| By introducing the new concept of the “Westernesque woman,” this study explores the relationship between translation, gender representation, and literary production in the cultural cross-fertilization that gave birth to modern Japanese literature.; The “Westernesque woman” names a distinct lineage of femmes fatales in modern Japanese literature who are neither ethnically nor culturally “Western” per se, yet are distinguished by physical appearances, personal mannerisms, lifestyles, behaviors, and ways of thinking that were perceived within the Japanese context as particularly evocative of the West. As femmes fatales, they function as the dangerously alluring embodiments of Japan's cultural assimilation of the modern West.; The landmark Westernesque women in modern Japanese literature not only represent the cultural vanguard as female other, but also mark a particular interest in the constantly disputed status of media within literature itself. From Futabatei Shimei's creation of a new vernacular style in Ukigumo and Tayama Katai's attempt at Naturalist “raw description” in Futon to Shimamura Hôgetsu's call for Naturalist acting, vernacular speech, and gender representation on the stage, Westernesque female figures were repeatedly invoked as proof of a given media's ability to represent the latest arrival on the modern scene.; As a favored mechanism for marking one's place on the battlefield of literary styles and representational modes, the Westernesque woman also reflects the mediation of these disputes by the consumption—reading, translation, and adaptation—of modern Western literatures. In order to show that the exotic value of the Westernesque woman in modern Japanese literature is inextricably tied to the exotic appeal of Western literary styles, concepts, and representational modes, this study expands the parameters of exoticism to include not only the exotic sexual other, but also the exotic textual other as an object of fascination. Sustained attention to the profound effects of translation on the development of modern Japanese literary production reveals Westernesque women to be sirens who personify the dangers of spanning the gap between reading Western literatures and writing in Japanese. |
