2023 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Beyond Genius: Gender, Ethnicity and Authorship in the Modern Japanese Literary Field
| Project/Area Number |
21K12932
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
PITARCH PAU 早稲田大学, 文学学術院, 准教授 (40813837)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2025-03-31
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| Keywords | Modern Literature / Authorship / Gender / Ethnicity |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In 2023, I continued my research on poet and novelist Otsuka Kusuoko (1875-1910). I broadened my view to include her contemporary publishing world between the mid-1890s and her death, studying both Otsuka's writing in journals and the critical discourse around her work. My current conclusion is that Otsuka was attempting to build a new image of female authorship that matched her social position as an upper-class mother, while expanding the range of appropriate themes for that public persona. Her attempt was ultimately unsuccessful because, even though her fiction was well-received among her contemporaries, the critical and publishing world was fixated on the "keishu sakka" as the only possible model for female authorship, and effectively weaponized the figure of Higuchi Ichiyo (1872-1896) as canonized after her death in order to police female writing. It would not be until the publication of the journal _Seito_ in 1911 that the critical mass of discourse would be present for a "new woman" authorship to emerge, but that was too late for Otsuka.
At the Waseda University Brussels Office I held the workshop “New Directions in Modern Japanese Culture: Comparativism, Translation, and Nation-Building in the Age of Empire” on September 4-6, 2023, in collaboration with the ERC project "Modernizing Empires: Enlightenment, Nationalist Vanguards and Non-Western Literary Modernities" (University of Bologna), together with other European scholars of Japanese and Ottoman studies from institutions in Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The publication opportunities afforded by the international workshop I ran in September with European scholars has necessitated a rearrangement of my writing plans to prioritize the work resulting from that event.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
My article on images of authorship in the Taisho era is under review at an international journal of Japanese Studies.
I am in the process of editing two articles for submission: 1) My article on Okamoto will be submitted to the Gender Studies journal _Lectora_. 2) My article on Otsuka will be submitted to the Japanese Studies journal _Mirai_.
I am scheduled to present on my Otsuka research at the conference of the Spanish Japanese Studies Association (September 25-27, 2024).
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| Causes of Carryover |
The balance is an effect of the restrictions during the earlier part of this project that resulted in many conferences being cancelled or conducted online. I plan to use the remaining funds both to acquire materials, and to attend further academic conferences during 2024.
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Research Products
(2 results)
