ASIAN 447: Gender and the City in Modern Japanese Literature
Alisa Freedman
437 Rockefeller Hall
Email: adf23@cornell.edu, 255-8409
Office Hours: Wednesday, 10-12 (or by appointment).
Course Description
All readings in English. No knowledge of the Japanese language is required.
Through reading and discussing a variety of works by both canonized Japanese writers
and those just becoming internationally known, we will explore the relationship between
representations of gender and the city in Japanese fiction. The class will consider how
such themes as urban growth, technological advances, the development of new popular
entertainments, mobilization toward war, economic booms and recessions, and changes in
the family system have affected the historical creation and literary portrayal of new
gendered social roles, including female and male students, working women, and
salarymen. We will also investigate the effects of interactions of classes and genders in
new city places and how these sites were frequently seen as both the setting and the
source of corrupt urban practices by Japanese authors at the time. Although we will focus
on literary images, the class will also examine visual media to better understand gender
and urban development in Japan. Importantly, we will discuss the value of literature in
both representing and reacting to Japanese history as experienced and the ways in which
stories help us understand more about the world and our own places in it.
I will begin class sessions with short lectures about Japanese history, authors,
literary form, and other information necessary to our understanding of the course
readings. Then the class will discuss the assigned literary works, and students are strongly
encouraged to share their ideas and insights.
Students will be required to keep reader response journals, which should include
relatively short entries about all of the assigned literary works. In these journals, students
are free to write about almost anything they would like, so long as entries specifically
concern the class readings. For example, students can give their impressions of the texts
and the authors’ literary styles, closely analyze passages, relate these works of Japanese
fiction to their own experiences, creatively rewrite parts of the stories, and start
brainstorming for their final papers. Students are also encouraged to post excerpts from
their journals on the class website and to read each other’s entries. Journals will be
collected and graded twice during the semester.
Students will also be responsible for preparing a longer final paper on a close
reading of one or more of the course texts. I strongly advise that students discuss their
final paper topics with me before they start writing. Each student will hand in a short
abstract of their final paper (which can be one of their journal entries) and will present
their topic to the class. Course grades will be based on class participation (20%) and
evaluation of the reader response journal (40%) and final paper (40%).
Course Reading List:
Books to Be Purchased:
Robert Lyons Danly, In the Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life and Writing of Higuchi
Ichiyo, A Woman of Letters in Meiji Japan (New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 1992).
Joan Ericson, Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women’s
Literature (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997).
Senji Kuroi, Life in the Cul-de-Sac, Phillip Garbriel, trans. (Berkeley: Stonebridge Press,
2001).
Miyuki Miyabe, All She Was Worth, Alfred Birnbaum, trans. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1992).
Nagai Kafû, Kafû the Scribbler: The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafu, 1879-1959
(Michigan Classics in Japanese Studies, No. 3), Edward Seidensticker, trans.
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990).
Ôe Kenzaburo, Seventeen & J: Two Novels, Luk Van Haute, trans. (New York:
Foxrock Books, 2002).
Tanizaki Jun’ichirô, Naomi, Anthony Hood Chambers, trans. (New York: Vintage Books,
2001).
Course Packet (Available for purchase at Gnomon Copies and placed on reserve in the
Kroch Library East Asia Reading Room.)
Optional readings are required for graduate students and suggested for undergraduates.
They will help you understand class themes and interpret the assigned stories. These
readings are on reserve in the Kroch Library East Asia Reading Room, along with the
following books for your reference: 1) Van C. Gessel, Three Modern Novelists, 2)
Edward Seidensticker, Low City, High City, 3) Edward Seidensticker, Tokyo Rising.
Course Syllabus: Gender and the City in Japanese Literature:
Week One: Background
1. Course Introduction
2. Gender and the City in Modern Japan (Showing of a video on Tokyo)
 Silverberg, Miriam, "Constructing a New Cultural History of Prewar Japan," Masao
Miyoshi and H.D. Harootunian, eds., Japan in the World (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1993), 115-143.
 Jane Rendell, “Introduction: Gender” and “Gender, Space,” Jane Rendell, Barbara
Penner, and Ian Borden, eds., Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary
Introduction (New York: Routledge, 1999).
 Optional Reading: Henry Smith, “Tokyo as an Idea: An Exploration of Japanese
Urban Thought Until 1945,” Journal of Japanese Studies (Winter 1978): 45-80.
Week Two: Growing up in Late Nineteenth Century Tokyo
 Higuchi Ichiyo, Child’s Play.
 Optional (but very helpful) Reading: Danly, 75-131.
Week Three: Yoshiwara and Tamanoi
 Nagai Kafû. A Strange Tale from East of the River.
Week Four: Women and the Gaze
1. Tanizaki Jun’ichirô, "Secret," Aileen Gatten and Anthony Hood Chambers, eds.,
New Leaves: Studies and Translations of Japanese Literature in Honor of Edward
Seidensticker (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 156-173.
2. Tayama Katai, "The Girl Watcher," Kenneth G. Henshall, trans., The Quilt and
Other Stories by Tayama Katai (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981), 167-183.
 Optional Reading: Earl Kinmouth, "The Sarariiman (Salary Man)," The Self-Made
Man in Meiji Japanese Thought: From Samurai to Salary Man (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1981), 277-325.
 Optional Reading: Mariko Inoue, “Kitokata’s Asasuzu: The Emergence of the
Jokakusei Image,” Monumenta Nipponica 51:4 (Winter 1996): 431-460.
 Optional Reading: Wolfgang Schivelbusch, "The Compartment," The Railway
Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 70-88.
Week Five: Outskirts – Housewives and the Suburbs
1. Kunikida Doppo, "The Bamboo Gate," Jay Rubin, trans., "Five Stories by
Kunikida Doppo,” Monumenta Nipponica 27:10 (Autumn 1972): 274-279, 328341.
2. Kawabata Yasunari, "Rainy Day Station," Lane Dunlap and J. Martin Holman,
trans., Palm in Hand Stories (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1988), 113-120.
Week Six: Memory, Women, and Urban Places
1. Izumi Kyôka, “Osen and Sokichi,” Charles Shiro Inouye, trans., Three Tales of
Mystery and Imagination: Japanese Gothic by Izumi Kyôka (Kanazawa:
Takakuwa bijutsu insatsu, 1992), 109-128.
2. (Reading to be announced)
Week Seven: The Modern Girl
 Tanizaki Jun’ichirô, Naomi.
 Silverberg, Miriam, "The Modern Girl as Militant," Gail Lee Bernstein, ed.,
Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991), 239-267.
Week Eight: Women, Wandering, and Writing
 Hayashi Fumiko, Diary of a Vagabond.
 Selections from Be a Woman (To be announced.)
Week Nine: Daily Life During the War and the Years After
1. Yasuoka Shotarô, “Bad Company,” Van C. Gessel and Tomone Matsumoto, eds.,
Showa Anthology: Modern Japanese Stories 1929-1961 (Tokyo: Kodansha,
1984), 76-99.
2. Images of the postwar city.
Week Ten: Uptown and Downtown Workers
1. Hayashi Fumiko, “Tokyo,” Ivan Morris, trans., Donald Keene, ed., Anthology of
Modern Japanese Literature (New York: Grove Press, 1956), 415-428.
2. Ariyoshi Sawako, “The Tomoshibi,” Makoto Ueda, ed., The Mother of Dreams
and Other Stories: Portraits of Women in Modern Japanese Fictions (Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1986), 241-257.
Week Eleven: Bad Boys (1960s)
1. Ôe Kenzaburo, 17.
2. Mishima Yukio, “Fountains in the Rain,” Lawrence Rogers, ed. and trans., Tokyo
Stories: A Literary Stroll (Berkeley; University of California Press, 2002), 32-41.
Week Twelve: Family Life
 Senji Kuroi, Life in the Cul-de-Sac.
Week Thirteen: Contemporary Tokyo
1. Apartment Living: Inaba Mayumi, “Morning Comes Twice a Day” Lawrence
Rogers, ed. and trans., Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002), 243-262.
2. Consumer Culture: Miyuki Miyabe, All She was Worth (A mystery novel so be
sure to read to the end!)
Week Fourteen:
1. All She Was Worth (Continued).
2. Final Impressions and Comments.
Students will be asked to present the topics of their final papers. If necessary, more than
one class will be devoted to presentations.