Constructions of Gender Identity in Kurahashi Yumiko's Seishōjo

Abstract

Kurahashi Yumiko’s use of transgressive themes and her experimentalism in content and form throughout her works have been points of both controversy and scholarly interest. In Seishōjo (1965), Kurahashi takes the taboo theme of incest and places it at the center of the novel. In terms of form, she also experiments with a layered, multi-vocal narrative. The novel moves back and forth through the eyes and voices of two narrators, “I” and Miki. While the incests of “I” and Miki and the unique narrative style of the novel have been the subjects of academic discourse, there has been little attention dedicated to discussing the relationship between the two narrators and the construction of their gender identities. In my paper, I will use Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity to analyze the ways in which Kurahashi parodies pre-existing gender identities to construct her hero and her heroine. By imitating two popular genres of Japanese literature—the I-novel and shōjo literature—Kurahashi caricaturizes the gender identities of the rational, smart, elite male writer and the flowery, beautiful, innocent shōjo. This caricaturization reveals the arbitrary nature of attributes like “masculine” or “girly,” thereby destabilizing the long held ideas that serious male writers write highbrow literature and that girlhood is a time of innocence, soft beauty, and friendship.