Narrating Bodies

Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Breastfeeding in Contemporary Japanese Literature

Authors

  • Juliana Buriticá Alzate
  • Letizia Guarini Hosei University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2024.324

Abstract

This special issue examines representations and constructions of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding in contemporary Japanese fiction in a selection of literary texts from the 2010s to the 2020s. It thus joins ongoing conversations and existing studies concerned with the representation of reproduction and motherhood in modern and contemporary Japanese culture (Saito, 1994; Seaman, 2016; Castellini, 2017; Harada, 2021). However, the essays in this section focus on depictions of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding in terms of narrating bodies as a way to articulate women’s experiences of physical and psychological oppression within Japanese society and redefine new forms of mothering, fathering, and parenting. This research investigates the ambivalence and complexity around motherhood and embodiment in contemporary women’s fiction. At the same time, it explores the connections between literary studies and contemporary sociocultural dynamics of gender and family.

References

Bullock, Julia C. The Other Women’s Lib: Gender and Body in Japanese Women’s Fiction. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010.

Buriticá Alzate, Juliana. “Shocking Readers and Shaking Taboos: Maternal Body and Affects in Itō Hiromi’s Work.” In Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations, and Reflections, edited by Andrea O’Reilly, 75–92. Ontario: Demeter Press, 2022.

Buriticá Alzate Juliana and Hitomi Yoshio. “Reimagining the Past, Present, and the Future of Reproductive Bodies in Contemporary Japanese Women’s Fiction: Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs and Sayaka Murata’s Vanishing World.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Reproductive Justice and Literature, edited by Beth Widmaier Capo and Laura Lazzari, 465–486. New York: Springer International Publishing, 2022.

Castellini, Alessandro. Translating Maternal Violence. The Discursive Construction of Maternal Filicide in 1970s Japan. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.

Guarini, Letizia. “Madri che uccidono. Maternità e solitudine in Mori ni nemuru sakana e Saka no tochū no ie di Kakuta Mitsuyo.” Il Giappone. Studi e Ricerche 1 (2020): 85–110, https://doi.org/10.6092/2724-4369.

Harada, Kazue. Sexuality, Maternity, and (Re)productive Futures. Women’s Speculative Fiction in Contemporary Japan. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021.

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Seaman, Amanda C. Writing Pregnancy in Low-Fertility Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2016.

Seaman, Amanda C. “‘The Mommy Trap,’: Childless Women Write Motherhood—Kōno Taeko, Takahashi Takako, and Murata Sayaka.” In The Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women, edited by Rebecca Copeland, 195–208. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023.

Slaymaker, Doug. “Pregnant Violence in Post-3.11 Fiction.” Japanese Language and Literature 54, no. 2 (2020): 477–492. https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2020.93.

Specchio, Anna. “Women and Queer Kinships: Matsuura Rieko, Fujino Chiya, and Murata Sayaka.” In The Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Japanese Women, edited by Rebecca Copeland, 209–224. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023.

Cover for JLL Special Section Narrating Bodies

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Published

2024-10-09

Issue

Section

SPECIAL SECTION LITERATURE