Time for a Music Bath: Body, Sex, Control, and Subversion in Unno Jūza’s Literary Dystopia

Authors

  • Yue Wang Washington University in St. Louis

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2025.352

Keywords:

Unno Jūza, Dystopian Fiction, Modern Japanese Literature, Science and Technology

Abstract

Modern Japanese writer Unno Jūza 海野十三 (1897-1949) published the story “The Music Bath at Eighteen O’clock” 十八時の音楽浴 ("Jūhachiji no ongakuyoku") in 1937 that envisions a future where the use of science, utopian desires, and dystopian realities intertwine. By examining Unno’s life, the socio-political context of interwar Japan, and reading his story as dystopian fiction, I argue that “Jūhachiji no ongakuyoku” cannot only be interpreted as a propagandist story advocating for scientific progress in militarism; it is also a political satire modeled on 1930s Japan and a cautionary tale. Unno’s dystopia shows us that utopian perfection can never be realized without the devastating loss in human lives, identity, and morality.

Author Biography

Yue Wang, Washington University in St. Louis

Yue Wang (wangyue1@wustl.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Japanese literature with a gender studies graduate certificate at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her Master’s degree on Japanese women’s reproductive dystopian fiction from The University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on Japanese women’s writings, feminist theories, ecological studies, and posthumanism. Her article “Eat A Life, Make A Life: Posthuman Love in Murata Sayaka’s ‘Life Ceremony’” is included in a forthcoming Routledge volume of love in world literature. She is currently working on the feminist and posthumanist construction of body, gender, and knowledge in Japanese dystopian fiction.

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Published

2025-11-12

Issue

Vol. 59 No. 2 (2025): Japanese Language and Literature

Section

LITERATURE ARTICLES

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