Rebecca L. Copeland is professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she has a courtesy appointment in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from Columbia University in 1986. Her published works include The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (2006), co-edited with Dr. Melek Ortabasi; Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing (2006); The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (2001), co-edited with Dr. Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen; Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan (2000); and The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo (1992). She is also the translator of several works of Japanese fiction.
... With tanka in Meiji representing the feminine tradition, "[v]irtually [End Page ... more ... With tanka in Meiji representing the feminine tradition, "[v]irtually [End Page 196] every woman writer of the era wrote poetry to some ... The first piece is Kishida Toshiko's polemical speech about creating "a box without walls" for young women in "Hakoiri musume" (Daughters in ...
The adage, “Do as I say, not as I do,” might well have been on the lips of American missionary wo... more The adage, “Do as I say, not as I do,” might well have been on the lips of American missionary women in Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. As Jane Hunter, a historian whose work has focused on missionary women in China, observes, “The message of Christian domesticity preached by missionary women [in China] was less transformative than the force of their own example.”2 Trained “in submission, service, and love, all objects of the mission cause,”3 American women were thought to be inherently suited to serving Christian goals. But more often than not, as these women crossed into unfamiliar territory, they also found themselves at odds with the very values and behaviours they were intent on projecting. Karen Seat notes in her study of American women missionaries in Japan, “Conservative American ideologies of womanhood, in fact, were powerfully undermined by the very women who were charged to promote them—namely, white Protestant missionary women. While nineteenthcentury mission...
<p>Kirino Natsuo picks up where the Kojiki leaves off in <italic>Joshinki</italic&... more <p>Kirino Natsuo picks up where the Kojiki leaves off in <italic>Joshinki</italic> (The Goddess Chronicle), her creative retelling of the Izanami-Izanagi myth sequence. She invents an afterlife for the goddess Izanami. In so doing, Kirino defies earlier gendered stereotypes by reconstituting Izanami with a diva-esque interiority. Izanami is furious that she has been locked in the underworld while her male partner roams the world freely. Her anger spills over into the imaginary human world Kirino designs, and it disrupts the myths that have been invented to keep female desire in check. Using Lauren Berlant's notion of the "diva citizen," this chapter finds in the angry voices of both Izanami and her author, Kirino, a creative force meant to challenge and change social and institutional practices of gender discrimination.</p>
In a place like no other, on an island in the shape of a tear drop, two sisters are born into a f... more In a place like no other, on an island in the shape of a tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of the oracle. Kamikuu, with creamy skin and almond eyes, is admired far and wide; Namima, small but headstrong, learns to live in her sister's shadow. On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is presented with a feast of sea-serpent egg soup, sashimi and salted fish, and a string of pure pearls. Kamikuu has been chosen as the next Oracle, while Namima is shocked to discover she must serve the goddess of darkness. So begins an adventure that will take Namima from her first experience of love to the darkness of the underworld. But what happens when she returns to the island for revenge? Natsuo Kirino, the queen of Japanese crime fiction, turns her hand to an exquisitely dark tale based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi. A fantastical, fabulous tour-de-force, it is a tale as old as the earth about ferocious love and bitter revenge.
Mythical Bad Girls: The Corpse, the Crone, and the Snake Rebecca Copeland Just as there is an arc... more Mythical Bad Girls: The Corpse, the Crone, and the Snake Rebecca Copeland Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil ...
... 13-14. For more on Shikin&amp;amp;#x27;s work, see Rebecca Copeland, &amp;amp;quot;Sh... more ... 13-14. For more on Shikin&amp;amp;#x27;s work, see Rebecca Copeland, &amp;amp;quot;Shimizu Shikin&amp;amp;#x27;s &amp;amp;#x27;The Broken Ring&amp;amp;#x27;: A Narrative of Female Awakening,&amp;amp;quot; in Review of Japanese Culture and Society 6 (1994): 38-47. 31 Wakamatsu, &amp;amp;quot;Keishu shõsetsu ka tõ, dai san: Wakamatsu Shizuko,&amp;amp;quot; p. 188. ...
... With tanka in Meiji representing the feminine tradition, &amp;quot;[v]irtually [End Page ... more ... With tanka in Meiji representing the feminine tradition, &amp;quot;[v]irtually [End Page 196] every woman writer of the era wrote poetry to some ... The first piece is Kishida Toshiko&amp;#x27;s polemical speech about creating &amp;quot;a box without walls&amp;quot; for young women in &amp;quot;Hakoiri musume&amp;quot; (Daughters in ...
The adage, “Do as I say, not as I do,” might well have been on the lips of American missionary wo... more The adage, “Do as I say, not as I do,” might well have been on the lips of American missionary women in Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. As Jane Hunter, a historian whose work has focused on missionary women in China, observes, “The message of Christian domesticity preached by missionary women [in China] was less transformative than the force of their own example.”2 Trained “in submission, service, and love, all objects of the mission cause,”3 American women were thought to be inherently suited to serving Christian goals. But more often than not, as these women crossed into unfamiliar territory, they also found themselves at odds with the very values and behaviours they were intent on projecting. Karen Seat notes in her study of American women missionaries in Japan, “Conservative American ideologies of womanhood, in fact, were powerfully undermined by the very women who were charged to promote them—namely, white Protestant missionary women. While nineteenthcentury mission...
<p>Kirino Natsuo picks up where the Kojiki leaves off in <italic>Joshinki</italic&... more <p>Kirino Natsuo picks up where the Kojiki leaves off in <italic>Joshinki</italic> (The Goddess Chronicle), her creative retelling of the Izanami-Izanagi myth sequence. She invents an afterlife for the goddess Izanami. In so doing, Kirino defies earlier gendered stereotypes by reconstituting Izanami with a diva-esque interiority. Izanami is furious that she has been locked in the underworld while her male partner roams the world freely. Her anger spills over into the imaginary human world Kirino designs, and it disrupts the myths that have been invented to keep female desire in check. Using Lauren Berlant's notion of the "diva citizen," this chapter finds in the angry voices of both Izanami and her author, Kirino, a creative force meant to challenge and change social and institutional practices of gender discrimination.</p>
In a place like no other, on an island in the shape of a tear drop, two sisters are born into a f... more In a place like no other, on an island in the shape of a tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of the oracle. Kamikuu, with creamy skin and almond eyes, is admired far and wide; Namima, small but headstrong, learns to live in her sister's shadow. On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is presented with a feast of sea-serpent egg soup, sashimi and salted fish, and a string of pure pearls. Kamikuu has been chosen as the next Oracle, while Namima is shocked to discover she must serve the goddess of darkness. So begins an adventure that will take Namima from her first experience of love to the darkness of the underworld. But what happens when she returns to the island for revenge? Natsuo Kirino, the queen of Japanese crime fiction, turns her hand to an exquisitely dark tale based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi. A fantastical, fabulous tour-de-force, it is a tale as old as the earth about ferocious love and bitter revenge.
Mythical Bad Girls: The Corpse, the Crone, and the Snake Rebecca Copeland Just as there is an arc... more Mythical Bad Girls: The Corpse, the Crone, and the Snake Rebecca Copeland Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil ...
... 13-14. For more on Shikin&amp;amp;#x27;s work, see Rebecca Copeland, &amp;amp;quot;Sh... more ... 13-14. For more on Shikin&amp;amp;#x27;s work, see Rebecca Copeland, &amp;amp;quot;Shimizu Shikin&amp;amp;#x27;s &amp;amp;#x27;The Broken Ring&amp;amp;#x27;: A Narrative of Female Awakening,&amp;amp;quot; in Review of Japanese Culture and Society 6 (1994): 38-47. 31 Wakamatsu, &amp;amp;quot;Keishu shõsetsu ka tõ, dai san: Wakamatsu Shizuko,&amp;amp;quot; p. 188. ...
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