Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I shall explore language, gender, and identity issues in Li Kotomi’s Higanbana ga saku jima. Li flips our current power dynamics, in a post-pandemic and xenophobic world where only some women have the power. But even this brand-new world turns out to be exclusive.

Paper long abstract:

Li Kotomi’s Higanbana ga saku jima (The island where red spider lilies bloom, 2021) has been acclaimed by Japanese and international critics for its use of language—a mixture of contemporary Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Ryukyuan languages for which the novel has been labeled “untranslatable”—and the gender issues it refers to. Language and nationality, as well as gender and sexuality play a crucial role in contemporary Japanese literature and relate to the patriarchal history of Japan as a nation-state, and of the Japanese language itself.

Li Kotomi builds her narrative around three characters, all of whom meet on “Island,” have different sensibilities, and serve to explore and question gender and power issues. What at a first glance seems to be a sort of utopian society and a story of empowerment (on Island, family system is deconstructed and there is not such a thing as “mother” or “father”, and women called noro “rules” the community), however, turns out to be another example of an exclusive society, where familiar old tropes are flipped, but fail to create inclusivity. According to Susan Napier (1995), “movement” is an important aspect of both utopias and dystopias, but in utopias history is something which is rewritten or rediscovered and in dystopias it is absent, or something to escape from. As the two young protagonists, Umi and Yona, learn the history of Island, they find out that their rewritten history is the result of a past of violence and exiles perpetuated by men, and that it is intertwined with language and gender issues.

Nevertheless, from a gender perspective, the power noro turns out into a failure, as the society is repressive regarding men – similarly to Naomi Alderman’s The Power. At the same time, the use of language reminds us of the power of Japanese as depicted by Iwaki Kei’s Farwell, my orange.