- Convenors:
-
Daphne van der Molen
(Leiden University)
Ludovica Marincioni (Sapienza University of Rome)
Mariam Talibi (Waseda University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Gala Maria Follaco
(L'Orientale University of Naples)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Modern Literature
Short Abstract
By analysing how modern women writers and editors utilized autobiographical discourse, this panel explores how life writing was used within the male-dominated literary and theatrical fields as a strategy to negotiate gender in relation to authorship, cultural legitimacy, and professional authority.
Long Abstract
This panel investigates how women writers and editors in early twentieth-century Japan used autobiographical discourse as a strategic tool to negotiate authorship, cultural legitimacy, and professional authority within male-dominated literary and theatrical fields. Moving beyond readings of life writing as mere personal testimony, the three papers demonstrate that autobiography functioned as a form of intervention, an instrument through which women reclaimed agency, articulated intellectual positions, and contested gendered hierarchies. All three papers illuminate magazines as crucial sites where women mobilised autobiographical discourse to negotiate authority, experiment with new authorial roles, and claim intellectual legitimacy within male-dominated cultural fields.
The first paper explores how Yosano Akiko—the first woman to write hyōron for Waseda bungaku—positioned herself in a context that was both highly intellectual and in which authors were male. It argues that as a woman, Akiko could not simply offer her critique but could only do so by strategically embedding her critique in an autobiographical narrative framework.
The second paper analyses how kabuki playwright Hasegawa Shigure mobilised autobiographical narrative to assert her authorial presence in a theatrical world that excluded women. Drawing on her essays and zuihitsu published in both women’s magazines and theatre-focused periodicals, the paper examines how Shigure reflected on the balance between creative work, domestic responsibilities, and structural limitations facing women. Through these texts, she transformed personal experience into a medium of cultural negotiation, using life writing to claim authority, position herself within kabuki, and articulate a role for women in broader theatrical discourse.
The third paper examines editorial self-representation in the opinion magazine Josei Nihonjin (1920-1923), arguing that the column Henshūshitsu yori served as a paratextual space where women editors constructed authority through the documentation of daily operations and affective aspects of the publishing process. These women editors used the column to assert their legitimacy as intellectuals in a male-dominated publishing field.
Together, these papers reveal life writing as a dynamic strategy of self-positioning, challenging assumptions about women’s writing in modern Japan and highlighting the centrality of life writing to the formation of female intellectual and cultural authority.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
The paper shows how Hasegawa Shigure uses life writing in magazine essays to negotiate her position in the theatrical field and her engagement with kabuki, drawing on experiences of creative work and domestic pressures to assert cultural authority for women in early twentieth century Japan.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines selected life writing by Hasegawa Shigure (1879–1941), the first Japanese woman to achieve public recognition as a kabuki playwright, framing these texts as both personal testimony and deliberate cultural intervention. Particular attention is given to Kasei o tori nagara kyakuhon o kaku tanoshimi (The pleasure of writing scripts while managing the household), published in 1909 in the women’s magazine Fujin Sekai, and to Shibai to kyakuhon (Theatre and scriptwriting), which appeared in Kabuki magazine in May 1909. The paper also considers Watari kiranu hashi (A bridge that cannot be crossed), part of a collection of zuihitsu that first appeared in 1929 in Nyonin geijutsu (Women’s art, 1928–1932), a magazine edited by Shigure herself, where these writings were published intermittently until the journal’s cessation. Thus, these writings appeared in both women’s magazines and theatre-focused periodicals. Across these and other texts, Shigure reflects on her early engagement with theatre, the daily negotiations between creative work and domestic demands, and the structural disadvantages faced by women writers. Her discourse repeatedly presents dramaturgy as contingent, shaped by deference to male predecessors and constrained by household responsibilities; yet these same reflections function as a means of asserting her authority within a sphere conventionally closed to women. By analysing how Shigure mobilises life writing, this paper argues that she transforms self-narration into a site of authorial negotiation, using personal experience to claim cultural agency and to articulate a position for women within the kabuki and broader theatrical world of early twentieth century Japan.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how Yosano Akiko—the first woman to write hyōron for Waseda bungaku—positioned herself in this masculine literary field and argues that as a woman Akiko could not simply write a critique but had to strategically embed it in an autobiographical narrative framework.
Paper long abstract
Yosano Akiko (1878–1942) was one of Japan’s most famous modern women writers. When Myōjo, the poetry magazine published by Akiko and her husband, folded and the Yosano household faced financial strain, Akiko—until then known primarily as a poet—turned to a wide range of genres, writing for diverse venues and audiences to support her family. This paper focusses on the hyōron (critiques) she wrote in this period for Waseda bungaku, one of the period’s most prestigious literary journals. Although the magazine published work by numerous women writers, their contributions were limited to fiction, drama, and poetry; Akiko was the only woman recognized as a critic in its pages. Her hyōron for this male-dominated readership are notable for their extensive autobiographical passages. These passages have long led scholars to treat the essays primarily as biographical data, neglecting both these texts’ context (Waseda bungaku) and genre (hyōron).
By taking both context and genre into account in my analysis, I show that these autobiographical passages provided Akiko with a legitimizing framework—a strategic pretext that enabled a woman writer to enter the domain of critique. I propose that as Akiko’s first forays into the genre of critique, these early hyōron present us with an important example of how Akiko, as a woman writer, positioned herself in the literary field. Further, they show how her texts strove to construct both authority and legitimacy for Akiko’s identity as a critic. Reinterpreting these essays as acts of literary positioning rather than biographical testimony reveals how Akiko navigated gendered constraints in the early twentieth-century literary field and, more broadly, illuminates the instrumental uses of life writing in this period. This analysis shows that treating these texts merely as biographical data—as is common in scholarship—does not do justice either to the intricate positioning that takes place in these texts or to the difficult position of Akiko as a woman hyōronka in a masculine space. Thus, this paper aims to broaden our understanding of the position of women in the late Meiji literary field and critically examines practices of life writing in this period.
Paper short abstract
Through archival analysis of Josei Nihonjin (1920–1923), this paper explores the column “Henshūshitsu yori” as a paratextual space where women editors documented intellectual labor and daily practice, claiming legitimacy and collective identity within a male-dominated nationalist publishing culture.
Paper long abstract
This paper investigates autobiographical strategies as instruments of legitimization in the context of women’s magazine production in interwar Japan. It focuses on the column “Henshūshitsu yori” (編集室より, “From the Editorial Room”) in women’s opinion magazines, which functioned as a space for women editors to narrate their publishing process and intellectual work. I argue that these editorial notes constitute a form of editorial performativity, where the process of editing becomes a means of self-legitimation, affirming women’s authority within a field that was still male dominated.
This paper focuses on Josei Nihonjin (1920-1923), a sister publication of Nihon Oyobi Nihonjin (1907-1945), produced under the intellectual group Seikyōsha (1888-1945). Josei Nihonjin constituted an experiment in gendered nationalist discourse, where contributors argued for women’s emancipation as an unavoidable stage for national progress. The editors – led by Sugawara Kyōzō, Yanagi Yaeko, Yoshida Kiyoko, and Chiba Yasurako – documented through “Henshūshitsu yori” not only the daily operations of the editorial room – deadlines, readers’ correspondence, financial struggles – but also their affective experiences of working together as intellectual women. The column also served as a means to connect with readers, offering a glimpse of the authors beyond the articles they penned and the ideologies they championed.
Existing scholarship on Japanese women’s periodicals has focused on content and political significance of these media, but little attention has been dedicated to the paratextual zones where women’s identity was constructed through the editorial process. Building upon theories of authorship and performativity, this study examines these columns as texts where women’s authority was enacted and reaffirmed. Methodologically, the paper is grounded in archival research and discourse analysis, drawing on issues of Josei Nihonjin, and approaches the “editorial room” as a discursive space of self-representation.
Reading “Henshūshitsu yori” columns as autobiographical documentation, this paper reassesses women’s magazine culture as a laboratory for feminist intellectual work and collective authorship in the context of modern Japan.