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Paper short abstract

The paper offers readings of Yoshiya Nobuko’s Hana Monogatari stories set within the space and time of the all-girls’ school. The paper foregrounds how the narrative treatment of school space privileges shōjo desire and reimagines school space against its heteronormative and institutional purposes.

Paper long abstract

This paper offers readings of Yoshiya Nobuko’s Hana Monogatari stories set within the space and time of the all-girls’ school. Specifically, it examines the short stories, “Wasurenagusa” (Forget-Me-Nots) and “Shiragiku” (White Chrysanthemum)—first published in the girls’ magazine Shōjo Gahō in May 1917 and November 1917, respectively. Both stories from the collection depict encounters with same-sex schoolgirl desire realized within and through the architectural and material features of school space. Close readings and working translations of these texts will reveal how this desire is facilitated and visually composed against specific locations: such as the school gate, indoor gymnasium, classroom, and schoolyard. The paper argues that while minimally described in the narrative, the references to such locations operate as a literary shorthand for the original magazine readers of the stories who possess an embodied knowledge of everyday school life and imbue further affective resonance and charge to the expressions of desire in these spaces. The paper reads these narrative representations of desire and intimacy in school space alongside the accompanying illustrations to the stories as well as the photographic depictions of the all-girls school in other parts of girls’ magazines. By highlighting the broader visual and textual economy that define material schoolgirl life in Taisho-period girls’ culture, the paper foregrounds how Yoshiya’s narrative treatment of school space operates toward privileging shōjo desire and reimagining what the all-girls school means in contestation of its heteronormative, national, and institutional purposes.