Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture

by Michiko Suzuki

Presenting a fresh examination of women writers and prewar ideology, this book breaks new ground in its investigation of love as a critical aspect of Japanese culture during the early to mid-twentieth century. As a literary and cultural history of love and female identity, Becoming Modern Women focuses on same-sex love, love marriage, and maternal love―new terms at that time; in doing so, it shows how the idea of "woman," within the context of a vibrant print culture, was constructed through the modern experience of love. Author Michiko Suzuki's work complements current scholarship on female identities such as "Modern Girl" and "New Woman," and interprets women's fiction in conjunction with nonfiction from a range of media―early feminist writing, sexology books, newspapers, bestselling love treatises, native ethnology, and historiography. While illuminating the ways in which women used and challenged ideas about love, Suzuki explores the historical and ideological shifts of the period, underscoring the broader connections between gender, modernity, and nationhood.

Genres: Japan, History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Asia, Literary Criticism

247 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 2009

Reviews

[Neli]

Este por otro lado ha sido una delicia, lo pongo como leído porque aunque me he quedado en el apartado de Nobuko porque necesito ir rapidísimo para el artículo, tengo interés en leerlo entero. Poner en el centro la modernidad me parece un enfoque buenísimo y varias de las líneas que se abren son precisamente muchas de las que quiero tratar en mi tesis. La bibliografía definitivamente me la apunto, me parece que las citas están elegidas con una maestría impresionante y que está hilado que da gusto.

[Arnika]

fascinating and very much necessary. easy to read and comprehend and rather informative. my only issue with it was that it did feel the need to reassert its main arguments during specific chapters very often, just in different ways. I understand the need to link back to an argument but it just felt like the author was simply rephrasing it multiple times when it wasn’t necessary. overall i did enjoy reading it, the part about same sex love in particular was especially fascinating, it was discussed in a way i haven’t encountered before. in addition, the trope of the mythic mother explored later on as a figure which both allowed japanese women in the 30s to legitimate their identities through a callback to ancient times while also falling in line with nationalistic values being perpetuated at the time was very interestingly explored

[River]

one of my favorite reads this year and definitely one I’ll go back and reference often. I loved the way she brought up concepts that existed in japanese social culture and used existing literature as a way to represent how people viewed and discussed these topics in popular culture.

[Richard]

Becoming demonstrated all of the elements one would like to see in a scholarly work. First, and foremost, it is based on a thorough review of a wide array of primary and secondary English and Japanese language sources. As some of the Japanese books were not available in English Suzuki translated them quite expertly herself. A 58 page bibliography confirmed how far reaching her research was in writing Becoming.

Second, the sources were carefully demarcated in the narrative text. Seventy nine pages of end notes confirmed just how deeply the author relied on her sources.

Third, her basic arguments were systematically presented. Chapters were subdivided into sections which were marked in bold. Ie, she integrated the information from these diverse sources and organized her ideas very effectively.

Fourth, the author did several things to enhance the readability of Becoming. Unlike many academic texts her prose was largely in direct declarative sentences. When writing literary analyses it can be challenging to provide a synopsis of a book that is thorough enough to help the reader grasp the points intended but not so lengthy as to become tedious. Suzuki accomplished this with some material which was quite complex. More specifically, subtle elements of the writings of the authors whose work she was analyzing were made comprehensible. Quotations, sometimes lengthy, were inserted in a timely way which supported her efforts to help the reader grasp the writer’s thinking. Although the Japanese language was used extensively throughout Becoming, translations were always provided. For a reader like me with some capacity in the language this was particularly interesting.

IMHO, Becoming has two modest flaws. First, there were times that her analyses were so thorough that the book was slow going in places. Eg, discussing the significance of the punctuation used, different editions of the same book, or the implications of choosing different Chinese characters for names got to be somewhat esoteric for me with my admittedly limited experience with this kind of analysis.

Second, nowhere in the book does Suzuki note that the sociocultural parameters within which the theories of love, marriage, and sex operating at that time were heterosexual and patriarchal in nature. Ie, she did not note that Japanese women of the early 20th century, as were women in the West, were struggling to find value and meaning in lives which were extremely circumscribed.

Despite these relative flaws Becoming was very informative. It would be wonderful if Suzuki wrote a follow up book covering the post war period in Japan up to and including the birth of modern feminism.

For those interested in reading a sampling of the works of the three authors discussed in Becoming as well as many other Japanese women writers of that era I recommend The Modern Murasaki. It was quite informative.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

[Chi Pham]

This book explores a wide range of themes found in the fiction of early twentieth-century Japanese women writers, illustrating the evolution of ideas such as self-identity, romantic love, marriage, and motherhood—topics that continue to feature prominently in contemporary discussions.

Today, many of these themes may seem familiar or even commonplace, but their initial appearance was often groundbreaking for contemporary readers. The section on love marriage was particularly interesting to me. While I was already aware that marriages based on romantic love were relatively uncommon in my grandparents’ generation, I had never fully placed this phenomenon within its historical context or incorporated it into my own historical analysis. The book helped me better understand how the concept of love marriage emerged and became an important subject of literary and social debate.

Another aspect I found fascinating was the discussion of illness as a literary symbol. Although this was not one of the book’s central themes, it introduced me to a new way of reading literature. Diseases often functioned as metaphors for broader social, emotional, or moral concerns—a technique that seems less prominent in much of modern literature. This perspective was new to me, and it is one that I will likely incorporate into my future analyses.

Overall, the book provides a valuable introduction to the concerns and aspirations of early twentieth-century Japanese women writers while also offering useful analytical tools for understanding literature more broadly.

[natalia]

gostei muito que teve uma seção inteira sobre a miyamoto yuriko :)

[Chelsea Szendi]

Suzuki tries to tease out themes of selfhood and modernity in the early twentieth century in Japan through the engagement of female authors with a "modern love ideology." She breaks down this ideology and its existence in the context of modern discourses on evolution, sexology, and liberal subjectivity in a way that can readily travel to other moments in modern Japanese history. In particular, a lot more work can be done to understand the tension (usually for modern female subjectivity) between what the model of a liberating liberal subjectivity lacks, and the oppressive potential of absolute identity between lovers or mothers and their children (and the frequent mobilization of the latter to undergird the nation).