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Zhang, Jessica Dong Ni

University of British Columbia

Dazai Osamu (pen name of Tsushima Shūji, 1909–1948) is one of the most celebrated writers of modern Japan. His enduring literary impact extends to the present day, as his works delve into contentious yet accessible topics like social alienation, fragmented subjectivities, and nihilism. Academic scholarship has historically situated some of his most iconic works within the shishōsetsu (“I-novel”) paradigm and examined them under an autobiographical lens. This thesis redirects the focus from Dazai’s canonized, (quasi-)autobiographical works to “Osan” (1947), one of his lesser-known works from the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). “Osan” features a first-person female narrator-protagonist who never benefits from the “revolutionary” opportunities introduced by the Occupation. In focusing on this text, my thesis offers important new insights into Dazai’s position vis-à-vis the changing conditions of Japan under the Allied Occupation. Specifically, this thesis argues that Dazai rejected the dominant idea of a Japanese postwar state that had completely and successfully severed itself from its problematic past and that the nation could only recover under the reformist agenda of the occupying forces. By employing a cross-gendered voice in “Osan,” Dazai offers a critique of the political continuities of the past into the present through the highlighting of persistent gender norms. Chapter One comprises the introduction to this thesis, including a historical overview of the Occupation period, a brief biography of Dazai, and a literature review of his cross-gendered writings and related scholarship. Chapter Two focuses on Occupation-period discourse surrounding “female liberation” and its effect on Japanese women, followed by a close reading analysis of “Osan” with a focus on the temporalities within the text and their relations to prevailing ideals of female domesticity. Chapter Three considers the language and narrative structure of “Osan” together with larger sociolinguistic discourse on “women’s language” in order to explicate how the female narrator-protagonist’s speech and interiorized thoughts are tied to her subordinated role within the household. In all, my thesis seeks to reveal the limits of “female liberation” as a masculinist-gendered discourse in Occupation-period Japan and illuminate the danger of forgetting those who have been overshadowed by the complex historical processes of patriarchal nation-building.

Text

2024-08-14

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88939

Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/