Motherly Affection as Tactics: Negotiating the Bourgeois Household in Higuchi Ichiyō’s Kono ko

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article explores the discursive formation of mid-Meiji households by analyzing Higuchi Ichiyō’s Kono ko (This Child, 1896), a novella comprising a young mother’s monologue in its entirety. Earlier scholarship has treated the piece as a story about the mother’s conformity to dominant gender ideology, primarily regarding her husband. To demonstrate negotiations between the mother and domestic staff within her household, given the existing power structure, this study also highlights changing relationships revealed in the monologue. I employ the framework of Michel de Certeau’s “tactics,” which explains an individual’s creative means of opening up a space for alternative interactions without drastically changing the dominant structure. These “tactics” can help us better understand the role of the mother’s emotional expressions that leads her to reformulate her domestic work relations. This new relation, I will argue, does not deviate from the emergent Meiji bourgeois culture that appreciated individual spontaneity to maintain both efficient and affective labor. By offering a close textual analysis of the piece, this study aims to broaden our understanding of mid-Meiji bourgeois domesticity and the complex gender and class relations of modern Japanese discursive space.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Shimizu, M., "“Jochū” imeji no katei bunka shi [History of household culture through the images of “maids”]" Sekai shisōsha 2004

2 Yosano, A., "Yosano Akiko zenshū [Complete works of Yosano Akiko]. Vol. 14" Kōdansha 1980

3 Van Compernolle, T. J., "The uses of memory: The critique of modernity in the fiction of Higuchi Ichiyō" Harvard University Press 2006

4 Reddy, W. M., "The navigation of feeling : A framework for the history of emotions" Cambridge University Press 2001

5 Moretti, F., "The bourgeois : Between history and literature" Verso 2013

6 Miri Nakamura, "The Cult of Happiness: Maid, Housewife, and Affective Labor in Higuchi Ichiyō’s “Warekara”" Johns Hopkins University Press 41 (41): 45-78, 2015

7 Kamei, H., "Shutai to buntai no rekishi [History of subjectivity and literary style]" Hitsuji shobō 2013

8 Nolte, H. N., "Recreating Japanese women, 1600–1945" University of California Press 151-175, 1991

9 De Certeau, M., "Practice of everyday life" University of California Press 1984

10 Saito, R., "October). Writing in female drag : Gendered literature and a woman’s voice" 44 (44): 149-177, 2010

11 Shimizu, S., "Modern Murasaki: Writing by women of Meiji Japan" Columbia University Press 232-239, 2006

12 Shimizu, S., "Modern Murasaki: Writing by women of Meiji Japan" Columbia University Press 240-266, 2006

13 Yuzawa, Y., "Meiji no kekkon Meiji no rikon: kateinai jendaa no genten [Marriage and divorce of Meiji: The origin of gender at home]" Kadokawa shoten 2005

14 Collins, P. H., "Learning from the outsider within: Sociological significance of Black feminist thought" 33 (33): 14-32, 1986

15 Higuchi, I., "Kono ko [This Child]" 1 (1): 1-13, 1896

16 Seki, R., "Kataru onna tachi no jidai: Ichiyō to meiji josei hyōgen [The era of women’s narratives: Ichiyō and Meiji women’s expressions]" Shin’yōsha 1997

17 Higuchi, I., "In the shade of spring leaves: The life of Higuchi Ichiyō, with nine of her best stories" W. W. Norton & Company 241-253, 1992

18 Sand, J., "House and home in modern Japan: Architecture, domestic space and bourgeois culture, 1880–1930" Harvard University Press 2003

19 Okada, K., "Historical demography and labor markets in prewar Japan, Vol. 3" Routledge 146-166, 1998

20 Maeda, A., "Higuchi Ichiyō no sekai [The world of Higuchi Ichiyō]" Chikuma shobō 1989

21 Tanaka, Y., "Higuchi Ichiyō iyada! to iu [“Iyada!,” says Higuchi Ichiyō]" Shūeisha 2004

22 Hasegawa, S., "Hasegawa Shigure zenshū [Selected works of Hasagawa Shigure](Vols. 4 & 5)" Nihon bunrinsha 1942

23 Van Compernolle, T. J., "Happiness foreclosed: sentimentalism, the suffering heroine, and social critique in Higuchi Ichiyō’s ‘Jūsan’ya’" 30 (30): 353-381, 2004

24 "Hakkan no kotoba [Inaugural Remark]" 1 (1): 1-4, 1895

25 Karlin, J., "Gender and nation in Meiji Japan : Modernity, loss, and the doing of history" University of Hawaii Press 2014

26 Brooks, B. J., "Gender and law in the Japanese emporium" University of Hawaii Press 2014

27 Mayumi Manabe, "From the Margins of Meiji Society: Space and Gender in Higuchi Ichiyō’s “Troubled Waters”" Johns Hopkins University Press 49 (49): 26-50, 2016

28 Kan, S., "Dōjidai no nakano ‘Kono ko’ [‘This Child’ among the contemporaries]" 68 (68): 126-131, 2003

29 Komori, Y., "Buntai toshite no monogatari [Narratives as writing styles]" Seikyūsha 2012

30 Suzuki, M., "Becoming modern women: Love and female identity in prewar Japanese literature and culture" Stanford University Press 2010