Reading List: Japanese Feminist Lens in The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa

(I) Secondary/ Theoretical Works:

  1. The Columbia Journal of Modern Japanese Literature
  2. Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature
  3. The Woman’s Hand: Gender & Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing
  4. World Literature Today
  5. Eastlit
  6. Electric Literature
  7. The Uncanny, Freud

 

(II) Academic Journals:

  1. The Journal of Japanese Studies
  2. AATJ Journal: Japanese Language and Literature
  3. Brill’s Journal of World Literature

 

(III) Key Words:

  1. Gender
  2. Japanese/Literature
  3. Post-colonial
  4. Sexuality
  5. Psyche
  6. Grotesque

 

(IV) Paragraph:

For this reading list, I put together these sources with the help of Professor Menon. Although she has a similar background to what I’m looking to find, she apologized for not specializing and for not being familiar with East Asian literature. Despite this, we compiled a list of sources that compliment my argument quite well. I wanted to focus my secondary sources on what I am planning on using as my primary source, The Diving Pool, by Yoko Ogawa. A female Japanese author wrote this compilation of three novellas; all three novellas center around three different female protagonists. I plan to attack this through a feminist lens, and how the female body (and bodies in general) is portrayed in this book, and in addition I will attempt to add to the feminist lens by looking at the Japanese female perspective (The Woman’s Hand: Gender & Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing). I also found Yoko Ogawa’s book to have a unique sense of the grotesque attached to it, which is what inspired me to add Feud’s The Uncanny to the list, as well as the key words psyche and grotesque. I believe that not only with the Japanese female perspective compliment this text, but also to recognize the unique ability of Ogawa to portray the female body in both appealing ways and in disturbing ways. It is unclear whether or not she was attempting to bring to light the female body and make a statement about it, but for my research, I believe this would be an interesting way to look at it.

2 thoughts on “Reading List: Japanese Feminist Lens in The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa”

  1. This thesis topic sounds extremely intriguing! Your interest in the portrayal of the female body within your texts got me thinking about different pieces of feminist literature that may be useful to you. Immediately, I thought of Sandra Lee Bartky’s essay called, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” This whole piece deals with questions of beauty and the female body along with the association of passivity with this body. I am not sure if that is the direction you plan to go in but it is an extremely interesting piece that discusses elements related to your interest in bodies.

  2. This sounds really interesting, and I think Professor Menon did some of this work with us in our Border Crossings course (or at least touching on it). I don’t know if you’re considering this, but what I thought of immediately was the body descriptions and study in Lê Thi Diem Thúy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For, so I wonder if you might revisit her work, as she’s from Vietnam and cohesive with this. Even just writing or commentary she’s done about the refugee experience or the book might be interesting. This looks really interesting, and though I’m not familiar with your primary text, it sounds like a great place to go for this project.

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