Kōno Taeko
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Kōno Taeko | |
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Native name | |
Born | Osaka, Japan | February 24, 1926 (15th year of Taisho)
Died | January 29, 2015 | (aged 88)
Occupation | Author |
Nationality | Japanese |
Genre | Fiction |
Kōno Taeko (
By the end of her life, she played a role in Japan's literary establishment and one of the first female writers to serve on the Akutagawa Literary Prize committee.[1] Kenzaburō Ōe, Japan's Nobel Laureate, described her as one of the most lucidly intelligent female writers in Japan, and the US critic and academic Masao Miyoshi identified her as among the most "critically alert and historically intelligent". US critic and academic Davinder Bhowmik described her as one of the truly original voices of the twentieth century, beyond questions of gender or even nationality. A writer who deals with dark themes, Kōno is known to many English speaking readers because of her collection of short stories Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories (New Directions, 1996).
Biography
[edit]Kōno Taeko was born in Osaka, Japan to Kōno Tameji and Yone;[2] her father Tameji operated a business specializing in mountain produce.[1] As a child, she suffered from poor health.[1] When she was 15, the Pacific War broke out and her teenage years were dominated by service as a student worker sewing military uniforms and working in a munitions factory.[3]
After the war, she finished her economics degree at Women's University (currently Osaka Prefecture University), graduating in 1947.[2][4] Kōno has written about the new sense of freedom and the high hopes she had after the war.[1] Determined to make a career for herself as a writer, she moved to Tokyo, a city full of literary activities and literary personae, joined a literary group led by Fumio Niwa, and threw herself into writing while working full-time.
After nearly a decade of trying to get published, during which she suffered several setbacks in her health including two bouts of tuberculosis, the literary magazine Shinchōsha began publishing her stories in 1961. In 1962, she was awarded Shinchōsha's "Dōjin zasshi" ("Coterie Magazine") award for her story "Yōji-gari" ("Toddler Hunting" [
Literary analysis
[edit]Kōno's writing explores how "underneath the seemingly normal routines of daily life, one may find hidden propensities for abnormal or pathological behavior," demonstrating that often "reality and fantasy are not so clearly distinguishable from each other."[1] Alternative sexual practices is a theme that permeates Kōno's writing. Sadomasochism, for example, figures in "Toddler-Hunting," "Ants Swarm" (1964), and her novel Miira-tori ryōkitan. Kaiten tobira (Revolving Door, 1970) features spouse-swapping.[4] Kōno uses these themes to explore sexuality itself and the expression of identity. She combines these elements with illness, childlessness, and the absence of a husband to delve even more deeply into these topics.[5]
More specifically, her writings explore "the struggles of Japanese women to come to terms with their identity in a traditional patriarchal society."[2] Most of her female characters "reject traditional notions" of femininity and gender roles, their frustration "leads them to violent, often antisocial or sadomasochistic ways of dealing with the world."[2] For example, in "Yōjigari," or "Toddler Hunting," one of her most famous stories, she investigates one woman's dislike of children. The protagonist, Akiko Hayashi, is repulsed by little girls but obsessed by little boys: she even imagines a little boy being beaten by his father to the extent that his innards spill out. She also takes pleasure in the sadomasochistic sex she has with her adult partner. One critic has written that the story "turn[s] the myth of motherhood on its head" while another argued that Hayashi was a representation of demonic women who threatened patriarchy itself.[2] In Fui no koe (1968), which one critic has called a "modern woman's Hamlet," Kōno presents the story of Ukiko, whose dead father haunts her. His ghost instructs her to murder the people who are controlling her life. At the end of the story, it is revealed that all of these incidents are only taking place within her mind and she is "trying in her twisted way to bring meaning to her everyday relationships."[2]
Selected list of works
[edit]Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Prizes | |
---|---|---|---|---|
"Flesh of the Bones" | ||||
"Blood and Shell" | ||||
"A Sudden Voice" | ||||
みいら |
"Cruel tale of a hunter become prey" | |||
1960 | 「 |
"Uses of a Female Impersonator" | ||
1961 | Yōjigari (Japanese: |
"Toddler-Hunting" | ||
1963 | Kani (Japanese: |
"Crabs" | Akutagawa Prize | |
1967 | Saigo no toki | "The Final Hours" | ||
1969 | Fui no Koe (Japanese: |
"A Sudden Voice" | Yomiuri Prize | |
1970 | Tetsu no Sakana (Japanese: |
"Iron Fish" | ||
1971 | Hone no niku | "Bone Meat" | ||
1980 | Ichinen no bokka (Japanese: |
"A Year-long Pastoral" | Tanizaki Prize |
Notes
[edit]- ^ a b c d e "Kōno Taeko", This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers, 1960–1976, edited and translated by Yukiko Tanaka and Elizabeth Hanson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), p. 44.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Taeko Kono", Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, December 9, 2002; retrieved June 17, 2009.
- ^ "Kono Taeko", The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From 1945 to the present, eds. J. Thomas Rimer, Van C. Gessel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 190.
- ^ a b c KKo, "Kōno Taeko", Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 175.
- ^ Mark Morris, "Japan", The Oxford Guide to Contemporary World Literature, ed. John Sturrock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 281.
English translations
[edit]- Kōno, Taeko. Toddler-hunting & Other Stories. Trans. Lucy North. New York: New Directions, 1996. ISBN 0-8112-1391-9.
External links
[edit]- J'Lit | Authors : Taeko Kono* | Books from Japan (in English)