THE ACCULTURATION OF SHOUJO CULTURE (少女文化) IN KAWABATA YASUNARI’S WRITING - CASE OF THE NOVEL “BEAUTY AND SADNESS”
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Abstract
In the 1920s, along with the development of popular culture and popular literature of the Taisho period (1912-1926), there appeared a cultural movement of schoolgirls, called Shoujo bunka (少女文化). At the same time, the shoujo novel (shoujo sosetsu/ 少女小說) - the precursor of 20th-century Japanese lesbian literature was born. From the 1930s to 1940s, Kawabata Yasunari participated in the magazine Shoujo no tomo (少女の友) and was influenced by shoujo literature. This article aims to explore the influence of the Shoujo cultural and literary movement on Kawabata Yasunari’s writing, as reflected in the novel Beauty and Sadness. This article examines the origin of the “artistic materials” that Kawabata learned and inherited from the Shoujo culture and literature of the early 20th century. This study also analyzes Kawabata’s own creations and contributions from the aspects of storytelling and ideology of Beauty and Sadness, considering the position of this novel in the lesbian literature genre of modern Japanese literature.
Keywords
Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata Yasunari, lesbian literature, modern Japanese literature, Shoujo culture
Article Details
References
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