22nd John W. Hall Memorial Lecture, Women Writers and Discourse on the Postwar Japan, Noriko Mizuta

The Council is pleased to present the 22nd John W. Hall Memorial Lecture in Japanese Studies. Noriko Mizuta (Poet, literary critic, scholar of comparative literature and educator) presented "Women Writers and the Discourse on the Postwar Japan” on April 5, 2022.

Discourse on the Postwar (sengoron) in Japan has predominantly consisted of debates among male commentators concerning responsibility for the war. Absent from these debates are questions of how women experienced the postwar era, and of how women have attempted to overcome their experiences of the war and trauma. This absence can be attributed in part to the lack of cultural perspectives—as opposed to those that are historical, political, and sociological—in Postwar Discourse. Accordingly, this lecture examines literary works by women writers and poets whose grew up during the war, experienced the air raids, the atomic bombs, family deaths, the loss of cities and villages, and the black market, while internalizing the resulting violence, destruction, and a pervasive sense of danger and anxiety. Particular scrutiny is given to a generation of writers born mostly in the 1930s, and who began writing in the late 1950s—Morisaki Kazue, Shiraishi Kazuko, Tomioka Taeko, Oba Minako, Yoshihara Sachiko, and Tsushima Yuko. Their works enable critical perspectives on the Postwar that are only possible when considered through the prism of female representation and experience.

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