Inside OUT: Space, Gender, and Power in Kirino Natsuo

Gender, Language, and Community: GALE SIG Forum

“…In literary studies, it has been pointed out that literature that has spread throughout the world market is "always as much about the host culture's values and needs as it is about a work's source culture; hence it is a double refraction, one that can be described through the figure of the ellipse" (Damrosch, 2003, p.283 Schipper, Cavcic, & Komai: Gender, Language, and Community: GALE SIG Forum abroad. In this forum, intending to raise gender awareness, Komai focused on Natsuo Kirino's work, Out, as one example that brings transnational viewpoints on Japanese gender structure. Out gained commercial success in English-speaking markets (Arimoto, 2004;Davis, 2010) and its critical depictions of Japan's male-dominated structure have been analyzed in many papers, in both Japanese and English (English examples: Copeland, 2017;Qiao, 2019;Seaman, 2006;Sokolsky, 2018). The novel, accepted by both popular readers and in academia, can be a vehicle for considering the hidden Japanese gender structure in the domestic context.…”