Writing Pregnancy in Low-Fertility Japan

Abstract

Writing Pregnancy in Low Fertility Japan analyzes the literary representations of pregnancy and childbirth by Japanese women in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century—work notable not simply for the diversity of views it encompasses, but for the wide range of genres in which it has taken shape. These texts reveal complex political, personal, and social concerns, ranging from the role and nature of the woman’s body, to her place in the family, to the meaning of motherhood for individuals and for society. Their authors engage with these issues, drawing on a range of literary techniques and frameworks to talk about the role of motherhood and the impact that it has on their lives and their work. This "pregnancy literature" serves as an important yet rarely considered forum for exploring and debating not only the particular experiences of the pregnant mother-to-be, but the broader concerns of Japanese women about their bodies, their families, their life choices, and their aspirations.

Embodiment and Its Violence in Kawakami Mieko’s Chichi to ran: Menstruation, Beauty Ideals, and Mothering

“…For example, in 1989, when Japan's fertility rate dropped to 1.57, it was treated as a public crisis and there were several expressions that encouraged motherhood, including a famous statement by finance minister Hashimoto Ryutaro at the time, about women prioritizing having children over their education. 102 Almost twenty years later, in 2007-the same year of the publication of Chichi to ran-"birth-giving machines" (kodomo o umu kikai) was the expression used by the Minister of Health Yanagisawa Hakuo to refer to Japanese women and their role to aid with the low birthrate. 103 In this context, when Makiko and Midoriko smash eggs Kawakami "bestows the participating female characters with the awareness, subjectivity and agency to refuse to be birth machines for the nation."…”

Ogawa Yōko and the Horrific Femininities of Daily Life

“…44 Amanda Seaman views the narrator's deliberate, repeated act of jammaking as shōjo resistance to adulthood, a sort of fairy tale in which "[t]he younger sister-cum-witch leans over her bubbling cauldron, concocting a potion with which to dispatch the pure princess." 45 This reading accompanies her analysis of the "shōjo" narrator's "fundamental fear of sexual, emotional, and relational transformation, and her rejection of the social maturity imparted by motherhood." 46 But what makes the depiction of the narrator particularly disturbing is the unthinking, unexplained manner in which she proceeds to make the jam.…”