Author: Hiraishi, Noriko

Annotation: This paper aims to examine the imagination of contemporary Japanese popular texts toward Chinese (or Chinese-ish) culture, focusing on high fantasies. Taking up this imagination for the epic in high fantasies, it reconsiders the notions of history and narrative in this genre related to the image of China, adopting a gender perspective. Epic literature is a typical example that is related to the “grand narrative” and suffers under the spell of Bakhtin’s dictum: “we encounter the epic as a genre that has not only long since completed its development, but one that is already antiquated (Bakhtin 1981: 3).” From the gender point of view, epic literature has been considered to be typically a masculine genre, from Homer’s Iliad to Milton’s Paradise Lost, as Bernard Schweizer states: “Both in subject matter and in form, epic may well be the most exclusively gender coded of all literary genres (Schweizer 2006: 1).” Japan was no exception; the heroic tales and war chronicles such as The Tale of Heike were definitely labeled male literature, while the diary-form was considered feminine. As far as contemporary Japanese literary genres are concerned, however, a desire for the epic still exists, and gender bias seems to affect them as well; a grand saga for boys’ comics and animation (such as Uchū Senkan Yamato (Star Blazers: The Quest for Iscandar) and the Gundam series in the 1970s-80s) and love and friendship for girls (from Candy Candy in the 1970s to Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You) in the 2000s). On the other hand, it is also intriguing that these genres seem to foster a desire for the epic among girls, especially epics with some Chinese-ish imagination. This paper also clarifies the girls’ yearning for grand history and the characteristics of the works that have been linked with Chinese-ish (and sometimes East Asia-ish) exoticism.

Keywords: Japanese Epic Fantasy, Grand Narrative, Chinese Culture, Gender.

Pages in journal: 98 - 103