Mirror Images: The (Lack of) Parallels Between Nogami Yaeko and Her Female Protagonists

Abstract

Certain characteristics of Japanese woman writer Nogami Yaeko's career and personal life were significantly different from those of her peers. Reading Nogami's works in context of her life story therefore provides an interesting platform on which to perform a literary analysis. This paper performs such an analysis on two of Nogami's short stories, "Persimmon Sweets" (1908) and "A Story of a Missing Leg" (1931). In particular, I show how Nogami was able to make unobtrusive societal criticisms through her writing because the lives of her female protagonists did not closely mirror her own life. As a dedicated wife and mother, Nogami appeared to be a very traditional woman in the eyes of literary critics, who therefore considered her a mere amateur author who wrote without any particular agenda. Nogami used this misguided impression to publish subversive writings which were not recognized as such by critics. In "Persimmon Sweets" and "A Story of a Missing Leg", the protagonists reject the stereotypically female roles that society tries to force on them. However, because Nogami's own life seemed to be in compliance with the rigid adherence to gender roles that her characters renounce, critics did not view her writing as revolutionary. Only by doing a careful reading and remembering that Nogami was not at all an amateur author--as I do in this paper--can readers appreciate the true depth of her social commentary.