A truism of the classical era split between kanbun and kana
           writing is that male authors used imported "masculine" Chinese for
           official documents and also had access to "feminine" native feeling.
           Nonetheless, some men "became" women through adoption of a
           female persona. This paper considers two modern authors who
           write as both men and women in the texts Shayo (The Setting Sun,
           1947) and Kagi (The Key, 1956). 

           As Japanese women had better access to "the master's tools" of
           writing, literary ventriloquism has differed from the West. Ovid
           speaking as Sappho or Richardson's Pamela step into a larger space
           devoid of women's own voices. Japanese male ventriloquists are
           arguably less likely to displace the woman's voice to assert
           domination. What happens in the Japanese case? As Miyake
           argues, a transformative merger of male and female voice
           characterizes the foundational performance that is Kagero nikki.
           Lyons suggests that in Dazai's late works he "had it both ways"
           through his male experience and female narrators. In Shayo, both
           the narrator Kazuko and her brother Naoji participate in Dazai's
           personality. Kagi enacts a play of genders as Tanizaki writes both
           the husband and the wife, Ikuko, who in turn write each other
           through "secret" diaries. 

           Neither author stops with a male-female hybrid voice, however.
           Kazuko and Ikuko not only observe but may hasten the death of
           the exhausted males Uehara and the husband. Dazai and Tanizaki
           expose the postwar male--remnant of the prewar nation's failed
           masculinist desires--in his weakness, allowing female characters to
           overpower him. 

           While taking care not to reinstantiate images of Dazai and Tanizaki
           that Wolfe explodes, this paper will explore the acts of writing that
           produce this apparent triumph of the feminine.
 

  In his fiction, plays and critical essays, Inoue Hisashi has long grappled with the problem of the modern nation state and national language as coterminous.  He seems to view the conflicting tensions inherent in the development of national language, that is, the opposition between nostalgia for the past and desire for the new (modern), as parallel to the Janus-faced nature of the emerging nation state. 

 In this paper I will briefly discuss how Inoue Hisashi positions himself in opposition to the
 homogenization of Japanese language (specifically, hyôjungo).  I will discuss Inoue’s often ironic attacks on “standard Japanese” as part of a larger polemic against the ideological excesses of the Meiji State and the negative impact on regional and pre-modern Japanese cultural forms.  Using three of Inoue’s texts that deal with the topic of national language: Kirikirijin (1981), Kokugo gannen (1986), and Tokyo seben rôzu (1999), I will show how Inoue’s writings consistently attack the idea of state control over language.  Inoue assails the instruments of state ideology by giving voice to the marginalized members of Japanese society; the social, economic and cultural outcastes who implicitly preserve the diversity of the pre-modern period.  While Inoue presents countless examples of cultural and linguistic heterogeneity that challenge the monolithic vision of modern Japanese national identity, I will also point out that his success in altering the discourse on national language runs counter to his original goals once he becomes an arbiter of linguistic orthodoxy himself.  As a proponent of the conservation of certain pre-modern linguistic forms, I will discuss the way that in some respects, Inoue ironically strengthens the case for fixing Japanese linguistic forms and thus, asserts the need for a more historically authentic version of “standard Japanese.” 
 

                                                                           Giorgio Amitrano 
                                                           Naples University of Oriental Studies
 

             The provocative novel Kagirinaku tômei ni chikai burû (1976) by Murakami Ryû, with
      the bisexual encounters of the male hero, may be considered one of the first examples of an
      unprecedented challenge to traditional boundaries of sex definition in Japanese literature. 

      Some years later, writers such as Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana, have expressed
      in their best-selling works an even stronger need for a redefinition of masculine and feminine
      roles. Their works are less obviously provocative than Murakami Ryû’s but are more subtly
      subversive in their suggesting unconventional sex roles as normality. In their novels a new
      balance between the sexes is created through questioning male and female stereotypes, and to
      a certain extent the reading public has seemed to identify with this. The invention of a
      transsexual father in Kitchin and the lesbian theme, recurrent both in Yoshimoto and
      Murakami, have been accepted by their readers without scandalized reactions, as if they
      faithfully reflected the state of Japanese society. 

      But do they really reflect reality, as the success of gay author Fujino Chiya, recent
      Akutagawa winner, would seem to suggest? Or do they just anticipate a change in Japanese
      sensibility that has not yet taken place in actual society? And why is the search for a
      redefinition of sexual roles so often connected with a feeling of loneliness and displacement?
      Do these writers see changing sexual identities as a cause of social isolation, or rather as a
      means to establish a new kind of communication between sexes? These are some of the
      themes I shall be investigating in my paper.
 

      Tomioka’s middle-aged female protagonist continues one-night-stand 
      ventures with young men and conclusively reconfirms her hope of living 
      life as an "animal," with no "relationships and words." The "animal" 
      here indicates that she wants to decenter any thematics of sexuality, 
      covered with values of commitment (relationships) and/or meaningfulness 
      (words). The mere pursuit for sexual acts is discovered at ground zero, 
      where a woman and a man can face each other equally and straightly. 

      Nakagami’s protagonist expresses an ambivalent interest in sexual 
      symbolism. The story unfolds a wandering hijiri’s encounter with a young 
      mysterious woman in a mountain. The man approaches her in the hope of 
      corresponding with something divine in her; he soon realizes that 
      neither spiritual salvation nor a life together with the woman are 
      attainable. With nowhere to belong to, this hijiri just keeps walking 
      through an always-renewing present. 

      Tomioka and Nakagami write about the limits of sexuality by highlighting 
      the literal and performative power of sexuality as something digressive 
      from sexual symbolism. The protagonist’s modes of being are both 
      described by their namelessness and endlessness of their desires. On the 
      basis of this commonality, the two writers display contrast: Tomioka’s 
      protagonist aggressively disengages herself from sexual symbolism, while 
      Nakagami’s hero becomes deconstructively free from within his engaged 
      search of the very symbolism. Their difference corresponds to the 
      asymmetric gender role differences assigned to them in the formation of 
      the discourse on sexuality.