C. Ames
Oct 10, 2008
Citations
0
Influential Citations
2
Citations
Journal
Japan Forum
Abstract
Abstract The Franco-Japanese writer Yamata Kiku (1897–1975) lived in Paris during the 1920s, 1930s and again after the war, writing solely about Japanese culture and predominantly about Japanese women. She was received and indeed styled herself as la japonaise for Parisian literary circles and met with great success, championed by the likes of Valéry, Colette and later Henry Miller. This article examines Yamata's status as a woman who capitalized on the racial and cultural imperatives of her time in France and Japan to present herself variously, both in Orientalist mode and in the tradition of French enlightened republicanism. It questions whether Yamata's works subvert the hegemonic reification of Japanese culture or whether they confirm the Madame Chrysanthemum myth. By analysing changes in her mode of self-representation, it reveals a nexus of gender and racial stereotypes, which has been little explored in the Franco-Japanese context and which challenges the common assumption of the subversive nature of cultural hybridity. Finally, it explores what recent studies of Yamata, together with the 1998 decision by her original publisher Stock to reprint her earlier works, can tell us about the (post-)Orientalist discourse in France today.