ABSTRACT
Skeptical and suspicious of socially constructed and universally accepted notions about reality, she is often drawn into an alliance with postmodernism which seeks to “distance us from and make us skeptical about beliefs concerning truth, knowledge, power, the self, and language that are often taken for granted within and serve as legitimation” for civilization. Sharing the characteristic element of modern literature which Lionel Trilling calls “a bitter line of hostility to civilization,” Minako’s work asks “every question that is forbidden in polite society. The verbal radicalism which Minako blunts in interviews, essays, and biographical writings is given free play in her fiction, particularly in the mouths of her fictional characters. The reassessment of her first marriage, a personal matter, also involves a larger issue of a political nature, that of a country willing to embrace certain stereotypes for securing a productive capitalist society to maintain the status quo.
