ABSTRACT
“Gender,” along with “sexuality,” a rediscovered subject for Japanese feminists, has always been an overriding concern for Minako. The sexual norms of the heterosexual relationship are turned upside down in “Sea Change” in a menage a trois consisting of two men and a woman. The boundary that distinguishes sexual possession from erotic power in a traditional male gaze is erased, and Minako’s playfulness takes over. The focal point of the female poet’s complaint is the pillar of masculine culture, the marriage institution. While the man’s poem registers the preferred male position in this world, the woman, after pondering his survival techniques of evasion and manipulation, rejects being a man. The woman’s gaze and observation miss nothing: the problems of single-parent child care, the increase in the number of women who choose to remain single, the abandonment of children, infanticide, as well as the disadvantages women still face working in male-dominated professions.
