ABSTRACT
The novels of Tomioka Taeko contain many autobiographical elements. In Meido no kazoku (A Family of Hades), Shokubutsusai (The Festival of Vegetables), and Kochuan ibun (The Strange Story of Kochuan), many of the sections are based on the author's real life or personal experiences. A Family of Hades is about two subcultures in Japan, both of which can be called indigenous, and the novel traces the way these indigenous subcultures undergo change in the new circumstances of the postwar period. The morality of the common people in the old, urban-merchant culture is replaced by the morality of the middle class in the urban-capitalist culture. Wanderer-immigrants like her artistlover can climb from the bottom of one culture to the height of the avant-garde easily because they exist outside the framework of any culture. The coexistence of self-insistence and self-parody characterizes the way Tomioka deals with the self who is an artist.
