ABSTRACT

The main aim of this chapter is to explore how queer theoretical approaches may be useful for readers of modern Japanese literature. I begin by summarizing what characterizes queer approaches to reading literature as they emerged in Anglophone literary studies. I try also to give some sense of how those approaches have evolved over the quarter century since Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler published the two books that are often said to have founded the field in 1990 (Sedwick 1990, Butler 1990). I then address the translation of queer scholarship into and out of Japanese, and examine how queer readings can illuminate certain texts both at the margins and at the centre of the Japanese literary canon, focusing especially on 1911 novel Kokoro, and what may be gained from different approaches to this canonical text. Finally, I discuss a 2008 theatrical adaptation of Kokoro in relation to recent developments in queer studies. Queer approaches have light to shed on authors of all stripes, so I could have chosen almost any author and any work. But for reasons I discuss below, Sōseki's work and its reception offer an especially rich medium for ‘queer reading’ in the modern Japanese context.