The Newly Forming Flesh of Women and the Divinity: A Theological Reading of Modern Japanese Fiction

Abstract

This dissertation performs a theological reading of modern Japanese fiction and poetry written during the Meiji-Taishō period (the late 1860s-1930s), the period informed by the transmission, adaption, and response to Western modernity and coloniality. This work examines Christian language and images in Japanese literary works as both socio-cultural and theological phenomena. The main focus will be given to themes of the Divine, eros, and women’s flesh. Through a close reading of texts written by Kitahara Hakushū (1885-1942), Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886-1942), Shimazaki Tōson (1872-1943), Arishima Takeo (1878-1923), and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927), this work explores how the Christian notion of the Incarnation was brought to, mutated, and increased its radicality in a textual space, particularly in regard to women’s bodies, gender, and sex/sexuality. I contend that these authors’ texts manifest radical freedom of the Incarnate, who interacts with women who have stigmatized flesh and souls, in intimate and surprising ways. Ultimately, in this work, I explore the meanings and roles of texts in our embodied experiences of religion in modernity, and also consider how literary experiments disturb and broaden the scope of theological writing.