The politics of gender, class, and sexuality in Miyamoto Yuriko's fiction

This dissertation examines Miyamoto Yuriko's (1899-1951) development into a feminist, Marxist writer, and cultural critic through an examination of her fiction. It sets out to explore successive phases in the career of Miyamoto Yuriko to place the author in the Japanese cultural context of her times. The primary goal is to move beyond the generally conceived image of "Miyamoto Yuriko as a communist writer" politically constructed by Miyamoto Kenji and his Japanese Communist Party associates. Her representative female protagonist transforms from Nobuko to Hiroko and back to Nobuko, and this turn/return demonstrates the author's critical stance to gender, class, and sexuality.; The dissertation is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter outlines the author's life and works. Chapter Two is a study of Nobuko (1928). As a Kunstlerroman this novel explores Yuriko's autobiographical protagonist Nobuko's development as an artist in a patriarchal culture. Chapter Three treats "The Breasts" (1935), which illustrates Yuriko's career as a proletarian writer. Through her semi-autobiographical protagonist, Fukagawa Hiroko, a nurse and revolutionist, the text represents the contradictory relationship between class and gender in Japanese proletarian literary movement. Chapter Four explores The Banshu Plain (1947). This work primarily concerns Japanese people's lives in the aftermath of the war, but Yuriko's autobiographical protagonist Ishida Hiroko's regressed feminist awareness is also probed. Chapter Five is a study of The Weathervane Plant (1947). This novel recounts the reunion of Ishida Hiroko with her husband Jukichi after his twelve year wartime incarceration as a political dissident. Through the couple's conflicting relationship, the text problematizes a contradictory aspect of Marxist feminism. Chapter Six examines The Two Gardens (1948). This book treats Nobuko's further development from Nobuko. The text centers on Nobuko's relationships with her mother and her female friend, which reveals the author's strong desire to recover her own repressed voice. Chapter Seven discusses Signpost (1951). This novel deals with Nobuko's ideological affinity to Marxism during her stay in the Soviet Union. Her representation as essentially a socialist propaganda figure playing apolitical role in a Stalinist text is critically scrutinized.