Miura Ayako the Christian writer: A critical study of her major novels and their reception in Japan

Miura Ayako (1922-1999) was one of the most successful women writers in modern Japan. Yet, despite her literary talent, Miura had until recently been labelled as "a writer of taishu bungaku," ("mass" literature) and her works had been relegated to the periphery as "popular novels" unworthy of serious criticism or scholarship. My research project is a re-examination of the life and works of Miura Ayako and a case study of how a female Christian novelist survived and thrived in the Japanese literary world. The central thesis of my dissertation is this: "the hitherto negative reception of Miura's novels by critics in Japan can be attributed to the obstacles she faced as a woman writer of popular novels on Christian themes, working from the off-center location of Hokkaido." My dissertation problematizes the distinction between junbungaku (pure literature) and taishu bungaku and questions the authority held by the male-dominated bundan (literary guild) in terms of deciding what is or is not pure literature. As the critic Hirano Ken observes, by the 1930s, the notion of "pure" literature had become established by the bundan in reaction to the rising tide of mass literature. I contend that, just as shishosetsu (autobiographical I-novel) became equated with junbungaku because it was considered more "purely Japanese," Miura's Christian novels had been rejected because they were viewed as "foreign" and "too far from native traditions" to be considered "pure literature." Through a textual analysis of eight representative works by Miura, including her historical novels, I demonstrate that her novels are by no means "low-brow fiction for mere entertainment"; rather they represent serious works of fiction that explore life and human nature, rivaling the works of Mori Ogai, Natsume Soseki, Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Oe Kenzaburo who are counted among the best of modern Japanese writers. I conclude that Miura ultimately succeeded by writing novels that defy a clear distinction between the "pure" and the "mass" and by challenging some of the most basic assumptions held by the literary establishment in terms of what constitutes pure literature, who is qualified to write it, and how it should be written.