Week 3 (Lecture) - Returning to Japan

Question 1

What was the ‘moga’ (modern girl) associated with being?

Answer 1

To some people, a free spirit. To others, addicted to sex.

Question 2

How was the moga portrayed?

Answer 2

Portrayed as a free spirit, makeup, bobbed hair, cigarettes. Features more heavily than other women in literature of 1920s (housewife and working woman).

Question 3

What were the ten qualifications for being a moga (according to Fujin Sekai magazine)?

Answer 3

1. Strenth, the ‘enemy’ of conventional femininity
2. Conspicuous consumption of food and drink
3. Devotion to jazz records, dancing and smoking Golden Bat cigarettes from a metal cigarette holder
4. Knowledge of the types of Western liquor and a willingness to flirt to get them for free
5. Devotion to fashion from Paris and Hollywood as seen in foreign fashion magazines
6. Devotion to cinema
7. Real or feigned interest in dance halls as a way to show off one’s ostensible decadence to ‘mobo’ (modern boys)
8. Strolling in the Ginza every Saturday and Sunday
9. Pawning things to get money to buy new clothes for each season -sometimes associations with sex for money
10. Offering one’s lips to any man who is useful, even if he is bald and ugly, but keeping one’s chastity because ‘infringement of chastity’ lawsuits are out of style.

Question 4

Aside from the moga, what other types of woman were featured in the 1920s?

Answer 4

• Housewife (shufu)
• Working woman
• New woman - somewhat feminist tone, not a good thing in 1920s

Question 5

What was the main literary school in the 1930s and what was it involved in?

Answer 5

Japan Romantic School. Involved in the project to overcome modernity.

Question 6

What did the Japan Romantic School celebrate?

Answer 6

Japan’s national essence, located in aesthetics.

Question 7

What were the themes of the Japan Romantic School?

Answer 7

Lost homes, wandering souls, rejection of modernity. Worshipped a (lost) past and envisioned a revitalised future. Overcome modernity, return to tradition, aesthetics of death.

Question 8

Who is considered one of the foremost writers associated with the Romantic School?

Answer 8

Tanizaki Jun’ichiro.

Question 9

What are the two phases of Tanizaki’s career?

Answer 9

1910s-20s: obsession with mass media, cinema, theatre, sexual perversion. Interested in cosmopolitanism in 1920s.
1930s: ‘koten kaiki’ (‘return to the classics’). Turns to culturalism in 1930s, professes attraction to tarnished beauty of the past. Key work: Some Prefer Nettles - Tanizaki trying to show us how to fall in love with traditional Japan.

Question 10

What characterised 1930s culturalism?

Answer 10

Escapism - a means to overcome capitalism, modernity and the West