Presentation Title

Narrating Self and Supper: Food in the Works of Ogawa Yoko

Location

RCC 202

Start Date

12-10-2013 11:00 AM

End Date

12-10-2013 12:30 PM

Abstract

In an interview after receiving the Akutagawa prize in 1991, Ogawa Yoko says that she is interested in writing characters who are frustrated in the pursuit of perfection through food. She tells the interviewer that she is intrigued by the idea of flawlessness and that is linked with the consumption of food. Certainly food is front and center in her novel Sugartime (1994), but it has an even more complicated role in her 1991 novella Pregnancy Calendar. In this paper, I will explore the young female protagonists’ relationships with food and how they use this relationship to define themselves against others and society at large. For both Kaori, the narrator, and the unnamed narrator in Pregnancy Diary, food serves to protect them from the disappointments in life, such as breaking up with a boyfriend. Yet for the unnamed narrator, food is a weapon against others. These two novels are told in the form of the diary narrated in the first person by the young female character. I will explore how these characters chronicle their food obsessions in diaries.

Comments

Presentation is included in Panel 16: The Role of the Body in Contemporary Japanese Literature

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Oct 12th, 11:00 AM Oct 12th, 12:30 PM

Narrating Self and Supper: Food in the Works of Ogawa Yoko

RCC 202

In an interview after receiving the Akutagawa prize in 1991, Ogawa Yoko says that she is interested in writing characters who are frustrated in the pursuit of perfection through food. She tells the interviewer that she is intrigued by the idea of flawlessness and that is linked with the consumption of food. Certainly food is front and center in her novel Sugartime (1994), but it has an even more complicated role in her 1991 novella Pregnancy Calendar. In this paper, I will explore the young female protagonists’ relationships with food and how they use this relationship to define themselves against others and society at large. For both Kaori, the narrator, and the unnamed narrator in Pregnancy Diary, food serves to protect them from the disappointments in life, such as breaking up with a boyfriend. Yet for the unnamed narrator, food is a weapon against others. These two novels are told in the form of the diary narrated in the first person by the young female character. I will explore how these characters chronicle their food obsessions in diaries.