Gazing on the Shōjo: Kawabata Yasunari's Novels for Girls (Shōjo Shōsetsu)

Abstract

Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972), Japan’s first Nobel laureate in literature, is best known today for highbrow novels such as Yukiguni (Snow country, 1935–1947). But in the 1930s and 1940s, Kawabata was deeply involved with the girls’ literary magazine Shōjo no tomo (The girls’ friend) as an editor and an author of novels for girls (shōjo shōsetsu). This article calls for a critical reevaluation of Kawabata’s fiction in terms of his involvement with and appropriation of girls’ culture, through analysis of the novels Otome no minato (The girls’ harbor, 1937–1938) and Utsukushii tabi (Beautiful journey, 1939–1941). Kawabata’s use of the idealized shōjo is consistent in his writing for girls and adults, and is a parallel to the fascist aesthetics and colonial ideology in his work of this time period.