Luciana Cardi | Kansai University (original) (raw)

Papers by Luciana Cardi

Amsterdam University Press eBooks, Jan 16, 2023

Ōba Minako and Kurahashi Yumiko engage with the Japanese tale “Urashima Tarō” in different ways. ... more Ōba Minako and Kurahashi Yumiko engage with the Japanese tale “Urashima Tarō” in different ways. In Urashima Grass, Ōba reflects on the notions of time, memory, and human curiosity embedded in “Urashima Tarō” and links them to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the interstitial identity of Japanese immigrants, and the problematic reality of modern Japan in a way that prefigures contemporary ecocritical and transnational perspectives. Kurahashi reshapes Urashima Tarō’s adventures into a metaphor of literature as a cross-cultural, intoxicating trip to another world and emphasizes the subversive, “poisonous power” of storytelling.

Contemporary Women's Writing 16:2, pp.190-207, 2023

This article explores the role of Japanese folktales in Angela Carter's oeuvre, focusing especial... more This article explores the role of Japanese folktales in Angela Carter's oeuvre, focusing especially on the figure of the Japanese fox trickster that appears in Fireworks, Love, and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. In these works, the shapeshifting body of the East-Asian fox becomes a site of conflict between contrasting categories (male/female, European/Asian, human/animal) and mirrors the process by which the characters are turned into commodified, fictionalized representations of gender and race. The trickster's ability to shift across the animal-human border also provides Carter with a narrative device to interrogate the cultural boundaries that define both sexuality and humanity (as opposed to bestiality)-a topic that prefigures her critique of patriarchal and anthropocentric hierarchies in The Bloody Chamber. In the last few decades, Angela Carter has become an iconic figure in the field of fairy-tale studies, and her approach to traditional fairy and folk narratives has been extensively analyzed through different theoretical frameworks, such as gender studies, postmodernism, Marxism, and psychoanalytic studies. More recently, we have seen an emerging scholarly interest in the fields of human-animal studies and ecocriticism in Carter's fairy-tale retellings that revolve around nonhuman protagonists and question the boundaries dividing humans, beasts, and plants (Kato; Hughes; Webb and Hopcroft; Desblache; Lau). Such interest mirrors an increased awareness of the interconnections between fairy tales, with their recurrent motif of animal-human hybridity, and human-animal studies, which reflects on the cultural discourse shaping our relation to animals (Seifert). While there is a growing corpus

Journal of the Short Story in English. Les Cahiers de la nouvelle, 2018

In this insightful study, Jennifer Smith moves from a lucid reflection on the controversial debat... more In this insightful study, Jennifer Smith moves from a lucid reflection on the controversial debate over the origins, characteristics and literary labels attributed to the short story cycle as a genre to explore how American cycles have contributed to articulating the problematic notion of modern subjectivity from the nineteenth century to contemporary times, in periods of cultural and ideological change. She examines texts by authors from different historical and ethnic backgrounds to illustr...

comparison between Greek theatre and Japanese aesthetics, because neither of them is influenced b... more comparison between Greek theatre and Japanese aesthetics, because neither of them is influenced by Christian morality. Moreover, in "Utsukushī shi" (Beautiful Death, 1967), he argues that the concept of beauty embedded in Greek poetry is similar to bushidō, the way of Japanese samurai: "Greek poets' concept of the ideal was to live beautifully and to die beautifully. Without doubt, this was also the ideal of our bushidō" (42). Here Mishima draws a subtle link between Japanese bushidō and the verses by Menander and Archilochus, who celebrate the 'beautiful death' of the young heroes. However, his words are tinged with melancholy, when he points out that the old bushidō values are no longer relevant １) Page numbers refer to the Japanese text. In this article translations from the Japanese are mine, except where an English source is given in the notes. ２) Kure Shigeichi described his experience as Mishima' s teacher in the following article: Kure Shigeichi (1972) "Mishima san to Girishia no koto" , Shinchō, 69 (12), pp. 184-186.

Journal of American Folklore, 2021

Forms of the Body in Contemporary Japanese Society, Literature, and Culture, 2020

This chapter explores the role of the Japanese fox trickster and the implications of its shape sh... more This chapter explores the role of the Japanese fox trickster and the implications of its shape shifting from animal to human in traditional folktales and contemporary adaptations. Combining literary analysis with approaches from folklore studies, gender studies, and human-animal studies, it offers an introduction to the history and the significance of the fox trickster, from the ancient Buddhist anecdotes to contemporary literature. In this context, it examines how its figure is reworked in Kij Johnson’s novel The Fox Woman (2000), inspired by the Buddhist tale “How Kaya no Yoshifuji of Bitchū Province Became the Husband of a Fox and Was Saved by Kannon.”
This tale, included in the collection Konjaku Monogatari (Tales of Times Now Past, ca. 1120), revolves around the theme of the “bride fox” (kitsune-nyōbō), a vixen that assumes the form of an attractive woman, marries a man, and lives with him until he discovers her beastly nature. By comparing the ancient Japanese tale with its contemporary adaptation, this chapter analyzes their different approaches to the shape-shifting process as a means to construct female body and identity. The Japanese tale emphasizes Kannon’s salvific power and focuses on the figure of the male protagonist, whereas Johnson’s retelling shifts the agency from Kaya no Yoshifuji to the two women who occupy a marginal position in the Konjaku Monogatari: the protagonist’s absent wife and the fox woman. At the same time, the performative nature of the vixen’s transformation mirrors the fictional nature of womanhood and challenges the concept of femininity embedded in the traditional tale.

Frontier of Foreign Language Education 2, 2019

Cogito – Multidisciplinary Journal 4 (1): 168-178. , 2012

This essay explores the rewriting of the myth of the Amazons in Amanonkoku ōkanki (Record of a Vo... more This essay explores the rewriting of the myth of the Amazons in Amanonkoku ōkanki (Record of a Voyage to the Country of Amanon), by Kurahashi Yumiko. Moving from the analysis of the function of myth in Kurahashi’s literary work, this paper investigates how the mythological subtext redefines the boundaries of the traditional Japanese novel and contributes to the construction of Kurahashi’s “anti-world”. In Amanonkoku ōkanki, the myth of the Amazons–the barbarian opposite of Greek civilization–mirrors the reverse side of Japanese reality, exposing its incongruities and questioning the transparency of its language. Moreover, by reverting the traditional archetypes of the Greek hero and the Amazons, the novel plays with the construction of sexual identity and undermines the narrator’s point of view.
Published in Cogito – Multidisciplinary Journal 4 (1): 168-178. Year 2012. Publisher: Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Publication Website: http://cogito.ucdc.ro/en/ ISSN: 2068-6706.

Reception of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia (https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=J9J7DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs\_ge\_summary\_r&redir\_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false ), 2018

This chapter explores the reception of Euripides’ Medea in postwar Japanese literature and traces... more This chapter explores the reception of Euripides’ Medea in postwar Japanese literature and traces the changing perceptions of Greek dramas among Japanese writers from the 1940s to the 1960s, focusing especially on Mishima Yukio’s Shishi (Lioness, 1948) and Kurahashi Yumiko’s “Shiroi kami no dōjo” (The White-Haired Little Girl, 1969). By setting the story of Medea in Tokyo in the aftermath of the Second World War, Mishima underscores the decadent ideal of traditional Japan, pointing out the gap between pre- and postwar society, and thereby highlights the contradictions internal to Japanese modernity. His retelling of Greek antiquity thus becomes a way to thematize Japan’s cultural crisis, look nostalgically at the past, and ideally to restore order in chaotic postwar society. Almost twenty years after Mishima’s work, Kurahashi rewrites the story of Medea in a contemporary Japanese context. Yet, unlike Mishima, she does not use ancient Greece to imbue traditional Japan with an idealized aura. Instead, she experiments with cross-cultural narrative forms that mirror the ambivalent role of a generation of Japanese intellectuals caught between Western literature, the avant-garde, and Japanese tradition. By combining Euripides’ tragedy with Noh theater, appropriates a foundational story of Western culture and establishes a cross-cultural dialogue between Japanese and European literary and theatrical avant-gardes.

I analyze how Kurahashi Yumiko (1935–2005) reworks the Grimms’ “Snow White” in the fairy-tale col... more I analyze how Kurahashi Yumiko (1935–2005) reworks the Grimms’ “Snow White” in the fairy-tale collection Otona no tame no zankoku dōwa (Cruel Fairy Tales for Adults). Exploring Kurahashi’s approach to fairy tales and her controversial relation with postmodernism and gender studies, I focus on how “Shirayuki hime” (Snow White) reproduces and deconstructs the models of femininity conveyed by the Grimms’ tale.

This essay explores the representation of ancient Rome in relation to the construction of Japanes... more This essay explores the representation of ancient Rome in relation to the construction of Japanese identity in Yamazaki Mari’s Thermae Romae (2009-2013) and in its film adaptations. Moving from the notion of identity construction as a specular process, it discusses how ancient Rome becomes a mirror-like image that reflects contemporary Japan through strategies of imitation, opposition and reproduction. In this mirroring system, which involves also contemporary Italy, the image of Japan is represented through the ancient Romans’ gaze, in a process that evokes the dynamics of self-Orientalism. Along with the increasing popularity of the manga and its adaptations outside Japan, the Japanese vision of ancient Rome conveyed by them is reconfigured by new viewpoints, in a multi-layered process of reflection.

This paper explores how Campania region (Italy) has been portrayed in Japanese literature. It ana... more This paper explores how Campania region (Italy) has been portrayed in Japanese literature. It analyzes the works of several Japanese writers who have visited Campania, including Watsuji Tetsurō, Shimoi Harukichi, Kawabata Yasunari, Suga Atsuko, and Yoshimoto Banana.

Retelling Oedipus in Murakami Haruki and Kurahashi Yumiko’s literary works This essay focuses on... more Retelling Oedipus in Murakami Haruki and Kurahashi Yumiko’s literary works

This essay focuses on the reworking of Oedipal themes in Kurahashi Yumiko’s “To Die at the Estuary” (1970) and Murakami Haruki’s Kafka on the Shore (2002). In “To die at the Estuary”, included in Anti-tragedies, Kurahashi tries to “transplant” the myths embedded in Greek tragedies inside the literary framework of contemporary fiction. She retells Greek classics in a narrative style reminiscent of the Surrealists and Kafka, thus building imaginary bridges between different genres and cultures. Almost thirty years later, Murakami combines the story of Oedipus with elements of Kafka’s surreal narrative and contemporary pop culture. Moving inside a globalized literary system, he provides European and American readers with a Japanese version of a story foundational to Western culture.

Studies in Language and Culture（言語文化研究) 41, Osaka University Press, 2015

Among Mishima’s plays based on the classical repertoire, my analysis focuses on Niobe and Suzakuk... more Among Mishima’s plays based on the classical repertoire, my analysis focuses on Niobe and Suzakuke no Metsubō (The Decline and Fall of the Suzaku) because they provide an interesting case study for understanding how he reworks Greek mythology and tragedy to represent Japanese modernity. Significantly, these plays are set in Japan during the 1940s: Niobe takes place in 1949, during the American occupation, whereas Suzakuke no metsubō is set in the years between the last air raids of the Allied Forces and the Japanese surrender. Both of them portray a period when Japan had to face important political and social changes, and when the traditional concept of “Japanese identity” was questioned by new cultural models. Against this historical background, Mishima’s stage adaptations of the ancient classics highlight the gap between the old Japanese values and the chaotic postwar reality, by combining Greek tragedy, Shingeki, Noh and the Theatre of the Absurd.

Books by Luciana Cardi

Mishima Monogatari: Un Samurai delle Arti, 2020

This is a chapter about Yukio Mishima and ancient Greece. It has been published in the volume Mis... more This is a chapter about Yukio Mishima and ancient Greece. It has been published in the volume Mishima Monogatari: Un Samurai delle Arti (Lindau, 2020, ed. Ciapparoni La Rocca)