ABSTRACT
There is a strong tradition in Japanese literature of idealized women who, for various reasons, do not or cannot eat. This continuum covers folk tales of pre-modern brides who do not eat, through to stylish vampires in the heady years of the 1980s Bubble economy, and up to delicate anorexia sufferers grasping for control in at least one aspect of their lives in the early 2000s. We will see that, in Japanese literature, food and gender are inherently linked, and that this relationship is inherently fraught. The situation becomes even more complicated simply by dint of the fact that we are talking about food as it is represented in literary texts – as Tomoko Aoyama, citing the work of Terry Eagleton, points out: “literature, like food, is endlessly interpretable… and food, like literature, looks like an object, but is actually a relationship” (Eagleton 1998, 204–5, cited in Aoyama 2008, 2). This chapter will explore the complex relationship that exists between women and girls and food (and food refusal) in the works of Japanese women writers working from the 1960s to the present.
