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Memento libri: New Writings and Translations from the World of Tsushima Yūko (1947~2016)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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We present this dossier on fiction-writer Tsushima Yūko (1947~2016) just as two new volumes of her writings have appeared in print. Two stories came out in Of Dogs and Walls in February 2018 in Penguin Classics, followed by Territory of Light (光の領分, 1979) in April 2018. Both by Geraldine Harcourt, these new translations build on works originally translated in the 1980s, Child of Fortune (寵児, 1982) and The Shooting Gallery (1988). These stories, like the works in this dossier, offer different points of entry into Tsushima's constellation of writings than earlier texts. New translations not only amplify our view of Tsushima's range. They also commemorate her work two years after her 2016 death, and join an exciting array of new translations into English of works by other female writers including Mizumura Minae, Shibasaki Tomoko, Tawada Yōko and Murata Sayaka—works that Tsushima's writing helped create an audience for in the 1970s. Our title, recalling Tsushima's use of classical languages, is meant to suggest the constant connection of memory to textuality that we see in her work: in remembering, reading.
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References
Notes
1 Tsushima Yūko, Ōgon no yume no uta [2010] (Tokyo: Kodansha bunko, 2013), 24. McKnight translation.
2 Butler, “Precarious Life,” 144.
3 Hoshino Tomoyuki, “Promise: In Memory of Tsushima Yūko.” Translated by Brian Bergstrom. Hoshino Tomoyuki: itteshimaebayokatta nikki, March 7, 2016.
4 Nishikawa Yūko, Shakuya to mochiie no bungakushi (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1998), esp. 189–191 and 357–363.
5 See, for example, Livia Monnet, “The Politics of Miscegenation: The Discourse of Fantasy in ‘Fusehime’ by Tsushima Yūko,” Japan Forum 5:1 (1993): 53–73; and Barbara Hartley, “Writing the Body of the Mother: Narrative Moments in Tsushima Yūko, Ariyoshi Sawako and Enchi Fumiko,” Japanese Studies 23:3 (2003): 293–305.
6 See Yoshiko Enomoto, “The Reality of Pregnancy and Motherhood for Women: Tsushima Yuko's Chōji and Margaret Drabble's The Millstone,” Comparative Literature Studies 35:2 (1998): 116–124.
7 On “Blindweed Mother,” see Sharlyn Orbaugh, “Oba Minako and the Paternity of Maternalism,” in Rebecca Copeland, et al., ed. The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001), esp. 276–77.
8 On “The Chrysanthemum Beetle,” see Livia Monnet, “Connaissance Délicieuse or the Science of Jealousy: Tsushima Yūko's Story ‘Kikumushi’ (The Chrysanthemum Beetle),” Japan Review 4 (1993): 199–239.
9 Ōgon no yume no uta explicitly mentions Bruce Chatwin's book (27), but unlike his book the narrative does not depend on a surrogate that would presumably be “relatable” to the dominant-ethnicity reader.
10 Ōgon no yume no uta, 483. Bourdaghs translation.
11 For an extensive exploration of “planetary” in contrast to global and other epistemes, see Masao Miyoshi, “Turn to the Planet: Literature, Diversity, and Totality,” Comparative Literature 53:4 (2001): 283–97.
12 Kojin Karatani, “Love and Empathy for the Oppressed: Remembering Yūko Tsushima” (translated by Geraldine Harcourt). This piece was originally published in Japanese in the Asahi newspaper on 23 February 2016.
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