ジェンダー研究第 22 号

2019 年◆ 書評 ◆

Edited by Laura Miller and Rebecca Copeland

Diva Nation
Female Icons from Japanese Cultural History（University of California Press 2018, ISBN: 9780 5202 97722, US$85.00）

Maki Isaka（Affiliate Faculty, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota）

The present book is co-edited by two
scholars with excellent records of editing
anthologies respectively. Rebecca Copeland has edited, as editor or co-editor, several anthologies of weight with the themesof “Japanese women” and “literature.” 1
Likewise, Laura Miller has co-edited
some important anthologies, the underlying themes of which lie in “gender” and“Japan,” broadly defined. 2 Now these superb creators of collaborative works haveproduced another welcome addition toJapan studies. In this book, the overarching subject is “diva nation.” Such a bluntbut eye-catching phrase is greatly openended, which might appear somewhat too
courageously risk taking, or even poten-

tially “vulnerable,” as a way of presenting a topic--whether as a concept or as atheme--that is as complicated and controversial as the one this book presents: The
combination of “diva” and “nation.” Thevery open-endedness, however, is nothingother than one of the strongest suits of thebook, engendering Diva Nation’s stimulating nature to entice readers to add theirown “diva” candidates to the already diverse list of their divas.
In fact, diversity is one immediately visible characteristic of this book, includingthat of its diva subjects. In addition to anintroduction, preface, and afterword, thebook consists of ten main chapters discussing various divas across time, social

1 Rebecca Copeland and Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen, eds., The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (University of Hawai’i Press, 2001); Rebecca
Copeland ed., Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing (University ofHawai’i Press, 2006); Rebecca Copeland and Melek Ortabasi, eds., The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (Columbia University Press, 2006).
2 Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley, eds., Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave, 2005); Laura Miller and Jan
Bardsley, eds., Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan (University ofCalifornia Press, 2011); Laura Miller, Alisa Freedman, and Christine Yano, eds., Modern Girls on
the Go: Gender, Modernity, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2013).

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書評

status, biological sex, etc., ranging frommythical ones to historical figures and tomodern and contemporary persons in various fields. A simple inventory will immediately imply that the book is not so muchinterested in defining “diva” as exploring
its possibility.
Methods also differ significantly fromone chapter to another. For example, thechapter on sixteenth-century Izumo noOkuni (pp. 77-94), the legendary founderof kabuki theatre, is a quite straightforward literary “profil[ing]” (p. 77) based ona namesake novel in the twentieth century
by Ariyoshi Sawako. A seemingly similar
yet differentiated approach to modern literary work on divas before them is takenin the chapter on Izanami and Kirino Natsuo (pp. 13-33), which discusses the female deity and the author of Joshinki (TheGoddess Chronicle), an imaginary sequelto the Izanami-Izanagi myth. Importantly,
the chapter in question explores Kirino asa diva in her own right, whose “perfected. . . performance of aestheticized smartness [is] all the more provocative because
it suggests defiance” (p. 15). The chapter
on Himiko (pp. 51-76) analogously pays
attention to later phenomena on the thirdcentury “paramount chief of the earliest
Japanese polity” (p. 51). There exists someroom for discussion whether it is appropriate to call the historical Himiko herself
a diva, for if the former was a successful“supreme ruler of 100 chiefdoms” (p. 51),
the latter is, collectively speaking, “unrulywomen” (p. 3). Countless contemporary
images and namesakes of Himiko, exam-236

ined in detail by the anthropologist scholar, are however most certainly that whichmake this diva possible.
The aforementioned Okuni chapter is
not independent of wide-spread common
sense that kabuki theatre was founded by awoman and yet women were purged fromthe realm soon afterwards. (Importantly,
such trajectory is not so unique to kabuki
history, hence the presence and need ofubiquitous divas.) The introduction of thebook reads, “When we entered the kabuki
theatre, drawn initially perhaps by the alluring onnagata [actors performing women’s roles], it was Okuni who captured ourimagination” (p. 1). While effective on thewhole, the common sense above equates
onnagata to men, and sometimes to cismen at that, concealing the diverse natureof onnagata in and of themselves: transwomen onnagata, intersex onnagata, female onnagata, including highly masculinized “honorary-men” female onnagata,to name a few. This would be anotherpromising matrix of varied divas, tempting us readers to nominate more female/feminine/feminized diva icons to the current list of “female icons,” as the subtitle ofthe book reads. The chapter on IKKO (pp.
133-150), a transwoman make-up artist incontemporary Japan, simultaneously appeases and further stimulates such desire.
It was highly commendable for this chapter, and this anthology for that matter, notonly to expand its scope beyond ciswomen
but also to squarely deal with personal difficulties of the diva being a transwoman(pp. 134-141). It is vital to recognize issues

ジェンダー研究regarding personal difficulties--including
but not limited to discrimination, PTSD,
and other victim experiences, etc.-- arebeing shared by many divas across timeand space, including Oprah Winfrey, as
the chapter mentions (p. 134), as well as
the subject of another chapter of the book:Uchida Shungiku, a writer and manga artist having come out as a sexual-abuse victim in her own family (pp. 151-167). As an
old feminist phrase has proven itself true,
the personal is political after all.
Due to the length limit, this review does
not have enough room to discuss anotherfive main chapters: female deity Ame no

第 22 号

2019 年

Uzume (a.k.a. Ama no Uzume), whose
dance in front of the heavenly rock door isconceptualized as the origin of performing
arts in Japan (pp. 34-50); Misora Hibari,
who dominated the popular song industry
in post-World War II Japan (pp. 95-114);
Yoko Ono, who is more famous for having broken up the Beatles than for her own
artistic work or activities (pp. 115-132);
contemporary author Kanehara Hitomi(pp. 168-184); ice skater Asada Mao (pp.
185-202). The list of divas is, and will remain, limitless, as this book convincingly
suggests.

（掲載決定日：2019 年 5 月 29 日）

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