East Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Traditional Tropes And Familial Incest In Banana Yoshimoto’S Kitchen, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Kitchen, written in 1983, by Banana Yoshimoto, contains one novella and one short story. The novella is entitled Kitchen and the short story which follows it is called Moonlight Shadow. In Moonlight Shadow, the structure of a Japanese Noh drama enfolds, wherein the ultimate end of the main character is to live on in a semi-incestuous relationship with her dead boyfriend’s brother. In Kitchen, the images that one is assailed by are those of desire coexisting with food, and love contingent on incest. The idea of food as a comfort conflates into that of a woman as comforting.

These two …

Homosexuality In Fushigi Yuugi And Gravitation: An Investigation Into The Cultural Background Of Homosexuality In Japanese Animation, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

This paper will delve into the following issues: how the Japanese view homosexual males and how the agency of the reader and/or viewer impacts the depictions of visual displays of intimate behavior by homosexual males. The purpose of this paper will be an attempt to define some sort of answer to each question within the context of the Japanese cultural products of manga and anime. I am going to dissect shifting sexualities as they are represented in two different examples of Japanese anime aimed at slightly differing audience groups. The two shows that I will focus on are: Fushigi Yuugi …

Enjo Kosai: Brand Name Marketing, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Media is a contributing factor in creating a market for the prostitution of minors in Japan today. Media creates an image to which the girls aspire by placing the trendiest items in the hands of music and movie idols who the girls look up to . The drive to then own these trendy, and expensive, products forces the girls into marketing their bodies to strangers. Though in many ways media can be seen as the root of all evil through print and film advertisements, there are some forms of media which work as a caution instead of an encouragement to …

Ono No Komachi: Love And Desire, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The poetry of Ono no Komachi can be read in many lights. The two ways in which I feel its message and context can be best appreciated are through feminine independence and masculine subjection. Ono no Komachi wrote poetry that was evocative of the feminine ideal of longing for a male, but she also wrote poetry which denigrated the need for a woman to rely on a male. Through a self-critical reader analysis of some of her poems, I will show that Komachi’s poetry can be read as comprising a longing for the world of men, and men in particular, …

Narcissistic Self-Love, Male Body Objectification, And Homoeroticism In John Woos’ The Killer And Face/Off, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

A theme of homoeroticism/sexually charged appreciation of the male body exerts itself as a clear visual in The Killer and Face/Off. In this paper, some of these homoerotic images and the theoretically gender-based reasoning behind them will be explored. In some ways, Woos’ films The Killer and Face/Off, can be “read” as both example and counterexample to masculine-feminine discussions of gendered cinema. Laura Mulvey, for instance, posits the thesis that cinema is a vision dominated by patriarchal society. Both films I will be analyzing exemplify the superior role of male societal functions; such as males in positions of authority, or …