Sirens of the Western Shore

The cross-fertilization of languages, cultures, and literary forms that produced modern Japanese literature also gave birth to a new literary archetype: the "Westernesque femme fatale," an alluring figure who is ethnically Japanese but evokes the West in her physical appearance, lifestyle, behavior, and use of language. Tracing the genesis of this archetype from her first appearance in the vernacularist fiction of the late 1880s to her role in Naturalist fiction of the mid-1900s and her embodiment by the modern Japanese actress in the early 1910s, Sirens of the Western Shore identifies the Westernesque femme fatale as the hallmark of an intertextual exoticism that prizes the strange beauty of modern Western writing. By illuminating the exoticist impulses that informed this archetype, Indra Levy offers a new understanding of the relationships between vernacular style and translation, originality and imitation, and writing and performance.

Indra Levy introduces a new archetype in the study of modern Japanese literature: the "Westernesque femme fatale," an alluring figure who is ethnically Japanese but evokes the West in her physical appearance, lifestyle, behavior, and, most important, her use of language. She played conspicuous roles in landmark works of modern Japanese fiction and theater.

Levy traces the lineage of the Westernesque femme fatale from her first appearance in the vernacularist fiction of the late 1880s to her development in Naturalist fiction of the mid-1900s and, finally, to her spectacular embodiment by the modern Japanese actress in the early 1910s with the advent of Naturalist theater. In all cases the Westernesque femme fatale both attracts and confounds the self-consciously modern male intellectual through a convention-defying use of language.

What does this sirenlike figure reveal about the central concerns of modern Japanese literature? Levy proposes that the Westernesque femme fatale be viewed as the hallmark of an intertextual exoticism that prizes the strange beauty of modern Western writing.

By illuminating the exoticist impulses that gave rise to this archetype, Levy offers a new understanding of the relationships between vernacular style and translation, original and imitation, and writing and performance within a cross-cultural context. A seamless blend of narrative, performance, translation, and gender studies, this work will have a profound impact on the critical discourse on this formative period of modern Japanese literature.

Indra Levy is assistant professor of Japanese literature at Stanford University.

Sarah Frederick:
Sirens of the Western Shore takes a fresh and detailed look at the topic of vernacular style in Meiji literature.

Nanette Gottlieb:
Richly textured... cogently argued, lucidly written, and offers the reader insights on both theoretical and biographical levels.

[An] insightful, carefully researched study... Highly recommended.