Wearing the “Mask of Woman”: Kurahashi Yumiko's Kurai Tabi and Early Short Stories

Abstract

The post-structuralist philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler asserts that the subject and the sexed body are not natural, but culturally constructed by the power structure. Although this is certainly true, Butler and other post-structuralists have neglected an important aspect of women's material bodies, namely, the capacity to become pregnant and give birth. In this essay, by focusing on the involuntary aspect of “the pregnant body” in Kurahashi Yumiko's Kurai Tabi (Dark Journey) and early short stories, I present a method of resistance to power that keeps “the pregnant body” firmly in sight. I begin by examining Kurahashi's early short stories, using them to analyze the power structure of man/woman (subject/object) that is constructed through social and cultural discourse on pregnancy. I then move on to Kurai Tabi, showing how the protagonist is forced at first to accept the gender “woman” when the unnamed narrator addresses her as “Anata” (you), but later, through involuntarily becoming a “pregnant body,” transforms her feminine gender into a “performative act.” I furthermore show how the gender performance of the protagonist “Anata” not only subverts the power structure, in which man is assumed to be the subject, but also makes possible a form of resistance that is not dependent on the subject.