“Peering into Pink Flesh”: On Female Same-sex Bodily Eroticism between Raichō Hiratsuka and Kōkichi Otake in “Chigasaki e Chigasaki e”

Abstract

  Raichō Hiratsuka eloquently wrote of her passionate affection for Kōkichi (Kazue) Otake in “Marumado yori: Chigasaki e Chigasaki e (Zatsuroku)” (From the round window: To Chigasaki, to Chigasaki (A miscellaneous note)), an essay published in Seitō (Bluestocking), the first journal written, edited, and published by women in Japan, in August 1912. Scholars and biographers have taken up Raichō’s works in the following years in which she imputes their affair to Kōkichi through identifying her as a sexual invert by referring to the knowledge of sexology and argued that this attitude shift attests to her conversion from a same-sex or (proto-)lesbian relationship to a heterosexual one after meeting with her lifelong male partner Hiroshi Okumura in the same summer. This paper instead investigates their bodily affective eroticism in “Chigasaki e Chigasaki e,” focusing especially on the scene in which Raichō intently looks at Kōkishi’s self-inflicted wound, which Kōkichi allegedly slashed out of her love for Raichō, and Raichō’s visceral reaction to it. Their bodily affective relationship, however, is subject to a transformation after Kōkichi receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis and admits herself to Nanko-in, a sanatorium in Chigasaki, following Raichō’s recommendation. Raichō’s later turnaround can be reformulated as an attempt to deal with the loss of her superior position and access to Kōkichi’s body, which is now given over to Western medicine. Her approach to sexology is based not only on her intention to comprehend their experience in terms of scientific knowledge but also her continued desire to dominate Kōkichi and her body.