Queer nonsense
Aestheticized homoeroticism in Inagaki Taruho's early stories
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6194759 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeffrey Angles (0000-0002-7324-1839, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 95-114 |
| Publication date | 2009-05-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Japan Forum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0955-5803 • E-ISSN: 1469-932X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09555800902857088 |
| OpenAlex | W1980166752 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
This article examines representations of schoolboy homoerotic desire in mid-1920s essays and short stories by modernist author Inagaki Taruho (1900–77) and argues that they should be read in the context of the concurrent proliferation of nansensu bungaku (nonsense literature), especially light, accessible stories that celebrate chance happenings, fashions, surfaces and fleeting impressions. Taruho uses a strategy of ‘nansensu’ in order to create a new celebratory form of queer literature that associates male homoeroticism with aesthetic acuity, modernity and what he called ‘the new arts’. At the same time, Taruho strenuously avoids the negative rhetoric that had become a significant part of representations of same-sex desire in the literature of the early Shōwa period. By drawing on particular examples from several essays and stories, including ‘Watashi no tanbishugi’ (My aestheticism, 1924), ‘Hana megane’ (Pince-nez glasses, 1924), ‘R-chan to S no hanashi’ (The story of R-chan and S, 1924), ‘Kāru to shiroi dentō’ (Karl and the white light, 1924) and ‘Tsukehige’ (False moustache, 1927), this paper demonstrates that Taruho was actively resisting and subverting the language and assumptions of sexology
Aestheticism · Aesthetics · Androgyny · Art · Literature · Masculinity · Narrative · Nonsense · Queer · Rhetoric · Sociology · Storytelling · Theology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |