The Journey to Define My Womanhood: My Encounter with Japanese Women’s Literature
Rouli Esther Pasaribu (Indonesia)

My first encounter with Japanese literature was about 25 years ago when I was an undergraduate student majoring in Japanese literature. At first, I chose the Japanese literature program for my major at the undergraduate level because I wanted to learn the language and did not pay more attention to Japanese literature.

Since reading novels is my hobby, I find it not difficult to immerse myself in Japanese literature. Once, my lecturer introduced the students to classic Japanese literature, such as Genji Monogatari, Makura no Soshi, and Tsurezuregusa, as well as modern Japanese literature, such as the works of Natsume Soseki, Tanizaki Junichiro, and Kawabata Yasunari. I read their works for my literature class assignment. I also read these novels in the Indonesian language translation since it was too difficult for me to read in Japanese. However, after reading the translated version, I wanted to read the novels in Japanese. It made me work harder to brush up on my Japanese language skills because I would be able to read Japanese literary works in the original version.

My undergraduate thesis discusses tabi (journey) theme in Matsuo Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to Oku). Oku no Hosomichi is a travel account to Tohoku area, written by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), the most famous haiku poet from Edo period. He combined haiku poems and prose in every place he visited during his travels. Published in 1694, Oku no Hosomichi is counted as one of the classic Japanese literature canons. To understand Oku no Hosomichi, I read them in Japanese, English translation, and the simplified Japanese version targeted to elementary school students. When I studied at Kanazawa University to deepen my knowledge of Japanese language and literature for a year, I was lucky because I visited some places Matsuo Basho visited during his journey to the Tohoku area and was supervised by a Japanese professor majoring in Edo literature. The process of writing my undergraduate thesis showed me that I loved Japanese literature, and I found it interesting to read more literary works.

Since I studied at the undergraduate level, I had made up my mind that in the future, I wanted to be a lecturer in Japanese studies. To pursue this dream, I continued my study to the doctorate level. After graduating from the Japanese Literature Program of the Faculty of Language and Literature, Universitas Nasional, I continued my study at the Postgraduate Program in Japanese Studies, School of Strategic and Global Studies, Universitas Indonesia. While studying at the postgraduate level, I started to develop my interest in Japanese women’s literature. I also realized that at the undergraduate level, I had not learned about women’s works in modern Japanese literature. For this reason, my master’s thesis investigated Tawara Machi’s Chokoreeto Kakumei (The Chocolate Revolution), a modern tanka poem anthology. I really enjoyed discussing and reading the Chokoreeto Kakumei together with my postgraduate thesis supervisor.

After getting married, I started to feel that patriarchal norms controlled the world. I felt uncomfortable when people asked me when I would have a child, why I wanted to continue my study while I had a family, and who would take care of my family when I went to study abroad. I was thinking about these questions in my heart and wondered why marriage hampered a woman’s ability to achieve her goals and dreams. This social condition represents that marriage makes the women’s dreams unimportant and forces them to focus on being a wife and a mother. This is not the life that I want to. Besides being a wife and a mother, I want to be myself, an individual with dreams and goals to achieve.

My thoughts and my experiences about being a woman in a patriarchal society led me to pursue my doctoral study in Japanese women’s literature. In the 2010s, a few Indonesian scholars majored in Japanese women’s literature. Therefore, I wanted to fill this gap. The biggest reason why I studied Japanese women’s literature was because I wanted to find the answers to women’s problems or, at least, had more knowledge to cope with this patriarchal society. I wanted to learn about literary works written by Japanese women writers and the theoretical frameworks in women and gender studies.

I pursued my master’s and Ph.D. degrees at Osaka University, majoring in Japanese women’s literature. I wrote my master’s and doctorate thesis about female selfexpression in Enchi Fumiko’s pre-war and post-war literary works. Enchi Fumiko (1905-1986) is one of the prominent woman writers in modern Japanese literature. She started her career as a writer in the 1920s. Still, she was fully recognized as a writer in the 1950s after winning a Women’s Literature Prize in 1954 for her short story, Himojii Tsukihi (Days of Hunger). Many of her writings focus on female oppression in patriarchal society, female body, female psychology, female aging, and female selfexpression. Her literary works describe the social problems of Japanese women that are also found in Indonesian women.

After graduating, I returned to Indonesia. Several years later, I started my work as a lecturer in the Japanese Studies Program of the Faculty of Humanities at Universitas Indonesia. In Japanese literature class, I introduce Japanese female writers’ literary works, including the work of Enchi Fumiko. I also introduce the literary work of modernism, such as works written by Natsume Soseki and Akutagawa Ryunosuke, literary works about the atomic bomb, such as Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) by Ibuse Masuji, and contemporary works, such as Murakami Haruki’s works. Through reading Japanese literature, I ask my students to reflect on their world and surroundings and see if the themes written in the literary works are problems Indonesians encounter. I expect that introducing Japanese literature to my students can ignite the students’ interest in understanding Japanese society and culture and sharpen their critical thinking about this world.

When I studied Japanese women’s literature for my postgraduate degrees in Japan, I defined this studying process as studying the knowledge of Japanese women’s literature and a reflection on my womanhood. The process of learning became very personal because I defined and redefined these aspects during six years of my postgraduate study in Japan. Therefore, I can cope with patriarchal norms around me and become the woman that I want to be. More importantly, I can find my true self amidst society’s voice that tells me how to be a woman. I reflected on these aspects through my readings as well as my master’s and doctoral thesis. Finally, I completed my postgraduate study and came up with the self-definition of womanhood, wifehood, and motherhood. I am an Indonesian who reads Japanese literary works, finds an answer, and gets questions about how I should live as a woman and an individual in this world. I called this process as a journey to define my womanhood.

(Japanese Studies Program/Department of Literature

Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia)