Female Images in Kobayashi Takiji's Proletarian Literature: Taking The Crab Cannery Ship, Yasuko, and Factory Cell as Case Studies
Abstract
In the early twentieth century, Japan was the first country to come into contact with Western proletarian thought in Asia. Under this background, a large number of proletarian writers have emerged in the Japanese literary world, and Kobayashi Takiji is one of the representatives. His works have a distinct class consciousness and realism. These works expose the living conditions of Japanese laborers at the bottom and depict the awakening and resistance of the oppressed groups. Existing studies on the images in Kobayashi Takiji's works have largely focused on male laborers, while the female group has been ignored for a long time. In fact, Kobayashi consciously presents many female images in his works. They not only belong to the oppressed class, but also are deeply affected by gender inequality. Based on this, this study takes The Crab Cannery Ship, Yasuko, and Factory Cell as primary texts. Drawing on Culpeper's model of character construction, the study compares similarities and differences of the female images in the aspects of character types and molding techniques from different dimensions—including self-presentation, other-presentation, and implicit cues. It also discusses whether the female images in Kobayashi's works are typical and whether they can reflect the multiple dilemmas faced by Japanese women of that period.
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