Eroticizing Japan: Who holds the power of gaze?

1. Eroticizing Japan:Who holds the power of gaze? Peter Greenaway’s film remodelling Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book

2. OrientalistMale Gaze • Most Japanese stock characters known to the Western culture are women: geishas, tea-room ladies, Madame Butterfly, kawaii street fashion girls, anime and manga females. • Sexualized images (pretty, exotic, submissive, erotically resourceful; dangerously sexy femmes fatales) created by men and intended for male audience.

3. Real Women in Cultural History of Japan(just a few examples…) • Murasaki Shikibu (XIth century), a medieval writer, author of the first Japanese novel. • 264 famous women calligraphers and painters in the Edo and early Meiji periods. • Female poets of the Heian and the Edo periods. • Izumo no Okuni (XVIth cent.), the female founder of kabuki theatre • Princess Kazu (XIXth cent.), a Buddhist nun, a renowned calligrapher, and a poet. • Kuzumoto Ine (1827-1903), the first female medical doctor in Japan. • Yuriko Miyamoto (1899-1951), the first female writer and cultural critic to become a social activist.

4. Sei Shōnagon (?966-?1017) • A court lady waiting on Empress Teishi in Heian Kyo (now Kyoto). • Known under the nickname based on her male relative’s court position, (shōnagon, “lesser councilor of state”). • Her real first name was probably Nagiko. • Famous for The Pillow Book (c. 1002), a collection of miscellaneous observations, diaries, poetry, and lists.

5. The Pillow Book • Written in a style called “the brush moving with the mind.” • Contains private daily thoughts, court gossip, impressions, accounts of love affairs. • Numerous lists include “Things That Irritate Me”; “Things That Can’t be Compared”; “Splendid Things,” etc.

6. The Pillow Book (1996),a film by Peter Greenaway • British film director’s view/gaze. • Power dynamics between West and East, between male and female. • Refers to Sei Sōnagon directly and through the heroine’s name, Nagiko. • A girl’s obsession with calligraphy and writing on a human body results in experiencing love and loss, executing revenge, becoming a writer, and finding herself. • Writing symbolizes taking control.

7. Man Plays God • The film starts with the father writing the story of creation on his daughter’s face. Black and white image acquires colour as she sees herself in the mirror.

8. Self-Awareness

9. Man Plays God • The father signs the girl as God signed his creation to bring it to life. • When she is 6, he teaches her to write – gives her power. • She is told that on her 28th birthday The Pillow Book will be exactly 1000 years old. • She is encouraged to write a diary, her own Pillow Book. • When she gets married, her husband refuses to write on her as her father did; she writes in English; he destroys her diary (takes power from her).

10. Writing and Power • Nagiko revels in getting written on, looks for a perfect calligrapher lover. • When a man (foreigner, translator) offers his body to write her book on, she gets perturbed and leaves.

12. Taking Control • For her first experience of writing on a male body Nagiko picks an Englishman, “entirely ignorant of oriental languages.” • “I am going to be the pen, not just the paper!” • She wants to get her work published.

13. Home-grown vs Foreign • A photographer says to Nagiko in Japanese: “You don’t have to write on some anonymous foreigner, you can write on me.” • She refuses him: a metaphor for the need to interact with another culture. • The publisher rejects her work; her reaction: “Perhaps, it is not Japanese enough!”

14. Ploy and Intercultural Inspiration • Nagiko decides to get to the publisher through the translator, Jerome. • Nagiko and Jerome, now lovers, passionately write on each other. • Nagiko: • “His writing in so many languages made me a sign-post pointing east, west, north, south.” • “I would like to honour my father by becoming a writer.” • Jerome promises to “make her understood all over the world”; performs her father’s ritual.

15. The Director’s Gaze • A close-up of Nagiko’s written-on body the camera travels along it, lingers on it. • Interaction between her body and Western writing.

16. A Foreigner as a Messenger/Mediator • Jerome shows Nagiko’s first book, written on his body, to the fascinated publisher. The book is accepted; Jerome stays with the publisher. • Nagiko, jealous, writes four more books on foreign and Japanese men’s bodies.

17. West/ East Power Dynamics • The photographer tricks Jerome into committing suicide. • Nagiko writes The Book of Lover on his body, metaphorically appropriating it. • Jerome’s mother: “Jerome always wanted to be foreign. Not necessarily oriental. English wasn’t enough for him.” Nagiko slaps her.

18. Fighting for Power • The publisher, prompted by the photographer, exhumes Jerome’s body and makes a book out of his written-on skin. • Nagiko burns her all possessions and diaries; informed by the photographer, she writes 7 more books on “substitute” messengers to retrieve the skin book from the publisher.

19. The Power of Writing The 13th messenger, a sumo wrestler, is The Book of the Dead. The publisher reads him (no subtitles for us for a while), surrenders the skin book, and has his throat slit.

20. Not a Madame Butterfly:Reclaimed Power, Redesigned Self • Nagiko, a new mother, “buries” the skin book under a bonsai tree. • Her chest is covered with tattoos: not a blank page any more. • It’s her 28th birthday: now she has lived enough to write her own Pillow Book, as her namesake did 1000 years ago. • She writes on her baby’s face as her father did.