Session 3 - August 6, Lynne Miyake, Pomona College

[Joel Jimenez]

What types of literature do you use currently in your English classes?  You teach in an stp resource class yes?  Also, of the literature works that you use in your class, which ones do students find most meaningful and engaging in?  For our 9th grade curriculum, our English teachers use Romeo and Juliet, House on Mango Street.  These works display very unique gender roles and heroic stories of females.  It's interesting that in ancient Japan and China, women had prominent roles in writing poetry and other literary works.

[Midori Sanchez]

Hello,

I find it interesting too that although there is a summer equivalent to the Kimono called a Yukata made of cotton that there are still ties and thick obi (ties) though it is so hot and humid!

Even walking with geta (Japanese platform flip flops/clogs) is a way to "remind" women to be careful in how they step in size and style. I have tried, and it is so difficult! We can also think about women's bound feet in China and not being able to walk at all, but this showing status since common people would need to work/be mobile.

[David Ojeda]

It's unfortunate that the false portrayal of various individuals is still seen on the stage and in films. It is the false portrayal of individuals who are marginalized due to various reasons (e.g., sex, race, sexual orientation, etc). This moment in the lecture made me think of the portrayal of a character in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's. In the latter film, Mickey Rooney, a white actor, plays Mr. Yunioshi, a Japanese photographer. Additionally, I also thought of the controversies Memoirs of a Geisha (the novel and the film) faced. The novel was written by Arthur Golden, so it was the perspective of a white male's portrayal of a geisha. As for the 2005 film, I believe the controversy pertained to casting Chinese actresses to play Japanese roles. I believe our society is gradually progressing...however, that's the issue: it's gradual. We move forward with some aspects (in films, for instance, we see more narratives of marginalized voices, like the LGBTQ community), yet we stay behind with some (actors playing LGBTQ roles in lieu of LGBTQ actors).

 

[Jennifer Chang]

Hi Nira, 

You bring up really good points about androgony in Asian cultures, and its prevalence in Asian dramas. This image of the ideal man really promotes a man that is sensitive the women's needs. While this type of man seems to be growing in popularity in Asia, I wonder if the same trend will follow in America or in other parts of the world. 

[Jennifer Chang]

I really enjoyed today's lecture with Professor Miyake. I appreciated the fact that we explored the role of gender through several analyses of literature throughout the different time periods in Japan. Because we were able to interact with the prose and poetry, I feel I have a greater depth of understanding of women and men in each Japanese era. This is definitely an exercise I'd like to do with my own students, even with pieces of literature in other ancient civilizations that we explore in 6th grade. 

The reading with Shikibu was also a really great way to introduce the blatant gender differences in classical Japan, and also how there were gender differentiated languages (Classical Chinese vs Japanese). This would be a great activity in which students can critically discuss why Shikibu pretended to be unable to read, why she had to teach the empress in secret, why her father said it was pity she was not born a man. 

[Petrina Jap]

I appreciate all the information Dr. Miyake shared with us in her lecture, including the resources and suggested classroom activities! After today’s lecture, I have a deeper understanding of the relationship between a country’s political state/nature and the aesthetic of its literature. I found it interesting to learn how scholars have been able to guess an author’s gender simply by examining the setting of the poem, and the time period of when it was written by analyzing literary details, such as tropes and diction. 

As Dr. Miyake suggested, many valuable classroom activities can be drawn from the knowledge shared today — analyzing a poem, connecting history and literature lessons, and perhaps even creative assignments such as illustrating a poem or story from Classical Japan. 

[Petrina Jap]

Nicole, 

I also enjoyed the comparison of male and female writings — it is so interesting to note how knowledge of historical details (such as gender expectations and mobility) can provide insight into a text! I would be curious to see if/what “clues” regarding an author’s gender can be seen in other cultures’ literary works. 

[Deanna Wiist]

The interaction between cultures and the change in culture between the Heian Period and Kamakura Period was one of my favorite parts of Professor Lynne Miyake’s lecture today. Sometimes my kids tend to think when studying the past that events in one country are somewhat isolated from the events in another - unless something cataclysmic like World War II is occurring. It seems to be a function of both intellectual development and common teaching methodology. It’s great to get examples that demonstrate the processes of interaction and isolation. The lecture today really reflected that when talking about the preeminence of Classical Chinese in Classical Japan (and in Korea). This is a example that I can use with my kids to illustrate the complexity of relationships between places and the forces that shape culture.

[Deanna Wiist]

Me too. I also enjoyed the Haiku examples that were rated PG-13. Those were unexpected. 

[Xiaowei Hunt]

At USC in summer 2019 I first encountered the word androgyny. My dictionary tells me that androgyny is the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics into an ambiguous form. Androgyny may be expressed with regard to biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual identity. Dr. Miyake showed us a picture of such group whose gender I can’t really tell because the group looks either male or female depending on the angles from which you look at them. I went online and found a few such Japanese musician groups or individual such as HOOPERS, a group known as "seven girls dressed as beautiful boys", Takarazuka Venue, an all-female Japanese theatre troupe who perform the male roles in low voices and Ryuchell who prefers to be genderless or androgynous.

 

I wonder why this became trendy in Japan. According to Jennifer Robertson in her “Exploring Japan’s genderless subculture”, “Ryuchell  and his cohort have -- whether consciously or not -- separated sex (the biological body) from gender (the accessorized body). For them, a male body need not conform to a stereotypical manly appearance.” It is a way to express freedom of presenting oneself, an indicator of Japanese open-mindedness. 

References:

 

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/genderless-kei-fashion-japan/index.html

[Celeste Modster]

Professor Miyake's enthusiasm and energy in our first conversation today sparked my interest in including the art of Manga in my Art Curriculum this year. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Manga From the Floating World as it was funny and charming and a story that I believe my students could relate to. How often do we think about doing something outside our normal existance? Are we able to laugh at ourselves? Are we willing to learn from our choices? Can we see the irony in our life journies? Can we turn our stories into pictures? I loved that Enjiro engaged in the rediculous and is portrayed with a pig nose as he pursues his role as Player. I look forward to sharing this story with my art class and inviting them to create a comic story that has witt and humor. Charactor development and Illustration will be fun. 

[Marcos Rico]

It was a wonderful lecture by Professor Miyake. I found it fascinating that we could gets clues to know if it was a man or a woman who wrote the poems based on the scenes described in the poetry. Because of different environments that each one of them experienced in ancient Japan, they would be drawn to write poetry about the things that they saw.

[Marcos Rico]

Dear Xiaowei,

        The first time that I saw a picture of a J-pop boy group, I was unsure if they were males or females. Later on my niece Elizabeth assured me that they were all boys, and that she loved their music( I have not taken the time to listen to any of their songs). I guess every generation has their own taste in music. Managers will keep on trying different formulas to create music groups that will attract a large group of followers, which will transform into larger profits.

 

[Zoey McKinney]

One thing from Professor Miyake's lecture that really interested me was the idea of separating genders through language. She mentioned that men mainly learned and used Classical Chinese for official documents, government edicts, and their personal diaries, while it was forbidden for women to use it. Women had to use vernacular Japanese in their writing, including diaries and poems. However, many women did learn some Classical Chinese, which created the Chinese-Japanese hybrid she discussed. I think the choice to oppress women by excluding them from a certain language is fascinating because it is more subtle than physical forms of oppression. It's interesting that women were not meant to be illiterate - in fact they needed to have writing skills in order to have high social status. However, neglecting to educate them in Classical Chinese was an effective way to keep women out of men's domains, such as government and economics. Education is empowering, as we all know, and lack of education is used to oppress in many circumstances. My 4th grade students last year worked on raising money to sponsor the education of a girl in a third world country through Heifer International. Some of the students were confused at first as to why that goal was important or why it specified girls but not boys. We discussed lack of education opportunities for women historically and in the present day, and how education is often the first step towards a better life.

This part of the lecture reminded me of Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a novel that revolves around nushu writing. Nushu was a system of writing used exclusively by women in Hunan. I love the idea of women responding to oppression by excluding their oppressors from their own language. I am curious if there is any similar phenomenon in Japan or Korea.

[Anthony Pollard]

     The first item that seems most relevant to use in the lesson is the poetry. We teach literary skills by using a common type of Japanese poetry called Haiku (5-7-5), however today, we learned Tanka (5-7-5-7-7). In addition, we can analyze gender and vocabulary usage, writing conventions, style, and creativity. Even though, these syllable forms are unique to the Japanese language, we have adapted this text structure into English language production.

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