Reichert 44:2

ABSTRACT

JAMES R. REICHERT
Yoshikawa Eiji’s Newspaper Novel Miyamoto Musashi, Gender, and Commercial Journalism

This article examines Yoshikawa Eiji’s period novel Miyamoto Musashi (1935–39) and the media environment in which it first appeared. Looking specifically at the version of the novel that was serialized in the Asahi shinbun, I consider how the newspaper as a whole and Yoshikawa’s text offer readers various gender identities with which they can relate. The format of the newspaper and structure of the novel, I argue, grant readers a certain level of freedom to identify across gender lines, although the patriarchal values of the text and the wider social context inevitably set limits for this process.