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Abstract
KEN K. ITO
Class and Gender in a Meiji Family Romance:
Kikuchi Yuho’s
Chikyodai
Kikuchi
Yuho’s Chikyodai (1903), which narrates a young woman’s attempt to
invade an aristocratic family, reveals the interplay of Meiji ideologies
of gender and social aspiration. The essay examines this novel’s “family
romance” against Meiji family ideology and the narrative properties of
melodramatic fiction, a form marked by both apparent moral certitude and
ideological contradiction. Comparisons with the English domestic
melodrama that served as a source reveal how Chikyodai’s motif of
switched identities disturbs the stability of class and family
affiliations. The novel’s ambivalent ideology is connected to its status
as a katei shosetsu, a genre of Meiji fiction aimed at women.
Volume 28, Number 2 (Summer
2002)
© 2002 Society for Japanese Studies
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