The beginning of Kono Taeko's artistic activities

In Japan most literature critics considered Japanese authoresses' works as a marginal category. A number of authoresses, among whom was Kono Taeko (1926-2015), came out against the androcentrism of Japanese society not admitting gender parity. The article is devoted to investigation of gender problems and a special style of Kono Taeko's short stories. One of her first stories “Toddler-Hunting” (“Yojigari”, 1961) arose a special interest. This story is distinguished with a detailed analysis of its characters' psychology and discovering their sexual preferences. For the heroine, her erotic imaginations are the means of surviving in society, and she even considers them as an element of freedom. The authoress focuses her attention on the situations related to childlessness, sexuality, aloofness and madness. She intrudes into the area of abnormal state of mind, cruel violence, and vice. Her works are sometimes written as fantasy filled with surreal visions and were greatly affected by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro’s (1886-1965) works with his sadomasochism motifs. Kono Taeko's first great achievement became the story “Crabs” (“Kani”, 1963), which was awarded the prestigious prize of Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke. The difficulties related with searching crabs draw up the parallel with unfavorable things in life of the heroine, who is experiencing a crisis of self-identification. In the story “Bone Meat” (“Hone no niku”, 1969), a lover leaves a woman, and she is seized with a painful wish to become free from her affection for him. However she recalls their eating oysters with constant persistence. The authoress reconstructs this case scrupulously, mentioning the slightest details, which is the peculiarity of her stylistic manner. This ritual had an erotic underlying cause for the heroine. The woman's anxious condition, her lostness reflected in her deviant behavior give evidence about the troubled society; the sociocultural system in which a woman has a deteriorated position. Women characters hate motherhood, and most of them do not get married to their partners. They are initiative in sex, which, as a rule, is rude, painful, and even dangerous. At first glance, they live a normal life, but they are rampant in their imaginations, which in spite of their taboo, are shown in the works of the authoress. Kono Taeko's characters tend to consistently display aberrant personality types.