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Chapter 16 - Food, Humor, and Gender in Ishigaki Rin’s Poetry

from Part III - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2018

Gitanjali G. Shahani
Affiliation:
San Francisco State University
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Summary

Food-related motifs permeate the works of Japanese poet Ishigaki Rin (1920-2004). Food in her texts is linked to gender issues faced by women in diverse roles and situations. Ishigaki worked full-time in a bank from the age of fourteen to fifty-five. Her working life coincided with Japan's military aggression, defeat, and post-war democracy, economic recovery and expansionism, all deeply connected to the question of food production and consumption. Ishigaki was involved in the bank workers' union movement, and published socially engaged poetry on topics ranging from atomic bombs and wars, to poverty, and industrial accidents. Food and family in her works are often confrontational rather than comforting, and associated with exhaustion, solitude, death, and the "abject". Black humor and cutting satire appear in many of her poems. This chapter identifies the links between Ishigaki's "written food" and other prominent examples of food in modern Japanese literature, and highlights her originality.
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Food and Literature , pp. 303 - 318
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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