meganbmoore | (Reply)

From:

Ikeda was (is?) a member of the Communist party, and a lesbian; crucially, 1970 essentially marked the death of large-scale left-wing activism in Japan with the automatic renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (AMPO) and various other things (the Narita airport battle being the notable, slightly later but fiercely local exception). So to clarify my statement I think you can see both strands of Ikeda's politics in the story--the need for a revolution in society is very much a Japanese Communist Party position, and Oscar's cross-dressing and dalliance with douseiai (same-sex love) is both feminist and non-heteronormative--and all these things are very radical in 1970s Japan, and even are still today. But Oscar being yoked to the revolution at the story level shows the futility of both the revolution and of her attempts at happiness despite her refusal to conform to gender expectations; it's very much, to me, a story of defeat--and it's crucial that Ikeda elides Marie Antoinette's historical cross-dressing, which would blur the picture intolerably.

...I may or may not have a paper in progress about this, actually. Sorry. ^^