English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Love, sex and marriage are recurrent themes in Kurahashi Yumiko’s literature, especially in her early works. In the novel  Divine maiden  (1965) she approached those topics from a different perspective, through the form of  shōjo shōsetsu  (girl’s fiction): she even went so far as to define  Divine maiden  as ‘the last  shōjo shōsetsu’ . The protagonist of this novel is a young girl, Miki: the story revolves around Miki’s incestuous relationship with her father, as it is depicted in her three diaries, read by a male narrator. Even though incest is a recurrent theme in Kurahashi’s work, it has been pointed out that the incestuous relationship between father and daughter could be considered  shōjo shōsetsu’ s grand finale. However, not much attention has been paid to the relationship between  Divine maiden  and  shōjo shōsetsu  as a literary genre; moreover, the meaning of love, sex and marriage in the novel has been left unexplored. This paper aims to analyse the girl’s sexuality depicted in  Divine maiden  in the context of post-war Japan’s  junketsu kyōiku  (‘purity education’); through an analysis of Miki’s diaries, I will explore the way Kurahashi has parodied the concept of ‘democracy’ in relation to the ideal of ‘pure love’.

Shōjo Sexuality in Post-War Japan: Parody and Subversion in Kurahashi Yumiko’s Divine Maiden