TERASAWA, Mizuho 1951-

PERSONAL: Born January 25, 1951, in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Ethnicity: "Japanese." Education: Ochanomizu Women's University, B.A., 1973; University of Tokyo, M.A., 1976, doctoral study, 1976–81. Religion: Buddhist.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, School of Education, Waseda University, 1-6-1 Nishi-waseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8050, Japan. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, translator, and educator. Wako University, Tokyo, Japan, lecturer, 1981–85, associate professor of humanities, 1985–90; Waseda University, Tokyo, lecturer, 1990–91, associate professor, 1991–96, professor of American literature, 1996–. Macalester College, visiting professor, 1993–94.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Japanese Ministry of Education, 1987–88, 1997–99.

WRITINGS:

Minzoku gokan to shojomaku genso: Nihon kindai, amerika nambu, fokuna, Ochanomizu-shobo, 1992, translation published as The Rape of the Nation and the Hymen Fantasy: Japan's Modernity, the American South, and Faulkner, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 2003.

(Editor, with Tomoko Kuribayashi, and contributor) The Outsider Within: Ten Essays on Modern Japanese Women Writers, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 2002.

Translator into Japanese of works by Leonard Shengold, Andrea Dworkin, Jessica Benjamin, Marianne Hirsch, and Dorothy Dinnerstein. Contributor to books. Contributor to Japanese periodicals.

WORK IN PROGRESS: "An elucidation of Herman Melville's major works."

SIDELIGHTS: Mizuho Terasawa told CA: "As a scholar of American literature, I have written numerous analytical articles which seek to inspire new understandings of works by such notable authors as William Faulkner, Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, and Scott Fitzgerald. In my book, now published in the United States as The Rape of the Nation and the Hymen Fantasy: Japan's Modernity, the American South, and Faulkner, I argue that Faulkner's novels, traditionally deemed incomprehensible, can be clearly explicated down to their minute details. In that sense, my understanding of Faulkner's work is quite different from the view held by today's academic establishment, but I am confident that my interpretations are well supported with textual evidence."

"The literary world of Faulkner, in my detailed analysis, opposes or resists the American culture of his day which was plunging into 'modernity' under the leadership of the North. Many female characters in Faulkner's fiction voluntarily lapse into sexual relations and become unwed mothers. The loss or preservation of the virginity of southern women is the symbol on which the most important question for Faulkner rests—of whether the clock that marks the South's movement toward modernity and toward the destruction of the southern tradition begins to tick, or whether the movement can be halted. My book clarifies that question in relation to Faulkner's three masterpieces and one additional novel: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, Sanctuary, and Absalom, Absalom!

"The same situation, of the hymen symbolizing the question of whether or not to give the South over to the invasion of the northern culture, is where Japan has found itself in its relationship to the United States. The Asian nation was forced to open its gate and to accept an unequal treaty imposed by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853, after which, for more than 160 years, the idea of the United States as a man to whom Japan as a woman must submit has remained a persistent undercurrent in the Japanese imagination. In both the politics and the culture of Japan, there have been two opposing factions, rejecting and reflecting the hymen fantasy: advocates of cooperation with the United States (usually the political party in office—the right wing) and supporters of anti-American policies (the opposition party—leftist groups). It is widely known that, on his 1955 visit to Japan, Faulkner made a statement about the similarity in fate (of loss) between the South which lost the U.S. Civil War and Japan which lost the Pacific war, both to the Yankees. That statement was not a whimsical comparison but an insightful comment that summed up the psychological opposition that Japan has suffered since 1853, as I discussed in my book as well as at Macalester College in the United States and at my home institution, the International Division at Waseda University. My lectures have received favorable and interested responses from students, American and otherwise, in both academic environments.

"I would like to acknowledge my intellectual debt to Professor Shu Kishida, a leading scholar of psychoanalysis in Japan, whose many accomplishments include in-depth psychological analyses of various historical events. Our discussions of related matters have helped me immeasurably to develop my literary consideration.

"I also would like to comment on the position held by mainstream American academics concerning American literary studies, a position from which my own viewpoint differs considerably. The United States being a nation that relies heavily on the ideology of American humanism, the majority of American scholars assume, without any prior contemplation, that a great writer must represent universal humanism, which also should correspond to the humanism of contemporary America. I consider that a mistake. Love and freedom might be a 'universal truth' that nobody would object to, but when it comes to the question of what constitutes 'love' (or 'freedom'), writers have a wide variety of ideas (hence, an innumerable variety of humanisms) which could not be bundled together under the name of contemporary American humanism. That variety itself gives American writers their individuality, which in turn gives meaning and adds excitement to literary scholarship. The idea that every writer from every era represents the self-same contemporary American humanism is itself a sign that scholars are ideologically restricted and blind to the substance of literary works.

"Based on such beliefs, I have long sought to illuminate, I hope with success, the meaning of important literary works that have been considered incomprehensible by the academic establishment. One example of that endeavor is my five-article study of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Pierre. I hope to have shown that the meaning and value of the author's creative struggle can be made clear only when what may be considered obscure and incomprehensible details are all well explicated."