Overview

Women, Magic, Wisdom: Explore a Japanese myth through the words and images of key scholars and artists. Alluring, nurturing, dangerous, and vulnerable the yamamba, or Japanese mountain witch, has intrigued audiences for centuries. What is it about the fusion of mountains with the solitary old woman that produces such an enigmatic figure? And why does she still call to us in this modern, scientific era? Co-editors Rebecca Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich first met the yamamba in the powerful short story ""The Smile of the Mountain Witch"" by acclaimed woman writer ba Minako. The story revealed the compelling way creative women can take charge of misogynistic tropes, invert them, and use them to tell new stories of female empowerment. This unique collection represents the creative and surprising ways artists and scholars from North America and Japan have encountered the yamamba.

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9781611720662

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Reviews

Reviews for Diva Nation (Rebecca Copeland) At turns witty and wise, frothy and fascinating, there's something for anyone interested in gender studies, Japanese culture or the shadowy layers of its subculture. --The Japan Times This collection is an important contribution to a better understanding of the diva in the post-feminist era. --Leonardo This collection will be valuable not only to those interested in Japanese studies, but also for those with an interest in gender studies, queer studies and any field engaging with minority cultural or subcultural groups. --New Voices in Japanese Studies Diva Nation stands out as a scholarly text that is commendably approachable in terms of the analysis. It is moreover an engaging book thanks to the material and the writing, and its merging of anthropology, history, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies makes it a valuable addition to many libraries and many syllabi. --Pacific Affairs Reviews for Woman Critiqued (Rebecca Copeland) Full of surprises, even where predictable arguments are being made. Careful translations of writings by the familiar and the obscure, together with thought-provoking introductions and supporting apparatus, make this an indispensable text for the study of modern Japanese culture and society. --Norma M. Field, University of Chicago Will become part of the reading assignments for many academic courses focused on women who write. --S. Yumiko Hulvey, Pacific Affairs An ambitious work that delves into an important part of Japanese literature that has until now been untouched. It brings together critical texts that mediate between the popular and the elite over a span of more than a hundred years and makes them available to an English-language readership in precise translations. --Miho Matsugu, Journal of Asian Studies The collected essays translated here stand out in two important regards: they are organized around a central theme, that of women and literature, and they avoid overemphasis on specific critics currently in vogue. --Judit Arokay, Monumenta Nipponica Translation Awards (Copeland) for The Goddess Chronicle by Kirino Natsuo (Canongate, January 2013; Grove/Atlantic, August 2013): The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, 2014-2015 PEN Translates Award, English PEN Reviews for The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu (Linda C. Ehrlich) In Linda Ehrlich, Kore-eda Hirokazu has found his most suitable and perfect commentator. Ehrlich possesses an eloquence and sensitivity that matches Kore-eda's own deep and abiding humanism. --David M. Desser, Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies, University of Illinois, USA It's difficult to imagine a more insightful and illuminating way of approaching Kore-eda's films than through the series of lyrical essays that Linda Ehrlich wrote. . . . Not since Gombrich's The Story of Art have I seen the integration of image, experience, and content implemented so elegantly and eloquently. --Otavio Bueno, Professor and Chair, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, University of Miami, USA Cinematic Reveries (Linda C. Ehrlich) Haunting, exquisitely sensitive . . . will inspire you to embrace the images that have long lingered in your own life .--Arthur Noletti, Jr., Framingham State University

These are evocative and timely writings that foreground the protean presence and multifaceted dynamism of the yamamba (mountain witch) beyond place and before time. The authors dismantle the misogynist treatment of the yamamba in masculinist canons and resurrect her powerful voice and the silenced voices of all independent women. -Jennifer Robertson, author of Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch exemplifies the ways creative minds can upend sexist images to craft new engaging stories of female empowerment. -Mari Boyd, Professor Emeritus, Sophia University Deftly unmasking the iconic Japanese witch through creative, scholarly, and speculative approaches, this collection is as enchanting and compelling as the yamamba herself. -Kristen J. Sollee, author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists Yamamba bursts with life, being that rare balance of both a scholarly and poetic celebration of Japan's woman of the woods. A combination of essays and interviews with new art, stories, and poems; I would love to see more books like this. -Zack Davisson, author of Kaibyo: The Supernatural Cats of Japan Copeland and Ehrlich's inventive Yamamba offers vibrant responses to Japan's beguiling Mountain Witch. Encompassing dance, poetry, fiction, essays, and the visual arts, this collection takes readers on imaginative paths of inquiry. Entertaining and intriguing, it will enhance readers' appreciation of Japanese arts, lore, and literature, inviting their own creativity. -Jan Bardsley, Professor Emerita (UNC Chapel Hill) and author of Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan Through poems, stories, and interviews with dancers of Noh and modern plays, this book gives a fascinating take on the Yamamba in Japanese folklore. -Hiroaki Sato, award winning translator and poet, and author of On Haiku and others This bewitching collection weaves together myth, scholarship and creative arts to reveal little-known truths about Japanese culture, gender relations, and the whole human condition. The Japanese mountain witch comes from folklore but lives on in contemporary pop culture and on the Noh stage. She is everywhere that female voices have been suppressed and independent women accused of being witches. Smart yet accessible, Yamamba casts a powerful spell. -Kittredge Cherry, author of Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women A really fresh and innovative approach to a fascinating subject. The yamamba will always remain a figure of mystery, but the consistently provocative think pieces, short stories, poems, and interviews presented in Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch capture her multifaceted appeal. -Susan Napier, author of Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art and The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity This volume offers a splendid journey through multiple literary genres and a few visual media in pursuit of the many faces of Yamamba. We meet her as the withered old woman who is perhaps her most popular guise; we hear of the young, alluring, and maternal Yamamba ; and we encounter her posing as a human, using her powers of clairvoyance to satisfy her family's everyday expectations. Collectively, the authors plumb the depths of these expressions to contemplate what Yamamba represents. Is she a specter spurred by ancient misogynistic attitudes? Is she a phantasm celebrating liberated, independent women? Or can she be a salve for society? But, as one author reminds us, Yamamba can always be reimagined. This multi-faceted collection will undoubtedly prompt further contemplation. -Julia Sapin, Professor of Art History, Western Washington University

Author Information

Rebecca Copeland is a professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis, a writer of fiction and literary criticism, and a translator of Japanese literature. Her stories travel between Japan and the American South and touch on questions of identity, belonging, and self-discovery. The Kimono Tattoo, her debut work, takes readers on a journey into Kyoto's intricate world of kimono design, and into a mystery that interweaves family dynamics, loss, and reconciliation. Linda C. Ehrlich is an independent scholar who has published extensively about world cinema and traditional theater. Her recent publication, The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), is the first book in English on this influential Japanese director. She has published poetry in International Poetry Review, The Bitter Oleander, Southern Poetry Review, Literary Arts Hawaii, Pinesong, and other literary journals. Dr. Ehrlich has taught at Duke University, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Tennessee/Knoxville, and on two Semester-at-Sea voyages.

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