“I can think of few other scholarly monographs that have taught us as much about the historical significance of the study of classical ‘literature’ in modernity. The narrative texts of Heian Japan have never received more meticulous and rigorous scrutiny achieved with such sheer intelligence. Tomiko Yoda succeeds in speaking to interdisciplinary and international audiences about why the institution of ‘literature’ had to serve a crucial role in the manufacture of specifically gendered subjects of the nation and how the pronominal categories had to be invented in order to newly designate modern subjects. She has laid a cornerstone in the literary studies of modernity, which the cultural studies of Japan, East Asia, and Europe can no longer ignore. This is a remarkable achievement.”-Naoki Sakai, Cornell University
“Keenly, lucidly, thoroughly, Gender and National Literature shows how the modern feminization of Heian literature did not simply parallel the formation of the modern subject in Japan, but proved integral to it. Tomiko Yoda thus issues a profound challenge to the received wisdom about the femininity and the ‘women’ of classical literature. And her response is brilliant: turning to the materiality of the Heian text, Yoda poses new readings that take the question of gender far beyond previous studies of Heian and modern Japanese literature.”-Thomas LaMarre, author of Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription
