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ENCOUNTER WITH THE MIRROR OF THE OTHER: angela carter and her
personal connection with japan

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Journal of the Theoretical Humanities

ISSN: 0969-725X (Print) 1469-2899 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20

ENCOUNTER WITH THE MIRROR OF THE OTHER

angela carter and her personal connection with japan

Natsumi Ikoma

To cite this article: Natsumi Ikoma (2017) ENCOUNTER WITH THE MIRROR OF THE OTHER,
Angelaki, 22:1, 77-92, DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2017.1285617

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 ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 22 number 1 march 2017

the mystery of her japan days

A ngela Carter is one author among many

whose literary style changes drastically
with exposure to other cultures. Scott
A. Dimovitz, for instance, separates her
career into “pre- and post-Japan” (“Cartesian
Nuts” 15). However, little has been known to
the public about what Carter personally experi-
enced in Japan, even though her works have
been the focus of extensive academic research natsumi ikoma
around the world. She came to Japan in 1969
with the award money she received from the
Somerset Maugham Literary Award, and after
living in Japan for a while she returned to
ENCOUNTER WITH THE
England in 1972. During her stay, she wrote MIRROR OF THE OTHER
a novel, The Infernal Desire Machines of
Doctor Hoffman (hereinafter IDM), and an angela carter and her
array of journalistic pieces on Japan, some of
which touch upon a relationship she appears
personal connection with
to have had with a Japanese man. Only that japan
much has been known, and researchers have
merely speculated on the possible Japanese
influences in her works – speculation derived general, and in The Infernal Desire Machines
mainly from Carter’s writings on Japan – in particular – in order to supplement one of
while the rest has been regarded as “myster- the underdeveloped areas of research in
ious” (Gamble 106) up until this point.1 For Angela Carter scholarship. With hope, this
instance, The Infernal Desire Machines has paper will also reveal the scale of impact that
been discussed not from the perspective of its her romantic encounter had on her later lit-
Japanese influence but mainly through its erary career. It seemed, for her, to be an
relation to Western theories and literature. experience of losing one’s subjectivity within
This paper attempts to fill that gap with orig- masculinist discourse, and putting herself and
inal information drawn from interviews with her lover in a situation she described as “a phi-
Carter’s former Japanese boyfriend, whose losophic assassination” (Angela Carter Papers:
existence has been vaguely recognized but not Japan 1, Add MS 88899/1/80 n. pag. (herein-
officially documented, combined with analyses after Japan 1)). In the end, this experience
of her unpublished journal entries archived in might have helped Carter to obtain a very post-
the British Library. It seeks to bring to light modern and positively feminist sensibility that
the Japanese influences in Carter’s work in enabled her to playfully upset masculinist

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/17/010077-16 © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2017.1285617

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 carter’s connection with japan

narratives and their core motif of woman as the big old bottle – psychoanalysis – is extensively
other. utilized for explosive new wine in this novel.
As Dimovitz puts it:
the infernal desire machines and the
Doctor Hoffman, therefore, systematically
japanese assassin literalizes the stages of various psychoanaly-
Although Dimovitz is among the few scholars tic traditions in order to subvert those tra-
who analyse the influence of Japanese culture ditions. Psychoanalysis, the novel suggests,
on Carter’s works, the main focus of his analysis serves as a useful tool to describe our
Western culture not because of its objective
is the way in which Carter develops/refutes the
validity for interpreting our culture, but
European psychoanalytic discourses of Freud
because that very structure, in fact, causes
and Lacan, or the philosophical discourses of our culture. (“Angela Carter’s Narrative
Plato and Surrealism.2 To be sure, The Infernal Chiasmus” 99)
Desire Machines could be read as a subversive
narrative that mockingly mimics European mas- A number of feminists, including Betty Friedan
culine/masculinist discourses of desire, such as and Kate Millet, criticize the male-centrality of
psychoanalytic theories and Proust’s famous nar- psychoanalysis for the way it indiscriminately
rative À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27), defines whatever is the opposite of reason and
as analysed by Maggie Tonkin and me.3 Carter is order, such as non-reason, illogicality, madness,
known to refer to – and often parody – many lit- etc., as “feminine.” In The Infernal Desire
erary, philosophical, and theoretical works and Machines, as if to reflect these feminist sensibil-
their authors; The Bloody Chamber (1979), for ities, the “feminine” defined by psychoanalysis,
instance, is a collection of subversive retellings such as desire, non-reason, and madness, is rep-
of fairy tales, and Wise Children (1991) is a resented by the male character, Doctor
parodic narrative on Shakespeare and his Hoffman, thus suggesting that the psychoanaly-
legacy. Her retellings offer new and alternative tic “feminine” is in fact a male creation, and
perspectives, at once feminist and postmodernist, therefore “masculine.” Similarly, fantastic
to upset the masculine narratives prevalent in the images of Albertina in the work are presented
literary world. as mere reflections of the desire of Desiderio,
Subversion and disruption are two of Carter’s and have nothing to do with the real woman
favoured qualities in narratives, as she writes: named Albertina, whose existence is ultimately
terminated by Desiderio himself. Indeed,
To try to say something simple – do I situate
Carter “literalizes” criticisms of psychoanalysis,
myself politically as a writer? Well, yes; of
course. I always hope it’s obvious, although even preceding major feminist criticism.
I try, when I write fiction, to think on my In the quotation above, however, Dimovitz
feet – to present a number of propositions seems to extend the scope of this novel’s criti-
in a variety of different ways, and to leave cism only to “our Western culture” (emphasis
the reader to construct her own fiction for mine). Is this novel solely about Western
herself from the elements of my fictions. culture, then? Are we supposed to read it only
(Reading is just as creative an activity as as a criticism of Western society and its narra-
writing and most intellectual development tives on desire? Though Carter might initially
depends upon new readings of old texts. I have written it for a Western readership, I
am all for putting new wine in old bottles,
would like to suggest the scope of its criticism
especially if the pressure of the new wine
is not confined to Britain, or even to Europe
makes the old bottles explode.) (Shaking a
Leg 37 (hereinafter SL)) for that matter, but is in fact much wider,
including Japan and other patriarchal societies.
The Infernal Desire Machines features many As will be explored in this paper, the journal
such “old bottles” into which new wine has entries that Carter wrote while living in Japan
been poured, so as to make them burst. One show that Carter wrote this novel while heavily

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under the influence of Japanese society and what deliberately creates Desiderio as a universal
she experienced there, both on cultural and per- subject, almost an abstract notion, and his
sonal levels.4 The City in this story, though Albertina as nothing more than the reflection
unspecified, greatly resembles the Japan that of his own desire, so that they serve to parody
Carter describes in an unpublished manuscript the male-centrality of literary narratives in patri-
fragment titled “Summer ’70,” as “a great archal cultures. In such narratives, the hero and
country for appearances and it is often hard to the heroine are totally dependent on each other
tell what is real and what is not” (Angela to establish their status as hero and heroine. The
Carter Papers: Japan 2, Add MS 88899/1/81 heroine, if she wants to remain in his masculine
n. pag. (hereinafter Japan 2)). Some of the discourse, needs to conform to the hero’s desire,
“old bottles” that Carter aims to explode in to reflect his desire for the other, and lose her
this novel, therefore, may very well reflect own agency to the extent that she becomes the
some aspects of Japanese society and culture. hero’s mirror. She needs to conceal her true
However, we need to bear in mind that Desi- form, and personify the otherness the hero ima-
derio, as his name suggests, is the personifica- gines her to possess. With a shred of suspicion,
tion of universal masculine desire. He is a of her heterogeneity and of her self, indepen-
typical hero-in-the-making. He pursues Alber- dent of his desire, this harmonious unity
tina, his object of desire, yet his real objective between the hero and the heroine is shattered,
is to assassinate Doctor Hoffman (and Alber- and they become each other’s assassins, as Desi-
tina, in fact) to become a hero, a masculine derio and Albertina demonstrate. Interestingly,
subject. Desiderio is not primarily Albertina’s Desiderio and Albertina seem to be modelled
lover but her assassin, though the romantic dis- after the same person, Sozo Araki, the Japanese
course serves as a façade to cover up the male man with whom Carter had an intense relation-
homosocial arena in which Desiderio moves, ship when she was in Japan. She called Sozo “my
similar to that described by Bakhtin: assassin” in her journal, and she dubbed his
native country “a country of beautiful assassins”
Truth’s earthly adventures take place on (Angela Carter Papers: Journal, MS 88899/1/
highroads, in brothels, dens of thieves, 93 n. pag. (hereinafter Journal 93)).5
taverns, market places, prisons, at secret The Infernal Desire Machines is just one
cults’ erotic orgies [ … ] The man of an
example among many stories written by Carter
idea – the wise man – is confronted with
that suggest what a strong impact her personal
the extreme expression of worldly evil,
depravity, baseness and vulgarity. (94) encounters in Japan had on her creativity in her
later career. By “encounters,” I do not mean a
It is rather revealing that Bakhtin assumes mere brush with foreign culture as an outsider
the personified “Truth,” who is to be challenged might enjoy, but much more personal and inti-
by various difficulties, as masculine here. The mate experiences, so as to change who one is;
challenges he encounters are those suited to Carter seemed to be so in love that she became
proving his manhood, his status as hero. This almost an insider to Japan when she dated and
kind of unconscious gender assumption in the lived with Sozo. She chose to immerse herself
patriarchal and masculinist imagination is among Japanese people and within the Japanese
what Carter attacks, although Bakhtin’s dialo- family system to the extent that she communi-
gism is in tune with Carter’s intertextuality. cated with Sozo’s family members constantly.6
Bakhtin’s “Truth” is named “Desiderio” in As I suggest in this paper, this personal relation-
Carter’s work, and he is challenged by similar ship with Sozo Araki affected Carter potentially
difficulties in the unspecified setting of The more than any cultural observation she made
Infernal Desire Machines. The racial ambiva- during her stay in Japan or her studious research
lence of Desiderio is no coincidence, then; the on Japanese society – so much so that it may have
novel is not a narrative targeting a specific been one of the key factors in the transformation
society, culture or race. In my opinion, Carter of her writing style from pre-Japan to post-Japan.

79
 carter’s connection with japan

The basis of this speculation is derived from leave him at, I think, the end of summer.
the insight made possible by my personal Until then, I shall watch him, study him &
contact with Sozo Araki himself. Carter’s jour- learn all I can. On the other hand – to
nals, as well as her unpublished works-in-pro- further confuse the issue – I discover I love
gress written during and after her stay and him more than anything in the world. (Ibid.)
now archived in the British Library, contain I interviewed Sozo Araki several times, and
numerous entries about Sozo and support what partly use the information I obtained from
I have heard from him. Besides Desiderio and him in this paper to suggest the impact of the
Albertina, there are several other characters personal as well as cultural experiences Carter
apparently modelled after Sozo: for instance, had in Japan on her writings, in the hope that
Taro in “A Souvenir of Japan” is one of them. Sozo’s testimony fills the formerly uncharted
In one of her journal entries, Carter scribbles gap between Carter’s hands-on experience and
“A Memory of Skin” juxtaposed to “A Souvenir final literary products.8 I also attempt to com-
of Japan,” under which is written the following: pensate for the one-sidedness of Sozo’s narrative
Short Story: Sozo with Carter’s own, recorded in her journals and
Simple style – the basis, the absolute impossi- other unpublished works. Indeed, I believe what
bility of the relationship – the desperate she experienced and learned in Japan during her
attempt to get through male arrogance, the romantic involvement with Sozo might have
bed duty bit. (Journal 93 n. pag.; strike- helped Carter to develop her theory of gender
through in original) performativity, even before the term was
coined by Judith Butler in the late 1980s. This
It testifies to the fact that “A Souvenir of paper, therefore, is an attempt at weaving a dis-
Japan,” included in Fireworks – a collection of cursive tapestry that reveals the hitherto unexa-
short stories – was initially inspired by Sozo mined influence of the years Angela Carter
and Carter’s relationship with him (Carter also spent in Japan.
refers to him as “my friend S” in many pieces,
including her essay on Mishima7).
Carter and Sozo met each other in 1969, see-
life as the other: a woman in love
mingly not long after she arrived in Japan. They Many of Carter’s journal entries archived in the
fell in love and, after an interval, spent about a British Library, as well as what Sozo relayed to
year and a half together. At one point, Carter me in our interviews, testify to the fact that
wrote in an undated journal entry: Sozo and Carter experienced a very intense
and turbulent romance. When they first met,
He is so beautiful, so variously beautiful
they both were in their twenties, though
[ … ] Sozo has the perfect languorous grace-
Carter was five years older than Sozo. Carter
fulness of the man in the Hilliard miniature,
whose legs, their musculature so exquisitely had distanced herself from her husband, but
delineated by the close silken skin of his was still technically married to him. After
white stockings, have a superb gracefulness – years of frustration, Carter was perhaps ready
an animal rather than human repose. In for a new adventure. Upon meeting Sozo –
sleep, however, he becomes purely Polyne- who seems to have possessed a melancholic,
sian, a Gauguin. (Ibid.) Asian handsomeness in his youth – Carter, it
seems, promptly fell in love with him. Accord-
Their relationship seems to have been intense,
ing to Sozo, after a short period of dating and
bittersweet, and the break-up painful. After a
her brief return to England, she persuaded
heated quarrel, Carter wrote in a journal entry:
him to live with her in a corner of Tokyo, as
We came to no conclusions; but I, at least, though they were a married couple.
came to a conclusion in my mind. That, With Sozo, Carter was able to visit places
unless he changes – which is unlikely in where foreign tourists did not usually venture,
someone so profoundly neurotic – I shall and witness the lives of ordinary Japanese

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people behind the formal, polite façades they not a common sight, Carter stood out as a Cau-
tend to wear in front of guests from overseas. casian woman, an exotic object, a rarity in Japa-
Partly because of him, Carter was able to see nese society. Though Japan today still exhibits
the real Japan some forty-odd years ago, which what can be called a “foreigner complex” – a
must have been far more exotic than, and differ- residual feeling from over two hundred years
ent from, today’s globalized, uniformed, Wes- of closed-door policy by the Edo government,
ternized Japan. The stories contained in perhaps – the Japan of forty-odd years ago was
Fireworks, and many of her essays published extremely awe-stricken by Caucasians. Depend-
in New Society, are described from this ing on the situation, Caucasians were feared,
unusual standpoint that Carter had as both idolized or sexualized, but in all cases they
insider and outsider, or rather, as neither one were objectified. Women in general were
nor the other. “others” in Japanese society, but Caucasian
Carter was very keen to know Japanese women were doubly so. In “A Souvenir of
culture, its traditions and its way of life. Accord- Japan,” Carter writes: “I had never been so
ing to Sozo, she was particularly interested in absolutely the mysterious other. I had become
the sexual mores of Japanese people, her curios- a kind of phoenix, a fabulous beast; I was an out-
ity most probably stirred by her own relation- landish jewel. He found me, I think, inexpressi-
ship with a Japanese man. She frequently bly exotic. But I often felt like a female
asked Sozo why Japanese men or women impersonator” (Fireworks 7).
behaved in a certain way. For instance, she It is noteworthy that she writes “a female
could not understand why Japanese women impersonator” here, to signpost the narrating
behaved childishly and demurely at first. For a woman’s awareness of the gendered expec-
person coming from Swinging London, Japa- tations imposed upon her, and of the difference
nese women in those days must have seemed between what was desired and what she herself
extremely backward and un-liberated. felt she was. Similarly, although on the surface
However, according to Sozo, Carter had to Carter was adored and respected, she was able
completely rethink her view of Japanese women to penetrate that façade to see how Japanese
one night when she was infuriated by a Japanese society robbed her of her subjectivity and
woman who seemed neither particularly beauti- agency. Instead, she was turned into an object:
ful nor intelligent, but upon arrival managed to a beast, a jewel, an automaton.
steal all the attention of the men, which pre- A similar conclusion was drawn when Carter
viously had been focused on Carter. She did worked as a part-time bar hostess in Ginza. This
not understand why this unremarkable woman particular bar hired many foreign women to
was capable of monopolizing male attention. serve as hostesses as a kind of “special attrac-
Sozo explained that the very qualities that tion” for male customers. After working for
woman exhibited – such as immaturity, childish- hours as a hostess, Carter visited a sex shop
ness, demureness and reserve – were the qualities and listened to a male shopkeeper’s description
appreciated by the Japanese men gathered there. of a product: “[T]he salesman explained: ‘a mas-
On that day, Carter must have become aware of turbatory device for gentlemen.’ Which is, pre-
the cultural specificity of gender norms and of sumably, the same function Suzy and I had
the Japanese definition of an “attractive performed for the last two and a half hours”
woman,” which was quite distinct from the Euro- (SL 254).
pean one. The Japanese woman she met that day Here, Carter seems to realize the extreme
may not have been innately childish or imma- male-centrality of Japanese society, and how it
ture, but she certainly acted as such in accord- renders women agency-less, whether they are
ance with the social norms in Japan. Japanese or otherwise. Having found how
This realization possibly led Carter to scruti- women are excluded from society and how
nize her own popular status among Japanese they are denied existence other than in relation
men. In those days, when foreign tourists were to men, Carter then seems to have formed

81
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some kind of sympathy towards Japanese power of male-centrism in Japanese society.

women, to whom she had felt hostility pre- What Judith Butler calls “a sedimentation of
viously. Once, in a town famous for its hot gender norms” (“Performative Acts” 524) pos-
springs, Carter witnessed a shooting game that sesses its greatest force in the framework of
displayed dolls of nude women as targets, and romantic love, as Carter demonstrates in a
wrote: “This seemed to me a fitting parable of story titled “Flesh and the Mirror,” a story
the battle of the sexes in Japan. True femininity that greatly resembles what Carter actually
is denied an expression and women, in general, experienced in her relationship with Sozo.
have the choice of becoming either slaves or In this story, the narrator is a foreign
toys” (249). woman in love, who wanders around the city
In these essays, Carter found that Japanese of Tokyo looking for her heartless Japanese
women were objectified so as to become slaves male lover, whom Carter undoubtedly created
or toys, and foreign women, including her, out of Sozo. This narrator is aware that she is
were objectified so as to become exotic jewels performing the role of a romantic heroine,
or beasts. In the end, the fact that both of and is confident that she is controlling her
them were objectified for the convenience own script and performance. The story begins
and pleasure of men was the same. She also as follows: “It was midnight – I chose my
wrote: “[T]he hostess – the computerized play- times and set my scenes with the precision of
mate – may conceivably be an illustration of the born artiste” (Fireworks 61). The protago-
the fact that Japan is just the same as every- nist is a Caucasian woman in a romantic
where else, only more so; perhaps she is script. With a touch of narcissism, the narrator
indeed the universal male notion of the seems confident in her own stage management
perfect woman” (251). skills. Even though her Japanese lover does
In the quotation above, Carter recognizes not come to greet her as promised on her
that Japanese society is not fundamentally return to Japan, she still executes a romantic
different from other patriarchal societies, and performance, as she wanders around Tokyo at
that universally, in male-dominant societies midnight, crying, cutting an exotic and roman-
the notion of the perfect woman has nothing tic figure – a perfect heroine in distress. Con-
to do with the reality of those with female tradictorily, however, she also desires the
bodies. This increased awareness may have genuine feelings of a romantic heroine, from
built the foundation of Albertina, the charac- which she is removed because of her self-con-
ter who reflects universal male desire. The scious performance:
same awareness also might have led Carter to
It was as if there were glass between me and
write: “In Japan, I learnt what it is to be a the world. But I could see myself perfectly
woman, and became radicalised” (Nothing well on the other side of the glass. There I
Sacred 28). No longer hindered by personal was, walking up and down, eating meals,
antagonism and rivalry, Carter here seems to having conversations, in love, indifferent,
discover a commonality between herself and and so on. But all the time I was pulling
Japanese women. the strings of my own puppet; it was this
puppet who was moving about on the other
side of the glass. And I eyed the most marvel-
the theatre of romance and the lous adventures with the bored eye of the
mirror of the other agent with the cigar watching another audi-
tion. I tapped out the ash and asked of
According to Sozo’s testimony, Angela Carter
events: “What else can you do?” (63)
was in love for at least the first half of the
period she was in Japan. And because of this, In spite of, or rather because of, her longing to
even though she was consciously a feminist be a true heroine in a romantic discourse, the
and remained as such, she was nevertheless at narrator becomes at once the impresario and
risk of losing her subjectivity, affected by the the puppet, thus driven further away from

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truly feeling the emotion of love. She takes her imbued with perpetual otherness in his theory;
own power for granted and this routine perform- in other words, there is no “feminine subject”
ance bores her. Up to this point, it is beyond her in psychoanalysis.
imagination that someone other than herself The narrator of “Flesh and the Mirror” now
could have, in fact, been the puppet master. realizes that, though she had believed she was
Gradually, however, she is consumed by her the scriptwriter and puppet master of the
own show: theatre of romance, in fact she is just a character
without any agency or control:
On the night I came back to [the city],
however hard I looked for the one I loved, The fancy-dress disguise I’d put on to suit the
she could not find him anywhere and the city had betrayed me to a room and a bed and
city delivered her into the hands of a a modification of myself that had no business
perfect stranger who fell into step beside at all in my life, not in the life I had watched
her and asked why she was crying. (Ibid.) myself performing. (65)

The subject of the sentence shifts from “I” to The loss of the narrator’s agency could be a con-
“she,” indicating her loss of subjectivity and sequence of her own naı̈ve performance as a
agency in the performance. The script she has “romantic heroine” in accordance with the
written – a script about a great romance – no gender norms imposed upon her. Although
longer functions, and the narrator becomes a the narrator is self-conscious and does not
third-person character in a script written by really believe in essential femininity, the ideal
someone else. discourse of a romantic heroine still makes her
The mirror motif used in the story reminds want to feel truly “in love” amidst her suffering.
the reader of the Lacanian mirror when the nar- Thus, the “sedimentation of gender norms” as
rator is faced with the reality of finding herself described by Butler has piled up to fix her as a
in a hotel room with a stranger: woman in patriarchal discourse – in other
words, as an object, which she herself does not
The magic mirror presented me with a recognize. When the narrator’s romantic
hitherto unconsidered notion of myself as relationship with a man is what triggers her
I. Without any intention of mine, I had
fall – she who has travelled the world alone of
been defined by the action reflected in
her own free will – the story demonstrates how
the mirror. I beset me. I was the subject
of the sentence written on the mirror. gender norms exert their power with a ven-
(64–65) geance in romantic ideology: “So, although I
thought I was the most romantic spectacle ima-
In Lacanian theory, the mirror offers the infant ginable as I wandered down the alleys, I was in
a sense of self, with its capacity and limitation, reality at risk” (66–67). Blinded by love and
formerly unknown to him/her. But Carter intoxicated by her mental state as a romantic
does not just utilize Lacanian theory here; heroine, which is equal to narcissistic maso-
again, she seems to criticize it. Unlike the Laca- chism in the masculinist definition, the narrator
nian mirror, the sense of subjectivity or agency actually enjoys this objectification of herself, her
found within the mirror in Carter’s story offers sufferings, her pain, her devastation and her
no consolation to the narrator. Rather, it makes patience.
her realize the deep chasm between her former The heroine of the story is, at least in part,
sense of self and reality: the “real” condition Carter herself, since this story is based partly
of herself as an object. The former is within on facts – Carter, too, was stood up by her
her control, the latter beyond it. This difference lover when he was supposed to pick her up
in the mirrors may be a reflection of Carter’s from the airport – and presumably reflects
critical reading of Lacan. Lacanian psychoanaly- Carter’s own feelings and mental state. Sozo
sis is applicable to a “masculine subject” but not was a bit of a player, and Carter sometimes
to its feminine counterpart, since the latter is had to compete with Japanese women. In one

83
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of her journal entries with the heading “Sozo, imposed upon her by Japanese society.
cont,” she writes: She seems to have found that shocking after a
certain time, as she writes in a journal entry
When he is away from me, I believe he
presumably some time after her return to
spends much of the time savouring the
England:
most exquisite ravages of guilt; yet out he
goes the next night, or the night after, and Bradford, again; and here I am, in the grey,
even if he fully intends to return home discomforting city, my new easy, strenuously
early, he never quite contrives to do so, disaffected self – how difficult, indeed, to
somehow inevitably forced by circumstance retain calm. It doesn’t matter, of course.
to always find himself, sodden with drink & Self-possession. To be in possession of one’s
self-disgust, moving as if in trance through self. That’s the only thing, really [ … ] My
the echoing vaults of a mysteriously deserted self & I – I & me, subject & object, the oscil-
& unlike-itself Shinjuku station at 5 in the lation between the two when it should be a
morning, tortured by the ghastly notion – dialectic, I should be in control of my
which yet contains a savagely damped down double, my most intimate other, myself as
spark of hope – that, this time, he may me, my own reflection [ … ] I am not my
have gone too far. My rave fears he misinter- self. Ego as subject, ego as object; experien-
prets; yet they excite him. (Journal 93 cing one self as object – onanistic sexuality
n. pag.) since I was the object on which they
focused their frigidity at its fullest intensity,
In the following entry, subtitled “Sozo, cont or
I perceived it as passion. (Angela Carter
completed,” Carter continues: Papers: Journal, Add MS 88899/1/94
He says these things to me & they don’t mean n. pag.; underlining in original)
a thing. No; that’s not fair; When he says Going beyond personal and culturally specific
them, he means them; when he kisses my
experiences, Carter further developed her ideas
thighs, & to excite himself, speaks of love,
on the power of gender norms for general appli-
he means every word; every choked syllable.
But it is impossible, when he is away from cation. The protagonist of “Flesh and the
me, for him not to betray me or, at least, in Mirror,” for instance, inquires into general objec-
word & thought, I constantly betray him, & tifications at work in romantic relationships, and
far more grievously, did he but know it. So finds herself not only as a victim but also as a per-
he will propose the old answer, the love petrator of objectification:
suicide, to preserve the notion that our love
is ultimate from that contact with the quoti- So I suppose I do not know how he really
dian world which will inevitably destroy it. looked and, in fact, I suppose I shall never
I have this desperate love & I do not know know, now, for he was plainly an object
what to do with it. (Ibid.) created in the mode of fantasy. His image
was already present somewhere in my head
Although this entry may not be a totally truthful and I was seeking to discover it in actuality,
description of what had actually occurred looking at every face I met in case it was
between Carter and Sozo, there appear to be the right face [ … ] So his self, and, by his
elements in their relationship that inspired self, I mean the thing he was to himself,
was quite unknown to me. I created him
this writing. Amidst the turbulent and some-
solely in relation to myself, like a work of
what co-dependent relationship described here,
romantic art, an object corresponding to the
Carter may have found herself becoming ghost inside me. (Fireworks 67–68)
someone she was not. Whether done consciously
or unconsciously, she might have acted in a way Deeply embedded in gender norms working
that was in response to Sozo so as to please him within heterosexual romantic ideology, the nar-
in part, and also to perform the role of a heroine rator objectifies herself and her partner without
properly. Without really intending to, she might realizing. In fact, she starts to think she has
have conformed to certain gender norms invented her “romance” in order to satisfy

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social norms that require her to be in love, to having every movement watched because of
have a heterosexual relationship: her otherness must have made her into a self-
conscious actor, even leading her to pay atten-
In order to create the loved object in this way
and to issue it with its certificate of authenti- tion to how she moved her own body.
cation, as beloved, I had also to labour at the In her journal, seemingly recorded during
idea of myself in love. I watched myself her return to England to sort out her marriage
closely for all the signs and, precisely upon after the initial bout with Sozo, she writes:
cue, here they were! Longing, desire, self-
abnegation, etc. [ … ] I no longer understood Home again, in that contented boredom
the logic of my own performance. My script which signifies “at home”; I remember my
had been scrambled behind my back. The magic other, as again I grow aware of, or
cameraman was drunk. The director had a grow back into, my peculiar identity; and
crise de nerfs and been taken away to a sana- how much, not so much of self-deceit but of
torium. (68) sleight of hand, went into the effortful cre-
ation of the idea of myself in love. And
What is described here is how coercive romantic perhaps I should say: “I am not the thing I
ideology, heterosexism and gender norms take am” or “Cogito non ergo sum.” (Journal 93
away the agency of both parties in a romantic n. pag.)
relationship. They feel they are falling in love
Even the most intimate feeling of being “in
willingly, believing love is by nature spon-
love” is a self-conscious, effortful performance
taneous and natural. But, in fact, they are ideo-
here. Her “self” is her “magic other,” and she
logically led to “fall in love willingly,” are
categorically defines her “self” as “not the
persuaded, educated and coerced to plunge
thing I am.” This loss of her “self” and
into heterosexual relationships. The script of
“essence” is characteristic of her post-Japan
romance they believe they have written them-
fiction, in which human performativity is
selves is in fact written by society and its ideol-
explored in various ways.
ogy. Consequently, her subjectivity and his
subjectivity are erased from the script. They
are both puppets pursuing a goal set by woman as the other: the tanizaki
society. No mutual respect can be attained in
such a relationship, and the lovers end up
connection
becoming each other’s assassins. Perhaps, after As mentioned above, The Infernal Desire
the turbulent relationship and bitter break-up Machines, the novel that Carter wrote in
with Sozo, Carter came to this conclusion Japan, can be interpreted as a subversive narra-
about “love”; that is, it is an illusion created tive that mimics masculinist discourses. In the
by the sheer force of imagination, and the ones novel, the heroine, Albertina, is a reflection of
involved inevitably act out parts for reasons the male protagonist, Desiderio. Just like the
unbeknownst to themselves, in order to fit the heroine in “Flesh and the Mirror,” Albertina
concept of what lovers “should be like.” is, until the final part of the novel, merely a
The protagonist of “Flesh and the Mirror” character within the male romantic discourse
comes to the conclusion that every act, not who has neither agency nor subjectivity, and
merely in romantic relationships, is a perform- the idea of performativity – especially of
ance to fulfil some sort of expectation imposed gender performativity – is most vividly
upon us when she says: “The most difficult per- expressed in Albertina. Gender performativity
formance in the world is acting naturally, isn’t itself had been a recurring topic that Carter
it? Everything else is artful” (70). addressed from the very early stages of her
This ultimate realization of performativity in writing career, although it was not as developed
human life seems to have resulted from Carter’s as in her post-Japan novels. This is striking, con-
experiences in Japan, to some extent. Being sidering that most of her works were published
coerced into gender norms foreign to her and before Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler’s

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seminal work on gender performativity.9 As the rank of Thomas Mann” (SL 267). Naomi,
early as 1964, using the motifs of theatre and one of Tanizaki’s masterpieces, was her favour-
performance, Carter theorized gender as part ite, and she even wrote a book review on it.
of a performance in The Magic Toyshop, for The story is set in the Taisho period (1912–
instance, in which Melanie, the protagonist, is 26), when Japanese society was undergoing
forced to perform “femininity” according to a Westernization and the people were striving to
script of heterosexuality and violence. act like Westerners. Kawai, the protagonist, is
However, nobody would disagree that after in his late twenties when he meets a girl of
her years in Japan, Carter’s work became more fifteen, Naomi, to whom he is strongly attracted.
fantastic and positively feminist. As to the per- Kawai is a representation of Japanese society in
formativity aspect, for example, the essential those days; behind his attraction to Naomi are
femininity retained by Melanie in The Magic her outlandish, Westernized face and name.
Toyshop evaporates in her post-Japan works. He basically purchases her from her family to
What contributed to this shift could be the coer- raise her to be his ideal wife. Naomi, though
cive power of gender norms that Carter experi- at first a naı̈ve girl, grows into a cunning, trea-
enced in her romantic relationship as explored cherous and voluptuous nymphet who toys
in the previous section, together with her cul- with many lovers and retains Kawai as her finan-
tural observations, including Kabuki theatre cial source. Kawai repeatedly tries to cut her out
(all-male traditional theatre) and Joruri puppet of his life, but ultimately fails. In the end, he
theatre, which, according to Sozo, Carter accepts his defeat, and caresses the knees of
visited with great interest. In those theatres, the evil Naomi, who is almost deified in his
an extremely elegant and stylized femininity is mind.
put on show by a male actor in the former or It is needless to mention that Carter sees
by a puppet in the latter, further consolidating through the façade of romantic love described
the fact that “femininity” is a performance. in Tanizaki’s story. In Carter’s assessment,
According to Sozo Araki, Carter also had an Naomi, including her evil nature, is Kawai’s cre-
insatiable appetite for books on Japan; among ation to fit his own desire. Carter writes:
them, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki and Akiyuki Nosaka “Naomi is drawn entirely from the outside,
were her favourite authors. With these experi- the very type of the faithless female lover that
ences and observations combined, Carter haunts the universal male imagination, tacky,
seems to have come to question the general meretricious and irresistible” (269).
meaning of “being a woman” and the existence Carter sees Naomi entirely as a creation of
of a female “essence.” this “male imagination.” She analyses Naomi’s
Carter’s works contain much intertextuality, imagined “otherness” as originating from
as I have argued previously, and in terms of Kawai:
The Infernal Desire Machines, specifically,
Tanizaki and Nosaka seem to have influenced For Kawai, Naomi stands for all the allure of
her research. The particular novels I would the exotic – but she only stands for it, she
does not embody it. She is, in reality, just
like to refer to in conjunction with The Infernal
as Japanese as he is. His own sense of self is
Desire Machines are Tanizaki’s Naomi (1924–
never at risk with her, as it would be with a
25) and Nosaka’s The Pornographers (1966). real foreigner. (268; emphasis in original)
The romantic love and sexual desire portrayed
in these two novels could be seen as the basis At the end of the story, Naomi completely trans-
of Carter’s own novel, though Carter uses forms herself into a Western goddess and
these works in order to subvert them. reappears in front of Kawai to make him
Tanizaki is one of the literary authors that succumb to her. But Carter feels that Naomi’s
Carter adored and respected, and of whom exoticism does not arise from her inherent
Carter wrote: “Tanizaki Jun’ichiro is one of “otherness.” Rather, it is exactly what Kawai
the greatest of twentieth-century novelists, of created her for and what Kawai embedded in

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her. Kawai brings about this exoticism in Naomi him the service of gratifying it” (SL 269).
so that he can safely succumb to it and worship Only, this male-centric mechanism is carefully
it. In the end, Naomi is there for Kawai’s plea- hidden in the name of love.
sure. As Carter grasps, the real otherness that Carter was likely drawn towards Naomi
is too disturbing and threatening is tactfully because it deals with a sadomasochistic relation-
avoided and replaced by an artificial replica, ship between a Japanese man and a foreign-
which is the exoticism of Naomi. Paradoxically, looking woman. Carter may have associated
it suggests how dangerous and threatening real Kawai’s attraction to, and simultaneous repul-
otherness can be, which Kawai experiences in sion at, Naomi’s foreignness and otherness
the middle of the story when he compares with Sozo’s. She writes in an unpublished
Naomi with “real foreigners”; real foreigners paper: “He perceived me, not in terms of the
are far more sophisticated than Naomi, and senses, but as an intellectual idea – as a baleful
beside them, Kawai can only feel belittled, threat to his own precarious autonomy, for he
inferior and ashamed. Carter writes in one of was too proud to subsume his self to mine &
her unpublished works titled “Tokyo”: love & pride cannot live in the same house”
(Japan 1 n. pag.). In this entry, Sozo resembles
Nowhere in Tokyo has an authentically cos-
Kawai, in that they both cling to their autonomy
mopolitan atmosphere, for the Japanese out-
by turning their partners into fantastic objects.
number everyone, but Shinjuku is a pastiche
of cosmopolitanism because it is a play- The Infernal Desire Machines employs the
ground and the foreign may be reproduced, same motif utilized in Naomi: the woman as a
for entertainment purposes only, in a series receptacle of narcissistic male desire. The
of lovingly executed tableaux made of novel pursues Carter’s speculation on what
plywood and papier mâché. Once reduced would happen to “romantic love” if the real
to a stereotype of itself, the foreign, disarmed “otherness” of the woman appeared to threaten
of strangeness, ceases to be a menace. the male ego. What if the woman did not remain
Foreigners who live in Japan long enough the hero’s doll? Up until the denouement, the
become affected by the benign refusal of relationship of Desiderio and Albertina is,
their hosts to take them seriously and start
though more fantastic, quite similar to that of
to parody their national characteristics; they
Kawai and Naomi. Desiderio in The Infernal
force us to behave as they have seen us on
the movies. (Japan 2 n. pag.) Desire Machines is a character created out of
the “universal male imagination,” a represen-
In the style of Tanizaki, Carter here refers tation of “male desire” that makes his love
directly to the threat that the Japanese feel object change her shape and migrate her
with the truly foreign. In much the same way, gender to suit his fantasy. The ecstatic words
the truly foreign is too scary for Kawai to uttered by Desiderio when he dreams of reunit-
handle. On the other hand, he finds Naomi’s ing with Albertina echo Kawai’s voice: “I would
shortcomings disgusting, yet contradictorily fall on my knees and worship” (IDM 41).
irresistible, because he feels superior to her. However, Carter makes Albertina more resist-
The story of Naomi – as Carter interprets it – ant than Naomi, in that she does not remain Desi-
is the story of a narcissistic male ego, in which derio’s doll, but gradually reveals her
the male raises his ideal goddess from scratch heterogeneous shape. Carter rips off the theatri-
so that he can enjoy succumbing to her cal veil that conceals the mechanism of desire
without any real threat to his ego. In this and thrusts it upon Desiderio, who laments:
story, Naomi is a mere receptacle, a doll, a thea-
Here, nothing could possibly be fantastic.
trical device of male desire. Even at her evilest That was the source of my bitter disappoint-
and worst self, she is not a threatening figure; ment [ … ] My disillusionment was pro-
after all, she is a docile being acting to satisfy found. I was not in the domain of the
Kawai’s masochistic desire. As Carter writes: marvellous at all. I had gone far beyond
“Naomi, as she matures into a tramp, does that and at last I had reached the powerhouse

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of the marvellous, where all its clanking, dull, Sozo Araki, Carter praised this novel and its
stage machinery was kept [ … ] I was already author, remarking that Nosaka would be recog-
wondering whether the fleshly possession of nized in the future and valued more highly
Albertina would not be the greatest disillu- abroad. The Pornographers was translated into
sionment of all. (IDM 200–01) English in 1968 and reviewed in both the
It is revealed here that what Desiderio had ima- New York Review of Books and the
gined as exotic and fantastic is instead “stage New York Times, and it must have been this
machinery.” Unlike in Naomi, the stage English version that Carter read.
machinery in Carter’s retelling is shattered The protagonist is Subuyan, a small-time
and the love story of Albertina and Desiderio trader and producer, making his living in a
meets its fatal ending, in which Desiderio kills corner of the sex industry. He harbours an
Albertina. If a love is this kind of narcissistic illicit desire for his step-daughter, Keiko, but
projection of the self onto the imagined other- finds himself impotent when the occasion
ness of the partner, then it is bound to end arises. The majority of the novel describes
like Desiderio and Albertina, because Alberti- what goes on behind the scenes in the sex indus-
na’s actual otherness has no place in this mascu- try; it reveals how “virgin” prostitutes fake their
linist “love” story. Commenting on her own virginity, and how one pair of pornographic
“love” story, Carter writes as follows: actors are in fact a father and a daughter, etc.
The theatrical mechanism that creates erotic
I came to define my own existence entirely in illusion, or what Carter calls “clanking, dull,
relation to him; he became the pole of my stage machinery,” is grotesquely laid bare here.
world, my sun, the core of my self. He – The highlight of the novel is the scene in
I. In a sense, it was a demonic possession. which one of the members of Subuyan’s team,
He was myself; I am Heathcliff. I abnegated Hack, who penned all the scripts of the
my existence to his & in return, I demanded
pornographic films produced by Subuyan, dies
absolute submission. He, my magic other,
my assassin. We reached a condition of absol-
of a heart attack after masturbation. Subuyan
ute, grovelling, whining, total dependence on visits Hack’s lodge and talks with the other
one another, so it was agony to be apart even members of the team:
if it was torture or ennui to be together [ … ]
Then, at the end, [we were] like sharks, help- “The first time Hack sat down to write a por-
lessly devouring one another; until there was nographic book, that’s what probably came
no way in which we could speak the truth. to him and got him excited. And now here
(Journal 93 n. pag.) at the end, he went over it again so that he
could get worked up and go to it [ … ]”
Unlike Tanizaki, Carter chose to tell the story of
Desiderio and Albertina until its conclusion, “So it was just for himself he wrote all those
books,” said Subuyan, shaking his head sadly.
with its bitter tragedy and impossibility of
“love,” and her hands-on experience with Sozo “I don’t know, but doesn’t it sort of remind
appears certainly to have contributed to the you of the human torpedoes during the war?”
making of the story.
“Yeah, that’s it! Grab yourself tight, go plun-
ging ahead in a world all your own, and with a
the ideal woman in homosocial burst of semen you blow yourself up.”
(Nozaka 240)10
discourse: the nosaka connection
Another novel Carter was likely influenced by is There is a certain irony in comparing death by
The Pornographers, written by Akiyuki masturbation to a suicide attack during the
Nosaka. This novel informed Carter more in war. It shows how Subuyan feels about the
terms of the male-centric sexual formation of team: they are brave soldiers, tragically fighting
contemporary Japanese society. According to for some great cause. But it is not only

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homosocial camaraderie that Subuyan feels for This may sound similar to what Kawai had in
Hack; Hack told Subuyan that he wrote porno- mind when he met Naomi. But what makes
graphic stories as a requiem for his dead Subuyan different from Kawai is that Subuyan
mother, who sacrificed her sexual pleasure, is aware that these women are not real. He
and eventually her life, by selling her body in tells a woman when he recruits her as a
order to raise her son. Subuyan and his team prostitute:
are touched by Hack’s love for his mother,
and the mother’s dedication to her son. “Now, every man’s got a dream woman he’s
As suggested in the episode with Hack, always looking for. The thing for you is to
Subuyan, the impresario of this theatre of sexu- be that kind of ideal woman, to fulfill, in
other words, the man’s dream. Let’s see …
ality, regards his profession as an act of humanism:
another way of putting it in a simple way is
True, he had gotten into pornography for the to say that, above all, you’ve got to hide
sake of the money; but more recently he had what you really are.” (141)
begun to see his profession as a genuine
What is important to Subuyan is the illusion she
means of alleviating human suffering. The
chairman of the board, so pathetically eager has to offer, and not the real woman herself. He
for a girl untouched, had been taken in in is an illusionist, a peepshow proprietor; in a
more ways than one; but still he lived now way, he is Doctor Hoffman or Mendoza, a
with the sense that he was truly a conqueror minor version of Doctor Hoffman. They use
of virgins, and, thanks to this illusion, male sexual desire to fill the world, just as
whenever the fatal moment came, he would Subuyan attempts to do. Subuyan’s homosocial
die happy [ … ] “Who would have brought project of serving male sexuality does not go
them salvation if it wasn’t for me, Oharu? smoothly, however, as the women do not
Isn’t that right? So you see, there’s conform to his plan. Subuyan laments to his col-
nothing at all to be ashamed of about this
league at one point: “This business of grooming
business.” (63)
women [ … ] believe me, it’s not easy. It’s like
What is interesting about this novel, and what I making your own Frankenstein monsters”
believe was intriguing to Carter as well, is that it (236). Real women are beyond Subuyan’s
is thoroughly, defiantly male-centric. The control; Keiko, his love interest, runs away,
“human suffering” that Subuyan mentions and the sex doll he obtains for masturbation is
only applies to men, and it is only to the raped by his teammate. What is more, Hack’s
menfolk that Subuyan thinks of bringing salva- mother appears one day, alive and kicking, shat-
tion. When planning a large erotic enterprise, in tering the image fabricated by Hack. Hilariously
which Subuyan aims to create the “ultimate enough, the women Subuyan thought he could
woman,” Subuyan’s team does not pay attention mould into the shape he desired are so
to the concept of love at all. Moreover, this cunning that they subvert his plan. Finally,
woman is nothing like the mythic goddess in Subuyan dies in an accident, but the irony is
Western narratives: that his dead body shows that his impotence
has been cured. The story ends with Keiko’s
Now as for the women, that’ll be my depart- guffaw.
ment. And we don’t want any of these old We can see why Carter liked this novel so
relics. I’m going to get hold of some young much when we consider the ironic ending.
seventeen, eighteen-year-olds and train
This novel demonstrates how male desire is sus-
them properly in every detail right from the
tained by illusions, and how consummation,
beginning. And we’ll eventually have some
call girls that are real paragons [ … ] We’ll which is often described as the ultimate goal
groom them right from the start, teach of a romantic relationship, becomes something
them how to please a man, keep an eye on to be dreaded; happy consummation can only
them all the time, and turn them out first- occur in death. Subuyan’s impotence, which
class women in every respect. (191) occupies a central place in this novel, suggests

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the alienation of reality in male eroticism within Tanizaki’s and Nosaka’s novels to create a fantas-
a modern patriarchal society. Women and their tic tale that is also a theoretical speculation on
bodies are important only as receptacles of male desire and women as its object, brought to fru-
desire, as theatrical devices to create illusions. ition in The Infernal Desire Machines.
As this homosocial novel shows, real women
only bring about fear and impotence.
A similar observation was made by Carter kaleidoscope
when she wrote a review of Oshima Nagisa’s
film Ai No Corrida, which was based on a real The Infernal Desire Machines and other
incident in 1936 in which a woman killed her writing produced during Carter’s stay in Japan
lover and cut off his penis. Oshima’s film is are all kaleidoscopic: they have many facets, a
full of depictions of them having sexual inter- mixture of creative imagination and descrip-
course, to which Carter objects: “what does he tions of Carter’s own experiences. I hope this
mean by all this screwing, what does he mean? paper shows some of those facets of her
[ … ] About female sexuality it is not, although writing in this period that might have resulted
it exploits male fear” (SL 357). from what Carter experienced and observed in
What she grasped from Japanese literature is Japan. In particular, Albertina’s gender perfor-
the sensibility that takes femininity not as an mativity and her tragic obliteration at the end
essential attribute of anyone with a female body of the novel mirror the place of women in
but as an artificial concept created by a male- Japan at the time Carter lived there, as well as
centric society and forced upon her, like theatri- her own romantic relationship with Sozo – the
cal costumes that actors must wear in order to experience of double assassination. She writes
keep their role in a theatrical project, however in her unpublished manuscript:
little importance that role may have. The actor Fiction Written in a Certain City
analogy does not go any further, though, Victims of Circumstances
because while actors might be appreciated He enslaved me in order to avoid his own
outside of the theatre in other capacities, enslavement; until, it seemed to me I had
women are appreciated only within the theatre. become him, by a process of transmigration
Women are treasured as long as they conform of souls. (“I am Heathcliff.”) Mirrors
to the norm and stay within the illusory defi- showed me his face where my own should
nition of themselves. However, when they over- be; so the city gave me an extraordinary
step their boundaries, women become fearful experience of the exacerbated & self-lacerat-
ing nature of pre-revolutionary love, which
monsters that bring about castration and death.
is nothing but a form of philosophic assassi-
What Carter learned, read, heard and experi-
nation. He had an assassin’s rage to annihilate
enced in Japan seems to have helped her to con- the attributes of my self that perturbed him
struct a comprehensive thesis on desire in a male- &, with this, necessitated a total annihilation
dominant society, which suggests “love should – for the self (is it not) is nothing more than
end in the death of the object of the other’s the sum of its attributes [ … ] I found I no
desire” (ibid.). Carter explains her thesis as “a longer knew my self, who was a stranger
refinement of a notion of sexual love as transgres- with another’s face, whose lineaments
sion, which is not unique to Judaeo-Christian spelled out hypocrisy. (Japan 1 n. pag.;
culture” (ibid.). Here, she takes both the exclu- underlining in original)
sion of women in Japanese culture and the
Having survived this assassination competition,
mythologization of women in Western culture
it appears that Carter obtained a sensibility she
as rooted in the same ideology that alienates
had not previously possessed. After a series of
real women and their bodies. This “femininity,”
entries about Sozo in Journal 93 is this entry:
so dissociated from women’s own identities, as
Carter herself experienced in Japan, was com- A young man of 23, who follows the Stendha-
bined with her study of “womanhood” in lian avocation of teaching English to women

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in coffee shops & has aspirations towards lit- 1 After this paper was submitted, the official bio-
erature, picks up a girl in a coffee shop. She is graphy written by Edmund Gordon was published
English; he is Japanese. She is starkly beauti- and it shed some light on Carter’s life in Japan
ful, comic, clever, hysterical, passionate & (see Gordon).
polyneurotic. (Is that really how I saw
2 Dimovitz observes that “[i]t was in Japan that
myself? Never mind. I’m re-reading this in
she experienced what she saw as a truly struc-
the autumn of 1973; & would add, maybe,
tured, patriarchal system, predicated on a massive
that all experience is unique – that is the
cultural repression, which she then re-read back
nature of experience. Two years later, two
into English and American culture” (“Cartesian
men later. Poor, darling Sozo, I never
Nuts” 15). He also analyses the influence of Japa-
meant you harm.) (Journal 93 n. pag.; under-
nese comic books and Sade, both of which
lining in original)
Carter picked up in Japan for the first time, and
A few years after the relationship with Sozo whose association, he argues, “seems to have
ended, Carter here seems to observe it from a helped to develop Carter’s 1970s technique of
making literal the unconscious and unspoken
distance, and marvel at the effect it once had
assumptions and symbolic forms that define a
on herself, and how both of them had helplessly
culture” (16).
turned into devouring monsters, consumed by
masculinist romantic ideology. As a writer, she 3 See Tonkin; Ikoma.
was empowered by these personal experiences 4 In her journal, Carter records: “Dr Hoffman;
in Japan and also by her analyses of Japanese lit- Dec 24, 1970–May 20, 1971. (Actual writing fin-
erature – as in the cases of Tanizaki’s and ished, March 1971)” (Journal 93 n. pag.).
Nosaka’s works, as explored above – and
5 In her journal, Carter contemplates calling a
became better equipped with the literary
story on Sozo “The Assassin Sings” (Journal 93
imagination and strategies to subvert the univer- n. pag.).
sal structure of masculine discourses. Using
these techniques, Carter’s stories came to posi- 6 Sozo told me how Carter talked with his father,
tively show the feminist sensibility, humour and one of Carter’s journal entries records her
conversation with Sozo’s sister-in-law in detail,
and postmodernity peculiar to Angela Carter,
showing that they frequently communicated with
and she began to create stories in which love
one another (Journal 93 n. pag.).
does not necessarily mean double assassination.
In the playfully heterogeneous voices of the 7 See “Mishima’s Toy Sword” in Carter’s Shaking a
characters in her later works, such as Fevvers Leg 241.
in Nights at the Circus and 8 I also persuaded Sozo Araki to write a memoir
Dora in Wise Children, the about Carter. It was completed, translated into
reader can detect the confidence English by me, and – I am hoping – will be published
and wisdom of one who has sur- in the near future.
vived the peril of double assassi- 9 Carter’s concept of gender performativity and
nation in the mirror of the other. Butler’s are not exactly the same, as Joanne Tre-
venna points out. Trevenna links Carter’s gender
disclosure statement formation more closely to the theories of Simone
de Beauvoir, as Carter seems to presuppose the
No potential conflict of interest was reported by pre-gendered subject, than to Butler’s. However,
the author. she also appreciates the contemporary resonance
of Carter’s theory, for it

moves beyond the feminism of de Beauvoir

notes and invites a more contemporary critical
This paper was supported by KAKENHI 24520307 debate through its presentation of the pre-
(Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(C)) from the gendered subject as unstable and fragmented.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Undermining the unity and integrity of the

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