Cross-Gender female same-sex love as women's solidarity in Torikaebaya monogatari and Ariake no wakare

In the last few decades, the theme of romantic love examined under a historical lens has attracted much academic attention. In fact, the fast-growing discipline of the history of emotions has argued that the notion of affection does not seem to constitute a universally fixed category but rather a phenomenon shaped by its historical, social, and cultural context. Therefore, emotional scholars conclude that this topic can be investigated under a historical perspective in an effort to understand how a given culture in a certain epoch constructs it. The present essay applies this theoretical premise to the representation of cross-gender female same-sex love found in two literary works entitled Torikaebaya monogatari and Ariake no wakare, written in Japan during the twelfth century. By close reading relevant sections of the texts which are then subjected to a historical and literary analysis, the article aims to demonstrate that the sources depict the object of study firstly as a cherishing relationship based on a strong emotional connection between the partners, open communication, and dependability, and secondly as a corrective to the tendentially unequal power dynamics of male-female love.