"Rekishi Shosetsu o lettura di genere? La condizione femminile in due racconti storici di Mori Ogai"

This paper examines the indirect influence that female writers of the turn of the XIXth Century and their writings exerted over some choices of content in the historical fiction of modern Japanese author Mori Ôgai (actual name Mori Rintaro,1862-1922). The main concern and focus of the dissertation is female characters’ depiction in the short stories Gyogenki and Yasui Fujin (1915-16), partially translated throughout the dissetation. Interactions between Ôgai and his circle of male literati and some important woman writers of the Meiji era are also discussed. The dissertation aims at assessing and discussing contemporary critics' views on Mori Ôgai’s historical fiction as a means of social analysis. In order to shape this new perspective on the significance of Ôgai's historical narratives, a thorough reconsidering of the impact of Ôgai's literary output on his public of mostly male literati is outlined; his investigation of role of women in premodern Chinese and Japanese society, as well the influence of his early training in Chinese and Japanese classics on the literature of his mature years, are also briefly discussed elements of investigation that further incentivate Ôgai's definite shift from fiction to history-in-fiction. These represent a modern man's understanding of the cultural past of his country; Ôgai's heroines are therefore to be considered a compelling cultural model and the answer to a social demand, the relatively few elements of departure from historical truth being, in the characterization of Ôgai's women, an occasional reliance on symbolism directed as a warning to a relentlessly evolving society. Ôgai's portrayals, though sometimes different from their real counterpart, appear then clearly to be much more the likenesses of a factual truth than historical characters fictionalized. The two concrete examples I chose to focus on to complete the dissertation are Ôgai's short stories Yasui Fujin (‘The Wife of Yasui’), and Gyogenki (‘Yu Xuanji’), whose setting is ancient Japan and China respectively.