CJS Noon Lecture Series | A Queer Girl in Modern Japan: Yoshiya Nobuko

Open to Everyone

The talk explores the life and work of popular writer Yoshiya Nobuko (1896–1973), known for her serialized fiction, modern fashion, and lifelong relationship with a same-sex partner. The talk considers her work through the lens of the shōjo (girl) as a term of genre, identity, and perspective on 20th-century Japan.

Sarah Frederick teaches Japanese literature and cinema at Boston University’s Department of World Languages and Literatures, of which she is currently associate chair. She is the author of Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women’s Magazines in Interwar Japan (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006), and articles in positions: East Asian Cultures Critique, US Japan Women’s Journal, and Japan Forum. She has also published a translation of Yoshiya Nobuko’s short story Yellow Rose (Expanded editions, 2016). She has also written on the travel writings of Yoshiya Nobuko, Isabella Bird, and Natsume Sōseki, including a GIS-aided map of Natsume Sōseki’s trips to Kyoto.