Introduction: Angela Carter and Japan—A Global Perspective

Abstract

There was a dreadful confusion of expectations and I never knew what was going to happen next, because of the confusion. It was both an enriching and a devastating experience, and in many ways it was an affair with Japan itself. (Angela Carter, qtd. in Bell 27) Since her premature death in 1992, Angela Carter has become recognized as one of the most important writers in the English language, with numerous edited collections, theater adaptations, documentaries, and The Bloody Chamber now on the A-Level syllabus cementing her legacy as the “white witch of English Literature” (Day 3). However, while her work has attracted both significant academic interest and popular acclaim, there is a danger that her radical feminist politics have been simplified and even sanitized in the rush to canonize her as a fairy godmother figure, locating her only in a Western literary tradition. What this special issue demonstrates is the importance of not underestimating the impact of Carter’s formative experiences in Japan on her feminist and political consciousness as a writer. The BBC documentary Angela Carter: Of Wolves and Women (produced by Jude Ho, 2018) concurs: “while Carter’s early work drew on her creepily claustrophobic childhood and miserable early marriage, it was her experience of living in Japan in the 1970s that liberated both her writing and her sexuality” (BBC). Yet the impact of Carter’s transformative experience in Japan has been critically overlooked. This special issue addresses this imbalance by bringing together a range of new readings and perspectives on the influence of her life in Japan on her writing and its politics.