The Gaze and Metamorphosis：Yoko Tawada’s “<i>Missing Heels.</i>”

Abstract

Yoko Tawada made her debut in Germany before Japan, but her first work of fiction published in Japan was “<i>Missing Heels</i>.” This novel has been read as a depiction of a person’s encounter with a foreign country. Based on previous studies, this paper examines the anxiety expressed by the protagonist as a foreigner, caught between two communities, old and new, culturally and linguistically, in relation to the violence inherent in the intersection of looking and being looked at. Specifically, we will look at how the gaze of “I” and the gaze of the people of the town are represented as the protagonist come to be placed in a place where the gaze of “seeing” and “being seen” intersect. We will then look at how the violence that the gaze contains, which transforms the object to be seen, works on the protagonist’s body and shakes the protagonist’s identity.