The Gendered Strategy of Tsutsui Yasutaka’s Early Works

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between SF author Tsutsui Yasutaka’s early short stories and the author’s gendered persona. The first section outlines the magazines in which Tsutsui’s early works were published, arguing that these magazines and their imagined readership influenced the content of each work. The second section analyses the representation of female political activity in several of Tsutsui’s early works, arguing that this representation contributed to Tsutsui’s “masculine” image. The third section focuses on how Tsutsui’s short stories depict the difficulties of being a man in Japan at the time of publication, illustrating how this foreshadowed the development of Men’s Studies and the Men’s Liberation Movement in Japan. The final section examines the relationship between Tsutsui’s image and his fan base by analyzing publications by Tsutsui’s fan club, “Tsutsui Club.” The analyses in each section lead to the conclusion that Tsutsui consciously used the political discourse of the time to set himself up as a champion of men, and to secure himself a place in the Japanese entertainment cannon.