is a series of fifty-two short stories written by Japanese author Nobuko Yoshiya. They were first published as a serial in the magazine Shōjo Gahō ('Girls' Pictorial') from 1916 to 1924, and in Shōjo Club ('Girls' Club') from 1925 to 1926. The stories of Hana Monogatari are each named after a flower, and typically focus on a sentimental and tragic romantic friendship between two female characters. The series was first published as a book in 1920, and has been regularly reprinted in both the pre- and post-war eras.
Hana Monogatari reflects Yoshiya's distinctive and influential writing style known as ( 'beautiful writing'), an aestheticized style of writing defined by its fluid prose and frequent use of modern text symbols. Scholarly analysis of Hana Monogatari has considered the series in relation to the then-dominant "good wife, wise mother" social expectations placed upon girls, while its depictions of gender and sexuality have been alternately considered in the context of Yoshiya's own sexual orientation and of depictions of sexuality in Japanese (girls') culture broadly.
Yoshiya is among the most prolific and commercially successful Japanese writers of the twentieth century, and Hana Monogatari is her most famous work. It is regarded as among the best known and most representative works of early culture, and was significantly influential on the literature and aesthetics of that culture. Contemporaneous Japanese literary critics often took a low view of popular fiction generally and Hana Monogatari specifically; the series was largely excluded from consideration within the Japanese literary canon until a period of renewed scholarly interest in Yoshiya in the 1990s prompted its reassessment.
Background
Context
Nobuko Yoshiya (January 12, 1896 – July 11, 1973) is among the most prolific and commercially successful Japanese writers of the twentieth century, credited with significantly developing the genres of ("girls' fiction") and ("popular fiction"). Yoshiya's works were popular among ( 'girl'), a term that came into common usage at the turn of the century to denote adolescent females at the age between childhood and marriage, and which emerged as a social category as increasing numbers of Japanese girls began to attend secondary school.
A social practice of romantic friendships between girls known as Class S was a ubiquitous element of Japan's early all-girls schools from their establishment at the turn of the century until the broader decline of culture in the late 1930s. This practice was often depicted in the fiction and non-fiction stories published in magazines aimed at readers; many of Yoshiya's stories examine themes of ( 'same-sex love'), with passionate friendships between female characters recurring as a frequent theme in her writing.
Publication history Following the cessation of the feminist literary journal Bluestocking in 1916, to which Yoshiya regularly contributed, she submitted a short story titled Suzuran ( 'Lily of the Valley') to the magazine Shōjo Gahō. Shōjo Gahō editor Wada Kokō agreed to publish the story if Yoshiya agreed to write several additional similarly-themed short stories for the magazine, which she obliged. Suzuran was published in the July 1916 issue of the magazine and was an immediate success; additional short stories by Yoshiya were subsequently serialized in the magazine under the title Hana Monogatari.
Though Hana Monogatari was originally planned to end after seven entries, overwhelmingly positive reader response led to its continued serialization until 1924. When publisher Kōran Shuppan asked for additional material to fill the pages of a planned book edition of Hana Monogatari, serialization resumed in the magazine Shōjo Club in 1925, and concluded in 1926. A total of fifty-two short stories form the corpus of Hana Monogatari.
The first paperback edition of Hana Monogatari was published in 1920 by the publishing company Rakuyōdō, while serialization in Shōjo Gahō was still ongoing. It has been regularly reprinted in both the pre- and post-war eras, most popularly in 1939 as a three-volume set with cover illustrations by Jun'ichi Nakahara. Selected entries of Hana Monogatari were also re-printed in the magazine Shōjo no tomo ("Girls' Friend") from 1937 to 1938.
Content Plot The fifty-two stories of Hana Monogatari are each named after a flower, which appears within the story as a plot device and as its main imagery. Though magazines typically used a wide variety of genres to categorize their narrative prose stories, Hana Monogatari was not designated with a specific genre when it was serialized in Shōjo Gahō. There is wide variation across stories in Hana Monogatari, but pedagogist identifies the following five attributes as core recurring elements:
Thematic focus on "non-heterosexual 'pure love'", to the exclusion of the then-dominant "good wife, wise mother" doctrine A female same-sex pairing as the central characters, usually a senior and junior student or a teacher and pupil A "closed world" setting, such as a girls' school or boarding house Fine, lofty prose that blends classical Western and Japanese writing styles Plots aimed at appealing to the reader's emotions, rather than conveying a specific message or moral
Stories in Hana Monogatari are broadly sentimental in tone, with a student's crush on another student or teacher recurring as a common plotline. Though only a minority of stories in Hana Monogatari specifically depict a Class S relationship, relationships are frequently constructed using the conventions associated with S relationships. These relations are typically conceived "in terms of distance rather than intimacy", with a focus on the innocent and spiritual feelings of the characters rather than physical consummation.
Though the positive and normative nature of these feelings is invariably emphasized, sad endings are frequent: love is unrequited, or the couple is separated by circumstances such as a change of feelings, financial problems, illness, graduation, marriage, or death. Thematic emphasis is placed on the fleeting and transitory nature of these relationships, and by direct or indirect implication, the fleeting and transitory nature of girlhood; marriage in particular is consistently framed as tragic, presented as the end of the relative freedom that girls experience before becoming wives and mothers.
The protagonists of Hana Monogatari range in age from pre-school girls to adult woman. Examples include a girl who chooses to pursue a career in nursing over postsecondary school so that she may help others in Dahlia, a tomboy who runs away from home in Wisteria, a teacher who bullys a student until she drops out of school and has a nervous breakdown in Acacia, and a student who develops a crush on a new music teacher in White Lily. Early stories in Hana Monogatari were often short and didactic, while later stories tended to be more pessimistic, tragic, and longer in length; when serialized, these longer stories were occasionally published across two magazine issues.
Illustrations Artist drew illustrations to accompany entries of Hana Monogatari for its serialization in Shōjo Gahō beginning in December 1920. These illustrations are done in the style of jojōga (lyrical pictures), distinguished by a "dreamy" and "flowery" style made popular by artist Yumeji Takehisa. Jun'ichi Nakahara drew illustrations for the series' reprint in Shōjo no tomo, and also illustrated the covers to the three-volume book edition of the series published in 1939. Other illustrators who contributed to Hana Monogatari were , whose art accompanied entries during its serialization in Shōjo Gahō, and .
Analysis and themes Style
A hallmark of Yoshiya's writing and of culture broadly was her distinctive prose style, known as ( 'beautiful writing'). A fluid and decorative writing style was already an extant feature of magazines of the early 1900s and 10s (which Yoshiya read and contributed to), but Yoshiya is crediting with combining elements from (the movement to unify spoken and written language style), ( 'ornate style') and English to develop a distinctive writing style "that is even today immediately identified with Yoshiya's girls' fiction". This style is exemplified in Hana Monogatari, which scholar Deborah Shamoon notes is defined by its "gentle tone of nostalgia, lyrical descriptions of beauty, and polite, feminine diction".
was the narrative equivalent of , and both were central in developing the aesthetics of culture. The repetition of certain words such as ('refined'), ('lyrical'), ('graceful'), and ('tragic') mark Hana Monogatari as , as well as the use of long, complex, and ambiguous sentences that convey an emotional and sentimental tone. Intimacy is described indirectly in a manner that leaves the true feelings of the characters to reader interpretation, while a sense of exoticism is evoked though frequent Western motifs such as pianos, ribbons, and churches that "estrange the audience from everyday Japanese society".
A distinguishing trait of this prose style is its frequent use of modern text symbols such as "—", "⋯⋯ ", "( )", "!" and "?". These symbols were frequently used by proponents of to simulate the feeling of real speech and thought in their writing. Shamoon notes how many critics have identified Yoshiya's decorative use of punctuation as a distinctive "marker of femininity" in her prose, and considers how these symbols create a sense of urgency that make her stories read similarly to poetry.
Academic Michiko Suzuki notes how this usage of symbols has been compared to Julia Kristeva's conception of écriture féminine but herself compares Yoshiya's usage of text symbols to Gilles Deleuze's notion of "a narrative that stutters". She suggests that Yoshiya's use of grammatically unstable sentences "impl[ies] incompleteness" in a way that underscores both the immaturity of the characters and the temporality of their feelings, while allowing for moments of silence that imply deeper emotions that cannot be articulated. Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase considers how these symbols expressing "overwhelming feelings of sadness and love fed readers' narcissism", linking them to Kristeva's conception of jouissance as the pleasurable senses and feelings experienced by pre-verbal infants. She considers these symbols as creating a "sphere of pleasure" which "help[s] girls indulge in narcissistic play".
Gender and sexuality Hana Monogatari was published at a time when the doctrine of "good wife, wise mother" () was dominant in Japanese gender ideology, and while sexuality was increasingly examined through a lens of European sexology that categorized sexual behaviors as either normative or perverse. The frequently tragic endings of Hana Monogatari are often read by critics as a rejection of the social expectation for girls to become , with Suzuki noting how the relationships of the series are "truly terminal in the sense that characters rarely grow up in these stories, refusing to move on to heterosexuality". Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase similarly considers how this refusal to mature "could be taken as a sign of resistance against their future roles as women", and regards Hana Monogatari as a story that "illustrates the pain of losing the identity" through marriage or age.