The present paper considers encounters between humans and nonhumans (especially nonhuman animals), a theme surprisingly frequent in the fiction works of contemporary Japanese women writers. The main characters of two short stories by Kawakami Hiromi are an old-fashioned, well-bred bear, which moves into a new apartment and invites its human neighbor for a walk to the river (Kamisama, 1993), and a mole which, being perfectly aware of its nonhuman origin and appearance, works with humans in an office (Ugoromochi, 2001). The other character of Kawakami’s work, awarded with the prestigious Akutagawa prize (Hebi o fumu, 1996), meets in her real, everyday life a snake claiming to be her mother and trying to draw her into the world of snakes. In turn, in the novels by other famous women writers, Tawada Yoko and Shono Yoriko, who are counted among the most recognized Japanese authors, we find a dog (Inu mukoiri/The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Tawada, 1993) and a tuna (Time Slip Industrial Complex by Shono, 1994) as lovers of the main female characters. In their works, Japanese women writers transgress not only cultural, linguistic and geographical barriers, but above all, they go far beyond the boundaries in force in the anthropocentric universe. Addressing in their works the issue of encounters and close relationships between humans and nonhumans, they openly provoke questions that concern not only Japan, but also the world’s contemporary posthuman thought: questions about human and nonhuman actants, its body, emotions, thoughts and mutual relations in a world where men coexist with other, animate and inanimate forms of being.
Hiromi Kawakami (born 1958) creates in her novels and short stories an original world of fantasy, inhabited with equal rights by human and non-human beings. Their universes mix with each other, obliterating taxonomic, aesthetic and ethical boundaries. As a result of the shift of focus from humans to amphibians, reptiles, mammals, plants and even inorganic matter, the human subject is decentered in Kawakami’s works, and the anthropocentric normative order is disturbed. It makes Kawakami’s prose fit well into the posthuman literary discourse present in the environmental humanities. In the article, I analyze such works by Kawakami as God Bless You, God Bless You 2011, A Snake Stepped On and Mogera Wogura, oscillating between a fairy tale and speculative fiction. They testify to the strong presence in contemporary Japanese literature of such topics, important for man of the Anthropocene, as the collective coexistence of humans and non-humans, the relationship between nature and culture, or environmental awareness.
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Hiromi Kawakami (ur. 1958) tworzy w swoich powieściach i opowiadaniach oryginalny świat fantazji, zamieszkiwany na równych prawach przez ludzi i byty nie-ludzkie. Ich uniwersa przenikają się, a granice taksonomiczne, estetyczne, etyczne zanikają. W wyniku przesunięcia uwagi z człowieka na płazy, gady, ssaki, rośliny, a nawet materię nieorganiczną, ludzki podmiot ulega w utworach Kawakami decentracji, a antropocentryczny porządek normatywny zostaje zaburzony. Sprawia to, że proza Kawakami wpisuje się wyraźnie w posthumanistyczny dyskurs literacki obecny w humanistyce środowiskowej. W artykule analizuję takie utwory Kawakami, jak Niedźwiedzi bóg, Niedźwiedzi bóg 2011, Nadepnęłam na węża, Ugoromochi, oscylujące pomiędzy baśnią a fikcją spekulatywną. Stanowią one świadectwo silnej obecności we współczesnej literaturze japońskiej tematów istotnych dla człowieka doby antropocenu, do których należy kolektywne współistnienie ludzi i nie-ludzi, związek natura – kultura czy świadomość ekologiczna.