Poison Woman: Figuring Female Transgression in Modern Japanese Culture

Description

Based on the lives and crimes twenty women, dokufu (poison women) narratives emerged in Japan during the 1870s. During this tumultuous time, as the nation moved from feudalism to oligarchic government, such accounts articulated the politics and position of underclass women, sexual morality, and female suffrage. Over the next century, the figure of the oversexed female criminal, usually guilty of robbery or murder, became ubiquitous in modern Japanese culture. In Poison Woman, Christine L. Marran investigates this powerful icon, its shifting meanings, and its influence on defining women's sexuality and place in Japan.