Date of Award

Spring 5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Rei Magosaki

Second Advisor

Dr. Justine Van Meter

Third Advisor

Dr. Michael Wood

Abstract

Natsuo Kirino’s novel The Goddess Chronicle has received little attention in regard to Western scholarship. However, Kirino’s other works in her literary canon are well renowned for their gritty and uncensored feminist commentary on contemporary Japanese society. This thesis aims to bring forth the discussion of not only feminism, as is so often the focus of Kirino’s works, but Indigeneity and Japanese imperialism within The Goddess Chronicle as well. In order to do so, this thesis analyzes Kirino’s novel in an effort to highlight the ways in which the narrative is both forward-thinking in its feminist critiques of modern and ancient Japan, while also identifying the complicated colonial implications of placing the mythos of imperial Japan in the setting of the explicitly pre-colonial Ryūkyū Kingdom, now modern-day Okinawa. Kirino acknowledges the existence and significance of the Ryūkyū Kingdom’s religious and cultural practices through the fictional island and people of Umihebi, while simultaneously colonizing the fictional island with the introduction and integration of Yamato gods. This fictional colonization is then analyzed through the lens of the historic and perpetuated imperial efforts it mirrors for the people of Okinawa. This critical examination of Indigenous narratives in Kirino’s The Goddess Chronicle situates the novel within the contexts of literary imperialism, decolonization, and feminism in order to critique the socio-political sentiments on modern and ancient Japanese colonization present within the narrative.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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