Electra complex in Japanese Literature
Mori’s affection towards her father can be observed from her essay collection. She states that “[her father] loved and pampered her as his favourite daughter” (Nagaike). Mori’s father, Mori Ogai, is a key writer in modern Japanese literature have exerted substantial influence on her. In fact, much of her writing orients around her father.
Mori Mari is the author of the acclaimed short story, “The Lovers’ Forest.” Mori uses the relationship between Guydeau and Paulo in the short story as a medium to express the bond between her father and herself.
Perhaps Mori believes homosexual relationship a higher form of love than mundane heterosexual relationship because homosexual relationship is often portrayed as more committed than heterosexual relationship. The devotion between male lovers in Ihara Saikaku’s Heian literature “The Mirror of Male Love” contrasts with philandering relationship Genji pursues in Murasaki Shikibu’s “Tale of Genji.” Likewise, male love, in Greek literature, is often portrayed as platonic and spiritual, not just based on sexual attraction. The male love in Mori’s story may be used to show the psychological connection she shared with her father. In “The Lovers’ Forest,” a high-class, sophisticated professor falls in love with an enticing, young and impoverished boy, and such homosexual relationship is a common element found in many of her writings like “The Bed of Withered Leaves” and “I’m Not Coming On Sunday” (Nagaike).
One plausible reason for Mori to use a male instead of a female character as Guydeau’s counterpart is that she subconsciously avoids the possibility of sharing the love for her father with another woman. Female characters in the story are portrayed as the villains who try to sabotage the relationship between Guydeau and Paulo. More specifically, Mrs. Ueda’s body is described as “an ugly, decaying piece of meat” (Mori 167) whereas the protagonist’s body is as possessing “nearly perfect beauty” and eyes “like sharply faceted gemstone” (Mori 137). Mori might purposely want to malign these female characters and draw the audience’s attention away from them. Perhaps, Mori sees other females as competitors that can potentially interfere with her love with her father.
In addition, much crucial information of the protagonist parallels those of Mori’s. For example, Paulo in the story is “seventeen or eighteen” but “not yet nineteen” (Mori 137), and Mori’s father deceased when Mori was 19 (Vincent 65). According to Vincent, Mori might be trying to bring “her father back to life but also creating a space of pleasure in which her own ‘maturation’ into heteronormative adulthood can be deferred indefinitely” with her writing (65). Like how Mori’s father was not only a father but a spiritual and career mentor for Mori, Guydeau is more than a lover to Paulo. Guydeau also plays the role of a guardian in Paulo’s life (i.e., helping Paulo establish a career, teaching him etiquette and skills).
The story of Paulo and Guydeau and the many other Mori’s stories akin to “The Lovers’ Forest” may be Mori’s fantasy of a relationship she could not have with her father in reality.
Works Cited
Mori, Mari. ”’The Lovers’ Forest’ (‘Koibitotachi no Mori’),” trans. Kazumi Nagaike. In Fantasies of Cross-Dressing: Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica. Leiden, The Netherlands:
Brill, 2008. Nagaike, Kazumi. “L’ homme fatal and (Dis)Empowered Women in Mari Mori’s Male
Homosexual Trilogy.” Fantasies of Cross-Dressing: Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica, vol. 41, no. 1, 2007, pp. 35–55., doi:10.1163/9789004227002_004.
Vincent, Keith. “A Japanese Electra and Her Queer Progeny.” Mechademia, vol. 2, no. 1, 2007, pp. 64–79., doi:10.1353/mec.0.0000.
