Association for Defending Female Authorship

We are very pleased to inform you that we have just established the Association for Defending Female Authorship, in order to support Ms. Mari Kotani, who, since January 1998, has been involved with the civil suit #1182　contested at Tokyo District Court, what is nicknamed the case of "sexual/textual harrasment." 　　Let us start by outlining what caused this trouble. 　 　On November 16, 1997, the publisher Media Works edited and the selling agency Shufu-no-tomo-sha (literally meaning "The Friends of Housewives")　distributed a reference book Alternative Culture, whcih insulted the book Evangelion as the Immaculate Virgin (Tokyo: Magazine House, 1997) written by Ms. Mari Kotani, the internationally known SF and Fantasy critic, by printing on purpose a false report on "her name as a pseudonym of her husband Mr. Takayuki Tatsumi," professor of English of Keio University. The writer of the entry, Mr. Hiroo Yamagata, goes so far as to redefine Ms. Mari Kotani as "a man." 　 　Confused by this description, Mari Kotani, through her editor of Magazine House, immediately lodged strong protests against Media Works in vain. They seem to consider the insult as an example of free speech. Receiving no serious response from the publisher and the distributor of Alt-Culture, Mari Kotani ended up sueing Mr. Hiroo Yamagata, Media Works, and Shufu-no-Tomo-sha. 　 　The accusor asserts that by misnaming Mari Kotani as a mask of her husband, and by misreporting on purpose a woman writer as a man, the accused revealed his discrimination against women, and deprived her of her proper name as well as the right of free speech. Yes, this case, we believe, is a perfect illustration of a cultural history of anti-woman discrimination, in whcih ultra-conservative patriarchy has persistently repressed, insulted, and underestimated a number of female artists and their works of arts. Phallogocentric hegemony has so skillfully naturalized this kind of discrimination that it is hard for some people, the accused included, to recognize their own prejudice as a perfect stereotype of sexist discourse. 　 　From the 1980s through the 90s, feminist criticism in the United States has paved the way for establishing the theory of this sort of sextual/textual harassment. For instance, Joanna Russ, a well-known feminist critic, published in 1983 a provocative book How to Suppress Women's Writing (Austin: The University of Texas Press), in the third chapter of which she begins by saying: "What to do when a woman has written something? The first line of defense is to deny that she wrote it. Since women cannot write, someone else (a man) must have written it"(p.20). Russ's book not only predicts what Mari Kotani experiences in the late 90s, but also historicizes sexual/texual harassment as deeply cultivated in the cultural politics of masculinity . 　 　Since few women writers have made complaints against patriarchal prejudice, the case of textual harassment, as well as that of sexual harassment, has remained largely invisible. However, we feel our time has come. Closely following the suit, the Association for Defending Female Authorship aims to correct the unjust situation of women writers, and envision the perfect future of all female creators. If you agree with our position, please join us and support our efforts. Mariko O'Hara, Fukuko Kobayashi, Kazuko Saegusa, Keiko Yonaha

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