Yu Mori and the Budding of "Women's Science Fiction": A Gaze into the Future of Male Society (Early 1970s)

Yu Mori and the Budding of "Women's Science Fiction": A Gaze into the Future of Male Society (Early 1970s)

In the early 1970s, the appearance of Masaru Mori brought a breath of fresh air to the world of Japanese science fiction, which had been dominated by male authors. She critically depicted "male-centered rationality" in a futuristic society, focusing on "the female body" and "gender structure. In her representative works, she presented a dystopian world in which women are managed as tools for reproduction, and is considered to be the first to clearly bring a feminist perspective to Japanese science fiction.

At the time, Japan was at the peak of its economic growth, and while the gender division of labor was fixed, the ideal image of society was still portrayed by men. Mori exposed this distortion through the techniques of science fiction, exposing the bias of the "science and rational vision of the future. Her awareness of the problem pushed science fiction as a form of social criticism to a new level.

Overseas, Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ had established feminist science fiction, and Mori's works echoed this trend. However, she was not a mere import, but established her own style of writing rooted in the oppressive structures of Japanese society. Yu Mori stood at the starting point of "women's science fiction" and created the opportunity for science fiction to transform from a "literature of science" to a "literature of society and the body.