Masochism meets motherhood. Rosi unravels themes of feminism, sex, and oppression in Kono Taeko's quietly biting critique of gender dynamics in 20th century Japan.

A woman enters her kitchen to discover ants swarming over a piece of raw meat—the one her husband used that morning to soothe her wounds after their violent love-making. At first, she observes the individual body of each ant as they “push [their heads] eagerly into the meat”, until the swarm becomes “a single writhing mass before eyes. . .teasing and goading her on”. As vivid as it is inconclusive, the closing line of Ants Swarm (Ari takaru), 1964, by Kono Taeko leaves us with more questions than answers—a provocative end to a story capturing one woman’s repulsion at carrying a child. If the titular swarm of ants burrowing into flesh represents the unsavoury act of conception, it is not a far stretch to draw parallels between the female body and the piece of meat going putrid on the counter. Within patriarchal cycles of sexual consumption, violence, and demands for reproduction, the woman’s body is arguably ‘butchered’ just as the meat has been—a metaphor lending itself to a feminist reading of this strange and disturbing tale.  

What elevates Kono’s writing from well-worn feminist cliché, however, is that there is no male gaze turning women into pieces of meat: it is the internalised misogyny of the protagonist which renders her body this way. In this sense, Ants Swarm invites crucial insight into manifestations of gendered expectations on women to this day, and in particular, how these pressures become internalised in womens’ intimate understandings of themselves and the power dynamics within their sexual relationships. 

The above extract provides a taste of how Kono’s wider oeuvre subverts conventions of marriage, motherhood, and sex in Japanese society, often by exploring the darkest depths of female sexuality and desire. The daughter of a shiitake mushroom merchant who worked in a WWII munitions factory before obtaining an economics degree, Kono (1926-2015) established herself in Tokyo’s literary circles of the 1960s. Although equal rights for women became legally recognized following World War II, economic and social inequalities persisted due to long-held patriarchal ideologies. Since the nineteenth century, the deeply-ingrained phrase “good wife and wise mother” (ryōsai kenbo) was often used to define the ideal Japanese woman, who in turn defined herself in relation to the three men in her life: father, husband, and son. These ideals, along with stigma attached to women who defied them, featured prominently in post-1945 feminist writing, with Kono’s work being no exception. Yet her brilliance lies in her exploration of these constructs through her female protagonists’ inability to overcome them. For it is their internalised misogyny fuelled by an inability to truly live up to these ideals which has created a need for punishment and self-destruction.

In Kono’s Toddler Hunting and Other Stories (where Ants Swarm features), each short story begins with a vignette of women’s suburban realities, yet nothing is as it seems once we scratch the surface of Kono’s literary world. In Theatre (Gekijō), 1962, a lonely married woman befriends an unusual couple she meets for the first time at the theatre. By the story’s end, she finds herself crawling across the floor at their command, with a sinister three-way relationship about to unfold. Snow (Yuki), 1962, begins with the protagonist heading north to the region of Japan known as ‘Snow Country’ with her boyfriend, despite an aversion to the titular substance. However, we later discover that this dislike is not without coincidence: she was raised with the identity of her murdered older sister, who was buried in snow by her stepmother during infancy. Snow concludes with the protagonist begging her lover to cover her with snow in a grim re-enactment. Through her direct and emotionally-detached lens, Kono navigates the trauma, perversion, and pain within her character's psyches—largely stemming from their resistance to “good wife, wise mother” constructs of Japanese womanhood. In Ants Swarm, the “wise mother” element preys the most on its protagonist Fumiko—much like ants on raw meat. 

When we first meet Fumiko, she is happily married (unusual for Kono’s women) and working for an American law firm in Tokyo. She is about to move to the United States for graduate school with her Fulbright scholar husband Matsuda, who arranged for her to enrol alongside him. However, when a late period raises the possibility of pregnancy, the foundations of Fumiko’s marriage and sense of identity are thrown into disarray. The couple have a mutual lack of fondness for children, with Fumiko finding motherhood particularly unappealing. And indeed, she has never considered it; the thought of “carrying a child inside her, giving birth, and then looking after it” feels like “such an unending, hopeless thing to do”. She wonders how she can get an abortion and recover in time to go to the States. Yet it is Matsuda who changes his tune, despite believing that it is “always the women” who falter in such resolutions. Once he hears she might be pregnant, his newfound fantasies about their future child dismay Fumiko. Gradually, her complete objection lessens—not because of any maternal instinct, but because the prospect of Matsuda as a father appeals to her:

“She could not bring herself to have a baby, and she was not broad-minded enough to let him have one with another woman, but to watch Matsuda act the father. . .That was something she longed to see”

At this point, we might assume Fumiko is simply adapting to the circumstances of accidental pregnancy. Yet we sense Fumiko forcing herself to come round to the idea for Matsuda’s sake in an act of gendered subservience, and out of the fear that he might leave her otherwise. This is re-emphasised by her feeling that she “could not bring herself to have a baby”, and by her later pleas to Matsuda to “stay by [her] side” on the condition she has one. When it eventually turns out she isn’t pregnant, we come to understand Fumiko’s response to the pregnancy scare as one fuelled by internalised misogyny towards her own body. 

By this point, it has been established that Fumiko is a masochist—a trait she shares with almost all of Kono’s female characters. Masochism typically refers to a tendency to derive pleasure from one’s own pain and humiliation (sexual or otherwise), and is a key feature in Kono’s writing that speaks to both a subversion and representation of societal gender norms. Firmly rooted in the gender binary’s power dynamics, the masochism of Kono’s women becomes a language that reflects tropes of female pain and oppression. At the same time, the consensual sado-masochistic relationships also assert new perspectives on female agency, desire, and opportunity, allowing her female protagonists to control their means of obtaining pleasure. However, as translator Lucy North notes in her afterword to Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories, the pleasure that masochism provides for Kono’s characters is often withheld by selfish and uncooperative lovers, to whom each protagonist is bound in mutual dissatisfaction and a gendered struggle for power. 

Another case might be made, therefore, for what Fumiko and Matsuda’s dynamic represents. Fumiko’s control over her own pleasure in their sex life is, in one sense, a daring expression of her agency, as is her determination to go against traditional gender constructs in keeping her career and renouncing motherhood. Yet as we witness Fumiko coming to terms with Matsuda wanting a child, there are clear parallels to be drawn between the pain he inflicts upon her as an act of intimacy and the pain caused by eventual pregnancy and childbirth (as a consequence of sex). The subjection of the female body to pain and degradation as a tenet of Fumiko’s masochism, therefore, becomes an interesting lens through which to examine the consequences of ultimately unwanted motherhood—something made explicit by an intimate scene between the couple once they decide to have a child after returning from the States. 

As Matsuda begins to inflict pain she desires, Fumiko’s feelings of arousal begin to merge with fantasies about how she will raise a child once she is pregnant; while she “might spoil a boy”, a daughter will be treated cruelly. She will have no education, be kept at home and treated like a maid, and raised as “a good little wife like the girls in ancient China”. And once she is married off, Fumiko will encourage the girl’s husband to abuse her. A vision of Fumiko punishing this daughter shows the child begging “I’m sorry! Forgive me!”, which are “the same words Fumiko uttered at night making love with Matsuda”. And just before they make love, Fumiko’s delirium reaches it peak:

“But I don’t like babies; you know that. So you must tell me to do it - order me when you want one… You’ve got to force me! Tied up and beaten as I have my baby. . . I wouldn’t mind [giving] birth like that”

The parallels between Fumiko’s punishment of her fictional daughter and her desire for punishment as the mother (even in childbirth) make explicit the internalised connections she has made between pervasive misogyny and a need for masochistic pain. Having failed to become the standard subservient wife, Fumiko wishes to make her daughter everything she is not as an educated career woman. Her quest for “forgiveness”, presumably for going against deep-seated gender norms, has warped her interpretation of motherhood into something entirely unwholesome and twisted—a form of atonement for her own life choices, and a self-inflicted punishment in itself. As the one who can provide this punishment—both as sexual pleasure and impregnation—Matsuda thus symbolises the oppressive, patriarchal society which has made her this way, leaving literal scars on Fumiko’s body and mind. 

Ultimately, Ants Swarm provides a sense of foreboding about the consequences of Fumiko’s twisted notions of motherhood for her future daughter. She would no doubt become the victim of her mother’s harmful ideals, as long as Fumiko fails to confront them. Yet Kono is also showing us that in her failure to do this, Fumiko is doing an injustice to herself most of all. This can perhaps be read as an extension of the injustices against women’s reproductive autonomy in Japanese society today, sixty years after the story’s publication. Japan is one of eleven countries worldwide that still requires women to provide proof of spousal consent for an abortion. The contraceptive pill was approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1999, after over forty years of political debate. Viagra was approved that same year after only six months of deliberation, serving as a prime example of a pervading gender imbalance and double standards concerning men and women’s sexual health. On top of this, Japan’s current low birth rate is framed as a cultural and social existential threat,  meaning that a woman’s decision not to have children is typically met with social stigma, blame, and accusations of selfishness. It is in this social context that Ants Swarm still resonates today: a cautionary tale that exemplifies the internalised and psychological effects of pervasive misogyny.