Japanese Branch Report - 2011

On Saturday 3 December 2011, the Fifteenth Annual Convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Ferris University. The morning session began with an opening address by Hidetada Mukai (Ferris University). Three papers were presented in the morning: the first two were introduced and commented upon by Hiroshi Ikezono (Yamaguchi University) and the third by Mie Abe (Shoin University). The first paper \u27Sensitivity and Materiality in The Lifted Veil\u27 was presented by Mari Takumi (Tokyo University). She focused on Latimer and his supernatural ability to look into the minds of others and see the reality through his previsions, and she discussed the two different approaches to epistemology that can be seen in \u27The Lifted Veil\u27 when Latimer attempts to approach and identify the external world. The second paper was \u27The Framed Heroines and the Miniature in Eliot\u27s novels\u27 by Nana Yano (Shirayuri College). She analyzed the relations between the Miniature and heroines in Eliot\u27s novels. The heroines are Milly in \u27The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton\u27 (1858), Caterina in \u27Mr. Gilfil\u27s Love-Story (1858), Dorothea in Middlemarch (1871-2) and Leonora in Daniel Deronda (1876). She concluded that the destruction of the enclosed (framed) picture, especially the miniature, suggests a release of heroines from the static and conventional world. The third speaker, Masako Kimura (Kyoto Women\u27s University) read a paper on \u27Daughters Who Hunger for Affection in The Mill on the Floss and The Moorland Cottage .\u27 She examined the development of heroines hungry for the affection of their families - Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot\u27s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Maggie Browne in Elizabeth Gaskell\u27s \u27The Moorland Cottage\u27 (1850) - in the context of mother-daughter relationships. She pointed out that Gaskell seeks understanding through bonding between women underpinned by mutual sympathy, while Eliot turns to a man who does not try to dominate women in the perspective proposed by Adrienne Rich