Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. xvii, 242 pp. (Figures, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$34.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-520-29773-9.
The word diva conjures up many images, including Beverly Sills and Beyoncé, both of whom fit the definition of a diva as a popular singer or actor who forges a career in line with her own agenda and whose agency often earns her the label prima donna. While regularly used to characterize Western female icons, the term has increasingly gained currency around the world, as attested by Nigeria’s African Diva Reality TV Show, launched in 2015 and created by the country’s own superstar Chika Ike.
Editors Laura Miller and Rebecca Copeland and their collaborators in Diva Nation redirect the lens to Japan and employ the term as an analytical tool to examine ten figures from Japanese myth and real life. Each chapter offers a case study and, while the authors provide helpful background information on their respective icons, their collective aim is “to track diva eruptions and sightings, and to consider her effects in the spectrum of national and personal realms” (5). More specifically, they explore the ways in which the ten contest and/or uphold gendered norms with respect to roles, appearance, and sexuality. In the process, they elaborate on how “the nation is imbricated with notions of gender, nostalgia, and identity politics” (11).
Laura Hein’s preface and the editors’ introduction offer a strong analytical foundation, with discussions of what defines a diva. A diva is a performer, an individual with immense talent, and regularly a builder of her own public persona. She transgresses the boundaries of normative behaviour and challenges power structures and expectations. A diva is also a product of her time and of those who seek to memorialize, commodify, praise, or demonize her. Rather than being born a diva, she emerges “from the friction produced when female genius meets social stricture” (8). While exploring the divahood of the icons in the book’s chapters, the authors directly engage with this definition. They also expand on it, and those efforts give the volume a strong conceptual coherence. The authors also illustrate that divas do not emerge from a single cookie cutter; rather, although they share traits, in true diva form, they have forged unique paths.
The case studies are arranged in chronological order, based on when the divas themselves initially appeared, whether in Japan’s founding myths, on stage, in film, in print, or on ice. The first four studies discuss, respectively, Izanami and Ame no Uzume, goddesses mentioned in Japan’s oldest extant chronicle, Himiko, the first ruler noted in a historical text, and Izumo no Okuni, who founded kabuki in the early 1600s. These chapters address how the four divas have been reimagined, repurposed, and given new voice for more contemporary audiences. Copeland and Barbara Hartley delve into novels whose authors use Izanami and Okuni as their central characters. This Izanami represents a rejection of male authority and the historical treatment of women, while the fictionalized Okuni exemplifies a woman who remains both steadfast in seeing her sexual identity as of her own making and resilient despite the myriad obstacles that she faces. Between these two chapters, Tomoko Aoyama underscores how Uzume lives on in today’s “vagina artist” Rokudenashiko, who similarly employs her body “to stave off crises in our present-day misogynistic society” (34). Miller in turn relates how Himiko has been a target for commodification by city officials and businesses who see in her power and ancientness a means to legitimize a local identity or to sell a product.
The remaining six chapters concern themselves with divas from the postwar period and further illustrate similarities and differences among the icons. Christine Yano writes about film star and enka singer Misora Hibari, pointing out that she came across as “an ordinary girl doing extraordinary things,” a contradiction mirrored by behaviour befitting a girl both good and bad (112). Carolyn Stevens sees multiple markers of divahood in the life of Yoko Ono, including her use of performance and film to challenge ideas about women’s bodies and gender in art. Jan Bardsley’s study of transgender make-up artist and beauty guide expert IKKO stresses that IKKO is not overtly a political activist and endorses normative gender ideas; at the same time, she undermines such notions with her message of self-acceptance and call for women to forge their own future. Amanda Seaman similarly describes manga artist, essayist, and sex manual author Uchida Shungiku as not politically active and yet as posing a challenge to normative behaviour through her openness about her sex life, her assertion that women should own their sexuality, and her refusal to see a woman’s sexuality and motherhood as mutually exclusive. As David Holloway shows, novelist Kanehara Hitomi also achieved divahood through her early writings based on her personal experience, seen as representative of the lives of disaffected and disconnected millennials. While her retreat to Paris may appear as a rejection of that status, it speaks to a diva’s power to chart her own path. Masafumi Monden attributes to figure skater Asada Mao that same power based on her refusal to privilege artistry over athleticism on the ice and her decision to retire on her own terms. That agency, coupled with the hyper-feminine and polite public image that she cultivated, makes her, according to Monden, “an icon who demonstrates the potential for a new kind of divahood” (202).
The selection of these ten divas stemmed from the contributors’ own research interests. The resulting coverage focuses almost exclusively on mythical/ancient and postwar Japan. Divas existed in the interim, and their lives would shed further valuable light on transgressive women in Japanese history. This is a minor quibble and a comment informed by this reviewer’s hope that a second volume will follow. Diva Nation stands out as a scholarly text that is commendably approachable in terms of the analysis. It is moreover an engaging book thanks to the material and the writing, and its merging of anthropology, history, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies makes it a valuable addition to many libraries and many syllabi.
Elizabeth D. Lublin
Wayne State University, Detroit, USA