Dastig-Balland, Anne
Mori Mari (1903-1987): A Japanese Author and Her Literary Alter Egos

From the Perspective of Karen Horney's Psychoanalytic Theory.

The Japanese writer Mori Mari (1903-1987) is considered the spoilt "daddy’s girl" of literary luminary Mori Ogai and a precursor of the Boys’ Love/yaoi-genre. She also had a reputation for being unconventional - a character trait that was expressed in her fictional and non-fictional works. Mori Mari authored a number of autobiographically inspired texts in which she staged several literary alter egos that were met with keen interest by the public. The study by Anne Dastig-Balland deepens our understanding of Mari’s personality, life course, and literature by examining biographical material, Mari’s non-fictional self-portrayals, and the characterization of her autobiographically inspired protagonists in the light of psychoanalyst Karen Horney’s theory of personality. It provides an extensive presentation of Mari’s biography and illustrates its arguments with numerous original translations of excerpts from her whole oeuvre. For her contemporaries, Mori Mari was an eccentric, but also an astute observer of society. She was ahead of her time with regard to social issues such as gender and the environment, which may explain her enduring popularity. XII,338 Seiten mit 6 Abb. und drei Tabellen, broschiert (Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Band 67/Harrassowitz Verlag 2025) leichte Lagerspuren/minor shelfwear