NEWS
Dean Natsumi Ikoma of the College of Liberal Arts Receives Best Chapter Award
Update: August 7, 2026
The chapter Underneath a Mishima-esque Mask: Angela Carter's Post-humanism and Postwar Japan's Empty Power by Natsumi Ikoma, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (Major: Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies), has received the Best Chapter Award from the Angela Carter Society.
Dean Ikoma specializes in gender studies, European literature, literature in general, Japanese literature, and history of thought, with a particular focus on representations of gender and sexuality in modern and contemporary literary works. From a comparative literature perspective, she examines concepts of the body and gender as they appear in literary works, exploring their connections to the intellectual currents of particular eras and countries as well as to broader global trends. Her research also investigates the relationship between Orientalism, self-Orientalism, and gender.
"Underneath a Mishima-esque Mask: Angela Carter's Post-humanism and Post-war Japan's Empty Power"
In this chapter, Dean Ikoma connects the works of author Angela Carter with those of Yukio Mishima through the motif of the "mask," vividly illuminating Carter's skill in deconstructing postwar Japanese society and transforming it into allegory.
"The judges praised the essay for its depth of critical analysis and its sustained focus on carefully selected twinned texts, noting in particular how effectively it bridged literary discussion with autobiographical, mythical, theoretical, political, and historical concerns. They especially admired the way Ikoma's essay celebrated Angela Carter's work by illuminating its radically deconstructive and reconstructive aims through the trope of the mask. The judges found this approach original and remarked that it fundamentally altered their own reading of "The Executioner's Daughter." They highlighted the essay's compelling analysis of differing concepts of the mask, linked to contrasting Occidental and Oriental perspectives, Japanese history, constructions of the body and the state, and to Mishima's right-wing politics and devotion to the samurai tradition. Written with exceptional clarity and argued with precision and insight, the judges felt it stood out decisively as the winning entry and described it as a genuine pleasure to read."
Comment from Dean Ikoma:I was both surprised and deeply honored to receive this award from the Society for the second time. After encountering the "Mishima Incident" during her stay in Japan, Carter read many of Mishima's works and continued to examine on the conservative thought in Japan at that time. She then expressed these ideas creatively in two allegorical works that employed the motif of the 'mask.' This paper was challenging to write because I sought to analyze clues in the texts that perhaps only a Japanese scholar would recognize, while making them understandable to readers unfamiliar with Japanese society and literature. I feel a great sense of accomplishment in having built a bridge between English literature and Japanese literature. I hope readers will enjoy the chapter alongside Carter's works themselves.
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