Leslie Winston is Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She is the author of “Female Subject, Interrupted in Higuchi Ichiy∂’s ‘Thirteenth Night,’” Japanese Language and Literature: Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 38.1 (April 2004). Her current research is on intersexuality as a trope for reading the female subject in early twentieth- century Japanese literature. © 2004 by the Center for Inter-Cultural Studies and Education, J∂sai University Where the Low and the Abject Collide: Shimazaki T∂son’s Female Subject in The Family Leslie Winston Shimazaki T∂son (1872–1943) developed his spare and straightforward writing style from the art of sketching, literally and literarily. Taken from the sketching of landscape, shaseibun was the practice of describing a scene objectively and with detachment. Japanese naturalism grew out of this important precursor. T∂son’s work from shaseibun to naturalism reflects the trends of modern Japanese literature from the late 1890s through the following decade. He is often heralded as the preeminent writer of naturalism. T∂son did not compromise in his practice of attempting to capture ari no mama (reality as it is) in his work, and strove continually to extend this principle to confessional writing. Certain themes characterize much of Japanese naturalist writing, such as how the freedom of the individual is restricted by the traditional family or by society, the situation of the individual who is secluded in the countryside, and the dependent, subjugated position of women in society. 1 Yet the intense concern for the (male) self in most naturalist literature does not allow for a developed portrayal of women. Perhaps inadvertently, T∂son’s delineation of some female characters challenges the patriarchal authority he represents, even though these characters have also internalized paternal law. This article considers one of T∂son’s most complicated female subjects, Otane, from his prose