ERASING THE BINARY OPPOSITIONS 
THE POSITION OF WOMEN CHARACTERS
IN ISHMAEL REED’S JAPANESE BY SPRING

Jiří Šalamoun

—Theory and Practice in English Studies, Vol. V, Issue 1, 2012—
https://is.muni.cz/repo/1105754/THEPES_Vol_V_issue_1_article_1_Salamoun.pdf

I. Introduction

The Raven myths of the Pacific Northwest are comic,
but they deal with serious subjects: the creation of the
world and the origin of Death. The major toast of the
Afro-American tradition, “The Signifying Monkey,” is
comic, but it makes a serious point: how the weak are
capable of overcoming the strong through wit.
The calypso songs of Trinidad may be comic, but they deal
with serious subjects [...] My work is also comic, but it
makes, I feel, serious points about politics, culture, and
religion. (Ishmael Reed 1988: 140)

ALTHOUGH Ishmael Reed is the author of nine novels, six collections of poetry, and nine collections of essays, not many readers know what to expect when they happen to
hear his name. However, the title of Reed’s third book of essays, Writing Is Fighting: Thirty-seven Years of Boxing  on Paper, combined with the passage quoted above, should give
one a succinct image of Reed’s style, writing technique, and approaches adopted in writing. 

All of Reed’s novelistic endeavours  can be encapsulated in the following plot line: a much weaker individual challenges an oppressive force which negatively influences the lives
 of many other individuals, the proverbial Others. Through the continuing struggle of the individual, the prime position of this oppressive force is deconstructed, and its power wanes until it ceases to threaten those Others.

Throughout his prolific writing career, Reed has taken on many heavy-weight opponents; and, thus, Afro-centrism, white racism, the European paradigm of the Enlightenment,
and the Western literary canon have all been deconstructed in his literary boxing-ring. Since Reed is very careful not just to switch the binary opposition of the Oppressor/Oppressed
equation, but also to erase, as best he can, instances of such a
system (Hogue 2009: 145), his works have been lauded as a key example of postmodern, multicultural writing. But Reed’s later work has been doubted by many who have been
concerned with the position of men and women in his novels. 

Since some critics have pointed out the unbalanced position of  men and women in his oeuvre (Hume 1993: 511; Womack 2001: 237), this article will examine the position of
women and men in Reed’s latest novel, Japanese by Spring, in order to discover whether it is aligned with Reed’s attempts to erase binary oppositions or not. It will argue that, while
the position of women in Reed’s early fiction is not in alignment with his attempts to deconstruct binary oppositions, this situation changes dramatically in Japanese by Spring,
where women hold better positions than men.