트랜스 혐오에 저항하다: 사쿠라바 가즈키(桜庭一樹) 「빨강(赤)」의 수복적 팔림프세스트 = Resisting Trans Hate: Connections Between Literature and the Ethics of Care

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines the structures of transphobic hate and forms of resistance against it. In Japan, awareness of trans discrimination remains limited, and exclusionary discourses are reproduced through familiar rhetorical strategies. Despite biological research increasingly challenging the binary conception of sex, exclusion persists even within academic and feminist circles. Simultaneously, however, movements of resistance—manifested through public statements and literary practices—are emerging.
As a literary example, this paper examines Kazuki Sakuraba’s Aka (“Red”) (Subaru, August 2023). In the first half of the novel, the narrative enlightens knowledges of trans issues, while in the second half it engages in a self-reflexive rereading of Sakuraba’s earlier work Aka × Pink, critically interrogating the ignorance and commodification embedded in its trans representations. The narrative configuration in which a character reminiscent of the author reflects on past portrayals and seeks dialogue with a transgender character constitutes a practice of “reparative overwriting,” whereby past errors are revised in accordance with present ethical commitments, aligning with the ethics of care. Effective resistance to transphobic hate, therefore, requires acknowledgment of one’s own ignorance, ongoing learning, and a commitment to rectifying past mistakes. Literature, by expanding temporal and spatial horizons and imagining novel relationalities, can concretely enact an ethic of coexistence.