The ‘curse of Eguchi’: ‘Prostitute-ness’ between sexual slavery and agency in Eguchi suieki (1981) by Saegusa Kazuko

Saegusa Kazuko has dedicated many of her works and essays to topics such as marriage, childbearing, and abortion and she is known for her commitment to the defense of woman’s emancipation, and her questioning of the values driving the division of male and female roles in society. In this paper, I would like to consider the strategic use of politically incorrect views on the figure of the sex worker emerging from the text as embodiment of female agency through the analysis of the intertextuality with two other texts: "Shōgen kiroku: Jūgun ianfu-kangofu. Senjo ni ikita onna no dōkoku", account of war stories published in 1975 by the freelance writer Hirota Kazuko, and the noh drama ‘Eguchi’.