La joueuse de go (2001) By Shan Sa: A Battle of Eroticism and Abstinence

Abstract:Set in the Second Sino-Japanese War, Shan Sa's award-winning novel La joueuse de go features the cross-cultural love between her protagonists-narrators: a Chinese teenage girl and a Japanese soldier. Since its publication in 2001, the novel has received divergent remarks from literary critics, especially for its contentious portrayals of sexuality. Viewing Shan's representation of sexuality as a battle of eroticism and abstinence, this essay focuses on how the protagonists' respective sexual explorations reflect and influence their identity-quests and their reciprocal yet untold love. In the book, abstinence, a defining feature of their cross-cultural love, is depicted as eroticism in disguise. While the Chinese girl's sexual awakening empowers her to embrace her womanhood, the Japanese soldier's love encounters enable him to live for and as himself. Throughout the narrative, Shan creates various forms of duality, whether it be structuring the text as a game of Go or presenting the characters as doubles. As the most crucial metaphor of duality, Go serves as a site of reflection and introspection. Through their interactions on the grid, the protagonists complete the liberating process of self-rediscovery by letting the strangers within themselves emerge. Drawing on critical theories of écriture féminine and platonic love, as well as celebrated creative works, such as Alain Resnais' film Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), my analysis seeks to shed new light on the central issues of sexuality, identity, and cross-cultural love in Shan's sentimental tale.