VISUAL ASPECTS OF THE WRITTEN SIGN IN YOKO TAWADA’S OEUVRE
VISUAL ASPECTS OF THE WRITTEN SIGN IN YOKO TAWADA’S OEUVRE

Summary/Abstract: As a bilingual writer and constant traveler between cultures, Yoko Tawada has shown a keen curiosity with regard to what changes beyond borders and what is left between. For Tawada, the transformative experience of traveling is inextricably entwined with the experience of language and signs, for culture itself is such a system. Her protagonists act as passive observers of an almost incomprehensible spectacle of reality, which they try to decipher one sign after the other. The images displayed all around contain strange letters and ideograms, for the road traveled is too often encoded in a new language. In this study, I analyze Tawada’s use of written characters as poetic devices that multiply the possibilities of written language. In her oeuvre, Tawada complicates the semiotic relationship through cultural intersections and transfer of meaning, reinterpreting the visual sign.

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