TITLE:
An Analysis of the Isomorphism Technique in Mitsuyo Kakuta’s The House on the Slope
AUTHORS:
Tingting Wang
KEYWORDS:
The House on the Slope, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Isomorphic Technique, Women’s Predicament, Patriarchal Oppression, Subjectivity
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.13 No.2,
February
9,
2026
ABSTRACT: Mitsuyo Kakuta’s work The House on the Slope centers on the experience of Risako Yamazaki, a housewife who serves as an alternate juror in the trial of the case involving Mizuho Ando. Taking the isomorphic narrative technique in the text as the core object of analysis, this paper elaborates on two dimensions: the isomorphism of women’s existential predicament and the isomorphism of the absence of male roles. The study finds that the protagonist Risako Yamazaki and the defendant Miho in the case share highly similar life trajectories: both were independent career women before marriage, but after marriage, under the influence of their husbands’ implicit pressure and the trauma from their original families, they were forced to abandon their careers and return to family life. In the process of child-rearing and daily family life, they suffered the deprivation of their right to speak and the neglect of their emotional needs, gradually losing their subjectivity and falling into self-doubt. In contrast, Risako Yamazaki’s husband Yoichiro Yamazaki and Mizuho Ando’s husband Toshi Ando exhibit homogeneous characteristics of absence, exercising mental control and oppression over women through seemingly unintentional verbal violence and behavioral logic based on double standards. By employing this narrative technique, Mitsuyo Kakuta not only promotes the process of Risako Yamazaki’s awakening, but also reveals that such women’s predicaments are not isolated cases, but rather epitomes of the structural oppression in a patriarchal society.