In "Yugamasenai yô ni (Not to Distort)" by Itô Hiromi (1955 - ), the poet presents a woman serving shiratama (rice dumplings) to her lover. Yet, the traditional roles depicted this interaction -- a woman serving a man -- become gradually erased as the food is transformed into an almost organic existence for the couple. Here, the images of the food are fully utilized by the poet: Shiratama effectively invokes the image of an egg in the womb, with its softness, shape and pronunciation. However, at the same time, it evokes maleness with its resemblance to testicles in terms of shape and pronunciation as well.
Thus, the images that the creature-like food imparts are indeed androgynous. A feminist critic, Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, perceives androgyny as "a psychic unity, either potential or actual, conceived as existing in all individuals." Shiratama, which is called "the food that I secrete" by the woman, is certainly assigned such a quality in this poem. By feeding the man thus, the woman intends to achieve inseparability as Gelpi describes.
Consequently, the borders between the creature-like food and the couple become more ambiguous. Ultimately, their love making is described as if they were the shiratama floating in the syrup. Here, the man and the woman become unified like the androgynous shiratama, the existence of which includes both maleness and femaleness. Regarding this state of being, they both intensely desire "n ot to distort" as in the title.
Thus, the core of this poem is in the woman's feeding of "her food" to the man in order to merge, transforming themselves into a state of being such as that represented by shiratama. In this paper, I intend to discuss the process by which such unity is achieved, focusing on the androgynous images of shiratama intertwined with the couple's interaction.