Body Consciousness and Environmental Narration: Reading The Emissary from the Perspective of Ecological Criticism

In The Emissary, Yoko Tawada avoided words such as "earthquake" and "nuclear disaster" so that this work is no longer limited to the narrow vision of "post-Fukushima Era" but becomes universal "post-disaster literature". It belongs to a subcategory of ecological literature. By describing ecological disasters, it proves the importance of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. In The Emissary, Yoko Tawada changes the traditional narrative mode of ecological literature in which the environment determines the body and constructs a group of new images of "body in environmental narration" and "environment in body consciousness". The body and the environment are no longer separated into two but together constitute an interactive organic whole. The protagonist's cognition of himself and nature breaks the subordinate relationship between the body and the environment and makes the body consciousness have the infinite possibility to surpass the ecological crisis. The Emissary opens up a new path of ecological literature that carries out environmental narration through body consciousness.