Precarious Memories of Precarious Time and Bodies: Reading Oyuki Konno, *Maria Watches Over Us*

As a “memorial” literary text that queers the religious past (and present), this paper explores a Japanese (juvenile) novel series, Maria Watches Over Us (1998–2012), by Oyuki Konno. This work can be interpreted as a literary resource for creatively remembering the ambiguous desires of adolescence, erotic and otherwise, especially within the context of religious education. In this work, female students maintain diverse forms of intimacy with one another—from very close “friendships,” a somewhat polyamorous yet hierarchical “sisterhood,” to lesbian romantic relationships—at a fictional girls’ Catholic school. Through a close reading of the text, this paper argues that Maria Watches Over Us “queers'' the past and present of a religious educational milieu in the Japanese context (and beyond). This study concludes by utilizing Foucault’s theory to emphasize the importance of (re)visiting both the comfort and discomfort that arise from the ambiguities of sexuality, relationality, and religious imagery.