Abstract
During the first half of the twentieth century, Japanese colonial officials in Korea (1910–1945), Manchuria (1932–1945), and Taiwan (1895–1945) drew upon romantic and familial relations between Japanese and colonized subjects in the service of the colonial project.1 In his term as the first civilian Governor-General of Taiwan (1919–1923), for example, Den Kenjirō encouraged intermarriages between Japanese and Taiwanese as a means of furthering the acculturation process and equalizing relations between the two groups.2 Similar messages circulated in relation to inter ethnic unions in colonial Korea as well, following the arranged marriage between Japanese and Korean royalty in 1920. Governor-General of Korea Minami Jirō (1936–1942) publicly cited inter ethnic marriage as one of three important ways to solidify the unification of Japan and Korea (nmsenittai) and, in 1941, went so far as to present inter ethnic couples with plaques honoring their contribution to this union.3 Throughout the empire, Japanese spouses were exhorted to contribute to the colonial project by “educating” their colonized partners in Japanese cultural practices, an endeavor that ultimately extended Japanese colonial influence into the private sphere.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
While Japan’s efforts at imperial expansion can be dated back to the integration of the Ryūkyū islands and the subsequent establishment of the prefecture of Okinawa in 1879, the “formal” colonial empire begins in 1895 with the acquisition of Taiwan in the wake of the first Sino-Japanese war. Ramon Myers and Mark Peattie identify “formal” empire as including Taiwan, Korea, Karafuto, the Kwantung Leased Territory, and the Nan’yō. Japan’s subsequent victory in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, resulted in the addition of the Kwantung Leased Territory, Karafuto, and parts of Manchuria to the growing list of territories under Japanese control. The establishment of Korea as a protectorate in 1905, followed by its “annexation” in 1910, further expanded Japan’s presence on the continent. “Informal” empire in Manchuria began in 1932 following the Manchurian Incident. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, “Preface”, in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 2895–2945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), ix.
Mark R. Peattie, “Japanese Attitudes Toward Colonialism, 1895–1945”, in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 2895–2945, ed. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 108.
Suzuki Yūko, Jūgun ianfū, Naisen kekkon: Sei no shinryaku, sengo sekinin o kangaeru (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1992), 86–88.
Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 366.
Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
The phrase “imagined community” is from Benedict Anderson’s seminal work on the process through which nationalist consciousness emerges. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition (London: Verso, 1991).
Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 2770–2870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 101.
Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985).
Aoki Yayoi, “Feminism and Imperialism”, in Sources of Japanese Tradition 1600 to 2000, Part Two: 1868–2000, comp. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Carol Gluck and Arthur E. Tiedemann (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 490.
Kathryn Ragsdale, “Marriage, the Newspaper Business, and the Nation-State: Ideology in the Late Meiji Serialized Katei Shōsetsu”, Journal of Japanese Studies 24.2 (Summer, 1998): 229–255.
Ken K. Ito, An Age of Melodrama: Family, Gender, and Social Hierarchy in the Turn-ofthe-Century Japanese Novel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008) 30.
Michael Bourdaghs, The Dawn that Never Comes: Shimazaki Tōson and Japanese Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) 89.
Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 45.
Kawamura Minato, Ikyō no Show a bungaku: ‘Manshu’ to kindai Nihon (Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 1990), 23–25.
Natsume Soseki’s famous travelogue Mankan tokorodokoro documents his travels along the South Manchurian Railway. For an English translation, see Natsume Sōseki, Travels in Manchuria and Korea, trans. Inger Sigrun Brodey and Sammy I. Tsunematsu (Kent: Global Oriental, 2000).
Yosano Akiko, Travels in Manchuria and Mongolia: A Feminist Foetfrom Japan Encounters Frewar China, trans. Joshua A. Fogel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
Joshua A. Fogel, The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China 1862–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
For information on Yuasa Katsue, see Ikeda Hiroshi, “Kaisetsu: Yuasa Katsuei no Chosen to Nihon”, in Kannani: Yuasa Katsuei shokuminchi shōsetsushü (Tokyo: Inpakuto shuppankai, 1995), 577–662
Mark Driscoll, “Introduction”, in Kannani und Document of Flumes: Two Japanese Colonial Novels (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 1–35.
Ozaki Hotsuki, Kindai bungaku no shōkon: Kyüshokuminchi bungakuron (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991), 140–143.
Yang Kui is best known for his short story “Shinbun haitatsujin” (Newspaper Boy, 1934). For information on Yang Kui, see Faye Kleeman, Under an Imperial Sun (Honolulu: University of Hawai Press, 2003), 160–196.
Nam Pu-jin, “Chō Kaku-chüron: Nihongo to kindai ni mukau yokubō”, in ‘Gaichi’ nihongo bungakuron ed. Kamiya Tadataka and Kimura Kazuaki (Tokyo: Sekai shisōsha, 2007), 79–92.
Kawamura Minato, “Kaisetsu”, in Nogawa Takasbi, Imamura Eiji, Hanawa Fusao sakuhinshü (Tokyo: Yumani shobō, 2001), 4–7.
Fujii Shōzō, Kawahara Isao, Faye Yuan Kleeman, and Ozaki Hotsuki, among others, have written on these literary journals in Taiwan. See Fujii Shōzō, Taiwan bungaku kono hyakunen (Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1998)
Kawahara Isao, Taiwan shinbungaku undo no tenkai: Nihon bungaku to no setten (Tokyo: Kenbun shuppan, 1997)
Faye Yuan Kleeman, Under and Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003)
Nakajima Toshio and Kawahara Isao, eds., Nihon tōchiki Taiwan bungaku Nihonjin sakka sakuhinshü (Tokyo: Ryokuin shobō, 1998)
Ozaki Hotsuki, Kindai bungaku no shōkon: Kyü shokuminchi bungakuron (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991).
Kim Yun-sik, “1940-nen zengo zai-Sôru nihonjin no bungaku undō: ‘Kokumin bungaku’shi to kanrenshite”, trans. Serikawa Tetsuyo, in Kin Am Nihon to shokuminchi 7, Bunka no naka no shokuminchi, ed. Kawamura Minato et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1993), 231–251.
Faye Yuan Kleeman, “Inscribing Manchuria: Gender, Ideology and Popular Imagination”, Last Asian History 30 (December 2005): 52.
Satō Haruo wrote numerous works on colonial Taiwan and supported such writers as Shōji Sōichi. Kawabata Yasunari coedited two volumes of Manchurian literature in 1942 and 1943. Kawabata Yasunari and Sugino Yōkichi, ed. Manshūkoku kakuminzoku sōsakusenshū 1 & 2 (Tokyo: Yumani shobô, 2000).
Liao Ping-hui, “Print Culture and the Emergent Public Sphere”, in Taiwan Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1895–1945: History, Culture, Memory, ed. Liao Ping-hui and David Der-Wei Wang (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 91.
A discussion of the Musha Incident appears in chapter 2. For information on anti-Japanese resistance by Korean resisters (futei senjin) and Chinese bandits, see Suzuki Masayuki, “Manshū, Chōsen no kakumei-teki renkei”, in Kindai nibon to shokuminchi 6, Teikō to kutsujū, ed. Gotŋ Ken’ichi et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1993), 29–60.
For an in-depth discussion of the differences between the notions of assimilation and imperialization, see Leo T.S. Ching, Becoming Japanese: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
Sakaguchi Reiko, “Shunjū”, in Gaichi no nihongo bungaku sen 1: Nanpō, nan’yō/Taiwan, ed. Kurokawa Sō (Tokyo: Shinjuku shobo, 1996), 168–192.
See Todd Henry, “Sanitizing Empire: Japanese Articulations of Korean Otherness and the Construction of Early Colonial Seoul, 1905–1919”, The Journal of Asian Studies 64.3 (August 2005): 639–675
Helen Lee, “Voices of the ‘Colonists,’ Voices of the ‘Immigrant:’ ‘Korea’ in Japan’s Early Colonial Travel Narratives and Guides, 1894–1914”, Japanese Language and Literature 41.1 (April 2007): 1–36.
Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture und Race (London and New York: Routledge, 1995): 2.
Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Fostcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 112.
Copyright information
© 2010 Kimberly T. Kono
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kono, K.T. (2010). Introduction. In: Romance, Family, and Nation in Japanese Colonial Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230105782_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230105782_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38245-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10578-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)