Organizer: Stephen R. MacKinnon, Arizona State University Chair and Discussant: David Buck, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Four papers examine popular sensibilities during the Sino-Japanese War and discuss with fresh perspective the evolving new national political culture of this period. Two papers deal with literature and film and the muted redefinition of patriotism which surfaced in occupied Hong Kong and Shanghai. In the writings of Zhang Ailing a feminist perspective on nationalism seems to emerge and in the popular Shanghai films of the period difficult moral choices mask patriotism. In both the life of ordinary people is the focus, providing the link to the two other papers which deal with inland, united front China and questions of mass mobilization. The latter papers deal with peasant mobilization in Henan and organizing youth in Hankou. In each case the dynamics of mobilization are examined in detail. In all four papers nationalism is seen to undergo major redefinition in the popular consciousness during the war. Our Chair and Discussant is Professor David Buck-until recently the editor of the Journal of Asian Studies-whose scholarly specialty is China in the 1930s and 1940s. The panelists represent a variety of disciplines, as well as ethnic and gender perspectives. Their presentations should produce a stimulating cross disciplinary discourse with the audience.
The Begonia: Love and Loyalty in Occupied Shanghai
Poshek Fu, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
The War of Resistance Against Japan has recently engaged much interest in the field. But, with a few exceptions, the focus continues to be framed by the problematic of political-military resistance and collaboration. The morality of human choices and everyday life of wartime China remain little explored subjects.
This paper will focus on the moral choices involved in everyday life in occupied Shanghai by analyzing a popular film, Qiu haitang (The Begonia) and the cultural politics surrounding its production and reception. Since its inception, film has been fascinated with and purported to represent the everyday. Adapted from a popular Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies novel by Qin Shouou, Qiu haitang was the biggest hit in occupied Shanghai. The film captured the occupied subjects' imagination by its delicate and subtle evocation of ordinary lives in agony and a romantic relationship beset with pain and excessiveness.
This paper will analyze the moral-political discourse underlying this romantic narrative and, based on personal memoirs, movie advertisements, and reviews (by both Chinese and Japanese) in popular press, to reconstruct the ways in which this narrative was produced and received. These approaches will shed light on the little-known life and popular attitudes during wartime occupation.
Reading Zhang Ailing's Wartime Writings: Chuan qi and the Aesthetics of
Everyday Life
Ming-Bao Yue, University of Hawaii, Manoa
In this paper, I will focus on Zhang Ailing's first short story collection Chuan qi (Romances) which was published in 1944 in Shanghai, and contains her so-called wartime writings, among which are her better-known pieces-Fengsuo (Blockade), Qingcheng zhi lian (Love in the Fallen City), and Deng (Waiting). Because these early writings lack the spirit of the "national defense literature" propagated during the Sino-Japanese war by the influential League of Leftist Writers, Zhang has been sharply criticized for being narrowly bourgeois in her outlook and even unpatriotic. I hope to show in this paper that these criticisms are unfounded, and instead argue that the opposite is the case, namely that Zhang's early stories squarely fit into the category of "war" narratives, albeit perhaps not the officially endorsed version. What makes her writing different is an emphasis on the ordinary people, on the practice of everyday life, or as she once formulated it herself "the everyday management of crisis." My reading of Zhang's stories will show that her aesthetics of the everyday life is deeply informed by the turbulent events of the Sino-Japanese war she experienced in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and by a pronounced concern with the fate of Chinese women. Taken together, these elements weave an intriguing, narrative text that offers invaluable insights into a feminist interpretation of patriotism and national sentiments. Time and space permitting, I will include a discussion of the film version of Qingcheng zhi lian (Love in a Fallen City) and the screenplay Gungun hong cheng (City in Red Dust), which was written by famous Taiwanese writer San Mao, and is loosely based on Zhang's stay in Hong Kong.
Peasant Nationalism and Participation in the Resistance War
Odoric Y. K. Wou, Rutgers University
Since Chalmers Johnson introduced the term "peasant nationalism" in his seminal work in 1962 on the peasantry and the rise of Communist power in the Sino-Japanese War, there has been intense debate on what motivated the peasants to participate in the Communist revolution. Even though there is a consensus recently among scholars (Yung-fa Chen, 1986 and myself, 1994) that peasants were motivated by both political and economic appeals in joining the revolutionary movement, there remains an outstanding question: how did the Communists motivate the ordinarily fatalistic and indifferent peasantry to join a nationalistic movement, particularly in the early war period?
Apparently, Japanese atrocities alone could not explain why the peasants came to the Communist side. It took both the Japanese brutal behavior as well as Communist persuasion and political/economic action to galvanize the peasants to turn out in a wartime nationalistic movement. But did popular culture, promoted by the Communists in base areas, as described by Chang-tai Hung in his latest work (1994), help the Communists recruit the peasants? How did the Communists carry on a political discourse with and convey these nationalistic messages to the apolitical rural cultivators?
This paper makes use of the recently-published party historical materials to look for answers to these questions. It focuses on how the Communists repositioned themselves and reframed the issues of war and nationalism for the peasantry in the early war years (1937-40) in order to seek their support in the resistance war. It will examine the intricate relation between security and injustice problems and the issues of war and nationalism. In addition to spoken dramas and cartoons, the paper will look at two other cultural media-literacy program and folk songs-as effective channels of communication with the masses. It will emphasize that cultural propaganda and sociopolitical action were mutually supportive. Nationalistic messages would be meaningful to the peasantry only if these messages addressed the peasants' concrete interests and were actualized by political action.
Wartime Mobilization of Students and Youth at Wuhan in 1938
Stephen MacKinnon, Arizona State University
Mobilization of youth and students is an often recognized but little studied dimension of the Sino-Japanese War. The subject has usually been treated narrowly in terms of the history of the Guomindang and Chinese communist political struggle. As Jeff Wasserstrom notes in his recent study of Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford, 1991), there is an absence of serious scholarly attention to the war period. Historians have written extensively on the period from May 4, 1919 through the December 9, Beijing demonstrations of 1935, and then jumped to the anti-Guomindang and anti-U.S. demonstrations of the Civil War period. The focus of this paper is the mobilization of youth which was organized under the Guomindang led United Front government in inland cities of central and southwest China during the initial year and half of the Sino-Japanese War. The study centers on Wuhan or Hankou, which for ten months in 1938, was the de facto capital of wartime China-after the fall of Nanjing and the Chinese victory at Taierchuang. At Wuhan the Guomindang and CCP as well as a variety of other political parties and organizations operated on almost equal footing. Particularly important was the organizing of youth. In the process, a new political culture was being born, with nationalism at its heart, but redefined to fit a united front, anti-Japanese wartime context.