Session 61: Traversing Intra-Empire Boundaries: The Japanese Empire and East Asian Women

Organizer: Norman Smith, University of Guelph

Chair: Youn-ok Song, Aoyama Gakuin University

Discussant: Minghui Hu, University of Chicago

During the Meiji era (1868–1912), Japan embarked upon a decades-long period of imperial expansion, which dramatically altered the fabric of East Asian cultures. The spread of Japanese imperial power fostered a flow of people from the peripheries of the empire to the colonial metropole of Japan, and vice versa. This panel focuses on women from Japan, Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan, who traversed intra-empire boundaries as they attempted to reconcile their ambitions with the demands of the Japanese empire. As Japanese cultural hegemony expanded across East Asia, Japanese-centered ideals of womanhood became powerful tropes of cultural advancement, to measure Japanese success in "resuscitating" and "restoring" the vitality of East Asia.

We draw on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean resources, privileging firsthand accounts of women who were inspired to move beyond the confines of their communities to pursue and personify modern ideals of womanhood in the Japanese empire. Each of the papers analyses how individual women’s lives intersected with expanding Japanese imperial power, "Sacred War," and the collapse of empire. In particular, we explore the factors that inspired women’s movement across the Japanese empire. Did women act as purveyors of Japan’s imperial pretensions? In what ways were East Asian women active in the construction of new ideals of modernity within Japan’s imperial project? This panel compares the specifics of women’s lives in various locations in the Japanese empire as it offers perspectives on larger international contexts of women, imperialism, and modernity.

Contrasting Lives in Colonial Korea: The Experiences of Japanese Elite and Working-Class Women

Youn-ok Song, Ayoama Gakuin University

During the first half of the twentieth century, many Japanese elite and working-class women migrated from Japan to Korea. The former included wives of bureaucrats, teachers, and midwives, while the latter comprised maids, waitresses and, especially, prostitutes. In Japan, contemporary movements to abolish state-controlled prostitution resulted in a domestic decline in prostitution, forcing many prostitutes to migrate to expanding markets in Korea. These women paralleled the numbers of soldiers occupying Korea and maintaining aggressive stances towards China and Russia. This paper argues against their continued silence in historical records. Historical narratives crafted solely upon the activities of the elite fail to account for the experiences of the vast majority of women who migrated to Korea.

In Korea, an enormous gulf existed between Japanese elite and working-class women, even more than in Japan. While many Japanese elite women left records of their lives, most working-class women, who experienced a different form of colonial life, were effectively illiterate. Japanese elite women possessed the ability, knowledge, and financial resources to express their experiences, but they were not free from prejudices toward working-class women. Elite women were blinded to the experiences of those who did not enjoy the same privileges. This paper examines a wide range of primary resources, including newspapers, autobiographies, and government documents, to validate and interject the voices of working-class women into the narratives that dominate received interpretations of Japanese women’s lives in colonial Korea.

From Village to Tokyo and Back Again: Korean Women’s Colonial Odyssey

Sunmi Park, University of Victoria

Under Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), Korea functioned as an ‘overseas’ entity while Japan assumed the position of ‘interiority’ for the Japanese empire. The interiority of Japan became the colonial ‘metropole,’ the center of the Japanese empire’s political and cultural power. Koreans were forced to depend on the metropole for cultural direction, making it necessary to seek ‘knowledge’ from Japan, regardless of one’s political stance towards Japan’s imperialist position. Consequently, countless numbers of Koreans aspired to a Japanese education. Korean students traveled to various institutions in Japan to actuate those ambitions. Koreans studying in the metropole of Japan were an important socio-cultural phenomenon that informs the multi-formity of the colonial period. This paper analyzes the colonial odyssey of Korean women students. Those women traveled from Korean villages to Tokyo for further study, and returned to their homes upon completion of their degrees. Many then embarked on careers as professional educators. In this paper, I examine the numbers of Korean women students who made the trek to Japan, why they did so, and what they learned. Finally, I reveal their post-Japan lives in Korea, the types of roles they performed in Korean society, and the long-term ramifications of Korean women’s studies in the colonial metropole of Japan.

Taiwanese Women Students in Japan under Colonial Rule

Yuru Hung, Meisei University

This paper analyzes the position between Japanese colonialism and the patriarchal foundations of Taiwanese society by shedding light on Taiwanese women who were educated under Japanese colonial rule and sought further study in Japan. In the colonial

period (1895–1945), Taiwanese men who studied in Japan did so for future career advancement. Taiwanese women did not. In the 1920s, students who graduated from local koutou jogakko (girls’ high schools) composed the first generation of formally educated Taiwanese women. Substantial numbers of these were dissatisfied with their educational achievements, and traveled to Japan seeking new paths for further study. By examining memoirs, oral history, and interviewing members of this first generation of women, my study assesses the social influences that contoured their lives. First, I explicate the factors that enabled these Taiwanese women to study in Japan, to choose schools, and to decide upon majors. Second, I demonstrate the impact of Japanese education on their lives in Japan end subsequently in Taiwan. Finally, I analyze the social roles of these Japanese-educated Taiwanese women. Although these women did not directly participate in anti-colonial activities, their experiences influenced other women’s social activities in local communities and transformed traditional Taiwanese family life.

Japanese Occupation, Manchukuo, and Chinese Women Writers: The Legacies of Dan Di and Mei Niang

Norman Smith, University of Guelph

This paper examines the lives, careers, and literary legacies of two of the most popular and influential Chinese women writers in the Japanese colony of Manchukuo (1931–1945), Dan Di (1916–1991) and Mei Niang (b. 1920). Both of these writers, who were partially educated in Manchukuo and pursued advanced study in Japan, forged careers in colonial institutions by articulating dissatisfaction with the Japanese cultural agenda. Empowered by ineffectual state policies, Dan Di and Mei Niang embarked on a quest to "describe" and "expose" the reality of Chinese women’s lives under Japanese occupation. Domestic Chinese May Fourth ideals of women’s emancipation inspired them to critique Japan’s cultural agenda, thereby undermining Japanese efforts to sever ties between Manchuria and the rest of China. Their achievements were lauded by contemporaries. In 1942, Dan Di’s novel Andi he Mahua (Andi and Mahua) was acclaimed novel of the year by the Huawen Daban meiri (Chinese Osaka Daily) and, in 1944, Mei Niang’s novel Xie (Crabs) was recognized with the same distinction by the Da Dongya wenxuezhe dahui (Greater East Asian Writers’ Congress). These two representative works explicitly condemn the Japanese presence in Manchuria. Following the collapse of the Japanese empire, the lives of Dan Di and Mei Niang were torn apart. For their "colonial" careers, they were condemned as Hanjian (Traitors to China). This paper illuminates the factors that alternately empowered and brought to ruin two of Manchuria’s most outspoken social critics of the twentieth century.