Organizer: Ji Young Suh, The Academy of Korean Studies

Chair: Kelly Y. Jeong, City University of New York, John Jay College

Discussant: Emiko Ochiai, Kyoto University

In the early twentieth century, China, Korea and Japan were entangled in the conflicting interrelation of the colonizer and the colonized. However, these countries also confronted with a similar historical condition that demanded to accept the western modernity. Especially, the women at the forefront of receiving the modernism in East Asia were located as a major seller, consumer and even the goods in urban commercial cultures, while being appropriated in a formation of modern nation project in each country. However, more attention is paid to the way women functioned as a crucial mediator in historical spot where the modernism put down the roots in East Asia.

Yongmei Wu's paper examines how 'New women' are involved with the formation of the modern consumer society in China through the analysis of Images of 'New Women' in calendar posters and magazine advertisements in 1920-30s' Shanghai'. Suh Ji young's paper pursues the images of 'Modern girl' as a woman 'flaneur' in the urban streets in the mass media of 1920-30s and discusses the conflicts of gazes in discourses on 'Modern girl' in colonial Korea. Ayuu, Ishida's paper looks at the strategies of representation in the formation of 'Japanese beauty' by analyzing the image of Japanese Woman on Commercials for Cosmetics in 1930-40's mass media. These specific researches from different regions will make a global field to give an insightful perspective of the modernity in East Asia as well as show the diverse modern experiences of women in China, Korea and Japan in the same period. 

Yongmei Wu, Beijing Foreign Studies University

  In the early eras of the twentieth centuries, the so-called "Paris in the East" colonial city of Shanghai is one of the biggest commercial cities that took the lead to become a mass consumer society in East Asia. With the development of women's education, film industry and mass media such as newspaper and magazines, and the department stores, there appeared a group of new women who were divided into several categories such as female students, professional women and housewives. They became the main bearers of the formation of the modern consumer society as well as the nation state. In this paper, by showing the beauties in Chinese dresses who are selling foreign products such as cigarette, medicine, cosmetics and clothes texture in the calendar posters or the Chinese Lady Posters and advertisements in the YOUNG COMPANION, the longest published graphic magazine in Shanghai from 1926 to 1945, I would like to examine how the Western aesthetic sense, the idea of science, health and sanitation had been promoted and helped to shape the formation of modernism in the Republican era. I will also analyze how the images of Chinese New Women are presented, and how these New Women are constructed to be ideal models of modern consumerism as well as how these images of New Women become the goods themselves.

Ji Young Suh, The Academy of Korean Studies

The emergence of women into urban everyday spaces, such as stations, theaters, cafes, and department stores, in 1920-30's Seoul is quite notable, and comparable with the male intellectual flaneur as an observer of the modern scenery in colonial Korea. Women on the streets, such as 'school girls', 'new career women' (called ‘shop girl’, ‘hello girl’, ‘bus girl’, etc), 'Kisaeng (traditional entertainer)', and the 'Cafe waitress' were sensational objects to be watched by the public gaze. They had different status and backgrounds, but were categorized into one image of the‘Modern girl’ who had a western appearance in the latest fashions and sought a western life style. Such women were also represented as bad women of extravagance, vanity, and frivolity and even as prostitutes.

In fact, the experiences of women in urban spaces ranged from active enjoyment of pleasure activities and a perilous prostitution under the unstable economic system of colonialism.  However, their various modern experiences also led to new self-recognition. This paper pursues the complex image of the 'Modern girl' through the mass media and novels of 1920-30s’ Korea. It will also show how 'Modern girls' came together to fulfill their own desires, reacting against the power of gazes from the outside, and how the representations of the "Modern girl" projected male intellectuals’ fascination for and fear of modernity in the colonial context.

Ayuu Ishida, Kyoto Seika University

This report examines Japanese sensibility about beauty from 1930's to mid-40s through the analysis of image on commercials for cosmetics in woman's magazines. It was also during this period that woman’s magazines as mass media drastically increased in advertising revenue. Beginning in so-called Manchurian Incident in 1931, until the war finally ended in 1945, it is known that Japan had deepened the conflict with other Asian nations, and also the United State. That trend of glowing nationalism was observed within the nation. At a more societal level, however, it also marked the emergence of modern consumer society in Japan. In the cosmetics advertisements on magazines, we can point out two different images of female figures of the time; one is that of "mothers" who vigorously supports the nation, and the other of cosmetics customers. What they cared most was to look "natural" even when they wore makeup. This, I would argue, was one of the common concerns for both nationalistic and consumerist sides. While it was expected of "mothers" to maintain fine and healthy looks especially in times of crisis, as a consumer, they eagerly desired to consume the latest beauty products. These two aspects might appear irrelevant to each other, but they need to be analyzed together. Being a good member of the Japanese nation and an ardent cosmetics consumer simultaneously, Japanese women during this period sought to establish a way in which a very original beauty of Japanese women can be distinguished from the occidental one.