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Loquacious Gaps and Silences: Re-constructions of Cultural Identity during and after the War of Resistance
Organizer: Jin Feng, Grinnell College
Chair: Haili Kong, Swarthmore College
Discussant: Weijie Song, Purdue University
This cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural panel looks at three narrative and cinematic constructions of cultural identity during and immediately after the Second Sino-Japanese war (1937-45). Through analyzing and contrasting the works of a female American missionary, a Chinese film director, and an organ of Japanese colonial propaganda in Manchuria, it explores the impact of the war on the psyches of those who lived through it. In addition, it focuses on their attempt to discursively reconstruct identities shattered by the war.
Jin Feng examines accounts of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre written by Minnie Vautrin, a missionary faculty of Ginling College in Nanjing, China. She shows that Vautrin’s avowed Christian submission in the face of Japanese military atrocities was belied by her eventual suicide: This signaled the collapse of her identity as Christian savior of the suffering Chinese people. Carolyn FitzGerald argues that Fei Mu’s 1948 film, Springtime in a Small Town, employs long take camera techniques and the unstable voice of the female narrator to portray post-war life amidst ruins. Also, she explores how memories of the war have become a central part of Chinese collective memory in her analysis of Tian Zhuangzhuang’s remake of the film. Gary Xu scrutinizes the ways Manchuria Motion Picture Corporation (Manei), an important Japanese cultural arm in its colony, Manchukuo, adapted many of Zhang Hengshui’s popular love stories. He draws attention to a representational and ideological tactic that he terms “mobilizing affects,” used in Manei films to fabricate a homogenous “East Asian identity.”
Silence of the Lamb: Minnie Vautrin’s Accounts of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre
Jin Feng, Grinnell College
This paper will examine reports, diary entries, and letters written by Minnie Vautrin, a missionary faculty of Ginling College--an all-women’s missionary institution established by female American protestant missionaries in 1915--to explore the impact of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre committed by the Japanese military during WWII. It will scrutinize both the way Vautrin coped with traumatic experience through narrative construction and to what extent her discursive efforts succeeded or failed to offer psychological relief. It will reveal that although the representation of trauma in principle allows survivors to “mourn” and hence to resume their normal life, such narrative output often betrays irresolvable emotional crises and unsuturable psychological wounds.
The scale and brutality of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre caused many cases of post-traumatic “haunting” for the survivors. Vautrin, who struggled to protect thousands of Chinese women and children at Ginling and earned the sobriquet “Living Buddha” for her work of mercy, eventually had a breakdown and committed suicide in 1942. Vautrin’s death testifies to the brutality of the Sino-Japanese war not only in terms of physical casualties but also in terms of psychological wounds that it caused. However, her narratives from that period abound in expressions of optimism and Christian submission. Ultimately, her apparent silence and omission of direct representations of Japanese war atrocities speaks even more eloquently to the shock of the historical trauma and the collapse of her self-image as the Christian savior of a benighted nation and people.
Between Forgetting and the Repetitions of Memory: Gazing at Ruins in Springtime in a Small Town
Carolyn Fitzgerald, Univ. of Michigan
This paper looks at Fei Mu’s 1948 film, Springtime in a Small Town. Filmed in the bombed ruins of a former Jiangnan mansion, Springtime portrays the post-war decay of the Dai family. Rather than viewing the film as a “timeless” classic characterized by quintessentially Chinese aesthetics, I argue that it attempts to mimic the post-traumatic psyche of people living in the ruins of the war. While the long-take camera gazes meditatively on the bombed wall of the town, the film’s unreliable narrator, Yu Wen, draws attention to the epistemological and psychological problematics of representing trauma. Unlike many realist post-war films, Fei Mu’s work tells its story through gaps—gaps between characters, in the lapses of their faulty memories, in the crumbling walls of their home, and in the chasm between present and past. In addition, this paper analyzes Tian Zhuangzhuang’s 2002 remake of the film, which reveals how traumatic memories of the war have become an integral part of Chinese collective memory.
The “Common” Affect: Zhang Henshui, Manei, and the “East Asian” Identity
Zhang Henshui was the most popular and prolific Chinese fiction writer in the first half of the twentieth century. His popularity can be attributed to his skillful manipulation of qing – romantic love, which is often pitted against familial or even national duties. Interestingly, Zhang’s sentimental stories of qing’s clash with obligations were considered suitable for the propaganda agenda of Manei – Manchuria Motion Picture Corporation, Japan’s most visible and active cultural arm in its colony Manchukuo. Many of Manei’s films were adaptations of Zhang’s stories. My study looks into the ways in which these adaptations utilized Zhang’s sentimentality to serve Japan’s national and colonial interests. I mainly pay attention to how qing becomes an affect shared by both the Japanese and the Chinese in Manei films. Articulations of this affect form the foundation of a homogenous “East Asian identity.” There are nevertheless representational gaps in the articulations that reveal the problematics of mobilizing affects, a tactic that combines nationalistic propaganda with sentimental education. The paper ends with a probe of how the tactic of mobilizing affects impacts the Sino-Japanese relationship.