Romance, Family, and Nation in Japanese Colonial Literature by Kimberly Kono

By Kimberly Kono

Romance, relations, and kingdom in eastern Colonial Literature explores how eastern writers in Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan used narratives of romantic and familial love with a purpose to traverse the harmful currents of empire. concentrating on the interval among 1937 and 1945, this examine discusses how literary renderings of interethnic kinfolk replicate the varied ways in which Japan’s imperial growth used to be imagined: as an unrequited romance, a reunion of long-separated households, an oppressive recreation, and a utopian collaboration. The manifestations of romance, marriage, and relatives in colonial literature foreground how writers located themselves vis-?-vis empire and demonstrate different stipulations, outcomes, and constraints that they confronted in rendering eastern colonialism.

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It’s as if you’re begging (for something). ”47 This particular scene also calls to mind a trope of performance in classical Japanese literature, whereby the performer, usually female, recites a poem or sings for a male audience. Oftentimes the woman expresses her “true feelings” through her performance. The gender reversal in Yokota’s work incorporates ethnicity, and transforms this trope, resulting in the feminized (but male) colonial Other, Wang, performing for a Japanese (female) colonizer audience.

For Japanese women, however, these privileges were limited to specific spheres, such as the home, and were oftentimes earned through subscription to conventional notions of women’s roles as wives and mothers. Scattered Colonial Hegemonies Yokota’s depiction of Wang and his beloved shows that different hegemonies shifted subjects’ access to power and complicated the categories of colonizer and colonized that some scholarship on colonialism has assumed. 58 Complicating the categories of colonizer and colonized enables the recognition of the agency and subjectivity of all individuals immersed in the colonial project.

I have decided in my heart to never see you again. To be honest, I felt humiliated by you. People say that humiliation goes hand in hand with romantic love and can be felt quite strongly. However, for me, it doesn’t matter. I will not apologize for being so pathetic. And yet, no matter how much humiliation I experienced, I cannot forget that “beauty” I sensed in you from the beginning. 20 Letters and Language “Love Letter” ends with Wang’s severing the relationship, and leaves the effect of his decision to the imagination of the reader.

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