UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Imperial Literature
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Imperial Literature: Languages, Bodies, and Others in the Japanese Empire A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Languages and Cultures by Mari Ishida 2016 © Copyright by Mari Ishida 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Imperial Literature: Languages, Bodies, and Others in the Japanese Empire by Mari Ishida Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Languages and Cultures University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Seiji Mizuta Lippit, Chair This dissertation examines the conflicting roles of literature in the production of discursive spaces of the Japanese empire from the 1920s to the early 1940s, with a focus on the relationship between linguistic imperialism, mechanisms of colonial violence, and multi-voiced and hybridized colonial spaces. I have constructed the category of Japanese imperial literature as “literature in between,” which stands between Japanese literature (nihon bungaku, national literature) and Japanese-language literature (nihongo bungaku, Japanophone-literature), in order to shed light on the role of ambivalent and precarious colonial others as the driving force of the expansion of the Japanese empire. Japanese imperial literature emerges as the site that repeatedly (re)produces the unified notion of Japanese subjects through continuously invoking ambivalent and precarious colonial and imperial subjects as ideological objects of desire, which, in turn, function to displace the violence exercised under the state of emergency through the idealized vision of the multi-ethnic, harmonious Japanese empire. The ideological vision of the ii multi-ethnic empire is perpetually reproduced not just through the imposition of imperial power on the colonized subjects by the colonizers, but through a dynamic chain of colonial violence, in which colonial assaults and inequalities are endlessly displaced onto others within a multi-layered hierarchical structure consisting of racial, gender, class differences, as well as hierarchical divisions between the visible and invisible, between the audible and inaudible, and between language and non-language. Therefore, this dissertation examines together literary works written in Japanese by authors in both the metropole and the colonies, including female proletarian writer Hirabayashi Taiko’s “In the Woods” (Mori no naka, 1929) and “At the Charity Ward” (Seryōshitsu nite, 1927) in chapter one, Taiwanese writer Long Yingzong’s “The Huang family” (Ōke, 1942) in chapter two, Japanese writer Ibuse Masuji’s “The City of Flowers” (Hana no machi, 1942) in chapter three, and Korean writer Kim Saryang’s The Taebaek Mountains (Tebekku Sanmyaku, 1943) in the epilogue, in order to elucidate “Japanese imperial literature” both as the site of colonial violence and as a site that makes visible mechanisms of colonial power. iii The dissertation of Mari Ishida is approved. Torquil Duthie Christopher P Hanscom Thu-huong Nguyen-vo Katsuya Hirano Mariko Tamanoi Seiji Mizuta Lippit, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv Table of Contents List of Figures ……………………………………………………………………………………vi Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………vii Vita………………………………………………………………………………………………..ix Introduction: Japanese Imperial Literature and the Ideological Vision of Empire………………..1 Chapter One: Claustrophobic Spaces of Empire: The Multilayered Structure of Others in Hirabayashi Taiko’s “In the Woods” (Mori no naka,1929) and “At the Charity Ward” (Seryōshitsu nite, 1927)………………………………………………………………………………………..66 Chapter Two: The Uneven Dialogism of Imperial Literature: Long Yingzong’s “The Huang Family” (Ōke 1940) as Provincial and Imperialization Literature …………………………….143 Chapter Three: Writing, Violence, and the Fantasy of Multi-Ethnic Empire: Ibuse Masuji’s “The City of Flowers” (Hana no machi, 1942)………………………………………………………205 Epilogue: The Resonance of the Multiple Voices of the Others………………………………. 252 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………….......286 v List of Figures Figure 1: A cover illustration by Ozaki Saburō for Hirabayashi Taiko Tanpenshū:Seryōshitsu nite ………………………………………………………………………………………… 72 Figure 2: An Illustration by Noma Hitone for Ibuse Masuji. Hana no machi ……………….213 vi Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without numerous material and intellectual support, encouragements, and conversations. I extend my gratitude to my advisor Professor Seiji Mizuta Lippit for guiding me in every step of the way through my graduate career. His steadfast guidance, support, and encouragement have been essential for my professional and intellectual progress. I am profoundly grateful for the generous support and intellectual guidance of my dissertation committee, Professor Torquil Duthie, Professor Christopher Hanscom, Professor Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, Professor Katsuya Hirano, and Professor Mariko Tamanoi who have continued to encourage me to complete this dissertation. Also at UCLA, I wish to express my gratitude to Professor William Bodiford, Professor Michael Emmerich, Professor Shoichi Iwasaki, Professor Namhee Lee, Professor Gyanam Mahajan, and Professor William Marotti for their warm support and guidance. A special thanks to my colleagues at UCLA for being a wonderful source for inspiration, encouragement, and support. I am greatly indebted to the UCLA Young Research Library, the librarian Tomoko Bialock, and the former librarian Toshie Marra. I am thankful to the staff in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures for their assistance. This study was generously supported by the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures of UCLA, the Graduate Division of UCLA, and the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies of UCLA. I am grateful to the staff of the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies for their support. The George and Sakaye Aratani Field Experience Scholarship from the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies of UCLA allowed me to conduct research in Japan from 2013 to 2014. I wish to thank people at the Graduate School of Language and Society of Hitotsubashi University for welcoming me to the community and inspiring my research in many ways. I am profoundly vii indebted to Professor Hoshina Hironobu, Professor Lee Yeounsuk, and their graduate students. The thought-provoking discussions in their seminars inspired me to develop this project in new directions. I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Hoshina Hironobu for generously suggesting many primary and secondary sources and offering his unparalleled knowledge. Matsuoka Masakazu san and Shin Jiyoung san individually shared their insightful thoughts and research materials. I wish to extend my gratitude to Professor Lee Yeounsuk for giving me profound inspiration, lots of new insights, and encouragement, which have enriched my perceptions and academic experiences. In Tokyo I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Kawahara Isao for graciously introducing me to literature in colonial Taiwan and archives and offering his expertise. I thank Professor Lee Yeounsuk and the participants of the second joint workshop of Yonsei University, UBC, and Hitotsubashi University, and Professor Hirano and the participants of the trans-pacific symposiums at UCLA for sharing numerous insights and observations. Finally, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my family who has been an unlimited source of encouragement and support. viii Vita 1999 Bachelor of Laws, Political Science, Keio University Tokyo, Japan 2009 M.A. Humanities, San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA 2013-2014 Special Research Student, The Graduate School of Language and Society, Hitotsubashi University Tokyo, Japan 2015-2016 Dissertation Year Fellowship Publications and Paper Presentations Translation, Lippit Mizuta Seiji. “Repetition, Singularity, Historicity.” Trans. Mari Ishida. Gendai Shisō. Vol 42.18 (2015) ( Published in Japanese as リピット水田清爾 /石田真理訳 「反復、単独性、歴史性」 現代思想 42 巻 18 号(2015)) June 2015, UCLA Trans-Pacific Symposium, UCLA Paper Title: “Writing, War, and Racialized and Gendered Violence: Ibuse Masuji’s The City of Flowers” March 2015, 2015 Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, Paper Title: “Writing, Violence, and the Production of Colonial Space: Ibuse Masuji’s The City of Flowers” June 2014, Second Joint Workshop, Yonsei University, UBC, and Hitotsubashi University: “Knowledge, Politics, and Gender in East Asia,” Yonsei University, Seoul Paper Title: “Bodies, Languages, and Others: Spaces of the Empire in Hirabayashi Taiko’s In the Charity Ward (Seryōshitsu nite 1927)” ix Introduction: Japanese Imperial Literature and the Ideological Vision of Empire The Greater East Asian Writers Conferences, 1942 to 1944 On November 3, 1942, about eleven months after the outbreak of the Greater East Asia War, which the Japanese empire waged under the slogan, “repelling the West and liberation of the East,” about 1500 participants from Japan (including Korea and Taiwan), Manchukuo, China, and Mongolia attended the opening ceremony for the first Greater East Asian Writers Conference (daitōa bungakusha taikai), which was held at the Imperial Theater beside a moat of the imperial palace in Tokyo.1 The conference was organized by the Japanese Literature Patriotic League (Nihon bungaku hōkoku kai), which was founded to mobilize Japanese writers for the war under the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (taisei yokusan kai). The objective of the conference was to gather together writers from Japan, Manchuria, Mongolia, and