Asian Literary Voices

Publications Series AsianEdited Literary Volumes 12 Asian Literary Asian Literary Voices Philip F. Williams has published nine books in East Asian studies, including The Great Wall of Confinement (UCal, 2004), and has been ProfessorVoices of Chinese at Voices Massey University and Arizona State University. Asian Literary Voices Williams (ed.) Asian Literary Voices: From Marginal to Mainstream brings From Marginal to Mainstream together some of the most exciting recent scholarship on literature and culture in Japan, Korea, China, and India. The contributors combine original findings of interest to specialists with a clear and accessible style of writing; Edited by their unifying aim has been to give voice to a wide range Philip F. Williams of literary and scholarly figures who were important in their time and remain relevant to our epoch, and yet whose significance has been poorly understood. “The ten inquisitive and energetic authors explore a variety of topics from ‘bad-girl’ writers in contemporary China to Sanskrit poetesses in medieval India, from urban migration to avant-garde theater, and from genre paintings to writing systems.” Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania “This excellent book of essays represents the best of the conference volume genre. It includes concepts of the ideal lover, historical fiction and elite women’s reading in Chôson Korea and Meiji Japan, and how Europeans invented ‘Sinology’.” Michael S. Duke, Professor Emeritus of Chinese and Comparative Literature, University of British Columbia “This engaging volume deepens our understanding of how Asian civilizations have evolved not only through their contact with the West, but with one another as well.” Timothy R. Bradstock, Professor of Chinese, University of Montana 9 789089 640925 www.aup.nl ISBN 978 90 8964 092 5 Asian Literary Voices Publications Series General Editor Paul van der Velde Publications Officer Martina van den Haak Editorial Board Wim Boot (Leiden University); Jennifer Holdaway (Social Science Research Coun- cil); Christopher A. Reed (The Ohio State University); Anand A. Yang (Director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and Chair of International Studies at the University of Washington); Guobin Yang (Barnard College, Colum- bia University). The ICAS Publications Series consists of Monographs and Edited Volumes. The Series takes a multidisciplinary approach to issues of interregional and multilat- eral importance for Asia in a global context. The Series aims to stimulate dialogue amongst scholars and civil society groups at the local, regional and international levels. The International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) was founded in 1997. Its main goals are to transcend the boundaries between disciplines, between nations stu- died, and between the geographic origins of the Asia scholars involved. ICAS has grown into the largest biennial Asia studies event covering all subjects of Asia studies. So far five editions of ICAS have been held respectively in Leiden (1998), Berlin (2001), Singapore (2003), Shanghai (2005), Kuala Lumpur (2007) and Dae- jeon, South Korea (2009). ICAS 7 will be held in Honolulu from 30 March-3 April 2011. In 2001 the ICAS secretariat was founded which guarantees the continuity of the ICAS process. In 2004 the ICAS Book Prize (IBP) was established in order to cre- ate by way of a global competition both an international focus for publications on Asia while at the same time increasing their visibility worldwide. Also in 2005 the ICAS Publications Series were established. For more information: www.icassecretariat.org Asian Literary Voices From Marginal to Mainstream Edited by Philip F. Williams Publications Series Edited Volumes 12 Cover design: JB&A raster grafisch ontwerp, Delft Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere ISBN 978 90 8964 092 5 e-ISBN 978 90 4850 819 8 NUR 617 / 640 © ICAS / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2010 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or in- troduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Table of Contents Acknowledgments 7 Introduction: Asian Literary Voices 9 Philip F. Williams 1 Korean and Japanese Portraits of Ideal Lovers 13 Susan Lee 2 Yamada Bimyō’s “Musashino” and the Development of Early Meiji Historical Fiction 31 Daniel J. Sullivan 3 From Atomized to Networked: Rural-to-Urban Migrants in Twentieth-century Chinese Narrative 41 Philip F. Williams 4 Sex for Sex’s Sake? The “Genital Writings” of the Chinese Bad-Girl Writers 53 Shelley W. Chan 5 In and Out of Home: Bing Xin Recontextualized 63 Mao Chen 6 From Enlightenment to Sinology: Early European Suggestions on How to Learn Chinese, 1770-1840 71 Georg Lehner 7 Chinese Avant-Garde Theater: New Trends in Chinese Experimental Drama near the Close of the Twentieth Century 93 Izabella Łabędzka 8 Malraux’s Hope: Allegory and the Voices of Silence 115 William D. Melaney 6 9 Reception, Reappropriation, and Reinvention: Chinese Vernacular Fiction and Elite Women’s Reading Practices in Late Chosǒn Korea 129 Sohyeon Park 10 Some Women Writers and their Works in Classical Sanskrit Literature: A Reinterpretation 149 Supriya Banik Pal About the Contributors 161 Index 163 Acknowledgments This book has been a global effort, having been initiated and adminis- tered in the Netherlands, developed part-way in New Zealand, and finally carried through to completion in the U.S. and the Netherlands. The contributors to this volume span the Northern Hemisphere, starting from the Pacific shores of northeast Asia, then across to the Indian subcontinent, over to north-eastern Africa, and then on to central Europe – and finally ranging all the way westward across the Atlantic Ocean to the heartland and west coast of North America. Throughout the entire editorial project, Paul van der Velde and Marti- na van den Haak provided expert counsel and unflagging assistance from the main offices of the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) in Leiden; I am most grateful to their steady hand. I would also like to thank the following editors and other professionals of Amster- dam University Press for having provided valuable information or assistance: Jaap Wagenaar, Erik van Aert, and Ebisse Wakjira-Rouw. My thanks also extend to Rie Koyama-Hayashi and Machiko Chika- matsu for having kindly provided permission to reprint a photo of a painting owned by the Tokugawa Art Museum in Tokyo, as well as to Jeff Zilm for reprinting permission of an image courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art. Moreover, I would like to thank the following indivi- duals for having provided encouragement or assistance: Terry Weidner, Steven Levine, and C. Lindner. Finally, I am grateful to the contributors for having revised their chapters carefully and for having responded in a timely and courteous manner to the numerous queries and requests I sent their way. Introduction: Asian Literary Voices Philip F. Williams Gathering together some of the most original contemporary research on Asian literature and culture, this volume presents a wide range of formerly marginalized Asian voices from all three of the primary cul- tures of northeast Asia – China, Japan, and Korea – along with the In- dian subcontinent to the south and west. The topics covered extend from Sanskrit poetesses of over a millennia ago to Chinese women nov- elists and bloggers of the twenty-first century. Originally presented at biennial conferences of the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), each chapter has undergone a competitive selection process and then been carefully revised – both to enhance its value to the academic specialist and to make it accessible to the general reader. The transnational orientation of the book emerges clearly from the first chapter, in which Susan Lee compares Chosǒn period Korean (1392-1910) and Edo period Japanese (1600-1868) genre paintings about everyday life in which elite male scholar-officials are frequently paired with well-educated, talented courtesans. Lee reveals how a somewhat idealized image of the “talented woman” in northeast Asia was in part constructed on the basis of such portraiture in genre paintings, thereby taking issue with the over-literalizing interpretations of this type of art by many Japanese and Korean folk historians. This chapter’s inclusion of prints of exemplary genre paintings adeptly complements Lee’s analysis in the text itself. The focus shifts from painting to fiction in northeast Asia in Daniel J. Sullivan’s analysis of a seminal nineteenth-century work of historical fiction, entitled “Musashino”, by the Japanese novelist Yamada Bimyō. At first glance, merely one among innumerable historical narratives about military conflagrations and decimated samurai families of centu- ries past, “Musashino” turns out to be every bit as groundbreaking in its style as local critics had long acclaimed it to be. Many well-translated excerpts from the text of “Musashino” vividly demonstrate Sullivan’s conclusions about Yamada’s stylistic innovations in that writer’s hand- ling of colloquialisms, regional and pseudo-classical dialects, and dialogue reminiscent of theatrical variants. Shifting westward to China, my chapter on rural-to-urban migrants in twentieth-century Chinese narrative underscores

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