In-Person Panel PS5.1

(Re)imagining Gender Across Asia

Gender and Disability Discourses in Japanese Literature during World War II: A Focus on "Shouigunjin Seisen Kashuu" 

Shunsuke Nishizawa 

This paper delves into the nuanced exploration of gender dynamics among incapacitated combatants during World War II. Existing research about wounded soldiers has predominantly concentrated on the historical aspects of their institutions and realities. However, a significant gap exists in the examination of their portrayal within literary works, encompassing novels and Tanka poetry. The pivotal inquiry revolves not around the persona of the injured soldier but rather the manner in which they have been artistically depicted. Consequently, this presentation aims to unravel the discourse surrounding wounded soldiers, emphasizing their representation through the lens of "Shouigunjin Seisen Kashuu." Within this compilation of Tanka poems, one encounters verses lamenting their departure from the battlefield due to grievous wounds. These verses encapsulate their personal lamentations and the collective anguish of their inability to continue their service to the nation. This latter facet of lamentation has cultivated a formidable archetype of masculine strength. This presentation offers a novel perspective at the intersection of literature, warfare, and the interdisciplinary fields of gender and disability studies. We assert that these issues can be harnessed not only as a somber relic of Japan's past but also as a collective Asian narrative that invites contemplation of the future.

Iterations of the Chinese Campus Romance Film from the Northeast 

Vivien Nara 

At the turn of the 2010s, the transnational popularity of Taiwanese film You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011) spawned a robust moment in commercial Chinese cinema that coalesced around a set of films that can be described as the campus romance. Usually set in the China’s urban cities, the campus romance tells a recognisable story of first love (chulian) against a necessary backdrop of the school and university life and pressures (see, for example: So Young (2013); Young Style (2013); My Old Classmate (2014); Fleet of Time (2014); Yesterday Once More (2016)). This paper focuses on a minor moment in the genre that reiterates the generic campus romance tale into a post-“iron rice bowl” (tie fan wan) imaginary of China’s declining industrial towns, telling the story of boy meets girl in contexts where academic success is seen to be neither possible nor necessarily desirable. By examining the two Northeast (dongbei) films Young Love Lost (2016) and Only the Wind Knows (2017), this paper explores how common, classed Chinese tropes of love, youth and gender circulate in new ways, offering a meditation on the vernacular pleasures of popular romance in the Chinese context.

Reframing Modern Girls in Turkey and Japan: A Feminist Literary Exploration of Uno Chiyo's and Suat Derviş's Literary Works 

Asli Kaynar 

In the 1920s, Modern girls emerged in both Turkey and Japan, capturing attention with their Westernized appearance and liberal lifestyles. These figures became popular subjects among authors and media outlets. However, portrayals of modern girls by male authors and in media predominantly relied on stereotypes, such as fashion icons, femmes fatales, materialistic party girls and so on. The discourse on the Japanese modern girl focuses on describing her characteristics and her role within society and mostly tends to overgeneralise her or undermine the figure by highlighting the ‘passivity’ that comes with being a part of the the rising consumer culture in the 1920s. Most scholars use newspaper articles or advertisements as primary sources, mostly mentioning the modern girls’ descriptions in literary works only briefly. This paper challenges the limited representations of modern girls by exploring themes of desire and self-representation in the literary works of women. It explores the representations of modern girls in Japanese author Uno Chiyo's (1897-1996) and Turkish novelist Suat Derviş's (1905-1972) selected literary works by adopting the feminist desire theories to demonstrate that they have complex identities and thus challenge the stereotypes that have been perpetuated both in the mass media and in the scholarship. Japanese modern girls have been only compared to Korean, Chinese and Western modern girls, yet they have never been discussed in conjunction with another country like Turkey. Looking into Turkish and Japanese modern girls provides insight into the effects of Westernisation on non-Western countries and can be useful in mapping out their lines of intersection in relation to women’s lives. Therefore, this project introduces a novel approach to the case of the modern girl by comparing these cultures.

The Image of Girls in Chinese Fiction During the Republican Era 

Yiwen Li 

The finding of the children is a significant literary theme in contemporary Chinese literature as well as a significant means by which intellectuals in the Republic of China strive to construct a contemporary sense of national identity. The academic community in the fields of modern Chinese literature and cultural history has progressively begun to pay more attention to images of children and women, but the topic of how children and women were discovered and built by modern literature, with “girls” as the key thread, has not yet been completely explored. In order to better understand the survival and mental state of girls during the Republican era as demonstrated by the observation, reproduction, and creation of the girls' image by writers during that era, this research will examine how girls are portrayed in novels written. By using close reading, literary theorist Susan Sniader Lanser’s female narrative perspective, historical context from the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, and literary theory, this study will examine how the girl image in literature reflects the social and cultural background of the Republic of China and how intellectuals can create a new nation by writing the girl image.