This week’s main theme is complicity — that is, how did ordinary Japanese people become implicated (consciously or not) in the act of inflicting colonial violence? Consider this question from the readings for lecture 7. Is there a link between someone like Ayako in Mizoguchi’s Osaka Elegy and Koizumi Kikue, who wrote “Manchu Girl” based on her experiences in Manchuria? How might these very different representations of late 1930s femininity in imperial Japan connect to the kinds of imperialist masculinity we see explored in the readings for lecture 8?
When talking about wars, colonialization, oppressions, and other related issues, I believe that no one can be isolated himself from these. No matter how one person tries to keep out of it, he has to get involved into this complicity that inflicting colonial violence. consciously or not. First, I would like to re-analyze events like the 1923 massacre. These events show that ordinary Japanese people became implicated in inflicting colonial violence consciously and unconsciously. They had this ideology that they were superior to their colonial subjects, and they felt it was common and just to harm their colonial subjects. They consciously inflicting colonial violence by their action of harming and discriminating, and unconsciously inflicting colonial violence by their ideology and their agreement on colonial rules. In Manchu Girl, we can clearly see this unconscious implication. First, Koizumi Kikue’s husband and their friends believed it was common and just to trade Manchu children. It makes me think that they considered those children as commodities which were inferior. Moreover, we could have an insight that Koizumi Kikue unconsciously implicate in inflicting colonial violence. It is good that she tried to mitigate Li Guiyu’s negative attitude and feelings to Japanese people. However, under her and her husband’s influence, Li Guiyu started to refuse her identity of being Manchu, and plan to become Japanese. The story of Koizumi Kikue reveals the actual situation in greater scale. It shows the relationship between Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Chinese ideas about each other, and the cultural invasion of Japan.
Both Kikue and Ayako represent Japanese female. They fit the Japanese ideology of female: Kikue performed the role as a cultural reproducer, and Ayako also tried her best to support and maintain her family. We can see the great change of Japanese women through Kikue and Ayako. Japanese women were not responsible for domestic part only. They started to walk out of their home, worked and supported their family and nation in both domestic part and nondomestic part. They were more independent than before, but they still followed the ideology that they should sacrifice themselves for others unconditionally. In Osaka Elegy, Ayako did all the things for her family members. She became the lover of her boss because her father embezzled money and they cannot repay. She slept with Fujino because her brother needed money to pay tuition. She sacrificed herself for the good of her family. However, nobody cared about her and they all blamed her in the end. We can see that Japanese women were still less dominant than men through Ayako’s story.
