1942: Women Writers at War

PHILOLOGIA 3/2010 ANUL LV 2010 STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ–BOLYAI PHILOLOGIA 3 Desktop Editing Office: 51ST B.P. Hasdeu, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Phone + 40 264-40.53.52 CUPRINS – CONTENT – SOMMAIRE – INHALT RODICA FRENŢIU − Cuvânt înainte / Foreword................................................ 5 ORIENTAL STUDIES YOSHIHIKO IKEGAMI, The Integration of Foreign Technology into Japanese Culture .................................................................................................7 TOSHIYUKI SADANOBU, Event Model without Time Shift.............................. 19 ANGELA HONDRU, Aoi-Matsuri – Essence of the Sacred and the Beauty......... 35 FLORINA ILIS, Murasaki Shikibu, Genji Monogatari. The Fictional Chronicle of the Heian World...................................................................................... 49 RODICA FRENŢIU, Nagaï Kafû, Une histoire singulière à l’est du fleuve (Bokutô kidan). Ton et couleur dans le roman de l’exil intérieur .............................. 61 GEORGE SIPOS, 1942: Women Writers at War ................................................... 79 XIANYIN LI, XU ZHANG, The Function of Attributives and the Word Order of Multiple Attributives in Chinese ........................................................ 97 XIAOYA HAN, SHAOZHONG FENG, The Embodiment of Taoist Culture in the Image of Yao Mulan ....................................................................... 107 LUMINIŢA BĂLAN, Xunzi’s Perspective on Human Nature ............................ 115 ŞERBAN TOADER, Confucian Values and the Revival of Confucius’ Thought in Contemporary China............................................................................. 127 LUKAS POKORNY, „Glückselig ist der Weise, weise ist der Glückselige“: zu einer vergleichenden Soteriologie von Neokonfuzianismus und Neuplatonismus .................................................................................... 139 CODRUŢA CUC, Daoist Elements in Koguryŏ Culture...................................... 151 JUDIT PAPP, The Fortune of Haiku in Hungary ................................................. 165 WORKSHOP RÉKA DRANIK, Der Gebrauch der Tempora im Japanischen im Vergleich mit dem Tempusgebrauch im Deutschen ............................................. 189 ANA SCUTURICI, Historiographic metafiction as a search for furusato. Ōe Kenzaburo and Murakami Haruki ........................................................ 201 DONG HUN KWAK, The Analysis of Juche Idea from the Point of View about Confucianism........................................................................................ 223 VARIA CATHERINE DÉTRIE, La relation interpersonnelle dans le 7-10 de France Inter : de la construction intersubjective à la connivence..................... 231 LUMINIŢA ROŞCA, The Journalistic Text. Theoretical Background ................ 245 ARPAD MIHALOVICS, Les actes de langage directifs d’un discours diplomatique ..263 MARIANA ISTRATE, Marian Papahagi – traduttore di Eugenio Montale......... 273 RECENZII / BOOK REVIEWS ANA SCUTURICI, Teru Miyamoto, Brocart de toamnă, (Kinshū: Autumn Brocade), Humanitas Fiction, Bucureşti, 2009, 184 p.......................... 283 Număr coordonat de: Lect. univ. dr. RODICA FRENŢIU STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, PHILOLOGIA, LV, 3, 2010 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR GEORGE SIPOS∗ ABSTRACT. 1942: Women Writers at War. With the beginning of the Pacific War in 1941, Japan seemed to be in full charge of its conquests and older colonies, Taiwan, Manchuria and Korea. Used as the premise for a comparison between writings of Korean and Japanese female writers, Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi`s Nogikushō (The Wild Chrysanthemum) is the main text analyzed in this article. The authors her work is compared with on the Japanese side are Sata Ineko, Hayashi Fumiko and Yoshiya Nobuko. The question the current article is trying to answer is why there are no good texts for comparison with Ch`oe`s work and offer a couple of hypotheses. Keywords: Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi, Sata Ineko, Hayashi Fumiko, Yoshiya Nobuko, Feminism, Motherhood, Pacific War, Japanese imperialism, Colonial Korea. 1. Introduction The original purpose of this paper was to compare Korean writer Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s Japanese short story Nogikushō (The Wild Chrysanthemum 1 , 1942) with a similar text written by a Japanese female author around the same time. The inspiration for this enterprise was offered by Kyeong-Hee Choi’s reading of The Wild Chrysanthemum. Choi avoids reading the text as a pro-war/pro-Japan propaganda, as it has been labeled by the Korean postwar critics, but as a testimony of the failed modernity of Korean women in colonial times2. In light of this reading and for the purpose of comparison, the identification of a meaningful piece of ∗ George Sipos is a PhD Candidate in Japanese literature and history in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. E-mail address: [email protected]. He is working on his dissertation entitled Family Ties: Betrayal, Divorce and Separation in Japan`s Tenkō Literature. In Romania, he published translations and papers on major Japanese writers in various literary and cultural magazines. He translated Mishima Yukio`s Taiyō to tetsu (Soare si otel, Humanitas 2008), Akutagawa Ryunosuke`s Aru aho no isshō (Viata unui prost, Curtea Veche 2010), Kawabata Yasunari`s Yama no oto (Sunetul muntelui, Humanitas, 2010). 1 This is the title used in Sarah Frederick’s translation (unpublished). This translation does, however, eliminate the last character in the title: 抄 (shō), which literally means “excerpt”. The real meaning of the title would thus be “Notes on the Wild Chrysanthemum” which might refer to the epistle form of the story. 2 Kyeong-Hee Choi, Another Layer of the Pro-Japanese Literature: Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s ‘The Wild Chrysanthemum’, “Poetica”, 52, Shubun International (Tokyo: 1999), 61-87 GEORGE SIPOS fiction written by a Japanese woman author and published around 1941-1942 was necessary. The task, however, proved rather daunting. The publication year was very important for this comparison given the fact that with 1941 and the opening of the Pacific front by the Japanese Army, Japanese writers’ mission as assigned by the military authorities changed significantly from previous years. The reading of pieces written by several Japanese women writers revealed some of the themes that were relevant for this comparison: motherhood, feminism, and war response from women’s part. In the end, three fiction writers, Hayashi Fumiko, Sata Ineko, and to some extent 1939 Yoshiya Nobuko3 seemed the most appropriate. The “ideal” text would have been a short story written and published in 1942, after the beginning of the Pacific War and no later than 1943, when the Japanese defeat was beginning to take contour. Eventually, that “ideal” text failed to show up in my readings. Thus, more important than finding that text, the reasons for its lack from the Japanese literature of the time became a more captivating question and constitute the core question of the present article. 2. The Wild Chrysanthemum Published in Japanese, in November 1942, in the literature journal Kungmin munhak/ Kokumin bungaku (National literature), The Wild Chrysanthemum 4 has generally been read as pro-Japanese fiction5. As Kyeong-Hee Choi aptly shows in her analysis of the story, besides the main6 (apparently pro-Japanese) narrative, at least one other sub-narrative, that of a Korean woman’s failed modernity is to be identified in The Wild Chrysanthemum. The plot of the story is a one-day trip a Korean mother, the narrating “I” of the text, takes together with her ten-year old son, Shōichi. Mother and son choose a beautiful autumn Sunday to visit the volunteer training camp set up by the Japanese imperial army for Koreans who want to join the empire’s army. On the way to the training camp and on the way back, the main character takes the time to reminisce on her failed relationship with Shōichi’s father. The beginning of the story, as well as the end, is addressed directly to this absent character: “I will raise these flowers for Shōichi into beautiful, strong wild chrysanthemums, just like I raised him, in spite of everything. And this shall be my revenge on myself and on you. Farewell!”7. (emphasis added). This paragraph at the end of the story opens up paths for different readings of the story and may clarify some of the interpretations already proposed by Choi. 3 Yoshiya Nobuko’s name came up in conversations with Miho Matsugu. Miho not only suggested Yoshiya, but also offered some of her research materials on the author. 4 Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi, Nogikushō, “Kungmin munhak”, Vol. 9 (Nov. 1942), 131-146. 5 See Choi, 65-68. 6 “Surface narrative” in Choi, 64. 7 Nogikushō, 146. 80 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR In Sarah Frederick’s English translation, the paragraph is rendered as: “Just as I have raised Shōichi, I will raise these wild chrysanthemums into beautiful flowers, strong flowers. That might be my revenge, on myself and you. Goodbye.” The parts emphasized in my translation were omitted in Frederick’s, and while the general meaning of the fragment does not change significantly by adding them, they add information to the message that the narrator is trying to convey. On one hand, 何 考えず (nanimo kangaezu), “in spite of everything”, literally “without thinking about anything” is very important for the feminist reading Choi is suggesting. That “thinking about anything/ in spite of everything”, which characterizes the way in which the character raised her son, is indicative of the very hardships through which a woman in her situation (single mother in 1930s Korean society) might have gone through. Due to the rigid family order and patriarchal system of the Korean society, the solution of having her illegitimate son enroll to become a soldier of imperial Japan might have offered the legitimacy a mother wishes for her son. In Choi’s words “In this imperial space, Shōichi will get a surrogate father figure such as Instructor Harada (the commanding officer of the volunteer training camp they visit) and have many enlisted men as his surrogate brothers”8. On the other hand, the same words characterize, by extension, the way in which the “I” character will take care and raise the wild chrysanthemums. The metaphor of the flower employed by Ch’oe in this story can be understood in at least two ways. First, the flower is a direct signifier for the main character, as described by the absent male character: “At one time you and I walked down this same sort of a country road. At that time, just as now, tremendous numbers of them [wild chrysanthemums] were blooming, and you picked one and gave it to me saying, ‘A small, lovely flower. It looks like you…‘ I am certain you must have forgotten that you ever said this.”9 Second, the wild chrysanthemum can be read as a metaphor for Korea, conveying the country’s colonial status, where the chrysanthemum represents the symbol of the Japanese imperial household. In her analysis, Kyeong-Hee Choi touches upon the complex meaning carried by the image of the wild chrysanthemum.10 The other words omitted in Sarah Frederick’s translation into English are 勝一のた に (Shōichi no tame ni), “for Shōichi.” The character promises to raise the flowers for Shōichi, just like she raised him, in spite of everything. These words are crucial to the final reading of the story. The protagonist agrees with her son’s request to take care of the flowers, which are supposed to comfort her after he will die on the battlefield for the Emperor. But she says she will do that “for Shōichi”. In other words, the deed will be performed not for her own solace, but for the benefit of her son. Choi’s reading of the ending equates the wild chrysanthemum 8 Choi, 70. Sarah Frederick’s translation. In Japanese, p. 146. 10 Choi, 79. 9 81 GEORGE SIPOS from the previous scene (where the flower was compared to the protagonist by Shōichi’s father) with the wild chrysanthemums she will have to take care of at her son’s request. Thus, in Choi’s reading, the chrysanthemums that the “I” will have to take care of represent the narrator herself. In the latter instance, however, the wild chrysanthemums cease to represent the woman and become an exclusive metaphor for Korea. This is how Choi reads the act of growing “beautiful,” “strong” flowers: “Through her maternal project of making a Japanese imperial soldier, she is now to strip her old female self as small, feeble and sad, and become strong instead.”11 The trans-plantation of the wild chrysanthemums from the field into the house can also be read as a symbolic submission of the wild, free Korea to the domesticity of the colonial dream. The character is to engage in this colonization project, just like she raised her child, “in spite of everything” (public condemnation from the part of the Korean society, and the label of collaboration for the rest of her life), because she will be doing it “for Shōichi.” For the sake of her son, the character is willing to help the “wild chrysanthemum” (colonial Korea) become beautiful and strong, in the hope, that, as Choi also points out, Shōichi will become a legitimate citizen of imperial Japan and not remain a bastard child forever, as traditional Korean society would have considered him. Following up on this reading, the character’s “revenge” on herself and her former lover represents the extreme act of erasing their national identity for the sake of the child. Her revenge is to help raise a beautiful, strong colonial Korea, in which she and her generation will have to disappear as Korean national subjects, and reinvent themselves as Japanese. All done for the sake of the son (Shōichi no tame ni). Therefore, without being necessarily different from Kyeong-Hee Choi’s on the issue of the failed woman’s modernity, the current reading of Ch’oe’s text reinforces the pro-Japanese quality of the story. Choi’s conclusion tends to be somewhat over-optimistic in switching the meaning of the story from her main proJapanese message to the feminist one: “’The Wild Chrysanthemum’ plays out a kind of literary masquerade, carrying in a disguised manner messages that resist and contradict a first impression. Ch’oe’s pro-Japanese narrative allows her not only to channel her social concerns about women’s multiple burdens in the colonial era but also to criticize ineffectual Korean male elites, who did not merely fail to protect their own youths but even urged Korean mothers to send their sons to the site of death.”12 In fact, the feminist message becomes a justification for the proJapanese story. The protagonist’s attitude of support for the colonial project is justified precisely because she had been betrayed by her lover and left alone to deal with an illegitimate child in a very conservative society. 11 12 Choi, 79. Choi, 81. 82 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR Despite the general melancholy tone of the story, its final message is optimistic. While Shōichi might die as a soldier for the emperor, he would acquire legitimacy as a citizen of the empire. But there is also the possibility that he will not die on the battlefield. It is not by mistake that the boy’s name is written with the character for “victory.” Shōichi as a colonial subject who truly believes in the imperial project represents the future of Korea and the mother’s revenge of the mother is represented by having had raised him as a perfect believer in imperial values (the scene where the boy sings a war propaganda song and her mother joins in, as they walk to the volunteer camp, is representative for her encouragement of his education as a good imperial subject.)13 3. Japanese Women at War: Feminism and the Issue of Motherhood (1941-1945) In an attempt to understand why Japanese women writers of the 1940s did not feel the need to or could not write pieces of fiction which would have been similar in preoccupations with Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s The Wild Chrysanthemmum, the status of women in the Japanese society during the WWII is to be considered. The role and position of women in Japanese society changed in many aspects during the fifteen years in which Japan was at war (1930-1945), but the most considerable changes came in 1937 and the commencement of the war with China. Reluctantly in the beginning and more and more vigorously as the shadow of defeat drew closer, Japanese authorities had to acknowledge for the first time in Japan’s history the need for women to step forward and actively engage in the war effort, not only as housewives, but as workers in factories, mothers of the nation, etc, in other words, in all fields of social life. Women became soldiers of the jūgo (the home front). In his article Women and War in Japan, 1937-1945, Thomas R.H. Havens claims that the collision of traditional expectations and the de facto social convolutions was especially jarring in the case of Japanese women during World War II, because customary female social roles conflicted with the requirements of the war effort14. In fact, in all countries involved in the war effort, taking women outside of the house and asking them to engage in working in factories was a major decision to make and was not welcomed by everyone. In Nazi Germany, while the importance of women was considered paramount for the advancement of the Nazi state, they were excluded entirely from the National Socialist Party leadership, with the exception of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, who headed the bureau for women’s affairs. Nevertheless, they helped both to bring the Nazis to power and to maintain 13 14 Nogikushō, 138. Thomas R.H. Havens, Women and War in Japan, 1937-1945, “The American Historical Review”. Vol. 80, 4 (October 1975), 914. 83 GEORGE SIPOS it,15 mostly because of the mythical basis of the Nazi movement which contained, among others, ideas of the primacy of the matriarchal system.16 The importance of women in society after the Nazis took power in 1933 was, however, reduced to that of “mothers of the nation,” to the disappointment of many of the leading Nazi feminist activists, like Sophie Rogge-Börner, the editor of the journal Die deutsche Kämpferin (The German Woman Warrior), who, as early as 1932, protested against the degradation of the German woman to a purely maternal animal.17 Nevertheless, ideology and propaganda aside, when the war became fiercer and the home front needed more “soldiers,” Germany increased general labor force (which included women) from 37.4% in 1939 to 52.5% in 1944.18 Women conscription raised bitter debates even in the United States, where motherhood and not work for the war effort was the role traditionally associated with women. The image of “Rosie the Riveter,” the World War II factory woman who wore overalls and held a wrench in her hand, while an icon of wartime propaganda, never failed to raised concerns over the changing status of women in society. “Most mothers, employed or not, saw child care as their major responsibility, enjoyed it, and thought that preservation of the American family was the purpose of the war,” wrote D’Ann Campbell.19 In Japan, women had to take jobs and help the war economy, but their number was comparatively low. Havens argues that the number of workingwomen in Japan during WWII only rose by 10% between 1940-1944, which shows that the authorities continued to be reluctant to employ women and involve them more in the war effort. Before 1943, despite the fact that there was a general labor conscription law under the National Registration System (kokumin tōroku seido), and un-married women aged 16 to 25 were supposed to enroll, the Japanese government never enforced that law. More than that, the official position of the government was critical of the practice of drafting women: “In order to secure its labor force, the enemy is drafting women, but in Japan, out of consideration for the family system, we will not draft them.”20 The wartime Japanese government thought that women could best serve their country by staying home, keeping their families happy and, of course, producing more future soldiers. 15 Elaine Martin (ed.), Gender Patriarchy and Fascism in the Third Reich: The Response of Women Writers, Wayne State University Press (Detroit: 1993), 19-20. 16 For more on the Nazi ideology on matriarchy and motherhood, see Jost Hermand, All Power to the Women: Nazi Concepts of Matriarchy, “Journal of Contemporary History”. Vol. 19, No. 4, Reassessments of Fascism (October 1984), 649-667. 17 Hermand, 661. 18 Havens, 918. 19 D’Ann Campbell, Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era, Harvard University Press (Cambridge: 1984), 14. 20 Koizumi Chikahiko, the minister of welfare, in a 1942 speech to the Diet. Quoted in Havens, 919920. 84 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR On the other hand, the same government rallied civic-minded women’s associations as early as July 1937 for traditional female duties in wartime: seeingoff war-bound soldiers and sailors at dockside, comforting wounded veterans and bereaved families, encouraging economic self-sufficiency and patriotic savings movements, and opposing the penetration of dangerous ideas. A few months later, in September 1937, all women organizations were obliged to support the National Spiritual Mobilization (kokumin seishin sōdōin).21 ***** The emphasis on the role of women as “mothers of the nation,” generated an active involvement of the government in otherwise private matters, such as marriage counseling, marriage and weddings. In the spring of 1941 women’s youth groups began to operate government-supported marriage counseling centers designed “to cause women to move from an individualistic view of marriage to a national one and to make young women recognize motherhood as the national destiny.”22 The state promoted early marriages, set up matchmaking agencies, and ask companies to pay baby bonuses to their workers. The government lent couples wedding clothes if they were too poor to afford a ceremony, and families with ten or more children were promised free higher education. Everything was done to promote childbearing and increase the number of the Japanese nationals. Behind it all, however, for mothers there was always the lurking specter of having to see their children taken away to war. The Japanese government got involved not only in training soldiers to die for the sake of the emperor, but also in training women to dedicate their sons willingly to the emperor and to the country. As early as 1910, a primary school textbook produced by the government included a story entitled A Sailor’s Mother, allegedly based on an incident that happened during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.23 The mother sent the following letter to her son who was serving as a sailor on a warship: “I was informed that you neither went into action during the Battle of Toyoshima nor rendered any distinguished service on the tenth of August during the attack on Ikaiei. Your mother deeply regrets. For what purpose have you gone to the war? It is not for the sake of repaying on to the Emperor by consecrating your own life to him? Everybody in the village is very kind to me by always telling me: ‘Since your only child is gone to the war, you must need help. Please don’t hesitate to ask us for help.’ Whenever I see any of them, I am ashamed of my cowardly son. It really breaks my heart to think of my son not having 21 Havens, 914. Excerpted from Nihon Seinenkan (ed.), Dai Nihon seishōnen danshi, Tōkyō, 1942, 314. Quoted in Havens, 927. 23 The story and the commentaries are taken from Kazuko Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual: Japan Before and After Defeat in World War II, Princeton University Press (Princeton: 1970). 257-259. 22 85 GEORGE SIPOS accomplished any feat. Every day I visit Hachiman Shrine to pray that you may distinguish yourself in a battle…” According to Kazuko Tsurumi, this story continued to be included in the state-made textbooks and exerted influence on the formation of the affective and ideological postures of men and women until the end of the Pacific war.24 In her sociological survey, Tsurumi interviewed many Japanese wartime mothers who grew up in an education system that emphasized self-sacrifice for the good of the nation, and reached the conclusion that the mothers did not perceive the conflict between the ideal role of a patriotic mother imposed upon them by the state and the role they actually performed of an intensely loving mother as a conflict of norms, but as a conflict of emotions.25 After 1942, with the formation of the Dai Nippon fujinkai (Greater Japan Women’s Association), which eliminated all other women’s groups and associations, motherhood became the central topic of the state discourse with regard to the women’s role in society. The idea that women were the “mothers of the nation” or the “mothers of the race” was emblematic and also took the first place in the feminist discourse of the time.26 Here are a few dominant ideas on motherhood as exposed by some of the leading feminists of the time, and as they are presented in Beth-Sara Katzoff’s For the Sake of the Nation, for the Sake of Women. In Senji fujin dokuhon (A Wartime Women’s Reader, 1943), Ichikawa Fusae, wrote an article on Fujin to kokka (Women and the State) and discussed five main topics, among which the first one was “women are mothers of the people” (fujin wa minzoku no haha). The other topics discussed were: “the family and housewives are the basis of the country” (kuni no kiso wo nasu ie to shufu), “state economics and household economics” (kokka keizai to katei keizai), “women as producers” (seisansha to shite no fujin), and “women’s self-training” (fujin no jiki rensei).27 In Ichikawa’s view, women had an important duty as mothers of the race to produce more children during the war, since they were the only ones to have the distinctive capacity for childbirth. Hence, women were expected to serve the nation through procreation. In so doing, motherhood was to become an expression of citizenship for women, as their children will one day become soldiers for the nation. To Ichikawa, women were to become “birthing soldiers” (shussan heishi), and raise their consciousness about the national significance of their role as mothers. They were to reproduce nor for themselves, but for the sake of the nation. 24 Tsurumi, 257. Tsurumi, 259. 26 For a detailed discussion of the Japanese feminist movement in Japan during WWII, see Beth-Sara Katzoff, For the Sake of the Nation, for the Sake of Women: The Pragmatism of Japanese Feminisms in the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945), PhD Dissertation, Columbia University, 2000. 27 The following discussion is heavily indebted to Beth-Sara Katzoff, 135-138, and following. 25 86 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR For Kōra Tomi, a government committee member, the pursuit of national greatness merged with the elevation of women in Japan. The effort to “make Japan a superior country… [was]… for the sake of the women and mothers.” Women were to become just like Japanese soldiers, using their knowledge of the household and society.28 Thus, the image of the mother in imperial Japan during the war was constantly revolving around the same characteristics: “birthing soldiers,” selfsacrifice, readiness to dedicate their sons’ lives to the emperor. These same characteristics are to be found in Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s The Wild Chrysanthemum, making the story the fictional expression of this particular type of wartime propaganda. 4. Japanese Women Writers and 1942 Looking at Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s biography one cannot help but to think about the striking similarities with another prominent woman writer of the time, namely Sata Ineko. Ch’oe had a relationship with Kim Yuyŏng, a socialist, and she herself was active in the socialist movement. Imprisoned by the authorities, she chose upon her release to live as a single mother, an act of defiance of the social mores of contemporary Korean society. After 1941, she lived with another important Korean intellectual of the time, Kim Tongwan, a publisher and poet, and had two daughters with him.29 Kyeong-Hee Choi, to which this biographical information is indebted, divides Ch’oe’s literary activity into three phases: the first (1931-1934), the socialist period that ended with her arrest in 1934, the second (1934-1942), her feminist period, characterized by “her exploration into female intellectuals’ survival efforts as single mothers and married women and their concerns with illegitimate children,” and the third, the pro-Japanese phase, constituted only by the year 1942.30 After 1942, Ch’oe’s literary activity ends and Choi reads The Wild Chrysanthemum as Ch’oe’s declaration of chŏlp’il (“breaking the pen”). 1942 thus represents the only year when Ch’oe was actively engaged in supporting the Japanese imperial project in Korea. Besides her pro-Japanese essays and speeches of that year, Ch’oe published another piece of fiction in April 1942, Night of February Fifteenth, which focuses on a husband and a wife. It presents a Korean husband who comes to approve of his wife’s pro-Japanese activities, as the Japanese army successfully attacked and conquered Singapore in February 1942.31 When compared to Sata Ineko, the similarities between the two women writers’ biographies are startling. Although married for ten years to Kubokawa Tsurujirō, a proletarian writer, and extremely active in the Japanese literary proletarian movement, Sata was betrayed by her husband and divorced him in 28 In Katzoff, 143-144. Choi, 82. 30 Choi, 82. 31 See Choi, 67. 29 87 GEORGE SIPOS 1936. Sata and Kubokawa had two children, and she had to take care of them on her own after their divorce. Arrested for her socialist activity in 1935, she will spend a little bit more than a month in prison, and will be convicted to a three-year suspended sentence. After 1941, Sata became one of the writers who were sent by various Japanese organizations to either write and send back reportages about the newly conquered colonies, or to give speeches to the soldiers and convey the support of the people at home for their actions on the battlefield. As a matter of fact, the majority of the Japanese writers, willingly or unwillingly, had to support the Japanese army efforts to “expand” the vital territory of the Japanese nation. With the proletarian literary movement decapitated and defeated and 95% of its former members undergone through tenkō (recantation) by 1941, and without the privilege of having an exile tradition like their counterparts in Europe,32 as people who lived off their writing, most of the Japanese writers (leftists or not) had to comply with the authorities’ orders and support the war effort. While Donald Keene and other literary historians’ explanation that most of the Japanese writers who lived off their penmanship had to collaborate with the authorities in order to survive and feed their families is correct, the fact remains that being a writer in prewar and wartime Japan was a very lucrative profession, and allowed one to lead quite a luxurious life. Beth-Sara Katzoff gives the example of Kisaki Masaru, a columnist for the magazine “Chūō Kōron”, who, between 1929 and 1939, was making between 5 and 10 yen per manuscript page.33 As Katzoff notes, the rates were variable according to the publication, the author’s prominence and gender. Nevertheless, at 5 yen per page, one writer could make 150 yen per month, which was three times the starting monthly salary at top-level companies in Tokyo.34 Another example given by Katzoff is that of Takamure Itsue, the renowned feminist and strong supporter of the military regime during the war. Takamure wrote in her diary that in the 1940s, her income was of 150 yen per month, made exclusively off her publications in the magazine “Nihon fujin,” where she was writing articles encouraging women’s patriotic support for the state.35 On the other hand, writers like Nagai Kafū stopped writing altogether during the war years, thus refusing to collaborate, and managed to survive off prewar royalties, but still paying the price of enduring financial hardships.36 Sata, however, joined the ranks of the patriotic journalists and made trips to the Japan’s new colonies in Manchuria, China and Southeast Asia, becoming very active in her support of the Japanese state. During the two years of her energetic pro-war activity, Sata visited many of the Japanese colonies beginning in 1941 in 32 See Donald Keene, Japanese Writers and the Greater East Asia War, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 23. No. 2 (February 1964). 210. 33 Katzoff, 57. 34 Katzoff, 57. 35 Idem. 36 Keene, 1964, 222. 88 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR Manchukuo and ending in 1943 in Burma, and sent home an impressive list of articles and travelogues.37 Nevertheless, it is rather difficult to find any piece of fiction that would depict Sata’s attitude towards motherhood and the support of war. In fact, there are hardly any fictional pieces altogether in her literary activity between 1941 and 1944.38 More than the plight of their mothers, Sata seemed to be touched by the plight of the soldiers she encountered in her trips to the newly conquered territories, a fact explained by Satsuma as a normal continuation of her preoccupation with the pain of others, which she exposed in so many of her earlier proletarian writings. In an article of July 1942, Saizensen no hitobito (People on the front line), about her trip to the front in Central China, she wrote: “On this trip, it wasn’t the case that we returned home in tears. We wore cheerful expressions and said something audacious like I hope we reminded them [the Japanese soldiers, the group of writers met] of the people at home, especially the dignified appearance of the women. While we said such things, we parted smiling and waving our farewells. But I remember the faces of the many officers and men whom we left behind. When I attempt to convey a fragment of their trials to the people at home, I end up in tears after all. I am afraid that my silliness will taint the courage of these men who are made to fight all kinds of battles – night and day.”39 One other text that deals this time with women conscripted in factories for the war effort is Sora wo seifuku kokoro (Spirit to Conquer the Sky, 1943),40 in which Sata interviewed women working in an airplane factory. After listening to the women and how they are worried every time when they hear about a plane crashing and wonder if it was not somehow their fault, the author links the home front with the battle front. “When I watch a scene in a film of young pilots in uniform receiving instructions from their commanders, raising their clasped hands, bowing, saying ‘I will return,’ and then swiftly flying off into the sky, I am struck by their desperate resolve, by their courage and radiance reminiscent of long-ago warriors in a personal combat, and moved to tears. But anyone surely would be moved by such a scene. We had not been aware of the sentiments of these women who strive to not have a mechanical problem with the planes that soar into the sky carrying these pilots…”41 37 For a complete list of her publications during those years, please see Gay Michiko Satsuma, Uncommon Ambition: The Early Life of Sata Ineko, PhD Dissertation, University of Hawai’i, 1998, 159 and 181, fn. 38 The only text that some critics consider fiction, is Ryojō (The Heavy Heart of a Traveler), 1941, in Sata Ineko Zenshū, Vol. 3. Kōdansha (Tōkyō: 1978), 359-381. First published in “Chūō Kōron”, 56, No. 9 (September 1941). Rather than as fiction, the text reads as a travelogue, and it deals with the author’s travel to Manchukuo. 39 In Sata Ineko Zenshū, Vol 16, 353. Quoted in Satsuma, 160. 40 In Sata Ineko Zenshū, Vol. 16, 370-371. 41 Quoted in Satsuma, 171. 89 GEORGE SIPOS Although herself a mother of two, like Ch’oe a mother of three, Sata seems not to have been concerned with the possibility of having her son, Kenzō, taken away by the army, and she did not deal with such an issue in any of her wartime fiction or non-fiction writing. As a matter of fact, Gay Michiko Satsuma points out that Sata was very much involved in her literary career. For instance, in Osoroshiki mujun (Dreadful Contradictions, 1935),42 writing about the conditions immediately following the decision to divorce her husband, Kubokawa Tsurujirō, Sata wrote: “I am not thinking of devoting my life from here on for the sake of my children. I want my own life. I do not want to hurt my chances for the sake of my children. I do not see my life from the larger perspective of my life with children…. I do not want to be merely a mother, even for the sake of my children.”43 Commenting the fragment above, Gay Michiko Satsuma wrote that “literary success and personal growth meant more to her than being a wife and mother.”44 ***** Things are a lot different when it comes to Hayashi Fumiko and her wartime literary activity. Coming from a very poor family of street peddlers, Hayashi’s most ardent desire was to make money and be popular, and writing, for which she had a natural gift, was the best way for her to achieve her goal. Hugely popular before the war, especially after the publication of Hōrōki (A Vagabond’s Story, 1930), she maintained a constant presence in the publications of the time, both with fiction and non-fictional pieces. As early as 1937 she threw herself in the war effort and traveled to China as a correspondent of the daily “Mainichi shinbun”, becoming the first Japanese woman inside Naking after its fall.45 She went to the war front again the next year, in a competition with her rival in literary popularity, Yoshiya Nobuko, and managed to be the first Japanese woman inside Hankow after the fall of that city to the Japanese army. From October 1942 through May 1943 she traveled to French Indochina, Singapore, Java, Borneo, and Sumatra, as a member of the Hōdōhan (Japanese News Corps)46 and used her experience to write, besides numerous travelogues, much later, in 1951, her most famous postwar novel Ukigumo (Drifting Clouds).47 After she returned to Japan, in 1943, she adopted a boy, Tai, a very important moment in her life, and which inspired her to write two stories, one in 1941, Fūbai (Anemophily) and the other in 1949, Nioi sumire (Sweet Violet). For the rest of the war years she dedicated herself to her son, and stopped writing (an event comparable 42 Published in “Fujin kōron”, 20, no. 10 (October 1935). Osoroshiki mujun, 79. Quoted in Satsuma, 145. 44 Satsuma, 145. 45 Donald Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era. Fiction, Columbia University Press (New York: 1998). 1142-1143. 46 Susanna Fessler, Wandering Heart: The Work and Method of Hayashi Fumiko, State University of New York Press (Albany: 1988), 39. 47 Keene 1998, 1143. 43 90 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR with the one in Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s biography) until after the war. One of her biographers, Fukuda Kiyoto, blames Hayashi’s decision on the harsh publication conditions imposed on writers after 1942.48 Compared to Sata, there are more stories touching on the subject of feminism and motherhood in Hayashi’s writings during the war, even though she did not have children of her own. None of the stories is, however, concerned with mothers having to send their sons to war. For the present article, it is interesting to note the usage of the pronoun anata (“you”) in the first two reportages from the frontline that Hayashi produced in 1937 and 1938, Sensen (Battlefront) and Hokugan butai (The North Bank Unit), respectively. Ch’oe used the same pronoun in her The Wild Chrysanthemum and addressed her writing to an absent character. As Fessler noted,49 the two texts are rather diaries than letters, despite the usage of the addressee pronoun. As Ch’oe’s writing is not formally a letter either, and the character 抄 (shō) in her title is still in need of an explanation, it could also be considered to be part (“excerpt”) of something similar to a diary with the same title. Hayashi’s stories produced around the year 1942 deal to some extent with the issue of motherhood. In Fūbai (Anemophily),50 the main character is Sanae, a young, single woman who wants to adopt a child (just like Hayashi will do two years after writing this story). She wants to be a mother, but she does not want to get married, so she has to lie to the adoption agency. She tells them she is a widow. She is very happy that she will get a child, but she is eventually exposed as being single and is rejected by the adoption agency. She is heartbroken and angry that she is not allowed to prove what a good mother she could be. While Hayashi is usually regarded as a writer who has not been indebted to any political influences,51 this story shows an interesting side of her work as it constitutes a criticism of the Japanese wartime law according to which a young woman could have been branded a traitor if she did not marry before she reached the age of twenty-five.52 Perhaps a more interesting story for the purpose of the comparison with Ch’oe is Kawauta (River Song, 1941). 53 The story deals with one of the most important topics in Hayashi’s writing: illegitimacy. An illegitimate child herself, Hayashi had strong opinions on the topic and expressed them through her characters in 48 Fukuda Kiyoto, Endō Mitsuhiko, Hayashi Fumiko: Hito to sakuhin, Shimizu Shoin (Tōkyō: 1966). 199. Hayashi Fumiko Zenshū (Shinchōsha, 1951) does not include the two texts. They were included in a later complete works edition, of 1977. This information is indebted to Fessler, 155. 50 In Hayashi Fumiko Zenshū, Vol. 9, Shinchōsha (Tokyo: 1952), 215-225. 51 Fessler, XII. “Fumiko [did not] approach her work with a specific political agenda. Throughout her career her writing displayed a virtual allergy to complex ideologies and philosophical constructs. Rather, she exhibited a kind of naïve common sense, one that an audience disgruntled with the petulance of Dadaism, the didacticism of Marxism, and the determinism of Naturalism, found refreshing and honest.” 52 See Katzoff, 138 for details. 53 In Hayashi Fumiko Zenshū, 20, 273. Detailed discussion of this story is to be found in Fessler, 127. 49 91 GEORGE SIPOS several writings. The main character in Kawauta is Shimagi Yasuko, a young girl, who is regarded as a “problem child” at school. Kawajiri Hisako, Yasuko’s teacher, feels pity toward the little girl and wants to help her, especially after Yasuko’s parents die. She needs to refrain herself from giving special attention to the girl at school, as a fellow teacher is accusing her of favoritism. So, Hisako decides to take Yasuko home and put her under her tutelage. According to her principles, she takes good care of the girl, but Yasuko does not seem to be happy. Hisako cannot understand that Yasuko wants independence more than anything, and the fact that her school teacher helps her out of pity makes her feel even lonelier and more dependent on the adult. In an attempt to make Yasuko understand that she only wants to make her happy, and take good care of her, Hisako gives the little girl a lecture in unselfishness: “You must not think only of yourself. Now that you have come to stay with me there is nowhere else to go, so you must put all your energies into your studies. Just like I've always said, right? People are different from cats and dogs. Your mother will have no peace if you go about always putting yourself before everything else… Life is difficult for everybody. Don't go thinking that you are the only one who is sad. You must not think that you alone are unhappy. You're under my care, now… you must gain strength from that. Mr. Kawajiri is abroad serving his country. Soldiers can't just go home of their own accord when being in the military becomes unpleasant, you know. You mustn't cry over such things as this. We've all got to get along together, don't we? We've all got to take care of things at home while the others are off at war. Mr. Kawajiri would surely think poorly of you if he saw this behavior. You said you wanted to go home, but where would you go?”54 This is a crucial passage in understanding the difference between Hayashi and Ch’oe. For young Yasuko, the appeal of the war hero has no meaning, while in ten-year old Shōichi it stirs up feelings of respect and awe: “The auditorium is large. Every single window is open and so much wind blows into the room that it is cold. Photos of Yi In-Sok and Yi Hyong-sok were brilliantly displayed side by side decorated with black ribbons. Perhaps because of the way the breeze makes the ribbons flutter, it seems to me as if their faces have come alive and they are saying something to me. Without being told to do so by anyone, Shōichi takes off his hat as he stands before the two men and bows politely. I soon follow Shōichi by lowering my head.”55 While the two children grew up in similar education systems, Shōichi seems to be lacking any kind of agency, and he is left at the state’s and his mother’s mercy. Seeing the boy absolutely unable to act on his own one has to ask again about the meaning of his mother’s revenge, which acquires monstrous dimensions: Shōichi seems to have been raised by his mother for the purpose of being sacrificed, because he is illegitimate. Instead of an act of rebellion against a male54 55 Hayashi Fumiko Zenshū, Vol. 20, 273. Quoted in Fessler, 127. Frederick translation. In Japanese, 142-143. 92 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR dominated society, where single mothers and their children are denied acceptance, Ch’oe’s character’s revenge becomes a cold-blooded murder for her own benefit. Moreover, everything seems to have been thoroughly planned: for the ten years of his life Shōichi was not taught about his roots and he is apparently unaware that he is not Japanese, hence his sincere willingness to serve and die for the emperor. Illegitimacy, while important, has more of a positive meaning for Hayashi’s characters. Fessler writes: “Hisako's pity stems from the knowledge that Yasuko lacks a stable family, that she is poor, and that she is illegitimate. To Hisako, these are fatal characteristics to be righted through charity. To Yasuko, they are incidental characteristics to be righted with effort. Like so many of Fumiko’s characters, Yasuko does not want pity; she wants the chance to work and support herself. Her age prevents her from being taken seriously.” 56 In a very different way from Ch’oe’s “I”, Yasuko’s adoptive mother manages to understand an essential fact: the child needs to have agency. “I've never once thought about children's happiness. I've always thought about children through the logical eyes of an adult. Yasuko said that I was a liar. I'm not sure exactly what she was referring to when she did, but come to think of it, perhaps it was because I am living inside my own world of constructs.”57 Shōichi is condemned to follow the rules of the world of adults: he is a product of the imperial education and his mother’s thirst for revenge. Yasuko, on the other hand, has the privilege to become free, with the price of losing both of her parents, which in Hayashi’s ethical system does not seem to necessarily be a bad thing, as long as the child can assume agency. The illegitimate characters in Hayashi’s writings accept their illegitimacy and move on with their lives.58 Without being a criticism of the imperial system or of the imperial war, Hayashi’s Kawauta offers a different approach to a problem similar to the one raised by Ch’oe’s The Wild Chrysanthemum. It is true that Hayashi does not concern Hisako with such issues as the woman’s failed modernity in Japan (she is, after all, an entirely different type of a character than Ch’oe’s protagonist), but she finds a more productive approach to the issue of the illegitimate child than the Korean writer. ***** The last writer considered as a potential Japanese counterpart for The Wild Chrysanthemum is Yoshiya Nobuko and one of her long novels, Onna no kyōshitsu (Woman’s Classroom, 1939).59 Like Hayashi Fumiko, Yoshiya was an enormously popular writer in the prewar, but also in the postwar period (while Hayashi died in 1951, leaving behind many unfinished projects, Yoshiya lived until 1973). To give 56 Fessler, 128. Hayashi Fumiko Zenshū, 20. 281. Quoted in Fessler, 128. 58 Fessler, 129. 59 Serialized in “Tōkyō nichinichi shinbun” from January 1st till August 2nd. 57 93 GEORGE SIPOS an idea of her popularity it is probably enough to mention that Onna no kyōshitsu was Yoshiya’s ninth novel to be serialized in a major daily newspaper.60 During the war years, Yoshiya, like other writers, was a member of the Pen butai (The Pen Corps), and was dispatched to various locations in the Japanese empire for propaganda purposes. For most of the time she was a war correspondent for Fujin no tomo, a women’s magazine and sent regular articles from Central and Northern China, Manchuria, Java, Thailand, Indochina, and so on.61 She also published in wartime magazines, such as Sensha (Tank) and Sukōru (Squall), in the latter contributing with one of her battlefront reportages Genshi hōkoku: Ran’In (Frontline Report: Dutch Indonesia, May 1941).62 After 1942, like Hayashi, she began building a new house in Kamakura, where she wanted to spend her life together with her life partner, Monma Chiyo and dedicated herself to the study of haiku with Takahama Kyoshi, a well-known poet of the time.63 With Onna no kyōshitsu, we move into the realm of newspaper novels, where the pro-war narratives were dominant during the 1930s. The novel follows a group of seven women medical students from 1936 till 1938, and concentrates on the development of Nimura Fujiho, a beautiful, young woman who becomes a pediatrician.64 To oversimplify the plot, the novel tells the story of Fujiho becoming an ideal Japanese woman, in accordance with the requirements of the “good wife, wise mother” ideology. Written by a lesbian author, from a gay point of view, Onna no kyōshitsu offers an alternative to the image of the dedicated mother, ready to offer her son as sacrifice, from Ch’oe’s story. Fujiho marries Rinya, the blind brother of her lesbian partner, Uiko. Even though a male, Rinya is blind and sexually handicapped (an emasculated character). Uiko is the one who is invested with the patriarch role in the family,65 at least until her death. After Uiko’s death, Fujiho decides to become a dutiful daughter to her adoptive father (she too is an illegitimate child), and dedicate herself to Rinya and her job as a pediatrician. In other words, she fulfills the three duties the Japanese society traditionally laid out for her: daughter, wife, mother (as a doctor who takes care of children).66 Within the context of this article’s comparison, Fujiho represents the alternative for Ch’oe’s main character, the struggle to find ways to get integrated and survive in a conservative society, despite of the patriarchal system. Fujiho is a 60 Miho Matsugu, Death of a Lesbian in Yoshiya Nobuko’s ‘The Woman’s Classroom’, Proceedings of the Across Time and Genre Conference, Aug. 16-20, 2001, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2002. 61 Jennifer Robertson, Yoshiya Nobuko, Out and Outspoken in Practice and Prose, in Anne Walthall (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, Scholarly Resources (Wilmington: 2002), 168. 62 Robertson, 169. 63 Robertson, 170. 64 All plot details are indebted to Matsugu. 65 Matsugu, 12. 66 Matsugu, 15. 94 1942: WOMEN WRITERS AT WAR daughter without being a daughter, a wife without being a wife and a mother without being a mother. Defined through three absences: of the father, of the husband, and of the children, she is, in the same time, the perfect definition of all three roles required from her by the society: daughter, wife, and mother. 5. Conclusion Two main reasons can be mentioned for the lack of that “ideal” text for a comparison with Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s The Wild Chrysanthemum. One is the different meaning of motherhood in wartime Japan and Korea. Due to so many years of education in the spirit of readiness to sacrifice their sons for the sake of the emperor, there was almost no more need for fictional pieces to reinforce that kind of a spirit in Japan. On the other hand, the mass production of such fictional pieces during the second half of the 1930s might also be cited as responsible for the reluctance of major Japanese women writers to engage such topics in the 1940s. On the other hand, even as late as the 1940s, the education system in colonial Korea was not deemed trustworthy enough by the authorities to convince the people of the benefits of the colonial regime and the need to enroll their children as volunteers in the Japanese imperial army. The Japanese government could not entirely rely on school textbooks 67 for education in the spirit of unconditional support for the colonial project. Fiction by famous authors must have been considered a very efficient propaganda weapon. The second reason is represented by the different roles assigned by the wartime authorities to writers in the mainland and in the colonies. While the writers of the mainland were expected to go the war front and send back home articles and reportages (non-fiction), the writers in the colonies had the role to convince their co-nationals of the necessity of the imperial project through fiction. While front reportages benefit from the “reality” effect, they can also be scary and estrange the readers from the colonies from the project of the colonizer. On the other hand, fictional pieces, rooted as they are in the realities of their home country (like the volunteer training camp, the Japanese names, etc), might have had a different impact in Korea and the rest of the colonies. This article represents but a first attempt to deal with such a complex issue, in the course of future research other reasons for the different approach of such topics like motherhood and war support in Japan and Korea around 1940s will surely emerge. 67 See E. Patricia Tsurumi, Colonial Education in Korea and Taiwan, in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (eds.), The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, Princeton University Press (Princeton: 1984), 275-311. 95 GEORGE SIPOS BIBLIOGRAPHY D’Ann Campbell, Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era, Harvard University Press (Cambridge: 1984)Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi, Nogikushō, “Kungmin munhak”, Vol. 9 (Nov. 1942) Kyeong-Hee Choi, Another Layer of the Pro-Japanese Literature: Ch’oe Chŏnghŭi’s ‘The Wild Chrysanthemum’, “Poetica”, 52, Shubun International (Tokyo: 1999) Fukuda Kiyoto, Endō Mitsuhiko, Hayashi Fumiko: Hito to sakuhin, Shimizu Shoin (Tōkyō: 1966) Hayashi Fumiko Zenshū, Vol. 9, Shinchōsha (Tokyo: 1952) Donald Keene, Japanese Writers and the Greater East Asia War, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 23. No. 2 (February 1964) Fukuda Kiyoto, Endō Mitsuhiko, Hayashi Fumiko: Hito to sakuhin, Shimizu Shoin (Tōkyō: 1966) Thomas R.H. Havens, Women and War in Japan, 1937-1945, “The American Historical Review”. Vol. 80, 4 (October 1975) Jost Hermand, All Power to the Women: Nazi Concepts of Matriarchy, “Journal of Contemporary History”. Vol. 19, No. 4, Reassessments of Fascism (October 1984) Elaine Martin (ed.), Gender Patriarchy and Fascism in the Third Reich: The Response of Women Writers, Wayne State University Press (Detroit: 1993) Miho Matsugu, Death of a Lesbian in Yoshiya Nobuko’s ‘The Woman’s Classroom’, Proceedings of the Across Time and Genre Conference, Aug. 16-20, 2001, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press Jennifer Robertson, Yoshiya Nobuko, Out and Outspoken in Practice and Prose, in Anne Walthall (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, Scholarly Resources (Wilmington: 2002). Kazuko Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual: Japan Before and After Defeat in World War II, Princeton University Press (Princeton: 1970) E. Patricia Tsurumi, Colonial Education in Korea and Taiwan, in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (eds.), The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, Princeton University Press (Princeton: 1984) 96