英文摘要 |
This paper undertakes a contrapuntal reading of four literary representations of local Chinese families in Manchukuo and Taiwan under Japanese imperial rule: The Ryū Family (1941) and Madame Chin (1940-1943) by Japanese writers, and The Green Valley (1942) and 〞Peace for the Entire Family〞 (1943) by Chinese writers. Focusing on the inconsistencies between ethnicity, state and empire in Manchukou and Taiwan, I discuss how Japanese and Chinese writers respectively represent the relationships between Chinese emigrant families, the Japanese empire, and the local community. While Japanese writers attempt to disentangle the local Chinese family from China and connect it instead to the Japanese imperial genealogy, Chinese writers stress what they regard as ineradicable ethnic and cultural differences through the local community. However, as a cultural product engendered at the intersection of various histories, spaces, nations, languages, and cultures, these literary representations cannot attain the purity and authenticity as assumed by their authors. Furthermore, these imperial cultural productions serve as materials through which questions of cultural translations, leftist ideal and practice, and East Asian modernity can be reexamined, and thus pose a challenge to the received narrative and framework of modern nation and nationalism. |