Rewriting History from the Shore: A Spanish Dominican Nun's Encounter with Japan During the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Introduction

There are relatively few texts dealing with Japan written by women during the first half the twentieth century, and most of the ones that do exist were authored by English-speaking women.¹ As Gayle Nunley in her study of Spanish travel narratives points out, owing to the persistence of cultural attitudes and the fact that travelogues often narrate "work-related journeys," international travel and the texts generated from these travels were predominately male endeavors.² Yet there was one career for women in Spain that provided the opportunity for travel: that of missionary. Dominican Spanish nun Sor María Rosa Miranda was one such missionary who wrote travelogues, and her A través del Japón [Across Japan] (1942) is the focus of this study.³

Paying attention to the historical context within which the text was written, I show that A través del Japón exhibits a multiple discourse on the Orient. Sor Miranda's text reflects the hegemonic discourses prevalent at that time (orientalism, fascism, etc.), but at the same time, it presents the reader with an alternative narrative: one that emphasizes the story of women and that challenges those very same hegemonic discourses. The first part of this essay points out where Sor Miranda's text manifests oriental-ist precepts. The second part outlines some of the fundamental aspects of Span ish conservative ideologies, the fascist interest in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century, and the presence of a fascist discourse on Japan in Sor Miranda's text. The third part highlights the themes and writing techniques Sor Miranda employs to create an alternative narrative. The final part of this essay elucidates how Sor Miranda uses Japanese myth and legends to establish an alternative version of history and an alternative idea of education for women that works to counteract (male) tradition.

However, before I examine the orientalist aspect of Sor Miranda's work, it will be helpful to detail some aspects of Sor Miranda's life and to flesh out the historical context in which she wrote her text. In the introduction to A través del Japón, Sor Miranda states that she lived in Japan for five years and spoke Japanese (10). Unfortunately, there is not much information about her life aside from this. From one other source we do know she was born in Oviedo, Spain, in 1910.⁴ We also know she traveled to Japan before she was twenty. After five years in Japan she spent four years in the Philippines and then returned to Spain by "superior mandate" immediately preceding the start of the Spanish Civil War.⁵ Owing to the persecution of the church by the communists and anarchists at the outset of the war, Sor Miranda was forced to flee to France and, later, Italy.⁶ From this information it can be deduced that she was seventeen in 1927 when she went to Japan. And similar to the famous Mexican colonial-period writer Sor Juana, one source states that Sor Miranda at a young age showed a desire for learning but was denied entry into the School for Women Teachers (Escuela Normal de Maestras). Not taking no for an answer, she educated herself and found another way to become a teacher.⁷ She traveled to Japan and worked with children in schools, probably in the kindergartens that were set up by the Dominicans.⁸ It seems that her place of residence and work would have been at a mission either in the rural and poor zones of the island of Shikoku (probably in Matsuyama), in Tokushima, or in the few areas of Tokyo where there were Spanish Catholic churches and schools. Early twentieth-century Spain was marked by ideological struggles and debates that resulted in long years of dictatorship grounded in conservative ideologies, starting with Manuel Primo de Rivera's rule from 1923 to 1930.¹⁰ Furthermore, the ubiquitous presence of the Catholic Church in Spanish society should be taken into account. Primo de Rivera's...