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Introduction: History, Women, and China’s War of Resistance against Japan
- University of Illinois Press
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introduction History, Women, and China’s War of Resistance against Japan Although in the United States, Europe, and other parts of Asia oral history has played an important role in the study of World War II,1 such has not been the case in the study of China and World War II, especially the study of women in China’s War of Resistance against Japan. Existing scholarly works on the Second Sino-Japanese War have tended to focus on master narratives and masculine state actors, stressing “the centrality of men’s experiences and theorizations of conflict” as the framework for the study of the war.2 Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the oral history of individual memories, especially ordinary women’s experiences and what they can offer to enhance our understanding of the history of the War of Resistance. The purpose of this study is not to put a female face on the war and thus normalize war, but rather to stress women’s experiences in the War of Resistance. It is resistance, not war, that empowers women. This book has three major objectives. First, it aims to introduce oral histories and private memories into the study of women and China’s War of Resistance against Japan. It focuses on women’s lived and multifaceted wartime experiences in the wartime capital of Chongqing, held by the Guomindang (gmd), or Nationalist Party, from 1938 to 1945. This book records the oral histories of twenty Chinese women, survivors of the war, whose stories were collected by the author through interviews. The inclusion of these war memories is to serve the same purpose as David Thelen proposed in his study of memory and American history: i-xii_1-220_Li.indd 1 8/13/09 3:19:07 PM 2 . introduction The historical study of memory opens exciting opportunities to ask fresh questions of our conventional sources and topics and to create points for fresh synthesis since the study of memory can link topics we have come to regard as specialized and distinct. Those questions grow so naturally out of everyday experiences that they point us toward bridges between our craft and wider audiences who have found professional history remote and inaccessible.3 E. P. Thompson in his pathbreaking study of British industrialization and the working class advises us to expand our knowledge of the past by including and validating ordinary people’s personal experience.4 Ordinary women as a social group are often voiceless and marginalized in the history of China’s War of Resistance. Oral history is important in recovering memories, particularly in uncovering evidence about the experiences of the subordinated and repressed in wartime China, especially when the historical texts are thin on the subject and the period has been ignored by scholars for many decades. Oral history helps recapture ordinary women’s wartime experiences not only by addressing the gendered social and political life but also by providing insights into other forms of structural inequalities during the war in the Chongqing region. Joan W. Scott points out: “Examinations of women’s experiences in war, especially those based on oral histories, are remarkable for their emphasis on death and deprivation. They contrast dramatically with the official emphasis on heroism and valor aimed at mobilizing national support.”5 The same discrepancies existed in the Chinese experience of the war. The oral histories recorded in this book tell us that the war against Japan has at least two stories and that the national mood during the war was also two-faced. One aspect was characterized by the officially promoted visible public stories and the upbeat mood of all citizens participating in the War of Resistance against Japan; the other aspect was marked by the invisible private stories and a sober national mood of death and suffering. We often take for granted the officially constructed images of a heroic War of Resistance while overlooking the personal suffering that sustained it. To reveal women’s suffering and struggles during the war, however, is not to cast Chinese women only as passive victims of the war—the image of helpless grieving mothers and sorrowful wives, as women are often portrayed in violent conflict. Instead, the oral histories in this book inform us about the many faces of women in the war in the gmd-held Chongqing—as the activists in war mobilization, propaganda, and wartime production, as victims of sexual violence and economic hardship, and as innovators of survival stratei -xii_1-220_Li.indd 2...