Resisting Manchukuo: Chinese Women Writers and the Japanese Occupation (review)

This book is at once a history of Chinese literary life during the fourteen years (1932–45) of Japanese rule in the northeastern colony of Manchukuo, and a prosopographic study of the literary careers and personal lives of seven Chinese women writers who lived in Manchukuo: Dan Di (1916–92), Lan Ling (1918–2003), Mei Niang (b. 1920), Wu Ying (1915–61), Yang Xu (1918–2004), Zhu Ti (b. 1923), and Zhuo Di (1920–76).

Based on often-rare primary sources in Chinese, the book provides unique insights into the as yet poorly understood topics of Chinese cultural production and social life in Japanese-occupied Manchukuo. It also reveals the tenacity and broad geographic reach of 1920s May Fourth cultural ideals and the fate of some of the ‘new women’ who imbibed them. The story of these seven women writers further exposes poignant ironies of not only colonial but modern Chinese history. As writers, these women were able to work and publish in Manchukuo because of the misogyny of the Japanese regime: dismissing women’s writing as trivial for much of the occupation period, the authorities unwittingly opened up a space for female literary production. Although the women authors used this space to criticize the Manchukuo regime harshly – if often indirectly – they were later condemned as traitors by the communist authorities in both the anti-rightist campaign of the late 1950s and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Vilified for their status as published writers under Japanese rule, they were further denounced for allowing the ‘enlightenment’ ideals of the May Fourth movement – feminism and individualism in particular – to overwhelm the nationalist and socialist ideals of anti-imperialism and class warfare.

The first three chapters of the book provide the context for the study and include a detailed examination of Japanese colonial rule in Manchukuo, a sophisticated treatment of comparative collaboration, and an introduction to the geographic and literary landscape of the occupied region. Chapters 4 to 7 collectively examine the lives and writings of the seven women and analyze the prominent themes in their literature: endurance, love, sex, darkness, pessimism, and disorder. The final chapters assess the women’s often tragic post-occupation lives and the value of their legacy for the study of Manchukuo.

The book is well written and the main argument clearly, if repetitively, articulated. This repetition is partly a result of the way the book is organized – by often overlapping themes rather than individual authors – which lends itself to the reiteration of the main theses. There are clear benefits to examining the seven women writers as a cultural and social group: this approach reveals the range of professional and literary choices open to women in this time and place, and provides insights into how women of their generation at once resisted and realized – on their own terms – the conservative ideology of good wives and wise mothers. At the same time, however, we often lose the thread of an individual woman’s life as careers, personal choices, and literary works are woven into a composite whole.

A looming question is the intrinsic literary value of these women’s writings. Did they create enduring literary works expressive of broader human truths? Although the author often relates their situation to that of other better-known women writers such as Xiao Hong (one of the most famous writers from Manchuria who lived in exile during the Japanese occupation), Ding Ling (who was also persecuted by the communists for her ‘bourgeois’ adherence to feminists ideals), and Zhang Ailing (who wrote allegedly apolitical tales of life in occupied cities), he does not directly address this question. He has rightfully and forcefully reclaimed these women’s stories for history, but can the same claim be made for literary history?

The book is generally well edited, although the lack of Chinese characters is a great lacuna for scholars in the field. While the range of Chinese materials cited is impressive, it’s unfortunate the author did not use Japanese sources especially...