Women's Performative Writing and Identity Construction in the Japanese Empire

Abstract

In Women’s Performative Writing and Identity Construction in the Japanese Empire, the author examines how writers captured various experiences of living under imperialism in their fiction and nonfiction works. Through an examination of texts by writers producing in different parts of the empire (including the Japanese metropole and the colonies and territories of Taiwan, Korea, and Manchukuo), the book explores how women negotiated the social and personal changes brought about by modernization of the social institutions of education, marriage, family, and labor. Looking at works by writers including young students in Manchukuo, Japanese writer Hani Motoko, Korean writer Chang Tŏk-cho, and Taiwanese writer Yang Ch’ien-Ho, the book sheds light upon how the act and product of writing became a site for women to articulate their hopes and desires while also processing sociopolitical expectations. The author argues that women used their practice of writing to construct their sense of self. The book ultimately shows us how the words we write make us who we are.