전쟁의 표상, 총후 여성

Abstract

The Japanese idea of ‘the home front(Japanese: jūgo, lit: behind the gun)’ was formed during World War II, indirectly indicating women who serve for the country in the civilian area, home, while men fight in the front line. In 1941, the Japanese government started the Pacific War and legislated the National Mobilization Law. Under these circumstances, the home front emerged as the representation of war. The wartime situation was strategically divided into the battlefield and the home front. Recent studies on wartime art have a tendency to marginalize artworks related to the home front. Yet to fully understand the art during wartime, these diverse visual images of the home front and their backgrounds should be reinterpreted. The art exhibitions run by the colonial government valued the idea of local color, making it the most important artistic achievement for artists of the colony. However, Woman of Shandimen sha by Taiwanese female painter Chen Jin(1907-1998), describes a Taiwanese indigenous woman, yet is difficult to simply define it as an embodiment of local color. Chen painted this work during the time of the Government-General of Taiwan’s enforcement of southward expansion policy toward Southeast Asian countries as a part of their militarization plan. The government policies and system on art became uniform during wartime, especially with the Pacific War on the way. ‘Women’ were mobilized on the home front in order to support the war, representing the image of ‘women on the home front’, which was basically what the government aimed for. They were obligated to fill the absence of men and support the war. The image of women on the home front in Chen’s painting has a twofold otherization structure within it: first, Japan, the colonial ruler, otherizing its’ colony Taiwan, and second, Taiwan otherizing its’ indigenous people. Japan lost the war in 1945 and women were finally released from the duty of ‘the home front.’ ‘Women on the home front’ is a representation of the war, and also an image to overcome.