Disrupting Narratives

Abstract

This article assesses the lives, careers, and literary legacies of the most prominent Chinese women writers during the latter stage of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The article reveals how they articulated dissatisfaction with the Japanese cultural agenda while working within Japanese colonial institutions. Empowered by ineffectual state policies and misogynous official neglect, the women embarked on a decade-long quest to “describe” and “expose” the reality of Chinese women’s lives under Japanese occupation. May Fourth ideals of women’s emancipation inspired them to forge careers as critics of Japan’s cultural agenda, and they undermined Japanese efforts to sever ties between Manchuria and the rest of China. This study adds to a growing body of recent critical scholarship incorporating Chinese-language sources into received interpretations of Japan’s colonial state of Manchukuo.