French Indochina as Seen from the Representations of Women Writers in the 1940s ：Focusing on the Cooperative Relations between the Empire of France and Japan

Abstract

In the 1940s, several Japanese women writers took up French Indochina as their stage, for example Hasegawa Haruko’s <i>Minami no shojochi (Virgin Soil of the South</i>, Kōanihonsha, 1940), Mori Michiyo’s <i>Harewataru Futsin (Clouds Roll Away Over French Indochina</i>, Muroto shobō, 1942), Kimura Ayako’s <i>Futsu·Tai·Inshōki (Impressions of French Indochina and Thailand</i>, Aidokusha, 1943), and Yoshiya Nobuko’s “Tsuki kara kita otoko” (“The Man from the Moon,” <i>Shufu no Tomo</i>, Shufu no Tomosha, 1942.5-1943.7). In this paper, I will elucidate the major differences and points of commonality between these works. In these texts, these writers express the relationality between Japan and France before and after the joint defence agreement. Hasegawa Haruko and Kimura Ayako, who visited before the joint defence arrangement was concluded, wrote that the French treated them warily, while Yoshiya Nobuko and Mori Michiyo, who visited after “Franco-Japanese Cooperation” had been established, found themselves in friendly French society. After the Japanese occupation began, they also elucidated the disappearance of Parisian colour from French Indochina and the gradual change into a Japanese landscape. These women writers became the best choice for the empire to argue that Japanese culture was superior to French culture without exchanging live fire.