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The Politics of Language in Manchukuo: Hinata Nobuo and Gu Ding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2014

JUNKO AGNEW
JUNKO AGNEW*
Affiliation:
Northern Kentucky University, Kentucky, United States of America Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the language politics of Manchukuo and the implications reflected in the literary texts of the Japanese writer Hinata Nobuo and the Chinese writer Gu Ding. Through the close examination of communicative failures, such as lexical misunderstandings, linguistic barriers, lies, and rumours in Hinata Nobuo's ‘The Eighth Switching Point’ and Gu Ding's ‘The Wilds’, this article illustrates the authors’ different responses to the impact of this language politics. While both authors were aware of the mutable nature of language, Hinata perceived the Japanese language as a symbol of colonial power and thus the miscommunications between Japanese and Chinese in his story address the ethnic hierarchy embedded in language in the specific context of Manchukuo. Gu Ding, on the other hand, did not see language as a defining element of the culture of a nation, and therefore tried to construct a new type of language and community that were not restricted by the discursive notions of the Chinese and Japanese nations. Gu Ding's primary concern was the modernization of his native place and, to him, adherence to traditional language forms was insignificant and deleterious.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 83 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Duara, Prasenjit (2004), Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield)Google Scholar; Tamanoi, Mariko (ed.) (2005), Crossed Histories: Manchuria in the Age of Empire (Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and the University of Hawai‘i Press)Google Scholar; Smith, Norman (2007), Resisting Manchukuo—Chinese Women Writers and the Japanese Occupation (Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press)Google Scholar.

2 In cases of French, Portuguese, and Spanish colonialism in Africa, Asia, and South America, the colonizer's language was often the only official language for education and administration. As a result, many local languages became extinct and the colonizer's language became the official language of the post-colonial countries after their independence. The British supported the teaching of English in India as a means of facilitating colonial control, but according to the scholar Stephen Evans, ‘The discontented products of the English schools were increasingly seen as a potential political threat to the Raj rather than as a class of cultural intermediaries between the British and the Indian masses.’ See Evans, Stephen (2002), ‘Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-century India’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 23 (4), p. 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Gu Ding and his works have been a popular research subject among Japanese and Chinese scholars. The primary reasons for the popularity is that Gu Ding was one of the most active writers in Manchukuo and his essays and works are easily accessible today. For a formative example, see Chunyan, Li (ed.) (1995), Gu Ding zuopinxuan (Selected Works of Gu Ding) (Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe)Google Scholar.

4 The May Fourth Movement (or the New Culture Movement) of the 1910s and 1920s was led by intellectuals and writers like Hu Shi and Lu Xun, who were mostly associated with the journal New Youth. The aim of the Movement was to promote the adoption in China of a Western-defined modernism characterized by science and democracy, and the consequent rejection of Chinese traditional values, ideologies, and social practices.

5 The Japanese called both Han and Manchu ethnicities ‘manjin 満人’ or ‘mankei 満系’ and they also called the Chinese language in Manchukuo ‘mango 満語’ or ‘manbun 満文’.

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8 Yamamuro, Chimera, pp.125–126.

9 The Pingdingshan Incident refers to a mass murder of Chinese civilians by the Japanese military. On 15 September 1932 anti-Japanese guerrilla groups attacked the Wushun coalmine and killed several Japanese. In response to this attack, the Japanese Army gathered Chinese people in the nearby villages. They accused these villagers of collaborating with the guerrilla groups and summarily killed and burned them all, including women and children. The number of fatalities is debated, ranging between 400 (Japanese claims) and 3,000 (Chinese claims). See Taiheiyō sensō kenkyūkai (ed.), Manshū teikoku (Manchukuo), p.136.

10 Taiheiyō sensō kenkyūkai, Manchukuo, pp.135–136.

11 Smith, Resisting Manchukuo, p.23.

12 Gang, Shi (1993), Shokuminchi shihai to nihongo—Manchūkoku, Taiwain, Tairiku senryōchi ni okeru gengo seisaku (Colonialism and Japanese Language—The Language Policies in Manchukuo, Taiwan, and the Occupied Regions of Mainland China) (Tokyo: Sangensha), p.52Google Scholar.

13 Shi, Colonialism and Japanese Language, p.56.

14 Shi, Colonialism and Japanese Language, pp.54–55.

15 Shinto shrines were also built in Manchukuo.

16 Shi, Colonialism and Japanese Language, pp.56–57.

17 Shi, Colonialism and Japanese Language, p.65.

18 There were numerous debates over Chinese and Japanese language in Manchukuo by Chinese writers in the journal Manzhou guoyu (National Language of Manchukuo). Some journals, including Qilin (Chinese mythical animal), which originally published only in Chinese, later included works and essays in Japanese.

19 Nobuo, Hinata (2000), ‘The Eighth Switching Point’ (‘Daihachigō tentestuki’), in Yōkichi, Sugino (ed.), Nihon shokuminchi bungaku seisen shū 6 (The Selected Works of Japanese Colonial Literature 6) (Tokyo: Yumani shobō), p.22Google Scholar.

20 Hinata, ‘The Eighth Switching Point’, p.38.

21 Hideki, Okada (2000), Bungakuni miru manshūkoku no yisō (An Examination of Various Elements of Manchukuo Through Literature) (Tokyo: Yenbun shuppan), p.264Google Scholar.

22 Yizhibanjieji (Scanty Knowledge) was published by the Japanese publisher Shiroshima bunko shuppansha in Changchun in 1938. Fenfei (Fly Strenuously) was published by the Japanese publisher Monthly Manchukuo in Changchun in May 1938.

23 Genya (‘The Wilds’) was published by the Japanese publisher Sanwa shobō in Tokyo. The editor and the translator of this collection was Ōuchi Takao, one of the most active translators and literary critics in Manchukuo. Most stories included in this collection are Yiwenzhi pieces, including Gu Ding's ‘The Wilds’ (‘Yuanye’) and Xiao Song's ‘Artificial Silk’ (‘Renzao juansi’). Manshūkoku kakuminzoku sōsaku senshū 2 (Selected Works of Each Ethnicity of Manchukuo Volume 2) was edited by the Japanese writers Kawabata Yasunari and Yamada Seizaburō. The book was published by Sōgensha in Tokyo in 1944. Besides Jue Qing's works, there are 17 other stories in the collection, including such works as Ushijima Haruko's ‘Spring’ (‘Haru’) and the Russian writer Baikov's ‘At Roryosan’ (‘Roryosan nite’).

24 Wanhua, Huang (1995), Zhongguo kangzhan shiqi lunxianqi wenxue shi (A Literary History of the Occupied Regions During China's War of Resistance) (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe), p.90Google Scholar.

25 Yiwen shufang published Yiwenzhi. Although Gu Ding ran the company, he received financial support from Japanese companies.

26 Gu Ding, ‘The Wilds’ (‘Yuanye’), in Li Chunyan (ed.), Selected Works of Gu Ding, p.317.

27 Gu, ‘The Wilds’, p.272

28 Gu, ‘The Wilds’, p.282.

29 Gu, ‘The Wilds’, p.284.

30 Hayashi Fusao 林房雄 was a Japanese writer and a literary critic. He was a communist writer in the 1920s but went through tenkō in 1932. He founded the journal Bungakukai文学界 (The Literary World) with other writers in 1933 and also published many books, including Musuko no seishun 息子の青春 (The Youth of A Son) and Tsuma no seishun妻の青春 (The Prime Time of a Wife). He was a worshipper of the Japanese emperor and he continued to defend Japan's position in the Pacific War after it ended. Hayashi never lived in Manchukuo. This discussion took place in Changchun when Hayashi visited Manchukuo in 1942.

31 ‘A Discussion Between Hayashi Fusao and Gu Ding’ (‘Hayashi Fusao, Kotei taidan’), Geibun (Arts and Literature) (April 1942), p.146.

32 Gu, ‘The Wilds’, p.260.

33 Gu, ‘The Wilds’, p.261.

34 Saussure explains the value of a word from both a conceptual and material viewpoint and stresses that the value of the word (the sign) is not determined by the correlation between a signifier and a signified alone (signification) but in its interaction with the things around it which involves an exchange and comparison with other words and languages. The point of his argument is that a word does have a pre-existing meaning but that the meaning is always created in the environment.

35 Saussure, Ferdinand de (1998), ‘Course in General Linguistics’, in Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael (eds), Literary Theory: An Anthology (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers), p.83Google Scholar.

36 For the history of Japanese loan words to China, see Norman, Jerry (1988), Chinese (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp.21–22Google Scholar; and also Liu, Lydia (1995), Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity China—1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press)Google Scholar.

37 According to the scholar of Japanese cultural studies, Kitazawa Kazutoshi, the word ‘healthy’ (kenkō 健康) was of Japanese origin. Kitazawa's study of two Japanese specialists of Dutch studies, Takano Chōei (1804–1850) and Ogata Kōan (1810–1863), suggests that people in Japan began to use this term widely after the Meiji Restoration. The earliest appearances of this term are in Takano Chōei's Kanyōnaikei setsu (Article on the Conditions of China and the West) (1836) and Ogata Kōan's Enseigenbyōyakuron (The Summary of the Foreign Origin Diseases) (1837). Kitazawa explains that Ogata's book demonstrates the process in which Ogata coined the term ‘kenkō’ and promoted it by stating that the normal and healthy condition of a body should be called ‘kenkō’. Morohashi's Daikanwa jiten also indicates that in the pre-modern period ‘jiankang’ did not mean ‘healthy’ in China but was a name for places, including Nanjing. Hanyudacidian also indicates that the earliest appearance of ‘jiankang’ in Chinese modern literature was in the 1950s. Wang Zheng's study of the women's movement in early twentieth-century China also explains that the concepts of health, physical education, and national strengthening emerged in China in the 1920s and 1930s. Based on the evidence above, it is reasonable to conclude that the term ‘healthy’ (kenkō 健康) was coined in Japan in the mid- nineteenth century and was exported to China in the 1920s and 1930s. See Kazuichi, Kitazawa (2000), Kenkō no nihonshi (Japanese History on the Concept/Term of ‘Health’) (Tokyo: Heibonsha)Google Scholar; Tetsuji, Morohashi (1990), Daikanwa jiten (Great Chinese-Japanese Dictionary) (Tokyo: Daishūkan shoten), p.653Google Scholar; Zhufeng, Luo (1997), Hanyu dacidian (Great Chinese Dictionary) (Shanghai: Hanyudacidian chubanshe), p.1522Google Scholar; Zheng, Wang (1999), Women in the Chinese Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press) pp.145–186Google Scholar.

38 Kimitada, Miwa (2007), ‘Pan-Asianism in Modern Japan: Nationalism, Regionalism, and Unversalism’, in Saaler, Sven and Koschmann, J. Victor (eds), Pan Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism, and Borders (London and New York: Routledge), p.21Google Scholar.

39 Shi Gang provides several examples of kyōwa-go and Manshū-kana. An example of Kyōwa-go is a sentence: 「ニーデ(你的)トーフ(豆腐)とイーヤン(一样)で、 ショーショー(少々)カタイカタイ(硬い硬い) メーユ— (没有)?」 Sentences usually consist of a mixture of Japanese readings of Chinese nouns or Chinese readings of Japanese nouns with Japanese particles. An example of Manshū-kana is the Chinese sentence 「这几天天气很冷」 in Japanese katakana 「ヂオーヂイーテイアヌテイアヌチイーヘヌ ロン」 Manshū-kana was first introduced by the Manchukuo Ministry of Education in 1935 and was gradually standardized. Manshū-kana was examined in schools after 1941 and the Ministry of Education issued a study guide for Manshū-kana in 1943. For more information on kyōwa-go and Manshū-kana, see Shi, Colonialism and Japanese Language, pp.73–81.

40 Shi, Colonialism and Japanese Language, p.77.

41 He Yunxiang (1941), ‘Manyu kana ji qi chuangzhi zhi yiyi’ (‘Mango-kana: Its Creation and Significance’), Xin manzhou (New Manchukuo), (August), p.76.

42 He, ‘Mango-kana’, p.76.

43 He, ‘Mango-kana’, p.76.

44 Gu Ding, ‘The Whole Night: Language’ (‘Tongxiao: Yuyan’), in Li (ed.), Selected Works of Gu Ding), p.129.

45 Gu, ‘The Whole Night: Language’, p.132.

46 Gu, ‘The Whole Night: Language’, p.129.

47 Gu, ‘The Whole Night: Language’, p.130.

48 See the discussion on Manchukuo literature in Manshū Roman, Vol. 5, 1940. Reprinted and edited by Lu Yuanming in 2002 (Tokyo: Yumani shobō).

49 Ding, Shan (1998), ‘The Leaves of Evergreen Pine Tree Are Green Again’ (‘Wannian songshangye you qing’), in Ti, Chen (ed.), Liang Shanding Yanjiu ziliao (The Research Materials of Liang Shanding) (Shenyang: Shenyang renmin chubanshe), pp.199–205Google Scholar.