Paper short abstract:

This article seeks to explore the representation of Japanese historical memory as well as the social roles imposed on women between 1930-1945 through the analysis of Urano Suzu, the main character from Kōno Fumiyo’s manga Kono sekai no katasumi ni (‘In this corner of the world’).

Paper long abstract:

This article uses Kōno Fumiyo’s manga Kono sekai no katasumi ni (‘In this corner of the world’) as an example of how historical narratives can be constructed and massively shared as a pop culture product. Kōno’s work is understood as a pseudo-manifesto, a political declaration that Hiroshima’s citizens and history are much more complex than the mere victims of the nuclear bombing. The chosen manga not only represents this political mindset but also provides many examples of how women’s roles can be constructed and naturalized. The discussion will be centered on the manga’s main character, Urano Suzu. Her conception of the romantic love as well as what she thinks about her social and marital roles will be explored.

The theoretical and methodological frames draw from Eco’s and Barthe’s semiotic theories as well as the guidelines put forth by feminist historians like Hélène Bowen Raddeker and Joan Scott. Thus, the article is structured in two main blocs. First, it seeks to explore what mythologies –as understood in Barthes, 1957– can be found in Suzu’s character. Our preliminary findings suggest that although she has assumed as her own the need to serve and please her family and country, she does not quite fit into the so-called exemplar wife mold. Throughout the story she constantly clashes with other womanhood conceptions as well as with people with very different social backgrounds that force her to question herself as well as to discover and acknowledge her own identity. The latter part of the article reflects upon the political disruption generated by the manga’s plot and protagonist, as they significantly depart from what the mainstream empiricist historians would recognize as the ‘one-true story of the Japanese empire’. The analysis reveals a parallelism between the manga’s narrative and the political utility that feminist historians advocate for in their postmodern and postcolonial investigations. Finally, this paper constitutes a contribution to the study of media accounts of the past and how these representations introduce shifts in historical memory.