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Paper short abstract:

How is Japanese post-war media on Mongolia influenced by pre-war conceptualisation and visualisations of Mongolian identity and by the trajectory of media creators active involvement in a colonial project ? I discuss examples of a lingering imperial gaze and complex new views on Mongolia and Japan.

Paper long abstract:

During the early to mid-twentieth century, the territory often subsumed under the acronym ‘Manmo’, a region encompassing large parts of North East China and Inner Mongolia, played a crucial role in the Japanese empire’s geopolitical objectives, settlement plans and imaginary. Japanese media reports emphasized the friendship and co-operation between Japan and (Inner) Mongolia and it’s importance to Japan as a military ally. Moreover, Mongolian scenery and customs were favourite topics among Japanese professional photographers. Their images ensured high visibility for Mongolians as Imperial subjects in Japan and were used to legitimize Japan’s expansionist endeavours and promote pan-Asian ideals.

In the post-war years, by contrast, Mongolia received relatively little attention and media on Mongolia - with the exception of movies on the Mongolian invasions in the 13th century - were quite rare. In this paper, I introduce selected examples of media productions, such as movies, photography and childrens books, that endured beyond the Japanese imperialist period, trace conceptions of Mongolian (and Japanese) identity through the Japanese lens and critically interrogate how colonial imaginations were transcribed into media examples popular today.

I demonstrate that some popular media still relies on the accentuation of “exotic” cultural difference and portrayals of intercultural encounters as mutually beneficial for both Japanese and Mongolians. Their reliance on strongly sentimental imagery echoes the Japanese imperial gaze.

Yet while occasionally in event recent Japanese media productions, Mongolians continue to serve as ‘the other’ and as enigmatic signifiers of a Japanese view that ‘Asia is One’, other examples of visual media speak of more complex conceptions of Japanese-Mongolian relations. For a broader view, I introduce narratives that break with stereotype and nostalgia and may offer a space for viewers to reflect on a changed post-war Japanese identity. I conclude that the historization of popular media examples is a deciding factor for understanding their role in the long post-war shadow of Japan’s imperial project.

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Paper short abstract:

Which would be more appealing to Japanese viewers: a message that Ainu can and will be assimilated into society or one which stresses heterogeneity, focusing on exotic cultural differences? I will analyze several film depictions of the Ainu to argue postwar Japanese cinema paradoxically chose both!

Paper long abstract:

One question that has plagued the modern nation-state of Japan is how to define the boundaries of Japaneseness. Are the indigenous Ainu fully Japanese as well? If so, how can society and the state balance laudable egalitarian goals with a respectful attitude towards Ainu culture? The tension between desire to assimilate (and thereby, arguably, erase) the Ainu, and racial fear that the assimilation project might actually succeed, is at its most visible in Japanese cinema. How did filmmakers approach the delicate issue of the Ainu ‘Other’ in postwar cinema? Which tactics did they employ in representing Hokkaido’s indigenous inhabitants on screen?

In this paper, I will focus on comparative analysis of several of the highest-profile postwar narrative (fiction) films that purport to show the Ainu. A 1947 romance entitled Lila no hana wasureji (dir. Hara Kenkichi, starring Takamine Mieko and Fujita Susumu), is the trailblazing example. As the pioneering attempt to depict what at that time was Japan’s only indigenous Other, the filmmakers (in this film and in the various other cinematic efforts which followed) must come to terms with how visible they wish to make the ‘natives’ (since the main plotline is typically focused on ethnically Japanese characters). Such films, particularly in the early postwar period after the war stripped away all other vestiges of Empire, also had to wrestle with Hokkaido as the last colonial territory remaining to Japan, and the Ainu as—potentially—postwar Japan’s only colonial subjects.

Viewers will soon notice that these films fall into familiar Orientalist patterns, seeking to exaggerate “exotic” Ainu differences (be they sartorial, linguistic, or cultural). Yet the filmmakers, confusingly, also attempt to erase some of those very differences over the course of their films, as though to suggest that despite their outlandish ways, the Ainu can (and should?) be assimilated after all. Taken together, postwar Japanese cinema’s engagement with the Ainu people, and the paradoxical assimilationism it promotes, ultimately offers a complex and problematic legacy which warrants further study.

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Paper short abstract:

How have Japanese war orphans remaining in Mainland China been represented in terms of their mobility across East Asia? How is their subjectivity shown in the film Song of Exile? And how do these orphans fit into the postcolonial discourse between China and Japan, and between Hong Kong and Britain?

Paper long abstract:

Thousands of Japanese war orphans were left behind in northeastern China (formerly a Japanese colony known as "Manchukuo") during the massive repatriation effort in 1945. De-imperialization and decolonization led to the geographical reconfiguration of Japan’s former colonies and mainland Japan after war’s end. But while the existence of these orphans has received attention, scholarship has tended to overlook the more subtle phenomenon of diasporas and displacement of certain Japanese war orphans throughout East Asia (and beyond). The semi-autobiographical film Song of Exile (1990), made by Ann Hui, acclaimed director of the Hong Kong New Wave, is a timely yet understudied intervention in this issue. In the wake of globalization, Chen Guangxing has proposed "Asia as Method" (2010), which aims to sort out local and trans-regional movements in Asia and to pursue decolonization as well as de-imperialization efforts stalled by the Cold War. Based on Chen's theory, Zhang Zhen reexamines the film archives of the Asian region and presents the concept of the "orphan imagination" (2022), which reorients the colonial "Orphan of Asia" in Wu Zhuoliu's novel to a geocultural Asian orphan consciousness in the context of post-colonialism and the Cold War.

In this paper, I argue that Song of Exile is also a vital film to include in this Asian orphan consciousness. I explore how the film's protagonist, based on the mixed Chinese and Japanese director herself, creates a trans-Asia narrative arising from her own movement between Hong Kong, Japan, mainland China and the UK, and how the film uses her story to discuss decolonization at the point when the Cold War had just ended. The characters' search for their homeland is also a process of losing it: the protagonist with her imaginary homeland, "Manchuria" (now Northeast China), and the mother with Japan, as well as the characters' gradual shift from a relatively stable identity to a wandering sense of orphanhood. Ann Hui successfully incorporates a sense of displacement and a nuanced view of orphanhood, showing her concern for marginalized minority groups and creating more visual space for the "orphans" in society though this autobiographical film.