Rewriting Manchukuo: The question of Japanese literary colonialism and Chinese collaboration

This dissertation examines those Chinese intellectuals who fought against Japanese imperialism along with those who worked closely with the Japanese during the occupation of northeast China (1932-1945). Through a study of their works and a comparison between these works and Japanese-language pieces, I intend to challenge the established interpretive framework which reads Manchukuo literature in terms of the opposition between Japanese literary colonialism and Chinese literary resistance. I probe instead how the shared class culture between Japanese and Chinese writers played a significant role in their collaboration and in the construction of their vision of Manchukuo literature. I also argue that despite the writers' endeavor to construct an identity for Manchukuo literature, this literature was a discursive product that was only coherent through a perpetual comparison with literary "others" such as Japanese literature, Chinese literature, May Fourth literature, and communist literature.