Wielding pens as swords: Chinese women writers and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, 1936--1945

“Wielding Pens as Swords: Chinese Women Writers and the Japanese Occupation of Manchuria, 1936–1945” is a social and literary history of Japan's colonial state of Manzhouguo. The major objective of this dissertation is to assess the lives, careers, and literary legacy of the most prominent Chinese women writers during the latter stage of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. This study has two aims. The first is to illuminate the regulatory framework through which the Japanese colonial state aimed to contour local Chinese identity and cultural production. The second is to reveal how Chinese women writers in Manchuria articulated their experience and perception of Japanese imperialism.; The writers who are the focus of this study worked within Japanese colonial institutions as adversaries to Japan's imperial project, empowered by ineffectual Manzhouguo state policies and official misogyny. From the mid-1930s, as male writers were driven into silence, exile, or the grave, the women embarked on a decade long quest to “describe” and “expose” the reality of Chinese life under Japanese occupation. May Fourth ideals of women's individual emancipation inspired them to forge careers as critics of Japanese colonial rule. My interpretation of their writings stresses the perseverance and strength of the impact of the May Fourth movement, which defined much of urban society in the Republic of China during the 1920s. May Fourth literary styles and ideals of womanhood undermined Japanese efforts to sever ties between Manchuria and the rest of China. This study seeks to define the complex relationships between their literary legacy and Japan's imperial project.; “Wielding Pens as Swords” adds to a growing body of recent critical scholarship incorporating Chinese language sources into received interpretations of Japan's colonial state of Manzhouguo. Analysis of the lives and literary legacies of the most prominent Chinese women writers of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria sheds important light on larger theoretical controversies over the nature of Japanese imperialism and Republican Chinese society, and the role of women and men in both.