THE POLITICS 
 
 OF SENTIMENT IN 
 
 POSTCOLONIAL 
 
 
 Duke 
 
 Duke 
 
 Authors 
 
 Authors | 
 
CoLiBri 
 
 Hade In tta/y 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/antijapanpoliticOOchin 
 
The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia 
 
 LEO T. S. CHING 
 
 Duke University Press Durham and London 2019 
 
 APAN 
 
© 2019 Duke University Press. All rights reserved. 
 
 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, 
 CRO 4YY. Designed by Courtney Baker and typeset in 
 Trade Gothic and Minion Pro by Copperline Books. 
 
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
 Names: Ching, Leo T. S., [date] author. 
 
 Title: Anti-Japan : the politics of sentiment 
 in postcolonial East Asia / Leo Ching. 
 
 Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2019. | 
 
 Includes bibliographical references and index. 
 
 Identifiers: lccn 2018044268 (print) 
 
 lccn 2018059395 (ebook) 
 
 isbn 9781478003359 (ebook) 
 
 isbn 9781478001881 (hardcover : alk. paper) 
 
 isbn 9781478002895 (pbk.: alk. paper) 
 
 Subjects: lcsh: East Asia—Relations—Japan. | 
 
 Japan—Relations—East Asia. | East Asia— 
 
 Relations—United States. | United States—Relations— 
 East Asia. | Japan—Foreign public opinion, East Asian. 
 
 | United States—Foreign public opinion, East Asian. | 
 World War, 1939-1945—Influence. | Nationalism- 
 Japan—History. | Imperialism—History—20th century. 
 Classification: lcc DS518.45 (ebook) | 
 lcc DS518.45 .C46 2019 (print) | ddc 303.48/25052—dc23 
 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044268 
 
 Cover art: Anti-Japanese protesters at the Bell Tower 
 Hotel, Xi’an, China. September 15, 2012. Courtesy of 
 BBBar / Alamy. 
 
 Publication of this open monograph 
 was the result of Duke University’s 
 participation in tome (Toward 
 an Open Monograph Ecosystem), 
 a collaboration of the Association 
 of American Universities, the 
 Association of University Presses, 
 and the Association of Research 
 Libraries, tome aims to expand the 
 reach of long-form humanities and 
 social science scholarship including 
 digital scholarship. Additionally, the 
 program looks to ensure the sustain¬ 
 ability of university press monograph 
 publishing by supporting the highest 
 quality scholarship and promoting a 
 new ecology of scholarly publishing 
 in which authors’ institutions bear 
 the publication costs. Funding from 
 Duke University Libraries made it 
 possible to open this publication to 
 the world. 
 
 This book is published under the 
 Creative Commons Attribution- 
 NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 
 United States (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 
 US) License, available at https:// 
 creativecommons.org/licenses/by 
 -nc-nd/3.o/us/. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Acknowledgments ■ ix 
 
 introduction. Anti-Japanism 
 (and Pro-Japanism) in East Asia • 1 
 
 one. When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira: Transimperial 
 Characters, Anti-Japanism, Anti-Americanism, 
 and the Failure of Decolonization • 19 
 
 two. “Japanese Devils”: The Conditions 
 and Limits of Anti-Japanism in China • 36 
 
 three. Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame: “Comfort 
 Women” and Anti-Japanism in South Korea • 57 
 
 four. Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial 
 Anxiety: The Dosan Generation In-Between 
 “Retrocession” and “Defeat” • 80 
 
 five. “In the Name of Love”: Critical Regionalism 
 and Co-Viviality in Post-East Asia • 98 
 
six. Reconciliation Otherwise: Intimacy, 
 Indigeneity, and the Taiwan Difference • 115 
 
 epilogue. From Anti-Japanism to Decolonizing 
 Democracy: Youth Protests in East Asia • 132 
 
 Notes • 143 
 References -153 
 Index • 161 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 In August 2017, four Chinese men dressed in Second World War Japanese 
 military uniforms posed at the Continental Bank Warehouse in Shanghai 
 where Chinese troops fought the Japanese imperial army in 1937. In Feb¬ 
 ruary 2018, two different men, also in Japanese military garb, struck vari¬ 
 ous poses in front of a memorial site on Zijin Mountain in Nanjing where 
 Chinese civilians were murdered by the Japanese army, also in 1937. The 
 images went viral and predictably garnered strong and mostly negative 
 reactions from netizens and unleashed a flood of criticisms against these 
 youths in both mainstream and new media. The situation has escalated 
 to the extent that China’s top legislative body, citing the Zijin case as an 
 example, is proposing a “heroes and martyrs protection law” to punish 
 people who “glorify wars or acts of invasion.” Even the Chinese foreign 
 minister, Wang Yi, joined the fray by calling them “scums among the Chi¬ 
 nese people” (Huang 2018). What upsets the netizens and politicians alike, 
 I surmise, is not only that these men dressed up as Japanese soldiers but 
 also that they deliberately posed in front of memorial sites of Japanese 
 aggression and Chinese resistance that formed the foundation of postwar 
 anti-Japanism. 
 
 The uproar caused by these incidents also inspired a new neologism in 
 cyberspace: jing-ri (ISS), literally, “spiritually Japanese,” an abbreviation 
 of jing-shen-ribenren, or Chinese people who identify themselves spiritu¬ 
 ally with the Japanese. The premise is that these misguided youths’ minds 
 have been contaminated by Japan and, more importantly, they lacked 
 
proper understanding of Sino-Japanese history. The term is widely debated 
 on Chinese websites, especially in relation to another term, ri-za (B 5 x), 
 or “Japanized mongrel.” To many, the two phrases represent different de¬ 
 grees of affinity with Japan: the latter is a more radical or extreme form of 
 the former. What is striking but unsurprising in the media coverage and 
 online discussions of these incidents is the resort to normative nationalist 
 discourse of collective shaming and the blame of historical amnesia. Two 
 decades of state-led patriotic education and countless anti-Japanese tv 
 dramas certainly couldn’t have anticipated the emergence of these jing-ri 
 or ri-za elements in Chinese society! 
 
 The emergence of these acts and their accompanying neologisms, this 
 book will argue, represent a shift of geopolitics whereby modern/colonial 
 Japanese hegemony is giving way to the rise of China. This transimperial 
 moment also signals the complete incorporation of China into global cap¬ 
 italism and the growing influence of Japanese popular culture despite of¬ 
 ficial censorship and bans. The shift of global hegemony is always uneven, 
 contradictory, and, at times, violent. While China has overtaken Japan as 
 the world’s second largest economy, its cultural influence, especially in the 
 realm of popular culture, lags far behind Cool Japan and the Korean Wave. 
 It is noteworthy that some of the jing-ri offenders first tried out their Japa¬ 
 nese uniforms in an animation convention where cosplaying well-known 
 anime characters is a major part of fandom all over the world today. We 
 should also attend to the prevalent new mediascape that continues to blur 
 the line between virtuality and reality and the desire to seek attention 
 and confirmation via multiple social media platforms. In a WeChat post 
 attributed to one of the alleged cosplayers in front of the Warehouse in 
 Shanghai, he describes in detail their successful “mission” and the “thrill” 
 of photographing in the location at night before the watchful eyes of by¬ 
 standers (Cao 2018). 
 
 The emergence of the jing-ri discourse certainly complicates the domi¬ 
 nant anti-Japanism in Chinese society today. When I taught a session about 
 popular culture in East Asia at Duke Kunshan University in spring 2017, 
 I was surprised by the Chinese students’ familiarity and fluency with Jap¬ 
 anese (and Korean) popular culture. They not only find ways to hop over 
 the great firewall of China, but they also find much of Japanese popular 
 culture translated and mediated through Taiwan and Hong Kong. Many 
 of them are jing-ri but not in the spiritual definition of the word, but, as in 
 its other meanings, to be skilled or proficient, in things about Japan. How- 
 
 x Acknowledgments 
 
ever, when I asked some of these students if there’s another anti-Japan pro¬ 
 test, what would they do, many of them said they will, without hesitation, 
 march on the streets. These students clearly separate consumption from 
 identity: consuming Japanese commodities and culture does not mean 
 that they are becoming Japanese. The reaction to the Japanese military 
 cosplay and the students’ maneuvering between consumption and activ¬ 
 ism point to both the limits and relevance of nationalism today. Pro- and 
 anti-Japanism need to be apprehended in their complexity, contradictions, 
 and particular historical conjunctures. It is this messiness of the trans¬ 
 imperial moment that the book is trying to address. 
 
 I began tracking anti-Japan demonstrations in the spring of 2005, largely 
 due to personal reasons. I was making preliminary plans to take my then 
 seven-year-old son to visit my father’s grave in Dandong, just outside of 
 Shenyang city in northeastern China. It would have been my wife and son’s 
 first trip to my father’s hometown. I visited there with my mother for the 
 first time in 1988 to bring over his remains after he passed away in Japan. 
 It was a trip of great importance to my mother, who still lives in Japan and 
 has since remarried a Japanese man. It has always bothered her that while 
 she and I had made occasional visits, her grandson has never met his long¬ 
 distance relatives. Our plan brought her much joy and excitement. The 
 only decision needed to be made was whether we would go through Japan 
 first and travel together or simply meet up with her in China. 
 
 Then came the April anti-Japan demonstrations. 
 
 As the protests spread across several cities and amassed tens of thou¬ 
 sands of people, anxious phone calls from my mother came more fre¬ 
 quently. When a good-sized demonstration took place in Shenyang on 
 April 17, 2005, my mother pressed the panic button and announced that 
 the trip was off. She simply did not think it was safe for us to travel to 
 China, despite my assurance that the protests would subside by the time 
 we arrived and the obvious fact that we are not Japanese. She was not con¬ 
 vinced. Images of violence and fury transmitted through the television 
 screen were too vivid and immediate for her. My stepfather, a man who has 
 experienced both the impoverishment of war defeat and the abundance of 
 postwar economic growth, was obviously disturbed and perturbed by the 
 demonstrations. He asked me on the phone incredulously: “Why do they 
 still hate us? The war has long been over. Japan is a peace-loving country 
 now. Why are they still so angry?” 
 
 The protests had subsided almost completely by the end of April. We, 
 
 Acknowledgments xi 
 
however, decided to postpone our travel until the summer. My stepfather’s 
 seemingly genuine and naive query, however, remained with me: “Why do 
 they hate us?” “Why do they hate us?” has reverberation in the post-9/11 
 American consciousness. In an interesting way, anti-Japanism and anti- 
 Americanism converge on the question of identity and difference, us and 
 them. For George W. Bush, “they” are simply haters of freedom and de¬ 
 mocracy; for Koizumi Jun’ichiro, “they” are merely Japan bashers who 
 intend to endanger bilateral relations. For both leaders, “they” become 
 an incommensurable difference that only serves to reconsolidate the 
 self-assured identity of the “us.” What is lacking is any attempt at self- 
 reflexivity on how the other is constituted through the actions of the self. 
 Despite the myopia and ignorance of the political leaders, “Why do they 
 hate us?” as an emotive response to anti-Japanism and anti-Americanism 
 can become a crucial point of departure for critical thinking. Once we can 
 shed the self-pity and innocence implied in the question “Why do they 
 hate us?” we can move toward the politics of reconciliation. 
 
 It is impossible to acknowledge all the people who have provided op¬ 
 portunities for me to share some of the ideas presented in this book. I am 
 grateful for their advice, criticism, and support. I thank the late Nancy 
 Abelmann, Yan Hairong, Robert Tierney, Masamichi Inoue, Douglas Shoe¬ 
 maker, Shu-mei Shih, Katsu Endo, Cody Poulton, Richard King, the late 
 Arif Dirlik, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Chua Beng Huat, Tomiyama Ichiro, Koma- 
 gome Takeshi, Itagaki Ryuta, Soyoung Kim, Huang Mei-er, Ping hui Liao, 
 Michael Bourdaghs, Ya-chung Chuang, Mariam B. Lam, Younghan Cho, 
 John Treat, Lila Kurnia, Hyunjung Lee, Michael Berry, Rob Wilson, and 
 many others. I thank both Reynolds Smith for helping me to clarify my 
 thinking and writing and Ken Wissoker for his unwavering support and 
 guidance. And I offer my gratitude to the two anonymous readers for their 
 critical engagement and patience. 
 
 Part of chapter 2 was previously published in Sino-Japanese Transcultur- 
 ation: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the End of the Pacific War, ed. 
 Richard King, Cody Poulton, and Katsuhiko Endo (Lanham, MD: Lexing¬ 
 ton Books, 2012); portions of chapter 4 and chapter 6 have appeared in Cul¬ 
 tural Studies 26, no. 5 (2012) and boundary 2 45, no. 3 (2018), respectively. 
 
 xii Acknowledgments 
 
introduction. Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) in East Asia 
 
 An early scene from Bodyguards of the Last Governor (1996; dir. Alfred 
 Cheung), a satire on the impending 1997 handover of Hong Kong to main¬ 
 land China, depicts a night rally against Japan. The outgoing British gov¬ 
 ernor with his family in the motorcade is startled by the noise of a com¬ 
 motion. The camera pans across a crowd of seated protesters listening 
 to a speech by a Hong Kong politician. Waving signs that read “Down 
 with Japanese Militarism!” and “Diaoyu Islands Belong to China!” and 
 repeating the politician’s chants of “Boycott Japanese goods!” and “Down 
 with Japanese imperialism!” the crowd is orderly and enthusiastic. Amid 
 the bustle, Lugo, who will become one of the bodyguards for the British- 
 anointed last governor as a parting joke, shouts down the names of popu¬ 
 lar Japanese celebrities in 1990s Hong Kong, such as Kimura Takuya and 
 Miyazaki Rie, and gives a satisfying grin to his wife sitting next to him. 
 The camera then cuts to the politician who is now offstage. A female aide 
 comes to his side and says that he must be tired and offers him some sushi 
 for sustenance, of which he gladly partakes. The politician gets back on the 
 stage and urges the crowd to toss away any clothing that is made in Japan. 
 As others hurl away their socks, shoes, and so forth, Lugo’s wife reminds 
 him that she bought his shirt at Sogo, the local Japanese department store. 
 He haughtily takes it off and throw it away with glee. Beaming with excite¬ 
 ment and crassly eyeing the bosoms of other female protesters, Lugo seizes 
 the opportunity and cheers, “Those who are wearing Japanese underwear, 
 throw them away!” Somewhat caught off guard by Lugo’s fervor, his wife 
 
whispers to him and asks if she should take hers off too. Lugo hovers over 
 her, as if to protect her from other prying eyes, and sheepishly utters, “No 
 need for that, no need for that.” 
 
 Bodyguards of the Last Governor belongs to the Hong Kong cinema 
 genre that is replete with crass inside jokes, political satire, and local refer¬ 
 ences. The anti-Japanese scene described above, however, poignantly re¬ 
 veals the duality of “Japan” in postwar East Asia: Japan as former military 
 violence and Japan as postwar economic and cultural desire. References 
 to militarism and the disputed islands point to the unresolved historical 
 trauma suffered by the Chinese people at the hands of the Japanese impe¬ 
 rialists. The cry to boycott Japanese goods refers to the economic and cul¬ 
 tural expansionism of postwar Japan in the region and beyond. The waves 
 of anti-Japan banners allow the protesters (and film spectators) to easily 
 draw a single line connecting Japan’s prewar political imperialism with its 
 postwar new imperialism. However, the diegesis of the scenes described 
 above refuses this facile and nationalistic reading of anti-imperialism. The 
 references to sushi and Japan-made underwear, not to mention other Japa¬ 
 nese commodities not featured in the film, only accentuate the pervasive¬ 
 ness of Japanese cultural penetration (as with other globalizing forces) into 
 the lives and onto the bodies of the Hong Kongers, even as they fiercely 
 protest against Japan. 
 
 The disjuncture between political demand and cultural acceptance in 
 the film’s anti-Japan sequence renders visible the definitive form of anti- 
 Japanism in postwar Asia: it is a paradox that defies simple definition and 
 that is simultaneously about and not about “Japan.” The protest tells us 
 less about the actually existing “Japan” than the context of “Hong Kong” 
 in which anti-Japanism conjures certain desire and fantasy about the pu¬ 
 tative notion of Japan. In its most direct form, anti-Japanism is a criticism 
 of Japan’s imperialist legacy and its reluctance to come to terms with that 
 past and to accept its responsibilities with sincere apologies and proper 
 redress. In its rallying and allegorical capacity to take Japan as an object of 
 derision, anti-Japanism reveals much about domestic conditions in places 
 such as Hong Kong, South Korea, or China. The film, after all, is a satiri¬ 
 cal displacement of the anxiety over the 1997 handover, and the anti-Japan 
 scene can be interpreted as a mocking of the fickleness of political com¬ 
 mitments among the Hong Kongers. But we must also ask: why do social 
 anxieties and political concerns in postcolonial East Asia take the form of 
 anti-Japanism? As I will argue here, anti-Japanism in East Asia is a symp- 
 
 2 Introduction 
 
tom of unsettled historical trauma of the Japanese empire and its legacy. 
 Or, in short, it is the failure of decolonization, on the one hand and, on 
 the other hand, also a manifestation of the changing geopolitical config¬ 
 uration of the region under the demands and strains of global capitalism. 
 The unilateral dominance of Japan in the region since the Meiji period is 
 giving ways to more multilateral, and more contentious, relations to other 
 East Asian nations, especially in the context of the rise of China. 
 
 Anti-Japanism in East Asia 
 
 At a talk given at Duke University on book banning, the famed author Yan 
 Lianke made a humorous remark on the absurdity of censorship in con¬ 
 temporary China. According to Yan, despite the plethora of conflicts with 
 foreigners in modern Chinese history—the British come to mind imme¬ 
 diately, but also Russians and Americans—only one such conflict, the Sec¬ 
 ond Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), is allowed, and even encouraged, to be 
 produced for public consumption in Chinese media, especially around the 
 National Day. These anti-Japanese shows are so prevalent that Yan and his 
 friends often joked that the number of Japanese characters killed in one 
 year in Chinese films and tv dramas would amount to the entire popu¬ 
 lation of Japan (127 million)! Yan has, however, seriously underestimated 
 the number of Japanese casualties: of the two hundred or so tv dramas 
 aired during prime time on all Chinese satellite channels in 2012, seventy 
 were about the Second Sino-Japanese wars or spy wars. In Hengdian World 
 Studio, the largest film studio in Asia, located in Zhejiang province, it is 
 estimated that seven hundred million “Japanese soldiers” died at the hands 
 of Chinese patriots that year alone! 1 
 
 Anti-Japanism is neither new nor exclusive to East Asia. In the United 
 States, for instance, there has been a long history of anti-Japan movements: 
 immigration exclusion acts in the early 1900s, internment camps of Jap¬ 
 anese Americans and anti-Japan mobilization during the Second World 
 War, and Japan bashing in the 1980s. What is arguably common among 
 all anti-Japanism in the United States is the fear of the Other manifested 
 through racism, be it the threat of Japan as a competing imperialist power 
 (after the Russo-Japanese War) or as an economic rival (after the Plaza Ac¬ 
 cord). For the United States, and perhaps for Europe as well, anti-Japanism 
 arises when “Western” hegemony is threatened by the real or perceived rise 
 of Japan, a non-Western, nonwhite empire. Anti-Japanism in East Asia re- 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 3 
 
quires a different interpretation and historicization than that of the United 
 States although racism within Asia is growing amid mounting political 
 tensions. 
 
 To begin, we need to distinguish at least two forms of anti-Japanism: 
 “resist-japan” (J/C 0 ) and “anti-Japan” (J 5 . 0 ) in East Asia. “Resist Japan” 
 is widely used in mainland China and the Sinophone world to convey the 
 efforts and success of Chinese struggle against Japanese imperialism, espe¬ 
 cially during the eight-year “war of resistance” (1937-45). “Anti-Japanism” 
 is a decidedly postwar phenomenon that saw its emergence in the imme¬ 
 diate postwar years. Anti-Japanism was mobilized in newly “liberated” 
 former colonies, such as Korea and Taiwan, for the building of political 
 power to unify the “nation.” 2 With the end of the Korean War and the 
 consolidation of the Cold War structure in East Asia, anti-Japanism was 
 soon replaced by anti-Communism and the imposition of martial laws in 
 both countries. In the early 1970s, concomitant with Japanese economic 
 expansionism into Southeast Asia and America’s decision to “return” the 
 Senkaku/Diaoyu islands to Japan as part of the Ryukyu/Okinawa rever¬ 
 sion in 1972, anti-Japanese movements erupted in the region: the Malari 
 Incident of 1974 and the Protest Diaoyu Island movements, for example. 3 
 Anti-Japanism in the 1970s was a diasporic and transpacific movement 
 led mainly by students from Hong Kong and Taiwan in the United States 
 (Wang 2013). Anti-Japanism took on the form of a Chinese cultural nation¬ 
 alism with Bruce Lee as its filmic symbolic icon (see chapter 1). China, iron¬ 
 ically, was not part of the first wave of postwar anti-Japanese movements. 
 Lee’s films were banned from mainland China until the 1980s. The Com¬ 
 munist regime was insisting on building bilateral relations with the Japa¬ 
 nese as the two nations reestablished diplomatic relations in 1972. The early 
 1970s also saw the dissipation of the postwar 1960s antisecurity treaty and 
 peace movement in Japan and coincided with Japan’s growing confidence 
 and reentrance into the capitalist market without opposition in the re¬ 
 gion. It is therefore not a coincidence that Jon Halliday and Gavan McCor¬ 
 mack’s Japanese Imperialism Today: “Co-prosperity in Greater East Asia,” 
 was published in 1974, signaling a “return” of Japanese capital to its former 
 empire as it shifted its lower-end manufacturing facilities to other devel¬ 
 oping nations in Asia. 
 
 Anti-Japanism gained momentum in the early 1980s with an econom¬ 
 ically confident Japan attempting to revise history textbooks by white¬ 
 washing its imperialist aggressions. In August 1991, Kim Hak-Soon, a for- 
 
 4 Introduction 
 
mer “comfort woman,” publicly testified about her experience as a sexual 
 slave under the Japanese military during the Second World War and filed 
 a lawsuit against the Japanese government. Her “coming out” radically 
 challenged the masculinist, patriarchal, and nationalist suppression and 
 denial of sexual violence between the Korean and Japanese governments 
 in the postwar years. Amid the Japanese government’s continued eschewal 
 and abrogation, weekly Wednesday protests by former comfort women 
 and their supporters are, to this day, held in front of the Japanese embassy 
 in Seoul. 
 
 Another contentious issue that elicits strong anti-Japanese sentiments 
 is memories and contention over the Nanking Massacre. The atrocity was 
 tacitly acknowledged but strategically suppressed by the postwar govern¬ 
 ments of China, Japan, and the United States. It was not until the publi¬ 
 cations of Travels in China (1972) by the Japanese journalist Honda Kat- 
 suichi, and The Rape of Nanking (1997) by the Chinese-American writer 
 Iris Chang, that this historical event became politicized, especially in the 
 2000s with Japanese neoconservatives’ repudiation and Chinese insistence 
 on their own victimization (Yoshida 2006). 
 
 In 2005, massive protests against Japan erupted throughout major cities 
 in China. The protesters cited the Japanese government’s ambition to join 
 the UN Security Council and former prime minister Koizumi Junichiro’s 
 continued visit to the Yasukuni Shrine that deified the Japanese war dead 
 (and subjects of Japanese empire) as signs of a lack of remorse and reflec¬ 
 tion on the history of Japanese aggression as reasons for their outrage. 
 Tensions between China and Japan have since continued unabated, as wit¬ 
 nessed by the more violent Chinese protests in 2012 and by China’s own 
 ambition to establish hegemony, including territorial claims that extend 
 beyond East Asia to Southeast Asia. The cursory and selective account is 
 to situate anti-Japanism within its historical conditions of possibility and 
 its pattern of emergence, eruption and ebbing since the 1970s. It is also im¬ 
 portant to differentiate popular and official anti-Japanism although they 
 are imbricated and implicated in ways that are difficult to separate com¬ 
 pletely. The comfort women’s demand for redress and reparation, based 
 on years of denial and shaming, is qualitatively different from the Ko¬ 
 rean state’s own suppression and instrumental usage of anti-Japanism for 
 its political gains, for example. However, the Korean government has no 
 qualms about appropriating the plight of the comfort women for its polit¬ 
 ical tussle with Japan. Similarly, the comfort women and their supporters 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 5 
 
often resort to nationalist discourse for their confrontation with the Jap¬ 
 anese state. 
 
 As mentioned above, it is important to differentiate the various phrases 
 used to describe both adverse and favorable feelings toward Japan. The 
 range of these vocabularies not only differentiates Asian sentiments to¬ 
 ward Japan from the West, but also charts the shifting nuances of “Japan” 
 in Asia from empire to Cool Japan. Besides “resist Japan” and “anti-Japan” 
 (mentioned earlier), there is “hate Japan” (JAB), which is used to describe 
 the hatred for Japan as a sickness, an extreme condition of hostility, like 
 an archenemy. Then there’s something like “repel Japan” (SEB), which is 
 mostly used during legal contexts of exclusion of Japanese immigration. 
 Anti-Japanism has its constitutive Other in pro-Japanism or sentiments 
 favoring Japan. This seemingly oppositional pair are interdependent and 
 in fact share a similar fantasy or desire about some ideas of “Japan.” “Pro- 
 Japan” (IMS) has the sense of being intimate with Japan and is usually 
 used by anti-Japanese nationalists when condemning those who collabo¬ 
 rated with Japanese rule and who, by definition, betrayed the nation. This 
 is particularly sensitive and incriminating in the postcolonial Korean con¬ 
 text, where the chinilpai, or factions that collaborated with Japanese rule, 
 are still being prosecuted today (Kwon 2015). In the Chinese context, those 
 who conspired with the Japanese imperialists are simply called “betrayer 
 of the Han race” OUfF) or “running dogs” (jfe'S'Rj), signifying the central¬ 
 ity of the Chinese race and reducing abettors to subhumans. “Worship 
 Japan” (^B) denotes Japanophiles who harbor sentiments of reverence 
 toward Japan, usually disparagingly referring to the Taiwanese preference 
 for Japan over mainland China. In recent years, two terms, “loving Japan” 
 (DpB) and “deep affection for Japan” (HB), are deployed to characterize 
 younger generations’ preference and addiction for Japanese popular cul¬ 
 ture in Taiwan and mainland China, respectively. What is significant in 
 the new generations’ infatuation with Japanese popular culture is not only 
 that it provides another option of consumption from American-dominant 
 pop culture under global capitalism, but also that it signifies the increasing 
 co-evalness among Asian youth and creating a transnational community 
 of fandom that has the potential to transcend the parochialism and nation¬ 
 alism marred by previous generations’ personal and secondary experience 
 of Japanese colonialism and imperialism. 
 
 6 Introduction 
 
Anti-Japanism and Americanism 
 
 Bodyguards of the Last Governors parodic juxtaposition of “Japan” as both 
 violence and desire is akin to what Yoshimi Shun’ya has argued about the 
 presence of “America” in postwar Japan and Asia (Yoshimi and Buist 2003). 
 Analyzing “America” from a region-wide context (but mainly focusing on 
 Japan) from the perspective of people’s everyday consciousness, Yoshimi 
 makes two important observations regarding postwar geopolitics in Asia: 
 first, that the United States has displaced, replaced, and subsumed the Jap¬ 
 anese empire in the region in the Cold War era. The American Occupa¬ 
 tion and policymakers have collaborated with the conservative Japanese 
 government in making Japan the “economic” hub of Asia, reversing its 
 original plan of radical demilitarization and democratization. Second, the 
 geopolitical calculus of rehabilitating Japan as an economic pivot in the 
 transpacific alliance—as part of a project to construct an anti-Communist 
 bloc—created a division of labor among the Asian nations. Okinawa, Tai¬ 
 wan, South Korea, and the Philippines bear the burden of large Ameri¬ 
 can military functions and installations. Meanwhile mainland Japan con¬ 
 centrated on economic development. As a result, according to Yoshimi, 
 two “Americas” began to emerge on mainland Japan in the late 1950s: the 
 America of violence, mainly surrounding military installations; and the 
 America of desire, a model of middle-class lifestyle and consumption 
 (Yoshimi and Buist 2003: 439). In postwar Asia and Japan, Yoshimi argues, 
 “America” prohibits, seduces, and fragments. Hence, anti-Americanism 
 and pro-Americanism are not binary oppositions but are intertwined, in¬ 
 terdependent and intersecting in complicated and, at times, contradictory 
 ways. 
 
 The “embrace” between America and Japan assured that America would 
 be the sole inheritor of the Japanese empire. American postwar hegemony 
 is a reconstruction of the Japanese empire that existed until the end of the 
 war. The transfiguration of Japanese imperial order from wartime to post¬ 
 war under America’s watch not only exonerated American violence during 
 the war, but also obfuscated Japanese imperialism and colonialism in Asia. 
 The symbol of this mutual “conditional forgiveness,” to borrow the phrase 
 from Jacques Derrida (2001), is none other than the cenotaph erected at 
 the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which reads “Please rest in peace, for the 
 error shall not be repeated.” As Oda Makoto and others have argued, the 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 7 
 
ambiguity of the subject in the Japanese language does not specify who is 
 responsible for the “error” (Tanaka 2007). Furthermore, if it was the Japa¬ 
 nese, then they are compelled to apologize for a crime they did not com¬ 
 mit, consequently absolving America’s crime of dropping the bombs. More 
 symbolically for the Japanese empire in Asia, the Peace Center and the 
 Memorial Park were commissioned to Tange Kenzo, who also designed 
 the Commemorative Building Project for the Construction of Greater East 
 Asia in 1942. The project was supposed to monumentalize the notorious 
 concept of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Japanese im¬ 
 perialist vision of regional unity to counter the West. The stylistic origin of 
 the Memorial Park can be traced back to almost an identical ground plan 
 for the Commemorative Building Project (Starrs 2001:173). The connection 
 and transformation between wartime and postwar can also be discerned 
 in the construction of the Nagasaki Peace Park. The heiwa-kinen-zd, or 
 peace statue, a massive masculine figure, was commissioned to a local 
 sculptor, Kitamura Seibo, and completed in 1955. Kitamura was a member 
 of the Imperial Art Association during the Asia/Pacific war. He had pro¬ 
 duced statues of military figures, and all were muscled, large, and com¬ 
 bative. For example, he created the statue of Terauchi Misatake, who was 
 instrumental in the annexation of the Korean Peninsula in 1910. The se¬ 
 lection of Kitamura’s peace statue represents somewhat of a comeback of 
 not only Kitamura’s career, but also his insistence of producing masculine 
 military figures (now rearticulated as pacifism). Many of Kitamura’s war¬ 
 time statues were either torn down, removed, or replaced by “feminine” 
 figures that represent postwar pacifism (Otsuki 2016: 409). The Nagasaki 
 Peace Statue then can be read as the recuperation of masculinity in post¬ 
 war Japan as peace and democracy rather than war and militarism. 
 
 The transition, from empire to subimperialism, is not a continuation 
 ot the same, but is a reconfiguration of imperial and wartime militarism 
 to postwar pacifism and democracy. In short, war defeat replaced decol¬ 
 onization (or deimperialization in Chen Kuan-Hsing’s usage [2010]) and 
 the possibility of postcolonial reflexivity. It is in this postwar Cold War 
 context of American hegemony and a Japanese failure of deimperialization 
 that framed and hence inhibited the process of decolonization in the for¬ 
 mer Japanese empire. Unlike French or British where decolonization often 
 accompanied violent struggles for independence, the end of the Japanese 
 empire was a result of war defeat and was followed by the Cold War. If, in 
 Japan, democracy and demilitarization replaced or hijacked the process 
 
 8 Introduction 
 
of deimperialization, in the former colonies, postwar settlement and na¬ 
 tionalist recuperation replaced decolonization as a radical political and 
 cultural process. The lack of deimperialization of Japan and the decoloni¬ 
 zation of Japan’s former empire sowed the seeds of anti-Japanism in Asia 
 that began to sprout in the early 1970s and continue to grow to this day. It is 
 in the context of the Cold War suspension or obfuscation that Chen Kuan- 
 Hsing calls for the simultaneous processes of deimperialization (for the 
 former colonizer), decolonization (for the former colonized) and de-Cold 
 War (for everyone) in East Asia and beyond (2010). 
 
 Asia's Anti-Japanism and Japan’s Anti-Americanism 
 
 Anti-Japanism finds its corollary in ethnonationalism. In this regard, anti- 
 Japanism produces similar effects both outside and inside Japan in fanning 
 nationalistic sentiments and operating through the binary discourse of 
 “us” and “them.” Just like Japan’s anti-Americanism, Asia’s anti-Japanism, 
 for the neoconservatives, is closely linked to nationalism and cultural sol¬ 
 ipsism. For the Japanese neoconservatives, anti-Americanism and anti- 
 Japanism converge on the ways Japan was deformed and disfigured by its 
 forcible transformation into a client status, inaugurating what has come to 
 be known as the “long postwar” that the Japanese have been living since 
 1945. As a result, they seek to revitalize “Japanism” to counter American¬ 
 ism and Asia’s anti-Japanism. Yamano Sharin, the author of the infamous 
 manga Kenkanryu (Hating the Korean wave) (2005), calls anti-Japanism 
 a “sickness.” Nishimura Kohyu, the journalist, considers anti-Japanism a 
 “magma” that is erupting. Nishimura argues in The Structure of Anti-Japan 
 (2012) that, in order for the Japanese to overcome “anti-Japanism,” they 
 must begin by searching for the identity of Japan and the Japanese (17). 
 This is to be done, according to Nishimura, by returning to history, cul¬ 
 ture, and tradition from a “linear” perspective. The reason that the Jap¬ 
 anese do not possess a linear sense of history, he argues, is because of its 
 war defeat and has been “ruled by the historical perspective that the past 
 was evil” (19). The culprit of this truncated conceptualization of history is 
 the American Occupation and those Japanese who embraced defeat and 
 complied with policies from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Pow¬ 
 ers. Seven years and eight months of the occupation created a “blank of 
 history” that severed historical continuity between the pre- and postwar 
 generations. Nishimura then presses for the return of “autonomy” to Ja- 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 9 
 
pan. He cites John Dower and Herbert Bix’s books as a continuation of 
 American hegemony over Japan (20). 4 
 
 After identifying the American Occupation as being responsible for 
 Japan’s “nonlinear” historical consciousness, Nishimura turns to Asia and 
 anti-Japanism. He places the “prototype” of anti-Japanism in 1982 when 
 Chinese and Koreans protested against Japan’s textbook revisions. He sees 
 the “structure of anti-Japanism” forming at this moment when Japanese 
 leftists and media colluded with Asian nationalists in criticizing Japan 
 (23). It is noteworthy that Nishimura uses the word “prototype” with anti- 
 Japanism and locates its emergence only in the early 1980s. As I discussed 
 above, one can trace the emergence of anti-Japanism in postwar East Asia 
 as early as 1948 and definitely by the early 1970s. Nishimura seems to have 
 developed a similar historical amnesia that he accuses others of having. 
 Nishimura argues that anti-Japanism is endangering the Japanese identity 
 that linked the Japanese people to the emperor and the imperial family 
 (26). Along with the Greater East Asian War and the Nanjing Incident (his 
 phrase), Nishimura cites the criticism of the imperial household as one 
 of the attempts by the Chinese and Japanese leftists to destroy Japanese 
 “memory.” For neoconservatives like Nishimura and others, anti-Japanism 
 is an extension, if not an amplification, of Americanism that severs Ja¬ 
 pan from its history, culture, and the imperial system. Instead of embrac¬ 
 ing anti-Japanism in a self-reflexive way, the anger of the Asian neigh¬ 
 bors simply rekindles the desire to reestablish Japan as a “normal” nation 
 freed from its “masochist” view of history. To this extent, anti-Japanism 
 becomes an alibi, an opportunity, to voice the conservatives’ long-standing 
 anti-Americanism. Anti-Japanism and anti-Americanism coalesce in the 
 form of reconstituting Japanism. 
 
 Anti-Japanism, Anti-Americanism, and Post-East Asia 
 
 The 2005 anti-Japan demonstration in China prompted many in Japan to 
 ask a similar question in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in the United 
 States: “Why do they hate us?” The question in itself is innocent enough. 
 Yet it belies its simplicity as a rhetoric of feigned denial. The question 
 works like a floating signifier, whereby different and competing answers 
 or perspectives can be posited, debated, redefined, and related, depending 
 on one’s political persuasion and worldview. Furthermore, the question 
 
 10 Introduction 
 
also assumes a binary between a purported incommensurable “they” and 
 “us” and the irreconcilable self-definition and foreign (mis)perception. 
 
 The images of the 2005 spring protests shocked the Japanese public in 
 two ways. First, there was a general disbelief that Japan and the Japanese 
 could be so despised by others. The issues of Japanese invasion and war 
 responsibilities did not often sink in immediately. Rather, they appeared 
 anachronistic, as if belonging to another era to another people. Second, 
 people were bewildered at the modern cityscapes and rapid development 
 seen on the news, which were utterly unthinkable due to the conventional 
 image of China as backward and underdeveloped. In short, there was a 
 gap between seeing and believing. As Mizoguchi Yuzo (2005) has pointed 
 out, this disjuncture or gap between the actually existing China and Ja¬ 
 pan’s idea of China points to the historical fact that Japan does not have a 
 shared experience with the global south and that Japan’s conceptualization 
 of Asia, which is vital in its modern/colonial self-definition, is utterly out of 
 date. Mizoguchi periodizes two moments of modernity: the first half from 
 1850 to 1950, and the second half from 1950 to 2050. There might be some 
 problem with this periodization, but Mizoguchi’s point is that Japan’s con¬ 
 ceptualization of Asia remains in that of the first half of modernity while 
 the real Asia is far along toward the second half of modernity. In short, 
 anti-Japanism points to the limit of modern Japanese thought on Asia. 
 The modern/colonial framework that enabled Japan’s self-identity vis-a- 
 vis the West and Asia is no longer feasible in grasping the fast-changing 
 condition ofglobality. For the East Asian left, anti-Japanism also rekindles 
 the question of Americanism. For scholars like Chen Kuan-Hsing, Sun 
 Ge, and Baik Youngseo (2006), a “post-East Asia” world is only possi¬ 
 ble with the end of the American military presence as its premise. Inter- 
 referencing among Asian peoples, or what Chen calls Asia as method, re¬ 
 quires the de-Americanization in the region since the conceptualization 
 of East Asia is itself an American invention in the Cold War period, as 
 we have seen earlier. If modern/colonial East Asia is constituted primar¬ 
 ily through Japanese imperialism and American neocolonialism, linking 
 anti-Japanism and anti-Americanism might enable us to radically recon¬ 
 figure and reconceptualize the region beyond the Japanese and American 
 imaginary. 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 11 
 
The Form of Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 
 
 I want to suggest that anti-Japanism consists of at least four distinctive 
 but interrelated sets of attributes: (1) a set of competing claims and nar¬ 
 ratives about Japan or, more precisely, the “idea” of Japan; (2) a set of per¬ 
 formative acts and representations; (3) a set of emotions and sentiments; 
 and (4) a set of temporary fixes to political, economic, and social crises. 
 First, anti-Japanism is an exaggerated version of ideas, traits, and postures 
 about Japan that are believed to be quite distinct from those of other cul¬ 
 tures or countries. From “Japanese devils” to “economic animals,” negative 
 images of Japan are first conjured as violating national sovereignty and 
 sanctity. The claims can range from Japan’s refusal to come to terms with 
 its imperialist past to Japan’s economic influence over domestic markets. 
 Pro-Japanese sentiments also share similar, albeit favorable, hyperbolic 
 representations of Japan. This does not mean that these claims are false or 
 nonexistent, but that they are amplified, partial truths.’ 
 
 Second, anti-Japanism operates on a collective level and is inherently 
 social. Anti-Japanism often enacts itself in the form of public demon¬ 
 stration with slogans, posters, and flyers, with numbers that range from 
 hundreds as in the Wednesdays demonstration in South Korea, to thou¬ 
 sands, like in major cities in China in 2005 and 2012. What is import¬ 
 ant about the demonstrations is that they are demonstrative: they elicit 
 certain visual representations that can be disseminated, circulated, and 
 reproduced. 
 
 Third, anti-Japanism (and pro-Japanism) cannot substantiate itself with¬ 
 out sentiments. Or, rather, sentiments can make anti-Japanism sustainable 
 and produce collective catharsis. These feelings (experiential), emotions 
 (social), and affects (unconscious and corporeal) all make the externaliza- 
 tion of anti-Japanism possible. These sentiments, however, are not uniform 
 or consistent. They are highly dependent on personal histories, collective 
 memories, and contingencies of the protest milieu. 
 
 Finally, anti-Japanism ultimately reflects more on the anxieties and de¬ 
 sires of the protesting society than on Japan itself. It is, in the final analysis, 
 a displacement of social unease caused by political and economic upheav¬ 
 als. It represents temporary fixes to domestic political crises by project¬ 
 ing Japan in various forms, from threat to foe, from ally to refuge. That 
 said, we must ask why this projection or deferral takes the form of anti- 
 Japanism and not something else. 
 
 12 Introduction 
 
ANTI-JAPANISM 
 
 PRO-JAPANISM 
 
 III 
 
 IV 
 
 IN THE REST OF ASIA 
 
 Anti-Japanism and its constitutive other, pro-Japanism, in East Asia is 
 represented in the figure above, with each quadrant representing a range of 
 possible positions. The figure is intended to convey the range of emotions 
 and geopolitical positions between Japan and Asia. Quadrant I consists 
 of moderate to neoconservative positions in Japan; quadrant II includes 
 leftists and the internationalist critique of Japanese imperialism; quadrant 
 III comprises various nationalist and anti-Japanese elements in China, the 
 Koreas, and Taiwan; and finally, quadrant IV represents positions favorable 
 to Japan, from the formerly colonized to contemporary youths obsessed 
 with Japanese popular culture. The figure and its respective quadrants de¬ 
 pict multiple relations that, due to historical and local conditions, cannot 
 be easily collapsed into homogeneous pro- or anti-Japan sentiments. For 
 example, colonial difference—the incommensurability between the colo¬ 
 nizer and the colonized—signals different desires between the Japanese 
 conservatives (quadrant I) and the Taiwanese imperial subjects (quadrant 
 IV) although they share similar pro-Japan sentiments. I discuss this spe¬ 
 cifically in chapter 4. 
 
 It is important to note that, like any discursive formation, anti-Japanism 
 is not static. While anti-Japanism in postwar Asia mostly takes on the form 
 of demands for apologies and atonements for colonial wounds or war 
 crimes (colonialism and imperialism), the content is often directed at local 
 and present concerns that may or may not have anything to do with Ja- 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 13 
 
pan. The degree of intensity of anti-Japanism is conditioned by the relative 
 power relationship between Japan and other nations in the world system. 
 Furthermore, the range of anti-Japanism spans several scales. From per¬ 
 sonal memories of Japanese atrocities to collective demands for redress and 
 reparation, from the casual slur of “Japanese devils” to an official discourse 
 of condemnation, anti-Japanism stirs feelings and emotions—anger, sad¬ 
 ness, envy, and so on—that are intense, mixed, and at times contradictory. 
 
 In his thoughtful analysis of post-Cold War American hegemony, Chris 
 Connery argues for the “continued necessity of anti-Americanism” today 
 because, “in certain forms, anti-Americanism can be a key component of 
 a powerful and effective anti-capitalist politics, and can preserve neces¬ 
 sary and important spaces of counter-hegemony and critique” (2001: 400). 
 Anti-Americanism, however, frequently and invariably takes the nation¬ 
 state as its primary platform. And as Karatani Kojin (2014) has argued, 
 capital, nation, and the state form a Borromean knot, reinforcing and sup¬ 
 plementing one another, depending on the crises and needs of capitalism. 
 As a consequence, globalization would not entail the end of the nation 
 or the state, as some have hoped. Instead, it only creates conditions for 
 their rearticulations. In this regard, because global capitalism is a social 
 relation and the ruling classes of all capitalist nation-states have a stake in 
 the reproduction of capitalist social relations, Connery cautions that any 
 anti-Americanism that strengthens the nation-state will be a double-edged 
 sword. Nation-based and state-sanctioned anti-Americanism becomes 
 dangerous and politically regressive when it is explicit in constructing the 
 nation-state itself as an alternative social collectivity (403). Despite these 
 shortcomings, Connery views anti-Americanism as having “an important 
 structural capacity to link the energy of the negative to the sphere of global 
 ideological reproduction” (403). Anti-Japanism in East Asia must be appre¬ 
 hended as this double-edged sword as well. 
 
 Not all anti-Japanism confers the same political desire or represents 
 similar grievances against Japan. Anti-Japanism enacted by the former 
 comfort women occupies very different structural and power relations to 
 the Japanese state as compared to anti-Japanism fanned by the Chinese 
 state to displace its citizens’ growing anxiety over precariousness and so¬ 
 cial unrest. Ethnonationalism and anti-Japanism work in complicity to 
 prevent genuine exchange and reconciliation over historical issues and 
 contemporary problems afflicting peoples in the region. Connery hopes 
 anti-Americanism (despite his reservations mentioned above) can produce 
 
 14 Introduction 
 
progressive social collectives against the universal nation-state that is the 
 United States. I see anti-Japanism as less a panacea to Japanese capital¬ 
 ism or regional reconciliation. Instead, I argue that anti-Japanism (and 
 pro-Japatiism) represents a shifting of power relations in East Asia in the 
 post-Cold War era. The rise of China has radically transformed the U.S.- 
 Japan dominance of the region since the end of the Second World War. 
 How to imagine an anti-Japanism (and its negative power) without falling 
 into the trap of ethnonationalism remains a formidable challenge. 
 
 Chapter Outline 
 
 The book is organized around the theme of anti-Japanism (and pro- 
 Japanism, its constitutive Other) in three East Asian spaces: mainland 
 China, South Korea, and Taiwan, with an emphasis on cultural represen¬ 
 tations, with “postcoloniality” and “sentimentality” as unifying concepts. 
 Unlike the falls of the French and British empires, which were due to inde¬ 
 pendence movements in their colonies, the dissolution of the formal Jap¬ 
 anese empire occurred primarily through its war defeat. This particular 
 demise of the empire has had two consequences that contributed to the 
 failure of decolonization. First, for the Japanese, the overwhelming defeat 
 at the hands of Americans, especially the dropping of the two bombs and 
 subsequent occupation, contributed to the perception that Japan lost the 
 war to the Americans and not to the Chinese. Furthermore, war defeat and 
 postwar demilitarization conflated, if not replaced, questions of empire 
 and decolonization. In relation to Taiwan, Japan’s defeat was appropriated 
 by the nationalist government to contrast the heroic endeavors of the “lib¬ 
 erating” regime and the “slave” mentality of the colonial Taiwanese, thus 
 justifying the nationalist recolonization of the island. After four years of 
 civil war ending in the Communist victory, the nationalist government 
 relocated to Taiwan and the two regimes have been mired in the Cold War 
 structure that continued, albeit in different form, to this day. The situation 
 on the Korean Peninsula was similar. Independence was soon followed 
 by a division into North and South Korea, the North propped up by the 
 Communist Soviet Union and the South by the capitalist United States, 
 which suited the exigencies of the emerging Cold War. The devastating 
 Korean War further entrenched the divided system even in the so-called 
 post-Cold War era. However, as I argue in chapter 4, the repression by 
 the nationalist government in post-1949 Taiwan and subsequent democ- 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 15 
 
ratization prompted a “nostalgia” for an imagined Japan, a nostalgia that 
 likely contributed to the stereotypical opposition between anti-Japanese 
 Koreans and pro-Japanese Taiwanese. It is to address the failed decoloni¬ 
 zation within the not-yet-over Cold War that Chen Kuan-Hsing proposes 
 decolonialization, deimperialization and de-Cold War as a three-pronged 
 method to rethink and reengage Asia. My analysis and critique of anti- 
 Japanism join Chen’s call for confronting the lack of decolonization in the 
 Japanese empire and for reimagining a post-East Asia unencumbered by 
 Cold War divisions and colonial legacies. 
 
 Naoki Sakai and others (2005) have argued that the myth of the mono¬ 
 ethnic society cannot be debunked with merely empirical attempts to il¬ 
 luminate its truth or falsity. More importantly, Sakai recognizes that the 
 “sense of being Japanese cannot be analyzed according to a methodology 
 of the history of ideas, but rather functions through the emotional dimen¬ 
 sion” (3). It is this “sentiment of nationality”—the regime of representa¬ 
 tions of community constituted through the apparatuses of fantasies and 
 imaginations within the modern national community—that undergirds 
 and animates the emotions, feelings, and passions of national competition 
 and divisions in the world today. My study, set within the context of anti- 
 Japanese sentimentality in postwar postcolonial East Asia, comprises ways 
 to analyze the “regime of fantasies and imaginations,” which Sakai sees as 
 an important affective dimension of the modern national community. For 
 example, I contrast the dominant (and masculine and culturalist) emo¬ 
 tion of han (an unresolved resentment against injustice) with the notion 
 of “shame” felt by the so-called military comfort women in South Korea. 
 I argue that “shame,” or rather the overcoming of feelings of shame, offers 
 a possible reconciliation for some comfort women, not with the Japanese 
 state but with loved ones. Feelings of national “humiliation,” I argue, have 
 animated Chinese anti-Japanism since the late 1980s. I trace the shifting 
 meanings of the term “Japanese devils” as a trope to reflect on China’s 
 own self-definition. In the case of Taiwan, I suggest that the sentiments of 
 “sadness” and “nostalgia” dominate many elderly Taiwanese feelings for an 
 imagined “Japan.” This nostalgia, I argue, has less to do with Japan than 
 with resentment toward the neocolonialism of the Kuomintang regime 
 in postwar Taiwan. These sentimentalities— han, shame, humiliation, 
 nostalgia—form the collective and differentiated affects conditioned by 
 the shifting geopolitical terrains in postwar postcolonial East Asia in the 
 wake of Japanese imperialism and colonialism. Finally, it is to continue the 
 
 16 Introduction 
 
line of argument of sentimentality that I attempt to articulate the political 
 concept of “love” and intergenerational intimacy in the hope of imagining 
 a transnational and subnational politics of affect in the conclusion. 
 
 Chapter 1, “When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira: Transimperial Characters, 
 Anti-Japanism, Anti-Americanism, and the Failure of Decolonization,” 
 argues that the symbolic anti-Americanism of Gojira (1954) and the anti- 
 Japanism of Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury (1974) constitute two axes of desire 
 and fantasy that characterize the failure of decolonization in postwar East 
 Asia. The sudden disappearance of the Japanese empire after Japan’s de¬ 
 feat, the subsequent American hegemony in the region during the Cold 
 War, combined with entrenched authoritarian rule in former colonies, 
 such as Taiwan and South Korea, and, finally, Japan’s postwar economic 
 ascendancy all contributed to the suspension, if not outright repression, 
 of legacies of the Japanese empire. It is only in the so-called post-Cold 
 War era (and, in the case of China, the postsocialist era) that issues of Jap¬ 
 anese empire—war responsibilities, territorial disputes, comfort women, 
 the Yasukuni Shrine, and so forth—became contentious in the region’s 
 public spheres. 
 
 Chapter 2, ‘“Japanese Devils’: The Conditions and Limits of Anti- 
 Japanism in China,” analyzes one instance of modern Sino-Japanese re¬ 
 lations: the epithet “riben guizi,” or Japanese devils, in Chinese popular 
 culture. I locate the representation of Japanese devils in four historical 
 moments: late Sinocentric imperium, high imperialism, socialist nation¬ 
 alism, and postsocialist globalization. I suggest that while this “hate word” 
 performs an affective politics of recognition stemming from an ineluctable 
 trauma of imperialist violence, it ultimately fails to establish a politics of 
 reconciliation. I argue that anti-Japanism in China is less about Japan itself 
 than about China’s own self-image, mediated through its asymmetrical 
 power relations with Japan throughout its modern history. 
 
 Chapter 3, “Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame: ‘Comfort Women’ and 
 Anti-Japanism in South Korea,” turns to the sentiment of shame regard¬ 
 ing sexual violence. I analyze Byun Young-Joo’s trilogy about the comfort 
 women through the affect of shame and the trope of the body. Unlike the 
 culturalist sentiment of hart in Korean nationalist discourse, shame, or 
 rather the overcoming of shame, has the potential to negotiate and move 
 forward the politics of reconciliation. If shame constitutes the affective 
 dimension of these women’s existence, the aging body reminds us of the 
 materiality of their suffering and the inevitable passage of time that fur- 
 
 Anti-Japanism (and Pro-Japanism) 17 
 
ther underscores the cruelty of “postcolonial” violence. Juxtaposing and 
 associating the visibly aged women’s bodies with that of Emperor Hirohi- 
 to’s dying and concealed body and the nationalized mourning surround¬ 
 ing his death, I argue not only that the bodies are differentially valued and 
 evaluated, but also that the cowardice of the imperial system once again 
 abrogated the responsibility of the Showa emperor for Japanese imperial¬ 
 ism and colonialism. 
 
 Unlike earlier chapters on anti-Japanism, chapter 4, “Colonial Nostal¬ 
 gia or Postcolonial Anxiety: The Dosan Generation In-Between ‘Retro¬ 
 cession’ and ‘Defeat,’” explores the sentiment of nostalgia and intimacy 
 toward Japanese colonialism, as displayed by former colonial subjects in 
 Taiwan. I argue that the favorable and at times intense feelings toward 
 “Japan”—imagined or real—must be seen as a desire to recuperate a sense 
 of loss in both personal and historical terms. I understand their passion 
 as a belated plea for recognition from the former colonizers of their mar¬ 
 ginalized existence since the end of formal colonialism. Their efforts, de¬ 
 spite the obvious pro-Japan sentiments, interrupt two linear narratives of 
 (1) colonialism —► retrocession —► nation-building and (2) colonialism —► 
 war defeat —► nation-building schematics espoused and expounded by the 
 Kuomintang government and by the Japanese state, respectively. 
 
 In chapter 5, “‘In the Name of Love’: Critical Regionalism and Co- 
 Viviality in Post-East Asia,” I examine four representations of love, or 
 instantiations of the political concept of love, in postwar postcolonial East 
 Asia (in Gojira [1954], Death by Hanging [1968], Mohist Attack [1992-96], 
 and My Own Breathing [1999]) that offer glimpses of possibility for trans¬ 
 national and subnational intimacies and affective belonging that tran¬ 
 scend love of the nation and love of the same. Finally, using Taiwan and its 
 seemingly pro-Japanese sentiments and its marginalization in East Asian 
 geopolitics, I argue for a reconceptualization of the politics of reconcilia¬ 
 tion. In chapter 6, “Reconciliation Otherwise: Intimacy, Indigeneity, and 
 the Taiwan Difference,” I read contrapuntally Tsushima Yuko’s novel Ex¬ 
 ceedingly Barbaric (2008) with Laha Mebow’s documentary film Finding 
 Sayun (2010), and I argue for an intergenerational reconciliation that dis¬ 
 places both the colonial narrative and state-centric politics of compromise 
 and settlement. 
 
 18 Introduction 
 
one . When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira: Transimperial 
 Characters, Anti-Japanism, Anti-Americanism, 
 and the Failure of Decolonization 
 
 As far as I know, the famed martial artist never fought the scaly monster. 
 Neither has the nuclear-infected beast stomped and destroyed the home¬ 
 land of the fictionalized Chinese patriot. Their closest encounter appears 
 briefly in the World Martial Arts Tournament in the episode “Milk De¬ 
 livery” in Dragon Ball, the popular Japanese manga and anime series. In 
 the brief combat scene, Bruce Lee at first easily defeats what appears to be 
 a giant gorilla (an obvious King Kong reference) with a high kick and his 
 trademark high-pitched screech. However, he is soon charred by Gojira’s 
 signature radioactive flames.' The Active battle in this popular animation 
 series underscores the continued reference to, and relevance of, the two 
 “global icons” in popular culture, each outliving their respective life spans 
 (the original Gojira opened in theaters in 1954 and the series purportedly 
 ended in 2004 with Gojira: Final Wars ; Bruce Lee, born on November 27, 
 1940, died July 20,1973). 2 These global icons, however, have their own local 
 and regional histories and itineraries. While Gojira made its transpacific 
 journey to become Godzilla in the United States in 1956, Bruce Lee made 
 the opposite trek to Asia and then back to the United States with his last 
 full-featured film, Enter the Dragon, in 1973. In this regard, America looms 
 large in the popular receptions of these cinematic icons. 
 
 The global popularity of Gojira and Bruce Lee notwithstanding, I want 
 to focus on their more limited historical conjuncture—specifically Japan, 
 Asia, and the United States. I want to suggest that the historical condi¬ 
 tion of possibilities for Gojira and Bruce Lee reside in the “postwar Cold 
 
War system” where “postcoloniality” in the Asia-Pacific region remains 
 unresolved and repressed, yet contested. 1 More precisely, I want to argue 
 that the “symbolic anti-Americanism” of Gojira and the “anti-Japanism” of 
 Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury (1974) constitute two axes of desire and fantasy that 
 characterize the “failure of decolonization” in postwar East Asia. The sud¬ 
 den disappearance of the Japanese empire after Japan’s defeat, the subse¬ 
 quent American hegemony in the region during the Cold War, combined 
 with entrenched authoritarian rule in former colonies such as Taiwan and 
 South Korea, and finally Japan’s postwar economic ascendancy all con¬ 
 tributed to the suspension, if not outright repression, of legacies of the 
 Japanese empire. It is only in the so-called post-Cold War era (and, in the 
 case of China, postsocialist era) that issues of Japanese empire—war re¬ 
 sponsibilities, territorial disputes, “comfort women,” the Yasukuni Shrine, 
 and so on—became contentious in the region’s public sphere. Here (as 
 with the “post” in “postcolonial”) “post-Cold War” in East Asia does not 
 signal the end of the Cold War. The Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, 
 and Okinawa are still mired in a Cold War framework, despite the end 
 of East-West conflict in other parts of the world. If the older Cold War 
 structure is visible through the lens of socialist/capitalist conflict, the cur¬ 
 rent post-Cold War structure is almost completely subsumed under global 
 capitalism despite official North Korean and Chinese claims that socialism 
 is the dominant state ideology. In short, what we have in the region today 
 is the coexistence of political Cold War structure and economic neoliberal 
 globalization with popular culture comprising a diverse and contradictory 
 variation between the two. 
 
 As products of Cold War anxieties, Gojira and Bruce Lee are there¬ 
 fore not just global icons, but what I call “transimperial characters” that 
 attempt to cope with the trauma of Japan’s defeat and the history of Chi¬ 
 nese humiliation in the modern colonial world. Transimperial refers to the 
 transition, transfer, translation, and transposition of imperial regimes, in 
 this case, the shift from the Japanese to the American empire and their 
 overlapping (and colluding) operation and extension of global capitalism 
 in the region. Gojira and Bruce Lee are “characters” in the sense that they 
 mediate between the fantasy (2-D) and real (3-D) worlds (Nozawa 2013). 
 As semiotic mediations, Gojira enacts a symbolic anti-Americanism that 
 tacitly criticizes the United States for its nuclear activities and expresses 
 Japan’s own inability to reconcile the contradiction between its war dead 
 and its Asian victims. Bruce Lee’s films, especially Fist of Fury, dramatize 
 
 20 Chapter One 
 
a symbolic anti-imperialism that heals the colonial wound through an 
 abstract Chinese cultural nationalism that, ironically, has nothing to do 
 with mainland China. 
 
 Gojira’s repeated return to Tokyo and Bruce Lee’s revenge against his 
 Japanese foes represent two sides of the same postcolonial coin: Japan’s war 
 defeat and the abrupt dissolution of the empire on the one hand and the 
 memories of Japanese imperialism/colonialism that remain contentious 
 and unresolved to this day on the other. Gojira’s footsteps and Bruce Lee’s 
 kicks remind us of the persistent traces of the Japanese empire. Further¬ 
 more, I want to show that these failures of decolonization are exacerbated 
 by the postwar Cold War system under American hegemony in the region. 
 Not only is Gojira tamed into the “secure horror” (Tudor 1989) of Godzilla, 
 Bruce Lee, in his last film, is also disciplined into a mainstream Hollywood 
 kung-fu star. The politics associated with Gojira (antinuclear testing) and 
 Bruce Lee (anti-Japanese imperialism) are erased, if not repressed, for 
 sheer entertainment and ideological containment. In short, the monster 
 and the dragon have been domesticated, Americanized, and depoliticized. 
 
 Why Does Gojira Always Return to Tokyo? 
 
 Gojira is a monster created by nuclear radiation exposure and inspired 
 by the real event of Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a Japanese tuna-fishing boat 
 exposed to the fallout of American hydrogen-bomb testing in the Bikini 
 Atoll on March 1,1954. More than simply a reflection of a historical event, 
 the film is to be read and interpreted on several levels. As Japan’s “first 
 postwar media event,” Barak Kushner (2006) has argued that Gojira was 
 unprecedented in several ways in its historical emergence. It was the first 
 film to signal the return of Japan to the international stage, the first post¬ 
 war film freed from American Occupation censorship, and the first film to 
 generate a franchise. Furthermore, for Kushner, Gojira represents “the per¬ 
 spective of a bridge between Japan’s imperial war from 1931 to 1945 and the 
 postwar” (41). Susan Napier, for instance, reads Gojira symptomatically 
 as a “rewriting of history” that temporarily and emotionally inverts the 
 power relations between Japan and the United States in popular culture 
 (1993: 327). The film has the “good” Japanese scientist (Serizawa), the in¬ 
 ventor of the Oxygen Destroyer, who sacrifices himself, not just for the 
 nation (as during wartime) but for humanity, in order to defeat Gojira, the 
 embodiment of “bad” American nuclear ambition. In this regard, Gojira 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 21 
 
represents what I call a “symbolic anti-Americanism” that not only enables 
 Japan to claim moral superiority over the Americans, but its antinuclear 
 and pacifist messages also align with a new emerging postwar Japanese 
 identity that is democratic and peace-loving. 4 
 
 Reading against the dominant interpretations of Gojira as antinuclear 
 and antiwar, the Japanese literary critic Kato Norihiro (2010) argues that 
 Gojira is the embodiment of the Japanese war dead who are unable to rest 
 in peace, due to their ambiguous status as both victimizers and victims. 
 Kato asks a simple question: “Why do King Kong and Gojira repeatedly 
 return to NYC and Tokyo, respectively?” Using the Freudian notion of the 
 uncanny, Kato reads both monsters as “something close to the heart, but 
 repressed” (2010:166). While they are ghastly and fearsome, once defeated 
 or killed, along with precipitous relief and possible regret, Kato contends 
 that there is also something that evokes sorrow. In the case of Gojira, the 
 film serves as a “protective mechanism” of a Japanese unconscious that 
 represses the duality of Gojira/war dead that continues to haunt the Japa¬ 
 nese psyche as long as postwar Japanese society refuses to come to terms 
 with its past, a symptom he has famously coined as nejire, or twistedness, 
 in postwar Japan (1997). In the diegesis of the film, Kato likens the move¬ 
 ments and the destruction of the Tokyo area by Gojira as reminiscent of 
 the air raid during the war. Moving slowly, pausing at times, and twisting 
 his body in pain, Gojira (and the Japanese war dead) seem to express liter¬ 
 ally, “Where is the nation that one has died for? Where did our motherland 
 go?” (2010:153). 
 
 Gojira repeatedly returns to Tokyo, in Kato’s reading, precisely because 
 postwar Japan has not squarely confronted its relationship with its war 
 dead. These victims were mobilized believing in the value of sacrifice for 
 the nation and the liberation of Asia. However, with Japan’s defeat, a “con¬ 
 version” took place in the national psyche from anti- to pro-Americanism. 
 What was left unresolved by this conversion, according to Kato, was the 
 relationship between those who survived the war, those who came to real¬ 
 ize the new values of peace and democracy, and those who perished in the 
 name of the holy war. The continued remaking of Gojira after fifty years 
 and twenty-eight films is an attempt by the Japanese society to “sanitize, 
 sterilize, neutralize and normalize” the uncanny represented by Gojira 
 and Japan’s war dead (2010: 169). In a rather whimsical conclusion to his 
 analysis, Kato ponders whether, if he were to be asked to direct another 
 Gojira film, he would have Gojira head over to the Yasukuni Shrine (the 
 
 22 Chapter One 
 
controversial site honoring Japan’s war dead) and have Gojira “destroy 
 Yasukuni!” 
 
 Kato’s interpretation of Gojira follows the logic of his earlier and more 
 controversial work, Haisengoron (On war defeat). In it, Kato argues that to 
 offer an authentic, formal apology for the twenty million (non-Japanese) 
 Asian victims of the Pacific War, it is first necessary for Japanese society 
 to form a national subject via the process of mourning the three million 
 Japanese war dead. Kato’s logic is based on his reference to Japan’s post¬ 
 war “split personality,” in which Dr. Jekyll apologizes for Mr. Hyde, who 
 defends Japan’s wartime aggression. This “twistedness” is the result of a 
 postwar “conversion” where the Pacific war was refuted as a bad war, and 
 the nation’s relation to those who died in the name of liberating Asians was 
 ignored (i.e., the Greater East Asian War). For bereaved families and others 
 sympathetic to the war dead, the Yasukuni Shrine and its associated prac¬ 
 tices of worshipping the war dead became fertile ground for right-wing ex¬ 
 tremism. Hence, according to Kato, Japanese leftists and progressives are 
 to be blamed for Yasukuni-type radicalism. Kato then invites progressives 
 to honor Japan’s own war deceased as a means to undercut the so-called 
 Yasukuni logic. Only by collectively facing the uncanny and haunting fig¬ 
 ure of Gojira/war dead, and having Gojira destroy the Yasukuni Shrine, 
 can Japan and its people get rid of their nejire. As Victor Koschmann and 
 others have pointed out, Katos rhetoric is inseparable from the conditions 
 of Japan’s two-decade-long recession. For Koschmann, “even the perceived 
 need to apologize to other Asians for Japanese aggression and atrocities 
 can be appropriated as the pretext for national mobilization” (2006:123). 
 
 Kato’s prescription amounts to an alibi for the Japanese government 
 and ultimately results in a perpetual “deferral” of apologies and compen¬ 
 sations from the Japanese government. Not only is there no guarantee that 
 a “Japanese national subject” can cohere out of mourning the Japanese 
 war dead, but also the formation of the national subject necessitates the 
 construction and reification of “self ” and “other” that would make any sin¬ 
 cere reconciliation impossible. While I agree with Koschmann’s critique of 
 Kato’s “prescription” to the problem, I do think that his analysis needs to be 
 taken seriously. However, as I hope to elucidate throughout the rest of the 
 book, the problem does not lie only in Japan’s war responsibility. Instead, I 
 want to suggest that it is the lack of “decolonization”—for both Japan and 
 its former colonized—that has repressed or suppressed Japan’s contradic¬ 
 tory coloniality/modernity. Simply put, unlike some other colonial powers, 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 23 
 
Japan’s war defeat signaled the end of its empire. The ensuing Cold War 
 and American hegemony that aided Japan’s rapid economic recovery all 
 contributed to the “forgetting” of colonial wounds. While the postcolonial 
 (divided) nation-states of Taiwan and South Korea signed normalization 
 treaties with Japan that supposedly resolved all reparations and compensa¬ 
 tions for Japan’s military aggression, these states were driven by economic 
 imperatives rather than by desires for a political reconciliation based on 
 sincere and deep reflection. As a result of this incomplete or suspended 
 decolonization and deimperialization, anti-Japanism remains a powerful 
 sentiment in the region, though with intensities that vary from country to 
 country whose state apparatuses often appropriate this sentiment to con¬ 
 ceal or deflect domestic problems and social contradictions. 
 
 Why Does Bruce Lee Take Off His Shirt? 
 
 If Gojira represents the struggle to define Japan’s postcoloniality and its 
 “symbolic anti-Americanism” to rewrite history (that a Japanese scientist 
 saves the day), Bruce Lee embodies the anticolonial, anti-Japanese senti¬ 
 ment that avenges centuries of Chinese (Asian) humiliations at the hands 
 of imperialist powers. Just as Gojira elicits multiple readings, so does Bruce 
 Lee. Yet as much as Lee represents, cinematically, anti-Japanism, this alone 
 cannot explain his tremendous popularity in Japan even to this day. (A 
 topic we shall return to later.) Steve Fore has rightly observed that, de¬ 
 spite Lee’s death in 1973, Lee remains the most potent icon of a cultural 
 China and of a particular version of the Chinese nation and Chinese na¬ 
 tionalism. What is important for the emergence of both Bruce Lee as an 
 anti-imperialist heroic figure and Chinese nationalism is the historical co¬ 
 incidence between the rise of Lee in the cultural Chinese imaginary and 
 the first Diaoyu controversy in the early 1970s. Fore relates the story of a 
 1996 incident around the disputed island that accentuates Lee’s continued 
 relevance in anti-Japanism. On September 26,1996, a group of seventeen 
 activists from Taiwan and Flong Kong, along with forty-two journalists, 
 boarded a rusting freighter, Kien Hwa no. Two, to protest Japan’s claim to 
 the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. This boarding was a result of a long-standing 
 dispute that had come to a boiling point earlier that year (July 14) when the 
 right-wing Japan Youth Association landed on one of the islets and built a 
 five-meter-high, solar-powered, aluminum lighthouse, and requested that 
 the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency designate it an official navigational 
 
 24 Chapter One 
 
signal. The protesters were monitored and intercepted by Japanese vessels. 
 At around eight thirty in the morning of the 26th, five activists, includ¬ 
 ing David Chan, a longtime Diaoyu activist, jumped into the water and 
 attempted to swim from the boats to an islet as a symbolic gesture of re¬ 
 claiming sovereignty. The unexpectedly rough water engulfed the activ¬ 
 ists; Chan drowned and was pronounced dead shortly afterward. One of 
 the survivors was rescued by the Japanese coast guard and transported to a 
 hospital in Okinawa. During his recuperation, he stated to the Hong Kong 
 press that he wanted “to return to Hong Kong wearing either a traditional 
 Chinese robe or a Bruce Lee T-shirt” (Fore 2001:118). 
 
 Anti-Japanese movements in the early 1970s were largely organized and 
 enacted in Sinophone areas outside of mainland China: Hong Kong, Tai¬ 
 wan, Southeast Asia, and among Chinese students in the United States. 5 
 Lee’s films were banned in mainland China until the early 1980s, although 
 rumor has it that Mao secretly admired his films. What this means is that 
 current anti-Japanese sentiment in mainland China is a much later phe¬ 
 nomenon than those of the 1970s (the topic of chapter 2), due to Cold War 
 politics and uneven development between Chinese socialism and East 
 Asian capitalism. Lee represents a cultural nationalism because it did not 
 posit mainland China or its regime as representative of the amorphous and 
 yet encompassing love for the imaginary homeland based on overcoming 
 China’s modern history of humiliation by foreign powers. 
 
 Of the four completed Bruce Lee films, Fist of Fury is arguably the most 
 popular in East Asia. That the film has continued to be an inspiration even 
 to this day in the Chinese cultural imaginary is evidenced by the plethora 
 of remakes, parodies, sequels, and prequels by stars such as Jackie Chan, 
 Stephen Chow, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen. 6 What is it about Fist of Fury that 
 resonates with the Chinese-speaking audience and assures its longevity 
 and afterlife, not unlike Gojira ? I would like to suggest two possibilities. 
 First, the film’s historical setting, occupied Shanghai in the 1920s, marks 
 the highpoint of China’s century of humiliation. Western and Japanese 
 imperialists not only defeated China and the Chinese materially, but also 
 shamed the people, especially men, culturally. This is evidenced by two 
 commonly held, although never verified, episodes represented by the de¬ 
 rogatory phrases “The Sick Men of Asia” and “No Dogs or Chinese Al¬ 
 lowed.” Two memorable scenes encapsulate Lee’s physical annihilation of 
 these inscriptions, hence symbolically rejecting the sentiments of collec¬ 
 tive shame. Inside the Japanese dojo, Lee not only returns “The Sick Men of 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 25 
 
Asia” wooden frame to the Japanese, but also demolishes all the Japanese 
 with martial art moves and the famous nunchaku sticks, accompanied by 
 his distinct screech and stare. And as if to return the humiliation to the 
 Japanese, he crumples the paper where “The Sick Men of Asia” was writ¬ 
 ten and makes the Japanese eat it as they promised they would do when 
 they brought the sign to the funeral of Lee’s teacher. Once Lee proves to 
 the Japanese imperialists that he, and by extension the Chinese people, 
 is neither sick nor weak, but capable of vengeance and violence, Lee pro¬ 
 ceeds to confront the second representation of Chinese humiliation. Soon 
 after he leaves the dojo, Lee chances upon the “No Dogs or Chinese Al¬ 
 lowed” sign hanging outside of the city park where Westerners are tak¬ 
 ing leisurely walks. As the Sikh guard points to the sign and the Japanese 
 beckon him to enter the park as a dog, Lee leaps, and with his signature 
 high kick shatters the sign, much to the astonishment of the Sikh guard 
 and the Japanese colonialists. Lee is then cheered by Chinese bystanders. 
 These powerful avenging scenes serve to allow the audience, especially 
 the Chinese-speaking audience, to experience a catharsis heretofore re¬ 
 pressed and unrealizable, and one that at least temporarily reverses the 
 power relations between Japanese/Western imperialists and Chinese, not 
 unlike the way Gojira allows Japanese viewers an opportunity to be on the 
 winning side. 
 
 Another aspect of Fist of Fury that provides affective resonance with 
 Chinese-speaking viewers is the reference to martyrdom. Fist of Fury ends 
 with Lee’s character, Chen Zhen, walking out of the martial art school in 
 order to save the school from police and Japanese interrogation. In the 
 memorable final scene, Lee struts out slowly to face the legion of police 
 and soldiers with guns pointing at him, ready to fire. His character, chin 
 held high, defiant and yet elegant, charges the crowd with his signature 
 shriek, leaps up, and freezes in midair as we hear gunshots fired and the 
 film ends. While it is presumed that Chen Zhen must have perished from 
 the gunfire, the frozen frame points to a suspended state between life and 
 death, a pause in history that retains the possibility of resistance. In short, 
 Bruce Lee, or his martial representation of cultural Chineseness, not as a 
 sick man of Asia or an equivalence to a canine, but as a reluctant and yet 
 capable masculine presence, provided the necessary channel for overseas 
 Chinese to project their long-held and repressed anguish and animosity 
 toward Japanese and other imperialist powers. More importantly, Fist of 
 Fury is also the film in which Lee, for the first time, takes off his shirt. 
 
 26 Chapter One 
 
FIGURE LI. Bruce Lee leaps in Fist of Fury (1974). 
 
 Some of the visual aesthetics of Lee are his smooth, quick kicks and 
 punches; his usage of weapons (such as the nunchaku) not usually seen 
 in traditional martial art films before he introduced them; and his signa¬ 
 ture screech. What sets him apart, however, from his predecessors (Jimmy 
 Wang Yu) and successors (Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen) is his pro¬ 
 pensity to display his upper body, especially during fight scenes. Unlike 
 the visual representation of other Asian male figures, Lee always deliber¬ 
 ately takes off his shirt, displaying his chiseled physique. And the image 
 of this body is not static. Instead, as Chris Berry has argued, Lee’s body 
 is a “transnational frame” that offers different interpretations in different 
 times and in different places according to local circumstances. Further¬ 
 more, in a transnational framework, it becomes significant that the vehicle 
 for the “triumph of the underdog” narrative is also a Chinese man and that 
 the particular masculinity he embodies foregrounds the eroticized male 
 body. Berry therefore argues that “Lee’s body is an agonized one—caught 
 in the double-bind of a compulsion to respond to modern American mas¬ 
 culinity on one hand, and a homophobic and racially marked self-hatred 
 that is a precondition for that ability to respond on the other.” Berry also 
 points to the history of Chinese masculinity —wen (the literary) and wu 
 (the martial) — that defies the polarization of the Asian American under¬ 
 standing of masculinity (asexualized) and the Western expectation of 
 feminization (2006: 219). 
 
 It is here where Lee’s demonstrative showcasing of the body breaks away 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 27 
 
from all previous conventions in martial art films. Lee’s hybridization of 
 Chinese wu masculinity and American masculinity can be read as not 
 separate from but closely tied to the various nationalist and anticolonial 
 interpretations of the underdog narratives in his films (226). In short, the 
 visibility of Lee’s body is a startling contrast from the invisibility of male 
 bodies of previous martial art stars. As Berry pointed out earlier, how¬ 
 ever, this masculinized body is also a Chinese body. The revelation of the 
 body (when Lee is shirtless) follows a long-standing convention of Chinese 
 prohibition, that of ren (to endure, to bear and forebear). The prohibition 
 is the mechanism that builds up tensions and anticipations whereby the 
 hero is instructed not to fight back. In the three Hong Kong-made films, 
 the figures of the mother (The Big Boss), the school (Fist of Fury), and the 
 uncle (The Way of the Dragon) all represent hierarchical relationships that 
 prohibit Lee’s characters to fight, or rather, to reveal his martial art exper¬ 
 tise. The repression, of course, does not, and cannot, last long. Predict¬ 
 ably, but with a considerable emotional outburst, Lee’s characters display 
 their superior skills and go on to defeat foes with the audience roaring 
 approval and applauding. In short, this revelation of his expertise is fre¬ 
 quently and characteristically accompanied by the removal of his shirt. 
 This undressing undoes the Western perception of Chinese as the “sick 
 men of Asia”—feeble, feminine, and feudal. Berry puts it succinctly: “The 
 moment at which he can no longer turn the other cheek is not only marked 
 by his engaging the enemy with the full force of his fury, in the typical wu 
 manner. It is also when the shirt literally comes off and he bares his mus¬ 
 cular upper body” (227). 
 
 It is important to underscore again that the martial body is also a Chi¬ 
 nese body, or a racialized body: hence, the tremendous cathartic identi¬ 
 fication by the audience. Yet this identification, as Kwai-Cheung Lo has 
 argued for people in Hong Kong when the films first appeared, is neither 
 natural nor direct (1996: 104). Lee’s popularity among Hong Kongers lies 
 not so much in the people’s desire for decolonization (as argued by M. T. 
 Kato [2007], for instance), but in their desire for an imaginary China they 
 can identify with. Put differently, it is not a specific Hong Kong identity 
 that the audience craved, but a fantasized and void “China” or “Chinese- 
 ness,” that which suffered in the hands of the Westerners and the Japanese, 
 that produces their identification with the “Chinese” hero represented by 
 Lee. This fantasized China and symbolic anticolonialism, based on the 11a- 
 
 28 Chapter One 
 
tion’s century of humiliation by foreign powers, are what make Lee’s first 
 three films speak to diasporic Chinese in Asia and beyond. 
 
 How Gojira Gets Trumped by Godzilla, 
 and the Patriot Turns into a Secret Agent 
 
 Despite Gojiras symbolic anti-Americanism and Lee’s symbolic anti¬ 
 colonialism, the representational struggles (and their political possibili¬ 
 ties) were contained and tamed by the Cold War system and American 
 hegemony. Two years after Gojira , in 1956, an Americanized version, better 
 known as Godzilla, premiered in American theaters. Conforming to the 
 established monster-flick genre that caters to the emerging youth audience 
 in American suburbs, the production of Godzilla took tremendous lib¬ 
 erty in editing, cutting, and transforming Gojira into Godzilla (Guthrie- 
 Shimizu 2006). The free rein that American producers took with the Jap¬ 
 anese Gojira is symptomatic of the power differential between the two 
 nations in the Cold War era, as I discuss in more detail later. Whereas 
 Gojira presented a not-so-veiled critique of hydrogen-bomb testing (hence 
 of American violence), Godzilla suppressed the politics of nuclear weapons 
 and American crimes against the Japanese population by excising thirty 
 minutes of footage referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And while the 
 Fifth Lucky Dragon incident was still fresh in most people’s consciousness 
 when Gojira was shown in Japan, Godzilla was presented simply as an en¬ 
 tertaining “secure horror.” 7 
 
 The asymmetrical power relations between the United States and Japan 
 can be illustrated by the uncanny (or unconscious) gendered represen¬ 
 tations in the two films. Raymond Burr, as Steve Martin, an American 
 reporter, was inserted into Godzilla to witness and describe the destruc¬ 
 tion caused by the menacing monster. An Asian security officer, Tomo 
 Iwanaga (played by the Asian American actor Frank Iwanaga), is also 
 slotted into the American remake as Burr’s sidekick. It is the relationship 
 between Martin and Iwanaga that deserves our attention here. In a par¬ 
 allel sequence in both films, we see the unintended but telling represen¬ 
 tation of the United States and Japan. In Gojira, the sequence begins with 
 a villager ringing the bell to signal the appearance of the monster. As Dr. 
 Yamane and his entourage of reporters and villagers climb the hill, they 
 are confronted with the first appearance of Gojira. Startled and panicked, 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 29 
 
FIGURE 1 . 2 . Ogata and Emiko embrace in Gojira (1954). 
 
 the group rush back down the hill. As they run for their lives, Emiko, Dr. 
 Yamane’s daughter, trips and falls. Almost immediately in the classic hero- 
 saves-dame image, Ogata, her love interest, comes to her rescue, holding 
 her up in a lovers’ embrace as they both look worriedly in the direction of 
 the monster. 
 
 In Godzilla, the same sequence is repeated, but with a twist. Before 
 Emiko falling, we see Burr’s Asian male sidekick, Iwanaga, falls down as 
 well. And just as Ogata comes to Emiko’s aid, we see Burr’s burly char¬ 
 acter lift the helpless and hapless Iwanaga off the ground. The uncanny 
 parallelism represented here is not a homosexual embrace, but a distinctly 
 heteronormative enactment of gender and sexual differences. The large 
 Burr character towering over the small meek Asian male in the black and 
 white film resembles the iconic photograph of General MacArthur stand¬ 
 ing majestically next to the short and stiff Emperor Hirohito immediately 
 after Japan’s surrender. 
 
 In that photograph, as in Godzilla, Japan is feminized, emasculated, 
 and made to be a supportive partner of America’s new hegemony in anti- 
 Communist East Asia. This “marriage” and its subsequent reverse course 
 allowed Japan to recuperate and recover as an economic power under the 
 
 30 Chapter One 
 
FIGURE 1 . 3 . Burr helps an Asian man in Godzilla (1956). 
 
 guidance and protection of American militarism that, along with the co¬ 
 operation of similarly American-led authoritarian regimes in South Korea 
 and Taiwan, virtually relieved Hirohito’s and Japan’s wartime and colo¬ 
 nial responsibilities as well as America’s own atrocities and war crimes, 
 hence nullifying decolonization. The American empire simply replaced 
 the Japanese empire. The critical valences in Gojira were short-lived. Af¬ 
 ter the surprising success of the film, and in conjunction with the rising 
 consumerism and depoliticized culture, Gojira became a franchise. The 
 first Gojira , much like its American counterpart, succumbs to the logic 
 of capitalism and American militarism, vanquished in the deep sea and 
 never to be awakened again. 
 
 It is well known that Lee left for Hong Kong to pursue his film career 
 due to racism in America. Furthermore, his success in Asia had much 
 to do with his films’ appeal to the “underdog” persona and to the anti¬ 
 imperialist (Japanese and whites) and anti-villain (overseas Chinese bosses) 
 sympathies in the first three films he made in Hong Kong. It is, therefore, 
 ironic that Enter the Dragon, Lee’s breakout film in terms of worldwide 
 distribution and visibility, was a Hollywood production. Enter the Dragon, 
 as many have observed, while set in Hong Kong and featuring some of 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 31 
 
FIGURE 1 . 4 . Hirohito and General MacArthur meeting for the first time on 
 September 27,1945. Photo by Lt. Gaetano Faillace. 
 
his more famous philosophizing on martial art, is less about his previous 
 cultural and national personas than it is simply a well-crafted and enter¬ 
 taining story of a martial art tournament and a spy narrative. Instead of 
 being a country bumpkin, an underclass figure, or a patriot, Lee plays the 
 role of a James Bond-like secret agent who infiltrates the tournament in 
 order to bust a drug ring, free the slaves, and defeat the Chinese boss on the 
 desolate island where the tournament is held. Although not as dramatic 
 as the Gojira/Godzilla sequence I mentioned earlier, the transformation 
 of Lee from an underdog patriot to a martial art teacher and secret agent 
 is obviously a nod to Hollywood’s perception of how to use Lee’s kung-fu 
 skills with a familiar Cold War narrative represented by the James Bond 
 franchise. 
 
 In the famous sz/b/sensez/teacher-student/disciple sequence that later 
 martial art films, notably The Karate Kid franchise, followed and emu¬ 
 lated, Lee is seen instructing a young practitioner. A few exchanges be¬ 
 tween them ensue, and we witness the other side of Lee, the wen, or literary, 
 aspect of the kung-fu master described by Berry earlier, a character that is 
 devoid in three of Lee’s Hong Kong films. With his typical Sino-English 
 accent, Lee retorts the student: “Don’t think, feeeeeel,” and “It’s like a fin¬ 
 ger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will 
 miss all that heavenly glory,” as the young disciple learns not just martial 
 arts but a life lesson. In the global circuit of Lee’s first Americanized pro¬ 
 duction, the underclass, undereducated, and anti-imperialist characters 
 that galvanized the audience in Asia gave way to a cosmopolitan, philos¬ 
 ophizing secret agent doing clandestine work for the U.S. government. 
 
 It is important to underscore here the parallelism between the United 
 States and Japan in their timing of the reception of Lee. Unlike the un¬ 
 canny gendered relations in Gojira/Godzilla that mirrored the asymmetri¬ 
 cal power relations between America and Japan in the immediate postwar 
 era, the similarity in these nations’ respective interests in Lee points to 
 the complicity between the United States and Japan and their differential 
 power relations vis-a-vis Asia. The belated entry of Lee’s films into West¬ 
 ern and Japanese markets underscores the disconnect between Japan and 
 its Asian neighbors in the postwar Cold War period. Lee’s first three films 
 in the early 1970s were extremely successful in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and 
 Southeast Asia. While Lee’s popularity became global in scale later, from 
 Harlem to Torino, from London to Beirut (Prashad 2001), its temporality 
 was not shared evenly worldwide. As Yomota Inuhiko (2005) has observed, 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 33 
 
compared to the rest of the (third) world, Lee’s films were relatively late 
 screening in Japan. The first showing of Enter the Dragon was in Decem¬ 
 ber 1973, five months after Lee’s untimely death. Unlike in most Asian 
 countries, the first Lee film to enter Japan was the American-produced 
 one (Warner Brothers) and was in English/ His films were advertised as 
 “oriental action films from the U.S., and words like ‘kung fu’ and ‘Bruce 
 Lee’ were written in katakana, the Japanese scripts for foreign words” 
 (2005: 20). In contrast, South Korea reads Lee in hangul pronunciation, Yi 
 So Ryon. What this historical “accident” signifies is that unlike “Asia” or 
 other “third worlds,” the Japanese reception of Lee was much more closely 
 aligned with the United States, further underscoring the temporal and 
 spatial asymmetry between Japan and “Asia.” 4 In short, in the late 1960s 
 and early 1970s, Japan simply did not have a shared consciousness with 
 the rest of “Asia.” To borrow Johannes Fabian’s (2002) much-used word, 
 Japan lacked “co-evalness” with Asia. The reversed order and American¬ 
 ized reception of Lee’s films in Japan mitigated Japanese viewers’ reaction 
 to the anti-Japanese and cultural nationalist sentiments in films like Fist 
 of Fury. Japanese viewers dismissed the portrayals of Japanese villains in 
 the film as caricatures and misrepresented stereotypes, pointing out the 
 awkwardly placed wigs and the actors wearing the Japanese hakama back¬ 
 ward. In short, anti-Japanese elements in Lee’s film were laughed away and 
 its historical significance displaced and repressed. The Japanese reception 
 of Fist of Fury contrasts dramatically with the film’s long-standing impact 
 on anti-Japanese sentiments and nationalist feeling. While Lee kicked and 
 punched his way into the hearts of the Japanese audience, his naked torso 
 no longer bears the scars of anti-Japanism or anti-imperialism. 
 
 As cultural representations, Gojira and Bruce Lee are symptomatic of 
 the possibilities of resistance within the political impossibility of the post¬ 
 war Cold War system in East Asia. As symbolic anti-Americanism and 
 anti-Japanism, respectively, in contexts where actual oppositions are not 
 available or allowed, they represent sites of desire and fantasy, and they are 
 projections of social anxieties that cannot be “fixed” in historical reality. 
 That the problem of unresolved decolonization—Gojira as the Japanese 
 war dead and Bruce Lee as Chinese cultural nationalism—is still with us 
 today only points to the political quagmire that continues to obstruct any 
 process of reconciliation or integration in the region. The colonial and 
 decolonial questions are not simply about the past. As Arif Dirlik has cau¬ 
 tioned, the “preoccupation with colonialism and its legacies makes for an 
 
 34 Chapter One 
 
exaggerated view of the hold of the past over contemporary realities and 
 an obliviousness to the reconfiguration of past legacies by contemporary 
 restructuration of power—especially changes in the practices of capitalism 
 and the nation-state that have already called forth a reconsideration of the 
 colonial past” (2002: 429). Issues of colonialism and imperialism in the 
 East Asian context, in the form of anti-Japanism, I argue in the chapters 
 that follow, are intrinsically connected to the increased apprehension over 
 economic disparity in postsocialist China, demands for justice against pa¬ 
 triarchal nationalism in South Korea, and the reassertion of cultural iden¬ 
 tities in post-martial law Taiwan. However, in the case of Taiwan, anti- 
 Japanism also implies its repressed Other, pro-Japanism. These sentiments 
 are neither culturalist nor timeless. They are conditioned by changing his¬ 
 torical conjunctures and mediated through cultural representations. It is 
 my contention that these contrary feelings toward “Japan” have less to do 
 with the actual Japan or the Japanese empire, and more to do with pro¬ 
 jections and mobilizations around local crises and anxieties. Put simply, 
 anti-Japanism (or pro-Japanism, in the case of Taiwan) remains palpable in 
 the collective psyche of East Asia because it resonates with the failed decol¬ 
 onization of the Japanese empire and it galvanizes nationalist sentiments 
 for coping with the growing precarity under global capitalism today. 
 
 It is not surprising that “nationalism” provides the content for the cin¬ 
 ematic form to which Gojira (anti-Americanism) and Bruce Lee (anti- 
 Japanism) are rendered legible, given that there are no other forms of resis¬ 
 tance available. I have placed “nationalism” in quotation marks to denote 
 the complication of the theorization of nationalism, more appropriately 
 nationalist sentiment, surrounding Gojira and Bruce Lee. The goal of the 
 chapters that follow is to point to the limits of nationalism in relation to 
 anti-Japanism and gesture toward a subnational and transnational articu¬ 
 lation of decolonization. 
 
 When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 35 
 
two . “Japanese Devils”: The Conditions 
 and Limits of Anti-Japanism in China 
 
 With their pervasive visuality and virtuality, the demonstrations against 
 Japan in several Chinese cities in 2005 inaugurated a new era of anti- 
 Japanism. These mass rallies were widely televised through the airwaves 
 and were YouTubed and videocasted on the internet; the protests were mo¬ 
 bilized by cellphones and debated in chat rooms and online fora. Bloggers 
 and vloggers continued to post opinions, movie clips, sound files, and flash 
 videos about the anti-Japan movements well after the crackdown on the 
 demonstrations by the Chinese authorities. The predominance of the vi¬ 
 sual and virtual flooded the public with scenes and images of Chinese fer¬ 
 vor and unmitigated anger toward Japan. A Japanese news video showed 
 a tearful Chinese woman in Shanghai driving in a Japanese car as she is 
 pelted with eggs and profanity by a mob of mostly young male protesters. 
 She begs for the crowd to let her leave while the camera pans to the small 
 “Boycott Japanese Products” sticker on her rear window. Another one of 
 the several thousands of random images posted on the internet shows a 
 little boy sitting on his father’s shoulders holding a toy machine gun with 
 banners of “Down with Japanese Militarism” waving in the background. 
 Still another photograph shows a boy holding a poster with the writing 
 “Do Not Forget National Shame!” A flash video that mixes rap music, an 
 animated cartoon, and grisly photos of the Nanjing Massacre urges every 
 Chinese to avenge national humiliation by killing all Japanese. 
 
 The 2005 demonstrations fizzled as quickly as they erupted, largely due 
 to the Chinese state’s concern that the protests not run amok and cause 
 
irreparable damage to its bilateral relationship with Japan. Yet the events of 
 2005 offer a number of new paradigms for thinking about political protests 
 in general and anti-Japanism in China in particular. First, in the age of the 
 internet and new media, political movements are necessarily multiscalar— 
 local, national, regional, and global—and their organizations less hier¬ 
 archical and centralized, yet more rhizomatic and dispersed. Multimedia 
 and mobile technologies such as computers, cellphones, and video cameras 
 cannot only document in the traditional sense of the word, but also Photo¬ 
 shop, transmit, and re-signify the events in unpredictable and unintended 
 ways. Blogs, chat rooms, and video gaming become the new sites of polit¬ 
 ical warfare where fighting words, hurtful images, and simulated killings 
 are interactively produced, circulated, and consumed, and where “intent,” 
 “truth,” and “facts” are bracketed and deferred. 
 
 Second, unlike the mostly student-led protests against Japan over the 
 textbook controversy in the 1980s, which were confined to university cam¬ 
 puses, the 2005 events were mobilized and participated in by China’s 
 emerging middle-class professionals. The protests took place in major ur¬ 
 ban centers amid high-rises, shopping malls, and open boulevards. These 
 new images of China’s “peaceful rise” appeared radically incongruent with 
 most Japanese peoples’ stereotypical impressions of China as an under¬ 
 developed Communist nation. But the 2005 events presented China in 
 ways that shattered conventional Japanese ideas of China that had been 
 consolidated in the postwar era. As Mizoguchi Yuzo (2005) has argued, 
 this disjuncture between the actually existing China and Japan’s percep¬ 
 tion of it points to the historical fact that Japan does not have a shared ex¬ 
 perience with the global south and, additionally, points to the reality that 
 Japan’s conceptualization of Asia is utterly out of date. 1 
 
 Third, the outpouring of emotion by the protesters on cityscapes and 
 cyberspaces—anger, outrage, zealousness, and even pleasure—requires us 
 to take emotion, passion, hope, or sheer delight seriously and to recognize 
 the power of some of the more alarming forms of popular nationalist senti¬ 
 mentality. To recognize these affective dimensions, as well as the interpre¬ 
 tative dimensions, of political mobilization is to acknowledge a shift from 
 memory and trauma to passion and indignation, thus acknowledging the 
 way that historical events are re-membered in people’s popular conscious¬ 
 ness. In short, the geopolitical must be analyzed, understood, and theo¬ 
 rized along with the biopolitical. 
 
 Critical colonial studies has alerted us to the numerous cultural tech- 
 
 Japanese Devils” 37 
 
nologies—images, metaphors, narratives, classifications, etc., or what Da¬ 
 vid Spurr (1993) calls “the rhetoric of empire”—employed by a colonial 
 discourse that has framed and perpetuated a false conception of the infe¬ 
 riority of colonized and imperialized subjects. But what has received less 
 scholarly attention are the ways in which the colonized perform “excitable 
 speeches” (Butler 1997) against the oppressor, or utilize incendiary images 
 to represent the colonizer’s barbarity, or remind us of the oppressor’s re¬ 
 cord of violence and atrocities. 
 
 In this chapter I would like to look at one instance in Sino-Japanese 
 relations: the epithet “riben guizi” (Japanese devils) in Chinese popular 
 culture. I argue that this “hate word” performs an affective politics of rec¬ 
 ognition stemming from an ineluctable trauma of imperialist violence. 
 Most important, I argue that anti-Japanism in China is less about Japan 
 than about China’s own self-image mediated through its asymmetrical 
 power relations with Japan throughout its modern history. Finally, by an¬ 
 alyzing Matsui Minoru’s documentary Riben Guizi (Japanese devils; 2001), 
 I suggest that, by assuming the racial epithet, the Japanese director and the 
 veterans interviewed in the film perform an important self-critical and 
 courageous testimony to Japanese war crimes. The perpetrators’ confes¬ 
 sions and admissions open up a much-needed space of dialogical possibil¬ 
 ity between victimizers and victims. 
 
 Guizi in the Chinese Imperium 
 
 Together with “xiao riben ” (little Japan), “riben guizi” is perhaps one of 
 the most casually and frequently utilized phrases in Chinese popular dis¬ 
 course, referring condescendingly to the Japanese. It is an enunciation that 
 is politically and socially useful precisely to the extent that it is excitable 
 and conjures emotions of disdain, deprecation, hatred, and envy. However, 
 unlike hate speech where the recognition is an imposing of a name or 
 language upon another that perpetuates subordination, these anti-Japan 
 epithets attempt to overturn the subordinated position of the Chinese vis- 
 a-vis the Japanese, at least symbolically. In this sense, “xiao riben” and 
 “riben guizi ” refer less to Japan and the Japanese and instead invoke a 
 ritualized context that confirms (or reaffirms) a concept of Chinese su¬ 
 periority over an inferior and barbaric Japan or Japanese. Much like the 
 contemporary global consumption of Japanese mass culture—where the 
 consumption is not about Japan as an identity, but about the idea of Ja- 
 
 38 Chapter Two 
 
pan conjured in the minds of the consumers—anti-Japanism tells us more 
 about the subject positions of anti-Japan enunciators than about Japan 
 itself (Ko 2003). In this sense, these denigrating references can only con¬ 
 stitute an internal conversation; its passion and affect are produced, circu¬ 
 lated, and consumed ritualistically within an enclosed community. (Such 
 internal referencing often comes undone with a sense of embarrassment 
 when Chinese speakers suddenly realize that the Japanese addressee actu¬ 
 ally understands Chinese.) 
 
 “Guizi ” derives from the word “ gui ,” meaning ghost or spirits of the 
 deceased, a word that also evokes notions of monstrosity or the unknown. 
 “Guifang ” or “gniguo” has come to signify distant and foreign territories 
 where “barbarians” resided. In the era of high imperialism, the modern 
 form “guizi” was used widely as a derogatory term for foreigners, especially 
 after the Opium Wars. During the Qing dynasty, it primarily referred to 
 Westerners from across the ocean, as the phrase “yangguizi” (foreign dev¬ 
 ils) would designate. It is important to recognize here that the “Chinese”/ 
 “guizi” differentiation relies on a premodern cartography of the civility- 
 barbarity ( hua-yi ) binary that differs from the modern Western colonial 
 hierarchy of racial classification. Imperial Sinocentrism relied more on 
 a civilizational discourse for its hegemony, whereas imperialist Eurocen¬ 
 trism relied on a discourse of race to legitimize its civilizing mission. With 
 the Japanese invasion of China proper, the Japanese came to be known as 
 dongyangguizi (eastern devils) and riben guizi as differentiated from yang 
 guizi. It was only during the War of Resistance against Japan and after its 
 victory that guizi became synonymous with “Japanese” and has remained 
 a popular derision to this day. 
 
 The Japanese, however, were not always considered devilish even while 
 they engaged in aggression against China. As Takeda Masaya (2005) has 
 shown, from the first Sino-Japanese war until the War of Resistance, the 
 preferred term to describe the Japanese was “wo” as in “woren” (people 
 of servitude, people of small stature) and “ woguo ” (land of the people 
 of servitude, land of the people of small stature), terms that have been 
 documented in classical Chinese texts since the first century. Again, it is 
 important to underscore here that the Self/Other distinction is not based 
 on the modern notion of sovereign nation-states or peoples, but deter¬ 
 mined by the hua-yi cosmology of Sinocentrism. According to Takeda, 
 from around the tenth century, the official discourse on Japan has shifted 
 away from using “wo,” which has been replaced by the more geographically 
 
 ‘Japanese Devils” 39 
 
oriented nomenclature of “riben,” “ribenguo,” and “ dongying .” Only with 
 the inception of the Sino-Japanese war did “wo” make an auspicious return 
 to once again designate China’s eastern enemy. Although Takeda does not 
 discuss the reason for this revival of “wo,” one can argue that it constituted 
 a haughty attempt to sustain the Sinocentric model of the regional order. 
 The propagandists superiority of the Qing army and the cultural inferior¬ 
 ity of the Japanese, depicted in the Dianshizhai Pictorial that Takeda relied 
 on for his study, attest to the desire to maintain a semblance of order in 
 the Chinese imperium that had been decomposing since the Opium Wars 
 and had completely collapsed after the Sino-Japanese war. By the time of 
 the War of Resistance, “wo” almost completely disappears from the pop¬ 
 ular lexicon and is replaced by “guizi” and other modern epithets such as 
 “invaders,” “enemy,” “Japanese bandits,” and so on. What I would like to 
 suggest is that the specific denomination of “woren” and “ woguo ” to desig¬ 
 nate the Japanese people and Japan during the Sino-Japanese war served as 
 a transitional phase from the Chinese empire based on the hua-yi system 
 to the colonial empire based on modern nation-states. 
 
 The hua-yi order is a political geography that differentiates the hua (the 
 Han Chinese people, or civility) from that of yi (the eastern tribes of an¬ 
 cient China, or barbarity). The hua-yi order is not static. As the territory 
 of China expanded throughout its history, it is conceivable and perceivable 
 that the yi can be “assimilated” into the hua. The hua, representing the 
 center ot the universe, however, cannot be challenged or usurped (Sun Ge 
 2010: i8). : In short, the hua is irreplaceable, and the references to the Jap¬ 
 anese as woren and woguo continue this Sinocentric thought of managing 
 differences in the Chinese empire. 
 
 However, in Japan, Confucian scholars conceived of a more fluid no¬ 
 tion of the hua-yi order. Instead of a geographically relativized center- 
 peripheral order between civility and barbarity, the terms “hua” and “yi” 
 are understood as two “measures of political culture” that are interchange¬ 
 able. Ogyu Sorai, for instance, has argued that hua and yi are not fixed 
 categories, but have potentials for hua to degenerate to yi or for yi to el¬ 
 evate to hua, depending on whether or not each adheres to the ancient 
 teachings of the sage kings (quoted in Sun Ge 2010:18). The emergence of 
 the term “guizi” during the War of Resistance came to signify not only the 
 specific modern notion of Japan and the Japanese but also the imagined 
 community of China. In short, if “wo” still signified a Sinocentric under¬ 
 standing of Japan’s (subordinate) place in the Chinese cosmology, then 
 
 40 Chapter Two 
 
“ guizi” points to the end of that worldview and China’s tacit realization 
 of its (subordinate) positionality within the newly reconfigured modern 
 imperialist system. In short, by designating and delimiting a “premodern” 
 Sinocentric worldview, “wo” has become anachronistic. 
 
 Guizi in the War of Resistance 
 
 In his 1937 speech, “The Meaning of the War of Resistance,” Chen Duxiu 
 argues that the War of Resistance is not a temporary emotional reaction, 
 but has a long historical meaning. He places the anti-Japanese war in a se¬ 
 ries of revolutionary attempts at political changes in modern Chinese his¬ 
 tory: from Li Hongzhang’s Self-Strengthening Movement to Kang Youwei 
 and Liang Qichao’s Wuxu Reform, from Sun Yat-sen’s Republican revolu¬ 
 tion to the Northern Expedition. Furthermore, Chen defines the historical 
 significance of the war within the context of global imperialism, and he 
 purposefully differentiates Japanese imperialists from the Japanese people 
 in the anti-imperialist war. He writes: 
 
 This anti-Japanese war is not based on temporary emotion or na¬ 
 tional vengeance, and [is] definitely not fought for empty phrases 
 such as justice, humanitarianism or peace. Instead, it is a revolu¬ 
 tionary war of the oppressed nation/people against imperialism. 
 The target of our resistance is Japanese imperialism. However, it is 
 the Japanese imperialists and not the Japanese people [that we fight] 
 because those who oppress us are not the Japanese people, but [the] 
 Japanese military and its government. The historical meaning of the 
 war is to release us from the oppression and constraints of imperial¬ 
 ism in order to complete China’s independence and unification. (5) 
 
 For Chen, the war is not to be apprehended as one between govern¬ 
 ments in Nanking and Tokyo, but as an anti-Japanese imperialist war that 
 requires the mobilization of the entire Chinese people. Victory against 
 Japanese imperialism will also deter other imperialist nations from fur¬ 
 ther oppressing the Chinese people. From Chen’s socialist/internationalist 
 perspective, it is crucial to distinguish imperialists from ordinary people 
 who also suffer from the ills of imperialism. This distinction is, of course, 
 later famously reiterated by Premier Zhou Enlai in the 1972 Communique 
 between the two governments as part of their normalizing of diplomatic 
 relations. 
 
 ‘Japanese Devils” 41 
 
The distinction between Japanese imperialists and the Japanese pop¬ 
 ulace can also be seen in the so-called anti-Japanese comics published 
 during the War of Resistance. Along with the numerous caricatures of 
 bucktoothed and mustached Japanese militarists, there are also comics 
 depicting the suffering of the Japanese people during the long drawn-out 
 war: the intense rationing of foodstuffs, the return of fallen soldiers’ ashes, 
 and the overall sacrifice of the common people. In many of these comics, 
 what is accentuated is the evil and exploitative nature of Japanese mili¬ 
 tarism alongside the suffering of the increasingly defeated Japanese peo¬ 
 ple. As a visual medium created in conjunction with the war effort, anti- 
 Japanese comics underscored the eventual doom of the Japanese military 
 operation as a result of the prolonged resistance of the Chinese people. The 
 portrayal of the Chinese is understandably heroic and resilient, with the 
 only exception being that of the collaborators, who are often depicted as 
 greedy and doglike in their subservience. 
 
 If the enemy has been clearly defined as Japanese imperialists and not 
 the Japanese people, its most immediate manifestation becomes the Jap¬ 
 anese soldiers. It is within this context of identifiable enemy combatants 
 that popular songs during the War of Resistance spell out who their en¬ 
 emies are (Sun Shen 1995). The audio medium of popular songs, like the 
 comics mentioned above, plays an important affective and political role 
 in the period of mobilization. Marching melodies accompanied by patri¬ 
 otic lyrics celebrate the history and the struggles of the Chinese people. 
 Most of the songs of the period praise the spirit of the Chinese people in 
 resisting Japanese imperialism, urge the people to rise up and continue to 
 resist their enemies, glorify the Chinese people and the nation, proclaim 
 the dawn of a new China, and so on. There are also songs that refer spe¬ 
 cifically to the Japanese. In these songs, Japan and the Japanese are called, 
 variously, “enemies” ( diren ), “devils” (guizi), “Japanese devil” ( riben gui), 
 “bandits” ( rikou ), “Japanese imperialism” ( riben diguo zhuyi), “little Japan” 
 (xiao dongyang, xiao riben), “Japanese military” ( rijun ), and “invaders” 
 (1 qinluezhe ). Of all the incendiary references to the Japanese, “guizi” and 
 “riben gui” elicit the most emotion in songs that are associated directly 
 with killing the Japanese. In lines such as “a large sword aimed at the heads 
 of the guizi,” “expel the guizi from our territory,” “kill the guizi and chop 
 off their heads,” and “fight the guizi to the end,” “guizi,” more than simply 
 “enemy” or “Japanese army,” stirs anger and passion for the acts (real or 
 imagined) of killing the devils. Whereas “Japanese imperialism” or “Japa- 
 
 42 Chapter Two 
 
nese military” are recited in songs lauding the tenacity and bravery of the 
 Chinese army, “Japanese devils” incites specific acts of violence against the 
 Japanese soldiers. What we can conclude from looking at these comics and 
 popular songs is that with the ensuing war on the Chinese mainland, the 
 imperial term “wo” gives way to the more specific designation of Japanese 
 military and imperialists. “Guizi” emerges in this context of global impe¬ 
 rialism along with other epithets describing Japanese militarism with the 
 added emotion and sentimentality linked to necropolitics. However, care 
 is taken to differentiate the Japanese people from Japanese imperialists, a 
 sentiment that continues into the socialist era. 
 
 Guizi in the Socialist Imaginary 
 
 In the postwar socialist era, memories of the War of Resistance remain 
 vivid and important in the legitimization of the Chinese Communist state. 
 The War of Resistance against the Japanese was critical for both the global 
 struggle of anti-imperialism and the unification of China. The war is an 
 achievement claimed by both the Communists and the nationalists as the 
 culmination of the Chinese people’s resilience and the symbol of Chinese 
 nationalism. For the Communist Party, after years of struggle against both 
 the Japanese and the nationalists, the War of Resistance was crucial in 
 establishing its own legitimacy. A number of popular films based on the 
 themes of anti-Japanese struggle were produced and widely viewed in 
 the 1950s and 1960s. These so-called anti-Japan films ostensibly re-created 
 the Communists’ struggle against the Japanese, valorizing their guerrilla 
 tactics and socialist ideology. In other words, these anti-Japan films are 
 less about Japan than about the Chinese state in its contemporary forma¬ 
 tion. Furthermore, although “guizi” and “riben guizi” are used casually to 
 refer to the Japanese in these films, the terms tend to portray the Japanese 
 devils as stereotypical, farcical figures. They are not figures to be feared, 
 but ridiculed. Their demises are often exaggerated and even comical, solic¬ 
 iting laughter from the audience rather than indignation, as we have seen 
 during the actual War of Resistance. The comic and at times absurd rep¬ 
 resentations allow people to laugh away the trauma of war (Xu 2007: 66). 
 
 Set during the height of the resistance against the Japanese, classic films 
 like Landmine Warfare (1962) and Tunnel Warfare (1965) extol socialist 
 virtues of collectivism, populism, gender equality, self-reliance, and guer¬ 
 rilla strategies. As the titles of the films suggest, common people, usually 
 
 ‘Japanese Devils” 43 
 
villagers and peasants, ingenuously utilize indigenous technologies and 
 landscapes—using a woman’s long hair to trigger a mine or digging and 
 connecting individual underground tunnels to hide and sabotage the Jap¬ 
 anese army. People’s struggles are complemented and reinforced by the 
 Eighth-Route Army to further consolidate the cooperation and collabo¬ 
 ration between common people and the Communists. It is this synergy 
 that allows the Chinese resistance to eventually defeat the better-equipped 
 modern military of Japanese imperialism. 
 
 Another recurring motif in these films is the presence of Chinese col¬ 
 laborators. The role of the traitor ( hanjian or zougou) is crucial in delin¬ 
 eating or differentiating the “good” from the “bad” Chinese. Collabora¬ 
 tors continue to serve as the negative example of otherwise heroic Chinese 
 subjectivities. The traitor characters are also utilized to express thoughts 
 of the Japanese and relay their orders as interpreters and subservient 
 go-betweens. 
 
 Th eguizi represented in these films are typically and singularly a cap¬ 
 tain or a commander of an army troop that is trying to attack a village and 
 subjugate the villagers. These Japanese characters derive from the evil¬ 
 looking, authoritarian, and cunning representations that first emerged in 
 comics during the War of Resistance. They often grunt in unintelligible 
 Japanese and personify the brutality of Japanese imperialism en masse. As 
 expected, these commanders will face their demise at the end of the film 
 while the audience celebrates the heroic victory of the Chinese people. 
 What is of interest here is the often humorous, if not absurd, manner in 
 which the Japanese villains die. The films end with marching songs that 
 celebrate victory and refer to the Japanese as generic “invaders” ( qinluezhe ), 
 although “guizi” is the common usage in the dialogue. 
 
 In both Landmine Warfare and Tunnel Warfare, the Japanese imperial¬ 
 ists are not killed by individual soldiers, but through imaginary collective 
 efforts. In the final scene of Landmine Warfare, Captain Nakano escapes 
 as his horse is shot by a woman warrior. He stumbles onto a large boulder 
 inscribed with the words “Suppress Demon Rock,” lying by the side of the 
 only road into the village. He sees a tall wooden tablet with “grave of the 
 invaders” written on it and sees phantoms of bombs surrounding him like 
 ghosts. He explodes as he tries to fend off the bombs by swinging wildly 
 with his sword. The camera then cuts to the battlefield accompanied by 
 a victorious song celebrating the people’s ingenuity and resilience against 
 the invaders. 
 
 44 Chapter Two 
 
A similar demise awaits the Japanese captain in Tunnel Warfare. After 
 being trapped in a large cave by the guerrilla fighters, he is asked several 
 times to drop his weapon, a typical bushido sword. The captain refuses 
 and we hear a round of bullets being fired. The scene then cuts to an open 
 field where the protagonist grabs him and has him witness the victorious 
 celebration of the Chinese people. A celebratory scene ensues with beat¬ 
 ing music lauding the courage of the people against the invaders. What is 
 important here is that the demise of a singular representation of Japanese 
 evil is engendered through the collective valor and inventiveness of the 
 Chinese people. Contrary to the downfall of the collaborators, who are 
 usually eliminated by an identifiable Chinese character, the Japanese devil 
 has to be symbolically exterminated through a united, communal effort. 
 
 What is constructed by the caricature of “the Japanese devils” is the 
 heroic and positive memory of the War of Resistance. The comical, absurd 
 portrayal of Japanese military leaders only serves to accentuate the trium¬ 
 phant and forward-looking characterization of a collective Communist 
 endeavor. In the period of socialist nation-building, these guizi are only 
 props to uphold the resilience and ingenuity of the Chinese people under 
 the leadership of Mao and the Communist Party. For the Chinese, the 
 history of the Second World War is the history of the War of Resistance 
 against Japan, and that is vital to the Chinese self-image after decades of 
 “national humiliation.” For them the war represented a turning point be¬ 
 tween old and new China and ushered in the victory of socialism. It was 
 a patriotic struggle of the whole of the Chinese people and revealed the 
 importance of unity among all Chinese. It was also of world-historical 
 significance because it was part of a worldwide struggle against fascism 
 (Dirlik 1991: 51). 
 
 Guizi in Postsocialist Nationalism 
 
 This positive history of the War of Resistance in the 1950s and 1960s grad¬ 
 ually gave way to the negative history of Chinas victimization in the 1980s 
 and 1990s (Callahan 2007: 2010). The anti-Japan war became the signa¬ 
 ture of China’s unity and the Communists’ legitimacy in the postwar Cold 
 War era. However, the rapid decomposition of the socialist economy since 
 the 1970s required a different ideology to cope with the inequality and 
 discontent caused by China’s embrace of a market economy in the era of 
 postsocialist globalization. There were already signs in the mid-1980s that 
 
 'Japanese Devils” 45 
 
the post-Mao reforms had run into trouble, and nationalist sentiment pro¬ 
 vided one means of reinvigorating the struggle for development. Along 
 with Japan’s own sense of asymmetry between its economic and political 
 power—manifested in the textbook and Yasukuni controversies—popular 
 nationalism emerged, now bearing more effects of China’s suffering, cul¬ 
 minating in the Nanjing Massacre. 3 The shift from socialism to nation¬ 
 alism became part of a delicate balancing act between the state’s tacit 
 approval of various anti-Japanese demonstrations and people’s rousing 
 emotions. Anti-Japanism in the 1980s and 1990s therefore served both to 
 contain an emerging Japanese nationalism and to legitimize state power in 
 the wake of massive economic reforms and popular discontent. 
 
 In the 1980s, anti-Japan demonstrations usually took the form of stu¬ 
 dent protests and were largely confined to university campuses. In 2005 the 
 protests broke out on a national scale and were mobilized and sustained 
 by the internet and new media technologies. The internet and mobile de¬ 
 vices, such as cellphones, have increasingly become an important arena 
 for political activity, and this is a general phenomenon of the so-called 
 network society. However, this technology is also becoming an integral 
 part of commerce, communication, entertainment, and activism in the so- 
 called developmental states. Its anarchic quality, nonlinear structure, and 
 relatively open and transnational properties allow any users with access, 
 at least theoretically, to voice their political opinions regarding local issues 
 or global affairs. Technology, however, is social and despite its seemingly 
 neutral and universal mechanism, its uses and effects are overdetermined 
 by the specific cultural and historical contexts of its users. The internet 
 culture has prompted various interpretations regarding the rise of popular 
 nationalism in both Japan and China, especially in relation to the younger 
 generation who are usually chided for their lack of historical conscious¬ 
 ness. Rumi Sakamoto and Matt Allen (2007), for instance, have argued 
 persuasively that one should be careful not to equate the growing popular¬ 
 ity of anti-Asian manga in Japan with the rise of nationalism among young 
 people there. The popularity of titles such as the inflammatory Kenkanryu 
 (Hating the Korean wave) is driven not by young nationalist zealots who 
 support the author’s denigration of Korea and the Koreans, but by netizens 
 who were disgusted by the seemingly colluded censorship of the manga, 
 which was first published as a web comic by major publishers. The neti¬ 
 zens mobilized a mass campaign so that Kenkanryu appeared at the top 
 of Amazon’s top ten list before the manga was even published, generat- 
 
 46 Chapter Two 
 
ing tremendous buzz for the work that traditional advertisers can only 
 dream of. 
 
 The situation is, however, quite different in China. Internet expansion, 
 as Jack Qiu (2004) has argued, is part of an explicit effort to rebuild the 
 nation via the acquisition of technological competence in China as a devel¬ 
 opmental state (106). This techno-nationalism has a long tradition and was 
 a key goal of Chinese leaders from Sun Yat-sen to Mao. While the Chinese 
 state tried to employ computer networks primarily in the economic do¬ 
 main, grassroots user networks continue to transform the new technology 
 from an abstract cyberspace to a meaningful place of social significance. 
 Multitudes of grassroots formations—web-based nationalist movements, 
 hacker alliances, youth cultures, gay and lesbian groups, and dissident uses 
 of the internet via diverse channels such as chat rooms, online gaming, 
 and peer-to-peer technologies—have given rise to a kaleidoscope of the 
 intricate interplay among myriad social forces in the network of Chinese 
 netizens (102). 
 
 Online protests in China first emerged in 1996, coordinated by Peking 
 University’s untitled Bulletin Board System station, focusing on the Jap¬ 
 anese occupation of the Diaoyu islands in September. Since then, major 
 online movements have targeted Indonesia (summer 1998), nato (May 
 1999), Taiwan (July 1999), Japan (January 2000 and February to March 
 2001), and the United States (April to May 2001) (Qiu 2004:116). These on¬ 
 line activities typically arise within the first week of a crisis to coordinate 
 mobilization and devise aggressive efforts. Interestingly, more rapid than 
 the formation of online patriotic alliances was the speedy evaporation of 
 many movements because of pressure from wary state authorities. This 
 sudden emergence and rapid demise suggest that grassroots nationalism 
 in China’s cyberspace remains a short-term political spasm rather than 
 an organized mode of citizen participation or a sustainable social force. 
 Nonetheless, according to Qiu, “A nationalist discourse permeates Chi¬ 
 nese political arenas on the Internet and remains central to the shaping of 
 cultural identity at the personal level because, unlike modernist ideologies 
 on the left or the right, it is the only state-promoted narrative framework 
 that appeals to the majority of netizens” (116). 
 
 Other than debates on chat rooms and in blogs, the internet makes 
 possible a combination of text, image, and sound, and it creates sites that 
 provide more than text-based representations. Videocasts, podcasts, and 
 flash movies are constantly being produced, mixed, cut and pasted, and 
 
 “Japanese Devils ” 47 
 
consumed, blurring the boundaries between political activism and enter¬ 
 tainment. What has emerged during and after the 2005 anti-Japanese pro¬ 
 test is the proliferation of flash-based shorts on the internet that variously 
 aimed at humiliating the Japanese and promoting nationalist sentiments. 
 Among these brief movies, “riben guizi” or “ guizi ” has become a common 
 denomination for referring to the Japanese that represents a crucial differ¬ 
 ence from earlier formulations. As we have seen, a deliberate attempt was 
 made to differentiate the Japanese imperialist from the Japanese people 
 throughout most of China’s modern history. What postsocialist popular 
 nationalism promotes, incites, and conflates are the heretofore distinct cat¬ 
 egories of Japan and the Japanese. It is no longer the imperialists per se, 
 but the Japanese people who are national enemies. Whereas in the earlier 
 periods, “guizi” was intended to accentuate the positivity of the War of 
 Resistance and the socialist revolution, now “guizi” is directed against ex¬ 
 plicit enemy figures, that of Japan and the Japanese people. 
 
 Let me cite two examples. The internet game “Da Guizi” (Whac-a- 
 Devil) follows the format of the popular Whac-a-Mole game popular in 
 video arcades. 4 At the start prompt, the user is presented with a grid made 
 of four by four rows of what look like tunnels with animated Japanese sol¬ 
 diers popping in and out like moles. The user is instructed to whack the 
 soldiers by moving and right-clicking the mouse. Before continuing with 
 the game, the main page shows on the left a Japanese soldier swaying back 
 and forth from a rope tied to a red star above that represents China. On the 
 right are texts that explain the rationale of the game. They speak of attain¬ 
 ing national victory and independence through the War of Resistance after 
 immense human and material loss—thirty-five million dead and injured. 
 Yet the hard-fought victory is confronting a new reality today—Japan’s 
 encroaching military buildup, the shameless claims to the Diaoyu islands, 
 the refusal to admit to the Nanjing Massacre, and so forth. The game then 
 proclaims that “every shameless act made us finally recognize the [percep¬ 
 tion of] ‘Chinese psychology’ held by every Japanese and the 
 
 soul of Japanese militarism.” Unlike the earlier concerted effort to separate 
 Japanese militarism from the Japanese people, today’s anti-Japanism col¬ 
 lapses the two into one common foe. 
 
 The flash movie “Resist Japan and Whack the Devils” JTJ&ff 1 ), with 
 the English heading “Kill Them Together,” provides another instance of 
 equating “guizi” with the Japanese people in cyberspace." Combining ani¬ 
 mation and rap, the short movie implores the Chinese to take revenge on 
 
 48 Chapter Two 
 
the shameless Japanese and express their patriotism. In a four-minute clip, 
 it reflects on the long history of Japan’s subservient position in the China- 
 centered world, Japan’s invasion of China, the Nanjing Massacre, and Ja¬ 
 pan’s postwar dependence on the United States. It tells of the inevitable rise 
 of the dragon and its preparation for revenge. The song raps angrily that 
 the two nuclear bombs dropped onto Japan are too light a punishment. 
 It then speaks of the changing battlefield from military to “culture.” It urges 
 the Chinese people to resist Japanese “garbage,” such as Japanese companies 
 and popular culture, and it equates Chinese youth who consume Japanese 
 popular culture with traitors lacking historical consciousness. 
 
 It is difficult to assess the effects of internet anti-Japanism, given the 
 form and structure of the technology itself. The examples cited above 
 clearly link nationalism with play—gaming and rapping—while at the 
 same time promoting a nationalistic agenda. Two trends are essential to 
 the process of collective identification in China’s cyberworld today: con¬ 
 sumerism and nationalism (Qiu 2004:114). The effectiveness of this “con¬ 
 sumer nationalism” is extremely difficult to assess, given the form of its 
 representation. What is clear, however, is that nationalism will continue 
 to thrive (albeit with restrictions and limitations) on cyberspace because it 
 is the only state-sanctioned ideology where emotions and passions are al¬ 
 lowed to congeal, adapt, and dissipate. More importantly, as Tessa Morris- 
 Suzuki (2005) has observed about historiography in the age of multimedia, 
 the digital hypertext is excellently suited to present a linked collection of 
 short statements, images, and clips expressing diverse perspectives on the 
 same event. However, hypertext tends to fragment rather than synthesize, 
 and it cannot be used to address wider conceptual questions raised by 
 complicated histories of imperialism, colonialism, or conflict in general. 
 Furthermore, as Slavoj Zizek (2006) has observed, in supposedly unadul¬ 
 terated and uninhibited cyberspace, the user can “freely” express his in¬ 
 admissible impulses because the rules regulating “real-life” exchanges are 
 temporarily suspended. Hence internet identity is not just an imaginary 
 escape from real-life impotence. Instead, in the guise of a fiction, the truth 
 about oneself is articulated. What pervades this cyberspace is a lingering 
 uncertainty: “I can never be sure who they are: are they really the way they 
 describe themselves, is there a ‘real’ person at all behind a screen persona, 
 is the screen person a mask for a multiplicity of people, or am I simply 
 dealing with a digitised entity which does not stand for any ‘real’ person?” 
 Despite the pervasiveness of nationalist sentiment on the internet, it is dif- 
 
 “Japanese Devils” 49 
 
ficult if not impossible to gauge its real effect, given the uncertain nature of 
 the medium and its usage. What is crucial is the recognition that popular 
 nationalism takes the form of anti-Japanism at this historical juncture. 
 
 I have argued that anti-Japanism in China represents multiple histori¬ 
 cal attempts to articulate China’s relative position in East Asia vis-a-vis its 
 changing relationship to Japan, the only non-Western (nonwhite) imperi¬ 
 alist power. Anti-Japanism is thus less about Japan than about China’s self- 
 images in the contexts of its own positionality in the region and beyond. 
 Through my analyses of the deployment of “guizi” as incendiary speech 
 against the Japanese in four historical moments—declining imperium, 
 high imperialism, socialist nation-building, and capitalist globalization— 
 I argued that the meaning of “guizi” has shifted from an effort to distin¬ 
 guish Japanese militarism from Japanese people to blurring and conflating 
 these two categories. New media technology such as the internet, I sug¬ 
 gest, has created a new form of rising Chinese nationalist sentiment that 
 is at the same time concrete and elusive, converging and dispersing. In the 
 final section of the chapter and shifting the use of the “Japanese devils” 
 invective to the Japanese themselves, I want to demonstrate the productive 
 aspect of the epithet when it is used in a self-reflexive and critical manner. 
 
 Guizi in Chinese Justice and Japanese War Crimes 
 
 Matsui Minoru’s acclaimed documentary Riben Guizi opens with scenes 
 from the Yasukuni Shrine on an August 15 where two factions—military 
 apologists and antiwar protesters—voicing their respective causes, clash 
 with each other. Some veterans don their military outfits to commemo¬ 
 rate their fallen colleagues while some right-wing activists interrupt and 
 threaten the protestors, yelling at them to get out of Japan. As men and 
 women collectedly ask for peace and reflection on Japan’s war, ultranation¬ 
 alist groups became increasingly agitated and violent. Amid the chaos, one 
 can hear a man pleading to the bullying mobs, “We are bereaved family; 
 we are bereaved family!” With images of young people seemingly enjoy¬ 
 ing postwar prosperity and somber music in the background, the director 
 makes his intention of the film known with the following superimposed 
 words: 
 
 Our fathers and grandfathers bore arms in the name of a holy war, in 
 
 fact, a war of aggression. What did they do in that war?... Although 
 
 50 Chapter Two 
 
much has been said of how that war victimized the Japanese, there 
 has only been silence and denial about how we victimized others. 
 
 In remembering the war, it is easy to speak of our victimization but 
 difficult to address our own aggression. Yet that aggression reveals 
 the true face of war, exposing as it does the terrible weak natures of 
 human beings. We give our truth to future generations so they are 
 not condemned to repeat our transgressions. 
 
 The self-reflexive and critical position aside, perhaps what is most poi¬ 
 gnant and reverberant from the film is the simple question “What did 
 they do in that war?” Riben Guizi then proceeds to record confessions of 
 violence, brutality, rape, and other heinous crimes committed by fourteen 
 former Japanese soldiers in northeastern China. These men are mostly 
 now in their eighties and half a century removed from their war expe¬ 
 rience. Grayed but spirited, and while some appear emaciated, they do 
 not resemble the “Japanese devils” of the usual Chinese representations. 
 Much like Hannah Arendt’s description of Adolf Eichmann, these men, in 
 their civilian attires and familiar surroundings, represent the “banality of 
 evil” (1963). Without much emotion, the men speak matter-of-factly about 
 their experiences in the army and their personal and collective misdeeds: 
 indiscriminate killing, beheadings, rapes, arson, human experiments for 
 biological weapon development, and cannibalism. The perpetrators’ forth¬ 
 right and solemn confessions also reveal the conditions that made their ac¬ 
 tions possible (or justifiable) in the first place: namely, the emperor system, 
 the dehumanization of Chinese people, peer pressure, and insensitivity 
 (even pleasure) toward violence. 
 
 The former imperial soldiers’ accounts are interspersed with newspaper 
 headlines, archival footage, and photographs. A female narrator describes 
 the escalation of the Japanese invasion to the Chinese mainland, Japan’s 
 imperialist reach to Southeast Asia, all-out war with the United States and 
 its allies, and, eventually, the dropping of the atomic bombs and Japan’s 
 surrender. The chronology of the war events is a familiar one. However, 
 the veterans’ detailed descriptions of atrocity answer that simple question, 
 “What did they do in that war?” from the ground and at an interpersonal 
 level largely neglected in postwar Japanese narratives. It is only toward the 
 end of the film that we come to understand the background and motiva¬ 
 tion of these men’s confessions, which also constitutes the most controver¬ 
 sial aspect of the film that, in turn, risks undermining the political mission 
 
 'Japanese Devils” 51 
 
the film set out to accomplish. As the narrator chronicles the dropping of 
 the atomic bombs and Japan’s surrender, we learn the plight of the esti¬ 
 mated 575,000 Japanese soldiers who were in China at the time. They were 
 subsequently interned in Siberia by the Soviets and assigned to hard labor. 
 While there, 55,000 died without repatriation. In July 1950, the Soviets 
 turned over 969 of the Japanese soldiers in Siberia to the People’s Repub¬ 
 lic of China as anti-Chinese war criminals. They were held in the War 
 Criminals Management Center in Fushun, Liaoning Province. Another 
 140 Japanese soldiers, who stayed on after the defeat and joined the na¬ 
 tionalist fight against the Communists in Shanxi were confined under the 
 Shanxi War Criminal Administration in Taiyuan. The fourteen witnesses 
 in Riben Guizi , we are told, were among those held in those facilities. 
 
 We are then presented with footage of the prisoners of war being treated 
 with medical care, given ample food supplies, doing physical exercises, and 
 enjoying cultural activities. The narrator underscores the humanitarian 
 treatment of the former soldiers by their detainers as directed by Premier 
 Zhou Enlai and the Chinese Communist Party ( ccp ). In the footage, we 
 see these Japanese soldiers eat, bathe, play, laugh, and live, albeit within the 
 confines of the detention center. Gradually, the narrator tells us, the mer¬ 
 ciful care of the ccp has profoundly moved the criminals, and they began 
 to feel remorseful for their wartime conduct. Many began to acknowledge 
 their crimes during the occupation and to write apologies to the Chinese 
 people. To culminate their transformation from “devils to men” (Kush- 
 ner 2006), in June 1956, after six years of confinement in China, a Special 
 Military Tribunal was convened under the Supreme Court of the People’s 
 Republic. Of the 1,062 Japanese held, and excluding those who died or 
 committed suicide, only 45 were indicted. The rest were repatriated im¬ 
 mediately after the trials. 
 
 During the tribunal, we see the former soldiers confess in detail their 
 crimes, and then, when confronted by their victims’ scarred bodies, began 
 to break down and cry. While we do not hear the voices of the Chinese 
 survivors, their anger and emotion, not to mention their bodily injury, are 
 clearly visible, both to the perpetrators and to the film viewers. However, 
 since only the victimizers’ voices are audible and they are superimposed 
 on top of the images of them crying and confessing, the film is devoid 
 of the sentimentality and emotion that are usually associated with such 
 confrontations. Those indicted were sentenced to eight to twenty years. 
 
 52 Chapter Two 
 
but most were released before serving their full terms. Between June and 
 August 1956, all the prisoners were released and repatriated to Japan. 
 
 The Japan that these soldiers returned to was unlike the Japan that they 
 left. The narrator describes 1956 as the end of the “postwar” and signaling 
 the dawn of Japan’s “economic miracle” in the following decades. With ris¬ 
 ing national confidence and a diminishing consciousness of Japan’s war in 
 Asia, the returnees were met with suspicions of brainwashing and ideolog¬ 
 ical conversion at the hands of the Communists. With the escalating Cold 
 War, many former soldiers were placed under police surveillance and en¬ 
 countered difficulty and endured taunts as they searched futilely for jobs, 
 not to mention marriage. The film ends with some of the soldiers express¬ 
 ing their conviction to break the silence in Japan about its war atrocities, 
 especially for the younger generations so they would not repeat the horror 
 of war in order to atone for their elders’ crimes. 
 
 The fact that these men were interned at Chinese facilities, publicly ac¬ 
 knowledged if not lauded, and granted such humane treatment only cast 
 doubts on the “authenticity” of their testimonies. The nationalists predict¬ 
 ably refuted their confessions as brainwashing and falsehood; even the 
 liberals and sympathizers remain cautious. That all testimonies, whether 
 by victims or victimizers, are viewed with various levels of suspicion is 
 nothing new. The meticulous and repetitive accounts shared by the for¬ 
 mer “comfort women” of Korea (see chapter 3) are attempts to authenticate 
 their collective experiences and also provide irrefutable facts about their 
 abuse and suffering. There is no doubt that the Communists’ benevolent 
 forgiveness is conditioned on a political calculus to achieve favorable pub¬ 
 lic relations. However, this does not preclude the fact that violent acts were 
 afflicted on the Chinese population by these repentant soldiers. That their 
 confessions are uncomfortable or seem improbable to postwar Japanese 
 speaks volumes about the lack of deimperialization and the swift “reha¬ 
 bilitation” to democracy and demilitarization under Cold War American 
 hegemony. Putting aside the veracity of the confessions for the moment, 
 we need to ask the obvious questions: Why did the Chinese Communists 
 treat the Japanese pows humanely instead of seeking revenge? What was 
 the Communists’ motivation to conduct war-crime trials but then subse¬ 
 quently release all the Japanese soldiers? By examining the historical back¬ 
 ground of the tribunals of Japanese war crimes in China, we can better 
 understand the impact of the emerging Cold War structure in East Asia 
 
 ‘Japanese Devils” 53 
 
and the impetus behind the trials and the Japanese soldiers’ subsequent 
 testimonies. My argument is that even if the veterans’ confessions were 
 conditioned by larger historical and political demands, their voices must 
 still be heard and reflected on, especially amid the growing militant and 
 nationalistic tension between Japan and mainland China today. 
 
 In his pertinently titled Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War 
 Crimes and Chinese Justice (2015), Barak Kushner provides a detailed and 
 comprehensive analysis of postwar legal maneuvers in the Chinese con¬ 
 text to bring Japanese imperial behaviors to justice. To Carol Gluck’s four 
 terrains of memory—official commemoration in public monuments and 
 school texts, vernacular memory in film and literature, personal mem¬ 
 ories, and public debates about memory—Kushner adds a fifth: legal or 
 institutional memory. Legal memory is important, Kushner argues, be¬ 
 cause “it has a particular and binding hold on the future—such as peace 
 treaties, court cases, lawsuits, legal precedents, and so on.” Furthermore, 
 “Legal memory is recorded in courts, used as the basis for international 
 relations, and therefore forms a cornerstone for decisions that affect for¬ 
 eign policy. The linkage of these elements with international law makes 
 their impact more valuable” (2015: loc. 488 of 8886). Kushner therefore 
 grasps the Chinese trials from the outset as a transnational performance 
 whereby the new People’s Republic attempts to insert itself onto the post¬ 
 war world scene via international law. Showing the world the benevolent 
 Communist justice toward Japanese war criminals had become an integral 
 part of the ccp propaganda campaign to seduce Japan to turn its back on 
 U.S. support. 
 
 Even if we accept the Fushun trials as Communist propaganda, the 
 importance of the Chinese trials is that they offered a de-Westernizing 
 critique of the trials in Tokyo. Kushner contrasts the West-centric Tokyo 
 Trial with the Communist trials in 1956. He writes: 
 
 The Tokyo Trial pivoted on crimes against peace, A class crimes, 
 so conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity did not 
 gain public attention. The entire legal focal point was the start of the 
 war or the debate about wartime responsibility and the policies that 
 continued the war. As such, the International Military Tribunal for 
 the Far East was essentially a politically oriented discussion, though 
 not without merit, and therefore arguments about wartime atrocities 
 or brutal military behavior mostly fell outside the confines of the 
 
 54 Chapter Two 
 
narrative and until recently stood beyond the historical pale as well. 
 
 (2015: loc. 5620-25 of 8886) 
 
 In other words, the Chinese trials, by focusing on the Class B and C 
 crimes, stood in contrast with the Western (American) victor’s justice, 
 and they were able to confront Japanese wartime violence against Chinese 
 civilians, something that the Tokyo trials largely ignored. By exempting 
 Emperor Hirohito from the trial and focusing on a few Class A war crimi¬ 
 nals, postwar Japan and its American overlord abrogated themselves from 
 their respective war crimes in Asia. 
 
 The ccp’s use of the trials as propaganda notwithstanding, the Chinese 
 trials bring forward crucial contexts that were missing in the Military Tri¬ 
 bunal for the Far East and in postwar Japan: the self-reflection of one’s con¬ 
 duct and the confrontation by the surviving victims. The criminal trials in 
 China have ironically emboldened the veterans to speak out openly. Linda 
 Hoaglund speculates that one reason the former soldiers felt free to testify 
 on camera is that, unlike most lower-ranking soldiers involved in Japanese 
 war crimes, they had actually been tried, albeit in China, by a Special Mil¬ 
 itary Tribunal and had already been confronted by their Chinese victims 
 (2003: 9). Comparing it with the situation in postwar Germany, Hoaglund 
 points out that since there is no statute of limitations for Nazi war crimes, 
 if former Nazi come forward admitting their crimes, they would be in¬ 
 carcerated and prosecuted accordingly, regardless of their age or the dis¬ 
 tance from their crimes. The Japanese witnesses are legally exempt from 
 prosecution and imprisonment and this, ironically, has enabled some to 
 publicly testify against Japanese militarism and to admit their personal 
 crimes (9). 
 
 It is instructive to compare the experiences of veterans who were de¬ 
 tained in the former empire and those who returned and lived through 
 postwar ruins and prosperity. Hara Kazuo’s The Emperor’s Naked Army 
 Marches On (1987), for instance, chronicles the attempt by its main charac¬ 
 ter, Okuzaki Kenzo, a former veteran, to track and confront his superiors 
 about the unexplained deaths of his two comrades. Although the victims 
 in this documentary are Japanese soldiers instead of Chinese civilians, 
 what we see, besides Okuzaki’s unusual methods of truth seeking and his 
 propensity for violence, is the continued denial, deflection, and dismissal 
 by those responsible for the heinous crime (cannibalism) against fellow 
 soldiers. Okuzaki has to resort to unconventional ways to seek justice for 
 
 ‘Japanese Devils” 55 
 
his fellow soldiers because the Japanese government has never brought a 
 single veteran to justice for war crimes. 
 
 Both Kushner and Hoaglund mention the friendships that were formed 
 between the Japanese soldiers and their Chinese wardens even after their 
 repatriation. The short-lived China Returnees’ Association, or Chukiren 
 (1956-2002), provided a platform for the veterans to publish and speak out 
 about their crimes so younger generations would not repeat the same mis¬ 
 takes. Kushner’s legal memory of the Chinese trial and Hoaglund s con- 
 textualization of perpetrators’ testimony amid postwar Japans imperial 
 amnesia shift the conversation of brainwashing and propaganda of Riben 
 Guizi to questions of redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, and healing. 
 Lisa Yoneyama further argues for the “unintended consequence” of the 
 Chinese policy and the experiences of the returnees from the normative 
 procedure of justice and reconciliation. She writes: 
 
 The Chukiren members’ contrition was born out of their face-to-face 
 encounter with the immensity and sheer irreparability of the loss 
 they inflicted on their wartime enemy Other. In their self-learning, 
 the Japanese were the unforgivable; the Japanese war crimes were 
 beyond repair. To them, the clemency did not mean the victims 
 had forgiven them; it meant simply that the Japanese violators were 
 free to live as the forever unforgiven. Instead of demanding that 
 the victim enter the horizon of reconciliation and the economy of 
 forgiveness, the practice of self-reckoning has established a radical 
 incommensurability—hence unconditional fraternity—between the 
 violated and the violator. It created an enigma, Derrida’s “insoluble,” 
 that would forever sever the Japanese pows from the state propagan¬ 
 da’s intended dialectics. (2016:134) 
 
 It is this “unconditional fraternity” that, to paraphrase Kushner again, al¬ 
 lows for the Japanese devils to become human, once again. 
 
 56 Chapter Two 
 
three. Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame: 
 “Comfort Women” and Anti-Japanism in South Korea 
 
 A Preamble 
 
 Writing about the “comfort women” is not easy for me. In March 2007, 
 I was asked to serve on a panel when a student group invited a former 
 comfort woman, Ms. Kim Ok Sun, to speak at the university where I 
 taught. Ms. Kim gave her testimony, often pausing in tears. Afterward, 
 my co-panelist talked at length on human rights. When it was my turn to 
 speak, I felt extremely uncomfortable, if not a little incensed. I was angry 
 at the self-absorbed and over-privileged students who used the occasion 
 to flaunt their unreflexive self-righteousness and moral superiority; I was 
 irritated at my colleague’s (unintended) patronizing and universalizing 
 attitude that subsumed Ms. Kim’s experience under a discourse of human 
 rights, with little regard or sensitivity toward Ms. Kim who, I surmise, 
 must have repeated the same testimony and relived the horrendous expe¬ 
 rience countless times. Like Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, I had wanted to ask her 
 what her life was like before her. abduction, what were the happier times of 
 her life (Kim-Gibson 1997: 255). Instead, I recounted the irony and imperi¬ 
 alist traces that allowed me to speak to her only in the Japanese language 
 a few minutes before the start of the event. Generations and continents 
 apart, the only possible means of communication between Ms. Kim and I 
 was within the imperialist language that had commanded her to become 
 a sexual slave. 
 
Personal experience aside, the difficulty of writing on the comfort 
 women issue lies in the tension between the search for the historical ve¬ 
 racity that would expose Japanese imperial violence and that would jus¬ 
 tify the demands for apologies and compensation, and the propensity to 
 marginalize the women themselves as victims or witnesses only, which 
 they have internalized to speak in public because that is the only discourse 
 and avenue of appeal available to them. Paraphrasing Rey Chow, the com¬ 
 fort women must be sacrificed through their victimhood (2012: 86). It is 
 in this context that the decade-old documentary trilogy by Byun Young- 
 Joo remains one of the most intriguing studies of the lives of the comfort 
 women. Unlike the normative documentaries on this issue, the trilogy is 
 completely devoid of the historical footage that is customarily used to pro¬ 
 vide realism. Instead, Bvun’s films follow a group of women, chronicling 
 their daily activities, which include attending weekly Wednesday protests. 
 The films use interviews as a way to have the women talk about their ex¬ 
 periences, during both their enslavement and their postliberation travails. 
 As the films progress, the hard distinction between the filmmaker and 
 her subjects begins to fade. Not only are the women beginning to become 
 aware of being filmed, but they also actively engage with the camera. In My 
 Own Breathing , a former comfort woman, Lee Young Soo—for most of the 
 film—takes over for the director; she travels and interviews other former 
 comfort women. The lack of sensationalism and sentimentalism allows the 
 films to exhibit a raw sensibility that, ironically, makes the films more real, 
 and it humanizes the women in their complexity and complicity, including 
 their struggles for recognition, redress, and reparation. Before moving to 
 analyze the issues of shame and the body in Byun’s trilogy, it is useful to 
 consider the dominant affect of han, a supposedly culturalist sentiment 
 particular to the Korean people that laments the tumultuous history of 
 Korea at the same time as it champions the Korean people’s resilience. 
 
 Extreme Nationalism and Its Discontents 
 
 Consider these two following acts of anti-Japanism in South Korea. 
 
 On August 13, 2001, twenty young Korean men chopped off the tips 
 of their little fingers while shouting “Apologize, apologize!” in their anti- 
 Japan demonstration in the drenching rain in front of Independence Gate, 
 which was once a prison that held freedom fighters during Japanese colo¬ 
 nial rule. The enraged young men were protesting Japanese Prime Minis- 
 
 58 Chapter Three 
 
ter Koizumi Junichiro's planned visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine 
 to honor Japan’s war dead. 
 
 On March 15, 2005, Park Kyung-Ja, a sixty-seven-year-old woman with 
 weed clippers, and Cho Seung-kyu, a forty-year-old man with a knife, 
 chopped off a finger each during a rally at the Japanese embassy in Seoul 
 to protest Tokyo’s claims on a group of desolate but disputed islands that 
 the Koreans and Japanese call Dokdo and Takeshima, respectively. 
 
 Other forms of anti-Japan protest have included self-immolation, cov¬ 
 ering one’s body with 260,000 bees, and decapitating pheasants in front of 
 the Japanese embassy. These acts of extreme (as opposed to banal) nation¬ 
 alism (Billig 1995) violently perform Koreans’ deep-seated indignation and 
 trauma from thirty-five years of Japanese colonial rule on the peninsula, 
 Japan’s subsequent whitewashing and denial of war responsibilities, and 
 the damaging legacies of colonialism. The symbolic meaning of severing 
 fingers aside, these acts of mutilation, as emotive expressions, require us to 
 consider the lasting antipathy toward “Japan” in the postcolonial present. 
 While some women do participate in fanatical acts of protest, it is perhaps 
 best to describe these performances as “masculine” or “hypermasculine.” 
 That nationalism has always been a gendered discourse is not surprising, 
 especially among formerly colonized peoples, because the tropes of im¬ 
 perialist violence and its resistance are often constructed along gendered 
 lines, and violence against women is enacted and utilized to humiliate the 
 masculine foe. In this regard, extreme (or hyper) masculine anti-Japan 
 nationalism, despite its symbolic and performative gesture, ultimately re¬ 
 mains complied with Japanese imperialism. Anti-Japanism, as long as it 
 remains monolithic and directed externally as only a catharsis to over¬ 
 compensate for colonial wounds, obscures its own internal violence and 
 contradictions in the name of the patriarchal nation. One of the most pub¬ 
 licized and yet unresolved issues of Japan-South Korea masculine conniv¬ 
 ances is arguably the comfort women case. 1 
 
 Although the exact number is still in dispute, it is estimated that tens or 
 hundreds of thousands of young women from various countries (but 80-90 
 percent from Korea) were abducted, raped, and mobilized by the Japanese 
 Imperial Army to serve as sexual slaves at various “comfort stations” within 
 the empire from 1932 to 1945. 2 The women’s testimony and historical docu¬ 
 ments have shown that, during their internment, they suffered multiple 
 incidences of psychological and physical torture and abuse. They were ex¬ 
 pected to “service” between ten and twenty men a day without compensa- 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 59 
 
tion or proper medical care. It is estimated that 70 percent of these women 
 perished before the end of the war, and a large number of them never repa¬ 
 triated. Even those who survived and returned to Korea after “liberation” 
 could not return to their “normal” lives, because physical ailments due to 
 sexually transmitted diseases and bodily abuse were compounded by severe 
 psychological and emotional traumas. Shame and guilt elicited by strict 
 Confucian codes of sexuality forced the women to remain silent so as to not 
 become the pariahs of the postindependent, economically driven, and mil¬ 
 itarily ruled authoritarian postwar South Korean regime. The silence was 
 finally broken on August 4,1991, when Kim Hak-soon—with the support 
 of feminist groups, religious associations, and other civic organizations— 
 publicly recounted her ordeal as a military sex slave. 
 
 For postwar postliberation Japan and Korea, enclosed within the Cold 
 War structure, engulfed in the hot wars in Vietnam and on the Korean 
 Peninsula, the comfort women issue was all but forgotten if not repressed 
 and acquiesced to in the face of the demands arising from the capitalist 
 reorganization of the region. When, after Kim’s public testimony, the issue 
 gained international attention in the early 1990s, the Japanese government 
 denied any wrongdoing and cited the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations be¬ 
 tween Japan and the Republic of Korea, which established normal diplo¬ 
 matic relations between the two countries, as having already completed 
 all colonial compensations to the Republic of Korea. The South Korean 
 government also agreed to renounce any further demands for reparations. 3 
 This justification, which persists in official discourse even today, ignores 
 the facts that not only was the comfort women issue suppressed if not 
 censored in the 1960s, but also a crime against humanity cannot simply be 
 offset by diplomatic negotiations. In 2005, the South Korean government 
 disclosed 1,200 pages of diplomatic documents, which had been kept secret 
 for forty years, revealing that the South Korean government had agreed to 
 demand no further compensation, either at the governmental or individ¬ 
 ual level, after receiving $800 million in grants and soft loans from Japan 
 as recompense for Japan’s colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. 4 
 
 The agreement between the two nations that supposedly reconciled the 
 colonial question needs to be contextualized in the postwar Cold War cap¬ 
 italist reorganization in the region that required adherence to an Ameri¬ 
 can policy of developmentalism and anti-Communism. In South Korea, 
 the “compressed modernization” under military authoritarianism has had 
 dire consequences for the underclass, women, the undereducated, and the 
 
 60 Chapter Three 
 
elderly. Although diplomatic goodwill cannot erase the people’s traumatic 
 memories of colonial rule and imperialist violence, the state, in its single- 
 minded and class-privileged economic development, tried to mobilize 
 anti-Japanese sentiments to achieve its own version of a masculine nation¬ 
 alism that would suppress internal difference and obscure contradictions 
 associated with its policies (Cho 2001). The comfort women issue, there¬ 
 fore, is a three-layered story about war, gendered violence against women, 
 and racialized violence visited mostly on Asian women, primarily those 
 from impoverished, uneducated families. In this regard, race (imperial¬ 
 ism), class (capitalism), and gender (sexism) intertwine in a complicated 
 yet definitive way. However, as long as nationalism is the sole agent and 
 arbiter for an anticolonial, anti-imperialist impulse, its homogenizing 
 forces will only suppress questions of gender (patriarchy) and class dif¬ 
 ference (capitalism). It is within this “patriarchal colonial capitalism” that 
 the comfort women issue must be contextualized. Chunghee Sarah Soh 
 puts it brilliantly: 
 
 Korea’s comfort women embody this in the context of patriarchal co¬ 
 lonial capitalism. Structural violence emanates from the economic, 
 political, and cultural forces that are embedded in everyday life— 
 notably gender, class, racial and ethnic inequality, and power im¬ 
 balances. It is manifested in the abusive or demeaning exercise of 
 power customarily practiced with impunity by one category of social 
 actors or groups against others in situations of hierarchically orga¬ 
 nized social relations. Korea’s comfort women were thus victims of 
 the mutually reinforcing convergence of sexism, classism, racism, 
 colonialism, militarism, and capitalist imperialism. (2008: xiii) 
 
 The “coming out” of the former comfort women in December 1991 sig¬ 
 naled the coming of the post-Cold War era in East Asia, at least in terms 
 of the suppression of the interrogation of Japanese colonialism and impe¬ 
 rialist violence under American hegemony and Japan’s complicity in the 
 Cold War structure. 
 
 In this chapter, I analyze Byun’s trilogy about the comfort women —The 
 Murmuring (1995), Habitual Sadness (1997), and My Own Breathing (1999)— 
 through the affect of shame and the trope of the body, arguably two of the 
 most salient attributes of the comfort women’s subjectivity. First, I argue 
 that the socially imposed and gendered sentiment of “shame,” in its con¬ 
 formity and acquiescence, allows the audience of these films to visualize 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 61 
 
the dilemma and the courage of these women in their decision to break 
 their silence. Unlike the culturalist sentiment of hart in Korean national¬ 
 ist discourse, shame, or rather the overcoming of shame, has the potential 
 to negotiate and move toward the politics of reconciliation, not with the 
 Japanese nation-state (as it continues to deny the women’s claims), but 
 with family and loved ones. Second, if shame constitutes the most salient 
 affective dimension of these women’s existence, the aging body reminds us 
 of the materiality of their suffering and the inevitable passage of time that 
 further underscores the cruelty of postcolonial violence. Juxtaposing and 
 associating the visibly aged women’s bodies with that of Emperor Hirohi- 
 to’s dying and concealed body and the nationalized mourning surround¬ 
 ing his death, I argue not only that bodies are differentially valued and 
 evaluated, but also that the cowardice of the imperial system once again 
 abrogated the responsibility of the Showa emperor for Japanese imperial¬ 
 ism and colonialism. 
 
 //a/7 and Cultural Nationalism 
 
 Cultural nationalism has always been imbued with the politics of gender. 
 Postwar postindependent South Korea is no exception. The imbrication 
 between gender and cultural nationalism, I suggest, must be understood in 
 the context of the “compressed modernity” of South Korea (and other late- 
 industrializing states) in global capitalism, where a single-minded drive 
 for economic development engenders an inequality and social contradic¬ 
 tion that cultural nationalism tries to obfuscate or suppress. In the desire 
 to “catch up” and modernize, South Korean society, with favorable capital 
 flows and American Cold War policies, has embarked on a nationalist, de- 
 velopmentalist model that came crashing down during the International 
 Monetary Fund (imf) crisis in November 1997. As Cho Han Hae-joang has 
 argued, the notions of kukmin (a member of a nation) and kajok (family) 
 are two signifiers that have exerted the most power in the constitution of 
 modern life in South Korea, a process that she refers to as “compressed 
 colonial growth” (2001: 57). The demands for compressed development 
 produced a society with only grand, state power and patriarchal families, 
 but no citizens or autonomous individuals. In turn, the kukmin, along 
 with kajok, made compressed growth possible. What is significant here is 
 that in South Korea, as in many late-industrializing nations, nationalism 
 is not contradictory to globalization. In fact, the concepts reinforce each 
 
 62 Chapter Three 
 
other and are seen as constitutive, rather than antagonistic (Lee and Cho 
 2009). However, in times of crisis, such as the imf bailout, nationalism is 
 mobilized in order to save the nation. 
 
 Anti-Japanese sentiment and anti-Communism have been the driv¬ 
 ing forces behind Korean nationalism since liberation. In the so-called 
 postcolonial, post-Cold War era, these antagonisms remain powerful 
 sources of nationalist mobilization, depending on the desire and needs of 
 the authoritarian developmentalist state during the Cold War and, more 
 recently, the neoliberal developmentalist state under the regime of global¬ 
 ization. Historical colonial violence and contemporary economic severity 
 have deprived Korean masculinity and patriarchy a sense of power, au¬ 
 thority, and legitimization. In the colonial period, the father is stripped of 
 his Confucian-derived power over the household and the nation, and he is 
 rendered traditional and irrelevant in relation to colonially derived mod¬ 
 ernization and sciences. During compressed growth, the father is reduced 
 to a financial provider, but at the same time he became the most instru- 
 mentalized and isolated member of the family. The crisis of masculinity, as 
 many scholars have argued, manifests itself in the culture realm through 
 what Kyung Hyun Kim has called “remasculinization” to cope with anx¬ 
 ieties of humiliation and emasculation (Kim 2004). 5 In her critical as¬ 
 sessment of work by the Korean auteur Im Kwon-Taek, Chungmoo Choi 
 (2002) has powerfully demonstrated the structural similarity between Im’s 
 aestheticism and Korean cultural nationalism. More importantly, Choi ar¬ 
 gues that colonized Korean men attempted to respond to the deprivation 
 of national identity and loss of masculinity by inflicting violence on col¬ 
 onized indigenous women or on the emasculated self. In Sopyonjie (1993), 
 perhaps Im’s most popular work, Yu-bong, the adopted father of Song- 
 hwa, blinds her in order to deepen her han, the sentiment that one devel¬ 
 ops when one cannot or is not allowed to express feelings of oppression, 
 alienation, or exploitation because one is trapped in an unequal power 
 relationship. The feelings of anger, pain, sorrow, or resentment that find 
 no expression turn into han. While han is purportedly a copious, collec¬ 
 tive, and shared Korean sentiment from its history of foreign oppressions 
 and internal strife, it emerges at the intersection of two aspects of Korea’s 
 modern history: the inability to articulate the incommensurable experi¬ 
 ence of modernity, and the lament of the loss of an imagined secure past 
 in the course of compressed modernization. 6 What is crucial here is that 
 the bearer of han is the native woman. Choi writes: 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 63 
 
The film adopts the viewpoint of both the colonial male gaze and the 
 Othered feminine subject responding to that gaze. Under this self- 
 primitivizing, internalized colonial male gaze, a daughter is blinded 
 for perfection of a cultural nationalist artifact that fulfills the mascu¬ 
 line desire of a father who has been shunted oft to the margins of that 
 capitalist development. The film attempts to sublimate the national 
 hati by recuperating a precolonial, aesthetic means of communica¬ 
 tion, p’ansori , as it highlights the hati of a victimized woman who 
 bears the burden of reclaiming national identity.... The victimized 
 woman is given the role of the redeemer of the nation. (2002:1x6) 
 
 Similar processes of recuperating masculinity and sublimating col¬ 
 lective sentiment can be seen in popular films as well. Frances Gateward 
 (2007) has suggested that three particular genres, the epic, the action 
 film, and the sports film, with their continued invocation of the colonial 
 past, work together to construct a collective Korean identity based on the 
 normalizing of anti-Japanese images. Gateward situates these films that 
 project anti-Japan sentiments within the crisis of masculinity over the ad¬ 
 vancement of gender equality and within the anxiety over the eclipsing of 
 traditional gender roles. These “manly” genres collectively deny tropes of 
 victimization. Gateward writes: “By revising the colonial past through a 
 rejection of victimization, highlighting patriotism and nonpassivity, these 
 films transform the traumatic social memory of defeat to one of active 
 struggle. Integrated into the wider social context of increased nationalism, 
 they serve as a kind of cultural glue for the ‘imagined community,’ aiding 
 the creation of what the Popular Memory Group describes as ‘dominant 
 memory’” (205). It is in the context of “hypermasculinity” and its historical 
 discourse that Gateward turns to Byun’s three documentary films on the 
 comfort women as critical and powerful interventions. 
 
 It is to Byun’s work that I also turn in thinking about shame and the 
 body as ways of confronting the historical injustice of sexual slavery and 
 Japanese colonialism. As Gateward has pointed out, Byun’s trilogy comes 
 out of a long tradition of progressive documentary making in South Korea 
 that eschews sensationalism and the historical narrative common to films 
 on the comfort women. I want to suggest that, unlike the pervasive and 
 “nationalized” notion of han, these documentaries offer a keen insight into 
 the notion of “shame” that is internalized by the former comfort women as 
 structured by patriarchal and Confucian authority. While reflexive of pa- 
 
 64 Chapter Three 
 
triarchal culture, women’s shame—I argue—has the potential to redirect 
 itself to critique the patriarchal nation. 
 
 Shame 
 
 As discussed earlier, the constitution and affirmation of han require the 
 mutilation of the female body. Without suffering, there is no han, a sup¬ 
 posedly collective Korean sentimentality. The residual and persistent ex¬ 
 istence of han among the former comfort women (as they do hold grudges 
 and indignation against those who perpetrated violence against them) 
 cannot be denied. Despite the pervasiveness of han in Korean culture and 
 general association with women’s suffering, Soh has argued that the han- 
 filled testimonials of some surviving comfort women show paradoxically, 
 in the context of modernizing Korea, their han. This derives in part from 
 their exercising personal agency against domestic oppression, such as the 
 prohibition of girls to receive an education. In some cases, it is the han the 
 women harbored for not being able to receive an education and to craft 
 a modern self that drove them to be deceived by the Korean brokers and 
 Japanese military who promised them work and education (2008: 82-85). 
 That said, it is the sense of shame, in its multiple Korean iterations and 
 embodied in the patriarchal Confucian tradition, that immobilizes these 
 women.' Here, shame obviously refers to the sense of embarrassment and 
 indignity of being sexually violated, and, in one of the woman’s words, 
 “disfigured.” However, it is the feeling of shame and the overcoming of 
 it that allow the women to gain some sense of agency and dignity amid 
 the double oppressiveness of nationalism and imperialism. What makes 
 the comfort women issue a fundamentally colonial issue is the patriar¬ 
 chal understanding of men’s and women’s sexuality. This understanding 
 then incriminates both Japanese and Korean patriarchalism for denying 
 and hence reasserting the self-shaming mechanism that makes the victim 
 apologize for herself (Yang 1997: 65-66). 
 
 Ruth Leys has argued that shame (and shamelessness) has displaced 
 guilt as a dominant emotional reference in the West. In her meticulous 
 evaluation of clinical and theoretical analyses of Holocaust survivors from 
 the 1940s to the present, Leys points out that the reevaluation of shame, 
 heretofore subordinated to guilt, is symptomatic of a larger shift away from 
 Freudian psychoanalysis to new theories of affect that see shame as anti- 
 intentionalist, built-in, and belonging with other inherited physiological 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 65 
 
systems of reaction that are inherently independent of any intentional ob¬ 
 ject (Leys 2007: 125). It is not the purpose of this chapter to engage the 
 debate over “the turn to affect” in the humanities and the social sciences 
 and the “intentionalist vs. nonintentionalist” arguments. 8 Instead, I am 
 interested in Leys’s observation that shame concerns aspects of selfhood 
 that are imagined to be amenable to correction or change, whereas guilt is 
 in principle irreversible, or at least not expungable. Eve Sedgwick has ar¬ 
 gued that “shame is simply the first, and remains a permanent, structuring 
 fact of identity” for certain queer people (quoted in Leys 2007: 129). It is 
 no different for the comfort women in their already having been exposed 
 to the gaze of some real or fantasized Other (Leys 2007: 130). However, I 
 would disagree with the notion that affects are nonintentional states but 
 autotelic (Leys 2007:133). Given the social stigma attached to the comfort 
 women and their internalization of neo-Confucian sexology, the shame 
 experienced becomes the condition of their silence and denial. In this 
 regard, the comfort women’s experience is akin to that of rape victims 
 whose shamefulness and guilt are invariably personal, familial, but also 
 national. It is only through various contradictory processes of suppression 
 and revelation, cognition and conversation, that the women can overcome 
 the sense of shamefulness and confront the demons within themselves. 
 
 The Murmuring (1995) follows the daily activities of six former com¬ 
 fort women who live in the House of Sharing. 9 In one early scene, one of 
 the women, Park Doo-ree, tells the filmmaker that going to the monthly 
 demonstration is akin to physical exercise. Park Ok-Nyong, one of her 
 housemates, disagrees. “It’s so humiliating,” she says. She mumbles a bit 
 and casts her eyes downward. “My god,” she continues, “I couldn’t even 
 tell my mother.” When the director asks Park Ok-Nyong if she feels humil¬ 
 iated when she demonstrates, Park lowers her face, looks down, pretends 
 to do something else, and mumbles, “I am, at times.” The lowered face 
 and downcast eyes are classic expressions of shame, indicating feelings of 
 embarrassment and ignominy, a dishonorable secret that cannot be shared 
 even with one’s own mother. In a public demonstration scene soon af¬ 
 ter, the women are seen with supporters singing and giving inspirational 
 speeches. As the camera shows close-ups of the women, they rarely look 
 at the camera and instead glance away. However, as the film progresses, 
 the women gain confidence; they become more comfortable with the eye 
 of the camera as well. But at this earlier stage, the grandmas looked tired 
 and fragile in contrast with the volunteers’ youth and energy. 
 
 66 Chapter Three 
 
The feeling of shame is what prevented many women from coming 
 forward to testify against the Japanese government. However, Kim Duk- 
 yeong decided to break her silence as one of a few remaining “live wit¬ 
 nesses” when the Japanese continued to deny historical facts. The horrid 
 experience and the shame have also instilled self-hatred in some women. 
 Park Doo-ree, for example, talks about wanting to end her life because 
 she has become an “invalid,” and that dying is the only purpose in her life 
 because she has hated her life for so long. 
 
 The film crew also travels to Hubei, China, to him three former comfort 
 women who did not repatriate to Korea after the war. When speaking with 
 Ha Koona, who was seventeen when she was abducted, the director asks if 
 Ha’s decision not to return to Korea after the war has derived from shame. 
 The director expresses her own feelings: “But if you had come home to 
 Korea... even ashamed.... I wish you had returned.” To these feelings of 
 sympathy, Ha can only express, “I wanted to, but I was so ashamed that I 
 was in such a terrible place. Why? It was a place of shame.” 1 " The place of 
 shame obviously refers to the comfort station where women were forced 
 to serve between ten to twenty men per day with little attendance to their 
 health and general well-being. And, according to Confucian tradition in 
 patriarchal Korea, the women are no longer “pure” because they were sex¬ 
 ually violated, regardless of circumstances. Shame, therefore, not only is 
 about not speaking out, but also is an impediment to returning “home.” 
 Besides Confucian and patriarchal regulation of chastity, shame is also in¬ 
 flicted on the women’s body. Another woman in Hubei tells the story of her 
 being cut open because her vagina was deemed too small to serve men. She 
 refers to her genitalia as the “shameful part,” and that it is “pitiful.” As she 
 speaks, she looks down and away from the camera while shedding tears. 
 
 Bodies Have Expiration Dates 
 
 Given the nature of this historical tragedy, Chungmoo Choi (2001) has 
 argued that the women’s corporeal experiences lie at the core of the com¬ 
 fort women issue. The pain has registered on their bodies and memo¬ 
 ries through repeated rapes, beatings, mutilations, and injections of ars- 
 phenamine and opium to ease both bodily and ontological pain (398). 
 Moreover, Choi points out that precisely because the bodily experience 
 of the comfort women is that of sexual violation, their experience directly 
 assaults the masculine desire of the Korean nation to overcome the sym- 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 67 
 
bolic emasculation that Japanese colonialism has left on the Korean male 
 psyche. As a result, women’s subjectivities are elided doubly: first, by Con- 
 fucian ideology that objectifies women as the property of men, and, sec¬ 
 ond, by anticolonialist nationalism that equates the nation with women’s 
 bodies. What surrounds the comfort women issue then, Choi contends, 
 is the metaphorization of women’s experience within the masculinist na¬ 
 tionalist discourse and the erasure of the pain of these women, hence also 
 erasing their subjectivity. 
 
 It is important to underscore that the comfort women’s bodies were 
 used to protect the bodies of imperial soldiers from diseases and to pre¬ 
 vent the production of hybrid children from this mutually contaminat¬ 
 ing intercourse. The Japanese military medically regulated and controlled 
 Korean women’s bodies by regularly sanitizing them. 11 Hence the wom¬ 
 en’s bodies are not only incarcerated and raped, but also disciplined and 
 medicated, causing profound and lasting illness and deterioration of their 
 bodies. When Kim Hak-soon first testified in public in August 1991 about 
 her experience as a sexual slave for the Japanese military, she was already 
 sixty-eight years old. Kim died in December 1997. During the time frame 
 that the trilogy covers, most of the women interviewed were in their late 
 sixties and seventies. Several also perished while making the films, leaving 
 their demands for redress and reparation unfulfilled. As is the case with all 
 historical victims, time is of the essence, because bodies wither and perish. 
 Their youthful bodies were violated, mutilated, and abandoned; their aged 
 bodies, neglected, disregarded, and scorned. 
 
 The Murmuring ends with two still photos of young comfort women and 
 a moving image of an older, eviscerated body. The first photograph shows 
 three comfort women (more like young girls) sitting on what appear to be 
 stretchers or makeshift beds. Two women share one stretcher on the right, 
 and one woman straddles the stretcher while holding an unknown item in 
 her hands. It appears to be summer: all the women in are in short-sleeved 
 dresses and one places a towel on her head to shelter herself from the heat. 
 There are two women on the right; one looks at the camera while the other 
 looks away, almost trying not to be framed by the photographer. The single 
 woman on the left looks directly at the camera, expressionless. The snap¬ 
 shot, presumably taken while the women are resting from “work,” displays 
 their youthful, albeit fatigued, bodies: the “daughters of Korea.” The photo¬ 
 graph conveys a sense of quotidianness, and the women’s facial expressions 
 
 68 Chapter Three 
 
exude indifference, or perhaps an emotionless indignation. What is hidden 
 from the photographic moment is the horror that goes on unphotographed, 
 undocumented, and untold, until recently. 
 
 A second photo shows four young women in a medium close-up. While 
 three women on the right appear preoccupied with writing something in 
 a notebook, the woman on the left, also with a towel over her head and her 
 chin on her left hand, simply looks into the distance and away from the 
 camera’s gaze. Once again, one is struck by the youthfulness of the sub¬ 
 jects, which belies the nightmarish circumstances they are being subjected 
 to. The film then cuts to a scene displaying the body of an aging woman, 
 purportedly a comfort woman. 
 
 The transition from the still photographs to the moving image of the 
 body is striking, as we go from the innocent-looking youths, as if stuck in 
 time, to the haunting image of a faceless woman baring her body to the 
 film camera. The body, however, is not simply aged as indicated by its limp 
 breasts, folds, and wrinkles. In the image, we glance at what looks like a 
 scarred and burned hand. But more stunningly, we observe what seems 
 like wrinkled skin in a spiral pattern going into the belly button, evidence 
 of a postsurgery body mark. The camera lingers for a bit and then closes in 
 on the wrinkles and the sagging breast, then toward the shoulder and arm 
 marked by wrinkles and crinkled skin. The camera then pans around her 
 body, revealing her slow breathing through the pulsation of her belly area, 
 then focuses on her scarred arm before fading out. 
 
 This last scene powerfully captures the lost youth of the comfort women 
 (frozen in time, lost forever in the still photograph) that was stolen by the 
 Japanese imperialist state and their presently living (although barely) bod¬ 
 ies, still pulsating despite the aged, tormented, scarred, and violated flesh. 
 In exposing the body in its materiality, as an embodiment of the repressed 
 history of violence inflicted on these women, the film reminds us of not 
 only the biologism of the body (that we all get old) but also the violence 
 engraved onto its physical being. The focus on the body also alerts us to 
 the limited time in which these aging bodies can receive any apology and 
 reparation. Borrowing Elaine Scarry’s notion that “bodily pain has no 
 object outside the boundaries of the body,” Choi has powerfully argued 
 against the coalescing of women’s bodily pain into a remasculinized na¬ 
 tional shame that translates their bodily experiences into the discourse of 
 anticolonial nationalism (2001: 398). The film, using still photographs and 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 69 
 
moving images, provides a powerful visual language that represents the 
 pained and shamed body that otherwise would be unrepresentable within 
 the dominant language of patriarchal nationalism. 
 
 What the violence of sexual slavery has inflicted on these women is not 
 just the physical and psychological damage they have endured through¬ 
 out their lives. What the photographs of youthfulness indirectly suggest 
 is the lives that Japanese imperialism has deprived them of—violently in¬ 
 terrupted lives and dreams unfulfilled, or what one comfort woman refers 
 to as “stolen innocence.” 12 What the aged body displays are the traces of 
 violation and “postliberation” patriarchal violence, leaving most of these 
 women so damaged they could not bear children. Many are dismissed by 
 their husbands or divorced for being barren. The knots around the belly 
 of the woman metaphorically suggest the impossibility of her giving life, 
 an essential role for women in the patriarchal nationalist society of post¬ 
 colonial Korea. 
 
 Given their advanced age, it is not surprising that besides testimonies, 
 demonstrations, and chronicles of their daily lives, the films frequently 
 dwell on the women’s health, their dying bodies, and their deaths. After 
 a brief explanation by Byun about her reasons for making the documen¬ 
 tary, The Murmuring begins with the one-hundredth monthly Wednes¬ 
 day demonstration, which began in January 1992 in front of the Japanese 
 embassy. Even in their defiant speeches to condemn those responsible, the 
 women are keenly aware of their aging bodies and reiterate that, even after 
 their demise, they expect their descendants to continue to denounce the 
 people responsible for their tragedy. 
 
 In recounting their experiences, almost all the women speak of abduc¬ 
 tion, deception, rape, and serving multiple men—between ten and twenty— 
 a day. They speak of physical pain from coerced penetration and being 
 beaten for misbehaviors, and from the agony of contracting venereal dis¬ 
 eases that made them barren. Hong Gang Lim (seventy-five at the time of 
 filming), who remained in China after the war, recounts her experience 
 of being mutilated to enlarge her genitalia because hers was too small. 
 Kim Bun Sun, for instance, in My Own Breathing, tells her interviewer, 
 Lee Young Soo, another former comfort woman, that “men kept coming,” 
 that she didn’t even have time to get up, and that her body couldn’t take it 
 anymore. One against many; a singular body against a sea of other bodies. 
 In My Own Breathing, Shim Dal Yeon (seventy-nine years old) describes 
 her first rape by multiple soldiers in which her body ceases to feel pain. 
 
 70 Chapter Three 
 
She cannot remember the rest of the incident and how long she had to en¬ 
 dure the swarming of men waiting in line. She does, however, recall that, 
 when she woke up, there was blood all over. The smell of foreign bodies 
 and semen mixed with her own blood disgusted her. It was so nauseating 
 that she threw up and had a headache. The smell of bodies and bodily 
 fluids—blood and semen in their unconsented and instrumentalized 
 mixing—is the smell of violence, violation, and disgust. It overwhelms 
 and suffocates when the body becomes numb and unresponsive. The ex¬ 
 perience leaves her mentally unstable. After “liberation,” she became a 
 cook at a temple because there was “no place for crazy people to go except 
 temples.” Even to this day, whenever she sees a woman holding a man’s 
 arm, she thinks to herself that that woman is crazy. She chuckles and says, 
 “Sometimes it makes me laugh. I know. I am the one who is crazy.” 
 
 If The Murmuring is about testimony and living, albeit precariously, 
 Habitual Sadness , the second film of the trilogy, is about dying. Conscious 
 of being the subject of the film and perhaps believing in the power of the 
 camera to sustain her, Kang Duk-kyong (sixty-nine years old) says to 
 the director, “Film me a lot while I am still alive.” In the first film, we find 
 the jovial and energetic Kang diagnosed with lung cancer and dying. She 
 asks to be filmed to the end. As with most women, she recounts being 
 raped by a truck driver in Japan before she even began to menstruate. She 
 is then taken to the military sexual slave unit to engage in forced sex with 
 Japanese soldiers. Her body is “sore every week.” She says, “It was a terrible 
 life. It went on for about a year.” 
 
 Unlike documentaries that purport to be objective, Habitual Sadness 
 is replete with interactions between the women and the director/camera- 
 person. The women are fully aware of their own objectification and con¬ 
 sciously ask the director to film them in a premeditated and purposeful 
 manner. For example, in a lighthearted moment when Kim and Park are 
 carrying and dropping pumpkins, the director asks: “Why did you ask us 
 to film you carrying these pumpkins?” The women respond because they 
 grew them and wanted the crew to film the harvest. When the director 
 implores the women to say how they would like to be seen in the film, the 
 women answer humorously: “As someone who works like a cow!” Here, the 
 emphasis on the laboring body is important although conveyed as a joke. 
 As women who have worked hard all their lives, they continue to insist on 
 being viewed as laboring bodies. With some of their fellow former com¬ 
 fort women incapacitated and dying, they want to prove to the world that 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 71 
 
they have been working hard as testimony to their resolve to continue the 
 struggle for redress and reparation. They are not just old women waiting 
 for handouts from the Japanese and Korean governments. By demanding 
 to be filmed in this way, they use the medium to assert their subjectivity. 13 
 Similarly, the dying Kang sees the film as a medium for achieving their 
 goals for redress and reparation. In her dying bed, clearly deteriorating, 
 Kang tells the director: “I’ve been thinking about this film. Lots of people 
 may come to see it. I will pray that everybody comes. I hope it’ll get a lot of 
 attention. It may move people to help us. That is my utmost wish.” Despite 
 her impending death, Kang is willful and defiant: “We grannies are very 
 old. But we live together like a family. Japan, be warned. You thought we’d 
 back down if you threw money at us. We can survive despite our pain. We 
 are determined. We’ve demonstrated over two hundred times on every 
 Wednesday. To the last woman. We’ll fight you, Japanese. I want the world 
 to know our fight. We won’t die easily. We will live long. We’re strong. 
 Japan made us strong. We will become stronger. We will live longer.” On 
 February 2,1997, Kang left this world, her wishes unfulfilled. 
 
 Imperial Body and Imperialized Bodies 
 
 Except for the attention paid by their comrades and supporters, the many 
 deaths of the former comfort women went by without much notice. Their 
 deaths only highlight the lack of time to right the wrongs inflicted on them 
 by patriarchal imperialism and nationalism. Despite their old age, they 
 died too soon. Their anonymous deaths contrast sharply with the single 
 preeminent death of the one who is most responsible for the plight of the 
 women: Emperor Hirohito. Hirohito died on January 7, 1989, two years 
 before Kim Hak-soon’s public testimony. Hirohito’s death (and his un¬ 
 expectedly long life and reign), unfortunately, vanquished any attempt to 
 investigate the emperor’s war responsibilities, including the institution¬ 
 alization of military sexual slavery. In this regard, Hirohito too died too 
 soon. What is important here is not so much the unpropitious timing of 
 the many deaths and a single death; rather, it is their association, or the 
 lack thereof, that brings to the fore the suffering of the many and the eva¬ 
 sion of the one: the one who should bear responsibility for the many. While 
 the women lived mostly in misery after the war, sequestered in shame 
 and silence, Hirohito was rehabilitated as “human” (despite the inhumane 
 acts conducted in his name) and came to symbolize the pacifist and eco- 
 
 72 Chapter Three 
 
nomically oriented new Japan created by American-designed Cold War 
 imperatives. As Norma Field has succinctly pointed out, “In the postwar 
 years the demands first of survival and then of recovery, reinforced by 
 American security interests in the wake of revolution in China and the 
 outbreak of the Korean War, and later, the headiness of High Growth Eco¬ 
 nomics all served to render the question of Hirohito’s war guilt moot and 
 eventually taboo” (1991:183). As the sole surviving commander of the orig¬ 
 inal Axis Powers (Mussolini was executed and Hitler committed suicide), 
 Hirohito was transformed and rehabilitated in the postwar years from a 
 god-emperor and commander-in-chief of Japanese militarism to a sym¬ 
 bolic emperor and microbiologist. His unexpectedly long reign encom¬ 
 passed three dramatic events in modern Japanese history: Japanese impe¬ 
 rialism, defeat, and postwar economic recovery. 14 
 
 The comfort woman’s body is not just a gendered body, but a colonial 
 body as well. It is a body used as military supply, a resource to enable 
 the Japanese victory (Yang 1997: 65). We must therefore also apprehend 
 the comfort women’s issue as a colonial issue: hence, the implication of the 
 Showa emperor and patriarchy as embodiments of both imperialist and 
 masculine violence. Unlike the many ordinary deaths of the comfort 
 women, Hirohito’s demise was extraordinary. The course of his illness 
 was meticulously reported (e.g., the amount of blood transfused). Indeed, a 
 new vocabulary pertaining only to the emperor was introduced to describe 
 his conditions. After his death, media and other commercial outlets dis¬ 
 played self-censorship and restraint in order to demonstrate their respect 
 for the emperor. Unlike Kang’s demand to be filmed until her death, the 
 Japanese media had no access to publish anything regarding Hirohito’s dy¬ 
 ing body. Whereas we saw Kang, in her deathbed, still demanding apology 
 and reparation, Hirohito’s passing more or less eliminated any possibility 
 of even an admission of guilt, not to mention an apology. 
 
 Hirohito’s dying and death, ironically, raised once again the long- 
 suppressed question of his wartime responsibility. In In the Realm of a Dy¬ 
 ing Emperor: A Portrait of Japan at Century’s End, Norma Field eloquently 
 weaves three stories of ordinary Japanese citizens who courageously defy 
 the postwar imposition of the “chrysanthemum taboo” and silence on war 
 guilt. Unlike Hirohito, the people in Field’s book—a supermarket owner 
 who burned the Japanese flag, a widow who lost a lawsuit refusing to let 
 her dead husband in the Self-Defense Force be enshrined as a deity, and the 
 Nagasaki major who spoke openly of Hirohito’s war responsibilities—all 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 73 
 
confronted Japan’s past history of imperialism and contested the postwar 
 state’s denial and whitewashing despite social ostracism and right-wing 
 attacks against them. They are important voices, much like the comfort 
 women’s demand since the early 1990s, for exposing and confronting the 
 contradiction between Japan’s postwar claims of pacifism and prosper¬ 
 ity and its wartime and colonial responsibilities. The former conveniently 
 suppressed the latter. 
 
 In December 2000, a transnational collaboration among women’s orga¬ 
 nizations established the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in 
 Tokyo, which drew several thousand participants. The tribunal was orga¬ 
 nized, not unlike the Chinese trials of the Japanese war crimes discussed 
 in chapter 2, as a countermeasure to the International Military Tribunal 
 for the Far East that failed to prosecute and punish those responsible for 
 establishing the military comfort system or committing mass rape during 
 the war. The Women’s Tribunal made two significant findings. First, it rec¬ 
 ognized the Japanese military comfort system as an institution of slavery 
 that violated antislavery conventions and international treaties of the time. 
 Second, it established that Japanese women who had been licensed prosti¬ 
 tutes before their conscription into the military comfort stations were also 
 victims of crimes against humanity, thus embracing the common victim¬ 
 ization between Japanese and other women under the Japanese military 
 sexual slavery system. Perhaps more symbolically, the late Hirohito was 
 found guilty a year later in a judgment given in The Hague. 1 ' Equally im¬ 
 portant, as Lisa Yoneyama (2016) has pointed out, the Women’s Tribunal, 
 despite its limitations and shortcomings, exposed the fallacy of earlier war 
 crimes adjudication, mainly the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Not only did the 
 Women’s Tribunal find that Hirohito was responsible and that the Jap¬ 
 anese imperial army had violated international laws prohibiting slavery 
 and forced prostitution, it also indicted the Allied powers for suppressing 
 knowledge of the comfort women system. Finally, the Women’s Tribunal 
 challenged the normative concept of “humanity” when it prosecuted mili¬ 
 tary violence committed against women in North and Southeast Asia as 
 “crimes against humanity,” whereas the Tokyo War Crimes Trial exclu¬ 
 sively focused on Japanese crimes against Western men and women (126). 
 What is most pertinent to the aspiration of my argument is Yoneyama’s 
 insistence on radical reconfiguration of knowledge production toward fu¬ 
 turity. She writes: 
 
 74 Chapter Three 
 
For the tribunal findings to gain any significance, audiences had to 
 realize that its justice could not be located in the present, in insti¬ 
 tutional realism or the status quo. Instead, its significance had to be 
 sought in the future, as the yet unseen, born out of a transformed 
 present. In other words, the Women’s Tribunal historical efficacy 
 will depend on whether and how those who respond to the survi¬ 
 vors’ testimonial accounts become transnationally and nationally 
 engaged so as to intervene critically in long-inherited institutions 
 and knowledge. (127) 
 
 Conclusion: A Bronze Statue and Transnationalism 
 
 On December 14, 2011, the former comfort women, along with hundreds 
 of volunteers and supporters, marked their one thousandth Wednesday 
 rally. At the demonstration, the Peace Monument, a 120-centimeter-high 
 bronze statue of a seated, unsmiling young girl, was erected to symbolize 
 all the victims and face the Japanese embassy. Next to the seated statue is 
 an empty seat, inviting visitors to sit with the girl and gaze at the embassy 
 with her. With her feet bare, her hands on her lap, the girl’s steely eyes 
 fix on the embassy across a narrow street in central Seoul. The gesture 
 of looking reminds us of the beginning of The Murmuring on an equally 
 frosty December morning more than sixteen years earlier. In the film, one 
 woman asks the police guards to move so she can “see” the embassy gate. 
 This “seeing” or “glaring” is not only a call to view the “symbol” or “substi¬ 
 tute” of Japanese aggression, but also a demand to be seen by those respon¬ 
 sible. To be able to see the embassy gate is to render visible at all times the 
 symbol of Japanese oppression. It also turns a downcast gaze of shame into 
 a defiant look of demand. The bronze statue of the girl in traditional attire 
 represents, on the one hand, the young victims who were enslaved and, on 
 the other, its materiality recalls and reenergizes the fierce demanding gaze 
 of the elder comfort women. It creates a sense of permanency, or a contin¬ 
 uous demonstration, from what inevitably will become the ultimate fate of 
 all the aging women. The installment of the bronze statue was not without 
 controversy. Just prior to President Lee Myung-bak’s visit to Tokyo that 
 weekend, the Japanese government’s main spokesman, the chief cabinet 
 secretary Fujiwara Osamu, called the installation of the statue “extremely 
 regrettable” and said that his government would ask that it be removed. 16 
 During a session of the Japanese Diet, Prime Minister Noda, responding 
 
 Shameful Bodies , Bodily Shame 75 
 
to a question by the lawmaker Yamatani Eriko from the conservative Lib¬ 
 eral Democratic Party, said “comfort woman forced into sexual slavery” 
 is “far from accurate.” 1 Not surprisingly, the conservative faction of the 
 Japanese society took this opportunity to denounce the women as liars 
 and to oppose the erection of the statue. On June 2012, Suzuki Nobuyuki, 
 a forty-seven-year-old former member of the Diet, along with another un¬ 
 identified Japanese man, tied a 90-centimeter-long stake to the leg of the 
 statue with a sign that said “Takeshima is Japanese territory.” Takeshima, 
 or Dokdo, as it is called in Korea, is a small island located on the East Sea 
 that has become a symbol of territorial dispute between the two countries. 
 Suzuki uploaded a video on YouTube and a blog of his planting the stake. 
 He also called the Peace Monument a “prostitute statue.” A month later, 
 in retaliation for planting the wooden stake, a sixty-two-year-old Korean 
 man rammed a small truck into the main gate of the Japanese embassy. 
 
 The controversy surrounding the Peace Monument commemorating 
 the one thousandth weekly protest only serves to underscore the continued 
 impasse and escalating conflict over the comfort women issue. The state- 
 to-state diplomatic sparring and scuffles are obviously not the solution, 
 as both states are complicit in ignoring and marginalizing the crimes in¬ 
 flicted on these women. The sparring only mobilizes support or demonizes 
 the women’s supporters for political gains. However, this is not to say that 
 therefore the state is irrelevant. If only the state can wage war, then also 
 only the state can bear the ultimate responsibility for redress and repara¬ 
 tion. The private fund concocted by the Japanese government is a sham, 
 because it excludes, if not exonerates, the Japanese state from any respon¬ 
 sibilities for institutionalizing the comfort stations and enslaving young 
 Korean women and others of different nationalities. Twenty-plus years 
 of protests, demonstrations, testimonies, education, and other activities 
 have raised national and transnational consciousness about the injustices 
 that former comfort women have endured, and they also raised awareness 
 about the violence against women and children during wartime in gen¬ 
 eral. 18 As Nami Kim has written, years of protest also “exposed the limits 
 of a nation-state that has sought to build a so-called fraternal community 
 in Korea, contesting its limited notion of citizenship.” 19 The transnational 
 support for the comfort women issue can be seen in the worldwide soli¬ 
 darity and the simultaneous protests supporting and commemorating the 
 one thousandth Wednesday demonstration. 
 
 In December 2015, the Japanese and South Korean governments reached 
 
 76 Chapter Three 
 
an agreement to settle the comfort women issue. Both sides lauded the ac¬ 
 cord as “epoch-making” and reflected the sincerity of the Abe administra¬ 
 tion toward resolving the issue. The agreement was as follows: Japan will 
 provide a one-time 1 billion yen grant ($8.3 million) to set up a fund tor the 
 comfort women, which will be administered by the South Korean govern¬ 
 ment. Abe will apologize to the comfort women and accept responsibility 
 for the issue. 20 South Korea will consider the issue “final and irreversible” 
 once Japan fulfills its promise. Both governments will refrain from criti¬ 
 cizing each other over the issue in the international community. Finally, 
 the South Korean government will seek to work with organizations in re¬ 
 solving the issue of the Peace Monument. 21 The agreement between the 
 two states only underscores the limit and failure of patriarchal national¬ 
 ism and representative governments. None of the comfort women were 
 informed about the agreement, and the patriarchal states also decided 
 to speak for the victims without consultation, empathy, or self-criticism. 
 These women had waited for more than seventy years for redress and rep¬ 
 aration, and they are still the pawns of bilateral diplomacy. To paraphrase 
 Jacques Derrida (2001), this amounts to a “conditional” reconciliation, 
 where two patriarchal states negotiated and settled on the betterment of 
 international relations rather than confronting the issues and resolving 
 them legally and ethically. I will discuss the possibility of “reconciliation 
 otherwise”—outside the purview of the state—in chapter 6. 
 
 The rather hastily conceived agreement, however, points to the shift¬ 
 ing geopolitical configuration in the region. The rapprochement could be 
 interpreted as an attempt by both states to develop a mutual defense to 
 counter the rise of China. As Noah Feldman (2015) writes: “What moti¬ 
 vates Abe is the quest to improve Japan’s national security. China’s military 
 expansionism is the main cause. Almost equally important is an accom¬ 
 panying perception that the U.S. may not be the strong protector it has 
 traditionally been. Would the U.S. go to war to defend Taiwan from China? 
 If the answer is no, then why would the U.S. go to war to protect Japan or 
 South Korea? If there’s doubt about the U.S. commitment, Japan and Ko¬ 
 rea need each other.” As I argued in the introduction, anti-Japanism (and 
 its constitutive Other, pro-Japanism) and its management today must be 
 understood within the context of anxiety over the rise of China. 
 
 It is important to consider the concern and unease that the Japanese 
 government and right-wing groups expressed over the comfort women 
 statue. What threat does the statue of a young girl pose to the Japanese, 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 77 
 
in order to elicit destruction attempts and with its removal implicitly in¬ 
 cluded in the bilateral agreement? I would suggest it is the statue’s repre¬ 
 sentation and materiality that resonate with the comfort women’s sup¬ 
 porters and at the same time threaten the opponents. The sculptors (Kim 
 Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung) who designed the statue had initially en¬ 
 visioned the statue to be an old woman in her eighties, the approximate 
 age of the comfort women at the time, holding a rod chastising the Japa¬ 
 nese. However, they decided on the image of a young girl, around fifteen 
 or so, about the age when they were taken, to represent their voice. The 
 design has several intended symbolisms: the girl is wearing Korean tra¬ 
 ditional clothing, the hanbok; her short and rough hair represents forced 
 hair cutting by the Japanese soldiers; the tightly clenched fists suggest a 
 strong will to fight against the Japanese government’s continued denial; 
 and the bird on her left shoulder is a link between the deceased comfort 
 women and those who are still alive (Lee 2016). In this regard, the statue 
 mediates between the past, the present, and the future. It represents a past 
 that deprived the girls of unknown possibilities, a present struggle against 
 patriarchal nationalism, and a future of continued demand for justice even 
 after all the comfort women have perished. What renders the statue em- 
 pathetic and also alarming to the supporters and naysayers, respectively, 
 is her verisimilitude, that she is neither a statue nor a real person, but both 
 at the same time. Thus, the statue also mediates between “real” life and 
 “fantasy.” It is therefore common to see people putting a hat on her head 
 or a scarf around her neck to keep her warm from the wintry weather, or 
 people placing a stuffed animal next to her to keep her company. 
 
 Other than representations, it is the materiality of the statue that 
 grounds and begets an undeniable physicality to the comfort women is¬ 
 sue. A sculpture, W. J. T. Mitchell has argued, “does not project a virtual 
 space, opening a window into immensity as a landscape painting does; it 
 takes up space, moves and occupies a site, obtruding on it or changing it” 
 (2000:166). The comfort women statue, by its sheer materiality, occupies a 
 site, in this case in front of the Japanese embassy, that rallies the supporters 
 of the comfort women and becomes an eyesore for the Japanese govern¬ 
 ment. Furthermore, as the sculptors have created thirty statues of the com¬ 
 fort women thus far, its materiality is also reproducible and, more impor¬ 
 tantly, transportable, allowing the comfort women statues to be exhibited 
 in memorial parks, museums, and streets in Korea, the United States, and 
 Canada. Recent controversies over the comfort women statues in Sidney’s 
 
 78 Chapter Three 
 
inner west and California’s Glendale Central Park between local Korean 
 and Japanese communities only attest to the transnational movement of 
 the comfort women issue and the tenacity of nationalist discourse in the 
 era of globalism. 
 
 The empty seat next to the Peace Monument evokes the transnational, 
 translocal possibilities of the comfort women issue. It is an open invitation 
 for anyone who cares about justice, who opposes violence, and who is in¬ 
 spired and humbled by the continuous efforts of the women who not only 
 survived horrendous lives as sexual slaves, but also endured in the convic¬ 
 tion and hope that the issue of comfort women would be resolved one day. 
 
 In the 1990s, there were 234 Korean women willing to break decades of 
 silence about their history as sex slaves. As of July 2017, only thirty-seven 
 remained. 
 
 Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 79 
 
four. Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety: 
 
 The Dosan Generation In-Between “Retrocession” and “Defeat” 
 
 Now that we were free, had subjugation ceased to exist? 
 
 Who would be our slaves? When we were colonial subjects, 
 we could dream of freedom, but now that we were free, what 
 would our dreams be? Were we even free? 
 
 —saddat hasan manto , Kingdom’s End 
 
 On the morning of June 7, 2007, Lee Teng-hui, the former president of 
 Taiwan and self-proclaimed one-time Japanese subject, fulfilled one of his 
 long-standing wishes and visited the Yasukuni Shrine. Lee insisted that he 
 took the pilgrimage only to mourn his late brother, who perished fighting 
 in the Japanese navy in 1945. Lee’s brother, who died in the Philippines, 
 was enshrined under his Japanese name, Iwasato Takenori. Just before go¬ 
 ing to the shrine and amidst a media blitz, Lee told reporters that it was a 
 personal matter and asked them not to construe his visitation in any po¬ 
 litical or historical context. He added that since his father did not believe 
 his older brother was killed, they still had no memorial tablet at home, nor 
 had they held a memorial service on his brother’s behalf. Lee’s personal 
 journey to the controversial shrine expectedly drew the ire of the Chinese 
 government, which has long regarded Lee as promoting Taiwan indepen¬ 
 dence and defying the one-China policy insisted on by the Communist 
 state. 
 
 On September 17, 2007, South Korean’s Truth and Reconciliation Com¬ 
 mission published a report on 202 Koreans who had collaborated with the 
 
Japanese between 1919 and 1937. Established in 2005 by “the special law on 
 the investigation of collaborations for Japanese imperialism,” the com¬ 
 mission published 106 names in December 2007 for the period between 
 1904 and 1919. As stated on its official website, the commission’s aim is to 
 “reveal the actual state of collaborations done in the period of Japanese 
 imperialism in Korea to ensure historical truth and national legitimacy 
 and thereby to realize a just society.” Furthermore, the commission is en¬ 
 trusted to embark on a historical mission to rectify the shameful history 
 of Korea’s colonial past in “preparing the start of a new national history at 
 the beginning of the twenty-first century.” 1 
 
 For the history of Japanese colonialism in Korea, the contrast between 
 these two events cannot be starker. It reaffirms the common perception 
 that the Taiwanese are unilaterally pro-Japanese and that the Koreans are 
 unequivocally anti-Japanese. For Lee, the visit to the shrine was a sym¬ 
 bolic gesture (his disclaimer notwithstanding) to reconnect with Japanese 
 rule and to reassert Taiwan’s historical identification with Japan. For the 
 commission, the investigation is to purge elements of Japanese rule and its 
 symbolic collaborators from its national history and to reclaim Korea’s au¬ 
 tonomy from the memories of colonialism. In both cases, the personal and 
 the national intertwine, but in diametrically opposing ways. Lee’s brother, 
 or more precisely his spirit as a former colonial subject, is resurrected as 
 a mediating force that rekindles both familial and colonial relations, and 
 this resurrection reconfirms Lee’s and Taiwan’s historical and emotional 
 connectivity to Japan. (Lee claims he wasn’t aware that his brother’s spirit 
 was enshrined in Yasukuni when he visited Japan as vice president in 1985.) 
 The 1,005 “traitors” identified by the commission, with their individual 
 names and crimes publicly displayed (some with their properties and as¬ 
 sets posthumously confiscated), demonstrates the resolve of the state to 
 punish those who conspired with the Japanese and to insist on a radical 
 break from Korea’s “shameful history.” 
 
 It is not the purpose of this chapter to elaborate on the difference be¬ 
 tween Taiwan’s pro-Japanism and Korean’s anti-Japanism. Any compar¬ 
 ative methodology based on a putative national frame is obviously inad¬ 
 equate to account for the myriad historical causes and contingencies in 
 both pre- and postcolonial contexts. 2 Instead, I am interested in explor¬ 
 ing the sentiment of nostalgia and intimacy toward Japanese colonialism 
 as displayed by former colonial subjects such as Lee and the so-called 
 Japanese-speaking tribe (nihongo zoku) of his generation, or what the Jap- 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 81 
 
anese writer Shiba Ryotaro affectionately referred to as the “old Taipeis” 
 (.lao taibei). What I want to suggest is that the favorable and at times in¬ 
 tense feelings toward “Japan”—imagined or real—must be grasped as a 
 desire to recuperate a sense of loss in both personal and historical terms. 
 With many of these men (and a few women) in their late seventies and 
 early eighties, and as the last generation of Taiwanese who had significant 
 contact with Japanese rule, they fear that their impending death will also 
 mean the end of the historical linkage between Japan and Taiwan. From a 
 regional perspective, their sense of loss is exacerbated by the real and per¬ 
 ceived decline of Japan and the rise of China in East Asia. Their anxiety, 
 I want to argue, is symptomatic of the larger historical shift in the region. 
 The modern/colonial and postwar/Cold War systems in Asia character¬ 
 ized by the dominance of Japan appear to have come to an end. And these 
 elderly Taiwanese’s desires for reconnection and anxiety for Japan’s regen¬ 
 eration are only its symptoms. Furthermore, I want to resist judging these 
 aged but spirited voices as simply the nostalgic yearnings of the formerly 
 colonized or as the illusory fantasies of the feeble-minded. Instead, I un¬ 
 derstand their passion as a belated plea for recognition from the former 
 colonizers of their marginalized existence since the end of formal colo¬ 
 nialism. Their efforts, despite the obvious pro-Japan sentiments, interrupt 
 the linear narratives of (1) colonialism —► retrocession —► nation-building 
 and (2) colonialism —► war defeat —» nation-building schematics espoused 
 and expounded by the Kuomintang and the Japanese state, respectively. 
 
 The Dosan Generation 
 
 Unlike the young consumers of the so-called Japan-fever tribe ( hari-zu) 
 in contemporary Taiwan, whose identification with Japan is exclusively 
 driven by consumption, the older generation’s relation to Japan is mediated 
 through recollections of belonging, social order, and the lament of being 
 abandoned. As mentioned earlier, there are a couple of terms used to re¬ 
 fer to this generation of pro-Japanese Taiwanese: the “Japanese-speaking 
 tribe” ( nihongo-zoku ) or “old Taipeis” ( lao-taibei ). Flowever, I would like 
 to use the personable and Taiwanized term “dosan” to describe them. The 
 word “dosan” derives from the Japanese “ tosan ,” meaning father. “Dosan” 
 has enjoyed some currency in (post)colonial Taiwan among Taiwanese¬ 
 speaking families and conveys an amicable and respectful sentiment. The 
 slippage from the original “tosan” to the bastardized “dosan” signifies not 
 
 82 Chapter Four 
 
only the traces of colonialism but also the process of acculturation and 
 appropriation. In 1994, Wu Nien-Jen’s Duo sang/Dosan (A borrowed life), 
 a film based on Wu’s father’s life living through Japanese and nationalist 
 regimes, gained critical attention and brought the term into popular and 
 public consciousness. “ Ddsan ” therefore refers to the generation of men 
 who spent their formative years under Japanese rule and were traumatized 
 by the ensuing recolonization by the Kuomintang (kmt). After years of 
 living in relative quietude under the kmt’s anti-Japan policy and authori¬ 
 tarian regime, the ddsan generation only recently began to publicly express 
 their thoughts in their memoirs. As depicted in the film, ddsan exudes a 
 sense of masculine dignity, sadness, and loneliness from the alienation he 
 suffers under the new regime and from his longing for a Japan that is no 
 longer in his “borrowed life.” Largely because of their explicit pro-Japanese 
 sentiment and their seemingly anachronistic existence in contemporary 
 Taiwan, the ddsan generation has found sympathetic ears among Japanese 
 neoconservatives. More often than not, the Taiwanese are being propped 
 up by the Japanese as simply confirming the conservative and nationalist 
 agenda. The complicated and contradictory emotions and sentiments ef¬ 
 fected by the historical shift from colonial to (post)colonial conditions and 
 Japan’s “responsibility” toward these former subjects are rarely mentioned 
 or interrogated. Their “Otherness” is again being assimilated into a “Japa- 
 neseness” that they can never possess but can only lament at its alleged 
 passing, much like their own tumultuous lives. 3 
 
 The complicity between the ddsan generation and Japanese neoconser¬ 
 vatives is neither new nor surprising. As Mori Yoshio (2001) has argued, 
 several former advocates of Taiwan independence residing in Japan, such 
 as Huang Wen-hsiung and Jing Mei-ling, have switched from their earlier 
 critique of Japanese rule to become the spokespersons for the Japanese 
 neoconservative agenda. This radical turnaround, Mori suggests, is largely 
 due to the political democratization of Taiwan since the 1990s, which in¬ 
 creasingly diminished the relevance of Japan-residing pro-independence 
 advocates. The conservative turn was induced by a number of political 
 failures and the ddsan generation’s own sense of irrelevance, not to men¬ 
 tion the need to rationalize their struggle for Taiwan’s independence and 
 their existence outside of the island-state. The desire to be heard hence 
 pushed them toward a mutual utilitarianism with Japanese neoconser¬ 
 vatives. More important and instructive here is Mori’s harsh indictment 
 of postwar Japanese leftists’ indifference to and ignorance of the voices of 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 83 
 
the formerly colonized. Progressive and leftist intellectuals, Mori argues, 
 in their postwar political correctness, have bought into the “pro-Japan 
 Taiwan” and “anti-Japan China/Korea” binary structure of the Cold War. 
 Since Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek’s rule was ostensibly a client state of 
 the United States, it automatically meant all voices from Taiwan are anti- 
 Communist and hence nonprogressive. Mori points out that this radical¬ 
 ism actually concealed the arrogance of the former Japanese colonizer in 
 its refusal to actually confront its own colonial history. The inattentiveness 
 and marginalization of Taiwan by the Japanese leftists ironically obscured 
 the colonial connection between Japan and Taiwan in the postwar years. 
 Furthermore, the Japanese government acquiesced to the authoritarian 
 Chiang regime by forcefully repatriating pro-Taiwan independence stu¬ 
 dent leaders residing in Japan in the 1970s so that they could be prosecuted 
 upon their return. 
 
 Nihonjinron from Taiwan 
 
 The texts that I have chosen for this chapter can be categorized under the 
 larger rubric of “Nihonjinron from Taiwan”—writings on Japan and the 
 Japanese in the (post)colonial era. This corpus of works can be classified 
 under the following categories: (1) periodization—from postwar to the 
 end of martial law (1945-87) and from post-martial law to the present; (2) 
 authorship—texts written by the so-called waishengren (mainlanders and 
 their descendants) or benshengren (native Taiwanese); and (3) languages— 
 those written in Chinese or Japanese. 4 
 
 According to a study by Huang Chih-huei (2004), between 1947 and 
 2000 approximately forty books were published in the Chinese language, 
 with the majority coming only after 1987. In the immediate postwar years, 
 as is to be expected, books on Japan were mostly written by waishengren 
 from the perspective of a victor nation. Even if they were written by ben¬ 
 shengren, they were published only with the tacit approval of the waishen¬ 
 gren ruling party and they reflected the approved political view of the kmt . 
 Sentiments about personal relations between the former colonizer and the 
 colonized are subsumed and silenced under the binary between the “vic¬ 
 tor” and “loser” nations, the heroic anti-imperialists and the evil colo¬ 
 nizers. In short, during this period, Chinese-language writings on Japan 
 reflected a waishengren s perspective as “invaded peoples” (as opposed to 
 a benshengren perspective as “colonized” peoples). The waishengrens is 
 
 84 Chapter Four 
 
the perspective concurrent with anti-Japanism on the mainland during 
 the war of resistance. The subtle but unmistakable distinction between 
 “invaded peoples” and “colonized peoples” is important, for it not only 
 marginalized the experience and perspective of the native Taiwanese, but 
 also rendered colonialism invisible in postwar nationalist discourse. 
 
 In the post-martial law era, writing about Japan from the perspective 
 of the formerly colonized flourished, especially from the 1990s onward. 
 Twenty-four Taiwanese Nihonjinron books were published between 1992 
 and 2003. These works were mostly written in Japanese by benshengren 
 and were either self-published or published in Japan. Most of these were 
 penned by nonprofessional writers and employed mostly the literary forms 
 of biography, memoir, autobiography, and poetry. These works recollect 
 and reexamine with immense emotion and conviction personal experi¬ 
 ences ranging from ardent condemnation of Japanese rule to equally pas¬ 
 sionate affirmation of Japanese colonialism. The shift from the perspective 
 of the “invaded” to that of the “colonized,” propelled by the democratic 
 movement in Taiwan since the 1990s, opened up a new space for a more 
 Taiwan-centric understanding of its own history, especially in the colonial 
 period. 
 
 I have chosen for analysis four recent works that follow the Taiwanese/ 
 colonized viewpoint expressing profound nostalgia and fondness for Jap¬ 
 anese colonialism. This choice is not entirely arbitrary. First, these works 
 were all published in Japanese within a book series entitled “Pride of the 
 Japanese” by Sakuranohana Publishing House, a small publisher that ob¬ 
 viously harbors a neoconservative and neonationalist agenda. 3 The series 
 title seems to elicit a double reading of “Japanese”: those former subjects 
 who are proud of once being Japanese, and Japanese today who are be¬ 
 ing called forth to be proud of their country. Second, these texts share, if 
 not dutifully expound on, the rhetoric and discourse of neoconservatives 
 such as Ishihara Shintaro and Kobayashi Yoshinori. The facile thing to do 
 would be to assume that these “Pride of the Japanese” authors are nothing 
 but dummies spewing the words of their Japanese ventriloquists. However, 
 I would like to argue, in the context of (post)colonial Taiwan/Japan/China, 
 that their discourse of nostalgia has to be apprehended as a rupture from 
 the linearity of historical progress from colonialism to recovery and finally 
 to nation-building. By equating their voices with simply conservative and 
 reactionary gibberish by people in the twilight of their lives is to reproduce 
 the colonial violence that constructed their subjectivity in the first place. It 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 85 
 
is also to flatten out the ambivalence of colonial power and the false faith in 
 “liberation.” The nostalgic mode of their writing forces us to confront a vi¬ 
 olence that continues from the colonial past into the (post)colonial present. 
 
 “Pride of the Japanese” 
 
 In the context of South Korea’s investigation into former collaborators 
 with the Japanese, the dosan generation appears to be worse than “trai¬ 
 tors,” because they openly praise Japanese rule. 6 The series “Pride of the 
 Japanese” has published four books since 2003: Nihonjin wa totemo sub- 
 arashikatta (The Japanese were wonderful) by Yang Suqiu/Yo Soshu 
 (2003), Kaerazaru Nihonjin (The unreturned Japanese) by Cai Minsan/ 
 Sai Binzo (2004), Bokoku wa Nihon, Sokoku wa Taiwan: Aru Nihongozoku 
 Taiwanjin (Motherland is Japan, fatherland is Taiwan: A Taiwanese from 
 the Japanese-speaking tribe) by Ke Desan/Ka Tokuzo (2005), and Subara- 
 shikatta Nihon no sensei to sono kyoiku (Wonderful! Japanese teachers and 
 their education) by Yang Yingyin/Yo Ogin (2006). With Yang Suqiu/Yo 
 Soshu as the sole woman, they all fit the profile of the dosan generation: 
 the authors were mostly born in the 1920s and 1930s and spent their for¬ 
 mative years of schooling during the period of imperialization ( kominka ) 
 and war mobilization; they experienced the end of war during their youth 
 and with a strong sense of confusion and depletion; they also lived through 
 the rule of the “recovering” nationalist regime. When these books were 
 published, their authors were already in their seventies and eighties. Before 
 examining the formal structure of their writings—what I call the nostalgia 
 mode—it is important to look at the role that these writings purported to 
 serve under the series “Pride of the Japanese.” 8 
 
 According to the editor, the goal of the series is to explore and reconfirm 
 the essence that forms the spirit of the Japanese at a time of the nation’s 
 uncertainty and instability. The story is a familiar one. The crisis of the 
 nation, despite its relative economic wealth gained since the end of the 
 Second World War, is that Japan and its people are not being respected by 
 other nations. The examples of servile diplomacy toward China and North 
 Korea and the controversy over the prime minister’s visit to the Yasukuni 
 Shrine all point to Japan’s lack of sovereign power. The culprits, the editor 
 insists, are postwar institutions such as the Japan Teachers’ Union and 
 left-leaning media such as the Asahi Shitnbun. This “masochist view of 
 history,” as neoconservatives like to say, rendered Japanese colonialism 
 
 86 Chapter Four 
 
as evil and invented war crimes beyond the normative violence of war. 
 The fabrication of the Nanjing Massacre is its prime example. Contrary 
 to these claims, the editor asserts, Japan modernized Taiwan and Korea 
 with infrastructure-building, education, a sense of public duty, and le¬ 
 gal institutions unlike the exploitative colonialism of the Western powers. 
 These are claimed to be exemplary accomplishments that only the Japa¬ 
 nese achieved. 4 
 
 The “advancement” of Japan in Asia, accordingly, was not based on av¬ 
 arice but self-defense. While some ambition was involved, Japanese expan¬ 
 sionism was vital to Japan’s self-preservation and to securing the Greater 
 East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere from Western encroachment. While it 
 would be wrong to praise all acts conducted by Japan, it is the goal of 
 this series to “capture and rectify the historical truths that have been un¬ 
 justly distorted.” The editor then goes on to explain the different reactions 
 to Japanese rule by the Taiwanese and the Koreans despite the mutual 
 benefit of colonialism. As far as Taiwan is concerned, the oppression of 
 the nationalist regime (as evident by the February 28 Incident, when na¬ 
 tive discontent and frustration about corruption, social disorder, military 
 abuse, and economic hardship exploded in an islandwide protest against 
 the nationalist regime) has further exploited and infuriated the people of 
 Taiwan and made them long for their former ruler. Korea, by contrast, was 
 blanketed by an anti-Japan regime under the watchful eye of the United 
 States. The Korean nationalists, denying any contribution by Japan toward 
 Korea’s modernity, fabricated and brainwashed people for the last sixty 
 years with their own national superiority and their belief in the inherent 
 evilness of the Japanese. 
 
 The editor goes on to call for a racial and regional solidarity to oppose 
 the continued Euro-American racism and hegemony in the world today. 
 The series calls for the construction of and deepening of spiritual, eco¬ 
 nomic, and political linkages among the yellow race nations to create civi¬ 
 lization/culture that is distinct from that of Euro-America. This is the only 
 way to reverse the long-standing tradition of white/Western envy of the 
 Asians. As if to reconstitute the Co-Prosperity Sphere of the 1940s, Japan, 
 Taiwan, China, Korea, Thailand, Myanmar, Indochina, Mongolia, Tibet, 
 Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka—the Buddhist and Confucian cultures— 
 must affirm their similar values. Only then can there be an Asian race 
 worthy of the respect of the European race that has ruled much of modern 
 human history. To illustrate Japan’s “positive” colonial experience and its 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 87 
 
relevance today, the editor ends with words from the former Thai Prime 
 Minister Kukrit Pramoj. Expressing his gratitude to Nakamura Aketo, 
 the former Japanese military commander stationed in Thailand in 1955, 
 Pramoj writes: 
 
 Thanks to Japan, all Asian nations have gained independence. Japan, 
 the mother, has had complications during this difficult birth. How¬ 
 ever, all the children are growing up quickly and healthily. Whom 
 should we thank today that peoples of Southeast Asia can speak to 
 the United States and England as equals? It is due to our mother, 
 Japan, who sacrificed herself for the benefit of all. The eighth of De¬ 
 cember [the attack on Pearl Harbor] is the day mother revealed to us 
 this important truth when she wagered her life on a critical decision. 
 August fifteenth [Japan’s surrender] is when our dear mother rested 
 in her sick bed. We should never forget these two dates. 10 
 
 The evocation of the old colonial East/West binary seems ludicrously 
 outdated and ideologically suspicious in the context of today’s capitalist 
 globalization. It amounts to a feeble gesture to resuscitate the logic of re¬ 
 gionalism under Japan’s leadership. The former colonial subjects are ush¬ 
 ered in as witnesses of Japan’s colonial achievements and as advocates for 
 the repressed truth, unspeakable in contemporary Japan, about its own 
 past. The publisher intends to reconstitute the pride of being Japanese 
 through the voices of formerly colonized subjects, and they seem happy 
 to oblige. However, I want to suggest that, through the analysis of their 
 nostalgia mode, the voices of those who once were Japanese cannot be so 
 easily assimilated. 
 
 The Nostalgic Mode 
 
 Despite chronicling their individual life stories within the larger historic¬ 
 ity of colonial/(post)colonial Japan and Taiwan, writings by the dosan gen¬ 
 eration share a common narrative structure and rhetorical strategy that 
 I have called the nostalgic mode. The nostalgic mode calls on us to view 
 (post)coloniality in a particular sequence that corresponds to the lives of 
 the dosan generation. Personal experiences become testimonies to larger 
 historical events, and historical events inform the trials and tribulations of 
 individual lives: a dialecticism that underscores the connectivity and orga- 
 nicity between Taiwan and Japan. The nostalgic text usually begins with 
 
 88 Chapter Four 
 
the author reflecting on an individual or a group of Japanese to whom the 
 author either owed gratitude or with whom she or he shared fond memo¬ 
 ries. This “peaceful and stable time” was characterized by the presence of 
 “kind and gentle policemen and soldiers” and “wonderful teachers.” The 
 text then recounts the numerous achievements of modernization that Jap¬ 
 anese rule has accomplished in Taiwan, such as education, infrastructure¬ 
 building, medicine, law and order, and so on. The benefit of Japanese colo¬ 
 nialism is then followed and juxtaposed by the ruthless authoritarian rule 
 of the kmt , usually highlighting the infamous February 28 Incident and 
 the white terror era of the 1950s. The book generally ends with the author’s 
 opinion on and concern about the “degeneration” of the Japanese nation 
 today, and he or she pleads for the Japanese to remember the historical 
 connection between Japan and Taiwan and to be proud of Japan. 
 
 The titles of the books connote the sense of nostalgia, announcing a 
 lament and fondness for a constructed past —suteki datta (it was wonder¬ 
 ful), subarashikatta (it was marvelous). The authors often play the role of 
 former Japanese subjects, much like adopted children who were left behind 
 by Japan’s defeat and repatriation. They are witnesses to the greatness and 
 benevolence of Japanese colonialism, and reflect opinions and convictions 
 that have been refuted and repressed in Japan since 1945. Their functions 
 are thus liminal and surrogates—both inside and outside of Japan (as indi¬ 
 cated by the translated titles “The Unreturned Japanese” and “Motherland 
 Is Japan; Fatherland Is Taiwan”)—for former Japanese; they can speak for 
 the conscience of Japan that has been silenced in the postwar (post)colonial 
 years. 
 
 Nostalgia has been a key concept in understanding postmodern aes¬ 
 thetics and politics under late capitalism (Jameson 1991). More specifi¬ 
 cally, it has been considered as the symptom or cause of the riff between 
 historical signifiers and their signifieds. More often than not, nostalgia 
 has become a term employed to accuse attachment to and affect for the 
 past as being too politically reprehensible and empirically untenable. Both 
 charges depend on a particular understanding of the proper way of re¬ 
 lating to the past: it was only after history was understood as necessar¬ 
 ily emancipatory, progressive, and rationally comprehensible that affect 
 for the past could come to be condemned as an irrational obstacle. Those 
 devoted to the past—or to that which becomes coded as the past—are 
 seen as inhibiting history’s progressive movement toward less exploitative 
 modes of production (Natali 2004). The nostalgia expressed by the ddsan 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 89 
 
generation is indeed politically conservative and preserves class privilege. 
 However, it is also a struggle for recognition from the former colonizers. 
 In an unintended way, (post)colonial nostalgia fractures the ideology of 
 historical progress from colonialism to postcolonialism, from liberation/ 
 recovery to nation-building. It challenges the ideology that history is the 
 narrative of progress toward an improved sate. Nostalgia is a symptom of 
 the real unease caused by an unjust condition caused by the double artic¬ 
 ulation of “liberation” and “defeat.” The dosati generation was caught in- 
 between historical and political processes not of their choosing, and this 
 confused them about the simultaneous “liberation” from the Japanese and 
 “defeat” by the Chinese. 
 
 This nostalgia is about affect, and it is a sense of intimacy and senti¬ 
 mentality that is corporeal. As Ke Desan writes about his relationship to 
 Japan in an abstract, emotive way, “After all, I am nostalgic. Although it 
 is only my personal opinion, my feelings toward Japan are not about like 
 or dislike. I am nostalgic. It is probably something that has seeped deep 
 into my body and soul that made me think this way” (2005: 232). But this 
 sentiment also has its material conditions. Ke continues: “For example, I 
 can’t express myself without using Japanese. Although I use Taiwanese 
 in my daily conversation, there are many expressions in Japanese that are 
 missing in Taiwanese. When I read and write, it is mostly in Japanese. 
 Mandarin Chinese is the third language I learned after the war. Compared 
 to the young people, I am poor at it. It is a fact, however, through Japanese 
 I have expanded my thinking and knowledge. It has been a plus to my 
 personal growth” (232). Because Taiwanese is mainly a spoken language 
 and Mandarin Chinese was imposed after “liberation,” it is not surprising 
 that Japanese, which he learned under the colonial education system, like 
 most Taiwanese of his generation, defined and constructed his thoughts 
 and worldview. It is precisely this colonial condition that Ke cannot on- 
 tologically see himself ever separating from—the very condition of pos¬ 
 sibility that defined his being in the world. He continues: “Today, even if 
 I wanted to cut all my ties to something called Japan, I can’t. It is because 
 of the blessing of (Japan’s) raising me and the nostalgia that remains with 
 me. Japan has already become part of me. This is my conclusion” (233). 
 
 It is easy to either celebrate Ke’s reflection as confirmation of the great¬ 
 ness of the Japanese empire (the perspective of the neoconservatives) or 
 to condemn it as a false consciousness of a “collaborator” (the perspective 
 of the nationalists). Those two diametrically opposed readings are indeed 
 
 90 Chapter Four 
 
possible, and they might seem to be the only ways these soliloquies can be 
 read. However, I would argue for another possibility. The sentiment at¬ 
 tached to the inseparability between Japan and its former colonial subject 
 testifies to the repressed continuum of colonialism, in the form of a “dis¬ 
 torted Japanese” in the (post)colonial present. What continues is not the 
 same colonialism, but is the reflection of a forgotten and neglected former 
 colonial subject reclaiming his subjectivity as having now been suffused 
 with traces of an undeniable coloniality. It is a colonial difference that can 
 neither be subsumed entirely under the category of “Japanese” nor can it 
 be fully defined as “Taiwanese” or “Chinese.” 
 
 “Japanese Spirit” 
 
 All these writers, when reflecting on what they missed most about the co¬ 
 lonial period, unanimously point to the loss of the “Japanese spirit,” not 
 only in postwar (post)colonial Taiwan, but in contemporary Japan as well, 
 and they express how the dosan generation embodies and inherits this Jap¬ 
 anese spirit. Kobayashi Yoshinori (2000) enthused in Taiwan-ron that the 
 Japanese spirit, lost and forgotten in Japan, can only be found in Taiwan. 
 It is important to understand, however, that the notion of a Japanese spirit 
 is different from the amorphous idea of a Japanese national essence asso¬ 
 ciated with wartime mobilization. Instead, as Mori Yoshio has demon¬ 
 strated, the Taiwanese reading of “Japanese spirit”— ribunjingshin —is a 
 decidedly postwar and (post)colonial term. That the Taiwanese usually use 
 the Taiwanese pronunciation ribunjingshin rather than the Japanese ni- 
 honseishin only underscores this colonial difference. Unlike nihonseishin, 
 which projects a sense of dedication and commitment to the Japanese na¬ 
 tion and the emperor, ribunjingshin defines a more quotidian and practical 
 understanding of social etiquette and communal conduct. It is construed 
 less about the nation, and more about everyday lives and their organiza¬ 
 tion. Most Japanese neoconservatives, including Kobayashi Yoshinori, ea¬ 
 ger to recuperate an imaginary past ideal, often project their own notions 
 of nihonseishin onto the Taiwanese ribunjingshin. The Taiwanese locution 
 points to attitudes and behaviors that suggest moral and ethical virtues. 
 It points to a wide spectrum of conducts and behaviors that is associated 
 with a greater whole: punctuality, justice, diligence, willingness to abide 
 by the law, responsibility, sincerity, humaneness, and other virtues. It is 
 important to note here that these attitudes are associated not with “Japan” 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 91 
 
per se, but with the perceived Japanese “period" in contradistinction to the 
 renegade government from the mainland. It is only through the historical 
 trauma of another (post)colonial colonial rule that the Japanese colonial 
 period appears righteous, just, and orderly. Thus the nostalgia for the co¬ 
 lonial period—despite its real discrimination and injustice—is projected 
 to underscore the rampant corruption of the “liberation” and the author¬ 
 itarian regime of the kmt in which former colonial subjects are viewed 
 with suspicion and disdain. By associating ribunjingshin with a modern 
 moral and ethical form of conduct for the “greater good,” with in fact a 
 philosophy of the public, the formerly colonized also lament its passing in 
 contemporary Japan, where they see rampant social ills that they attribute 
 to an increasingly self-centered populace that has abandoned the notion 
 of the common good. In this critique of contemporary degeneration, the 
 dosan generation shares a similar conservatism with Japanese neoconser¬ 
 vatives and sees the regeneration of the Japanese nation as their most ur¬ 
 gent calling. 
 
 If the nostalgia for ribunjingshin is for the period of Japanese rule rather 
 than for Japan itself, the evocation of ribunjingshin almost always enforces a 
 contrast with the postliberation rule of the kmt from 1945 to 1987. Ribunjing¬ 
 shin then undergirds the imagined period that critiques the (post)colonial 
 era and further emphasizes the schism and incommensurability between 
 “China” and “Taiwan.” The contradistinction between Japanese rule and 
 Chinese rule is usually posited as between modernity and primitivity, dig¬ 
 nity in defeat and avarice in victory, that overturns the normative rela¬ 
 tionship between loser and victor in war. The writers uniformly comment 
 on images of the take-over Chinese military as haggard and beggarlike 
 in their appearance and lacking military discipline. Their crassness and 
 idiocy are documented and repeated in several rumors about their inabil¬ 
 ity to understand or use modern technology: a Chinese soldier trying to 
 switch on a light bulb without connecting it to the outlet; another soldier 
 buying a water faucet and being furious at the sales clerk because no water 
 would come out of it after he attached it to a wall. Such repeated stories 
 and caricatures reinforce the conviction that Japan lost to the Americans 
 and not to the Chinese. 
 
 The stories of primitive Chinese soldiers reverse the dominant dis¬ 
 course of “retrocession” that justified the kmt rule over Taiwan. In Tai¬ 
 wan, decolonization—unlike in normative Third World discourse—was 
 not about liberation or independence, but about a “retrocession” ( guangfu ) 
 
 92 Chapter Four 
 
to the fatherland, China; while Third World discourse is about indepen¬ 
 dence, for the Communist Party in China it is about emancipation (fan- 
 shen) or liberation ( jiefang ). As the kmt maintained its symbolic legiti¬ 
 macy over the representation of China, Chinese “retrocession” of Taiwan 
 meant re-Sinicization of the Taiwanese from their fifty years of “enslave¬ 
 ment” ( nuhua ) by the Japanese. It is important to note here the subtle but 
 crucial differences in how Korean and Chinese discourses constructed 
 their internal Other, the collaborators with the Japanese, and the Chinese 
 representation of the Taiwanese subjects. It is instructive that the words for 
 collaborators in Korean and Chinese are “chinilpa” (pro-Japanese faction) 
 and “ hanjian” (traitor to the Han race), respectively, whereas Japanese col¬ 
 onization in Taiwan is apprehended as a period of “enslavement.” The Tai¬ 
 wanese are collectively rendered as “slaves” of the Japanese. By describing 
 the colonial period as “enslavement,” the kmt not only legitimized itself 
 as a superior culture, but also availed itself of the unconditional power to 
 “un-enslave” its subjects and to expel any remnant of colonial rule in total 
 and by any means necessary. Whereas their internal Other— chinilpa and 
 hanjian —must be tried, exhibited, and executed, the “slaves,” by definition 
 owned by others, are not only “saved” by the nationalists, but also must be 
 “reeducated” and their culture “reconfigured.” “Enslavement” therefore led 
 to the need for “eradication” of all traces of colonialism—meaning anything 
 that could be associated with Japanese rule—from language to education, 
 from clothing to architecture. During this time of “transition,” Taiwan¬ 
 ese intellectuals pleaded for a more moderate process of “translation”— 
 translating what is modern and useful from the Japanese to Chinese. But 
 this was completely ignored in favor of the patriotic process of Siniciza- 
 tion. 11 Taiwanese intellectuals were therefore deprived of any role as ac¬ 
 tive subjects of decolonization. Instead, they became passive objects of re- 
 Sinicization. 
 
 The primitivity of the “victorious” army is further compounded by the 
 rampant corruption and brutality of the new regime. All the writers men¬ 
 tion the February 28 Incident in 1947. That led to a severe military crack¬ 
 down in which tens of thousands of Taiwanese were killed and arrested. 
 In this time of turmoil and confusion, the Japanese language was used by 
 the Taiwanese as the only way to distinguish the Taiwanese from the Chi¬ 
 nese. A scene from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Beiqing chengshi (The city of sad¬ 
 ness) brilliantly captures this irony of how the colonial language becomes 
 a means of resisting the “liberating” people.” Liberation is followed by the 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 93 
 
forty-year authoritarian rule of the kmt after they relocated to Taiwan in 
 the wake of their defeat by the Communists. What ensued was a period of 
 white terror aimed at squashing political dissent and exercising ideological 
 control in the name of anti-Communism under the Cold War structure. 
 The kmt launched several anti-Japanese measures to consolidate its rule 
 and to reeducate the Taiwanese from their “slave” mentality. The longing 
 for ribunjingshin and the Japanese period, unlike most forms of nostal¬ 
 gia, is not simply a passive and conservative reaction to the status quo or 
 a lamenting of the passing away of a particular privilege. Instead, it is an 
 active demand for reparation and redress. Certainly it should lead to the 
 interrogation of the presumed linear narrative of colonialism —► anticolo¬ 
 nialism —► liberation —► nation-building prevalent in most Third Worldist 
 discourse. 
 
 Nostalgia for ribunjingshin as a counternarrative to Taiwan’s second 
 colonization under the nationalist regime thus creates an anti-China at¬ 
 titude in the dosan generation that is both culturalist and racist. Their 
 postliberation experiences consolidated in their minds the notion that 
 the Chinese are prone to lying and therefore untrustworthy, that they al¬ 
 ways rationalize their actions and are inherently corrupt. From one’s own 
 waishengren brother-in-law to generalized remarks about rude and shop¬ 
 lifting Chinese tourists, all waishengren and mainlanders are conflated 
 and stereotyped, if not demonized, as insidious, corrupt, and haughty. Not 
 only is the Japanese period then rationalized as better and just, but all crit¬ 
 icism of Japanese colonialism is hence regarded as Chinese conspiracy and 
 slander. In their resolute anti-China stance, the dosan generation envisions 
 themselves in their twilight years as humble former subjects reminding 
 a degenerating nation of its past grandeur and accomplishments in the 
 midst of China’s rise to prominence. The ambiguity and double meaning 
 of ribunjingshin and nihonseishin thus connect the former colonized’s plea 
 for recognition and the former colonizers’ desire for national revival. This 
 shared ethos emerges as a mechanism to imagine a future that was denied 
 to the former colonial subjects. They take pains to explain that their opin¬ 
 ions about contemporary Japan should not be construed as “criticism” but 
 as “kind advice” from those who were once Japanese. Many lament their 
 old age but hope to awaken and to revitalize Japan through their feeble but 
 genuine acts. They urge the Japanese to develop historical consciousness 
 about Japan’s colonial relationship to Taiwan, to rekindle the pride that the 
 
 94 Chapter Four 
 
Japanese once had during the colonial period and postwar reconstruction, 
 and to remember the once beautiful, once wonderful nation. 
 
 What is clear from this desire for reconnection with Japan and for Ja¬ 
 pan’s revival is the dosan generation’s acute sense of threat from a newly 
 powerful China. All the texts present the emergence of China as a danger 
 to the co-prosperity of the region. They still view the new China through 
 the lens of old stereotypes and are unable to reconcile the gap between 
 their “seeing” China’s astonishing economic growth and “believing” in 
 their memories of an underdeveloped China. What I would like to sug¬ 
 gest is that the anxiety over China and the sense of urgency for recon¬ 
 nection with and revitalization of Japan point to the pronounced shift 
 within the regional order from the modern/colonial model of Japan and/in 
 Asia in which Taiwan was subsumed since the late nineteenth century and 
 throughout the postcolonial postwar years. What this anxiety reveals is 
 precisely the passing of Japan as the sole leader in the region. With the 
 economic and cultural development of South Korea, Taiwan, and the so- 
 called greater China, Japan, for the first time in its modern/colonial his¬ 
 tory, has to confront its neighbors as equals. This eclipsing of the Japan¬ 
 centric model is crucial to the neoconservatives’ attempt to recuperate the 
 “pride of the Japanese.” For the dosan generation, it is also an attempt 
 to make sense of their tumultuous lives under various periods of colo¬ 
 nization. It is a desperate yearning for recognition, a truncated identity 
 that with their passing will be forgotten and buried with their remains. 
 Abandoned by Japanese colonialism after Japan’s defeat, oppressed by the 
 kmt because of their Japanese heritage, they found no viable channels to 
 express their feelings other than in the privacy of their homes, with their 
 families and friends. That the Japanese neoconservatives became the only 
 group to mobilize their memories and stories is only a testament to the 
 tenacity of the traces of colonialism and the bittersweetness of the post¬ 
 colonial condition between Japan and Taiwan. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 Frantz Fanon said that decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. It is 
 “quite simply the replacing of a certain ‘species’ of men by another ‘species’ 
 of men. Without any period of transition, there is a total, complete, and 
 absolute substitution.” It is a historical process where “the last shall be first 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 95 
 
and the first last.” This reversal of fortune can take place, he warns us, only 
 “after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists” 
 (1968: 37). The decolonization process between Japan and Taiwan was vi¬ 
 olent, but the violence that ensued was not between the colonizer and the 
 colonized, but between the liberating semicolonized and the colonized. 
 Whereas Fanon has cautioned about reproducing the structure of the col¬ 
 onizer under the national bourgeoisie after liberation and the implication 
 of neocolonialism, decolonization in Taiwan produced two different but 
 interrelated trajectories: a process of “recolonization through liberation 
 and decolonization through defeat.” Liberation became another form of 
 exerting external control over the natives, inheriting the colonial struc¬ 
 ture left behind by the former colonizer. In this (post)colonial condition, 
 the last remained last. Japan’s defeat meant that the Japanese empire was 
 liquidated without intense struggles in the former colonies: defeat simply 
 replaced decolonization. The first did not become last. It is this paradox¬ 
 ical condition of (post)coloniality that I call the “nondecolonization” be¬ 
 tween Japan and Taiwan. Nondecolonization, as a historical condition, 
 problematizes the teleological discourse of colonization —► decoloniza¬ 
 tion —► liberation. My purpose is not to imagine what could have been if 
 there were “true” decolonization. Instead, nondecolonization points to the 
 convoluted and violent process of East Asian (post)coloniality where anti- 
 Japanism and pro-Japanism are only its belated manifestations. Japan has 
 always had an ambivalent relationship to its Asian neighbors. It has viewed 
 itself as simultaneously part of Asia and apart from Asia—racially similar 
 but culturally superior. This modern/colonial perspective is fast becoming 
 outdated, given the rise of China and other Asian nations such as South 
 Korea and Taiwan. It is telling that recently the resident Korean critic Kang 
 Sanjun has asked if Japan is willing to be “the orphan of Asia” if it con¬ 
 tinues to serve as a client state of the United States and ignore its Asian 
 neighbors. It is ironic that Kang uses the word “orphan” to describe Japan 
 today. Orphan of Asia, a book written in Japanese by the Taiwanese author 
 Wu Zhouliu during the war years, describes the protagonist’s painful re¬ 
 alization of a Taiwanese identity after being rejected by both Japanese co¬ 
 lonialism and Chinese nationalism. 12 For the dosan generation, the desire 
 for recognition derives from the ambivalence of their colonial and (post) 
 colonial identities. Ke Desan writes that when he visited Japan during 
 colonial times he was asked by the Japanese where he came from. After 
 
 96 Chapter Four 
 
he told them Taiwan, he was asked if he were related to the headhunting 
 aborigines. In (post)colonial times, the questions are still where you are 
 from, and why you speak Japanese so fluently. Postwar and (post)colonial 
 Japanese simply cannot fathom the existence of people who once were Jap¬ 
 anese. This inability to relate to the former colonial subject is symptomatic 
 of the larger forgetting of colonialism in postwar Japan. For the dosan gen¬ 
 eration, unfortunately, time may not be on their side. 
 
 Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 97 
 
five . “In the Name of Love”: 
 
 Critical Regionalism and Co-Viviality in Post-East Asia 
 
 Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend. 
 
 — MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 
 
 Let me begin with two images. During the fall 2012 anti-Japanese rallies 
 in China—as with the 2005 protests but arguably with more intensity and 
 regularity—images, videos, tweets, and chats inspired by these rallies pro¬ 
 liferated on social media such as Sina Weibo, the most popular microb¬ 
 log site in China. Because many Japanese-branded stores were vandalized 
 by the protesters, store owners and consumers went to great lengths to 
 demonstrate their patriotism (or more likely to deflect their peers’ patri¬ 
 otism) such as darkening and taping over Japanese brand names on their 
 electronics or insisting on the stores’ Chinese ownership. The first photo 
 shows the storefront advertising Japanese brands Nikon and Sony in an 
 unspecified Chinese city. 
 
 In the photo, just below the yellow Nikon sign, is a row of smaller but 
 brightly lit red neon lights displaying the following phrases: “Down with 
 Little Japs; Nab Aoi [last name] Sola Alive; Return Diaoyu Islands to Us!” 
 There is no doubt that this electronic sign was meant to shelter the store 
 from angry demonstrators, as “little Japs” and “the Diaoyu Islands” clearly 
 express solidarity with Chinese nationalist sentiments. What then, do we 
 make of the reference to the famed former Japanese adult video star Aoi 
 Sola? Japanese adult videos have dominated the Asian (black) market with 
 Aoi as one of its biggest former stars. As she gradually moved to main- 
 
stream acting, Aoi made her debuts in other Asian entertainment markets. 
 In March 2008, she appeared in a Thai film, Hormones, playing the role 
 of a Japanese tourist. In May 2009, she appeared in the Korean tv drama 
 The Korean Classroom. In April 2011, she starred in the Indonesian horror 
 film Suster Keramas 2. However, by 2014 it was China where she had the 
 most fans, including among them women who do not consume adult vid¬ 
 eos. In China at that time Aoi had more than thirteen million followers 
 on Sina Weibo and was affectively referred to as “Teacher Cang” by her 
 adoring admirers. 1 
 
 On September 14, amid the anti-Japanese protests, she posted on her 
 Sina Weibo account some fetching calligraphy calling for Sino-Japanese 
 “friendship.” Aoi’s seemingly innocent, if not naive, plea for peace pre¬ 
 dictably met with mixed reactions, from mockery to admiration, from 
 scorn to tacit approval. While many of Aoi’s presumably male sympathiz¬ 
 ers urged her not to get into politics (a messy men’s business, they say), 
 most responses were either crudely sexualized references to her previous 
 profession or were light teasing with sexual innuendos. What we see here 
 in Aoi’s “public” calling for “friendship” between the two nations and the 
 “private” experience of her Chinese fans denouncing her is an incommen¬ 
 surability of “love” for her with “love” for the country. Those fans who 
 insisted that Aoi should stay out of politics substituted one type of inti¬ 
 macy (self-pleasure, visual delight) for another (love of the nation, love of 
 the race). By “capturing her alive,” as the slogan appears in the photo, it 
 at least temporarily resolves the contradiction between public and pubic 
 (?) desires, satisfying the love for the country and taking possession of 
 their “idol.” What we have here then, whether coarse or soft sexism, is a 
 masculinist discourse that repeats the old idiom of “violate the enemy’s 
 women”: one that expresses the love for the nation as a public performance 
 of patriotism, the other one that represses love for a porn star, or rather for 
 her performance that is presumably practiced in private. What links these 
 seemingly incommensurable affects is carnality and masculinity. Perhaps 
 instead of love, we should characterize the second affect as lust. Unlike 
 love, lust, as an appetite, is believed to be indiscriminate as well as indif¬ 
 ferent to its object’s subjective states and wishes, whereas love signifies 
 reciprocity feeling and exclusivity. 
 
 The second image circulated widely on the internet appears to express 
 the opposite sentiment to the previous one. It shows a young Chinese 
 woman, eyes cast down, holding a poster that reads “We’ve overcome war, 
 
 ‘In the Name of Love” 99 
 
earthquake and flood. This is not fascism; our territory is never based on 
 fighting, smashing or burning. This is not the Cultural Revolution. The 
 whole world watched our Olympics. Please stop the violence. I remember, 
 our country is filled with love .” Contrary to the masculinist, sexualized, 
 and vindictive nationalist sign, this simple declaration, written in black 
 characters on white paper, is much more moderate and critical of the mob 
 mentality of the anti-Japanese protesters. If we can borrow Frantz Fanon’s 
 formulation of racism and call the first “vulgar nationalism,” we might 
 characterize the second as a form of “polite nationalism.” Differentiating 
 this from fascism and the Cultural Revolution—evils of the past—stressing 
 the resiliency of the Chinese people over man-made and natural disas¬ 
 ters, and drawing on the success of the recent Beijing Olympics as a sign 
 of progress and development, the poster urges the protesters to stop the 
 violence. What made this claim of benign nationalism possible is “ai,” or 
 love, written in an enlarged character. As with Aoi’s call for “friendship,” 
 a banal if not empty gesture of diplomatic naivete, the appeal to love as a 
 unifying principle for the Chinese nation is not without its own problems. 
 As Michael Hardt (2011) has argued, this type of love is identitarian and 
 nontransformative. It is love of the same that characterizes nationalism, 
 fascism, and racism alike, although to different degrees and intensities. For 
 Hardt, a properly political concept of love must resist a unifying impulse 
 and embrace differences and multiplicity. It must be love of the stranger 
 and open to the power to create new social bonds and affiliations. What 
 political concept of love can we imagine that will transcend both vulgar 
 and polite nationalism? What can love, as a political concept, do to create 
 new affinities and subjectivities that enable us to imagine relationships in 
 East Asia beyond fundamentalist political conflicts and liberal cultural 
 exchanges? In this chapter, I examine four representations of love—or rep¬ 
 resentations of the political concept of love—in postwar postcolonial East 
 Asia that offer glimpses of possibility for transnational and subnational 
 intimacies. 2 
 
 I examine the instantiations of love in four texts: Gojira (1954), Death by 
 Hanging (1968), Mohist Attack (1992-1996), and My Own Breathing (1999). 
 The choice of these texts is not arbitrary. Some have already been dis¬ 
 cussed in previous chapters, hence affording these texts the possibilities 
 of multiple and differentiated readings. I suggest that they represent four 
 possible political concepts of love that allow us to glimpse the possibilities 
 of affective belonging that transcend love of the nation and love of the 
 
 100 Chapter Five 
 
same. Their specific historicities suggest variable possibilities and impos¬ 
 sibilities conditioned and delimited by their respective political contexts. 
 I preliminarily configure them as “postwar,” “postcolonial,” “post-bubble,” 
 and “post-nation,” respectively. By focusing on the love triangle in Gojira, I 
 demonstrate the transition from “traditional” to “modern” love in postwar 
 Japan. However, instead of privileging the modern over the traditional, 
 I argue that the realization and materialization of the modern form of 
 coupling depends on sacrificing the “traditional” form of nonromantic 
 engagement. In this regard, a “traditional” arrangement of marriage is 
 not outside modern, romantic love, but is its very condition of possibility. 
 In Death by Hanging, we see the refusal of R, the postcolonial subject, to 
 identify with the Korean nation through his love for “Sister.” Despite his 
 affection for “Sister,” who represents the conscience of anticolonial na¬ 
 tionalism, R continues to struggle with his diasporic condition as a Ko¬ 
 rean living in Japan, and he finds the unification with the Korean nation 
 not commensurable with his present plight. Reinscribing the notion of an 
 impartial love of Mohism, Mohist Attack, a serial manga, critiques the his¬ 
 tory of warfare that links impartial love with antiwarism. This impartial 
 love rearticulates a linkage between Japan and China as having a common 
 ancestry amid the growing nationalist chauvinism in post-bubble Japan. 
 Lastly, My Own Breathing redeems the shame of the “comfort women” 
 through the unconditional love between mother and daughter amidst the 
 continuous deferral and denial of apologies and compensations by the pa¬ 
 triarchal Korean and Japanese nation-states. It is not in the official public 
 realm of diplomacy, but in private intimacy that the politics of reconcilia¬ 
 tion become possible. The analyses are not simply different instantiations 
 of intimacy, but glimpses of relationality outside of heteronormative and 
 state-sanctioned politics of reconciliation. In short, they allow us to imag¬ 
 ine love, otherwise. 
 
 Gojira, Romantic Love, and Postwar Japan 
 
 As Japan’s “first postwar media event,” Gojira (1954) was a landmark in Jap¬ 
 anese filmmaking (Kushner 2006: 41). It not only marked Japan’s return to 
 the international stage, but it also was the first film not to have to undergo 
 American Occupation censorship; it was the first film to generate a fran¬ 
 chise, and it engendered an adaptation (a very bad one nonetheless) to Hol¬ 
 lywood’s monster-flick genre. Susan Napier has argued that Gojira oper- 
 
 ‘In the Name of Love” 101 
 
ates on a number of ideological registers (i993 : 33 1_ 3 2 )- First, it demonizes 
 American nuclear science in an obvious reference to the atomic tragedies 
 of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Incidentally, thirty minutes of references to 
 the two sites of nuclear devastation were deleted from the American ver¬ 
 sion.) Second, the film ends with the triumph of “good” Japanese science 
 against the evil and menacing monster— via a dramatic ending in which 
 the Japanese scientist, Serizawa, using his oxygen destroyer, vanquishes 
 the nuclear beast—thus signifying a “rewriting of history’ wherein Ja¬ 
 pan, and not the United States, emerges as the world’s savior. Serizawa’s 
 sacrificial humanism, as opposed to wartime fascist militarism, conjures 
 a new Japan that is antinuclear and symbolically “anti-American, and, 
 at least temporarily, reverses the power dynamics between the two coun¬ 
 tries. What is, however, less frequently observed by critics of the film is the 
 love triangle between Serizawa, Emiko (Professor Yamane s daughter), and 
 Ogata, the salvage-ship captain. Serizawa, a colleague of Yamane’s, has an 
 arranged marriage to Emiko. But Emiko is attracted to Ogata and decides 
 to break off the engagement. Serizawa, perhaps still interested in Emiko, 
 shows and demonstrates to her his secret experiment and invention, the 
 lethal oxygen destroyer, and warns her not to tell anyone about it. Shocked 
 by the power of this secret weapon and eager to defeat the menacing mon¬ 
 ster, Emiko, ignoring Serizawa’s warning, tells Ogata about the weapon 
 and they try to convince Serizawa to unleash it on Gojira. Despite much 
 prodding and agonizing, Serizawa initially rejects their plea, citing the 
 danger of the oxygen destroyer falling into the wrong hands. However, 
 witnessing Gojira’s devastation and the agony of the injured, and after 
 listening to songs by schoolgirls broadcast on television, Serizawa changes 
 his mind. What is germane here is that Serizawa’s sacrifice not only de¬ 
 stroys Gojira (and Serizawa himself), but also allows Ogata and Emiko, the 
 symbol of postwar individualism, democracy, and romantic love, to pre¬ 
 vail. Serizawa’s sacrificial love (for humanity and for Emiko) thus resolves 
 two crises, national and personal. 
 
 Anthony Giddens (1992) has argued that “romantic love,” based on 
 already-established gender norms (hence unequal) and sexuality, has 
 given way to “confluent love,” which is based less on complementarity be¬ 
 tween the sexes than on contingency and lifestyle choices led by feminine 
 emancipation and autonomy, developments that have the potential of de¬ 
 mocratizing sexuality and leading to personal freedom. Giddens is talking 
 about sexuality and democratization in late-industrial societies such as 
 
 102 Chapter Five 
 
the United States. However, his distinction between “romantic love” and 
 “confluent love” is useful in thinking about the historicity of love within 
 modernity and its increased democratization. 3 Pushing further back in 
 history and focusing on three case studies, William Reddy (2012) argues 
 that “romantic love” emerged in twelfth-century Europe as a way of coping, 
 if not deflecting, the theological chastisement regarding desire-as-appetite. 
 The dichotomy between “true love” and “desire-as-appetite” undergirded 
 the Western notion of “romantic love.” Analyzing the South Asian and 
 Japanese contexts in similar historical periods, Reddy found that the bina- 
 rism between love and desire did not exist in the European counterparts. 
 Both Giddens and Reddy alert us to the conservatism of “romantic love,” 
 despite its seemingly modern, individualistic, and progressive guises. For 
 Gojira, we need to apprehend the tension between “romantic love” and 
 “arranged marriage” and their resolution in the context of postwar Japan 
 and the symbolic anti-Americanism discussed in chapter 1. While Ser- 
 izawa invents and possesses new technology to destroy Gojira, he himself 
 is a victim and relic of a recent past. We learn that his blinded eye is an 
 injury sustained during the Pacific war; his respect for Dr. Yamane and 
 his desire to consummate the arranged marriage with Emiko represent 
 the hierarchical structure of interpersonal relations that the supposedly 
 liberated and democratizing postwar Japan has tried to eradicate with the 
 assistance of the American Occupation. 
 
 The injured and disfigured Serizawa, much like the radiation-infected 
 Gojira, is a figure representing the trauma of war and nuclear devasta¬ 
 tion. It is therefore not surprising that both Serizawa and Gojira have to 
 perish (or be repressed in history) so a new Japan can be born. However, 
 the film is far from a straightforward endorsement of postwar values such 
 as democracy, demilitarization, and freedom. As a man of devotion and 
 duty (characteristics that supposedly contributed to fascism), yet much like 
 the monster itself, Serizawa evokes feelings of lament, nostalgia, and gal¬ 
 lantry from the audience. In this regard, compared to Serizawa’s sacrifice, 
 the romantic love between Emiko and Ogata can only appear selfish and 
 cowardly. In a subtle overturning of the postwar value system, the ghosts 
 of war and nuclear devastation return to haunt the new Japan. Serizawa 
 sacrifices for humanity and modern love. Put differently, Serizawa s love 
 extends beyond individuals, or the Japanese, to humankind. Modern love, 
 symbolized by the coupling and unification of Emiko and Ogata, is made 
 possible only with the demise of a “traditional” marital arrangement. In 
 
 ‘In the Name of Love” 103 
 
this sense, a truly postwar modern Japan is conditioned on the passing of 
 “premodern” practices, such as arranged marriage, and yet that “tradi¬ 
 tional love” is expansive and redemptive. Here Gojira questions the facile 
 transition of Japan from wartime militarism to postwar democracy. While 
 it depicts the romantic conjoining of Emiko and Ogata, the film’s denoue¬ 
 ment requires a different form of love to actualize itself. 
 
 Death by Hanging, Love, Nation, and Postcolonial Japan 
 
 Death by Hanging (1968) is arguably one of Oshima Nagisa’s most daring 
 and critically acclaimed films in the wake of the failure of anti-Anpo pro¬ 
 tests. 4 If Gojira signifies a transition from postwar to the end of the postwar 
 era—from a defeated country to a revitalized economy, thanks to Ameri¬ 
 ca’s “reverse course”—Death by Hanging highlights the shift from political 
 defeat to cultural avant-gardism. Influenced by Brechtian aesthetics, the 
 film uses the debate over the death penalty as a prelude to exposing the 
 discrimination faced by the resident Koreans and the colonial history that 
 brought them to Japan in the first place. With black humor and stinging 
 criticism, Death by Hanging is a composite of comedy, tragedy, and political 
 satire. What I want to focus on here, however, is the relationship between 
 R, the protagonist, and the woman that R calls his “sister” in one of the 
 seven intertitles in the film. Based on the actual correspondence between 
 the murderer in the 1958 incident, a resident Korean journalist, and their 
 relationship, “sister” becomes the means by which R will accept external 
 confirmation of his Korean identity as a first step toward effectively becom¬ 
 ing R." What I want to suggest in this sequence is both the personification 
 of Korean nationalism through “sister,” and R’s ambivalence toward that 
 politics of unification—between South and North Koreas, R and sister— 
 despite his “love” for sister. In short, while in love with sister, R, as a resi¬ 
 dent Korean, rejects the double blackmail of Japanese assimilationism and 
 Korean nationalism. As the Japanese officials struggle to have R recognize 
 himself as R, the murdered girl transmorphs and appears as “sister” in 
 front of R. 6 R asks the sister whether he is the R that she knows, and she 
 responds by saying, “Yes, you are a Korean called R,” affirming R’s Korean 
 ancestry and current identity. Sister further reminds R that he began to use 
 R instead of his Japanese name when he was “awakened to Korean nation¬ 
 alism” ( minzoku ishiki). Furthermore, sister introduces the oppression of 
 Korean women historically. She tells R as he touches her skin: “R, you’re 
 
 104 Chapter Five 
 
touching the Korean skin that bears the long, painful history of the Ko¬ 
 rean race. When the race is sad, we women are especially sad. There are no 
 women of my age from the southern part of Korea who do not bear scars. 
 They are beaten by their fathers, injured by their husbands, and some 
 of them have committed suicide, slitting their wrists.” One Japanese official 
 then interjects a narrative of the long history of oppression on the Korean 
 Peninsula and the thirty-six years of Japanese colonial rule. Sister then re¬ 
 minds R that at the night school he was “a young Korean among Japanese 
 who knew his Korean race” (rippana chosenjin). She then implores him to 
 atone for his crime by striving for unification and the prosperity of his 
 country. The exchanges between sister and the Japanese officials further 
 incriminate Japan and the colonial past that forcibly brought Koreans to 
 Japan. As sister puts it succinctly: “R’s crime was caused by Japanese im¬ 
 perialism and thus Japan has no right whatsoever to punish him.” 
 
 Finally, sister asks R, “We’re going to work for the unity of our country, 
 will you follow me?” R, however, remains silent. “Why don’t you answer?” 
 she asks. After a pause, R answers, “Maybe I don’t remember very well. 
 Being a revolutionary doesn’t seem to fit R though I am trying to be and 
 think like him.” “You mean you don’t care about the unification of your 
 country?” sister interrogates. To that nationalist demand, R replies, “it 
 doesn’t quite fit” (pittari shinaidesu). To that, sister can only retort: “When 
 did you change? R, you’re no longer R. You’re no longer a Korean! You’ve 
 lost R’s spirit and you’ve lost the Korean spirit. You’re simply a culprit, a 
 murderer!” R’s nonrecognition of himself as a revolutionary Korean de¬ 
 stroys the fantasy of nationalism. For sister, R’s crime was a Korean crime. 
 More important, R’s crime “is the only way for a Korean to wreak revenge 
 upon the Japanese. In the name of the Japanese nation, the Japanese have 
 murdered innumerable Koreans. However, we who belong nowhere (with¬ 
 out nation) can only take personal revenge on the Japanese. The world 
 is upside down [yUganda].” The pride and sorrow of the Koreans, sister 
 continues, are subsumed into this murder. Against this identification be¬ 
 tween the national and the personal, while ignoring the diasporic and the 
 postcolonial, R’s response is not what she expected: “Sister, if what you 
 described is really the way R is . . . then I am not R at all.” What is im¬ 
 portant for the context of our discussion is R’s ambivalence about various 
 forms of identification, or unification—between the personal and the na¬ 
 tional, between the two Koreas, and between himself and sister. What the 
 film does here is, while allowing the critique of Japanese colonialism and 
 
 ‘In the Name of Love” 105 
 
Korean patriarchy to present themselves through sister’s enunciations, it 
 disallows a facile reduction of the resident Korean as representative of anti- 
 Japan Korea and its colonial wound. The otherness of a resident Korean, 
 precisely because of the resident’s always-already colonized and diasporic 
 status, “just doesn’t quite fit” the discourse of nationalism, even if it is an 
 anti-imperialist nationalism. Through this reading, the love for sister is 
 not reduced to, or made equivalent to, love of the nation. This ambivalence 
 or hesitation, while allowing personal love for another human being, does 
 not collapse it into love of the nation, as is prevalent in Third World na¬ 
 tionalist discourse. 
 
 Mohist Attack, Impartial Love, and Post-Bubble Japan 
 
 Mohist Attack ( Bokko ), a historic novella by Sakemi Ken’ichi (1991), was 
 serialized as a manga by Mori Hideki from 1992 to 1996 in Big Comics. Set 
 in the Warring States Period of 370 bc China, the manga depicts Kakuri, 
 the lone adherent of the Mohist philosophy of “impartial love” (kenai in 
 Japanese, jian ai in Chinese readings) and “nonaggression” (hikd;fei gong), 
 and his attempts at defending weaker states from stronger ones by using 
 various tactics of fortification. The plot is complicated by the fact that Ka¬ 
 kuri not only has to defend the city-state from attackers, but also has to 
 fend off assassins who are his former comrades at the Mohist school, thus 
 creating a subplot that accentuates Kakuri’s battle skills, his commitment 
 to the Mohist thoughts and practice, and also his precarious situation. 
 The once venerable Mohist school has degenerated, moving further away 
 from the teachings of impartial love and the condemnation of aggressive 
 war, and has availed itself to the powerful Qin state by offering itself as a 
 mercenary service to attack others. Banished from the Mohist school for 
 his refusal to ignore the request to defend the weaker states, Kakuri sets 
 out on a treacherous journey. What needs to be defended is therefore not 
 only the weak states, but Mohist philosophy itself. 
 
 Pertinent to our discussion is the manga’s ironic ending that criticizes 
 Japan’s history of warmongering. The story has Kakuri being forced to 
 leave the Chinese proper after one of his patron kings decides to release 
 him of his service with a small group of adults and children. It becomes 
 clear that where Kakuri and his entourage have ended up is none other 
 than the land of the rising sun. This episode clearly references the myth 
 of Japanese ancestry as originating in mainland China under the rule of 
 
 106 Chapter Five 
 
the First Emperor. The myth has Chinese men and women dispatched by 
 the emperor in search of an elixir of life. It is said that they ended up in 
 Japan and became the progenitors of present-day Japanese people. The 
 manga ends by fast-forwarding to the present where Kakuri returns to Ja¬ 
 pan as a terra-cotta warrior on display in a department store. The caption 
 reads: “What would Kakuri think about the history of Japan?” following a 
 series of images depicting Japan’s military aggressions, both internal and 
 external, throughout its history. The critique here is that Japan, despite its 
 origins in the teachings of impartial love and anti-aggression embodied 
 by Kakuri and his followers, has continuously waged wars against its own 
 people and others. Unlike postwar pacifism that eschewed the difficult 
 question of Japanese colonialism and imperialism, Mohist Attack not only 
 reconstructs a mythological connectivity with imperial China, but also 
 lays bare the various acts of war waged throughout Japan’s history. 
 
 Impartial love and antiwar are intrinsically related. To love the other is 
 to exclude the possibilities of aggression (or partiality) toward the other. 
 “When states and cities do not attack and make war on one another, and 
 families and individuals do not overthrow or injure one another, is it a 
 harm to the world or a benefit? Surely it is a benefit!” This benefit comes 
 from “loving others and trying to benefit them,” and when people do so, 
 they are motivated by universality and not partiality (Watson 2003: 42). 
 This “universalism” is an attack on the Confucian notion of “partial love,” 
 in which people differentiate their treatment of others in a carefully scaled 
 manner depending on familial relationships and other factors, such as 
 friendship, political roles, relative need, and broad social implications. 
 
 As a manga genre, Mohist Attack’s critical anti-aggression and impar¬ 
 tial love stand in direct contrast with subsequent manga in the 2000s that 
 advocate nationalism and racism against other Asians. These manga draw 
 radical differences and illustrate the incommensurability between Japan 
 and other Asian nations, usually China and Korea, and promote the sen¬ 
 timent of hate. Depicting the Chinese as self-centered, irrational, and ab¬ 
 normal, Manga Chugoku nyumon (A manga intro to China) (2005) by Joji 
 Akiyama presents a history of modern China mired in continuous crisis 
 and turmoil. Recent anti-Japan movements in China are seen as the re¬ 
 direction of internal anxiety and discontent among the Chinese people 
 and have escalated to “hating” Japan (54). Akiyama’s manga depicts the 
 Chinese as cannibalistic, militaristic, and expansionist. Under the Chi¬ 
 nese threat, the manga exposes the social ills caused by China’s economic 
 
 'In the Name of Love” 107 
 
“success” and urges Japan to re-militarize in order to confront the rise 
 of China. In a similarly bifurcating construction of self and other, while 
 also demonizing the other, the best-selling Kenkanryu (Hating the Korean 
 wave) (2005) by Yamano Sharin makes South Korea its target of derision. 
 Paying scant attention to the popularity of contemporary Korean culture 
 in Japan, as implied in the title, the manga intends to expose the “true” 
 history of Japan-Korean relations. Its premise is that everything taught 
 about Korea in Japan has been wrong, including the history of the colonial 
 period and the discrimination against “resident Koreans” in Japan. Clev¬ 
 erly deploying the narrative of self-discovery through informal knowledge 
 production, the manga has its male protagonist awaken to the “truth” of 
 Korea through various staged debates and self-study. Both the Yamano 
 and Akiyama works were published in the mid-20oos. Their fanning of 
 nationalist sentiments only point to the shifting geopolitical position in 
 East Asia where Japan’s once dominant status is no longer assured with 
 the rise of China and popularity of the Korean Wave. The rearticulation 
 of a shared past/ancestry and the revoking of a third philosophical tra¬ 
 dition other than Confucianism and Daoism, the “impartial love” and 
 “nonaggression” praxis of Mohism not only critiques all warfare, includ¬ 
 ing Japan’s, but also advocates a commonality that rejects the ideology of 
 national competition in the era of neoliberal globalization. 
 
 My Own Breathing , Unconditional Love, 
 and the Politics of Reconciliation 
 
 The fourth example of the political concept of love attempts a reconcili¬ 
 ation, not on a national level but between family members in healing the 
 “colonial wound.” I argue that in the wake of continuing denial and ne¬ 
 glect by the Japanese government (with complicity from the South Korean 
 state), the space of domestic intimacy subverts the public discussion of na¬ 
 tional reconciliation that insists on state-to-state negotiations, apologies, 
 and compensations. 8 
 
 One of the main characters in Byung Young-Joo’s My Own Breathing 
 is Kim Yun Shim, a former comfort woman who received the Jeon Tae 
 II Award for her realistic portrayal of life in the Military Sexual Slavery 
 Unit. Kim recounts her tumultuous and unhappy life after “liberation”: 
 betrothed at sixteen by her mother, divorced by her husband due to her 
 barrenness, and remarried at the age of twenty-six. However, her daugh- 
 
 108 Chapter Five 
 
ter has cerebral palsy and is mute, most likely because of Kim’s physical 
 illness sustained while in the Military Sexual Slavery Unit. Kim ran away 
 with her baby because she was afraid her past would be revealed. In “those 
 days when a woman had syphilis, she wasn’t a human.” In one of the most 
 poignant scenes of the film, the director interviews Kim and her daughter, 
 Sun Ye Sook. The mother and daughter sit next to each other, a measured 
 distance apart, with Kim closer to her sewing machine that she uses for 
 her job as a tailor. Byung asks Kim how much she thinks her daughter 
 knows about her experience. “She doesn’t know much,” Kim answers and 
 smiles confidently while her daughter sits knowingly next to her. From the 
 daughter’s facial expression, it becomes apparent that she knows more than 
 what her mother thinks she does. After several more exchanges with the 
 director, Kim assures her that her daughter does not know and definitely 
 has not read her award-winning book. 
 
 Kim then uses sign language and asks her daughter, “Do you know 
 about my book?” as she looks at her daughter to confirm that she does 
 not. Much to Kim’s surprise, the daughter, using sign language, responds, 
 “I know. I read it. Yes, while you were in America.” As Sun responds to 
 Byung’s queries about the content of the book, Kim looks on with anguish 
 and concern while continuing to tell the director, “She probably doesn’t 
 know.” When the director asks, “You know? You know everything?,” the 
 daughter nods. As the camera zooms in on Kim’s surprised look, the direc¬ 
 tor reiterates what the daughter has told her about how she knows why her 
 mother was kidnapped. “So she read the book, that book?” Kim queries, 
 still in disbelief. “Yes, I think she did,” Byung confirms. “Wow, she did 
 read the book,” Kim says, while continuing to look away and pretending 
 to work on her sewing machine. As if unable to suppress her surprise and 
 seeking consolation, Kim suddenly turns to her daughter and asks if her 
 grandchild has read the book and tells her that she should not have. Kim 
 once again turns away, and we see Sun smile with a sense of satisfaction 
 while nodding and glancing at her mother. Kim again turns to her daugh¬ 
 ter, but this time she taps at Sun’s back and smiles. The daughter smiles 
 back. Sun then uses sign language to express her gratitude to her mother: 
 “She worried a lot about me. Two years ago she began coming to see me 
 often. She thinks about me a lot. She doesn’t like it that I am just getting 
 by. She wanted me to be happy just the way we used to be. She comes here 
 and helps me a lot.” The scene then ends with the following text from Kim: 
 “The past which I will never forget in my life. My daughter who can’t speak 
 
 ‘In the Name of Love” 109 
 
forever because of this unfortunate mother. My daughter who I love to 
 death. My tragedy shouldn’t continue on to her life. The brutal and mer¬ 
 ciless Japanese soldiers. I hope there will be no more war. The past I will 
 never forget in my life. I must keep it to myself forever. “ 
 
 A shameful secret that the mother has kept away from her daughter. A 
 tragedy that the mother would not want to wish upon the daughter. The 
 gratitude the daughter has for the caring mother. An acknowledgment 
 of mutual love and struggle that overcomes the memory of the atrocity 
 inflicted on both mother and daughter and that transcends shame. The 
 demand for justice has enabled these old women to come forward and 
 testify. In doing so, they overcome the patriarchal nationalist shame im¬ 
 posed on them. The scene portrays the undying and unconditional love 
 between mother and daughter who are bound by violence and pain, and 
 the acknowledgment of this truth overcomes the mother’s shame. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 It is important to underscore that the four political concepts of love I discuss 
 here are not transcendental or universal categories, although they might 
 appear to be so as any enunciation of love tends to be. Instead, they are his¬ 
 torically specific sentiments and emotions borne out of political necessity 
 where resolutions and reconciliations are not yet available or possible. 
 
 In Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (2013), the philosopher/ 
 legal scholar Martha Nussbaum proposes that to sustain stability and mo¬ 
 tivation in a liberal society, the cultivation of public emotions is essential 
 to inducing strong commitments to justice in citizens. Appropriate sen¬ 
 timents such as sympathy and love, she argues, are necessary to guard 
 against division and hierarchy. Nussbaum’s intervention is an important 
 one, especially as a philosopher and proponent of liberalism, because his¬ 
 torically liberal thinkers have not resolved the fundamental problem: How 
 can a “decent” society do more for stability and motivation in cultivating 
 public emotions without becoming illiberal and dictatorial? Nussbaum’s 
 book is provocative and touches on crucial issues that this book has tried 
 to address, albeit from a postcolonial perspective. However, I want to take 
 up two of Nussbaum’s arguments and use them to extend some of my 
 own theses in this chapter and throughout the book. I want in particular 
 to address the problem of the nation as the unit of analysis and political 
 emotions as eudaimonistic. 
 
 no Chapter Five 
 
Because Nussbaum’s central concern is liberalism and society, her unit 
 of analysis understandably is the nation. Following the works of Giuseppe 
 Mazzinni and other nineteenth-century nationalists, Nussbaum sees the 
 nation as a necessary '‘fulcrum” for leveraging global concern by extend¬ 
 ing generous sentiments to all humanity. 9 The nation also provides Nuss¬ 
 baum with a good “historical particularity” for the formation of political 
 emotions (17). In this regard, she also defends patriotic sentiments, sug¬ 
 gesting that internationalists such as Comte, Mill, and Tagore all provided 
 the nation with an “honored place” in their account of “extended sympa¬ 
 thy” (207). She writes: “In loving the nation, people can, if all goes well, 
 embrace general political principles—but in a motivationally efficacious 
 way. The public love we need, then, includes love of the nation, and a love 
 that conceives of the nation not just a set of abstract principles, but as a 
 particular entity, with a specific history, specific physical features, and spe¬ 
 cific aspirations that inspire devotion” (207). Nussbaum then uses speeches 
 of historical figures in the United States and India (George Washington, 
 Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, and Jawa- 
 harlal Nehru) to demonstrate how their respective articulations of patrio¬ 
 tism can be taught successfully in schools and provide an aspiring nation 
 strength in its struggle for justice. 
 
 While not denying the continued relevance of the nation as a unit of 
 analysis, Nussbaum’s resort to nineteenth- and twentieth-century theo¬ 
 ries and figures to justify a “good” patriotism that has the potential to 
 extend and transform these patriotic sentiments into a liberal internation¬ 
 alism seems anachronistic, given the rapidly changing configuration of 
 economic globalization, new social media technology, and transnational 
 mass culture that are simultaneously breaking down and building up na¬ 
 tionalist sentiments. Furthermore, the examples she gives are all situated 
 in anticolonial, nation-building processes that look at the nation as the lo¬ 
 cus of deliverance and emancipation. Yet under today’s neoliberalist global 
 capitalism, the role of the nation seems to have become more of an enabler 
 for capital flows and profit making than for providing the kind of aspi¬ 
 ration toward justice and equality that Nussbaum attributes to patriotic 
 sentiments. The increased “clash of nationalisms” in East Asia, with anti- 
 Japanism as one of its symptoms, only underscores the tenacity of nation¬ 
 alism’s hold on the people, especially those facing increasingly precarious 
 livelihoods under the very capitalist development that nation-states are 
 implementing. 
 
 ‘In the Name of Love" 111 
 
Nussbaum’s normative philosophy of public emotions and favorable pa¬ 
 triotism as capable of producing “extended sympathy” to others beyond 
 a particular nation seems to correspond to the neo-nationalism of Kato 
 Norihiro that we observed in chapter 1, a neo-nationalism that ultimately 
 provides an alibi for the nation-state indefinitely to defer its responsibility 
 for Japan’s colonial rule and its war victims. Kato has argued that for Japan 
 to take responsibility for its Asian victims, it must first constitute a “com¬ 
 munity of repentance” for its two million Japanese war dead. This rather 
 convoluted logic, while addressing an inherent contradiction of postwar 
 Japan by relegating questions of empire secondary to nation reconstitu¬ 
 tion, continues to marginalize the horrid experience of others in its fallen 
 empire, as well as the Japanese traumatized by Japanese colonial violence 
 themselves. I do not mean to suggest that the nation, or, more precisely, 
 the nation-state, is irrelevant in today’s project of political reconciliation. 
 Given that the empire was claimed and wars were waged in the name of 
 the nation and the emperor, and that governments are currently the only 
 recognized entities of bilateral diplomacy between countries, the role of 
 the nation remains important for victims’ demands for reparation and 
 recognition. Furthermore, as Karatani Kojin (2014) has argued, capital, 
 nation, and state constitute a Borromean knot that modulates, corrobo¬ 
 rates, and reinforces each other, even in the time of globalization where 
 the nation and the state are supposedly weakened if not irrelevant under 
 the transnationalization of capital. 
 
 Nevertheless, the nation form poses notable difficulties for those in 
 the former imperialist state who have opposed their nation’s violent his¬ 
 tory. How would they negotiate their involvements and “implications” as 
 subjects of the imperialist nation and its dissenters? Where some might 
 completely disidentify with the nation-state (as in the case of the feminist 
 scholar Ueno Chizuko) or prioritize one’s identification with the nation (as 
 with Kato), is there another option? In “Decolonialization and Assump¬ 
 tion of War Responsibility” (2000), the Japanese critic Hanasaki Kohei 
 argues that in light of the Japanese state’s evasion of responsibility for the 
 war and for the incomplete decolonization process within its former em¬ 
 pire, a “provisional” identification with the Japanese state and nation is 
 necessary. He writes: 
 
 In the face of the accusation that the Japanese as a whole are an ac¬ 
 cessory to this cover-up, I take the stand that as long as I was born as 
 
 112 Chapter Five 
 
a member of the colonizer nation state, and am still positioned in a 
 historical situation where the decolonialization of Japan is not com¬ 
 plete, I would provisionally take upon myself the definition of being a 
 “Japanese,” the definition that is given to me by other people and that 
 puts me into the national Japanese collective. I say “provisionally” 
 because I do not think I should remain forever passively defined and 
 bound by this given relationality. Japanese colonial rule as viewed 
 from the colonized peoples presents itself as nothing other than na¬ 
 tional oppression by the Japanese as a race. The colonized peoples 
 thus take the Japanese race to task for their colonial responsibility. In 
 the context of decolonialization, this identification of the nation state 
 with the race is grounded in both imagery and reality. (78) 
 
 Hanasaki is careful not to collapse responsibility as equally shared by 
 all people who belong to a nation-state as that gesture itself would be na¬ 
 tionalistic. (The primary example of this nationalistic rhetoric that made 
 war responsibility ambiguous is Prime Minister Higashikuninomiya’s 
 doctrine of “national confession of Japanese war guilt.”) Instead, Hana- 
 saki’s “provisional” identification should be apprehended as a disposition, 
 an acknowledgment of what Tessa Morris-Suzuki has termed historical 
 “implication” (2005: 25). It is not an acceptance of guilt on behalf of the 
 nation-state, but rather a “strategic essentialism” that opens oneself up 
 toward the Other for a possible dialogical relationship. Without this ini¬ 
 tial vulnerability, a sense of one’s implication within historical forces not 
 of one’s choosing, there will be no reconciliation. The ultimate goal for 
 co-viviality is to transcend the nation-state system toward a transborder 
 collaboration. 
 
 For Hanasaki, this disposition is an individual choice and free will. 
 It is a provisional identity one has to become. It also points to the par¬ 
 adox of Japanese postcoloniality where flexible subjectivity in postcolo¬ 
 nial discourse is incompatible with a rather rigid body (the Japanese state) 
 that still has yet to assume colonial and wartime responsibilities. Creating 
 this postcolonial relationship is, however, the task of not only the former 
 colonizer (or the entity conditionally identified as the former colonizer), 
 but also the formerly colonized, or those who identified with the formerly 
 colonized. Given the violence of colonialism, the desire for a collective 
 identity that arose from resistance to colonial assimilation is understand¬ 
 able. However, this “traditionalism” ( dentoshugi ), or the insistence on pro- 
 
 ‘In the Name of Love” 113 
 
tecting this tradition for the sake of tradition, Hanasaki Kohei argues, 
 amounts to a nonproductive conservatism that ultimately undermines the 
 creativity and energy of development from generation to generation (2001: 
 120). By provisionally identifying with the nation and assuming respon¬ 
 sibilities not of one’s own, Hanasaki’s decolonialization interrogates and 
 criticizes the role of the nation without privileging it as a step toward po¬ 
 litical reconciliation and co-viviality. 
 
 The four texts I have analyzed, albeit through a very selective reading of 
 love, are intended to historicize “modern” love and posit the possibilities 
 of love as a political concept. In Gojira, I identified the interdependent re¬ 
 lationship between “traditional” and “modern” love; in Death by Hanging, 
 I argued that the liminal status of the resident Korean obliges R to reject 
 unification while allowing personal love to persist; in Mohist Attack, an 
 implicit “impartial love” constitutes a self-reflexive critique of war through 
 the concept of “anti-aggression as an alternative to conservative pacifism,” 
 and, finally, in My Own Breathing, I suggest the intimacy of unconditional 
 love as a way to rethink reconciliation outside the national frame. What 
 fundamentally motivates love is one’s relationship to others and how love 
 can exist in various forms without being reduced to coupling, unification, 
 and sameness. Furthermore, precisely because of Japan’s legacies of em¬ 
 pire, military aggression, nuclear disaster, and environmental degrada¬ 
 tion, rethinking the history of Japanese radicalism can potentially offer 
 alternatives to the current political stalemates in East Asia. Finding al¬ 
 ternatives, I believe, is crucial as the region is increasingly facing similar 
 struggles and crises from the sense of precariousness and social anxiety 
 due to the growing liberalization of economies under global capitalism 
 and from environmental degeneration due to an unfettered developmen- 
 talism perpetrated under the guise of nationalism. To this end, the politi¬ 
 cal concept of love must be apprehended in the context of common crises 
 and collaborative work. East Asian nations must strive to overcome grow¬ 
 ing nationalist sentiments and, in their place, to create aspirations that are 
 antiwar and antimilitaristic and that respect the suffering all their peoples 
 have endured, and this must happen not only for the sake of the past, but 
 also for the future—not just for the dead, but for the yet to come. A politics 
 of reconciliation outside of the nation-state mandate and the struggle for 
 future generations are explored in the next chapter. 
 
 114 Chapter Five 
 
six. Reconciliation Otherwise: 
 Intimacy, Indigeneity, and the Taiwan Difference 
 
 There have been important scholarly interventions to make Taiwan legi¬ 
 ble in the international context: remapping its particular position in the 
 capitalist world system (Jameson 1995), citing its ambivalent and ironic (in) 
 significance in globalization (Shih 2003), and critiquing its southward su¬ 
 bimperialist ambitions (Chen 2000). These provocations and theorization 
 notwithstanding, interests in Taiwan or Taiwan studies remain marginal 
 in Euro-American academia, especially compared to the preoccupation 
 with the so-called rise of China. The aim of this chapter is not to overturn 
 the historical and political subordination of Taiwan as an object of study. 
 The facile reversal of Taiwan’s “minor” to that of a “major” (or hegemonic) 
 status, hence justifying our analytical attention and intellectual invest¬ 
 ment, would risk reproducing the power dynamics and the desire of a cap¬ 
 ital nation-state (Karatani 2014) that the aforementioned critical writings 
 on Taiwan have tried to undo. It is therefore from what Masao Miyoshi 
 (1991) has called an “off center”—a liminal but not invisible—position of 
 critique that I inquire the cultural and political possibility of Taiwan in its 
 marginalization. I do so by attending to two “particularities” of Taiwan in 
 East Asia: the presence of indigenous populations and the supposed inti¬ 
 macy with its former Japanese colonizers. 
 
 The original inhabitants, or yuanzumin as they are officially called to¬ 
 day, comprised approximately 2 percent (500,000) of the total population 
 of Taiwan, which is similar to the ratio of indigenous peoples in Canada 
 and Australia. Encountering and enduring multiple colonial rules like 
 
other indigenous peoples in the world, the indigenous people of Taiwan 
 suffered similar cases of extermination, forced relocation, economic dis¬ 
 possession, and cultural annihilation. It is only recently that social move¬ 
 ments demanding political rights, economic justice, and cultural autonomy 
 have gained traction in Taiwan’s public sphere. As figures of minoritar- 
 ianism and underdevelopment under colonial and postcolonial regimes, 
 the yuanzumin have been accordingly denigrated and/or romanticized, 
 depending on dominant political exigencies and instrumentalism. Unlike 
 the anti-Japanese sentiments that people readily displayed in China and 
 South Korea, it is often observed that people in Taiwan, especially the so- 
 called benshengren, or Taiwanese people, are pro-Japanese. Whereas China 
 and South Korea unequivocally denounce the ills of Japanese imperialism 
 and colonization, Taiwan seems to laud the benefits of colonial modernity. 
 Analyzing these Taiwan differences, I am interested in how indigeneity and 
 intimacy offer the potential to rethink questions of reconciliation outside 
 of the state-centric model of political negotiation in post-Cold War post¬ 
 colonial East Asia. To this end, this chapter examines two texts—the Jap¬ 
 anese novelist Tsushima Yuko’s Exceedingly Barbaric (2008) and the Tai¬ 
 wan aboriginal filmmaker Laha Mebow (Chen Chieh-yao)’s Finding Sayun 
 (2010)—as rehabilitations of colonial wounds not through the normative 
 politics of recognition, but a Active articulation of intergenerational inti¬ 
 macy through indigenous knowledge of myth-making that displaces his¬ 
 torical colonialism as the primary site where an alternate and nonstatist 
 reconciliation can take place. 1 
 
 Taiwan in East Asian Historical Reconciliation 
 
 China’s rise is seriously challenging the postwar-Cold War system orches¬ 
 trated and dominated by Japan and its American ally in the region. Neo¬ 
 liberal policies of varying forms and degrees have brought about economic 
 instability and social anxiety—a general sense of precarity—especially 
 among the youth and the underclass. The resort to nationalist sentiment 
 and chauvinistic negativity has increased, along with the desire to address 
 historical issues of Japanese colonialism and imperialism and the destruc¬ 
 tive violence and pain it has inflicted on the neighboring countries. While 
 much of the wrangling is performed by the state that fastidiously fans or 
 foils nationalist fervors among its citizens for its political means, there 
 have been collaborations among scholars aimed at transcending national 
 
 116 Chapter Six 
 
history and at crafting a regional, if not global, history based on mutual 
 agreement. However, even with this laudable effort, Taiwan, as a partici¬ 
 pant and object of inquiry, is surreptitiously left out. Debates on past con¬ 
 flicts and their resolution in the region are often depicted as that between 
 Japan and South Korea, or Japan and China, leaving Taiwan, Japan’s col¬ 
 ony for fifty years, not to mention Hokkaido and the Ryukyus, Japan’s 
 initial colonies, outside of current discussions. For example, the Common 
 History Project, a trilateral joint history editorial committee formed of 
 mostly historians from South Korea, China, and Japan, has published thus 
 far two collections: A History That Opens to the Future: The Contemporary 
 and Modern History of the Three East Asian Countries (2006) and New 
 Modern History of East Asia, Vol. 1: Reading Changes in International Re¬ 
 lations (2012a), and Vol. 2: People and Exchanges (2012b). 
 
 The attempt by these scholars to forge a transnational history of the re¬ 
 gion beyond national history is indeed commendable and desirable. How¬ 
 ever, the almost complete exclusion of one of Japan’s most important col¬ 
 onies is curious if not baffling. (The only place Taiwan is mentioned is in 
 the second volume of New Modern History of East Asia under the theme 
 “Railroads.”) The exclusion of Taiwan from the Common History Project 
 publications can be attributed to Taiwan’s lack of nation-state status in 
 the negotiations among so-called sovereign states. However, if the project 
 is to rewrite regional history, then why insist on the dominant configu¬ 
 ration of the nation-state form? Besides Taiwan’s lack of independence, I 
 surmise that the preclusion is also based on the assumption that Taiwan 
 has nothing to offer in a history-writing project with an aim toward rec¬ 
 onciliation. Hence, the project is symptomatic of contemporary political 
 negotiation between the three nation-states rather than a thorough rewrit¬ 
 ing of regional and transnational history that can transcend national(ist) 
 histories. Taiwan is excluded because it is perceived not to be in conflict 
 with Japan over past history the ways South Korea and China are, despite 
 the facts that Taiwan also has claims on the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku 
 islands and that women from Taiwan were also forced into sex slavery for 
 the Japanese military. 
 
 The perceived nonconflicting relationship between Taiwan and Japan 
 results from two independent but interrelated events. First, there is Chiang 
 Kai-shek’s “benevolent” gesture of “repay injury with kindness,” a condi¬ 
 tional and calculated “forgiveness” that supposedly absolved Japanese re¬ 
 sponsibility not only in Taiwan but also for mainland China. Its aim paral- 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 117 
 
leled American postwar policy to reconstruct and rehabilitate Japan as the 
 primary bastion against rising communist threat in Asia. Second, unlike 
 South Korea and China, with their strong anti-Japanese sentiment, Taiwan 
 was perceived to be “pro-Japanese.” This “intimate” relationship is often 
 cited by Japanese conservatives as reflecting the achievements of Japanese 
 colonial rule and juxtaposed against the insidious and grudging Koreans 
 and Chinese. However, as I have argued elsewhere, the “intimacy” between 
 Taiwan and Japan, especially among the generation of benshengren who 
 experienced both Japanese and Kuomintang (kmt) rules, has less to do 
 with colonialism itself but more to do with the ‘postcolonial coloniza¬ 
 tion” of Taiwan by the Nationalist government led by the dictator Chiang 
 Kai-shek himself. The intimacy toward Japan is a decidedly postcolonial 
 phenomenon that reflects more on the oppressive kmt rule than the be¬ 
 neficent Japanese colonialism (Ching 2012). What I want to challenge is 
 the assumption that “intimacy,” especially that of a (post)colonial kind, is 
 both a perversion from the normative process of political engagement over 
 conflicts and a betrayal of anti-imperialist nationalism that is not worthy 
 of consideration in the process of reconciliation. The binarisms between 
 resistance and collaboration, enmity and intimacy, need to be rethought in 
 their constitutive, rather than antagonistic, relationship. Taiwan’s alleged 
 intimacy with Japan, I suggest, offers the possibility of imagining recon¬ 
 ciliation of a different kind. 
 
 Theorizing Intimacy 
 
 Recent scholarship in critical colonial studies has argued for the com¬ 
 plexity, contradiction, ambivalence, and incompleteness of colonial rule. 
 Moving away from the Manichean division of the colonial world, these 
 analyses pay close attention to colonial-subject formation, for both colo¬ 
 nized and the colonizer (and their internalization and mutuality), despite 
 the very real violence and subjugation that operate between them. One of 
 the more fecund areas of research is the connection between the broad- 
 scale dynamics (or macro-politics) of colonial rule and the intimate sites 
 of its implementation, or what Ann Stoler has called, following Foucault, 
 the “microphysics of colonial rule” and “the affective grid of colonial pol¬ 
 itics” (2002: 7). Stoler defines intimacy in this way: “The notion of the 
 ‘intimate’ is a descriptive marker of the familiar and the essential and of 
 relations grounded in sex. It is ‘sexual relations’ and ‘familiarity’ taken as 
 
 118 Chapter Six 
 
an ‘indirect sign’ of what is racially ‘innermost’ that locates intimacy so 
 strategically in imperial politics and why colonial administrations worried 
 over its consequence and course” (9). However, as Lisa Lowe (2006) has 
 shown, “intimacy” can be expanded to larger historical and continental 
 connectivities. Beyond domesticity, in both bourgeois and colonial con¬ 
 texts, Lowe’s “multivalent of intimacy” also includes “spatial proximity or 
 adjacent connection,” where slave societies engendered profits that gave 
 rise to bourgeois republican states in Europe and North America, and the 
 colonial labor relations on the plantations in the Americas also became 
 “the conditions of possibility for European philosophy to think the uni¬ 
 versality of human freedom, however much freedom for colonized peoples 
 was precisely foreclosed within that philosophy” (193). Intimacies under 
 colonial rule were “embodied in the variety of contacts among slaves, in¬ 
 dentured persons, and mixed-blood free peoples” that were eschewed by 
 the colonial management in fear of possible rebellions against the planta¬ 
 tion structure itself (203). 
 
 In the context of East Asia, the notion of intimacy has formed the ba¬ 
 sis of Japan’s colonial desire and informed its postcolonial entanglement. 
 From the notion of naisen ittai (Japan and Korea share one body) and 
 naitaiyuwa (harmony between Japan and Taiwan) to the contentious cate¬ 
 gory of shin nichi (pro-Japan, or intimacy with Japan) and the Greater East 
 Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, the emphasis on the affective union between 
 the colonizer and the colonized has been part and parcel of the Japanese 
 colonial ideology of assimilation and imperialization. In Taiwan’s case, 
 the intermarriages between Japanese policemen and daughters of aborig¬ 
 inal tribal leaders are examples of colonialism’s “sexual diplomacy.” Shoji 
 Soichi’s novel, Madame Chen (1940), depicts the marrying of a Japanese 
 woman into a prominent Taiwanese extended family whereby the Japa¬ 
 nese woman, enduring hardship and prejudice by the Taiwanese, succeeds 
 in transforming the Chen family into an emperor-worshipping, empire- 
 dedicated household. In postcolonial times, to be “pro-Japan” was to be 
 labeled as a “collaborator” and “traitor” as opposed to the postindepen¬ 
 dent nationalist discourse of “resistance” and “patriots.” In this regard, 
 the “enslaved mentality” of the Taiwanese under Japanese rule entailed the 
 forced “re-Sinicization” by the takeover kmt regime that reproduced the 
 colonial binaries of “Taiwan” and “China,” “ benshengren ” and “waishen- 
 gren” with the former deemed inauthentic, perverted, foreign, and hence 
 potentially subversive. The postwar postcolonial Chinese authoritarian 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 119 
 
rule has propelled many Taiwanese to feeling nostalgic for Japanese rule, 
 lamenting the decline of Japan and stressing over the ascendant Chinese 
 power (Ching 2010). 
 
 As mentioned earlier, Taiwan is excluded from the regional discussion 
 of reconciliation because of its alleged intimate relation with Japan. This 
 political and conditional process of reconciliation seems to work from the 
 process of conflict —► antagonism —► reconciliation that prioritizes differ¬ 
 ences and incommensurability. Given the violence of Japanese colonialism 
 and imperialism inflicted on its neighbors, this is understandable. How¬ 
 ever, what if we do not assume that reconciliation must have its prerequi¬ 
 site in antagonism, but that intimacy between the former colonizer and 
 colonized can result in reconciliation (perhaps not the political and nor¬ 
 mative kind, but on a more interpersonal and intergenerational level)? For 
 the rest of the chapter, I analyze the works by Tsushima and Mebow to 
 explore how intimacy and indigeneity open up a space of reconciliation, 
 not with the colonial past, as normative political processes are prone to do, 
 but with the future, for the unborn and the yet-to-come. 
 
 Musha and Sayun 
 
 Tsushima’s Exceedingly Barbaric and Mebow’s Finding Sayun take as their 
 subjects arguably the two most important and interrelated historical events 
 concerning Taiwanese aborigines during the Japanese colonial period: the 
 Musha Rebellion and the Bell of Sayun, respectively. 2 My choice of these 
 two texts as exemplars of what I am calling “reconciliation otherwise” is 
 based on their departure from the normative accounts on the two events. 
 Although Tsushima’s novel recounts the aboriginal killings of Japanese 
 settlers and indicts the savagery of Japanese colonialism and modernity in 
 general, the main concern is the storytelling about a complex psychologi¬ 
 cal conflict and the corporeal desire of Miicha, a Japanese woman trapped 
 in colonial domesticity in 1930s Taipei. Her story is recounted and paral¬ 
 leled by her niece, Lily, who travels to Taiwan in 2005 to retrace her aunt’s 
 footsteps. 
 
 For Mebow, her film’s initial intention to find the “truth” of the story of 
 the sacrificing aborigine girl, Sayun, proved to be futile, and what emerges 
 instead is the relationship between Grandpa, Ah Gong, eager to revisit the 
 forsaken aborigine village and his filial grandson, You-Gan, who accom¬ 
 panies him on the treacherous return. Their respective loci of enunciation 
 
 120 Chapter Six 
 
are also important. Tsushima, a well-known writer, has, since the mid- 
 1990s, written novels that address Japan’s imperial past and war trauma, 
 often dealing with marginal characters and suppressed events. Her con¬ 
 cern has always been about women’s desire, the experience of losing a 
 child, and patriarchal oppression within Japanese society. Exceedingly 
 Barbaric is narrated from the Japanese women’s perspectives, and, more 
 specifically, from that of a colonial settler and her niece, whose alternating 
 timelines reveal the asphyxiation of colonial domesticity and the open¬ 
 ness of indigenous landscapes. Mebow is the first aborigine woman (from 
 the Atayal tribe) to direct a feature film. As she remarks in an interview, 
 her concern is the disappearing Atayal tradition and culture, which she 
 wants to pass on to the future generation. It is the common concern for 
 futurity—responsibility beyond the now—in the name of the lost child 
 and those yet to be born for Tsushima, and intergenerational connectivity 
 to the ancestors for Mebow, a shift from colonial to familial intimacy that 
 allows for a positive contrapuntal reading of the two texts. 
 
 Let me briefly recount the two colonial events concerning the Tai¬ 
 wanese aborigines. The Musha Rebellion was an October 1930 clandes¬ 
 tine killing of 134 Japanese, including women and children, by the Seediq 
 indigenous people, making this the largest and most notorious uprising 
 against the Japanese in the country’s colonial history. The incredulity and 
 agitation caused by the insurgence consumed the colonial authority to the 
 extent that the subsequent subjugation campaign mobilized approximately 
 three thousand military and police forces (against three hundred rebels) 
 that deployed internationally banned poisonous gas with the clear aim 
 of decimating the rebelling population. While the killing of the Japanese 
 settlers, including women and children, shocked the colonial administra¬ 
 tion and the public, the sheer barbarity and calculated vengeance against 
 the aborigines shattered the idealized images of compliant natives and be¬ 
 nevolent colonizers and crushed the dubious boundary between savagery/ 
 civility and barbarity/modernity. The Musha Rebellion is also the subject 
 of a recent blockbuster film in Taiwan. The two-part, four-hour-plus epic 
 Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (2011), stays relatively faithful to the 
 generally accepted historical narrative, and, unlike Tsushima’s novel, rep¬ 
 resents a masculinist representation of aborigine bravery and violence. 1 
 
 The story of Sayun (or Sayon), or rather the Bell of Sayun in its most 
 popular colonial representation, dramatizes the aboriginal redemption and 
 devotion to the Japanese nation through self-annihilation in the wake of 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 121 
 
the Musha Rebellion. The Bell of Sayun is the story of Sayun, a seventeen- 
 year-old aborigine woman from the Ryohen settlement (where Mebow 
 hails from). In September 1938, with the escalating Japanese war in China, 
 Takita, a police officer cum schoolteacher, is drafted to the front. Sayun, 
 with ten other classmates, is to carry the departing officer’s luggage to the 
 foot of the mountain. The entourage descends the precipitous mountain 
 path, thirty-four kilometers long, amid a torrential typhoon. As they cross 
 the rising water on the makeshift log bridge, Sayun slips and is swept away 
 by the rapid current. Even after many diligent searches, Sayun’s body is 
 never recovered. 
 
 Sayun’s accident was only casually mentioned in the Taiwan Daily 
 News in its September 29,1938, edition, with the simple heading “Aborig¬ 
 ine Woman Missing after Falling into Stream.” For three years the story of 
 a drowned seventeen-year-old remained obscure and insignificant. In the 
 spring of 1941, after learning about Sayun’s good deed, Governor-General 
 Hasegawa Kiyoshi presented the Ryohen settlement with a bell inscribed 
 with the following phrase: “The Bell of the Patriotic Maiden Sayun.” The 
 commemoration reverberated throughout the island, especially among the 
 aborigines, and generated a media sensation with a number of paintings of 
 Sayun, a popular song, and eventually a film based on her story. 
 
 As I have argued elsewhere, the two events are interrelated in what I call 
 “savage construction and civility making” in the Japanese empire (Ching 
 2001). After the Musha Rebellion, we encounter a visible shift in aborigine 
 representations in the circulation of the culture of colonialism. The aborig¬ 
 ines are no longer the savage heathens waiting to be civilized though colo¬ 
 nial benevolence; they are imperial subjects assimilated into the Japanese 
 national polity through the expressions of their loyalty to the emperor. In 
 this regard, “Sayun” constitutes a post-Musha tactic of idealizing primitiv- 
 ity in the making of civility. Sayun dramatizes the aboriginal redemption 
 and devotion to the Japanese nation through self-annihilation—a trans¬ 
 figuration from a rebellious savage to a patriotic imperial subject. In other 
 words, Sayun represents a compensation for Musha, as a “rehabilitation” 
 and “redemption” for the violence and evil of the Musha massacre. The 
 barbarity of Musha is “healed” by the patriotism/civility of Sayun. The 
 two events continue to be of interest to writers and filmmakers alike, I 
 propose, precisely because of the contradictions and the mysteries that the 
 colonial narrative generates. How do we reconcile the savage imaginary of 
 the Musha Rebellion with the patriotic endeavor of Sayun? What I would 
 
 122 Chapter Six 
 
like to suggest through my analyses of Exceedingly Barbaric and Finding 
 Sayun is that the two texts undermine the colonial narrative at the same 
 time that they construct a postcolonial futurity that opens up a space of 
 hope beyond colonialism’s encompassing power. 
 
 Displacing Colonialism and Rearticulating Intimacy 
 
 Despite their different loci of enunciation—Tsushima from the metro¬ 
 politan Japanese perspective and Mebow from the Taiwanese aboriginal 
 perspective—they speak from similar subaltern positions vis-a-vis their 
 respective dominant sociohistorical contexts. Tsushima attempts to re¬ 
 count the marginal lives of Japanese women entrapped in colonial domes¬ 
 ticity and their liminality between the colonizers and the colonized. As 
 Staler and others have shown in the Dutch, French, and British imperial 
 cultures, women in the colonies experienced “the cleavages of racial dom¬ 
 inance and internal social distinctions very differently than men precisely 
 because of their ambiguous positions, as both subordinates in colonial 
 hierarchies and as agents of empire in their own right” (2002: 41). Tsushi¬ 
 ma’s work certainly points to the ambiguity of Japanese women’s experi¬ 
 ence in settler colonialism: they are confined in the Japanese community 
 and prohibited to travel, but they are provided with domestic helpers from 
 both mainland Japan and the local community; one character assists with 
 her husband’s translation of the works of Durkheim (but without official 
 acknowledgment) and endures the husband’s demand for intercourse after 
 losing her baby. 
 
 As mentioned earlier, Finding Sayun is Mebow’s first feature film, and 
 as the title in Chinese, Buyiyang de yueguang (A different moonlight) sug¬ 
 gests, Mebow wants the aborigine community to shine under a different 
 glow. Against the normative filmic depictions of aborigines struggling in 
 urban settings, which often leaves the audience with a heavy heart, Me¬ 
 bow wants to “depict aborigine life through a lighthearted, natural way” 
 (Huang 2011). 4 Using a film within film as a visual prop and the story of 
 Sayun as a narrative device, Mebow takes the audience along with the 
 Atayal people back to the old village, and, more importantly, through the 
 grandfather’s elocution, discovers the Atayal people’s intimate connection 
 to the ancestors and their land. Based on her own experience of return¬ 
 ing to the ancestral village, now barely recognizable as it is depicted in 
 the film, Mebow utilizes aboriginal art and props and had casted mostly 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 123 
 
aborigine actors and allowed some to ad lib in order to express a natural 
 and “authentic” representation of their lives. In both cases, while colonial 
 history—the Musha Rebellion and the Bell of Sayun—looms large, the 
 novel and the film manage to deflect normative colonial discourse and at¬ 
 tempt new storytelling about indigenous experiences that have been mar¬ 
 ginalized in dominant narratives of colonialism. 
 
 The displacement of the dominant colonial narrative allows Tsushima 
 and Mebow to focus on the intimate relationship of the subaltern subjects 
 that, in the final instances, enables alternative forms of reconciliation with 
 the past. Both narratives are initially motivated by the desire to trace the 
 colonial past but end up forging ahead of what is possible in the future. In 
 Exceedingly Barbaric, Tsushima initially depicts both Miicha’s journey to 
 the colony and her intimate relationship with her husband as romantic and 
 sensual. With the ensuing realization of colonial and domestic oppression 
 culminated by the news of the Musha Rebellion, Miicha begins to identify 
 with Mona Rudao, the Atayal chieftain responsible for the uprising, and 
 to distance herself physically and emotionally from her husband. Toward 
 the end of the novel, Lily ventures beyond what her aunt Miicha could 
 have only dreamed of, to exit the Japanese settlement and leave new tracks 
 in areas where a colonial woman would not have been allowed to venture, 
 especially the central mountain region. Through her encounters with an 
 aborigine elder woman and a Taiwanese man, Lily imagines what Miicha 
 would have experienced if she had been able to travel in the colony. The tv 
 crew’s initial attempt to trace the “truth” of Sayun’s story ends in futility 
 but is instead rewarded after following Grandpa’s trail back to the aban¬ 
 doned old village. In the novel, the two temporalities converge at the end, 
 where the differences between Lily and Miicha become indistinguishable, 
 collapsing colonialism and the Musha Rebellion into the postcolonial pres¬ 
 ent whereby Lily meets and forges an alliance with Mona Rudao, Tewas 
 (his sister), and a contemporary aborigine woman and Taiwanese man in 
 the mountains. The film ends with a series of interviews with the villag¬ 
 ers about what they know about Sayun and the drowning incident. What 
 is rendered through these interviews is the impossibility of the “truth” 
 of Sayun. From Sayun’s age, the number of students accompanying the 
 teacher descending the mountain, to whether Sayun’s action was voluntary 
 or obligatory or whether her relationship to the teacher was amorous or 
 not, the villagers’ opinions are divergent and contradictory. The main rea¬ 
 son for the incertitude is that there are no surviving witnesses, including 
 
 124 Chapter Six 
 
Sayun’s classmates who joined her on the descent. The colonial trace, much 
 like the Derridean trace, marks the presence but suppressed nonpresence 
 of colonialism: the oppressiveness of colonial domesticity erases the ab¬ 
 original worldview of myth-making and enchantment. Hence, tracing is 
 not a dutiful reproduction of the past (because the past is always shifting 
 and open to interpretation), but a path to a new vista for reconciliation, not 
 with colonialism at large but with family members and intimate others. 
 
 Much of Miicha’s life and thoughts are narrated through her niece. 
 Lily’s travel to central Taiwan, seventy-some years after Miicha’s death, is 
 recounted in the form of dreams, personal reflections, and speculations. 
 Soon we find that Lily not only resembles her aunt, but also had lost her 
 eleven-year-old son during a traffic accident, just as Miicha lost her infant 
 child in colonial Taiwan. Part of Lily’s trip to Taiwan, besides wanting to 
 find out how her aunt lived during the colonial period, is to alleviate her 
 pain (or to “wait it out,” as she puts it) from the loss. In fact, it is through 
 Lily’s travel to the mountains, her encounters with an elderly aboriginal 
 woman and Mr. Yang, a Taiwanese man who accompanies Lily on her 
 travels, that we learn much about aborigine legends and customs, such as 
 the “cloud leopard” and “the yellow butterflies” that construct an alternate 
 world of spirituality and mythology. 
 
 Toward the end of the novel, the two temporalities merge as Miicha’s and 
 Lily’s worlds converge in a dream sequence: “Is this Lily’s dream or Miicha’s 
 dream? They’re the same. It is impossible to separate Lily’s dream from 
 Miicha’s. There is no reason to distinguish them” (334). Lily and Miicha 
 are joined by Mr. Yang, who could be Mona Rudao, Tewas, and Meimei, 
 the young Taiwanese helper who died at the age of fifteen. What is shared 
 by them is the intimate loss of a young life. Each carries a baby on his or 
 her back. The figures are accompanied by a black dog, with a shadow of 
 the “cloud leopard” for their journey to “fix the world” burning with three 
 suns. The three suns story refers to the popular aborigine mythology of the 
 human effort to eliminate the extra sun (told earlier in the novel). Because 
 the suns are far away from the human realm, the aboriginal myth has each 
 member of the entourage accompanied by young babies as they embark on 
 the long journey to where the suns rest. By the time the group of strong and 
 young men reaches the suns, they have become old and feeble. However, 
 the young babies have grown and are now capable of striking down the 
 extra sun. Once the extra sun has been eliminated and the world returns 
 to its normal order, the young men begin their journey back home. By the 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 125 
 
time they arrive home, they become old themselves. Lily and her group will 
 repeat this journey but with three suns instead of two. (Could the extra sun 
 be a reference to Japan?) Intimacy here is bounded by the living, the dead, 
 and the yet to come. According to the novel, the entourage does not have 
 to be people from the same nation, tribe, or race, and the babies they carry 
 do not have to be blood-related. They resemble what Lowe has called “the 
 volatile contacts of colonized peoples” (203). What they share are a sense 
 of loss and a task to forge forward to “fix this world.” More important, to 
 accomplish or to right the world requires an intergenerational effort that 
 links the young and transcends divisions between colonizers/colonized, 
 naichi (mainland Japan )/gaichi (overseas territory), and the dead/the living. 
 
 The prologue at the beginning of Finding Sayun foretells not only the 
 impossibility of finding the “truth” about Sayun, but also a hint at a dif¬ 
 ferent path to be followed. The film begins with Li Ke-xiao’s reflection: 
 “There is a big difference between the worlds of reality and the novel, but 
 I don’t want to listen to the recordings of truth. It is just like I did not 
 begin this road of discovery for the truth of Sayun.” The search for the 
 truth regarding Sayun’s story (a colonial narrative) turns out to be a failed 
 endeavor, especially the “intimate” relation between the Japanese teacher 
 and the young aborigine girl. In the end, there are only multiple narratives 
 about what “really” happened. In the process of searching for the truth 
 about Sayun, we are led instead to the relationship between You-Gan and 
 Grandpa, Grandpa and the ancestors, the “old village” and the spiritual 
 world of reciprocity. Whereas Tsushima imagines a more cosmopolitan 
 mode of belonging based on shared losses, Mebow’s concern is more local 
 and specific to her people. Along the treks to the mountains. Grandpa is 
 seen joyously singing Japanese songs, mostly about missing loved ones. 
 However, Grandpa’s affection here is directed toward the prospect of see¬ 
 ing the old village than toward nostalgia for the colonial period. Intimacy 
 here shifts from the colonial love between teacher and Sayun (indetermi¬ 
 nacy) to that of an alleged young love between Grandpa and Sayun (fabri¬ 
 cation) and finally to that between Grandpa, the younger generation, and 
 ancestors (indigenous knowledge). In arguably the most poignant scene 
 in the film, Grandpa and the entourage reach the old village in what looks 
 like nothing but landscape filled with piles of dirt and weeds. Upon lo¬ 
 cating what he believes is the site of his ancestral home, Grandpa begins 
 to speak. Alternating between close-ups of an emotional Grandpa with 
 You-Gan holding him and medium shots of the mountainous landscape, 
 
 126 Chapter Six 
 
Grandpa first speaks about the unconditional love between his parents 
 and him and the debt he owes to them: “Dad, Mom, without you, I won’t 
 exist today. It’s you who raised me. If you hadn’t raise me and teach me, I 
 wouldn’t have grown up, and I wouldn’t be standing here.” Moving then 
 from the personal, the familial, to the communal, grandfather laments: 
 “Many tribal people want to come up here. All the tribal people make 
 efforts to come up here. Everyone misses here [he sobs]. Everyone wants 
 to come back here to see the original state of the tribe. Maybe this is the 
 last time I come back. I can’t see you. But instead in front of you I shed my 
 tears. Do you hear me? I never cry like this. Because I really miss you and 
 your homeland.” You-Gan then embraces Grandpa. 
 
 The Taiwanese crew then asks the younger generation, You-Gan and 
 his friend A-Guo, what they think about the old village and Grandpa’s 
 emotional connection to it. You-Gan responds: “I haven’t lived there, so I 
 don’t feel much. If I had, and then saw my hometown ruined like this ... 
 I might cry like him.” A-Guo also empathizes: “I think it’s very worthy.” 
 “But there is nothing,” the reporter retorts. A-Guo continues, “But still... 
 I know the ancestral spirits could see me. No matter where I am. I know 
 they can see me.” In short, even for the younger generation, despite the 
 ruination of the old village due to the forced relocation policy of the kmt, 
 the connection to the past remains imaginable. Mediated through mem¬ 
 ories of the elders and aboriginal practices of hunting, the tribal lives do 
 not simply vanish due to modernization. The him ends with You-Gan run¬ 
 ning, not away from the camera as he did at the beginning of the him but 
 forward, toward the future, and the following words are superimposed on 
 the screen: “The mythologies and cultures of the tribal people are slowly 
 disappearing. But my people, whether they’re dwelling in the mountains 
 or in the plains, they’re continuing to make a great effort to live.” 
 
 Both Tsushima and Mebow displace colonialism and explore intergen- 
 erational reconciliation: between Lily and Miicha, between You-Gan and 
 Grandpa. The displacement of colonialism as a site of reconciliation with 
 the state does not mean disregarding the colonial wound. First, it means to 
 heed the warning of Arif Dirlik (2002) that the obsession with the colonial 
 past runs the risk of obscuring from us the need to confront the changing 
 power relations in the present. This is most obvious in what William Cal¬ 
 lahan (2010) has called “the discourse of national humiliation” in China, 
 whereby historical defeats and victimization are channeled into nationalist 
 discourse that not only justifies China’s return to its imperial grandeur but 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 127 
 
also obfuscates the contradictions resulting from its uneven development. 
 Second, the demands for reparation and genuine apology from the former 
 colonized have been met with consternation if not outright denial by the 
 Japanese state. The so-called comfort women from South Korea have held 
 weekly Wednesday demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy since 
 the late 1990s, and many of them have perished while the Japanese state 
 continues to refuse to meet their demands or acknowledge the imperial 
 state’s role (and, by implication, the Showa emperor’s responsibility) in 
 instituting systemic sex slavery. Caught between the double blackmail of 
 nationalism and colonialism orchestrated by the state, political reconcili¬ 
 ation continues to elude and marginalize the very subjects that it purports 
 to represent. It is under this specific historical condition of political im¬ 
 passe that the works of Tsushima and Mebow allow us to imagine different 
 forms of rapprochement outside of state power. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 In “On Forgiveness,” Jacques Derrida observes that since the Second World 
 War and accelerating in recent years, there has been a “globalization of for¬ 
 giveness” on the geopolitical scene. In all the scenes of repentance, con¬ 
 fession, forgiveness, and apology, “one sees not only individuals, but also 
 entire communities, professional corporations, the representatives of ec¬ 
 clesiastical hierarchies, sovereigns, and heads of state ask for ‘forgiveness’” 
 (2001: 28). The concept of forgiveness, the scene, the figure, the language 
 which one tries to adapt to it, argues Derrida, all belong to the Abrahamic 
 tradition and is expanding to cultures that do not have a European or “bib¬ 
 lical” origin. To emphasize the universalization of forgiveness in the non- 
 Abrahamic tradition, Derrida uses the example of a Japanese prime minis¬ 
 ter asking for forgiveness of the Koreans and the Chinese for past violence. 
 Derrida writes, “[The prime minister] presented certain ‘heart-felt apolo¬ 
 gies’ in his own name, [at first sight] without implicating the Emperor as 
 the head of state, but a Prime Minister always implicates more than a pri¬ 
 vate person. Recently, there have been real negotiations, this time official 
 and serious, between the Japanese and the South Korean government on 
 this subject. There will be reparations and a political reorientation” (31)/ 
 Leaving aside Derrida’s contention that the concept of forgiveness is 
 foreign to cultures of Japan or Korea, he points to the “instrumentality” 
 of such apologetic gestures. Derrida continues: “These negotiations, as is 
 
 128 Chapter Six 
 
almost always the case, aimed at producing a reconciliation (national or 
 international) favorable to normalization. The language of forgiveness, at 
 the service of determined finalities, was anything but pure and disinter¬ 
 ested. Always in the field of politics” (31). Derrida is therefore critical of 
 the political appropriation that sidesteps rather than upholds justice in the 
 name of reconciliation. It is in this regard that Derrida sees reconciliation 
 as important, but vested in strategic or political calculation in the generous 
 gesture of one who offers reconciliation or amnesty, but we should not take 
 them to be the same as forgiveness. 
 
 What I have explored through these two texts then is the possibility 
 of reconciliation without state intervention or normalization. This is not 
 to diminish the necessary task of holding the Japanese state accountable 
 for its colonial violence and war crimes. Because colonial rule and war 
 are waged in the name of the state and the emperor, any gesture toward 
 reconciliation and forgiveness has to begin with their admission and in¬ 
 dictment. However, with shifting geopolitical power in Eastern Asia and 
 the rising tension among nation-states, it is unlikely that a reconciliation 
 beyond any categorical imperative, beyond any debt and obligation, is pos¬ 
 sible in the near future. Even if some agreement is reached between the 
 states, the conditions attached to such will only serve to reestablish na¬ 
 tional and political (hetero)normativity, such as the 2015 accord between 
 Japan and South Korea on the comfort women issue. Equally important, 
 the last generation that experienced colonial rule and war is fast disap¬ 
 pearing. Their demands for apologies and reparation and their yearning 
 for recognition have been largely ignored by the Japanese, Taiwanese, and 
 Korean states. I am interested in ways that people today, who lived through 
 colonial rule or were born in the postcolonial present, come to terms with 
 their memories of colonialism. 
 
 Derrida’s caution on reconciliation’s conditional instrumentalism is 
 echoed by others. In a scathing critique of a photo essay published by the 
 New York Times that commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the 
 Rwandan genocide, Suchitra Vijayan (2014) problematizes the very narra¬ 
 tive of reconciliation, forgiveness, and transformation that not only sim¬ 
 plifies the complexity of the killings and its aftermath, but also obfuscates 
 the violence perpetrated by the state in the name of reconciliation. Vijayan 
 first takes issue with the single “overarching identity” that subsumes the 
 other fractured and contradictory Rwandan identities into simple “bi¬ 
 nary preoccupations between Hutu and Tutsi, Good and Evil, Victim and 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 129 
 
Perpetrator, and Redemption and Liberation.” This simplification is re¬ 
 inforced by a series of photographic images of a Hutu and a Tutsi, side 
 by side, with brief testimonies recounting their requests for forgiveness 
 and decisions granting forgiveness, respectively. These feel-good stories 
 of redemption do not confront the more difficult questions of moral am¬ 
 biguities where victims become perpetrators, or the strife of living with 
 irresolvable conflicts. Reconciliation “immediately becomes complicit in 
 the exercise of various forms of structural violence in its appeal to an idea 
 of commonality to legitimate a social hierarchy.” 
 
 The photo essay also fails to account for the Rwandan state’s refusal to 
 prosecute alleged war crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army 
 and associated individuals before, during, and after the genocide, includ¬ 
 ing retribution killings of thousands of Hutu. The simplified narrative of 
 incommensurable Hutu guilt and Tutsi victimhood formed the foundation 
 of postgenocide Rwandan political power. The memory of the genocide is 
 therefore instrumentalized to stifle dissent and international criticism, and 
 the act of reconciliation, “although sometimes genuinely participatory, has 
 been manipulated to intimidate Kagame’s political opponents and con¬ 
 solidate power.” As Vijayan argues, the demand for forgiveness and the 
 extraction for reconciliation ultimately serve the calculus and imperative 
 of the state into what Derrida calls “national reconciliation” (40). These 
 conditional reconciliations, although necessary and important, would not 
 achieve intended goals without the radical reorganization of power. 
 
 At the end of his rumination on forgiveness, Derrida dreams of the 
 “purity” of a forgiveness worthy of its name. It would be “a forgiveness 
 without power: unconditional but without sovereignty.” The most difficult 
 task, he continues, “at once necessary and apparently impossible, would 
 be to dissociate unconditionality and sovereignty” (59). How to imagine 
 nonsovereign social and subjective formations in political discourse also 
 preoccupy theorists such as Michael Hardt and Lauren Berlant in their 
 use of the idiom of love as a political concept. Despite their theoretical 
 differences, they both view love as transformative, collective, and sus¬ 
 tainable (Davis and Sarlin 2008). While not addressing the specific issue 
 of true forgiveness or love as a nonsovereign possibility of the social, my 
 uses of sentimentality and reconciliation in these chapters are attempts to 
 imagine a nonstatist, noncolonial, and nonguaranteed working-out of his¬ 
 torical injustice and colonial memories. In this transimperial moment in 
 the region—the decline of Japan and the rise of China and its unresolved 
 
 130 Chapter Six 
 
colonial past and unsettling globalizing present—we must attend to the 
 legitimate resistance to colonialism without obscuring its entanglements 
 with the very real competition for hegemony in East Asia today. Anti- 
 and pro-Japanese sentiments, as I have argued throughout the book, are 
 symptoms of the failure of the decolonization of the Japanese empire and 
 the reemergence of China under global capitalism. The competition for 
 economic accumulation and political authority under the Borromean knot 
 of nation, state, and capital will render Derrida’s dream of “unconditional 
 and non-sovereign forgiveness” unlikely in the foreseeable future. 
 
 Transimperial figures such as the repentant former Japanese devils, the 
 recalcitrant comfort women, the nostalgic dosan generation, and the affec¬ 
 tionate aboriginal elders all straddle the imperial divide between Japanese 
 empire and the postwar Cold War order. As many people perish due to the 
 passage of time, their struggle, resolve, resentment, and longing are testa¬ 
 ment to the failure of postcolonial nation-states to critically confront and 
 address issues of responsibilities, reparation, and redress. No doubt there 
 will be attempts at conditional reconciliation, such as the Japan-South 
 Korea accord over the comfort women issue (see chapter 3) as states be¬ 
 come eager to facilitate economic and cultural exchanges through politi¬ 
 cal means. At the same time, competing nationalism will be mobilized to 
 assuage internal contradictions by constructing and recalling past atroc¬ 
 ities and inflicted pains. The liberal discourse of reconciliation and the 
 nationalist discourse of redemption are not mutually exclusive and are in 
 fact symptoms of the same process of neoliberalist capitalism. In this re¬ 
 gard, the nation-state cannot be counted on as the space for unconditional 
 reconciliation, for its basic mode of operation is conditional negotiation. 
 To overcome anti- and pro-Japanism is therefore to explore trans- and 
 subnational forms of affiliations and to imagine reconciliation otherwise. 
 
 Reconciliation Otherwise 131 
 
epilogue. From Anti-Japanism 
 to Decolonizing Democracy: 
 Youth Protests in East Asia 
 
 Democracy is hypocrisy. 
 
 — MALCOLM x 
 
 Between March 2014 and August 2015, major student-led demonstrations 
 erupted throughout East Asia. The Sunflower and the Umbrella move¬ 
 ments and protests led by Students Emergency Actions for Liberal De¬ 
 mocracy (sealds) drew tens of thousands of people to the streets, ob¬ 
 jecting to government conduct in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. Unlike 
 the anti-Japanese protests in major cities in China in 2005 and 2012, the 
 images of young people showed them defiantly occupying public spaces, 
 rallying the crowd with emotive speeches, and sometimes clashing with 
 police. Also, the oft-reported postdemonstration cleanups impressed the 
 general population with the students’ exuberance and idealism, seemingly 
 marking the dawn of a new era of democracy in the region. In the name of 
 liberal democracy, these movements seem to have transcended the jingo¬ 
 istic rhetoric and violent display of the anti-Japan demonstrations on the 
 Chinese mainland and elsewhere. While each movement emerged from 
 its particular sociopolitical context, they also resonated with each other in 
 their demands for change and shared tactics, inspired by worldwide youth 
 activism since 2011, especially the Occupy movements. The simultaneity of 
 local, national, regional, and global interconnectedness appears to debunk 
 the perception of political apathy among youths in the region. Many have 
 remarked on the unprecedented use of social media and the seemingly 
 
“leaderless” and nonhierarchical organization of current movements. I 
 would like to, however, approach the student protests from a regional per¬ 
 spective and suggest an alternative to anti-Japanism. These movements, 
 despite their different political visions and local circumstances, have the 
 potential to forge transnational and regional political initiatives that can 
 contribute to inter-Asian dialogue and activism. First, I would like to ad¬ 
 dress two characteristics common to the three movements. The first char¬ 
 acteristic is the importance of popular culture in providing a common 
 grammar for regional interlocution and inter-referencing. The second 
 characteristic is their shared concern about the rise of China and the gen¬ 
 eral sense of precarity among the youth in the region. Second, I will argue 
 that, without questioning and challenging the complicity of democracy in 
 suppressing the colonial question in the postwar capitalist order, especially 
 in Japan, the movements would not be able to transcend the limits of lib¬ 
 eralism and nationalism. In short, what is needed is to shift the discourse 
 from anti-Japanism to the decolonization of democracy. 
 
 A 2016 publication written by sealds (translated as Youths Never Give 
 Up—Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: Is a Transnational Student Solidar¬ 
 ity Possible?) features five conversations between members of the organi¬ 
 zation (Okuda Aki, Ushida Yoshimasa, and Mizoi Moeko) and student 
 activists from Flong Kong (Agnes Chow and Joshua Wong) and Taiwan 
 (Chen Wei-Ting). The question mark in the book title clearly suggests an 
 open-ended project-in-progress without presuppositions and clear objec¬ 
 tives. It also underscores the aspiration and adversity of transnational al¬ 
 liance building. Conducted in a free-flowing style and facilitated by an 
 editor, the Japanese youths converse with Wong (in three chapters) and 
 with Chow and Chen (one chapter each) on a variety of topics, ranging 
 from initial impressions of each other’s movements and the challenge of 
 balancing dating with activism to more substantial discussions on mobi¬ 
 lization tactics and the political visions of poststudent movements. What 
 I want to focus on are two aspects of the conversations that are relevant 
 to an emerging regional sensibility: popular culture as common grammar 
 among the youths, and China as the new hegemon in the region. It is clear 
 from their exchanges that the students have been following each other’s ac¬ 
 tivities via social media and express great admiration for one another. The 
 discussions are amicable, jovial, and engaging. There might be minor dis¬ 
 agreements regarding future political roles—to form oppositional parties 
 or to continue the struggle from nonestablished political institutions—but 
 
 Anti-Japanism to Decolonizing Democracy 133 
 
the conversations are more about finding commonality than proclaiming 
 differences. What is striking, however, is the sheer ignorance of the Jap¬ 
 anese youths toward their Asian neighbors, a process of de-Asianization 
 characterizing Japan’s relation to Asia since the postwar years. Ushida, one 
 of the sealds members, acknowledges this in the preface. Ushida admits 
 that he, and perhaps most Japanese youths, heretofore have not seriously 
 considered themselves as belonging to the same geo-space that is called 
 “East Asia.” While a plethora of images and ideas is circulating on the 
 internet, he expresses the difficulty that Japanese have in imagining how 
 to share this regional space with other youths. Ushida postulates this as 
 simply an observation, but avoids probing into the reasons behind their 
 obtuseness. It is only through their conversations on democracy and po¬ 
 litical movements that Ushida begins to realize their commonalities and 
 aspirations (10). This self-awareness, however, as I will suggest later, must 
 transform into a decolonizing project of Japanese democracy itself that the 
 youths are trying to salvage. Unbeknownst to Ushida and his colleagues, 
 youths from Hong Kong and Taiwan know much more about Japan than 
 they themselves know about Hong Kong or Taiwan. Japanese popular cul¬ 
 ture plays an indispensable role in creating and facilitating this transna¬ 
 tional imagined community. Agnes Chow, Joshua Wong, and Chen Wei- 
 Ting were all born in the 1990s. This generation’s relationship with Japan, 
 especially with its cultural products, is significantly different from their 
 parents’ or grandparents’ generations, when memories of war and colo¬ 
 nialism remain strong. Hong Kong has witnessed an upsurge of interests 
 in Japanese popular culture, especially popular music, in the 1980s and in 
 anime and manga in the 1990s. In post-martial law and market liberaliza¬ 
 tion Taiwan, Japanese popular culture has been favored by young people, 
 known as the hari-zu, or “Japan-fever tribe,” since the early 2000s. Beyond 
 anime and manga, Japanese tv drama, music, films, cuisine, fashion, lit¬ 
 erature, and so on have been avidly consumed by youths in Taiwan, Hong 
 Kong, and increasingly China, via the internet. Given the exposure during 
 their formative years, it is not surprising that Chow, Wong, and Chen are 
 all familiar and fluent in Japanese popular culture. What I want to under¬ 
 score here is that for Chow, Wong, and Chen’s generation, “Japan” is no 
 longer external or foreign; Japanese popular culture created intimate ob¬ 
 jects and texts that are part of their everyday lives. While there are differ¬ 
 ent levels of engagement with Japanese popular culture among the youths, 
 what I am suggesting here is the “quotidian” aspect of cultural practice 
 
 134 Epilogue 
 
and consumption. Through popular culture, youths from the three lo¬ 
 cales can claim a shared time and space where one can reference another 
 via common texts. For example, Wong tells the story that during a debate 
 with one of the parliamentary officials, he used the phrase “we’re the cho¬ 
 sen children” to describe their group. The phrase comes from one of his 
 favorite Japanese anime, Digimon. Upon hearing this, Okuda immediately 
 jumps in and says Digimon is also one of his favorites and that he still 
 sings the theme song from the anime at karaoke bars. In her conversation, 
 Chow also reveals that she is a big fan of Japanese manga and anime, and 
 she often posts anime songs on her Facebook page. Wong reports being 
 an avid Gundam fan. Chen also expresses his liking of Japanese manga 
 and novelists such as Haruki Murakami and Ryu Murakami. He relays 
 how he learned about Japanese social movements from reading nonmain¬ 
 stream manga such as Medusa, depicting the Anpo protests in the 1960s, 
 and Stories of My Village, on the Sanrizuka struggle over the construction 
 of Narita Airport in the 1970s. Chen also mentions that Japanese intellec¬ 
 tuals such as Karatani Kojin and Oguma Eiji have visited and given talks 
 in Taiwan over the last few years. Compared to Chow, Wong, and Chen’s 
 enthusiasm for and knowledge of Japanese popular culture, it is striking 
 that none of the Japanese youths mention even in passing a single cul¬ 
 tural reference from Taiwan or Hong Kong. This “transnational imagined 
 community” is by no means equal in production, distribution, and con¬ 
 sumption. Japanese youths know very little about cultures and intellectual 
 developments outside of their archipelago. This emerging shared space 
 of “East Asia” is based on an asymmetrical relationship where Japanese 
 youths have much to learn, especially its colonial and imperialist history 
 in Asia and its postwar postcolonial de-Asianization. To this end, anti- and 
 pro-Japanism are important discourses for Japanese youth to engage with 
 Asia as a starting point toward the decolonialization process. 
 
 The second common thread in the conversations is the rise of China 
 and its regional and global implications. Hong Kong and Taiwan, for obvi¬ 
 ous reasons, have a complicated and constraining relationship with main¬ 
 land China. However, the way that Japan, as a former colonial power and 
 a staunch ally of the United States, reacted to China’s rise (and its own 
 decline) is no less problematic. Chow, Wong, and Chen perceive China as 
 a threat to universal democratic values. They see their political activism 
 and energy as a means of resisting and disrupting the power of Beijing. 
 For Okuda, Ushida, and Mizoi, the Abe administration trumpeted about 
 
 Anti-Japanism to Decolonizing Democracy 135 
 
the Chinese threat as a way to frighten the populace into submitting to the 
 security bills that allowed the state to reinterpret the postwar constitu¬ 
 tion and deploy military overseas under the vague declaration of a “pro¬ 
 active contribution to peace.” While the demand for universal suffrage is 
 considered the main impetus for the Umbrella Movement, it is to protest 
 the directive of “moral and national education” by the Hong Kong gov¬ 
 ernment and Beijing in 2012 that Chow and Wong sprang into activism 
 by forming Scholarism. For Chen and the Sunflower Movement, it is the 
 secret passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (cssta) by the 
 then-ruling Kuomintang (kmt) Party that provided the movement’s im¬ 
 petus. The cssta, signed in 2013 but still unratified, aimed to liberalize 
 trade in services between mainland China and Taiwan. Chen also traces 
 the general support for their movement to 2008 when the kmt returned 
 to power under Ma Ying-jeou and his policy of a closer relationship with 
 Beijing. Chen cites a number of pre-Sunflower protests that culminated 
 in the 2014 movement: the 2008 student protest against the visit of Chen 
 Yunlin, chairman of the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait, 
 the highest-level meeting in sixty years between the kmt and the Chinese 
 Communist Party; the 2012 student-led Anti-Media Monopoly Movement 
 that rose against media conglomeration and the rhetoric of pro-Chinese 
 national economic development; and the 2013 protests against forced dem¬ 
 olition of rural housing. To demonstrate solidarity with Hong Kong and 
 Taiwan colleagues, Okuda says sealds has published several statements 
 requesting the Chinese state “understand the values of freedom and de¬ 
 mocracy” (48). The sealds stance against several security-related bills is 
 largely due to the students’ objection to the Abe administration’s blatant 
 disregard for the constitution. Students against Secret Protection Law 
 (saspl), a sealds predecessor, was formed in opposition to the Special 
 Secrecy Law in 2014. One of the key catalysts behind these bills is Abe’s 
 attempt at reviving nationalism by fanning fear and people’s anxiety over 
 the rise of China. For the activists, however, it is not so much the content of 
 the bills that is the issue, but the ways in which the ruling party has strong- 
 armed the revisions despite enormous popular opposition. 
 
 While the threat of China cannot be understated, I would argue that 
 there’s a deeper anxiety over the future of their lives that undergirds the 
 youths’ political awakening. It is this shared sense of precarity among 
 youths worldwide that constitutes the core of the problem. What Anne 
 Allison (2013) has perceptively analyzed in the case of precarious Japan is 
 
 136 Epilogue 
 
becoming normative in the region and beyond. The anti-China sentiment, 
 like anti-Japanism discussed in the book, is symptomatic of a larger struc¬ 
 tural shift in the region. Wong describes this global youth problem as that 
 of “exclusion from wealth”: low-paying jobs with no prospects (148). The 
 wave of neoliberal policies in the last few decades has increased competi¬ 
 tion, emphasized individual responsibilities, created more inequality, and 
 blurred young people’s visions of the future. It is important to recall here 
 Judith Butler’s (2004) differentiation between “precariousness,” a general 
 condition for all human existence, and “precarity,” a specific condition 
 pertaining to a segment of the population as the result of state policy. I 
 would add that the emergence and resonance of precarity in most devel¬ 
 oped economies is very much a middle-class phenomenon. This is not to 
 diminish the real challenge faced by young people globally. In the three ar¬ 
 eas under discussion, there are populations who have always felt the brunt 
 of precarity, such as the aborigines in Taiwan, low-waged laborers in Hong 
 Kong, and resident Koreans in Japan. It is only when the dominant mid¬ 
 dle class began to feel the pressure and compression from neoliberalism 
 that precarity gained urgency in describing this phenomenon as a specific 
 condition of uncertainty. 
 
 These movements are about reforming existing systems, not eliminat¬ 
 ing them. Part of the desire for direct action (not direct democracy) is 
 the belief in localism/nationalism among the youths. The threat of China 
 prompted Hong Kongers to demand a democratic system and not the of¬ 
 ficial “one-country two systems”; the mainland economic juggernaut has 
 instilled a growing Taiwanese consciousness, the so-called naturally in¬ 
 dependent, and participation in the political process has made Japanese 
 youths realize if not amplify their sense of national identity. They do, 
 however, distinguish between “good” and “bad” nationalisms. The rise of 
 right-wing populism represented by Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump is 
 considered exclusionary, whereas they see themselves as representing an 
 open and inclusive form of nationalism. Chen even argues that Taiwanese 
 nationalism is distinct for its identification with a place, Taiwan, rather 
 than being based on blood or ethnicity. For them, therefore, democracy 
 and nationalism are complementary. 
 
 The unequal relationship between Japan and other Asian spaces, its 
 imperialist past (including unresolved issues such as the “comfort women” 
 and territorial disputes), and its client-state status to that of the United 
 States necessitate serious reflection on the formation of postwar Japanese 
 
 Anti-Japanism to Decolonizing Democracy 137 
 
democracy and its obfuscation of the colonial question. The limitation 
 of sealds, I argue, lies in the youths’ inattentiveness to the reconfigu¬ 
 ration of Japanese empire in the postwar where defeat, demilitarization, 
 and democracy replaced the process of decolonization, sealds is a liberal 
 and reformist movement that, due to its massive media coverage and wide 
 support, marginalizes more radical demands. Robin O’Day (2015) has ar¬ 
 gued that the sealds movement, unlike some Freeter activists who call 
 for radical change, attempts to restore the general status quo of the pre- 
 Abe period. (Freeters are young people who lack full-time employment or 
 are un- or underemployed, excluding housewives and students.) However, 
 unlike the issue-focused and media-driven sealds, the Freeter movement, 
 short of calling into question the foundations of Japanese postwar capital¬ 
 ism, is not able to identify a cause, event, or action that would address the 
 grievance behind the movement. What the sealds phenomenon demon¬ 
 strates, according to O’Day, is the formation of a new political identity 
 among college students in Japan: social movement is part of their lives but 
 not their whole lives. It is acceptable to seriously engage with political ideas 
 without becoming radical or having to completely devote themselves to the 
 cause. The idea, given Japan’s general apathy in the last half-century, is not 
 progressive but resonates with a broad spectrum of students. 
 
 Despite large public protests led by sealds and other civil groups, the 
 Abe government passed a new set of security bills in September 2015. The 
 main bill allows the country’s military to participate in foreign conflicts, 
 overturning its prior policy of self-defense. More specifically, by reinter¬ 
 preting passages from the Japanese constitution, the legislation allows for 
 the military to operate overseas for the “collective self-defense” of its al¬ 
 lies. The government claims that the revision was necessary to meet new 
 geopolitical challenges, such as those posed by China’s rising ambitions. 
 However, the new condition that necessitates the security bills goes be¬ 
 yond the region proper. Citing worldwide terrorist threats, it sees security 
 threats to Japan from anywhere in the world. Critics and opponents argue 
 that this violates the constitution and could lead Japan into unnecessary 
 U.S.-led wars abroad. They also charged the Abe administration with de¬ 
 stroying Japan’s postwar liberal democracy and the ideal of pacifism that 
 that very democracy had established and sustained. It is this opposition 
 to the Abe administration’s reinterpretation of the constitution and an 
 undeterred “faith” in postwar democracy that made the question of colo¬ 
 nialism invisible. 
 
 138 Epilogue 
 
I argued in chapter 1 that there is a continuity rather than a rupture in 
 Japan’s postwar transition and reconstruction from empire and milita¬ 
 rism to demilitarization and democracy. Pacifism became one of the pil¬ 
 lars (together with capitalism) of Japan’s postwar democracy represented 
 by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ambiguity of the Hiroshima cenotaph 
 that absolves both the American crimes of dropping the bomb and the 
 Japanese crimes regarding war and colonial responsibilities in Asia. The 
 marginalization of the Korean A-bomb victims and their memorials in 
 the dominant narrative of Japan’s victimization conveniently leave out the 
 questions of empire. The architecture of the Hiroshima Memorial Hall 
 was based on the draff design of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Hall 
 by Tange Kenzo in the 1940s; the Nagasaki Peace Statue was created by 
 Kitamura Seibo, who created masculinist military sculptures for the Jap¬ 
 anese empire. The appeal to world peace and humanism, as universalism 
 often does, conceals its particular enunciation and the colonial difference. 
 That Japan, the only country in history to suffer from nuclear attacks, will 
 not sign the treaty to ban nuclear weapons, adopted at the United Nations 
 and supported by 122 countries, indicates the hypocrisy of pacifism and 
 Japan’s continued submission to American hegemony. 
 
 Hang Kim (2016) has argued that the belief in constitutionalism and 
 liberal democracy in postwar Japan is based on an “idealism” of world 
 peace by restraining the sovereign power of each nation-state under the 
 guidance of the universal norms (482). It stipulates that the sovereign 
 power of a nation-state should be restrained by a universal norm of inter¬ 
 national society: the primary presupposition it refers to is not so much a 
 denial of war itself as an inhibition of war between sovereign states. Ac¬ 
 cording to that universalism, international conflicts should be resolved by 
 intervention of international organizations such as the League of Nations 
 or the United Nations (483). This universalism, however, enables certain 
 nations to exercise armed forces against ones that commit “crimes against 
 humanity.” Once a war is declared in the name of humankind, those op¬ 
 ponents cannot but be named “the enemy of all.” The figure of the pirate is 
 associated with the enemy of all and thus should be banished from human 
 society and allowed to be exterminated without any consideration of legal¬ 
 ity. Kim argues that the primary supposition of the postwar Japanese con¬ 
 stitution is thus to sanction a universal war, and the newly passed security 
 bills continue to sanction (rather than oppose) the Japanese government in 
 exercising an armed force in the name of international protection. 
 
 Anti-Japanism to Decolonizing Democracy 139 
 
It is to this adherence to universalism that Kim argues that legislation 
 of the new security bill neither violates nor diverges from the constitution 
 of postwar Japan. He writes, 
 
 Rather, it inherits the spirit of the Constitution. The Japanese gov¬ 
 ernment actually denies changes in the basic position of the uni¬ 
 versalism by placing an emphasis on the expression “Proactive 
 Contribution of Peace.” . . . [WJhat the government has done is, if 
 inadvertently, to uncover the hidden legal and political consequence 
 of the universalism that has sustained the postwar democracy and 
 constitutionalism in Japan. Given postwar Japan’s support of Amer¬ 
 icans during the Korean and the Viet Nam wars, the new security 
 bill should be regarded as a declaration that the Japanese govern¬ 
 ment “proactively” inherits the ideal of universalism and continues 
 to support international cooperation in the future. (484) 
 
 Therefore, it is not sufficient to criticize the Japanese government’s at¬ 
 tempt to change the new law of peace and security by upholding postwar 
 democracy and constitutionalism (as sealds would claim), because at the 
 very core of those ideals lies the possibility of war against the enemy of all. 
 “It is necessary to reconsider the universalism of the postwar democracy 
 and constitutionalism in Japan, taking into account how and in what way 
 the idea of war against the enemy of all has influenced (the) discourses and 
 thoughts in postwar Japan” (Kim 2016: 484). Kim then proceeds to expli¬ 
 cate the interrelationship between the universalism of postwar democracy 
 and colonialism. 
 
 Examining the controversy over the publication of Park Yuha’s Comfort 
 Women of the Japanese Empire and the response by the zainichi writer Seo 
 Kyungsik, Kim underscores the elision of colonialism in the establishment 
 of Japanese postwar democracy. Seo’s criticism of Park and her Japanese 
 supporters is that their faith in postwar democracy and constitutional¬ 
 ism conveniently ignores the plight of the Korean residents in Japan who 
 were subjects of the empire. (We might also add the Taiwanese, Ainu, and 
 Ryukyuans to the similar exclusion from democracy.) After Japan’s defeat, 
 many of these former subjects had no choice but to remain in Japan. The 
 Japanese government, however, treated these people not as citizens of their 
 country but as foreigners. The former colonial subjects were stripped of 
 their imperial citizenship and deprived of their rights as such. “In this way, 
 the Korean people on the Japanese island after the Second World War lost 
 
 140 Epilogue 
 
their legal position as citizens of the country. It is this way that Japanese 
 citizenship after the Second World War has been established; which is to 
 say, the subjects of the postwar democracy of Japan have created their citi¬ 
 zenship by excluding the former colonized inhabitants on the island of Ja¬ 
 pan” (2016: 485). In short, postwar democracy was established by dismiss¬ 
 ing the responsibility of colonial rule; democracy was established through 
 nondemocratic means. 
 
 Kim continues his examination of the relationship between universal- 
 ism and colonialism through the writing of Nambara Shigeru, one of the 
 most eminent political philosophers and the first president of the Univer¬ 
 sity of Tokyo in postwar Japan. Kim argues that Nambara construes the 
 tenno, or emperor, as a medium through which the universal principle of 
 humankind and world peace—as stipulated in the new constitution—can 
 be achieved through the national heritage of Japan and the Japanese peo¬ 
 ple. By educating the Japanese people and transforming them into enlight¬ 
 ened individuals via the tenno as culture, national heritage can achieve 
 universal value because the ideal of world peace could only be realized 
 throughout the efforts and cooperation of all nations (492). The return of 
 Japan to its original and pure state necessitates the exclusion of “external 
 races,” which means the former colonized peoples in the empire. Kim con¬ 
 cludes that “it might be said that postwar democracy, from its beginning to 
 date, has been relying on the notion of war against the enemy of all, despite 
 its ideas of world peace and elimination of war. This is a peculiar trait that 
 postwar democracy reveals, the trait that the interwoven relation between 
 universalism and colonialism has formed since 1945” (493). 
 
 Capitalism and democracy, two pillars of the postwar American hege¬ 
 monic project, are under duress. Growing inequality, sectarian violence, 
 and ecological crises are prompting many to seek “transition discourses” 
 that call for a significant paradigmatic or civilizational transformation 
 (Escobar 2018). In terms of democracy, theorists such as Jacques Derrida 
 have examined the contradiction between freedom and equality. Instead of 
 deconstructing democracy, which I understand as the West’s self-critique, 
 we should begin by analyzing the colonial and neocolonial conditions of 
 democracy and, following Malcolm X, the hypocrisy of democracy. As I 
 argued in this book, anti-Japanism is symptomatic of a larger structural 
 shift in the region, signified by the rise of China and the unresolved im¬ 
 perial and colonial legacies of the Japanese empire. This transimperial 
 moment involves also the decline of American hegemony but with its 
 
 Anti-Japanism to Decolonizing Democracy 141 
 
unrivaled military capability. While China’s ambitions cannot be under¬ 
 estimated, it is imperative that Japan genuinely and seriously engage with 
 its deimperialization process by embracing anti- and pro-Japanism as a 
 platform to begin dialogues with its Asian neighbors toward a possible 
 regional reconciliation for futurity. 
 
 142 Epilogue 
 
NOTES 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 1. This information was retrieved from an article published in 2013 by Offbeat 
 China: http://0ffbeatchina.c0m/700-milli0n-japanese-s0ldiers-died-in-china-in 
 -2012. The site is no longer available, but an archived view of the article can still be 
 seen on the site’s former Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/hotpotdaily 
 /posts/414540271964283. 
 
 2. For a discussion on anti-Japanism in postwar Korea, see Cheong (1991). 
 
 3. On January 15,1974, as Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei landed on the 
 last stop of his five-nation, eleven-day “goodwill” visit to Southeast Asia, anti-Japan 
 riots broke out in Jakarta, the sprawling capital of Indonesia. The violence started 
 with the burning of every Japanese automobile within reach of the approximately 
 100,000 roaming people and quickly mushroomed into sacking and setting fires 
 
 to stores and businesses that sold Japanese products, especially those owned by 
 overseas Chinese. At the Astra Toyota agency, the entire stock of new cars went up 
 in flames, their fuel tanks exploding with an occasional thud. At the Pasar Senen 
 shopping center, thousands of rioters looted the Chinese-owned stores and stalls 
 and started fires, where seven of the ten known victims of the two-day riots were 
 killed. The Presidential Hotel, operated by Japan Airlines, became the target of 
 the rioters as security forces hurled back wave after wave of rioters with clearly 
 shaken Japanese guests watching fretfully from their windows. The protests and 
 riots were so violent and widespread, Tanaka would be a virtual prisoner in the 
 Dutch-colonial guesthouse within the presidential compound, guarded by hun¬ 
 dreds of commando troops and armored vehicles. As with most postwar postco¬ 
 lonial anti-Japanism in Asia, the protests and the ensuing violence are less about 
 Japan than symptoms of contradictions within the Indonesian society. Among the 
 feelings anti-Japanism detonated was outrage over the corruption of government 
 
officials and the ostentatious lifestyle of the rich generals. The students resented the 
 special privileges held by the ethnic Chinese residents; they were also angry that 
 the nation’s newfound wealth from oil had not bettered the lives of the Indonesian 
 masses. In short, Tanaka’s visit enabled the surfacing onto the symbolic realm the 
 repressed desire and anger of the Indonesian people under continued political au¬ 
 thoritarianism and economic disenfranchisement. 
 
 4. Dower (2000); Bix (2001). 
 
 5. It is important to note here that these “stereotypes” of the Japanese should not 
 be apprehended as simply “negative” or “reductive.” These images ultimately create 
 social realities. See Chow (2002), especially chapter 2. 
 
 one. When Bruce Lee Meets Gojira 
 
 1. Throughout the manuscript, I use “Gojira” to refer to the Japanese version of 
 the monster and films and “Godzilla” to refer to its Americanized counterpart. The 
 differentiation is crucial, I argue later on, not only for production purposes, but for 
 politics and the power differential as well. 
 
 2. In May 2014, a new Godzilla film directed by Gareth Edwards screened in the¬ 
 aters around the world. While paying homage to the original Gojira film and with 
 a visual reference to the Fukushima disaster, the film anthropomorphizes Gojira 
 as a hero fighting off the Mass Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms in order to save 
 the human race. Whereas the original Gojira was a warning tale about the nuclear 
 destruction made by humans (or, more specifically, Americans), the newest story 
 absolves humankind of any responsibilities for its destruction of the environment 
 by having Godzilla “balance” nature against the other nuclear-infested monsters. 
 
 In the succinct words of Professor Serizawa, “Let them light.” 
 
 3. My usage of the “postwar Cold War system” requires explanation. It is com¬ 
 monly assumed that “postwar” and “Cold War” share the same time frame: hence, 
 their articulation is redundant and one should use them interchangeably. What 
 gets elided, however, is the “transition” from the ruins of immediate postwar Japan, 
 where political possibilities were denied, if not repressed, with the intensification 
 of the Cold War. In Democracy and Nationalism, a comprehensive study of postwar 
 Japanese nationalism and the public sphere, Oguma Eiji (2004) argues that there 
 
 is not one but two “postwars” in Japanese discourse. The shift from the first to 
 the second postwar, demarcated by the year 1955, witnessed profound changes in 
 discourses about nationalism among the intellectuals. There is the shift from a “de¬ 
 veloping” to “developed” country, from “Asian” to “Euro-American.” There is also 
 the shift from immediate economic deprivation and social disorder to economic 
 recovery, with an emerging consumer society and its affiliated social order and 
 political conservatism. My usage of the “postwar Cold War system” marks and re¬ 
 marks on the transition that bridges the residual elements of Japanese empire with 
 the emergent new nation that vowed to remain pacifist and tied to U.S. hegemony 
 for its economic development. 
 
 144 Notes to Introduction 
 
4. One can also see the catharsis and affective formation of “symbolic anti- 
 Americanism” in postwar popular culture in the personification of Rikidozan and 
 Japanese professional wrestling. 
 
 5. For an analysis of Chinese students’ activities in the United States and their 
 implications in Asian American politics, see Wang (2013). 
 
 6. According to a Wikipedia entry, since 2973 there have been no fewer than four 
 films and eight tv series based on Chen Zhen, Lee’s character in Fist of Fury. 
 
 7. The Lucky Dragon No. 5 ( Daigo Fukuryu Maru ) incident happened when the 
 Japanese tuna fishing boat of that name was contaminated by a fallout caused by 
 U.S. Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapon test in Bikini Atoll on March 1,1954. 
 Tudor (1989) defines “secure horror” as structured around clear oppositions. The 
 threat is external. Human action is meaningful. Identification is with the expert. 
 There is an absence of genuine doubt and there is narrative closure. 
 
 8. Enter the Dragon opened in August 1973 to huge box office returns in the 
 United States. The following February it opened in Hong Kong to much smaller au¬ 
 diences. However, it became a huge hit in Japan, and from 1974 to 1975, three other 
 Bruce Lee films from Hong Kong were screened in Japan. 
 
 9. As Yomota (2005) describes it, there were multiple reasons for the delay. First, 
 Raymond Chow, the head of Golden Harvest (a studio in Hong Kong), thought the 
 Japanese were prejudiced against Chinese and Hong Kong people, so he did not 
 consider Japan a viable market. He also did not think the Japanese would take the 
 negative portrayal of the Japanese in Fist of Fury very well. From the 1950s to the 
 1960s, Shaw Brothers and Cathay made films about Japan. Shaw Brothers used Jap¬ 
 anese directors and cameramen such as Nakahira Kb (d 3 ¥■)#), Inoue Umetsugu 
 (#_hf§# 0 , and Nishimoto Tadashi (H$IE) to help make action films (17). How¬ 
 ever, the Japanese film industry showed absolutely no interest in Hong Kong cin¬ 
 ema when it was extremely popular in Southeast Asia. Chow was understandably 
 pessimistic about the prospect of exporting Hong Kong cinema to Japan. Second, 
 the Japanese industry had no clue about the influence and reach of Hong Kong 
 cinema in the 1960s. Some socialist films from China were shown, but prejudice 
 against the Chinese was high and so the promoter and distributor wanted to have 
 Bruce Lee scripted in katakana —which was associated with foreign loan words in 
 Japanese—instead in Chinese characters. The Japanese came to know Bruce Lee 
 through katakana and pronounced his name as “Burusu Li”; South Koreans, by 
 contrast, name Bruce Lee using hangul pronunciation, “Yi So Ryon.” 
 
 two. “Japanese Devils” 
 
 1. This lack of co-evalness with Asia in the postwar Cold War era is similar to the 
 Japanese reception of Bruce Lee (discussed in chapter 1). 
 
 2. Sun Ge (2010) gives an example of this hua-yi order when Hong Kong was 
 ceded to Great Britain. It was understood by the Qing officials as an act of pacifying 
 the yi by the hua. 
 
 Notes to Chapter Two 145 
 
3.1 refer here to the textbook controversy of the early 1980s, in which some 
 revisions were made in textbooks for Japanese junior high schools that aimed to 
 minimize the history of Japanese aggression in Asia during the Second World War. 
 The Yasukuni controversy refers to the provocation by Japanese political officials’ 
 annual visit to a shrine that worships the war dead. 
 
 4. This game can be accessed at http://www.51windows.net/game/index.asp 
 ?fileid=77. 
 
 5. This movie can be accessed at http://flash.dm.sohu.com/comic/show_44923 
 .html. 
 
 three. Shameful Bodies, Bodily Shame 
 
 1. Similar cases of patriarchal nationalism that appropriate and undermine the 
 demands of former comfort women for justice can be seen in the Indonesian case as 
 well. See McGregor (2016). 
 
 2. Other than Koreans, women from China, Thailand, French Indochina, Sin¬ 
 gapore, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan were mobilized 
 to serve the Japanese army. For basic facts on the comfort women issue, see “Fact 
 Sheet on Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women.’” 
 
 3. The situation is the same with other Southeast Asian countries, such as Indo¬ 
 nesia. The United States stipulated in Article 14 of the 1951 San Francisco Treaty 
 that Japan should pay “service reparations” to Southeast Asian countries, focusing 
 on the provision of equipment for industrial production rather than monetary pay¬ 
 ments. The intention of the United States is to help rebuild the Japanese economy 
 to make Japan an Asian regional power that would hold influence over Southeast 
 Asian countries in the context of the Cold War. In 1958 Indonesia signed a treaty 
 with Japan, which included payment of U.S. $223 million over twelve years, the 
 cancellation of trade debt of U.S. $177 million, and $400 million in economic aid. 
 During Suharto’s New Order, Japan became one of the biggest contributors of aid 
 and investment in Indonesia. During this time, except for the 1974 anti-Japanese 
 Malari riots over Japanese investment and Indonesian corruption, which were 
 quickly repressed by the military, there was no critical reckoning with the Japanese 
 Occupation or with Japan’s ongoing economic influence over Indonesia, not to 
 mention the comfort women issue. See McGregor (2016). 
 
 4. See “Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea,” 
 Wikipedia, accessed August 12, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on 
 _Basic_Relations_between_Japan_and_the_Republic_of_Korea. 
 
 5. See also Soyoung Kim’s article from 2006, which is a critique of gendered 
 trauma regarding the representation of the Gwangju Uprising. A recent example of 
 the desire to remember and reconstitute the father figure in Korean society is the 
 box office success of Ode to My Father (2014; dir. Yoon Je-kyoon). The film chron¬ 
 icles modern Korean history from the 1950 to the present day through the protag¬ 
 onist’s personal sacrifice and hard work for his family. The tumultuous history of 
 
 146 Notes to Chapter Two 
 
Korea is condensed into a few symbolic events: the Hungnam evacuation of 1950, 
 the Korean guest workers in West Germany in the 1960s, the Korean participation 
 in the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and the reunion of separated family members of 
 the Korean War in the early 1980s. Each time, Doek-soo, the eldest son and hence 
 the patriarch of the family, sacrifices himself to protect and take care of the family, 
 as he promised his father when he was lost during the evacuation. 
 
 6. For an insightful critique of the discourse of han and ethnocentrism, see Jung 
 (2007: 296-332). 
 
 7. In The Murmuring, one of the women calls their plight “our bitter grudge 
 unresolved.” 
 
 8. For a concise overview, see Leys (2011). 
 
 9. The House of Sharing was founded in June 1992 to provide housing for a num¬ 
 ber of living comfort women. Buddhist organizations and other social groups pro¬ 
 vided the funding. See http://www.nanum.org/eng/. 
 
 10. Literally, “the fact that I was in this brothel!” Thanks to Hae-Young Kim for 
 the Korean transcription. 
 
 11. Hyunah Yang puts it this way: “The project was an apparatus designed to pro¬ 
 tect Japanese women from the threat of rape by military personnel. Virgin Korean 
 girls were, furthermore, the solution protecting Japanese soldiers from venereal 
 disease, which was regarded as one of the factors weakening military morale and 
 effectiveness” (1997: 63). 
 
 12. Stolen Innocence is the title of Kang Duk-kyong’s painting. The painting de¬ 
 picts a Japanese soldier as a tree, with a naked girl lying at its roots while flowers 
 are falling. 
 
 13. The shift from being the object of a film to the subject of filming is further 
 developed in the third documentary, My Own Breathing (1999), where Lee Young 
 Soo, a former comfort woman, takes an active role in interviewing other women. 
 
 14. For a “revisionist” view of Hirohito’s active involvement in the war and its 
 aftermath, see Bix (2001). 
 
 15. The judgment is rendered as follows: “The Tribunal finds, based on the 
 evidence before it, that the Prosecution has proved its case against the accused 
 Emperor Hirohito, and finds him guilty of responsibility for rape and sexual slav¬ 
 ery as a crime against humanity, under Counts 1-2 of the Common Indictment, 
 and guilty of rape as a crime against humanity under Count 3 of the Common 
 Indictment. Additionally, the Judges determine that the government of Japan has 
 incurred state responsibility, as recognized under Article 4 of the Charter, for its 
 establishment and maintenance of the comfort system.” 
 
 The Court comprised the distinguished judges Carmen Argibay (Argentina), 
 Christine Chinkin (United Kingdom), and Willy Mutunga (Kenya) and was pre¬ 
 sided over by the Honorable Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (United States), who 
 delivered the highly anticipated judgment. See http://iccwomen.org/wigjdrafti 
 /Archives/oldWCGJ/tokyo/index.html. 
 
 16. See Choe (2001). The Japanese government officially claimed that the statue 
 
 Notes to Chapter Three 147 
 
of comfort women breached the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, an 
 international treaty that outlines a framework for diplomacy. 
 
 r7. See “Japanese pm Stirs Up Trouble.” 
 
 18. Nami Kim (2012). 
 
 19. Nami Kim (2012). 
 
 20. On the issue of political apologies, see Dudden (2or4). 
 
 2r. For the full text of the agreement, see “Japan-South Korea Statement on 
 ‘Comfort Women,’” The Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2or5, http://blogs.wsj 
 .com/japanrealtime/2015/12/28/full-text-japan-south-korea-statement-on-comfort 
 -women/tab/pri nt/. 
 
 four. Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety 
 
 r. The previously viewable official page is no longer available. The commission 
 disbanded after four and a half years of classifying all pro-Japanese collaborators 
 and their activities. The effort resulted in a collection of twenty-five volumes, 
 
 2r,ooo pages in all, listing r,005 collaborators. I would like to thank Lee Hyunjung 
 for translation assistance. 
 
 2. The different attitudes of Taiwan and Korea toward Japanese rule can be 
 attributed to a few reasons. First, Korea’s precolonial history as a dynastic state 
 within the tributary system of the Chinese empire provided a sense of commonal¬ 
 ity among its peoples, whereas Taiwan, while a province of the Qing empire, was 
 largely neglected and had little sense of shared belonging. Second, postwar post¬ 
 colonial occupation by the renegade Nationalist Party significantly impacted the 
 way that Taiwanese people came to compare the two rules. The divided system on 
 the Korean Peninsula and the American Occupation further strengthened Korean 
 nationalism and its shared antipathy to Japanese colonial rule. 
 
 3. For a critical analysis of the film, see Chen Kuan-Hsing (2002). 
 
 4. Waishengren and benshengren are categories specific to the postwar Taiwan 
 context. “Waishengren,” literally, means “people outside of the province,” and it 
 refers to those who came to Taiwan from mainland China after the years ^45-49. 
 “Benshengren,” or “local province people,” refers to those who came before ^45-49. 
 These concepts are only meaningful in relation to each other. 
 
 5. “Sakuranohana” means “cherry blossom.” 
 
 6. It should be noted that “pro-Japan” (C: qinri; K: chinil) has very different nu¬ 
 ances in Taiwan and Korea. In Taiwan, the term connotes an affinity to Japan or 
 Japanese things; in Korea, the term is used derogatively for collaborators during 
 Japanese rule, especially those branded chinilpa. 
 
 7. All titles are published by Sakuranohana shuppan (Cherry Blossom Press). 
 
 8. The series recently added “testimonies” from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the 
 Philippines. 
 
 9. The editorial can be found at http://sakuranohana.jp/hokori.html. The asser¬ 
 tions cited echo Kobayashi Yoshinori’s “comparison” of Japanese colonialism to 
 
 148 Notes to Chapter Three 
 
Western colonial rule. He categorized Spanish rule in Latin America as a “plun¬ 
 dering” type, Britain’s rule in India as an “exploiting” type, and Japanese rule in 
 Taiwan and Korea as an “investing” type. See Kobayashi (2000). 
 
 10. Quoted in the editorial cited above, available at http://sakuranohana.jp 
 /hokori.html. 
 
 11. For an important documentation of this brief period of possibility, see Ko 
 Eitetsu (Huang Yingze) (1999). 
 
 12. For the English translation, see Wu and Mentzas (2006). 
 
 five. “In the Name of Love” 
 
 1. “Cang” is the mandarin Chinese reading of “Aoi.” 
 
 2. The political concept of love I am trying to articulate here is different from the 
 “love events” and ultimately heteronormative conceptualization of sexuality and 
 the universalization of the couple implied in Alain Badiou and Nicolas Truong’s In 
 Praise of Love (2012). Badiou’s concern is mainly on the modern romantic love, its 
 inherent and desirable risk (the Encounter), difference (not from the perspective of 
 the One, but of the Two), and points of regeneration. Badiou’s commitment to love 
 is to salvage it from the proliferation of technologized and commodified bourgeois 
 relationships. 
 
 3. Giddens writes, for example, “Unlike romantic love, confluent love is not nec¬ 
 essarily monogamous, in the sense of sexual exclusiveness. What holds the pure 
 relationship together is the acceptance on the part of each partner, until further 
 notice,’ that each gains sufficient benefit from the relation to make its continuance 
 worthwhile. Sexual exclusiveness here has a role in the relationship to the degree 
 to which the partners mutually deem it desirable or essential” (Kindle loc. 983 of 
 3627). 
 
 4. “ Anpo ” is the Japanese shorthand for the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and 
 Security between the United States and Japan. The treaty supported the continuous 
 military occupation in Japan, mostly on the island of Okinawa. Despite mass oppo¬ 
 sition, the treaty was rectified in both i960 and 1970. For a historical account of the 
 antigovernment art movements, see Marotti (2013). 
 
 5. The Komatsugawa Incident refers to the 1958 alleged murder and rape of two 
 Japanese women by an eighteen-year-old resident Korean student, Ri Chin’u. 
 
 6. In the film’s fifth segment, R Was Proven to Be a Korean, although not proven 
 by others, he will accept external confirmation of his Korean identity as a first step 
 toward effectively becoming R. The external force is a Korean woman substituting 
 herself for the “corpse” of the schoolgirl who was “strangled” by R. She appears 
 
 as R’s “sister.” Initially she is only visible by R and the Education Officer, but later 
 gradually she reveals herself to others as well. One of the significances of this seg¬ 
 ment is to introduce to the audience the historical oppression of Korean women. 
 “Sister’s” logic in trying to convince R to accept himself as R is refuted by the offi¬ 
 cials and also rejected by R. “Sister” is executed at the end of the segment. 
 
 Notes to Chapter Five 149 
 
7. The film version, a Chinese, Korean and Japanese coproduction starring Andy 
 Lau and directed by Jacob Cheung, was released in 2006. 
 
 8. For a thoughtful critique of state usurpation of the discourse of apologies, see 
 Dudden (2014). 
 
 9. Nussbaum writes: “Fraternal sentiment must, in the beginning, be organized 
 at the national level. Unmediated cosmopolitan sympathy for all human beings— 
 ‘the brotherhood of all, love for all’—is an unrealistic goal at the present time, so 
 immersed are people in egoistic projects and local loyalties. The nation—the demo¬ 
 cratic nation committed to equal human dignity—is a necessary intermediary be¬ 
 tween the ego and the whole of humanity: we can already see that the nation can be 
 the object of intense emotions that have motivational efficacy. By building the right 
 sort of patriotism, then, people concerned with universal love may hope to produce 
 the basis for truly international fraternity” (2013: 56). 
 
 six. Reconciliation Otherwise 
 
 1 .1 would like to thank Kerim Friedman for bringing Finding Sayun to my 
 attention. 
 
 2 .1 will briefly summarize the texts here. Exceedingly Barbaric is a complicated 
 novel narrating the lives of two women—Miicha, a colonial housewife in 1930s 
 Taiwan and Lily, her niece who travels to Taiwan in the summer of 2005 to trace 
 Miicha’s footsteps and to alleviate her own sorrow of also losing a child. Alternating 
 between Miicha’s letters to Akihiko, her husband; her diaries; and Lily’s travelogue, 
 the novel traverses two temporalities—from early 1930s and 2005—to narrate 
 Miicha’s life in the colony, with Lily often supplementing Miicha’s story through 
 her own narratives. What mediates the two temporalities is the aborigine folklores, 
 beliefs, customs, and, more importantly, the 1930 Musha Rebellion. The notion of 
 barbarity or savagery not only refers to the violent aborigine uprising, the colonial 
 administration’s policy or the massive retaliation against the Seediq people, but 
 also serves as a metaphor for “human sexuality and its accompanying love and 
 marriage, and human existence itself” (Okamura 2013:148). What makes Exceed¬ 
 ingly Barbaric an interesting critique of colonialism is its attentiveness to both the 
 macro politics and microphysics of colonial lives. From governmental ity to domes¬ 
 ticity, from patriarchy to sexuality, the novel crafts the entangled stories of colonial 
 expansion, with all its sensibilities, sentiments, and states of distress that haunt and 
 hover the descriptive fringes of colonial histories and its postcolonial legacies. 
 
 Finding Sayun is the first feature film on indigenous culture from the perspec¬ 
 tive of the aboriginal director, Laha Mebow, of the Atayal tribe in northeastern 
 Taiwan. The film begins when the tale of Sayun draws a tv crew consisting of a 
 Taiwanese female reporter and two cameramen from Beijing to the Atayal hamlet. 
 (It is not quite clear from the film why the two men from Beijing were necessary 
 for the narrative.) As the crew interviews local residents and tries to find out more 
 about Sayun’s story, they are increasingly attracted to You-Gan, a handsome high 
 
 150 Notes to Chapter Five 
 
school boy and hunter, who does not understand the crew members’ interest in the 
 story. (In an earlier scene, You-Gan literally runs away from the crew’s camera.) 
 
 But his grandfather’s memories of Sayun, whom he went to school with, revives his 
 interest in the old tribal village, which the villagers had been forced to desert fifty 
 years prior by the Kuomintang after “liberating” Taiwan from the Japanese. Due to 
 concern over his health and old age, not to mention the treacherous and abandoned 
 mountain trails leading to the old village, the grandfather has been prohibited from 
 visiting his village. With the memory of Sayun and his yearning for home stirring, 
 the grandfather is determined to pay a visit to his childhood home. You-Gan, with 
 his friends and the female reporter, then embark on a journey along the hazardous 
 trail to the Atayal home. 
 
 3. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale forms one of the so-called Taiwan trilogy 
 by the director Wei Te-sheng, along with Cape No. 7 (2006) and Kano (2014). These 
 films are all box office hits in Taiwan and have garnered positive reviews abroad. 
 
 4. See http://www.epochweekly.com/b5/256/10203p.htm. 
 
 5 .1 don’t have any information about the particular Japanese prime minister and 
 the apology that Derrida is thinking of, but my guess is that, since the book was 
 published in 2001, he may be referring to Murayama Tomiichi, the socialist prime 
 minister of Japan from June 1994 to January 1996, who offered apologies for Jap¬ 
 anese colonial rule and aggressions to Asian neighbors. The so-called Murayama 
 Statement is officially titled “On the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 
 War’s End.” Derrida also appears to be overly optimistic about “reparation and a 
 political reorientation”(20oi: 31). The exclusion of the emperor from the act of apol¬ 
 ogy is already a concession to the postwar American and Japanese complicity to 
 absolve the emperor of any war crimes and wrongdoings. And if indeed Murayama 
 was the example whom Derrida cites, we should not ignore the fact that, despite his 
 much more reconciliatory attitude than other postwar prime ministers, he presided 
 over the short-lived Asian Women’s Fund (1994-2007) that established a private 
 mechanism to compensate the so-called comfort women for their sufferings but 
 again absolved the state of any responsibility for the system of sexual slavery. In 
 November of 2015, McGraw-Hill, publisher of the world history textbook Traditions 
 and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, Vol. 2, by the history professors 
 Herbert Ziegler and Jerry Bentley, was contacted by Japan’s Consulate General in 
 New York to request the deletion of two paragraphs (i.e., the entire entry) about the 
 comfort women. 
 
 Notes to Chapter Six 151 
 
REFERENCES 
 
 Akiyama, Joji, and Ko Bunyu. 2013. Manga Chugoku nyumon: yakkai na rinjin no 
 kenky u [Manga intro to China: The study of a troublesome neighbor]. Tokyo: 
 Asukashinsha. 
 
 Allison, Anne. 2013. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 Arendt, Hannah. 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. 
 London: Penguin. 
 
 Badiou, Alain, and Nicolas Truong. 2012. In Praise of Love. New York: The New 
 Press. 
 
 Berry, Chris. 2006. “Stellar Transit: Bruce Lee’s Body or Chinese Masculinity in a 
 Transnational Frame.” In Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, 
 and Chinese Cultures, ed. Fran Martin and Larissa Heinrich, 218-34. Honolulu: 
 University of Hawai'i Press. 
 
 Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. 
 
 Bix, Herbert. 2001. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: 
 HarperCollins. 
 
 Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London: 
 Routledge. 
 
 Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Lon¬ 
 don: Verso. 
 
 Callahan, William. 2007. “Trauma and Community: The Visual Politics of Chinese 
 Nationalism and Sino-Japanese Relations.” Theory and Event 10, no. 4. https:// 
 muse.jhu.edu/article/230142. 
 
 Callahan, William. 2010. China: The Pessoptimist Nation. Oxford: Oxford Univer¬ 
 sity Press. 
 
 Cao Rui. 2018. “Jingri shi shemo yisi” [What is spiritually Japanese?]. Xuehua News, 
 February 26. https://www.xuehua.us/2018/02/26/tt Hxeff 
 HttBffl/zh-tw/. 
 
Chen Duxiu. 1937. Kangri zhanzheng zhi yiyi [The meaning of the war of resis¬ 
 tance], Speech given at Huachung University, Wuhan, China, on October 6. 
 https://www.marxists.0rg/chinese/chenduxiu/mia-chinese-chen-19371006.htm. 
 
 Chen Kuan-Hsing. 2000. “The Imperialist Eye: The Cultural Imaginary of a Sub¬ 
 empire and a Nation-State.” Trans. Wang Yiman. positions: east asia cultures 
 critique 8, no 1: 9-76. 
 
 Chen Kuan-Hsing. 2002. “Why Is ‘Great Reconciliation’ Impossible? De-Cold War/ 
 Decolonization, Or Modernity and Its Tears (Part 1).” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 
 3, no. i: 77 - 99 . 
 
 Chen Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: 
 Duke University Press. 
 
 Cheong, Sung-hwa. 1991. The Politics of Anti-Japanese Sentiment in Korea: Japanese- 
 South Korean Relations under American Occupation, 1945-1952. New York: 
 Greenwood Press. 
 
 Ching, Leo T. S. 2001. Becoming “Japanese”: The Politics of Identity Formation in 
 Colonial Taiwan. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
 
 Ching, Leo T. S. 2012. “Colonial Nostalgia or Postcolonial Anxiety: The Dosan 
 Generation In Between ‘Restoration’ and ‘Defeat.’” In Sino-Japanese Transcultur- 
 ation: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the End of the Pacific War, ed. Rich¬ 
 ard King, Cody Poulton, and Katsuhiko Endo, 211-26. Lanham, MD: Lexington 
 Books. 
 
 Cho Han Hae-joang. 2001. “‘You Are Entrapped in an Imaginary Well’: The For¬ 
 mation of Subjectivity within Compressed Development—a Feminist Critique of 
 Modernity and Korean Culture.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1, no. 1: 49-69. 
 
 Choi, Chungmoo. 2001. “The Politics of War Memories toward Healing.” In Peril¬ 
 ous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War, ed. T. Fujitani, Geoffrey M. While, and Lisa 
 Yoneyama, 395-409. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Choi, Chungmoo. 2002. “The Politics of Gender, Aestheticism, and Cultural Na¬ 
 tionalism in Sopyonje and the Genealogy.” In Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a 
 Korean National Cinema, ed. David E. James and Kyung Hyun Kim, 107-33. 
 Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. 
 
 Chow, Rey. 2002. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: 
 Columbia University Press. 
 
 Chow, Rey. 2012. Entanglements: Or Transmedial Thinking about Capture. Durham, 
 NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Common History Project [Nicchukansankoku kyotsurekishikyozai iinkai], 2006. 
 Mirai wo hiraku rekishi: nihon, chugoku, kankoku kyotsuhenshu higashiajia san- 
 koku no kindaishi [A history that opens to the future: Japan, China, and Korea; 
 The contemporary and modern history of the three East Asian countries]. Tokyo: 
 Kobunken. 
 
 Common History Project [Nicchukansankoku kyotsurekishikyozai iinkai]. 2012a. 
 Atarashii higashiajia no kingendaishi Vol. 1: kokusai kankei no hendo deyomu 
 [New modern history of East Asia, vol. 1, Reading changes in international rela¬ 
 tions]. Tokyo: Nihon hyoronsha. 
 
 154 References 
 
Common History Project [Nicchukansankoku kyotsurekishikyozai iinkai]. 2012b. 
 Atarashii higashiajia no kingendaishi Vol. 2: teima deyomu hito to koryu [New 
 modern history of East Asia, vol. 2: People and exchanges]. Tokyo: Nihon 
 hyoronsha. 
 
 Connery, Christopher. 2001. “On the Continuing Necessity of Anti-Americanism.” 
 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 2, no. 3: 399-405. 
 
 Davis, Heather, and Paige Sarlin. 2008. “On the Risk of a New Rationality: An In¬ 
 terview with Lauren Berlant and Michael Hardt.” Review in Cultural Theory 2, 
 no. 3. http://reviewsinculture.c0m/2012/10/15/0n-the-risk-0f-a-new-relati0nality 
 -an-interview-with-lauren-berlant-and-michael-hardt/. 
 
 Derrida, Jacques. 2001. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. London: Routledge. 
 
 Dirlik, Arif. 1991. “‘Past Experience, If Not Forgotten, Is a Guide to the Future’; Or, 
 What Is in a Text? The Politics of History in Chinese-Japanese Relations.” bound¬ 
 ary 2 18, no. 3: 29-58. 
 
 Dirlik, Arif. 2002. “Rethinking Colonialism: Globalization, Postcolonialism, and 
 the Nation.” Interventions 4, no. 3 (January): 428-48. 
 
 Dower, John. 2000. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New 
 York: W. W. Norton and Company. 
 
 Dudden, Alexis. 2014. Troubled Apologies among Japan, Korea, and the United 
 States. New York: Columbia University Press. 
 
 Escobar, Arturo. 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Independence, Autonomy, 
 and the Making of Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Fabian, Johannes. 2002. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. 
 New York: Columbia University Press. 
 
 “Fact Sheet on Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women.’” 2015. Asia-Pacific Journal, 
 
 May 11. https://apjjf.org/-Asia-Pacific-Journal-Feature/4829/article.html. 
 
 Fanon, Frantz. 1968. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. 
 
 Feldman, Noah. 2015. “Apology Isn’t Justice for Korean’s ‘Comfort Women.’” 
 Bloomberg View, December 28. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles 
 /2015-12-28/how-korea-s-deal-with-japan-fails-comfort-women-. 
 
 Field, Norma. 1991. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: A Portrait of Japan at Centu¬ 
 ry’s End. New York: Pantheon. 
 
 Fore, Steve. 2001. “Life Imitates Entertainment: Home and Dislocation in the 
 Films of Jackie Chan.” In At Fidl Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless 
 World, ed. Esther C. M. Yau, 115-41. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 
 Press. 
 
 Gateward, Frances K. 2007. Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary 
 Korean Cinema. Albany: State University of New York Press. 
 
 Giddens, Anthony. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Erot¬ 
 icism in Modern Societies. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 
 
 Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri. 2006. “Lost in Translation and Morphed in Transit: 
 Godzilla in Cold War America.” In In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture 
 Icon in the Global Stage, ed. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, 51-62. New 
 York: Palgrave Macmillan. 
 
 References 155 
 
Halliday, Jon, and Gavan McCormack. 1973. Japanese Imperialism Today: 
 “Co-Prosperity in Greater East Asia". New York: Monthly Review Press. 
 
 Hanasaki, Kohei. 2000. “Decolonialization and Assumption of War Responsibility.” 
 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1, no. 1:71-83. 
 
 Hanasaki, Kohei. 2001. Aidentiti to kyosei no tetsugaku [The philosophy of identity 
 and co-vivality]. Tokyo: Heibonsha Library. 
 
 Hara, Kazuo, dir. 1987. Yukiyukite shingun [The emperor’s naked army marches on]. 
 Tokyo: Shisso Purodakushon. 
 
 Hardt, Michael. 2011. “For Love or Money.” Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 4: 676-82. 
 
 Hoaglund, Linda. 2003. “Stubborn Legacies of War: Japanese Devils in Sarajevo.” 
 Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus 1, no. 10. https://apjjf.org/-Linda-Hoaglund 
 /1822/article.html. 
 
 Honda, Katsuichi. 1981. Chugoku no tabi [Travels in China]. Tokyo: Asahi shimbun 
 shuppan. 
 
 Huang Chih-huei (Huang Zhihui). 2004. “Zhan-hou Taiwan de ‘Riben wenhua lun’ 
 shuwu zhong xianxiande ‘dui-wu zhong xianxiande ‘ihui), Modernity and its 
 Tears (Part 1),” Ri guan” [Attitudes toward Japan manifested in postwar books 
 from Taiwan on “Discourse on Japanese Culture”]. Ya-Taiyanjiu luntan [Forum 
 for Asia-Pacific Debate] 26: 94-118. 
 
 Huang, Zheping. 2018. “Cosplaying as Japanese Soldiers Could Become Illegal in 
 China.” Quartz, April 26. https://qz.com/1262615/china-considers-punishing 
 -those-who-glorify-japanese-militarism-in-a-new-heroes-and-martyrs 
 -protection-law/. 
 
 Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. 
 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Jameson, Fredric. 1995. The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World 
 System. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 
 
 “Japanese pm Stirs Up Trouble with ‘Comfort Women’ Remark.” 2012. Chosun Ilbo 
 (English edition), March 28. 
 
 Jung, Baek Soo. 2007. Koroniarizumu no kokufuku: kankoku kindai bunka ni okeru 
 datsu shokuminchi-ka eno dotei [Overcoming colonialism: The process of decol¬ 
 onization in modern Korean culture]. Tokyo: Sofukan. 
 
 Karatani, Kojin. 2014. The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to 
 Modes of Exchange. Trans. Michael Bourdaghs. Durham, NC: Duke University 
 Press. 
 
 Kato, M. T. 2007. From KungFu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular 
 Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. 
 
 Kato Norihiro. 1997. Haisengoron [On war defeat]. Tokyo: Kodansha. 
 
 Kato Norihiro. 2010. Saydnara, Gojira-tachi: Sengo Kara Tdku Hanarete. Tokyo: 
 Iwanami Shoten. 
 
 Kim, Hang. 2016. “Universalism and Colonialism: Reconsidering Postwar Democ¬ 
 racy in Japan.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 17, no. 3: 481-95. 
 
 Kim, Kyung Hyun. 2004. The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema. Durham, NC: 
 Duke University Press. 
 
 156 References 
 
Kim, Nami. 2012. “Marking the 1,000th Wednesday Demonstration.” Feminist 
 Studies in Religion, January 14. http://www.fsrinc.org/blog/marking-ioooth 
 -wednesday-demonstration. 
 
 Kim, Soyoung. 2006. “Do Not Include Me in Your Us: Peppermint Candy and the 
 Politics of Difference.” Korea Journal 46, no. 1: 60-83. 
 
 Kim-Gibson, Dai Sil. 1997. “They Are Our Grandmas.” positions: east asia cultures 
 critique 5, no. 1: 255-74. 
 
 Ko, Eitetsu. 1999. Taiwan bunka saikochiku no hikari to kage (1945-1947): Lu Xun 
 shisojuyb no ikue [The light and shadow of the reconstruction of Taiwan culture 
 (1945-1947): Acceptance of Lu Xun’s thoughts], Tokyo: Sodosha. 
 
 Ko, Yu-fen. 2003. “Consuming Differences: ‘Hello Kitty’ and the Identity Crisis in 
 Taiwan.” Postcolonial Studies 6, no. 2:175-89. 
 
 Kobayashi Yoshinori. 2000. Shin-gomanizumu sengen. Special Taiwan ron [A mani¬ 
 festo of the new pride: A special theory of Taiwan], Tokyo: Shogakukan. 
 
 Koschmann, Victor J. 2006. “National Subjectivity and the Uses of Atonement in 
 the Age of Recession.” In Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Re¬ 
 cessionary 1990s to the Present, ed. Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunian, 122-41. 
 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Kushner, Barak. 2006. “Gojira as Japan’s First Postwar Media Event.” In In Godzil¬ 
 la’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icon on the Global Stage, ed. William M. 
 Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, 41-50. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 
 
 Kushner, Barak. 2015. Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chi¬ 
 nese Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kindle. 
 
 Kwon, Nayoung Aimee. 2015. Intimate Empire: Collaboration and Colonial Moder¬ 
 nity in Korea and Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Laha Mebow (Chen, Chieh-yao), dir. 2010. Buyiyang deyueguang (Finding Sayun). 
 Hua-Ying Entertainment. 
 
 Lee, Hyunjung, and Younghan Cho. 2009. “Performing Nation-ness in South Korea 
 during the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup.” Korea Journal 49 no. 3: 93-120. 
 
 Lee, Woo-young. 2016. ‘“Comfort Women’ Statues Resonate with Koreans.” 
 
 The Korea Herald, March 6. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.phpTud 
 =20160303000844 
 
 Leys, Ruth. 2007. From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After. Princeton, NJ: Prince¬ 
 ton University Press. 
 
 Lo, Kwai-Cheung. 1996. “Muscles and Subjectivity: A Short History of the Mascu¬ 
 line Body in Hong Kong Popular Culture.” Camera Obscura 13, no. 3 (Septem¬ 
 ber): 104-25. 
 
 Lowe, Lisa. 2006. “The Intimacies of Four Continents.” In Haunted by Empire: 
 Geographies of Intimacy in North America History, ed. Ann Staler, 191-212. 
 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Manto, Saddat Hasan. 2008. Kingdom’s End: Selected Stories. New York: Penguin 
 Global. 
 
 Marotti, William A. 2013. Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 
 1960s Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 References 157 
 
McGregor, Katharine. 2016. “Emotions and Activism for Former So-called ‘Com¬ 
 fort Women’ of the Japanese Occupation of the Netherlands East Indies.” Wom¬ 
 en’s Studies International Forum 54: 67-78. 
 
 Mitchell, W. J. T. 2000. “What Sculpture Wants: Placing Antony Gormley.” In Ant¬ 
 ony Gormley: Blind Light, ed. Anthony Vidler, Susan Stewart, and W. J. T. Mitch¬ 
 ell. London: Phaidon. http://www.antonygormley.com/resources/download-text 
 /id/114. 
 
 Miyoshi, Masao. 1991. Off Center: Power and Culture Relations between Japan and 
 the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
 
 Mizoguchi Yuzo. 2005. “Hannichi demo: Doyu rekishi no medemiruka” [Anti- 
 Japan demonstration: How to see through the eye of history]. Gendai Shiso 33: 
 144-51. 
 
 Mori Yoshio. 2001. Taiwan/nihon-rensasuru Koroniarizumu [Colonialism connect¬ 
 ing Taiwan and Japan]. Tokyo: Impact Shuppansha. 
 
 Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2005. The Past within Us: Media, Memory, History. London: 
 Verso. 
 
 Napier, Susan J. 1993. “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imaginations of Disaster from 
 Godzilla to Akira.” Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 2: 327-51. 
 
 Natali, Marcos Piason. 2004. “History and the Politics of Nostalgia.” Iowa Journal 
 of Cultural Studies 5, no. 1. http://www.uiowa.edu/~ijcs/nostalgia/nostfei.htm. 
 
 Nishimura, Kohyu. 2004. Hannichi no kozo: Chugoku, kankoku, kitachosen wo 
 aotteiru no wa dareka [The structure of anti-Japan: Who is flaming China, South 
 and North Korea?]. Tokyo: php Kenkyusho. 
 
 Nozawa, Shunsuke. 2013. “Characterization.” Semiotic Review 3. https://www 
 .semioticreview.com/ojs/index.php/sr/article/view/16/15. 
 
 Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 2013. Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. 
 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
 
 O’Day, Robin. 2015. “Differentiating sealds from Freeters and Precariats: The Poli¬ 
 tics of Youth Movements in Contemporary Japan.” Asia-Pacific Journal 13, no. 37. 
 https://apjjf.org/-Robin-O_Day/4376. 
 
 Oguma, Eiji. 2004. Minshu to aikoku: Sengo nihon no nashonarizumu to kokyosei 
 [Democracy and patriotism: Postwar Japanese nationalism and the public]. 
 Tokyo: Shinyosha. 
 
 Okamoto, Tomoko. 2013. “Tsushima Yuko ‘amari ni yabanna’ ron: sei to shi no 
 rondo” [On Tsushima Yuko’s Amari ni yabanna: A rondo of life and death]. Mod¬ 
 ern Japanese Literary Studies 89:139-53. 
 
 Otsuki, Tomoe. 2016. “Reinventing Nagasaki: The Christianization of Nagasaki and 
 the Revival of an Imperial Legacy in Postwar Japan.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 
 17, no. 3: 395 - 415 - 
 
 Park, Yuha. 2006. Wakai no tame ni: kyokasho, ianfu, tokuto [For reconciliation: 
 Text books, “comfort women,” and Dokto]. Tokyo: Heibonsha. 
 
 Prashad, Vijay. 2001. Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and 
 the Myth of Cultural Purity. Boston, MA: Beacon. 
 
 Qiu, Jack Linchuan. 2004. “The Internet in China: Technologies of Freedom in a 
 
 158 References 
 
Statist Society.” In The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Manuel 
 Castells, 99-124. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. 
 
 Reddy, William M. 2012. The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in 
 Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 ce. Chicago: University of Chicago 
 Press. 
 
 Sakai, Naoki, Brett de Bary, and Toshio Iyotani. 2005. Deconstructing Nationality. 
 Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University. 
 
 Sakamoto, Rumi, and Matt Allen. 2007. “Hating ‘the Korean Wave’: Comic Books: 
 A Sign of New Nationalism in Japan?” Asia-Pacific Journal 5, no. 10. https://apjjf 
 .org/-Rumi-Sakamoto/2535/article.html. 
 
 Students Emergency Actions for Liberal Democracy. 2016. Nihon X Hong Kong X 
 Taiwan Wakamono Ha Akiramenai: Kokkyo Wo Koeta “gakusei Undo” No Rentai 
 Ha Kanoka [Youths never give up—Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan: Is a trans¬ 
 national student solidarity possible?]. Tokyo: Ohta Shuppan. 
 
 Shih, Shu-Mei. 2003. “Globalisation and the (In)Significance of Taiwan.” Postcolo¬ 
 nial Studies 6, no 2:143-53. 
 
 Shoji, Soichi. 1940. Chinfujin [Madam Chen]. Tokyo: Tsubunkaku. 
 
 Soh, Chunghee Sarah. 2008. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial 
 Memory in Korea and Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
 
 Spurr, David. 1993. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, 
 
 Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham, NC: Duke University 
 Press. 
 
 Starrs, Roy. 2001. Asian Nationalism in an Age of Globalization. New York: 
 Routledge. 
 
 Staler, Ann. 2002. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in 
 Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
 
 Sun Ge. 2010. “How Does Asia Mean? (Part I).” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1, no. 
 i:i3-47- 
 
 Sun Ge, Kuan-Hsing Chen and Youngseo Paik, eds. 2006. Posuto higashi ajia 
 [Post-East Asia]. Tokyo: Sakuhin sha. 
 
 Sun Shen, ed. 1995. Kangzhan mingqu 100 sho [100 war of resistance songs]. 
 Zhejiang: Zhejiang Wenyi Chubanshe. 
 
 Takeda, Masaya. 2005. The Portraits of“Guizi”. Tokyo: Shueisha. 
 
 Tanaka, Yuki. 2007. “Oda Makoto, Beheiren, and 14 August 1945: Humanitarian 
 Wrath against Indiscriminate Bombing.” The Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus 5, 
 no. 9. https://apjjf.org/-Yuki-Tanaka/2532/article.html. 
 
 Tsushima, Yuko. 2008. Amari niyabanna [Exceedingly Barbaric]. Tokyo: 
 
 Kodansha. 
 
 Tudor, Andrew. 1989. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror 
 Movie. New York: Blackwell. 
 
 Vijayan, Suchitra. 2014. “Rwanda and the NY Times: On Those Images by Pieter 
 Hugo Pairing Perpetrators and Victims of the 1994 Genocide.” Africa Is a 
 Country, April 25. https://africasacountry.com/2014/04/rwanda-the-genocide 
 -must-live-on. 
 
 References 159 
 
Wang, Chih-ming. 2013. Transpacific Articulations: Student Migration and the Re¬ 
 making of Asian America. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. 
 
 Watson, Burton. 2003. Mozi: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press. 
 
 Wu Zhuoliu, and Ioannis Mentzas. 2006. Orphan of Asia. New York: Columbia 
 University Press. 
 
 Xu, Gary G. 2007. Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Lanham, MD: Row- 
 man and Littlefield. 
 
 Yamano Sharin. 2005. Kenkanry u [Hating the Korean wave]. Tokyo: Shinyusha. 
 
 Yang, Hyunah. 1997. “Revisiting the Issue of Korean ‘Military Comfort Women’: 
 The Question of Truth and Positionality.” positions: east asia cultures critique 5, 
 no. 1: 51-72. 
 
 Yomota Inuhiko. 2005. Burusu Ri: Ri Shiuron no eiko to kodoku [Bruce Lee: The 
 glory and solitude of LiXioa-long]. Tokyo: Shobunsha. 
 
 Yoneyama, Lisa. 2016. Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice 
 and Japanese War Crimes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
 
 Yoshida, Takashi. 2006. The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory 
 in Japan, China, and the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. 
 
 Yoshimi, Shun’ya, and David Buist. 2003. “‘America’ as Desire and Violence: Amer¬ 
 icanization in Postwar Japan and Asia during the Cold War.” Inter-Asia Cultural 
 Studies 4, no. 3: 433-50. 
 
 Zizek, Slavoj. 2006. “Is This Digital Democracy, or a New Tyranny of Cyberspace?” 
 Guardian, December 30. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006 
 /decQo/comment.media. 
 
 160 References 
 
INDEX 
 
 Akiyama, Joji, 107,108 
 Allison, Anne, 136 
 anti-Americanism, 9-11 
 anti-Japanism: 2005 demonstration, 36-38, 
 46, 48; attributes of, 12-13; historyof, 4-6; 
 ethnonationalism and, 9-10,14; Korea, 
 58-59; as symptom, 2-3; U.S., 3-4 
 Aoi Sola, 98-99,100 
 
 Baik Youngseo, 11 
 
 benshengren (native Taiwanese), 84,116 
 Berlant, Lauren, 130 
 Berry, Chris, 27-28 
 
 Bodyguards of the Last Governor (film), 
 
 1-2,7 
 
 Butler, Judith, 137 
 
 Byun Young-Joo, 17, 58, 61, 64,108,109 
 
 Callahan, William, 127 
 Chang, Iris, 4 
 Chen Duxiu, 41 
 Chen Kuan-Hsing, 8-9,11,16 
 Chen Wei-Ting, 133,134,135,136,137 
 Cho Han Hae-joang, 62 
 Choi, Chungmoo, 63, 64, 67, 69 
 Chow, Agnes, 133,134,135,136 
 comfort women, 5,17, 57, 59-61,131; the 
 December 2015 Accord, 76-77,148021; 
 statue, 77-79 
 
 Connery, Christopher: anti-Americanism, 
 
 14-15 
 
 Death by Hanging (film), 18,100,101; post¬ 
 colonial, 104-6 
 
 Derrida, Jacques, 7, 77,125; “On Forgive¬ 
 ness,” 128-30 
 
 Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, 4,117 
 Dirlik, Arif, 34-35,127 
 Dosan (A borrowed life) (film), 83 
 dosan generation, 18, 82-83, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 
 131; nostalgic mode, 88-91 
 
 Enter the Dragon (film), 19, 31-34,145n8 
 Exceedingly Barbaric (novel), 18,116,120-21, 
 123,124-25 
 
 Fanon, Frantz, 95-96 
 Field, Norma, 73 
 
 Finding Sayun (film), 18,116,120,123-24, 
 126-27 
 
 Fist of Fury (film), 17,18, 20, 25-29, 34 
 
 Gateward, Frances, 64 
 Giddens, Anthony, 102,103 
 Godzilla (film), 29-31,100,101 
 Gojira (film), 17,19, 20-24, 29; and Godzilla , 
 29-31; and romantic love, 101-4; symbolic 
 anti-Americanism of, 22, 24, 34, 35 
 
Habitual Sadness (film), 61,71 
 han, 16, 58, 62; and cultural nationalism, 
 62-64, 65 
 
 Hanasaki Kohei, 112-14 
 
 Hardt, Michael, 100; and Lauren Berlant, 130 
 
 Hirohito, Emperor, 72, 73 
 
 Hoaglund, Linda, 55, 56 
 
 Honda, Katsuichi, 5 
 
 Huang Chih-huei, 84 
 
 hua-yi (civility-barbarity), 39, 40-41,145n2 
 intimacy, 117,118-19 
 
 Japanese devils, 17, 38; during Chinese em¬ 
 pire, 38-41; during War of Resistance, 
 41-43; during socialism, 43-45; during 
 postsocialist nationalism, 45-50 
 jing-ri (spiritually Japanese), ix, x 
 
 Kang Sanjun, 96 
 
 Karatani Kojin, 14,135 
 
 Kato Norihiro, 22-24,112 
 
 Kim Hak-soon, 68, 72 
 
 Kim, Han, 139-41 
 
 Kim, Kyung Hyun, 63 
 
 Kim, Nami, 76 
 
 Kitamura Seibo, 8,139 
 
 Kobayashi Yoshinori, 85, 91,148n9 
 
 Koschmann, Victor, 23 
 
 Kushner, Barak, 21, 54-55, 56 
 
 Laha Mebow, 18,120,123,124,126,127 
 Landmine Warfare (film), 43,44 
 Lee, Bruce, 17,19, 20, 34, 35; and cultural 
 nationalism, 24-25 
 Leys, Ruth, 65-66 
 Lo, Kwai-Cheung, 28 
 Lowe, Lisa, 119 
 
 Madame Chen (novel), 119-20 
 Malari Incident (1974), i43n3 
 Mitchell, W. J. T„ 78 
 Mizoguchi Yuzo, 11, 37 
 Mizoi Moeko, 133,135 
 
 Mohist Attack (film), 18,100,101; impartial 
 love, 106-8 
 
 Mori Yoshio, 83-84; Japanese spirit: ribun- 
 jingshin and nihonseishin, 91-92, 94 
 
 Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 113 
 Musha Rebellion, 121 
 
 My Own Breathing (film), 18, 58, 61, 70,100, 
 101; unconditional love, 108-10 
 
 nationalism: and hypermasculinity, 59, 64; 
 
 vulgar and polite, 100 
 nondecolonization, 96 
 Nishimura, Kohyu: The Structure of Anti- 
 Japan (book), 9-10 
 nostalgia, 16, 85; as mode, 88-91 
 Nussbaum, Martha, 110-12 
 
 Oda Makoto, 7 
 O’Day, Robin, 138 
 Okuda Aki, 133,135 
 Oguma, Eiji, 135 
 Ogyu Sorai, 40 
 
 Park, Yuha, 140 
 
 precarity: 136; difference from precarious¬ 
 ness, 137 
 
 pro-Japanism, 6,12,35,118 
 
 Qiu, Jack, 47 
 
 Reddy, William, 103 
 Riben Guizi (Japanese Devils) (film), 38, 
 50-54 
 
 rise of China, anxiety regarding the, 77, 
 94-95.135 
 
 ri-za (Japanized mongrel), x 
 
 Sakai, Naoki, 16 
 Sayun, the story of, 121-22 
 sealds (Students Emergency Actions for 
 Liberal Democracy), 132,133,134,136, 
 
 138 
 
 Seo Kyungsik, 140 
 shame, 61, 65-67,109 
 Shiba Ryotaro, 82 
 Soh, Chunghee Sarah, 61 
 Stoler, Ann, 118 
 Sun Ge, 11 
 
 sunflower movement, 132,136 
 
 Takeda, Masaya, 39,40 
 Tange Kenzo, 8,139 
 
 162 Index 
 
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On 
 (film), 55-56 
 
 The Murmuring (film), 61, 66, 68, 70, 71, 75 
 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and 
 the Republic of Korea (1965), 60 
 Tsushima, Yuko, 18,120-21,123,124,126,127 
 Tunnel Warfare (film), 43, 44, 45 
 
 umbrella movement, 132 
 Ushida Yoshimasa, 133,134,135 
 
 Vijayan, Suchitra, 129-30 
 
 waishengren (mainlanders and their descen¬ 
 dants), 84, 94 
 
 Women’s International War Crimes Tribu¬ 
 nal, 74,147ni5 
 Wong, Joshua, 133,134,135 
 
 Yamano Sharin, 9,108 
 Yan Lianke, 3 
 Yasukuni Shrine, 80 
 Yoneyama, Lisa, 56, 74-75 
 Yoshimi, Shun’ya, 7 
 
 Index 163 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 


www.coiibrisystem.com 
 
Asian studies/Cultural studies 
 
 A lthough the Japanese empire rapidly dissolved following the end of 
 
 World War II, the memories, mourning, and trauma of the nation’s imperial ex¬ 
 ploits continue to haunt Korea, China, and Taiwan. In Anti-Japan Leo T. S. Ching 
 traces the complex dynamics that shape persisting negative attitudes toward Japan 
 throughout East Asia. Drawing on a mix of literature, film, testimonies, and popular 
 culture, Ching shows how anti-Japanism stems from the failed efforts at decolonization 
 and reconciliation, the Cold War and the ongoing U.S. military presence, and shift¬ 
 ing geopolitical and economic conditions in the region. At the same time, pro-Japan 
 sentiments in Taiwan reveal a Taiwanese desire to recoup that which was lost after the 
 Japanese empire fell. Anti-Japanism, Ching contends, is less about Japan itself than it 
 is about the real and imagined relationships between it and China, Korea, and Taiwan. 
 Advocating for forms of healing that do not depend on state-based diplomacy, Ching 
 suggests that reconciliation requires that Japan acknowledge and take responsibility for 
 its imperial history. 
 
 “ Anti-Japan is a timely intervention that unpacks the entangled complexity of contem¬ 
 porary East Asian subjectivities across China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. One of the 
 very few creative authorities on the politics of popular culture, Leo T. S. Ching produces 
 historically and locally grounded work that continues to focus on mental-psychic con¬ 
 ditions from which to locate the unresolved contradictions of Japanism and Ameri¬ 
 canism, as well as sources of hope beyond the nation-state. A must read.”— KUAN-HSING 
 CHEN, author of Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization 
 
 “Filled with innovative, unique, and sensitive insights, Anti-Japan offers a brilliantly 
 crafted critique of nationalist responses to the incomplete decolonization of East Asia 
 following World War II. Leo T. S. Ching interrogates the historicity and limits of these 
 responses while painstakingly excavating the possibilities of reckoning with the violence 
 and trauma produced by Japanese colonialism, imperialism, and militarism. Ching’s 
 work is transnational and postnationalist in the best sense.”— TAKASHI FUJITANI, author 
 of Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II 
 
 leo t. s. ching is Associate Professor of Japanese and East Asian Cultural Studies at 
 Duke University and author of Becoming “Japanese”: Co/j 
 Identity Formation. 
 
 Duke University Press www. dukeupress. edu 
 
 COVER ART: Anti-Japanese protesters at the Bell Tower Hotel, 
 Xi’an. China. September 15, 2012. Courtesy of BBBar / Alamy.