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The role of women before 1939 before WW2
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The role of women before 1939 before WW2
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Introduction Foreign Husband (1958) is a short story by Chang Hyok-chu, a writer born in colonial Korea who naturalized as a Japanese citizen after the war. His work, in depicting a colonized writer’s struggle to “become Japanese,” is said to reveal how “the deeply rooted racism of colonial legacies” penetrates into the “most intimate realm…of the family.” By drawing on the scapegoat theory, however, this paper argues that the conflict between the Korean narrator and his Japanese wife (Keiko) is rooted more in socio-economic factors than colonial discourse. This paper will also highlight how the Korean narrator’s efforts to assimilate into Japanese society threatened Japan’s colonial discourse and postwar self-image as a “mono-ethnic” and “homogeneous” nation. Racial Tensions in the Colonial Context Japanese-Korean racial tensions permeate within Foreign Husband. Due to the narrator’s race and background, he is treated like “a so-called rebellious Korean” and faces verbal abuse by a Japanese policeman (“all you damn Koreans from the peninsula”). The “rebellious Korean” stereotype which so irks the narrator reflects …show more content…
Within Foreign Husband, blame features prominently in the couple’s fights. The story opens with Keiko accusing the narrator of being the reason for her shame (“all because of you”); in retaliation, the narrator claims that “it’s [her] fault” that he “failed as a writer.” This scene, when examined in light of the scapegoat theory, demonstrates that beneath the veneer of racism lies socio-economic insecurities and frustrations that both parties avoid putting into
Matsumoto studies three generations, Issei, Nisei, and Sansei living in a closely linked ethnic community. She focuses her studies in the Japanese immigration experiences during the time when many Americans were scared with the influx of immigrants from Asia. The book shows a vivid picture of how Cortex Japanese endured violence, discriminations during Anti-Asian legislation and prejudice in 1920s, the Great Depression of 1930s, and the internment of 1940s. It also shows an examination of the adjustment period after the end of World War II and their return to the home place.
Soon after Papa’s arrest, Mama relocated the family to the Japanese immigrant ghetto on Terminal Island. For Mama this was a comfort in the company of other Japanese but for Jeanne it was a frightening experience. It was the first time she had lived around other people of Japanese heritage and this fear was also reinforced by the threat that her father would sell her to the “Chinaman” if she behaved badly. In this ghetto Jeanne and he ten year old brother were teased and harassed by the other children in their classes because they could not speak Japanese and were already in the second grade. Jeanne and Kiyo had to avoid the other children’s jeers. After living there for two mo...
This shows how complex Japanese and Korean interactions with each other are during this time period, because on one hand many people are experiencing extreme racism such as vulgar racism, while here a Japanese person is treating a Korean person with respect and kindness. This shows how nothing is black and white when interacting with people, however it can also be credited for this period of cultural rule and the government’s effort at assimilation with Koreans and Japanese. Kang Pyongju’s experience differs from Ulsu’s experience in which he did not have a close relationship with his business partner, however, the relationship he had with his work was subtle and affective racism where he observed racism and how it disenfranchise him and his people throughout his work. For example, he noticed that now the Bank of Agriculture now decided to let Koreans apply which benefited him and any other Koreans, however it has its flaw when the bank selected more Japanese than Koreans, regardless of how qualified a Korean is. He also noticed that although it appeared as if the salaries for both Japanese and Korean bank managers appeared to be the same, Japanese people received
This signifies the dominant presence of Japanese hegemony in Korea. Similarly, the dominance of Japanese colonialists’ educational agenda was evident, as the threat of the emergence of Korean women’s identity and role within the context of the new spaces created by education, led the colonial government to discharge advancements in female education(Yoo,60). Instead of creating equal opportunities for women and men, Japanese colonial authority’s educational agenda created “secondary education [that] aimed to create more ‘feminine’ women”, in which “the highly gendered division of courses encouraged women to select ‘feminine’ courses” (Yoo 70). This eventually led women to be in their original positions: to stay within the domestic sphere. For example, in the Japanese empire and colonial Korea, women were more encouraged to learn housekeeping and sewing in lieu of learning masculine courses such as “ethics, national language, literature, history, geography, mathematics or science” (Yoo 70).
Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.
Poetry is a form of literature that some view as obsolete in the modern world, but in the poem “To the Man Who Shouted ‘I Like Pork Fried Rice’ at Me on the Street”, Franny Choi dispels that belief. She uses poetry as a medium to convey her own personal experience with the stereotyping and fetishization of Asian American women, which is an issue that millions of Asian American women still face today. When considering Choi’s background as a Korean American woman and how that has shaped her identity and philosophy, we see how being an Asian American woman is intrinsically a core part of her work, which is why much of her work is about breaking the stereotypes that come with this identity.
Adams Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Orphan Master’s Son, amazingly depicts the disturbing lives of North Koreans and government horrors through its simplistic language with relatable characters. The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in North Korea and revolves around Jun Do, who is the son of an orphan master, but who receives the shame that Koreans place on orphans. Then he enters the military where he learns different fighting tactics and becomes a professional kidnapper for the North Koreans. For his reward, the government assigns Jun Do to a listening position on a fishing boat where he becomes a hero for fighting the Americans with a story that the fishing crew and he invented to keep from getting placed in a prison camp after to one of their crewmates defects. Jun Do then goes to Texas as a translator, where he learns about freedom and other cultures. When the mission fails the government sends him to a camp where Jun Do’s name and identity die.
Although the term “revolution from above” is often used to explain the GHQ’s method of postwar reform in Japan (Dower, 1999: p.69), I argue that a similar motivation was in effect in the U.S.’s efforts to isolate all Japanese descendants in America and subject them to coerced American soci...
John Dower's War Without Mercy describes the ugly racial dimensions of the conflict in the Asian theater of World War II and their consequences on both military and reconstruction policy in the Pacific. "In the United States and Britain," Dower reminds us, "the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor. On this, there was no dispute among contemporary observers. They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart -- and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the 'good German' in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Conservative readers, don't fret - Dower isn't making this argument to exonerate the Japanese for their own racism or war crimes -- after all, "atrocious behavior occurred on all sides in the Pacific War." (12-13) Rather, Dower is exploring the propaganda of the US-Japanese conflict to delineate the "patterns of a race war," the cultural mechanisms of "othering," and the portability of racial/racist stereotypes. For "as the war years themselves changed over into into an era of peace between Japan and the Allied powers, the shrill racial rhetoric of the early 1940s revealed itself to be surprisingly adaptable. Idioms that formerly had denoted the unbridgeable gap between oneself and the enemy proved capable of serving the goals of accommodation as well." (13)
Hwang’s father has been victims of racism since 1996, we can’t tell by the last name or by the way the look like where they come from. We aren’t allowed to ask at auditions legally, a person’s race. Therefore, the fact that DHH a character in this play mistakes a white man for being part Asian shows us that we can’t necessarily tell where a you really from by looking
Japanese immigration created the same apprehension and intolerance in the mind of the Americans as was in the case of Chinese migration to the U.S at the turn of the 19th century. They developed a fear of being overwhelmed by a people having distinct ethnicity, skin color and language that made them “inassimilable.” Hence they wanted the government to restrict Asian migration. Japan’s military victories over Russia and China reinforced this feeling that the Western world was facing what came to be known as “yellow peril”. This was reflected in the media, movies and in literature and journalism.4 Anti-Oriental public opinion gave way to several declarations and laws to restrict Japanese prosperity on American land. Despite the prejudice and ineligibility to obtain citizenship the ...
[4] Ann G. Sunahara, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during World War II(Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 1981), 161.
By any measure, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, known as Hanjungnok (Records written in silence), is a remarkable piece of Korean literature and an invaluable historical document, in which a Korean woman narrated an event that can be described as the ultimate male power rivalry surrounding a father-son conflict that culminates in her husband’s death. However, the Memoirs were much more than a political and historical murder mystery; writing this memoir was her way of seeking forgiveness. As Haboush pointed out in her informative Introduction, Lady Hyegyong experienced a conflict herself between the demands imposed by the roles that came with her marriage, each of which included both public and private aspects. We see that Lady Hyegyong justified her decision to live as choosing the most public of her duties, and she decided that for her and other members of her family must to be judged fairly, which required an accurate understanding of the her husband’s death. It was also important to understand that Lady Hyegyong had to endure the
Knowing that it would be four years of relentless pestering, I knew that someday I would surpass my tormentors; I would keep under cover of my books and study hard to make my brother proud one day. It would be worth the pain to someday walk into a restaurant and see my former bully come to my table wearing an apron and a nametag and wait on me, complete with a lousy tip. To walk the halls of the hospital I work in, sporting a stethoscope and white coat while walking across the floor that was just cleaned not to long ago by the janitor, who was the same boy that tried to pick a fight with me back in middle school. To me, an Asian in an American school is picking up where my brother left off. It’s a promise to my family that I wouldn’t disappoint nor dishonor our name. It’s a battle that’s gains victory without being fought.
For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued. In essence, he was shunned” (Hongo 4) by the white people who could not believe that he would attack their superior American ways. According to writers such as Frank Chin and the rest of the “Aiiieeeee!” group, the Americans have dictated Asian culture and created a perception as “nice and quiet” (Chin 1972, 18), “mama’s boys and crybabies” without “a man in all [the] males.” (Chin 1972, 24). This has become the belief of the proceeding generations of Asian Americans and therefore manifested these stereotypes.