French Indochina as Seen from the Representations of Women Writers in the 1940s ：Focusing on the Cooperative Relations between the Empire of France and Japan

ZHANG, Ya

doi:2023.16.1.37

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 16(1); 2023 > Article

Article

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2023;16(1): 37-57.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2023.16.1.37

French Indochina as Seen from the Representations of Women Writers in the 1940s ：Focusing on the Cooperative Relations between the Empire of France and Japan

Ya ZHANG

Postdoctoral fellow, Nagoya University

1940年代の女性作家の作品からみる仏印像 ―― ｢日仏協力｣という<帝国>間の関係性を中心に

張雅

Correspondence Ya ZHANG ,Email: choganong@gmail.com

Published online: 30 June 2023.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

In the 1940s, several Japanese women writers took up French Indochina as their stage, for example Hasegawa Haruko’s Minami no shojochi (Virgin Soil of the South, Kōanihonsha, 1940), Mori Michiyo’s Harewataru Futsin (Clouds Roll Away Over French Indochina, Muroto shobō, 1942), Kimura Ayako’s Futsu·Tai·Inshōki (Impressions of French Indochina and Thailand, Aidokusha, 1943), and Yoshiya Nobuko’s “Tsuki kara kita otoko” (“The Man from the Moon,” Shufu no Tomo, Shufu no Tomosha, 1942.5-1943.7). In this paper, I will elucidate the major differences and points of commonality between these works. In these texts, these writers express the relationality between Japan and France before and after the joint defence agreement. Hasegawa Haruko and Kimura Ayako, who visited before the joint defence arrangement was concluded, wrote that the French treated them warily, while Yoshiya Nobuko and Mori Michiyo, who visited after “Franco-Japanese Cooperation” had been established, found themselves in friendly French society. After the Japanese occupation began, they also elucidated the disappearance of Parisian colour from French Indochina and the gradual change into a Japanese landscape. These women writers became the best choice for the empire to argue that Japanese culture was superior to French culture without exchanging live fire.

Keywords: French Indochina, Women Writers, Franco-Japanese Cooperation, Annamese Representation, Japanese Landscape in Annan

キ―ワ―ド: 仏印, 女性作家, 日仏協力, 安南人表象, 日本色の安南町