ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009

〈Response 2 to Rey chow〉

Impossible Nostalgia in
A Response to Rey Chowʼs “Autumn Hearts”

Nahoko Yamaguchi
Before making some comments on Prof. Rey Chow, I would like to express my gratitude toProf. Chow for having oﬀered us insightful readings of Chinese ﬁlms and novels for more thana decade. Prof. Chow has continuously focused on cultural representations of modern Chinese
women in terms of the rise of cinema as a new technology, which has drastically caused an
epistemic change to modern Chinese culture. Although I major in British literature and not in
Chinese literature or cinema, and have just watched a lot of Chinese ﬁlms since my childhood, I
have been much inspired by Prof. Chowʼs books. Actually, Iʼm working on how modern female
stereotypes were produced through British literature in relation to Hollywood ﬁlms. Prof. Chowargues that the emergence of cinema should be taken into consideration for assessment of Chinese modern literature. British literature during the 1920s and the 1930s also suﬀered the similar
epistemic change due to the rise of Hollywood, the powerful cinematic apparatus. For analyses ofliterary texts of British modernism under the cinematic inﬂuence, therefore, Prof. Chowʼs discussion is very stimulating, even though we have to clearly and carefully distinguish the cultural
production in the metropolis from that in the colonial/postcolonial contexts.
Among the analyses in chapter 4 of Prof. Chowʼs book,, I am most impressed with the section analyzing flashbacks, which thedirector Ann Hui uses in. Prof. Chow precisely details how ﬂashbacks in Huiʼsﬁlm explore and complexify two diﬀerent womenʼs charactersʼ “psychic interiority” as a narrativetechnique. These ﬂashbacks make the ﬁlm more than a simple autobiography of a young woman.
This is a marvelous insight because this ﬁlm visualizes a psychic predicament of modern womencreated by the malfunction of domesticity, and those women suffer from the predicament not
only as the individual female subject. Their predicaments are intensiﬁed by the fact that they are
involved in the mother‑daughter relationship. In the ﬁlm, a mother and her daughter respectively
irritate with each other because of the fact that they cannot ﬁnd their home in themselves. Forexample, Hueyinʼs voiceover at the graveyard in Japan narrates that she also left home at the ageof 15 like her mother and so she feels like she understands how her mother is feeling. As clearly
illustrated by this, Hueyin has regarded her own home as her early days with her grandparents
in Macao, not the mother‑daughter relationship in Hong Kong. But as the ﬁlm progresses, especially after visiting Japan, Hueyin gradually regards herself as an exile like her mother. In the last57Nahoko Yamaguchi Impossible Nostalgia insequences in Japan, as if all ﬂashbacks in the ﬁlm culminated in the dissolution of two womenʼsmemories and consciousness, they intersubjectively share their predicaments of the exile. The
second bathing scene in particular depicts a casual but intimate conversation between the motherand her daughter. They say, “Do you want to go home?” and “Yes.” Coupled with its intimate
atmosphere, these ﬂashback scenes visualize their ﬁnal reconciliation, which is brought about by
their estrangement from “home” rather than by each of their separate restoration of it.
In addition to the careful analysis of the effects of flashbacks, Prof. Chow shows us how
a Cantonese traditional song works at the end of the ﬁlm. According to Prof. Chow, this song
“exists as a nostalgic reminder of bygone eras for older Cantonese‑speaking populations”. Here,I would like to add a few more words to Prof. Chowʼs analysis of the use of the song, by paying
attention to another song used in the ﬁlm. It is “Kuroda‑Bushi”, a Japanese traditional folk songaboutspirit, especially popular in Kyushu area (Aikoʼs birthplace), which is performed inAikoʼs reunion party with Japanese old friends in the ﬁlm. Whether the director Ann Hui uses it
intentionally or not, it is also a song about the exile. “Kuroda‑Bushi” is popular among Japaneseelder generations and it usually enlivens the drinking party, encouraging people to drink more andmore, as Aiko performs a traditional Japanese dance to the song. But in fact, the song implicitly
foretells that Aikoʼs homecoming to Japan will result in bitterness. In the last stanza of “Kuroda‑Bushi,” alaments loss of home, witnessing the desolation of the place where he used tolive. Moreover, the ﬁnal line of the song is that “I feel the deep sorrow, blowing in the autumn
wind (Akikaze nomizo miniwa shimu),” as if it resonated with the title of the ﬁlm as well as
another Chinese traditional song. The use of these Chinese and Japanese songs of the exile thus
suggests that “autumn melancholy” in this ﬁlm is the symptoms of nostalgia for the lost home.
Then, what kind of home are two female characters losing and going back in the ﬁlm?
In order to examine how “home” is explored in, I would like to compare

the ﬁlm with a short novel “West Wind” by Bing Xin, one that Prof. Chow discussed in the book.
In Bing Xinʼs story, “home” is depicted and fully idealized as the modern nuclear family, which issupported by heterosexual romance, marriage, and reproduction. The female protagonist of thestory, who is at once a professional feminist ﬁgure and a secret admirer of family values, is forced
to locate herself outside of such family. In other words, the novelʼs protagonistʼs own internalized
idealization and evaluation of the modern nuclear family turns herself into its outsider, causing
her melancholy. In Huiʼs ﬁlm, on the contrary, home is not presented as an embodiment of suchfamily values. In the flashback scenes of Hueyinʼs as well as Aikoʼs, each of their homes inMacao, Hong Kong, or Japan is described as discorded and collapsed rather than as idealized andharmonious. In contrast to Bing Xinʼs idealization and evaluation of the modern nuclear family,
the ﬁlm does not idealize such family as a crucial referent point. What, then, causes the motherand the daughter melancholy and ﬁnally leads them to share a sense of loss intersubjectively? As58

ジェンダー研究 第12号 2009a matter of fact, it is the loss of an ideal image of a family that intensiﬁes their melancholy. For
example, Huiʼs ﬁlm shows the contrasting deployment of the female protagonistʼs old boyfriend
to Bing Xinʼs story. In one of the sequences of her stay in Japan, Aiko, disappointed at herbrotherʼs decision to sell her parental home, gets heavily drunk in the bar which her old boyfriend
runs. Her old boyfriendʼs miserable wedlock is far from an envious one for Aiko as opposed tothe idealized family in Bin Xinʼs story. Therefore, she feels isolated from “home” in a double
sense ̶ home as a birthplace and home as an idealized family. Hueyin, who left home and isstill unable to ﬁnd her new home anywhere, is also in similar circumstances to Aikoʼs, even if sheromanticizes, at the end of the ﬁlm, her younger days with her grandparents in Macao. The two
womenʼs melancholy is thus caused not only by nostalgia for their lost home in the past but also
by impossible nostalgia for the ideal home.
I completely agree with Prof. Chow regarding the directorʼs recuperative attitude toward
the Chinese kinship family shown in the end of the ﬁlm. On the other hand, I am also tempted
to read the conversation between Aiko and Hueyin in the bathing scene (“Do you wanna gohome?” “Yes”) as their discovery of their own home within themselves and their resolution tolive together in exile, as Hong Konger. In other words, it seems to me that they try to conﬁgurea family outside of the patriarchal imperatives. In this sense, Professor Chow, could you tell us
what you think about the diﬀerence between Bing Xinʼs story and Ann Huiʼs ﬁlm in terms ofrepresentations of family? This is what Iʼve been curious about, stimulated by your talk. Thankyou.
(Nahoko Yamaguchi, Graduate Student, Ochanomizu University)

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