electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies
Conference and Seminar Papers“Images of Asia in Japanese Mass Media, Popular Culture and Literature”
Papers Presented at ICAS 2, Berlin, Germany, 9-12 August 2001

Japan’s “Return to Asia”: History, Diversity, Gender
Ulrike Wöhr
Hiroshima City University, Japan

Keywords:
Japan, Korea, Asia, return to Asia, Ajia e no kaiki, nationalism, national identity,
cultural identity, ianfu, gender, feminism, media, manga, zainichi, self-orientalisation,
popular culture, literature.

1.

Summary

In this paper, I will argue for an interdisciplinary and multi-facetted approach toJapanese images of Asia, with particular emphasis on history and gender. I also claimthat when studying constructions of Asia in Japanese media and (popular) culture weshould not loose sight of the wider context of Asian responses to such constructions.
Taking into account the modern history of the region, that is Japan‘s prewar andwartime history as military aggressor and coloniser as well as its postwar history as aneo-colonial power in Asia will enable us to make sense of the various Asianisms andnationalisms apparent in Japanese images of Asia as well as in Asian reactions toJapan. The second aspect, gender, also has a historical dimension: the case of the socalled “comfort women” (ianfu), which epitomises the sex-discriminatory character of
the Japanese-Asian hegemonial power relationship. Present-day popular Japaneseimages of Asia should be scrutinised for the gendered messages they transport, notjust because of how they construct the “Asian woman” but also because of what they
imply about the roles of Japanese women. Finally, I argue that it is the women, andparticularly the minority women of Japan who have the greatest capacity to criticise
simple identity concepts like Asianism and nationalism because they have always had
to deal with multiple identities and multiple discrimination.

Ulrike Wöhr

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2.

Japan’s “Return to Asia”: History, Diversity, Gender

The following discussion is based on three papers presented at the 2001 ICAS
Conference. These presentations, together with an introduction and these comments
constituted a panel on “Images of Asia in Japanese mass media, literature and popular
culture.”1 The three presenters are all part of a research project headed by the panel
chair, Hilaria Gössmann, on the theme of Japan’s “return to Asia” (Ajia e no kaiki) as
reflected in literature, media and popular culture (see Gössmann, 2002). This
discussion refers, primarily, to the three papers by Barbara Gatzen, Susanne Phillipps
and Kristina Weickgenannt, but also to some other data collected for the project bypanel members2 as well as to research of my own. In my comments, I will try andpick up some of the themes which ran through all three of the papers, and addresssome of the questions which remain, namely with regard to the diversity of images ofAsia emerging and circulating in Japan, the historical dimension of the relationships
between Japan and other Asian nations, other Asian nations’ responses to Japaneseefforts to “return to Asia”, and, finally, questions of gender.
The three papers, and the joint project that their authors are part of are concerned witha topic that has come to the foreground and has continuously called our attention since
the end of the Cold War: the question of national, ethnic, racial, and cultural or - toquote Samuel Huntington (1993) - “civilisational”3 identities. For Japan, the collapseof the political system of the Cold War coincided with two other more or lesstraumatic experiences, namely, the bursting of the so-called economic bubble of the
1980s, and the emergence of “Asian” issues in the context of unresolved Japanese war
crimes. The latter was initiated by the coming-out of so-called “comfort women”(ianfu or, more precisely, Nihongun ianfu): women, mostly from other Asian
countries who were, during the Asia-Pacific War, held in slave-like conditions andsexually exploited by the Japanese army. These events taken together have heightened
the interest of the Japanese public for issues of national and ethnic identity and ofJapan’s position in a world that has rediscovered the category of “culture” as one ofits coordinates.
The quest for a Japanese national identity has plagued Japanese intellectuals since
before the Meiji-Restoration, and has continued to do so up through the period of higheconomic growth. In contrast, the pan-Asianism of pre-war and wartime Japan seems
to have been discontinued after Japan lost the war and was economically and politically integrated into the Western power system – as if to fulfil Fukuzawa Yukichi’s
famous appeal for Japan to separate from Asia. From the 1970s, however, numerous
intellectual constructs of Japanese cultural identity emerged which presume Japan‘s
superiority over the rest of the world but did not preclude visions of an Asian identity.
Especially those concepts that identified Japanese traditions with a holistic view of theworld and of humankind associated with Buddhism or Shintô aimed at relocating
Japan in the Orient (tôyô). Such concepts depend on dichotomies like that of Eastern

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“harmony” and “oneness of the mind and body” versus Western “egocentrism” and“dualism.”4
Such identity concepts, including what has been called Japan’s “return to Asia” havetypically been criticised for their politically conservative or reactionary tendencies,
their naïvety and commercialism by foreign Japan scholars (e.g., Dale, 1986; Prohl,
2000; Gebhardt, 2001) as well as by some Japanese academics (Kokubun, 1995;
Mishima, 1996; Matsumoto, 1997; Shimazono, 1993). Gatzen, Phillipps andWeickgenannt, in accordance with their project, take a basically affirmative stanceacknowledging the inevitability of constructions of cultural identity. They do notfollow postmodernist claims to the obsoleteness of so-called “master narratives” butpoint to, and examine the retelling of these narratives in the context of a changing
world. We may deduce from their framework an overarching hypothesis whichassumes that the change in focus from concepts of Japanese uniqueness topostulations of an Asian community is a positive move toward a more open Japanesesociety. The project represented by the papers which I am to discuss here is thus inline with post-colonial theories which postulate “hybrid identities”, and with recent
efforts made in various disciplines to overcome ethnocentrism and to construct orreevaluate more integrative views of the world (with regard to History see, e.g., Rüsen,Gottlob, Mittag, 1998, herein especially Rüsen, 1998). Of course, we should notforget to cast a critical eye even at ideas which like Japan’s new Asianism seem topertain to the new post-colonial discourse but, in fact, they transport hidden, or
unconscious ethnocentrisms and nationalisms.
As Gössmann points out in her introduction (Gössmann, 2002), the question that runs
through all three presentations is whether in Japanese manga, literature and television“Asia” is presented as foreign and exotic or as the discovery of something familiar.
We might add another question with regard to those images of “Asia” that make itlook close and familiar to the Japanese. Do these images, we should ask, help todissolve ethnic and national borders, or do they merely displace them to create newboundaries – real or imaginary? One example of such reinvented and, at the sametime, reinforced boundaries might be the borderline between East and West formerly
defined to run between Japan and the West, now circumscribing the whole of Asia
including Japan. Another example could be a new emphasis on gender, replacing
previous definitions of Japanese femininity and masculinity with new normative
concepts of Asian femininity and masculinity.
In my comments, I would like to focus on this second question. But before I return to
the topic of gender, let me point out a few other important issues with regard to theJapanese quest for an Asian identity, which emerge from the three papers.
Firstly, what we are concerned with is, of course, not the Japanese construction of asingular Asian identity but a whole spectrum of Asian identities constructed indifferent contexts and at different levels, more or less visible and more or less

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influential. Let me show only to some of the levels touched upon in the three papers.
There is “Asia” as it is being constructed in NHK documentaries – distributed via
national television, one of the most influential media in Japanese society. The closer
look that Gatzen took shows that NHK does not produce a monolithic image of Asia
but a range of diverse and even contradictory images. Stories focusing on China’s
speedy modernisation5 versus references to traditional Chinese concepts like the quest
for a long life provide one such example. 6 Then, there is the diverse imagery ofJapanese manga catering to their nicely segmented readership: “Asia” for young
working women and maybe even feminists; “Asia” for sarariiman; “Asia” forchildren; “Asia” for students etc. And, finally, there are images of “Asia” constructed
for a more intellectual readership, readers expected to deal and identify with thealienating Asian life histories of people like the writer Yû Miri and some of theprotagonists of her fiction: women born in Japan but, nevertheless, alien to Japan – anexperience that calls common concepts of identity into question. To take such
experiences into account is to recognize the possibility of “hybrid” Asian identities aswell as the construction of a position “inbetween”, refusing to identify with any
normative or media image of Asia or Japan. Recognising the diversity of Asian
images and of ways to identify also means to acknowledge a pluralism which hasoften been denied with regard to present-day Japanese society.
Secondly, Japanese constructions of “Asia” usually mirror the very complex andcomplicated historical relationship between Japan and other Asian nations. Japan’s
historical role of tributary to China and the strong influence of Chinese culture andcivilisation, for example, imply Japan’s subordination, and a mode of learning from
Asia apparent in some of the NHK documentaries. (See, for instance, the programs on
Chinese secrets of long life, on a Korean summer camp teaching modern children
Confucian morals, or on the diligence and motivation of Indian students of computerscience).7 On the other hand, Japan’s recent past as a colonial power in Asia and its
present role as what is sometimes called a neo-colonial power may result in anarrogant and presumptuous attitude with regard to the rest of Asia represented, forinstance, by the bestseller manga “Hurray, we are all alive” (Bokura wa minna
ikiteiru) which Phillipps has analysed. However, among the conscientious
intelligentsia (ryôshinteki chishikijin), the fact of Japan’s past and present exploitationof Asia including the sexual slavery of the ianfu can be shown to have the reverse
result, prompting these Japanese women and men to take on the guilt of their own
country and to apologise to the victimised nations of Asia (see Wöhr, 2001).
Interestingly enough, the manga “Hurray, we are all alive” also gives somerecognition to the fact that Japan is not innocent of the fictive Asian country’s disaster
which provides the background of the story. This manga is a good example of thecomplexity of Japanese images of Asia.
The “hybrid” existence of the writer Yû Miri which is documented by Weickgenannt,
is also a result of Japan’s unresolved colonial past: Yû’s personal history of being

Ulrike Wöhr

4born to Korean parents in Japan is a reflection of the historical relationship between
the former colony, Korea, and its coloniser, Japan. Her being bullied at school to theextent of trying to commit suicide, as well as her dilemma with regard to her own
child’s nationality reflect the hard fate of the ethnic minority that she was born into. In
Yû’s fiction and autobiographical writing we also find the theme of the problematic
return of the Japanese-Korean8 to the land of her ancestors. One of the issues here is
how Japan is viewed by a country formerly colonised, or victimised, by Japan.
This is the third point I would like to make: Our perspectives on Japanese constructions of “Asian” identities should always include the reactions and points of viewof people in other Asian nations which may not always welcome the Japanese
overtures. When in Korea, the protagonist of Yû Miri’s story “Fish swimming in
Stones” (Ishi ni oyogu sakana) is perplexed by encounters with a kind of nationalismthat ignores her position as Japanese-Korean by treating her like any other Korean.
Her feelings also get hurt by her manager’s suggestion that the prospective audienceof her play will react more favourably if she keeps up the lie that her play was
originally written in Korean rather than being a translation from the Japanese. From
Weickgenannt’s analysis of the story I imagine that Yû’s protagonist, the JapaneseKorean playwright Hiraka, might have started on her first trip to Korea with a visionof some kind of reconciliation, at least on a personal level. However, the refusal of her
Korean countrymen and countrywomen to recognize the Japanese part of her self andher being in-between the two cultures makes her trip to Korea a nightmare.
The Korean trauma of Japanese colonial rule still lingers on. It is epitomised by thephenomenon of the “comfort women”, the majority of which came from Korea. This
trauma comes to the surface in reactions against the Japanese economic and cultural
hegemony which, in South Korea, seem to be stronger than in other Asian states.9
Only recently, South Korea lifted its ban on products of Japanese culture.
Nevertheless, in April 2001, demonstrators in Seoul publicly burnt Japanese products
like toys featuring Pokemon and Hello-Kitty characters to protest against the recent
backlash regarding the presentation of the Asia-Pacific War and Japanese colonial
rule in Japanese school textbooks (Universität Erfurt, 2001).
Taiwan, in contrast, has been presented in the Japanese media to be pro-Japanese inspite of – or, in the mind of some Japanese, due to – its history as a Japanese colony.
One of the latest expressions of this belief is a manga called Taiwanron (“OnTaiwan”) which was published in Japan in 2000. It was written and illustrated by
Kobayashi Yoshinori who is a figurehead of the neo-nationalist group fighting against
the mention of the “comfort women” and other Japanese war crimes in Japanese
school textbooks. The Taiwanese edition of this manga came out in March 2001. The
unfavourable Taiwanese reactions show that Taiwan’s image as a nation of Japanlovers where the “Japanese spirit” (Nihon seishin) that has been lost in present-day
Japan is still alive (Honda, 2001, p. 226) is, to a large extent, a Japanese selfdeception. The politicians and industrialists acting as the informants of the Japanese
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5

media as well as of manga author Kobayashi, represent a small and ever shrinking
segment of Taiwanese society made up mostly of old men who formerly collaborated
with the colonisers and, in some way or other, profited from Japanese colonial rule
(Honda, 2001, pp. 224-227). One critical Japanese author, the journalist Honda
Yoshihiko, has analysed this phenomenon of the Japanese political right “taking
advantage” (amae) of pro-Japanese people from Taiwan “without trying to understandtheir background and motivation.” According to Honda, “the true concern [of theJapanese who overemphasise Taiwan’s pro-Japanese attitude] is not with Taiwan;
their interest is, rather, anti-communist and anti-[mainland] China, or else they are[merely] acting out the role of a good person with sympathy for Taiwan” (Honda,
2001, p. 227). The gulf between the image of Taiwan produced by Japanese media, on
the one hand, and the self-perception of most Taiwanese, on the other, proves thepoint that when we analyse Japanese images of Asia we should always bear in mind
that those who these constructions refer to may not agree with them at all.
The forth issue which I would like to discuss a little more in depth is that of gender.
Authors on the topics of nationalism and gender, or on feminist nationalism haveemphasised the fact that perceptions and concepts of the nation and of national
identity are always gendered. That is, concepts of the nation as they are propagated bymodern social movements, by the media or the State, usually prescribe different roles
to different genders – roles pertaining to the public sphere in the case of men, and to
the private sphere in the case of women, who are, thereby, relegated to the position of
second grade citizens (e.g. West, 1997 (a), pp. xi-xii; Ueno, 1998, pp. 31-38; YuvalDavis, 1997). Nevertheless, the nation is often conceived in implicitly feminine terms
centring on biological and cultural reproduction.10 Also, as a result of their genderedroles, men and women must necessarily perceive the nation differently. This has beenshown to be true by studies on feminist nationalisms all over the world (e.g. West,1997 (b)).
Of course, the above must, in some way, also be true for Japanese constructs of Asian
identity, many of which can be viewed as extensions of national identity concepts.
Such gendered identity concepts are, sometimes, even reproduced by otherwise
critical authors. One example is Honda Yoshihiko whom I cited on Japanese selfdeceptions about the “Japanese spirit” supposedly alive in Taiwan. To counter suchideas, Honda maintains that what has been idealised, as “Japanese spirit” is, actually,
the moral code which all Asian agricultural societies adhered to. According to Honda,
this morality entails as its central concepts: public-spiritedness (kô no seishin),loyality (seijitsusa), diligence (kinbensa), steadiness (jimichisa) and manliness(isagiyosa) (Honda, 2001, p. 223). Except for that of diligence, these are qualities
which, on the whole, pertain to the public sphere, a warlike State and male gender.
Honda thus challenges the notion of Japan’s particularity and leadership in Asia but at
the same time, unconsciously and unwillingly, constructs a clearly gendered Asian
identity.

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6

Images of Asia emerging from NHK documentaries are also imbued with moral
implications, promoting diligence and perseverance as Asian virtues of the future.
(See, for instance, the program on people in Cambodia and East Timor training for the
Sydney Olympics).11 Diligence and perseverance are not distinctly gendered concepts
but gender, nevertheless, plays an important role in NHK conceptions of a new Asia.
As Gatzen has shown, male protagonists by far outnumber female main characters in
the NHK programs. This ratio bespeaks a gendered approach to the construction of
the new Asia. There are also more explicit messages about and for women. However,
it would go beyond the purpose of this paper as well as my means (as I have notmyself been able to watch a representative sample of the discussed NHK programs) togive an in-depth analysis here. Let me therefore make some brief suggestions which
are mainly based on the summaries of the NHK Asia documentaries which wereprepared by Barbara Gatzen.
Among the programs featuring female protagonists there is, no doubt, a significant
number focusing on so-called liberated or emancipated women. The popular Chinese
singer for instance who stands for individualism and for political and social change
allowing private emotions to be expressed in public which previously used to be taboo.
There is the young Korean fashion designer whose precarious existence is sustainedby new prosperity and a new individualism and, maybe, a new kind of national pride
apparent among the youth of the city of Seoul. Another example is the staff memberof the women’s bank in Bangladesh helping poor women to start their own business.12
These women are, in a sense, icons of modernity. They represent the avantgarde
within their own societies and cultures that are characterised by political, moral andeconomic constraints which are, often, particularly hard on women.
Although the NHK documentaries often focus on processes of modernisation anddemocratisation, the preservation of traditional lifestyles and culture is presented as animportant issue for those Asian nations recovering from civil wars, from communismand dictatorship. If “Asia”, or the “East” is conceived as oppositional to the “West”,
then traditional Asian customs must play an important part in the reconstruction of an
Asia liberated from Western “cultural imperialism”. Women are ascribed importantroles with regard to Asia’s return to tradition. In one story, a woman is shown to be
struggling to recover the tradition of puppet play in Myanmar, and another story
features a woman working for an NGO in Cambodia and hoping to revive thetraditional silk production there. Women, thus, are shown as activists, on the one hand,but the preservation of traditional lifestyles on the other has other implications for
women which are usually not an explicit part of the narrative.
Tradition, as we know, is often a modern construct which implies the reinforcementof patriarchy, and the return of women to the home or family. We may ask ourselves,then, what the United Arabian Emirates’ nostalgia for traditional lifestyles, and the
Korean trend to reintroduce Confucian values into children’s education – both topicsof the NHK program “Meeting a New Asia”13 – might entail for women. We may
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wonder whether the Mongolian girl featured in “Meeting a New Asia” will be happy
supporting her nomad family’s struggle for survival, or whether she would have beenhappier if her wish to go to school had been fulfilled.14 Also, we should note that
representations of women who have supposedly left the domain of family andtradition may, nevertheless, transport gendered norms, such as the story about young
women in Thailand training to nurse old people.15 On the one hand, the existence ofnursing homes is, in itself, evidence of the decline of the family and traditional values.
On the other, the program seems to reinforce discriminatory ideas pertaining togender and ethnicity by implying that being a woman and being of the friendly
mentality said to be typical for Thai makes these young workers naturally suited tocare for old people. Finally, such messages with regard to Asian women should makeus attentive about what they may imply for the Japanese audience which these
documentaries were produced for. What does the representation of Asian women as
caring, and as community and family oriented rather than pursuing their own
individual interests, entail for Japanese women who are to be part of the new Asia?
As has been shown, images of Asian women conveyed in the NHK programs arerather contradictory. We find celebrations of modern realisations and expressions of
the self as well as demonstrations of the preservation of traditional values like selfdenial and self-constraint. Phillipps, in her analysis of Asia as portrayed in Japanesemanga, has introduced a paradigm that may help to view these seemingly contradictory perceptions of women’s roles as consistent responses to (as well as constructions of) views on women as they are held by the majority of the Japanese
television audience. What I am referring to are the three categories of horror,
salvation and the exotic which Phillipps used to characterise manga imagery.16 We
could try and apply these categories when analysing images of the female in Asian aswell as in Western cultures. The above mentioned documentary on young Thai
women, for example, can be interpreted to pertain to the categories of salvation as
well as the exotic, constructing Asia and the female as healing, exotic “Other”. The
same can be said with regard to “Akio’s travels to Bali” (Akio kikô Bari), one of themanga analysed by Phillipps. Here, the essence of Asia seems to reside in the poor
but beautiful woman which the male protagonist, the author’s alter ego, falls in lovewith.
But “modern” women like the popular Chinese singer, the Korean fashion designer
and the Bangladeshi social worker can also be seen to have a healing effect – notdirectly on Japan, this time, but on their own societies which, for the time being, may
be too politically backward or too poor to be represented as the healing “Other” ofmodern Japan but for which these women are leading the way to modernity. In thesecountries there are, of course, also male artists, designers and social workers, andsome of them do appear on the NHK programs. However, it seems that the message
conveyed by men versus that conveyed by women is a slightly different one. Possibly,
the modernity represented by these Asian women is perceived by the audience as one

Ulrike Wöhr

8that allows for more “private” sentiments, personal relationships and compassion thanthat represented by men. It may stand for an Asia of the future that will, in time,
emerge as a new healing “Other” for Japan and, perhaps, for the “West”.
The female as “Other” is, basically, a male construction. We might hypothesise thatthe common identification of Asia as “Other” with the female as “Other” is also theresult of a male perspective. If women are prone to have a different view on nationand nationalism, as feminist theory and research have told us, then they should also
have a different perspective with regard to Asia. Murata Junko’s partly
autobiographical manga “Hong Kong Working Girl” (Honkongu wâkingu gâru)
proves the point. Phillipps informs us that Murata’s female protagonist Tomo finds
Hong Kong a modern, dynamic city which, with regard to women‘s job opportunities,
is much more advanced than her native Tôkyô. Although Tomo also enjoys the exotic,“Asian” aspects of the city, the focus is on the modern aspects of her new
surroundings and working conditions. This image of Hong Kong is underlined by the
representation of a Japanese businessman who is shown to be barbarian andmisogynist.
Japanese women’s simultaneous turn towards Asia and against their own Japanesecountrymen seems to be a typical pattern which can also be found with what has beentermed “Asia feminism” (Ajia feminizumu) (Tonooka, 1992). Today, the most important issue of “Asia feminism” is the rights of the former “comfort women.” The feminist activists supporting the claims of the former ianfu in Japan are, in an importantpart, the successors of a movement against Japanese men’s sex tourism to South
Korea and other Asian countries (Wöhr, 2001, pp. 3-4). The objective of thismovement, which was initiated in the 1970s, implied solidarity with Asian peoples,particularly Asian women, and criticism of Japanese men. The Japanese ianfu
supporters, who started their activities in the early 1990s, are part of a strong networkof women from all over Asia. Their criticism focuses on the system of sexual slavery
instituted by Japan’s military during the Asia-Pacific War, on present-day Japanese
men’s exploitation of women from other Asian countries, and on men’s sexual
violence against women perpetrated by the military and in wars all over the world.
The image of Asia which emerges from the writings of these women is informed by acritical self-image – contrary, for example, to the narcissist notion of Taiwan held bymanga author Kobayashi Yoshinori and other neo-nationalist reactionaries, whostrongly oppose the aims and activities of the ianfu support movement. Although theianfu feminists’ ideas are not totally free of essentialist constructs pertaining to “Asia”
and to “women” (Wöhr, 2001), their inbetweenness – “as daughters of theperpetrators and sisters of the victimised” (Kim Puja, quoting Yamazaki Hiromi, in
Nihon no Sensô Sekinin Shiryô Sentâ, 1998, p. 74) – seems to enable them to view
Asia both more realistically and more sympathetically.
An even more complicated inbetweenness informs the writings of Japanese-Korean
ianfu activists like Kim Puja (see the above quote) and Yamashita Yon’e (1996, 2000),
Ulrike Wöhr

9and of the Japanese-Korean sociologist Chon Yonhe (1995, 1996) who are all keenly
aware of the double discrimination they are subject to as minority women: ethnic
discrimination by the majority and sexual discrimination by the male members of
their own ethnic group. Sadly, I cannot give any details here. All I can say is that thethree women’s reactions to these experiences are different, but for all of them being awoman assumes more importance than being of a certain ethnic origin. At the sametime, they remain more or less critical of feminist universalisms and an essentialist
denial of differences between women. For all of them, a peaceful Asia is an important
objective, but the deconstruction of identities – ethnic and sexual – becomes aninevitable step on the way to get there.17
Let me return, once more, to the Japanese-Korean author Yû Miri. In an essay, Yûstates that it was her torn situation as a Japanese-Korean which made her all the moreindifferent toward the issue of identity (Weickgenannt, 2002, p. 4). And, as Gössmannshows in an article on Yû’s recent autobiographical works, the author is keenly awareof the conspiracy of ethnic discrimination by Japanese society and sexual
discrimination by Korean culture, much like the three Japanese-Korean women
mentioned above (Gössmann, 2002, p. 7).
Perhaps, it is women like Kim Puja, Yamashita Yon’e, Chon Yonhe and Yû Miri whowill pave the way for a peaceful Asian community – individuals who were forced intoa status of multiple identities and multiple discrimination, and have emerged fromtheir painful experiences to question all simple concepts of identity.

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52-58.
Ueno Chizuko, 1998, Nashonarizumu to jendâ, Tôkyô: Seidôsha.
Universität Erfurt, Lehrstuhl für Ostasiatische Geschichte, 2001:‘Japan/China/Korea: Cyber Wars: Der Schulbuchstreit eskaliert,’ Disgo 03/2001,(Online),Available
World
Wide
Web,
URL:
http://www.unierfurt.de/ostasiatische_geschichte/texte/disgo/200103.htm#1, (Accessed 9 May 2001).

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Weickgenannt, Kristina, 2001 ‘Yû Miri no sakuhin wo zainichi bungaku toshiteyomu,‘ paper presented at the symposium ‘Bungaku, eizô kara mita Ajia. Ajiateki
naru mono no yôin o megutte’ at Reitaku-daigaku, Chiba, March 31, 2001
(unpublished manuscript).
Weickgenannt, Kristina, 2002 ‘The Deemphasis of Ethnicity: Images of Koreanness
in the Works of the Japanese-Korean Author Yû Miri,’ in Electronic Journal ofContemporary Japanese Studies (ejcjs) (Online) Available World Wide Web, URL:
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/.
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Politics and the “Comfort Women” Issue,’extensive revision of a paper presented at a
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Sage Publications.

About the Author:
Ulrike Wöhr majored in Japanese Studies and History at the Universities ofFreiburg/Breisgau, Vienna, and Heidelberg. She is an associate professor of JapaneseStudies and Women‘s Studies at Hiroshima City University. Her main publications
are on the women’s movement in pre- and post-war Japan, on Japanese women andreligion, and on women and the print media in prewar Japan. She has also written on
recent trends concerning the genre of Nihon bunkaron (discourses on Japaneseculture).
1

The second International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS) was held in Berlin, August 9-12, 2001.
Just like these comments, the papers mentioned here were all published online with the Electronic

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Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies (ejcjs) (Available World Wide Web, URL:
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/.
2
In particular, I would like to thank Barbara Gatzen for letting me read her summaries of the NHK
documentaries.
3
The conservative political scientist Samuel Huntington who, in 1993, prophesied a “clash of
civilisations” provides a prime example for how theories of culture can imply political meanings andintentions.
4
See Prohl, 2000 about the ideas of Umehara Takeshi, Kamata Tôji, Nakazawa Shin’ichi, Yamaori
Tetsuo and Yuasa Yasuo; see also Wöhr, 1997.
5
See, for instance, the program on the Chinese pop singer Na Hei in “Asia Who is Who,” May 2000,
broadcast No. 1, and on the fashion show on board of an air plane in “Asia Crossroads,” October 2000,
broadcast No. 1. All my citations of NHK programs refer to the summaries by Barbara Gatzen; some ofthem she did not use herself in her paper or her presentation.
6
See “Asia Crossroads,” May 2000, broadcast No. 2, and September 2000, broadcast No. 2.
7
See “Asia Crossroads,” May 2000, broadcast No. 2; “Meeting a New Asia”, September 2000,
broadcast No. 4; “Asia Crossroads,” October 2000, broadcast No. 2.
8In accordance with the other panel members, the term zainichi is rendered as “Japanese-Korean”
rather than “Korean-Japanese.” Our reasons for this choice are that most of the zainichi are not“naturalized,” that is they are not Japanese nationals (different from, e.g., Korean-Americans who areusually American citizens). To use the term Korean-Japanese, we felt, was to ignore this status which ispartly due to the immens difficulties facing those who apply for Japanese nationality, but also involves
questions of ethnic identity.
9
About how the construction of manhood in Korea is influenced by “the historiography of Korea as anation constantly under threat of foreign domination,” see Cheng, 2001, pp. 9-12. Page numbers of
unpublished works like those of Cheng and Gössmann, 2002, refer to the manuscript which was at mydisposal.
10
See Kandiyoti, 1991, p. 429, who is referring to Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1989; see also Cheng,
2001, pp. 9-11.
11
See “Asia Crossroads,” September 2000, broadcast No. 1; broadcast No. 2.
12
See “Asia Who is Who,” May 2000, broadcast No.1, “Meeting a New Asia,” May 2000, broadcast
No. 2, and broadcast No. 3.
13
See “Meeting a New Asia,” May 2000, broadcast No. 1, and September 2000, broadcast No. 4.
14
See “Meeting a New Asia,” October 2000, broadcast No. 2.
15
See “Meeting a New Asia,” October 2000, broadcast No. 1.
16
These categories were originally employed by film theorist Werner Faulstich (see also Gössmann,
2002).
17
For an analysis of some of the writings of these three Japanese-Korean women on the subject of the
Nihongun ianfu, see Wöhr, 2001.

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