‘국가주의’와 역사의 착종성: 다카무레 이쓰에(高群逸枝)를 중심으로

Abstract

This study is an essay intended to consider a few issues relating to women’s history by examining Takamure Itsue(1894-1964). Therefore, it aims to reflect on the fundamental topics of history, such as the implications for history of Takamure’s actions as a feminist and female historian, rather than historically studying Takamure as an individual. Takamure Itsue was born in Kumamoto Prefecture on January 18, 1894. Her father was a primary school principal and he taught Chinese classics to his daughter in a countryside blessed by nature. Takamure’s preference for classics and history originates from her father’s Chinese education and her mother’s influence from childhood, which later formed the foundation for her historical research. This study focuses on the 1930s and 1940s in particular, during which period she devoted herself to studying women’s history by immersing herself in it from 1931 onwards. This period coincides with the time when Japan became increasingly involved in the Sino-Japanese War, which makes her indispensable when studying the situations and ideologies of the time. Starting out as an anarchist, Takamure published a number of fanatical texts around 1931 that praised the war, justifying the ‘Pacific War’ as a ‘holy war’ under the logic of ‘marriage harmony(婚姻和協).’ Before then, she had been a defender of the urban lower classes and farm villagers who had fallen into financial difficulties due to the influences of urbanization and industrialization. She advocated for ‘anti-home’ and ‘anti-citizen’ as a critic of modernization more intense than any other. What this study aims to focus on is to examine why she, who had been so cool-headed and had such a critical mind regarding modernity (as shown by ‘anti-home’ and ‘anti-citizen’), could not keep her distance from the modern state and people that had recently come into power. Furthermore, what are the historical and social implications for the course of ‘history’ when an anti-modernist and anarchist converts to being a supporter? These are the two questions this study aims to answer. Takamure found an alternative form of ‘anti-modernism’ (represented by ‘anti-home’ and ‘anti-citizen’) in the ancient kingdom of Japan, stating that the integration of the ancient Japanese kingdom was achieved, not by armed conquest, but by marriage harmony or genealogical ties, which was possible thanks to the existence of the maternal clan since ancient times. Moreover, she declared, “there is no question but that foreign civilizations are inferior to the Japanese civilization that is built on the conscious foundation of the harmony of clans.” As such, her ‘inspiration’ for ‘anti-modernism’ was in the ‘Japanese state’ and ‘people’. Furthermore, Takamure’s assessment that she “thought the true meaning of history is ‘history that gives courage for women to live’ and not history that conveys what happened as it is” shows what she considered the meaning of history to be at a time that was seen as a critical period for Japan. However, there are criticisms of the fact that Takamure’s studies involved ‘creating theories.’ This, perhaps, shows an example of how history is “not something that conveys what happened as it is” but “something that poses ‘current’ problems about ‘the past,’” as merely one of the possible narrations of the past, limited by the ideology of the historian as well as by the methodologies based on that ideology.