[번역문] 동아시아 식민주의와 문학 -‘만주국’ 문단을 중심으로

Abstract

The puppet state of Manchukuo was a Japanese colony in the first half of the 20th century. This literary field covers not only works of Japanese colonialists, but also Chinese, Korean, and Russian literary works that survived throughout this colonial framework. Such colonial works capture the multi-layered and pluralistic conditions in which nationality, ethnic identity, and language intertwined with East Asian colonialism. This article aims to examine literature under this complex colonial structure, and analyze different ethnic literary works in their own languages, which includes Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. Each of these ethnic writings express the theme of anti-colonialism on the one hand, but also because of differences in terms of the colony’s position, the purpose and methods of defense against it, and the differences in intensity the results are multifarious. As such, direct anti-colonial literature, indirect anti-colonial works, self-flattering colonial propaganda works are multiple and disparate. This article inspects the relationship between East Asian colonialism and literature, and illustrates why and how literature played a part in anti-colonialism struggles. In order to scrutinize East Asian colonialism and offer a new thought of interpreting East Asian colonial literature, this article also intends to understand how colonial scars set in people’s mind, and the psychology of intellectuals in colonial areas, under which the entanglement of anti-colonialism/collaboration, accepted unwillingly/approaching voluntarily, and nationalism/colonialism. This research finally attempts to reveal another possible new interpretation of colonial literature out of the current existing theories on nationalism and post-colonialism, with an expressed focus on Manchukuo literature in East Asia.