Coda: Listening to Silence

Nobuko Ishitate-Okunomiya Yamasaki

Orcid.org/ 0000-0003-1492-9710

Abstract

This book has focused on four authors and an actress who have sought to address the

marginalization of women, as well as of former colonial subjects. It considers how women labor in

ways that benefit patriarchy, but also highlights women’s agency within their labor; ways in which

women are silenced and abandoned within the historical framework of patriarchy that designates

them as the marginal that must satisfy men’s desire; yet, at the same time, seeks to recognize

women’s affects both within and beyond their patriarchally-predetermined functions. It examines

voices and experiences that have fallen into the cracks of official historiographies or imperial

nationalist archives. Inconspicuous, marginalized, silenced voices and experiences reveal how grand

narratives of history are incongruous with the personal; in response, the book foregrounds

memories that literature and cinema can capture, embrace, and recuperate, at least momentarily and

diagonally, while cutting through imperial nationalist narratives and their temporalities. It refuses to

let the suffering and experiences of women living under the empire be dismissed, crossed out, or

erased, amplifying women’s narratives to manifest the urgency of listening to their voices, because

they possess the power to transform our world, particularly within a deaf and enduring patriarchy.

I start my conclusion by citing Morisaki Kazue and Lee Chonghwa once more, two

feminist thinkers born and raised in Korea, the former in Daegue, the latter in Jeju. Morisaki

provokes her audience:

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 To live sexuality is not to possess sexuality as an idea, nor to be made to have it. Yet,

under such a condition that sexuality is forced, then her orientation toward its

spontaneity becomes sharpened. “Advocates,” who commodify sexuality, condition

prostitutes (shōfu) to deceive themselves. Then, what sexuality is not deceptive?

(Morisaki 2009: 3.161, my translation)

Likewise, Lee writes:

Before attacking the ideology of motherhood, we shall face the existence or soul that

roams around the world, riding on women’s bē, belly, boat in Korean. Love for those,

the sorrow of the soul, an attitude to care for, an affectionate gaze, an act of love.

From there, a possibility of living together, paradoxically, might be born. But at the

same time, we shouldn’t dismiss [the possibility] that those who are oppressed will

stand up only out of revenge and a grudge. (Lee 1998)1

These subtle yet powerful, attentive, and alert manifestos continue to inspire the ethos of my

affectionate labor in completing this book. Both quotes consider how women labor in ways that

benefit patriarchy, but also highlight women’s agency within their labor. In particular, their words

suggest the ways in which women are silenced and abandoned within the historical framework of

patriarchy that designates them as the marginal that must satisfy men’s desire; yet, at the same time,

they seek to recognize women’s affects both within and beyond their predetermined functions as

defined by patriarchy. I hope it is evident by now that I am interested neither in writing a linear

historiographical narrative nor in supporting patriarchal nationalist discourses. Instead, like Morisaki

and Lee, I have tried to examine voices and experiences that have fallen into the cracks of official

historiographies or imperial nationalist archives. Inconspicuous, marginalized, silenced voices and

experiences reveal how grand narratives of history are incongruous with the personal; in response, I

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have sought to foreground memories that literature and cinema are astutely able to capture, embrace,

and recuperate, if not fully, then at least momentarily and diagonally, while cutting through the

imperial nationalist narratives and their temporalities. I believe in the power of literature. I trust the

resilience of the women who lived in the shadows of the Japanese empire. Fragments negotiate with

the totality which seeks to control, censor, and conceal the personal and the private in order to

exercise and maintain its dominance.

With these beliefs in mind, my book refuses to let the suffering and experiences of women

living under the rule of the empire be dismissed, crossed out, or erased. I wish to amplify women’s

narratives in order to manifest the urgency of listening to their voices, because they possess the

power to transform our world, particularly within the framework of a deaf and enduring patriarchy.

This book has focused on four authors and an actress who have sought to address the

marginalization of women, as well as of former colonial subjects (both men and women, listed in

order of their birth): Nakajima Atsushi (1909–1942), a Japanese male writer, who grew up in colonial

Korea and was later sent to Palau as a colonial official; Yamaguchi Yoshiko a.k.a. Ri Kōran

(1920–2014), a multilingual Japanese actress born and raised in Manchuria; Hayashi Kyoko

(1930–2017), another bi-lingual Japanese woman writer and hibakusha in Nagasaki, who was raised in

a Japanese community in Shanghai; Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982), an avant-garde artist and

writer, who was born in Busan, Korea and later migrated to California and died in New York City;

and Yi Yang-ji (1955–1992), a Zainichi Korean woman writer, who was born and raised in Japan,

studied in Seoul, and died in Tokyo. The book thus examines works and lives by two separate

groups: Japanese nationals and former colonial (or current post-colonial) subjects. The materials

analyzed are different in terms of genre, temporality, and space; yet, what robustly unifies their

creators is their acute interventions into imperial Japanese history and concerns for its legacy.

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 In however limited a fashion, I am here responding to the theme raised by Nayoung Aimee

Kwon: “A disavowed continuity exists from the logic of the nation and that of empire when it

comes to patrolling what is included and excluded at their borders; likewise, these are continuities

from the colonial to the postcolonial eras that are yet to be acknowledged” (Kwon 2015: 194).

Echoing Kwon’s insight, I examined how each writer and actress negotiated and produced their

works and managed their lives within the Japanese empire’s power structures and/or its legacies, and

how they shed new light on Japanese history and society. Acrossing time and space, Nakajima

Atsushi and Yi Yang-ji are figuratively having a conversation about the atrocity committed to

Koreans at the hands of Japanese after the Great Kantō Earthquake. Likewise, Hayashi Kyōko and

Nakajima, two Japanese writers who grew up in overseas territories (gaichi), are in dialogue about

national (un)belonging through the usage of kuseni (despite). Hayashi, Yi, Nakajima, and Ri wrote on

women in the sex industry, including but not limited to prostitutes, women entertainers, bar

(sunakku) hostesses, and comfort women. Moreover, in 1941, Nakajima in his letter to his wife, Taka,

wrote about natives of Jaluit Atoll in the Pacific, who sang “China Nights” (Shina no yoru) on the

guitar.2 Nakajima and Ri’s crossing of paths was made possible only thorough the fantasy of the

Japanese empire. All these creators revealed the fictive nature of being Japanese, and the contrived

idea of race and identity, through close attention to and affection for such liminal figures. None

explains away racism, sexism, and violence as a way to diminish or minimize the empire’s role in

their oppression.

Some may object that I am treating autobiographical short stories, novels, and films as facts,

or that my use of memoirs as incontestable truths is problematic, at best naïve. Conflating facts and

imagination is indeed problematic, since such art forms as literature and film not only reflect but also

refract facticity. Yet using memoirs allowed me to reconsider the significance of constructing a

narrative and history through memory. It raised the following questions: What can history know?

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What cannot be known through history? What forms of memory can memoirs narrate? Despite their

closely related nature to the past, memoirs still conform to their genre. Memoirs, autobiographies,

and autobiographical stories subjectively and affectively control their contents. They limit locations

and temporalities other than their own. They therefore have selective understandings of the past,

however sincerely authors attempt to make truth-claims based on their own lived experiences. The

works and films in this book are all mediated through the position of each author and actress, and

hence, they all undeniably have limitations. Although the very material realm of “the Real” that can

never disappear still exists, we are no longer able to hear the immediate voices of its core. My

arguments, therefore, may (or may not) be simply scratching the surface of “the Real.” This scratch

nonetheless exposes affect—socially shared emotions—that must be taken into account to dismantle

the clearly delineated teleological arc of History.

Some may say that the book has not analyzed enough texts (in the large sense of the word,

including films) produced by former colonial subjects. That is, however, intentional, as a first step

for my larger project as a feminist thinker. To combat the racism against former colonial subjects

that is still rampant in Japan, I argue that what is crucial for a transformative future is not only

accepting criticism from outside, but also exposing, examining, and interfering with racism from

within Japanese nationals. This is precisely because self-criticism from within enables us to recognize

history reflectively, then to renew our consciousnesses. Self-doubt creates conditions for ethical

praxis. That said, self-complacency keeps patriarchy in place, unmoved and unmoving.

Looking forward, what lies ahead is further inquiry into female voices from former colonies,

since focusing solely on Japanese writers could inadvertently fortify their already-established

dominant positions. Nevertheless, I contend that it is not that works by former colonial subjects

need to be recognized as part of Japanese literary forms, but that through their works Japanese

language art, including Japanese literature and films, should be re-read and re-envisioned. Art obliges

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us to suspend our current temporalities, enabling us to re-interpret the past, decipher the present,

and conceive a different future. Art creates ruptures within normative horizons, allowing us to

become susceptible and vulnerable to others: otherness within ourselves and others without. Art

re-activates temporalities and cuts through violence inherent in patriarchal imperial legacies, thereby

opening up new imaginations and new intellectual horizons. The damage remains, perhaps, in the

coherence with which we feel settled and comfortable and that we deem as a given. To resist such

damage, it is urgent to unsettle, transgress, and fragment the history manifested by authoritative

tones. We need to embrace art forms that make us feel uncomfortable. In the face of such a praxis,

there remains a question of women’s silence, represented within stories about women who attempt

to cope defensively and survive patriarchal society.

Women’s silence is often read as obedience to a patriarchy, or worse, a sign of participation

in their own oppression—indeed, a sign of weakness. Are we overlooking the potent value of

women’s silence? What if women’s silence offers much more than muteness? Living within

patriarchal society, these women would be all too aware of how patriarchy willfully refuses to listen

to and comprehend their stories. After all, to listen would mean that Japanese society would have to

admit the various ways in which it has ensured women’s oppression. Women’s silence is not simply

an act of capitulation or passivity. Silence does not mean weakness, but possesses power. Silenced

women, by reclaiming the resilience of silence, gradually act to silence loud, patriarchal tones. The

challenge is to discover how silence can be heard, and how silence can actively represent and

articulate. For silence is expression.

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Notes

1
Lee spells out belly as ベー in katakana, not in Hangul 배. In Korean 배 means both belly and

boat. As mentioned in Chapter Two, there are no page numbers in this book, which seems clearly

intentional, considering Lee’s singular and polemical sense of politics. This translation is also mine,

and the original is, again, written in a fragmentary poetic manner, as if resisting reductive

interpretation of her writing.

2
See Nakajima’s letter to his wife, Taka, in Nakajima 2015: 440. The composition “Shina no yoru,”

composed in 1938, was first sung by Matsudaira Akira (1911–1961) and then by Watanabe Hamako

(1910-99). The song’s rapidly growing popularity in many parts of Asia and the Pacific (e.g., Vietnam,

Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan), the production company Tōhō shot a film in 1940 under the same

title, starring Ri Kōran and Hasegawa Kazuo; in it, Ri sang the song. The piece was also covered in

Chinese in 1942 by Chinese singer Yao Lee (姚莉, 1922–2019).

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Bibliography

Kwon, Nayoung Aimee. 2015. Intimate Empire: Collaboration and Colonial Modernity in Korea and Japan.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Lee Chonghwa [Ri Jonfa; Yi Chŏng-hwa]. 1998. Tsubuyaki no seiji shisō: Motomerareru manazashi,

kanashimi eno, soshite himerareta mono eno. Tokyo: Seidosha.

Morisaki Kazue. 2009. Morisaki Kazue Korekushon, vol. 3. Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2009.

Nakajima Atsushi. 2015 Nakajima Atsushi Zenshū. Vol. 2. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō.

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