Ri Ko Ran

[Aaron Gerow]

>Did you answer my main question, Aaron? What exactly do you think we should 
>consider that Ri Ko Ran could conceivably be culpable of or responsible for? 
>What did she do wrong?
>
>I have a problem with the hindsight view that patriotism in wartime (in a 
>losing war, anyway) is somehow bad.

Well, one problem here is whether this is really a case of patriotism.  
Manshu was not Japan and Ri Ko Ran was not Manchurian Chinese.  Even 
while the symposium wanted to expand the possible meanings Manshu had, 
Yomota made clear at the beginning, and I think we can all agree on it, 
that Manshu was a puppet state of the Japanese government and an integral 
part of its murderous imperialist policies in East Asia.  Being patriotic 
and supporting the colonization and oppression of other people are 
different things (though they are unfortunately too often related).  
While more work is needed to understand the polyvalency of Manshu 
culture, it is still undeniable that Man'ei was a big part in Japanese 
propeganda policies aimed at legitimizing its oppression in China.  The 
fact that Ri Ko Ran also appeared in films legitimizing such colonization 
in Taiwan and Korea by acting the roles of Taiwanese or Korean 
women--again countries she had absolutely no real relationship to--means 
that she was a part of an apparatus that caused suffering for many people 
throughout Asia.  There definitely is an issue of culpability here.

This cannot be excused by simply saying she was being patriotic, because 
her actions were involved in not simply defending Japan (a supposedly 
patriotic act), but in oppressing people outside her country.  Maybe you 
can call supporting your nation's imperialist aims patriotic, but it is a 
patriotism that is morally indefensible.

>From another perspective, Ro Ko Ran raises these issues precisely because 
she was, in a sense, "not Japanese" for much of her youth.  She had 
Chinese adoptive parents and went to school with regular Chinese hiding 
the fact of her Japanese birth.  If she was to be patriotic, one could 
ask why she didn't act patriotic for the Chinese who were her friends and 
"relatives."  Ri Ko Ran especially complicates the notion that 
"patriotism" is natural (something that comes with your blood or 
ethnicity) or just something you have if you are "part" of a community.  
Communities are more complex than that: they are rife with contradictions 
and have to be constructed.  In some ways, patriotism and the community 
it supports have to artifically created (your being part of a community 
is thus a constructed phenomenon); in other ways, there is a choice over 
what to be patriotic for. Ri Ko Ran especially had this choice, and that 
does create an issue of responsibility and culpability.

I hope that clarifies the issue somewhat.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171