Ri Ko Ran

[David Hopkins]

Well, it's kind of hard to continue this if Manchuria is "not Japan" but 
Man'ei is an integral part of Japan's effort, and if Ri Ko Ran is both 
Japanese and not Japanese depending on what point you want to make.
I got a plane to catch, see you in the fall.
David Hopkins

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From: 	Aaron Gerow
Sent: 	Thursday, July 6, 2000 10:12 AM
To: 	KineJapan
Subject: 	Re: Ri Ko Ran

>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