Gendered Literature In Colonized China: A Close Analysis of Mei Niang’s Yu, Xie, Bang

Manchukuo was on the surface a special region where the government was ruled by the Manchrian, the descendants of the last dynasty, Qing; however, in the reality, Manchukuo was Japan’s colony. Raised in the Manchuko period and received higher education in Japan, Mei Niang was praised and implanted by Japan’s colonial institution. Her short novel Yu won the Greater East Asia Writers’ Congress Second Prize for Literature In 1942. However, she was also criticized by the leading Japanese sinologist, Yoshikawa Komodo, by saying she wrote” the most degenerate pieces” he had ever seen. More importantly, she was also regarded as a “traitor“ not only because her works were considered to be collaboration with the colonial institution but also because she translated a lot of Japanese Literature during the wartime. Some scholars stated that the cultural products produced in the colonial times serves only to legitimize the colonizing state. However, I will be arguing in this paper that Mei Niang’s work serves as an example of neither a conformity to the colonizaiton nor a collaboration with the wartime imperialism. Instead, her works signifies the women’s liberation from the “old” system. It’s a continuation of the anti-traditionalism originated in the May Forth Movement and a search for the modern identity