Nationalist Propaganda And Woman Question In Manchukuo’s Early Period: Education, Mass Media, And Literature

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Authors
Li, Rui
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University of Guelph
Abstract

The establishment of Manchukuo (1932-1945) was an attempt at a brand-new national system. Under such unprecedented circumstances, the intellectuals of Manchukuo and Japan began to promote the official ideology of Manchukuo to construct a new discourse system, and its government set about reforming the education system to accommodate Manchukuo’s propaganda discourse. Policymakers chose “the Kingly Way” as the Manchukuo’s nation-building discourse to unify the people living in Manchukuo. Under this nationalist discourse, the requirements for women, “Good Wife, Wise Mother,” became the key to the discourse system. By analyzing the official propaganda discourse of Manchukuo, this study concludes that its internal logic was still based on the hegemony of patriarchal discourse. This study also analyzes the literary works of several female writers to explore the internal logic of being recipients and resisters of the official propaganda discourse system of Manchukuo so as to describe the living conditions of women during the Manchukuo rule.

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Keywords
Modern Northeast Asian History, Manchukuo, East Asian History, World War II
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