THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

LECTURE ABSTRACT

Although the Japanese empire theoretically disappeared off the map in 1945 following Japan’s defeat by the Allied Powers, the competing narratives of place and belonging that had been engendered by Japanese imperialism were not so easily erased. This talk looks at repatriation memoirs and fiction published in Japan from the 1940s through the 1960s in order to illuminate the process whereby Japan was reconstituted from “multiethnic empire” to “peaceful nation-state.” It focuses in particular on Fujiwara Tei’s repatriation narrative The Shooting Stars are Alive (Nagareru hoshi wa ikite iru), which was an immediate commercial success when it was published in Japan in 1949 and which has since been translated into multiple languages, including English and Korean. In tracing how Fujiwara’s book has circulated in postwar East Asia and beyond, this talk will consider some of the transnational configurations of race, ethnicity, and post(-imperial, -colonial, -war) conditions that continue to shape common understandings of national and world literatures today.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Christina Yi is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature at the University of British Columbia. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her first monograph, Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea, was published by Columbia University Press in 2018. She is also the co-editor for the edited volume Passing, Posing, Persuasion: Cultural Production and Coloniality in Japan’s East Asia Empire (University of Hawai’i Press, 2023) and the translator for Kim Sŏkpŏm’s Death of a Crow (Karasu no shi, 2022).

CEAS LECTURE SERIES

The CEAS Lecture Series is an initiative that advances the University of Chicago's Center for East Asian Studies' mission in fostering dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration. This annual public lecture series presents eminent scholars who concentrate on the study of East Asia in a variety of disciplines. For more information on the series, follow the link here: https://ceas.uchicago.edu/events/ceas-lecture-series

SPONSORSHIP

This event is co-sponsored with the University of Chicago Library.

P HOTOGRAPHY/VIDEOGRAPHY

Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.

CEAS Lecture Series ft. Christina Yi