Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T22:15:20.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Manchukuo to Marriage: Localizing Contemporary Cross-Border Marriages between Japan and Northeast China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2015

Chigusa Yamaura
Get access

Abstract

This essay examines Japanese-Chinese arranged cross-border marriages and investigates the ways in which participants legitimate and render such marriages comprehensible in light of national and local histories. Marriageability in this context is produced not through conceptions of “exotic difference” but instead distinct discourses of “familiarity.” On the one hand, Chinese participants tactically narrate “blood ties” (xueyuan guanxi 血缘关系) to interpret current marriage migration as following relational bonds and thus a “natural” phenomenon. On the other hand, Japanese participants stress Chinese women's “familiarity” (shinkin kan 親近感) with Japan, a familiarity that is claimed to stem from positive historical ties forged by colonialism, and thus effaces Japanese wartime culpability. In short, multiple layered notions of familiarity, shaped by the colonial legacy in East Asia, are at work in rendering these transnational intimate relations possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 565 - 588
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Antze, Paul, and Lambek, Michael. 1996. “Introduction.” In Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory, eds. Antze, Paul and Lambek, Michael, xi–xxxiii. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Araragi, Shinzo, ed. 2008. Nihonteikoku wo meguru jinkōidō no kokusaishakaigaku [The international sociology of movements of people as pertaining to Japanese imperialism]. Tokyo: Fuji Press.Google Scholar
Araragi, Shinzo. 2011. Teikoku hōkai to hitono saiidō—Hikiage, sōkan, soshite zanryū [The collapse of the empire and the movement of people: Repatriation, deportation, and those left behind]. Tokyo: Bensei Press.Google Scholar
Assmann, Jan. 1995. “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity.” New German Critique 65 (Spring-Summer):125–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, Denise. 2004. What's Love Got to Do with It?: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carsten, Janet. 2011. “Substance and Relationality: Blood in Contexts.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40:19–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charsley, Katharine. 2005. “Unhappy Husbands: Masculinity and Migration in Transnational Pakistani Marriages.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(1):85–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, Jane Fishburne, and Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko. 1987. “Introduction.” In Gender and Kinship: Essays toward a Unified Analysis, eds. Collier, Jane Fishburne and Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 1–5. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Constable, Nicole. 2003. Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Constable, Nicole. 2009. “The Commodification of Intimacy: Marriage, Sex, and Reproductive Labor.” Annual Review of Anthropology 38:49–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 2003. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Edison, John. 2000. “Which Past for Whom? Local Memory in a German Community during the Era of Nation Building.” Ethos 28(4):575–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eggebø, Helga. 2013. “A Real Marriage? Applying for Marriage Migration to Norway.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39(5):773–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2003. “Introduction.” In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, eds. Ehrenreich, Barbara and Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 1–13. New York: Metropolitan Books.Google Scholar
Fernandez, Nadine T. 2013. “Moral Boundaries and National Borders: Cuban Marriage Migration to Denmark.” Identities 20(3):270–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, Caren. 2011. Making and Faking Kinship: Marriage and Labor Migration between China and South Korea. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, Sara L. 2010a. “Determining ‘Truth’ at the Border: Immigration Interviews, Chinese Marital Migrants, and Taiwan's Sovereignty Dilemmas.” Citizenship Studies 14(2):167–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Sara L. 2010b. “Marital Immigration and Graduated Citizenship: Post-Naturalization Restrictions on Mainland Chinese Spouses in Taiwan.” Pacific Affairs 83(1):73–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Sara L. 2013. “Mobilizing Gender in Cross-Strait Marriages: Patrilineal Tensions, Care Work Expectations, and a Dependency Model of Marital Immigration.” In Mobile Horizons: Dynamics Across the Taiwan Strait, ed. Yeh, Wen-hsin, 147–77. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fujitani, Takahashi, White, Geoffrey M., and Yoneyama, Lisa. 2001. “Introduction.” In Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), eds. Fujitani, Takahashi, White, Geoffrey M., and Yoneyama, Lisa, 1–29. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayashi, Iku. 1983. Manshu sono maboroshino kuniyueni [Manchuria, because of that phantasmal country]. Tokyo: Chikuma shobou.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ide, Magoroku. 2004. Owarinaki tabi: “Chugoku zanryu koji” no rekishio to genzai [Never-ending journey: The history and the present of the Japanese war orphans in China]. Tokyo: Iwanami bunko.Google Scholar
Ide, Magoroku. 2008. Chugoku zanryu houjin, okisarareta rokujyunen [Japanese war orphans, sixty years of being left behind]. Tokyo: Iwanami bunko.Google Scholar
Izutsu, Kikue. 2004. Tairiku no hanayome [Brides in the mainland]. Tokyo: Iwanami bunko.Google Scholar
Kelsky, Karen. 2001. Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak. 2003. The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.Google Scholar
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2005. The Past within Us: Media, Memory, History. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Nakajima, Tatsuru. 1990. Wasurerareta onnatachi [The forgotten women]. Tokyo: Nihon shupan kyokai shupan sha.Google Scholar
Nora, Pierre. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémorie.” Representation 26 (Spring):7–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okubo, Maki. 2006. Chugoku zanryu nihonjin “kimin” no keikato kikokugono konnnan [Japanese war orphans, abandonment and their hardships after return]. Tokyo: Koubunken.Google Scholar
Oxfeld, Ellen. 2005. “Cross-border Hypergamy? Marriage Exchanges in a Transnational Hakka Community.” In Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia, ed. Constable, Nicole, 17–33. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2001. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sassen, Saskia. 2000. “Counter-geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival.” Journal of International Affairs 53(2):503–24.Google Scholar
Schein, Louisa. 2005. “Marrying Out of Place: Hmong/Miao Women Across and Beyond China.” In Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia, ed. Constable, Nicole, 53–79. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, David. 1984. A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shih, Shu-mei. 1998. “Gender and a New Geopolitics of Desire: The Seduction of Mainland Women in Taiwan and Hong Kong Media.” Signs 23(2):287–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shukuya, Kyoko. 1988. Ajia kara kita hanayome: Mukaeru gawa no ronri [Brides from Asia: The logics of the receiving side]. Tokyo: Akashi shoten.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Nobue. 2005. “Tripartite Desires: Filipina-Japanese Marriages and Fantasies of Transnational Traversal.” In Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia, ed. Constable, Nicole, 124–44. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Swedenburg, Ted. 1991. “Popular Memory and the Palestinian National Past.” In Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History, eds. O'Brien, Jay and Roseberry, William, 152–79. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamanoi, Mariko. 2009. Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Stefan. 1993. Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Watt, Lori. 2009. When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.Google Scholar
Wertsch, James V. 2000. “Narratives as Cultural Tools in Sociocultural Analysis: Official History in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia.” Ethos 28(4):511–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wertsch, James V. 2002. Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Geoffrey M. 2000. “Histories and Subjectivities.” Ethos 28(4):493–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Geoffrey M. 2006. “Epilogue: Memory Moments.” Ethos 34(2):325–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Ara. 1988. “American Catalogues of Asian Brides.” In Anthropology for the Nineties, ed. Cole, Johnnetta B., 114–25. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Yamashita, Kiyomi, Hirofumi, Ogi, Guimin, Zhang, and Guoqing, Du. 2013. “Development of Fangzheng County in Harbin Municipality as a Hometown of New Chinese Migrants in Japan.” Geographical Space 6(2):95–120.Google Scholar
Yoneyama, Lisa. 1999. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Louise. 1998. Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar