| Manchukuo (1932--45) has long been viewed as imperial space that was appropriated to serve as a "puppet state" by Japan located in northeast China. Due to the diversity that characterized this region, which was populated by multiple ethnic groups such as the Manchu, Han Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Mongols, Russians, and other minorities in Siberia, Manchukuo was routinely represented as a an ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse state that embodied the ideology of "ethnic harmony" in the Japanese empire by virtue of regions being "liberated" from Western colonialism. Existing works have tended to be organized by nation-specific disciplines within the conventional framework of area studies, but this often neglects to carefully examine the categorization of ethnicity itself.;In my project titled "Myths of Multiculturalism: The Formation of Ethnicity and Language in Manchukuo Literature," I problematize the essentialized concepts of ethnicity and language through my analysis of narrative fictions produced in Manchukuo. This study is designed to critically revaluate the still prevailing views of Manchukuo as a multi-ethnic state that operate in the corresponding forms to existing nation-states in East Asia today such as Japan, China, Korea, Mongolia, and Russia. Nevertheless, my close analysis of literary texts undermines the concepts of ethnicity and language, which are often considered as the basis of ethnic nationalism. By focusing on the discursive constructions of Manchukuo, I hope to help revise the way histories have tended to recuperate Manchukuo and the Japanese empire, informed by current debates on immigration and multilingualism in our contemporary world of globalization, topics and problems that were very much in play in Imperial Japan. |
