Postcolonial Theory Reconsidered: Discourses of Race, Gender, and Imperialism in the German-Japanese Real

This study explores the intersections of race and gender as they manifest in film and print media across a century of transnational flows between Germany and Japan. I argue that German-Japanese relations in the twentieth century invite novel re-readings of existing postcolonial theories, resulting in a productive re-evaluation of inherited terms such as 'hybridity' and 'race'. Each chapter of my dissertation is devoted to a particular strand of the cultural fabric woven between Germany and Japan and its consequences for the broader relationship between East Asia and Europe.;Chapter two focuses on the German-language magazine East Asia (Ost-Asien) published by the Japanese Tamai Kisak from 1898-1910 in Berlin, on Kitasato Takeshi's German-language drama Fumio (1900), and on the silent film Bushido (1926). These works negotiate Japan's complex situation as simultaneously belonging to an Asian and a European cultural realm in often contradictory ways.;Chapter three pursues an in-depth analysis of the German-Japanese relationship between 1932 and 1945 via such diverse cultural artifacts as the results of a German-Japanese essay contest held in 1944, German newsreels, and German-Japanese filmic co-productions. My research demonstrates how the cultural co-productions between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan downplayed questions of race and gender in an attempt to forge a shared identity as Soldatenvolker (soldier people).;In my fourth and final chapter, I analyze the contemporary work of one Japanese filmmaker and two Japanese authors who migrated from Japan to Germany after the Second World War: Marie Miyayama, Yoko Tawada and Hisako Matsubara. I will demonstrate how tourism, commodity culture, as well as notions of transculturalism and an increasing convergence of 'East' and 'West' are paramount for shaping the German-Japanese discourse in the late 20 th and early 21st century.