Women at home-front: the image-making through war films in postwar Japan and its impact on the understanding of Japan's war responsibility

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24510391
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Gender
• Research Institution: Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
• Principal Investigator: YOSHIDA Kaori 立命館アジア太平洋大学, アジア太平洋学部, 准教授 (00550386)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): NAGAIKE Kazumi 大分大学, 学内共同利用施設等(国際教育研究センター), 准教授 (90364992)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 戦争の記憶とメディア / 日本の戦争映画と戦争の記憶 / メディアと記憶のジェンダー化 / 女性と戦争メディア / 戦争マンガと記憶の構築

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project, through analyzing Japanese war films, their reviews, and their contexts, elucidates that women depicted in war films in postwar Japan play the following two roles in the memory-making of World War II: 1) stressing the formula of "woman = victim = Japan" by suffering from war atrocity at home front, or 2) fighting with male soldiers at the battlefield as war nurses or phone operators, suggesting their active involvement in the war as victimizers. In the latter case, the fighting women are "the Other" (Okinawa and Sakhalin) distinguished from the "proper Japanese women" in the mainland (Japan's Self) who stress Japan’s role as the victim. In the discourse of war memory, mediated narratives have shaped gendered war memories by compromising, regulating, and negotiating the subject of women. The feminization of war memory co-exists with the masculine/dominant desire toward the nation’s war narrative in postwar Japan.

Free Research Field

メディア研究、比較文化研究