Envoys of Civilization, or Violent Drinkers? Representation of Russians in the Linguistically Diverse Literature of the Imperially Racist Manchukuo
Abstract
In the 1930s and 1940s, a vibrant literary world, which was to some extent shaped by the official institutions of the Japanese Empire, emerged in Manchukuo, present-day Northeast China. "Manchurian literature," which has long been erased from history for political reasons after the defeat of Japan in World War II, was produced by writers of various ethnicities, especially Chinese, Manchu, Japanese, Russian, and Korean. Through an analysis of the representation of Russians in selected works of this multi-ethnic "Manchurian literature," this paper suggests that many of the official Manchukuo writers were, to a certain extent, independent on the Manchukuo government's official ideology.
Furthermore, their fiction works reveal the racist nature of discrimination against Chinese and Russian inhabitants of the informal Japanese colony.