The Affect of Difference

The Affect of Difference

Representations of Race in East Asian Empire

With contributions by: Christopher P. Hanscom, Dennis Washburn, ann-elise lewallen, Paul D. Barclay, Todd A. Henry, Chul Kim, Gyewon Kim, Kate McDonald, Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Ji Hee Jung, InYoung Bong, John Whittier Treat, Kim Brandt, Edward Mack, William H. Bridges and Angela Yiu
Edited by: Christopher P. Hanscom and Dennis Washburn

University of Hawaii Press | 2016

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824852818

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Affect of Difference is a collection of essays offering a new perspective on the history of race and racial ideologies in modern East Asia. Contributors approach this subject through the exploration of everyday culture from a range of academic disciplines, each working to show how race was made visible and present as a potential means of identification. By analyzing artifacts from diverse media including travelogues, records of speech, photographs, radio broadcasts, surgical techniques, tattoos, anthropometric postcards, fiction, the popular press, film and soundtracks—an archive that chronicles the quotidian experiences of the colonized—their essays shed light on the politics of inclusion and exclusion that underpinned Japanese empire.

One way this volume sets itself apart is in its use of affect as a key analytical category. Colonial politics depended heavily on the sentiments and moods aroused by media representations of race, and authorities promoted strategies that included the colonized as imperial subjects while simultaneously excluding them on the basis of "natural" differences. Chapters demonstrate how this dynamic operated by showing the close attention of empire to intimate matters including language, dress, sexuality, family, and hygiene.

The focus on affect elucidates the representational logic of both imperialist and racist discourses by providing a way to talk about inequalities that are not clear cut, to show gradations of power or shifts in definitions of normality that are otherwise difficult to discern, and to present a finely grained perspective on everyday life under racist empire. It also alerts us to the subtle, often unseen ways in which imperial or racist affects may operate beyond the reach of our methodologies.

Taken together, the essays in this volume bring the case of Japanese empire into comparative proximity with other imperial situations and contribute to a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the role that race has played in East Asian empire.

Author information

HanscomChristopher P.:

Christopher P. Hanscom is an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.WashburnDennis:

Dennis Washburn is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies in the Comparative Literature Program at Dartmouth College.lewallenann-elise:

Ann-Elise Lewallen is assistant professor in the East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Christopher P. Hanscom (Editor)
Christopher P. Hanscom is an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dennis Washburn (Editor)
Dennis Washburn is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies in the Comparative Literature Program at Dartmouth College.

Reviews

Alan Tansman, author of The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism:
This volume brings together a rich set of essays pertaining to race and its representations in East Asia. It provides an illuminating and clarifying picture of the messy and complicated relationships among imperial power, race, language, culture, and the imagination.

Takashi Fujitani, author of Race for Empire:
This stunning collection is a major intervention in the study of empire and its afterlives that richly details the historical and regional singularities of the Japanese imperial formation even as it provocatively opens up questions of imperialism and racism as aspects of global modernity. Imaginatively deploying and sometimes troubling the concepts of ‘affect’ and ‘race,’ the editors and authors show how representational technologies—such as postcards, language, literature, portraiture, movies, radio, and architecture (as well as human bodies)—mediated sentiments, sensations, desires, and violence in ways that both sustained and yet always threatened to unravel asymmetrical relations of power. Exceedingly well written and sophisticated without pretense, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in imperialism, whether inside or outside of the East Asian context.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	vii
1. Introduction: Representations of Race in East Asian Empire Christopher P. Hanscom and Dennis Washburn Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
2. “Intimate Frontiers”: Disciplining Ethnicity And Ainu Women’S Sexual Subjectivity In Early Colonial Hokkaido Ann-Elise Lewallen Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	19
3. Playing the Race Card in Japanese-Governed Taiwan: Or, Anthropometric Photographs as “Shape-Shifting Jokers” Paul D. Barclay Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	38
4. Assimilation’s Racializing Sensibilities: Colonized Koreans as Yobos and the “Yobo-Ization” of Expatriate Japanese Todd A. Henry Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	81
5. How Do Abject Bodies Respond? Ethnographies of a Dispersed Empire Chul Kim Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	108
6. Faces That Change: Physiognomy, Portraiture, and Photography in Colonial Korea Gyewon Kim Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	133
7. Speaking Japanese: Language and the Expectation of Empire Kate Mcdonald Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	159
8. Race Behind the Walls: Contact and Containment in Japanese Images of Urban Manchuria Kari Shepherdson-Scott Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	180
9. Imagining an Affective Community in Asia: Japan’s Wartime Broadcasting and Voices of Inclusion Ji Hee Jung Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	207
10. Racialized Sounds and Cinematic Affect: My Nightingale, the Russian Diaspora, and Musical Film in Manchukuo Inyoung Bong Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	225
11. Chang Hyŏkchu and the Short Twentieth Century John Whittier Treat Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	244
12. Japan the Beautiful: 1950S Cosmetic Surgery and the Expressive Asian Body Kim Brandt Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	260
13. Implied Promises Betrayed: “Intraracial” Alterity during Japan’s Imperial Period Edward Mack Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	286
14. The Sun Never Sets on Little Black Sambo: Circuits of Affection and the Cultural Hermeneutics of Chibikuro Sambo—A Transpacific Approach William H. Bridges Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	304
15. Delivering Lu Xun to the Empire: The Afterlife of Lu Xun in the Works of Takeuchi Yoshimi, Dazai Osamu, and Inoue Hisashi Angela Yiu Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	328
Contributors Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	347
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	351

The Affect of Difference

Representations of Race in East Asian Empire

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