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Sunday Onsite Presentation Session 1 Comparative Studies of Asian and East Asian Studies
Session Chair: Benjamin Wai Ming Ng
09:30-09:55
68514
| A Comparative Study of Trauma Memory and Cultural Identity between 1990s Chinese and Korean Films
Xiaoman
Liu, Seoul National University, South Korea
With the disintegration of the Cold War system and the transformation of the social and economic structure, the Chinese and Korean film industries have undergone earth-shaking changes since the early 1990s. The first is the reform of the film production and distribution system, which provides a material basis for the integration of film and capital markets. Secondly, in the process of accelerated globalization, the themes and genres of films have become more diverse, in the process of seizing market quota with Hollywood movies, how to position the national films of the two countries have become the most concerned topic of the filmmakers. Just as China's fifth generation of directors won the attention of the West with the national fables of "Iron House" and "Rural China" in the 1980s, they successively made works such as "The Blue Kite", "Farewell My Concubine" and "Life" that examined historical reality in the early 1990s, to reconstruct the collective memory of "China", and also won the global pinnacle moment of Chinese film. At the same time, Korean films got rid of the shackles of ideological censorship, and reproduced historical memory and national trauma with films such as "To the Starry Island", "A Single Spark" and "A Petal", which opened the new wave of Korean films. Therefore, this article re-explores the historical trauma films of China and South Korea in the 1990s from the perspective of national films, and explores how Chinese and Korean films reconstruct the ‘state-nation’ cultural identity through historical trauma narratives.
09:55-10:20
67925 | Representations of the Modern Girl in Uno Chiyo’s and Suat Derviş’s Literary Works
Aslı Kaynar, University of Queensland, Australia
The figure of the modern girl emerged in Turkey and Japan in the 1920s. They drew attention due to their Westernised looks and liberal lifestyle and became a popular subject among authors and the media. However, male authors' and media (newspaper articles, advertisements and so on) portrayals of this figure mostly consist of stereotypes. This paper supports the idea that modern girls were more than the male gaze depicted them to be, and we can get a fuller understanding of the modern girl by examining the theme of desire and self-representation in the literary works of women. There are not enough literary studies done on the modern girl figure. Moreover, Japanese modern girls have been only compared to Korean, Chinese and Western modern girls, whereas Turkish modern girls have not received much attention from scholars around the world. This research explores the representations of modern girls in Japanese author Uno Chiyo's and Turkish novelist Suat Derviş's selected literary works by adopting the feminist desire theories. It aims to demonstrate that the modern girl is a complex figure and carry the discussion beyond the figure's similarities to the Western model.
10:20-10:45
67815 | Confucianism, Platonism and the Future of the ‘Hybrid Regime’: Beyond China
Mario Maritan, Mahidol University International College, Thailand
My presentation would discuss the future of liberalism and the preservation of Confucian values in East Asian societies and politics. The discussion involves an interdisciplinary analysis of contemporary East Asian politics that draws on classical political philosophy and history, with implications also in the field of global affairs. The presentation argues that whereas Western political life is based on misunderstanding and forsaking its classical past, as Wittfogel and von Hayek had already shown, with very little originating from ancient Greece besides the terminology of political institutions, East Asian societies are steeped in their own classical tradition. And it is not China that may represent Daniel Bell’s ‘hybrid regime’, but the other ‘Confucian’ societies of East Asia. These societies may offer the key to the future of politics, also for the West, by conflating meritocracy and the Rule of Law, which are aspects that can be found across Confucius’, Mencius’ and Plato’s philosophies. Contrary to Bell, I argue that Confucian principles in China are abused as a tool of legitimation of total power, thus actually jeopardizing Confucian teachings. Contrary to Tongdong Bai, I argue that Plato’s and Aristotle’s political philosophies are much closer to Confucianism than is generally thought. Drawing on Burckhardt, Strauss, Wittfogel and von Hayek, the discussion argues that Western beliefs about the irreconcilable nature of Asian and European philosophies and politics rest precisely on the West’s abandonment of classical political philosophy, which was funnelled into the present through the distortions of the French Revolution.
10:45-11:10
68358
| The Yijing and the Japanese Creation Myth
Benjamin Wai-ming Ng, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
The Japanese creation myth described in the Jindai no maki (Chapters on the Age of the Gods) of the Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan, 720) was strongly influenced by early Chinese Daoist texts. Yijing-related concepts such as taiji (Supreme Ultimate), yinyang (the two complementary and contradictory forces in the universe), qiankun (first two trigrams representing heaven and earth), sancai (three powers or realms of the universe: heaven, earth, man), wuxing (five phases or agents), and bagua (eight trigrams) were applied to explain different aspects of the Japanese creation myth. The Japanese creation myth was later Confucianized in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) when Japanese Confucian and Shinto scholars provided the Neo-Confucian metaphysical underpinning for Shinto mythology. Based on textual analysis of the Jindai no maki, this study aims to investigate how Yijing-related concepts were used to construct the Japanese creation myth and how Tokugawa Confucian and Shinto scholars further elaborated upon it.