Writing Japan’s Orient: Shanghai through the Pen of Yokomitsu Riichi

This article is a case study of Yokomitsu Riichi’s (1898-1947) novel Shanghai (1928, 1932) and the way the novel reflects changing Japanese views of China during the period of Japanese imperial expansion. Drawing for its theoretical framework on Edward Said’s epochal Orientalism (1978), the article argues that Japan’s perception of China in the early twentieth century was shaped by the emergence of a discursive practice that delineated China as Japan’s “Other.” Appropriation of China for political and ideological agendas that occurred as a result of Japan’s imperial ambitions in Asia, the article further illustrates, was reflected in the latent and manifest displays of a distinct Japanese Orientalism that both mirrored and at times diverged from Western Orientalism. Through a close reading of Yokomitsu Riichi novel, I will show how Japanese attitudes toward China were impacted by the urge to control and to speak on behalf of the rest of Asia as well as a desire to demarcate modern Japan from what was perceived of an ancient civilization unfit to survive in the present. At the same time, I will comment on the limitations of Said’s original theory when applied to the literature of a country that itself remained part of the West’s Orient.