Reassessing Japan’s imperialism in his book “Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895–1945”, Mark Driscoll discusses excessive labor of citizens of the country and its Asian colonies as one of the aspects used in order to build “Japan’s imperial behemoth” (p. 6). Yoon Jong-chan’s Blue Swallow gives a glimpse into the life of an ordinary Korean girl who became one of the first female pilots pursuing her dream to fly on the background of Japan’s occupation of Korea.
Driscoll asserts “the suffering of colonized subaltern laborers” was an inevitable part of Japan’s imperialism. In the movie, we see the episodes of cruel tortures of the main characters, Park Kyung-Won and Han Ji-Hyuk, in a bid to force them to admit their involvement with Red Korean Brotherhood. After all physical abuse and being already released from prison, Park Kyung-Won still ponders over whether to support the Japanese by flying a transatlantic flight. Han Ji-Hyuk reminds her, “Korea hasn’t done anything for you” in order to persuade her not to give up on her dream (Jong-chan). All her hard work to earn money for pilot school and unfair suffering for deeds she did not commit fail to turn her against the country that inflicted it upon her. The aggressive Japan is believed to give existence to its citizens (Driscoll p. 17). Park sees her life as devaluated without her ability to fly planes. According to Marx, “the worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object” (p. 18). Even if the analogy may seem a bit stretched, it is evident that at that point of her life Park set a higher value on her trade than on her moral obligations before her native country. Park did not have a wide range of option. Her life was at stake. Mbembe writes, “the colonized person … perceives life not as a flowering or a development of an essential productiveness, but as a permanent struggle against an omnipresent death” (p. 20). Park lost her life. However, it happened on her own terms
Wait, but are Kyung-won and Ji-hyuk laborers in the Japanese empire? What is their status? Does the film present them as national subjects (before their false conviction in the assassination plot)? Are they nationalist subjects or *modern* subjects? What's the difference?
ReplyDelete