Flower of Dreams: Longing and Loss in Yosano Akiko's Man-Mō yūki

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: In 1928, Japanese feminist poet Yosano Akiko traveled to Manchuria at the invitation of the Japanese-operated South Manchurian Railway Company. She recorded the six-week journey in a travelogue, Man-Mō yūki, which is notable for its organization in two parts: prose followed by poetry. English language scholarship on the travelogue has centered on the prose account, discounting the poetry or ignoring it entirely. This scholarship has largely converged around the point of Akiko’s complicity with Japanese imperialism. In this thesis, I examine Akiko’s poetry composed on the journey and show how it reveals ambivalences in Akiko’s position that resist easy categorization. In particular, I examine Akiko’s poetry related to a young Chinese noblewoman she meets on the journey, Wu Yousheng. For Akiko, Wu is a pivotal figure – one who stands at the intersection of literature and politics within the imperial context. Akiko’s poetry related to Wu reveals an emotional narrative of love and loss untold in the prose. Her grief is both personal and political, fueled by a commitment to a Sino-Japanese tradition of poetic exchange that she views as threatened by the violence of imperialism. Lamenting violence without rejecting imperialism itself, Akiko’s position is ultimately ambiguous, eluding a definitive political stance while in the end remaining loyal only to her core vision for poetry as a pure space for the free expression of emotion.

Type of resource	text
Date created	December 2019

Author	Hamilton, Nancy J
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies
Primary advisor	Reichert, James

Subject	Yosano Akiko
Subject	Wu Yousheng
Subject	1928
Subject	South Manchurian Railway Company
Subject	Japanese Poetry
Subject	Tanka
Subject	Travel Writing
Subject	Manchuria
Subject	Japanese Imperialism
Subject	Stanford Global Studies
Subject	Stanford East Asian Studies
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/hh389nj4744

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Hamilton, Nancy J. (12/6). Flower of Dreams: Longing and Loss in Yosano Akiko's Man-Mō yūki. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/hh389nj4744

Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection

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