The Columbia Journal of Asia

“Rotting Away Into A Woman”: Castration, Gender and Biological Sex in Late Imperial Fiction

Sophie Dodds — 2024-12-09

In the aftermath of the Ming-Qing transition, philosopher Tang Zhen 唐甄 (1630–1704) wrote of eunuchs: “If a castrated individual can become a female, then [the eunuch] is acceptable, but if they cannot do this, then they remain a male” 奄若化為女子則可，不然，固男也. Here, Tang suggests the topical question: without sexual potency, does a castrated male become female? And if not, what is to be made of an emasculated male? Due to their perceived part in the dynastic fall of the Ming, eunuchs were a subject of curiosity and unease among Qing scholars like Tang, who began to question the effects of castration upon the male body. Castration, beginning with its earliest usage as a commutation for the death sentence, signaled not only social death but an entrance into the yin 陰, the cosmological force associated with the feminine and counteracted by the masculine yang 陽. Through the removal of the entire sexual organ, the castrated male was removed from Confucian society and sexually neutered in a way that was thought to render him more female than male. Eunuchs, who were also often illiterate, possessed neither sexual or social determiners of masculinity.

As my following analysis of fictional Ming-Qing castration narratives will show, the presence of literally or metaphorically castrated men threatened masculine identity. A masculinity that is defined by its opposition to a constructed femininity is necessarily a fragile existence, at all times endangered by a fall into the feminine. Narratives of castration, whether of eunuchs, transformation into the female or male-male relationships, offer a compelling glimpse into late imperial definitions of gender, by illustrating when and how a male body was no longer considered that of a man.

Comparing Medical and Mass Media Discourse on Male Prostitutes in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952

Ike Tamanaha — 2024-12-09

What can media representations of male prostitutes in Japan during the Allied Occupation (1945-1952) tell historians about the postwar period? This paper explores male sex workers in the wake of Japan’s World War II defeat to revise male-female centered historiographies of this seven-year period. While the population of male prostitutes remained stable—if not decreased—from before to after 1945, they became subjects of psychiatric case studies and popular magazine articles as unique symbols of postwar societal chaos. 1 Though Japanese lives changed dramatically after August 15, 1945, journalists and psychiatrists projected society’s “emasculation” and collapsing social norms onto male sex workers who had been part of society long before World War II began. This paper argues that postwar Japan lingered between tensions of real and perceived social instability, where psychiatrists and journalists alike wrote disorder, emasculation, and chaos into their depictions of male sex workers’ bodies.

Order and Disorder: the Governance of the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong during the late 20th Century

Ruqian Liu — 2024-12-09

Due to the high crime activity resulting from the historical legal disputes over the sovereignty between China and Britain, the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong was often regarded as a place without law and governance. This paper seeks to discover the nature of the governance mechanism of the Kowloon Walled City while dismantling the above claim. The Kowloon Walled City had the Neighborhood Welfare Association serving as the bridge for communication with the British Hong Kong government, which then also provided basic support and services for sanitation. In addition, many of the past scholarship argued that the Kowloon Walled City as without law and governance, other than the legal dispute, was also due to the intense gangster activities conducted by the triad, mainly the Sun Yee On. However, during the 20th century and before the establishment of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), areas under the British Hong Kong government governance were also undergoing the same situation. In this sense, with self-governance from the local Neighborhood Welfare Association, a certain level of intervention from the Hong Kong government, and the fact that gangster activities were a widespread phenomenon, the reality of Kowloon Walled City was not according to the popular imagination.

They're Lovin' It: How China and Japan Turned American Fast Food Into Global Phenomena

Zachary Zeller — 2024-12-09

Kentucky Fried Chicken arrived in Japan in the 1970s. McDonald’s launched in China in the late 1980s. Both arrived during periods of massive social upheaval, sending shockwaves through the countries and corporations, creating an international and cultural legacy. Through analyzing the tactics and stories of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japan and McDonald’s in China, a pattern emerges. Both companies arrived in their respective countries to initial success, riding on the coattails of burgeoning Americana in the mid-late 20th century. However, once they faced respective challenges and potential waning success, both companies decided to focus on shedding some of their American policies to allow their product to better match the East Asian markets. By doing so, they engaged in a balancing act of localization and globalization; by using localization tactics to achieve global success, each ultimately becoming globalized corporations. The success that both companies have achieved, both culturally and financially, prove to be the backbone of their international endeavors, and have ingrained them as staples of the modern East Asian culinary culture.

Bagong Bayani

Tara Isabel Lago — 2024-12-09

The Catkillers

Halim Jung — 2024-12-09

A short story about a friend and the memories he had, the world they lived in and the cats that were killed.

Untitled

Theresia Zhang — 2024-12-15

This piece discusses about the societal expectations and how they “shaped” individuals in an abstract but figurative way, using just simple geometrical shape and color to create expressive visual effect. The blue mimicks the influences by internet. The background is based on street views in Shibuya, Tokyo. The concept is an abstract expression of society expectations and the conflict between individuals and how the human bodies are politicized.

The Columbia Journal of Asia: Volume 3, Issue 1

Isabella Garcia Bernstein — 2024-12-09

Fall 2024 Masthead

Isabella Garcia Bernstein — 2024-12-09

Letter from the Editors in Chief

Isabella Garcia Bernstein — 2024-12-09

To Live is to Desire: Cultural Production and the Phantasmatic Nation in Zhang Yimou’s To Live

Iris Shu — 2024-12-09

This essay examines media dissemination in mid to late twentieth-century China, during and after the Cultural Revolution, as China established its place in the modern world. Through a psychoanalytic inquiry into the revolutionary romance genre and fifth- generation Chinese film—in particular, Zhang Yimou’s film To Live (1994)—this essay will analyze the formation of national narratives across media formats and the hierarchization of this modern knowledge production. I argue that the dissonance between the popular images of the Cultural Revolution and post-Mao highbrow filmography reveals the imaginative essence of nationhood.