The Modernist Writer and Censor Jue Qing's Art of Escaping Censorship: Symbols, Allusions, Parody and Perfect Lies

Abstract

Jue Qing 爵青 (1917-1962) was not only one of the most talented writers in Manchukuo but also one of the most controversial. Throughout his writing career, he was actively collaborating with the Japanese colonial regime and in the late stages of the war, he was spreading the Greater East Asia propaganda in his essays.

He even became a literary censor. However, his own fictional work that was openly violating all of Manchukuo's literary regulations and harshly criticizing the colonial regime could avoid censorship in most cases.

This paper aims to analyze the relation between the two faces of the collaborator and the resistance fighter in the context of the whole Manchukuo literary scene. In particular, the paper examines the modes of Jue Qing's collaboration with the occupying force, especially his role in official structures such as the The Association of Manchurian Artists and the way he started to spread wartime propaganda in his essays as "Glory" 榮光 (1943) or "Feelings About The Third Greater East Asia Writers Conference" 第三回大東亞文學者大會所感 (1945).

Furthermore, this paper elaborates on expressions of resistance in Jue Qing's short stories "Harbin" 哈爾濱 (1936), "Devil" 惡魔 (1942), "Fountain" 噴水 (1944) and others and shows how the representation of women, foreigners and refugees in his fiction implies not only criticism of social inequality in Manchukuo, but also criticism of the Japanese racial superiority and the deceptive war propaganda (which he was spreading himself at the same time). In this study, I suggest it was Jue Qing's active collaboration what enabled him to publish his openly critical work.

Findings of this research thus oppose the simplified perception of Chinese collaboration with Japan. They contribute to the debate about the characteristics of Japanese colonialism in East Asia and literary censorship in modern China.