Abstract
Jue Qing (1917-1962) was a very active member of Manchukuo's official literary world. After the Japanese surrender he was labeled "a traitor of the Chinese nation" and, until recently, his fiction works have been erased from the history of Chinese literature.
Indeed, some of his stories can be read as supportive of the colonial regime. However, especially after the Pacific War broke out in 1941, his works seem to express anti-colonial sentiments.
This paper analyzes Jue Qing's stories "Harbin" (1936) and "The Devil" (1942) that represent the early and the late periods of his oeuvre, respectively. It focuses on the representation of women in these works of fiction and argues that the women's images function as a construct of the author's own subjectivity.
Whereas the "modern girl" in "Harbin" that was inspired by a similar but not identical type of a modern woman in the Shanghai's new sensationist writings symbolizes the accessibility of the colonial modernity's benefits for the male artist, the protagonist of a teenage female thief in "The Devil" can be considered rather a symbol of the denial of these benefits to the marginalized colonial subjects, including Jue Qing, after the outbreak of the Pacific war: if she wanted to become equal with the others (as rich as them), she had to steal. This paper analyzes these images of women and suggests that Jue Qing used them as a tool for expression of his changing attitudes towards the colonial regime.