H199 Loftus, Changing Lives Ch. 1 Notes
One of the things they teach you in graduate school is that you need to have a strong theoretical grounding for your project. You need to spell out for your readers what your book or article is about and why it is important—which is to say, what it means to you.
Ch. 1 of Changing Lives does a bit of that and then gives the reader a peek into the stories of four of the women whose memoirs I read as part of this project and whose stories moved me.
Theoretical and Contextual Underpinnings
Ch. 1 starts withe some context setting.
1. What does Sharalyn Orbaugh have to say about the role narratives can play, especially in times of dramatic cultural upheaval? (pp. 1-2)
2. What perspective does Japanese historian Kano Masanao offer on how men and women may have experienced the end of the war differently? (2)
On Reading Women's Memoirs and Autobiographies -
A Digression on Subjectivity and Historical Agency
3. Things really open up with a look how the "Linguistic Turn" has presented challenges for modern historians. Drawing on the early 1900s' work of Swiss Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, schoalrs and critics from the late 1960s onwards, reminded us that language doesn't really do—cannot really do—what we think it does. Instead of offering us an "objective," reality-grounded, transparent view of the world, language turns out to be no more thas a "chain of signifiers," capable only of referring to things within its own linguistic system.
Obviously, then, Language is is not capable of actually depicting objective reality in a transparent manner as we often assume.
Instead, it is regarded as "the constitutive agent of human consciousness and the social production of meaning, and that our apprehension of the world, both past and present, arrives only through the lens of language's pre-encoded perceptions."
So, once accepted as a relatively neutral medium of communication, sufficiently transparent to convey a reasonably accurate sense of reality, now language was being reconceptualized with the emergence of structural linguistics and semiotics, a movement that traces back Saussure's 1916 Course in General Linguistics.
What does all this—the Linguistic Turn!—mean for Historians?
Traditonally, we try to do our job by digging up and reconstructing the past from documents or artifacts, but if everything is already predetermined or pre-configured in our brains by language, then it undermines our belief in a fixed and determinable past, which makes the possibility of historical representation far more complicated. Given this framework, how are historians supposed to do their jobs? Are such things as Historical Actors just another from of constructed reality, the accuracy of accounts about which we have to be very skeptical? Does that mean that the opportunity for individuals to act, to behave with Historical Agency, is highly circumscribed? (3)
We should probably "unpack" some of the Key Vocabulary we find on pp. 3-5.
For example:
Subjectivity and Historical Agency
At the heart of understanding what it means to read and appreciate memoirs is the assumption that they can tell us something about the social conditions in which the authors were negotiating their subjectivity, their historical agency.
This is not our first encounter with the concept of Subjectivity. As we learned from Yoshimoto's chapter on Kurosawa's No Regrets for our Youth, a lengthy “Debate Over Subjectivity,” or shutaisei-ronsô took place between 1946 and 1948) among scholars, academics, writers, intellectuals, and philosophers in the pages of academic journals and popular magazines.
In this postwar debate, Subjectivity referred to the possibilities for individual freedom, autonomy and historical progress—and the capacity of individuals "to engage in an effort to change a specific social situation in which they find themselves, and to transform themselves in relation to that situation.” (Quoted in Yoshimoto, 128) Whatever these conditions might be, they constitute the forces that either enhance, shape, or oppose the influence of the social structure on the individual.
Subjectivity apparently has a variety of meanings, and it is not clear how close the Japanese term for subjectivity—shutaisei (主体性)—actually comes to the English word. But thinking and talking about Subjectivity, and figuring out about how one can manifest one's deepest inner, authentic self in social action is something that was extremely important in the early postwar years.
The antithesis of Subjectivity was the "feudal" outlook—to which many felt prewar Japanese were too closely wedded—which was an anti-scientific, anti-rational view, and one too easily submersible in communal indoctrination. Japanese, some critics complained, seemed to lack this thing called Subjectivity—a strong sense of self—and therefore they were unable to fully appreciate their individuality or their self-worth. Without that strong sense of themselves and an appreciation for their value as individuals, they were unable to stand up against the powers of the prewar Japanese state, often called the tennôsei, or the "emperor system."
This, perhaps, was the crux, the jumping off place for this fierce debate. Why hadn’t Japanese intellectuals and activists been able to resist the powers of the Authoritarian state more effectively? Seeking remedies as well as answers, postwar Japanese wanted to believe that it was possible for individuals to become Historical Agents and be able to take action in order to make a difference in the world, to help bring about Social Change. It was believed that if individuals can engage in an effort to change the specific social situation in which they find themselves, they have the possibility of transforming themselves in relation to that situation. This would afford them some control over their lives, and their situations.
Enter William Sewell (p. 3) - What does he have to say?
This seems to be what William Sewell, who is quoted on p. 3 of Changing Lives, means when he argues that “historical agents” are people who are “capable of exerting some degree of control over the social relations in which they are immersed, which in turn implies the ability to transform those social relations to some degree.” (3) It is the importance of having this precious "some degree of control" that affirms or constitutes their Subjectivity.
As we know, No Regrets for our Youth aimed to focus on the question of individual Subjectivity, and the Value of embracing a commitment to making the world a better place. Moreover, the film implied that prewar Japan needed more genuine authentic "subjects" with historical agency in order to resist the rise of militarism and fascism which they were unable to do. In the language of the film, they needed individuals capable of carrying out and being responsible for their actions, rather than just settling for being the object that is acted upon. In the context of history, an historical “subject” is someone who is an agent of history, someone who participates in the conscious construction of events, and is not willing just to be their unconscious tool.
One might assume that Japanese women—and indeed most prewar Japanese individuals—did not feel very much empowered to exert this of control on the society in which they were living and trying to be active.
The rise of a powerful Right Wing, along with the active participation of military leaders who supported Imperialism and Expansionism, combined to send the prewar Japanese government into a tailspin of bad decisions and eventually into military adventurism overseas, the upshot of which was a disastrous war.
Unfortunatey, those Japanese citizens who, like Noge, dared to criticize these events and decisions, and who tried to resist this drift toward Authoritarism at home and Imperialism abroad, were ultimately deprived of their freedoms and crushed. And, like Noge, they were forced to spend time in prison where they were often brutally tortured and/or eventually murdered.
These individuals tended to be Progressives, Leftists, Writers, Labor Union activists and the like. Some were Socialists, some Marxists, others Anarchists, some even members of the underground Japan Communist Party (JCP). But in the end, they could not withstand the overwhelming power of the State with its increasingly Authoritarian militarist government, with all Ideological underpinnings, along with its Censorship and Thought Control policing powers. It was a formidable regime.
Some Background (pp. 3-4)
My work with memoirs from the prewar years, Telling Lives, which preceded Changing Lives, shows that there was evidence of strong currents of resistance, along with some degree of empowerment or awareness on the part of many women who felt that they were capable of discovering and asserting their subjectivity and historical agency. They did this in part by generating a new vocabulary and a new mode of discourse which allowed them to talk about some of these things.
The first step in this process for many of the young women was reading feminist authors of the day—like Ellen Key and Alexandra Kollontai—and gaining a new conception of what women’s role in society should be, and it was not limited to the widely accepted “good wife, wise mother” role that was the dominant one in Prewar Japan.
Gabrielle Spiegel's Insights (p. 4)
- What does she offer?
While working on Changing Lives, I was delighted to encounter the work of Historian Gabrielle Spiegel who gave a wonderful address as outgoing President of the American Historical Association gtigtles "The Task of the Historian," in which she ruminated on the impact of the "Linguistic Turn" on the Profession. I wrote about her views (p. 4 and in a footnote) but how did she construct an argument that allows room for historical actors to function within the limitations of such our socially constructed reality?
It came down to a few key words that I found uplifting, where she noted that historical actors might be
"constrained but not wholly controlled"
by the social reality in which they must operate. (See p. 4)
What do you think that might mean in practice?
I think that many of us might agree that it is possible to get out there and do something in order to make a difference, right? That is why many believe that SOCIAL ACTIVISM is a key way to discover one's Subjectivity and to exert some influence on one’s surroundings and the social relations they embody.
But I think Changing Lives takes things even a step further, suggesting that perhaps prior to, during, or even after becoming socially active, an individual historical actor—an Agent—who reflects on what their own activities mean, might well develop some sort of “awareness,” or a “consciousness” (ishiki 意識 in Japanese) that occurs in the act of REMEMBERING, WRITING, RECORDING, and RECONSTRUCTING the past.
After all, is there any act more SELF-REFLECTIVE, or more engaged with SUBJECTIVITY than recalling the past and writing about it?
All the women in Changing Lives actually did both: they thought about their lives, they reflected on their circumstances, and they wrote down their thoughts and disseminated them, sometimes in journals and "mini-komis" (from "mini-communication"), and sometimes later in their formal memoirs or autobiographies.
Anybody who becomes active, or engages in writing, is doing it somewhere and in some historical time, so they are rooted in some specific historical moment, and therefore they must be subjected to the forces and conditions surrounding them when they write, or when they head out the door to go to a meeting, or to join a protest movement.
To the degree that one goes through a process of becoming AWARE, becoming CONSCIOUS of the fact that both one's own study, or the library, and the streets are all SITES in which individuals have the possibility of becoming conscious of all the TENSIONS and the CONTRADICTIONS they experience in the world around them…and as they become more aware of this, they realize that they can actually TRANSFORM themselves (and possibly SOCIETY as well) through either their linguistic (writing) or social (activist) PERFORMANCE.
So even though the times in which we live are constituted by certain specific HISTORICAL CONDITIONS—the historical realities which are the "givens" of any situation—it is possible to discover that the existing language can be put to new uses, and new language and vocabulary can thereby be created, providing NEW STRATEGIES for processing historical experiences.
Isn't this is where Gabrielle Spiegel's quote comes into play?
Historical agents, she argues, are “constrained but not wholly controlled” by the CONDITIONAL REALITY that we inherit from our times and our surrounding environments. This would offer us a thin ray of hope which might illuminate the pathway toward a more reasonable or palatable world.
To the extent that we can come to understand this, and become aware of our situation, then our understanding, our consciousness, kind of bumps up to the next, higher level. So while there may always be forces hemming us in, limiting us, conditioning our awareness and our behavior, this does not mean that these things cannot be overcome, or cannot be dealth with!
In these moments of awareness triggered by the SELF-REFLEXIVITY that comes along with RECALLING and WRITING ABOUT THE PAST—i.e., the act of writing a memoir—a writing subject can actually hold both the PAST and PRESENT in a kind of SUSPENDED ANIMATION for at least a few moments, maybe more like a few hours, or even a a few days. Or maybe from that point forward.
That is HOW our consciousness is transformed and we are actually able to rise above the limitations of the times and the circumstances in which we live.
It is helpful to talk about these kinds of things because given the LINGUISTIC TURN in historical writing—or the THEORETICAL TURN as it's sometimes called—we might think that everything is already preconfigured by language and, given the way our brains work, how we perceive and transform our perceptions into knowledge and/or action.
It seemed to me that what the women I studied in Changing Lives were able to do just this thing! They were able to change their way of looking at the world, their way of standing in the world, or of "being" in the world—by what they did, said and wrote—and I didn't just make all this up because they actually developed a new term for it.
They referred to it as "REPOSITIONING" themselves—tachi-naosu in Japanese—or literally "standing up and fixing" (立ち直す)—after they went through a change in their consciousness and could then SEE the world and STAND IN the world a new, different way. I thought (and still think) that this is something meaningful and powerful, and found it a penetrating and useful insight that I gained from reading these women's self-reflective writings.
Jill Kerr Conway (p. 5) Nails it!
And that is why, no doubt, I also loved Jill Kerr Conway's comment on what we can get out of reading other people's memoirs. I always saw them as a legitimate way to get a picture—and a feeling—for what people who went through major historical upheavals or experiences, offering a window into how they thought about things.
As Conway says,
"We want to know how the world looks from inside another person's experience, and when that craving is met by convincing narrative, we find it deeply satisfying."(p. 5)
Obviously, I found the memoirs I read not only to be "convincing narratives," but also "deeply satisfying" and I hope they offer you the kinds of insights that you will find worthwhile.
In some ways, the title of Yoshitake Teruko's memoir speaks to this point:
Onnatachi no Undôshi--Watakushi no Ikita Sengo
「おんなたちの 運動史ーーわたくしの 生きた 戦後」
How might we express this in English?
An Undôshi (運動史) would literally be a history of movements...but it is modified by the word "women," so it really points to "A History of Women's Engagement with [Social and Political] Movements."
And, by the way, the word for woman onna おんな was an innovation. Up until now, more formal words Chinese-language influenced words like josei 女性, onna 女, or fujin 婦人 were preferred but these kanji based words originated with the patriarchy and the women of the "Women's Lib" movement were drawn to a less formal, more warm and heartfelt term like onna written in hiragana.
In fact, with the advent of the powerful "women's lib" movement in the 1970s, the word for woman, onna (おんな), will be placed in front of the word for "consciousness" (ishiki) to generate a new lexical item: onna-ishiki or "women's consciouness" which will become a power tool helping to guide women like Yoshitake (Ch. 3) and Kishino Junko (Ch. 4) on their pathway to realizing their subjectivity.
So Yoshitake's title is really talking about the history of how women have become engaged--and increased their self-awareness by this engagement—as told by individuals who lived through the postwar years.
Note:
The emperor never spoke explicitly of either "surrender" or "defeat." He simply observed that the war "did not turn in Japan's favor, and trends of the world were not advantageous to us."
Let's have a closer Look at Yoshitake and the three other women Introduced here in Ch. 1:
Anything Surprising?
Memorable Words:
Kunio's legacy to Okabe were his words:
"This war is a mistake"
Now she has to live wih them...and also live up to them. She refers to her memoir as her intended Yuigon, her last words:
"Because you left me with those words, I have my today."
His words must now have meaning for her every day of her life!
Doesn' this remind us of Yukie in No Regrets for Our Youth? She also had Noge's words --which she continued to hear, as his voice whispers over and over, "No Regrets for My Life."
Definitely something shocking here!
Memorable Words:
"That I became able...to begin to talk about my rape experience, and to write about it, was due entriely to my encounter with women's lib because the movement help me become aware of the existence of a female consciousness that resides inside each one of us." (21-22)
"The first step toward my own personal liberation, then, began with recounting my rape experience and writing about it." (22)
Performance Art as Salvation
The 180 degree turn around after the Imperial Broadcast.
"I was awakened from being a loyal, 'Imperial Daughter of Japan' to what it means to be an ordinary human being."
"War is unacceptable."
"People are all just people." (all from p. 24)
"I began to become aware of the importance of seeing with your own eyes and speakng from your own heart." (25)
The Outlier?
5. Analysis Section (39-41)
All four women treated here—Okabe, Yoshitake, Shinya and Sawachi—had been thoroughly indoctrinated during the war and were "loyal daughters" of the emperor. They were shocked and beweildred by Hirohito's Announcement accepting the Conditions of the Potsdam Declaration and became determined to probe history, to re-evaluate the present, and establish their own agency.
1. Okabe has a powerful story to tell: her brother, the neighborhood Association, and her intended, Kunio. She confesses in order to teach and wants to lead an assault on the entire prewar regime of thought. Powerful stuff.
2. Yoshitake saw the End of the war as a new Beginning for women; her story is the story of women becoming engaged in social movements. Shocked by her gang rape, she felt silenced, marginalized, inferior. The Women's Movement provided her the language and and the framework --the scaffolding--for coming to terms with her realities and helping her to reclaim her historical agency.
3. Shinya wanted to reclaim her "ordinariness"—she realized how abnormally the prewar thought system treated her, how distorted her thinking and behavior had become. Now she just wants to "become ordinary" and her path to achieving his was to speak her heart from the Stage.
She stood up in front of people and portrayed the inhumanity and discriminatory nature of the prewar system against Korean-Japanese, Korean A-bomb Victims, and buraku women. This was her way of asserting her both her "ordinariness" and historical agency.
She liked to say: "People are all People," and proclaimed that everyone needed to learn to "See with your own eyes and Speak from your own hearts."
Words to live by.
4. Sawachi Hisae exposed the hypopcrisy of Japanese militaristic adventurism—since she grew up in Manchuria, she takes a deep dive into the Manchurian Incident of 1931. A kind of refugee herself in 1945, it took a year for her to get back to Japan.
She looks at the end of the war unflinchingly and calls on others to do so—History is there to tell a story; don't confuse ignorance of history for innocence. It is incumbent on all Japanese to come to know the truths about the Shôwa Era.
She does not want to hear people saying that they were too young and therefore not responsible. Or to accept the belief that they were just victims of bad leaders. This is not the time for "victim consciousness." If we can't immerse ourselves in our history, bring it into language, and write about it, then we have no grounds on which to construct our subjectivity and historical agency.