TRANSNATIONAL WIVES’ TALES: Yonsama
as Postcolonial Ghost and the Revenge of
the Obatarians (letter from
Before I Begin
I am very honored to be writing this letter from
Feminism, linking scholars, cultures, histories. I have therefore decided to use the space of
my “Letter from
I hesitate to give readers on both sides of the Pacific
information that is old news to them. But just in case, according to the
Japanese mass media a generation of middle-aged Japanese women are addicted to
the serialized TV drama entitled Fuyu no Sonata (Winter Sonata). Moreover they are passionately attached to
the male lead played by Bae
Yong Joon. This is most apparent when crowds of women rush to meet him at the airport when Yonsama (Lord Yon) arrives for one
of his visits to his so-called “family”
in
The most obvious question is “What is going on?” But I also have three more specific questions that are based on an interest in transnational gender history: 1) Where is colonialism in the media frenzy about Fuyu no Snata? 2) How is the adoration for Yonsama connected to what I shall call Japanese-Korean “colonial eroticism.” And 3) why does Yonsama look like a girl?
The revenge of the obatarian
I asked Puja Kim,
leading historian of Korean women, my firsr question. In response she sent me an article by Nobuta
Sayoko with the title Yonsama wa Nihon no Kazoku no Kyuuseishu
Koza 4.05)This insightful piece
offers sympathetic portraits of
the middle-aged women who have been “sucked into” (hamatta) Fuyu no Sonata
. This author knows the frustrations and
desires of the aging woman, whom she has met while counseling them. The youth
and dreams of the obatarian are gone.
Obatarian –the word marks the middle-aged wife and mother as old,
asexual, undesirable, someone to laugh at.
But the obatairans are not innocent . Nobuta dissects how their intense relationship with Yonsama is premised on a colonial sense of entitlement. Her analysis reveals the twisted logic of the colonizer’s consciousness. In other words, the obatarian feels free to adore Yonsama because there is no danger of rejection. As a colonial subject he is not allowed to challenge her in any way. The fantasy is that he will protect her but the reality is that she controls him, just as she rules over her children. Moreover, because he is effeminate he will not attack her. And her husband won’t be threatened. Not only because he sees her as a non-sexual being. In addition his conflicted sense of superiority and guilt towards the colonized prevents him from being jealous.
The author answers my
question ,”What is going on?” She concludes that the obatarian of today has a new
sense of authority, community, and mastery of technology. Her constant communication with countless
others just like her gives meaning and purpose to her life. But it is a harmless revenge. She allows the
media to laugh at her, her family is not disrupted, and the phenomenon aids the
state in demonizing
But what about my three more specific questions? She shows me the colonial legacy in the Yonsama
phenomenon, thus answering my first question. She comes close to
exploring the Japanese version of the colonizer’s eroticization of the
colonized, when she mentions the novel The
Lover by Marguerite Duras , as an
example of a relationship between the colonizing female and the colonized male.
I agree. It is a powerful illustration of the erotic relationships based on race and power that were so central
to European colonialism. ( On that topic I recommend the work of anthropologist Anne Stoler.) But I
cannot put Nobuta’s example of the perversions of Abu Ghraib in the same
category as The Lover. Even if we
agree that the degradation of the Iraqi prisoners was an extremely twisted form
of eroticism based on
Finally, regarding Yonsama as a girl. In addition to his softness contributing to his harmlessness, Nobuta mentions the parallel with the Takarazuka fan base. I agree. I see Yonsama as a male, male lead (otoko no otokoyaku) in contrast to the charismatic women who play the male roles.
But what if Yonsama looks like a girl for another reason? What if he were a girl? In her article Nobuta imagines a non-harmless revenge of obatarian , who use their new skills and energy for political ends. I am imagining anther form of revenge – what if Yonsama were a so-called “comfort woman” in disguise, seeking truth and justice?
Yonsama as Post-Colonial Ghost: Witnessing
This is a ghost story (kaidan)of a comfort woman as witness to history. The “comfort woman” will be called simply comfort woman. Let me explain. The words betray history. Violence can never be comfort. And moreover these slaves who were tortured as only women can be tortured, were girls. This ghost story is not history; it is tale of history betrayed. It is a ghost story and ghost stories are about almost unspeakable, frightening matters. I do not have the space here to compare my Yonsama Kaidan to the Kabuki play Yotsuya Kaidan. I can only note that just as Fuyu no Sonata with its vast white spaces and static scenes of people seated in cars is far from the color and action of Kabuki, the witnessing is somber. The witness is a survivor of trauma who has the will and the urgency to tell her story. It is a story nobody else can tell and it is a story she could not tell in the past because there was nobody to tell.
To witness is to have a voice. As when in the movie The Murmuring (Nanumu no Ie) the comfort woman Pak Tou Ri suddenly says: “Beppin-san daijobu kai?” (Hey beauty, you doing OK?) The effect is chilling. Whose voice is this? It is clearly the language of a Japanese soldier. The words are embedded deeply in this old woman’s mind. Where were they spoken? How were they spoken? In sarcasm, as they seem to be when voiced by the comfort woman? Could there have been some concern? We do not know. We do know that Pak is bearing witness to something she witnessed even though the words may not have been addressed to her. We can guess she was using the words of the soldier in order to grasp a memory she wanted to forget (consciously or unconsciously).
Monologue (dedicated to the memory of Matsui Yayori)
[Someone dressed as Yonsama,
wearing muffler, glasses and a bright
brown wig, steps onto a stage to tell
her tale. It is a comfort woman ghost in
disguise. She is dressed like Yonsama in a coat that looks like a
dress and the muffler wrapped several times around her neck is pink. The vivid
colors frame her face (It is
clear that those designing the look of the drama spent time strategizing Yonsama’s look. As a result of the mufflers and the
high-necked sweaters and the fullness of the materials, the effect in the TV
drama, is of a floating head. No heterosexual male in the
The ghost comfort
woman passing as Yonsama places a
curse on the entire generation of women who are the daughters of the soldiers
who lined up at the comfort stations. As in the case of other witnessing, she
speaks for herself and for others. The obatarians will be cursed because they
did not listen For a decade, the comfort
women have been speaking out. First
alone, then in small groups, then former comfort women from throughout Asia
gathered in Tokyo in December 2000 for the Women’s International War Crimes
Tribunal. on
The curse is as follows :The obatarian women will forever be condemned to puberty. They will have the bodies of adult women but the minds of young girls (shojo). Their consciousness will be a comic book mentality. They will fantasize in the words and images of Shojo Furendo (Girl’s Friend), which they would have read when they were twelve years old. In Fuyu no Sonata there is no sex; only wistful romance. This will be their idea of love.
The women will be trapped in a yasashii (kind and sweet) life, a life without depth or irony or any meaning other than the meaning found in ‘guudzu,’ such as the books and reference books (sankosho) dedicated to the study of Fuyu no Sonata. They will consume books promising them that they can Solve the Riddles of Fuyu no Sonata in One Hour ( Fuyu no Sonata no Subete :Ichijikan de Fuyu no Sonata no Nazo ga Zenbu Tokeru) and How to Better Understand the Love in Fuyu no Sonata. ( Fuyu no Sonata no Ai ga Motto Wakaru Hon.) Their reference books will be their own version of the textbooks and workbooks that they have urged their children to read over the years. These will be their very own Kokoro no Nooto” (Notes of the Heart), which is the title of the new, saccharine ethics textbooks currently required in Japanese schools. But there will never be an examination to end the routine.
Memory
Fuyu no Sonata can be understood as a story (monogatari) about memory. About losing it, about regaining it, and even about implanting it. In the program, our hero demands that his memory be returned to him. The comfort woman witnessing declares that the Japanese state took her history, but it could not take her memory. But the obatarians will not be able to interpret the problem of memory in life in Fuyu no Sonata or in life outside Fuyu no Sonata, just as they have not been able to recognize that the drama is not about the history of Japan but about social change in postwar Korea, as historian Song Youn-ok, historian of Korean women in Korea, on the continent, and in Japan, recently noted. Instead, in their pink haze, they will experience Fuyu no Sonata at its most conventional level, as a story about men giving women to other men. (As feminists have studied and taught, thoughout history women have been given from man to man as gifts, whether they be slaves like comfort women or wives. This practice has been accompanied by the incest taboo,) The obatarian cannot grasp this history. She only knows that in Fuyu no Sonata, Yonsama and his sweetheart, for a brief moment, think they are brother and sister. This does not seem to bother her. She is only concerned with the common tale of two men fighting over who will give the woman and who will take the woman. Yonsama and his rival repeatedly use such words as “give her back to me” and “I will not return her to you,” referring to the love of their lives. Each man also orders her to do what he says. The obatarian stuck in her childhood fantasy doesn’t mind. She likes the idea of the prince and his enemy fighting for her.
Witnessing: the Return of The Repressed
The comfort woman as ghost as Yonsama is the return of the repressed. In other words, the history of the comfort women has been denied. She has therefore returned, in the guise of Yonsama, in order to bear witness. The comfort woman in disguise quotes the testimony from the International War Crimes Tribunal on sexual slavery as part of her witnessing. She remembers how more than one comfort woman testified that a Japanese soldier had told her “you’ve got the face of a Korean,” before slashing her with his sword and then raping her. The stories go on. Not all testimony is witnessing, but the words at the Tribunal were. The Yonsama-comfort woman promises that the curse will last for one generation, or as long as any comfort woman remains. Until that time, the comfort women will continue to speak the truth as witnesses to history to all those who will listen.
My questions have been answered for now. But I think again. What is going on? If the obatarians are so harmless, as the first story says, why is the media so concerned. Is this just a matter of laughing at women in order to sell magazines.? It should be noted that the reference books studied by the obatarians study make jokes about the studying. Kokoto no Nooto has no such humor. There is a difference. So, what else is going on? In the words of Barbara Kruger,”Who laughs last?”
Thus end my two tales and with them, my letter from
With congratulations on this new journal,
Miriam Silverberg