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Men, women and “Japanese” as outsiders: A case study of postcards with Ainu images

2000; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08949468.2000.9966801

1545-5920

Sidney C. H. Cheung,

Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

The depiction of the Ainu in photography, as created and circulated in Japan starting from the Meiji era, provides us with a case study to investigate how gender and ethnic differences are related to the construction of self/other relations in modern Japan. I consider the imaginary relations between Japanese viewers and Ainu images ranging from paintings to photographs and, in doing so, make use of metaphorical meanings and imaginary mythical structures for the analogy of contentious ethnic relations from the age of mechanical reproduction, as Walter Benjamin suggested. I will examine the different images of Ainu men and women interwoven with an imaginary Japaneseness regarding the cultural meanings of insider and outsider within the process of colonization in Hokkaido during the Meiji era. Likewise, with the notion of stranger‐king political transformation emphasized by Marshall Sahlins in his Fijian studies, this article serves as a challenge to discern the construction of Japaneseness in terms of mythical motifs and stranger‐king political transformations from a visual perspective.