M.A. - Asian Studies

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/1916

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Postcards, Place, and Progress: Colonial Korea as a Touristic Commodity
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Crowley Duffy, Lucie; Park, Young-a; Asian Studies
Seeing acts as a person’s grounding mechanism for determining what they know about the world around them. This thesis asserts the importance of visual sources to analyze empire maintenance in Korea during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), highlighting the specific utility of the postcard. Postcards are materially representative of mobility across space; they are sent from one geographical area to another to impart on the receiver the experience of the sender’s movement. Postcards also represent temporal mobility; it takes real time for a postcard to be sent and received. In its reception, there is the understanding that it is symbolic of the past, and simultaneously representative of future mobility aspirations. This thesis argues that postcards of colonial-era Korea are a form of ‘colonial kitsch’: an emphasized cultural commodity that played into Japanese nostalgic desires for Korean tradition. Objects of colonial kitsch located a sense of Korean culture in the past, mediating how notions of Korean tradition were communicated through mass culture. As a visual historical medium representative of spatial mobility across the Japanese empire, examining postcards allows one to investigate the conflicts within the notion of imperial nostalgia and the commodification of Korean tradition during the colonial period. Multiple layers of consciousness are inherent in visual historical sources and their continued circulation and reproduction. Thus, the complex interactions of Japanese imperialism with tourism and commercialism can be decoded through an analysis of postcards. These discussions further allow for an exploration into the notion of place in history, elucidating how place can inform theories of imagined geographies and become intertwined with historical commercialism, as well as mobility and movement.
Digital (Dis-)Embodiment: Virtual YouTubers, Queerness, and Neoliberalism
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Yu, Anna Jj; Stirr, Anna; Asian Studies
Virtual YouTubers, or VTubers for short, have gained immense popularity in the past few years as an originally Japanese cultural phenomenon. These VTubers differentiate themselves from standard video game live-streamers by using an anime-style avatar instead of showing their actual face on stream, thereby erasing their physical body in favor of a virtual one. This thesis engages VTubers through a lens of queerness, studying VTubers that claim queerness in some form, whether in their avatar or in their lived body, in order to shed theoretical light on what it means to claim identity and embody gender / sexuality in a virtual realm. Refusing to accept VTubers as merely their fantasy characters, I advance a framework that allows one to understand these VTubers also as real streamers, thereby encouraging one to look beyond identity as a private endeavor and towards the body as an irreducibly material existence. Doing so allows me also to connect this analysis of queer VTubers to a critique of neoliberal identity politics, showing how neoliberal discourses on identity cast it as an individual matter separate from material structures of oppression. As such, VTubers become the medium through which I re-conceptualize identity as based in sociality, inhering in lived bodies that are positioned within larger societal modes of power
GRIEVING TOGETHER: How Muharram poetry creates liminality, allowing women to grieve
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Jeraj, Alia; Stirr, Anna; Asian Studies
In this thesis I examine the role of poetry in allowing Indian Shi’a Ishnaa’ashri women to grieve in observation of Muharram. During these majalis (gatherings), Ishnaa’ashri women come together to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of Prophet Muhamad. Within these rituals they weep and wail, loudly performing their grief as they listen to and recite poetry. I note that because of histories of state and religious suppression of women’s performances of grief, this ritual provides one of the few, if not only, spaces where women can loudly, physically grieve. Following performance theorists including Dell Hymes (1981), Richard Schechner (2004), Richard Bauman (1975), and Charles Briggs (1992; 1990), I examine the words and performances of the poetry through textual analysis and ethnographic research to demonstrate how they allow Shi’a Ishnaa’ashri women in northern India to perform grief in ways that are not allowed in other social contexts. Further, I argue that this poetry allows women to express their grief for things beyond the stated and conventionally-accepted reasons provided by Muharram. This argument provides a deeper understanding of the poetry recited during Muharram, and particularly of women’s roles in these rituals. It also sheds light on the potential power of rituals of grieving together by showing how the ritual space can create strengthen feelings of community, shared identity and memory, and solidarity.
Gender, Water, and Culture in Northern and Northeastern Thailand: Issues in Gender Mainstreaming in Water Resources Management
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2022) Sweeney, Sarah Sunthorn; Andaya, Barbara W.; Asian Studies
Women, girls, and other marginalized social groups in Thailand are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, particularly those related to water. Elite men continue to dominate decision-making power in water resources management, exacerbating gendered climate-related vulnerabilities. Although Thailand has successfully implemented some efforts of gender mainstreaming, generally defined as the promotion of gender equality, connections between gender and water security remain largely overlooked. This thesis investigates the reasons for current limitations in gender mainstreaming in water resources management in Thailand and the appropriateness of applying Western concepts to specific socio-cultural contexts. It specifically explores traditional gender relations within the rural contexts of Northern and Northeastern Thailand. I argue that current limitations primarily stem from the resiliency of gender norms that is driven by the persistence of smallholding livelihoods and Thai state interests in preserving existing hierarchies that privilege the position of men.
"Only Clear Water Flows East": Hero Narratives, Environmentalism, and Cultural Debt in Tibetan-Language Documentary Television of the People's Republic of China
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2022) Hayes, Caitlin Rose; Clayton, Cathryn H.; Asian Studies
Since the latter half of the Twentieth century, the People’s Republic of China has enacted various strategies to combat grassland degradation on the Tibetan Plateau; many of these strategies have revolved around encouraging rural ethnic Tibetans to give up their traditional lifeways – such as semi-nomadic agro-pastoralism – in the name of environmental protection. One unique avenue by which the state transmits these messages is via depictions heroic and exemplary figures as portrayed in Tibetan-language satellite television programs. This paper analyses a two-part television newsmagazine documentary originally aired on a Sichuan-based satellite station and aimed at the residents of the Sanjiangyuan region of southern Qinghai Province. By amplifying the stories of a diverse array of ethnic Tibetan environmentalist workers and volunteers, this documentary series seeks to encourage and inspire Sanjiangyuan’s rural Tibetan residents to become involved in state-promoted environmental protection initiatives at the potential expense of their cultural and financial well-being. In doing so, the state seeks to instill in its ethnic Tibetan population a sense of responsibility in environmental stewardship for the benefit of the entire Chinese nation. By reframing Tibetans’ participation in environmental protection as a form of repayment for debts incurred for social and economic development on the plateau, the state seeks to insert itself into the historical and cultural relationships between Tibetans and their physical environments.
Reimagining the Pre-Islamic Past: Narratives of Conversion in Two 1960 Malay Films
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Lim Bin Adam Lim, Herman; Andaya, Barbara; Asian Studies
Described in newspapers as the first Malay-language films to deal with the coming of Islam to Southeast Asia, 'Noor Islam' and 'Isi Neraka' (1960) reinterpret the cultural memory of Malay conversion into Islam for the silver screen. This thesis explores how the pre-Islamic past was reimagined in these films, situating them within the continued negotiations over Islamic identity and ‘race’ in Malaya and Singapore at a time of intense decolonisation, where such identity categories remained in flux. I investigate what visual metonyms were used to connote Muslimness—as opposed to non-Muslimness—and where these visual vocabularies might be coming from. By using the concept of ‘inter-ocularity’, I show how these films were embedded within a web of visual vocabularies from across the Indian Ocean, drawing from circulating ephemeral art, theatrical traditions, and the films of India and Egypt. These various visual media drew from one another, simultaneously reinforcing the longevity of image tropes. Replicating Orientalist tropes of the ‘Problem Hindu’, the Malayan makers of 'Noor Islam' actively adapted such images to portray the pre-Islamic past as a time of demonic deities and virgin sacrifices, in contrast to Islam’s role as an illuminating force for good. The makers of 'Isi Neraka', on the other hand, appeared to build upon the genre of Sandiwara, a popular theatrical form focused on social issues at the time, to explore what happens to the relationships between people in a Malay society that recently converted to Islam. Hence, the consequences of transgressing Malay cultural norms such as durhaka or insubordination and disobeying one’s parents take centre stage. I therefore emphasise how images and discourses work together to perpetuate enduring essentialised ideas about identity, tightening and sharpening the limits for what constitutes Muslimness and Malayness.
From Wali Songo to Televangelists: Changes in Visuality and Orality in Javanese Islam
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Antonio, Jordan Miller; Andaya, Barbara; Asian Studies
The intersection of media and religion is a relatively new phenomenon in contemporary society, but often embodies the most important aspects of successful proselytization: charisma, orality, and entertainment. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, conveying a religious message in ways that will capture an audience’s attention is central in any explanation of the widespread popularity of televangelism over the past several decades. The preachers who have embraced these new techniques of proselytization, commonly referred to as da’i or ustadz(ah), while affirming their own Islamic commitment, and seeking to strengthen the faith of fellow believers, are celebrities in every sense of the word. Many own their own companies and invest in products that they believe will produce spiritual as well as material wealth, which becomes an extension of their religious outreach. The use of oral and visual expression to convey religious messages has a long history in Indonesia, but has found new pathways through technology and social media . In examing the teachings and presentation style of four popular preachers in Indonesia: Mamah Dedeh, Aa Gym, Tan Mei Hwa, and Muhammad Syafii Antonio, the thesis shows how this new style of technology-based preaching reflects the historical spread of Islam to the region and makes predictions for the future of digital dakwah.
Animating Sun Wukong: Shanghai Animation Film Studio's Havoc in Heaven and Symbolic Transformation on the Eve of the Cultural Revolution
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Ayers, Jackson; Clayton, Cathryn H.; Asian Studies
This paper attempts to deconstruct the complex intersection of Maoist-era propaganda and Chinese folk-art traditions in the years before China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) by interrogating the symbolic transformation of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, into a hero who justified rebellious action. Specifically, this research analyzes director Wan Laiming’s 1964 film, Havoc in Heaven (Danao Tiangong 大闹天宫), China’s first domestic feature-length animated film. Employing Wan’s memoir and documents from other animators at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS), this framework establishes artists as the unit of analysis to study symbolic change between Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propagandistic guidance and the Chinese people. This approach emphasizes the agency and mediating role artists possess when producing art as propaganda. Developing on approaches employed by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney and Alexander Bukh in their research on nationalism, this research encompasses both the narrative content of Havoc in Heaven and the perspectives of SAFS animators towards their work. It argues that a lack of direct party intervention during production and the unexplored frontier of animated film created permissive and productive conditions in which Ohnuki-Tierney’s concept of meconnaissance flourished. Furthermore, Wan and his team reveal that the primary operating principle at SAFS was the development of a nationalized Chinese animation style, founded in traditional folk-arts, and directed towards children’s education, not the fulfillment of Party objectives.
Transreality: Finding the Real Trans Women Inside Hyperreal Trans Women in Korean Media
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Kim, Young Seo; Park, Young-a; Asian Studies
Oftentimes, representation of marginalized groups in mass media comes short of actually representing the lived reality of the group that is on screen. The same is true for trans women in South Korea and elsewhere. Confronting the false and, at times, harmful representation by pointing out where the representation fails is important, but stopping there leaves out the nuance of the purpose of the mass media that gets the lived reality wrong. Rather than take the simple approach of describing the differences, this thesis describes and goes further to analyzes the reasons, cultural and sociopolitical, for trans women’s representation in South Korean cinema. The thesis focuses on the beginning of the 21st century and onward, and compares and contrasts the films with ethnographic data of lived experiences of trans women in South Korea. This comparison reveals the ways that the media attempts to present an understanding of trans women to the public that is radically different from the lived experiences of the trans women, while also critically examining what those similarities and differences mean for trans women.
Intersecting Hierarchies: Media Representation Of Marriage Migrants Under South Korea’s Empty Multiculturalism
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Hong, Yeeun; Park, Young-a; Asian Studies
In 2006, the South Korean state enacted a multicultural policy, as an extension of immigration policy and a response to increased international marriages and marriage migrants. Marriage migrants wed ethnic Koreans and settle in South Korea for a variety of reasons. Despite the political rhetoric that the multicultural policy ensures life quality for marriage migrants, it remains an empty government promise which embodies a nationalist agenda. This study examines how the Korean media represents South Korea’s multicultural policies, and how the media help affirm or deny marriage migrants’ intersecting hierarchies of race, gender, and class. By exploring the political and cultural dimensions of Korea’s multicultural policies through media analysis, I argue the Korean media separates marriage migrants into four different ideal types: Inspiration, Integration, Assimilation, and Separation. Despite the media’s efforts to display racial harmony, the media perpetuates multicultural policies which maintain biased images of marriage migrants (e.g., the public surveillance and stigmatization of Southeast Asian migrant wives). To explore intersecting hierarchies of race, gender, and class, this study pays attention to racialized genders that have received little academic attention, such as non-white migrant husbands. This study rejects the prevalent dichotomous interpretation of marriage migrants’ experiences on an inclusivity versus exclusivity binary, and demonstrates how this dichotomous narrative fails to recognize their complex social positionality and agency.
Filipina War Brides
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Magdua, Jeannie; Abinales, Patricio; Asian Studies
The women who immigrated from the Philippines to the U.S. after World War II as war brides grew up under colonial rule, learning English and developing a loyalty to the United States while in public school. Though the 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act promised the Philippines independence in ten years, and the debates over Philippine self-governance were taking place mostly in Manila, people in the provinces continued to live their lives as subjects of the United States. Prior to World War II, the story of the Filipino immigrant in the U.S. was largely that of the single male struggling against the exploitation of his labor and the hardship of poverty. Moreover, his hardship was borne alone because there were laws that prohibited Filipinos from marrying white women and there were very few Filipinas who immigrated to the U.S. for them to marry. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, many of these Filipinos in the U.S. joined the U.S. military and were deployed to the Philippines to fight the Japanese occupation of their homeland. During their deployment in the Philippines, amongst the women of their home country, these Filipino-Americans found brides willing to return to the U.S. with them after the end of the war. World War II, therefore, was the start of another Filipino-American story, the story of the Filipina war bride. This thesis argues that the Filipina war brides I interviewed hold a positive view of their immigration experience in contrast to their male predecessors because a) their expectations were shaped by their colonial upbringing and Filipina feminism, b) their immigration was mediated through marriage and not labor and was, therefore, an immigration towards integration and not rejection, and c) their experience in Japanese-occupied Philippines stood in contrast to the hardship of laborers in the U.S.
Tales Of The Water God In The Water God Temple Of Guangsheng Monastery: Folk Religion And Social Justice In The Premodern Chinese Political Tradition
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Zhang, Xinli; Clayton, Cathryn H.; Asian Studies
This paper focuses on a Yuan dynasty Water God Temple in Hongtong County, Shanxi Province, China and hopes using this temple to research the special relation between Chinese political tradition, folk religion, and social justice. This paper used two argument tracks. The first argument track is focusing on the identity of Water God himself. The second but core argument track is to discuss the relation between Chinese political tradition, folk religion, and social justice. The first argument is not the evidence but a very important clue to finish the main argument. In conclude, both political authority and local communities were using folk religion as tool to search their benefits and remain social justice. The benefit for authority is the stability but the benefit for local communities is water, the resource. In the end, a Water God from folk religion became the symbol of social justice.
Reconceptualization of English Ideology in Globalizing South Korea
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Yang, Seung W.; Asian Studies
This thesis examines how the South Korean president-elect Lee Myung-bak’s public English education reform plan in 2008 revealed a shift in top-down delineation of language ideology as a mechanism of national competitiveness. The state historically allocated the Korean and English languages as “Korean body” and “Western utensil,” respectively, to frame Korean as an inherent and genealogical character of the nation and English as a necessary but foreign tool. However, qualitative content analysis on Korean news articles reporting on President Lee’s 2008 public English education reform plan showed that the PTC’s English ideology deviated from previous iterations of confining English as a Western utensil. Instead, Lee’s reform plan outlined an eventual Korean-English bilingual nation where speaking English was to become a normative repertoire congruent with Korean identity. Situated within other studies on the evolving nature of Korean identity, this thesis reveals that Korea’s once considered static linguistic identity is showing signs of dislodging as the state continues to pursue national competitiveness in the globalizing world.
Five Turtles in a Flask: For Taiwan's Outer Islands, An Uncertain Future Holds a Certain Fate
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Green, Edward W., Jr; Asian Studies
Who Holds the Mirror? The Creation of an Ideal Vietnamese Woman, 1918-1934
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Aitchison, Madeleine E.; Asian Studies
This thesis analyzes the conception of two different ideal archetypes for Vietnamese women during the late colonial period, from 1918 until 1934. I use women’s newspapers (primarily Phụ Nữ Tân Văn) and other contemporary literature to first trace the creation of “historical” Vietnamese heroines in the early 20th-century. Second, I examine the creation of a cosmopolitan international woman who demonstrated Vietnamese women’s encounters with the broad concept of “modernity.” With these two archetypes, writers targeted women and communicated differing idealized feminine traits to emulate. With Vietnamese heroines, advocates wished to promote an invented tradition that emphasized women’s duty to the potential nation of Vietnam and, further, pushed women to commemorate women such as the Trưng Sisters or Lady Triệu. Within the context of the cosmopolitan New Woman, Vietnamese writers looked to international news to find exceptional women whom Vietnamese readers should emulate. Importantly, Vietnamese women came to endorse both of these ideals through their own writing. The formation of two differing feminine models demonstrates Vietnamese women’s engagement with historical time and global space to promote what they perceived as ideal feminine traits. Additionally, these two models show a growing Vietnamese engagement with global trends and international news, as well as rising nationalism within Indochina.
The Dynamics of Collective War Memory in Japan: The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Yasukuni Shrine, and the Legacy of the Asia-Pacific War
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-05) Coldren, David A.; Asian Studies
The Game’s The Thing: A Cultural Studies Approach To War Memory, Gender, And Politics In Japanese Videogames
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-05) Moore, Keita; Asian Studies
This thesis establishes a framework for analyzing Japanese pseudo-historical ludic media within the Japanese ideo-cultural context from a Cultural Studies perspective. It examines how discourses of war memory, gender, and politics inflect the texts of Onimusha (2001), Sengoku BASARA (2005), and Metal Gear Solid (1998). As artifacts of a demonized militarism and societal pacifism, these games justify ludic violence with player-avatars who have defensive masculinities. Through interactivity, however, this mechanism interrogates pacifism. In this questioning, these games take on transformative potential as cultural technologies. Onimusha and Sengoku BASARA seek to foreclose upon this potential through narrative denunciation and parody. Conversely, Metal Gear Solid leaves this potential open. As a game whose narrative supports a progressive political agenda, it unintentionally endorses an ultraconservative conception of both politics and history—thereby constituting a nationalistic argument. In sum, this research suggests that videogames are imbricated in processes of imagining Japanese nationhood.
“Nepomuceno Legacy”: The Construction of an Elite Heritage
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2016-12) Kuestner, Alexander R.
This thesis examines the manner in which the Nepomuceno family promoted themselves in two books published in the early 21st century. The Nepomucenos are an elite family in the province of Pampanga in the Philippines. They are regionally important in politics and business. Their ancestors founded Holy Angel University, a private Catholic institution. The Nepomucenos used Holy Angel’s press to have two books published which promote the family’s descent from locally prominent elites in the 18th to 20th centuries, including but not limited to a Spanish priest named Guillermo Masnou. The Philippines is dominated, both politically and economically, by nationally powerful oligarchic families. The Nepomucenos are not one of these as their power is limited within their home province. It is clear from their portrayal of themselves in their books that the Nepomucenos would like readers to believe that the family is just as significant as the oligarchs.
Snow Country: Skiing, Globalization, and Rural Economic Development in Japan
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2016-08) Allen, Daniel
Hokkaido’s Niseko region is now Japan’s most famous ski destination, attracting tens of thousands of winter recreationalists each winter to its powder-draped slopes. The overwhelming majority of these skiers and snowboarders are now foreigners. Yet, just fifteen years ago the mountain and its ski resorts were practically unknown outside of the country. This thesis examines the area’s rapid transition to a globalized tourism model and discusses why this occurred, how it has positively and negatively impacted the surrounding towns, and what other Japanese rural municipalities can learn from Niseko’s development experience. Following Pred (1984), the case study is contextually located across several intersections, including the area’s and Hokkaido’s historical legacies, the individual biographies of regional stakeholders, and the tension between localities and globalization in the process of place-making. The present study was conducted from the summer of 2015 to the spring of 2016, and focused on personal interviews with area government officials and local residents that have been involved with Niseko’s rapid change. The thesis first covers the evolution of mountain recreation and skiing in Japan, then moves to an overview of the Niseko region. It details the economic and demographic benefits that inbound tourism has brought, as well as the negative consequences of the area’s largely unmanaged tourism industry and the difficulties it has faced in its efforts to become a year-round destination. Before concluding, several proposals are offered that might assist other areas seeking to capitalize on or increase inbound visitation to their regions. By looking at globalized ski tourism in Niseko, this study highlights a potential new paradigm for revitalization efforts in Japanese rural communities.
The South China Sea Dispute: Bridging Position and Motivation for China, Vietnam, and the Philippines
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2016-05) Huynh, Khoa
The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivations behind the positions held by China, Vietnam, and the Philippines regarding the South China Sea dispute. Interviews, governmental speeches and documents, notes verbales, treaties, and data generated by various governmental agencies were among the sources used to quantitatively and qualitatively explain their positions. It argues, generally, that the policies of the three nations are meant to address other, mainly domestic, but also international, concerns of an economic, political, military, and social nature, both current and historical. Specifically, China’s is vague, non-conforming, maximalist, and aggressive, yet measured, and is intended to maintain its stature as a world leader, which in turn helps in terms of regime survival and support at home. Vietnam’s is nationalistic, expansionistic, and protectionist in its position as well as continuing uninhibited oil and natural gas exploration in which it favors foreign sales. These positions reflect its historical fear of and resistance to external encroachment, its general policy orientation toward popular mobilization and control of the population, and its emphasis on economic security. The Philippines’s position, being the weakest and least effective bilaterally or multilaterally, is mainly rhetorical and meant for domestic, political consumption. It therefore focuses on legalistic approaches while promising to accommodate internal power centers, and notably the military. It aims to use whatever windfall there might be from the SCS’s oil and gas reserves to combat socioeconomic inequalities and rectify its tarnished national identity internally and externally.

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