“Manchukuo Perspectives,” or “Collaboration” as a Transcendence of Literary, National, and Chronological Boundaries

Literature in Manchukuo served to both further and contest national aims, while writers of varied ethnicities engaged in multivalent strategies to continue cultural production amidst difficult political circumstances, such as censorship demands, the Japanese occupying regime's propaganda goals, and even the market. As a linguistic and cultural borderland, transnationalism became an everyday practice contributing to discursive layers of literary production in a colonial contact zone. Though fictional, short stories or novels worked to expose a visceral sense of place to readers, and capture the atmosphere of a fascist state under Japanese domination.