The Representation of Taiwan in the Post-War Japanese Film, Begging for Love: Between Forgetting and Remembering

Abstract

This paper considers how the memory of the colonial experience influences the representation of Taiwan in post-war Japanese films by examining the following work that has never been explored from a post-colonial perspective: Begging for love, a 1998 Japanese film directed by Hideyuki Hirakawa that is based on the eponymous novel written by Harumi Shimoda in 1992. The screenplay was written by a Korean writer residing in Japan, Chong Wui Sin. There are several stylistic issues that this paper focuses on. First, a Japanese female and a Taiwanese male get married and have daughter in Japan just after the war. Second, the Taiwanese male passes away in the first part of the story. Third, after her husband's death, the Japanese female turns violent and abuses her daughter. Fourth, the daughter who was born to a Japanese mother and a Taiwanese father heal her trauma when She visit Taiwan after the father's death. By analyzing this film, this paper argues that post-war Japanese films assumed that post-war Japanese people sought to find catharsis in Taiwan, which is cast as an idealized repository of memories and experiences. The fundamental stance toward the former colonies in the film is thus one of nostalgia and orientalism. Furthermore, the paper examines the incomplete nature of memories of colonialism in post-war Japan in relation to the representation of the absent Taiwanese father, the violent Japanese mother and the complex feelings between them in the film.

Keywords

• memory
• post-colonialism
• gender
• Japanese film
• Taiwan