Friday, April 14, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. in Wieboldt 301N
Nicholas Lambrecht, “Long Repatriate Postwars: Memory and Postmemory in Contemporary Japanese Repatriation Literature”
Discussant: Norma Field (Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in Japanese Studies in East Asian Languages and Civilizations)
Please join us this Friday (4/14) as we host Nicholas Lambrecht (PhD Candidate, EALC). Nicholas will present a draft of one of his dissertation chapters. He summarizes the chapter as follows:
Nearly seven million Japanese colonists and soldiers underwent traumatic journeys of repatriation to Japan at the end of the Second World War. “Repatriation literature” (hikiage bungaku) written about these experiences reveals the enduring questions of culture and identity prompted by the process of repatriation from overseas. This paper deals with contemporary authors of repatriation literature who describe the memories and postmemories that connect them personally to repatriation. The writing of these authors incorporates a strong focus on the postwar experiences of civilian repatriates, as well as descriptions of the hardships that repatriates endured upon their return to a nation that was invested in forgetting its imperial past. This contemporary repatriation literature broadens the scope of the genre and reaches contemporary audiences that never underwent repatriation, revealing and reinforcing the ongoing relevance of repatriation in contemporary Japanese society.
The paper is available at this link. If you do not have the password, or if you have concerns about accessibility, please contact Alex Murphy at murphya1@uchicago.edu.
