FAH262H1 Chap.9 Modern Girls and Interwar Cities
Modern Girls and Interwar Cities
A week built around three cities
The syllabus titles Week 9 Cities and Sensations and sets it in interwar Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul, about 1926 to 1937. The assigned readings are Jennifer Robertson on Japan's all-female Takarazuka Revue and the push for a state theatre, and Hsiao-pei Yen on how China's New Life campaign targeted the Modern Girl, published in 1991 and 2005. Joan Kee's essay on modern art in late colonial Korea is listed as optional and supplies the Seoul material.
The common thread is a young urban woman whose clothes, spending and leisure became the subject of national argument in each city.
Kee's essay also reaches into the war years, since its central painting, Yi Yu-t'ae's Research, dates from 1944.
Tokyo: the revue as a school for wives
Robertson describes the moga, the flapper-like modern girl of the Ginza, as a fan of the all-female Takarazuka Revue, founded by Kobayashi Ichizo in 1913. Kobayashi disliked the moga.
He wanted a woman who looked Western but behaved as a Japanese wife, and he pitched his revue as the true state theatre: actors in male and female roles would model the gender order of the Civil Code for audiences made up of whole households. Some actors and fans read the stage differently.
In 1932 several male-role stars cut their hair short and told the press that marriage was a box for girls, and by 1939 Osaka had banned the male-role players. Kobayashi's 1933 motto for the school, Purely, Righteously, Beautifully, reads as a reply to that scandal.
Shanghai: a campaign against the Modern Girl
In China the label carried a political charge.
Yen shows that Chiang Kai-shek's New Life Movement of 1934 treated the Modern Girl as the embodiment of national weakness: she bought foreign goods, wore Western clothes and showed her body. Bans on outlandish dress, short sleeves and bare legs followed in several cities.
Yen's evidence, though, comes from Linglong, a women's picture weekly published in Shanghai from 1931 to 1937, whose readers mocked the rules and turned the state's own promotion of health and exercise into a case for freer dress. Elsewhere the reaction was violent: a gang calling itself Smashing Modernity attacked fashionable women with acid.
Linglong's chief editor, writing as Ling, hailed the 700 women athletes at the 1933 National Games as a sign that women were waking.
Seoul: modern girl, new woman and the colonial salon
Kee notes that the term modern girl was in use in colonial Korea from the late 1920s, borrowed from Japanese press rhetoric after the 1923 Kanto earthquake.
Korean writers set her against the new woman, whose identity was tied to education and the independence movement; the Marxist critic Pak Yong-hui attacked modern girls in 1927 for consuming without producing. Pictures matter here: Kim Eun-ho's Reverie of 1923 shows heels and a shorter skirt, and a 1930 newspaper cartoon wrote marriage terms on women's bare legs.
The colonial salon, the Sonjon, founded in 1922 on the Bunten model and judged mostly by Japanese jurors, shaped which images of Korean women were shown.
What to compare in an answer
Treat the modern girl as a figure made by others before asking what women did with it.
In Tokyo the impresario and the state theatre reformers defined her; in Shanghai the Nationalist party-state did; in Seoul nationalists, Marxists and the colonial ideal of the wise mother and good wife competed. Then follow the response: Takarazuka fans, Linglong letter writers, Korean painters.
The sample aid sheet adds names to recognise, among them the Shanghai cartoon magazine Modern Sketch (Shidai manhua, 1934 to 1937) and the Korean painter and writer Na Hye-sok (1896 to 1948). Anchor every city with a year and a venue, because the label shifted meaning as war approached.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Interwar Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul, about 1926 to 1937
- 02
The moga and the Takarazuka Revue
- 03
Kobayashi Ichizo and the state theatre movement
- 04
The New Life Movement of 1934 and its dress codes
- 05
Linglong and women's replies to the bans
- 06
Modern girl and new woman in colonial Seoul
- 07
Healthy beauty, sport and swimming
Worked example · free
Explain why Kobayashi offered Takarazuka as state theatre
- 2Set the context: the mid-1930s state theatre movement wanted a theatre that would express the nation, and Kobayashi's rivals dismissed the revue as a frivolous Western import.
- 2Give Kobayashi's case: Western-style musicals with a Japanese spirit, cheap seats in huge theatres, households as the audience unit, and actors trained in gender roles that prepared them to become good wives and wise mothers.
- 2Explain the failure: male-role actors cut their hair, used masculine speech and drew a devoted fan culture, so the press attacked the revue and Osaka banned male-role players in 1939.
Key terms
- Moga
- Short for modan garu, the Japanese press label for the fashionable young woman of interwar Tokyo, linked with the Ginza and with revue fandom.
- Kokumingeki
- The mid-1930s Japanese state theatre movement, led by Oyama Isao and Iizuka Tomoichiro, that sought to forge a national culture through theatre.
- New Life Movement
- Chiang Kai-shek's campaign launched at Nanchang in 1934 to revive four traditional virtues and to regulate everyday dress, hygiene and conduct.
- Linglong
- A pocket-sized Shanghai picture weekly for women, published from 1931 to 1937, whose reader contributions Yen uses to recover the Modern Girl's own voice.
- Healthy Beauty
- Jianmei, the 1930s Chinese ideal of a strong, athletic female body, promoted by the state and by women's magazines in place of fragile beauty.
Modern Girls and Interwar Cities FAQ
Why was Takarazuka linked to the modern girl in 1930s Japan?
Robertson notes that moga were fans of the revue and that the press sometimes called its actors moga. Its 3,000-seat Tokyo theatre opened on New Year's Day 1934, the largest theatre in the city.
What clothing rules did the New Life Movement impose on women?
From June 1934 the Nanchang headquarters set limits on qipao length, slits and sleeves and on hair below the collar, enforced by police. Beijing adopted similar rules, and Guangdong regulated female students' dress in 1936.
How did Korean writers separate the modern girl from the new woman?
The new woman was tied to women's education and the independence movement. The modern girl was criticised for consumption; Kee cites Pak Yong-hui, a KAPF member at the time, writing in 1927.
Exam move
Make a three-column sheet for Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul and fill four rows from memory: the local label, who defined her, the approved alternative and one dated piece of visual evidence. Then write one sentence per city on how women answered.
