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World Literature: Asia

Yukio MishimaÆs short story Patriotism and Ai QingÆs poem Dayahnhe-My Wet-Nurse both employ the device of a male-female relationship as metaphor for love of country. In each work the authors construct their notion of Japanese and Chinese nationhood, though those constructs are quite different. In WindschuttleÆs commentary on Edward SaidÆs Orientalism, the author notes that ôThe construction of identity in every age and every society involves established opposites and æothers.Æ This happens because the development and maintenance of every culture requires the existence of another different and necessarily competing alter egoö (31). While this is particularly true among nations, it is also true internally. Nations often embrace national identity that posits an ôotherö even domestically, the ôotherö being devalued because it is in contrast with the values or beliefs national identity seeks to promote. We see this is clearly the case in both MishimaÆs Patriotism and QingÆs Dayanhe, where each author advocates values of national identity at odds with the then status quo.

The use of a male-female relationship in QingÆs poem and MishimaÆs short story mirrors the relationship between individual and country. Qing was a Chinese poet who believed in the doctrines of Mao Zedong, accused of being a rightist in the late 1950s. He was interned in labor camps but was eventually cleared of the charges. Qing advocated measures for the common people, ones that did not gel with an emerging modernization in China. As one critic says of the poet, Qing was ôAn advocate of free expression and [viewed] the role of the writer as social criticàcreating socially oriented poemsö (Ai 1).

We see in the poem Dayanhe-My Wet-Nurse that the literal story is a foster childÆs warm remembrance of his wet-nurse Dayanhe. The son of an influential landowner, it was common for the well-to-do to hire a new mother to nurse and care for thei...

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World Literature: Asia. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 03:36, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710235.html