Writing Manchuria: The Lives and Literature of Zhu Ti and Li Zhengzhong

<p><em>Writing Manchuria</em> details the lives and translates a selection of fiction from one of the mid-twentieth century’s four famous husband-wife writers of China’s Northeast who lived in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo: Li Zhengzhong (1921–2020) and Zhu Ti (1923–2012).</p><p>The writings herein were published from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s in Manchukuo north China and Japan; their writings appeared in the most prominent Japanese-owned Chinese-language journals and newspapers. This volume includes materials that were censored or banned by the Manchukuo authorities: Li Zhengzhong’s Temptation and Frost Flowers and Zhu Ti’s Cross the Bo Sea and Little Linzi and her Family. Li Zhengzhong has been characterized as an angry youth while Zhu Ti’s work questioned contemporary gender ideals and the subjugation of women. Their writings – those that were censored or banned and those published – shed important light on Japanese imperialism and the Chinese literature that was produced in different regions reflecting both official support and suppression.</p><p><em>Writing Manchuria</em> is the first English-language translation of their writings and it will appeal to those interested in Chinese wartime literature as well as contribute to understandings of imperialism and the varied forms it took across Japan’s vast war-time empire.</p>