Welcome to the conference website of
New Gender Constructs in Literature, the Visual and the Performing Arts
of Modern China and Japan

This conference is designed to explore the changing constructs of masculinity and femininity in China and Japan from the late 19th century up to the 1930s from the vantage point of the Western impact on gender perception.

The contours of notion of masculinity and femininity came from the West during the 19th century. In the context of the challenges posed by the Western impact, both countries translated their sense of national crisis into a crisis of cultural identity. The issue of gender manifested itself in the reshaping of national identity as well as in the approach to education, commercial culture and cultural ideals. In the early Meiji period (1868-1912) gender had become a core component in Japan’s formulation of its “progress” towards modernity, and it was the most visible and public way in which this was articulated in the field of literature and art. In the case of China, the Japanese became the immediate ‘Western’ model. The focus of the conference is on the redefinition of gender and the creation of the new ideal in these two countries during that period. By bringing together scholars working in the fields of history, literature, media studies, fine arts and performing arts, the conference hopes to promote a critical dialogue among scholars of China and Japan on a wide range of questions concerning gender. With a comparative approach, we hope to contribute to a reevaluation of the role of gender in the rise of modern societies in Asia.

This conference is kindly supported by The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (CCKF), The Japan Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) & the Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Heidelberg (IWH)