Zawiszová, Halina, ed. / Lavička, Martin, ed. Palacky University Olomouc 2023.
This volume consists of 19 chapters that reflect the titular theme – Voiced and Voiceless in Asia – from a variety of angles, making use of diverse scholarly approaches and disciplines, while focusing specifically on China, India, Japan, and Taiwan. The chapters are broadly divided into two parts: (1) Politics and Society, and (2) Arts and Literature, although the texts included in the second part also deal with social themes. In addition to historical topics, such as Japanese colonialism or Chinese agricultural reforms in the 1950s, the volume also addresses current issues, including restrictive Chinese policies in Xinjiang, Japanese activist movements against gender-based violence and discrimination, or the problems of migrant laborers in India and performing arts in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, it provides insight into satirical woodblock prints from the Boshin War period or works of literature produced in Japanese leprosariums in the first half of the 20th century, as well as into selected topics in contemporary Chinese, Japanese, and Sinophone Tibetan literature. Collectively, the chapters comprised in this volume narrate the multifaceted relationship between ‘voice’ and ‘power,’ thus highlighting the fact that the question of ‘voice’ is closely intertwined with a variety of social, political, and cultural issues.
Official website (downloadable open access or print on demand): https://www.vydavatelstviupol.cz/cz/978-80-244-6270-7
Content
· Introduction: In Voice is Power by Halina Zawiszová and Martin Lavička
PART I – Politics and Society
· Dalit Activism, Social Media, and Transnational Advocacy by Madhu
· An Analysis of India’s Uncalled Migrant Labor Crisis during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Case Study of Bihar by Bhavana Kumari
· Buraku Discrimination in Contemporary Japan: The Dichotomy between Discursive Practices and Identity by André Pinto Teixeira
· “Soft” Resistance in Rural China: The Silent Voice of the Powerless by Silvia Picchiarelli
· Hukou, Land Tenure Rights, and Chinese Rural Women by Pia Eskelinen
· Religious and De-extremization Regulations and Their Dissemination in the XUAR by Martin Lavička
· Personalized Propaganda: The Politics and Economy of Young, Pro-government Minority Vloggers from the XUAR by Rune Steenberg and Tenha Seher
· Japanese Militarism in Early Colonial Taiwan: Two Dissidents Muted – the Takano and Isawa Cases by Nikolaos Mavropoulos
· Rethinking the Power of the Voiceless: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Birth of Popular Human Rights Activism in Occupied Okinawa by Fumi Inoue
PART II – Arts and Literature
· Playful Pictures as Satire: Utagawa Hiroshige III Capitalizing on the Shift in Political Power during the Boshin War by Freya Terryn
· Echoes of Slavery: An Analysis of Aimé Humbert’s Depiction of Courtesans in Le Japon Illustré (1870) and His Artistic Approach by Jessica Uldry
· Female Writers and Autonomy in Love: “Romantic Adultery” in Japanese Literature at the Beginning of the 20th Century by Noriko Hiraishi
· Illness in the Echo Chamber: The Rise of Leprosy Literature in Japan by Robert Ono
· Voiceless Witnesses: The Role of the Beggar in Four Works of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature by Martina Renata Prosperi
· “Poetry of Anguish, Poetry of Praise”: A Study of Wang Jiaxin’s Poetry and Translation by Robert Tsaturyan
· Voiceless Tibet? Past and Present in Tibetan Sinophone Writing by Tsering Norbu by Kamila Hladíková
· Voices against Gender-based Violence in Contemporary Japanese Literature: An Analysis of Two Novels by Kaoruko Himeno and Aoko Matsuda by Letizia Guarini
· Gender and Violence in Sakuraba Kazuki’s Red X Pink: Hearing Female and Transgender Voices in Boys-Oriented Light Novels by Rafael Vinícius Martins
· Performing Artists’ Voices Remain Unheard: Theater Productions and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan by Annegret Bergmann