• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.417-425
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• 2017

The goal of this study is analysing a box office success of The Handmaiden in terms of modified space-time and character. The movie which has original novel induces desire of watching by decreasing property of experience good of movie based narrative of novel. Contrary to novel that is set in Victorian age, the movie changed contents that make a character who realizes masculine of colonialism and women oppressed by man escape through transcending class by adopting period of Japanese occupation. It hereby decreases negative effect by substituting growth and solidarity of women for the element of homosexuality. Also the gender discussion about crimes against female when the movie was running increases factor of sympathy of characters and accord with subject of the movie. Beside that, The reasons of success are detector, star system of actor, effective public marketing of movie trailer and selection of movie won the award for best picture at a film festival.. Movie through adapting novel enhances ability of various creation and blow up appreciation of spectator. The differentiation of adapted hit movie is that the altered content is creative, has subject that corresponding with universal awareness transcending space-time and expresses property of media effectively.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.163-202
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• 2020

This paper examines how Japanese society produced and reproduced a distinctively gendered history and memories of the experience of WWII and colonialism in the postwar era. We argue that these gendered narratives, which were embedded in postwar debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women, have engendered contradictions and made the historical conflicts with neighboring countries challenging to resolve. On the one hand, this deepens conflict, but on the other, it also generates stability in East Asia. After Japan's defeat in WWII, the American Occupation government created the Peace Constitution, which permanently "renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." The removal of the state's monopoly on violence - the symbol of masculinity - resulted in Japan's feminization. This feminization led to collective forgetting of prewar imperialism and militarism in postwar Japan. While collectively forgetting the wartime history of comfort women within these feminized narratives, the conservative movement to revise the Peace Constitution attempted to recover Japan's masculinity for a new, autonomous role in international politics, as uncertainty in East Asia increased. Ironically, however, this effort strengthened Japan's femininity because it involved forgetting Japan's masculine role in the past. This forgetting has undermined efforts to achieve masculine independence, thus reinforcing dependence on the United States. Recurrent debates about the Peace Constitution and comfort women have influenced how Japanese political elites and intellectual society have constructed distinctive social institutions, imagined foreign relations, and framed contemporary problems, as indicated in their gendered restructuring of history.