Nishino, Ryota (2013) Pacific Island women in the eyes of a Japanese travel journalist:Impressions from Kanetaka Kaoru’s journey in 1961. UNSPECIFIED.
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Abstract
A Japanese travel journalist Kanetaka Kaoru (b. 1928) is best known for her weekly television documentary programme Kanetaka Kaoru sekai no tabi [Kaoru Kanetaka’s “World around Us”] which ran from 1959 to 1990. On her sixth filming trip in 1961, she visited the South Pacific islands for the first time – when foreign travel was still beyond the reach for many Japanese people. Her itinerary included Fiji and Papua New Guinea (PNG). The trip resulted in several programmes and a travelogue, Sekai no tabi: Oceania [Travel around the world: Oceania] (1962). Kanetaka’s travel-writing is noteworthy for her candid aesthetic judgements on women she met in Fiji and PNG. The presentation asks what messages and implicit assumptions of beauty her writing conveys. While Kanetaka is flattering about Fiji’s women’s natural beauty, she is concerned the encroachment of western aesthetic values would harm the women’s self-worth. At the same time other episodes underline commonality between her aesthetic values and the western imagining of ‘the South Seas maiden’. Kanetaka’s aesthetic vision is challenged by the sight of the women in PNG. She then asks herself “What is to be human?” Her conclusion – however problematic it may be – informs us how she attempts to resolve her seemingly inconsistent, if not paradoxical, aesthetic judgements.
| Item Type: | Other |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DS Asia D History General and Old World > DU Oceania (South Seas) P Language and Literature > PI Oriental languages and literatures |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts, Law and Education (FALE) > School of Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Ryota Nishino |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Oct 2013 23:21 |
| Last Modified: | 22 Jun 2016 03:23 |
| URI: | https://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/6989 |
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