AAFKE VAN EWIJK

Research

Book project: Memory, Modernity and Children’s Literature in Japan

The way in which a social group conceptualizes children and childhood reflects its understanding of society, culture, and humanity. My book project “Memory, Modernity and Children’s Literature in Japan” rethinks Japan’s nation-building process in the late nineteenth century through the new lens of children’s literature. I show how modern children’s (or youth) literature did not develop as a belated derivative of modern literature for adults, but as an important ‘arena’ where forms of citizenship are cultivated, disseminated, and contested.

The rewriting of war tales and warrior legends, that already appeared in woodblock-printed picture books for children in Edo period Japan (1603-1868), played a large role in this development. Drawing upon recent theories from memory studies, I argue that the rewriting of warrior legends as modern children’s literature contributed to the coherence of culture during Japan’s modernization, and the identity-formation of the adults who created and co-read such texts.

Publications related to this project

  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2024. ‘Historical Memory, Warrior Identities and the Young Child in the Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Picture Magazine Children’s Illustrated‘. Children’s Literature in Education (published online 23 April, 2024).
    READ here, or go for the view-only version in case you have no access.
  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2023. ‘Premodern Warriors as Spirited Young Citizens: Iwaya Sazanami and the Semiosphere of Meiji Youth Literature’. Japan Forum 35:3, pp. 344-366. READ
  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2023. 子どもの心に訴える国家的英雄の創造と変容 － 少年の秀吉を中心に (The Boyhood of Toyotomi Hideyoshi : The Creation and Transformation of a National Hero for Children)’, in Suh Johng Wan and Suzuki Akira eds., 文化権力と日本の近代―伝統と正統性、その創造と統制・隠滅 (Cultural Power and Modern Japan : Creation, Control, Manipulation of Tradition and Legitimacy), pp. 231-265. Bungaku Tsūshin, 2023. (website publisher)
  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2022. PhD dissertation: ‘Memory, Modernity, and Children’s Literature in Japan: Premodern Warriors as National Icons in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Literature and Curriculum’ Leiden University Repository

Heroines from the Wartales and Historical Identity in Early Twentieth Century Literature for Girls

Alongside the book, I am working on a follow-up project that aims to find out how female historical exemplars were represented in girl’s magazines. How did the authors and illustrators adapt the premodern texts and iconographies? What was left out and what was (re)invented? Were these heroines only exemplars of individual virtues or were they also re-imagined as contributors to collective history, and in what way?

  • [under review] Aafke van Ewijk. ‘Reinventing retsujo for shōjo: national heroines in prewar textbooks and girl’s magazines’.

The First Letter from Kusumoto Taki to Siebold

In 2017, I discovered an Edo period letter in the Special Collections of Leiden University Libraries. It had been sent by the Japanese ‘wife’ of the physician Philipp Franz von Siebold after his banishment from Japan in 1829. I created a transcription and a translation and contextualized the letter within early modern women’s writing and contemporary issues of translation. I gave various talks on the letter, including for non-specialist audiences, most recently in the Museum Sieboldhuis in Leiden, where it was exhibited in 2023.

Publications related to this project

  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2025. “Navigating Literacies, Love and Gendered Epistolary Styles between Nagasaki and Leiden: Kusumoto Taki’s Rediscovered Letter to Siebold, 1830.” East Asian Publishing and Society READ here, or go for the Author Manuscript (post peer-review)
  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2019. “Het raadsel van het Damesjapans: De rol van vertaling in de briefwisseling tussen Siebold en Taki, 1830-1831 (The mystery of ladies’ Japanese: the role of translation in the correspondence between Siebold and Taki, 1830-1831).” Filter 26:3, pp. 17-23.
    READ
  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2019. “1830年12月、帰国したシーボルトへ其扇が送った最初の手紙 (The first letter that Sonogi sent to Siebold after his return to The Netherlands, in December 1830).” Narutaki kiyō 鳴滝紀要 29, pp. 33-48.

Blood, Tears and Samurai Love: A Tragic Tale from Eighteenth-Century Japan

From October 2022 to October 2023, I contributed to the Leiden-Yale collaborative project ‘Blood, Tears, and Samurai Love’ as a postdoctoral researcher. The project focuses on a digital scholarly edition of a rare eighteenth-century jitsurokubon (‘true-record book’) about a male-male amorous affair in the northeastern fief of Yonezawa. It will be published in 2024 on the innovative digital platform Japan Past and Present (JPP).

Publications related to this project

  • Aafke van Ewijk, 2024. “Archery in Early Modern Japan.” Blood, Tears, and Samurai Love: A Tragic Tale from Eighteenth-Century Japan on Japan Past & Present. Read at JPP