Reordering the Family, Society, and Nation. The Problem of the “Resistance-War Wife” in Postwar China
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2785-3233/25812Keywords:
Resistance-war wife, family reconstruction, gender inequality, social reform, nationalismAbstract
This paper examines the post-WWII Chinese debate over the problem of the “resistance-war wife,” a term referring to intimate relationships formed during wartime displacement. Drawing on mass media sources, it argues that discussion of this issue created a key discursive arena in which the relations among family, nation, and society were contested in the aftermath of the War of Resistance against Japan. Melodramatic narratives cast the phenomenon as a moral crisis rooted in wartime upheaval, and expressed a popular longing for the restoration of familial order. In contrast, feminist voices redirected attention to structural gender inequalities in Chinese society and called for broader social reform. The “resistance-war wife” problem thus revealed competing visions of postwar reconstruction and illuminated how personal trauma, gendered expectations, and nationalist ideologies intersected in shaping public understandings of family and society during a moment of profound transition.
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