国際結婚で福島県に嫁いだ中国人女性の主体性とその形成過程

東日本大震災経験者のライフストーリーから読み解く

抄録

In the late 1980s, the problem of “marriage difficulties for men” in Japan society became more and more serious. In order to solve this problem, Japan society was actively introducing “Asian brides”, from the government to the private sector. As a result, the Japanese-husband-and-foreign-wife type of intermarriages increased. But behind this positive introduction, the lives of “Asian brides” and their perspectives are often overlooked in discussions of various social issues. Despite the increasingly three-dimensional image of women in the studies of intermarriages, the discussion of the image of women in social issues - such as the Great East Japan Earthquake - only stays on the superficial side of being “vulnerable people to disaster”. In the previous studies, the emphasis were on finding the mechanism of intermarriage rather than the continuity of individual’s life. Even when the subjectivity of those women became the focus, the discussion was only held within the framework of the family. Therefore, the research questions are: is it possible that subjectivity will be exerted within a broader framework such as their living community? And if the answer is positive, how the subjectivity is reflected and how it is formed? Having this problem in mind, this paper provided with a microscopic perspective of “individual’s life”, at the intersection of the discussion of intermarriage and the Great East Japan Earthquake. Specifically, based on the life story of 2 women, who were born in the northeastern region of China and moved to Fukushima prefecture after marrying to Japanese men, this paper aimed to approach the women’s subjectivity mainly from their experience of the earthquake. As a result, by analyzing the behaviors of the two women after the disaster, the study found that women’s subjectivity was not only confined in the framework of the family, but also manifested in their living community. Furthermore, based on the women’s life story, the author analyzed the accumulation process of their subjectivity under the framework of “agency”. “Agency” shows a living strategy, different from straightforward imaginations that the women are either subject to the limitation or resist the structure, they take on the existing relationship and at the same time work towards desirable ways of life by readjusting step by step. Finally, the author argued that, although those women have surpassed the level of “vulnerable people to disaster”, the vulnerability of belonging is worthy of further discussion as a future topic.