Childhood Constructed by Children: Wartime Everydayness and Children’s Voices in the Chinese Magazine Modern Children (1941–1945)

Abstract

Abstract

This article analyzes children’s own writings published in Modern Children (新兒童), a Chinese children’s magazine founded in Hong Kong in 1941 – one of the few children’s periodicals to survive the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937–1945). Drawing on Hans Van de Ven’s concept of wartime everydayness, which redirects attention from decisive battles and prominent leaders to how war reshapes ordinary lives, the article examines forty-eight wartime issues of the magazine to illuminate how Chinese children experienced, interpreted, and narrated the conflict. It is argued that war destabilises boundaries concerning children’s everyday lives: between children and adults, between the battlefield and the home front, and between reality and memory. Rather than appearing as passive victims, the child authors of Modern Children emerge as active agents who constructed and represented their wartime childhood – offering a rare, child-centred perspective on one of the twentieth century’s most devastating conflicts.