I think the arts, or the ‘cultural productions’, play important roles in the political struggles among the oppressed people in different places around the world in multiple aspects.
Among all ways of fighting against opressors, the most effective one is presumably violent rebellions. However, for the opressed people around the world, the situation often does not allow them this luxury. When direct ways of revolts are not possible, indirect ways start to play their roles. Being a way of expressing thinkings and ideas, cultural productions are versatile yet indirect. Comparing to other ways to establish effects such as force and rules, arts such asliterature and paintings can express the author’s ideas by osmosis. Through the use of painting techniques such as color combinations and writing techniques such as metaphors, these cultural productions can establish their effect while not being very obvious. This property is extremely useful and important for the oppressed people because they are in a relatively inferior social status, which makes it very tough for them to fight against the oppressors, any direct claims of their ideas may be subjected to punishments. For example, the Ryukyuans cannot express their opinions against the Japanese or they will be treated harshly. In these situations, the cultural productions provides a way for the opressed people to express and spread their ideas in a relatively safe way.
Meanwhile, under conditions where brutal fights against the oppressors are not possible, which are the cases for the most oppressed people we discussed, cultural productions are their ways to maintain their culture, passing it, and increasing the difficulty of the oppressors to completely diminish their culture and complete the assimilation. We can observe this trend in many places, for example, the Chinese people in Honolulu never gived up speaking Chinese and creating Chinese cultural works, although they suffered a lot from segregation and bullying from the white people. Another example is that although toughly banned by the Janpanese forces, the Ryukuans never fully gave up their native languages and music such as the three lines. It was these efforts that maintained the distinctiveness of these groups of opressed people, keeping them independent from the opressors. By sticking to cultural productions, the opressed people such as the Chinese people and the Ryukuan people maintained their identities and even established cultural atmospheres around the place they live, loosening their oppressions in multiple ways.
Additionally, cultural productions can be the stepping-stones for more direct and fatal rebellions. During the years of being occupied by the Janpanese imperialism, the Korean people never give up to express their ideas through writings and arts, in multiple places of the world, and finally the March 1st declaration of independence aroused the March first rebellions across Korea, which definitely contributed to the increase in the conditions of Korean people under the occupation. This kind of cases are not limited to Korean people but instead are prevalent everywhere among the oppressed people. There were countless efforts that were brewed, covered, and finally evoked by the cultural productions.
Personally, my home country suffered a lot from imperial invasion in the 19th to 20th century, the imperialist powers relentlessly plundered the wealth, oppress the people, invaded and occupied lands. Our people tried multiple ways to save our country from invasion, and among all the attempts, the creation of cultural production never stopped. Lots of brilliant works were created at the time and spread across the country and everywhere in the world, encouraged the people never to give up the fights against the imperialists. Cultural productions played extremely important roles in the fight against imperialist ppowers and the solidarity of opressed people. These cultural production from the time of suffer and wars have encouraged me greatly in many aspects, and formed my idea about the world, that is to make it a world of equality where no more people are being oppressed again.
