2013
January 11th
Frontiers of Visual Technology: Japan’s Aerial Approach to Inner Asia, 1930-1945
Sakura Christmas, PhD Candidate, History, Harvard University
Both contemporary witnesses and present-day historians point to the construction of railroads across Manchuria and Inner Mongolia as marking the end of an older order on the Eurasian steppe. The railroad may have disrupted a perceived balance between nomads and settlers along this “Inner Asian Frontier,” and in so doing, integrated the region into the global market economy, but it was the airplane that transformed spatial perception as a new technology of rule during the Japanese occupation. This talk examines how the experience of flight and, correspondingly, aerial perspective led to the formation of a new frontier space in Inner Asia. Taken within a larger context of British bombardment of Arabia and French surveys in Mali and Vietnam, this presentation reveals Japanese anxieties over the seeming vastness of space as the empire sought to expand control over the continent. In an era when national boundaries of airspace remained uncertain in Inner Asia, however, flying planes and building airports often resulted in contested sovereignty over the skies, and one that complicates the nature of informal rule and territoriality for the Japanese empire.
If the view of the horizon from a train corresponds to the panorama, as Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues, then the view from an airplane—in eliminating that horizon—corresponds to the map. Such cartographic depictions of an aerial Inner Asia appear in the travelogues of Murata Shirō (?—1945) and Imanishi Kinji (1902-1992) among other intellectuals who experienced flight. Indeed the aerial perspective led to an unprecedented precision in measuring and mapping terrain, as conducted by the photography bureau of Manchurian Airlines ( Manshūkoku kōkū kabushiki kaisha) from the early 1930s. This technology delineated space in new calculative regimes that reconfigured earlier methods of triangulation from the ground. While the resulting maps tended to circulate among military and corporate circles, the aerial perspective did not necessarily produce a privileged view for a select few. Architects and archaeologists, for example, co-opted aerial surveys for their own projects. This view from above, moreover, filtered into literature for mass consumption, from bird’s-eye photographs in tourist publications to technical glossaries in Mongolian-language newspapers, even as their audiences came under increased threat of aerial bombardment during the war.
February 8th
Testing the Limits of Commercial Order in the Interwar World's Pearl Empires
Kjell Ericson, PhD Candidate, History, Princeton University
In the wake of the First World War, two institutions emerged in Europe and Japan in order to test specific attributes of a new product, spherical pearls cultivated in and around the Japanese empire. The first attempted to pick out pearls that were associated with the potentially deceptive manipulations of exclusively Japanese hands in order to separate them from "natural" ones. The second sought to defend the good name of the patented-in-Japan products of pearl cultivation.
I argue here that the legal definition and technical assessment of a pearl’s naturalness, national provenance, and relative quality were inseparable from the ways in which far-flung groups dealt with pearls, pearl oysters, and pearl-inducing processes. The energy expended to test pearls itself provides a measure of the controversy that surrounded one of the early twentieth century’s most widely discussed biotechnologies, which, not coincidentally, was also one of its most closely inspected objects of adornment. Pearl testing can be understood in the context of parallel efforts to redefine local commercial order -- whether setting the rules for trustworthy exchange, first in France and then beyond, or maintaining control over access to pearl cultivation processes in Japan -- all during an era of widespread economic protectionism and specific suspicions about Japanese exports. Tests provided a rationale for issuing identity papers in the form of seals of approval, certificates of authenticity, and even passports. Yet every time a pearl was tested, it became subject to a different rubric of classification. Depending on the circumstances, a pearl deemed to be of high quality in Kobe could become an illegal impostor in Paris or Bombay. If, that is, it could be tested at all. This presentation hints at the persistence of interwar testing methods and ideals, even amid the vastly altered political and commercial terrain (not to mention coastlines) of the post-1945 world.
March 1st
Envisioning the Amateur Masses: The Sports Purification Movement and the Fashioning of a Middle-Class Identity of Leisure in Wartime Japan
Jamyung Choi, PhD Candidate, History, University of Pennsylvania
This paper examines the Sports Purification Movement (supōtsu jōka undō) initiated in 1930 by the alumni of the Tokyo Imperial University (hereafter, Tōdai) Athletic Association (TAA) in the context of changing middle-class identity in wartime Japan. As intercollegiate sports activities prospered at higher educational facilities, star athletes stood out for their privileged status on campus and the job market. They quickly became the target of criticism, not only from leftists but also from school authorities and sports administrators. Sports Purification activists problematized the "professionalization of student sports," which, they claimed, adversely affected academic performance, lowered admission standards, and encouraged athletes' monopolization of sports facilities. To solve these problems, they proposed a restoration of an “amateur identity” in sports. Viewing Tōdai as a privileged sports community with its sports facilities and influential alumni, I explore how university students created a sports culture that helped fashion middle-class identities of leisure in early-twentieth-century Japan. By focusing on the pervasive influence of TAA alumni on collegiate sports, the Japanese Amateur Athletic Association, and the state bureaucracy, this paper also highlights the effects of "sports purification" in three contexts: state engagement, the reform of intercollegiate leagues, and the popularization of sports. I examine how TAA leaders used the idea of amateurism to move from an elitist to mass identity and created opportunities for non-athletes across the campus and beyond. In this way, the TAA fashioned a middle-class identity of leisure that became increasingly notable for its classlessness.
April 5th
Resisting Resistance: Buddhists and Religious Freedom, 1926–1945
Jolyon Thomas, PhD Candidate, Religion, Princeton University
The counterfactual question of why Japanese Buddhist leaders failed to resist authoritarianism and militarism in prewar and wartime Japan has frequently appeared in foregoing scholarship. However, this question cannot be answered without taking a normative religious standpoint (assuming, for example, that Buddhists should be pacifist or celebrating Buddhist martyrdom for political causes). Such inquiry abrogates the principle of doctrinal neutrality that distinguishes the history of religions from theology, while the associated expectation that Buddhist leaders should have resisted by appealing to the constitutional religious freedom clause easily slips into the presentist fallacy of applying postwar understandings of religious freedom to an earlier period. Humanist understandings of religious freedom were still largely unthinkable during the early Shōwa era (1926–1989), and neither the state nor religious groups can be expected to have espoused conceptions of religious freedom as a universal human right that preceded citizenship or superseded governmental authority.
This paper uses three case studies to elucidate how some Buddhists imagined religious freedom and ideal religion-state relations in early Shōwa era Japan. Examining priest-turned-politician Andō Masazumi’s (1876–1955) influential participation in the crafting of controversial religions legislation, I show that Buddhist complicity with seemingly oppressive bureaucratic projects did not necessarily occur at the total expense of liberal interpretations of religious freedom. Conversely, the case of influential Buddhist priest Chikazumi Jōkan’s (1870–1941) stalwart opposition to the proposed religions legislation shows that Buddhist resistance to bureaucratic initiatives was very real, but it was not necessarily based on liberal, egalitarian interpretations of religious freedom. Finally, a critical reading of the 1943 arrest and interrogation of Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai founder Makiguchi Tsunesaburō (1871–1944) suggests that seemingly draconian policies were understood in context to protect religious freedom, not infringe upon it.
May 14th
Emigrant Empire: The Origins of 1920s and 30s Japanese-Brazilian Migration
Andre Kobayashi Deckrow, PhD Candidate, History-East Asia, Columbia University
Between 1920 and 1935, almost 200,000 Japanese left their homeland to begin new lives in the hinterlands of Brazil. The majority of these emigrants were poor tenant farmers whose relocation was organized and financed by the Japanese state. In all aspects of the migratory process – from their initial recruitment to technical assistance once on the ground in Brazil – Japanese migrants depended on the Japanese government and its institutions for support. My presentation explores why Japanese intellectuals and government officials saw Brazilian migration as a panacea for Japan’s myriad social and economic challenges and how Japanese-Brazilian migration eventually became government policy in the early-1920s. Through the writings of prominent emigration promoters, such as Hokkaido Imperial University professors Satō Shōsuke and Takaoka Kumao, I examine the ways in which popular theories of nation- and empire-building motivated state-sponsored emigration. Ultimately, I argue that pre-World War II Japanese-Brazilian migration must be understood as an important phase of Japan’s overseas expansion.
June 14th
'Human Trafficking' on Trial: Bride Price, Adopted Daughters, and Households in Colonial Taiwan, 1919-1925
Tadashi Ishikawa, University of Chicago, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
By the early 1920s, human trafficking (jinshin baibai) had become one of the most addressed social problems in particular relation to licensed prostitution on the globe, and Japan was no exception. Amidst negotiations between the League of Nations and the government, intra-governmental disagreements, and concomitant popular criticisms, there emerged a compromise: the gradual accommodation of stricter age-based regulations for licensed prostitution in the metropole and the exclusion of their application to Japan’s colonies such as Taiwan. Internalizing the compromise, current scholarship has paid more attention to the adversities of licensed prostitutes in the Japanese imperium. However, what Japanese and Taiwanese media sought to expose as the issues of trafficking were the practices of bride price and adoption of daughters. While these practices had given rise to certain Japanese administrative and judicial modifications since the late 1910s, the discursive labeling and cases brought to the courts remained active in the early 1920s. This paper takes the case of bride price and adoption of daughters to examine how discourse and law interacted over the emerging question of human trafficking in early-1920s Taiwan. To raise the question, my paper analyzes not only Japanese and Taiwanese journalistic writings but also roughly 300 criminal and civil cases on abduction, bride price payment, other marriage-related disputes, and the dissolution of adoptive relationship. In contesting the argument that the colonial government and its courts did little to bride price exchange and adopted daughters, this study presents a more nuanced picture of the judicial interventions with the practices in involving the Japanese discourse in particular. Moreover, such interventions entailed unintended dynamics inside and between Taiwanese households in marriages and adoptions. The history examined gives an insight into humanitarian interventions in colonial settings, the relationship between law and society, and family configurations in a relatively short period of time.
August 9th
The Contradiction of Everyday Life: Hani Motoko on Marital Happiness
Satoko Kakihara, Ph.D. Candidate, Literature, University of California, San Diego
Starting in the Meiji era the Japanese government reformed and modernized its political and social institutions, widening the scope of education and industrializing to develop its economy. Combined with this modernization was the strengthening of Japanese imperialism, a venture at once political, economical, and social, that required loyalty from imperial subjects on multiple fronts. The role of women was contradictory during this period: they were expected to become modernized and educated while simultaneously safeguarding tradition through their roles as wives and mothers in the ie system, itself a reflection of the subjects’ relationship to the emperor. During this time many publications directed toward women readers discussed the role of women in Japanese society. This presentation explores the philosophy on marriage proposed by Hani Motoko (1873–1957), editor and publisher of several such magazines. Motoko’s philosophy on marriage and family, published in magazines such as Katei no tomo and Fujin no tomo, stresses that marriage is about individuals and self-improvement, but that its ultimate goal is to create a single unit from the couple (fūfu ittai) that transcends individual abilities. Influenced by her Christian faith, Motoko promotes work and productivity as the means to find marital happiness—yet such a philosophy on marriage presents a classed and idealized notion of the marriage institution that skews the idea of “happiness”. This presentation argues that, despite its leanings toward liberal notions of self-improvement and fulfillment, Motoko’s notion of liberation through marriage maintains a traditionally patriarchal and imperialistic institution.
September 6th
Atoms for Peace in the Land of the Rising Godzilla
Craig Nelson, Ph.D Candidate, Department of History, Ohio State University
In 1954, Japan seemed unlikely to adopt nuclear power. The country was just beginning to explore the meaning of bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the end of the American Occupation and its media censorship when a Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon Number 5, was exposed to fallout from an American bomb test in the South Pacific. This incident was followed by widespread panic over the contamination of fish populations in the Pacific, which led to the discarding of 450 tons of tuna.
1954 marked the height of the Japanese "nuclear allergy"; it was the year that saw both a nuclear test ban petition that gained over 30 million signatures and the release of one of the most iconic anti-nuclear films of all time: Godzilla. And yet, the next year, the American Atoms for Peace exhibitions dominated the headlines and captured the attention and imaginations of people throughout Japan. This presentation will examine this rapid shift and explore how the United States Information Service and the Japanese media attempted to sell the Japanese public on nuclear power by rhetorically separating the peaceful uses of nuclear power from its use as a weapon. The exhibition and media campaign focused on how nuclear power could improve the daily lives of ordinary Japanese by linking together its applications for power generation, medicine, industry, agriculture, and transportation.
October 4th
The Mythos of Agrarian Production: Economic "Modernization", Labor Policy, and Ideas of Southern Expansion in Japan's South Pacific Mandate
Ti Ngo, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
This paper explores the pivotal role that ideas of agrarian production played in economic planning and policymaking in Japan's South Pacific mandate. Occupied during World War I and formally acquired as a League of Nations mandate in 1919, the Marshall, Caroline, and Mariana Islands remained under Japan's jurisdiction until the closing stages of the Pacific War. Unlike its overseas territorities at the time such as Korea and Taiwan where a rich tradition of farming existed, Japanese ethnologists, government officials, and business inaccurately perceived the native Micronesian population as lacking the historical experience of sedentary agriculture. The importance placed on agricultural production fundamentally shaped policymaking in Japan's South Pacific mandate from the methods employed in the first cadastral survey of the islands to labor policy to education. Widely viewed as a marker of civilization and a key stage on a unilinear path of development during the prewar period, the supposed lack of agriculture in the South Pacific also indelibly shaped liberal internationalists' judgements regarding whether Japan was adhering to its responsibility as a Mandatory power to guide the islands into the "modern" world. Figures who were either critical or ambivalent about empire such as Yanaihara Tadao, John Decker, and Nakajima Atsushi could nevertheless praise or work with the local Japanese administration on the islands in the belief that their actions were benefitting the native population. Drawing upon documents from the local Japanese administration as well as Japanese businessmen, navy personnel, and intellectuals, this presentation shows how pervasive ideas about agrarian production and modernization influenced policymaking and economic development in Japan's South Pacific mandate. Agrarian production also became a marker of racial difference within the Japanese empire, separating Micronesians from ethnic Chinese or Korean subjects. Japan's experience in the South Pacific during the 1920s, moreover, would go on to spur interest and influence the way in which the empire sought to expand southwards (nanshin).
November 15th
'You can stake our land but you can't stake our spirits': Resisting militarism and fighting for the right to landscape in 1950s western Tokyo
Dustin Wright, PhD Candidate, History, University of California, Santa Cruz
For nearly a century, western Tokyo has existed under a heavily militarized condition, particularly in the areas of Tachikawa and Yokota. The spaces produced by this militarism provide useful and intriguing sites through which to not only unpack the complicated histories of local Japanese protest against militarism, but also to engage in a better understanding of the immense urban and spatial changes that have occurred in Tokyo since the end of World War II. My project argues that though the production of these militarized spaces continues (often rendered invisible by a sense of everydayness and apparent ordinariness), so too does local resistance.
Only one among the many military bases that haunt the future and the past of western Tokyo, Tachikawa Air Base was originally built by the Japanese Imperial Army and occupied by the U.S. military until 1977, when it became a Japan Air Self-Defense Forces base. There have been multiple phases of local resistance to the Tachikawa base, though for this talk I will focus on one moment in particular. The “Sunagawa Struggle” was a series of anti-base expansion protests in the 1950s that rocked Tachikawa Air Base and invigorated anti-base movements throughout Japan. The frequently violent protests were initiated by local farmers who sought to protect their fields and homes from the bulldozers, but later grew to include radical student groups and labor unions. Through the employment of protest records, activist newsletters, and interviews, I will highlight the various forms of anti-militarism that emerged during the struggle. Lastly, I will argue that reclaiming the “right to landscape” was an important component to the anti-base activism.