Category Archives: Japan

by | 24 February 2004 · 9:03 pm

The Omi Mission in Japan, 1915

February 1915, the tenth anniversary of the arrival in Hachiman of Mr. W. M. Vories, marked the beginning of the second decade of the Omi Mission.

The distinctive features of this Mission consist in its being financially self-supporting; undenominational–advocating and practising co-operation in all Christian efforts; administered entirely on the field; international–having voluntary supporters in America, Europe, and Japan, and both American and Japanese workers on equal terms, the general secretary this year being Japanese; rural from choice and conviction; aimed at the establishment of a model Kingdom of God, rather than at individual conversions alone; many-sided in its approach–preaching, Sunday Schools, railway and Student Y.M.C.A., with hostels, farm, motor cruiser (Galilee Maru) on Lake Biwa, physical work in the embryo antituberculosis camp, two monthly publications, newspaper evangelism, loan library of evangelistic books, many types of women’s work, and architectural office–for support and for training self-supporting mission workers; and finally, in its compromising a practical Laboratory of Mission Methods, where new lines of evangelistic and institutional effort are being tried out–and the results open to any mission in the Orient.

Beginning without resources and with only one green young worker in 1905, the Mission numbered in 1914 thirty workers, eight of whom were Americans.

The first ten years were marked by the complete alteration of the attitude of the community, from that of open and violent opposition and persecution to open and cordial favour; the building up of a staff of native workers–which is the hope of any mission enterprise; and the crystalization of aims and methods adapted to peculiar conditions, after experimentation.

The direct achievements, though sounding well in report, are, we trust, merely suggestions of real harvesting in the next decade.

SOURCE: “The Omi Mission,” by W. M. Vories, in The Christian Movement in the Japanese Empire, including Korea and Formosa, a Year Book for 1915 (Conference of Federated Missions, Japan, 1915), pp. 136-137.

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by | 23 February 2004 · 9:47 pm

Syncretism vs. Hybridity vs. Creolization

The November 2003 issue of The Journal of Asian Studies (vol. 62, no. 4) contains a review by Tom Havens of the book, The Age of Creolization in the Pacific: In Search of Emerging Cultures and Shared Values in the Japan-America Borderlands, edited by Takeshi Matsuda (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2001). The book offers an interesting application of the notion of creolization. The following extract is from the review, which quotes from two chapters by David Blake Willis.

Long ago, the discourse on Japan’s relations with the West emphasized cultural assimilation or syncretism. In the 1950s, Katô Shûichi recast the interaction as hybridity–still a powerful concept in literary and cultural criticism, although Willis believes Katô’s formulation continues “to privilege a Japanese essence” (p. 6). As anthropologists and world historians use the term, “creolization” is a dynamic, interactive process based on “more even-handed horizontal relations” than in the somewhat static notion of hybridity. Creolization involves “a leveling and a borrowing that is two-way,” creating “a new shared culture” that is “open-ended, eclectic, flexible, and mobile” (p. 6). Creolization facilitates transnational and transcultural (rather than international or intercultural) synergies, thus de-emphasizing states and national communities as units of analysis. Simultaneous multiple processes of creolization in various world regions today show that, “the globalization of culture is not the same as its homogenization” (p. 23)….

Willis offers an empirical chapter on the transcultural experiences of creole “JAmericans” educated at CA [my alma mater!], a well-known international school in Kobe barely masked as “Columbia Academy.” He argues that cultural, not necessarily genetic, hybridity often leads to true creolization, concluding hopefully that “Pacific Creoles are the cross-fertilizing currents of new directions, the lubrication for the global cultural landscape” (p. 195).

EXEGESIS: Assimilation models imply you either remain who you are beneath the layers of outside influences (good, unless you were bad to begin with), or you lose your soul and become someone else (bad, unless you were bad to begin with). Hybridity models allow “in-betweeners” and “half-castes” but also imply the existence of purity at the cultural poles. For most people, I suspect (not me! not me!), purebreds are willy-nilly superior to mongrels, whether we’re talking dogs, or cultures, or cultures gone to the dogs. Creolization models acknowledge the creation of uniquely new structures, with their own internal consistencies, arising out of a mixture of cultural (or linguistic) components, but shaped both by universal patterns and by new functions that none of the old structures adequately served.

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Filed under Japan, Pacific, scholarship, U.S.

by | 5 February 2004 · 5:31 pm

Japanese Occidentalism, 1942

Via Arts & Letters Daily comes this link to an essay in The Chronicle of 6 February 2004 by the always interesting Ian Buruma on “The Origins of Occidentalism.” It’s a rich topic, but I’d like to highlight a few paragraphs early in the essay.

What, then, is the Occidentalist idea of the West?

That is the problem that vexed a group of prominent Japanese intellectuals who gathered for a conference in Kyoto in 1942. The attack on Pearl Harbor was not the ostensible reason for the conference, but the underlying idea was to find an ideological justification for Japan’s mission to smash, and in effect replace, the Western empires in Asia. The topic of discussion was “how to overcome the modern.” Modernity was associated with the West, and particularly with Western imperialism.

Westernization, one of the scholars said, was like a disease that had infected the Japanese spirit. The “modern thing,” said another, was a “European thing.” Others believed that “Americanism” was the enemy, and that Japan should make common cause with the Europeans to defend old civilizations against the New World (there would certainly have been takers in Europe). There was much talk about unhealthy specialization in knowledge, which had fragmented the wholeness of Oriental spiritual culture. Science was to blame. So were capitalism, the absorption into Japanese society of modern technology, and notions of individual freedom and democracy. These had to be “overcome.”

All agreed that culture — that is, traditional Japanese culture — was spiritual and profound, whereas modern Western civilization was shallow, rootless, and destructive of creative power. The West, particularly the United States, was coldly mechanical, a machine civilization without spirit or soul, a place where people mixed to produce mongrel races. A holistic, traditional Orient united under divine Japanese imperial rule would restore the warm organic Asian community to spiritual health. As one of the participants put it, the struggle was between Japanese blood and Western intellect.

An Occidentalist view of the West seems to require an Orientalist view of the East (or the Rest).

(Filed under Plus ça change)

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by | 3 February 2004 · 11:17 pm

Cultural vs. Situational Factors in East Asian Industrialization

In 1991, Ezra Vogel published a slim volume that attempted to analyze for lay audiences some of the reasons why certain East Asian nations achieved notable success in industrializing. He compared Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which he labelled the “Four Little Dragons.” Here are some highlights, from a book review published in 1994.

British and American advocates of minimal government interference in the marketplace will be countered not just by how different the role of Hong Kong’s government has been from the other little dragons, but by the historical perspective offered in the introductory chapter, where Vogel notes that only the earliest wave of industrialization, in England and later the United States, had the luxury of a rather leisurely pace of industrialization with relatively little government direction. The later waves in continental Europe and then East Asia had to rely much more heavily on government to secure the ever larger amounts of capital, complex technology, and skilled labor needed to leap the ever-widening gap between preindustrial and industrial society. Each new entrant in the race to industrialize had a clearer view of the finish line and ran down a better-trodden path to get there.

East Asian nationalists who, like European and American imperialists before them, tend to credit their success primarily to their own harder work and superior cultural heritage, will be forced to consider Vogel’s lists of the many situational factors that aided their efforts. And anti-American nationalists will object to the prominent position of U.S. aid on those lists. Vogel enumerates new global opportunities offered by the postwar world: (1) The United States, supremely self-confident and fervently anticommunist, was willing to open its markets and universities and share industrial technology with its allies to an unprecedented degree. (2) Thanks to the demise of colonialism and to bitter lessons learned during the prewar depression, international trade was far less restricted than before. (3) The growth of mass consumption enabled smaller countries to achieve manufacturing economies of scale that their domestic markets could not have supported. (4) Large Western corporations acquired a multinational outlook that placed loyalty to profits above loyalty to country of origin, making them willing, for profit, “to buy, sell, and lend anywhere in the world” (p. 11).

Vogel also lists more particular situational advantages East Asia enjoyed during the postwar period: (1) The U.S. poured in massive amounts of aid to build a bulwark against communism. Just as the Japanese economy benefited from U.S. procurement during the Korean War, the other regional economies benefited during the Vietnam War. (2) Confucian conservatives were discredited and large landowners were dispossessed. The postwar governments were not beholden to the traditional elite, so they were free to concentrate on production of new goods, not control of existing assets. (3) A keen awareness of external military threats and of inadequate land and natural resources lent an urgency that made leaders more willing to cooperate and citizens more willing to sacrifice for the common good. (4) Each country had large numbers of refugees and displaced people who comprised an “eager and plentiful labor force” (p. 88) dependent on their labor, not their land, for income. (5) Japan’s pioneering effort provided the little dragons with a goal, a way to get there, and the confidence that they could succeed in their drive to industrialize. As wages rose in Japan, corporations there were willing to transfer limited technology and manufacturing capacity to the other East Asian countries. However, some of those countries, most notably South Korea, succeeded in transferring more technology than Japan intended.

Did particular cultural traditions shared by East Asian societies confer any advantages? Vogel begins his chapter on explanations by downplaying the role of Confucianism in the spread of industrialization. He asks whether the ongoing industrial transformations of Islamic Malaysia and Turkey, Buddhist Thailand, and Roman Catholic Brazil and Mexico will not utterly invalidate cultural tradition as an explanatory factor. He further notes that Confucianism was blamed just as frequently during the 1940s and 1950s for retarding modernization, and asks why China, the heartland of Confucianism, has been slower to industrialize than the periphery, even before the socialist era. In answer, Vogel offers a tantalizing suggestion:

“If anything, just as Max Weber found that the greatest drive to industrialize in his time came in areas located far from Catholic orthodoxy, so in East Asia industrialization prospered in areas far from the centers of traditional Confucian orthodoxy, where trade and commerce were most highly developed. And successes occurred not under the old Confucian-style governments but in societies that had cast them aside for new governments, with very different political systems.” (p. 84) …

It is long past time to lay aside such vague, chauvinist notions as the Protestant ethic, the Confucian ethic, or the samurai spirit, and examine instead the more specific cultural traditions that aided industrialization. Vogel identifies four such traditions shared by Japan and the little dragons: (1) a “meritocratically selected bureaucracy” (p. 93) that not only implemented policy decisions, but formulated them; (2) an entrance examination system that afforded the means to overcome feudal favoritism and channel the most talented people into key leadership positions; (3) an emphasis on group loyalty and subordination of individual to group demands that well suited the level of centralized coordination needed to effect a modern industrial transformation; and (4) a tradition of lifelong self-cultivation.

Of course, the challenge today is not just to find a way for all nations to climb onto an industrial plateau, but to find ways to keep scaling new heights of innovation and growth in a postindustrial world. Orthodoxies of all kinds still seem to be among the primary obstacles.

SOURCE: Review of The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia, by Ezra F. Vogel (Harvard U. Press, 1991).

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Filed under China, economics, industry, Japan, Korea, labor, Vietnam

by | 2 February 2004 · 7:54 pm

A Female Empress in Japan? Why Not?

The Japanese Diet appears to be moving ahead at its normal, glacial pace to provide for the possibility of a female empress. The Guardian reported the story soon after Princess Aiko’s second birthday in December.

Japan is preparing to revise its succession law to allow women to ascend the 2,600-year-old Chrysanthemum Throne for the first time in more than two centuries.

The change could see Princess Aiko, the two-year-old daughter of the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Naruhito, become only the ninth female to head the world’s oldest monarchy.

“We are planning to accept a reigning empress in our final report,” Taro Nakayama, who chairs a parliamentary committee on constitutional issues, said in an interview published yesterday in the Sankei Shimbun newspaper.

Mr Nakayama said the revision could be made as early as next year. “Since Japan had eight reigning empresses in history, succession by a new empress would not be strange,” he said.

Now the Associated Press has gotten around to reporting the same story. Perhaps we’re just seeing a slow release of trial balloons.

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by | 1 February 2004 · 8:08 pm

The German Pacific "Gutpela Taim Bipo"

Germany acquired its colonial empire in the Pacific beginning in the 1880s and lost it abruptly in 1914. Conventional wisdom usually assumes that one colonial administration was as bad as another and that colonial transitions usually made little difference to the indigenous population. However, the new military administrators who took over from the Germans in Micronesia, Samoa, and New Guinea ran so roughshod over their new territories that the inhabitants of all three regions soon began to look back on German times as the good old days–at least according to a meticulously researched revisionist history of that transition entitled The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I, by Hermann Joseph Hiery (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1995).

While Germany’s African colonies were governed by aristocrats, often with the aid of sizable contingents of Schutztruppe (colonial troops), the farflung Pacific colonies were governed by administrators drawn from the middle class, with the aid of tiny police forces.

In New Guinea they replaced the “Perpetuum Bellum Melanesicum” with a Pax Germanica, which attracted more and more unpacified Melanesians. But they also generally let Melanesian villagers settle their own disputes in traditional ways, often by compensation for damages rather than by the trial and conviction of offenders before German courts. This was in marked contrast to the later Australian administration, under whom flogging, the pillory (“Field Punishment No. 1”), and public executions became not only far more common, but far more arbitrarily applied. The Australians also began to dispossess indigenous plantation owners and to impose new restrictions on native dress and education. (For instance, New Guineans were prohibited from speaking proper English and from wearing nonnative garments on the upper half of their bodies.)

In Micronesia, the laissez-faire attitude of the German administration gave way to the much more hands-on approach of the Japanese, who modernized the island economies with unprecedented force and speed. By 1921, the value of exports from Micronesia had already exceeded the value of imports. (And by 1940, the population of Micronesia was over 50% of foreign origin.) The islanders were forced to assimilate to Japanese norms in every respect.

Perhaps the most incompetent new administrator, however, was Col. Robert Logan, New Zealand’s military governor of German Samoa. Whereas Wilhelmine Germany and oligarchical Samoa had shared basic values about social hierarchies and ritual forms of behavior, “the Samoans perceived the ‘democratically’ undifferentiated behavior of New Zealanders as an insult and expression of open disregard for Samoan mores” (p. 250). During the war years, New Zealand bled dry the Samoan treasury, and the fiercely anti-Chinese and anti-American Logan also issued discriminatory edicts against their representatives in Samoa. Worst of all, Logan allowed an influenza-infected ship from New Zealand, the Talune, to dock in 1918, then stubbornly refused either to implement strict quarantines, as the American administrator had done in eastern Samoa, or to accept American medical aid. “Rarely would anti-American prejudice have more disastrous consequences than in Samoa under New Zealand occupation” (p. 174). As a result, about 20% of the population of western Samoa died, while eastern (American) Samoa escaped virtually unscathed. (New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark issued an apology to Samoa in 2002.)

Among the many other gems Hiery’s archival research unearths is a dispirited quote from Woodrow Wilson recorded in the minutes of a meeting at Versailles on 28 January 1919: “the question of deciding the disposal of the German colonies was not vital to the world in any respect.” He seems to have anticipated by exactly half a century Henry Kissinger’s alleged comment about Micronesia in 1969: “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?”

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Filed under Germany, Japan, Micronesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Polynesia

by | 17 January 2004 · 9:35 pm

Asian Acronyms: Did you teach at GWYX or at Guangwai?

Discriminating linguists sometimes distinguish between acronyms pronounced as if they were a word, like NATO and UNICEF; and initialisms pronounced as a series of letters, like IBM or the UN. This distinction breaks down in orthographies that write whole syllables at a time, like Chinese.

In Chinese, for instance, acronyms are composed of the initial syllabic characters of (usually) two-syllable words. So, Peking (= Beijing) University, or Beijing Daxue [lit. ‘NorthCapital BigSchool’] becomes Beida [lit. ‘NorthBig’]. In Korean, Korea University, or Koryo Taehak [lit. ‘HighBeautiful BigSchool’] becomes Kodae [lit. ‘HighBig’]. In Japanese, it’s a bit more complicated. Chinese characters can be pronounced not just in their Chinese loan forms, but as native Japanese words that mean (more or less) the same thing. This is what makes Japanese far and away the most complex, least efficient writing system on earth. In either case, each character is usually pronounced as two syllables, since Japanese had to add final vowels to one-syllable Chinese roots in order to pronounce any final consonants, most of which have been lost in modern Mandarin Chinese. (The same thing happens to current Japanese borrowings from English: ranchi < lunch, setto < set, beisubouru < baseball, and so on.) So the acronym for Hiroshima University, or Hiroshima Daigaku [lit. ‘WideIsland BigSchool’] becomes HiroDai [lit. ‘WideBig’]. The name Hiroshima is native Japanese (the Sino-Japanese pronunciation would be Koutou = Ch. Guangdao), but Daigaku is Sino-Japanese [= Ch. Daxue].

After China adopted the supplementary Latin-based alphabetic pinyin writing system, which is increasingly used in computer input, you could begin to see alphabetic abbreviations, some of them rather alarming and most of them quite unpronounceable. Very few Chinese syllables start with vowels: a- is not uncommon, but e- and o- are rare, and i- and u- are nonexistent. Even worse, initial q-, x-, y-, and z- are way too common.

So, if you were to take the first pinyin letter of each syllable, Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute would be abbreviated GZWGYYXY < GuangZhou WaiGuo YuYan XueYuan [lit. ‘WideState OutCountry SpeechTalk LearnYard’]. You would do better to take the first letter of each two-syllable word rather than the first letter of every single syllable, in which case the same school would end up as GWYX < Guangzhou Waiguo Yuyan Xueyuan [lit. ‘Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute’]. However, most Chinese acronyms are more economical than that. The common name for this particular school was equivalent to “GuangFor” (Guangzhou Foreign), namely, GuangWai [lit. ‘WideOut’]. (It has now merged into GDUFS, the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, which would still qualify for the acronym GuangWai in Chinese. The unfortunate English acronym must certainly be guh-doofs.)

These syllabic acronyms aren’t unique to Chinese. Indonesian (or Malay) uses a Latin-based alphabetic writing system, but is chock full of syllabic as well as alphabetic acronyms (and initialisms). Acronyms seem to proliferate under big bureaucracies–especially if the military has a free hand. Examples of syllabic acronyms in Indonesian include the names of provinces like Sulsel < Sulawesi Selatan [‘south’], Sulut < Sulawesi Utara [‘north’], and Sulteng < Sulawesi Tengah [‘central’] on the island of Sulawesi (Celebes); schools like UnHas < Universitas Hasanuddin in Sulawesi and UnPatti < Universitas Pattimura in Maluku (Molucca); and terms like tapol < tahanan politik [‘political prisoner’].

UPDATE: Like Japanese and Korean, Vietnamese used to be written in Chinese characters and has lots of Chinese loanwords. Judging from the website of Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamese seem to abbreviate by taking the first letter of each separately written syllable. Thus, (ignoring diacritics) Dai hoc Quoc gia Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh [lit. ‘University National City Ho Chi Minh’] is abbreviated DHQG-HCM. Ho Chi Minh City is also abbreviated TP.HCM, which I’m pretty sure is often pronounced Saigon. Otherwise, I don’t have a clue how these abbreviations are pronounced.

FURTHER UPDATE: Korean usage of taehak seems to be diverging from that of its cognates in Japanese (daigaku) and Chinese (daxue). While each term applies to a variety of institutions of tertiary education, Korean now distinguishes between taehak ‘college’ and taehakkyo ‘university’ very much long the lines of American usage. Taehakkyo indicates a larger institution that offers graduate education. So Kodae now stands for Koryo Taehakkyo, as the Chinese characters and Korean title on their homepage shows. I don’t think the cognate forms, Jp. daigakkou and Ch. daxuexiao, even exist, much less serve a similar function.

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by | 15 January 2004 · 3:41 pm

The Bonin Islanders: Ethnogenesis and Exodus

A lot of people have heard of Iwo Jima, the subject of a recent bestseller by James Bradley about one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific War. But far fewer people know much about the Bonin (or Ogasawara) Islands, the next cluster to the north in the chain of volcanic islands that comprise Japan’s Nampo (‘southward, austral’) Islands, which stretches between Tokyo and Tinian. (See map). However, Bradley wrote an earlier book, Flyboys, about the air war over Chichi Jima [‘Father Island’], the main island in the Bonins. According to the Book of the Month Club blurb:

As the U.S. prepared for the final assault on Japan one key to success was knocking out the heavily fortified monitoring station on Chichi Jima, an island about the size of Central Park. But in the course of their daring mission, eight flyboys were shot down. Only one pilot could be rescued–his name was George H. W. Bush. His fellow fliers were not as lucky. They were captured and subjected to a fate so horrible that the records had been sealed until now.

Another recent book, Sorties into Hell: The Hidden War on Chichi Jima, is rather more explicit about that horrible fate.

In October 1946, Colonel Presley Rixey arrived by destroyer at Chichi Jima to repatriate 22,000 Japanese who had been bypassed during the war in the Pacific. He discovered that the downed flyers had been captured, executed, and eaten by certain senior Japanese officers. This is the story of the investigation, the cover-up, and the last hours of those Americans who disappeared into war’s wilderness and whose remains were distributed to the cooking galleys of Chichi Jima.

There also appears to have been a long-running cover-up involving U.S. nuclear weapons on Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima during the 1950s and 1960s. But I’d like to focus on the what happened to the first permanent settlers in the Bonins. (The Sino-Japanese characters for Bonin–actually Bunin, now usually pronounced Mujin–mean ‘absence [of] people’.) Here’s one rough summary that bobbles a few details.

The Bonin Islands might have been an American possession if President Franklin Pierce’s administration had backed up Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry. Chichi Jima was first settled from Honolulu in 1830 by two New Englanders — Aldin B. Chapin and Nathaniel Savory — a Genoese [Matteo Mazarro], and 25 Hawaiians [more accurately, Pacific Islanders mostly unnamed on the ship manifest], who made a living raising provisions for sale to passing whalers. Commodore Perry called at Port Lloyd on 14 June 1853, next day purchased for fifty dollars a plot of land on the harbor, stocked it with cattle brought over in U.S.S. Susquehanna, set up a local government under Savory, promulgated a code of laws, and took possession for the United States. He intended to make Chichi Jima a provisioning stations for the United States Navy and American mail steamers. But this action was repudiated by the Pierce administration in Washington. Thus, in 1861 Japan was able to annex the Bonin Islands without opposition. The government did not disturb the American colony, and serious colonization of the group by Japanese did not start until the arrival of Japanese fisherman and sulfur miners in 1887. Kazan Retto was formally annexed by Japan in 1891 and administered as part of the Tokyo prefecture….

Following the loss of the Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian, etc.) in June 1944, Iwo Jima was heavily fortified as part of Japan’s inner ring of defenses. The Peace Treaty of 1951 recognized Japan’s “residual sovereignty”, but the United States maintained its occupation and control from 1945 to 1961 [actually 1968] when the island were formally returned to Japanese control.

The lengthiest, but still sketchy, account of the earliest years is by the Rev. Lionel Berners Cholmondeley, an Anglican prelate whose book bears the quaint, 19th-century title, The History of the Bonin Islands from the year 1827 to the year 1876 and of Nathaniel Savory, one of the original settlers, to which is added a short supplement dealing with the islands after their occupation by the Japanese (London: Constable, 1915). (Kudos to Tom Tyler at the University of Denver for mounting complete Project Gutenberg editions of this and many other early 19th-century nautical works, including Melville’s Moby Dick and Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast.)

In June 2003, an Asian studies conference in Japan devoted a panel to Exploring the Rich History and Culture of the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands. A sampling of the abstracts follows.

Daniel Long (Tokyo Metropolitan University), The Unknown Linguistic Heritage of the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands – The Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands are unique throughout not only Japan (of which they are part) but indeed throughout the world. They were settled in the early 19th century by a mixed band of settlers speaking European, Polynesia and Micronesian languages (among others). The descendents of these settlers remain on the islands today and speak English (ranging from Standard English to a more local variety) and Japanese as well as a Japanese-English Mixed Language. These linguistic abilities play a large role in the formation of the Bonin Islander identity, and in turn this sense of a unique identity reinforces language usage.

Robert Eldridge (Osaka University), The U.S. Naval Administration of Ogasawara Islands, 1945-1968 – The United States occupied and administered the Ogasawara, or Bonin, Islands from 1945 until 1968, when the islands were returned to Japan…. While the occupation was undertaken for strategic reasons, much like that over Okinawa, there were several differences in the way that the administration was organized. Firstly, the actual direct administration did not begin until 1951. Secondly, the Navy was in charge. Thirdly, only islanders of Western descent were allowed to return to the islands and former residents of Japanese descent were denied permission to return throughout the period. Fourthly, education and local government was undertaken in English (and not Japanese as was the case in Okinawa). Finally, there was a strong effort by some U.S. Naval officials to encourage the permanent separation of the islands from Japan and the adoption of U.S. citizenship by the islanders.

Junko Konishi (Shizuoka University), The Adoption of Micronesian Song and Dance by Ogasawara Islanders – It was the Oubeikei [‘Euro-American heritage’] Islanders of Ogasawara who brought the Micronesian-Japanese songs and the Nanyou odori [‘South Seas dance’] to Ogasawara. The original forms of these songs and dance were the product of a cultural syncretism between Japanese and Micronesian cultures under the Japanese administration (1914-1945). Oubeikei-Ogasawarans adopted these cultural forms, which reflected the ambiguous identity of the Japanese-educated Micronesians. Soon after it was introduced into Ogasawara in the 1930s, the Nanyou odori spread among Japanese-Ogasawarans as well, and was transformed into its Japanese form with respect to melodic movements, the pronunciation of the lyrics, and body movements. The Micronesian-Japanese songs, on the other hand, were sung mostly in private by some Oubeikei-Ogasawarans until 1988 when a cassette tape of island songs (including these) was released to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Ogasawara’s return to Japan. Songs on the tape, distributed among the villagers, maintained their distinct forms, especially in melodic movements.

If I had presented a paper there, my imaginary abstract would read something like this:

The Bonin Islanders: Ethnogenesis and Exodus – Before the Japanese administration took over the Bonins in 1875, the 70-odd residents there were a motley crew of diverse heritage tracing back to Europe, North America, Africa, and various Pacific Islands ranging from Hawai‘i and Tahiti to Guam and Pohnpei. But, vis-à-vis the Japanese, they abruptly became Bonin Islanders, an ethnic minority subject to the Emperor, like the Ainu in Hokkaido. It was a classic case of ethnogenesis. Until 1945, it behooved the Islanders to identify themselves as Japanese, to intermarry with Japanese settlers, to move to the main islands to pursue educational or business opportunities, even to serve in the military. But when the Americans took over after the war, residual English language skills and non-Japanese heritage conferred more advantage. When the Americans offered them the opportunity to choose U.S. citizenship when the Bonins reverted to Japan, more than a few grabbed the chance and joined the exodus to Guam, Hawai‘i, or California, where they dissolved into the larger population, as did those who remained behind as Japanese. Only subtle traces now remain of their unique, but ephemeral, common heritage.

UPDATE: Prof. Daniel Long of Tokyo Metropolitan University, perhaps the world’s foremost Boninologist, was kind enough to suggest a few corrections and elaborations, which have been incorporated into the text above. He assures me that the farflung former Bonin Islanders hold worldwide reunions every year or two.

I should also have mentioned that Tom Tyler credits Danny Long for his electronic text and reproductions of photographs from Cholmondeley’s work. Prof. Long has also compiled a website on Bonin language and culture that includes a very extensive bibliography of sources (at least when the TMU server is working, which seems to be every other week).

Amritas notes an earlier novel by Hank Searls (author of Overboard) inspired by Bonin history, Kataki: A Novel (McGraw-Hill, 1987), sort of a “Chichi Jima Candidate” tale:

The descendants of 19th century American settlers on one of Japan’s Bonin Islands are caught up in WW II. Though loyal to the emperor, they are suspect. When 12-year-old Matt Bancroft’s mother is killed by a strafing American plane, he vows kataki (revenge). In the confusion of Japan’s collapse, Matt assumes the identity of a dead son of missionaries and is “repatriated” to America. Forty years later, he is manipulated by a rabid Japanese secret society into thinking that Vice-President Bush was the “murdering” pilot.

Gotta watch out for those missionary kids.

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Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, migration, U.S.

by | 14 January 2004 · 8:42 pm

Kobayashi Kiyochika: Woodblock Print War ‘Photographer’

I can’t leave the subject of woodblock print artists without mentioning Kobayashi Kiyochika (surname first), a woodblock print artist trained in Western art and photographic techniques. After fighting as a low-level samurai for the Tokugawa shogunate against the successful restoration of the Meiji emperor, he found himself at loose ends after the fighting stopped.

In the beginning he tried to keep his neck above water-level with some odd jobs. Later from about 1875 on, he tried his luck as self-taught painter. He had met Charles Wirgman, an English painter, cartoonist and correspondant for a British newspaper in Yokohama. Kobayashi studied arts with him for a short period. He also met Shimooka Renjo, a photographer, from whom he learned the principles of photography.

From 1876 on Kobayashi Kiyochika created his first woodblock prints, scenes from Tokyo. Although his prints were basically kept in traditional Japanese style, [he] used Western elements like perspective, the effect of light and the graduations of shadows. By that time he probably had read about the French impressionists and seen photographs of their works in newspapers.

After 1880 [his] style became more traditional. He also turned to satirical cartoons and illustrations for newspapers and magazines. During the Sino-Japanese war the artist made about 80 war prints. War prints were like a last commercial resurgence of the old ukiyo-e business. Kobayashi’s war prints are regarded as among the best in this genre – with a masterly play on the effects of light.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts mounted an exhibition of late Meiji prints in 2001, and still has many such prints online. Among the most striking of Kobayashi’s prints are:

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by | 13 January 2004 · 10:19 pm

Karhu and Jacoulet – Foreign Japanese Woodblock Print Artists

The two most famous exponents of the art of the Japanese woodblock print in [the 20th] century are not Japanese. Clifton Karhu, whose views of Kyoto’s traditional architecture can be seen on the walls of European galleries and American museums, was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1927. Paul Jacoulet, creator of a gold and platinum Asia that existed mostly in the artist’s fantasy-filled imagination, came to Japan at an early age from France.At first glance, other than being foreign woodblock print artists, these two men would seem to have little in common. Karhu carves his own blocks and adheres to the relatively new Sosaku Hanga (Creative Print) school. Jacoulet, on the other hand, adopted the style of the Shin Hanga (New Print) movement, whose members followed in the footsteps of such ukiyo-e (floating world picture) masters as Utamaro and Hiroshige, who designed and directed the production of their prints, leaving the carving of blocks and pulling of paper to master craftsmen.

For me, Jacoulet the Liar is the more interesting, for the following reason.

Jacoulet earned himself a place in history not just as an artist but as a source of information on Micronesia under Japanese rule. He was one of very few foreigners trusted enough by Japanese officials to be allowed to travel through a vast area of mandated territory in the Western Pacific which the Japanese military was fortifying illegally in preparation for war. Jacoulet’s disdain for the real world of political and economic forces seems to have been well known. As Yun Hwa Rah put it, “The sensei [master] made a point of not reading any newspapers. He said they were full of lies.” In contrast to his postwar prints, which are almost entirely the product of fantasy, his pre-World War II work is grounded in real experiences. In his 1928 watercolor, Talaos Boy, Jacoulet meticulously records his young fisherman subject’s sunken chest and distended belly, signs that life in the South Seas fell far short of the paradise depicted by Gaugin and other European painters.

These quotes are from an article by Andrew Horvat entitled Karhu and Jacoulet: Western Artists Working in an Eastern Medium, a revised version of an article that appeared in the 40th anniversary issue (October-December 1994) of The Japan Quarterly, published by Asahi Shimbun. Jacoulet’s depictions of Yapese will illustrate his blend of accuracy, especially in props, and fantasy, especially in colors and faces.

  • Belle de Yap et orchidees, Ouest Carolines (1934) accurately depicts a traditional woman’s hairdo, tattoos, betelnut-stained lips, grass skirt, and neckcord indicating a woman who has passed puberty, but goes a bit overboard on the decorative cloth strips.
  • Un homme de Yap, Ouest Carolines (1935) accurately depicts a traditional Yapese man’s hairdo, three-pronged comb (or pick), pierced and distended earlobe, betelnut-stained lips, and starfruit hanging in the background, but goes overboard in the necklace decorations.
  • Femme tatouee de Falalap, Ouest Carolines (1935) accurately depicts tattoos, shells, Ulithian lavalava patterns, and even windswept hair, but the face is right off the kabuki stage.
  • Fleurs violettes, Tomil, Yap (1937) accurately depicts a woman’s hairdo, neckcord, betelnut-stained lips and teeth, and hanging flowers. (This is my personal favorite. Tomil is where I first learned to chew betel nut.)
  • Sur le sable, Rhull, Yap (1937) accurately depicts a married woman’s sitting posture, neckcord, and possibly even bracelet, but makes the woven frond basket look too much like canvas, and the grass skirt look too much like vinyl.
  • Yagourouh et Mio, Yap, Ouest Carolines (1938) accurately depicts the grass skits, lack of neckcord, and perhaps unruly hair of two pubescent girls, but makes the faces look too much like the Japanese moga (‘modern girl’)
  • Le betel, Yap (1940) accurately depicts a man’s loincloth, decorative comb, leaf armband, bamboo betel lime dispenser, and pepper betel leaf, but makes the hair look too much like a Japanese moga.

After the war Jacoulet progressively loses touch with reality. It’s not just that memories of Micronesia fade, because certain aspects remain remarkably accurate.

  • La jeune chef Saragan et son esclave Forum, Tomil, Yap (1948) accurately recognizes the caste system of Yap, but fakes the colors and the decorative carvings.
  • La tresseuse de paniers, Remoue, Yap (1948) fairly accurately depicts a woman weaving basketlike objects, but fakes both the color and the weave, so she looks like she’s weaving giant peapods.
  • Le fille du chef, Mogomog [Ulithi] (1953) is almost as much pure fantasy as his mermaid (1951).

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