Japan
Foundation/ISTR/CAPSTRANS/
University of Wollongong
Before and After Defeat: Japan as
the Occupier and the Occupied
2-3 December 2011
University of Wollongong
WORKSHOP PROGRAM
Japan Foundation/ISTR/CAPSTRANS/
University of Wollongong
Before and After Defeat: Japan as the
Occupier and the Occupied
Welcome to the University of Wollongong!
This workshop has been kindly supported and funded by the Japan Foundation,
the Institute for Social Transformation Research (ISTR), the Centre for Asia Pacific
Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), and the University of Wollongong.
We wish to thank all of our sponsors for their generous assistance in enabling us to
bring you all together for this workshop. And thanks to all of you for taking time out
of your very busy schedules and generously sharing your research with this
project.
The aim of this workshop is to further develop our proposed chapters and to
develop coherent themes for our edited book on Japan as the occupier and
occupied.
We hope you find the workshop presentations and the ensuing discussions
informative, stimulating and enjoyable.
Christine de Matos
Convenor
Mark E. Caprio
Convenor
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The Project
While there have been some studies that have examined Japan’s role as the
occupier in its colonised and occupied territories throughout East and Southeast
Asia and the Pacific, and others have separately considered Japan’s history as the
occupied during the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), little research has
been conducted on these seemingly contradictory aspects of Japanese history
together. The moment of defeat in 1945 artificially dissects these continuous parts
of Japan's history. This workshop and its subsequent edited book aims to fill this
gap by crossing the 1945 divide to compare and contrast issues that document
Japan as both the occupier and the occupied at the bureaucratic, military, and
civilian levels. It is important that each chapter crosses this historical ‘divide’. In
addition, the outcomes will shed further light on the practice of military occupation
more generally—an issue of continuing significance and one that can further an
understanding of military occupations within the broad paradigms of peace
studies.
The primary outcome of the workshop will be a collection of papers edited by the
workshop convenors. The book aims to:
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contribute to a greater understanding of military occupations through an
examination of Japan's role as an occupier and as the occupied;
create a forum for emerging and established scholars of colonisation and
occupation to have dialogue and share their research;
publish the outcome of that dialogue in an edited collection of papers;
cross the 1945 divide in Japan's 20th century history.
Themes to be explored at the workshop and in the book include:
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The gendered impacts of occupation;
Daily life under occupation
Resistance under occupation;
Labour, class and occupation
Performances of power;
Enacting occupation policies
Symmetries and differences between colonialism and occupation
Repatriation issues;
Memory and nostalgia;
Human rights
Collaboration;
Literature and film;
Defining occupation.
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Workshop Program
Building 67, Room 101
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Day 1 Themes: Living Occupation, Remembering
Occupation (Friday 2 Dec)
Day 2 Themes: Labour and Gender under Occupation
(Sat 3 December)
9.00am
Arrival of participants
8.45am
Arrival of participants
9.15-9.30
Welcome
Welcome from convenors and introductions
9.00-10.50
Panel 5: Work under Occupation (30 min per
presentation, 20 min discussion)
9.30-10.40
Panel 1: Constitutions and human rights (plus
Korean paper) (30 min per presentation, 10 min
discussion, 15-20 min discussion for paper/outlines)
Presentation: Shigeru Sato, 'Japanese farmers and
fishers in Southeast Asia during WWII: The case of
Tawao in Sabah '
Presentation: Lydia Jose and Ricardo Jose,
‘Japanese-sponsored Philippine Constitution and
American-made Japanese Constitution’
10.40-11.00
11.00-12.40
Presentations: Christine de Matos & David Palmer,
'Labour during war and occupation: Korean forced
labour and Allied Occupation labour in Hiroshima'
Outline discussion: Vera Mackie ‘Human rights in
the constitution of 1947: The international context’
10.50-11.10
Morning tea
Outline discussion: Atsuko Aoki, ‘Reintegrating
Korea in Postwar Japanese Memory: Former
Japanese Residents in Colonial Korea and their
Activities Before/During/After Repatriation’
11.10-12.30
Panel 6: Gender and occupation I (30 min per paper, 20
min discussion)
Presentation: Maho Toyoda, 'State, Sterilisation and
Reproductive Rights in the US Occupation of Japan'
Morning tea
Presentation: Mary Reisel, ‘The impact of Western
ideologies on the Japanese world of erotic
entertainment and amateur sex work’
Panel 2: Korea (30 min per presentation, 20 min
discussion, plus 20 min discussion for paper)
Skype presentation: Igor Saveliev, ‘Trapped in the
Contested Borderland: The Wartime Relocation of
Koreans to Sakhalin and the Transformation of their
Identity’
Paper discussion: Brian Yecies, ‘Disarming
Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras’
12.30-1.30
Lunch
1.30-2.30
Panel 7: Gender and occupation II (30 min per paper, 10
min discussion, 15-20 min discussion for paper)
Presentation: Mark McLelland, ‘Good wife, wise
lover: Reinventing the conjugal couple during the Allied
Occupation of Japan’
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Presentation: Mark E. Caprio, 'The Lingering
Collaborator Issue in Contemporary Korean Politics
and Society'
12.40-1.40
Lunch
1.40-3.00
Panel 3: Repatriation and Memory (30 min per
presentation, 20 min discussion)
Presentation: John Kwok, 'Singapore Memories of
the Japanese Occupation: The first attempt at
building Singapore's first WWII memorial'
Paper discussion: Curtis Anderson Gayle, ‘The
past within the present: Narratives of tribulation by
women during the Allied Occupation’
2.30-2.50
Afternoon tea break (NOTE: no afternoon tea provided)
2.50-3.30
Joint discussion, where we go from here, thoughts on
structure/form/themes of book and further
instructions from convenors.
3.30pm
FINISH
Presentation: Miyume Tanji, ‘Remaining
importance of Japan’s wartime occupation of Guam’
3.00-3.20
Afternoon tea
3.20-4.35
Panel 4: China, Borneo and Ryūkyūs (30 min
presentation, 10 min discussion, 15-20 min discussion
for paper/outlines)
Presentation: Ooi Keat Gin 'Cash and Blood: The
Chinese Community and the Japanese occupation
of Borneo, 1941-1954'
Outline Discussion: Jason Lim, ‘Relations
between Japan and the Republic of China’
Paper discussion: Matthew Augustine, ‘Divided
Islanders: The Repatriation of ‘Ryūkyūans’ from
Occupied Japan’
4.40-5.00
Convenor summing up and instructions, back to
Medina before dinner.
7.30pm
Workshop dinner at Baan Krua Thai
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Chapter Abstracts
Aoki Atsuko, ‘Reintegrating Korea in Postwar Japanese Memory: Former Japanese Residents in
Colonial Korea and their Activities Before/During/After Repatriation’
My paper deals with the repatriation of Japanese residents from former colonial Korea and
its impact in the postwar Japanese society. The particular focus will be placed on Japanese
resident organisations formed in the liberated Korea and their role in organising and
facilitating repatriation, and in shaping public discourse on “Korea” in postwar Japan,
spanning from the immediate postwar years up to the early 1960s. The objective of this study
is to delineate the continuities of residents’ colonial/imperial consciousness and identity
from the prewar into postwar years, and how they influenced the positioning of “Korea” in
postwar Japanese public discourse. The first part of the paper overviews the process in which
civilian groups of Japanese residents were formed in the liberated Korea and how they
organised and assisted carrying out repatriation. Then, the paper examines the evolution of
such groups after repatriation, into organisations promoting and assisting the settlement and
integration of repatriates in postwar Japan and demanding the government for compensation
of their lost oversea assets. Many former bureaucrats of the Government-General of Korea
were involved in the establishment and management of such organisations. In the late 1950s,
when the normalisation of relations with South Korea emerged as an imminent issue for
Japan, the repatriates organisations became actively engaged in the promotion of the
normalisation process, redeeming their identity as Korea experts and exerting a certain
degree of influence in the political and business elite. Chuo Nikkan Kyokai and Yuho
Kyokai, the two most documented organisations, will be examined in this study.
Augustine, Matthew, ‘Divided Islanders: The Repatriation of ‘Ryūkyūans’ from Occupied Japan’
In the wake of the Japanese defeat in World War II, the United States military not only
occupied Japan but also its southernmost island prefecture, Okinawa. Renaming Okinawa as
the Ryūkyū Islands, the US military government began dismantling Japanese rule that dated
back from the annexation of the Ryūkyū Kingdom in 1879. One of the most critical US
occupation policy objectives that bolstered this process was the repatriation of over 188,000
“Ryūkyūans” from Japan proper. This paper will analyse how repatriation played a central
role in the transformation of Japan from an empire into a divided nation-state, stripped of its
sovereignty over Okinawa and its inhabitants. The repatriation of Ryūkyūans ultimately
served as an important justification for the separation of the Ryūkyūs from Japan in the name
of perpetuating direct US military rule in the strategic islands.
Caprio, Mark E., 'The Lingering Collaborator Issue in Contemporary Korean Politics and
Society'
From even before Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910 it defined as one of its
primary goals the recruitment and developing of a cadre of Koreans to assist in the
administration and policing of the territory. Toward this endeavor Japanese administrations
in Korea enjoyed a degree of success. Recently the Republic of Korean government
comprised a list of thousands of ch’inilp’a (members of the Japan-friendly faction) in an
effort to identify those who had betrayed the Korean people and nation during the period of
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Japanese rule. While the northern Koreans generally succeeded in dealing with this issue
rather swiftly, the southern Korean has only recently been able to deal with the issue of
colonial-era collaboration. This delay was caused by a number of factors, among the more
important being the support that the American military government showed to these Koreans
after it occupied southern Korea in the wake of Japan’s defeat. This paper will consider the
Korean collaborator across the two occupations of the Korean peninsula, first by the
Japanese (1910-1945), and then in southern Korea by the United States (1945-1948) as a
colonial and postcolonial issue. How did the Japanese recruit Koreans, and what advantages
did these collaborators enjoy in colonial Korea? Under what terms did these efforts attempt
to establish “guilt” in terms of collaboration with the enemy? What consequences did
Korean society pay by the failure to identify and prosecute these people soon after Korea’s
1945 liberation? What is to be gained by compiling ch’inilp’a lists at present, considering
that most (if not all) are no longer alive?
de Matos, Christine and David Palmer, 'Labour during war and occupation: Korean forced
labour and Allied Occupation labour in Hiroshima'
These two papers will explore models and practices of coerced labour under conditions of
war and occupation. The first, by David Palmer, will analyse Japan’s use of forced Korean
labour during the war and free Korean labour after the war under Allied Occupation, using
the example the Mitsubishi shipyard complex in Hiroshima City. The second, by Christine
de Matos, will provide a study of labour under Australian occupation between 1946 and
1952. While the two papers have different perspectives on the labour systems in Japan
during wartime and later Occupation, they address key related issues that deserve broader
discussion.
The first paper focuses on Korean workers who were brought to Mitsubishi by force under
company and military authority in the last years of World War II and their eventual liberation
after Japan’s defeat. Japan’s surrender and the Allied Occupation allowed many Koreans to
suffer under this system to return to their homeland. The accounts these workers have
related, through court testimony and through interviews conducted by David Palmer, clearly
indicate that they were taken against their will from their Korean villages and confined
against their will during 1944 and 1945 until the atomic bombing of Hiroshima destroyed the
ability of authorities to control them. Many of these Koreans initially welcomed the atomic
bombing because they gained their freedom. However, when they discovered later of their
exposure to radiation poisoning they realised that they actually had a common bond with
other Japanese workers and civilians who suffered from the atomic bomb.
The Japanese military regime used the deceptive term “conscripted labour” for these Korean
workers, while the common term used by Koreans seeking compensation from Mitsubishi
and the Japanese government has been “forced labour.” However, the radical contrast in
labor conditions these Koreans experienced – under Japanese military rule and then under
Allied Occupation – requires a clearer distinction between the real conditions of “unfree”
and “free” labour in these two eras, with “unfree/free” defined primarily by whether a
worker has or does not have the ability to freely engage in or leave one’s place of
employment. The issue of wages (payment or nonpayment) also is a factor. This analysis
therefore brings therefore does not accept the notion of “two occupations” when applied to
the Japanese home islands, with one being Japanese during wartime, the other being Allied
forces after the war. Koreans used as slave labour at Mitsubishi Hiroshima under Japanese
military rule did not experience “occupation” – they experienced fascism. Regardless of the
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Allied Occupation’s faults and abuses, the Allied Occupation cannot be equated with
Japanese fascism in wartime, and any analysis of labour systems in these two eras must
consider this fundamental difference.
The second paper highlights that under the Allied Occupation of Japan, the imposition of
democratic reform via military occupation is inherently problematic. This is quite visible in
reforms pertaining to trade unions and the labour movement under conditions of occupation.
By focusing on the Australian component of the occupation force in Hiroshima prefecture,
part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), this paper will examine the
tensions between and within the various roles of the occupation force as a protector of new
labour rights, as an employer of Japanese labour, and in the surveillance of labour in relation
to cold war prerogatives. While the levels of coercion in this example are much more subtle,
the paper will argue that the colonial power paradigm, based on race/whiteness, gender and
class, informed Australian occupation labour practices. This included a racial differentiation
between the Korean and Japanese occupied in the eyes of the occupiers, especially as
military and political tensions increased on the Korean peninsular.
Gayle, Curtis Anderson, ‘The past within the present: Narratives of tribulation by women during
the Allied Occupation’
This paper will bring to light an important historical elision between the wartime era and the
subsequent Allied Occupation. By the year 1950, the effort to construct a new kind of
subjectivity for themselves, as Japanese women, took place against the backdrop of the
Reverse Course, the start of the Korean War, and a regime of domestic oppression and
violence. By examining specific cases of how certain women experienced and rendered the
Allied Occupation through its effects upon the body (身体感覚・身体表現), the presentation
will link the harsh material realities of daily life with implicit and explicit memories of the
wartime era within Japan. In contrast to male-organised resistance based upon immediate
structural change, revolution and political ideologies, women often expressed their material
trials and psychological tribulations in terms of how this was affecting the body and how,
moreover, it was also indicative of a deeper suppression of subjectivity, one that threatened
to `re-colonise` Japanese women through state-driven forms of patriarchy that were part of
the gradual repression of social and political dissent becoming all too apparent after the start
of the Reverse Course in 1947. The pressing issue of subjectivity raised the disturbing
possibility of a return to conditions of patriarchy and oppression of women during the war, a
time when Japan was not just an occupier of Asia but also headed by a regime in which
women were treated literally as `reproductive organs` of the imperial state.
Jose, Lydia N. Yu and Ricardo Trota Jose, ‘Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied:
Japanese-sponsored Philippine Constitution and American-made Japanese Constitution’
Japan during World War II ordered the Filipino political elite to write a constitution in
preparation for the launch of the Japanese-sponsored Philippine republic. After the war,
Japan had to take on a contrary role: that of a state occupied by the US. As such, the Japanese
political elite was instructed by the US through Douglas MacArthur to write a constitution.
This chapter will have two major parts: the first part, to be written by Ricardo Trota Jose is
about Japan as the occupying power of the Philippines, while the second part, to be written
by Lydia N. Yu Jose is about Japan under the US occupation. The focus of both parts is the
interaction between the political elites of the occupied and the officials of the occupying
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power as the two parties negotiated over the terms of the constitution the occupier mandated
to be written.
The main argument of the chapter is this: The Japanese military administration in the
Philippines, for practical reasons, had to give some concessions to the Filipinos’ clamor for a
democratic form of government, already stated in the 1935 constitution. On the other hand,
as an occupied state, the Japanese elite were able to get from the US a major concession for
its tradition: the nature of its polity.
In developing the argument, the authors will look into the actual conditions of the
Philippines under Japan and of Japan under the US at the time of the writing of the two
constitutions. And in doing so, they may observe that Japan had the difficult task of presiding
over the Filipino constitution makers whose ideals (democracy, freedom, independence)
were similar to those of the general public. On the other hand, Japan under the US
occupation was divided between some sectors of the general public (women, labour groups,
socialists) who looked forward to emancipation from authoritarian rule, and the conservative
political elite who wanted to preserve many of the authoritarian features of the pre-World
War II Japanese polity.
The authors’ tentative conclusion is this: Japan as a militaristic, authoritarian occupier
borrowed deliberately and unavoidably from the democratic tendencies of the Philippines
and the democratic ideology of the US in instructing the Filipinos to write a constitution. As
a result, the Japanese-mandated constitution of the Philippines did not leave any lasting
legacy that is typically Japanese. On the other hand, Japan under the US, while being forced
by the occupying power to democratise, tried to fight off some of the democratic principles
being imposed on it. The present gap between actual situations in Japanese society and what
the American-made constitution stipulates as well as the continuing controversy over some
parts of the present constitution (Article 9, status of the emperor), are as much a legacy of the
postwar conservative Japanese political elite as the American-made constitution is a legacy.
Kwok, John, 'Singapore Memories of the Japanese Occupation: The first attempt at building
Singapore's first WWII memorial'
In 1967, a memorial called the Memorial to the Civilian Victims of the Japanese Occupation
was erected to commemorate the memory of civilian victims of the Japanese Occupation in
Singapore. This memorial has been a subject of study in Singapore centring on the question,
what and who does it commemorate? Part of the answer however, can be gleaned from the
first attempt at building Singapore’s First WWII memorial in the 1940s. How the locals,
especially the Chinese majority in Singapore, remember Japan as the Occupier began as soon
as the Pacific War ended. The memories of the Singapore Chinese of the Japanese
Occupation, especially the massacres of the Chinese, had fostered a firm belief that the
Chinese had borne the brunt of the Japanese Occupation (which, in many ways, they had).
Their bitter disappointment with the results of the War Crimes trials in Singapore further
fuelled their desire to erect and dedicate a memorial exclusively to their war dead. Archival
records from the British Military Administration files will show for the first time,
Singapore’s first attempt to remember the memories of the fallen during the Japanese
Occupation with a war memorial, an attempt that first raised the question in Singapore; who
would a local WWII memorial commemorate?
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Lim, Jason, ‘Relations between Japan and the Republic of China’
This chapter looks at the changing relationship between the Japanese Empire and the
Republic of China (ROC) between 1928 and 1972, from the latter’s perspective. With the
end of the Warlord Era and the promulgation of a new National Government in Nanjing, the
ROC soon had to face encroaching Japanese political and military interests. In 1931, the
Japanese invaded and occupied Manchuria, eventually creating a new puppet State of
Manchoukuo in 1934. In 1937, war broke out between Japan and China and the conflict
lasted until 1945. The ROC survived on the mainland until it was driven out by the
Communists in 1949. Japan recognised the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1972.
During the time of Japanese militarism and ultra-nationalism in the 1930s, Japan sought to
place herself on equal terms with Western imperial powers in East and Southeast Asia. Japan
needed access to resources and land to feed her growing population and meet the nation’s
industrial needs. The Chinese were wary of the Japanese as the latter had often interfered in
China’s domestic affairs since 1901, when Japan joined seven Western nations to suppress
the Boxer Rebellion by invading Beijing. The Chinese were also familiar with the growing
power of the far right in Europe and the call for lebensraum (living space) rang loud not only
in Germany, but also in Japan as she eyed the vast land of Manchuria. Japanese children
were taught from young that the Chinese people as a race were ‘lower than bugs’; by the time
Japanese boys entered the military, they were told to ‘kill all, burn all, loot all’. Japan felt the
need to prove to the rest of the world that the Empire was superior to China in order to quell
any belief that Japanese culture was borrowed from Chinese culture.
In addition to the image Japan wanted to present as a modernising political, military and
economic power in Asia, the Chinese saw Japan as an empire that sought to tear China apart
by keeping the wealthier parts of the ROC for herself. Hence, the formation of the so-called
‘State of Manchoukuo’ was not only an occasion for the Japanese to dismember the ROC, it
was also a slap in the face of the National Government of the ROC as the last Qing Emperor,
Puyi, was installed as the new Emperor of Manchoukuo. In 1938, the Japanese also installed
a collaborationist government under Wang Jingwei in Nanjing. The Japanese had no
intention to govern captured parts of the ROC the way it administered Taiwan.
Collaborationist regimes such as that of the Nanjing Government and the royal court at
Manchoukuo were installed because Japanese planned to dominate East and Southeast Asia
through a ‘Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’.
From the perspective of the ROC, therefore, the year 1945 marked a turning point in
international relations. When the Japanese surrendered, it not only marked the end of the
Pacific theatre of World War II, it also resulted in the return of Taiwan to the ROC. The start
of the Cold War meant that Japan was now of particular importance to the ROC because of
the American presence from 1945 to 1952. A ‘pacified’ Japan was now regarded as an ally
through the United States. It paved the way for the signing of the Treaty of Taipei in 1952,
officially marking the end of the war for the ROC. The ROC also stopped calls for war
reparations from Japan after the National Government moved to Taiwan in the end of 1949.
The need for Japan as an ally was paramount during the Cold War as Chiang Kai-shek,
President of the ROC, had to face the possibility of a military invasion by the Communists
from the 1950s. Taiwan, on which the ROC was based, was also of special economic and
cultural interest to Japan as it was a former Japanese colony. The relationship between the
ROC and Japan officially ended in 1972 when Tokyo switched recognition of ‘China’ from
Taipei to Beijing but unofficial relations continued until today.
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Mackie, Vera, ‘Human rights in the constitution of 1947: The international context’
Not available.
McLelland, Mark, ‘Good wife, wise lover: Reinventing the conjugal couple during the Allied
Occupation of Japan’
This presentation looks at the new role that “sexual satisfaction” was considered to play in
the postwar marital relationship through a discussion of the influential “couple magazine”
Fūfu seikatsu (Conjugal couple lifestyle). In the prewar period the representation of marital
sexuality had been out of bounds but a new genre of marriage magazines placed a “proper
sex life” at the very heart of the “new” or “modern” marriage. These magazines traced a
“course” of sexual discovery that dating couples should take from walking side by side, to
hand-holding, to kissing and finally to the sexual acts performed on the wedding night. Both
male and female partners were encouraged to educate themselves in an “ars amatoria” that
would help them understand not only their own sexual responsiveness but how to attend to
the newly discovered needs of their partners. In these texts American dating practices and
American lifestyles in general (complete with all the necessary time-saving home
accessories) were held up as an ideal for Japanese couples to follow. The publication in 1953
of Alfred Kinsey’s volume on the sex lives of American women further reinforced the
perceived need for Japanese women to “catch up” with their more liberated peers.
Ooi Keat Gin, 'Cash and Blood: The Chinese Community and the Japanese occupation of Borneo,
1941-1954'
In less than four months since the assault by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) on the United
States (US) Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i, Imperial Japanese forces invaded
and occupied territories that subsequently became known as ‘Southeast Asia’. Strategically
situated as a landing base for aerial operations on two prized targets of the region, namely
British Malaya to the west and Dutch Java to the south, Borneo was occupied with scant
resistance from the Western colonial regimes. Imperial Japan occupied Borneo from
December 1941 to September 1945. Administratively the island was partitioned into Kita
Boruneo (Northern Borneo) comprising pre-war British Borneo that came under the Imperial
Japanese Army (IJA) whereas Minami Boruneo (Southern Borneo), pre-war Dutch Borneo
was ruled by IJN. Overall it appeared that both IJA and IJN differentiated the multiethnic
populace between indigenes and Chinese in possessing different attitudes of each group that
were translated into treatment and policies towards them. On hindsight the Chinese
community throughout Borneo received the proverbial short straw of Imperial Japan’s
iron-fisted military-dominated administration.
Focussing on ‘Japan as the occupier’ this paper draws attention to two conspicuous dictates
of Japanese wartime administration on the Chinese of Borneo, viz. the imposition of shu-jin
(‘blood money’) on Kita Boruneo, and pogroms undertaken in Minami Boruneo. A closer
scrutiny of these two developments is aimed at attempting to understand Japanese intent and
purpose towards the Chinese community and, in turn, to evaluate the impact of such actions
on the latter. It shall be argued that the shu-jin demands were calculated to financially cripple
the Chinese who hitherto dominated the economy and in turn to allow the IJA to seize
control with forcible cooperation from them. In this manner the Chinese would be dependent
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on the Japanese. In Southern Borneo on the other hand, owing to its professed policy of
permanent possession (eikyū senryū) the IJN intended to eliminate all vestiges of the past
including the Chinese commercial and trading elite that possessed the lion’s share of the
economy. This break with the past to facilitate to start anew led to the elimination of
prominent members of society, in the case of the Chinese community, the captains’ of
industry and commerce as well as intellectuals and communal leaders.
Reisal, Mary, ‘The impact of Western ideologies on the Japanese world of erotic entertainment
and amateur sex work’
The chapter will present and analyse the extensive impact of the American occupation on the
development and proliferation of non-professional sex services and erotic entertainment in
Japan. As a result of enforced legal enactments imposed on Japan after the war, the
authorities were obliged to illegalise prostitution and many other services that existed in
Japan for centuries and had never been considered illegal in the past. The purpose of the
American forces was to regulate prostitution and keep it under control, but the new
regulations led to the opposite result: both workers and customers developed many new
forms of erotic exchanges that can not officially be included in the definition of prostitution,
and therefore cannot be stopped. Thus the world of paid erotic services expanded, developed
and reached all layers of the population.
The process of legalisation of prostitution began already in the end of the nineteenth century
with the Mariz Luz event, which had also raised awareness to ideas of human rights in Japan.
However, until today, many intellectuals, politicians and commentators believe that the
American interference and the enforcement of Western way of thinking on Japanese culture
should have been stopped on time. These conflicting attitudes and the results of the
American interference in Japanese laws and mentality will be the focus of the chapter which
will also present the development of the amateur sex world from the forties onwards.
Sato Shigeru, 'Japanese farmers and fishers in Southeast Asia during WWII: The case of Tawao in
Sabah'
Japanese farmers and fishers from humble backgrounds immigrated to British North Borneo
as part of the ‘Japanese Diaspora’ in prewar years. They were mostly employed by Japanese
zaibatsu that were expanding overseas. Those workers contributed to transforming the area
called Tawao from primeval jungles into what is now a vibrant multi-ethnic city. When the
Pacific War broke out the British imprisoned those Japanese settlers but soon the invading
Japanese Army ‘liberated’ them and imprisoned the British instead. In late 1944 when the
Allied attacks intensified to ‘liberate’ Borneo, many of those Japanese civilians were
conscripted to join the Army. Some volunteered, as their economic foundation had collapsed.
In early 1945 the Army command ordered them to shift to the southwestern part of Borneo in
a manner similar to the infamous ‘Sandakan Death March’. Their marches did not involve
Allied POWs but were almost as perilous and deadly. Meanwhile Tawao was completely
destroyed by the Allies. After the Japanese defeat the survivors were imprisoned again and
sent back to Japan. Besides them were their wives, children and elderly people. Some were
born during the war. This paper examines their eventful experiences in the context of the
Japanese ‘Southward Advance’.
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Saveliev, Igor, ‘Trapped in the Contested Borderland: The Wartime Relocation of Koreans to
Sakhalin and the Transformation of their Identity’
Several tens of thousands of ethnic Koreans became hostages during the transition in
sovereignty over Sakhalin in 1945. Having moved or been brought to the island when the
southern part of Sakhalin was part of the Japanese Empire, they had long experienced a
policy of forced Japanisation. However, unable to return to the Korean Peninsula after the
seizure of the territory by the Soviet Union at the end of WWII, they faced the necessity of
reconsidering their identity yet again, this time subject to a strong Soviet policy of
assimilation. Addressing the relationship between the transformation of the borderland and
the reshaping of the minority's self-identification, this article attempts to contribute to the
discussion on borderland identity, suggesting that diasporians who have experienced the
transition from one strong assimilative policy to another construct a distinctive marginal
identity. Briefly explaining the historical background of this multiethnic borderland and
examining the policies towards minorities of the Japanese and Soviet administration, this
paper will explore how the forced encapsulation and political and social change affected the
complexity and continuous transformation of Sakhalin Korean identity.
Tanji Miyume, ‘Remaining importance of Japan’s wartime occupation of Guam’
This paper will be on the legacy of wartime Japanese occupation that contributes to postwar
US militarisation on Guam. I will present my interpretation of the historical legacy of the
liberation and Chamorro loyalty in Guam – that the indigenous Chamorro people are
indebted to the United States for ending the hardship endured under the brutal Japanese
occupation. I will introduce some Chamorro elders’ testimonies of their wartime experiences.
These stories and the presentation of wartime memories of the Japanese occupation have
helped create the myth of Chamorro loyalty to the US and the residents’ cooperation with the
US military on Guam. Official recognition of collective suffering of the Chamorro people as
US citizens or Japanese colonial subjects has been limited. At the same time, there is a lack
of communication and discussion on the wartime past on the part of Japanese visitors,
government officials, expats and local residents in Guam. The silence prolongs the liberation
myth and the stability of Guam as a major US military outpost, also hosting the outflow of
US forces in Japan. The paper will discuss communication that nevertheless exists, initiated
by the citizens’ attempt for reconciliation and alternative war commemorations.
Toyoda Maho, 'State, Sterilisation and Reproductive Rights in the US Occupation of Japan'
The Eugenic Protection Law of 1948 literally legalised the state interference with the private
life and individual reproductive rights. It authorises government agencies, so called Eugenic
Protection Commissions, to subject any person suffering from certain hereditary diseases,
including mentally defective and Hansen’s disease, to compulsory sterilisation. Although it
had already been found at the time that Hansen’s disease was not hereditary, there were
several cases where leprosy patients had compulsorily been sterilised based on the law.
Although the law was sponsored by lawmakers and decided at the Japanese Diet, it had been
reported to and approved by the Occupation authorities. Thus, Douglas MacArthur, the
Supreme Commander, and other Occupation staffers met a barrage of criticism, mainly from
the American Catholic groups, both in Japan and the US.
This paper will show how the Occupation authorities as well as other Americans intervened
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in Japanese government making the law and how it arouse controversy over the
infringements on the individual reproductive rights.
Yecies, Brian, ‘Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras’
This chapter will compare and contrast how the Japanese and US occupation authorities in
Korea used feature films for different purposes. By addressing the 1941-1945 and
1945-1948 periods respectively, I aim to show how films were used as tools to assimilate
Koreans toward Japanese ways of thinking before defeat and then as instruments to reverse
this trend (by the USAMGIK) after defeat.
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Contributor Bios
Atsuko Aoki is a part-time lecturer at Rikkyo University and a PhD candidate in the
Department of History, Brown University. Recent publications include: “Japanese Wives
of Resident Koreans and Their ‘Repatriation’ to North Korea,” Acta Koreana, Vol 13, No1,
June 2010, 91-112, and “A Dissenting Voice from the Margins in Colonial Korea, Joko
Yonetaro and the ‘Teachers Union Incident’ of December 1930,” Asian Cultural Studies,
Institute of Asian Cultural Studies, International Christina University, Vol 36, 2010,
331-345.
Matthew Augustine is an Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese History at Kyushu
University. His research interests include: the history of military occupations, especially
US occupations in Northeast Asia after World War II; restitution and reconciliation in the
Asia-Pacific; modern Okinawan history; and the history of migration and border controls.
His dissertation topic was 'Crossing from Empire to Nation: Repatriation, Illegal
Immigration, and the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952'.
Mark E. Caprio is Professor of Korean History in the College of Intercultural
Communication at Rikkyo University, Tokyo. He is the author of Japanese Assimilation
Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (University of Washington Press, 2009). He has
also published articles on Korea’s occupation by the United States (1945-48), the exodus
of Japan-based Korean to the Korean peninsula following liberation, Korean War concerns,
and the North Korea’s nuclear program. At present he is working on a monograph that
considers post-1945 occupations in Northeast Asia, specifically those organised by the
United States.
Christine de Matos is an honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Asia Pacific Social
Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS) and School of History and Politics at the
University of Wollongong. Her book Imposing Peace and Prosperity: Australia, Social
Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan (2008) examines the policies of the
Australian government towards the labour movement in occupied Japan. She has also
co-edited, with Robin Gerster, a collection of papers titled Occupying the ‘Other’:
Australia and military occupations from Japan to Iraq (2009) and, with Rowena Ward,
Gender, Power, and Military Occupations: Asia Pacific to the Middle East since 1945, to
be published by Routledge in early 2012. She has also co-written, with former Australian
soldier Noel Huggett, the biographical story of an Australian-Japanese marriage, Love
under occupation: A personal journey through war, marriage and White Australia (2010).
Curtis Anderson Gayle is a Japanese studies specialist whose most recent book was
published by Routledge in 2010, Women's history and local community in postwar Japan.
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Lydia N. Yu Jose is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science,
Ateneo de Manila University and currently director of the Ateneo Center for Asian Studies.
She obtained her PhD from Sophia University (Tokyo). She has authored books and
written articles for peer-reviewed international journals. Among her publications are Japan
Views the Philippines, 1900- 1944 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999,
revised edition) and Filipinos in Japan and Okinawa, 1880s-1972 (Tokyo: Research
Institute for the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign
Studies, 2002). She co-authored, with Ricardo T. Jose, An Annotated Bibliography on
Philippines-Japan Relations, 1935-1956 (Manila: Yuchengco Institute of East Asia, 1998)
and The Japanese Occupation, A Pictorial History (Makati City: Ayala Museum, 1997).
She is the editor of The Past, Love, Money and Much More: Philippines-Japan Relations
after the Second World War (Quezon City: Japanese Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila
University, 2008). With Ikehata Setsuho, she edited Philippines-Japan Relations (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003).
Ricardo Trota Jose is Professor of History at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.
He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at UP, and his PhD from the
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He specialises in military and diplomatic history,
with focus on the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Among his major publications
are The Philippine Army, 1935-1942 (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1992) and
Volume 7 (on the Japanese occupation of the Philippines) of the multi-volume Kasaysayan
set (Reader’s Digest, 1998). He has delivered papers in numerous conferences in the
Philippines and abroad. He was awarded the Outstanding Young Scientist award in the
field of social sciences in 1997, the first historian to be given this recognition.
John Kwok earned his PhD at the University of Wollongong. His thesis examined the
themes and influences that shape memory of a single event, 15 February 1942, from the
Australian and Singaporean national perspective. His research interests include war and
society with an emphasis on colonial Singapore and Malaya, and the languages and politics
of commemoration in Southeast Asia and Australia. He has recently completed a
Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Asia Pacific Research Unit in USM, Malaysia that
examined the commemoration of war and the building of war memorials in Singapore and
Malaysia.
Jason Lim was awarded a PhD in History and Asian Studies at the University of Western
Australia in 2007. A former civil servant, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the
Department of History at the National University of Singapore from 2008 to 2010. He
joined the University of Wollongong as its Lecturer in Asian History in September 2010.
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Vera Mackie is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor of Asian Studies in the Institute for
Social Transformation Research (ISTR), Faculty of Arts at the University of
Wollongong. She is currently working on a research project on Human Rights in the
Asia-Pacific Region.
Mark McLelland is a sociologist and cultural historian of Japan specialising in the history
of sexuality, gender theory and new media. His latest book, Love, Sex and Democracy in
Japan during the American Occupation, will be released by Palgrave Macmillan in early
2012.
OOI Keat Gin is professor of history and coordinator of the Asia Pacific Research Unit
(APRU) in the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. His
publications related to the Pacific War (1941-5) include The Japanese Occupation of
Borneo (Routledge, 2011), Traumas and Heroism (Opus, 2007), Rising Sun Over Borneo
(Macmillan/St Martin’s Press, 1999), Japanese Empire in the Tropics, 2 vols. (Ohio, 1998),
and a host of journal articles and book chapters. His other areas of interests include social
and economic history, socio-cultural and heritage issues, urban history of colonial cities,
women and labour, and history of colonial education. Other book-length publications
include World Beyond the Rivers (Hull, 1996), Of Free Trade and Native Interests (Oxford,
1997), One Hundred Years of Tin Smelting, 1898-1998 (Escoy, 2001), Enter the Dragons:
A History of the Penang Dragon Boat Festival Malaysia (Ministry of Unity, Culture, Arts
and Heritage Malaysia, 2008), Historical Dictionary of Malaysia (Scarecrow, 2009), and
others. Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London), Ooi is
founder-editor-in-chief of International Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies (IJAPS)
(www.usm.my/ijaps/) and serves as series editor of the Asia-Pacific Studies Series under
the auspices of APRU and Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM Press).
David Palmer teaches in American Studies in the School of International Studies, Flinders
University, Adelaide. His publications include “Organizing the Shipyards: Union Strategy
in Three Northeast Ports, 1933-1945” (Cornell); an edited collection on Australian labour
history; and articles on Korean forced laborers in wartime Japan. His current book project
is “The Business of Total War: Mitsubishi, DuPont and the Destruction of Nagasaki”.
Mary Reisal is a social anthropologist living and working in Tokyo since the year 2000.
Her PhD research centers on changing forms of intimacy and sexuality in Japanese society
and the place of non-professional prostitution and erotic exchanges in Japanese culture
throughout its history. The research involved a long ethnographic study conducted during
the last 10 years among both buyers and seller of erotic exchanges and dates from different
layers of society in Tokyo. Mary has been teaching at different universities in Tokyo,
among them Temple University, Meiji Gakuin and for the last five years Rikkyo
University. She has an extensive background in journalism and has been working as
foreign correspondent during the years she’s been living in Japan.
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Shigeru Sato is a senior lecturer in Japanese and Asian Studies at the University of
Newcastle, Australia. His research interests lie in structural analysis of socio-economic
impact of World War II on the Japanese-occupied areas in long historical perspectives. The
books he authored, edited, or contributed to include: The Encyclopedia of Indonesia in the
Pacific War (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2010), Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese
Empire (Singapore: NUS Press, 2006), Imperial Japan and National Identities in Asia,
1895-1945 (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), World War II in Asia and
the Pacific and the War's Aftermath, with General Themes: A Handbook of Literature and
Research (Westport: Greenwood, 1998), and War, Nationalism and Peasants: Java under
the Japanese Occupation 1942-1945 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin; New York and London:
M.E. Sharpe, 1994).
Igor Saveliev is an Associate Professor of History and Cultural Anthropology at the
Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University. He holds PhD in
history from Nagoya University. He is the author of Imin to kokka: Kyokutō Roshia ni
okeru Chūgokujin, Chōsenjin, Nihonjin imin (Migration and the State: Chinese, Korean
and Japanese Diasporas in the Russian Far East), Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobo, 2005,
“Mobility Decision-Making and New Diasporic Spaces: Conceptualizing Korean
Diasporas in the Post-Soviet Space,” Pacific Affairs, Vol 83, No 3, 2011, pp. 481-504, and
other publications on migration in Northeast Asia and Russo-Japanese relations.
Miyume Tanji is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights Education,
Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. Her current research
focusses on communities living with US military bases, especially those in Okinawa and
Guam. Miyume is the author of Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa (RoutledgeCurzon,
2006) and articles in journals such as Critical Asian Studies, Asian Studies Review and The
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Miyume has a doctorate degree in Politics from
Murdoch University and a Master's degree in International Relations from the Australian
National University. She also teaches International Relations.1
Maho Toyoda is from Kansai University and has contributed to Mark E. Caprio and
Sugita Yoneyuki's edited book, Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and
Japanese Politics and Society with the chapter 'Protective Labor Legislation and Gender
Equality: The Impact of the Occupation on Japanese Working Women'. She has also
published in Japanese, including: Senryo ka no Josei Rodo Kaikaku [Women's Labor
Reform in the US Occupation of Japan] (2007) available at:
http://www.keisoshobo.co.jp/book/b26252.html, ‘Amerika senryouka no nihon ni okeru
jinkou mondai to baasu kontorooru—Maagaretto Sangaa [Margaret Sanger] no rainichi
kinshi wo megutte’, Kansai daigaku jinken mondai kenkyuushitsu kiyou (2009), and
‘Sengo nihon no baasu kontorooru undou to Kurarensu Gyanburu [Clarence Gamble]—dai
5 kai kokusai kazoku keikaku kaigi no kaizai wo chuushin ni’, Jendaa shigaku (2010).
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Rowena Ward is a Lecturer in Japanese in the Language Centre, Faculty of Arts,
University of Wollongong. She is interested in the experiences and repatriation of Japanese
civilians residing outside the naichi (the mainland) at the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific war
through to the Japanese surrender in August 1945. This research covers questions of
gender, national identity and relations between various states in the Asia-Pacific region.
Rowena wrote her PhD on the interrelationship between modern Japanese ideas of 'race'
and nation and the placement of foreign migrant workers in the contemporary Japanese
labour market. She recently co-edited, with Christine de Matos, Gender, Power, and
Military Occupations: Asia Pacific to the Middle East since 1945, to be published by
Routledge in early 2012.
Brian Yecies is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies (University of
Wollongong) and teaches and researches on transnational film and digital media industries
with an emphasis on policy, culture, and convergence in the Asia-Pacific. He is a past
Korea Foundation Research Fellow and a recipient of research grants from the Korea
Foundation, Academy of Korean Studies, Asia Research Fund, and Australia-Korea
Foundation. His book Korea’s Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948 (with Ae-Gyung Shim) was
published by Routledge in mid-2011.
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