Week 9: Identities
The Japanese empire was built, in part, on economic and military domination. Yet, not all
subjects experienced Japanese power in this way. Part of the imperial project involved
claims and promises to those non-Japanese living in the empire about their status within the
racial hierarchy of the empire. This involved first an effort to turn imperial subjects into
‘Japanese’ through language and cultural policies, to a broader wartime effort at
‘imperialization’ of identity. These projects operated differently in Taiwan, Korea, China,
and Manchuria. A major paradox was that imperial governance created and reinforced a rigid
racial hierarchy even as it made promises and policies promising otherwise. This, in turn,
leads to some fascinating postwar identity politics after 1945, which we will explore in term 2.
Questions:
What was the kominka movement? Did it operate differently in Taiwan and Korea?
What did it mean for colonial subjects? What did it mean for Japanese identity?
What does such an assimilation program reveal about the nature of the Japanese empire in
terms of how it treats/views its subjects?
Optional Background Reading: (for comparison)
Mark Caprio, ‘Western Assimiliation Practices’ in Mark E. Caprio, Japanese Assimilation
Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (University of Washington Press, 2009), 19-48.
(scanned PDF on module website)
Core Readings:
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, 'Northern Lights: The Making and Unmaking of Karafuto Identity,' The
Journal of Asian Studies, 60, 3 (2001), 645-71. (JSTOR)
Wan-yao Chou, ‘The Kominka Movement in Taiwan and Korea: Comparisons and
Interpretations’ in Peter Duus, Ramon Myers, and Mark Peattie, ed., The Japanese Wartime
Empire, 1931-1945, (Chapter 2, pp.40-70). (E-book available through library catalogue)
Lo, Ming-cheng Miriam, ‘Between Ethnicity and Modernity: Taiwanese Medical Students
and Doctors under Japan’s Kominka Campaign, 1937–1945’ in positions: east asia cultures
critique, Volume 10, Number 2, Fall 2002, pp. 285-332 (Project Muse Database)
‘Becoming Japanese’ in Hildi Kang Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea
(Cornell, 2001). (Scanned PDF on module website)
Additional/Recommended Reading:
Mark E. Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (University
of Washington Press, 2009).
Alan Christy, ‘The Making of Imperial Subjects in Okinawa’ in Lydia Liu, ed., Formations of
Colonial Modernity in East Asia p. 141-170.
Hildi Kang, Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea (Cornell, 2001)
Kuramoto, Kazuko. Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of A Japanese Colonist. East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 1999.
Carter, James. Creating a Chinese Harbin: Nationalism in an International City,1916-1932.
Cornell University Press, 2002.
Brooks, Barbara J. “Peopling the Japanese Empire: Koreans in Manchuria and the Rhetoric
of Inclusion” in Sharon Minichiello, ed., Japan’s Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture
and Democracy, 1900-1930 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 25-44.
______. “Japanese colonial citizenship in treaty port China: the location of Koreans and
Taiwanese in the imperial order” in Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot, ed., New
Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842-1953 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2000), 109-124.