Japan

Beyond Objectification: The Role of Women in the Wartime Economies of Japan and Vietnam

While stationed in Yokosuka during the American occupation of Japan, the cartoonist Bill Hume began drawing cartoons featuring a character named “Babysan,” a highly sexualized caricature of Japanese women.  Babysan: A Private Look at the Japanese Occupation was published in 1953 and in 1965, Tony Zidek published a similar collection of cartoons called Choi Oi! The Lighter Side of Vietnam, while serving in the Vietnam war.  Published as “morale-building” material for deployed soldiers as well as nostalgic accounts for those who had returned to the US, the books depict the interactions of American soldiers with Japanese and Vietnamese women.  Looking beyond their overt objectification of women, they provide insight into the roles these women played in the economic systems which developed under the American presence.

The women depicted in Babysan belong to “the greyer category of what were sometimes referred to as onrii (from ‘only’ or ‘only one’), or women who engaged in serial, ostensibly monogamous relationships with ‘only one’ uniformed lover at a time, and who received various forms of material compensation in return.”1 Although Japanese women are portrayed primarily as objects of American consumption, the cartoons suggest that women held considerable power over financial transactions.  One cartoon features Babysan remarking, “No dependent?” as she looks over her boyfriend’s tax form.2 Hume describes how the boyfriend is not only expected to support Babysan financially, but in some cases her family as well.  Women are depicted as being dependent upon the support of American soldiers, but also as financially intelligent and using their “resources” (American soldiers) as effectively as possible.  Hume states that, “Japanese women are traditionally the holders of the purse strings, so Babysan knows of many more practical ways of using his okane.”3 Not only do women control the “purse strings” of American soldiers, but Hume suggests that many women had multiple American partners and therefore multiple sources of income.

To ensure their financial security, women relied on networks of information to learn the whereabouts of their partners.  In Babysan, Hume describes how “She and her girl friends, with apparently the help of everyone else in town, have a highly efficient communication system that the Americans call the grapevine,” a system which “gives them a forecast of their economic future.”4 Although Babysan makes no direct references to black markets or prostitution, they were highly successful around American bases and likely relied on similar systems of communication.  Around 70,000 women were employed legally as prostitutes and thousands more worked on a private basis.5 Each of these ventures relied on the capital provided by Americans, combined with an internal network of information.

Like Japan, Vietnam saw the rise of black market operations following an influx of American soldiers.  “American goods dominated storefronts and street vendors’ stands in Saigon, Hue and Da Nang, putting a tight pinch on local manufacturing which could not compete. American soldiers and civilians, and the United States government, had money to spend… Vietnam realised with equal cleverness that there was money to be made.”6 As black markets flourished in Vietnam, so did currency fraud which was facilitated by informal street vending stalls or “Howard Johnsons.”  One cartoon from Choi Oi remarks, “Saigon’s ‘Howard Johnsons’ do have a flair for providing ‘extra’ services also.  Numbered among them is the illegal exchange of money.”7 Another cartoon depicts a Howard Johnson advertising the daily exchange rate of piastres to dollars and an exchange between the woman running the stall and an American soldier.8

Vietnamese, particularly women, often played the role of go-between in these schemes. For example, a soldier might get wind of an upcoming MPC conversion date… A soldier would take X piastres to the US exchange at a particular installation and purchase US dollars. He (or his Vietnamese house servant or girlfriend) would then take the dollars to the black market and purchase X + Y piastres, Y being the difference between the rate at the American exchange and the black market rate of exchange.9

Women were both “go-betweens” for Americans as well as the ones exchanging money and operating stalls.  Their role extended beyond that of wife or girlfriend, and even beyond the Vietnam War itself.  After socialist forces took and renamed Saigon, “In Ho Chi Minh city women from the middle and upper classes were involved more in socio economic activity, they were also more active in business and financial transactions, and in the black market.”10 Even after the American presence in Vietnam disappeared, women continued to play important roles in the economic systems that had taken hold as a result of the war.

While the women in Babysan and Choi Oi appear as sexualized objects of humor and entertainment, the cartoons suggest that their real role in post-war and wartime economies was varied and complex.  The American presence in Japan and Vietnam was a major contributing factor to the economic hardship faced by Japanese and Vietnamese women, but while American soldiers were present, women used soldiers both as a source of income and as a way to make the most of the financial situation caused by their presence.

  1. Kim Brandt, “Learning from Babysan,” review of Babysan, by Bill Hume, Japan Society, 3 https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/learning-from-babysan#sthash.pt5iJI39.dpbs. [↩]
  2. Bill Hume, Babysan: A Private Look at the Japanese Occupation (Tokyo: Kasuga Bocki K.K., 1953), 56-57. [↩]
  3. Hume, Babysan, 92. [↩]
  4. Ibid., 98. [↩]
  5. Brandt, “Learning from Babysan,” 2, 9. [↩]
  6. William Allison, “War for Sale: The Black Market, Currency Manipulation and Corruption in the American War in Vietnam,” in War & Society 21 no. 2, (2003): 135. [↩]
  7. Tony Zidek, Choi Oi! The Lighter Side of Vietnam (Rutland & Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1965), 34. [↩]
  8. Zidek, Choi Oi!, 35. [↩]
  9. Allison, “War for Sale,” 146. [↩]
  10. Tran Phi Phuong, “Work and family roles of women in Ho Chi Minh City,” in International Education Journal 8 no. 2, (2007): 290. [↩]

Mitsukoshi and IKEA: Traveling Department Stores

In 1905, the Mitsui Dry Goods Store changed its name to Mitsukoshi and began advertising itself as Japan’s first department store.  The original store was founded in 1673, but it went through a long process of transformation to become the modern department store that exists today. In 1878, it began hosting bazaars where the public would take off their shoes before wandering through the stalls of goods, and in 1904, the addition of windows to the storefront allowed people to look in at goods from the street.1 While many of the innovations Mitsukoshi implemented were modeled on Western department stores, Mitsukoshi created its own unique “department store experience” and its branch stores in colonial Korea and Dalian enjoyed similar success when they opened in the 1930s.2

Despite Mitsukoshi’s popularity in Japan and Southeast Asia, it was less successful in the United States.  In 1979, it opened its first branch in New York in an effort to “learn more about the American market and equalize the Japanese United States balance of trade.”3 It opened its doors just as another Japanese department store, the Takashimaya company was reducing the size of its Fifth Avenue location.  The Takashimaya Company also began “shifting to primarily American products from largely Japanese because of the rising price of the Japanese merchandise.”4 Despite its goal of learning about American markets, the New York branch of Mitsukoshi closed in the 1990s.  While the failure of Mitsukoshi in New York was attributed to economic factors, it is essential to note that the products and experiences that department stores offer their customers are tailored to the place itself and its consumption culture.  In New York for instance, consumers were less interested in expensive Japanese products from a brand without widespread recognition in the United States.

The difficulties of adapting shopping experiences to new markets went in both directions. Although certain aspects of Japanese department stores were modeled on Western department stores, this does not mean those stores were universally successful when transplanted to Japan.  Like the Mitsukoshi in New York, Ikea failed to adapt to the needs of Japanese consumers.  In 1974, Ikea entered the Japanese market but by 1986 all locations had closed.  This was attributed partly to different consumer habits, as “Japanese consumers at that time were not ready for the ‘self-service and self assembly’ concept because Japanese consumers were only accustomed to a high level of service,” but also to the spatial practices of the Japanese.  Japanese homes and living spaces tend to be smaller and “the Scandinavian style furniture from Sweden did not fit small-space living.”5

“1974 Ikea Catalogue,” Ikea Museum, 72 https://ikeamuseum.com/en/digital/ikea-catalogues-through-the-ages/1970s-ikea-catalogues/1974-ikea-catalogue/.

In 2006, Ikea relaunched in Japan with new strategies for adapting to the Japanese market.  A recent series of promotional videos on how to furnish tiny homes with Ikea products demonstrates the store’s recognition that their products must to cater to the specific spatial needs of Japanese customers.6

Like Mitsukoshi, Ikea failed to adapt to consumer habits and spatial needs.  While department store models often appear transferable, the success of a department store depends on more than management and appearances.  In a comparison of shopping malls, Lizzy van Leeuwen notes that “although the design and management strategies of shopping malls are rather standardized all over the globe, the social configurations of these centres of consumption differ remarkably at local levels.”7 The social and spatial configurations of department stores are just as unique at local levels and stores must take into account the experience of shopping as well as the specific needs and spatial practices of their customers.

  1. Brian Moeran, “The Birth of the Japanese Department Store,” in Asian Department Stores, ed. Kerrie L. MacPherson (London: Routledge, 1998). [↩]
  2. Aso, Noriko, “Mitsukoshi’s Expansion Before 1945” Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History. [↩]
  3. “Mitsukoshi Opens Here.” The New York Times, March 16, 1979. https://www.nytimes.com/1979/03/16/archives/mitsukoshi-opens-here.html. [↩]
  4. “Mitsukoshi Opens Here.” [↩]
  5. Thy Nguyen, Yingdan Cai, & Adrian Evans, “Organisational learning and consumer learning in foreign markets: A case study of IKEA in Japan,” Paper presented at The British Academy of Management 2018 Conference, UWE Bristol, UK (2018), 9. [↩]
  6. WK Tokyo, “IKEA |Tiny Homes Episode 2: Small Space Visions,” YouTube, December 21, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60KL3p-M27k. [↩]
  7. Lizzy van Leeuwen, “Celebrating Civil Society in the Shopping Malls,” in Lost in Mall: An Ethnography of Middle-Class Jakarta in the 1990s (2011), 162. [↩]

Vending Machines: Understanding Spaces of Consumption within Japan and the Risk that Vending Machines Posed

In a 1963 news article, a debate was struck regarding vending machines in Japan. Specifically, why America had chosen to create an exhibit based on the vending machine idea. The fundamental point of this exhibit was to showcase industrial achievements, but what confuses the audience and author of the article is why America chose vending machines as one of its biggest achievements. ‘In view of past exhibits when America showed the world such developments as space capsules and cars that float on a cushion of air, why did the U.S choose vending machines to display in Tokyo?’ 1 The expectation for this exhibit was to allow people to understand certain achievements by being able to hold them within their own hands. The other expectation was to catch the interest of Japanese businesses and ensure that vending machines would become a part of Japanese consumption.

The exhibit showcased the vending machine as an invention that could practically do everything from cooking food to dry cleaning clothes. Therefore, creating a new space of consumption that took away human interaction, allowing businesses to run a low-cost vending machine venture with almost no employees. However, in comparison to the introduction of department stores to Japan, this space of consumption meant that customers were left with no employee interaction, therefore, dismissing former expectations within a space of consumption.

‘In selling food, companies again position products less for personal pleasure than as a means for their customers to appropriately fulfil social expectations.’2

Vending machines posed a risk of disrupting Japanese values and expectations because it took away the standards placed on businesses to ensure customer satisfaction, and due to having no human contact these standards could not be met. Therefore, what this created was a generational shift, in which young people were expected to use these machines and housewives were encouraged to stay away and use supermarkets.

‘Housewives still buy many of their beverages from the supermarkets, and older people are just beginning to use can vending machines. Older people didn’t use the machines as much because they didn’t feel comfortable with them. They felt service was too impersonal.’3

This is similar to the stereotypes placed on department stores because of the association between being an adult and the step up to adulthood. Therefore, what this highlighst is that spaces of consumption are not just built on socialization and the exchange of goods, but they are also shaped into a generational environment that might be used to encourage family ideals. This is perhaps why newspapers would mention housewives and their resilience to avoid vending machines and remain committed to using supermarkets. Young people were not attacked by the media for using vending machines, but what is presented is a stereotype that young people use these machines because they have not yet matured and come to understand the value of customer service.

Consequently, however, vending machines also became associated with crime because they lacked human interaction, therefore, allowing them to be broken into or smashed because they could not provide change.4 Without the necessary security to keep these machines safe, they became easy targets for thievery. Not only was the lack of human interaction a factor which caused a large amount of crime, but it was also because of what vending machines began to offer as a result of popular demand. Cigarettes were just as popular as drinks and food and therefore, created a different influx of customers which diminished the former stereotype of vending machines being primarily for young people. The consequence of this allowed this space of consumption to become associated with the class and status of its customers not only because of crime, but also because of what was being consumed and how it was being purchased.5

  1. Pacific Stars and Stripes, Vending Machines Dispense bit of America (Tokyo, 1963) p.6 [↩]
  2. Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan: A Transdisciplinary Perspective (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) p.37 [↩]
  3. Pacific Stars and Stripes, Drink Machines a Big Business (Tokyo, 1984) p.7. [↩]
  4. Pacific Stars and Stripes, Starting a Coin-Operated Rampage (Tokyo,1991) p.66. [↩]
  5. Pacific Stars and Stripes, Shoplifting No Bargain for AAFES Customers (Tokyo, 1973)p.26. [↩]

Escaping Modernity: Conceptualising the Timelessness of the Teahouse

‘Thus, teahouses were not places that automatically produced instant friendships or provided sanctuary for the “hodge-podge of humanity” that made the stress of the real world give way to a remarkable sense of serenity and harmony, as some observers have suggested.’ ((Qin Shao, Tempest over Teapots: The Vilification of Teahouse Culture in Early Republican China (The Journal of Asian Studies, 1998) p.1015.))

The concept of the teahouse has drastically changed as a result of modernity; however, this has enabled this type of establishment to survive in a modern world. The consequence of this is that tradition co-exists with modernity, meaning that although the interior of a teahouse might remain traditional, the concept of the teahouse has had to make room for different social standards. Qin Shao states in their article Tempest over Teapots: The Vilification of Teahouse Culture in Early Republican China that Teahouses became a safe haven for people who could not comprehend their changed society which had become fast-paced, and work-driven. Therefore, this enabled the teahouse to form a multi-functional establishment that valued tradition, but also could become community driven.  Although there is evidence of Teahouses reaching a limit of how far they will go for their community, this limit does not exceed their ability to create a small space that seems almost immune to modernity.

‘While resting at a teahouse on my way to Chuzenji a poor woman carrying an infant came into the teahouse to ask if she might be allowed to sleep that night in the woodshed, as her house had been carried away and she did not know where her husband was – he might be dead. She said she would beg a little rice from her neighbours, but had nowhere to sleep. The landlord curtly refused this request.’1

This observation from a customer within a teahouse might suggest that it was not the teahouse that changed to conform to its patron’s needs, but it was the community that forced teahouses to become less about class and status, enabling a space to be created which provided a timeless environment for people who were victims to a fast-paced society. ‘The rapid change of that time brought social and political dislocation to many people. Previous class boundaries were being shaken and reconstructed. Teahouses both reflected and shaped such reconstruction.’2

Spaces such as convenience stores which provided the same basic requirements such as consumables and a table to eat on, however, this difference between both establishments is time. Standing at a bench and eating promotes the concept of a rushed environment. It would be uncommon to remain standing at the table once the task of eating was complete. Therefore, what differentiates a social space like the teahouse to others such as the 7-eleven convenience store in Japan, cafes and restaurants around the world is that tearooms normalised the concept of occupying time rather than allowing time to become a construct of these social spaces.

((Pacific Stars and Strips, 7-Eleven is Blooming in Japan (1985) p.19))

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘The teahouse appealed to these and other city dwellers for other reasons as well. It was perhaps one of the most affordable public social spaces. For three to ten copper coins, one could easily pass two to three hours.’3

Modernity brought about a culture of speed and efficiency. Whether that was through travel, work or leisure, many places ensured quick service, disenabling people to waste time. Taking away seats within food based establishments is a product of modernity promoting a time conscious society. Therefore, the resilience of the teahouses allowed its customers to achieve something which modernity has all but erased and that is to harmonise with their surroundings. Being able to sit down and remain stationary for a period of time is perhaps why many people sought teahouses as an escape from society.

 

  1. North China Herold, The Typhoon at Nikko (1902) p.966-967. [↩]
  2. Qin Shao, Tempest over Teapots: The Vilification of Teahouse Culture in Early Republican China (The Journal of Asian Studies, 1998) p.1015. [↩]
  3. Qin Shao, Tempest Over Teapots: The Vilification of Teahouse Culture in Early Republican China (The Journal of Asain Studies, 1998) p.1018. [↩]

Thoughts on the Letters of Donald Keene

 

The letters of Donald Keene to Theodore (Ted) du Bary and Otis Cary stand out as a stark picture of life during the Asia-Pacific war. As an American, Keene’s reflections on his experiences and observations show the reality of life on the ground as he was sent from post to post. In a time when propaganda on both sides showed the glory of war and pushed the message of righteousness of their cause, Keene offers a very different viewpoint. His letters are in places difficult to stomach for a modern reader, as he describes the atrocities that both American and Japanese soldiers committed against each other, especially in the treatment of prisoners and their corpses1

What really stands out in Keene’s letters is his views on war and his hope for the future. In the same letter as he describes the mutilation of corpses, he ends by saying that

If it were possible, I think the best solution would be to forget the past and to attempt a real reconversion of the Japanese nation. I think that we have a good chance of arousing the interest and active cooperation of many young Japanese. Intelligence on our part can really win the war. I wonder if Americans won’t find the Japanese the most agreeable people in Asia from almost every standpoint. The Japanese will certainly admire the Americans. With this initial advantage we can create a powerful and meaningful friendship.2

Keene’s view was, by his own admission, not widely shared. He recounts that he often found himself on the ‘wrong’ side of arguments by attempting to show his peers a different viewpoint on war and their opinion of the Japanese people. To attempt to change the mindset of an entire nation would be beyond the ability of any single person, but Keene did not let this deter him. He went on to become a highly respected scholar in Japan, even going as far as to renounce his American citizenship in favour of Japanese and adopting the phonetic rendering of his name in Japanese. He remained highly respected in Japan until his death in 2019.

 

  1. Donald Keene to Ted du Bary, September 23rd 1945, pp. 127-28. [↩]
  2. ibid, pg. 130 [↩]

Protests Against Modernisation: How Japanese Authors Document Transportation Infrastructure

Trains and rail lines feature prominently in Japanese literature on modernization and growth, but writers are often critical of the ways in which new modes of transportation transform the areas around them.  In Murakami Haruki’s introduction to Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki, he describes the parallels between his life and the novel’s namesake, sixty years apart.  In 1908, Sanshiro travels for two days to reach Tokyo by steam train, while Murakami makes a similar trip in under four hours on the bullet train.1 Despite the difference in time and circumstances, their reactions to trains and descriptions of them in literature are strikingly similar.  Both Soseki and Murakami associate trains with the perils and confusion of modernity and the challenges posed by rapid technological change.  These literary depictions are not only allegorical, but reflect the reality of political protest against the consequences of modernizing transportation.

In Murakami’s 2014 novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, the train-obsessed Tsukuru sees trains and stations as spaces of possibility, beginnings, and endings, but the theme of transport is also associated with the character’s personal trauma and struggles with living in a modern world.  In the novel, trains provide snapshots of “modern” life and the struggles which come with it: “There was still some time before the train opened its doors for boarding, yet passengers were hurriedly buying boxed dinners, snacks, cans of beer, and magazines at the kiosk. Some had white iPod headphones in their ears, already off in their own little worlds. Others palmed smartphones, thumbing out texts, some talking so loudly into their phones that their voices rose above the blaring PA announcements… Everyone was boarding a night train, heading to a far-off destination. Tsukuru envied them. At least they had a place they needed to go to.”2 While trains symbolize the character Tsukuru’s internal turmoil, Murakami also uses physical proximity to trains to describes his own personal experiences of living in poverty.  He remembers that “ the National Railways’ Chūō Line ran by just below the window, which made it horribly noisy… We used to have long freight trains running by until the sun came up.”3 Not only do trains represent inner emptiness in his novel, but in his own life they are a physical manifestation of his financial circumstances in the 1970s.

Despite the separation between Murakami and Soseki, both authors associate the noise of trains with modernity, and characterize it as an unwanted inconvenience.  In contrast to Murakami’s noisy home, Sanshiro describes his University campus as being “extraordinarily quiet. Not even the noise of the streetcars penetrated this far.”4 While the expansion of transportation is often presented as a symbol of progress in historical accounts, Murakami and Soseki question whether the benefits of modernized transportation are truly positive for all.  In Sanshiro, a member of the University faculty exclaims, “They’ve built so damned many lines the past few years, the more ‘convenient’ it gets, the more confused I get.”5 His comment reveals the conflict between the convenience of modernization and the disorientation it generates.

The metaphorical associations between new modes of transportation and “confusion” in literature not only reflect the attitudes of certain communities towards government efforts of modernization, but are also effective forms of political protest.  In Nishiguchi Katsumi’s semi fictional account of the Japanese National Railway’s proposal of a new line connecting Tokyo and Kyoto, he describes the reactions of Kyoto residents who “are drawn in at first but gradually realize that they are about to lose their homes.”6 This is a process that repeats throughout history from the introduction of steam trains in 1872, street cars in 1903, and bullet trains in 1964, all of which rapidly changed the areas they connected and crossed.7 These continuous efforts to modernize transportation heavily impacted communities, but often their negative effects are overlooked in official discourse and historical narratives.8

Literary representations of transportation not only demonstrate its symbolic power, but they also document the impact on communities and the attitudes of citizens, serving as a form of protest.  In Sanshiro, “One streetcar line was to have run past the Red Gate, but the University had protested and it had gone through Koishikawa instead.”4 The University’s ability to lobby the government into redirecting the train line demonstrates the influence of powerful organizations to shape infrastructure, while also revealing the places which are powerless to avoid the disruption of their communities.  While the University remains quiet and undisturbed, other communities will be transformed and perhaps destroyed by the “noise” of modernization.  Nishiguchi’s account provides a case study of this situation fifty years later in 1958.  JNR’s plan for the proposed the line connecting Tokyo and Kyoto overlooked those “for whom the personal costs would be highest: people evicted from their homes and workplaces or condemned to life under the shadow of busy elevated tracks.”9 

While literature often seems detached from reality, the views of Soseki, Murakami, and Nishiguchi reveal that negative attitudes towards modern transportation networks existed for more than a century.  Rather than criticizing “modernisation” itself, their works address the human costs which exist in any fast-paced movement of modernisation. They provide insight into the effects of rapid technological advancement on communities with little political power and document the perspectives of those who don’t feature in historical narratives.

  1. Natsume Soseki, Introduction to Sanshiro (United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2009). [↩]
  2. Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (London: Random House, 2014), 285. [↩]
  3. Soseki, Introduction to Sanshiro. [↩]
  4. Soseki, Sanshiro, Chapter 2. [↩] [↩]
  5. Ibid. [↩]
  6. Jessamyn Abel, “Invisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,” in Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2022), 20. [↩]
  7. Ailsa Freedman, “Introduction,” in Tokyo in Transit : Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 5-6; Abel, “Invisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,” 34. [↩]
  8. Abel, “Invisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,” 20-21. [↩]
  9. Abel, “Invisible Infrastructures of Protest in Kyoto,” 39. [↩]

Prisons as Internal and External Space: The cases of Lushun and Seodaemun

 

The study of prisons from a spatial aspect is an interesting one. There are the architectural studies, which analyse the shape of a building and never begin without first referring to the famous Bentham Panopticon, then there are the multitude of ethical and moral studies, as well as philosophical, historical, legal, the list goes on.

For my essay I am focussing specifically on two prisons under Japanese rule, Seodaemun in Korea and Lushun in Dalian (Manchuria, formerly Port Arthur). Both are brilliantly covered in Shu-Mei Huang and Hyun Kyung Lee’s work Heritage, Memory and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia. Their work covers all aspects of prisons, showing how prison architecture in east Asia developed through Western influences. Crucially, they show how this evolved not just in an architectural sense, but also in line with legal, judicial and penal reform itself.

What I am most interested in is the difference in prisoner treatment between Seodaemun and Lushun. As Huang and Lee state, Lushun was not originally built as a Japanese prison, but taken over after the defeat to Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The plans for the prison had originally been drawn up by the head of the Russian Pacific Fleet, and so there is a clear visual demarcation in the architecture denoting the extent of the original Russian construction and the later Japanese additions.1 This is important to keep in mind, as Lushun was used to hold the captured Russian prisoners of war after 1905. Perhaps this was an attempt at keeping the prisoners aware of their defeat, but the accounts of those held there show that they were treated remarkably well. I argue that the location of Lushun in Manchuria is central to this, as it was seen as an already contested space- having gone variously through Russian, Chinese and Japanese control. Furthermore, the Russo-Japanese War was Japan’s first global conflict, and so Lushun represented Japan’s willingness to abide by the relatively new European treaties of human rights. I therefore argue that the treatment of prisoners in Lushun was not a case of Japan’s magnanimity to their fallen enemies, but a deliberate ploy to be viewed as civilised and modern by the rest of Europe, in order to prove their ‘enlightenment’ and modernisation.

The proof is clear when contrasted against the conditions and treatment of prisoners in Seodaemun prison. Unlike Lushun, Seodaemun was constructed by the Japanese imperial government after the signing of the Japan-Korea Protectorate Policy in 1905, which formally brought Korea under Japanese control2. It was therefore a clear symbol of Japanese Imperialism and their view of Japanese superiority. Huang and Lee argue that it was designed specifically to hold ‘“dangerous figures” such as political offenders’, with the ‘”objective” [own emphasis] of separating them from society’3. I argue that it was this viewpoint of the Japanese as superior to the Koreans that explains the mistreatment of those held in Seodaemun prison. Taking the spatial angle, it is clear that Seodaemun, being located in Korea and fully under Japanese control, was thus perceived as an ‘internal’ space compared to Lushun’s ‘external’ space.

  1. Shu-Mei Huang and Hyun Kyung Lee, Heritage, Memory and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia, Oxon, 2020, p. 57 [↩]
  2. Ibid, pg. 76 [↩]
  3. Ibid, pg. 77 [↩]

Blank Pages: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Japanese Occupied Manchuria

The Great Kanto Earthquake which leveled much of Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923 created an opportunity for reconstruction on an enormous scale and caused a shift in the population distribution as well as the aesthetic standards of the city.  The utopian approach to rebuilding Tokyo after the earthquake mirrors Japanese attitudes towards Manchuria while also serving as a stark contrast of utopian ideals.  

The event was described in the September 1923 issue of the American publication Japan Society as “The Greatest Disaster in History.”1 The earthquake and subsequent fire left “298,000 houses burned and 336,000 more shaken down,” in the journal’s initial report.2 A final estimate of its destruction was that around 45 percent of the structures in Tokyo were leveled, transforming it “from a bustling metropolis and imperial capital to a seemingly extinct city.”3 

4 

The scale of the destruction was interpreted at the time as “a moral wake-up call if not an outright act of divine punishment” but also, contrastingly, as a “golden opportunity.”5 At a time when utopianism and grand visions of urban planning were circulating in books like Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow, the earthquake essentially rendered Tokyo a blank slate upon which to rebuild.  It literally flattened the city, creating “not only a unique, perhaps unparalleled opportunity to reconstruct Tokyo but the chance to arrest the perceived moral and ideological regress of Japan.”6 Efforts to not only reconstruct, but to renovate, beautify, and modernize Tokyo began.  By 1930 the products of these initiatives could be visibly traced on a series of maps produced by the Tokyo City Government which illustrated the results of projects dedicated to restoration and new construction of parks, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and electrical facilities.7 

8 

In addition to government efforts to rebuilt the city itself, the earthquake triggered a flight from the city center to the areas surrounding Tokyo, increasing the suburban population and decreasing the density of the city.  The suburb of Denenchōfu, planned and constructed in the years just before the earthquake, was modeled after the utopian vision of Howard’s garden city.  The timing of its construction (completed in 1923) and its location outside Tokyo caused its population to increase dramatically after the earthquake.9 This suburban population boom was widespread according to Japan Society’s December 1925 issue, which predicted that “Under the Greater Tokyo system, in which all of these suburban towns will be included in the City of Tokyo—and it is expected that this can be realized within the next decade or so—the City of Tokyo will have a population equalling that of London.”10

Denenchōfu serves as an example of the change in Tokyo’s population distribution as well as a new emphasis on the aesthetic qualities of the city’s spaces.  The architects of Denenchōfu placed a high value on the natural beauty of the development in accordance with Howard’s garden city ideal.11 The Tokyo government likewise invested in natural surroundings in its efforts to rebuild as evidenced by the excerpt in Japan Society’s May 1925 issue stating that “The Park Section of the Tokyo Municipality will plant 3,000 trees along streets in various sections of the city in May as part of the program to beautify the city.”12

This utopian conception of Tokyo post-earthquake as a blank slate on which to modernize infrastructure, disperse the population, and beautify the city parallels how some Japanese planners and intellectuals envisioned Manchuria.  The Japanese conquest of Manchuria after 1931, “provided a blank slate, or as city planners in Manchukuo put it, a white page, hakushi, on which ideal designs might be realized.”13 Ideal designs such as the Agricultural Immigrant Plan which envisioned utopian agricultural villages populated by Japanese farmers in northern Manchuria.14  In fact, “More than a few planners disillusioned by the resistance their plans faced in postearthquake Tokyo found planning on what they considered to be ‘blank pages’ in colonial Manchukuo more rewarding.”15 While the Agricultural Immigrant Plan was never realized, many architectural projects and modernization efforts were carried out in Manchuria.16 Like Tokyo after 1923, it served as a place in which to test utopian ideals.

Despite certain similarities in the conception of utopian plans, one of the stark contrasts between the “blank slate/page” of utopian planning in 1923 Tokyo and 1931 Manchuria was the ideology which accompanied it.  Unlike the aftermath of the Kanto earthquake in which the perceived “moral regress” included socialism, for those censored for their contrary politics in Japan, Manchuria offered a blank slate of a different kind.

  1. Japan Society, About Japan 1920-1928 (Internet Archive, 2021), https://archive.org/details/about-japan-1920-1928/page/n5/mode/2up. [↩]
  2. Ibid. [↩]
  3. Charles Schencking, “The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan”, in The Journal of Japanese Studies 34, no. 2: (Summer 2008), 296. [↩]
  4. Zenjirō Horikiri, 1. Areas afflicted by the earthquake and fire disaster, places where fire broke out and circumstances driving the spread of the fire [map], Tokyo City Government, 1930, https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~334402~90102430?qvq=q%3Apub_list_no%3D%2210808.000%22%3Blc%3ARUMSEY~8~1&mi=11&trs=38. [↩]
  5. Schencking, “The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan”, 297. [↩]
  6. Ibid., 297. [↩]
  7. Zenjirō Horikiri, Teito Fukkō Jigyō Zuhyō, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Tokyo City Government, 1930. [↩]
  8. Zenjirō Horikiri, 5. Program for the reconstruction of the imperial capital [map], Tokyo City Government, 1930, https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~334398~90102426?qvq=q%3Apub_list_no%3D%2210808.000%22%3Blc%3ARUMSEY~8~1&mi=7&trs=38. [↩]
  9. Ken Tadashi Oshima, “Denenchōfu: Building the Garden City in Japan”, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 55, no. 2: (June, 1996), 146. [↩]
  10. Japan Society, About Japan 1920-1928. [↩]
  11. Oshima, “Denenchōfu: Building the Garden City in Japan”, 144. [↩]
  12. Japan Society, About Japan 1920-1928. [↩]
  13. David Tucker, “City Planning without Cities: Order and Chaos in Utopian Manchukuo”, in Crossed Histories (Honolulu, 2005), 55. [↩]
  14. Ibid., 53. [↩]
  15. Schencking, “The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan”, 323. [↩]
  16. Louise Young, “Brave New Empire: Utopian Vision and the Intelligentsia”, in Japan’s Total Empire (Berkeley, 1998), 242. [↩]

Impermanent Spaces: Japanese Gardens and their Interpretations

In 1892, Lafcadio Hearn published an article in the Atlantic Monthly on the unique characteristics of Japanese gardens.  Hearn was a writer and teacher, born in Greece and raised in Ireland, who traveled to Japan in 1890 and remained there for the rest of his life.1 His article gives a general background on the appearance, history, and symbolism of Japanese gardens for his western readers through a description of his own garden, and ends with the gloomy prediction that “…the old katchiû-yashiki and its gardens – will doubtless have vanished forever before many years… For impermanency is the nature of all, more particularly in Japan, and the changes and the changers shall also be changed until there is found no place for them, and regret is vanity.”2 Contrary to his prediction, by 2006 there would be at least 432 Japanese gardens throughout the world.3 Rather than disappearing from Japan, their global popularity seems to reflect a common fear of the very impermanence that Hearn believed would lead to their disappearance.  As spaces, Japanese gardens symbolize the preservation of natural landscapes whose value seems increasingly important as urban centers grow and natural areas diminish.  

Henri Lefebvre proposes that as natural spaces disappear, they do not vanish completely.  Natural space becomes “…the background of the picture; as decor, and more than decor, it persists everywhere, and every natural detail, every natural object is valued even more as it takes on symbolic weight (the most insignificant animal, trees, grass, and so on).”4 This symbolic weight is clearly identified by Hearn, whose account of his own garden is given primarily through descriptions of the symbolic meaning of the rocks, plants, and animals which inhabit it.  He describes objects and creatures both physically and through the myths, legends, and traditions which surround them and signify their role in the garden.  Not only do they carry individual symbolic meaning, but the garden as a whole is “…at once a picture and a poem; perhaps even more a poem than a picture. For as nature’s scenery, in its varying aspects, affects us with sensations of joy or of solemnity, of grimness or of sweetness, of force or of peace, so must the true reflection of it in the labor of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul.”5 

This symbolism or “mood in the soul” acquires a new meaning in light of the western adoption and re-creation of Japanese gardens.  Questions arise as to whether the gardens symbolize something inherently Japanese and are therefore only authentic when they are created in Japan according to strict traditions, or whether they symbolize a broader appreciation of nature which can be replicated anywhere in the world.  Hearn argues that “In the foreigner,” the aesthetic complexities of the representation of nature in Japanese gardens, “needs to be cultivated by study. It is inborn in the Japanese; the soul of the race comprehends Nature infinitely better than we do, at least in her visible forms.”5  His suggestion that non-Japanese people cannot comprehend the full meaning and complexity of this art form is reflected by modern Japanese scholars such as Sato and Kajinishi who argue that Japanese gardens in the West are merely inauthentic reproductions (“Japanese-style gardens”), rather than the real thing.6  This idea is taken even further by the notion that Japanese gardens in the late 19th century, lost their authenticity because the Japanese government, being partially controlled by western powers through treaties, recast them embodiments of Japanese nationalism.7  

While questions of authenticity, in Western and Japanese gardens, are highly contested among historians and specialists, the spatial concept of a garden which serves to “…copy faithfully the attractions of a veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression that a real landscape communicates” is one that captured the imagination of the world.5  A place which is designed not only to reflect vanishing natural space, but also to express “moral lessons” and “abstract ideas” through its design is something which can be universally appreciated.8  While the original creator of Hearn’s garden was long gone by the time he owned it and whatever lesson or idea it was meant impart had been forgotten, Hearn believed that, “…as a poem of nature it requires no interpreter.”8 The gardens that exist today, whether ancient or modern, Japanese or Western, built on the practices of artistic tradition or ideologies of nationalism, are, as Christian Tagsold points out, “real places.”9 Their histories, symbolic meaning, and authenticity vary, but as places, they are created with intent.  They are spaces “confiscated from nature” and turned into conscious representations of a particular kind of space.10  Like the natural spaces they reflect, there is an impermanence in the meaning and understanding of Japanese gardens.  Although they are created according to certain principles and meant to represent specific ideas, (moral lessons, nationalist ideology, or western imitations of Japanese spaces) their meaning is constantly changing.

  1. Elizabeth Bisland, The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Volume 1 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1906). [↩]
  2. Lafcadio Hearn, “In a Japanese Garden,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1892, Volume 70, Issue 417, https://www.trussel.com/hearn/jgarden.htm#Part1. [↩]
  3. Christian Tagsold, Spaces in Translation: Japanese Gardens and the West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 2, ProQuest Ebook Central. [↩]
  4. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1991), 30. [↩]
  5. Hearn, “In a Japanese Garden.” [↩] [↩] [↩]
  6. Tagsold, Spaces in Translation, 79. [↩]
  7. Ibid., 84. [↩]
  8. Ibid. [↩] [↩]
  9. Tagsold, Spaces in Translation, 84. [↩]
  10. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 49. [↩]

Foreigners in Treaty-Port Japan (1859 – 1872)

Foreigners in Treaty-Port Japan (1859 – 1872)

In 1854, with the Treaty of Kanagawa, Japan’s ‘closed country’ sakoku policy was replaced with an ‘open country’ kaikoku policy.1 This open era created new markets, new distribution routes and critically opened new Treaty Port towns. The most significant of these was the Treaty Port of Yokohama. Yokohama’s success and use as trading hub was so significant that it led it to the town being known to be ‘synonymous with the West’.2 John Dower explores how the local Japanese viewed this new commercial hub and their new foreign counterparts through analysing Yokohama prints, Yokohama-e. Yokohama prints were woodblock prints that, during the 19th century, became an extremely popular way to depict Treaty Port towns and depict the actions of the new foreign merchants and traders. This blog entry will explore how the Yokohama prints illustrated; first, the different uses of the new Treaty Port towns, second the lack of knowledge or information the locals had about these new foreigners and, third the suspicion the locals attributed to the foreigners.

One primary source, Utagawa Sadahide’s ‘Pictures of Western Traders at Yokohama Transporting Merchandise’, 1861, will be the principal source for this blog entry; Dower uses it to gain an insight into the different activities within the thriving treaty port harbour in Yokohama. The woodblock depicts five vessels within the bustling Yokohama port and the various tasks that are occurring on them when they are coming into the harbour. The five vessels represent the five nations with bilateral treaties allowing them to use the harbour. Many different activities are occurring within the print, from clerks making notes to crewmen climbing the riggings. These various activities illustrating what Dower calls ‘the unprecedented bustle’3 in the Yokohama harbour and reinforces how Treaty Ports were a hub of trading, business and all the other activities that facilitated Japan’s new international markets. The American ship, denoted by an American flag, includes a long row of small cannons running along the length of their ship.2 The presence of these cannons, Dower views as a ‘subtle touch of the ominous’4, signalling the Japanese’s uncertainty and discomfort with their new open era; they now looked out ‘upon the unknown world of foreign nations’.((Ibid.))Second, most critically, it displays the suspicion attached to foreigners in Yokohama. Locals still were sceptical of the Americans after their aggressive ‘gun-boat diplomacy’ which triggered the kaikou policy. It further illustrates how alongside treaty port towns being a hub of commerce, they were also a place where foreigners could display their naval strength. As Jeremy Taylor explores, the harbour in Yokohama was ‘on occasions lined with foreign troops of all kinds to intimidate Japanese government officials into further concessions’.5

It should be noted that, as Dower argues, it is unlikely that Sadahide was creating this print based on his first-hand view of the harbour. Dower explores how a similar European port scene appeared in the Illustrated London News before the publishing of Sadahide’s print, and this had potentially been the inspiration behind Sadahide’s work. This use of a European source to depict Yokohama’s harbour exposes again the lack of understanding and great uncertainty that Japanese locals and artists had towards these foreign nations and this new influx of trade and chaos. Dower emphasises how often different features of the woodblock prints were a ‘departure from strict reality’.6

Overall, Sadahide’s woodblock print is used by Dower to draw conclusions about the Yokohama local’s impression and interactions with their new foreign counterparts and their attitude towards the new use of their previously quiet village. It is clear the locals viewed their foreign counterparts with caution and uncertainty, often relying on European sources or images to fill their lack of knowledge of the new concepts and people that now surrounded them.

 

 

 

 

  1. John W Dower, “Yokohama Boomtown, Foreign Community in Treaty Port Japan 1859-1872,’” MIT Visualising Cultures, 2008, https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/yokohama/yb_essay01.html, 1. [↩]
  2. Ibid., 27. [↩] [↩]
  3. Ibid., 25. [↩]
  4. Ibid. [↩]
  5. Jeremy E. Taylor, “The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia,” Social History 27, no. 2 (2002): pp. 125-142, https://doi.org/10.1080/03071020210128364, 137. [↩]
  6. Dower, Yokohama Boomtown, 27. [↩]