Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame 9780520947665

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Tropics of Savagery

ASIA PACIFIC MODERN Takashi Fujitani, Series Editor 1. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, by Miriam Silverberg 2. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific, by Shu-mei Shih 3. The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health, 1910–1945, by Theodore Jun Yoo 4. Frontier Constitutions: Christianity and Colonial Empire in the Nineteenth Century, by John D. Blanco 5. Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, by Robert Thomas Tierney

Tropics of Savagery The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame

Robert Thomas Tierney

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tierney, Robert Thomas, 1953– Tropics of savagery : the culture of Japanese empire in comparative frame / Robert Thomas Tierney. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Asia Pacific modern ; vol. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-26578-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Japan—Colonies—History. 2. Imperialism—History. 3. Indigenous peoples—History. 4. Indigenous peoples—Public opinion. 5. Public opinion—Japan. 6. Popular culture—Japan—History. 7. Japanese literature—History and criticism. 8. Colonies in literature. 9. Imperialism in literature. 10. Indigenous peoples in literature. I. Title. DS843.T49 2010 325'.352—dc22 2009049274 Manufactured in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.

For Hiromi Matsushita

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

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1. From Taming Savages to Going Native: Self and Other on the Taiwan Aboriginal Frontier

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2. Ethnography and Literature: Satō Haruo’s Colonial Journey to Taiwan

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3. The Adventures of Momotarō in the South Seas: Folklore, Colonial Policy, Parody

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4. The Colonial Eyeglasses of Nakajima Atsushi

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Conclusion: Cannibalism in Postwar Literature Notes Glossary of Japanese Terms Bibliography Index

182 199 249 255 287

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Acknowled gments

A work of scholarship is inevitably a collaborative endeavor; here, I would like to acknowledge the people who made the most significant contributions to my research over the past decade. I am most indebted to Jim Reichert, my dissertation adviser at Stanford University, who was a wonderful mentor throughout my graduate studies. I would also like to thank Peter Duus and Miyako Inoue, who challenged me with the broader perspectives of their respective disciplines and helped me to approach my project from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. Susan Matisoff and Tom Hare were both exacting teachers who inspired in me a deep love for Japanese literature and for the craft of translation. During my last years at Stanford, I was greatly stimulated by the critical comments from Kären Wigen and Steven Carter. Throughout my years as a graduate student, I had the good fortune to be surrounded by friends with whom I have shared both ideas and laughs. I would especially like to thank Julia Bullock, Claire Cuccio, Michael Foster, Mark Gibeau, David Gundry, Shu Kuge, Miri Nakamura, Christopher Scott, Ethan Segal, Roberta Strippoli, Daniel Sullivan, and Michiko Suzuki. In Japan, I had the honor of working with Kawamura Minato, a scholar at Hōsei University who has almost single-handedly created the field of Japanese colonial literature studies. Professor Kawamura offered me access to his book collection from the colonial period and shared with me his extensive understanding of the field. I would also like to express my appreciation to Professors Araki Masazumi and Yoshihara Yukari for inviting me to take part in the Critical Culture Research Group at Tsukuba University. Through my regular participation in this group, I met and exchanged ideas with many young Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean scholars ix

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and had a chance to present my own research to this exacting group. I would particularly like to thank Hibi Yoshitaka, Saitō Hajime, Washitani Hana, and Wu Peichen for their encouragement and advice. As a graduate student at Stanford University, I received financial support from the Department of Asian Languages, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the Institute for International Studies. I began to conceive of my dissertation project during one year at Shizuoka University on a generous fellowship from the Shizuoka Prefecture. I conducted most of my archival research at Hōsei University with support from the Department of Education and the Fulbright Foundation. At the University of Illinois, I received a Mellon Foundation Grant for Junior Faculty in 2006– 7, which released me from teaching responsibilities for one semester and enabled me to turn my dissertation into a book manuscript. From 2008 to 2009, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) provided financial support for me to spend a year in Japan. I would like to thank the Department of Comparative Cultures at the University of Tsukuba for hosting me during the period that I was revising the final manuscript. Since I began to teach at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I have been fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues with whom I can exchange ideas. I would especially like to thank Nancy Abelman, Nancy Blake, Marilyn Booth, David Goodman, Wail Hassan, Karen Kelsky, Sho Konishi, Elizabeth Oyler, Dan Shao, Ron Toby, and Hairong Yang for their warm support and friendship. I would also like to express my gratitude to the following individuals who commented on earlier versions of my work, whether conference presentations or drafts of articles: Paul Barclay, Leo Ching, Kim Kono, Helen Lee, Michele Mason, Ann Sokolsky, and Mariko Tamanoi. I would like to thank Naomi Kotake at the Stanford University East Asian Library and Setsuko Noguchi at the University of Illinois for their assistance in finding my way through Japanese source materials. I must thank Reed Malcolm, editor at the University of California Press, and Tak Fujitani, editor of its Asian Pacific Modern series, for their faith in my project and their patience; two anonymous readers for UC Press provided invaluable suggestions to improve my manuscript. I am deeply indebted to Jacqueline Volin and Andrew Frisardi, whose informed and careful editing of my manuscript has made my prose more readable. I am also grateful to Daniel Sullivan, who proofread the book. I would also like to express my appreciation to Deng Xiang Yang, who provided me the photograph of the second Musha Incident that appears on this book’s cover. Chapters 2 and 4 of this book are expanded versions of my articles “Ethnography, Borders, and Violence: Reading between the Lines in Satō Haruo’s Demon Bird,” in Japan Forum 19:1 (2007), pp. 89–110; and “The Colonial Eyeglasses of Nakajima Atsushi,” in Japan Review 17 (2005), 149–96. I would like to express my gratitude to Ann Waswo, editor of the Japan Forum, James Baxter, editor of the Japan Review,

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and to the anonymous readers for both publications for their many helpful comments and suggestions. Last but not least, I would like to thank Hiromi Matsushita, my partner over the past twenty-five years. While I often doubted my ability to bring this project to completion, Hiromi never wavered in his confidence in me. I dedicate this work—and others to follow—to him.

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Introduction

Tropics of Savagery looks at the culture of imperial Japan, the most important nonWestern colonizer of modern times. It consists of a series of historically situated studies of literary works and of colonial tropes focusing on the theme of “savagery” in Japanese imperial culture.1 Borrowing from Hayden White’s Tropics of Discourse, the title plays on the dual meaning of the word “tropics” to refer to two related aspects of Japanese imperialism. On the one hand, Japan ruled over colonies situated in the “tropics,” although this fact has not seemed especially important to most historians of the Japanese empire. On the other, Japan exercised domination over its colonies through the deployment of “tropes,” that is, figures of speech, as well as through military conquest, political control, and economic exploitation. As Nicholas Thomas writes of the English empire: “Colonial culture includes not only official reports and texts related directly to the process of governing colonies and extracting wealth, but also a variety of travelers’ accounts, representations produced by other colonial actors such as missionaries and collectors of ethnographic specimens, and fictional, artistic, photographic, cinematic and decorative appropriations.”2 In this book I focus on tropes of savagery in Japanese literature and representations that Japanese writers made of the tropics during the colonial period. Many Japanese writers traveled to Japan’s tropical colonies and wrote fictional works, travelogues, popular articles, and a vast variety of other texts about savage or primitive societies. In this book I consider works by Ōshika Taku, Satō Haruo, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Nitobe Inazō, Hijikata Hisakatsu, and Nakajima Atsushi that appeared during Japan’s colonial period (1895–1945). These writers made the savage a foil against which the Japanese constituted themselves as members of a modern, civilized nation. At different stages of Japan’s colonial trajectory, the savages 1

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were headhunters to be eradicated, primitive societies to be studied, “noble savages” who had escaped from the blight of Japan’s industrial modernity, or hybrid subjects expected to conform to Japanese cultural norms. Just as images of savagery changed over time, the Japanese defined themselves in various ways in relation to those they colonized: as conquerors bearing the gifts of civilization to backward others, as ethnographers studying these others to find the hidden order of their society, as nostalgic romanticists in flight from civilization, and as colonial officials promoting assimilation policies. As I will show, savagery in these literary texts is less a realistic description than a polyvalent trope that writers have employed to depict their encounters with other cultures and histories, as well as to tell about their own ambivalent experiences as Japanese colonizers. As a result, these works open an especially important window onto both the images of the societies that Japan ruled and the lived experience of Japanese colonizers. Alongside literary works, I also examine other discourses in Japan’s colonial archives: ethnography, anthropology, colonial policy studies, folklore, and eugenics. In the late nineteenth century, Japanese scholars imported new academic disciplines from the West, but they quickly established autonomous branches of these disciplines within Japan. These disciplines offered paradigms of knowledge that were sometimes applied to solving the practical problems of ruling an empire. In return, the realities of ruling an empire informed the conceptual framework of these disciplines and shaped representations that the Japanese made of themselves and their nation. To consider only the case of the human sciences, Japanese anthropologists, ethnologists, and archaeologists—all pioneers in newly created fields of knowledge—formulated new ideas of Japan that situated it in the new spaces of empire and defined its relationships to the colonies. First, they conceived of Japan not as constituting an isolated archipelago but rather as forming a continuum with the continent of Asia and the Pacific region. Second, they stressed resemblances and analogies, rather than differences, between the people whom Japan ruled and the Japanese people. These new paradigms of knowledge justified empire as a territorial unification of areas originally one but later divided, and they legitimized colonialism as a system of rule over people who were related to the Japanese. In this book, I pay close attention to the development of these new paradigms of knowledge in order to situate literary texts in their context and link these texts to the wider sociopolitical nexus in which they were embedded. In my studies of Japanese colonial writers, I highlight the connections between literary texts and social and intellectual contexts and ignore the boundaries that traditionally demarcate literature, popular culture, social science, and history. While I approach each literary text as a singular work to be understood on its own terms, I also believe that literature is in dialogue with other social discourses, including legal writings, scientific reports, Western colonial narratives, popular songs, and school textbooks. In my view, the fiction writer is not the architect who designs

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the habitation of social discourses or the builder who constructs it. Rather, he or she is the tenant who has little choice but to make a home there, much as he or she inhabits the language in which he or she writes. Nor is the writer’s relationship to environing discourses predetermined, simple, or unidirectional. A writer may sometimes parrot, paraphrase, reproduce, and disseminate the tropes or topoi that circulate within society at any moment, but he or she may also invert, ridicule, and transform dominant discourses by relativizing or parodying them, or simply by inscribing them in a fictional world. Indeed, even when a literary work restricts itself to reproducing these social discourses, it inevitably distances itself from them by the playful nature of the literary text. In “A letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre,” Althusser argues that literary works are significant because they make us perceive “from the inside, by an internal distance, the very ideology in which they are held.” In short, Althusser treats ideology as the raw material that literature transforms and puts on display.3 Furthermore, the works that I study mirror the shifts in Japanese views toward imperialism and the trajectory of Japan’s imperial expansion over time. Nitobe’s essays are products of the early formation of the Japanese empire and of Japan’s incorporation into a global imperialist order. The stories of Satō and Akutagawa resonate with the liberal critique of colonialism in the 1920s. Ōshika’s work offers an interesting counterpoint to the “return to Japan” movement in Japanese letters in the 1930s, and Nakajima’s South Seas fiction intersects with 1940s rhetoric of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In my studies of specific texts, I locate literature within changing configurations of Japan’s empire and highlight the instability of imperial discourse over time. In addition to studying literary works and their relationship with social discourses, I use these studies to complicate the application of Western-oriented paradigms to Japanese colonial literature. Japan is largely neglected in the major works of postcolonial studies. Yet its place in the history of modern empires is paradoxical. Modern Japan was never colonized; nevertheless it was the product of a semicolonial collision between an Asian society and the expanding West. After Commodore Perry forced the Tokugawa shogunate to open its ports to international commerce, Japan signed “unequal treaties” with Western powers according to which Western nationals residing in Japan enjoyed the privilege of extraterritoriality. Japan remained under this system until the early twentieth century.4 At the same time that Japan was renegotiating with Western powers to replace these one-sided treaties with reciprocal agreements, it was quickly moving to establish its own “unequal treaties” with its Asian neighbors. Indeed, Japan emerged as a colonizer in its own right by 1895, when it took over Taiwan, and it later went on to build a vast empire in East Asia. In fact, Japan was the paramount imperial power in East Asia during the first half of the twentieth century. Tropics of Savagery studies the dynamics of a hybrid imperialism that was dif-

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ferent from, but also mimetic of, Western imperialism. It challenges the dyadic models that underlie most postcolonial theories, proposing alternate models with which to understand Japan. By focusing on the case of Japan, I also hope to illuminate the imperial cultures of other mimetic, late-developing empires, and of postcolonial nations for which Japan often provided a template and an example. Finally, I will note that Tropics of Savagery is in close conversation with two recent studies of Japanese imperial literature: Faye Yuan Kleeman’s Under an Imperial Sun and Leo Ching’s Becoming Japanese. Kleeman’s work is an excellent study of literary writing by Taiwanese and Japanese writers during the colonial period. Like Kleeman, I center my attention on literature, but unlike her, I focus on the theme of savagery in literary works and situate this theme in the context of broader social discourses and new disciplines of knowledge. In addition, I approach Japanese colonial literature from a comparative vantage point and seek to uncover both similarities and differences between it and the literature of Western empires. Rather than a study of literature, Tropics of Savagery is a work of cultural studies that explores the links between Japanese literature and discursive disciplines that influenced it within the global context of competitive imperialism. Leo Ching’s Becoming Japanese, a pioneering work on Japan’s colonial culture, defines Japanese imperialism as a non-Western imperialism that both resembles and differs from Western imperialism. Building on Ching’s analysis, I problematize the relationship between Japan and the West by showing how Japanese discourse is always produced in relation to, and in a certain sense, refracted through, Western imperialism. Indeed, I show that Japanese imperialism (and its colonial literature) has a mimetic relationship to Western models. For example, Nakajima Atsushi modeled himself on Robert Louis Stevenson, although his literary works differ in fundamental ways from those of his model. In Tropics of Savagery, I also offer readings of texts that go beyond Taiwan (the focus of Ching’s book) and extend to the South Seas. I am interested in the figure of the savage, a theme that is peripheral to Ching’s study of Taiwanese intellectuals. A L L E G OR I E S OF T H E SE L F

Japanese writers used savagery as a polyvalent trope to write about their encounters with the different cultures and societies that Japan colonized. At the same time, they wielded this trope to tell their own stories as modern Japanese people. Accordingly, the savage in the works I study is often highly romanticized, an alter ego who has preserved what modern Japan has lost, even the mirror of its authentic culture. This archaic, estranged “other” sometimes offers the writer access to hidden desires or his or her primordial self. By writing about savages, modern writers sometimes critique their own society in a veiled way, confess their own ambivalences, explore their experiences of modernity, or otherwise construct an imagi-

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nary terrain to write about themselves. Just as savages became alter egos of the Japanese, the islands of the South Seas were reconfigured as a space with important meanings. Far from being peripheral to Japan, this region came to be seen as central to its culture and as the birthplace of the Japanese people. As writings about cultural “otherness,” one can characterize the literary works I consider in this book as “ethnographic” in the broadest sense. Yet, as James Clifford argues in “On Ethnographic Allegory,” every ethnography about another culture is also “an allegory” and “an extended metaphor” that contains “additional meanings” about the ethnographer’s own society. Ethnographic writing “is allegorical at the level both of its contents (what it says about other cultures and their histories) and of its form (what is implied by its mode of textualization).”5 In the individual chapters of this book, I explore these additional meanings and metaphors in specific works of colonial literature, but here I will comment briefly on the significance of the allegorical form in Japanese colonial texts. The term “allegory” covers a vast field with a wide array of types: “Within the boundaries of literature, we find a kind of sliding scale, ranging from the most explicitly allegorical, consistent with being literature at all, to the most elusive, antiexplicit and anti-allegorical at the other.”6 Some of the texts studied in this book, such as Nitobe’s essay on Momotarō, are straightforward, “naïve” allegories. In his study of this folktale, Nitobe proposes to interpret Momotarō’s conquest of the island of ogres as an allegory for Japan’s colonial expansion into the South Seas. Developing a multitiered reading of Momotarō that leaves little to the reader’s imagination, Nitobe causes this seemingly inconsequential folktale to stagger under the crushing weight of its allegorical significance. By contrast, Satō Haruo subtly weaves an allegory of contemporary history into the very fabric of his “Demon Bird,” a work published in October 1923, based on a Taiwanese aboriginal legend and offering Satō’s contemporaries a lens through which to interpret their own recent history. Manifestly a story set in colonial Taiwan, “Demon Bird” alludes to the massacre of Koreans in the streets of Tokyo during the great Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1, 1923. In Nakajima’s 1942 stories about the South Seas, the narrator views a reflection of his own hybridity and self-colonization in the people he meets in Micronesia. In this case, the reader hesitates between the literal sense of the text and its rich allegorical overtones.7 While literary historians since the romantic period disparaged allegory as an inferior form of symbolism, modern critics have done much to restore its critical potential.8 Allegory provides a way for writers to juxtapose different levels of meaning within a single text and to comment intertextually on other literary works. I argue that Japanese writers use allegory to bracket their colonial narratives in order to tell their own stories of cultural colonization and hybrid identity. Subtle layerings of meanings that neither fully cohere nor fully merge, these allegories manifest the ambivalences of Japanese imperial culture. In formal terms, these texts are

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often hybrid products that combine other discourses or comment on other texts in a pastiche. In his 1935 story “The Savage,” Ōshika Taku depicts a Japanese hero who “goes native” in the wilds of Taiwan, effectively inverting Japan’s colonial mission of civilizing savages. In his story “Momotarō,” Akutagawa inverts Japan’s most famous folktale by turning its hero into a villain, parodying this model of imperialist youth held up as a paragon of virtue by Japan’s leading scholar of colonial policy studies. In “Demon Bird,” Satō Haruo deconstructs the discourse of colonial ethnography and pens a radical critique of Japan’s empire. Although I emphasize the critical potential of allegory, I also point out the limits of allegorical critique. An allegorical text arranges its different levels of meaning in an implicit hierarchy, one that mirrors the power relationships of the colonial relationship itself, thereby raising questions of an ethical and political nature.9 The form of the allegory that allows the writer to speak to his or her readers about their own contemporary reality also serves to mask the colonial domination that victimizes the colonized. If the works of Japanese colonial writers studied in this book are allegorical in form, perhaps my study of Japanese colonial literature is too. Northrop Frye notes, “The instant that any critic permits himself to make a comment about a literary text, he has begun to allegorize.”10 If Frye is right, then my book is no less allegorical than the works that it studies. When I began to research Japanese constructions of savagery during the colonial period, I thought I was investigating a somber but— in the final analysis—closed chapter of human history. As I approached the end of my work on this book, I realized that I was also telling my own story as an American in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Certainly, since the 1990s, the discourse of empire has made a dramatic comeback, and with it, the rhetoric of civilizing missions, dehumanizing tropes of savagery, and even the “savage wars of peace” of which Kipling spoke. The only piece missing from this picture is any historical awareness that we are resurrecting the demons of the past. For the fact of the matter is that there have never been any savages, only tropes of savagery, although these tropes possess their own logic and generate fateful consequences. When we refer to our present as the postcolonial era, we often assume that we have transcended the age of empire. Indeed, it is true that some empires (the Japanese, for example) have vanished from the face of the earth. In addition, the forms of imperial power have changed markedly since the great decolonization movement of the 1950s and 1960s. However, to speak of our present as “postcolonial” may be— at least in part—an expression of wishful thinking. Much as the “post” of postwar does not signify the arrival of a period of peace on earth, I would argue that the “post” of postcolonialism is perhaps misleading and, if nothing else, premature. In this study, I am guided by the conviction that we can deepen our awareness of history and better understand our present times by examining the rhetoric of a defunct empire.

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V IOL E N T S AVAG E S A N D C H I L DR E N OF PA R A DI SE

But who were the savages of the Japanese empire, what were they called, and where did they live? And why make them the focus of a book on Japanese colonialism? Let me first repeat that I do not believe that there actually were savages. I am concerned in this book only with rhetorical constructions of savages and with their representations in literature and social discourses. I employ “savage” as a word without a referent or indeed without any basis in reality—a word that functions, nevertheless, as a polyvalent signifier. As a nominal, the word “savages” refers to fictitious creatures imagined by the Japanese, whose imaginations were shaped by discourses on civilization, race, ideology, and literature. These savages populate the pages of Japan’s colonial writings rather than the spaces of its empire. Though the savage was an imaginary creature, he or she acquired a virtual reality by the body of statements, made by writers who cited and accepted similar claims by their predecessors, attesting to his or her existence. Nevertheless, this figure of discourse was an unstable entity that assumed different forms as the boundaries of empire changed and policies shifted. How did writers during the colonial period refer to the savages about whom they wrote? In the first place, they often used nonspecific, abstract terms such as yaban (barbaric), genshi (primitive), or mikai (unenlightened) to denote the savage. Of these three terms, yaban is an ancient Sino-Japanese term for those who lie outside the pale of Sinic civilization and control, whereas both mikai and genshi take on their modern meanings in the translated discourse of enlightenment and evolutionary civilization that entered Japan during the Meiji period. If kaika meant the process of evolutionary civilization, then mikai (unenlightened) denoted the state that preceded civilization. Genshi, a term signifying “origin” or “beginning,” took on the added meaning of the earliest and most primitive stage of society when theories of evolutionary civilization entered Japan. One encounters these terms throughout the colonial archive, but the words that writers used most frequently to speak of savages in the Japanese empire tended to have a more limited and concrete specificity. Adopting older Qing terms to refer to Taiwanese aborigines, Japanese spoke of the seiban (raw savage) or jukuban (cooked savage), terms that classified the aborigines in accordance with their acculturation to Chinese norms. In addition, particularly during the first years of Japanese colonial rule, they divided the aborigines geographically into nanban and hokuban, respectively, savages in the south and north of Taiwan. During Japan’s decades-long war of conquest in the Taiwan highlands, the aborigines were often categorized simply as allies (mikata ban) or enemies (tekiban). The kanji for ban, common to all these terms, differed from its homonym in the term yaban, which signified barbarian, and it served as the root for many related terms, whether spatial (banchi, aboriginal land in Taiwan), gendered (banfu, or savage women), abstract (banjō, or

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the condition of the savages), or moral (kyōban, or evil, violent savages who resisted Japanese policies). After the visit of the crown prince to Taiwan in 1924, the government began to replace this deprecatory terminology with the neutral term takasagozoku, based on an ancient Japanese appellation for Taiwan. In the late 1930s, the government general of Taiwan launched a campaign to enforce usage of this term in all official discourse. The Japanese also divided the Micronesians between the Chamorro (numerous in the Marianas Islands, often racially mixed descendants of Spanish) and the kanaka (the residents of the Caroline and Marshall Islands). The term kanaka was also a general, derogatory term used to describe all South Seas islanders and not specifically Micronesians, a term which derived from the Polynesian word for “human being.” More commonly, Japanese referred to islanders collectively as dojin, domin, and, most frequently, nan’yō dojin, an omnibus term for the indigenous people of the South Seas. The term dojin (a native person) originally had the neutral meaning of a “resident of a particular locality,” but it acquired the pejorative sense of “backward, primitive person” during the colonial period. The earliest use of dojin in this new sense was the so-called 1879 law on “former natives” of Hokkaido (the Ainu). The appellation “former native” (kyūdojin), like the term “new commoner” (shinheimin), applied to former outcasts, belonged to a lexicon of terms that replaced the status system of the Tokugawa period, which was abolished at the start of the Meiji period. In fact, these terms tended to perpetuate prejudice against minority groups in Japan and to reinforce discriminatory practices against them. Since savages inhabited only the imaginations of the Japanese, there is no way that one can locate them on the map: they belong to the nonplace of discursive production. Indeed, since the savage is the product of the discourse that names him, the same writer could use the same words to represent other spaces and to refer to other groups than the ones named above. Consequently, the actual usage of tropes for savagery exceeds the delimited spaces of the Japanese imperium and its South Seas colonies, and can be used for writing about the home islands, the Japanese past, or the human condition in general. Nevertheless, this study will focus predominantly on representations of Taiwan aboriginal society and the South Seas, the richest sites for the production of this discourse, and will cover the years 1895–1945. After Taiwan was ceded to Japan under the Shimonoseki Treaty, which ended the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese fought a long colonial war to extend their control over the new territory. At first the aboriginal tribes in the mountainous interior of Taiwan were the allies of the Japanese in their struggle to crush Taiwan Chinese who had launched a guerilla war against Japanese colonial rule. After the guerillas were vanquished, the colonial authorities turned their attention to the mountainous interior of Taiwan and to its rich resources. Since the aboriginal population resisted the encroachments of settlers and soldiers, the regime launched a large-scale military offensive that cul-

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minated in the genocidal five-year pacification campaigns waged by GovernorGeneral Sakuma Samata (1909–14). While the colonial regime succeeded in extending its control to most of the Taiwan highlands by 1914, the resulting order was periodically broken by aboriginal rebellions that punctuated the subsequent decades of colonial rule. During the Musha Incident of 1930, Sedeq aborigines from six villages attacked a school athletic event and murdered some 134 Japanese, precipitating a major crisis in colonial rule over the aboriginal territories. The Japanese practiced a distinctive form of colonization in the highlands of Taiwan—what one could refer to as “expropriation by dispossession.” They subjugated the aboriginal lands primarily in order to exploit their resources, but had little use for the indigenous population. Deprived of their control of vast territories, the aborigines chafed under a colonial system that differed from the one imposed on the Han Chinese in the plains. Indeed, the Japanese drew a clear border that separated aboriginal territories from the rest of Taiwan, and ruled the aborigines under a special administrative system in which the police assumed the leading role; until the 1920s, travelers wishing to visit these lands needed special permits issued by the authorities. Such special treatment both reflected and legitimated the stereotypes of aborigines as fearsome savages, stereotypes that dominated Japanese popular culture and literary works. By contrast with the brutal subjugation campaigns and the periodic upheavals that characterized colonial rule of Taiwan, the acquisition of Micronesia, Japan’s second tropical colony, was a bloodless affair. Ruled by Germany from the late nineteenth century, Japan seized the islands of Micronesia after a short naval campaign during the First World War. Passing from German to Japanese control, the islands were later entrusted to Japan as a trust territory under a mandate of the League of Nations. Mandated territories were divided into three classifications, A, B, and C, determined by the level of their cultural and political development. Territories classified as “A” were considered closest to independence, and, as in the case of Iraq (a British mandate that became formally independent in 1932), could receive sovereignty after the required period of “tutelage.” Mandates given a “C” designation— such as Japan’s Pacific allotment—were judged to be furthest from sovereignty; they “were regarded as being on such a low level of political development as to be suitable for treatment as integral parts of the mandatory Power’s territory, almost, that is, as annexed domains.”11 Much like the Taiwanese aborigines, Micronesians were not seen as a labor force to be exploited. Unlike Taiwan, however, the Micronesian territory was exiguous and poor in resources. As a result, the process of expropriation was far less brutal than in the case of Taiwan. On islands such as Saipan, where the Japanese developed a plantation economy requiring an abundant labor force, the most important Japanese enterprises imported their workers from outside, especially from Okinawa. During the three decades that Japanese ruled Micronesia, the Japanese settler population eventually came to outnumber the indigenous is-

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landers, notably in the islands in the Mariana chain. While some Micronesians resisted Japanese rule and colonial policies, the Japanese authorities did not confront widespread and violent opposition, as they did in Korea and Taiwan. Reflecting these different modalities of conquest and imperial rule, colonial literature set in Taiwan and the South Seas often offers diametrically opposed images of indigenous peoples. In general, the dominant trope for representing the Taiwan aborigines during the colonial period was that of the violent, irrational headhunter. Reflecting the ferocity of the Japanese conquest period, narratives set in Taiwan recount cycles of rebellion and repression that punctuated the period of colonial rule. By contrast, writers about the South Seas often draw on figures of a “soft” primitivism to idealize the islanders as innocent, happy primitives and to depict their islands as a tropical paradise.12 As Japanese immigrants came to outnumber South Seas islanders, Japanese writers often evinced “imperial nostalgia” for the vanishing Micronesians, victims of colonial modernity and of rapid demographic changes, a theme common in ethnographic writings about both Taiwan and Micronesia. This diptych of contrasting figures of the savage—noble savage and violent headhunter—constitutes the light and shadow of colonial literature. Scholars of Western colonialism have often noted the ambivalence of the trope of the savage in Western discourse. From the time of the “discovery” of America by Europeans, the indigenous native has been portrayed as the frightening and violent cannibal but also as the innocent and happy child, the epitome of all that is pure and untainted.13 It is no historical accident that a similar dichotomy can be found in the works of Japanese literature. After all, Japan was only one in a series of colonial powers that ruled Taiwan and Micronesia, and it borrowed liberally from its predecessors even as it strove to distinguish its rule from theirs. In addition, Japanese proponents of empire were quick to adapt figures of the savage along with the entire panoply of colonial discourses and tropes that had accumulated during several centuries of Western exploration and colonization of non-Western parts of the world.14 Why make savages central to study of Japanese colonial culture? In general, historians stress that the Japanese were culturally close to people that they colonized. One scholar writes: “[Japan’s] most important territories, Korea and Taiwan, were well populated lands, whose inhabitants were racially akin to their Japanese rulers with whom they shared a common cultural heritage. This sense of cultural affinity with its subject peoples made Japan unique among the colonial powers of modern times.”15 Because of these purported cultural and racial similarities with the colonized, this author points out, the Japanese were less likely to feel an exotic fascination with their colonies than Western colonizers did. While I will not attempt to refute this observation, I will note that the Japanese empire included societies without writing or complex state organization that were culturally remote from the home islands. The aboriginal population of Taiwan and the indigenous population of Micronesia may have made up a tiny fraction of the population of the Japanese em-

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pire, but they played a major role in the imagination of Japanese writers and loomed surprisingly large in colonial literature. Japanese writers devoted a disproportionately large number of fictional works to the Taiwanese aborigines, a mere 2 percent of the island’s total population, while they wrote relatively few works about the numerically preponderant Taiwan Chinese. Indeed, Japanese writers wrote no fewer than fifty works that were inspired by the aforementioned 1930 Musha Incident, in which Ataiyal aborigines rebelled against the Japanese colonial regime.16 Many Japanese writers and artists traveled to Micronesia, after it became a Japanese colony in 1914, in search of inspiration, producing an abundant and varied body of work.17 Beyond their quantitative importance, such literary works are qualitatively significant because they intersect in manifold and complex ways with the different strands of Japan’s colonial discourse and with the different phases of Japan’s empire. The Taiwanese aborigines were the targets of Japan’s earliest colonial endeavor, the 1874 Taiwan Expedition, undertaken to chastise savages who had murdered the crew of a ship from the Ryūkyū kingdom. Later, in encyclopedias of geography, ethics textbooks, travel books, and colonial policy studies, they were often depicted as the “headhunters” of the Japanese empire. Indeed, the subjugation of “headhunters” was adduced by Nitobe Inazō, Japan’s first professor of colonial policy studies, who started his career as a colonial official in Taiwan, as the paradigmatic case of Japan’s civilizing mission. These same “headhunters” captured the imagination of early Japanese ethnographers who went to Taiwan in 1895 to survey the aborigines and to establish a system of classification of their major groups. Pioneers of colonial ethnography wrote primarily for like-minded experts, but they also profoundly influenced writers like Satō Haruo and Nakajima Atsushi, who based their stories on passages from ethnographic studies. Finally, whereas Meiji-era Japanese celebrated the subjugation of savages as an achievement of a modern and civilized Japan, their descendants in the twentieth century fled modern civilization and resettled in the Taiwan highlands to recover their inner savage. In Japan, the earliest depictions of primitive South Seas islanders appeared in political novels from the 1880s, written by authors who had never traveled to the places they wrote about. These South Seas novels, which sparked great interest in the Pacific region among Meiji youth, often feature young officers of the Japanese navy who explore the South Seas and claim uncharted territory for Japan.18 In Yano Ryūkei’s Ukishiro monogatari (Tale of the Floating Castle), published in 1890, a group of Japanese adventurers take over a British warship, set off to explore the South Seas, and eventually help a small island nation in its independence struggle against the Dutch. In Oshikawa Shunrō’s Kaitei gunkan (Battleship at the Bottom of the Sea), written in 1900, a Japanese naval officer establishes a secret base on a desert island in the South Seas where he develops new weapons and fights Western empires to win respect for his nation.19 By the turn of the twentieth century, these fantasies started to turn into reality

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as Japanese established strong commercial ties in the South Seas and eventually acquired their first South Seas colony. Nitobe Inazō saw Japanese expansion to the south as a manifestation of Japan’s national character. He also interpreted the popular folk hero Momotarō as a metaphor for the nation’s expansion and as a model for prospective colonizers to emulate, much as Robinson Crusoe had been an inspiration to generations of English schoolboys. In fiction from the first decade of the twentieth century, young Japanese frequently travel to the South Seas in search of adventure or riches. With the vast expansion of Japanese media and economic ties in the South Seas in the 1920s, primitive South Seas islanders begin to enter Japan’s burgeoning popular culture, giving rise to what Kawamura Minato refers to as a “popular [taishū] orientalism.” Finally, South Seas islanders occupied the bottom rung of the racial and environmental hierarchies that the Japanese constructed to legitimate their dominant position in an autarchic empire, particularly at the time of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. To use Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s term, they filled the “savage slot” in the imperial hierarchy of power and knowledge as the empire came to encompass broad swathes of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.20 JA PA N I N P O STC OLON IA L ST U DI E S

This book sets out to comprehend Japanese colonial culture by analyzing the tropes of savagery in literary works and exploring links between them and wider social discourses. An ancillary aim of the book is to place the Japanese empire within the comparative context of global imperial discourses and to initiate a dialogue with current postcolonial theory, which is so deeply informed by the study of European empire. Gyan Prakash offers a succinct statement of the aims of postcolonial theory in his essay “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography”: “One of the distinct effects of the recent emergence of postcolonial criticism has been to force a radical rethinking and reformulation of forms of knowledge authored and authorized by colonialism and Western domination. . . . Recent post-colonial criticism seeks to undo the Euro-centrism produced by the institution of the West’s trajectory, its appropriation of the other as history.”21 If the condition of the postcolonial world is the legacy of colonialism and of Western domination, then Prakash believes that the central task of postcolonial critique is to undo this legacy and to deconstruct “Eurocentrism.” Prakash thus uses the term “postcolonial” to refer to non-Western parts of the world (the “third world”) once colonized by the West, a geographical notion that underlies other major postcolonial theoretical statements. In his seminal work on French and British domination of the Middle East, Edward Said calls Orientalism “a Western style of dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”22 Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak honed their theories to explain the British

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colonization of India, although Spivak frankly cautions her reader against treating India as emblematic of all colonial relationships: “The Indian case cannot be taken as representative of all countries, nations, cultures, and the like that may be invoked as the Other of Europe as Self.”23 Notwithstanding this cautionary note, postindependence India has a centrality in the literature of postcolonial studies not inferior to India’s erstwhile position as the jewel in the British crown.24 Even when they go beyond this single case, however, postcolonial theories are generally based on a limited empirical perspective, cover a narrow geographical range, and tend to generalize excessively. As a consequence, their theoretical formulations tend to neglect the historical and linguistic features of colonial empires outside the Anglo-American framework.25 Nevertheless, forms of colonial domination varied greatly depending upon the location of colony (Africa, Asia, Latin America) and the time period (sixteenth, eighteenth, or twentieth century) considered. In addition, there are national differences in the style of imperial domination: England’s way of being imperial was not the same as that of France, Portugal, the United States, or Japan. If the British empire looms especially large in postcolonial studies, Japan is perhaps the most neglected of the world’s major empires.26 Japan controlled the most extensive territorial empire in East Asia, yet it is “unmarked as a colonizer in Euro-American, but not in East Asian eyes.”27 That Japan, the only non-Western colonial power in the modern period, hardly figures in the annals of postcolonialism reflects the traditional disciplinary division between East Asian studies and studies of Western societies and mirrors a division of labor between their respective practitioners. If postcolonial scholars research the global aftermath of Western empires, East Asian area specialists tend to restrict themselves to their country or region of specialization. The development of East Asian studies in the United States, which came about as a result of the need during the Cold War for specialists with cultural and language training in East Asia, has led to the segregation of this field in area studies programs in American universities. This segregation of East Asian specialists in area studies has had the perverse effect of cutting off East Asian specialists from broader trends of intellectual life, thereby fostering intellectual provincialism.28 By contrast, postcolonial theorists have tended to treat imperialism as a “Western” rather than a global problem, notwithstanding their interest in recovering the agency of the non-West. In fact, by neglecting to include the only non-Western colonial experience in the general critique of imperialism, they have forfeited a magnificent opportunity to broaden the scope of postcolonial studies. Instead, they have tended to reproduce the Eurocentrism that they claim to combat.29 Even though postcolonial theorists have ignored Japan, students seeking to understand Japan’s empire can often apply postcolonial paradigms fruitfully to an analysis of its culture of empire. In other cases, however, these paradigms do not offer much insight into Japanese colonial relationships. Without proposing an over-

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arching theory to explain Japan’s imperial culture as a whole, I will highlight some distinctive traits of Japan’s imperial culture and suggest lines of approach that inform my own studies of colonial period literature. Suzanne Zantop’s study of German colonial culture, which offers some interesting parallels with Japan, is a precedent for the type of empirically grounded and comparative study that can widen our cultural understanding of modern empires.30 C OLON IA L M I M IC RY A N D M I M E T IC I M P E R IA L I SM

Homi Bhabha’s notion of “colonial mimicry” has proven to be extremely fruitful in analyses of colonial relationships. Colonial mimicry, an “ironic compromise,” is “the desire for a reformed, recognizable other as a subject of difference that is almost the same but not quite.”31 Colonialism is haunted by ambivalence toward this colonial mimicry: on the one hand, the colonizer demands that the colonized resemble himself or herself through a process of “narcissistic identification,” but on the other, he or she also disavows this resemblance and even regards it as a “menace.” Thus the colonizer both requires and rejects colonial mimics; they are, impossibly, required to be “almost the same but not quite.” At first glance, this notion of a “desire for a reformed, recognizable other” seems especially pertinent to the assimilation policy (dōka) that Japan adopted toward the colonized. For the colonized subjects under Japan’s control were placed in a classic double bind. On the one hand, they were encouraged to become “like the Japanese” by speaking Japanese and adopting Japanese customs; on the other, contradicting this rhetoric of assimilation, they were never accorded the economic and political rights granted to Japanese subjects. Like children exposed to contradictory messages from adults, the colonized confronted by the insoluble double bind of the colonizer responded with resistance and mimicry, or even with subversion through mimicry. As Bhabha notes, mimicry is not only “resemblance” but also “menace” that the colonizer must “disavow,” since mimicry “destroys narcissistic authority through the repetitious slippage of difference and desire.”32 Yet colonial mimicry can only deconstruct the authority of a colonial power that posits itself as original in the first place. But should we apply such a conceptual framework of original and copy to the case of Japan? And if so, where do we draw the line between imperial “original” and colonial “copy”? Before Japan insisted that the people it colonized mimic the Japanese, did it not imitate the West, including late nineteenth-century Western imperialism? It is well known that the architects of Japan’s modernization studied Western societies and adapted Western institutions and techniques to remake Japan as a modern nation-state. At the same time, they made a careful study of Western empires and colonial systems of rule. In the nineteenth century, the control of colonial territories was as important a measure of national strength as industrial development and military readiness. Determined

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to rescind the “unequal treaties” that formalized its subordination to the West, Japan early on resolved to acquire and rule its own overseas territories. Peter Duus writes that “imperialism, like so many other aspects of Meiji development, was an act of mimesis,”33 adding that “what ultimately enabled the Japanese to mimic Western imperialism was their simultaneous mimesis of other aspects of Western ‘wealth and power.’ . . . Although the Meiji Japanese mimicked the imperialist culture system that developed in the West, Meiji imperialism was the imperialism of a backward or follower country. It was characterized by a psychology of inferiority vis-àvis the West, a desire to catch up with the more advanced economies, limited foreign contacts, dependency on the import of capital goods, a lack of political leverage over the advanced powers, and a high degree of state involvement in economic development.”34 Interestingly, Japan mimicked the tactics Western powers had earlier used to deprive Japan of its sovereignty. Now, however, the Japanese were the active agents who mobilized these same tactics against their neighbors rather than the passive recipients of Western intrusions. In this regard, Japan’s first imperialist move toward Korea is exemplary. In 1876, the Meiji government dispatched warships to the Korean coast and forced the Chŏson court to sign the unequal Kanghwa Treaty, in a replay of Commodore Perry’s gunboat diplomacy of 1853. The Japanese did not simply mimic the actions of the Western imperialists; they also imitated Western justifications of empire to legitimate their own expansionism. In the early years of the twentieth century, the liberal politician Takekoshi Yosaburō appealed for Japan’s admission into the club of Western empires in a rhetoric clearly fashioned after Western models of the civilizing mission and the “white man’s burden”: “Western nations have long believed that on their shoulders alone rested the responsibility of colonizing the yet unopened portions of the globe and extending to the inhabitants the benefits of civilization; but now we Japanese, rising from the ocean in the extreme Orient, wish as a nation to take part in this great and glorious work. Some people, however, are inclined to question whether we possess the ability requisite to this task.”35 The mimetic character of Japanese imperialism is readily apparent in Japan’s first foray into empire building. In 1874, the Japanese government invaded Taiwan to punish aborigines of the Botan tribe who had massacred fifty-four Ryūkyūan sailors a few years earlier.36 Japanese commercial newspapers vied with one another to cover this military expedition and depicted its major episodes in lavishly colored woodblock prints. In their media reports, reporters argued that Japan must place the aborigines under firm Japanese control, in part to secure Western recognition and to “underscore Japan’s identification as a civilized nation.”37 In temporal terms, the 1874 expedition coincided with the Meiji government’s imposition of “civilization” on recalcitrant Japanese peasants and samurai. Japanese media reports often described the aborigines as cave dwellers and “cannibals,” images that point to mimicry of Eu-

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ropean discourse on savagery, since the cannibal had been the central European marker of lack of civilization from as early as the sixteenth century. However, they also deployed explicit visual analogies with Perry’s expedition to Japan to explain the hierarchical relationship between the aborigines and the Japanese, associating Japanese dominance over the aborigines with the dominance of the government over the Japanese commoners and with the Western dichotomy of civilization and savagery. In addition to displacing Japan’s subordination to the West onto the aborigines, such representations “of the aborigines’ subordination foreclosed the possibility of solidarity between the Japanese and the aborigines in favor of asserting a hierarchical relationship between them patterned in part after Western imperialism.”38 As the above examples suggest, one needs to supplement Bhabha’s idea of colonial mimicry with the subsidiary notion of imperial mimicry—the mimicry by one imperial power of another—in order to understand Japan’s imperial culture. Japan’s imperial mimicry structured the public discourses in which the Japanese justified their empire, but it also inflected their intimate feelings as colonial subjects. It assumed a multitude of forms—historical, political, ideological, psychological, artistic—but I will be concerned primarily with three varieties of mimicry. In the first place, I will consider psychological mimicry, which often was accompanied by a sense of cultural colonization. Natsume Sōseki provides an excellent example of this mimicry in his 1911 lecture “The Civilization of Modern-day Japan.” In this lecture, he contrasts the “internally motivated” development of European countries with Japan’s “externally imposed” development. If the former “develops naturally from within, as a flower opens,” the latter has “to assume a certain form as the result of pressure applied from the outside.” Japan’s modernization is a “forced march” in which Japan had to “compress 100 years of development that went into the enlightenment of the West into a span of 10 years.” The end result of this external imposition and temporal compression is that the Japanese “feel that we are dressing up in borrowed clothing, putting up a false front.” To be sure, Japan’s rapid modernization was a voluntary “simulation” rather than the result of forced colonization. Yet Sōseki treats this process as a form of self-colonization that alienates the Japanese people from their traditions and subordinates them to Western culture: “All we can do is mechanically memorize Western manners—manners which, on us, look ridiculous.” As “ridiculous” as they may look, given the realities of geopolitics the Japanese have no choice but to “imitate the West”: “Just look at how we socialize with Westerners: always according to their rules, never ours. Why, then, do we not just stop socializing with them? Sadly enough we have no choice in the matter. . . . When two unequal partners socialize, they do so according to the customs of the stronger.”39 Whereas Sōseki stressed his sense of cultural colonization when confronted with European civilization, he readily adopted a superior position toward other Asians when he visited Japanese outposts in Korea and Manchuria in 1908. Standing on the deck of a ship approaching Dairen (Dalian), he describes the crowd of coolies

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gathered along the shore as “buzzing and swarming like angry wasps” and producing in him an “impression of dirt.” The same writer who had felt the piercing gaze of European civilization on himself when he wrote about Japan’s modern civilization in a global context appropriated this same gaze to look at other Asians from a position of assumed superiority.40 This “complex” in which feelings of superiority and inferiority form such an unstable, contradictory mix, was not a psychological peculiarity of Sōseki; it can be found, in a thousand guises, in the works of many other writers. Bhabha sets his colonial mimicry in opposition to a narcissistic authority and mastery. The constellation of feelings expressed by Sōseki stands in marked contrast to the sense of ontological priority and psychological groundedness that Bhabha finds in Western colonial writings. He more closely resembles the colonized “mimic men” depicted in Naipaul’s famous book of the same title. I will also be concerned with literary imitation, the mimesis of specific works or writers or more generally of tropes of Western literature. If modern Japanese literature as a whole is mimetic with respect to the West,41 this fact would apply a fortiori to its colonial literature. As I have already noted, Japanese colonial writers had no choice but to copy Western models when they set out to write about savages. Besides borrowing tropes from Western writers, Japanese writers actually modeled themselves on Western writers and on Western artists. For example, Nakajima Atsushi, a key figure in late imperial literature, vicariously identifies with Robert Louis Stevenson in his 1942 novel Light, Wind, and Dreams. This novel, a “fictional autobiography,” is based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s writings on his final years in Samoa. Shortly after entrusting the manuscript with an editor, Nakajima followed in the footsteps of Stevenson and set off on his own South Seas journey to work as the editor of Japanese-language textbooks in Palau. For Nakajima, Stevenson provided a model of the romantic artist fleeing modern civilization—a model that he appropriated to construct his own imperial subjectivity and define his standpoint toward the South Seas. In the third place, colonial administrators and propagandists appropriated Western discourses to justify their rule of colonized Asian and Pacific peoples while scholars imported scientific disciplines which they used to construct the colonized as an object of knowledge: I will treat both as forms of discursive mimicry. Just as Western nations had earlier deployed international law to impose a semicolonial status on Japan, Japanese imperialists used the same instrument to legalize their domination of their Asian neighbors.42 International law assumed a hierarchy of states that were divided into the civilized, those who were full participants in the juridical order, and the less civilized, those who would be dealt with by means of unequal treaties. Japan renegotiated its unequal treaties with Western countries and replaced them with more equitable arrangements, but it also had recourse to the same law to justify colonization in Asia.43 To start with, foreign terms and concepts—international law, race, civilization,

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and so on—needed to be translated into Japanese. But Japan’s acculturation of modern discursive formations went beyond linguistic appropriation: it also involved using these terms as instruments of power to redefine its position within a global order. Yet discursive mimicry offered Japan more than merely an idiom with which it could justify its imperialism. Japanese intellectuals also appropriated authoritative disciplines such as colonial policy studies and anthropology, veritable technologies of colonial knowledge, and later employed them in the laboratory of the Japanese empire. When they constructed the colonized as objects of knowledge, the Japanese proved that they were knowledgably building their empire and that they controlled their colonies through knowledge. In arguing that the Japanese empire was mimetic, I do not wish to underestimate Japanese agency or to depreciate Japanese responsibility for its colonization. Even a cursory examination of Japanese history shows that Japanese imperialism also had indigenous roots in the nation’s premodern past. Under Hideyoshi, Japan invaded Korea in 1592 and 1597, centuries before it started to copy the West. Motoori Norinaga, the National Studies scholar, already placed Japan at the top of a global hierarchy in the eighteenth century.44 Nevertheless, Hideyoshi’s empire came to an end in a few years and Motoori’s speculations were written at a time when the Japanese were prohibited from leaving the country. Without the collision with Western imperialism and the mimicry of its forms, it is hard to conceive that Japan would have followed the expansionist and imperialist course that it did in the modern period. T H E A M B I VA L E NC E S OF C OLOR E D I M P E R IA L I SM

At a crucial turning point in his argument in “Of Mimicry and Men,” Bhabha identifies the narcissistic authority of the colonizer as “western” and “white.” The colonial mimic is always betrayed by a visible, racial difference or, to quote Bhabha, he or she must be “almost the same but not white: the visibility of mimicry is always produced at the site of the interdiction.”45 Bhabha’s verbal slippage from “quite” to “white” may seem natural for a Western imperial order in which whiteness and empire are synonymous terms. By contrast, the position of Japan as empire is closer to that of the colonial mimic who is “almost the same but not white” and whose mimicry is betrayed by a visible difference. Indeed, Japan is the first example, in the modern period, of “colored imperialism.”46 I used the term “colored” not in a biological sense to mean a darker shade of skin but rather to refer to a discursive system in which the West stood for “white, civilized, and colonizer” and the East was “colored, barbaric, and colonized.” Prior to their encounter with the West, the Japanese did not think of themselves as “colored.” Indeed, one prominent intellectual objected to the notion that the Japanese could be classified as a “colored,” or even an Asian, nation.47 Nevertheless, by the late nineteenth century, the Japanese had little choice but to accept the position assigned to Japan in this Western discursive system.

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Japanese learned the Western codes of racial color by their direct experience of the West. Natsume Sōseki discovered his “colored” man status as a student in fin de siècle London: “In the street, I saw a short and shabby looking fellow coming toward me: on second thought, it was my own reflection in a mirror. Since I arrived here, I realized for the first time that we are yellow.”48 Japanese-born Takao Ozawa learned that he was “colored” in the course of his lengthy battles with the American legal system to obtain U.S. citizenship. In 1914, Ozawa’s application for U.S. citizenship was rejected on the grounds that he was not white. He later appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that he was indeed a “white person.” In Ozawa v. United States (1922), the Supreme Court rejected his application, but it recognized that the discursive boundaries of race are not based only on skin pigmentation. As a Supreme Court justice put it, “ Manifestly, the test [of race] afforded by the mere color of the skin of each individual is impracticable as that differs greatly among persons of the same race, even among Anglo-Saxons, ranging by imperceptible gradations from the fair blond to the swarthy brunette, the latter being darker than many of the lighter-hued persons of the brown or yellow races.”49 As “colored” imperialists, the Japanese harbored ambivalent feelings toward the Western powers: they admired Western wealth and civilization but they resented Western racism. After defeating “white” Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904– 5, Japan was elevated to the position of one of the major world powers, but it remained a minority among a concert of white and Christian nations. Indeed, Japan’s military victory over Russia exacerbated Yellow Peril fears that a strong Japan could lead all of Asia in repulsing Western power.50 Within a year of the Russo-Japanese War, the city of San Francisco issued an ordinance that prohibited Japanese immigrants from attending public schools, and, in 1907, the United States forced Japan to sign the so-called Gentleman’s Agreement, effectively curtailing the immigration of Japanese laborers to the United States.51 Allied with Britain during the First World War, Japan participated on the side of the war victors in the Versailles Peace conference in 1919, but the victorious Western nations rejected Japan’s proposal that a racial-equality clause be inserted into the charter of the newly established League of Nations. In 1924, the United States adopted the Immigration Act, which barred Japanese immigration to the United States, prompting one middle-aged Japanese man to commit ritual seppuku in front of the American embassy in Tokyo with a letter of protest addressed to the U.S. president lodged in his chest.52 The passage of the 1924 Immigration Act and the rejection of the racial-equality clause were taken as crowning insults that strengthened Japan’s perception of itself as the victim of Western imperialism even as the nation was emerging as the dominant imperial power in East Asia. Yokomitsu Riichi’s novel Shanghai captures the complicated psychology of Japan’s “colored imperialism” in the 1920s, in which a feeling of superiority toward Asians was conjoined with a sense of inferiority to Westerners. Throughout the

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novel, Kōya, a Japanese businessman who speaks French and German fluently and prides himself on the fact that women say he is “just like a foreigner,” fruitlessly pursues the club dancer Miyako, who prefers Western lovers and rejects her compatriot “on account of the pigment of his skin.” The pair enter a municipal park where the “only legs not permitted to enter . . . were those of the Chinese.” While Kōya resents the fact that he is “scorned” by the “sturdy long-legged foreigners” strolling through the park, he takes pride in the fact that at least he is not Chinese; indeed, he prefers not to think about the Chinese barred from a park in their own city. As a citizen of a world power, Kōya enjoys the exorbitant privileges that extraterritorial status accorded to all members of the colonial powers that dominated Shanghai. His position was slightly lower on the totem pole than that of Westerners, but it was far superior to that of the Chinese. Indeed, the position of the Japanese characters in the novel is articulated in terms of the two major ideological formations that battle in it: colonialism and pan-Asianism.53 On the one hand, Japan was a foreign occupier of Shanghai aligned with the United States, England, France, and Germany— its racial others. On the other hand, it sought to align itself with the colonized peoples of Asia by reason of racial similarities.54 Japan’s position as a “colored” empire shaped the ambivalent, fractured sense of identity of the Japanese colonizer.55 Even as it actively colonized its neighbors, Japanese imperialists presented themselves as “friends” and “brothers” that would liberate them from the threat of Western domination. Viewing Japan as a victim that had “suffered at the hands of the white race,” they stressed their identification with the people they colonized. Nevertheless, Japan was not only “victim of the West” but also the victimizer of Asia. Just as Japanese diplomats were tabling a racialequality proposal at the conference of Versailles, the Japanese army was brutally repressing March First demonstrations in Seoul, an ironic juxtaposition of events that did not escape the notice of contemporary observers.56 Colonial ambivalences notwithstanding, the Japanese probably treated their colonized no better than any other empire did, as indeed the victims of Japan’s rule were fully aware: “In some cases, this sense of victimization will cause the ruler to mitigate some of the harshness of its domination, but in general this same sense may exacerbate its sadism toward the dominated, particularly when its sense of identity is in violent flux.” Japan’s “colored imperialism” was a “parasite that grew in the spaces between the binaries of ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia,’ ‘victimizer’ and ‘victim,’ ‘colored’ and empire.’ ”57 A N I N T E R ST I T IA L I M P E R IA L I SM : T H E T R IA NG L E OF JA PA N E SE C OLON IA L DI S C OU R SE

To summarize, Japanese imperialism was a form of imperialism that explicitly mimicked the Western variety even as it was also a “colored imperialism” that differentiated itself from the West and promoted close identification between colonizer and

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colonized. In noting that the Japanese were “mimics,” I do not mean to suggest that they were unique in this respect. In the late nineteenth century, rising empires such as Germany, the United States, and Russia clearly imitated the older imperialisms of Britain and France, who in turn followed the precedents of Spain or even ancient Greece and Rome.58 Nor do I wish to imply that their imperialism was nothing but a “copy.” In fact, mimicry is never a simple matter of copying.59 Even the perfect mimic never produces a perfect “copy” of the original he or she seeks to imitate, if only because a copy differs ontologically from the original it reproduces. Nor is mimicry a passive matter of duplicating a preexisting model, as a mirror gives a reflected image of the object standing before it. To the contrary, mimicry is an active, creative process that requires resourcefulness and implies an ironic remove on the part of the actor producing a replica. Precisely because Japan was creative in its mimicry, its mimesis of the West produced in the final analysis less a merging with its model than a distinctive type of imperialism that set Japan apart from the countries it imitated. This distinctiveness resulted from the historical context in which Japanese imperialism evolved and from the psychology of colored imperialism, in which Japanese colonizers had a kind of colonized consciousness toward the West. In general, Japanese imperial culture differed from Western paradigms of empire in two key respects: it had a triangular structure and it tended to promote close identification between the Japanese and the people they colonized. Typically, postcolonial critics treat the colonial relationship as a dyad composed of colonizer and colonized. However, in the case of Japanese imperialism the West was always the (implicit) third party. Due to this triangular structure, Japanese colonial discourse was always produced in relation to and, indeed, refracted through Western colonialism. Precisely because the West was an implicit reference point for the Japanese empire, writers during the Japanese colonial period frequently claimed that the Japanese resembled or were closer to the people they colonized than were other imperialists to their colonized. I refer to this second discourse as the “rhetoric of sameness,” studying its function within Japanese imperial discourse. The position of Japan between its colonies and the West was not stable and invariable throughout the entire colonial period but evolved in accordance with Japan’s changing position in the global order. At times, Western empires were held up as models to emulate, but at others, they were negative examples to be carefully avoided. Regardless of whether it was copied or eschewed, the West was an implicit reference point by which Japan charted its own course as empire and measured its own progress. After Japan acquired its first colonies, it justified its new position as colonial master by invoking the civilizing mission that Western powers had earlier used to impose unequal treaties on it, and legitimated its rule over others by appealing to the superiority of the Japanese race. By contrast, in the 1940s, the Japanese government legitimated its expansion by arguing that Japan was liberating its fellow Asians from the evils of Western imperialism in the name of racial brotherhood.

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While these two historical moments are diametrically opposed to each other in content, they are structurally quite similar. The three-sided structure of Japanese imperial discourse can also be seen in Japanese appropriations of the notions of race and civilization in the late nineteenth century—notions that Japanese imperialists used to articulate a rationale for Japan’s rise as an empire and to legitimate its colonial rule over others. Yet the race that ruled most of the world was the white race and the term “civilization” referred to Western civilization. How were these terms translated into Japanese culture and how did Japan fit itself into the hierarchies they underwrote? How did Japanese imperialists use these terms to legitimate Japan’s colonial rule over others? In the Meiji period, Japanese intellectuals did not construct their own hierarchies of empire ex nihilo before setting out to colonize their neighbors. Rather, they revised these Eurocentric hierarchies, in which Japan initially occupied an inferior position and was subordinated to the West, in order to make room for a non-Western colonial power. Indeed, Japanese emergence as an empire was premised on a prior form of selfcolonization. The Japanese people were the first objects of the government’s colonizing mission, even before they began colonizing foreign peoples. In Japanese adoption of Western notions of race and racial hierarchy in the late nineteenth century, early proponents of the science of racial improvement (eugenics) used two terms, minzoku and jinshu, to signify the mix of biological and cultural characteristics that meant race, although jinshu had a more scientific connotation and minzoku was the more popular term.60 From the early Meiji period, these writers played an active role in disseminating to the general public notions of race along with “scientific” methods of classifying different races based on physical appearance, bodily measurements, blood types, and common languages and cultural traditions. Such notions were closely intertwined with ideas of racial hierarchy, the superiority of the white race and the inferiority of colored races. Fukuzawa Yukichi, an important figure of the Japanese enlightenment, introduced his readers to the world’s five continents in his 1869 book Shōchū bankoku ichiran (Catalog of the World’s Countries in the Palm of One’s Hand) and in Sekai kunizukushi (World Geography; also 1869), which was adopted as a school textbook in the early Meiji period. He also described the five color-coded groupings that inhabited these different continents: Caucasians (Europeans) are white, Asians “slightly yellow,” Africans black, the people of the Pacific Islands brown, and the inhabitants of “the mountains of America” red.61 Besides identifying these racial groups (Fukuzawa uses the term jinshu) and estimating their population, he characterizes each race in terms of its cultural and moral level within a clear hierarchy, following the categories of Western racial hierarchy. The whites “have enlightened spirits and have attained the highest stage of civilization”; the yellow race “is strong in the face of adversity, diligent in study, but its abilities are narrow and it is slow to progress”; the red race is “aggressive and loves to fight”; the blacks are “lazy by

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disposition and know nothing of progress and enlightenment”; and the “brown race is “violent and prone to revenge.”62 While Fukuzawa briefly discusses Oceania in his geography book, he does not use the more expansive term nan’yō, which later writers employ to refer to the South Seas or to identify the race of its inhabitants.63 Shiga Shigetaka, who spent ten months touring the South Pacific aboard a Japanese navy training vessel in 1886, prided himself on being the first to introduce the Japanese public to the nan’yō, a geocultural region like the East (tōyō) and the West (seiyō), the two civilized worlds known to Japan. In Nan’yō jiji (Conditions of the South Seas; 1887), he provides a geographical description of South Seas island-nations under threat from Western imperialism, as well as a racial classification of their inhabitants as “Malays.”64 Warning his readers that the battle for the “survival of the fittest” was taking place in the South Seas, he contends that Japan must modernize if it hopes to escape colonization by a more advanced or “superior” country. Drawing on neo-Darwinist theories, Shiga argues that “the white race is superior to the yellow, the black and the brown,” and that these inferior races are “threatened with extinction when they begin commerce with the whites.”65 By introducing the Japanese to recent events in the South Seas and to the notions of social Darwinism, Shiga hoped to sound a warning alarm to the Japanese about the perils they faced: “We must devise a strategy to protect our future as a race and to defend ourselves in this competition with the white race.” In a world in which strong nations dominated others by force, weak nations could only survive by cooperating with one another. Shiga goes on to argue that only an alliance between China and Japan could check the irresistible advance of the white race throughout the world. Shiga treats the Japanese as an “inferior” race when he compares them with the white race, but he later describes them as a “superior” race in comparison with the Ainu of Hokkaido. Rather than standing at the bottom of a racial hierarchy, the Japanese (and the yellow race) are placed in a middle position.66 During the 1880s and 1890s, the Japanese weighed the pros and cons of the government plan to abolish separate residential districts for foreigners in cities such as Yokohama and Kobe and to permit mixed residential districts.67 This proposal generated a significant controversy that offers a window onto Japanese views on racial hierarchy and on Japan’s racial identity in the late nineteenth century. Inoue Tetsujirō, professor of philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University, vigorously opposed mixed residence on the grounds that “the Japanese are inferior to most Westerners intellectually, financially, physically, and in every other respect [so] they are inevitably doomed to be defeated in any competition [with the superior Caucasians].” To prove his point, he cited the precedents of the South Seas islands of Hawaii, Tonga, and Fiji, whose “inferior” populations began to decline when European settlers arrived, with the native population of Hawaii declining by over 80 percent during a century of Western encroachments.68 According to Inoue, Hawaii could serve as an object

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lesson to Japan since Hawaii “is very similar to our country.” Since “the ancestors of the Japanese come from the south,” it stood to reason that they, too, were an inferior race that would not prevail in a competition with Westerners. By contrast, Taguchi Ukichi, a proponent of free trade and an early advocate of southern expansionism (nanshinron), favored mixed settlement areas and argued that the Japanese were not racially inferior to Westerners. In addition, he denied that they were of South Seas origins. Taguchi later argued, in a 1905 essay, that the Japanese were related to the Hungarians, that both were “beautiful white people and that their languages shared common linguistic roots.”69 Though Taguchi and Inoue took opposing positions on the issue of mixed settlements, they were in agreement that the southern peoples belonged to an inferior race.70 Both thinkers placed the whites at the top of the racial hierarchy and southern races at the bottom; the question that divided them was where the Japanese stood within this hierarchy. In the late nineteenth century, these diverse thinkers generally envisaged international racial hierarchies through a distinctly social-Darwinist lens. Shiga and Inoue treated Japan as one of the “weaker” or inferior races, that is, losers in the struggle for survival, and argued that Japan should resist Western pressures and protect its national identity. At a time when Japan occupied a weak position in the international order, these writers regarded the struggle for survival from the perspective of the inferior races. Most writers switched rapidly to the perspective of the stronger races after Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Japan’s defeat of Russia signified that the nation had attained military parity with the West. The victory by an Asian country over a major European army generated new attempts in the West to define Japan’s position in the racial hierarchy. William Elliot Griffis, a natural science teacher who had worked in Japan from 1870 to 1874, reclassified Japanese as “Caucasian” rather than “Mongoloid,” based on the popular notion that the Ainu, the original inhabitants of Japan, were a Caucasian race.71 Within Japan, military victory was seen as a vindication of the superiority of Japanese blood and of the Japanese racial make-up. Henceforth, many intellectuals mobilized social-Darwinist postulates to justify Japan’s new position as the leading nation of Asia. In particular, a group of writers associated with southern expansionism began to use racial rhetoric to justify the nation’s advance into the South Seas. Much like Inoue Tetsujirō, they believed that the Japanese shared “blood” or racial ties with the people of the region. Unlike him, they argued that the existence of these blood ties justified Japan’s further expansion rather than its retreat to the protected shores of Japan’s home islands. In 1915, Inoue Masaji (1876–1947) likened contemporary Japanese to the “superior” Anglo-Saxons to justify their new position in the racial hierarchy. I have long contended that Japanese expansion into the South Seas is a matter of returning to the ancient past of our race prior to Emperor Jinmu. . . . I do not think it

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an insult to the Japanese to say that we have a large share of southern blood in our veins. Anthropologists [ jinshugakusha: literally, “race scientists”] have argued that superior and victorious peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxons, formed themselves by absorbing and fermenting several different racial strains. How can the Japanese people, who have received the blood of the southern peoples and purified it, leave the southern races to languish in their backwardness? By leading them, developing them, and fostering their happiness, we are not merely laying down the so-called royal road for the barbarians; from our point of view as Japanese, we have the good fortune of being able to return to our original home from the time before Emperor Jinmu. . . . The southern expansion is inevitable, natural, and indispensable.72

Inoue begins by asserting that the ancient Japanese advanced from the South Seas to their present home. Based on this racial past, he argues that the modern Japanese should return to the place of their birth. Significantly, he does not claim that the South Seas islanders are the only ancestors of the Japanese, but he implies that they are the most ancient ones. Later, as the Japanese “advanced to the north by conquest,” they incorporated the blood of other peoples into their heterogeneous racial makeup. As a racial strain composing the modern Japanese, the southern islanders are distant kin toward whom the Japanese feel both a sense of superiority and a patronizing sense of obligation. Indeed, when Inoue notes that it is not an “insult” to say that the Japanese have southern blood, he implies that he agrees with prevailing conceptions about the congenital inferiority of South Seas islanders. Unlike their primitive and inferior forebears, the Japanese have “fermented” and “purified” their southern blood, transforming themselves into a superior and victorious race, just as the Anglo-Saxons had done. Inoue makes use of pseudoscientific racialist discourse to identify the Japanese as the Anglo-Saxons of the Pacific, and he also justifies Japan’s expansion of the South as a return to its original homeland. Japanese conceptions of civilization follow a similar trajectory to those of race that I have outlined above. If racial discourse spatializes cultural differences among the various societies in the world, the discourse of civilization temporalizes these differences by plotting all human societies as occupying different stages in a universal scheme of historical development.73 To be sure, long before the opening of Japan, Japanese thinkers possessed well-developed notions of “civilization” and “barbarism,” which often were signified by visible markers such as style of dress or behavior.74 Unlike Tokugawa notions of civilization, however, the modern notion of civilization and enlightenment (bunmei kaika) was a dynamic idea that signified that all human societies were progressing along the same path, but that they were moving at variable speeds. In accordance with this idea, differences among social groups were interpreted as different stages of development along a single trajectory: societies were deemed “backward” or “advanced” according to their position along the path of progress.75 In his Bunmeiron no gairyaku (An Outline of a Theory of Civilization), Fukuzawa

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Yukichi set forth a theory about the temporal development of civilization: all societies of the world (including Japan) occupy a place in history according to their greater or lesser distance from the most advanced Western countries. He divided all societies into three categories, representing different stages of evolutionary progress: first, the “primitive” stage, in which “neither dwellings nor supplies of food are stable” and in which man “is dependent upon arbitrary human favor or accidental blessings”; next, the “half-civilized” stage, where “daily necessities are not lacking since agriculture has been started on a large scale” but where people only “know how to cultivate the old,” not “how to improve it”; finally, the stage of civilization, where on the basis of material abundance, humans have invented the “principle of invention itself ” and can “plan great accomplishments for the future and commit themselves to their realization.”76 Civilization is at once the ideal to be attained, the end point of a progression, and the summit of a hierarchy. In addition, Fukuzawa located the different continents of the globe within this temporal schema: “When we are talking about civilization in the world today, the nations of Europe and the United States of America are the most highly civilized, while the Asian countries, such as Turkey, China, and Japan, may be called halfcivilized countries, and Africa and Australia are to be counted as still primitive lands.”77 Such designations are “common currency,” accepted even by those “labeled semicivilized or barbarian.” The distance between their countries and those of the West is “the overriding concern of Asian intellectuals today.”78 Though Fukuzawa borrowed from the previous studies of Buckle and Guizot in his theory of civilization,79 he freely modified their ideas to fit the case of Japan. Buckle and Guizot had treated climate and race, respectively, as the key factors that accounted for the worldwide dominance of European civilization. Rejecting this determinist approach, Fukuzawa saw civilization as a universal process open to all nations rather than a system confined to Europe. In his view, nothing would prevent Japan from assuming its rightful place as a full member of the community of civilized nations, provided that it reformed its institutions and society.80 Furthermore, he defined civilization as a “relative” concept inasmuch as it could only be defined in relation to what civilization was not: “civilization is escaping from barbarism and gradually advancing along the path of progress.” Nevertheless, the converse of this statement was also true: barbarism could be defined only from the point of view of civilization. Fukuzawa located the forces opposing civilization in the internal weakness of Asia: Oriental despotism of China and “the old customs of Japan.” Most important, he differed from his European sources in the position that he, as enunciator, occupied within the hierarchy of civilization.81 He placed Japan (but also Turkey and China) in the middle stage of half-civilized (hankai), behind the nations of the civilized West but ahead of the primitive societies of Africa, Oceania, and Asia. This notion of the middle ground offered Japan a lever to raise its position in this hierarchy, precisely because, as Fukuzawa also pointed out, civ-

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ilization is a relative notion: “If we compare China with countries of South Africa, or to take an example closer to hand, if we compare the Japanese people with the Ezo, then both China and Japan can be called civilized.”82 At the time he wrote An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, Fukuzawa stressed that Japan needed to develop internally before it could engage in military ventures abroad. Catching up with the West did not yet entail colonizing Asia, but it most definitely included the adoption of a Western viewpoint toward Asia. The recognition of Japan’s position as a middle ground might have served as a basis for solidarity between the Japanese and other Asians. Instead of joining forces with its neighbors to resist Western encroachments, however, Japan appropriated Western civilization to improve its own position in the international order, thereby weakening this middle ground between civilization and barbarism. After the failed coup d’état by the pro-Japanese reformists in Seoul (the Kapsin Incident), Fukuzawa published an editorial in the Jiji Shinpō (Jiji Newspaper, Tokyo), titled “Datsuaron” (Disassociation from Asia), in which he urged his countrymen to break with East Asia and to treat its neighbors as Western imperialist nations were doing: “Japan is geographically on the eastern end of Asia, but in terms of our national spirit we have left the old confines of Asia and have joined Western civilization.”83 Yet even as he identified Japan with European-style civilization, he compared the advance of the latter to the spread of measles: “Measles started in Nagasaki and is gradually spreading to the east with the spring thaw.” As the spread of Western civilization was ineluctable, the nations of the East could not resist it any more than the people of Nagasaki could stop the spread of measles. Like a contagious disease, civilization was an alien product whose introduction had a corrosive effect on Japanese society. However, the Japanese should “encourage its spread and make sure that all countrymen infect themselves with its spirit” because the transmission of civilization was ultimately beneficial, strengthening the health of the nation.84 Besides recommending that the Japanese “infect themselves with the spirit (of civilization),” Fukuzawa urged them to “quarantine” themselves from Korea and China, because these countries “violate the natural law of the spread of civilization.” During the Meiji period, Japan had broken with Asia in its “national spirit,” but “from the perspective of civilized Westerners,” Japan would be judged in the same way as were China and Korea “because of the geographical proximity of the three countries.” Fukuzawa feared that Japan would be the object of a Western orientalizing gaze that would be unable to distinguish Japan from its “lawless” and “unscientific” neighbors.85 Rather than let foreigners impose their civilization upon Japan, Fukuzawa summoned the Japanese to preempt them and to step forward as the agents of Japan’s cultural transformation: the Japanese must colonize themselves and internalize the orientalizing gaze of the West that views Asia and Japan as uncivilized. In his “Gaikōron” (On Diplomacy; 1883), Fukuzawa exhorted his countrymen to “first abandon their old customs and usages and to reform everything from their politi-

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cal system, laws, and education down to the smallest details of their everyday lives in society . . . and to strive to borrow from Western ways, resolving to make their country in the eastern region of Asia a new Western nation.”86 In a later passage of the same essay, he called for the Ainu and Ryūkyū on the periphery of the nation to practice a similar form of self-colonization, but in this case the model to be copied was Japan itself. Indeed, he argued that the process of civilization will be easier for these peoples because “the degree of difference in people and culture is not so great” as that between Japan and the West;87 here he offered a template of colonial discourse that would later be applied to other Asians. In a first stage of self-colonization or auto-Orientalism, the Japanese accepted and internalized Eurocentric standards and value judgments that judged Japan as backward and uncivilized.88 In a second and later stage, they discovered barbarians on their periphery and set out to colonize them in the name of civilization. The motto of dissociating from Asia was achieved not only by civilizing Japan but also by discovering uncivilized others among Japan’s Asian and Pacific neighbors.89 T H E R H E TOR IC OF S A M E N E S S / SI M I L A R I T Y

In an essay titled “Japanese Colonialism,” in his book The Japanese Nation, Nitobe describes the policies of blockade and extermination that the Japanese employed to force aboriginal headhunters of Taiwan to surrender their lands in the early twentieth century. “When they are practically caged, we make overtures to them. We say, ‘If you come down and don’t indulge in headhunting, we will welcome you as brothers.’ ” This rhetorical transformation of headhunters into brothers resembles the Western “civilizing mission,” in which the representatives of advanced nations assume the burden of raising backward savages from their benighted state and thereby redeem their humanity. However, Nitobe’s claim of “brotherhood” is premised not simply on his notion of “civilization” and shared humanity but also on a belief that the aborigines are of Malay origin and hence are racial cousins of the Japanese. “These Malay tribes resemble the Japanese more than they do the Chinese, and they themselves say of the Japanese that we are their kin and that the Chinese are their enemies.”90 In midsentence, Nitobe shifts from speaking in the first person to recording the viewpoint of unidentified, plural aboriginal speakers. This curious shift from “they are like us” to “we are like you” is not uncommon in Japanese imperial rhetoric. In this statement, we have a perfect instance of what I would call imperial ventriloquism, the attribution of views by the colonizer to the colonized in order to create the false impression of dialogue, whereas in fact the speaker’s only real interlocutor is himself. Nitobe puts words into the mouths of the colonized. He was far from the only practitioner of this imperial ventriloquism.91 In calling attention to the solipsistic nature of Japanese colonial discourse, I do not mean to imply that the colonized did not participate in the production of discourses

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on the original sameness of the Japanese and the people they colonized. In fact, there were many writers in Korea and Okinawa who also wrote about the original unity of Japan and its colonies.92 Nevertheless, the Japanese were the creators and main practitioners of this discourse. Often, Japanese speakers based their notion of similarity with the colonized on claims of physical resemblance or common descent. Takekoshi recalled meeting an aboriginal student at medical school in Taipei who “bore no resemblance to ordinary Formosan students but reminded me much of Japanese students from Kyushu.” Indeed, he recommended that specialists undertake historical study to compare the Taiwan savages with “the Kumaso family in Kyushu . . . or with the ferocious chieftain Nagasunehiko,” the leader of a clan in the ancient past that had resisted Emperor Jinmu in his subjugation of the eastern territories.93 Like Takekoshi, Fujiwara Toyo, one of the founders of physical education for women, compared the bodies of Taiwanese aborigines to those of Japanese peasants. “The seiban say one must not kill the Japanese because they are brothers, but they regard the Taiwanese who have emigrated from China as enemies and want to kill them. Since the facial structure of the seiban is exactly the same as that of Japanese peasants, one might surmise that the Japanese in the ancient past used to have a physical constitution like that of the seiban.”94 If some scholars stressed Japan’s similarities of physical constitution and appearance, others emphasized that the Japanese were racially related to the people they colonized. By far the best known of these theories, the so-called nissen dōsoron, held that Korean and Japanese races were of common ancestry. The linguist Kanazawa Shōzaburō (1872–1967) coined the term “nissen dōsoron” in an eponymous 1929 book. Noting the similarity between Korean and Japanese languages, he claimed that the former was a branch dialect of the latter, just like the Ryūkyū language.95 Anthropologists, who compared present-day inhabitants of both places, held that the Koreans were all but indistinguishable from the Japanese in their cranial and bodily measurements.96 Based on early historical interaction between Korea and Japan, Hoshino Hisashi and Kume Kunitake argued that Japan had ruled the peninsula from the fourth to the seventh centuries; this past experience offered a precedent for the Japanese annexation of Korea in the modern period.97 As the empire expanded into Manchuria and Mongolia, Japanese scholars argued that both Japanese and Koreans were part of a single racial and cultural grouping that encompassed most of Northern Asia. First proposed by nineteenth-century European linguistic scholars, this Ural-Altaic hypothesis was used to justify further conquests on the Asian continent in the name of shared racial heritage. They also used such theories to justify treating Manchuria, Korea, and Mongolia as regions (rather than nations) and to detach China from its borderlands.98 As these examples show, Nitobe’s rhetorical move exemplifies a general feature of Japanese colonial discourse: its tendency to advance claims of similarity between

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the colonized and the colonizer. In its emphasis on similarity, this discourse stands opposed to the typical discourse of Western colonial powers.99 In most of their colonies, Europeans drew a clear line between themselves and those they ruled, and they actively discouraged any border crossings and mixing. When theorists use these European models to describe colonial relationships, they characterize them as binary relationships in which the colonizer constitutes himself or herself in opposition to the colonized.100 If Western colonizers tended to emphasize the “otherness” of the colonized, Japanese colonial administrators made sameness a mode of rule in the Japanese empire.101 Why did the Japanese couch their claims of imperial rule in this rhetoric of similarity and analogy rather than that of binary opposition and difference? One might argue that this Japanese rhetoric had a certain basis in reality, notably in the geographical and cultural characteristics of the lands Japan colonized. As historians have pointed out, the Japanese empire differed from other empires in that Japan colonized territories in close proximity to the home islands and ruled peoples with whom it shared a common culture and history.102 While this assertion certainly contains a grain of truth, it does not explain why Japan made neighborliness and sameness a feature of its rhetoric of rule. To start with, Japan most certainly colonized adjacent lands from necessity rather than from choice. By the time Japan entered the world-wide scramble for overseas colonies, the other world powers had already seized most of the world’s “unclaimed” territories in Africa, Asia, or the Pacific. In addition, until the first decades of the twentieth century, Japan lacked a powerful navy, was unable to project its power far from the home islands, and could only colonize geographically proximate territories. Another reason why Japanese writers drew on the rhetoric of similarity has to do with the policies of assimilation the Japanese adopted to transform the colonized into future Japanese. As is well known, the dominant Japanese policy toward the colonized was dōka, a word formed by two graphs meaning “to make the same” and translated as assimilation. However, if the Japanese sought to make the colonized the same as themselves, then it followed that they were perfectly aware that they were separated from those they ruled by differences. These differences resulted from centuries of political separation, to say nothing of cultural and linguistic barriers, and had created a huge gulf between Japan and its colonies. In the context of assimilation policies, the rhetoric of sameness was less an acknowledgment of real similarities between colonizer and colonized than a legitimizing discourse that explained away the gap between a similarity posited in the past and a difference acknowledged in the present. It also concealed the contradictions of colonial policy discourse and masked the realities of discrimination and the structures of Japanese domination.103 Indeed, the Japanese rhetoric of sameness was no less hypocritical than the Western rhetoric of otherness, since it legitimated policies that were discriminatory and

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racist toward the colonized. “To make the same” tended to foreclose the option of granting the colonized political rights and equality with the Japanese. Particularly late in the colonial period, “making the same” entailed coercive policies toward Koreans, Taiwanese, and Micronesians such as forced name changing, prohibitions of indigenous languages, compulsory worship in Shinto shrines, and induction of qualified males into the Japanese military. Such policies, implemented with great brutality in all Japanese colonies from the late 1930s, smothered the identities of the colonized and repressed any form of cultural difference. When they imposed these policies, colonial officials claimed that they were granting “benefits” on the colonized by “raising them to the level of the Japanese.” In a vicious and perverse circle, the greater the violence that colonial authorities visited on the colonized, the greater the benefit they claimed to be conferring upon them. Even though Japanese imperialists often couched their arguments in this rhetoric of sameness, it was by no means the only idiom available in their lexicon to justify colonial rule. Indeed, some writers downplayed racial and cultural similarities between themselves and other Asians and emphasized their affinities with Western powers. Fukuzawa Yukichi described the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) as a war of civilization against barbarism, thereby conflating Japan with the civilized West and distancing it from China. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), the Japanese government dispatched Suematsu Kenchō and Kaneko Kentarō to Western nations to convince the Western public that Japan was waging a war on behalf of Western values and to refute “yellow peril” propaganda.104 In a speech given in London, Suematsu ridiculed the idea—promoted by Yellow Peril ideologues—that Asians shared either practical interests or common cultural traditions. Can anyone imagine that Japan would like to organize Pan-Asian agitation of her own seeking, in which she must take so many different peoples of Asia into her own confidence and company—people with whom she has no joint interests or any community of thought and feeling? . . . How then could it be expected for one moment that the various peoples of the East, with their varying degrees of intelligence, their conflicting interests, and their long-standing feuds and jealousies, could ever have cohesion enough to range themselves under one banner against the powers of the Occident? And if they could do so, is it to be imagined that Japan would enter upon so quixotic an enterprise as to place herself at the head of so unmanageable a mob? . . . The peoples of the East are, some of them, politically independent; others are under the sway of one or another European power. To combine them in a single undertaking would be a task utterly impracticable and unpromising. Japan has already cast her lot with the Occident, and in the eyes of many Asiatics it is to be remembered that the Japanese are no less “Yang-Kwai” (foreign devils) than the Occidentals.”105

If some writers sought to play up Japan’s resemblances to the people they colonized, others categorically asserted that the Japanese were racially superior to all other Asians or advanced claims that they were racially unique. Like Natsume Sōseki

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in Manchuria, travelers to the colonies associated other Asians with images of “filth, squalor, and indolence” and identified themselves with values of civilization, diligence, and hygiene.106 In wartime propaganda, the Japanese people were described as belonging to a pure race and possessing a unique culture to distinguish them from their rivals and enemies in the West. Indeed, Japanese “Orientalism” differs from its Western variety, since it fuses assertions of the superiority of the Japanese in relation to other Asians with claims about the cultural uniqueness of Japan in relation to the West. Depending upon time and place, Japanese played up affinities between themselves and other peoples of Asia or stressed differences, claimed to represent Western civilization or asserted their absolute uniqueness. Accordingly, the Japanese rhetoric of sameness was not invoked consistently and did not possess any conceptual coherence. On the contrary, duality, not to say duplicity, characterizes Japanese writings about the colonized.107 At least initially, the rhetoric of sameness reflected the weakness of the Japanese empire and its status as a latecomer. The Japanese themselves had imported Western civilization and technologies only a few decades before they claimed to introduce these novelties to their colonies. Unlike the Europeans, they could not pretend that they were spreading their own universal civilization to the colonized. It is noteworthy that Western legal advisors on Japanese policy toward Taiwan, Japan’s first colony, recommended that the government adopt a system of indirect rule in order to reduce the cost to the Japanese treasury. In spite of this advice, the Japanese colonial regime favored the more costly alternative of assimilation because they feared that the subject people, left to their own devices, would lack loyalty to the Japanese state. The government laid special stress on the inculcation of the Japanese language and emperor worship to foster the loyalty of the subject peoples. A Japanese educator wrote in 1901: Japan is weaker than and inferior to the West in the military, economic, and cultural spheres and is slightly superior to China and Korea. Aside from this, we must hold onto one thin thread of hope. Namely, Japanese ethics, part of our education curriculum and a very important subject, is something that we can spread throughout the world. Our spirit is superior to that of the Western peoples. I concede that we must yield to them in matters relating to material conditions. But we do not need to yield to them in ethics. It is a matter of policy that we should introduce material civilization to the Chinese. But it is our duty to infuse them with Japanese ethics.108

As a discourse turned toward the colonized, the rhetoric of sameness sought to “infuse [the colonized] with Japanese ethics.” As a discourse directed toward the West, this rhetoric showed that the Japanese had a unique relationship with the people they colonized, a relationship that set them apart from colonization on the Western model.109 In 1910, Count Ōkuma Shigenobu, founder of Waseda University, wrote that “many European countries

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expanded into countries with different races, different nations and different religion, unlike Japan, which expanded into areas occupied by the same race and the same nation. . . . As for the Taiwanese and the Koreans, they hardly differ from the Japanese in their thinking, their feelings, their customs, manners, and religion.”110 Whereas Western imperial powers face “innumerable problems in their attempts to rule over different races . . . in our case, the path to assimilation [dōka] will transform the Koreans into loyal, obedient subjects.”111 To be sure, Ōkuma did not want to extend to Koreans the same rights granted to Japanese under the Meiji constitution when he spoke of transforming them into “loyal, obedient subjects.”112 He simply meant that the racial similarity of the Japanese and Koreans would smooth the path to Japan’s colonization and obviate the need for Japan to employ violence, the means that Western powers had used to subjugate their radically different and refractory subjects. Yet even after the Japanese empire became strong in the early part of the twentieth century, Japanese writers continued to deploy the rhetoric of sameness to justify its rule over the different people of the Asia Pacific region. Proponents of panAsianism argued that Japan was destined to lead East Asia both because it was a modern nation and because it shared a common culture and racial identity with its neighbors. While pan-Asianists initially sought to reform decaying Asia along Western lines, they later sought to oust Western imperialism, notably during the Second World War.113 In the 1940s, supporters of the Greater East Asian CoProsperity Sphere called for the unification of peoples “closely related to each other geographically, racially, culturally, and economically” and pledged to end centuries of Western hegemony.114 This anti-imperial rhetoric both distinguished Japanese imperialism from the predatory Western variety and sought to bind the colonized to the Japanese with claims of racial solidarity. In fact, the terms of this rhetoric were again and again reinterpreted, transformed, and redirected to serve new purposes. On the one hand, claims of similarity offered an ideological justification for Japanese colonialism, distinguishing it from that of the West. On the other, the notion that the Japanese shared a common identity with the colonized provided an important paradigm for early twentieth-century history, ethnography, archaeology, and so on. When they turned their attention to territories under Japanese imperial control, Japanese scholars often argued that there was an ethno-racial continuity between the Japanese and the people they colonized. In this respect, Japanese imperialism resembles the continental imperialism (pan-Germanism or pan-Slavism) analyzed by Hannah Arendt, which also used racial and cultural ties to justify territorial unification. Whatever the precise motivation of individual exponents of this discourse, I will argue that the fact that the Japanese sought to claim a fictive unity and imaginary kinship with those they colonized is highly significant and calls for close examination. In the course of this book, I will consider the discourses of a variety of writ-

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ers, literary and otherwise, who deployed this rhetoric of similarity. In the works of these writers, similarity was posited at different sites including culture and civilization, race, and physical bodies. This rhetoric assumed two different forms, one strong the other weak, that I will distinguish analytically. In the strong form, the Japanese were said to possess attributes (race, culture) that made them absolutely similar to the colonized, thereby justifying Japanese colonial rule on the basis of common qualities. In the weaker version, the Japanese were, by comparison with Westerners, relatively similar to the people they colonized; on these grounds, Japanese rule was preferable to that of Western colonizers. Japanese speakers invoked both sets of justifications ever more aggressively in the post–World War I period, when President Wilson’s call for self-determination, the Russian Revolution, and the upsurge in nationalist movements throughout the colonized world put all kinds of imperialism, whether Western or Eastern, on the defensive. Just as Japanese imperial rhetoric often stressed the similarities between colonizer and colonized, distinguishing their imperial rule from that of Western powers, it described the Japanese empire in ways that distinguished Japan from the West: anti-Western and “anti-imperialist” terms. A kind of anti-imperial imperialism shaped the ordinary language with which the Japanese spoke of their colonies and referred to themselves and the people they ruled. When Japan acquired Taiwan in 1895, politicians and journalists carefully avoided referring to this “newly acquired territory” as a colony, no doubt because the term “colony” had negative connotations.115 For example, Hara Kei wrote: “The situation of the [Taiwanese] people is absolutely different from that of the different countries that establish rule over people of different races.” In 1910, speaking of Korea, Prime Minister Hara wrote that it was “an extension of Japan rather than a territorial dependency or a colony.”116 In journalism until the First World War, Japanese colonies are often referred to simply as shin Nihon, or the new Japan, and their residents as new Japanese (shin nihonjin). Not only did the Japanese eschew referring to their “foreign territorial possessions” by the term “colony,” but they claimed to have acquired these lands through neutral, peaceful processes: Japan did not “annex,” it “merged” (heigō suru) with Korea, and the Qing “ceded” (katsujō suru) Taiwan to Japan. In the case of Manchuria, Japanese rulers strove to preserve the fiction that they were dealing with an “independent country.”117 To be sure, these euphemisms concealed the realities of colonial war (Taiwan), military occupation (Korea), and invasion (Manchuria); nevertheless this curious nomenclature deserves attention in its own right. Japanese history textbooks still refer to the “cession” of Taiwan and the “merger” with Korea. People commonly distinguished Japan (naichi) from the colonies (gaichi): these two terms could be rendered in English as inner and outer lands. Indeed, gaichi denoted not only colonies like Korea and Taiwan, but also Hokkaido and Okinawa, both peripheral spaces between nation and colony that had been incorporated into Japan in the 1870s.118 Reflecting its semicolonial status, Okinawa in particular was

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(and to some extent still is) conceptually aligned with a colonial outside rather than with an inside of the nation. If pre-1868 Japan constituted naichi, then the Japanese who settled in the colonies were called naichijin, rather than simply nihonjin (Japanese). (I will note here that the term gaichijin, as a conceptual counterpart to naichijin, is rarely encountered in colonial period writings.) “Japanese” clearly included Taiwanese and Koreans, as is shown by 1930 census reports that give Japan’s population as a hundred million, a figure that included thirty million people in the colonies.119 In colonial discourse, “Japanese” was an umbrella term that did not distinguish between Japanese and Taiwanese (or Koreans), whereas naichijin specifically excluded the colonized. The distinction between naichijin and nihonjin was a crucial semantic difference that spoke volumes about Japanese colonial policy. In a suggestive passage of his travel memoir Musha, Satō Haruo transcribes a rumor about a massacre of Japanese by rebellious aborigines that he happened to overhear in an inn where he was staying: “All of the nihonjin [Japanese] in the village of Musha had been murdered.” He comments sardonically that, “strictly speaking, this should have been ‘all the naichijin were massacred,’ to use the terms that our rulers have taught us.” When the speaker blurts out “Japanese” in a moment of excitement, he reveals his assumption that, notwithstanding the euphemisms then in vogue, the “Japanese” did not include the colonized.120 ORG A N I Z AT ION OF T H I S B O OK

In Tropics of Savagery, I offer four specific case studies of Japanese imperial literature and of figures of its colonial discourse. Chapters 2 and 4 focus on individual writers: Satō Haruo, who traveled to Taiwan in 1920, and Nakajima Atsushi, who lived in Palau between 1941 and 1942. Chapters 1 and 3 focus on tropes for “savagery,” the figure of the headhunter in Taiwan and the “ogres” of the South Seas in the Momotarō legend. The first two chapters of the book deal with literature related to Taiwan, Japan’s first colony, while the last two chapters treat works on Micronesia and the South Seas. While I have not followed strictly chronological order in this book, my individual chapters trace the stages of Japan’s imperial trajectory diachronically: early conquest, liberal critiques of colonialism, late-colonial integration, and war-time mobilization. In chapter 1, I recount the history of Japan’s brutal military conquest of the Taiwanese aborigines and examine the legal rationales that colonial officials offered to justify this conquest. As Japanese military force encountered fierce resistance by aboriginal groups, the aborigines came to be viewed in Japanese discourse entirely in terms of “headhunting.” Even as Japanese colonial administrators endeavored to stamp out this custom, they carefully preserved the figure of the “headhunter” as a trope, and they circulated images of this “headhunter” to justify the violent subjugation of the savage “Other” and to affirm their civilizing mission. In the

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legend of Go Hō, a story that was widely disseminated to young Japanese and Taiwanese, a Qing official sacrifices his own life in order to persuade the savages to renounce headhunting. Once the savages were incorporated into the Japanese empire, some Japanese writers discovered a savage within themselves. The protagonist of Ōshika’s “The Savage” goes to the aboriginal lands in search of his inner savage and becomes a “headhunter” to free himself from civilized modernity. Just as an earlier generation of writers drew on global discourses on civilization to write tales of Japan’s colonial conquests of savages, late imperial writers appropriated tropes of primitivism prevalent in Western literatures to address a critique of Japanese modernity. In chapter 2, I examine the early development of Japanese anthropology and its influence on colonial literature. Western scholars introduced the science of anthropology to Japan in the 1870s and conducted the first scientific investigations into the origins of Japanese people. Within a decade, Japanese scholars “nationalized” this foreign science and brought it to bear on the aboriginal population of Taiwan, which quickly became the first overseas field in which Japanese anthropologists could work. In the next few decades, colonial ethnographers expanded their fieldwork to embrace all of the new territories that fell under Japan’s dominion. As a genre of writing about aboriginal societies, ethnography provided a model for the writer Satō Haruo, who traveled to Taiwan in 1920 and became acquainted with the ethnographer Mori Ushinosuke. A few years after he returned to Japan, Satō wrote Machō (Demon Bird), a short story based on a passage in Mori’s ethnography. The ethnographer-narrator of “Demon Bird” writes about an episode of persecution in an unnamed barbarian village. At the same time, the story he tells is an allegory about Japanese persecution of Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake. “Demon Bird” is a story that uncovers unexpected links between colony and metropolis. The work appeared at a time when criticism of Japan’s colonial policies by liberal and reformist intellectuals was at its peak. In chapter 3, I consider Momotarō, Japan’s most famous folktale, and his transformation in the early twentieth century into an allegory for Japanese expansion toward the South Seas. To overcome the dearth of overseas adventurers in Japanese history, advocates of imperial expansion championed the mobilization of this folklore hero to spark the interest of Japanese youth in the acquisition of overseas colonies. Nitobe Inazō saw Momotarō as a pedagogical tool that could fire the imagination of Japan’s insular youth and spur them on to colonize the South Seas. Other writers believed that Momotarō was, at best, a flawed model for Japanese colonialism, and even blamed the failures of Japanese colonial policy on his harmful influence. In 1925, Akutagawa published a satire of Momotarō in which the peach boy is portrayed as a cruel invader who brutally attacks a group of humanized ogres living peacefully on an island paradise in the South Seas. At the end of this story, young ogres counterattack and fight to win the independence of their homeland.

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At the intersection of folklore, propaganda, and parody, Momotarō emerges as a contested site for debating the Japanese imperial project and for defining self and other in the age of empire. In chapter 4, I look at the South Seas literature of Nakajima Atsushi (1909–42), an important writer who published most of his work during the period of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Nakajima, who grew up in Japanese-ruled Korea in the 1920s, went to Palau in 1941 to work as editor of Japanese language textbooks in Japanese-ruled Micronesia. Returning to Japan after about nine months, he wrote two collections of stories that offer the reader a compendium of colonial discourses and stereotypes on nan’yō during this late period of the Japanese empire. I examine the colonial filter through which the narrator of these works regarded the islands of Micronesia and the people that inhabited them. This late colonial writer offers us a sensitive reflection on Japanese “imperial mimicry” and a selfconscious assessment of the Japanese imperial gaze. In my conclusion, I examine tropes of savagery in literature of the postwar period. Cannibalism features as a major theme in three prominent pacifist and humanistic novels that were published within ten years of Japan’s defeat and the loss of its empire. By focusing on this theme, I examine continuities and discontinuities between tropes of savagery in the colonial era and in the immediate postcolonial period.

1

From Taming Savages to Going Native Self and Other on the Taiwan Aboriginal Frontier These primitive tribes had tattoos painted on their faces, thought that killing was a matter of honor, and took pride in displaying numerous skulls of their victims in front of their homes. Since this barbarous race was obstinate and extremely violent, it was no easy matter to smoke them out of their hideouts. He couldn’t help but be moved by learning of these people which coexisted with the cultural worlds of airplanes, ocean-faring ships, and trains. He listened to stories about the tribes, looked at their pictures, and heard true accounts of the bloody and tragic rebellions that all too frequently broke out. He thought about them and compared them to the adventure tales, novels, and articles written overseas about persecution by the natives. Tayama Katai, 1918

According to some, the members of the Bunun tribe are by their nature obstinate, insolent, and sinister. One inevitably hears such comments about aboriginal people who have fled into the mountains from observers with superficial knowledge of these people. But as one learns to understand their lifestyles and appreciate their characters, one discovers that they are a simple and pure mountain people. Kano Tadao, 1941

JA PA N’ S “S AVAG E WA R S OF P E AC E”

It is commonly asserted that Japan acquired its major colonies by defeating China and Russia in two major international wars that were fought on overseas battlefields. The fact that colonial wars played an essential role in the formation of Japan’s empire is less well known.1 Yet consider the following fact: when the Qing dynasty “ceded” the island of Taiwan to Japan in accordance with the provisions of the Shimonoseki Peace Treaty, there was not a single Japanese soldier present to stake his 38

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claim to this new cession. Before Japan could transform this territory into a colony, it needed to fight a colonial war that lasted for two decades and claimed more Japanese, not to mention Taiwanese lives, than the better-known Sino-Japanese War.2 On June 19, 1895, Kabayama Sukenori, the first governor-general of Taiwan, frankly acknowledged the veritable situation that Japan faced on the island: “In name, Taiwan is already a new territory of the empire, but the real situation is not different from subjugation of an alien land.”3 During the early years of colonial rule, the Japanese military concentrated on fighting Chinese guerrillas in the densely populated western plains of the island. Lacking the manpower to wage a war on two fronts, the military favored a tactical alliance with the Austronesian aborigines, who for the most part inhabited the mountainous interior.4 This policy of alliance was variously described as one of “tutelage,” “taming the savages,” or “leniency and conciliation.” In one of the first colonial documents setting forth policies toward the aborigines, Kabayama writes: “If we are to develop the island, we must first tame the savages. If upon meeting our people, the savages regard us as they do the Chinese, we will face a big obstacle to our plans to develop the island. Therefore, this government should adopt a policy of leniency and conciliation; over the long run, we will reap benefits from this policy.”5 To carry out this policy, the colonial government set up Offices of Pacification and Reclamation along the aboriginal frontier, modeled after earlier bureaus through which Qing-regime officials had conducted relations with the aboriginal tribes. The officials manning these offices “would gather together the heads of the tribes and other savages to distribute clothes and tools and hold feasts with drinking.”6 Hashiguchi Bunzō, an official who led an early expedition to the aboriginal district of Taikokan (Dakekan), later noted that the aborigines were delighted to hear that Japan was the new sovereign of the island, “since they had been oppressed by the Chinese” and “greeted the Japanese as long-lost relatives.”7 The colonial government eventually defeated the Chinese resistance, but it depleted its coffers trying to finance the costly campaign against the guerillas and to build infrastructure in the island early on. Furthermore, Taiwan was an immense burden for the home country: subsidies to Taiwan regularly consumed 7 percent of the Japanese national budget from 1895 to 1902. To bail out the colony’s finances and reduce the fiscal drain on Japan, the Taiwan governor-generalship established a government monopoly on camphor, opium, and salt; in subsequent years camphor alone supplied from 15 to 25 percent of the revenue of the colonial state.8 Since most camphor resources were located in the aboriginal areas, the aborigines henceforth became an obstacle that had to be removed rather than an ally to cultivate.9 As the insurrection in the plains diminished, the colonial authorities intensified military pressure on the mountain aborigines and moved to occupy their lands. At the turn of the twentieth century, Governor-General Kodama Gentarō declared: “We must shift our military forces to the savage territory. The savages who live there are

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stubborn and like wild animals. If we continue to feast them with food and drink, staying with a policy of conciliation, they might evolve to a certain degree. However, given the urgent conditions of the present time . . . we must dedicate ourselves to exterminating this obstacle to our progress as soon as possible.”10 As Chinese and Japanese settlers, tree cutters, engineers, and surveyors flooded into the camphor-growing regions, they encountered fierce resistance from aborigines who resented their presence and opposed their encroachments on ancestral lands. To protect the settlers, the colonial administration recruited guards to police the aboriginal border and retaliated against aboriginal villages that were suspected of harboring insurgents. Nevertheless, the aborigines took advantage of their knowledge of the terrain and hard-to-reach mountain bases to inflict hundreds of casualties on guardsmen and government forces. In response, the colonial regime hired a special police force to guard the aboriginal high country (approximately half of the island’s total land area) and established a permit system that controlled access in and out of these territories. When this system was in place, the regime could block all trade in salt and rifles to force rebellious aborigines to halt their attacks on settlers. Under the regime of General Sakuma Samata, the fifth governor-general of Taiwan (1906–15), the administration shifted from a defensive posture to an offensive one that employed military force to open up the region for economic development and to take control of the land.11 Just as they had sought to cultivate the neutrality of the aborigines during the war against Chinese resistance, colonial authorities now established a tactical alliance with Taiwan Chinese. To push the conquest of recalcitrant tribes to completion, the Japanese required both the financial backing of the Chinese gentry class and a steady supply of Chinese foot soldiers to man the guard posts of empire.12 Between 1909 and 1914, the Sakuma administration launched the “Five Year Plan to Conquer the Northern Tribes,” a centrally coordinated campaign to force an end to resistance by the northern tribes. The policy was called “subjugation” but was in fact an invasion. A key strategy of the Japanese offensive was to expand the fortified guard lines13—made up of mountain roads, guard posts at regular intervals, electric wire fences, and a two-hundred-meter-wide strip of scorched earth studded with land mines—that marked the outer perimeter of Japanese sovereignty. Aborigines were basically offered the choice of slowly starving to death outside the guard line or surrendering their weapons and moving “inside the line.” First the military commanders would issue a call for the aborigines to surrender, prohibit any entry within the defense perimeter of the guard line and enjoin strict obedience to the orders of the authorities. If the aborigines refused to heed the call to surrender, the authorities would next interdict all their supplies of guns and salt while pushing the defense lines deeper into aboriginal territory by constructing roads through the mountains, felling trees to obtain an unobstructed view of their enemy

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and constructing fortified battery emplacements at strategic points along the defense perimeter. When the aborigines surrendered, unable to resist an army and police force equipped with modern weapons, they were forced to give up their weapons, which were also their only means of resistance.14

Adopting the extermination strategy carried out by the British commander George Arthur in the early nineteenth century against the aborigines on the island of Tasmania, the Japanese army also systematically terrorized the indigenous peoples into submission by carrying out public executions of warriors in aboriginal villages and by indiscriminately destroying their villages.15 According to a recent deposition to a UN working group on aboriginal affairs, over ten thousand Ataiyals (the largest northern aboriginal group) are believed to have perished during the five-year campaign.16 In order to minimize casualties to the Japanese troops, the army introduced bomber aircraft to the fight and had Japanese warships bombard villagers within range of naval guns. Besides using brute force against aborigines, the colonial regime employed psychological tactics to convince them that it was in their best interests to surrender to the Japanese state. The regime organized island tours to the cities of Taiwan for select members of the aboriginal groups, such as village heads or tribal chiefs, sometimes after the group had formally submitted to the authorities, in which they were shown schools, military bases, factories, and other modern institutions. A key purpose of these tours was to show aborigines the might of the new rulers and to dissuade them from continuing any resistance. One researcher notes that these tourists were shown a film that included a scene with an aborigine dying from electrocution after touching the high-power electric wires that surrounded aboriginal territories.17 In the end the aboriginal fighters were no match for the well-equipped Japanese army and were forced to give up the struggle. Though some groups continued to resist the colonial authorities for years,18 most aborigines gave up their weapons and pledged obedience to the new authority in formal surrender ceremonies that signified the submission of the tribes. The final tribe to submit, a village of two hundred members of a Bunun tribe led by the chieftain Rahoare, did not yield to the authorities until April 22, 1933, almost two decades after the Sakuma offensive had ended in victory. For the tribes, giving up their weapons meant submission to labor drafts, conscription as Japanese allies in campaigns against tribes fighting the Japanese, the abandonment of their previous lifestyle of hunting and its replacement by agriculture and the raising of livestock. Once they had confiscated the aborigines’ weapons, the army withdrew from the villages and left the task of enforcing the terms of the surrender to the colonial police force. As a representative of the state in the villages, the policeman was not only a disciplinarian who imposed law and order, but also a schoolteacher, agricultural advisor, medical doctor, arbitrator of trade, and—most

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of all—the eyes and ears of the colonial state. Until 1945, the aboriginal lands were the most heavily policed part of the Japanese empire, with an average of 1 ranking officer for every 57 aborigines, compared to a ratio of 1 to 963 in the plains area of Taiwan.19 While the establishment of police rule ensured that a semblance of order reigned in the highlands, the ensuing peace was punctuated by bloody rebellions launched by aborigines against the colonial authorities. In 1920, a large aboriginal force attacked the Slamao district police stations and killed or wounded nineteen police officers at their posts. In response, the government dispatched military reinforcements and allied tribes to the area and routed the rebels. Ten years later, in what later became known as the Musha Incident, hundreds of Sedeq tribesmen, armed with guns and swords, attacked a group of Japanese during a school sports festival on October 27, 1930, in the town of Musha, which authorities regarded as a showcase of their enlightened rule. In the ensuing melee, they indiscriminately killed 132 Japanese men, women, and children (two Taiwanese wearing Japanese kimonos were also killed, by mistake); at the same time, other aboriginal groups attacked police stations, government offices, and weapon stores before fleeing to mountain bases. Within weeks of the massacre, the Japanese authorities mobilized thousands of police and soldiers, used airpower, and allegedly employed internationally banned poison gas to crush the rebellion. After capturing the ringleaders of the rebellion, the Japanese moved the survivors from rebel villages to an aboriginal district allied to the colonial authority, where, in April 1931, a “second Musha incident” occurred in which 210 of them were attacked and killed by members of tribes allied with, and allegedly instigated by, the Japanese authorities. Of these, some 101 Ataiyal, including men, women, and children, were decapitated by the allied tribes. The 1930 Musha Incident, the bloodiest uprising against Japanese colonial rule during the imperial period, symbolized the bankruptcy of the colonial government’s policies toward the aborigines. It occurred thirty-five years after the Japanese first colonized Taiwan and took place in a model village that had been subjugated decades earlier. It also shook Japanese rule in the Taiwanese highlands to its very foundations. Viewing the incident as the consequence of failed policies, the government dispatched investigators to look into the causes of the rebellion; journalists and diet members openly criticized the colonial authorities. For the first time since Japan acquired its first colony in 1895, events in the colonies became a main topic of deliberation in the Imperial Diet. In the end, the top leaders Governor General Kamiyama Mannoshin and his chief civil administrator, Gotō Fumio, were forced to step down from their posts and major changes in aboriginal administration were promulgated. After this watershed in Japanese rule of the aboriginal lands, the police enforced land expropriations and forced relocations of villages and eventually established permanent reservations for aboriginal tribes. Beyond a change in administrative policies toward the aborigines, the uprising led to a “rearticulation of

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the Japanese colonial strategy in the form of imperialization. The aborigines were no longer savage heathens waiting to be civilized by colonial benevolence, but were now imperial subjects assimilated into the Japanese national polity through their expressions of loyalty to the Emperor.”20 S OLV I NG T H E “A B OR IG I NA L P ROB L E M”

Chief civil administrator to the third governor-general of Taiwan, Gotō Shinpei, who is generally accorded the credit for single-handedly turning the colonization of Taiwan into a success story for Japan, wrote in 1901: “Ruling Taiwan is much more complicated than we originally thought, since today on the island of Taiwan thousands of years of living history exist simultaneously.”21 In this statement, Gotō articulated the assumptions that colonial officials commonly held about history as linear progress and about the nature of the population of Taiwan. When he spoke of “thousands of years of living history” that coexisted peacefully on the island, he meant that Taiwan was settled by population groups that stood at radically different levels of historical development: a Chinese majority that had attained a fairly high level of civilization and an aboriginal minority that were “living fossils” at a primitive stage of history. From the earliest years of the colonial period, Japanese officials established two separate systems of colonization on the island in order to rule these different groups. Toward the aborigines, the Japanese system of rule became one of expropriation by dispossession. The colonial government conquered the aboriginal lands primarily to exploit their potential wealth but it actually had little use for the people living there. By contrast, the colonial state sought to have the Han Chinese in the plains work the land and contented itself with skimming off the profits produced through normal circuits of capitalism. This differential imperialism was reflected in the legalistic discourses that the Japanese colonial officials invented to preserve the power relations created by the conquest. The colonial government mobilized the army and deployed psychological warfare to defeat the aboriginal fighters, but it also marshaled its rhetorical resources to justify its policies. In 1902, Mochiji Rokusaburō (1867–1923),22 councilor in the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the Taiwan governor-general, played a central role in this ideological battle. Mochiji was appointed to head the Provisional Section for the Investigation of Affairs in Aboriginal Lands, an advisory body charged with the task of working out long-term policy toward the aborigines. He offered an intellectual framework for the riban policies by which the Japanese ruled the aboriginal territories during the next four decades. Riban, a compound formed of the characters reason and barbarian, denoted the Japanese colonial policy of managing the aborigines by a combination of punitive raids (seibatsu) against those who had not submitted to Japanese rule and acculturation policies (kyōka) to alter the economic activities and lifestyle pattern of those who had surrendered to the authorities. In

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his position paper “Bansei mondai ni kan suru ikensho” (An Opinion on the Aboriginal Problem),23 Mochiji defined the “aboriginal problem” first and foremost as a land problem. The problem of aboriginal land has yet to arrive at a successful solution. Yet if we do not solve this problem, our countrymen will likely fail to realize their great potential for overseas expansion. Occupying 50 to 60 percent of the entire island, the aboriginal lands constitute a treasure trove rich in forest, agricultural, and mining resources. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in unlocking this treasure trove because ferocious savages block our access to it. . . . If we fail to exploit these resources and eliminate the trouble these savages cause, we will not be able to carry to completion the economic development of Taiwan. . . . How can we neglect to deal with this pressing problem? Let me state clearly that when I refer to the problem of aboriginal lands: from the point of view of the empire, there is only aboriginal land but not an aboriginal people. The problem of aboriginal land must be dealt with from an economic perspective and its management is an indispensable part of fiscal policy. . . . It is not a problem that one can hope to resolve by ethical means.24

In this framing of the aboriginal problem as a land problem, the aborigines figured only as “ferocious savages” who blocked Japan’s access to Taiwan’s “treasure trove” and prevented Japan from realizing its full potential as a colonizing nation. In order to clear a space for Japanese settlement, the aboriginal people had to be separated from their land and the land had to be reclassified as ownerless. To resolve this “problem,” the government needed to shelve its ethical values since the problem could not be resolved “by ethical means.”25 If the main purpose of this colonial discourse was to empty this desired territory of its former inhabitants, Mochiji seasoned his advice with a caveat: Japanese offensives against the aboriginal population should only be conducted in territories where the revenue resulting from eliminating the aborigines would justify the costs entailed by their suppression. In his “Opinion,” Mochiji did not attempt to justify policies of suppression by appealing to Japan’s “civilizing mission,” nor did he single out for condemnation aboriginal practices such as headhunting. Indeed, he explicitly disavowed any intention to “inculcate these savages, who are no different from wild beasts, with the principles of the emperor’s morality.” Comparing the suppression of savages to a tiger hunt, he cautioned the colonial government “to exercise violence in order to put an end to violence.” Indeed, he warned that the Japanese should hold onto their own “barbarian nature” and avoid becoming excessively civilized if they expected to obtain victory in the struggle with savages. Citing the examples of the decadent Roman and Greek empires weakened by their high levels of civilization, he cautioned his audience that the courageous people of imperial Japan would win against a savage foe only by displaying their “warrior spirit.” In addition, he recommended that the government mobilize Taiwanese guards to man the savage frontier and urged local officials to take advantage of intertribal rivalries, to use “barbarians to

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subdue other barbarians”; he even countenanced the taking of heads by allied tribes and the payment of bounties to aboriginal warriors for the taking of enemy heads.26 Besides counseling the Japanese not to give up their “barbarian nature,” Mochiji drew upon the transnational discourses of international law and biological determinism to justify his solution to the aboriginal problem. Both discourses were imported from the West but Mochiji applied them to the specific problems of Japan’s colonization of Taiwan. From the start, Japanese statesmen had situated their colonization of Asia within the framework of international law and argued that it was a lawful endeavor. Mochiji discovered in this same framework a rationale for dispossessing the aborigines of their land and for excluding the savages from the politico-juridical order that Japan’s colonialism had instituted in Taiwan. Referring to Okamatsu’s commentary on the 1895 Shimonoseki Peace Treaty,27 he asserted that the savages (seiban) have no legal status under either Japanese or international law. In accordance with the third article of that treaty, Japan extended its jurisdiction over all former subjects of the Qing empire and recognized them as imperial subjects. With the exception of a small number of former Qing officials who left Taiwan, most Taiwan Chinese remained on their lands, continuing to work them and paying taxes to the colonial government. Over the next few decades, the Japanese conducted a meticulous survey of landholding and introduced capitalist forms of production into a Chinese society in which class division and modes of private property already existed. By contrast, the colonization of aboriginal lands followed a completely different logic. The aboriginal lands were comparatively “underdeveloped” and their societies were less divided. Most important, to develop the mineral and timber resources of the aboriginal lands, the Japanese colonial government had to expel the original inhabitants from their lands and bring in a labor force.28 Mochiji was opportunistic in the ways he used international law. In 1874, Qing officials had described the raw savages (seiban) as lying beyond the pale of Chinese civilization (kegai no min); this is how they disclaimed responsibility for the aborigines’ massacre of Ryūkyū fishermen. Japan used this disclaimer as a pretext for launching a punitive expedition against the aboriginal perpetrators of the massacre. When Mochiji characterized the aborigines as kegai no min, a term borrowed from the Sino-centric order, he did not mean to recognize the legitimacy of that order but rather to justify denying any legal status to the aborigines under Japanese or international law. Drawing on this Qing precedent, Mochiji reasoned that the aborigines fell outside the purview of the Shimonoseki Peace Treaty and thus outside of Japanese jurisdiction. Mochiji concluded: “There is no relation between the Japanese empire and the aborigines under Japanese law.” By the same token, the aborigines were not citizens of a foreign power to be dealt with according to the “law of nations,” since they lacked a “unified administration or political organization that would be recognized by the great powers under international law.” “While in sociological terms, the raw savages who have not surrendered are human beings, they

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are analogous to animals from the perspective of international law.” Arguing from the premise that the aborigines would not be recognized as a foreign state under international law, he went on to reason that punitive expeditions against them would not be covered by the protocols of war. Accordingly, only those who submitted to Japanese law would be treated as human beings; as for those who resisted, Japan enjoyed the “power of life and death over them.” By the same token, unassimilated savages had no property rights to the land they occupied: “According to Dr. Okamatsu’s theory, rights in a legal sense can only be established in the first place where a unified administration protects them.”29 The aborigines therefore occupied a liminal space within the Japanese empire: falling under its jurisdiction but outside its laws, sociologically human yet indistinguishable from animals, occupying land but having no rights to it. By defining the savages as “animals” outside the law, Mochiji justified the employment of unlimited violence to force them to surrender and to give up their lands. In his legal reasoning, he illustrates an essential aspect of sovereignty under the modern state system: sovereignty is the right of the state to determine exceptions to the juridical order it institutes.30 The “savages” of Taiwan were discursively constituted as lying outside the law, denied its protections and deprived of all human rights. While Mochiji in his policy statement relies primarily on legalistic language, he also uses the rhetoric of the “struggle for survival” to rationalize the change of policy toward the aborigines in biological terms. In the ceaseless, ineluctable struggle for survival, the Chinese settlers inflicted the first defeat on the aborigines and drove them from the rich lands of the coastal regions into the relatively barren mountainous interior. To open up this interior, the Japanese colonizers needed to carry on and complete the work begun centuries earlier. Since the aborigines were doomed to disappear or else to assimilate to those who occupied their territories, their land ought to be appropriated and developed by the superior races that replaced them. Mochiji asserted that the dispossession of the aborigines was an irreversible biological process, criticizing those who counseled against aggressive conquest on ethical or humanitarian grounds: “The island’s vast stretches of fertile land have been opened as a result of the struggle for survival, wherein the superior Chinese expelled the aborigines from their land. The occupation and colonization of the aboriginal territory was a great achievement. Yet, still today, there are those youthful men who advocate a policy of tutelage, who noisily call for passivity, as if to return things to an Arcadian past.”31 One could argue that the two discourses of international law and biological determinism were merely the opposite sides of the same coin. International law was itself based on a hierarchical concept of world order in which powerful nations employed law as an instrument of power. By contrast, the biological determinism of the “struggle for survival” dispensed entirely with any juridical or moralistic language, replacing it with an idiom of pure force. Ultimately, this notion of force al-

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ready underlay the abstract, legalistic discourse of international law and constituted its hidden truth—the iron fist inside the velvet glove. This truth is essentially the notion that in an imperialistic world system only powerful nations are entitled to use the language of law to justify their exercise of force. T H E H E A DH U N T E R A N D T H E JA PA N E SE C ONQU E ST NA R R AT I V E

Published in 1930, the Nihon chiri taikei (Compendium of Japanese Geography) opens an unexpected window onto mature colonial discourse about the Taiwan aborigines. Since Taiwan was part of the national body of Japan, it was treated in a series on Japanese geography rather than in the separate companion series devoted to world geography.32 The aboriginal lands are “an alien place where culture has yet to permeate, although most of the aboriginal people have submitted to the authorities and live peacefully. However, in the depths of the forests near Rahoare, there are a small number of villages that continue to resist the authorities.” While optimistically predicting the rendition of these recalcitrant few, the writer turns to a description of the frightful aboriginal practice of headhunting, which “was widely practiced among tribes either as a form of resistance to external forces or as an expression of worship toward ancestral spirits.” Accompanying the text, a photograph shows “a model of a skull case from a village of the Ataiyal aboriginal group.” As the caption to the photograph explains, “The headhunting of Taiwan’s aborigines is well-known,” but “with few exceptions, the police have effectively eradicated the custom and most skull cases have been destroyed. As a result it has become almost impossible to see one nowadays.” For that reason, “a model of a skull case has been specially fabricated.”33 This illustration in a popular geography book exemplifies the role that representations of “headhunting” played in the economy of mature colonial discourse. Though the police had eradicated headhunting in all but a “small number of villages,” the editors of this work, intended for metropolitan readers, went out of their way to create realistic representations of headhunting. In that respect, this text resembles the many government reports, ethnographic studies, and travelers’ accounts that invariably featured pictures of aboriginal “skull cases” and commentary on Japan’s steadfast efforts to eliminate the practice of headhunting. These stereotyped texts and images contrasted the civilized present with the barbaric past and served to remind their readers of the inveterate violence and irrationality of the aborigines. To be effective, such stereotypes needed to circulate widely in society. They also froze the relationship between the Japanese and aborigines at the precise moment of Japanese conquest of aboriginal lands. The picture of the “skull case” illustrates this double logic of colonial representation precisely because it is not a real skull case but rather an artifact created by Japanese colonialism—that is, a pure sim-

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ulacrum. A “specially fabricated” replica, the skull case is photographed for no other purpose than to be consumed by Japanese readers in a kind of self-perpetuating cycle of illusion: even after its ostensible referent, the actual practice of headhunting, has been eradicated. What was the function of such images in Japanese discourse? Why were they produced and circulated? What made this replica useful in the symbolic economy of Japanese colonialism? Notwithstanding the opinion of Mochiji, it was not the “savage outside the law” but the “cruel headhunter” and enemy of “civilization” that became the dominant trope for “savagery” during the colonial period. This trope existed in relative independence from the actual practice of headhunting, just as the photo of the fabricated skull case in the 1930 geography book circulated independently of any real skull case. The headhunter served as a metonym for the aboriginal population, identified by this single practice (the “headhunters” included many groups who did not practice headhunting), and as an all-purpose metaphor for bloodthirstiness and irrationality. This discursive development was relatively tardy. At the time of the 1874 Taiwan Expedition, popular media often portrayed the aborigines as cannibals and cave dwellers but did not single out headhunting for harsh condemnation.34 Two decades later, Hashiguchi Bunzō, a colonial official who had established contact with the aborigines in 1895, wrote of aboriginal headhunting as “a sad and cruel custom,” but he attributed the practice to Chinese perfidy, in line with official policy that the Japanese were the protectors of the aborigines while the Chinese were their inveterate enemies.35 In 1905, the liberal politician Takekoshi Yosaburō similarly wrote that aboriginal headhunting was a response to the misdeeds of the Taiwan Chinese: “As the Chinese have always treated the savages so cruelly, it is but natural that the nature of those savages who have come into contact with them should have changed decidedly for the worse, so that now they regard everybody who sets foot on their territory as a deadly foe.”36 To be sure, Takekoshi and Hashiguchi did not condone headhunting, but they understood it in the context of long-standing friction between aborigines and Chinese settlers. While neither speculated on the ethnographic significance of headhunting to those who practiced it, both acknowledged its political meaning: the taking of heads was one means by which the aborigines resisted enemy intrusions and fought to protect their lands from outsiders. However, both were writing before the large-scale Sakuma invasions of aboriginal territories and the land dispossession that followed in their wake. In later years, the label “headhunter” served to dismiss any resistance to the military forces of the colonial state as an expression of the aborigine’s inherent savagery and irrationality. The violence employed by the colonial state to subjugate savages was, in this rhetoric, merely a response to an anterior aboriginal aggressiveness epitomized by the practice of headhunting. Japanese writers justified the violence of the colonial state on several grounds: the absolute difference between the head-

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hunter and the civilized, the duty to abolish practices that violate universal values, the defense of innocent victims of headhunting, the need to diffuse civilization. Finally, I should add that the trope of the “headhunter” fit within a transnational rhetoric of civilization that aligned Japan with the civilized nations of the world and transformed the aborigines into a savage enemy to be eliminated. In a 1912 essay, “Japan as Colonizer,” delivered in English while he was a visiting professor in the United States (and later published in the book The Japanese Nation), Nitobe Inazō offers a stunning illustration of this new rhetorical strategy of civilization and savagery. As a Japanese intellectual educated in the West and fluent in English, Nitobe sought to persuade his audience that Japan deserved admission into the exclusive club of imperialist powers, since it possessed the ability to colonize other lands. Drawing on his personal experience as economic advisor under the Gotō-Kodama regime that ruled Taiwan from 1898 to 1906, he lists the great achievements of Japanese colonialism in Taiwan, notably the abolition of aboriginal headhunting.37 He first reminds his audience that the Taiwanese headhunters are “allied to the headhunters of Borneo made familiar by the pen of Professor Haddon,” thereby establishing a parallel between “savages” ruled by Japan and those ruled by Western nations. He goes on to describe these headhunters in more detail. What concerns us most nearly in their manner of life is their much-venerated custom of consecrating any auspicious occasion by obtaining a human head. If there is a wedding in prospect, the young man cannot marry unless he brings in a head. . . . A funeral cannot be observed without a head. Indeed all celebrations of any importance must be graced with it. Where a bouquet would be used by you, a grim human head freshly cut is the essential decoration of their banquet. Moreover, a man’s courage is tested by the number of heads he takes, and respect for him grows with his achievements. Thus the gruesome objects adorn the so-called skull shelf, for the same reason that lions’ and stags’ heads are the pride of a gentleman’s hall.38

In this hyperbolic rhetoric, Nitobe defines all aborigines by the single custom of headhunting, which is detached from any social context. Implicitly, headhunting is defined as a cultural practice associated with weddings and funerals, but the aborigines are said to practice it to consecrate “any” auspicious occasion.39 However, Nitobe’s description of the practices of civilized peoples, rather than those of savages, is the most revealing part of this passage. Nitobe juxtaposes “our” civilized practices and “their” grotesque customs, banquets graced with bouquets of flowers and “their” feasts decorated with “freshly cut” heads, “a gentleman’s hall” and “their” gruesome skull cabinets. By referring to recognizably Anglo-American institutions as examples of the rituals of the civilized, he conflates the civilized Japanese with the objects of his address, the Anglo-American “you.” That is, he merges himself (I) with those he is addressing (you), thereby conflating the two within a collective “we” which is civilized. Once these two are conflated, he draws a contrast between

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a civilized “us” and a savage “them,” abstract identities that exist as paired opposites. The conflation of Japan with the Anglo-Americans and the stark opposition to the aborigines are not simply contiguous propositions; they are logically connected parts of Nitobe’s overall justification for Japanese colonialism. By offering a justification for incorporating the colonized savages within the new hierarchy of Japan’s empire, Nitobe also makes a case for incorporating Japan within an imperial order dominated by the West. The trope of the headhunter acquired its fullest significance when it was deployed in conquest narratives that purported to justify Japan’s subjugation of savages as a triumph of civilization. In these narratives, the eradication of the fierce headhunter was held up as the supreme victory of civilized values. The purest example of this narrative genre is a legend of Chinese origin that was subsequently rewritten by the Japanese and taught in Japanese textbooks. This explicitly ideological work was an enduring fixture of Japanese language, ethics, and kanbun textbooks used throughout the empire until the end of the colonial period.40 The best-known conquest narrative of the Japanese empire is the so-called Go Hō legend, a story of an interpreter of the Qing period who sacrifices his life to convince the savages to renounce headhunting.41 Though the story derives from Chinese sources, Japanese colonial officials extensively reworked these source versions to produce a narrative that would serve the purposes of the new regime. If Nitobe in his lecture amalgamates Japanese civilization with the West, the Go Hō legend unites Chinese civilization with the Japanese civilizing project. By showing that these two civilization projects were complementary, the legend served to reinforce a tactical alliance between the Japanese and Chinese gentry in Taiwan and to cement a trans–East Asian consciousness based on Confucian values in Taiwan, Korea, and metropolitan Japan. The most widely circulated version of this legend appeared in readers for public schools in both Taiwan and Japan during the colonial period. A 1914 reader gives the following account: There was an interpreter on the savage frontier of Mount Arisan named Go Hō [Wu Feng in Chinese]. Go Hō attempted to make the Arisan savages give up their evil custom of killing people without a second thought and offering up human heads in their ceremonies. For forty years Go Hō placated the savages by offering them each year the head of someone who had already been killed. After his supply of skulls ran out, he persuaded them to forebear for another four years. At the end of this period, he told them, “If you really must have a head, come to this spot tomorrow at noon. A man wearing a red cape and a red hat will pass by. Take that man’s head. But remember, you will be punished for taking his head and all of you will perish.” The following day, when the Arisan savages killed the man wearing a red hat, they learned that he was Go Hō. After an epidemic struck the village, resulting in many deaths, the villagers began to worship Go Hō and swore never to kill any human beings again.42

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Set in the period preceding the Japanese colonization of Taiwan, the Go Hō legend features no Japanese characters. The only actors in the story are the virtuous Go Hō and the blood-thirsty savages, the latter defined by the evil custom of headhunting and sacrificial rituals and the former by his courage and self-sacrifice. Headhunting in this textbook story is treated as a cultural practice and as a trope for cruelty.43 However, unlike later records of aboriginal practices, the descriptions of headhunting in this story are pseudoethnography. Mori Ushinosuke, a later ethnographer who devoted most of his life to studying the aborigines, refuted the notion that they offered heads in propitiatory ceremonies: “In the past, [the aborigines] preserved the hair of their enemies’ heads—they worshipped it as part of their rituals—but I have never heard that they cut off heads and offered them to the souls of their ancestors.”44 While the Japanese do not figure as characters in this story, they played a major part in turning Go Hō into a colonial hero and in disseminating his legend. In 1912, Nakata Naohisa, a police section chief in the Huayi region of Taiwan, wrote a biography of Go Hō titled Sasshin jōnin tsūji Gohō (The Interpreter Go Hō, Sacrificing His Body and Realizing Benevolence). The expression sasshin jōnin is taken from a passage of the Confucian Analects (“The brave man will not cling to life at the cost of virtue but will sacrifice himself in order to realize benevolence”). Nakata’s book was published in a bilingual Chinese (kanbun) and Japanese edition that included almost a hundred poems in honor of Go Hō, for the most part composed in classical Chinese by members of the Taiwanese gentry, who likely constituted the principal readership of the book. Appearing with calligraphy by Governor-General Sakuma Samata and prefaces by the commissioner of police and the head of the Bureau of Aboriginal Affairs, Nakata’s book was published with the full support of the colonial state. At the time that the work appeared, colonial administrators also rebuilt an old shrine dedicated to the memory of Go Hō and held a ceremony in his honor attended by Governor-General Sakuma and other high-ranking officials, a concatenation of activities that Komagome Takeshi refers to as the “Go Hō commemoration enterprise” of the colonial state.45 By honoring the Qing official, the Japanese hoped to deepen the divide between Taiwan Chinese and the aborigines, associating the former with the colonial state as junior partners in its civilizing mission.46 As already mentioned, the Taiwan governor-general required both the financial backing and the manpower of the Taiwan Chinese to successfully prosecute the enormously costly war in the aboriginal highlands.47 Besides being used to win the Taiwanese as ideological allies, the cult dedicated to Go Hō’s heroic spirit was a religious device meant to defuse and redirect Chinese resentment over the many Chinese who died in battles with the aborigines. Indeed, the cult of Go Hō grew in popularity when the military struggle against the aborigines was most intense. If the Sakuma conquest (1909–14) saw the first mobilization of the Go Hō leg-

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end, the 1930 Musha Incident represented a second period of ideological deployment of the myth. In 1931, one year after the Musha Incident, the shrine of Go Hō was reconstructed with the backing of the colonial regime. In 1932, Chiba Yasuki directed Gijin Gohō (The Righteous Go Hō), a seventy-minute silent film and one of the few colonial-period films to survive into the postwar period. In this film version, an epidemic spreads to an aboriginal village. When the son of the village chief falls sick, the chief decides to order the young men to set off on a head-hunting expedition in order to exorcize the evil spirit causing the illness. Go Hō promises to cure the boy with medicine and the chief agrees to call off the expedition. After the boy recovers, the villagers live peacefully for forty years. Then famine strikes the village. Go Hō endeavors to collect money to save the aborigines from starvation but is unable to raise sufficient funds. The chief begs Go Hō to allow them to practice headhunting and the latter accedes to this request, secretly deciding that there is nothing left for him to do but to let them take his own head. By glorifying the self-sacrifice of the Qing interpreter, this film also justified Japan’s colonization by showing that most Taiwan Chinese were willing partners in the nation’s civilizing mission. By depicting a Go Hō who offers medicine to the tribes and contributes money to assuage their food problem, it associates the protagonist with the modernizing mission of the colonial state. Besides being a police officer, Nakata was an amateur folklorist who analyzed the story and sought to trace its sources. He mentions several source texts, primarily Chinese documents from the Qing period, and provides both Chinese and aboriginal variants as well as the orthodox version. Whereas all of the source texts for Go Hō identified in Nakata’s book feature an aboriginal-Chinese confrontation and the aborigines’ later renunciation of headhunting, neither the Chinese nor the aboriginal variants suggest that the aborigines killed Go Hō by mistake or that Go Hō sacrificed himself to make the aborigines give up headhunting. In aboriginal oral versions, the aborigines knew precisely whom they were killing. Chinese versions play up the aboriginal practice of headhunting, while aborigines lay emphasis on the misdeeds of the Chinese settlers and the duplicity of the Qing authorities. Furthermore, all Chinese versions claim that the aborigines renounced headhunting, not because they were impressed with Go Hō’s moral nobility and self-sacrifice, but because they feared his powerful spirit and sought to avoid his retribution. According to these sources, before Go Hō set off for his last encounter with the aborigines, he ordered the members of his household to make a paper figure of himself mounted on a horse, with a sword in one hand and an aboriginal head in the other. He instructed them to burn this paper figure if he should die and let it be known that Go Hō has gone to the mountain. When the aborigines later witnessed this figure riding on horseback, they fell sick and died in large numbers.48 Japanese transformed Go Hō by a process of transplanting or grafting a new colo-

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nial narrative onto a Chinese source legend. To make the Go Hō story a narrative of colonial conquest, the source text needed to be rewritten by processes of addition, deletion, distortion, and changes of emphasis. The story of the paper figure, based on popular Taoism, was deleted because of its association with superstitions (the colonial government officially sought to destroy indigenous superstitions),49 while Go Hō’s noble spirit of self-sacrifice was added in Japanese versions. Also, the legend displaces the worship of Go Hō from the Chinese (who practiced it) onto the aborigines (who didn’t). Since Go Hō was not mentioned in colonial textbooks used to teach aboriginal children, one can only assume that the objects of his civilizing mission were not the intended audience for his legend; rather, the Taiwan Chinese and the Japanese themselves were the objects.50 The colonial regime used this legend to mobilize Taiwan Chinese support for the suppression of aboriginal resistance.51 For this audience, the legend had the merit of harmonizing Chinese conceptions of civilization with the Westernizing civilization that the Japanese were introducing into Taiwan. Indeed, the rewriting of Go Hō belongs to the larger rewriting of Confucianism aimed at showing that philosophy’s congruence with the Japanese spirit (kokutai) and the imperial spirit. This reexporting of Confucianism, suitably modified and embellished, to the Chinese population of Taiwan was actively fostered by associations that promoted Confucianism both in Japan and in the colonies.52 From the early years of colonial rule, the government held public ceremonies honoring traditional scholarship and sponsored poetry competitions to cultivate ties with Confucian scholarly elites. Extolling the virtues of filial piety, loyalty, courage, and self-sacrifice, conservatives in Japan supported the promulgation of Confucian values in the educational system to promote unquestioning loyalty to the state, to the emperor–centered political order, and to the fight against Western individualism and radical ideas. In the case of Go Hō, the rewriting of a Chinese legend repackaged virtues such as bravery and selfsacrifice in ways that bolstered Chinese identification with the objectives of the Japanese colonial state. At the same time, textbook versions of Go Hō effectively excised folklore beliefs—such as the paper figure and Go Hō’s magical powers—that conflicted with these objectives. As a result of this colonial rewriting, Go Hō is a hybrid product of indigenous Chinese folklore and the Japanese spirit that met the ideological requirements of the conquest period. Taking on a life of its own, it circulated for the remainder of the colonial period, even after 1937, when all expressions of Taiwan cultural identity were rigorously suppressed. Besides promoting commonalities between the Japanese and the Chinese, the legend constructed the aborigines as a common enemy of both by exaggerating their savagery and cruelty. If the Japanese claimed that the aborigines were their racial and ethnic brothers, they also stressed that the Chinese were their cousins by virtue of a shared culture and moral code. After 1945, Go Hō was dropped from Japa-

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nese school curricula, but he continued to be taught in textbooks in postcolonial Korea and Taiwan. When the Kuomintang regime replaced the Japanese as the rulers of Taiwan, it revised the Japanese colonial version of the Go Hō legend to substantiate its own claims of bringing civilization to the aborigines. Just as the Japanese had used this legend to enroll Chinese in their war with the aborigines, the postcolonial Kuomintang regime employed it to ease frictions between Taiwanese and mainlanders and to win support among the Taiwan Chinese population for their one-party dictatorship.53 In 1987, aboriginal resistance forced the nationalist government to delete the Go Hō legend from textbooks and to destroy shrines built in his honor. P R I M I T I V I SM A N D T H E R H E TOR IC OF DE SI R E

Fukuzawa Yukichi compared civilization to a ladder that modern nations must climb ever higher to reach more advanced stages of development. Disillusioned with Japan’s successful attainment of civilization in the 1930s, some Japanese writers rejected the values of modernity and expressed a strong identification with primitive societies. Far from being confined to Japan, such disillusionment was widespread throughout Europe and the United States at this time. Sigmund Freud best captured the mood of the times in Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), where he advanced the hypothesis that human beings had to pay for progress and civilization by repressing their basic nature and instincts. With each advance of civilization, modern man experiences a “loss of happiness through a heightening of the sense of guilt.”54 In some fictional works from the interwar period, Japanese protagonists jump off the “ladder” of civilization altogether in order to recover their inner savage and recover the “happiness” they have sacrificed. The writers of these works shared with Fukuzawa an understanding of primitive societies as early stages of humankind’s development. However, they discovered in these societies something positive to be embraced rather than something negative to be transcended. In 1935, Ōshika Taku wrote “The Savage,” a story about a Japanese man who “goes native” in aboriginal Taiwan. Ōshika’s hero has obvious affinities with the American woman in D. H. Lawrence’s story “The Woman Who Rode Away,” who abandons her husband and children in search of the “secret haunts of the timeless, mysterious, marvelous Indians of the mountains” of Mexico.55 By the same token, he differs from the Meiji dreamers in the novels of Sōseki and their real historical counterparts who headed south with dreams of getting rich, lured by propaganda on the opportunities for economic enrichment in the tropics. Ōshika was the contemporary not only of Lawrence but also of André Gide, and many other Western writers who sought physical and spiritual renewal in Africa, the South Seas, and South America in the early twentieth century. As Marianna Torgovnick points out in Primitive Passion: “In the early decades of the twentieth century, when a man of means

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felt anxious about his manhood or health, or maladjusted to the modern world, one prescription dominated. Go to Africa or the South Pacific, he was advised, or to some other exotic site identified with ‘the primitive.’ ”56 Torgovnick distinguishes between two different Western discourses on the primitive: a rhetoric of control, “in which demeaning colonialist tropes get modified only slightly over time,” and a rhetoric of desire, “which implicates ‘us’ in the ‘them’ we try to conceive as the Other.”57 Both varieties of discourse are found in Japanese colonial literature, but there is a discernable shift from the former to the latter in the 1930s. One reason for this shift is that the Japanese sought savagery within themselves after they had incorporated savages into the Japanese empire.58 In the early years of colonial rule, the savage was an external foil against whom the Japanese affirmed their status as civilized. As the Japanese acquired experience as colonial rulers, the savage became a domesticated foreigner, an otherness resituated within the self. Repressed by civilized modernity, this long-lost but familiar “other” became the object of a nostalgic desire, a need to recover the purity and original nature of the Japanese people. The Japanese had lost this “other” in their race to catch up with the West, but they remained connected to him at a deeper level, by hereditary ties and by repressed unconscious desires left in their psyches. For that reason, the figure of the primitive that appears in literary works has much to tell us about the dissatisfactions of Japanese writers with their own society but actually tells us little about the realities of indigenous society. Nor was there anything coherent about the idea of the savage in this rhetoric of desire: often the savage is an amalgam composed of the exotic, the erotic, the archaic, the utopian, the transgressive, and the unconscious. In general, one can point to three distinct figures that embodied this cultural “otherness” in Japanese imperial discourse: the savages as children, as women, and as traditional samurai. To each of these forms there corresponded an identity of the Japanese self that served as its counterpart. Thus the Japanese self was established as a mature adult in relation to the savage “child,” as husband in relation to the aboriginal wife, and as modern national subject in relation to the traditional warrior. If Japanese writers had earlier rejected the aboriginal headhunter as their antithesis, they now appropriated the savagery of the other as a necessary avatar or complement to the self in this new rhetoric of desire. The adult recovered his childhood by nostalgically imagining the aboriginal present as a familiar stage of his personal past. The Japanese male found in the aboriginal woman a partner who reaffirmed his masculinity and complemented him in the relationship of romance or marriage. The modern Japanese discovered in the aboriginal present the national past of Japan, notably its warrior culture and the cult of the samurai. While the second and third figures are strongly gendered and sexualized figures for aboriginal men and women, the first tends to desexualize and infantilize the aboriginal population as a whole. Here I will consider each of these figures in turn.

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In 1931, the Bureau of Aboriginal Affairs established the journal Riban no Tomo (Friends of Savage Management) to promote policy reform in the aftermath of the Musha Incident. The articles in this journal, mainly written by police officers who manned the savage frontier, constitute a precious record of late-colonial discourse on the aborigines. Police officials often described the aborigines as “innocent and pure,” “honest and chivalrous,” and “truly loveable creatures.” One writes of the Orchard Island, inhabited by the Yami tribe: “It floats in the middle of the ocean and has been completely isolated from civilization since the most distant antiquity. Even today, the people live without worries or anxieties. As one observes their life looking at the waves of the ocean or napping in the shade, one cannot but feel how pure-hearted and loveable the Yami people are.”59 If Orchard Island was a kind of timeless paradise, a Peach Blossom Spring for certain writers,60 the Ataiyal group, perhaps the group most identified in the popular mind with headhunting, was described as follows: “The evil influences of the world have passed them by. They lived without deceit or trickery and were brought up to be simple and innocent. I couldn’t help but feel that we were the ones who were hateful and pitiable. They did not play tricks and were brought up strictly.”61 Indeed, police officers in the field were not the only ones to voice such views. Minami Hiroshi, the governor-general of Taiwan, wrote in 1932: “In general, the savages [banjin] are simple and pure by nature and are truly loveable human beings.”62 Earlier colonial administrators had spoken of the aborigines as children, but they generally meant that the savage was “ignorant and unruly” and therefore in need adult tutelage. For example, in 1898 the anthropologist Inō Kanori had compared the aborigines of Taiwan with infants: “In civilized countries, politics, law, religion, and other elements of civilization and progress represent our coming of age in a modern society. If we attempt to apply these to the uncivilized aborigines [banjin], it would be the same as giving an infant only meat to eat, causing much harm and bringing little benefit.”63 By contrast with this view of childhood as a state of ignorance that requires adult supervision, writers in the 1920s and 1930s often described the primitives as pure-hearted and loveable children with their own unique virtues who had the innate potential to mature and develop. The utopian view was strongly influenced by the revaluation of early childhood by adult writers associated with the journal Akai Tori (Red Bird; 1922–36). This revaluation of childhood was not confined to real children, but was applied metaphorically to “primitive” societies, which were viewed as the childhood of humanity. Since in fact there is no equivalence between childhood as a stage of life and the “childhood of humanity,” except in this purely metaphorical sense, I would argue that this construction of adult aborigines as children was a rhetorical trope that served to put them in a separate temporality from their colonizers. In this trope, the aborigines represented the past of the Japanese while the present-day Japanese figured as their future. Because they conceived of this time lag between themselves

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and the aborigines, Japanese travelers experienced their journey to the aboriginal lands as time travel, in which the Japanese discovered traces of their personal or national past. This discourse on the colony as Japan’s ancient past fostered both a sense of superiority, based on Japan’s advanced modernity, and a feeling of nostalgia for the ancient past. As we will see, this temporal distancing was also a constitutive element of later Japanese intellectual discourses on savagery, from ethnography to colonial policy studies. In 1931, Ogawa Mimei, a frequent contributor to Akai Tori, published “Kyōkaidō e no ichiretsu” (Procession to the Church), a story that extols the pure innocence of the aborigines and criticizes Japanese colonialism. Rather than treating the aborigines as children requiring adult supervision, Ogawa discovers in their society traces of ancient traditions and an artistic sensibility not inferior to that of the Japanese. The narrator describes his surprise on discovering an earthenware jar in an aboriginal market: He picked up the heavy, dirty-looking unglazed jar that had perhaps been used to store mercury in ages past and looked at it for a long time without losing interest. . . . Doubtless, the jar had been created by savages. But can we really just dismiss them as savages? As he gazed fixedly at the jar, he couldn’t help feeling that these people must have possessed a richer imagination than the Japanese, as well as gentleness and warm humanity. . . . He first traveled to the distant village that had made this jar, after being invited there by a friend who worked for the government in this territory recently acquired by war. In the undeveloped villages and towns, he discovered traditions and ancient customs that differed from those of Japan [naichi]. He couldn’t think that these people could be called savages and the Japanese civilized, even though at first glance he found their culture strange.64

In this work, the trope of aboriginal innocence is displaced from aboriginal society onto aboriginal artifacts, which represent the free inventiveness, richness of imagination, and humanity of the savages, qualities that have been sacrificed at the altar of modernization. Mimei discovers an idealized childhood of humanity in the artistic expression of the aborigines and he uses this notion to overturn the hierarchy of “civilized” and “barbaric.” His attitude toward this jar recalls that of Yanagi Sōetsu, founder of the Japanese mingei (folk craft) movement, who had praised the folk art of the Taiwanese aborigines (and the Ainu in Japan) as “unadorned” and “untainted by civilization,” while at the same time claiming for the Japanese the colonial privilege of recognizing and articulating the beauty they create. And indeed, from the 1930s, Japanese writers wrote extensively about the virtues of aboriginal arts, from dancing to sculpture to music, which they saw as examples of “primitive art.”65 Nakamura Chihei and Masugi Shizue were two writers who lived in Taiwan in the 1930s. Both wrote stories about young Japanese men aspiring to educate the pure-hearted and childlike aborigines and pursuing romantic love affairs with abo-

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riginal women.66 When the protagonists of their stories visit Taiwan, they encounter a land in which it is no longer dangerous to travel since the aborigines have long since been “pacified.” Indeed, with the development of rail travel and the establishment of hotels and inns for Japanese guests, the “savage frontier” is now a place of relaxation and tourism, in which visitors can bathe in hot-spring resorts and hike in newly designated national parks.67 To promote tourism, the government published guidebooks such as the 1935 Taiwan no tabi (Taiwan Travel), which introduces travel to the aboriginal districts “as among the highlights of a trip to Taiwan,” and particularly recommends that travelers take the time to visit an aboriginal house and school.68 In addition, the protagonists in these works are not policemen, the Japanese who actually lived closest to the aborigines, but rather artists and writers who flee from Japan and seek a new life in Taiwan. In Nakamura’s “Bankai no onna” (Women of the Savage Frontier), Sankichi, a young painter on a trip to Taiwan, hikes to various aboriginal villages near a hot-springs resort in the company of the young novelist Yamana, who attended high school in Taiwan. Sankichi professes to identify with a certain European “mad poet,” Guy de Maupassant, who sought peace and healing among “the water, the sun, the clouds, the cliffs” of southern Europe. Like Maupassant in the Mediterranean, Sankichi aims to experience a spiritual and artistic rebirth in uncivilized Taiwan. The feminized and tamed aboriginal lands beckon to him as a utopia that promises healing and emotional rehabilitation. Attracted to a young aboriginal woman, Sankichi draws a stark contrast between his innocent flirtations with her and his unhappy married life in Tokyo: [His wife] was a woman who suffered from chronic insomnia and never managed to enjoy anything but shallow and uneasy sleep. When she opened her eyes in the morning, she would often appeal to him in a whispering voice with a dark look in her eyes. “I had a dream in which you tied me to a pillar with rope and ran away.” “In last night’s dream, I was buried alive in a coffin. It was horrible. I kept calling out your name as loud as possible, but you were turned away from me and ended up walking away.” How unhappy the woman was with this tragic and uneasy state of mind. In addition, he was unable to love his wife and, having fallen into this state, was no less unhappy than his wife. Anyone can easily understand this. He had traveled to this southern place because of his desire to cure his unhappy feelings, however slightly.69

In contrast with Sankichi’s neurasthenic and insomniac wife, Hanachan, an aboriginal girl (banfu) who works as a servant for a Japanese family, possesses “a beauty overflowing with suppleness and force, an overpowering wildness and an almost animal vitality in every extremity of her body, even to the very tips of her fingers and toes.” If Sankichi is a short-term tourist in Taiwan, the young protagonists in Masugi Shizue’s stories are Japanese men who flee patriarchal Japan and find a long-term emotional refuge in aboriginal Taiwan. In “Rion Hayon no tani” (The Valley of Rion

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Hayon), Muranishi Takemi, a student who majored in painting and music at Culture College in Tokyo, rejects his father’s financial support and sets off to Taiwan on his own. After quarreling with a Japanese colonial official, he finally finds peace in the aboriginal territories. “Truly these barbarians have pure hearts. . . . They are naïve as well as angelic. I was banished to this mountainous interior because I struck an obnoxious official. However, I feel good to be here.” Muranishi decides to devote himself to the education of the aborigines, describing his mission as follows. “I have made up my mind to devote myself to civilizing the aborigines. The task of leading these pure-hearted savages fills me with awe.”70 In another of Masugi’s stories, “Kotozuke” (The Message), the narrator meets Tsuyuhara Tomojirō, the brother of a friend, in wartime Guangdong. Prior to his volunteering to fight, Tsuyuhara was “an eccentric writer of waka [a traditional Japanese poem of thirty-one syllables] who emigrated to Taiwan’s aboriginal areas and devoted himself to the education of the aborigines because he did not get along with his parents.”71 The protagonists of these stories recover their health and self-confidence by devoting themselves to the education of the aborigines. At the same time, they pursue romantic relationships with aboriginal women. Described as more intriguing than the women in Japan, the aboriginal women are not only accessible objects of the colonizer’s masculinity but are seen as restoring his mental health. Indeed, romance with an aboriginal woman becomes a metonym for the protagonist’s relation to aboriginal culture as a whole and to the feminized aboriginal lands. This theme is developed more explicitly in the “Banjo Rion” (Savage Rion), by Masugi Shizue, set on Ari Mountain. The heroine’s name, Rion, is identical to that of the protagonist of “The Valley of Rion Hayon” and resembles Sayon, the heroine in the popular movie Sayon no kane (Sayon’s Bell).72 In this work, the young Japanese protagonist, Kajiwara, works at a pineapple canning factory in Kaohsiung after graduating from college in Japan. He suffers from a nervous breakdown and tries to kill himself in the mountains but is discovered and rescued by the aboriginal woman Rion. After his rescue, Kajiwara visits the mountain village of Rion and becomes intimate with her. The local policeman harbors misgivings about their relationship and counsels the young man as follows: “If you decide to marry her formally, we can help you and offer guidance about the proper procedure, but if you are not ready to take on any responsibility then you will get into trouble.” Ultimately, Kajiwara tries and fails to force Rion to commit double-suicide with him. He kills himself and later Rion gives birth to his daughter.73 At the time that Masugi was writing, affairs between Japanese men and aboriginal women had the allure of the forbidden. It was widely thought that a Japanese policeman’s abandonment of his aboriginal wife had been one of the causes of the Musha Incident.74 In the late 1930s, the Japanese police sought to discourage any budding intimacy between Japanese men and aboriginal women since they feared that such relationships would lead to a repetition of the aboriginal rebellion. Rather than sexual intimacy and husband-wife relations, the authorities encouraged

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platonic relationships and nonsexual family ties to strengthen colonial integration for war mobilization. In addition to discourses of childhood purity and tropical romance, other writers held up for admiration aboriginal warrior traditions, forthrightness, spirit of independence, and manly valor. The samurai had vanished from the Japanese islands with the Meiji reforms and were consigned to an earlier period of the nation’s history; as a living presence, he was only to be found in the colonies, particularly among the aborigines of Taiwan. In the works of certain writers, the aborigines became the last living repositories of the samurai spirit of Japan. Mori Ushinosuke, an ethnographer active in Taiwan from 1895 to the 1920s, praises the spirit of bushidō (the way of the warrior) among the tribes. Not only do they bravely confront and resist the enemy who seeks to conquer them, but they continue to fight with all their forces even when they are well aware that they will be destroyed or defeated, that they have run out of weapons and face defeat, and that their resistance is futile. . . . They are not concerned with damaging their reputation in the eyes of their foreign enemy, whether Japanese or Chinese, but rather they fear losing the respect of their comrades in the aborigines tribes and disappointing their ancestors. . . . The land where the aborigines are living was preserved for them by the fighting spirit of their ancestors and they are duty-bound to defend it with all their might, and even to the death, when they are persecuted or attacked by other aboriginal tribes or by other races. They think the worst insult is to be criticized for allowing a more powerful enemy to invade and seize control of their territories without resistance and without a fight.75

Anthropologists were not the only ones to praise the warrior spirit of the aborigines. After the Musha Incident, a massacre that shocked most Japanese as the epitome of savagery, many fictional writers paradoxically cast the aborigines as paragons of warrior virtue. After the Japanese counterattacked the rebels, hundreds of them and their family members elected to commit suicide rather than surrender to the Japanese authorities. The stories and deaths of Hanaoka Ichirō and Hanaoka Jirō, young aborigines who had graduated from the Taizhong Normal School, exemplify this tendency to apotheosize aboriginal men into Japanese samurai. These two Hanaoka were not biologically related, but they were “sons” of the Japanese colonial order, educated by the Japanese, employed by the colonial administration, and presented as models for other aborigines. After the Musha Incident, Japanese opinion was divided as to the role that these two “brothers” had played in the planning and direction of the uprising. Were they traitors who had masterminded the plot or had they remained loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor and killed themselves from shame at their inability to restrain their fellow aborigines? In his story “Kiri no bansha” (The Mist-Enshrouded Village), an account of the Musha Incident, Nakamura Chihei portrays the desperate situation of these two young men after the outbreak of the rebellion. Unable to choose between the side

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of the aborigines and that of the Japanese, they suffer from an irresoluble contradiction between their obligation toward the Japanese and their blood bond with their people. The different forms of their deaths—Ichirō commits seppuku in Japanese ceremonial dress while Jirō hangs himself from a tree—illustrate the cultural split in their identities. After penning a suicide note of apology in Japanese, Ichiro proceeds to perform a Japanese suicide that demonstrates his loyalty to the warrior traditions of the Japanese nation. “Wearing a silk garment, a hachimaki around his head, Ichirō first cut off his children’s heads with a Japanese sword that had a blade measuring about one and a half feet. Then he cut his belly open and died. His wife, who also wore Japanese clothing to enter death in style, slit her own throat and died with the children placed between herself and her husband.”76 For Japanese commentators, the determination of many aborigines to die rather than live in dishonor suggested that they were capable of the highest moral sentiments. Evoking feelings of pathos and nostalgia in the Japanese public, these aboriginal suicides recalled the celebrated deaths of General Nogi Maresuke and his wife, who became symbols of Japan’s ancient warrior tradition after they killed themselves following Emperor Meiji’s death in 1912.77 Though they were enemies of the Japanese state, these aboriginal suicides also possessed the Japanese spirit (yamato damashii) of honesty, loyalty, disinterest, and bravery. At the same time, by treating aboriginal warriors as samurai, Japanese writers detached them from their own history and resituated them within Japanese history, as earlier stages of a modernity that had been transcended and subsumed by the modern Japanese. Along with a positive evaluation of aboriginal warrior virtues, one sees a concomitant reevaluation of the custom of headhunting in Japanese discourse, which indeed coincided with the near disappearance of the actual practice.78 Rather than being a sign of barbarism and ignorance, this custom was reinterpreted as an emblem of bravery and military prowess. This revaluation was premised on a verbal slippage between aboriginal headhunting and the long-standing customary Japanese practice of “taking heads” in traditional warfare.79 In 1910, the anthropologist Ishii Shinji wrote: “The best evidence of the aborigines’ prowess is the possession of an enemy’s head. The same state of affairs is revealed in Japanese war stories of the 16th century.”80 While Ishii speaks of Japanese warriors from three centuries earlier, Japanese soldiers participating in the much more recent (1874) Taiwan Expedition were unlikely to find the aboriginal custom of headhunting especially shocking.81 Indeed, some troops took the heads of their enemies, including that of the chief of the Botan tribe, who was responsible for the massacre of Okinawa fishermen, in accordance with warrior tradition. Western observers of the 1874 campaign expressed their shock at this “barbarous” Japanese behavior. One cites the example of a young man from Hizen, who “set off on his own with a party of explorers after the murder of a Satsuma man and returned several days later with three heads that he had cut off himself,” noting for his English-speaking readers that “decapi-

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tating the dead . . . had been a regular accompaniment of Japanese warfare in all former times.”82 If anthropologists noted the similarity between aboriginal headhunting and the Japanese practice of taking of heads, other writers went one step further in positing that the aborigines were simply like the Japanese at an earlier stage of their history. In 1939, Nishikawa Mitsuru published Choppuran tō hyōryūki (The Record of the Castaways to Choppuran Island), a historical novel about Japanese sailors during the Edo period who were shipwrecked in Taiwan. At one point, the protagonist of this novel, Bunsuke, joins an aboriginal raid on a neighboring village and cuts off an enemy’s head, which he attaches to his belt. Bunsuke is neither squeamish about his own action nor shocked by the headhunting of the aborigines.83 Indeed, unlike the audience who read Nishikawa’s book in the twentieth century, Bunsuke lived at a time when it was commonplace for a Japanese warrior to demonstrate his valor by the number of heads he took. Tanizaki’s masterful Bushukō hiwa (The Secret History of Lord Musashi) is neither set in Taiwan nor alludes to the Japanese empire. Nevertheless, this purely fictional work set in the sixteenth century is perhaps thematically related to this internalization of savagery in late colonial discourse. Serialized in the mass-circulation periodical Shinseinen (New Youth), The Secret History of Lord Musashi first appeared in 1931, that is, within one year of the Musha Incident.84 Whereas Nishikawa’s hero is an anonymous castaway from the Edo period, Tanizaki’s protagonist is a great military leader during Japan’s civil war period in the sixteenth century. Like Nishikawa, Tanizaki uses the taking of heads as a pretext for examining the mentality of his protagonist. To construct his narrative, he anachronistically draws on the contemporary language of “sexual abnormality” and tells his story in the form of a “case history,” a staple of the sexological journals that flourished in prewar Japan. In the opening scene of the book, the future Lord of Musashi experiences his first sexual awakening as he witnesses a group of beautiful women wash and groom the severed heads of enemy warriors taken in the previous day’s battle. He experiences “an agitation that he had never felt before, an intense emotion beyond the reach of the normal man,” which eventually assumes concrete form as a wish to be “killed, transformed into a ghastly head with an agonized expression and manipulated in the girl’s beautiful hands.”85 In this scene, this sixteenth-century warrior’s desire is depicted as a form of fetishism, in the specific sense that psychoanalysis has given to this term. Tanizaki’s historical novel explores the ties between sexual perversion and the primitive practices of sixteenth-century Japanese warriors. Of course, Freud had been among the first to draw a connection between the savage and sexual abnormality by treating both as manifestations of early stages of human psychosocial development. Just as the adult neurotic harbors infantile sexuality, the primitive man preserves an early phase of our psychosocial development, an image of our prehistory; at the same time, he has the emotional ambivalence that makes him akin to

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the contemporary neurotic. In his Totem and Taboo, Freud argues: “Primitive man is in a certain sense our contemporary. There are men living who, as we believe, stand very near to primitive men, far nearer than we do, whom we regard as his direct heirs and representatives. Such is our view of those we describe as savages or half savages; and their mental life must have a peculiar interest for us if we are right in seeing in it a well-preserved picture of an early stage of our development.”86 A JA PA N E SE H E A RT OF DA R K N E S S

The writer most associated with the “discovery” of the inner savage is Ōshika Taku (1898–1959), a poet and novelist who in the 1930s set several of his stories in the Taiwan highlands.87 The younger brother of the renowned poet Kaneko Mitsuharu, Ōshika Taku was born into a prosperous family of sake brewers in Aichi Prefecture in 1898 and spent part of his childhood in Taiwan. Through his connection with his older brother, he participated in the Rakuen shisha (Paradise Poetry Group), helped to found the poetry magazines Fūkeiga (Landscape Painting) in 1924 and later Jojōshi (Lyric Poetry), and published a collection of his poems Heitai (Soldier) in 1926. Though he began his literary career as a poet, Ōshika later turned to prose and is best known for a series of stories set in Taiwan. The first of these works, “Tatsutaka dōbutsuen” (Tatsutaka Zoo) appeared in 1931 with an introduction by Yokomitsu Riichi, followed by “Banfu” (Savage Women) in 1933, “Yabanjin” (The Savage) in 1935, “Sō no yokubō” (Sō’s Desire) in 1936, and “Okuchi no hitobito” (The People of the Inlands) in 1937. In 1936, all but the last of these works appeared in book form under the title of The Savage. In the course of a round-table discussion, Yamaguchi Masao refers en passant to Ōshika Taku’s “The Savage” as the Japanese Heart of Darkness.88 Since Ōshika most likely had not read Conrad’s novella at the time he wrote his book, one cannot say that he set out to create a Japanese version of Conrad. If the phrase “Japanese ‘Heart of Darkness’ ” still rings true to the present-day reader, this is less because of the author’s intentions than because of the discursive environment in which he wrote. In effect, in Japanese discourse, Japan’s civilizing mission toward these “savages” was conflated with the Western civilizing mission in Africa. In 1904, the ethnographer Inō Kanori spoke of the Taiwan interior as “darkest Taiwan” (ankoku Taiwan), thereby aligning himself with Europeans such as Henry Morton Stanley and linking the Taiwanese aborigines with the “savages” of black Africa. By the time that Ōshika wrote his novella, he could draw on this well-established discourse of “darkness” and “light,” of civilization and savagery, which had entered everyday discourse. Indeed, the process of translating the rhetoric of civilization and savagery was circular in nature. Early twentieth-century Japanese writers appropriated a European colonial lexicon developed during the scramble for Africa to write about aboriginal Taiwan. Later, writers would use the Japanese equivalents of these terms to

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translate works of European literature into Japanese. When Nakano Yoshio translated Conrad’s Heart of Darkness into Japanese in 1940, he drew upon fully domesticated Japanese expressions to create equivalents for Conrad’s terms, such as “reclaimed savages” or “improved specimens.”89 But Ōshika not only draws on these prevalent discourses that associate “aboriginal Taiwan” with Africa and savagery with darkness. The imaginary geography of primitive Taiwan—like Africa in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—is above all a metaphor to explore the breakdown of civilized values within the protagonist himself. Just as Africa constitutes the backdrop against which Kurtz acts out his own savagery, aboriginal Taiwan is the theater where a Japanese protagonist releases his inner wild man. Furthermore, Marlowe describes his voyage up the Congo River as a journey to the beginning of time: “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.” In a similar way, the protagonist of “The Savage” experiences his travel to aboriginal Taiwan as a journey back to the primitive origins of man. And it is from his archaic and distant ancestors that this modern man expects to learn his deepest and most guarded secrets. Ultimately, the central concern of both writers is not the actual savages living in real places but rather the idea of savagery. The savage “other” is a distorting mirror into which the civilized protagonist stares, fascinated, at his own reflection, at once a temptation to which he yields and a threat to his identity against which he defends himself—fascinating precisely because it is threatening.90 Ōshika’s “The Savage,” accordingly, offers the reader insight into latecolonial period constructions of internalized savagery in a way that Conrad did for fin de siècle Europe. Ōshika’s works also reflect late-colonial disillusionment with the project of managing savages.91 Indeed, shortly before he wrote “The Savage,” Ōshika published an article called “Taiyaruzoku no seikatsu” (The Life of the Ataiyal Tribe), in the journal Kōdō (Action). The Ataiyal “have received comparatively little cultural influence from Japan and continue to live in accordance with their original nature.” After painting an idyllic picture of their traditional hunting and agricultural life, he concludes: “I have said very little about their lives, but I believe that I have attained a proper understanding of their nature, their purity of heart, and their simplicity which knows no dishonesty.” Having discovered the fundamental honesty of these people, he takes issue with a fundamental premise of Japanese policy: that Japan needs to bring to these happy people the benefits of civilization. “I couldn’t help feeling that the presence of these people who live in the same country as we do yet retain their primitive lifestyle was truly a precious boon for those of us who have had our hearts corroded by civilization.” Ōshika goes on to say that “we civilized people should not feel ashamed of the presence of these barbarians. Nor do we have any reason to educate them to be ashamed of themselves. As far as this basic spiritual attitude is concerned, have the colonial authorities not perpetrated a fatal mis-

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take in their policies toward the aborigines, notwithstanding the sacrifice of so many precious lives?” From Ōshika’s point of view, aboriginal rebellions and, by extension, the 1930 Musha Incident, which occurred in the showcase of Japan’s civilizing mission, resulted from mistaken policies that corrupted the innocence of the savages and taught them to feel ashamed of themselves.92 “The Savage,” written in 1935 for an award competition sponsored by the major periodical Chūō Kōron, is perhaps Ōshika’s most representative work. The short story was highly praised by the writer Satō Haruo, who provided illustrations when it was published in book form. Selected from among 1,218 entries in the competition, “The Savage” narrates the transformation of the hero from civilized Japanese to savage. After flunking out of a college in Tokyo, the protagonist, Tazawa, returns to his father’s home in northeastern Japan, where he becomes acquainted with Komiya, a labor organizer, and takes part in a labor dispute at the coal mine owned by his father. Without consulting with Komiya, he incites a group of miners to flood one of the mines, whereupon Komiya “betrays” him to his father. Enraged at his son’s incitement of workers to sabotage his mines, the father banishes his son to the wilds of Taiwan. Tazawa, having “lost his mental bearings,” meekly accepts this punishment as a dispensation of fate. In this vignette of the protagonist’s background, Tazawa is an Oedipal rebel who seeks to bring financial ruin upon his capitalist father, rather than as a proletarian revolutionary who aims to advance the miners’ cause. By highlighting this episode, the third-person narrator also places his tale within the ambit of an abortive anticapitalist and proletarian movement in early Shōwa Japan. Nevertheless, by exiling his hero to Taiwan, the narrator erases the capitalist struggle that pits a group of miners against their capitalist boss, along with the division of labor and the process of industrialization. Henceforth, the figure of the worker (miner) is displaced onto that of the savages and the class struggle in the mines onto the virgin spaces of the colony. The colony is, paradoxically, imagined as a utopian space free from the taint of the very industrial development that made it possible in the first place and from the divisions within capitalist society. As Tazawa undergoes his transformation, he no longer confronts industrial workers or for that matter, colonial laborers: the central dichotomy that structures the story is that of civilization and savagery. When the “misfit” arrives in Taiwan, he is assigned to work as a frontier policeman at the White Dog police station in the Taiwan highlands. He thus finds himself in a paradoxical situation: as a policeman, he occupies a position of paramount authority, but as a rebel he feels instinctively drawn to the “primitive” lifestyle of those he is charged to discipline. As the action is displaced from metropolis to colony, Tazawa’s rebellion against the rule of his father and capitalism is transformed into a more generalized revolt against “civilization”; this rebellion leads the protagonist to search for a new morality of blood and manliness.93 Shortly after he arrives in an aboriginal village, Tazawa is admonished by the friendly police chief Inō:

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“It becomes surprisingly easy to live here and put up with this savage place when you get used to the savagery around you or you yourself become a savage.”94 In the final words of this statement, Inō virtually hands the hero the formula for his later self-transformation: Tazawa will “become a savage.” “The Savage” charts his stages along the way to this goal.95 A literary product of 1930s, “The Savage” reflects a growing disillusionment with the nation’s attainment of capitalist modernity, a sentiment shared by many writers and intellectuals who turned away from modernist experimentation and embraced an indigenous cultural identity.96 Rather than being a simple negation of modernity, however, this turning away from modernity was no less “modernist” than what it displaced; indeed the negation of modernity is perhaps the modernist gesture par excellence. Ōshika offers a colonial variant to the discourse on overcoming modernity: his heroes strive to recover their true identity outside the borders of Japan by enacting transgressive acts of violence and eroticism in the colonies. The protagonist’s descent to savagery involves both a spatial displacement from the home islands to the colonial periphery and a temporal regression to an imagined, archaic, original self. In the first place, Tazawa creates a new identity by leaving Japan (naichi) for Taiwan (gaichi). The aboriginal space of Taiwan frees the protagonist to indulge in behavior that would not be allowed in civilized Japan. However, this displacement in space is also a form of time travel that brings the hero into contact with his primeval self. In accordance with the narratives of evolutionary progress, Tazawa sees the aborigines of Taiwan as stranded at an earlier stage of historical development, one that he easily conflates with that of his own racial ancestors. Weeks after his arrival, he participates in a punitive mission, launched against a rebellious tribe, during which he cuts off the head of an enemy warrior and thus crosses the border from civilized to savage. He imagines that he has skipped over countless generations and rediscovered the blood of his prehistoric ancestors: “He was thrilled that he would be able to temper himself in the midst of this primitive human struggle and amid the living wildness of this vast nature. The blood of his ancestors was still coursing through his veins. As he skipped over many generations, the violent blood of his ancestors came back to life within him. His eyes shone when he confided to himself that he would not allow himself to be mentally bested by these savages when the time came.”97 In this passage, the aborigines become the representational support for the protagonist’s own quest to make the “blood of his ancestors” coursing within him flow again. Ōshika’s The Savage, set in the early twentieth century, is essentially an anticivilization narrative. It inverts Fukuzawa Yukichi’s tripartite theory of ascending stages of civilization: primitive, half-civilized, and civilized. Fukuzawa wrote his Outline of a Theory of Civilization at a time when Japan was still a semicolonized nation placed under the unequal treaty system with Western nations, and he urged his countrymen to “civilize” Japan in order to preserve national independence. By contrast,

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Ōshika wrote when Japan not only was recognized as a fully civilized nation but also controlled a vast empire whose peoples it viewed as half-civilized or primitive. Ōshika’s protagonist retraces the stages of civilization in reverse order. Starting as a representative of the civilized nation charged with the “management of the savages,” he “descends” to savagery, passing through an intermediary stage along the way. Tazawa’s primitivism has much in common with Fukuzawa’s theory of civilization but there is an important difference. Whereas Fukuzawa had described mankind’s primitive condition as one of deprivation, Tazawa discovers positive qualities of wholeness and freedom in this same condition. In accordance with his romanticized vision of the primitive societies, he experiences his departure from the metropolis as a form of liberation and spiritual rebirth: “He felt an unexpected stimulation from his life as a guard man and the atmosphere of the village. Having abandoned country and father, he began to hope that an entirely new life—one in which there would be no traces of his past—awaited him as he advanced further into the savage frontier.”98 For Tazawa, beginning this “new life” means starting again with a clean slate; past identity (national and familial) have been wiped clean. Freed from the shackles of his former civilized self, he embarks on a journey to his own “heart of darkness” to recover his instinctual self that has been repressed by civilization. Two scenes of transgressive violence punctuate his descent to savagery: the taking of an aboriginal man’s head and the rape of an aboriginal woman. The first major transformation of the hero’s identity occurs when he cuts off the head of an aboriginal enemy in a skirmish on a mission to punish rebellious aborigines.99 Ashamed of his impulsive and bloody act, Tazawa tosses his victim’s head into the bushes but an aboriginal man recovers his “trophy” and brings it back to the village. Later, he is stunned when he witnesses a young aboriginal girl praying to this very same head. Facing the skull shelf where the enemy’s head had been washed and placed, she whispered: “I will summon the heads of your parents and brothers and sisters so that you can live together with them.” Before the fifteen-year old Taimonamo, he was overwhelmed by a sense of his own spiritual debility. He did not think that she was the slave of savage custom yet he felt as though he would suffocate as he inhaled the odor of this savagery that flowed from one person’s blood to another. It was a mistake to call it mere savagery. It rather was like the solemn pulse that coursed through a great tree infused with an indomitable spirit; a great tree that expands its branches even as it is tormented by the cruelty of pitiless nature and yet is kept alive by its bitter compassion. The sap pulses through the tress, flowing to the tips of the tiniest branches. “Compared to that I am nothing more than a weak sapling that has been transplanted.”100

If authentic savagery is a “great tree,” then Tazawa discovers that he is a weak graft, a transplant. Ultimately, he is constrained by his individual self-consciousness, in his attempt to return to the primitive, and by his lack of passion; his sav-

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agery is merely individual play-acting and empty mimicry. “Authentic” savagery, by contrast, is a communal way of life and a belief system that invests the otherwise meaningless act of headhunting with a sacred significance. Unable to share the religious beliefs of the aborigines, he finds his own behavior bloody, futile, grotesque, and senseless. In discovering his inferiority to the authentic savagery of the aboriginal girl, Tazawa realizes that his own attempts are ill-conceived, halfhearted, and inauthentic. He is at best a half-savage: Tazawa discovered the rationalization. “I am afraid of her because my savagery is still half-hearted. . . . Then, all at once, it stopped being a rationalization and became a whip by which he spurred himself on. He rolled over on the floor, crying: ‘Become a savage! Become a savage!’ ” If Tazawa reaches this intermediate stage by the violent act of taking his enemy’s head, he must wed an aboriginal woman in order to complete his transformation to savagery. From the start of the story, Tazawa is attracted to a young aboriginal woman named Taimorikaru, in whom he discovers “something animal-like and simple which sets her apart from the women of Japan,” but also a “purity of heart” that he had never experienced before. Taimorikaru is the younger sister of Inō’s wife and the daughter of the tribal chief in the aboriginal village. Feeling that there is an unbridgeable gap between them, Tazawa is unable to consummate the relationship at first. At the end of the punitive expedition against aboriginal rebels, Tazawa meets a second woman named Yauinaage, an aboriginal woman from the defeated village, who announces that she wants to marry a Japanese soldier.101 More than Taimorikaru, this woman embodies his fantasy of the hypersexual aboriginal woman. “What a tremendous woman! I had never yet seen an aboriginal woman whose innate wildness was undisguised to that degree. She was the real thing! Her eyes shone with the deep passion of the wild cat. Her body had the odor of bamboo grass and rustling pine needles. It smelled of animal hides and dried animal dung. Burning with this thought, he was overpowered with a violent pain.”102 While Tazawa feels overpowered by the woman’s exquisite savagery, he fantasizes about “implanting Yauinaage’s wildness into Taimorikaru’s body,” thereby doubling her attractiveness. Tazawa attempts to carry out his plan with a rape, a scene that was almost entirely censored after the story’s publication.103 The day after Tazawa rapes Taimorikaru, he moves to her village, puts on aboriginal clothes, daubs his face with ash, and dreams of taking part in a hunting expedition with the aboriginal men. To summarize, Tazawa’s self-transformation involves a triple crossing over. After giving up on the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in Japan, Tazawa throws himself wholeheartedly into the battle between civilization and savagery in the colonies. Rejecting the values and restraints of urban, industrialized Japan, he recovers a sense of psychological wholeness and health through acts of sexual transgression and violence. Finally, repudiating the policy of managing savages, he throws away his identity as a Japanese colonizer and seeks to merge him-

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self in the communal life of the tribe by marrying an aboriginal woman and moving to the aboriginal village. At the end of the story, he proclaims to the aborigines of the village: “I am also a savage. I won’t be outdone by anyone.” Tazawa has gone completely “native” and prides himself on becoming a “savage.” Yet, Tazawa paradoxically discovers that his quest leads him to new forms of confinement rather than to the liberation that he sought. The savages clapped their hands and shouted when they recognized him. In the end, they barked out orders to him: “Turn on your side.” “Show us your back.” “See what it’s like walking.” He did as he was told, impressed that the passions of the conquered people had been suppressed to this point. Hearing the men’s cries, even more aborigines gathered. They flooded into the small hut, pushing and jostling against each other. With an animal smell and animal excitement, the whole hut was so caught up in turmoil that it seemed about to move. Many times, Tazawa seemingly overpowered by the excitement around him, he tried to repel them saying over and over “I am a savage too. I won’t be bested by you.” Realizing that his behavior was making them boil over with excitement, he himself grew excited and tried to make the best of their excitement. In the end, letting out a loud cry and waving his arms about, he pressed himself against an aboriginal man standing right in front of him, and began to push his way out of the room. Outside, dozens of aboriginal men raised a hue and cry and buzzed with excitement. When, overcome by their power, he collapsed onto the grass, the aborigines gradually formed a ring around him. Bathing in the pale light of dawn, Tazawa rose to his feet inside this human fence. And then he began to pace restlessly like a wild animal imprisoned in a cage.104

In this scene, the aboriginal men form a hedge around Tazawa, making him feel like a wild beast in a cage. This final scene—in which the Japanese hero is surrounded by a “ring” of aborigines all staring at him—is also an inverted image of the aboriginal village itself, a gigantic cage in which the aborigines are surrounded by Japanese guard lines and placed under the panoptic gaze of the colonial police. Consequently, in an ironical conclusion to Tazawa self-transformation in primitive Taiwan, he becomes not a liberated man but a “subjugated” savage, in the midst of “conquered people” whose “passions” have been “suppressed.” This was, doubtless, the only possible form that savagery could take under conditions of Japanese colonialism and a dystopia that “The Savage” merely reflects. The ambivalent conclusion of “The Savage” recalls the ending of Ōshika’s first story, “Tatsutaka Zoo,” which appeared in the literary journal Sakuhin in 1931. While this early work also romanticizes the figure of the savage, it is told in the form of an allegory: for the guardsmen at the Tatsutaka station in the Taiwan headlands, “the savage men and women were animal species” that closely resembled the ani-

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mals they kept in a small zoo beyond the station. Fukai, the hero of the story, is a young Japanese man who both identifies with and sadistically mistreats a wild cat imprisoned in a cage of the zoo. This wild cat serves as a mirror for his own frustrated desire to rebel against the authorities and for his suppressed sexuality. At the end of the story, the Tatsutaka station is ambushed by a band of aborigines, an invisible hoard that hovers menacingly on the margins of the text. Realizing that all of the guardsmen will be slaughtered in the ensuing melee, Fukai decides to liberate the mountain cat from its cage. He opened the door and entered the cage. She jumped down quickly, crouched in a corner and started to moan in a low voice. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. The police station is finished. At least you will be set free.” Coughing, he stamped his foot and drove her toward the entrance of the cage. It was the instant he left the cage. The wild cat set off at a tear, clearing a clump of bushes at an astounding speed. Looking at her running back that left a pale trail of light behind it, he thought of the brushes of the deep forest to which she was returning and was suddenly seized by envy. He aimed his rifle and fired at her.105

“Tatsutaka Zoo” depicts the interaction of the wild animal and her civilized trainer, who frees the caged animal and then kills it. In “The Savage,” the interaction between animal and human is displaced onto that between savage and civilized. In addition, Tazawa in “The Savage” enacts both roles: he liberates himself by becoming savage and he marries the wild cat of his fantasies. In the end, he discovers that he has merely exchanged one prison for another, that his liberation is only a new form of being encaged. C RO S S - E T H N IC K I NG A N D T H E P OL I T IC S OF P R I M I T I V I SM

One might consider “The Savage” to be a transgressive work since it celebrates the hero’s flight from civilization and his embrace of violence and sexuality. As evidence to buttress this interpretation, one could mention that the colonial authorities banned the work in Taiwan and that metropolitan police ensured that it was heavily censored when it was published in Japan. In accordance with censorship policies, the editors of Chūō Kōron blackened out offending passages with fuseji (hidden characters), making certain portions of the work difficult to decipher, and they also deleted any reference to the role of the Japanese army in crushing aboriginal rebellions. In addition, one could point to the author’s implicit criticism of colonial policies and his frank depiction of the military suppression of the aborigines. Ōshika’s novel is loosely based on the Slamao Incident of 1920, in which aborigines attacked and killed nineteen Japanese policemen. In “The Savage,” Ōshika makes no direct reference to the much larger Musha Incident. Nevertheless, his

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works were also a literary reaction to this major rebellion against Japanese colonialism and to the bankruptcy of the policies toward the aborigines that this event revealed. Kawahara Isao, who published a detailed study of Ōshika, notes that at the request of the Taiwan minshutō (Taiwan Popular Party), the principal Taiwan opposition party which stood for a platform of self-rule and popular elections until it was outlawed by the colonial government 1931,106 Ōshika’s brother-in-law Kawano Mitsu was sent to Taiwan with Kawakami Jōtarō to investigate the Musha Incident. Returning to Japan, the two writers published a series of articles in Chūō Kōron in 1931 in which they strongly criticized the official account set forth in a booklet by the colonial regime (Taiwan Sōtokufu), Musha jiken no tenmatsu (A Detailed Account of the Musha Incident). According to Kawano, “the Musha uprising embodied the problem of ethnic liberation, the problem of labor and the problem regarding colonial rule in general.”107 Whatever influence the author might have sustained from his brother-in law’s political analysis of the Musha Incident, he tends to depict aboriginal rebellion as a random eruption of violence rooted in the “savagery” of the aborigines rather than as a form of political resistance to Japanese colonialism. It goes without saying that colonial rulers favored this type of explanation for aboriginal resistance.108 Nevertheless, to accept this work as it presents itself—that is, as an anticonquest narrative—would be to miss both the author’s complicity with colonial discourse and his narrative strategy. When he romanticizes the savagery of the aborigines, Tazawa is hardly challenging Japanese stereotypes of savages. Rather he is merely joining his own voice to a general and harmonious chorus of colonial administrators, ethnologists, journalists, and artists. As I have already noted, the police chief of White Dog encourages Tazawa’s primitivist proclivities from the start. Properly channeled, he rightly assumes that such primitivism is compatible with the basic aims and priorities of Japanese rule. Indeed, it actually reinforces official policies toward the aborigines by instilling colonial administrators with the indispensable sentimental disposition that enables them to willingly carry out the rational and clearheaded imperatives of the colonial administration. Tazawa rebels against his capitalist father, but he feels genuine affection for the paternal Inō, his superior on the savage frontier. The latter becomes a surrogate parent figure for the protagonist after the failure of his Oedipal struggle with his father.109 “He looked straight into the moving pupils under the triangular eyelids. When he discovered in the man an even wilder spirit than his own, he felt drawn to the man’s attitude in a flush of excitement. Privately, he had already started to place his trust in this man.” Like the young aboriginal girl whose spiritual strength amazes him, Inō is “a great tree who has put down roots in the savage land” during his sixteen years of residence” there.110 Under the guidance and with the warm encouragement of this new father figure, Tazawa directs his energies in more pro-

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ductive directions and joins the patriarchal order of colonial administration. Thus, the career of Tazawa enacts, in a Japanese context, the transition from filiation to affiliation, which Edward Said identified as a key transition in modern fiction generally.111 Tazawa’s rebellion against his father in the first pages of the story signifies his failure of class reproduction and his refusal to carry on the family business. In the end, however, he both transforms and reproduces patriarchy under the guidance of this colonial father, with whom he has no blood ties. Thus, Tazawa’s abortive rebellion is rectified by his successful rebirth as a colonial official and his affiliation with the colonial administration. Within the framework of the story, Tazawa’s violent conquest of Taimorikaru is depicted less as a freeing of his wild libido than as an arranged marriage desired by the authorities and his surrogate parents. Indeed, such marriages often served to fortify the foundations of Japanese rule.112 Reviving the Qing custom of marriage between Chinese interpreters and the daughters of tribal chiefs, the Japanese colonial administrators initiated a policy of government-brokered marriages between Japanese policemen and daughters or sisters of aboriginal headmen, especially during the years of the Sakuma administration (1906–15). Ōtsu Rinpei, chief of the Police Bureau and head of Aboriginal Affairs, proposed the implementation of such a policy in 1907: “The quickest route to cultivating translators would be to give occasional financial assistance to the appropriate men and have them officially marry aborginal women [banfu].”113 During the colonial period, political alliances cemented with interethnic marriages (between Japanese police officers and aboriginal women) facilitated Japan’s conquest of the northern aboriginal territory and later became one of the pillars of colonial rule.114 The Japanese authorities viewed these strategic matches as a tactic to win the acquiescence of aboriginal society by forging an alliance between the police and the tribal chiefs. In addition, by marrying a local woman, the police acquired a potential ally and informer who could keep tabs on aboriginal men and provide the police with valuable intelligence prior to the outbreak of aboriginal rebellions. On both counts, establishing kinship ties was useful to the authorities for the purposes of pacifying the aborigines. At the same time, the Taiwan Government-General did not publicly acknowledge Japanese-aborigine marriages and vital statistics compiled by it do not list a single “aborigine wife— Japanese husband” marriage between 1905 and 1934.115 Tazawa’s marriage with Taimorikaru follows this pattern since it is brokered by the head of the police unit, has doubtful legal status, and involves a close relative of the aboriginal chief. Inō and his wife (herself an aboriginal woman) arrange for the first meeting between the two partners, encourage their budding affection, and even resort to brokering “a strategic marriage.” When Inō announces to the “wild cat” Yauinaage that Tazawa has a wife, Tazawa feels “as if the final resolution of his obscure association with Taimorikaru [has] been pronounced.”116 In a later scene, Inō’s wife falsely informs him that a rival police officer (Araki) is courting the same

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woman and that the girl’s father favors this latter match, precipitating the hero’s hasty and impetuous “marriage.” Besides favoring strategic marriages, the colonial authorities encouraged “friendly tribes” (mikata ban) to fight under their command. Indeed once tribes submitted to Japanese rule, they were often required by the terms of their surrender to join the Japanese in punitive missions against recalcitrant tribes. While the authorities officially prohibited headhunting, they enforced this law only against savages who rebelled against the colonial state and actually encouraged members of “friendly tribes” to take the heads of their enemies, offering them bounties for the heads thus procured.117 But it was not only the members of allied tribes who were exempted from the prohibitions on headhunting or offered rewards. When Tazawa returns from the battlefield having taken an enemy’s head, Inō does not reproach him for his savagery but lauds him and promises him a reward: “That’s quite a prize on your first experience of combat. Now you can go back to White Dog with pride!”118 In his descent to savagery, Tazawa may have thought he was rebelling against civilization, but he also became a cog in the wheel of the colonial machine and an instrument in the hands of Japanese administrators. While the official ideology of the colonial regime drew a sharp distinction between the civilized Japanese and the savage aborigines, actual policies toward the subject population were hybrid in nature, making use of aboriginal customs or, as in the case of “strategic marriages,” of earlier Qing customs. Though the narrator portrays Tazawa’s transformation as taking place at the deepest level of his psyche, this transformation is signified by the most superficial of changes: namely, changes of clothing. Tazawa’s becoming savage is negotiated through two such costume changes. The first occurs when he exchanges his civilian dress for a police uniform, signifying his new position in the colonial administration: “Drenched in sweat, he arrived at the White Dog Police station just as the blazing sun was setting, wearing his uniform right on his skin and over it a raincoat.”119 The second takes places at the end of the story when he doffs his police uniform and dons indigenous hunting dress, marking his entry into aboriginal society. By assuming the external markings of the savage, Tazawa also assimilates into himself the character that he impersonates in the theater of colonialism (and I use the word “theater” advisedly). Just as an actor must imitate the external appearance of the character he brings to life on the stage, Tazawa puts on a new costume to mark the fact that he has taken on a new identity. The politics of clothing in “The Savage” is pregnant with meaning. Indeed, Tazawa’s ethnic cross-dressing tells us more about the politics of this narrative and its relationship to colonial policy than the manifest theme of the recovery of the hero’s “inner savage.” It is often asserted that Japan’s colonial rulers sought to assimilate the colonized to Japanese norms of clothing, housing, and culture in order to reinforce a sense of identification with the colonizer. Historians who have

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studied the policy of assimilation have generally focused on what the Japanese did to the people they colonized. The Japanese preference for assimilation policies is often ascribed to a Japanese need to manipulate the identity of the colonized, but also to Japan’s inability to condone diversity in its empire. By contrast, few studies look at the effect of such policies on the Japanese colonizers and what the ability to assimilate “otherness” implied about the nature of the Japanese people and their empire. Writing at a time when Japan was a multiethnic entity, many prewar writers subscribed to the notion that the Japanese were originally a heterogeneous people formed by the merger of many different racial strains.120 In prehistoric periods, the “Japanese” had migrated in successive waves from the Asian continent and the South Seas to the Japanese archipelago, where they had absorbed the indigenous people (Kumaso, Izumo). From the fourth to seventh centuries, many “Koreans” and “Chinese” had introduced continental arts and religion to “Japan,” intermarrying with the “Japanese” and becoming naturalized “Japanese.” As a result of this intermingling, the later Japanese were a heterogeneous race that included South Seas islanders, North Asians, Ainu, continental peoples— not surprisingly, all of the groups that Japan eventually colonized. Shortly after the annexation of Korea in 1910, Tsuboi Shōgorō published an article in which he stated that the Japanese were a recapitulation of all the races in the Japanese empire by virtue of their mixture of Ainu, Malay, and continental racial strains. “As the Ainu and Malay [the Taiwanese aborigines were thought of as Malay] had long since been integrated in the empire, he welcomed the fact that the Koreans had now been incorporated, saying that all three groups had been ‘put into a large cauldron.’ ”121 The Japanese had assimilated peoples from different racial backgrounds in the prehistoric past; their descendants were sure to repeat this ancient success in the modern period. The ability to ingest and digest otherness was a sign of cultural strength, as a large appetite is a sign of physical health. Just as Japanese bodies were said to be more adaptable to tropical climates than those of Westerners, Japanese culture was better at assimilating and preserving cultural difference than Western colonizing powers. Historians and anthropologists offered a quick synopsis of Japanese history showing that Japanese from the earliest times were adept at digesting foreign cultures. Such accounts tended to simplify and tendentiously interpret Japan’s earlier experience of interaction with foreigners to make Japan’s long history fit into its present attempts to colonize foreign people. During the Nara period, Japan absorbed Chinese institutions and religion without losing its unique identity in the process. In the modern period, Japan successfully fused traditional Eastern culture with modern Western civilization, producing a uniquely hybrid form of modernity. The great historian Shiratori Kurakichi argued that “the special character of progress of Japanese civilization lies in its ability to assimilate the merits of outside cultures,”122 while Watsuji Tetsurō argued that Japan possesses a unique ability to

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bind seemingly antagonistic and unrelated elements into a cultural totality, which he conceived of as being multilayered.123 This complex structure and Japan’s long history of cultural synthesis provided bona fides for Japan’s contemporary ability to rule over culturally distinct people and absorb them into a greater whole. Indeed, some writers went further, arguing that the Japanese, as a culturally hybrid people, possessed a uniquely protean nature and an exceptional capacity to absorb cultural difference without sacrificing their own cultural identity. In 1944, the playwright Kishida Kunio, the director of the cultural department of the Taisei Yokusankai (Imperial Rule Assistance Association), praised both Japan’s assimilating power and its ability to respect cultural difference: “A special trait of Japanese culture is that it possesses an ability to embrace otherness and a strong prowess for assimilation [dōkaryoku]. Far from painting everything the same color, Japan exercises this power of assimilation to preserve the distinctive character of each culture and to assign it an appropriate place under the benevolent regard of the emperor.”124 The Japanese were endowed with an openness that enabled them to embrace foreign cultures and peoples, but they could also “preserve the distinctive character of each culture” and make the most of the merits of whatever they absorbed. Besides being manifest in policies of assimilation, this talent at absorption of difference also expressed itself in a knack for assuming other identities and playing at cultural difference. Takarazuka (all-female theater) troupes during the late 1930s and wartime period performed a series of “ethnographic fantasies” about Asians and Pacific islanders incorporated into the Japanese empire. In these performances, notes Jennifer Robertson, “colonial subjects were represented on stage as objects and products of the dominant Japanese imagination of exoticized yet inferior otherness. [At the same time] according to the logic invested in the Kabuki onnagata [a male actor who specializes in female roles], these representations were sometimes circulated as models of ‘cultural correctness’ to be emulated by the colonized peoples objectified on the Takarazuka stage.” Robertson coins the term “cross-ethnicking”— with its analogy to cross-dressing—to denote this assumption by Japanese actors of identities that both objectify “inferior otherness” and offer a model of “cultural correctness.”125 Takarazuka troupes were hardly unique in making use of cross-ethnicking in ways that perform empire.126 Ōshika’s “The Savage” also highlights the hybrid and protean character of a Japanese colonizer and his ambivalent role in the policing of colonial identities. While Tazawa’s ambiguous ethnic cross-dressing calls into question his own stable identity as colonizer, it does not abolish the basic binary distinction between colonizer and colonized. In the first place, ethnic cross-dressing is the privilege and prerogative of the colonizer, and his alone. By his ethnic crossdressing, Tazawa arrogates to himself a right to role ambiguity and multiple identities. He extends the borders of his own identity by incorporating otherness into himself, just as Japan incorporates others within an expanding empire. In this re-

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gard, it is important to recall that assimilating otherness implied that the Japanese could absorb foreigners and that Japanese culture was inclusive, not exclusive. To understand Tazawa’s manipulation of this power at the very same time that he joins the “conquered people,” it is instructive to consider his reaction to his wife’s own attempts at ethnic cross-dressing. Following her marriage to Tazawa, Taimorikaru wears a kimono and powders her face, partly because she thinks her husband expects her to do so and partly because she hopes to signify her ascension to civility by adopting the external appearance of the colonizer. Far from welcoming these changes, Tazawa is appalled by his wife’s behavior.127 An odor of Japanese femininity assailed his nose. “But you shouldn’t powder your face,” and he thrust out his hand at her cheeks on which she had applied powder. “But now that I am your wife,” she trembled with fear as she looked at his angry face. “Throw it away.” But Taimorikaru could not understand why he had become so angry. As his wife looked at him perplexed, he shouted at her wildly, “Take off that kimono and go back to the aboriginal village and change into aboriginal dress.”128

When he insists that Taimorikaru remain unchanged, Tazawa not only denies his wife a right to cross-dress as Japanese but also vetoes her social ascension. In doing so, he asserts a dual authority as colonizer and as husband: as colonizer he is able to define her identity as colonized, and as Taimorikaru’s husband he has the power to specify her gender role. If Tazawa’s right to cross-dress is an expression of his gendered and ethnic power as a male Japanese colonial subject, his denial to his wife of any such right expresses his power to define and control her identity: she must conform to the fixed model that he alone has the right to determine, be a banfu (savage wife) and nothing more.129 When Tazawa restricts his wife to this single role, he does not regard this as an expression of his power over her but as a means for freeing her to become herself. In his view, his wife’s efforts to become Japanese represent a betrayal of herself and a loss of her true identity. By refusing her the right to dress differently, he insists that he is freeing her and “returning” her to her original, savage self—just as he frees his own primal man by assuming an aboriginal guise. From the beginning of the story, we are introduced to the construction of the identity of the colonized as an immutable trait of their bodies. When Tazawa first encountered Taimorikaru, she was wearing “a dark blue cotton dress fastened with a red Satsuma obi, but it did not cover at all the animal gloss of her skin and rather made it even more apparent that she was an aboriginal woman.” The animal gloss of Taimorikaru’s skin rejects the disguise that she wears; her disguise only highlights her essential identity, “which makes one think of the bearing of the trees of

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the forests or the wild beasts.”130 Similarly, Tazawa is shocked when he hears Inō refer to Taimorikaru as the sister of Inō’s own wife, who wears Japanese clothes, speaks impeccable Japanese, and has mastered every nuance of the body language of the colonizer. Yet when he looks carefully into her face, he realizes that her tattoo indelibly marks her as an aboriginal woman. Tattoos had of course played a part in premodern Japanese society, but here they are interpreted as the living traces of Inō’s wife’s primitive nature, which her superficial assimilation is unable to conceal. “The tattoo breathed like an ineffaceable sorrow under the thick powder she had applied to her forehead.”131 Unlike the “thick powder” which she applies to her face, this woman’s tattoo is a part of her body, an “ineffaceable” brand that bespeaks her fixed nature as a savage. Unlike Tazawa’s embrace of savagery, which is a free, voluntary choice, the savagery of these women is a result of biological destiny and a fixed property of their bodies. Because he conceives of the identity of the aborigine as an unchanging, fixed essence, he regards any assimilation on their part to Japanese norms and any mimicry of Japanese customs as a betrayal of their authentic identity. When Inō has the two sisters sing a song for Tazawa, he reacts with great pain. “It was completely different from the song that Japanese children sing. Her face wore an expression of great seriousness, almost of solemnity. As he looked on, he was seized by the illusion that he was bullying her and it became painful for him to listen. He tapped with his hand to keep time, but he wore a rigid expression on his face as though he would burst into tears.”132 In effect, Tazawa hopes to institute a new system of surveillance and control that “will overturn the lifestyle and policies imposed by the police.” His rebirth in the savage frontier becomes an allegory for a reformed, discreet system of colonial rule. Rather than assimilate the savages to Japanese norms, Tazawa will “return Taimorikaru —and presumably all the other villagers—to their original wild nature.” Yet this liberation of the wild creature has all the ambivalence of the final gesture of the hero of “Tatsutaka Zoo,” who frees the wild cat and then fires a bullet at it. Tazawa achieves this liberation by an inversion of “values” that leaves unchanged the asymmetrical power relationship between colonizer and colonized. While he performs his own metamorphoses through changes of costume, his wife is allowed only one costume and one role: that of an unchanging savage as filtered through the lens of her husband’s nostalgic exoticism. Like the zookeeper in his earlier stories, the primitivist Tazawa becomes the steward of colonial identities and the upholder of aboriginal authenticity, of which he becomes the sole authoritative judge and arbiter.

2

Ethnography and Literature Satō Haruo’s Colonial Journey to Taiwan Of all learned discourse, the ethnological seems to come closest to fiction. Roland Barthes

Whether you call us “raw barbarians” or “mountain citizens,” we have always been pushed to the margins of Taiwan. Oh the destiny of our people, oh our destiny, whether we inhabit mountains or plains we have received sympathy and polite treatment only in the research reports of anthropologists. Mōnanon, “Give Us Back Our Names!”

F ROM NAT IONA L TO C OLON IA L E T H NO G R A P H Y

Along with steamships and conscript armies, anthropology arrived in Japan during the late nineteenth century. Western expatriates (oyatoi gaikokujin), an elite, multinational group hired by the Meiji regime to teach in the nation’s new educational institutions and to advise the government, first introduced this science of “savages” to the Japanese. Just as Japanese scholars would later study the racial origins of colonized peoples in the Japanese empire, these Western academics initiated research into the origins of the Japanese. Applying to the Japanese islands the model of colonial settler societies in North America and Australia, they hypothesized that a proto-Japanese “race” in a prehistoric era had conquered a less “advanced,” indigenous “race,” often identified with the contemporary Ainu population, which thereafter rapidly dwindled in the Darwinian struggle for survival. In addition, they often remarked that the Japanese people contained a bewildering variety of physical types, a hybridity they attributed to extensive racial mixing on the Japanese archipelago. Comparing the Japanese with the people of individual European countries, Lev Mechnikov, a Russian anarchist who lived in Japan in the early Meiji period, wrote: “The Japanese type represents much greater variation and fluctua78

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tion than the population of any European country, and this alone is sufficient to suggest that today’s Japanese nation originated from multiple tribal elements.”1 In 1875, Wilhelm Doenitz (1838–1912) proposed a theory that the Japanese people were a mixture of two major racial strains: the Mongoloid and the Malaysian. In 1883 Erwin von Baelz (1849–1913) argued that the predominance of one or the other of these two strains throughout the archipelago led to pronounced regional differences in the appearance and color of the inhabitants of Japan. He referred to the Mongoloid as the Chōshū type and to the Malay as the Satsuma type.2 In 1877, Edward Sylvester Morse (1838–1925), professor of zoology and physiology at Tokyo Imperial University, noticed shell deposits near Omori station while he was riding the train from the foreign settlement in Yokohama to Tokyo. He surmised correctly that they were remnants of an ancient site of habitation and decided to excavate them. In 1879, he published an article titled “Traces of an Early Race in Japan,” followed by a report called “The Shell Mounds of Omori, Japan.” Based on the evidence of bone fragments, iron tools, and shards of pottery, he argued that Japan’s prehistoric inhabitants were a savage people who practiced cannibalism. In later years, these savages—Morse claimed they were a pre-Ainu people— were conquered by more “advanced” invaders from the Asian continent. In addition, he described the pottery of this prehistoric people as “cord-marked,” after its decorative pattern; today the Japanese term jōmon, written with the characters rope and writing, refers both to this style of pottery and to the Neolithic period when it was produced (ca. 12,000 b.c.e. to ca. 350 b.c.e.). Morse’s pathbreaking excavations opened up a new dimension of time to Japanese scholars. Not only did they offer a new vision of Japan’s prehistory (that is, a history prior to the one recounted in Japan’s oldest written histories, the Nihon shoki and Kojiki), but they offered a privileged form of access to that history in the form of material remnants of the past.3 Stimulated by these bold speculations, a group of intellectuals led by Tsuboi Shōgorō (1868–1913) began to use the methods and conceptual apparatus of Western anthropology to explore the racial origins of the Japanese people. Tsuboi Shōgorō was himself from a family of rangakusha (scholars of Dutch learning) and viewed his own activities as renewing a long-standing Japanese interest in the collection of ancient stoneware and earthenware objects.4 He mentions Edward Morse’s article as the primary impetus for his later inquiries into Japanese racial origins, but he characteristically adds that he found it “mortifying to hear that I am a disciple of Morse and that Morse is the father of Japanese anthropology.”5 Indeed, Tsuboi had a rather complicated relationship to this so-called father. He denied that he was influenced by Morse’s theories, but he could hardly help but acknowledge that Morse was the first to adopt a scientific approach to the question of Japanese racial origins.6 In an article on the history of Japanese anthropology, Torii Ryūzō notes that Tsuboi ordered that the collection that Morse had donated of Omori shell mounds be removed from the store boards at Tokyo University and

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be replaced by the “far more valuable specimens” that later Japanese investigators had collected.7 After founding the Tokyo Anthropological Society in 1884, Tsuboi was sent by the Ministry of Education to study anthropology in London for three years and was appointed professor at University of Tokyo and chair of its Anthropological Institute upon his return to Japan at the age of twenty-nine. The Tokyo Anthropological Society began as a small group of scholars who shared interests in the investigation of the racial origins of Japanese prehistoric antiquity and folk customs and published their findings in the Tōkyō Jinruigaku Zasshi (Journal of the Tokyo Anthropological Society). A cursory glance at the early articles of this publication suggests that Japanese anthropology at this stage was a heterogeneous discipline that subsumed the later divergent fields of archaeology, physical anthropology, ethnology, folklore studies, ethnography, and linguistics.8 If Morse was the “father of Japanese anthropology,” Tsuboi was the first of his “sons” to turn it into a thoroughly Japanese science. In contrast to Western scientists who tended to investigate “primitive” others living in colonies, Tsuboi and his associates began to study the origins of the nation to which they belonged. In addition, in the course of searching for the origins of the Japanese, they came to pay close attention to the Ainu people living on the northern frontier of the nation, who were incorporated into the Japanese nation in 1869. These “domestic” foreigners or internal others were thought to hold important clues to a mystery that truly baffled early anthropologists: who were the first inhabitants of Japan? This question generated the first major controversy that divided early Japanese anthropologists. On one side, Koganei Yoshikiyo (1858–1944), the father of physical anthropology in Japan, held that the early Japanese were related to the Ainu; on the other, Tsuboi claimed that the ancestors of the Japanese belonged to a pre-Ainu group called the Koropokgru, a term which derived from Ainu folk legends.9 If Western scholars were the first to speculate on the origins of the Japanese, Japanese scholars completely dominated this Ainu-Koropokgru debate, which lasted until Tsuboi’s death in 1913.10 In the formative years of this new discipline, Japanese anthropologists pursued research topics within the framework of the Japanese nation, a limited geographic focus that reflected the semicolonized position of Japan in the international order. Tsuboi Shōgorō identified this domain as lying within the new borders of the nation: “Our research materials are placed in our immediate vicinity. On the hills by the sea there are many shell mounds. . . . If you travel north to Hokkaido, there are the Ainu, famous for their hairy bodies. If you go south to the Ryūkyū Islands, there are the Okinawans, who treasure the magatama. We can say that we are living in an anthropological museum.”11 The science of anthropology enabled researchers to conceive of Japan as a museum that housed a succession of different historical periods. In addition, as Tsuboi indicates, an important object of study for these anthropologists was the different “races” that clustered near the nation’s borders. Even

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after the domain of Japanese anthropology had expanded to encompass the wider spaces of Japan’s colonial empire, the origins of the Japanese people and the identity of the people on the nation’s periphery remained central concerns to anthropologists. Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), the founder of Japanese folklore studies, shared with early Meiji anthropologists an interest in the origins of the Japanese, but he tended to look for these origins in Okinawa, which he viewed as a museum of ancient Japanese culture.12 I have already noted that Tsuboi sought above all to create a fully independent Japanese branch of anthropology, even to the point of denying the indisputable contributions made by Western scholars. In general, early Japanese anthropologists shared a strongly “nationalist” agenda to liberate anthropology from Western domination and to establish their own autonomy as scientists.13 Just as Meiji statesmen negotiated with Western governments to restore Japanese sovereignty and eliminate the “unequal treaties,” these early anthropologists wanted to establish a Japanese branch of anthropology that would be free from Western influence. In particular, they sought to reclaim from Westerners the task of searching for the roots of Japan and to establish themselves as modern scientific investigators. The conceptions about the racial origins of the Japanese that were being developed at this time anticipate later conceptions in Japan’s colonial ethnography. Just as Morse had described Japan’s earliest inhabitants as “cannibals” conquered by a more advanced people from the Asian continent, these early scientists believed that Japan’s autochthons formed a primitive society that the more virile Japanese coming from the continent eventually conquered.14 From this time, the Ainu, as the original population of Japan, came to embody a racial “otherness” in relation to which the Japanese defined their racial and national identity. A “dying” race that would be superseded by the Japanese, the Ainu were also seen as throwbacks to an earlier stage of evolution: as atavisms that had been preserved for eons, the contemporary Ainu promised to open a window onto the prehistory of the Japanese race.15 After defeating the Qing empire in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), Japan emerged as an imperialist power in East Asia and acquired the island of Taiwan as a colony. While Japanese anthropologists had not previously ventured overseas to conduct fieldwork, they now turned to Taiwan to study their primitive others. These scholars did not necessarily give up their search for the racial origins of the Japanese: in some cases, they merely displaced this quest onto the colonies. The ancestors of the Japanese race, they argued, were a seafaring people who had migrated to Japan from the South Seas and had conquered an indigenous people. Proponents of such theories would later deploy them in support of Japanese expansionist claims to territories from which these adventurers had purportedly come. Similarly, if Japanese scholars had written of hypothetical, prehistorical racial conquests on the Japanese archipelago, they were now witnessing the very much present conquest of Taiwanese savages.

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Aboriginal Taiwan and its population, which made up a mere 2 percent of the island’s total population, became the first overseas “field” in which Japan’s anthropologists could exercise their intellectual virtuosity. By contrast with the anthropologists, officials in the colonial government were primarily concerned with the majority Chinese population that resided mainly in the western plains of Taiwan. Under Civil Administrator Gotō Shinpei, the Government-General of Taiwan in 1900 launched a major research project to study the “old customs” of the Chinese, whereas it did not establish a similar research bureau to study aboriginal societies until 1909.16 Nevertheless, within one year of the incorporation of Taiwan into the Japanese empire, three ethnographer-pioneers traveled to Taiwan to inform their countrymen about the exotic aborigines newly placed under the authority of the emperor: Torii Ryūzō (1870–1953), a student of Tsuboi Shōgorō;17 Inō Kanori (1867–1925), a Taiwan Government-General official during the first ten years of Japanese rule; and Mori Ushinosuke (1877–1926), an interpreter who assisted Torii in his early surveys and lived in Taiwan for most of the next three decades. The colonization of Taiwan not only provided ethnographic pioneers with a new field in which to work, but it also gave them a new object of study: the Taiwan aborigines became Japan’s very own “savages.” Torii Ryūzō, who conducted four research trips to Taiwan from 1896 to 1899 under the auspices of Tokyo University, speaks of this new object of ethnographic science with the excitement of a latterday Columbus who has stumbled, as if by accident, onto a new and hitherto unknown continent. In the rich, beautiful Japanese colony of Taiwan . . . several savage tribes can be found who have completely turned their backs on civilization. They adhere to their ancestors’ primitive customs and are cut off from all external contact. They are a matter of astonishment to all voyagers. From the point of view of civilization and human solidarity, they are in an unhappy state that merits our pity; but for the anthropologist they constitute a marvelous field of studies. To what race of the human species do these populations belong? What are their customs, their diet, their way of life, their social institutions, and so on? For science, all these matters are of the highest interest. It is for this reason that after the Japanese troops occupied Taiwan, the Tokyo Imperial University sent the author of these lines on a survey mission to learn more about these inhabitants.18

Like Western anthropologists, Torii believed that the primitives he studied were not only exotic populations geographically distant from his home country. They also lived at a vast temporal remove, in close proximity to the primitive origins of man, from the modern era of the researcher who visited their society. Torii viewed his task as that of defining the distinctive traits of these self-enclosed and primitive societies and cataloging the physical and cultural attributes of their inhabitants. In his view, the value of an anthropological investigation varied in inverse proportion with the level of civilization of those who were its object. Torii held that the Yami

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of Botel-Tobago were likely to yield “the most precious” truths to the assiduous scholar precisely because they were “the most barbarous and savage of all the tribes of Formosa.”19 Besides gaining an object of study “of the highest interest,” Torii also staked out a privileged epistemological position for himself within this new field. As a scientific observer, the ethnographer was separated from his object of study by a sharp epistemological boundary that overlapped with other boundaries: the one dividing the civilized and savage, the colonizer and colonized. At the same time, however, the ethnographer distinguished himself from his civilized countrymen by his intellectual detachment and his freedom from “prejudices.” While the colonial ethnographer was beholden to the Japanese empire for his very existence, he also retained a margin of independence from the colonial state and enjoyed a degree of autonomy due to his position as scientific investigator. Indeed, he exercised a specific, scientific power from his vantage point of objectivity toward the people he studied. In principle, he left behind the value-laden preconceptions of his own culture when he stepped into the society of the aborigines. For him, aboriginal society could be objectified and rendered intelligible: his job was to decipher this “text” and to translate it into terms comprehensible to the layman. Ethnographers had two major objectives in deciphering the aboriginal societies delivered to them by Japan’s conquest of Taiwan. On the one hand, they attempted to offer cultural or religious explanations for customs and practices of the aborigines that had previously indicated aboriginal irrationality. On the other hand, they sought to provide a definitive taxonomy of the aborigines and to make clear distinctions between the different groups. We have seen that the violent, irrational “headhunter” was the dominant Japanese stereotype for the Taiwan aborigines. Ethnographers contested this stereotype by claiming that the aborigines were neither “irrational” nor especially violent.20 Like any other cultural practice, headhunting was a meaningful custom susceptible to analysis and classification. In Taiwan banzokushi (An Ethnography of the Taiwan Aborigines), Mori Ushinosuke classified six different cultural meanings that the Ataiyal group attributed to the practice. According to his analysis, the taking of heads in Ataiyal society served (1) to signify a young man’s coming-of-age, (2) to settle disputes or resolve conflicts, (3) to avenge the deaths of relatives or respond to attacks of enemies of the tribal chief, (4) to demonstrate that a young man was ready to get married, (5) to exorcise epidemics and threats to the tribe, and (6) to demonstrate a warrior’s bravery and win him fame.21 In his analysis of the custom, Mori abstracted the practice of headhunting from the context of Japan’s colonization and analyzed it solely as a cultural phenomenon. Indeed, he made it an object of scientific observation precisely by abstracting it from the messy context of imperial conquest and from the institutions of colonial rule.22 To be sure, Mori was not unaware that Japan’s conquest had deeply affected all aboriginal customs, including head-

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hunting. However, this context itself did not fall within the frame of his analysis. As previously noted, Takekoshi Yosaburō, a nonspecialist on the tribes, viewed headhunting as a response on the part of the aborigines to foreign intrusion and as a means of self defense; that is, he attempted to understand this practice within a political context of ongoing conflict. By contrast, Mori’s ethnographic analysis substituted a cultural explanation for a political one. The depoliticization of headhunting concealed the power relations in the colonial order from the investigator, but it also enabled him to discover the “objective” cultural laws that ruled aboriginal society. But Mori not only bracketed out the power relations of “colonization” when he isolated a cultural practice for ethnographic analysis; he also bracketed his own status as an observer located within the society he studied. Both maneuvers were facilitated by the authoritative epistemological form of ethnography and its writing. If Mori established a system of classification for the different types of headhunting, early ethnographers all believed their initial task was to classify the race to which the aborigines belonged. First, ethnographers defined the entire collectivity of aborigines as members of the Malay race, that is, one of the world’s five major races according to the science of that time, thereby distinguishing them from the majority Chinese population.23 Second, they sought to reduce the messy and confusing plurality of the aboriginal groups to a neat and rational system of classification. In this endeavor, they proposed new taxonomic systems based on empirical surveys to replace previous Sino-centric categories. From the late seventeenth century, Chinese writers had divided all the aborigines between raw (shengfan or seiban) and cooked barbarians (shufan or jukuban), according to their proximity to Chinese cultural norms and their submission to government control.24 To Japanese anthropologists, this nomenclature was “nothing more than the ancient Chinese tradition . . . completely lacking in any scholarly value.”25 In line with global scientific norms, they devised systems of classification that grouped aborigines into several distinct categories according to physical or cultural markers of differences. The tribes in these classifications were constructed as internally homogeneous entities that occupied externally distinct and bounded territories. Based on the evidence from the British empire, Norman Thomas calls this type of enterprise “anthropological typification” and views it as emblematic of modernity itself.26 Conceiving of these aboriginal subgroups as static, coherent entities, they developed “colorful images of the interior of Taiwan that aggregated the myriad villages into geographically contiguous but distinct “culture areas” or “tribes” according to perceived similarities in village social organization, architectural styles, religion, forms of personal adornment, language, physique and economic life.”27 While the Japanese colonial state did not recognize the aborigines as nations with bounded territories in a juridical sense, ethnographers treated them as miniature nations and worked to draw clear borders among the different tribes.28 In this endeavor, they offered a model to the officials of the colonial state, whom they pre-

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ceded into the savage frontier. Prior to Sakuma’s campaign, Taiwan’s aboriginal lands were terra incognita for the colonial government. After it militarily subjugated the aborigines, the government dispatched surveyors to make accurate maps of the aboriginal territories, the sine qua non to unlocking their riches. At the same time, police assigned to keep order in these territories compiled household registers in the villages and conducted annual population censuses. Years before the surveyors and the police charted the aboriginal lands and counted their inhabitants, ethnographers had already established sharply demarcated borders among the different groups.29 Much as physical maps made the countryside intelligible to the colonial administration, ethnographic mappings provided the ethnographer with a schema that made these societies legible and clear. Geographies of the mind rather than of space, these maps also manifested the subordination of the tribes to Japanese intellectual power, a colonization through anthropological knowledge.30 Indeed, the mapping of the aboriginal lands and tribes did not reproduce a preexisting reality but rather projected onto a land that was still unknown a figment of the ethnographer’s imagination. To start with, bounded territories and ethnic borders existed in the mind of the ethnographer alone. Just as new states in the postcolonial period came to rule over the same lands that imperial powers had previously carved out as colonial possessions, the categories invented by colonial ethnographers later provided the basis upon which aboriginal groups identified themselves as members of larger communities. In the future, the ethnic categories elaborated by Japanese ethnographers, slightly modified, would continue to shape both ethnographic surveys of the Taiwan aborigines and the process of aboriginal self-identification. A M E E T I NG OF E T H NO G R A P H E R A N D W R I T E R I N C OLON IA L TA I WA N

One of the most fascinating early anthropologists in Taiwan is Mori Ushinosuke (1877–1926). Unlike Torii and Inō, Mori is a neglected figure in studies by Japanese scholars, perhaps because he spent most of his career in the relative backwater of Taiwan and because he lacked the academic credentials that matter so much in education-minded Japan. While he remains largely unknown in Japan, Taiwanese scholars have recently devoted considerable research to his contributions in the natural sciences, especially botany, and to his ethnographic studies. Yang Nanjun, who recently published a biography of Mori and a selection of his writings in Chinese translation, notes, for example, that Mori gave his name to several plants indigenous to Taiwan.31 Mori first came to Taiwan in 1895 during the Sino-Japanese War as a Chinese language interpreter attached to the Japanese army. In his later memoirs, he recalls that he had been motivated to travel to Taiwan by his long-standing fascination with the savages of the South Seas: “As a child I remembered having heard tales of trop-

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ical islands and of ogrelike savages living in Taiwan. Now that Taiwan had become part of our territory and we Japanese could travel there, I suddenly felt a strong urge to go there and see it for myself.”32 Trained by Torii Ryūzō in ethnographic research, he participated in Torii’s 1899 expedition and joined the Tokyo Anthropological Society. Like other early anthropologists, Mori notes that he desired to contribute to the development of Japanese science and to uphold the “honor of Japanese scholarship. . . . If we Japanese, as usual, did not involve ourselves in the research of the Taiwanese savages, smart foreign researchers would arrive, study them, and publish their findings. I hoped that the Japanese would maintain the honor of Japanese scholarship by conducting research of the Taiwanese savages. This may sound a bit presumptuous on my part, but it was my honest feeling when I heard that Taiwan had been ceded to Japan during the Sino-Japanese War and that primitive savages lived there.”33 A self-described adventurer who studied the aborigines primarily “for his own amusement and pleasure,” Mori soon began to compile handbooks of their languages and acquired a reputation as an expert on aboriginal societies. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, he conducted fieldwork throughout Taiwan, published over a hundred articles on the aborigines in the aforementioned Journal of the Tokyo Anthropological Society and the Taiwan Jihō, and he proposed his own taxonomy of the tribes, later adopted by the colonial state in 1913.34 Significantly, Mori was the only ethnographer of note to remain active on the “savage frontier” during the Sakuma period as the Japanese colonial regime employed military force to take control of all aboriginal lands and to crush any resistance to Japanese rule. To continue with his research, in 1909 he reluctantly joined the paramilitary Banmuhonchō chōsaka (Survey Section of the Bureau for the Control of Aborigines) and remained until the bureau was disbanded in 1913. In a speech given at the Taiwan Museum on the eve of his departure from Taiwan in 1913, he argued that the ethnographer could serve the colonial state by increasing understanding of the ethnic nature of the tribes. “I was confident that by promoting mutual understanding and smooth communication between us and them, I would be able to reduce (even slightly) the sacrifices needed to reach the goals of extending the guard-line, building roads, using the aboriginal lands, and confiscating weapons. The way to do this was to survey and thoroughly research their customs and their ethnic mentality, their feelings and thoughts.”35 Mori believed that the ethnographer could help the government to develop “scientific” policies toward the aborigines based on a proper understanding of their society.36 However, he frankly acknowledged that this was knowledge of the enemy, a necessity in any war: “If we are to subjugate the aborigines, we must of course first understand them.” Mori hoped to use his knowledge to promote cultural understanding, but he faced a problem encountered by any anthropologist who puts his cultural expertise at the disposal of one of the parties to a war: that is, he risks becoming a mere accomplice

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to the military strategist, his knowledge simply another weapon with which to destroy the enemy. Indeed, Mori harbored serious misgivings about the government’s policies and in the same speech he strongly criticized Sakuma and the subjugation policies of the Government-General of Taiwan.37 In Mori’s view, the ethnographer needed to be an intermediary who would promote “mutual understanding and smooth communication” between indigenous societies and the Japanese state. As an ethnographer, he believed that his role transcended his actual position as a salaried employee of the Survey Section of the Bureau for the Control of Aborigines. Relying on his ethnographic expertise, he tried to speak for the aborigines at a time when, for obvious reasons, they could not speak for themselves.38 However, Mori attempted to mediate when the space for mediation had been virtually eliminated by the government’s policies of military conquest. Indeed, his statement betrays regret that officials neither took him up on his offer to put his knowledge at the disposal of the state nor accepted his good offices as go-between. Indeed, Japanese officials made little use of the expertise of the ethnographers when they crafted policies toward the aborigines, relying instead on the time-tested policies of “savage control” implemented by the police, who continued to rule the savage lands as “special administrative zones” during most of the colonial period. In his later years, Mori excoriated the colonial policies of the Japanese state. The colonization of Taiwan may have provided Japanese ethnographers with a rich field of research, but at the same time it was eliminating the very object the ethnographer wished to study. [Opening up the savage territory] entails very rapid and severe changes in the aborigines’ particular cultures, if not their outright destruction. Furthermore, their oral traditions are being forgotten, while their precious heirlooms and material artifacts are destroyed in fires. Hit by the waves of civilization, the aborigines may become mere shells of their former selves and lose the lofty and noble qualities that arise from their ethnic character. If present trends continue, they will experience such changes in their customs, social structures, and lifestyle that their cultural distinctiveness will be completely destroyed. When people start to notice these changes and raise calls to protect and preserve [indigenous cultures], it will be already too late. It will be like the proverbial child wanting to show filial piety to his parents after they have passed away. How many times has one heard of material remains disappearing before the investigators arrived in time to conduct their surveys?39

As “waves of civilization” rolled over them, the savages risked becoming “mere shells of their former selves.” Mori valorized these “former” selves as noble and lofty, comparing the “civilized” Japanese unfavorably with them: If we really understood the reasoning of the aborigines and the meaning of what they said, we would already be rid of the term “savage.” They are not savages, but rather

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Mori’s attitude toward the aborigines resembles the “imperial nostalgia” that Renato Rosaldo has found in the discourses of Western colonial administrators. “Curiously enough, agents of colonialism often display nostalgia for the colonized culture as it was ‘traditionally’ (that is, when they first encountered it). The peculiarity of their longing, of course, is that agents of colonialism long for the very forms of life they intentionally altered and destroyed. Nostalgia is a particularly appropriate emotion to invoke in attempting to establish one’s innocence and at the same time talk about what one has destroyed.” Imperial nostalgia helps these agents to establish their innocence and to deny their complicity in the destruction of the lost cultures whose passing they mourn.41 In Mori’s case, one can hardly overlook the fact that his appearance among the aborigines was made possible by the colonial conquest and that he served the very state that intentionally “altered” the culture for which he nostalgically yearned. Indeed, conquest was the condition for the discoveries of aboriginal cultures and the classification of aboriginal societies pioneered by Japanese anthropologists. At the same time, these ethnographers did not intervene on behalf of the threatened aborigines to prevent their cultural extinction, but rather sought to record their cultures in the short period remaining before they disappeared for good. Whereas Torii Ryūzō saw the aborigines as living creatures who were distanced from the Japanese in time, Mori viewed them as the bearers of a dying culture. Since the objects of his study were vanishing before his very eyes, he not surprisingly saw his role as that of a “salvage” ethnographer. Mori could not actually “save” the aboriginal groups as such, but he could at least salvage the things which they left behind that were destined to outlive the people who made them. As an ethnographer, his principal mission was to gather vestiges of this past, inventory and classify them, record them and hand them down to posterity. In the preface to Taiwan banzokushi, he writes: “We must investigate and record their social customs and traditions today, since in the future there will be no way to study their history.”42 The things that survived from aboriginal culture no longer belonged to the men or women who created them but became the inheritance of those who knew how to conserve them. In a sense, Mori merely extended to the cultural realm the expropriation that the Japanese had initially carried out toward the aboriginal lands, but he did so in the name of knowledge and in his capacity as a scientist. To the end of his life, Mori persevered in this salvage mission both through his writings and through his collections of aboriginal artifacts. He donated most of the latter to the Taiwan Museum, laying

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the foundations for that museum’s aboriginal collection.43 By organizing the fragments of a vanishing culture, the ethnographer-curator could call this past back to life and offer it to spectators as an object of mourning and commemoration. Satō Haruo (1892–1964), a respected figure in the Japanese literary establishment, traveled throughout Taiwan during the summer of 1920. In Taipei he met Mori, then deputy director of the Taipei Museum and curator of the institution’s collection of aboriginal artifacts. Mori drew up a travel plan for him and introduced him to Taiwan colonial officials, including Shimomura Hiroshi, the chief of the Civil Administration of Taiwan. Shimomura, a liberal bureaucrat and amateur of literature, made arrangements for the writer to obtain the necessary permits to venture into aboriginal lands.44 Since the aboriginal lands were ruled as special administrative zones, a traveler wishing to enter them needed to obtain a special permit from the police administration, and this permit was often revoked at the discretion of the authorities. “If not for the directive of this high official, I would not have obtained permission to travel to the aboriginal lands so quickly, and even if it had been granted, it may have been canceled from one minute to the next.”45 His trip was widely reported in the both Japanese and local Taiwan newspapers,46 and he was treated as a VIP by the colonial government throughout his stay. Traveling under police escort, he set out for the aboriginal areas shortly after an aboriginal rebellion broke out in the village of Slamao; he reached Musha, the principal administrative town in the highlands, just as the colonial authorities were organizing a punitive expedition to put down the uprising. After visiting Musha, he returned to Taipei, where he was a guest at Mori’s house for two weeks. He consulted with Mori about aboriginal societies and about government policies of military suppression. Indeed, Satō remained in contact with Mori long after he returned to Japan, frequently referred to him in his memoirs and correspondence, and hosted him in Tokyo in 1926, shortly before Mori’s death. Satō cites Mori’s views at length (Mori is referred to as M) in the final chapter of his travel memoir Musha, a detailed account of his travel to the aboriginal lands that is profoundly informed by Mori’s work. He describes him as a scholar who has “a deep knowledge of aboriginal societies” and as an adventurous fieldworker who never “carried a sidearm to defend himself during his fieldwork.” In a passage on government policies toward the aborigines, M interprets the Slamao uprising as a desperate form of resistance to Japan’s colonial intrusions: “The banjin have been provoked to anger by the fact that Japanese authorities have completely disregarded the customs of their society.” He also laments the destruction that the Japanese have inflicted on the aborigines’ culture: “Handicrafts are in danger of disappearing before long because their traditional methods are completely disregarded by the authorities and receive no official encouragement.”47 These citations of M are broadly congruent with the opinions that the ethnographer expressed in his publications and public lectures.

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Indeed, Satō Haruo clearly identifies with the primitivist ethos informing Mori’s ethnography when he argues that the Japanese are infecting the Taiwan aborigines with their civilized diseases (or rather, to be precise, the “disease of civilization”), leaving behind nothing but ruins. Encountering a group of aboriginal porters on the road to Musha, he describes an aboriginal man suffering from venereal disease: “All were dressed in aboriginal clothes and had long hair except for one who wore a cap on his head. It was a military cap that resembled the kind porters wear in Japan. He had his hair cut short. But it was not just in his taste in appearance and costume that he seemed to have caught the disease of civilization. The bridge of his nose had fallen and his ugly nostrils sprawled in the center of his face. In this savage land, and among these savage people, I was shocked to find a man ravaged by syphilis.”48 Promoted by the Japanese state as the cure for backwardness of the savages, civilization is here depicted as “syphilization.” Indeed in his travelogue, it is not only the aboriginal man’s face that has been corroded by the disease of civilization; aboriginal society as a whole has been infected by the same illness. Satō finds the symptoms of the disease wherever he looks: in the trading posts the Japanese set up in the villages, “where there was almost nothing for sale except the most inferior goods from Japan”; in the spread of prostitution and the abandonment of aboriginal women by the Japanese who marry them; and in the schools that teach students “concepts they can scarcely imagine in their own world.”49 In general, for the narrator, the Japanese are the carriers of the “disease of civilization” in aboriginal Taiwan and the aborigines are their passive victims. Satō’s 1920 voyage to Taiwan and China proved extremely fruitful in terms of his later literary production. Based on his experiences there, he went on to write a series of short stories, children’s tales, and travel memoirs over the next decade, including “Machō” (Demon Bird), a short story based on an aboriginal legend which first appeared in the October 1923 issue of the journal Chūō Kōron.50

DE C ON ST RU C T I NG T H E T E X T OF C OLON IA L E T H NO G R A P H Y

Editors of Satō Haruo’s complete works point out that the author referred to Mori’s ethnography of the Ataiyal aborigines (Taiwan banzokushi) when he wrote “Demon Bird.” Of particular importance is the following passage that appears in Mori’s ethnography, in a chapter titled “Shinkō oyobi seishinteki jōtai” (Beliefs and Spiritual States). According to aboriginal legend, there is a magical bird called the hafune. It looks like a dove, with white feathers and red feet. The savages believe the bird has magical powers and that anyone who sees it is certain to die. Certain savages called the mahafune have the ability to manipulate this bird. If a man is suspected of being a mahafune, he

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and all the members of his family will be massacred. In addition, if a village is rumored to harbor a man who is a mahafune, other villages will be terrified and avoid all contact with it.51

The narrator of “Demon Bird” does more than simply refer to this passage of Mori’s ethnography. This aboriginal “legend” provides the kernel for the entire plot of “Demon Bird” and inspires the narrator to propose his own ethnographic theories about aboriginal culture. Along the way, he fleshes out his narrative by paraphrasing Mori’s interpretations of aboriginal beliefs and by invoking his commentary on aboriginal customs.52 Indeed, Mori’s study informs Satō’s descriptions of the fine points of aboriginal culture and the entire narrative frame of “Demon Bird.” More important, the narrator appropriates the standpoint of an ethnographer toward the society he describes. He begins: “The story I am about to tell you is about a superstition of a certain savage society.” The narrator first draws a boundary between the civilized (which includes his audience) and the savages whose superstitions are the ostensible object of his report. Then he establishes his own authority as an ethnographer by creating a distance between him and his “civilized” audience. The narrator demonstrates his freedom from prejudice by observing that the civilized are really no different from the savages: “Just as civilized people tend to think that there are many superstitions in the manners and customs of savages, savages would discover many superstitions in the constraints of social existence among the civilized. Indeed for the savages it is possible that what we take to be justice and morality is nothing but superstition.”53 The narrator not only simulates the ethnographer’s detachment from his own culture and his cool objectivity, he also imitates his position as a fieldworker interrogating his “native informants” on their interpretations of their own practices: “When I was traveling throughout the land of the savages, I often asked the natives the question why someone would choose to become a mahafune.”54 Even though the narrator of “Demon Bird” impersonates an ethnographer, he is, of course, not literally an ethnographer but rather a pseudo-ethnographer. I use this latter term advisedly because the narrator occasionally undercuts his own position, denies his expertise, and drops his mask: for example, “In reality, I am far from being an expert on the meaning of this word and since it has no bearing on the tale . . . ”55 In effect, the narrator both imitates and distances himself from the ethnographer. From this ambiguous position, he is able to create a pastiche of colonial ethnographic discourse and to deconstruct it at the same time. Satō has an enormous regard for Mori, but in “Demon Bird” he treats the language and the praxis of colonial ethnography in a highly critical manner.56 Besides simulating the ethnographer’s attitude of cool detachment, the narrator also reproduces the hybrid form of the modern ethnographic text. Just like an ethnographer making a report, he mixes speculation about another culture with tran-

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scriptions of indigenous oral legend, and blends the voiceover of the ethnographer with the recorded voice of the “other” culture. In the first half of the story, the narrator is conspicuously present when he advances his theories about “savage societies.” Besides being intrusive, he adopts a playful tone toward his subject matter and his audience, mingling sarcasm with self-deprecation. By contrast, he effaces himself in the second half and restricts himself to setting down the legend that he heard during his travels. The light, playful tone of the first part gives way to a somber account of aboriginal society at the time of the Japanese conquest. In the first part of “Demon Bird,” the narrator sets forth a theory about a savage custom and in the second he transcribes a legend as if to illustrate his theory. Speaking to an imaginary civilized audience, the narrator in the first part proceeds by isolating a single custom—defined as traditional and timeless—from its social and historical context and then interprets this custom to illuminate the construction of social borders by members of a primitive community. A part is used to represent the whole (metonymy). Like the ethnographers who defined the borders between aboriginal groups, the narrator of “Demon Bird” is concerned with boundaries. In particular, he wants to determine how primitive communities define their boundaries and establish their group identity. The savages, we learn, believe that certain individuals in the community—those called the mahafune—possess supernatural powers to manipulate an imaginary bird, a harbinger of death. When the community is struck by an epidemic, famine, or natural catastrophe, members of the group blame their misfortunes on this individual and put him (or her) and indeed his (or her) entire family to death. After asking the savages how they are able to identify the nefarious mahafune, the narrator notes that they invariably “destroy a person who has a different facial expression from the majority of the group.” That is to say, the members of the group “fabricate” the mahafune or, from their point of view, they “recognize” this individual by certain telltale signs: The mahafune “inspires anxiety in others and acts abnormally. Neighbors begin to pay attention to him. Eventually people start to make comments such as ‘This guy has an evil eye.’ ”57 Although villagers and mahafune occupy the same space, they are divided by an impalpable and invisible boundary. The villagers invest the liminal mahafune with terrifying powers: an ability to look at the demon bird without suffering harm and a capacity to wreak catastrophe on his or her fellows. By recognizing the mahafune, his or her fellow villagers exercise a social power to police community borders and determine group membership. The narrator suggests that communities constitute themselves as such not by what they share in common but by what they exclude. The narrator concludes that primitives need scapegoats in order to establish and guard their own tenuous borders.58 If the narrator first explains the scapegoat mechanism, he next tells a legend which gives a concrete example of this mechanism in action. While he had hitherto addressed the reader from an undisclosed location, he now situates himself in

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a specific place, namely aboriginal Taiwan. In chapter 7, the narrator writes: “The greater part of this big island was referred to as banchi.”59 Whereas he has hitherto employed a general graph for savage (ban), here he uses a graph that refers specifically to aboriginal Taiwan. In addition to being set in Taiwan’s aboriginal interior, the legend contains other new elements that, paradoxically, complicate rather than confirm the narrator’s speculations about the mahafune in the first part of the story. Unlike the expert on “savage superstitions” who addresses us authoritatively in the first part, the narrator here undermines his own theory by his insinuations and revelations. First, he puts colonial violence, which the ethnographer eliminates from his speculations by positing a traditional and pure aboriginal culture, at the very center of the legend. Second, he places his ethnographer right in the middle of a colonial apparatus when he tells how he happened to hear the legend. The legend thus forces the reader to rethink his theory of the mahafune and to reconsider the position of the ethnographer toward the object of his knowledge. The legend recounts the destruction of the family of a young woman called Pira. Villagers mistake the members of Pira’s family for bird manipulators because Pira refuses to tattoo herself and because her father averts the gaze of others when he walks about the village. Rumors about the family start to fly when villagers witness the young Pira wandering around after the soldiers of a “civilized country” who have recently invaded their village. However, villagers do not act on these rumors until a “great misfortune befalls the people of the village.”60 A large detachment of soldiers from a civilized country suddenly invaded their lands . . . and ordered them to surrender unconditionally. As a sign of their surrender, the village men were told to assemble inside a building and were promised gifts. . . . The men were confused how to respond to this incomprehensible order, but in the end they realized they had no choice but to comply. They gathered in the designated building, about eighty men in all. The doors were securely shut and then flames shot up from outside the building. All eighty men were burned to death. The army later spread the word that ‘the savages in this village were violent and evil creatures.’ . . . The savages believed that the disaster that had befallen their village must have been caused by the mahafune.61

If the narrator of the first part interprets the custom of the mahafune in isolation from any external factor and describes it as a tradition internal to the aboriginal community, the story of Pira shows that external factors—namely, foreign invasion and colonial violence—play a key role in triggering the hunt for a scapegoat. Indeed, as we learn later, Pira “is said to have been the start of the trouble” because she refuses to tattoo herself even though she had reached the age of eighteen. Pira’s refusal to be tattooed attracts the suspicion of the other villagers. The reason for Pira’s refusal, we later learn, is that a soldier from the “civilized” army has raped her. By raping Pira, the soldiers of a “civilized army” plant the seeds of suspicion and terror, which

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will eventually destroy Pira and her family, since rape already violated the distinction between self and other in the community. The rape of Pira also foreshadows the violence of the colonial army and prefigures in graphic form the violation of the boundaries of the aboriginal community by Japanese invasion. Not only do Pira and her family come to be seen as mahafune after the colonial army invades their lands, but crucially their persecution is depicted as a response to this invasion, and specifically, as an effort to reconstitute the borders of their own community violated by the colonial army. Unable to strike back against the invading army, the villagers target Pira and her family by a process of displacement and substitution. The villagers vent their frustrations onto a vulnerable and proximate member of their own community rather than confront a powerful military foe. Pira and her family thus become scapegoats for a colonial military beyond reach of reprisal. This cycle of displacement and substitution of violence does not end with the persecution of Pira’s family as mahafune, but is significantly reenacted by the very victims of the villagers’ persecution in a later episode of the legend. Pira and her brother manage to escape from the burning hut and return to the village a few days later. When Pira confesses to having been raped by a Japanese soldier, she is banished from the village for the crime of concealing her “impurity” for such a long time and for having caused “a disturbance” in the community.62 Banished and stripped of their membership in the village community, Pira and her brother build a hut in the forest and spend their lives in exile. One day Pira tells her brother: “A great misfortune has befallen us and I do not know who brought this misfortune upon us. Yet we must avenge ourselves. Kōre, when the new moon rises in the west, you must fire an arrow at it.”63 Unable to strike back at the villagers who massacred their family or the soldiers who invaded their village, Pira has her brother shoot an arrow at the moon. This ritual reenactment resembles in structure the displacementsubstitution mechanism described above, but it is also an act of play and an innocent gesture that does not produce any fresh victims. Furthermore, firing an arrow at the moon can be thought of as an exorcism that effectively closes the cycle of violence opened by colonial conquest.64 Moreover, the persecution of the mahafune is not only a response to colonial violence; it is also an imitation of colonial violence. When the villagers massacre members of Pira’s family, they employ the same tactics the colonial army used against the male villagers: like the colonial army, the villagers round up all members of Pira’s family, lock them in a hut, and set it on fire. The custom of the mahafune may predate the Japanese intrusion into aboriginal society, but in this scene it is fundamentally inflected by and repeats the colonial conquest. Curiously, in a passage of Musha, Satō cites the ethnographer M’s explanation of new aboriginal customs that originated with imitations of “foreign invaders.”

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One day it was reported in the newspaper that the corpse of a pilot (whose plane crashed in the aboriginal mountains) was recovered but the man’s head and penis had been cut off. That time, M’s gentle face clouded over. He said: “Generally when aborigines kill a man, they do not kill simply for killing’s sake. They only do so to take the person’s head in accordance with a type of religious superstition. If it were possible to take a person’s head without killing him, they would doubtless spare his life. The fact of the matter is that one can find no trace in their traditional customs of religiously meaningless and sadistic actions, such as cutting open the womb of a pregnant woman or cutting off a man’s penis. Probably these actions are not traditions passed on by their ancestors but new barbaric customs that they learned from foreign invaders.”65

While M explains the taking of heads as a “traditional” practice that can be rationally interpreted within the basic framework of aboriginal religious beliefs, he treats the emasculation of the Japanese pilot as a new custom that departs from aboriginal tradition. In an ironic displacement of colonial narratives of civilization, he suggests that aborigines develop new and hybrid “savage” customs by imitating not the civilization but rather the savagery of their foreign invaders. Similarly, in the legend of Pira, the custom of the mahafune is not merely a traditional custom handed down by the village ancestors. Transformed by the influence of “foreign invaders,” it takes on a new shape as the aborigines reconstruct the borders of their community after foreign troops invade their lands. The legend of Pira thus complicates the ethnographic explanation of the mahafune by treating it as a reenactment of colonial violence. Besides complicating the theory of the scapegoat, the narrator also discloses the colonial conditions under which the ethnographer comes into contact with the story of Pira. Two armed police officers protected me on my right and left. . . . Two completely assimilated savages served as our guides and porters. . . . The tale I am going to tell was told in turns by these two porters as they were walking and then translated for me by one of the policemen in our party. I believe it is the most recent case of the destruction of an entire family of demon-bird manipulators. However, there is a touch of the legendary about this tale that passed through so many different lips before it reached my ear. The narrative style is crude and unpolished but the story holds together. Indeed this tale recounts an event that I can scarcely conceive of and am not in a position to verify. These barbarians have a real talent for tying up a story’s loose ends in a suggestive way and may have invented the entire tale.66

If the narrator in part 1 addresses his readers from the privacy of his study, he is in this scene located squarely in a very charged contact zone: “social spaces where different cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.”67 Peopled by a variety of colonial actors—guards, porters, police escorts, and a translator—occupying clearly

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asymmetrical positions, the contact zone mediates the encounter between ethnographer and indigenous legend.68 In the first place, the ethnographer is beholden to “assimilated savages” who are removed from their native village and employed by the police; these “native informants” are associated with the network of routes crisscrossing the aboriginal lands and provide indispensable services to the colonial state as porters and guides. But the ethnographer also depends on armed Japanese police to traverse a forbidding terrain peopled by hostile groups. In calling attention to the circumstances surrounding the transmission of the tale, the narrator offers us a mise-en-scène of the ethnographic encounter and shows us that this encounter is deeply indebted to colonial structures of domination. By the same token, he also calls into question the status of the legend as a transparent sign of a traditional or primitive culture. The legend had to “[pass] through . . . many different lips” before it reached the narrator’s ear. The porters carry the legend through the countryside just as they transport the narrator’s baggage—their status as “assimilated savages” makes them the ideal intermediaries. A policeman who protects the ethnographer-narrator overhears this conversation by accident and translates it into Japanese for the narrator. After passing through the voices of the porters and the translation of the policeman, the legend reaches us—the readers— only after the ethnographer records it in writing, leaving some margin for the tricks of ethnographic memory. Filtered through these different mediations, the legend becomes an opaque, enigmatic cultural artifact with an indeterminate meaning. Besides allowing for errors in transmission, the narrator acknowledges the agency of the porter narrators who are the first in the line of messengers who transmit it. The “contact zone” described in this work is not merely a zone of domination but also one of unequal exchange, in which subordinated groups rework the materials transmitted to them by the dominant culture by a process of autoethnography. Besides criticizing the violent intrusion of the Japanese military on aboriginal society, the porter narrators fashion the tale of Pira into a story, “tie up the loose ends of the story in a suggestive way” and perhaps “invent the entire tale to amuse themselves.” The ethnographer thus stands at the end of a long and involved process of violence, oral transmission, fabrication, and translation. He never comes into contact with the isolated “primitive” society evoked in his theory of the scapegoat, but only with a society as it has been transformed by the imposition of colonial rule and the response of local subjects to that rule. And what purpose does the porters’ telling of the legend serve? If colonial violence facilitates the ethnographic project by transforming aboriginal societies into objects of knowledge, then the telling of the legend may be read as an effort to master colonial violence. The porters do not tell their story from the point of view of either the persecutors, the villagers who survived the massacre, or the persecuted, Pira and her brother. Detached and displaced from the original scene of the legend, they are perhaps the first real “ethnographers” who fashion the episode into a

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narrative (and by so doing, interpret its significance) long before the Japanese come into contact with it. The Japanese are not addressed directly by these speakers; they come to overhear the legend by chance. If the villagers’ persecution of Pira and her family can be seen as a repetition or displacement of the shock caused by colonial violence, the porter-narrators may be attempting to absorb the trauma of conquest by turning the entire episode into a story or narrative. Trauma is not simply a disease of a wounded psyche: it is always the “story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available.”69 The narrator of “Demon Bird” repeats the gesture of these first narrators by using the aboriginal legend he hears as an allegory to master the shock of another catastrophe: that of the Great Kanto Earthquake. “DE MON B I R D” A S A L L E G ORY

The narrator of “Demon Bird” uses the custom of the mahafune as a metonym to propose a theory of persecution in a culturally alien society, much like the ethnographers whose writing style he imitates. When he recounts the legend of Pira, however, he paradoxically undermines his theory by showing how the persecution is also a reaction to colonial violence and by highlighting the ethnographer’s dependence on a colonial apparatus. Yet, there is a gap between what the text says and what it means, between its ethnographic content and its narrative strategy. Ostensibly about persecution in a primitive society, “Demon Bird” also has a subtext. Besides serving as a metonym for primitive society, the mahafune is also a metaphor used by the narrator to throw light on Japan’s recent history. Following an opposite trajectory from that of Japanese anthropology, Satō begins by writing about a foreign society only to return in the end to matters closer to home. Allegory is the mediator and the point of passage between the manifest and latent meanings of the text—it serves as a bridge connecting the “here and now” of this text with the “there and then” of the aboriginal legend.70 On September 1, 1923, an earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale struck the densely populated and heavily industrialized Kanto region and killed or injured at least 150,000 people. A second disaster—caused by man rather than by the blind forces of nature—followed fast on the heels of the first. After rumors began to spread that Korean residents were setting fires, poisoning wells, and starting riots, Japanese military, police, and vigilante groups made up of ordinary citizens targeted the entire Korean resident population as scapegoats and killed an estimated six thousand Koreans. Historians have since brought to light compelling evidence that the Japanese state played an instrumental part in propagating rumors, in setting up the vigilante groups that carried out most of the killings, and in censoring news of the massacre in the months that followed.71 On the day of the Great Kanto Earthquake, Satō Haruo was staying in a hotel in

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Omori; he spent the next several days wandering around the ruined capital city. Ushigawa Yuriko, editor of the complete works of Satō Haruo, supplies the following information on the whereabouts of the writer at the time of the earthquake: “At the time of earthquake on September 1, Satō was with Horiguchi Daigaku (1892– 1981) at the Bōsuiro Hotel. On the second he set out for Tokyo in search of his younger brother and other acquaintances.” Ushigawa also notes that on September 10, Satō paid a visit to Murō Saisei before returning to his hometown of Shingū. Between September 2 and 10, Satō thus had ample opportunity to witness or hear about the activities of the vigilante groups and the lynching of Koreans.72 He completed “Demon Bird” by September 20, undoubtedly in a great hurry or perhaps he chose this moment to submit a manuscript that he had started to work on previously. Whatever the case may be, “Demon Bird” was first published in the special October 1923 issue of Chūō Kōron, an issue titled Grieving for this Unprecedented Catastrophe. The October issue consists mainly of two large feature sections: the first, called “Rebuilding the Imperial Capital,” consists of a series of essays, while the second, titled “Record of the Unprecedented Earthquake and Conflagration,” comprises memoirs by major literary figures. By contrast, “Demon Bird” appears under the separate rubric of fictional works. The placement of “Demon Bird” within an issue devoted to the Kanto earthquake, side by side with narratives evoking the massive destruction caused by the quake and the ensuing massacres, invites the reader to search for links between Satō’s story and the contents of the publication in which it first appeared. I have already referred to Clifford’s observation that an ethnography about another culture is also “an allegory” or “an extended metaphor” that contains “additional meanings” about the ethnographer’s own society.73 In what way is Satō’s ethnographic pastiche also allegorical and metaphorical? What “additional meanings” did this legend have for readers in 1923? To answer these questions, I will consider three types of evidence about “Demon Bird”: the circumstances of textual production, reader reaction, and the text itself. A few of the writers of memoirs in Chūō Kōron refer to the massacre of thousands of Koreans residing in the capital. Without exception, however, these references are excised from their accounts and replaced by fuseji, or hidden characters, making these passages all but illegible to the reader. This massacre, in many ways the defining moment of the Japanese colonial period, was literally “unspeakable,” covered over with a heavy veil of silence. By contrast, Satō’s “Demon Bird,” a story about an aboriginal legend, passed under the radar of the censor and was published intact. In short, the form of allegory gave Satō Haruo a medium for saying what everyone already knew but which nobody could explicitly declare. Besides the author, the editors of Chūō Kōron and the censor also played central roles in the textual production of this work. The editors of the Chūō Kōron— the first readers of “Demon Bird”—made a positive contribution to the allegorical

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significance of the work by choosing to publish it in a special edition devoted to the Kanto earthquake.74 A third party involved in the publication, the state censors, played a passive role: by not cutting the text or removing offending characters, they also signaled that the text fell within the parameters of acceptable discourse.75 Once the text appeared in print, it escaped from the specific “intentions” of the author and acquired a life of its own. All later readers—including me—contribute to this afterlife of the text by adding successive and multiple layers of interpretations to the text by the endless process of reading. In the case of “Demon Bird,” one might argue that the earliest readers of the Chūō Kōron text were more likely to recognize the allegorical possibilities of the text based on their experience and the venue of its publication. By contrast, a reader who first encounters the text in Satō’s complete works, published in the 1990s, is likely to overlook this allegorical dimension and to read the work as a simple fable. In this final canonized product, the traces of allegory have been, if not erased, then at least forgotten. In short, “Demon Bird” takes on an allegorical significance partly because of the historical moment in which it was read and the specific venue in which it was published. In his memoirs, entitled Shibun hanseiki (Fifty Years of Poetry and Prose), Satō Haruo offers a clue as to how readers in 1923 interpreted the work: “When a reporter received the manuscript of ‘Demon Bird,’ a work based on a barbarian legend which I wrote shortly after the Great Kanto Earthquake, he suggested that I ought to name the work ‘a novel of rumors [ryūgen].’ I remember thinking he might well be right.”76 As is well known, the spread of rumors (ryūgen higo) that Koreans were poisoning wells played a central part in instigating the massacre of Koreans. Encouraged by the authorities, these rumors took on a life of their own and spread with amazing speed throughout the Tokyo-Yokohama area and beyond. In the same way, in “Demon Bird” rumors about Pira traveled throughout the village, foreshadowing the destruction of her family. As the social anthropologist Satō Kenji points out in his study of the role of rumors in modern Japanese history, “Is it not likely that the very term ryūgen higo is a product of the experience of the Great Kanto Earthquake?” He also notes that the Great Kanto Earthquake is the starting point for all consideration of the role of rumor in modern Japanese history and points out that “the military and interior ministry officials became strongly aware of the importance of the management of rumors after this experience.”77 A search of Yomiuri Shinbun articles during the Taisho period confirms that the expression ryūgen higo began to appear with great frequency after the earthquake and referred in most cases to rumors about nefarious deeds of Korean residents in the capital area. The journalist who described “Demon Bird” as a novel of rumors doubtless expressed a viewpoint shared by other early readers of this text: the term ryūgen is a code word that links the mahafune in the aboriginal village with the massacre of Koreans. By considering the circumstances of textual production and reader reaction, I have uncovered a few clues about the allegorical meaning of “Demon Bird.” While

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these clues are suggestive, they do nothing more than help us to clarify the text’s historical milieu. Yet to make sense of “Demon Bird,” it is not enough to understand its historical context. In fact, I would rather argue the reverse: to understand the context of this work, we need first to make sense of the text itself. If an allegorical text is “a representation that ‘interprets’ itself,” the question becomes how does this text elucidate the historical moment of its own production?78 How does it enable its readers to interpret and read their own experience of history? The text of “Demon Bird” gives us the clearest signals of the work’s allegorical significance. Among other textual features, I would mention the geographical vagueness of the text, the use of coded language, and the narrator’s rhetorical strategy. In the first place, the narrator maintains a geographical vagueness about the location of the savage society he is describing, and dispenses with all place names. Rather than speaking of Japan and Taiwan, he refers to a certain “civilized” power and to “savage” societies. In this case, one can say allegory conflicts with the ethnographic character of the text: allegories gain by this vagueness while ethnographies are necessarily specific and localized. Another technique would be the narrator’s use of hidden language and code in the work. Whereas the narrator announces in the first chapter that he will “dispense with all proper nouns in this tale,” he later breaks this self-imposed rule by assigning names to the three main aboriginal characters: Satsusan, Pira, Kōre. Or does he? There is some evidence that the narrator chose these names primarily because they possess some allegorical resonance. Just as he relied on Mori in his depiction of the custom of the mahafune, he likely learned these names from Mori, one of the first to create manuals on aboriginal languages. According to Yamaji Hiroaki, editor of a handbook of the Ataiyal language, the word sasan (Satsusan) means morning, qoleh (Kōre) fish, and pila (Pira) silver.79 In an analysis of this story, Morizaki notes that if the narrator had assigned the Ataiyal word for “sheep” to Pira, these three names would have joined together to form the cipher Chōsen, the name of colonial Korea. Morizaki speculates that Satō Haruo may have been motivated by aesthetic reasons to name his heroine Pira rather than Shiri (“buttocks” in Japanese). “Demon Bird” contains a mutilated cipher, buried in the text and probably unnoticed by most readers.80 This cipher would not have been legible to his contemporary reader—only a reader acquainted with Mori’s ethnography or conversant with the Ataiyal language would have been able to decipher it—but nevertheless it offers us a possible clue to the allegorical meaning of the text. Most important, the narrator repeatedly insists on the parallelism between “civilized” and “savage” society. After describing how the aboriginal villagers persecute the mahafune, he goes on to write: During the same voyage, I witnessed the colony of a certain civilized country. The people of that civilized country did not go so far as to kill the local people, who pos-

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sessed a high level of civilization, but they treated them as beasts for the simple reason that they had different customs and mores. . . . In addition, I have also seen the government of a civilized country arrest, imprison, and sometimes even put to death those with slightly different views than the common run of men—thinkers who believe that it is possible to increase the sum of human happiness.

At this point the narrator draws back and says: “The civilized resemble savages since they arbitrarily deem evil everything they do not understand and strive to exterminate people who wear an incomprehensible facial expression. There are many among us civilized folk who are identified as manipulators of birds. However I am not here to talk about civilized people.”81 He issues this tactical disclaimer (I am not here to talk about . . . ) only after making political statements that essentially deny any difference between the “civilized” and the “savage.” Furthermore, he cites two specific cases in which the civilized, like the savages, exterminate those who are identified as mahafune; one case refers explicitly to the violence of colonialism. The narrator’s claim that he is “not here to talk about civilized people” is an example of paralipsis, that is, a way of stating a view while simultaneously denying that one is doing so. By his strategy of denial, the narrator quite pointedly invites the reader not to accept what he says at face value and to read his text against the grain. The allegorical significance of this text may be thought of as a series of concentric circles. In the outer ring, the narrator of “Demon Bird” manifestly speaks of a recent episode of the persecution of a mahafune in an unnamed society. At one remove inside this outer ring, he evokes state violence against intellectuals and persecution of the colonized as two instances that resemble the persecution of the mahafune but take place in the setting of civilized society. At its deepest level, unspoken and latent, the text evokes the Great Kanto Earthquake for readers still reeling from its aftershocks as the most recent episode of scapegoating in their society. When the narrator says he witnessed governments that “arrest, imprison, and put [thinkers] to death,” he refers in a veiled fashion to the infamous 1910 Great Treason trial. Twenty-six socialists were tried by a secret tribunal on trumped up charges of plotting the assassination of the Meiji emperor; twelve of the accused, most famously Kōtoku Shūsui, were condemned and put to death. By alluding to the Great Treason trial, Satō Haruo also returns to his own starting point as a writer. The son of a medical doctor, Satō grew up in the town of Shingū in Wakayama Prefecture.82 Seven of those tried in the Great Treason trial were also from Shingū, notably Ōishi Seinosuke, a doctor and close friend of the Satō family. After learning of Ōishi’s execution, the young Satō published one of his first poems, “Gusha no shi” (The Death of a Fool), in the journal Subaru. On January 23, 1911, Ōishi Seinosuke was killed.

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If the narrator of “Demon Bird” announces his allegory by denegation, the poet stigmatizes by antiphrasis the very things that he seems to praise. To understand what the poem means, the reader must interpret the poem as signifying the opposite of what it actually says (the “fool” is a wise man, truth is falsehood). Ōishi, the “fool” of the title, is not just physically eliminated, he is also expelled from the national community and his name is presumably expunged from national memory— he is not “Japanese” because he knows “nothing of the people’s history.” Although he is excluded from the nation by state persecution, he remains a man of Shingū, which, “trembl[ing] in fear,” partakes of the fate of its fellow countryman. When he speaks of the “sacred rules of the majority” and of teachers “preaching” the official version of history, he also pokes fun at the acquiescence or collusion of the citizens in the exercise of state terror. If the construction of the imperial family state requires the execution of dangerous thinkers, it also requires the colonization of peripheral regions such as Shingū, the falsification of national memory, and a passive, fearful citizenry.85 When the narrator of “Demon Bird” links the state persecution of intellectuals with violence against the colonized, he emphasizes the connections between imperial expansion and political repression within Japan. Indeed, the Great Treason trial coincided with the formal incorporation of Korea within the Japanese empire in 1910 and with the start of the five-year pacification of the Taiwan Highlands under Governor General Sakuma Samata (1910–14). The reference to violence against the colonized could also be an allusion to the brutal repression of the March 1, 1919, independence movement in Korea. In addition, Satō also stresses a key similarity between colonial violence at home and abroad. Both are treated as examples of the

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mahafune mechanism, the construction of social borders and group identity by the violent elimination of carefully selected scapegoats. Indeed, Satō might have had a specific incident in mind when he evoked violence against the colonized. The Japanese army’s massacre of aboriginal villagers described in “Demon Bird”—and the villagers’ massacre of the members of Pira’s family—recall a real atrocity that took place in Korea. The Japanese army and police killed thousands of demonstrators to put down the nationwide March First Independence Movement that spread throughout Korea in 1919 and burned down villages that offered resistance. In one famous incident, the colonial police in the village of Jeam-ri, Suwon County, Kyonggi Province ordered dozens of villagers to assemble in a Christian church, locked the doors, and then set the building on fire, killing all of them. While the narrator mentions the violence of colonialism and of the repressive state, he pointedly neglects to mention a case of persecution that fits his theory perfectly: the massacre of Koreans in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Even more than the legend of Pira itself, the massacre of the Koreans corresponds to the schema of the scapegoat developed in “Demon Bird.” All of the elements are present: a natural disaster of unprecedented scale, the role of rumors in spreading panic, the fabrication-recognition of an invisible enemy, and the reaffirmation of the boundaries of the community by the massacre of a designated scapegoat. To be sure, the massacre of the mahafune in “Demon Bird” is not equivalent to the massacre of Koreans in Japan. In the former case, the villagers displace their rage against a powerful army onto a vulnerable member of their own community. In the latter, the Japanese urban dwellers turn their panic after a natural catastrophe onto a perceived “foreign body” in their society. The relationship between the two is one of homology rather than of equivalence or resemblance. By hinting at their underlying structural similarities, Satō’s allegory connects two different and ostensibly unrelated events. What links the aboriginal village and 1923 Tokyo—the two scenes of the text— is colonial violence. The violence of colonialism is not something confined to the colonies.86 By a kind of boomerang effect, this violence—and the fears and hatreds it expressed—overflows the boundaries of the colony and strikes at the very heart of the metropolis itself. Just as with the superstition about the mahafune, the violence results from the construction of social borders; in this case, the borders in question are those of Japan’s multiethnic empire. Japan’s national borders were defined in a complex process of negotiation with the borderlands of empire, contracting or expanding over time as policies toward these border regions oscillated between assimilation and exclusion.87 On September 1, 1923, the borders of the national community were suddenly redrawn within the very streets of devastated Tokyo, to terrifying effect for the thousands of Koreans who had settled there after Korea became a colony of Japan, and especially during the rapid economic expan-

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sion during the years of the First World War.88 As in the legend of the magical bird, these borders separated those who might live from those who must die, those who must be punished from those who must be protected. In aboriginal Taiwan and metropolitan Tokyo alike, the persecutors projected onto their hapless scapegoats an array of extraordinary powers and capabilities. In the case of the Japanese after the earthquake, these included the ability to foresee natural disasters and to organize seditious actions in the midst of chaos. Both persecuting groups also saw themselves as victims of their victims and justified their persecutions as a response to prior violence against themselves by the very ones they were persecuting. In the aboriginal village, people could at least rely on some visible sign to distinguish the terrifying mahafune from ordinary villagers: a look of anxiety, Pira’s refusal to tattoo herself. In earthquake-stricken Tokyo, there was no foolproof visible sign that set apart the Japanese from the Koreans.89 As Nakayama Satoru recollected in 1924, “At the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake last year, it was not possible to distinguish Koreans from Japanese by their facial features. There is no difference between the facial or physical features of the Japanese and the Koreans.”90 The “sameness” of Koreans and Japanese, which made Koreans invisible in Japanese society, at times provided them with a protective covering and a degree of invisibility. In the chaotic aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, this invisibility made them the targets of a general racial panic. In the absence of visible markers that clearly distinguished the Koreans, vigilantes accosted Koreans in the streets of the capital and tried to get them to talk. Rather than race, the national language (kokugo) was the main criterion used to distinguish the Japanese from the Koreans; it was the functional equivalent of the demon bird in the aboriginal village. The ideology of kokugo as the national language of Japan developed concurrently with the formation of the Japanese empire as an instrument for instilling a national consciousness among the Japanese and as a tool to assimilate subjects in the colonies. From the outset, it had a double, contradictory status. On the one hand, it was promoted as a universal language that should be spread throughout Asia (anyone who learned it could, in principle, become Japanese). On the other hand, it was intimately tied to an essentialist notion of national identity, to the Japanese spirit, and to the family state ideology, and it ensured that the colonized could never become Japanese. In response to nationalist movements in the colonies, colonial regimes in both Taiwan and Korea began to adopt an assimilationist approach toward the colonies and to promote the use of the national language through the education system. In practice, contrary to the propaganda of the Japanese government, this policy “brought about neither the improvement of education for Taiwanese nor equal opportunity.”91 While education of the colonized in Japanese allegedly aimed to eradicate differences between colonizer and colonized, at the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake the national language became the de facto border marker between members

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of the national community and nonmembers. The vigilante groups responsible for the massacres used the national language as a blunt but serviceable tool to identify the Koreans in their midst (or at least those Koreans who did not speak Japanese fluently) and to select them for elimination, in a sense making open and explicit the violence implicit in the very notion of a “national language.”92 Accosting pedestrians in the city, they forced them to recite phrases in Japanese, identifying Koreans (but not only Koreans) by their imperfect mastery of the national language or their nonstandard pronunciation. In Kantō daishinsai (The Great Kanto Earthquake), Kan Tokusan describes how vigilante groups “recognized” Koreans in the earthquake-devastated capital: “To spot Koreans, passers-by were forced to say fifteen yen fifty-five sen [jūgoen gojūgosen], to recite lyrics of the ‘Kimigayo’ [the Japanese national anthem], the ‘Iroha dodoitsu’ [a popular song from the Edo period], or the Imperial Rescript of Education as ways of distinguishing difference.”93 As these examples show, the point of this questioning was not simply to see whether passersby had an ability to speak Japanese. Rather, speaking Japanese was inextricably linked with the imperial ideology and myth dispensed by the schools. In “Demon Bird,” the members of the aboriginal village reconstructed the borders of their community after colonial invasion by a displacement of violence onto the mahafune. Similarly, the residents of Tokyo reaffirmed national borders by displacing their violence onto the Koreans through the circulation of rumor and by the institution of these strange language examinations.94 Japanese colonial discourse differed from that of Western nations in that the difference between colonizer and colonized in the West was signified by the visible marker of race.95 In a sense, the outbreak of violence against the Koreans reflected the absence of visible differences between the colonizer and the colonized in the same way that the persecution of the mahafune reflected a loss of readily discernable differences among the members of the aboriginal community. In Tokyo, this ambiguity led to racial panic and a fear of loss of identity—specifically, the fear of being unable to distinguish between the Japanese and the Koreans. The fact that Koreans and the Japanese were not so different raised the frightening possibility that Koreans might pass themselves off as Japanese, an uncanny and disturbing prospect that perhaps was exacerbated by the uncontrolled spread of rumors. Yet, as “Demon Bird” shows, where visible markers were lacking, other forms of difference could easily be invented and brought into play. In the aboriginal village and in Tokyo, on September 1, 1923, these differences were established through sacrifice and mass murder in order to justify, organize, and manage community boundaries. S ATŌ HA RU O A N D L I B E R A L I ST I M P E R IA L I SM

In this chapter, I have excavated a forgotten text of the writer Satō Haruo. “Demon Bird” is an exception both within this writer’s oeuvre and within colonial literature

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generally; it is “a road not taken” in the literary history of the period. Recently, scholars of Japanese colonial literature have singled out Satō Haruo’s stories about the Taiwan aborigines as among the few prewar literary works that are highly critical of Japanese colonial policies and discourses. In the epilogue to Musha, a reprint of the author’s Taiwan stories that first appeared in 1936, Fujii Shōzō writes that “Satō hints at the unhappiness of the aborigines assimilated into the Japanese empire and indirectly criticizes the repressive policies of the colonial government by his cool, clearheaded observations,”96 a view shared by Shū Eikō in her article on Musha.97 Concerning “Demon Bird,” Faye Yuan Kleeman notes that Satō uses an aboriginal legend as a metaphor to fashion “a critical discourse on Japan’s internal and external colonial conditions during the 1920s.”98 Kimura Kazuaki and Kurokawa Sō have both argued that the implied target of Satō’s criticism in “Demon Bird” is the violence directed toward leftists and Korean residents after the Great Kanto Earthquake.99 When these scholars praise Satō’s works, they employ a vocabulary that is not ordinarily used to describe literary writers or to characterize purely literary works. Indeed, these words are more commonly employed to depict an ideal ethnographer conducting his fieldwork, this “cool, clear-headed observer” of another society who nevertheless feels great empathy toward those he studies. Curiously, however, these scholars have overlooked the author’s engagement with the point of view of the ethnographer and with ethnographic discourse. Yet this engagement is central to his Taiwan works and to his critique of Japan’s colonialism, particularly in “Demon Bird.” The narrator of this story impersonates a colonial ethnographer and writes a pastiche of the ethnographic report. Like the colonial ethnographers who first classified the aborigines into distinct groups, Satō is concerned with the definition of social boundaries and the construction of cultural identities. The colonial ethnographers mapped the aboriginal lands and drew ethnic borders between the different tribes, but Satō is concerned with the way that human groups exclude elements they perceive as threatening their communal borders in their quest for identity. Just as the actual colonial border making in Taiwan was accompanied by state-initiated violence against recalcitrant tribes, the bordering in the aboriginal village depicted in the story involves the mobilization of cruelty and terror. In “Demon Bird,” Satō discloses the terrible destruction that the establishment of group borders entails in an aboriginal village of Taiwan. In addition, this story subtly displaces a second border: that which divides colony from metropolis. From the first few lines, the reader of “Demon Bird” finds himself or herself in a new topography of imperial Japan in the early 1920s, with its well-defined boundaries between colony and metropolis and its stable hierarchical relationship of “civilized” Japan and “primitive” Taiwan. Yet these boundaries blur in the course of the story and eventually disappear entirely. Satō published “Demon Bird” in 1923 shortly after the Great Kanto Earthquake—one of the greatest natural disasters in history—and the massacres of Koreans that followed in its wake. By

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giving an ethnographic account of persecution in a far-off, primitive village, he suggests the inexorable link between colonial “other” and imperial Japan, between cultural identity and colonial violence. In both colony and metropolis, he explores the liminal spaces where boundaries break down, social differences lose their clarity, and hierarchies fall apart. Besides showing the atrocities that the establishment of colonial borders entailed in aboriginal Taiwan, he hints at the terrible price exacted by colonial borders on the streets of the Japanese metropolis itself. This deconstruction of colonial ethnography turns out to be a cool-headed ethnographic critique of Japan’s empire. Satō’s concern with the topography of empire is also closely related to the historical moment in which he wrote. He traveled to Taiwan in 1920, that is, at the midpoint of Japan’s rule of Taiwan (1895–1945) and of the Japanese colonial empire tout court. This was the period of “imperial democracy,” when colonial policies were under attack by both liberal and reformist intellectuals and by the people whom Japan had colonized.100 “Demon Bird” epitomizes the strengths and limitations of this liberal, reformist critique of imperialism. As far as its strengths are concerned, the critique of Japanese imperialism in “Demon Bird” is grounded on the narrator’s engagement with ethnographic writing and formally on his recourse to allegory. The ethnographic narrator of “Demon Bird” implicitly invites his readers to adopt his cool, detached point of view toward their own society and to take a close look at the fault lines of colonial violence that underlay Japanese society—fault lines that the Great Kanto Earthquake laid bare. Through his recourse to allegory, he deconstructs the civilizing mission of the metropolis by elucidating the equivalences between the “uncivilized savages” of the colony and the “civilized Japanese.” Although “Demon Bird” exposes the connections between colonial violence at home and abroad, the text also manifests the weaknesses of the liberal critique of colonialism. In part, this failure results from the form in which the narrator chooses to couch his critique. Indeed, as we have seen, when the narrator refuses to designate the “place” of the legend, he also limits the critical impact of this radical work. Yet the studied ambiguity of the work—its refusal to name the “place” of the events it describes—is at the same time the condition that rendered the text publishable in October 1923. A second weakness of “Demon Bird” has more to do with the specific literary genre to which the work belongs: its nature as allegory. In this multivalent text, the aboriginal legend is merely a pretext for a more essential truth: that barbarous superstitions and the scapegoating of minorities flourish even in the most civilized societies. As in any allegory, the relationship between these two levels of the text is skewed and hierarchical. Once the reader has seized this deeper truth, he or she can safely dismiss the envelope of legend in which it is wrapped. The very form of the allegory that allows the narrator to speak to his readers also serves to belittle the tragedy of the aborigines and to downplay the violence that victimizes them.

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Yet the deeper reasons for the text’s “failure” have less to do what the text leaves out than with what it says. In the end, “Demon Bird” does not exceed the limits of a narrow self-critique. In that respect, the work suffers from the same fatal flaws that vitiate the ethnographer’s text. Just as Mori Ushinosuke wrote mainly for likeminded ethnographers, Satō addressed himself exclusively to a restricted audience of metropolitan readers. He gives voice to the unhappy consciousness of Japanese colonialism, but he does so only in the form of a monologue addressed to other Japanese people. Writing at a time when colonial borders were already coming under attack by the colonized throughout the Japanese empire, he neither speaks to the victims of Japan’s imperialism nor records what they have to say to him. It was not that they had nothing to say; rather they were refused a space in discourse that would have provided a forum for their voices. This refusal to address the colonial other in dialogue also marks the discursive limits of Taisho liberal critique generally. Like the colonial ethnographer whose viewpoint he adopts, partly because of a failure of imagination, the fictional narrator cannot escape the limits of a solipsistic self-critique: for the liberal imperialism of this period, liberation from empire is ultimately unthinkable. While the narrator of “Demon Bird” lucidly exposes the connections between violence in the metropolis and violence in the colonies, he shares with the ethnographer a blind spot toward the violent expropriation that underlies his own perspective. Colonial violence is not simply an object that one can safely observe from the outside and then talk about; rather it is inscribed in the very place from which colonial agents take up their stance and transform the colonized into objects of their discourse. It would be a mistake to impute the writer’s (or ethnographer’s) impotence to change these conditions to a lack of courage or effort: the real problem was that he was speaking from within a colonial structure and, indeed, was authorized to speak by the very violence he denounced. Just as the silences of the narrator of “Demon Bird” are eloquent, so too is the speech of the ethnographer defined as much by what he never mentions as by what he says. Mori’s ethnography was a monologue about the aborigines rather than a dialogue with them: he enjoyed a monopoly on definitions of aboriginal identities that he exercised in the name of science and under conditions of colonial rule. To hear the voices of the objects of this ethnographic discourse, one would first have to recognize their right of response and to listen to their voices, as the Ami poet Mōnanon demanded of the post-colonial Taiwan state in the poem opening this chapter. If the ethnographer depends on the imposition of colonial control over the aborigines for his position as privileged scientific observer, Satō Haruo owes his stance as pampered tourist to his status as a celebrated guest of the colonial government. I have already called attention to the author’s humanism and his unprejudiced attitude toward aboriginal culture. Yet while the writer of this text rejects the notion that the values and beliefs of one culture are inherently superior to those of another, he does not thereby conclude that no nation should colonize another. In fact, the

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existence of multiple cultures is not incompatible with imperial rule at all: these two realms are absolutely separate. While I have tried to elucidate the humanistic liberalism in his “Demon Bird,” I would note that he never treats the colonized as anything more than interesting objects to be elaborated in his later stories. In his Taiwan-themed works, Satō merely treats the aborigines as an “object of observation.” “He never deviates from this basic posture in all of his works. Though he always stands in the position of ruler, he occasionally ‘descends’ to the level of the ‘ruled’ and expresses his sympathy for them.”101 The aborigines are the topics of other people’s discourse, not speech subjects with points of view on Japanese rule and a right of response. Those critics who have praised the author for his humanistic criticism of the harshness of Japanese colonial rule have tended to overlook the extreme narrowness and patronizing nature of his “empathy” toward the aborigines. Yet the limits of his humanism become flagrantly apparent in a passage from his travel memoir Musha, where he describes an aboriginal maid (who calls herself Ohanachan) who serves him dinner at an inn. “Pointing to a spot on my own forehead, I tried to indicate the shape of the tattoo on her face. She laughed and hid it with the flat of her hand. I couldn’t help but feel affection for this gesture and the expression that accompanied it. However, to speak plainly, it resembled the affection a master would feel for his pet dog.”102 Satō’s master-pet metaphor reveals the assumption of innate superiority that results from his hierarchical relationship to the colonized. The reader captures a glimpse of his fundamental stance in a revealing passage of his memoir “Ka no ichinatsu no ki” (A Record of That Summer), in which he discusses the circumstances of his visit to Musha. Satō mentions that he came to view the “real situation of the aborigines” not by design but rather by accident. When he learned of the outbreak of the Slamao uprising, he had to cancel a planned visit to Mount Ari that Mori Ushinosuke had highly recommended to him. He goes on to write: “Though it may seem odd to express myself in this way, I came to witness the uprising in Musha as a replacement and substitute (for the majestic and breathtaking views from Mount Ari of the Taiwan highlands).”103 For Satō, then the trip to Musha and Mount Nōkō was, ultimately, nothing more than a consolation prize for his failure to reach Mount Ari. If he had been able to carry out his original plan, he would doubtless have discovered new “material” and written other works for his metropolitan reader.

3

The Adventures of Momotarō in the South Seas Folklore, Colonial Policy, Parody The foundation of the expansion of the Japanese race must be laid while our youth are still in their cradles. Imperialism must spark their desire for exotic lands and fire their dreams. Tsurumi Yūsuke

Certain essential aspects of the world are accessible only to laughter. Mikhail Bakhtin

G O S OU T H , YOU NG M A N !

Between 1880 and 1945, Japanese journalists, writers, politicians, and patriots often promoted Japan’s expansion into the South Seas (nan’yō), an area long dominated by Western powers. The early twentieth century was the key turning point in the development of this expansionist discourse. From this time on, the goal shifted from the development of trade ties with the Pacific region to a more aggressive drive to increase the territory of the nation by conquest and foreign settlement. During the Taisho period (1912–26), an “untiring spate of publications, stereotypes, and slogans exerted considerable influence on the emergence of a South Seas fever, an unmistakable mood for southern expansion.”1 These “publications, stereotypes, and slogans” accompanied an important historical expansion of the Japanese empire toward the South Seas. At the start of the First World War, Japan seized the islands of German-controlled Micronesia and later ruled them in the interwar period under the mandate system of the League of Nations. During the war, Japanese business firms took advantage of trade disruption between Western powers and their colonies in Southeast Asia and vastly expanded their commercial ties and economic presence in the region.2 The growing Japanese business stake in Southeast Asia led to a shift in the mean110

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ing of the term nan’yō, or the South Seas in Japanese parlance. After Japan acquired German possessions of Micronesia in 1915, this new colony was referred to as the inner South Seas (uchi nan’yō), to be distinguished from the much vaster and richer outer South Seas (soto nan’yō), which designated areas not colonized by Japan. Moreover, the contours of nan’yō shifted over this time, sometimes including the Indian Ocean as well as Oceania and littoral Southeast Asia. In a 1915 article called “Waga nan’yō dojin no kishū” (The Strange Customs of Our South Seas Natives), Torii Ryūzō wrote: “What we Japanese call the South Seas [nan’yō] is practically a meaningless term. The scope of the term differs according to who is using it, and it is a nonscientific term; an equivalent term for what we call the South Seas does not exist in Western countries.”3 In the home islands, the 1914 Tokyo Taisho Exhibition boosted public awareness of Japan’s present footholds and future prospects in this vaguely defined region. The Taisho Exhibition included colonial pavilions displaying Korea, Taiwan, Hokkaido, Karafuto, and, for the first time, a South Seas pavilion, complete with tropical products and human showcases of South Seas islanders. A columnist in the Jitsugyō no Nihon (Business Japan) periodical in 1914 wrote: “When you enter the South Seas Pavilion, you feel as if surrounded by the atmosphere of the South Seas. Against a backdrop of South Seas scenery, various tropical plants grow luxuriantly while dolls representing the natives are hunting for gorillas and boa constrictors. . . . The biggest novelty is a live display in which one can experience native islanders (twenty-five in all) living in realistically constructed huts.”4 These “native islanders” included representatives of the wild Sakai tribe, reputed to be cannibals. The journalist notes that, notwithstanding their fearsome reputation, these natives were extremely “mild and well-behaved when one actually met them” and that their cannibalism was “a thing of the past.”5 Nevertheless, the exhibit of live, albeit tamed, “cannibals” not only drew many curious Japanese spectators to the pavilion but also served to confirm their own standpoint as civilized spectators from an advanced country. Such media events in metropolitan Japan served to reinforce stereotypes of the South Seas as a land inhabited by primitive peoples and wild animals. Aside from human showcases and imperial exhibitions, one can catch a glimpse of this fascination with the South Seas in early twentieth-century Japanese fiction. Takenaka Tokio, the protagonist of Tayama Katai’s 1907 story “The Quilt,” fantasizes about “cast[ing] himself away in some colony in the South Seas” to escape from his infatuation with the aspiring female writer Yoshiko who is placed under his charge.6 Tagawa Keitarō, the hero of Natsume Sōseki’s 1912 Higan sugi made (To the Spring Equinox and Beyond), avidly reads Kodama Onmatsu’s account of his exploration of Borneo and is especially fascinated by passages “describing Onmatsu’s fight with an octopus monster that had escaped from its den.”7 While hunting octopuses is “too fanciful an adventure to be contemplated,” Keitarō imagines himself as the superintendent of a rubber plantation, “his bungalow in the midst

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of a limitless plain filled with millions of well-kept rubber trees.”8 If Sōseki shows how Japanese southern expansion shapes the fantasy life of his young protagonist, in Anya kōro (A Dark Night’s Passing), published between 1921 and 1937 in Kaizō, Shiga Naoya depicts the South Seas as a public, everyday spectacle within urban Japan. Miyamoto, a young friend of the protagonist, Tokito Kensaku, visits the aforementioned South Seas Pavilion several times to watch the dances of native peoples.9 Finally, the young Tanizaki Jun’ichirō publishes a one-act play called Zō (The Elephant) in 1910 about the reactions of ordinary Edo townsmen to a procession including an elephant sent to Japan from an unnamed Southeast Asian kingdom located between India and China. Though the work is set in the early Tokugawa period (1600–1867), it is also a spoof of early twentieth-century expansionist discourse.10 Most writings about the South Seas were not works of literature but rather nonfiction writings by advocates of Japan’s expansion toward the South (nanshinron).11 In his 1910 bestseller Nangokuki (An Account of the Southern Countries), the liberal politician Takekoshi Yosaburō coins the slogan “Go south, young man!” thereby inaugurating this outbreak of South Seas fever.12 He also sets forth pell-mell several themes that become the stock-in-trade of later works on the same subject: the Japanese are, by nature, a southern people and are racially related to the Malays; the South Seas constitute a treasure trove of resources without which “civilized” nations could not maintain their “present-day civilization and lifestyle”; for that reason, “he who controls the resources of the tropics will control the markets of the world”; finally, the future of Japan lies in the South Seas and its people should turn their attention to the great task of “making the Pacific Ocean a Japanese lake.”13 Takekoshi devotes the last chapter of his work to the topic of literature, which in his view separates the civilized Japanese from the underdeveloped peoples of the South Seas and aligns them with the Western colonial powers. He urges Japanese writers to emulate their Western counterparts and to establish a “colonial literature that will stimulate the flagging energies of our youth by narrating the stories and exploits of colonial pioneers.”14 Several years later, Tsurumi Yūsuke returns to the theme of “literature” in the preface to his massive and lavishly illustrated travel book Nan’yō yūki (Travel Sketches of the South Seas), a summum of southern expansionist writing. For Tsurumi, the very word nan’yō conjures up visions of exotic tropical lands and a mood of nostalgic longing: “Rather than pondering the political and economic question of developing the lands and ruling the people, I am more deeply moved by the image of moonlight shining through the leaves of a palm tree or a human figure wearing a sarong in the shadow of a mango tree.” He confesses that his own longing for the South Seas was first piqued not by actual experience of travel but rather by his encounters with the exotic stories of European writers:

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“I first caught a glimpse of that island when it was neither night nor morning . . . ” Wearing a dark blue suit, Professor Natsume Sōseki strode into our third year English class at the First Higher School and read to us in his casual and fluent English. It was the opening passage to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Island Night’s Entertainment. At the time, Sōseki was a rising star in literary world and had already published London Tower and I Am a Cat. With the innocent longings of youth, we eagerly awaited being taught by this celebrity in the new school year. . . . Subsequently, I devoured many works by Stevenson but none of them made as deep an impression on me as this Island Night’s Entertainment. The deep blue waters of the South Pacific, a solitary island surrounded by the vast ocean, the gentle winds that bore the salty air and the fragrance of various tropical plants, the natives with their childish thoughts who lived in the midst of this scenery, their minor cares and troubles: I felt as if the atmosphere of the South Seas impregnated the entire volume and each page brought a fresh delight. I imagined the life of the author who spent his final years amid these surroundings and with these people. Afterward, the South Seas were always in my head.

Later, he confides to the reader: “I am deeply convinced that our literary and poetic interests have far deeper roots than our thirst for knowledge and intellectual interests.”15 In his reminiscences of his encounter with the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Tsurumi illustrates the marriage of imperial strategy with imagination, of romance with realpolitik, which is an essential part of all modern empires. Interestingly, he was himself first inspired not by Japanese novels but by the romantic visions that Western writers had created during an earlier phase of the colonization of the South Seas. Based on his own experience, he goes on to argue that literature, and particularly children’s literature, must play an important part in fostering the emotional disposition that underlies any successful imperial project. Recently, more and more writers have raised their voices to call for our nation to expand . . . to the rich and fertile lands of the south. I welcome this trend, but cannot believe that a southern expansion policy that promotes only expanded production or emigration is enough. People will not easily summon the will to leave the land of their ancestors unless they also are stimulated to feel fascination and longing for the South Seas. This longing arises most easily during boyhood and youth when our imaginations are most active and our perceptions sharpest. The foundation of the expansion of the Japanese race must be laid while our youth are still in their cradles: imperialism must spark their desire for exotic lands and fire their dreams.16

The “opening” of Japan meant not only that foreigners could travel to Japan but also that Japanese people would overcome their inertia, go overseas, and settle there. Just as the Meiji state required that citizens become active participants in national institutions such as the armed forces and the public schools, it also encouraged them to seize new opportunities and transplant themselves abroad. Accordingly, Tsurumi concludes that the success or failure of Japan’s empire will depend “on the subjec-

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tive attitude of the Japanese people.”17 He concedes, however, that ordinary Japanese are often reluctant to forsake “the land of their ancestors” and that intellectual arguments will not overcome their resistance. If people are to transplant themselves overseas, an appetite for exotic lands must be artificially stimulated in them. Conversely, to induce this “longing for exotic countries,” writers should appeal to their readers’ imaginations. Last but not least, the best time to touch the imagination of these readers was when they were still in their cradles. C R E AT I NG F OL K I M P E R IA L I SM

Japan’s modern imperialism is unthinkable without taking into account the midnineteenth-century intrusion of Western imperialism into East Asia, the mimetic imperialism of the Meiji period, and the appropriation of Western discourses of “civilization” and “racial hierarchy” by Japanese intellectuals. When Tsurumi mentions Stevenson’s Island Night’s Entertainment, he calls attention to another piece in the gestalt of Japan’s imperialism: namely, the fashioning of an imperialist sensibility among the Japanese elite formed by reading the Western literature of empire. Tsurumi was a member in good standing of the elite, having attended the exclusive First Higher School and studied under Natsume Sōseki. However, he voiced his deepest concerns not about the elite but rather about the Japanese people in general, who also needed to develop the proper “subjective attitudes” if the nation’s imperial projects were not to miscarry. He argued that it is imperative to reach young Japanese at the period of their lives when they are most impressionable. One serious obstacle, however, stood in the way of fostering a popular imperialist sensibility among Japanese youth: the relative paucity of colonial prototypes and heroes in Japanese culture and history. Tsurumi was hardly the first modern writer to express this concern. In his 1900 “Umi to Nihon bungaku” (The Sea and Japanese Literature), Kōda Rohan lamented that the Japanese, unlike the seafaring and adventurous Anglo-Saxons, had failed to create a maritime literature worthy of the name, even though Japan was no less an island nation than Great Britain. He assigned the blame for this failure squarely on Japan’s rulers during the Tokugawa period, who had prohibited Japanese from leaving the archipelago under the policy of national seclusion. Besides fostering an insular attitude toward the outside world, this long period of seclusion had deprived the Japanese of valuable historical experience and reduced their store of practical wisdom regarding colonialism. In 1894, Kume Kunitake wrote a series of articles on the insular mentality of the Japanese that appeared in Kokumin no Tomo, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War. He argued that in the ancient period, the Japanese people had demonstrated an enterprising and belligerent attitude toward the outside world, but that this spirit had disappeared with the closing of the country. After this long interruption, Japanese had recovered the enterprising attitude they

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had shown in the past. With the progress in trade and the building of a naval forces, Japan could play in the Pacific region the role that England played in the Atlantic.18 In light of these historical constraints, ideologues of empire sought for models of colonial heroes, not in the annals of Japanese history and literature, but rather in myth and folklore. Unlike the exotic literature of the West, folklore was a domestic resource, not a foreign product. In addition, folktales were simple, easy to understand, and suitable for dissemination to the masses through the national system of elementary education. Just as narratives like Robinson Crusoe and the story of Pocahontas had shaped the imaginations of generations of English-speaking boys and girls, Japanese myths and folktales were the proper vehicle to instill in the nation’s youth an urge to empire. Beyond their use in the training of young Japanese, the mobilization of folktales on behalf of imperialism suggested that the Japanese empire had a cultural basis in the Japanese past and traditional culture. I have already argued that Japan established the legitimacy of its empire in the transnational idiom that Western powers used to justify their own empires. At the same time, Japan’s embrace of this Western idiom implied an estrangement from its own past, a repudiation of its history, and an alienation from its own culture. Yet even as Japan eagerly absorbed Western influences, it also sought to assert its own cultural identity and to reclaim its own heritage, notably through embrace of folk culture said to embody the primordial spirit of the nation. While the rise of folklore studies in the late Meiji and Taisho periods reflects a growing dissatisfaction with modernity and a nostalgia for lost traditions, the mobilization of folklore for empire served to show that Japanese imperialism was not simply an imitation of Western empires but an inalienable part of its cultural heritage. Traditional tales not only enabled people to discover their roots in the past but they also helped them to chart their own future in a modern world. If myths and folktales were to be rendered useful in political propaganda, they first had to be substantially revised to accord with the needs of the early twentieth century. The Meiji regime had mobilized ancient myths from the eighth-century Kojiki to trace the imperial line back to the sun goddess Amaterasu, but the myths also helped to legitimate a modern monarchy which had no precedent in the past. In a similar way, ancient myths were invoked to justify Japan’s modern expansion overseas, but they were also substantially transformed in the process of rewriting. Borrowing from the national studies scholar Motoori Norinaga, the historian Hoshino Hisashi (1839–1917) claimed that Susanō no mikoto, brother to the sun goddess Amaterasu, had ruled ancient Shilla Korea and traveled back and forth between the peninsula and the Japanese islands until he quarreled with his illustrious sister. Thereafter, the two kingdoms remained estranged for ages, until another mythical figure, the empress Jingū, invaded the peninsula and reestablished Japanese rule there. The continental exploits of Susanō and the empress Jingū became standard fixtures of history textbooks during the colonial period; these stories sug-

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gested to their readers that the annexation of Korea by Japan was simply the restoration of a status quo ante and showed that the Japanese possessed a long-standing capacity for assimilating foreigners.19 As late as 1942, the governor-general of Korea, Koiso Kuniaki, stated that all twenty-two million Koreans were the offspring of Susanō.20 In a similar vein, Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159–89), perhaps Japan’s most brilliant military strategist and certainly its most beloved warrior-hero, was pressed into service to promote Japan’s later push onto the Asian continent. Yoshitsune led the Minamoto clan in the decisive battles against the Taira during the twelfth-century Genpei Wars, but he was later pursued by his half-brother Minamoto no Yoritomo, who feared him as a rival, and became a fugitive with Fujiwara no Hidehira, the powerful feudal leader of northern Japan. When Yasuhira succeeded his father Hidehira in 1187, he succumbed to pressures from Yoritomo and sent an expeditionary force against Yoshitsune, who took his own life after killing his wife and daughter.21 Writers during the Edo period, who were not content to let such an illustrious hero die in such pitiful circumstances, developed bizarre theories of Yoshitsune’s survival and circulated stories of his posthumous exploits.22 According to one theory, Yoshitsune crossed from Hokkaido to the island of Sakhalin and eventually reached Mongolia, where he reappeared as Genghis Khan, unified the tribes of Mongolia, and led his armies to their glorious conquests in Asia and Europe.23 In 1879, while he was a student in England, the young Suematsu Kenchō published a work in English titled The Identity of the Great Conqueror Genghis Khan with the Japanese Hero Yoshitsune, in which he cites a variety of written sources to prove his central thesis. In the final chapter, he clinches his argument on the hero’s identity by asserting that “a wild and uncivilized region [Mongolia] could never have produced a man of such discipline and experience [Genghis Khan], whom even the heroes of the civilized world have scarcely equaled.”24 Since he could not possibly have been a Mongol, Suematsu concludes he must have been Japanese. Basing his hypothesis on Western notions of “civilization and progress” that had only recently been introduced to Japan, Suematsu sought to lift Japan’s reputation in the West by showing that the nation had produced a hero who could hold his own against Western conquerors such as Alexander the Great or Napoleon.25 In 1924, Oyabe Zenichirō (1868–1941), published a Jingisu-kan wa Minamoto no Yoshitsune nari (Genghis Khan Was Indeed Yoshitsune),26 a work that reflects the growing influence of Pan-Asianism. Pan-Asian propagandists such as Amakasu Masahiko (best known as the military police lieutenant who ordered the murder of Itō Noe, Ōsugi Sakae, and his nephew after the Great Kanto Earthquake), and Okawa Shūmei praised the book and members of the imperial family honored it by “inspecting” it, but prominent Japanese historians, linguists, and anthropologists dismissed it as an absurd hoax. Despite the unanimous condemnation of the experts, Oyabe’s book became a best seller. Whereas Suematsu had sought to con-

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vince Europeans that Japan had produced a world-class hero, Oyabe used Japanese claims of kinship with Asia to justify its further expansion on the continent. After the creation of Manchukuo in 1932, articles in Manshū Nichinichi (Manchuria Daily) newspaper regularly reported discoveries of traces of Yoshitsune on the Asian continent while the theme of Yoshitsune as Genghis Khan influenced artworks, including a Noh play performed in 1941.27 As these two examples show, academic and amateur historians alike re-created a variety of mythical characters and semihistorical figures to justify Japan’s expansion onto the Asian continent.28 Yoshitsune and Susanō were well-known heroes, but the expansionist legends that accreted around their names probably failed to leave a profound mark on the imagination of Japanese youth. In contrast, Momotarō proved a much more durable model and a more compelling figure. Whether he actually “fired the imagination” of young Japanese for imperial conquest lies beyond the scope of this study, but it can be safely affirmed that Momotarō was a ubiquitous presence in prewar Japan. Momotarō is the quintessential Japanese folktale.29 In the standard, schoolbook version, the tiny boy Momotarō, floating down a river inside a peach, is discovered by an elderly couple who decide to bring him up as their own son. When he grows up, he sets off to conquer the island of the ogres and recruits three animal retainers to accompany him: a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant. Overcoming the powerful ogres, Momotarō seizes their treasures and returns to his village in triumph. It would be unfair to single out Momotarō—among all Japanese folk heroes—for being uniquely expansionist. Nevertheless, educators and political propagandists alike found in this seemingly innocuous tale a wonderful tool to inculcate imperial awareness in Japanese youth. “Momotarō” came into existence in oral form during the late Muromachi period (1333–1568) and appeared in written versions during the Genroku period (1688–1704).30 There are more than eighty versions of Momotarō’s legend extant in kusazōshi (printed works combining picture and text), particularly in the wellillustrated akabon, a book form specifically directed at an audience of children. The story was also performed on the kabuki stage during the late Tokugawa period.31 In addition, Takizawa (Kyokutei) Bakin (1767–1848), a contemporary of the Grimm brothers, studied the origins and main motifs of Momotarō and provided variants of the legend in an essay published in his 1810 Enseki zasshi (Swallow Stone Miscellany).32 In the modern period, Momotarō was rediscovered as a national folktale and classified as one of five great Japanese folktales (godai mukashibanashi).33 Like the term mukashibanashi itself, this canonization of five national folktales appears to be a product of the educational system, especially of elementary-school readers. “Momotarō” was among the first folktales to be included in these readers at a time of growing nationalism and increasing government control over textbooks.34 In

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1888, the Ministry of Education established a formal screening system for textbooks. These new national textbooks became a vehicle to instill in the Japanese people a sense of national culture and a means to promote a standardized national language. In the case of Momotarō, this meant replacing local versions of the folktale with a single standardized version authorized by the Ministry of Education—essentially nationalizing “Momotarō.” This nationalized “Momotarō,” a creation of the mid– Meiji period, was a fixture of Japanese textbooks until 1945, and it came to be closely associated with emperor-centered ideology.35 But Momotarō was also a contested figure that was continually reinvented throughout the modern period. Appearing in almost six hundred versions, this folk hero inspired generations of Japanese artists, writers, and educators and proved to be among the most protean creations of twentieth-century Japan.36 During the SinoJapanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, Momotarō was depicted as a standard-bearer of military valor and an emblem of the imperial state.37 In Iwaya Sazanami’s “Momotarō” (1894), he is sent to an “island where ogres live, located to the northeast of Japan far across the seas. These ogres, evil by nature, not only refused to obey the commands of our sacred emperor, but became the enemies of our reed land and stole our treasures and grains.”38 Given the historical context of this work, it is clear that Iwaya identified the ogres with Qing China. In picture books at the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), Momotarō, dressed in a Japanese military uniform, led his animal retainers in military battle with Russia. In contrast with these wartime versions, writers of children’s literature in the Taisho period often depicted Momotarō as the archetype of childhood innocence.39 These versions of Momotarō downplay the aggressive implications of the hero’s conquest of the ogres. In the aptly named “Inu ni au made: Momotarō san no hanashi” (Until the Meeting with the Dog: The Tale of Momotarō), Kitagawa Chiyo narrates the adventures of Momotarō only up to the point when he meets the first of his three animal retainers.40 Rather than omitting the conquest of ogre island altogether, Soma Taizō, in her Momotarō no imōto (Momotarō’s Younger Sister), reduces it to a plot device that serves to bring about the happy reunion of brother and sister at the close of the story. In the climactic scene of this tale, Omomo, Momotarō’s sister, is awarded a “sword of peace” by the king of a prosperous society and told that the sword will protect its bearer from any danger as long it is not employed to shed blood. The “sword of peace” thus serves as a metaphor to criticize adult society and Japanese militarism. In still other versions, Momotarō does not seize the treasures of the ogres: the ogres give them to him voluntarily after they promise not to cause any more harm and he “forgives” them. With the eclipse of children’s literature in the late 1920s, writers associated with proletarian literature offered new images of Momotarō as an allegorical figure in the class struggles of Japanese society. In Oniseibatsu no Momotarō (Momotarō, Conqueror of the Ogres), Momotarō is a revolutionary leader who liberates his an-

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imal retainers, who stand for exploited peasants and workers, from evil factory and land owners, who represent the ogres. However, in “Sono ato no Momotarō” (The Later Days of Momotarō), Momotarō himself is a profiteering capitalist who hoards all of the ogres’ treasures and ruthlessly exploits his retainers until they go on strike and demand that Momotarō stop initiating war with other countries and fairly compensate those he employs.41 In World War II propaganda, the figure of Momotarō is ubiquitous in cartoons, Takarazuka revues, posters, songs, picture books, and animation. John Dower speaks of a Momotarō paradigm in World War II propaganda, according to which a “pure Japanese self ” (often identified with the self-sacrificing pilots of the Special Attack Forces) liberates the childlike peoples of Southeast Asia from the clutches of the Allied powers, represented as oppressive demons (American and English beasts and devils). Among other examples, he cites two early, feature-length animated films starring the peach boy, both directed by Seo Mitsuyo. In Momotarō no umiwashi (Momotarō’s Sea Eagles; 1942), Momotarō is a Japanese military commander who leads his animal retainers in the attack on Pearl Harbor; in Momotarō: Umi no shinpei (Momotarō’s Divine Ocean Warriors; 1945), he leads an army made up of rabbits, dogs, and other domesticated animals (the Japanese) as they train wild animals like elephants and crocodiles (South Seas islanders) to destroy a devilish enemy (the British) in a battle representing the fall of Singapore.42 These early cartoons, in addition to being early examples of the technological development of Japanese anime, use the Momotarō story as an allegory for interpreting contemporary history. Besides animation, Momotarō was adapted in Takarazuka productions as well as in local theaters throughout occupied lands during the Pacific War, including one called Taiyō no kodomotachi (Children of the Sun). In this wartime Takarazuka production, Momotarō recruits followers from Indonesia, China, and the Philippines to free Asia from American and European ogres.43 Partly because of his association with wartime propaganda, Momotarō was “purged” from school textbooks by the U.S.-occupation authorities. Postwar scholars attempted to retrieve Momotarō as a hero of postwar democratic and peaceloving Japan and to exonerate him from the taint of war crimes. While Momotarō continued to be an important national hero into the postwar period, he also embarked on a new career as a symbol of regional cultural identities, particularly in Okayama Prefecture, where he is used to this day to promote tourism and town revitalization (machi okoshi).44 Yet the association of Momotarō with aggressive Japanese imperialism long predates the battles of the Second World War. Before Momotarō became a hero in the battles of Hawaii or Singapore, he had long been associated with imperialism in the South Seas. For example, the author of the 1893 “Momotarō no hanashi no gūi” (The Allegorical Sense of Momotarō) advises his readers to emulate Momotarō and “to cross the equator to the islands near Australia, attack and seize better places than

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ogres’ island, subjugate the blacks who look like ogres, and bring back the many treasures of the South such as copra and pearls.”45 Kyō no Warabei’s “Ima Momotarō” (Momotarō Today), which appeared in the boys’ publication Shōnen Sekai (Boys’ World) in 1895, concerns a contemporary Momotarō whom an elderly couple discover inside a peach-shaped Japanese confectionary containing a surprise toy.46 When Momotarō later becomes a Japanese general, the island of the ogres is the recently won colony of Taiwan, and the ogres’ treasure is Taiwan’s sugar-cane industry.47 Nevertheless it is in first two decades of the twentieth century—at the time of the South Seas fever—that prominent writers developed theories showing a connection between this folktale and the expansion of the Japanese empire. From this time, Momotarō became a role model for youth to emulate.48 His expedition to the island of ogres came to be seen as a parable for Japanese expansion overseas, and especially toward the South Seas. N I TOB E I NA Z Ō, MOMOTA RŌ, A N D C OLON IA L P OL IC Y ST U DI E S

In 1907, Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933) gave a lecture titled “Momotarō no enseidan” (Momotarō’s Conquest), which he later published in essay form under the title of “Monotarō no mukashibanashi” (The Tale of Momotarō). Rather than retell the story, he teases out moral lessons for contemporary Japanese youth from the standard version. This essay stands at the intersection of two major currents of Nitobe’s thought: his concern with moral development of youth and his interest in the study of folklore. He pursued his moralizing aims through biographies of great men and character-building tracts.49 Just as in one of his early works he champions William Penn, the early American colonist and Quaker, as a model to be emulated, he upholds Momotarō as a culture hero who can help to inculcate desirable character traits among the Japanese. To be sure, the Momotarō lecture differs from Nitobe’s other pedagogical works. As a teacher in Japan’s most prestigious educational establishments, Nitobe was responsible for training cosmopolitan leaders able to deal on equal terms with their counterparts in other “civilized” powers. By contrast, in this lecture, he is concerned with the education of the subalterns of Japan’s modernization, whom he sought to transform into active agents of the nation’s expansion. Momotarō offered an all-Japanese model of overseas expansionism for the masses that fostered a sense of national grandeur and perhaps turned them away from pressing demands for social change within Japan. Besides reflecting his didactic concerns, the Momotarō essay indicates Nitobe’s new interest in the study of folklore to promote a nationalist and imperial consciousness. In 1910, the year that Japan annexed Korea,50 he joined with Yanagita Kunio and Kindaichi Kyōsuke to inaugurate the Kyōdokai (Home Customs Association). Besides serving to nationalize folk traditions, this study group strove to

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make the Japanese more receptive to the rationale for imperialism and to promote the integration of overseas colonies (or, in the case of the Hokkaido, of domestic frontiers) into the nation. It sought to achieve these goals by mapping out zones of cultural affinity that transcended the borders of the nation.51 Though Nitobe’s lecture on Momotarō antedates his involvement in this association, it offers a concrete and compelling example of the mobilization of folklore to foster a sense of linkage between the Japanese and the people of the South Seas. Nitobe begins his lecture by noting that educators must transmit “the abilities of our ancestors and the lessons they have handed down in tales from ancient times.” In particular, they should not overlook folklore traditions that “can increase national vigor.” Such traditions constitute a “genetic inheritance” that has sustained the Japanese people for millennia and “give the Japanese a spiritual motive” for their actions. Among these folktales tied to the nation and handed down by the ancient ancestors of the Japanese, Nitobe argues, Momotarō occupies a privileged place. Often the first folktale that children are told, it “leaves an indelible impression on their young minds.” While most Japanese folktales are restricted to a particular region or a period of time, the story of Momotarō is both timeless and national in scope. Finally, it has a “simple, well-crafted plot, a beautiful construction, and a fresh and manly character.”52 Even though all Japanese are familiar with the story of Momotarō, Nitobe laments that adults and children fail to grasp its broader implications. When he states that folklore is part of the Japanese people’s “genetic inheritance,” Nitobe implies that Momotarō emerged from the folk culture and belongs to the people. When he goes on to claim that Japanese have failed to grasp the broader implications of this folktale, he implies that the people need to be reeducated to take possession of their “genetic inheritance.” One might say that the goal of his lecture is to remake the folklore hero to fit a national ideal and to remake the people in the image of their folk hero. To accomplish both tasks, Nitobe stresses the multiple levels of meaning in the story—historical, moral, and economic—and seeks to show how this timeless tale has a special relevance to twentieth-century Japan. In his analysis of Momotarō’s historical meaning, Nitobe mentions Takizawa Bakin’s theory that the character of Momotarō is based on the hero of the medieval chronicle Hōgen monogatari (The Tale of Hōgen), Minamoto no Tametomo, and his banishment to the Izu Islands.53 In the same breath, however, he argues that a historical reading cannot exhaust the latent importance of a folktale. History, he writes, is “concrete and objective” while folktales are “archetypical and subjective.”54 Like many of his contemporaries, Nitobe deplored the fact that Japanese history featured few overseas adventurers. As an adventurer willing to confront a fearsome enemy overseas, Momotarō was merely the exception that proves the rule. Besides the absence of historical figures to draw on, Nitobe might have seen real advantages in using folk heroes as role models for youth. The very lack of reality of the peach

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boy conferred upon the person retelling his story full license to interpret his adventures without interference from historical facts. Availing himself of this license, Nitobe reads Momotarō as an allegory for his fellow countrymen, places the ogres on the map, and fixes this timeless tale in historical time. His version of Momotarō serves a precise educational purpose: to help ordinary Japanese overcome their insularity (shimaguni konjō) and acquire a broader outlook on the world, one more in tune with Japan’s position as a great power. Nitobe treats Momotarō as a folktale or fiction rather than as a legend based on the historical Tametomo. This fiction is a prism through which he claims to discover, not the history, but rather the prehistory of the Japanese race. Whereas Momotarō is the quintessentially Japanese folk hero, Nitobe paradoxically emphasizes his foreign origins. Just as the peach (momo) from which he takes his name is not native to Japan, Momotarō is the personification of the Malay adventurers who reached Japan in large numbers (momo also means multitudes or great quantities) in ancient times. Momotarō’s three animal retainers, for their part, stand for archaic indigenous societies that he conquered and recruited to join his campaign.55 Momotarō’s foreign origin and his capacity to absorb other racial groups both prefigure the multiracial and assimilating prowess of the Japanese race in modern times. In this interpretation, Nitobe concurs with many prewar writers who assumed that the Japanese people were racially hybrid and possessed a talent for absorbing foreign races. Such theories were often invoked to justify Japan’s pursuit of empire in the modern period.56 Just as the Japanese had long ago assimilated many different peoples from different racial backgrounds, they were confident that they could repeat this success as a colonial power. If Nitobe discovers a prehistorical basis for expansion in the mixed racial origins of the Japanese, he finds a model for contemporary Japan to emulate in Great Britain. In his English-language works, Nitobe often stressed the resemblances between the culture and history of Japan and those of Western nations. In this essay, he refers especially to Great Britain as a future model that Japan should emulate, an island nation that is not “insular” or inward-looking. While “insularity” is synonymous with timidity and small-mindedness, Great Britain, ruler of the world’s largest empire, proves that geography does not determine historical destiny. By positing an analogy between Japan and Great Britain, Nitobe shows that Japan’s historical development is comparable with that of the most advanced nation of the West and he distinguishes Japan from an Asian continent characterized as stagnant and backward.57 If Nitobe makes use of the “historical” meaning of Momotarō to define a racial talent for colonization, he turns next to the “ethical” dimension of the tale. He notes approvingly that there is nothing even remotely erotic in the tale: “I believe that the old man and women were selected precisely to eliminate ‘eros’ from the tale and to reinforce its moral message.”58 If the “manly” Momotarō is a perfect role model for

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young boys, then manliness is an important colonial trope in Nitobe’s writings.59 Nitobe often characterizes imperialism in explicitly gendered terms, in which the Japanese colonizers are male and the colony is a female who offers herself to the male. In his essay “Bunmei kokumin nanka no taisei” (The Tendency of Civilized Nations to Go South), Nitobe writes, “Just as a young girl desires a red belt when she comes of age, a nation that has developed wants to acquire territory near the equator.”60 In Japanese, the terms “red belt” (akai obi) and “equator” (sekidō) are written with the same characters; traditionally, a young woman wore a red belt when she was pregnant. While Nitobe compares the young girl with a red belt to Japan, he also suggests that Japanese colonization impregnates the fertile lands of the tropics that Japan wants to “acquire” now that it is “developed.” If the colonized refused to submit to the advances of the masculine colonizer, she might be taken by force. In the 1920 essay called “Japanese Colonization” he writes: “The merciless law of the survival of the fittest . . . has only justified the expansion of virile nations,” which follow the law of organic growth and become conquering or colonial powers. In contrast, “those [such as Korea] who, like the Foolish Virgins of the parable, were not ready to act at the call of the century were bereft of their independence.”61 Nitobe suggests that colonization is an act of metaphorical “rape” that is ordained by the very “laws” of nature. If Momotarō embodies manliness and valor, his three animal retainers stand for the Confucian virtues of wisdom (the monkey), benevolence (the loyal dog), and courage (the pheasant). The virile hero can defeat the ogres because he is endowed with these virtues. Nitobe directs the attention of religious leaders, moralists, and educators to this “moral” aspect of the tale and compares Momotarō’s heroic subjugation of the ogres to the missionary endeavors of “soldiers” of the Salvation Army in the evil slums of the modern cities.62 In this construction, Momotarō does not undertake his expedition to retaliate for previous attacks by the ogres; rather he is driven by a missionary zeal to right the moral failings represented by the very fact that “ogres” exist. In late nineteenth-century discourse, the urban slum was “represented in contemporary newspapers and journals as the symbolic opposite of civilization [bunmei] . . . its inhabitants were depicted as the descendants of ‘remote foreign races’ on whom images of both savagery [yaban] and barbarism [ikai] were projected.”63 Matsubara Iwagorō significantly titled his 1893 report on the slums of Tokyo Saiankoku no Tokyo (In Darkest Tokyo), a clear reference to Henry Morton Stanley’s famous account of his 1887–88 exploration of Africa (In Darkest Africa; 1890). Like Stanley, Matsubara saw the urban slum as a jungle inhabited by savages. Such reports on city slums horrified his educated audience and galvanized action by Home Ministry officials and nongovernmental organizations alike, who viewed the slums as breeding grounds for disease and social disorder.64 Just as Christian social reformers in Japan viewed the lower classes in the urban slums as savages in need of taming, Nitobe’s colonizer considers the “ogres” on Japan’s periph-

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ery as barbarians that must be domesticated. After the Japanese successfully contained savagery within the delimited space of the slum, they imagined that it continued to exist outside the spatial boundaries of civilized Japan. In Nitobe’s formulation, colonization is a form of missionary social work that finds its field of exercise outside the boundaries of the nation and is justified as the onward march of a superior civilization. Indeed, one could argue that conquering domestic savages demonstrated the nation’s self-mastery and thus proved its competence to rule others in an imperialist world system.65 Nevertheless, for Nitobe, the main allegorical lesson of Momotarō’s mission to subdue the island of the ogres is “economic.” By spelling out this economic meaning, he offers a solution to one of the greatest mysteries surrounding the folktale: Momotarō’s motives for setting out to conquer the island of ogres in the first place.66 I believe that the tale of Momotarō’s overseas expedition undoubtedly expresses the interest the Japanese people feel toward the outside world and their expansionist drive. As for the island of the ogres, it is a general term for the islands of the South Seas. In the time of Tametomo, the boundaries of Japan did not extend beyond the eight provinces, and Hachiojima was the island of the ogres. But when Japanese settled in Hachiojima, its ogres disappeared. . . . Thereafter, people called the Ryūkyū the island of the ogres. Now, however, the Ryūkyū has become part of Japanese territory and the Ryūkyū people have begun to learn Japanese. . . . With each step we take southward, Onigashima is displaced even further south. . . . Until 1895, Taiwan was the island of the ogres. Now, more than a decade after we have occupied the island, many Japanese still regard it as the island of the ogres . . . because of our differences in language and customs. The Momotarō of today will expand and conquer islands of ogres much further south. As for the treasures of the islands, they are naturally the products of the tropical zone, the treasures of the earth [takara]. The war booty that Momotarō brings back to Japan—the magical cloak, the cape of invisibility, and the lucky hammer [kakure mino, kakurekasa, and uchide no kozuchi]—are the tropical products that he supplies to his home country.67

In this long passage, Nitobe construes the Momotarō story as a metaphor for Japan’s manifest destiny, its irrepressible drive to expand. This drive expresses itself in the conquest of southern islands and the seizure of tropical products to be exported to Japan. Indeed, Nitobe’s view of the South Seas as a treasure chest of natural resources is a staple of most writings about nan’yō from the days of the Iwakura Mission of 1871–73. Writing about his return from the mission to Japan by way of Africa and Asia, Kume Kunitake noted that the prosperity of the Western countries was based on their historical rule of colonial territories in the south. “Most of the raw materials used to manufacture the European products [hakuraihin] that Japan imports actually originate in the South Seas. These raw materials are processed in Europe, fashioned into manufactured goods, and then sold to Japan for a profit. Only when this geography of production becomes widely known will we see the

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fruit of Japan’s national strengthening ripen.”68 In 1887, Shiga Shigetaka published his Nan’yō jiji (Conditions of the South Seas), in which he advocated expansion to the South Seas through trade. Despite these thematic continuities, Nitobe’s views of Japan’s expansion to the south differ greatly from the promotion of commercial exchange associated with writers such as Shiga or Kume. They are also unlike the ideologies of the Co-Prosperity Sphere that stressed the material benefits that Japan’s expansion brought to the southern territories. As an economic parable, the Momotarō story justifies Japan’s expansion as a form of primitive accumulation. Momotarō conquers the islands of the tropics, seizes their treasures, and brings them back to the home country as “war booty.” In effect, he dispossesses the original owners of their wealth, without offering any compensation in return or engaging in any commercial exchange. In 1871, the liberal thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi singled out this precise aspect of the folktale for unequivocal condemnation in his Hibi no oshie (Everyday Teaching): “Momotarō is said to have gone to the island of the ogres in order to steal treasures. Isn’t this an unforgivable act? The ogres were the rightful owners of these treasures, which they valued and stowed away. We should regard Momotarō as a thief and villain [warumono] because, for no good reason, he went to steal a treasure that was someone else’s property.”69 If Fukuzawa treated the folk hero as a thief and condemned his behavior, Nitobe holds him up as a model to be emulated since his seizure of the “treasures of the tropics” enriches the Japanese nation. Nitobe’s economic interpretation of the tale suggests that primitive accumulation is the indispensable precondition for the imagining of empire. As the ogres flee from the previous encroachments of the Japanese, the location of their island changes over time. As Nitobe was telling the story, Japan had already conquered the Ryūkyūs (1879) and Taiwan (1895) and was setting its sights on territories further to the south. The year 1895, in some respects, marks a crucial turning point in this progression. From this moment, pressure grows within Japan to accelerate the assimilation of the Ryūkyūan population and to rename the Ryūkyūs as Okinawa.70 If the Okinawans are henceforth to be rapidly assimilated, the Taiwanese are depicted as savages as a pretext for conquering them. Momotarō’s conquest of Onigashima becomes an allegory for the Japanese empire that advances continuously to the south, eventually assimilating the ogres it captures. Thomas Burkman describes Nitobe’s Momotarō doctrine as a theory of irresistible expansion, a Japanese version of manifest destiny.71 Referring to Nitobe’s essay, Kamishima Jirō argues that Momotarō-ism was an unstable compound composed of a spontaneous, natural desire for expansion—shizen yokubō—and militarism.72 Outside this essay, Nitobe stresses the applicability of the Momotarō model to Japanese colonialism also in his scholarly lectures and his articles in masscirculation periodicals.73 In these works, he reinterprets the figure and makes some interesting additions to his tale.

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Nitobe’s distinguished career as Japan’s premier internationalist was closely intertwined with Japanese imperialism. As a young man, he studied agricultural science at the Sapporo Agricultural College (today’s University of Hokkaido) and took part in the nation’s first colonial project: the colonization of Hokkaido and of its indigenous people.74 In 1901, he was recruited by Gotō Shinpei to work in the colonial government of Taiwan, which was, in Gotō’s words, Japan’s first “colonial university.”75 After receiving his first degree in colonial studies from that “university,” Nitobe completed formal academic training in international political science at Johns Hopkins in the United States, at Halle University in Germany, and at Kyoto University. From 1908, his former sponsor in Taiwan, Gotō Shinpei, then president of the Southern Manchurian Railway Company, was instrumental in creating a chair in colonial policies at Tokyo Imperial University and in appointing Nitobe as the first to occupy it. If Tokyo University was established to train officials to serve the government, then the chair in colonial policy studies served to educate a corps of officials to administer the colonies. At Tokyo Imperial University and Takushoku (Colonial) University (an institution whose name evokes the imbrication of knowledge and empire), Nitobe created the basic curriculum for this new field of study and trained the next generation of specialists who were to play important roles in the Japanese empire. He continued to teach until he was named undersecretary general of the League of Nations (1920–26), at which time Yanaihara Tadao replaced him. As Japan’s first professor of colonial policy studies, Nitobe standardized the terminology for “colony” in later Japanese discourse and set forth the fundamental concepts of this field. In a 1911 article, “Shokumin naru meiji ni tsukite” (On the Word Colony), Nitobe noted that Taiwan was not referred to as a “colony” in official Japanese discourse as late as 1910. He observed that the term shokumin in colloquial usage signified both colonization and emigration, two closely related modalities of national expansion. In addition, it could be written with two different but phonetically identical characters: the first signified to “plant people” and the second to “increase people.” Reflecting this linguistic usage, the journal Shokumin Sekai (Colonial World; published in 1908, written with the second of these two characters) carried stories about Japanese emigrants to Hawaii and South America side by side with articles on career prospects in Korea and Taiwan. To eliminate such semantic and graphic ambiguities, Nitobe argued that the government should adopt the former character since it was closer in meaning to what “colony” signified in European languages, which derived from the Latin colonus, or “planting of people.” Noting that the “Chinese language lacks any meaningful term for colony,” Nitobe went on to write: “Whenever names of places like Korea, Taiwan, and Karafuto are mentioned . . . they are referred to as ‘new additions to the empire.’ Does it suffice to name these newly occupied territories with old expressions? Wouldn’t it be better to use the new term for colony [shokuminchi]?”76

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Besides coining a new term for “colony,” Nitobe also spearheaded the creation of colonial policy studies in Japan. He undertook a systematic and comparative study of colonial institutions around the globe and placed Japanese colonial policies within this global framework. The creation of this new field played an important part both in legitimizing Japan’s growing empire and in showing that it was based on knowledge. Not only did it demonstrate that the empire was built in accordance with international norms, but it “gave authoritative, academic explanations to the international terms that defined Japan’s empire.”77 In Nitobe’s later colonial policy writings, he often pointed to the limitations and imperfections of Momotarō as an allegory of empire. Momotarō conquers the ogres, but he returns later to his rural village and leaves them alone. Nitobe wanted to amend the figure of Momotarō and to refashion him as a long-term settler who remains in the colony and develops its resources, rather than being simply an invader who annexes new territory and incorporates it into the home country. To have Momotarō approximate this ideal, he supplements what is missing in the tale by adding new elements to the plot and substantially reworking the legend. In 1916, he writes: “I love Momotarō and have frequently had occasion to refer to his story. Nevertheless, I believe that we need to revise this folktale to make it fit the new Japan. In this new version, Momotarō goes to the island of ogres, settles down, and does not return to his home country. Rather than bringing the treasures of the island back to Japan, he invites the old man and old woman to join him and plans to build a happy home in this new land.”78 If Momotarō later became a long-term settler in the land, he began his career as a conqueror with a boundless urge to expand. The island of the ogres in both versions was the frontier where Momotarō steeled his will and became a “man”:79 “The frontier rejuvenates the human nature which we are apt to forget and lose. For human life there must always be a frontier. If it were not for it, man would be reduced to a trifling existence under the pressure of the customs and traditions of society.” A fascination with the frontier is a constant throughout Nitobe’s life and career, from his early education in Sapporo to his final days spent justifying Japan’s expansion into Manchuria to skeptical Americans. On an observation tour of Manchuria in 1932, he wrote, “If only I were still in my twenties, I would like to go and settle in Manchuria. . . . Man’s timeless hope is to be part of the first generation of nation builders, cultivating barren lands, opening roads through the impenetrable forests, developing natural resources that people had never given a thought to, building a base there and making it one’s home.”80 Though he refers to the territories into which imperial Japan expands as a “frontier,” this frontier is more a vector of expansion than a bounded space. Indeed, the frontier in Nitobe’s theories serves as the functional equivalent of Turner’s frontier in his thesis on U.S. history. Turner had argued that the American character had been formed by the nation’s experience on the Western frontier, where civilization

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and barbarism met. Like the West in Turner’s thesis, the South Seas for Nitobe was the crucible where Japanese national character must be forged.81 However, Nitobe’s Momotarō doctrine differs from Turner’s frontier thesis in that it is oriented toward the future, while Turner sought to account for America’s past at a time when the western frontier had closed. Indeed, notwithstanding his argument that the folktale expressed the southern origins of the Japanese, the vector of Momotarō’s expansion did not necessarily point south. After the annexation of Korea in 1910, Nitobe saw Japan’s expansion moving in the opposite direction: the outer perimeter of the nation now spread northward in concentric circles to embrace southern Manchuria, Karafuto, and northern Manchuria. He wrote: If one were to draw a circle with a radius of 180 ri [a ri = 3.9273 kilometers] centered on the Noto peninsula at Hokutan point and include Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Korea inside the circle, it would extend right to the Tumen River. If the circle’s radius were increased to 320 ri and its center were shifted to 40 degrees north latitude and 135 degrees east longitude, southern Manchuria and the Liaoting peninsula would fit inside, and the circle would extend right to 50 degrees north latitude in Karafuto. And if the circle’s radius were increased to 380 ri and its center moved just a little, naturally Harbin would fit inside as would Chichihar in northern Manchuria.

Noting the new dimensions of the nation after the annexation of Korea, he went on to write, “The first circle is already a reality.”82 In this way, the Momotarō “doctrine” became a flexible paradigm that could be adapted to the vicissitudes and changes of direction in Japan’s imperial trajectory. In Shokuminchi no shūkyoku mokuteki (The Ultimate Goal of Colonization), Nitobe wrote that the final aim of colonialism is the expansion of the oikoumene, a Greek word he defines as “the land in which humans can dwell [ningen no sumieru tochi].”83 In his view, man, as steward of the earth’s riches, has a responsibility to exploit the resources of the earth and, in particular, to develop land that is neglected by its feckless inhabitants. Viewing undeveloped land as a patient in a “state of illness,” he argued that the patient would never recover if left only to his own devices; only by following the medical prescriptions of colonial policy could the land regain its “health.” In “Igaku no shinpo to shokumin hatten” (Medical Progress and Colonial Development), Nitobe identifies endemic tropical illness as the “ogres” that must be expelled if the resources of the tropics are to be developed: The “red and blue ogres” are the “bacteria and protozoa that cause the endemic diseases of the tropics.”84 In this disease model of colonialism, the colony is infected by malignant “ogres” that frighten away would-be colonists and impede development. In order to take control of the “treasures they desire,” the Japanese must first expel the ogres that block access to the land. Starting from the premise that “the one who made best use of the land, or in other words, loved the land most, ought by rights to be the true owner of the land,”

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he concluded that the original inhabitants should hand the land over to the colonist best able to realize its potential. He saw colonization primarily as the provision of a proper infrastructure of empire,85 consisting of courts of law, public hygiene, new industries, and schools. Ultimately, colonization was merely “the spread of civilization itself,”86 a beneficial process in which advanced peoples offered their knowledge, technologies, and capital to contribute to the development of undeveloped land. If, however, the colonized refuse the civilization offered by the colonizer, they are doomed to regress to their original state as “ogres.” Such was the fate of the former French colony of Haiti, a flourishing plantation economy under French rule, which became a place of disease and stagnation—in a word, “the island of the ogres”—after it achieved independence.87 Like earlier and later writers of southern expansionism, Nitobe believed that the greatest treasure trove of the earth’s natural resources was to be found in the tropical south. The tropics were the place where the human race was born, but humanity had progressed and developed in more temperate climates. Whereas the tropics contained “raw and unfinished material,” the temperate zone acquires this raw material, polishes it, and purifies it,”88 and in the end turns it into finished products that can be traded. The people of the South Seas also represented an early, raw stage in the evolution of humanity, which stronger nations needed to mold and “develop” by introducing civilization. “When we consider the condition of barbarians who still inhabit the world today, we see that these people rarely stir themselves to make progress because, having no shortage of the basic necessities of life, they lack any motivation to do so. Only where the heavens bestowed cold weather, does it appear that people have been made to feel the necessity of working to satisfy their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter.”89 Since human beings develop only where they meet resistance and are forced to overcome obstacles, the inhabitants of the tropics are unable to progress on their own. Rather, the tropics are for those “who have conquered the north and developed the power to shape their external environment as they desire” to exercise their will most efficiently. As a descendant of Malay adventurers, Momotarō—and the Japanese race—are ones who, originally coming from the south, have “conquered the north” and thus are uniquely qualified to promote the “southern expansion of civilization.” If Nitobe lays stress on the development of resources of the south, he says relatively little about policies toward the colonized. As the peach boy advances to the south, he demonizes the inhabitants there. However, the term oni or “ogre” does not denote a malevolent, unchanging nature. A devout Quaker, Nitobe argues that the Japanese will discern the humanity of the colonized “other” when the latter learns to speak Japanese and adopts Japanese customs. However, this discovery of a common humanity does not lead Nitobe to favor equality between colonizer and colonized. The ogres are no longer “demonic others,” but they are not equals either. If the “ogres” accept colonization by the superior civilization, they will eventually

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progress to the level of human beings, thanks to the effort of their colonizers, although complete assimilation might take centuries. Gradualism was the watchword for Nitobe’s ideas about the assimilation of the colonized. Nitobe believed that Japanese law and institutions should be gradually extended to the colony according to the level of development of the colonized. Gotō Shinpei famously remarked that it would take at least eighty years before the Taiwanese could be elevated to the level of the Japanese, but Nitobe multiplied this figure by ten in his lectures on colonial policy. In addition, he was opposed to any attempts to hurry this slow process along by interfering with and aggressively changing the culture of the colonized. Since each society had its own cultural peculiarities, he argued that assimilation policies that aimed to destroy the culture of the colonized were doomed to fail.90 This gradualist view of assimilation coexists in uneasy equilibrium with a completely different narrative. Nitobe had long believed that the racial origins of the Japanese were in the South Seas: “I believe that the Japanese people belong to the Malay race. We are probably a race that was first born in the South Seas. Of course, there are also many of us that came from the north as well. Even though there are many (of our ancestors) who came from China and Korea, I still believe that most of the blood flowing in our veins is from the south.”91 In a 1915 article titled “Bunmei no nanshin” (The Southern Expansion of Civilization), he goes a step further and claims that the “ogres” of the Momotarō tale are proto-Japanese. Since the ancestors of the Japanese originally migrated from the South Seas, present-day ogres presumably descend from the same ancestors as the Japanese. Unlike their illustrious cousins, they languish in a stagnant primitive culture that has stood still for centuries as history has moved on and Japan has become a great empire. As a result, the encounter between the Japanese and the ogres occurs not only through a displacement in space but also by means of time travel to this distant past. Nitobe’s Momotarō retraces the path that the ancient Japanese took when they traveled to Japan long ago. Consistent with this reasoning, Nitobe reinterprets the metaphor of Momotarō’s homecoming, a central motif of the tale; since the “ancestors of the Japanese probably came from the South Seas, our southern expansion today can be thought of as the homecoming of one, crowned with laurels, who long ago left his hometown, traveled to the north, and carried out great deeds.” Momotarō’s homecoming, the happy ending of his success story, takes place not when he returns to the village of the old man and woman—who have no blood relation to him—but rather when he arrives in the island of ogres in the first place. If the ogres show Momotarō his past, he in turn points them in the direction of their future. He also offers them the possibility of their acceptance as Japanese, at the cost of submission to Japanese cultural, social, and political norms.92 In this interpretation of Momotarō’s quest as a homecoming to the land of his ancestors, Nitobe calls attention to an important aspect of Japanese colonial rhetoric: the notion that the Japanese were blood relatives of the people they colonized.

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Like Nitobe, many prewar Japanese speculated that the ancestors of the Japanese came from the south, while others argued that they were from the north, and others still proposed that they were a mixture of northern and southern peoples. Torii Ryūzō (1870–1953), a towering figure in prewar Japanese anthropology, synthesized these different views and argued that the Japanese were a mixture of Ainu, continental peoples, and southern peoples (Indonesians and Indo-Chinese).93 While I have already mentioned the theory that Japanese and Koreans had common ancestors (nissen dōsoron), a theory that many Japanese writers subscribed to during the colonial period, I will add that similar theories were advanced with regard to the Japanese and the people of the South Seas. If historians and social scientists could point to a long recorded history of interactions between Japan and Korea, they stood on shakier ground when they asserted that the Japanese were related to South Seas islanders. Nevertheless, anthropologists, historians, linguists, and folklore specialists concocted similar theories to demonstrate that Japanese shared common ancestry with southern peoples as well. Torii Ryūzō, who undertook extensive anthropometric surveys of the Yami aborigines on Lantal Island in Taiwan, argued that they were related to the Negritos, one of several racial strains he believed made up the Japanese race. If Torii investigated physical similarities between the Japanese and Taiwanese aborigines, Tsuboi Shōgorō, the founder of Japanese anthropology, concentrated on cultural ties between the Japanese and the Malay races, arguing that “Japanese ancient copper swords excavated from sites in Kyushu resembled in shape the dagger [kris] used by contemporary Malay.”94 Besides these two prominent anthropologists, numerous linguists, mythologists, and historians also offered other theories linking the Japanese with Malay, Polynesian, or Austronesian peoples.95 Later, Yanagita Kunio, the founder of Japanese folklore studies, advanced the theory that the Japanese had migrated to their present home from the South Seas in the distant past; he viewed Okinawa—which was a kind of relay station between Japan and its origins—as the key to understanding the nation’s prehistoric past. In his Kaijō no michi (The Way of the Sea; 1961), he attempts to recover Japan’s ancient history by examining traces of archaic Japanese culture in contemporary Okinawa. Such speculations circulated widely in popular books and periodicals, particularly during the boom periods of southern expansionism. Like Nitobe in his 1915 essay, Takekoshi Yosaburō believed that the original “Japanese” were of Malayan origin and hence related to both the Taiwanese aborigines and the South Seas islanders. Of the former, he wrote: “I entertain a firm conviction that our Japanese ancestors and these savages are in some way blood relations.” Indeed, he recommended that specialists undertake a historical study to compare the Taiwan savages with “the Kumaso family in Kyushu . . . or with the ferocious chieftain Nagasunehiko,” the leader of a clan that resisted Emperor Jinmu in his subjugation of the eastern territories of Japan in the ancient past.96 Since the Taiwanese had once

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been “cousins” of the “Japanese,” they could once again become Japanese under Japan’s assimilation policies. In his later book Nangokuki, Takekoshi claimed that the Japanese were racially related to the Malay population of Southeast Asia and he cited both physical similarities and cultural resemblances to support his claim. Inoue Masaji, another proponent of southern expansionism, claimed that the Japanese, by advancing into the South Seas, were returning to their place of origin: “For Japanese to advance into nan’yō is to return to the ancient time before Emperor Jinmu.”97 In 1942, Niimura Ide (better known as the editor of Kojien dictionary) treated the early military victories in the Pacific War as a kind of homing instinct of the Japanese race, when he wrote, “The advancement of the Japanese to the southern regions is perhaps based on the longing that each of us unwittingly harbors for the place of birth of our people.”98 While the Japanese claimed that they were linked to those they colonized and shared common ancestors with them, they distanced themselves from the colonized by interpreting their present condition as Japan’s ancient—indeed primordial—past. In Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Objects, Johannes Fabian refers to this form of temporal distancing as the “denial of coevalness,” arguing that it is a key way of constituting others as primitive or backward in relation to the modernity of Western civilization. This “denial of coevalness” lends intellectual support, not only to the discourse of anthropologists and colonial policy scholars, but more generally to relations of domination between observer and observed.99 When Nitobe spoke of Momotarō’s homecoming and Takekoshi compared Taiwanese savages with the tribal leaders of Japan’s mythical past, they were both engaged in this temporal distancing. The Japanese found traces of their origins, their early history, and a primitive version of their culture in the South Seas. Imagining themselves the evolutionary fulfillment of their putative ancestors, the Japanese assigned themselves the mission of bringing their backward racial brothers forward in time. By reinterpreting his arrival as homecoming, Nitobe naturalizes Momotarō’s conquest and sets it on a genetic foundation. To begin with, he construes Momotarō’s desire to conquer the island of the ogres as an obscure racial instinct to return to the home of his ancestors. Nitobe compares the Momotarō tale to Mignon’s song in Goethe’s famous bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. While still an infant, Mignon was kidnapped by an evil spirit, whereupon she lost all memory of her parents and her native land. Asked one day where her home is, she replies with a song containing the celebrated verse: “Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blumen?” (Do you not know the land where the lemon trees grow?). This song, familiar to all Germans, expresses “the longing felt by the German people for the warmer lands of the south and their ethnic destiny of southern expansion.” Nitobe concludes: “Since even the Germans, a northern race par excellence, feel such longing, how much more natural it must be that a southern race like the Japanese feel an instinctual yearning for the south?” Besides naturalizing the yearning that the

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Japanese feel for the south, Nitobe claims that the Japanese are best suited to introduce progress and civilization to the tropics because of their racial origins. Nitobe concludes this essay by writing that “nothing will rival [Momotarō’s] great power of influence over the expansion of the Japanese nation.”100 T H E M E TA MOR P HO SE S OF MOMOTA RŌ I N L AT E R C OLON IA L P OL IC Y DI S C OU R SE

If, in Nitobe’s view, Momotarō provides an ideal model for Japan’s imperial mission, he becomes a far more problematic figure for later writers on Japanese colonial policy. Tōgō Minoru (1881–1959), a student of Nitobe, vigorously disputes the latter’s claim that this folk hero is a useful model for the Japanese of his time; Tōgō thinks of him as the negative model of the bad Japanese colonist. While the two writers took diametrically opposed attitudes toward Momotarō, they agreed in treating him as an allegorical figure of Japanese imperialism, particularly toward the South Seas. This difference in evaluation is clearly related to the different periods in which these two scholars of colonial policy studies were writing. Whereas Nitobe’s writings on colonial policy epitomize the early twentieth-century period of Japanese colonization, Tōgō’s reflect new concerns with governance of the colonies that emerged in the post–World War I period. Facing growing political movements in the colonies demanding self-determination, Japanese colonial authorities implemented new cultural policies to co-opt colonial elites, policies often referred to as cultural rule (bunka seiji). A staunch advocate of Japanese expansion, Tōgō attempted to reconcile continued Japanese rule with postwar internationalism and the rise of ethnic nationalism in the colonies. In his view, Momotarō constituted an inappropriate model at this new historical conjuncture. Tōgō agreed with Nitobe that fairy tales offer insight into Japanese historical experience and folk wisdom regarding overseas expansion. One can “discover flashes of the national character of a people” if one pays attention to “a nation’s myths,101 legends, proverbs, literature, and fine arts.”102 In Momotarō, he claims to discover not lessons to be learned but rather “the basis for mistakes in the Japanese colonial enterprise,”103 and indeed the “shortcomings” of Japanese colonizers.104 In particular, Momotarō epitomizes the aggressive and plundering nature of Japanese colonization and the lack of patience and perseverance of Japanese colonists.105 Tōgō also follows Nitobe in situating Momotarō’s adventures in the South Seas. From the perspective of colonial studies, he is a youth endowed with the virtues of wisdom, benevolence, and courage, who sets off to conquer an undeveloped island in the south, conquers the barbarians (banjin) living there, seizes a plethora of treasures, and returns to Japan to please his parents.106 This simple tale “expresses the sense of the Japanese race’s overseas expansion in the distant past,” but in Tōgō’s view, therein lies its problem:

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Applying to Momotarō’s conquest of the isle of the ogres the categories of colonial policy studies, one would describe it as an invaded colony. It differs from the agricultural colony in which the colonizer develops the undeveloped plains by tilling the soil with his labor and establishing new companies and launching new enterprises. All Momotarō does is to use the power of the sword to seize every treasure possessed by the natives of the land, whether it be gold and silver, coral, flax, or cotton. This is so-called despoiling colonial policy or plundering policy and has nothing to do with permanent-settlement colonizing. Momotarō’s conquest of the isle of the ogres faithfully expresses the national character of the Japanese race that seeks to “return to their hometown bedecked in brocade.”107

Rejecting the indigenous Momotarō as model, Tōgō instead calls on the Japanese to study a fable of the Ataiyal, an aboriginal group in north Taiwan, in order to remedy the deficiencies of the Japanese colonial model.108 This fable, “Taiyō no seibatsu” (Conquest of the Sun), offers a mythical explanation of the alternation of night and day. In the ancient past, two suns shone in the sky, bathing the earth in such constant sunlight that the rivers evaporated, living creatures were roasted, and the forests withered. The members of one village decided to launch an expedition to remove one of the suns from the sky; over the course of generations it took to reach the sun, a “savage [seiban] Momotarō” finally appeared and slew the second sun by firing a supernatural arrow. Tōgō draws the following moral lesson from this fable: “There is no greater enterprise than an effort such as this, carried out over not one but two or three generations, to relieve the suffering of all living things and usher in an age of global peace.”109 Learning from the colonized, Tōgō argues that the Ataiyal myth is a better paradigm for long-term colonization than the tale of Momotarō, and one more suited to realities of ruling a multicultural empire in the 1920s. Later writers continued to treat Momotarō as an allegorical figure for the Japanese empire, notably Japanese settlers in the colonies. Miyagawa Jirō, the editor of a Taiwan Jitsugyōkai (Taiwan Business World), published a scenario titled “Otogigeki seibatsu sareru Momotarō” (Fairy Tale Drama: Momotarō Conquered) in 1934, which was recently reprinted by Takehisa Yasutaka. In this fairy tale drama, Momotarō is neither a metaphor for Japanese colonialism per se nor a model to be followed or shunned; rather he represents the colonial government of Taiwan as seen from the perspective of the Japanese settler community in Taiwan.110 Though he had formerly worked in the Taiwan Government-General, Miyagawa became the self-appointed spokesman of the Japanese settler community when he assumed the position of editor of the Taiwan Jitsugyōkai in 1929. The settlers, a small, privileged minority living among an alien majority, sometimes felt as though they were under siege. On the one hand, they feared the specter of resurgent Taiwanese nationalism. On the other, they opposed policies promoting the “assimilation” of the Taiwanese, which, in their view, would result in Japanese being treated no differently from the Taiwanese. Miyagawa excoriated Japanese colonial officials in the

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columns of his journal and fulminated against their neglect of the interests of Japanese residents. As deep economic crisis struck the home islands in the early 1930s, thousands of unemployed Japanese fled to Taiwan in search of work, while longterm Japanese residents of Taiwan faced stiff competition from Chinese business rivals on the island. Increasingly, settlers demanded that the governor-general offer economic relief for lower strata of Japanese migrating to the colonies and protective legislation for members of the long-standing Japanese business community. Above all, they wanted the government to uphold the elite status of each and every Japanese settler vis-à-vis the Taiwanese, since they—the settlers—constituted the very “foundation of colonial rule” and were an extension of the Japanese homeland. Detailing settler complaints, reporters in Taiwan Jitsugyōkai noted that the colonial government was damaging the vital interests of its own people under the slogan of fostering the union of Japan and its colony.111 In his view, the Japanese (naichijin) faced the danger of “being overwhelmed economically” by the “Taiwanese people” and forced to live a “pitiful life.”112 Notwithstanding the economic hardships of the settlers, journalists claimed that Japanese officials listened sympathetically to Taiwanese complaints about the unfairness of colonial rule and gave in to their “insatiable” demands, thereby undermining the very basis for colonial rule. According to Miyagawa, “foolish officials,” in the name of “fairness and equality,” favored Taiwanese business interest in order to protect their own position with respect to the local (Chinese) population. At the same time, the Chinese, who lacked any sense of “national consciousness,” were insatiable and would never be content with the crumbs being thrown to them.113 Ultimately, concessions would embolden rather than placate the colonized, inciting them to demand complete independence. This is exactly what occurs in Miyagawa’s “Otogigeki seibatsu sareru Momotarō” (Fairy Drama: Momotarō Conquered), a short work that tells of the latter days of Momotarō. While Momotarō stands for the Japanese colonial regime, his animal retainers are Japanese settlers in the colony, while the descendants of the ogres, also identified as different species of animals, are the indigenous population of Taiwan. In the opening scene, Momotarō, the governor-general of Taiwan, proclaims: “Since the island has been freed from ogres, I will distribute equally to all inhabitants and their children the millet dumplings that the old couple made.” When one of his animal retainers complains that Momotarō is spoiling the indigenous people out of misguided good will, the governor-general dismisses him and resolves to carry out his policy of fairness and equal treatment to all. Afterward, a monkey and a raccoon (representing the colonized) complain to Momotarō that his retainers abuse their power and torment the local population. In reply, the governor-general vows to end such abuses.114 In the second scene, the islanders complain that the millet dumplings they are given are “too small” and “all but inedible.” Rather than dumplings, what they really want is Momotarō’s sword and uniform. In the final scene, the monkey, fox,

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and badger (animals associated with trickery and disguises) ply Momotarō with drinks, tricking him into giving up his sword and uniform, the symbols of his authority in Taiwan. Taking advantage of Momotarō’s guilelessness, the ogres disarm him and reverse the colonial conquest, leaving Momotarō “conquered.”115 While Momotarō begins by offering to share the millet dumplings (economic prosperity) supplied from the home country with his colonial subjects, the colonized are primarily interested in acquiring the trappings of political power. From Nitobe to Miyagawa, Momotarō has served as a trope for colonialism and his name has been invoked in debates on colonial policy. Indeed, the tale of Momotarō as conqueror survived, nearly intact, the demise of the Japanese empire in postcolonial Taiwan. I have already noted that the figure of Momotarō was extensively transfigured in postwar Japan. On the one hand, Japanese writers sought to free Momotarō from the taint of war crimes and made him a symbol of a peaceful and democratic nation, a fitting metaphor for postwar Japan. On the other hand, Japanese regions enlisted him as a symbol of local identity and mobilized his image to promote regional revitalization and tourism. Paradoxically, he maintained his martial qualities in a Taiwan ruled by the Kuomintang (KMT) and placed under martial law until the late 1980s. While the Taiwan regime was acutely aware of the wartime manipulation of Momotarō as a symbol of Japan, they also countenanced the refashioning of this familiar and malleable figure into an icon of Taiwan popular culture. In 1961, the Taiwanese film director Shao Luo Hui directed Momotarō’s Great War with the Island of the Ogres. Takehisa Yasutaka studies this film, of which no print survives, by examining surviving posters and newspaper articles about the film that appeared in the Chinese-language press. He argues that the KMT regime decided to make use of the folktale as a vehicle for its own anticommunist ideology, much as it had also recuperated the Go Hō legend to support its civilizing mission toward the Taiwanese aborigines. The film was renamed The Record of Old Peach’s Great Conquest of the Bandits, incorporating Momotarō as a Chinese figure (Old Peach) and assimilating his enemies with bandits. The “bandits” that the hero conquers were identified with the Chinese communists that ruled the mainland. In this new guise, Momotarō became a KMT hero who liberates the mainland from the communists (bandits).116 This postcolonial Momotarō illustrates the continuity between colonial ideologies and postwar nationalism but also exemplifies the radical change in the uses to which such a popular figure can be put. MOMOTA RŌ A S V I L L A I N A N D T H E DI S C OV E RY OF T ROP IC A L PA R A DI SE

If Miyagawa caricatures Momotarō as a feckless colonial governor of Taiwan, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke debunks him as a repellent symbol of Japanese imperialism in his short story “Momotarō.” First appearing in the Sunday Mainichi on July 1, 1924,

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this story is an entertaining parody of the folktale and belongs to a rich tradition of sequels, parodies, and rewritings of Momotarō, which began in the seventeenthcentury period. While Akutagawa inherits and carries on this long-standing tradition, he directs his satiric barbs at contemporary Japanese imperialism and, in particular, at the “South Seas fever,” to use Shimizu’s term. Akutakawa was perhaps the first writer to satirize this ideal Japanese boy as an aggressive invader and to cast the ogres as peace-loving islanders.117 Consequently, his Momotarō is a parody of the model hero proposed by Nitobe. Though I have no evidence that Akutagawa had read Nitobe’s essay on Momotarō, he was a student at the First Higher School when Nitobe was headmaster and later caricatured him as a poseur in his story “Hankechi” (The Handkerchief). Professor Kinji Hasegawa, the protagonist of this story, is “a professor of colonial studies” and a strong proponent of Bushidō, that is to say an unmistakable stand-in for Nitobe. “The Handkerchief ” not only caricatures Nitobe but also lampoons contemporary imperial rhetoric.118 “Momotarō” also expresses Akutagawa’s disgust with Japanese military aggression on the Asian mainland and his flirtation with proletarian literature. While Akutagawa is best known today as an apolitical and self-absorbed writer, he wrote a number of works in the early 1920s that are strongly critical of Japan’s imperialism, militarism, and its distortions of national history. An interesting example of these anti-imperialist works is the story “Kin Shōgun” (General Kim), which was published the same year that “Momotarō” appeared. Relying on the Korean accounts of Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea, the narrator of “General Kim” recounts the exploits of Kim Ōzui, a Korean national hero whose exploits are recounted in the Jinshinroku (A Record of Jinshin, 1592), a book banned during the Japanese colonization of Korea.119 Endowed with supernatural powers from birth, Kim assassinates Konishi Yukinaga, one of Hideyoshi’s top generals, and kills a kisaeng (female Korean entertainer) who is bearing Konishi’s child. The work concludes as follows: “And that was the end of Konishi Yukinaga as it has been handed down in Korean legend. To be sure, Yukinaga did not lose his life on the battlefield during the invasion of Korea. But the Koreans are not the only ones to embellish their history. In Japan, too, the history that is taught to children—or to youth who are not so different from children—is filled to the brim with such legends.” In support of his point, the narrator cites a passage from the Nihon shoki (an ancient history of Japan) describing a Japanese military defeat on the Asian continent that is absent from Japanese history textbooks, and concludes: “Every national history is the history of that nation’s glorious deeds. The legend of General Kim is far from being the only one that deserves our laughter.”120 We must understand these works in light of the writer’s personal experience as correspondent for the Osaka Mainichi in China in 1920. Akutagawa traveled in China within one year of the May Fourth Movement, met with several Chinese in-

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tellectuals and revolutionaries, and carefully recorded in his travel journals the antiJapanese graffiti he saw there.121 In Shanghai, Akutagawa met Chang Ping Lin, a leading political figure at the time of the first Chinese revolution;122 he later described their meeting in an essay titled “Hekiken” (Distorted Views): When I visited Mr. Chang Ping Lin in the French settlement of Shanghai, we discussed Sino-Japanese relations in the study room, which had a stuffed alligator mounted on the wall. Even today, his words continue to echo in my ears. “The Japanese I most detest is the Momotarō, who conquered the land of the ogres. I can’t suppress a feeling of antipathy for Japanese who love Momotarō.” Mr. Chang is a true sage. I have heard many foreigners who are knowledgeable about Japan hold Prince Yamagata up to ridicule, praise Katsushika Hokusai to the skies, or shower abuse on Viscount Shibusawa. . . . However, up to now, I have never heard any of these so-called Japan experts utter a word of criticism about Momotarō, who was born from a peach. What’s more, Chang’s words contained more truth than all the eloquence of these experts.123

More perspicacious than other foreign “experts” on Japan, Chang unmasks the relation between a folktale hero and Japanese imperialist ideology. In an analysis of this passage, the critic Sekiguchi Yasuyoshi proposes a simple allegorical grid for reading Akutagawa’s “Momotarō”: the island of the ogres is China, the ogres are the pacifistic Chinese, Momotarō and his followers are aggressive Japanese imperialists.124 Yet Sekiguchi has little to say on the nature of this text or on its allusions to southern expansionism. A close reading of the work will help us to situate Akutagawa’s “Momotarō” more precisely within Japanese colonial discourse. Whereas Nitobe bases his didactic interpretation on the standardized Momotarō of the national school reader, Akutagawa recasts the story as a satire by mixing stylistic features of the fairy tale (for example, the formulaic “long, long ago,” mukashi, mukashi ōmukashi) with realistic details and pointed criticism. Writing for an adult reader whose familiarity with the standard versions of the folktale is assumed, Akutagawa dispenses with recapitulating whole sections of the story. “After the fruit bearing a baby inside left the deep mountain fastness, what sort of human being first retrieved him from the river? There is hardly any need for me to mention that there was an old woman at the lower end of the valley, since every child in Japan knows that she was washing clothes while her husband was out cutting firewood.”125 In addition, he plays with earlier literary versions of Momotarō, notably the works of celebrated writers such as Iwaya Sazanami and Ozaki Kōyō. Like Iwaya’s Momotarō, Akutagawa’s hero is adorned with the symbols of the nation (he has a fan with the hinomaru) and is linked to the emperor ideology (he traces the origins of Momotarō back to the creation myths of the Kojiki). Like Ozaki, Akutagawa reverses the perspective of the standard tale and attempts to tell the story from the point of view of the ogres. In the end, his chief narrative innovations consist in his icono-

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clastic attitude toward Momotarō and his portrayal of the ogres’ community as peaceful and fun-loving. Since Momotarō is identified with the Japanese nation, the writer encourages the reader to take a critical look at Japanese imperialism and to reconsider it from the perspective of the colonized. Akutagawa overturns the standard version mainly by inverting the basic elements of the tale. Rather than a hero, Momotarō is a villain driven only by his lust for power and a drive to get rich quick. If the old man and woman in the story are ordinary hard-working peasants in rural Japan, Momotarō himself is a lazy good-fornothing, who sets off to conquer the island of the ogres simply to escape from the drudgery of farm labor: “He had an aversion for the kind of life the old man and women led, going out to labor in the fields and streams.”126 By portraying Momotarō as lazy, Akutagawa reverses the conventional Japanese rhetoric about the people of the South Seas. As noted, Nitobe associated the trait of laziness with the heedless South Seas islanders (nan’yō dojin) and contrasted them with the hard-working and diligent Japanese. Far from discouraging him from leaving, the old man and woman were anxious to be rid of him since they were “at their wits end in dealing with this spoiled brat.” To send him on his way, “they willingly acquiesced to his every demand, whether it was a flag, a sword, or a battle coat. At Momotarō’s request, they also made millet dumplings as provisions for his trip.”127 For the old man and woman, Momotarō’s overseas expedition is viewed as a serendipitous solution to their problem of dealing with their headstrong and mischievous offspring. If the parents represent a metropolitan view of colonial space, they view it as a dumping ground for Japan’s social misfits. On his way to the island of ogres, Momotarō encounters three animals that he entices to join him. In these scenes, he is a manipulative leader who wins others to his cause with deception and cunning. He “naturally had no idea whether the dumplings were really the best in Japan,” but he advertises them as such.128 He is also a shrewd businessman who pulls out his abacus when the animal retainers offer to work for him. Taking full advantage of his monopolistic position, he slashes their salaries from one millet dumpling to half a dumpling per retainer.129 Rather than earning their trust and loyalty, he gains power over them by preying upon their gullibility and hunger. Instead of paragons of Confucian virtue, these three animals are perhaps allegorical figures for the three poisons (sandoku) that, according to Buddhist teaching, cause all of our misfortunes: anger, greed, and delusion. The stray dog stands not for benevolence but for anger, the clever monkey for greed, and the pheasant for delusion rather than courage. These three animals openly hate one other and fight constantly. The dog threatens the cowardly monkey with his huge fangs, the monkey with his commercial acumen feels nothing but contempt for the impractical pheasant, while the pheasant “with his expertise in seismology,”130 despises the stupid dog. Nevertheless, when the exasperated dog attacks the monkey, the pheas-

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ant interposes itself as referee and “preaches to both the ethics of loyalty and obedience.”131 Ultimately, Momotarō enforces order in the ranks of his unruly followers not by spouting the platitudes of emperor ideology but by promising them a share in the war booty. When the monkey threatens to walk out on the whole venture, he warns: “You can leave if you want. But in return, you won’t get a share of the treasures when we take over the island.”132 If the animals are a quarrelsome crew on their way to the island, they become veritable monsters when they arrive. Holding a plum banner in one hand and shaking his hinomaru fan in the other, Momotarō sets his followers free to plunder and pillage: “Attack! Attack! If you spot an ogre, kill him. Kill every last one of them!” Malnourished and brainwashed, his retainers prove brutal, not an unexpected outcome since “no one can be such a paragon of military courage as a starving animal.” The dog bites the ogre youth in half with his fangs, the pheasant pecks out the eyes of the children, and the monkey, perhaps because of his “close resemblance to man,” strangles the young ogre women to death “only after ravishing them to his heart’s delight.”133 Nitobe had treated colonization as a metaphorical rape in his essay, but there is nothing metaphorical about the rape in Akutagawa’s story. Indeed, according to one critic, Momotarō’s cruel invasion anticipates prophetically the rape of Nanjing.134 In this story, the villainous ogres are plainly Momotarō and his three animal helpers. By contrast, in the topsy-turvy world of this story, the ogres are humanized. Before Momotarō’s invasion, they are portrayed as living happy lives in peace and harmony. Just as humans are taught to fear ogres, ogre children are warned about the evils of the mythical human realm. A white-haired nurse admonishes her charges: “You had better behave yourselves or I will have to send you off to the island of human beings. You will be killed just like the kidnapper Shutendōji of ancient legend who was sent away to the human island. What are these beings like, you ask? Well, they lack horns, have pale faces, pale arms and legs. They are quite repulsive creatures . . . they are greedy, jealous and conceited liars. They like to burn things down and steal. They love to kill. There is no way to control them. They are beastly creatures.”135 Here the projection of colonial stereotypes is reversed by a change of perspective: if colonial narratives dehumanize the colonized other, Akutagawa shows how the colonized view colonizers as savage beasts. Nevertheless, Akutagawa’s “Momotarō” is not merely an allegory about universal human failings. Just as Nitobe and Tōgō discover layers of meaning in the folktale that relate to contemporary Japan, Akutagawa adds details that make his story a pointed satire on the Japanese imperialism of his time. If the peach boy symbolizes Japanese imperialism, his retainers stand for different social groups that backed and encouraged it: the war-mongering military is represented by the violent dog, Japanese capitalists by the profit-minded monkey, and deluded intellectuals by the

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pheasant.136 In Akutagawa’s satire, these different groups are unmasked as a criminal band whose words, stripped of any ideological finery, are simple justifications for pillage. However, there is a second way in which Akutagawa’s tale parodies contemporary imperialism: the setting of the story. Whereas the ogres in standard accounts are fierce fighters protected by an impregnable fortress on a craggy island, Akutagawa’s ogres live on a distant tropical island and lack any means of self-defense besides their isolation. The ogres lived on a solitary island in the far-off sea. It was not a craggy, hilly place as people tend to think. In fact, it was a beautiful natural paradise in which palm trees soared and birds of paradise chirped. The so-called ogres seemed to be a much more pleasure-loving race than we humans. The ogres in the story “How an Old Man Lost His Wen” danced the night away while the hero of “The One-Inch Boy” totally forgot the personal danger he faced when he became infatuated with the young princess he spotted at the temple. . . . In the midst of this tropical scenery, the ogres lived in peace and passed their time strumming the strings of the koto, dancing, and singing the verses of the ancient poets. The daughters and wives of the ogres wove cloth, brewed sake, made bouquets of orchids, and lived lives that were not in the least different from those of our human wives and daughters.137

Writing at a time of South Seas fever, Akutagawa sets his story not on the Asian continent but rather on a tropical island in the South Seas. Just as Nitobe has recourse to stereotypes of tropical islanders as backward savages, Akutagawa deploys the conventional tropical images (palm trees, birds of paradise, orchids, lovely moonlight, bananas, and coconuts) to depict his southern island as a tropical paradise and to cast the ogres as carefree, happy creatures, fond of drink and given to sensuality and childlike pleasures.138 Akutagawa’s ogres stand at the crossroads of at least three discourses on primitivism. In accordance with a cultural primitivism that believes that the savage is superior to the civilized, they are children who spend their time at play while civilized adults slave away at work. Second, they know nothing of warfare or sin, while their civilized counterparts are brutalized and corrupted by civilization; this is a form of spiritual primitivism associated with the biblical myth of Eden.139 Finally, the islanders are compared to ancient Japanese who play the koto and recite old narrative poems. In this allochronic primitivism, the ogres embody values associated with a more virtuous and simple past from which present-day Japanese have grown estranged. Like his novella Kappa, Akutagawa’s “Momotarō” is an allegory in which the idealized ogres are defined by reference to the humans, and are employed to criticize human society.140 Unlike the ogres in Nitobe’s essay who are defined in terms of lack (development, civilization), these islanders know contentment—it is rather Momotarō and his followers who are lacking in contentment and therefore rapacious and insatiable. Accordingly, Akutagawa

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employs two devices to make his critique of colonialism: he debunks the figure of the mythical Japanese hero (Momotarō) and idealizes the society of the ogres as a utopia. The idealized others serve as a foil which is contrasted with the flaws of the Japanese. I should add here that Akutagawa never traveled to the South Seas but was familiar with the clichés and stereotypes that circulated in Japan during the Taisho period. One of his earliest stories—“Zettō no kaiji” (Strange Event on a Desert Island)—is set on a South Seas island with palms and banana trees.141 If colonialism is portrayed as naked violence, this violence is unredeemed by any civilizing project that might justify it as a necessary means to a legitimate end. After the chief of the ogres surrenders and hands over to Momotarō the island’s treasures, he says: “I believe that we become the target of your military might because we have in the past been guilty of disrespect toward you. Nevertheless, none of us can recall the offense of which we are guilty. Could you not clarify the nature of this infraction.” “I, the greatest man in Japan, summoned the dog, monkey, and pheasant as my three faithful retainers and set forth to conquer the island of the ogres.” “In that case, what is the reason that you summoned those three individuals?” “Since I had already made up my mind to conquer the island of the ogres, I engaged the services of my retainers by giving them millet dumplings. That is enough. If you still do not understand my reasons, I will kill all of you.”142

We have seen that Nitobe characterizes colonization as the spread of civilization and as the return of the Japanese to their ancestral home. For Akutagawa, colonization is an exercise in futility. Ultimately, the conquest of the southern island brings few rewards to Momotarō and even fewer benefits to the islanders. Momotarō makes a triumphal return to his hometown with a treasure-laden cart drawn by ogre children, but he does not spend the rest of his life in the happy retirement that a conquering hero expects as his due. When the captive children grow up, they kill the pheasant, Momotarō’s personal bodyguard, and flee back to the safety of their island. Other survivors, in search of revenge, sail across the ocean to attack Momotarō’s palace, set it on fire, and kill the monkey. Troubled by nightmares, the hero confides to his loyal dog: “ ‘I am distressed that the ogres have remained so vindictive.’ ‘It is beyond comprehension,’ the dog acknowledged, ‘how the ogres can disregard the generosity their veritable master has bestowed upon them.’ ”143

In the end, Momotarō is the fatally deluded colonizer who misunderstands how his own actions galvanize and unite the colonized against him. Expecting his victims to welcome his conquest as an expression of his disinterested “generosity,” he is distressed to discover their “ingratitude” and “vindictiveness.” But as Akutagawa suggests, the peace-loving hedonistic ogres only become “revenge-seeking ogres” after their island utopia has been destroyed by Momotarō’s pillaging troops.

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Akutagawa’s satire also suggests that Momotarō has unwittingly set in motion a cycle of violence that leads to defeat of the conqueror and the decolonization of the island. Colonial conquest arouses “national” consciousness of the conquered people, awakens their desire for independence, and prods them to resist the power that enslaves them. Learning lessons from Momotarō’s tactics, the young ogres use materials readily available to build their own weapons and fight for the “independence” of their island. “On the shores of the lonely island, under the beautiful light of the tropical moon, a group of young ogres were stuffing the coconuts with explosive materials in order to carry out their plan to win independence for their island. Their eyeballs the size of tea saucers grew bright with happiness as they worked in silence, so committed to their cause that not even the charms of the lovely ogre girls could distract them.”144 The final image of this narrative—island men stuffing explosives into the hollowed-out shells of coconuts and immune to the charms of the young girls—is the poisoned fruit of colonial conquest. Colonial conquest makes any return to the former tropical paradise all but impossible. As a result of Momotarō’s conquest, the young men have forsaken their carefree lives and become ascetic militants, who are no longer distracted by “the charms of the lovely ogre girls.” In short, Akutagawa turns the propaganda figure of Momotarō on its head. Momotarō’s benign expansion toward the south is unmasked as brutal conquest and exploitation, while the gradual assimilation of the “ogres” is replaced by a story of resistance and liberation. In the end, Akutagawa’s satire shows that a folktale can be a double-edged sword: serving as a weapon for the political propagandist of Japanese imperialism and for those who wish to lampoon his arguments. MOMOTA RŌ’ S P RO G E N Y A N D “S OU T H SE A S” OR I E N TA L I SM

Akutagawa does not end his story with this scene of ogres assembling their coconut explosives. Rather, he returns to the opening of the story where he describes a mythical peach tree that gives birth to a “genius” like Momotarō only once every ten thousand years. He speculates about the other peaches ripening on the branches of the same tree. “In these mountain fastnesses unknown to human beings . . . countless other fruits are still ripening and we have no idea how many future geniuses are still sleeping within them.”145 These “future geniuses” did not take thousands or even hundreds of years to be born. They were released in the next two decades after Akutagawa’s story appeared in print in a torrent of wartime picture books, cartoons, Takarazuka plays, posters, songs, and animation. However, even before these avatars of Momotarō were enrolled to promote war and invasion, popular writers associated with the children’s literature and manga wrote about boy-heroes who set off to conquer the South Seas. Unlike Momotarō,

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these boy-heroes were not of supernatural birth and possessed neither extraordinary powers nor mythical helpers. Nevertheless, they succeeded in setting themselves up as rulers over the tropical islanders using only tricks or weapons they improvised or invented on the spot. In 1929, Yamanaka Minetarō published a short story titled “Nan’yō no Shōnen ō” (The Boy-King of the South Seas) in the widely read Shōnen Kurabu. Kenkichi, the boy-king of the title, accompanies his uncle on a trading trip to the South Seas and persuades his uncle to let him stay behind on a small island in the Pacific “because he enjoys having naked natives bow and scrape before him.” Entrusted with a revolver and a mirror from his uncle, Kenkichi gradually learns to speak the indigenous language and “feels as if he had become a native [dojin] boy.” When his uncle returns to the island a few weeks later, Kenkichi announces that he has no desire to return to Japan since he “wants to make these islands a part of Japan . . . expand the territory and eventually take over a bigger island.”146 Though he is still a boy, Kenkichi “is much smarter than the natives” and teaches them to build wooden houses, to cook and season their food, and to use fertilizer to grow their “banana, rubber, and coconut trees.” When he discovers that the islanders worship the sun god, Kenkichi tricks the islanders into believing that he is the son of the sun god by holding up the mirror given by his uncle in the palm of his hand to refract the sunlight in their direction and dazzle them. When the inhabitants of a neighboring island attack, Kenkichi drives off the invaders by firing his revolver at them and manipulating his mirror. Son of a god and protector of the island, Kenkichi becomes king of the island, names the island daiken ōkoku, using the characters of his own name, creates a national flag (a white circle on a red ground, an inversion of the colors of the Japanese flag), composes a national anthem, promulgates a constitution, establishes an army, and expands the national territory by invading and conquering neighboring territories, carrying out a mini–Meiji restoration complete with colonial expansion. He wears a “strange crown made of leaves and ivy” on his head and is borne about by his subjects on a portable throne. Two years after this story first appeared, it was reissued in book form with eight other stories and became a best seller, selling more than a hundred thousand copies.147 Perhaps the most famous of these boy-heroes was Dankichi, the hero of a popular manga that appeared in the Shōnen Kurabu from 1933 to 1939.148 Indeed, Kawamura Minato singles out the popular series Bōken Dankichi (The Adventures of Dankichi) as the epitome of a “popular Orientalism” that denigrates backward South Seas natives and contrasts them with modern Japanese. The manga recounts the adventures of a young Dankichi who drifts to Barbarian Island in the South Seas after falling asleep in his fishing boat. Shimada Keizō, the creator of Dankichi, peoples his imaginary island with fauna not ordinarily associated with Micronesia (lions, elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, camels, etc.). With the assistance of Karikō, a clever

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mouse, Dankichi establishes a private colony on the island, crowns himself king, and domesticates the wild animals and the cannibals who live there (referred to as “barbarians” and kuronbō, or “darkies”). In a sense, The Adventures of Dankichi, which was read by millions of young readers, realized on a massive scale what Nitobe had earlier proposed to a much more limited audience in his Momotarō lecture: it holds up an appealing model of Japanese imperialism to Japanese youth. In evolutionary narratives of civilization, savages were conceived of as the first stage of human development, the first rung of a ladder leading step by step to civilization; by analogy to the psychosocial development of the human individual, they were often thought of as immature and undeveloped, as living in the childhood of humanity in general. A boy hero who conquers adult savages, Dankichi represents the reductio ad absurdum of this evolutionary paradigm. Smaller and younger than the natives, Dankichi is more than their match in terms of civilization thanks to the edge provided by his primary school education and the few tokens of civilization he carries with him such as his wristwatch and shoes. These infantilized natives submit without a fight when confronted by the evidence of Dankichi’s irrefutable superiority. After crowning himself king, Dankichi proceeds to tame and educate the natives and the wild animals on the island. He introduces schools, postal services, banking, and other aspects of modern civilization to the benighted inhabitants of the island, mimicking the civilizing mission of his home country. Since he cannot pronounce their names, he assigns them numbers that are written on the front of their bodies, effectively treating the natives as a tabula rasa without a past of their own. Dankichi’s superiority over the islanders is based, not only on his membership in an advanced nation, but also on his racial difference from the natives: he is drawn with white skin while the natives are dark-skinned and called “blacks” (kuronbō).149 The racial difference between Dankichi and the natives is the source of a good part of the visual humor in the comic series. In an early episode, Dankichi daubs himself with mud to pass as black and escape detection by the natives, but he is exposed as a white when a sudden rainstorm washes off his disguise. In a later episode, the natives paint themselves white and impersonate the parents of Dankichi in order to cure the boy of his homesickness. Whether he is superior because of his race, nationality, or cultural identity, Dankichi illustrates one of the key ideas underlying colonial discourse precisely because he is portrayed as an average and unremarkable boy: that every Japanese colonizer, no matter how mediocre, is superior to any member of the conquered people, no matter how outstanding, simply by virtue of being from a conquering country. Thanks to this idea, even Dankichi, the lowest of emperor’s subjects, is immensely empowered by colonialism and the obverse side, indeed the very condition of his empowerment, is the denigration of the racially and culturally other natives.

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A latter-day Momotarō, Dankichi offers his readers an outlet for the projection of colonial fantasies onto tropical islands, which are envisioned as places marked out in advance and waiting for Japan to colonize them. His adventures suggest that colonialism is simple, fun, and, above all, within the capacity of even the most ordinary and callow Japanese. While entertaining his young readers, Dankichi also contributed to the formation of later generations of imperial subjects, empowered and disciplined by the wish-fulfilling fantasies that he enacts in their place.

4

The Colonial Eyeglasses of Nakajima Atsushi It seemed that there were many strange creatures dwelling together within me in total disorder, including miserable and revolting creatures. Nakajima Atsushi

In Shokuminchi gensō (Colonial Fantasy), Masaki Tsuneo uses the metaphor of “Western-tinted eyeglasses” to describe the mimetic and hierarchical gaze the Japanese directed at the lands and the peoples in their colonies. Before their nation began to invade Asia, the Japanese learned to look at Asia anew through Western-tinted eyeglasses. Almost four hundred years after the Europeans, Japan attempted to create a new “world” in Asia. It was called the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Needless to say, it was the political and economic culmination of Japan’s modernization. In tandem with this process, there developed a view that the different people of the world formed a pyramid with the Japanese at the top and the natives of the South Seas at the bottom. Japan just rearranged the ranking of values that it inherited from Europe and applied them to the new world it formed. . . . Japan’s invasion of Asia was not a result of its failed modernization or of its clinging to traditional culture, but of its exceptionally rapid and thorough modernization (compared with other Asian countries), for modernization is the Euopeanization of the world, and at the heart of Western modernity is the ethos of colonization.1

The metaphor of “Western-tinted eyeglasses” highlights an important element in Japan’s mimicry of Western colonialism. Japan’s modernization was not simply the mimesis of Western sociopolitical, economic, or cultural models but also the appropriation of Western ways of viewing the world. These ways of viewing, which in the West date back to the “discovery” of America by European explorers, were several centuries in the making. In the early twentieth century, Japan domesticated this Western gaze that was trained on “others,” notably those who lay beyond the borders of civilization and modernity. For that reason, Japan’s views of the people it ruled can be described as refracted through and distorted by a Western lens or 147

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filter, which is why the metaphor of eyeglasses is so compelling. At the same time that Japan donned these “Western-tinted eyeglasses,” it rearranged the Western “pyramid” of peoples to buttress its own rival claims as an imperial power when it fashioned its empire of overseas colonies. Until the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the Japanese empire existed within a framework of international legality that had been established by the Western powers and was incorporated into a global system of imperialism. In 1895, Western powers failed to come to the aid of the Taiwanese Chinese who established a “Republic of Taiwan” on the island and appealed to the West to intervene in their behalf. A decade later, Japan and the United States signed the Taft-Katsura agreement, in which Japan recognized the U.S. rule of the Philippines in exchange for U.S. recognition of Japanese rule of the Korean peninsula. And, of course, Japan ruled Micronesia under a mandate of the League of Nations. With the Kwantung army’s seizure of northeast China, Japan abandoned this framework and attempted to carve out an exclusive and autarchic sphere in East Asia no longer subject to Western surveillance and no longer needing Western recognition. Eventually, Western powers responded to Japan’s aggressions on the Asian continent with trade sanctions and stern criticisms. Whereas the Japanese had earlier viewed their empire as analogous to Western empires, they now sought to distinguish their empire from others and to expel Western powers from Asia. By expelling the West, Japan proposed to liberate Asia from imperialism and to lead Asians in a new world order. Rather than follow a preexisting model, Japan proposed itself as the new model of modern civilization and progress and defended this model with a new rhetoric of vociferous anti-imperialism. We find the clearest ideological expression of this period in the rhetoric and iconography of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, a time of unprecedented imperial overstretch and the climax of Japan’s colonial trajectory. As Masaki notes, however, the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” was paradoxically the pivotal moment in the Japanese appropriation of a Eurocentric viewpoint toward the people it colonized. In a famous wartime poster from the early 1940s, the rising sun (the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere) beams down on the Dutch East Indies as the Japanese drive out the Dutch colonizer, who is portrayed as a woman shod in wooden clogs. This woman flees in disarray and carries a small lantern whose light is already sputtering out. As she runs toward the edge of the poster, the white hand of a Japanese man in a Western business suit reaches down from the top and clasps the hand of a dark and half-naked Indonesian laborer. In this poster, the West continues to exist in the spectral form of an essentially Euro-centrist hierarchy, but the actual West (Holland) is represented as “feminine,” feeble, old-fashioned, and all but vanquished. By contrast, the Japanese exemplify the new standard of modernity, progress, and manliness.2 Under the banner of “liberating” Asians—depicted as the dark-skinned and half-naked Indonesian laborer—from Western imperialism, Japan essentially fills the position Hol-

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land had formerly occupied toward its colony. At the same time, it dons Western eyeglasses to gaze down from above upon these new colonial subjects. In accordance with European criteria, other Asian and Pacific peoples were situated several rungs lower on the racial ladder than the Japanese. What was it like for Japanese writers to wear these “Western-tinted eyeglasses,” viewing the world through their Western filter? To probe the complexities of the Japanese colonial gaze during the late colonial period, I consider the South Seas fiction of Nakajima Atsushi (1909–42). Nakajima, a writer who lived in Palau from July 1941 to March 1942, published two volumes of stories based on his experiences in Palau during the period of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In these works, he orchestrates a variety of discourses on savagery and civilization, race and climate, gender and culture, to define his position toward Micronesians and toward the West. Writing at a moment when Japan was ostensibly the “leading race” of Asia and was freeing the continent from the clutches of Western imperialism, he also expresses an anxiety about his own position as colonizer and attempts to differentiate himself as such vis-à-vis the West. While Nakajima is first and foremost a writer of Japan’s late imperial period, he is also in some ways a forerunner of the postcolonial period that ensued not long after he died. Although he is little known in the English-speaking world, Nakajima is a celebrated writer of early twentieth-century Japan. Almost every graduate of high school in postwar Japan has read his “Sangetsuki” (Record of the Mountain and the Moon) or his novella Riryō (Li Ling) in Japanese national language textbooks. These two works are based closely on Chinese language sources—the first on a fictional work from the Tang period and the second on historical records from the Han period— and have been extensively studied by Japanese literary scholars. By contrast, these scholars generally neglect the author’s South Seas fiction, dismissing it as of negligible literary value. However, I argue that this writer’s South Seas fiction not only paints a compelling picture of late imperial rule, but that it also opens a valuable window onto Japan’s literature of the colonial period generally and of Nakajima in particular. Through these works, Nakajima engages in a sustained reflection on the lens or filter through which he, a Japanese subject, regarded the people Japan colonized. He was acutely aware of his own ambivalent position as a mimetic colonizer as well as of the complicated literary debts he had contracted with earlier European writers. For all of these reasons, I find the works of this late colonial writer to be a particularly rich field to probe the peculiarities of the Japanese imperial gaze. When Masaki speaks of “Western-tinted eyeglasses,” he rightly highlights the fictional, fantastic, and constructed character of the Japanese colonial gaze.3 If the Japanese colonial gaze was fictional in nature, then it stands to reason that works of fiction may be the best place to discover its essence. At the same time, there are problems with this metaphor of eyeglasses. In the first place, when Masaki places the blame for Japan’s imperialism on its adoption of a Western standpoint, he im-

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plicitly denies Japanese agency and exonerates the Japanese from responsibility for their colonialist past. Second, Masaki’s assertion that Japanese were blinded by Western ways of viewing is, at best, a speculative hypothesis that needs to be tested. In my study of Nakajima Atsushi, I argue that this writer appropriated “Western-tinted eyeglasses,” and used them quite deliberately and self-consciously to situate himself within a Japanese empire. Far from being blind, he was quite aware that he was wearing “eyeglasses,” and even expressed anxiety and doubts about his views of the South Seas and his position as colonizer. In the end, the reader is struck by the inability of this writer to view the world through “Western-tinted eyeglasses.” To be sure, Nakajima was not necessarily a representative figure of the Japanese people as a whole, but neither was he an entirely isolated or exceptional individual. By looking at his colonial fiction, we discover that he was complex, a writer who had ambivalent feelings about his own place, about Europe and the South Seas, and about the Japanese empire he both faithfully served and grew disillusioned with. By looking closely at the narrator’s perspective in Nakajima’s fiction, I shed light on the ambivalences and aporia that characterized the Japanese colonial gaze at the end of the colonial period. NA KAJ I M A AT SU SH I’ S S OU T H SE A S A DV E N T U R E

Nakajima Atsushi was truly a child of empire. Born to a family of kangaku (Chinese studies) scholars, his paternal uncles were active in the colonial administration of Manchuria while his father was a teacher of kanbun (Chinese literature) in high schools in Korea and Manchuria. Because of his family background, Nakajima spent several years of his adolescence in Keijō (Seoul), capital of Japanesecontrolled Korea, where he graduated from the elite Keijō Middle School in 1926. He passed his school holidays traveling in Manchuria. Nakajima lived his brief life as a citizen of a large colonial power and never once traveled beyond the borders of the Japanese empire. As a writer, too, he created an imaginary world that delimited the colonial space of his time. Nakajima’s literary universe “embraces the northern and southern geographical limits of the Japanese empire during the early Showa years.”4 He set his earliest sketches and stories (published in Kōyūkai Zasshi, the magazine of the Tokyo First Higher School) in the colonial Korea and Manchuria that he had known during his childhood and adolescence.5 From 1933 to 1935, he worked sporadically on an unfinished novel titled Hoppōkō (Heading North), set in contemporary Beijing, which he traveled to after becoming a teacher at the Yokohama Girls’ School. As for works set in the south, Nakajima wrote a full-length novel in 1940 about the final years of Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa, and subsequently wrote two collections of stories based on his own experiences as a colonial official in Micronesia. This is not to say that Nakajima primarily wrote fiction that is set in the con-

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temporary Japanese empire. While he explored the exotic spaces of the empire, he was also fascinated by remote periods of history and by the customs of primitive societies—by what Victor Segalen refers to as the exotic in time. Indeed, Segalen expands the notion of exoticism beyond a geographical association with far-away places to embrace all realms of human experience: an exoticism of time, of nature, of the senses (visual, aural, olfactory, tactile), of sex and an exoticism of art. Perhaps no prewar Japanese writer was more fascinated with the different incarnations of the exotic, or approaches Segalen’s ideal of the exote, more than Nakajima Atsushi.6 In 1940, he wrote a series of stories called Kotan (Old Tales), which are set variously in ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Scythia; his most famous works are stories are set in ancient China. By contrast, he set almost none of his works in contemporary Japanese society. In July 1941, the young Nakajima resigned from his position as English and Japanese teacher at the Yokohama Girls’ School and set sail for Koror, then the administrative capital of the Japanese colony in Micronesia. When he arrived in Palau, he worked in the Regional Section of the Nan’yōchō (South Seas Agency), the government agency responsible for administering Micronesia. While Japan had seized these Micronesian territories (mainly, the three archipelagoes of the Marianas, the Carolines, and the Marshalls) from Germany in 1914, it ruled them from 1921 to 1933 under a League of Nations mandate; after it withdrew from the League in 1933, Japan continued to insist on the legality of its status as a mandatory power in Micronesia and to make annual reports to the Permanent Mandatory Commission.7 The Regional Section of the South Seas Agency was the nerve center of Japan’s new kōminka (imperialization) policies then being promoted in fields such as education, language, and culture in order to foster among the indigenous populations a sense of identification with the Japanese empire. In line with the increasing stress the authorities placed on the inculcation of the Japanese language, the South Seas Agency established a permanent position in 1941 for a language textbook editor responsible for investigating the current situation of Japanese language education in the archipelago and editing textbooks that would meet the requirements of educators in Micronesia for new teaching materials.8 Nakajima was offered this position through the good offices of an old friend from his days in the University of Tokyo, Kugimoto Hisaharu, a senior official at the Ministry of Education in charge of Japanese language education in overseas colonies. As a postwar bureaucrat with the same ministry, Kugimoto later played a central role in promoting the reputation of his college friend, championing the canonization of his works in Japanese school textbooks. Unlike the ethnographer Hijikata Hisakatsu, his closest friend when he was in Palau, Nakajima was hired as a bureaucrat to serve the assimilating project of making the Micronesians “imperial subjects” of the Japanese empire. But Nakajima was not simply taking part in a national experiment to change the natives of Micronesia into replicas of the Japanese: he clearly viewed his travel to

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the south as a personal experiment in self-transformation. Besides hoping to find a cure for his chronic asthma in the tropics, he wanted “to throw [himself] into this new and unknown environment and take a chance at discovering powers within [himself] of which [he] was not even aware.”9 In many respects, this life experiment was an unmitigated disaster. Nakajima discovered that the tropical climate exacerbated his chronic asthma and that he was by nature unsuited for bureaucratic work. After a mere eight months in Micronesia, most of which he spent touring outlying islands to visit schools, he returned to Japan on a business trip in March 1942 and resigned his charge with the agency. In letters from his period of residence in Palau, Nakajima expressed disillusionment with Japan’s colonial education policy generally and with his job as textbook reviser in particular. In a diary entry of November 28, 1941, he describes in unflattering terms the ultranationalistic and militaristic education being dispensed by the schools:10 I am shocked by the harsh treatment meted out to pupils by principal and teacher alike. Several students, who are unable to pronounce Okuninushi no mikoto are forced to stand up and practice saying it over and over for hours.11 A young boy in a pink shirt (evidently the classroom leader) angrily reprimands the other students by brandishing a short stick in his hand. Generally, this class leader walks around the classroom during the lesson and is ordered to administer a beating to students who are loafing off. What kind of school insists that students must have military orders barked out at them—one! two!—just in order to take off their caps!12

In a letter to his wife dated November 9, 1941, Nakajima writes of his job in the following terms: Now after the tour [of inspection to the schools of eastern Micronesia], I have come to see the utter meaningless of this job of editing textbooks for the natives. To make the natives happy, there are many things of far greater importance than textbooks, which are a triviality, the last thing they really need. In the present conditions in nan’yō, we have more and more trouble providing them with adequate food and shelter. At such a time what good would it do even if I were to produce a slightly improved textbook? Providing the natives with a half-baked education may only deepen their misfortune. I no longer feel the least zeal for my job as editor. It is not because I hate the natives. It is because I love them.13

In another letter to his father dated November 6, he notes the drastic worsening of exploitation of the islanders as the Japanese military launched a large-scale plan to fortify the islands in preparation for the Pacific War. In his study of the history of the nan’yō, Mark Peattie describes the effect these war preparations had on the ordinary lives of the Micronesians: “The confiscations, conscription of labor, and preemptions of Micronesian land and property were common to all the islands where there were substantial Japanese garrisons and worked to corrode whatever sympathies the Islanders may have had toward the Japanese.”14 As Nakajima real-

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ized that the government’s priorities had shifted to war mobilization, he grew even more disillusioned with his bureaucratic job. “In the present emergency situation, education of the natives is hardly a priority. It seems that the policy of the authorities is to treat the natives as an expendable labor force to be exploited at will. In these circumstances I have totally lost even the little enthusiasm for my job that I had before.”15 Nevertheless, Nakajima was not simply a disgruntled and disillusioned colonial official. After returning to Japan, he wrote two collections of stories based on his experiences in Palau, Nantōtan (Tales of the Southern Islands) and Kanshō (Atolls). Both of these collections were published for the first time in November 1942 in a book titled Nantōtan, one of two volumes of the author’s works published during his lifetime, which also included a series of works set in ancient China and two semiautobiographical works. The editors of the latest complete edition of Nakajima’s works speculate that most of these nan’yō stories were written in August or September of 1942.16 L E A R N I NG TO SE E T H ROU G H W E ST E R N EY E G L A S SE S

In order to bring to light the literary sources of Nakajima’s vision of the South Seas, before I turn to the above works based on the author’s experiences in Micronesia, I would like to briefly consider the representation of the South Seas in his works before he traveled to Palau. As I hope to show, Nakajima encountered the textual “South Seas” long before he set foot in its geographical counterpart. In fact, he journeyed to the real South Seas partly to behold with his own eyes images that he had first discovered in literary texts. For example, Nakajima reveals in his diaries and letters from his time in Palau that he was happiest when the nature of the South Seas imitated art: that is, when real places approximated the fantasy of a “primitive” paradise he sought. During a tour of the Marshall Islands, he writes to his wife Taka: “I like Jaluit best of all the islands I have visited because it is the most uncivilized and the closest to the South Seas of [Robert Louis] Stevenson.” In an entry to his diary dated September 29, 1941, he notes: “After daylong preparations for the banquet were completed, the young girls came to the banquet hall in the evening, singing and carrying garlands of flowers in their hands, which they placed on the head and shoulders of each of the guests. The bonfire, the oven of hot stones, the many tasty dishes, etc. It was exactly like the world of Stevenson and (Pierre) Loti.”17 In these statements, Stevenson and Loti supply the standard against which reality is to be measured—a standard that is tantamount to the standard of civilization itself. By contrast, the authentic South Seas is, almost by definition, “uncivilized.” In noting that Nakajima discovers the South Seas through the texts that he reads, I do not mean to say that he was passively “influenced” by Western writers and sim-

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ply reproduced their vision of the South Seas. On the contrary, he actively adopted these writers as models and appropriated their stance in order to establish his own position as a writer. One can find an early example of this process of emulation and appropriation in a tanka sequence called “Henreki” (Pilgrimages), written in 1937 but first published after the author’s death. This sequence mirrors traditional Japanese aesthetics in which the poet masters his craft by aligning himself with former masters. As the final tanka in the sequence indicates, the poet creates his own “soul” or identity through this imaginary pilgrimage and transmigration through the souls of those writers with whom he chooses to identify. “How my soul has traveled afar now that I approach the age of thirty.”18 In addition to showing how a writer seeks to master his craft by seeing the world through the eyes of his consciously chosen predecessors, I would argue that these poems are meaningful in the context of Nakajima’s apprenticeship to a colonial view of the world. Let us consider the following lines from two poems in “Henreki”: “At times I wish I could feel the power of life in the raw like Gauguin. . . . At times, I want to plunge into Stevenson’s beautiful dreams and be intoxicated.”19 Here the young Nakajima wishes to experience the South Seas by replicating the emotions and dreams of two artists that epitomize South Seas exoticism. By adopting the point of view of these Western artists, he experiences the South Seas as a dream of primitive and “raw” life—that is, the contrary of the urban, industrial society—and is “intoxicated” with his dream. At the time he wrote “Henreki,” Nakajima was a young dilettante content to formulate imaginary projects without actually realizing them. However, a few years later, he carried out one of these projects—one with clear South Seas connotations. In 1940, a year before he departed for Palau, Nakajima entrusted a manuscript about Robert Louis Stevenson entitled Tsusitara no shi (The Death of Tsusitala) to the editor Fukuda Kyūya. Fukuda later arranged for the work to be published in the May 1942 issue of the literary periodical Bungakukai (Literary World) under the title Hikari to kaze to yume (Light, Wind, and Dreams). The editor apparently renamed the book because the word death in the original manuscript was thought inauspicious after the outbreak of the Pacific War. This novel, a fictional autobiography based on Stevenson’s last years in Samoa, was nominated by members of the Japanese literary establishment as a candidate for the fifteenth Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award, but it failed to win. Nor, however, did any of the other five nominees; for the second time since the establishment of the Akutagawa Prize in 1935, the jury chose not to make an award that year. Yasuoka Shotarō, who was on the Akutagawa prize jury, remembers his own first impressions after reading the manuscript: “It did not appear to be a rebellious work that was out of line with national policy of the time. However, I felt there was something in the work that journalism of the time might shy away from, for fear of what the military authorities might say. At the same time, I am not sure where in the work this concern came from.”20

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This “fictional autobiography” is an odd hybrid that defies easy classification, combining as it does imaginary scenes with translated passages from Stevenson’s writings, especially his Vailima Letters but also from many other works, including Footnote to History, In the South Seas, Essays, Memories and Portraits, and Stevenson’s poems. Formally, the text alternates between entries in the diary of the putative narrator, “Stevenson,” written in the first person, and a biography of Stevenson’s years in Samoa (1890–94) told by an omniscient narrator.21 This narrative instability produces a jarring effect on the reader, a fact that may account for the somewhat ambivalent and strained reception the work received when it was first published. Under the guise of writing Stevenson’s diary, Nakajima regularly and anachronistically inserts his own opinions on the contemporary literary scene of Japan into Stevenson’s mouth, a fact that tends to blur the boundaries between character and narrator. For that reason, most critics who have read this work are in agreement that “Nakajima has infused much of his own beliefs into the portrait.”22 In addition, Light, Wind, and Dreams is a critique of late nineteenth-century Western meddling in Samoa—a critique that is voiced by Stevenson. At the same time, however, the work can be read as an allegory about the Japanese colonization of the South Seas and the figure of Stevenson can be seen as a stand-in for the narrator. The author of Light, Wind, and Dreams invites such an interpretation by his oscillation between first- and third-person modes of narration style and by his tendency to use Stevenson as a spokesman for his own views. In Japan, with its tradition of writing highly subjective first-person novels, readers and critics alike are accustomed to read first-person narratives as confessions. When Nakajima’s book first appeared in print, critics were quick to observe that the author had left for the South Seas shortly after completing the manuscript, perhaps contributing to a blurring of writer and character. Accordingly, when Stevenson expresses critical views of Western imperialism in Samoa, the reader can also construe his remarks as expressing the author’s negative opinions about Western empire, and indirectly, criticism of Japanese colonial policies.23 Perhaps a second reason for the book’s ambivalent reception is that the protagonist, Stevenson, is especially critical of Germany’s role in Samoa at a time when Germany was an ally of Japan. Nakajima clearly identified strongly with Stevenson in this “diary,” particularly with his protagonist’s critical attitude toward European imperialism and his attraction to the “primitive” islanders. From the opening passage, Samoa is refracted through the vision of a European artist who seeks spiritual renewal through contact with a “primitive” people: “Love the sun, the land and all living creatures, scorn wealth, give alms to the one that asks, and consider the white’s man’s civilization as nothing but a great prejudice. Stride side by side with uneducated but strong people, feel the pleasant sensation of blood pulsing under your skin wet from labor in the wind and the bright light. . . . Say only what you truly think and do only what you really want to do. This was his new life.”24

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The novel ends the story with the death of “Tsusitara,” a Samoan word meaning a “storyteller,” which had become Stevenson’s title among the Samoans. “Just as the people of South Seas are inebriated with the joy of life, they are overcome with despair and grief in the face of death. As tears streamed down his bronzed and wrinkled face, the old chief whispered in a low voice. Tofa [sleep]! Tsusitara.”25 Tsusitara thus ends his life surrounded by the islanders who loved him and accepted him as the teller of their story. In a study of Nakajima, Wada Hirobumi poses an intriguing question about this odd literary work: why did Nakajima choose to entrust (takusō) to himself the writer Robert Louis Stevenson?26 Wada points to the many obvious affinities Nakajima had with the Scottish writer: both men were writers of “tales,” both were physically frail, and both were fascinated by the exoticism of the South Seas.27 However, this reasoning is based partly on a retrospective illusion: that is, it compares the Stevenson in Samoa with Nakajima as canonized by his postwar critics rather than with Nakajima at the time he wrote this novel. Unlike Robert Louis Stevenson, an author with an international reputation by the time he moved to Samoa, Nakajima was a virtually unknown writer who was working as a teacher of English and Japanese in the Yokohama Girls’ School at the time he wrote Light, Wind, and Dreams. I would argue that, on the contrary, Nakajima discovers the exoticism of the South Seas precisely by putting himself in Stevenson’s position: that is, by writing this book, he assumes Stevenson’s position and the South Seas becomes the South Seas of Robert Louis Stevenson. For Nakajima, Stevenson was not a mirror in which he could see a reflection of himself but a model he sought to emulate, vicariously, by writing. If we compare the geopolitical position of these two men, we will discover a similarity of perhaps greater significance than the superficial connections that one can point to between the two authors’ biographies. As a creative writer living at the peak of the Japanese empire, Nakajima stood in a position toward the South Seas in 1940 analogous to that of Stevenson to Samoa in the 1890s. By telling the story of Stevenson in Samoa as a “fictional autobiography,” Nakajima both fused himself with Stevenson and mastered his perspective on the South Seas. To understand the true significance and the novelty of this geopolitical similarity, it will be fruitful to compare the perspective of Stevenson in Nakajima’s novel (written half a century after Stevenson’s death) with that of a Japanese contemporary of Stevenson, Shiga Shigetaka. The young Shiga wrote Nan’yō jiji (Conditions of the South Seas) in 1887, a year after spending ten months cruising the South Seas on the Navy training vessel Tsukuba. In a chapter titled “Tangaroa shinrei no yume monogotari” (Dream Story of the God Tangaloa), Shiga offers an account of Samoa’s loss of independence, which overlaps with the plot of Light, Wind, and Dreams. Both works stress the devastat-

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ing effects of Western colonization upon Samoa and denounce the destructive meddling in Samoan affairs by England, America, and Germany. The chief difference between these two accounts lies not in the events they narrate but rather in the position of the narrator toward these events. Shiga implicitly identifies not with the white settlers who came to Samoa but rather with the Samoan victims of Western imperialism. In Shiga’s account, a Samoan god appears to him in a dream and addresses him as follows: “Are you not a man of the yellow race? I will set before you the grievances that fill my breast.” That is, Shiga is addressed precisely because he is not white and because he can empathize with the grievances of the Samoans. The god then explains how the Germans have used trickery and force to seize control of his country at a time when all of Europe is in a “colonial fever,” scurrying to grab the last remaining lands of the South Seas. In his closing words, he issues the following warning to Shiga: “In the end, Samoa will probably not be able to secure its independence because of a combination of domestic unrest and foreign interference. If you make it back to Japan safely, I want you to let your countrymen know about recent events in Samoa and to take them as a warning for your future. In the future you should strive to avoid mistakes such as defying the laws of biological evolution and worshipping all Western things and intoxicating yourself with Western ways.”28 When Shiga sets down this god’s account of how Samoa lost its independence, he offers us a Samoan perspective on the South Seas as well as on Europe. Addressed by the god, Shiga is invited to think of Samoa as an example of the dangers presented by the Western imperialist threat from which Japan—as a colored nation—can learn a valuable lesson. Recounting the same series of events fifty years later in Light, Wind, and Dreams, Nakajima completely reverses Shiga’s perspective. Rather than offer a Samoan point of view on Europe, he tells us about Samoa as seen by a European: Stevenson. Samoa is no longer the example from which Japan can learn a useful lesson, nor is it a “warning” for its future. Rather, Stevenson, the romanticist, becomes the figure to emulate. In adopting Stevenson’s—that is a Westerner’s—perspective, Nakajima depicts the South Seas both as an antidote to the ills of civilization and as a tropical paradise under threat from the same civilization. Perhaps the political significance of Light, Wind, and Dreams lies in this fusion not only of writer and character, of Nakajima and Stevenson, but also of the British empire in 1890 and the Japanese empire in 1940, of Stevenson’s criticism of Western imperialism and of the rhetoric of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.29 As we have seen, even the Samoans in the novel view Stevenson as their benefactor and choose him as their storyteller. As I hope to show, the works Nakajima wrote after traveling to Micronesia are written from a similar point of view, but with some significant changes: a Japanese narrator substitutes himself for Stevenson and he writes about a Japanese colony rather than a European one.

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DE C OLON I Z I NG NA KAJ I M A AT SU SH I

Did Nakajima realize that he was looking for a South Seas that he had first discovered in Western fiction? And was he conscious that he was copying Stevenson’s romanticist vision of the South Seas? At first glance, Nakajima would seem to be a writer blinded by his “western eyeglasses” (to use Masaki Tsuneo’s term). However, if we examine the South Seas stories he wrote after his experiences in Palau, he seems to anticipate (rather than illustrate) the theories of Masaki Tsuneo precisely by his very conscious endeavor to situate himself within the Japanese empire. In 1942, Nakajima wrote a short story called “Mahiru” (High Noon), which is included in his anthology Atolls. In this story, a Japanese narrator chides himself for his stereotyped images of the South Seas.30 Appropriately, the story begins with the narrator “opening his eyes” onto a scene resembling some of the picture postcards of Micronesia that Nakajima regularly sent to his family back in Japan. “When I went to look out at the offing, a bright scarlet triangular sail slicing the mackerel blue waters made my eyes open wide. The sailboat was just about to reach the limit where the reef turns into the open sea. Judging by the sunlight, it must have been about noon.”31 Reflecting on the reasons that drove him to come to the South Seas, the narrator recalls the frigid mists of the north and the thoughts that had tormented him the year before:32 “I could no longer deliberately summon up from my memory the vivid sensation of the winter cold penetrating my flesh. At the same time, the many cares I had once been tormented with in the north were now nothing but memories of indifferent matters which remained as vague shadows that now hovered on the other side of a membrane of happy oblivion.”33 The narrator finds himself enveloped by a “membrane of happy oblivion” although it is not clear whether this “membrane” is a product of his own consciousness or a property of his external environment.34 This membrane filters out what he would prefer to not to see, particularly the memories that “hover like vague shadows” on its other side. As soon as the narrator refers to this “membrane” of forgetfulness that covers his consciousness in the south, a second “person within him” interrupts his monologue to ask him some embarrassing questions about his true motives for traveling to the South Seas: did he not travel to the south “to throw himself into this new and unknown environment and take a chance on discovering powers within himself of which he was not even aware”? This second, “nasty” self then rips apart the membrane of “happy oblivion” which protected him. Then this nasty fellow inside me addressed me: I don’t mind if you sought only idleness and inaction. Provided, that is, that you are truly without regrets—but are you truly freed from the ghost of modernity, of Europe, of the artificial world? The fact remains that wherever you happen to be, you are always yourself. You are always the same whether you are walking in the slightly chilly Jingū Park where the gingko leaves are falling or whether you are stuffing yourself with the breadfruit roasted on hot stones

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with the other islanders. You are not the slightest bit different. The bright light and the hot wind only cover your consciousness for a short time with a thick veil. Perhaps you think that you are gazing out at the glittering sea and sky at this moment. Or maybe you flatter yourself that you are looking at them with the same gaze as the islanders. What an absurd idea! In reality you are not even trying to look at the sea and sky. You have your eyes turned toward the space that lies beyond them but in your heart you keep reciting over and over again, as though it were a kind of magic incantation, the words, “Elle est retrouvée!—Quoi ?—L’éternité. C’est la mer melée au soleil.” [Rimbaud: It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea mixed with the sun.] You’re not even trying to look at the islanders. All you can see are reproductions of Gauguin paintings. And you are not looking at Micronesia either. All that you see are pale copies of the Polynesia depicted by Loti and Melville. How can you discover eternity with those pale (shells) blinders you wear on your eyes. You pathetic creature!35

How does this nasty second self diagnose the narrator’s optical problem? First, when he claims that the narrator is haunted by the “ghost of modernity,” he implies that his distorted view of the south is a hallucination. Next, he traces this distorted vision to a veil covering the narrator’s consciousness, caused by the “bright light and hot wind,” that is, an external obstacle that might easily be removed. Finally, he challenges the narrator—now addressed deprecatingly as “you pathetic creature”—with the diagnosis that he cannot see the reality before his eyes because he wears “shells” on them, which filter any external stimulus before it reaches his consciousness. But how did the narrator allow these shells to usurp the place of his living eyes? Here this second voice tells him that he is not even trying to look at the sky and seas with “the same gaze as the islanders” because he has his eyes “turned toward the space that lies beyond them.” And this “space that lies beyond” is nothing other than the position of Europe from which the narrator turns his gaze on the people of the South Seas. At that point, a third voice enters what had hitherto been a dialogue: “But you had better take care. Primitive is not the same thing as health, nor is idleness. There is nothing more dangerous than a mistaken flight from civilization.”36 Here Nakajima has penetrated to the crux of the matter—for the narrator who can only see “reproductions of Gauguin paintings” and “pale copies of the Polynesia depicted by Loti and Melville” uncovers his own mimicry of a European tradition of “flight from civilization” and of pursuit of primitive health. The Japanese colonizer, who has internalized the vision of the European artists, sees copies that are twice removed from the realities of the South Seas, which have therefore become “pale” and lost their hue. In a study of Western representations of Tahiti, Robert Nicole has argued that the stereotype of the South Seas as primitive paradise was invented by Western artists and writers seeking to escape from their own urban, industrial civilization: it was imagined as the “other” of Europe, unspoiled nature as opposed to civilized artifice, primitive physicality as opposed to the “ghost of modernity.”37 These writers pro-

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duced texts that “created the very reality they appear to describe.” As a result of constant repetition and outright plagiarism, their texts formed “a tradition, or what Michel Foucault calls a discourse, whose material presence and weight, not the originality of a given author, is really responsible for the texts produced out of it.”38 The narrator of “High Noon” tries to intoxicate himself with this textual South Seas when he repeats the words of Rimbaud’s poem like “a magic incantation,” but the formula has clearly lost its magic: all that remains are stereotypes and pale copies. Instead, he is prodded by his inner voices to become aware of his hidden “self-colonization” as the first step in a process of decolonization. In the end, the narrator apparently acknowledges that these “eyeglasses” can never really belong to him: “People who do not fear to look at the world with their own eyes, rather than with borrowed eyes, are always healthy no matter what their surroundings.”39 This narrator who confesses that he sees only a pale, stereotypical copy of the South Seas goes on to describe himself as a cultural hybrid, a multiplicity of fragmentary and partial selves, none of which is pure: “In any case, it seemed that there were many strange creatures dwelling together within me in total disorder, including miserable and revolting creatures.”40 Long before he set off for Palau, Nakajima had explored the theme of mimicry and cultural hybridity in his short story “Kamereon nikki” (The Chameleon Diary). Like the narrator of “High Noon,” the first-person narrator of this diary is fascinated with the tropics. A teacher of natural history, he finds that his craving for tropical exoticism is satisfied when he is asked to look after a chameleon presented to his school: “The exoticism that had lain dormant for so long came alive again with the unexpected appearance of this rare, little animal.” Yet at the end of the story, the narrator finds an image of himself in the mirror offered by this animal, famous for its ability to change its body color at will. Like the chameleon, the narrator’s identity is multiple and mixed: “In the final analysis, to what extent is my way of looking at things really my own? Like the jackdaw in Aesop’s tales, I have a few feathers of Leopardi, a few of Schopenhauer, a few more of Lucretius, some from Zhuang-zi and Lie-zi, and a few from Montaigne: what an ugly bird!” Just as the narrator in Nakajima’s early “Chameleon Diary” depicts himself as a bird of many feathers,41 the narrator of “High Noon” describes himself as “a clown who craftily wears the mask of Voltaire or a fake gentleman-scholar decked out in the trappings of ancient China?”42 The copy is treated as parody (the clown) and counterfeit (the fake gentleman-scholar). In these examples, the narrator expresses a sense of inauthenticity because of his mimicry of ancient China and the modern West, the two ancestors from which so much of Japanese culture is the hybrid descendant. Japanese literature, in particular, descends from the kanji culture of East Asia and Western cultures introduced after the Meiji Restoration. Nakajima Atsushi is here expressing a sense of cultural colonization from which no Japanese writer could have been totally free.43 In “High Noon,” the narrator realizes that the concepts of identity that he had

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taken for granted—that he had a unitary self and belonged to a pure culture—are perhaps only fantasies with which he was deluding himself. Unlike Homi Bhabha, who celebrates postcolonial hybridity and diaspora, the narrator does not experience this condition as a form of emancipation, but rather as a painful awakening from a bout of intoxication. One could imagine that, after having discovered his own self-colonization, the narrator would react by embracing the “authentic” Japanese identity that preexisted the nation’s self-colonization. Like many writers of this period, the narrator both yearns nostalgically for the cultural wholeness associated with tradition and realizes that there is no turning back to Japan’s premodern past.44 Near the end of the story, he recounts a dream from the night before in which he found himself at a kabuki theater. Curiously, he was not there to watch a play, but was rather looking at the goods on display in a souvenir shop: Japanese sweets, portraits of kabuki actors, and so on. “I don’t particularly care for the kabuki theater. Naturally I have even less interest in souvenir shops. Why did I suddenly recall this superficial fragment of my life in Tokyo—so totally without meaning and content— when I was listening to the sound of coconuts falling from the trees near the native’s house thatched with palm leaves on this tiny island surrounded by the vast Pacific Ocean?”45 This meaningless fragment of his life has occurred unbidden to another part of his divided self, another one of the “strange creatures” that live within him, alongside “a clown who craftily wears the mask of Voltaire or the fake gentlemen decked out in the trappings of ancient China.” By stressing that he does not even enjoy kabuki, Nakajima’s protagonist refuses to privilege his sense of belonging to a Japanese culture above his “Western” or “Chinese” identities: the wardrobe of masks, costumes, and other trappings that make up his composite self. In addition, the narrator encounters not the kabuki stage but the kabuki souvenir shop in which the dramatic art has already been reduced to commercialized cliché. To the extent that he attempts to return to a fixed cultural identity as a Japanese, he is likely to do nothing more than embrace commodified stereotypes as in his dream. “High Noon” offers no easy solutions to the problem of identity: homelessness and cosmopolitanism are the ineluctable conditions of the postcolonial self. “M A R I YA N” : W R I T E R , E T H NO G R A P H E R , A N D NAT I V E I N F OR M A N T

In the same collection in which “High Noon” was published, Nakajima wrote a short story called “Mariyan” (Mariyan), the portrait of an indigenous woman of the South Seas. In an essay on postcolonialism in the Japanese context, Nakamura Kazue refers to “Mariyan” as the start of postcolonial literature in Japanese.46 I will treat this story as a Janus-faced work, which simultaneously looks back at the colonial period and forward to our postcolonial present. “Mariyan” is an episodic work in which nothing really happens. The narrator

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meets Mariyan at the house of his friend H, a Japanese ethnographer and long-term resident in Micronesia. H tells the narrator of Mariyan’s past, her education, and her family background. The narrator describes Mariyan, tries to explain her, and occasionally cites her opinions. He also hints that Mariyan may enter into a romantic involvement with him or perhaps with H; in the end, this romance fails to occur. At the end of the story both Japanese men suddenly return to Japan, ostensibly on a temporary trip. Writing from Japan (naichi) a few months later, the narrator reminisces and wonders what Mariyan is thinking. Although he ends his story in Japan, he continues to be haunted by this Micronesian woman. The narrator of “Mariyan” works for the colonial government but he is hardly a “typical” bureaucrat. He says of himself: “I have a rather odd character, so I was completely unable to be myself in my dealings with all of my colleagues in the Palau government office; aside from Mr. H, I had no other person that I could really call my friend.”47 Due to his “odd character,” the narrator neither fits into his government office nor gets along with his colleagues. By emphasizing the peripheral position he occupies in the bureaucracy and the eccentricity of his character, this narrator appears to disavow his authority as a colonial bureaucrat.48 Thus, at least in his own eyes, the narrator of “Mariyan” occupies a dual position: officially, he is an agent of authority but unofficially he is a nonconformist who keeps his distance from institutional authority.49 From this dual position, he simultaneously expounds colonial discourse on South Seas and subverts it by exposing its incoherence and contradictions. If the narrator is a reluctant colonizer, H is an expert on Micronesia culture. H is modeled after Hijikata Hisakatsu (1900–1977), a Japanese ethnographer who lived in Micronesia for thirteen years and befriended Nakajima during his stay in Palau. Born into an aristocratic family, he studied sculpture at Tokyo University of the Fine Arts but set off for Japanese-ruled Micronesia in 1929 and remained there until 1942. In an essay entitled Waga seishun no toki (The Days of My Youth), he explained why he chose to go to the South Seas rather than to Paris—then the international capital of the art world—after graduating from art school. After the First World War, he notes, major European artists often drew their inspiration from the art forms of “primitive” and “undeveloped” people of Africa. Rather than go to Paris to study “primitive” art, he reasoned that he should experience “primitive” art directly. Fortunately, at this time, the Japanese empire included one territory inhabited by bona fide “primitives.” “If it was just a matter of going to Paris to bring back France & Africa primitivism, would it not be more splendid to create a Japan & Primitive in the South Seas?”50 For Hijikata, Micronesia was plainly an analogue to French colonies in Africa. Consequently, he did not need to take the long detour of studying “primitive” art by going to Paris but should rather follow the example of French artists who went directly to Africa. Hijikata saw his own artistic project in imperial, indeed in geopolitical terms at a time when Japan had become a great empire.

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Hijikata, who wrote this essay in 1968, adds with a touch of sarcasm: “Such were the distorted (views) of those like me who did not go to Europe.” Though he compared his own trajectory to that of the European modernists, he differed from them in one important respect: Picasso, for example, actually encountered African art in ethnographic museums in Paris. In fact, Hijijkata more closely resembled Gauguin, the paradigmatic artist fleeing to the primitive South Seas, and for that reason he is referred to sometimes as the “Japanese Gauguin.”51 In his long untitled farewell poem to Tokyo, included in his Days of My Youth, he writes of his desire to be reborn amid the primitive sun and scenery of the tropics: “I crossed to a small South Seas island and spent fifteen years living and playing with the naked natives. . . . There I ripped away the extra baggage which had accumulated and stuck to me from the time of my birth and upbringing: these did not even serve as good accessories.”52 For this writer, civilization is nothing but useless baggage from which he desires to be free. However, it would be hasty to dismiss Hijikata as a “wannabe Gauguin,” much as it would be to shelve Nakajima as a “would-be Stevenson.” In Palau, Hijikata started as a teacher of sculpture in island schools, but he later devoted himself singlemindedly to ethnographic research.53 In 1931 he moved to Sawatal, a tiny island in the eastern end of the Yap archipelago, inhabited by only 280 people, and he spent the next seven years living according to the customs of the islanders and studying their culture. Afterward, he published an ethnographic diary based on the notes he kept during his first year in Sawatal, called Ryūboku (Driftwood). Returning to Palau in 1939, he worked part-time for the South Seas Agency, organized ethnographic surveys, and published a series of ethnographic studies. An acknowledged authority on Micronesian culture, he befriended writers and artists who visited Micronesia, including Nakajima Atsushi.54 In the story “Mariyan,” H serves as mediator between the narrator and Mariyan, and, more generally, between the narrator and Palauan society and culture. He plays a role not unlike that which Hijikata Hisakatsu performed with respect to the writer Nakajima in real life. As an intimate friend, Nakajima enjoyed free and untrammeled access to Hijikata’s notebooks and diaries and reworked material he found there when he wrote his stories. In Aotokage no yume (Dream of the Blue Lizard), Hijikata notes that Nakajima cobbled together two separate entries from Hijikata’s journal to create the plot of the story “Niwatori” (Hens). He modestly concludes: “A real writer will end up writing a well-structured short tale using only these simple raw materials.”55 Yet, Nakajima’s borrowings were not restricted to using “raw materials” from the ethnographer’s writings. The narrator of “Hens,” who collects religious artifacts in Palau, bears more than a passing resemblance to the real Hijikata.56 In the December 19, 1941, entry of his diary, Nakajima mentions that he based his story “Naporeon” (Napoleon) on two different anecdotes taken from Hijikata’s draft manuscript “Nanpō ritōki” (An Account of the Outlying Southern Islands). As these two examples suggest, Nakajima actively used Hijikata’s jottings

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and ethnographic notes to write his own South Seas fiction.57 In addition, Hijikata served as a filter for the writer to interpret the realities of Micronesia. In “Mariyan,” Nakajima provides the reader with a candid portrait of his friend and intellectual mentor during his time in Micronesia. If the narrator is a somewhat reluctant colonialist and Hijikata an ethnographic expert, Mariyan is an exemplary product of the policies of assimilation that the narrator half-heartedly implements. Nakajima probably had a real model in mind when he composed “Mariyan.” In diary entries dating from his stay in the South Seas, he refers to two encounters with a young Palauan woman named Maria, and both entries bear a striking resemblance to corresponding episodes of “Mariyan.” In the first entry, dated December 21, 1941, he describes an evening spent at the home of Hijikata Hisakatsu, where he samples a variety of local foods for the first time. He adds, “Maria treated us to a feast today.” In the second, dated December 31, he mentions going out for a stroll late at night with Hijikata and a few other men. Maria “is invited” to join them on a walk to the Koror pier where they relax by the side of a pool.58 The corresponding passages from the story “Mariyan” are as follows: “Sometimes, Mariyan would bring some Palauan dishes that she cooked to H’s place and entertain us. Whenever that happened, I would always partake of the feast. It is thanks to Mariyan that I had my first taste of such delicacies as binllumm, a dumpling made of tapioca wrapped in bamboo leaves and a sweet dessert called titinl.” And: “There was a bright moon on the evening of December 31 last year; we—that is, H, Mariyan, and myself—were taking a stroll and enjoying the cool evening breeze that brushed against our skin.”59 Rather than explore whether his depiction of Mariyan bears any resemblance to the real model on which he based his portrait, I examine the coherence of Mariyan as a discursive creation. The character Mariyan attended a girls’ high school (jogakkō) in Japan, is a voracious reader, and is a polyglot intellectual in her own right. She is introduced to the narrator as H’s Palauan language teacher: she stops by regularly to help him transcribe ancient Palauan narrative poems and translate them into Japanese. Related on her mother’s side to the most distinguished family in Palau, Mariyan is also the foster child of a character named William Gibbon, who once served as interpreter to the German ethnographer Augustin Kramer (1865–1941), when the Germans ruled Micronesia.60 Accordingly, Mariyan is second in a line of culturally hybrid native mediators-informants between Palau and its successive colonial ethnographers. The mention of Kramer is the first appearance of a recurring motif in this story. H and Mariyan are represented here as reenacting an earlier colonial relationship first performed by the pair Kramer and Gibbon during the period when Micronesia was ruled by Germany. But the narrator takes this theme of replication one step further: hearing H mention William Gibbon, the narrator immediately associates his name with the famous Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall

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of the Roman Empire, treating William Gibbon not as a recurrence but rather as a colonial double or ironic parody of the renowned English historian. “Mariyan” begins with the narrator’s declaration, “Mariyan is the name of a woman whom I got to know quite well in the southern islands.” As a general rule, the narrator relies on two sources for the knowledge he conveys to us about Mariyan: the first is the secondhand information he obtains from the ethnographer H, and the second is his firsthand and personal knowledge. For example, it is largely through H’s mediation that the narrator comes to hear about Mariyan’s family background, her education, her marriage and divorce. The narrator introduces H as an authoritative expert on Palau, qualified to represent its people and to speak on their behalf. An early exchange exemplifies the narrator’s reliance on H as privileged commentator on the Micronesian environment. In her presence, the narrator asks H whether Mariyan speaks English. “Laughing, Mr. H looked at Mariyan and said, ‘Does she know English? Why, English is her forte. She attended an upper school for girls in Japan [naichi].’ ” Mariyan looked slightly embarrassed, but her thick lips broke into a smile and she made no attempt to deny what H had said.”61 Rather than questioning Mariyan directly, the narrator prefers to have his information filtered through H’s expertise. Mariyan is the topic of their conversation but does not take part in it; at most, she assents to what is said about her or, to be precise, makes “no attempt to deny” it. As a spectator who observes Mariyan from a distance and records the effect that she makes on him, the narrator also relies on his own direct observation to form his opinions. His position in the scene where he first meets Mariyan typifies his perspective as an interested bystander: he is introduced to her in H’s room and then left to observe as H and Mariyan proceed with their language lesson. It is worthwhile to reflect on the structure of this narrative gaze, particularly on its nonreciprocity. While the narrator is free to react to Mariyan at his leisure, Mariyan does not return his gaze or scrutinize him. She is exposed and vulnerable, whereas the narrator is insulated by his privilege. Indeed, one could characterize his point of view as a form of voyeuristic surveillance—Mariyan is primarily apprehended as an object placed under surveillance. This voyeurism is not simply a psychological peculiarity of the narrator but a fundamental narrative structure of “Mariyan.” Peeping out of my window, I saw Mariyan cutting weeds in a nearby banana field. She must have been performing the labor service that was imposed on the women of the island from time to time. Besides Mariyan, there were several other women bending over among the grasses and holding sickles in their hands. She was probably not whistling to get my attention—Mariyan frequently visited H’s room, but she probably did not know where I lived. She was cutting diligently, oblivious to the fact that she was being watched by me. . . . After her big basket was stuffed full of weeds, she straightened her bent back and turned in my direction. She smiled wryly on recog-

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nizing me, but she did not come over to talk to me. To conceal her embarrassment, she deliberately called out loudly, “Heave-ho,” lifted the basket on top of her head, and walked away without saying good-bye.62

In this scene, the reader is shown in miniature the basic structure of the narrator’s position with regard to Mariyan. First we catch a glimpse of the narrator peeping out at Mariyan from a protected and hidden position (she does not know where the narrator lives). In addition, the narrator observes her precisely at the moment when she performs a forced labor duty in the company of other island women; under his surveillance she is transformed into a docile object of colonial rule as well as a passive object of his surveillance (her passivity is underscored by the narrator’s use of the passive voice in his recounting of the scene). Lastly, when Mariyan realizes that she is the unwitting object of the narrator’s surveillance, she reacts with a “wry smile” and “embarrassment,” thereby offering the narrator a mirror reflecting his authority over her. In addition to presenting the narrator as a voyeur exercising his “right” of surveillance over Mariyan, this scene throws into relief the wider context in which narrator and Mariyan meet: a context of colonial disciplinary power over the bodies of the colonized.63 We have seen the method by which the narrator comes to know Mariyan; but what does he actually know about her? And how does he justify his own position toward her? First, the narrator uses the tropes and terminology of a racialist discourse to construct her as a member of a backward race. Mariyan is called a kanaka, a derogatory term Japanese applied especially to the indigenous people of the Carolines and Marshalls, and her ethnicity entails a variety of physical and mental limitations. After mentioning that Mariyan is “very much the intellectual,” he adds that “the contents of her brain have practically nothing kanaka about them,” plainly implying that being kanaka and being an intellectual are mutually exclusive propositions. In his description of Mariyan’s face, he writes: “There is nothing you can do about the limitations of her race, but if you keep these limitations in mind . . . she has a truly natural and rich face.” Mariyan’s “truly natural and rich face” is all the more unexpected since Mariyan has not the “slightest admixture of Japanese or Western features,” even though people in the South Seas assume that “anyone with good looks must be of mixed blood.”64 When he assigns Mariyan to membership in an inferior race, the narrator himself assumes the perspective of a member of a superior race, that is to say, those Japanese or Western races that are free of the aforementioned “limitations.” What social backdrop lies behind this rhetoric about “the limitations of race”? In the first place, one can point to the institutionalized racism of colonial society in which one’s social rank was determined by one’s race and ethnicity. “Micronesians were always viewed by Japanese colonial administrators as lesser peoples in an empire that, ethnically, was sharply hierarchical.” By the time that Nakajima lived

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in Palau, the population of nan’yō was a multiethnic mix that included mainland Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Okinawans, as well as the indigenous population. Whereas the Japanese stood at the top of the pyramid, followed by Koreans and Okinawans, the indigenous islanders were designated a third-class people (santōkokumin) and relegated to the bottom.65 Within this category of “third-class people,” colonial administrators distinguished between Chamorros of the Marianas, a group considered advanced and adaptable, and the kanakas, viewed as incorrigibly backward and lazy.66 While some scholars have described the colonial society of Micronesia as a stable and well-defined hierarchy, others have noted that the boundary between the second tier (Koreans and Okinawans) and the third (indigenous islanders) was fluid and unsettled. For example, a comic verse popular at the time reversed the respective positions of the Koreans and the natives: Ittō kokumin Nihonjin Nitō kokumin Okinawajin Santō kokumin buta: Kanakas, Chamorro Yontō kokumin Chōsenjin

First-class citizens, the Japanese; Second-class citizens, the Okinawans; Third-class citizens, the national pigs: kanakas and Chamorros; Fourth-class citizens, the Koreans.67

Besides the institutionalized racism of colonial society, one cannot overlook the powerful influence that media images denigrating the “backward” South Seas islanders had on all Japanese during the interwar years. In the 1920s and 1930s, popular novels, children’s comic strips, and films disseminated to the masses a “popular Orientalism,” in which images of colonial and backward groups in the South Seas are contrasted with Japanese modernity. I have already noted that Bōken Dankichi (The Adventures of Dankichi) epitomizes this popular orientalism.68 The popular song “Shūchō no musume” (The Chief ’s Daughter), composed by Ishida Ishimatsu, is another work that offers a compendium of Japanese stereotypes about the South Seas. The lyrics of this song describe a native island woman as seen by her Japanese boyfriend: “My lover [raabaa] is the daughter of the chief. She is pretty dark but in nan’yō she’s considered a beauty.69 She sways and dances beneath the palm trees in the Marshalls, south of the equator [sic] dancing as she swigs down muddy liquor. Tomorrow is the happy festival of the severed heads. The chief ’s daughter I saw yesterday is sleeping today beneath the banana tree. How can a girl who does not dance make a good wife?”70 As the daughter of a Palauan chieftain, Mariyan must also be seen in counterpoint with the offhand images of savagery, headhunting, and innocent playfulness evoked by this popular song. In addition to manga and popular song, I would mention as well the powerful influence of film on Japan’s tropical Orientalism. Interestingly, Nakajima begins his early story “Roshituski” (Record of a Strange Illness) with a scene in which the protagonist, Sanzō, is watching a film of the natives of the South Seas. We learn that the film is a documentary made by “whites” about an ex-

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ploration of “savage lands.” As a spectator, he adopts the exotic point of view of the Western cameraman toward the savage people being filmed. “On the screen you could see images of the lifestyle of the natives [dojin] of the South Seas.” The first scene of the film depicts a group of native women with “thick lips” and “snub noses” who wear only straw skirts around their waists and eat with their fingers. The next scene shows a group of natives dancing to the loud beat of a drum during a village festival. “A man who looked like the tribal chief was sitting cross-legged among a group of elders off to the side of the dance stage. Thin and with prominent cheekbones, the old man wore several strings of beads around his neck. Conscious that he was being photographed, he seemed strangely agitated and looked on at the performance with a gaze that showed that he had completely lost his self-confidence as a savage.” As he watches the movie, Sanzō sets off on a series of metaphysical reflections on the “uncertainties of existence.” “Whenever he read accounts of the primitive lives of savages or saw pictures of them, he could hardly help thinking how it might have been if he had been born among them. . . . Under the dazzling light of the tropical sun, would he not have passed his entire life ignorant of the structure of the solar system, the history of the human species, of materialism, Vimalakirti, and the categorical imperative?” Sanzō thus experiences the South Seas as constituting the contrary of a civilized modernity defined as an amalgam of Eastern and Western science and philosophy and that is objectified and offered to him by the modern technology of film.71 When the narrator speaks about “mixed blood” and racial improvement by intermarriage, he is drawing on a different register of discourse, namely, that of eugenics.72 Eugenics, or yūseigaku (literally, the science of superior birth), entered Japanese discourse in the late nineteenth century, along with social-Darwinist notions of a hierarchy among the races of men. Takahashi Yoshio, a disciple of Fukuzawa, introduced eugenics to the Japanese in Nihon jinshu kairyōron (Theory on the Improvement of the Japanese Race; 1884). Believing that the Japanese are physically and mentally “inferior” to the white race, Takahashi advocated intermarriage of white and yellow races (kōhaku zakkon) as a scientific means to improve the racial stock of the Japanese. According to his theory, the birth of mixed-blood children (konketsuji) would eventually bring an influx of “superior” Western blood into Japan since the blood of the superior race would predominate over that of the inferior race as a result of such unions.73 Accordingly, Takahashi was an early proponent of the “mixed-blood” position of Japanese eugenics, one of two opposing positions concerning blood. Katō Hiroyuki, a proponent of the opposing “pure-blood’ position, published a scathing rebuttal of Takahashi’s theory in 1886, in which he argued that interracial marriage would produce “a completely new hybrid category of persons whose political and social status would be unclear and perplexing.”74 Most Japanese eugenicists at this time supported the pure-blood position, but the advocates of the opposing side continued to promote intermarriage as a means of racial

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improvement throughout the prewar period. Unlike Takahashi, these writers argued that the “inferior” races colonized by the Japanese would most benefit from mixing their blood with the superior Japanese. For example, in 1939, Ijichi Susumu advocated intermarriage between Japanese and carefully selected Manchurian females on the grounds that “mixing superior Japanese blood with inferior Manchurian blood would stimulate the development and civilization of inferior peoples.” Unlike Takahashi, Ijichi identifies the Japanese as a superior race who can improve inferior races by this “racial blood transfusion.”75 While Ijichi’s position may not have been common among eugenicists, Japan’s colonial governments actively favored intermarriage between Japanese and the colonized as a means to promote the assimilation of the colonized within the Japanese empire. The narrator elliptically refers to such theories of “racial improvement” to present his own solution to the conundrum posed by Mariyan—for, as an intellectual kanaka, Mariyan does constitute a challenge to the narrator’s racial categories and his preconceptions about “backward” races. She may belong to a race of ignorant and inferior savages, but the narrator has to draw a distinction between her racial identity as a kanaka and her individual story. In fact, he relates her individual story as a narrative of progress and enlightenment: Mariyan, who attended upper school in Japan, was able to rise above the limitations of her race and become “enlightened,” “the number one reader in Koror, even if we include all the Japanese residents.” If “the contents of her brain have practically nothing kanaka about them,” then the narrator is tempted to think of this woman, whom he praises as so “enlightened” and exceptional, as konketsu. Of course, the narrator does not assert that Mariyan is of mixed blood: in fact he assures us that Mariyan, unlike her foster father William Gibbon, is a “pure” Micronesian. Rather, he attempts to understand and explain her in terms of the category of mixed blood: his construction of Mariyan as a child of mixed blood is a purely rhetorical exercise. Among eugenicists, it was a truism at the time that the kanaka—as an inferior race—would benefit most from intermarrying with members of superior races, whether Japanese or Western; one finds similar comments in other stories by Nakajima from this period. The later allusions in the story to Mariyan’s possible marriage with a Japanese need to be understood in the same context.76 In constructing Mariyan as a child of mixed blood, he makes tactical adjustments in racial categories to accommodate an “exception” without calling into question the racial hierarchy per se.77 PA R A DI SE LO ST A N D T H E C OR RU P T ION OF T H E P R I M I T I V E

In contrast to this racialized description of Mariyan, the narrator elsewhere uses the terminology of a climate-centered discourse to depict Mariyan as a noble savage corrupted by an imposed civilization. In this discourse, the narrator divides the

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world into temperate and tropical zones, assigning Japan to the former and the South Seas to the latter. Although terms such as “temperate” and “tropical” are ordinarily employed to designate geographical regions, the narrator uses them to denote opposing aesthetic standards and values.78 Effectively, he sets up a binary opposition between tropical and temperate standards of beauty in order to demonstrate that the two are mutually incompatible and must not be mixed. For example, he offers the following explanation about the administrative capital of Koror. Mariyan herself seems to be a bit ashamed of her own Kanaka looks . . . [because] she lives in Koror City [the cultural center of the nan’yō archipelago], where standards of civilized beauty exert a great influence even among the indigenous islanders. In reality, it seems to me that this Koror—and the fact is that I have lived longest in this place— is in a state of chaos brought on by the intrusion of values belonging to the temperate zones in a city that lies in the tropics. I was not so struck by this fact when I first came to Koror, but now, whenever I return to the city after making a circuit of islands where there are no Japanese residents, I have come to feel it quite clearly. In this place, neither tropical nor temperate things seem very beautiful. Or it would be more accurate to write that what we call beauty—whether tropical or temperate—does not exist here at all. Things that you would expect to have tropical beauty wither after suffering castration at the hands of temperate civilization, while things that ought to possess a temperate beauty become feeble and lose their poise in this tropical landscape, particularly under the relentless light of the sun. The city reeks of decadence and a strange poverty; everyone is obviously obsessed with keeping up appearances, but that only adds to the sense that the place is a colonial backwater.79

If the narrator sees race as a vertical hierarchy, he describes these climate zones as flat and nonhierarchical (literally bands, tai or obi). However, these “tropical” and “temperate” zones stand in a clear power relationship: the narrator uses the terms “temperate” and “civilized” interchangeably and implicitly treats “tropical” as synonymous with uncivilized. At the same time, the narrator tries to be evenhanded: he recognizes that both tropical and civilized forms of beauty—in their pure, authentic forms—are worthy of admiration. By contrast, he condemns mixing as a form of adulteration or pollution. This “adulteration” happens especially when natives of the tropics give up their own standards of beauty and adopt those of civilized peoples. The power relationship between temperate and tropical standards is made explicit by the narrator’s metaphors. Tropical beauty suffers “castration at the hands of temperate civilization, while things that ought to possess a temperate beauty become feeble and lose their poise in this tropical landscape.” Tropical beauty is a wild animal rendered impotent after being operated on by a castrating “civilization.” By contrast, civilized beauty is like an overdressed woman in the tropics who loses her poise in the blazing sun: the harm is limited and results merely from circumstance rather than from competing standards. While the power differential in the narrator’s use of metaphor is easy to unravel, the same cannot be said of the complicated gender

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politics in this passage. Most colonial narratives tend to depict the South Seas as feminine and the colonizer as masculine. By contrast, the narrator of “Mariyan” implicitly treats the tropics as a male when he speaks of castration, but then goes on to attribute the “feminine” predicate of beauty to the tropics. Civilization is also depicted in feminine terms as wilting under the sun and lacking in “poise.” The harm caused by civilized standards does not end with the destruction of primitive beauty. Unlike the residents of “islands where there are no Japanese,” indigenous islanders in Koror tend to internalize civilized standards. Mariyan “seems to be a bit ashamed of her own kanakan looks.” Corrupted by civilized standards, Mariyan cannot appreciate her own beauty. The beauty Mariyan represents exists only outside herself—as a lost object, an object of longing and nostalgia for this narrator from the temperate zone. Only he is able to “discover” this beauty, turn it into an object of aesthetic contemplation, appropriate it for his own enjoyment, and rescue it from destruction. The narrator both laments and savors the tragic disappearance of tropical beauty under the castrating influence of civilization. Whereas the ignorant savage is redeemed in the racist narrative of progress and civilization, the primitive innocent is an endangered species in this nostalgic account of civilization and corruption. Or rather, the primitive can retain its identity and beauty only by remaining isolated from outside interaction, whereas any changes it makes to adapt to external influences are seen as degrading, alienating, and identityerasing. The narrator despises the half-civilized colonial backwater of Koror, which “reeks of decadence.” Koror is ugly because it belongs neither to the civilized nor to the uncivilized world: it is in between, an impure mixture and an epigone of civilized culture. The obverse of this horror is the nostalgia the narrator expresses for the beauty that continues in its pure state only in “islands where there are no Japanese residents.” The narrator longs for the primitive beauty of islands that he alters by his very presence and condemns the chaos of colonial cities where the Japanese have imposed their civilized standards. In this narrative of the vanishing primitive, Mariyan, the cultural hybrid, figures as a primitive corrupted by civilization. In Mariyan, the narrator refers to discourses of race and environment to construct two contradictory figures of this Micronesian woman: she is a child of an inferior race as well as an innocent primitive—familiar figures to any student of Western colonial narratives. But the narrator does not merely force Mariyan into these Western colonial stereotypes: he also interposes himself as a spokesman for an ambivalent Western perspective on Mariyan. To construct this point of view as quasiWestern, Nakajima conflates the conventional colonial rhetoric of Japan with that of the West to produce a broad, inclusive category of “the civilized” that can be contrasted with the tropics: for example, he writes of the superior looks of islanders with “Western or Japanese” blood, stressing his identification with Europeans as a superior race. He also speaks of the Japanese and Europeans as inhabitants of the temperate zones.

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By comparing the published text of “Mariyan” with an early draft of this story, we discover that Nakajima made significant deletions and revisions to the final copy in order to make his construct of “the civilized” more cosmopolitan—indeed to suggest that it is universal. The statement “the contents of her brain have practically nothing kanaka about them,” originally read, “the contents of her brain were like those of a civilized person, more than half Japanese, and had almost nothing kanakan about them.” Or consider his description of the colonial contradictions of Koror: the final manuscript reads, “where standards of civilized beauty exert a great influence even among the indigenous islanders”; but an earlier draft reads, “where the standards of Japanese civilized beauty exert a great influence even among the islanders.”80 Without speculating on the reasons behind the author’s decision to cross out “Japanese” twice, I would suggest that the effect of these changes is to endow the narrator with a universal point of view rather than a view limited to Japanese national identity. By deleting any reference to Japan in the final published edition, the narrator apparently stresses a seamless identification with the West and rhetorically constructs the South as a place of backwardness. But was Nakajima’s identification with the West that seamless and unproblematical? T H E A M B I VA L E NC E OF JA PA N E SE C OLON IA L I SM

As we have seen, the narrator constructs Mariyan as a primitive and a savage, simultaneously incorporating her into long-standing Western colonial narratives and introducing himself as a quasi-Western observer of her. These two narratives, those of race or climate, offer conflicting images of the primitive, always an ambivalent figure in Western history. The narrator treats Mariyan as problematic not because she is “primitive” but rather because she is culturally hybrid, at once a native Micronesian and a product of Japan’s assimilation policy. While Mariyan is not depicted as internally troubled about her split identity, she is depicted as a problem for the narrator who reacts to her with distress and even pain. To the narrator, Mariyan fits into neither her environment nor the clothes she wears; for him she is a dissonant chord, an incongruous juxtaposition. Consider two brief scenes in which the narrator discusses his ambivalent reaction to Mariyan. One time, Mr. H and I paid a visit to Mariyan’s house, which we happened to be passing by. As in almost all houses of the islanders, the flooring was largely made of bamboo planks lined up alongside each other, and only partly of wood. I walked in without ceremony and noticed a small table set on the wooden floor with two books lying on it. I picked them up to see what they were. One was a selection of English poetry edited by Kuriyagawa Hakuson and the other was the Iwanami edition of The Marriage of Loti.81 Several baskets made of palm leaves were lined up on shelves hanging from the ceiling and light summer wear was hanging in disorder from a rope strung

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across the room (the islanders do not put their clothing away but hang them out on a clothesline). The cries of chickens could be heard from under the bamboo flooring. A woman, probably a relative of Mariyan, was sleeping in a slovenly posture in a corner of the room; when we came in, she cast a suspicious glance in our direction and then turned over and fell right back to sleep. I thought there was something odd in coming across Kuriyagawa Hakuson and Pierre Loti in such an environment. I would even say that the place caused me a vague sort of distress, but I cannot say for sure whether it was the books or if it was Mariyan herself that pained me.82

The narrator is distressed when he discovers Japanese translations of European literature on Mariyan’s desk. Mariyan does not read Pierre Loti in the original but rather in a Japanese translation, the Iwanami edition of The Marriage of Loti. Here he shows that Japanese translators were not merely mediators between Western ideas and the Japanese people; in this scene, they serve to introduce Western civilization to the colonial subjects over which Japan ruled. Mariyan, a colonized woman, reads Loti’s classical colonial novel of the South Seas but she does so in the language of the new colonizers of the South Seas. In the second scene, he writes: Once I saw Mariyan all dressed up. She was decked out in a pure white dress with high heels and carried a short parasol in her hand. As usual her face was bright, or rather it beamed with a brownish sheen; her thick, bronze arms, so powerful that they could crush a demon to death, stuck out from her short sleeves; it looked like the narrow shoes with their high heels at the base of her column-like legs would bend and give way. Even as I tried my best to thrust aside the bias with which a person of weak physique regards someone who is physically superior, I could hardly help but be amused at the spectacle she offered. At the same time, it is true that I felt the same distress [itamashisa] that I had earlier experienced when I discovered the Selected English Poems in her room. Just as before, this time too I was not sure whether I was disturbed by her white dress or by the person who was wearing it.83

Here again, the narrator uses the term itamashisa to express his emotion, although he also stresses the comical effect that Mariyan in her Sunday best makes on him. Yet why does the narrator insist, not once, but two times in the story that he feels “distress?”84 When he records that he is distressed by Mariyan, he is displaying a patronizing arrogance toward Mariyan but at the same time he confesses to a kind of identification he feels with her. The question of the narrator’s distress takes us to the heart of his confusion over how he should define his own position toward her. Only by analyzing the specific structures of Japanese colonialism can we understand why the narrator sees himself in Mariyan. When the narrator tells us that he is distressed to discover a novel by Pierre Loti in Mariyan’s home, he is not simply reacting to the juxtaposition of objects. Loti’s novels or Mariyan’s high heels are emblems of civilization. It is Mariyan’s appropriation of these emblems, of this cultural capital, that gives rise to the narrator’s

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complex reaction. Homi Bhabha writes that for “mimicry to be effective, it must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference.”85 It is not Mariyan who produces this slippage or excess, but rather the narrator who produces Mariyan as “difference.” Mariyan is ontologically different from a Japanese reader of the Iwanami edition of Loti. She is ontologically deficient because she is a copy—and in this particular case, the copy of a copy. In the final analysis, Mariyan’s ontological deficiency is of course an optical illusion; it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with the gaze of the viewer. If the narrator insists on viewing Mariyan as a “copy” who deserves pity, the question then becomes: what is the “original” on which she is modeling herself? By choosing Western artifacts as the standards of civilization, the narrator adopts a European perspective from which to look down on Mariyan. But the narrator of “Mariyan” does not stand in relation to Mariyan as original to copy with respect to the Western cultural standards he invokes. In this case, both colonizer and colonized are culturally hybrid products of mimicry. In this situation one can imagine that the narrator would have two ways to represent his relationship to Mariyan. Instead of presuming to be the “original,” the narrator would base his sense of superiority on a distinction between different types of copies. We have already noted that Nakajima closely identified with Stevenson before he left for Palau and apprenticed himself to his perspective of the South Seas in his novel Light,Wind, and Dreams. In a similar way, Japan, as a modern but nonWestern country, also identified with the Western powers and studied in the Western school of imperialism. Not only was Japan a “good” copy of Western imperialism, but it was eventually an “authorized” copy. The narrator of “Mariyan” is an agent of imperialism authorized by the very language of the League of Nations mandate under which Japan ruled Micronesia. As a member of an “advanced nation,” he exercises colonial authority as “a sacred trust of civilization,” while the Micronesians are a primitive people incapable of exercising rule over themselves “under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.”86 However, this official involved in assimilation policies suffers from conflicted feelings: he feels a sense of superiority to Mariyan and “imperial nostalgia” for her tropical beauty—beauty that is endangered by the very policies that the narrator is called upon to implement. However, since both Mariyan and the narrator are equally “copies,” the narrator also finds a touch of Mariyan in himself and is tempted to make common cause with her rather than to exaggerate the differences between them.87 If we recall that Japanese imperialism was also an example of mimicry, we can understand why: this mimetic colonizer cannot help but find an image of himself in the cultural mimicry he finds in her. He identifies with the colonized Micronesian woman not because she resembles him but insofar as he considers her to be a mimic. While the narrator only occasionally cites Mariyan’s words in this short story, he allows her to wax quite eloquent about the Pierre Loti novel, The Marriage of Loti, which he discov-

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ers in her room. This novel tells the story of an English naval officer who travels to Tahiti, has a brief affair with a Tahitian girl, and then abandons her to return to England. Mariyan questions whether Loti’s representations bear any resemblance to the realities of the South Seas. “Mariyan aired her dissatisfaction about the Marriage of Loti and criticized its author for misrepresenting the reality of the South Seas. She argued, ‘Naturally, I don’t know anything about what went on long ago and in Polynesia, but even so, it is hard to believe that such things could really have happened.’ ” Here Mariyan is not only criticizing Western misrepresentations of the South Seas: she is pointing out a blind spot in the narrator’s perspective of her. In this passage—and this is the originality of “Mariyan”—the narrator has Mariyan talk back to Loti, telling him what an educated Micronesian thinks of his fantasies of the South Seas. Her comment also complicates the narrator’s relationship with her, since Loti is also the author of Madame Chrysanthème, which might be described as the Japanese variant of The Marriage of Loti and a blueprint for many other Orientalist fantasies about Japan. Translated as Kikusan by Nogami Toyoichirō in 1915, Madame Chrysanthème was reprinted many times and was much better known in Japan than The Marriage of Loti. Though the narrator does not explicitly mention Kikusan, the specter of this work seems to haunt Nakajima’s text as its dark shadow and its parodic double. The reference to Loti destabilizes his view of her and institutes a triangular relationship among Loti, Mariyan, and the narrator.88 How do the three sides of this triangle interact with one another? A contemporary of Stevenson and Shiga, Loti treats Japan and the South Seas indifferently as exotic decors against which his protagonists pursue their colonial and erotic conquests. Here I do not mean that the Japanese and South Seas islanders in his works resemble each other but rather that both are apprehended as objects of a hierarchical gaze. Offended by Loti’s novel, Mariyan directly criticizes the French writer for “misrepresenting” the reality of the South Seas. Indirectly, she points to the blind spot in the narrator’s perspective toward her, refracted through these same Western “misrepresentations” and no less hierarchical than that of Loti. When he mentions Loti, the narrator sets up an implicit equation in which Loti stands in the same relation to Mme. Chrysanthème (or Rarahu) as the narrator does to Mariyan. Just as the narrator speaks of Mariyan as being a deficient kanaka, Loti had earlier written of the Japanese as “a race of slit-eyed people without a brain” and goes on to say: “More than ever I feel that their souls belong to a different species than mine. I feel that my thoughts are as far from theirs as the changing conceptions of birds or the dreams of apes.”89 Just as the narrator mocks Mariyan’s mimicking of the ways of civilization, Loti had written of the Japanese as perfect imitators who make themselves ridiculous by copying European ways.90 Loti’s criticism of Japanese mimicry of the West provides a model for the narrator’s own attitude toward Mariyan, but the narrator’s “distress” suggests the difference between the position that he occupies and that of Loti. By citing Mariyan’s critique

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of Loti approvingly, the narrator expresses his solidarity with her: both reject becoming the objectified “other” for a citizen of a European imperialist power. By the same token, he seems to allude to his own dissatisfaction with his “Western-tinted eyeglasses.” The narrator is torn between his identification with Mariyan and his sense of superiority over her, between being observer and observed, colonizer and colonized. Ultimately, this triangular relationship among Loti, Mariyan, and the narrator shows that the narrator cannot view Mariyan through Western-tinted eyeglasses. The Marriage of Loti is a formula story that later became “the blueprint for hundreds of other such stories.” Later writers recycled Loti’s formula in their books; constant repetition in turn contributed to the formation of enduring myths about the South Seas. Here I will call attention to two key motifs of Loti’s novel which figure in the tradition of South Seas novels he inaugurated: the island wife and the tragic desertion of the woman by the hero. In The Marriage of Loti, Loti turns his emotional and sexual relationships with Tahitian women into a famous love story, conflated into a single character, a young girl, whitewashing its exploitative nature and ignoring the women’s point of view: I will refer to this as the “island wife” motif. At the end of the novel, he sails back to Europe while she is left behind on the shore to agonize and eventually die: this is the tragic desertion motif. We have remarked that the author of “Mariyan” encountered a textual South Seas long before he actually set foot in Micronesia. Is “Mariyan” simply a Japanese version of Loti’s novel that reproduces the same formulas, or does Nakajima rework the inherited motifs and differentiate his story from Loti’s? The open-ended conclusion of “Mariyan,” I will argue, proves the latter: Nakajima’s achievement is to take these familiar motifs and produce an anticonquest narrative. If Loti’s novel is centered on his erotic conquest of Rarahu, “Mariyan” could be subtitled “Mariyan’s (re)marriage.” Early in the story, we learn that Mariyan broke up with her former husband because he “was too prone to jealousy,” and that she lives alone with her five-year-old daughter. “H used to wonder whether Mariyan would finally be able to marry again—her high lineage ruling out almost every possible match and her excessive ‘enlightenment’ making it all but impossible to find a match among the islanders.” Mariyan’s “remarriage” is a constant preoccupation for these two Japanese males. Indeed, remarriage to a Japanese is presented as a form of salvation for Mariyan and a solution to the problem of being an enlightened hybrid in primitive Micronesia. Toward the end of the story, the narrator, H, and Mariyan take a stroll out to a wharf in Koror during which the drunken H suggests to Mariyan that she ought to take a Japanese husband if she ever remarries. Mariyan does not reply to H at first, but eventually answers after a long pause: “But you know . . . as far as Japanese men are concerned . . . you know . . . ” Hearing Mariyan’s reply and realizing that she has given some thought to the issue of remarriage, the narrator bursts out laughing when

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he realizes Mariyan has been thinking about her future remarriage. “And continuing to laugh, I asked, ‘So how about a Japanese man? What do you think?’ ”91 Mariyan’s situation in this scene is shown to be radically different from that of Loti’s heroine, the fourteen-year-old Rarahu. Unlike Rarahu, she enjoys a considerable degree of autonomy and a greater sphere of power. Rather than being simply a woman-object who is married off, she is portrayed as the agent of action. The two Japanese men plainly solicit Mariyan’s views on marriage with a naichijin. Mariyan appears to have considered the possibility of remarriage to a Japanese, but she leaves the reader wondering what she really means by her deferred and broken answer to their questions.92 While Mariyan is represented as possessing agency, this representation is set in a larger narrative framework that undercuts her agency. H may solicit Mariyan’s opinion but he is drunk; the narrator responds to Mariyan’s words with laughter. Framed between H’s drunkenness and the narrator’s mockery, Mariyan’s voice is effectively reduced to silence. Just as the narrator’s perspective on Mariyan is constituted in a triangular relationship with Loti and Mariyan, Mariyan’s agency is inscribed in a similar triangle with the two male characters. Despite the appearance of agency, Mariyan is treated as an object of exchange between the two men, who use her to establish their own relationship. The subtext of this scene is that H is proposing Mariyan as a possible “wife” for the narrator, who rejects the proposal. In this respect, the scene illustrates the function of marriage in patriarchal societies as described by the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss: “The total relationship of exchange which constitutes marriage is not established between a man and a woman but between two groups of men, and the woman figures only as one of the objects in the exchange, not as one of the partners.”93 In the scene when the narrator discovers Loti’s book, he allows the fluent Mariyan to speak back to Loti, the Western imperialist, in well-formulated and thoughtful terms. In this scene, by contrast, she is deprived of her fluency in Japanese and she is censored. Mariyan’s halting and broken utterance—“But you know . . . as far as Japanese men are concerned . . . you know . . . ”—could be construed to mean anything at all: rejection, resigned acceptance, or indecision. When Mariyan reminds the two men twice that they “know” about Japanese men, she may be referring to the well-known fact that many Japanese settlers took “island wives” during their stay in Micronesia and that the Micronesian women they married hardly ever acquired Japanese citizenship.94 Mariyan differs from Rarahu in that she possesses much more agency than Loti’s heroine; yet she resembles her in being an object of exchange between two men in the patriarchal structures of Japanese colonial power. Since the narrator never “consummates” his relationship with Mariyan, his departure at the end of the story is not a tragic occasion, unlike many South Seas nar-

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ratives, in which the abandoned woman falls into despair or even dies, as did Rarahu.95 Rather the narrator’s departure is treated as a highly ironic episode. As chance would have it, H and I both ended up leaving for Japan that spring for what we imagined was a temporary trip. Mariyan killed a chicken and treated us to our last feast of Palau cooking. Since neither of us had had so much as a bite of meat since the first of the year, we were eating with gusto and promising Mariyan, “At any rate, we will probably be coming back around autumn” (in fact, both of us were expecting to return at that time). Mariyan said with a smile on her face, “Since Uncle is already more than half Palauan anyway, I bet you will probably be back before long, but as for Ton’chan . . . ” To my annoyance she had taken to calling me by this name, copying the way H used to refer to me. At first I was a little irritated with her but in the end I was silenced and could do nothing but give a strained laugh. I said, “So you mean to say that I am not to be relied on then?” “No matter how close you become to Japanese from the home islands, when they return to their home, they never come back here a second time,” she retorted in an unusually wistful tone of voice.96

Though Mariyan speaks in an “unusually” wistful tone of voice, she actually celebrates the departure of the narrator and H, and offers them their final feast in Palau. Clearheaded, she “smiles” at their promises to come back in the midst of the Pacific War (although not mentioned, the war is the cause of growing food shortages on the island). Mariyan also makes a clearheaded evaluation of the likelihood of their eventual return. To what end does the narrator rework these motifs of Loti’s South Seas narrative? In my view, the narrator of “Mariyan” adopts a strategy to absolve the narrator of any colonial guilt, particularly with respect to sexual relations based on colonial power, a staple of most South Seas novels, notably that by Pierre Loti. In his first encounter with Mariyan, the narrator hints that there might be an interracial romantic plot involving Mariyan and H, the ethnographer, who meets Mariyan by chance when she visits H’s apartment unexpectedly: “I could hear a young woman’s voice from a narrow opening in the window saying, ‘Is it all right to come in?’ . . . I was a bit shocked and thought to myself, ‘Boy, I had better keep an eye on this ethnographer friend of mine,’ but was shocked again when the person who opened the door and walked into the room turned out not to be a Japanese, but rather an island girl with an imposing physique.”97 In the scene at the wharf, H proposes that Mariyan remarry a Japanese, implying that the narrator might make a suitable mate. While Nakajima sprinkles his story with these suggestions, in the end the romantic plot fails to materialize. In fact, the author seems to deliberately tantalize readers with the possibility of sexual relationships based on colonial power in order then to frustrate their expectation; by the same token he portrays the narrator as an emasculated man (for example, in the passage on civilization and castration) as if to foreclose this very possibility.98 He depicts Mariyan in masculine terms (Mariyan is seen

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as strong, independent, and fully autonomous) but describes himself as a “feminized” man (the narrator is not only physically weak, but also dependent and immature). Nakajima has him voice an introspective observation that penetrates the psychology of the corporeally disadvantaged: “I tried my best to thrust aside the bias with which a person of weak physique regards someone who is physically superior.” By deliberately foregrounding his weakness and inferiority, the narrator seeks to exculpate himself from his complicity in a colonial power relationship, if only by reason of incapacity. Nakajima’s emasculated narrator goes to great lengths to establish his own innocence: for example, by behaving like a child and even allowing Mariyan to treat him as one. When he bursts into laughter in response to Mariyan’s reply to H’s question about remarrying a Japanese man, it is clear that by his mocking he is disqualifying himself as a possible marriage partner. Further, when Mariyan imitates the patriarchal H in calling the narrator by the diminutive “Ton’chan” (ton being the SinoJapanese reading of the character for Atsushi, chan a diminutive used after the name of a child or someone not regarded as fully adult), she switches positions with him and challenges his authority. Here, Mariyan’s copying (of H) has all the subversive potential that Bhabha discovers in colonial mimicry. As Bhabha writes, “The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority.” 99 Up till this moment, the narrator has occupied the position of observing subject, describing the impression that Mariyan makes on him but neglecting to take account of the effect he produces on her. Suddenly, the viewpoint is reversed. Mariyan appropriates the position of the subject and the narrator, much to his consternation, becomes the object. While the narrator is bothered (“To my annoyance she had taken to calling me by ‘Ton’chan,’ copying the way H used to refer to me”), he implicitly accepts this reversal perhaps because it allows him to disavow his authority. Finally, it is noteworthy that the narrator ends the story by leaving the last word to Mariyan. In contrast to the Loti novel, it is not the abandoned South Seas islander but the “superior” narrator who falls ill after his return to Japan. Ultimately, he has “little hope” of ever returning to his government job, and for his part, H unexpectedly gets married and settles down in Tokyo. The narrator concludes, “What will Mariyan say when she hears this news?”100 Naturally, he does not answer his question, nor can he know what Mariyan’s reaction will be. In concluding his story with an open-ended question of what Mariyan would say, he is suggesting that Mariyan might have a right of reply. Writing from Japan, the narrator continues to be haunted by the absent Mariyan and by her mute voice. The story may come to an end but it reaches no conclusion. What Nakajima has created here parallels the “anticonquest narratives” that Mary Louise Pratt finds in nineteenth-century European travel writings. Nineteenthcentury writers employ “strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois

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subjects secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony.”101 Pratt focuses on two new antiheroes that appear in travel writings from this period: the detached naturalist traveler who asserts his authority by cataloging, naming, and collecting all the fauna and flora of the natural world, and the vulnerable narrator of sentimental novels who depicts himself as the lonely suffering victim of his demanding journey. The emasculated narrator of “Mariyan” is another antihero who attempts to establish his innocence in this colonial narrative. “Mariyan” was written in the early 1940s, a time of intensified Japanese imperialism. In some respects, the narrator’s anticonquest narrative resembles the ideological constructions of late Japanese colonialism. The narrator seeks to differentiate his narrative from that of Loti in the same way that ideologues of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere sought to distinguish Japanese colonialism from that of “white” colonial powers. He achieves this aim by stressing his own affinities with Mariyan just as these ideologues stressed the racial and cultural interconnectedness between Japan and its Asian neighbors to justify their own colonial endeavors. T H E S OU T H A N D I M P E R IA L NO STA LG IA

What then is the relation between Nakajima’s confessional “High Noon” and “Mariyan,” a portrait of a Micronesian woman? I would argue that the narrator of “Mariyan” who went to Micronesia in search of his primitive opposite also found a way to tell his own story as a Japanese colonial official sent to assimilate the indigenous people of Micronesia. He portrays the Micronesian woman Mariyan, who fascinates him, as a cultural hybrid but also as a colonial mimic. At the same time, he unwittingly reveals his own identification with Mariyan when he writes of the pained ambivalence she arouses in him. But he has trouble recognizing this resemblance in the mirror that Mariyan so graciously holds up to him. Instead, like the author Nakajima, he prefers to identify with Stevenson and to view the South Seas vicariously through Stevenson’s eyeglasses even as he accepts Mariyan’s criticism of Loti’s orientalizing views. In this welter of contradictions, we find the aporia of Japanese imperial mimicry. Perhaps because of these contradictions, the narrator’s encounter with Mariyan— much like the romantic entanglement that is hinted at—is never consummated. It is perhaps for this reason that the absent Mariyan continues to haunt the narrator at the end of the story. The narrator of “Mariyan” could not help but misinterpret the significance of their meeting so long as he applied the categories of colonial discourse to her and conveniently ignored the colonial context that structured their encounter. For decades, Japan had been the model pupil of the West, and Japanese colonizers had thoroughly appropriated the “tropical” imperialism pioneered by France and England. However, the Japanese continued to feel culturally colonized by the

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West even after they became colonizers in their own right, a feeling that Nakajima expresses in “High Noon.” The pain the narrator feels toward Mariyan is also a kind of displaced nostalgia. The narrator of “Mariyan” displaces his own sense of loss onto the colonized subject Mariyan in this ethnographic allegory, but the pain that she inspires in him is induced by his own loss of cultural identity. The nostalgia expressed by Nakajima for the primitive paradise of the South Seas resembles the nostalgia that Japanese ethnographers such as Yanagita Kunio discovered in Japan’s rural villages, which were seen as the repository of an authentic Japanese cultural identity. For Yanagita, as Harry Harootunian notes, “the problem was the ruination of the countryside, seen increasingly as the locus of authentic identity, and the sacrifices it was forced to make for an entirely new kind of social order based on urbanization and massive industrialization.”102 Much as the Japanese countryside was a spatial refuge from the capitalist modernity that ethnographers constructed within Japan, the beautiful islands of Micronesia promised a refuge that Nakajima yearned for outside the borders of the nation. This repository of authentic identity was all the more precious and poignant since it was threatened with imminent destruction and was on the verge of being lost forever. Transfigured into imaginary, utopian, and timeless spaces, such refuges offered writers a glimpse of cultural wholeness and an escape from capitalist modernity through a process of nostalgic recapturing.

Conclusion Cannibalism in Postwar Literature

F ORG E T T I NG E M P I R E

In this book, I have brought to light several works on the theme of savagery from early twentieth-century Japanese literature, works which have generally been neglected in previous scholarship. By closely attending to this theme, I have demonstrated that Japanese writers during the colonial period created elaborate figurations of the savage and of the South, which changed over time in tandem with changes in the empire itself. I have also highlighted the tendency of Japanese writers to use these figures to talk, allegorically, about themselves and their identity as colonizers. Furthermore, I have shown that these texts exemplify Japanese imperial culture in general, which both imitated Western imperialism and differed greatly from its model. In their fictional works, these writers voice feelings of ambivalence and anxiety about their place as colonizers, a constellation of feelings that derives from the triangular nature of Japanese empire and its positioning between the West and the colonized peoples. In addition, they often claim to identify with the colonized, often employing the rhetoric of sameness, a key feature of Japanese imperial discourses in general. Finally, rather than study literature in a vacuum, I have shown that literary works are tied by numerous threads to the circulation of tropes and stereotypes of savagery in Japanese popular media and in social discourses generally. In my study I have paid particular attention to the creation of new paradigms for understanding savages and the South that developed during the colonial period. Nitobe Inazō, who saw Momotarō and his conquest of ogres as an allegory for Japanese imperialism in the South Seas, incorporated elements of this folktale in his lectures on colonial policy at Tokyo Imperial University, to such an extent that later historians refer to his theories as Momotarōism. Furthermore, ethnography and anthropology became 182

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the “sciences of savagery” par excellence, as I have shown through my studies of Mori Ushinosuke and Hijikata Hisakatsu, who both spent most of their careers in the colonies. Besides carrying out important fieldwork for decades in Taiwan and Micronesia respectively, these men profoundly influenced Nakajima Atsushi and Satō Haruo, two writers who engaged with ethnography as a perspective on cultural otherness and as a form of writing in their creative works. While I can hardly claim to have exhausted the theme of savagery in Japanese colonial literature, I have shown that there exists a rich vein of works on this theme that merits further study. Looking beyond the limits of my own research, I would add that prospective researchers of Japanese colonial period literature encounter a plethora of works, mostly little studied or wholly unknown. Almost all the most celebrated names of modern Japanese literature—from Yosano Akiko to Abe Kōbō—traveled to or lived in the colonies and wrote about their experiences in essays, travel journals, and stories.1 In the 1930s and 1940s, many of the recipients of the Naoki and Akutagawa prizes, Japan’s most prestigious literary awards, set their works in the gaichi, that is, in overseas colonies under Japanese rule.2 Nevertheless, literary scholars have, by and large, neglected these colonial-period works during most of the postwar period. Even in the case of canonical writers such as Akutagawa and Satō, scholars have overlooked their fiction dealing with the colonies. There are no full-length studies of many lesser known writers such as Ōshika Taku, who wrote a significant body of fiction set in Taiwan. Why have scholars ignored these writers and neglected to study this rich vein of literature? In 1984, Marius Jansen wrote an essay that sums up four decades of research about the Japanese empire: “Imperialism never became a very important part of the [Japanese] national consciousness. There were no Japanese Kiplings, there was little popular mystique about Japanese overlordship and relatively little national selfcongratulation. . . . The passing of empire in Japan evoked little trauma and few regrets. It has in fact scarcely been discussed at all.”3 When Jansen notes that there were no Japanese Kiplings, he offers one reason why scholars have overlooked Japanese colonial literature, treating it as deservedly forgotten. In this view, literary works from the period simply lack literary merit and are inevitably mimetic or derivative— secondhand Kipling, as it were—in nature.4 Indeed, Jansen implies that Japanese have justly consigned, not merely works of colonial period literature but their imperial period as a whole, to the dustbin of history.5 One reason why this plethoric Japanese literature has been consigned to oblivion has to do with the modalities of “decolonization” in the Japanese case, which greatly differed from that of French and British colonies. The Japanese empire “simply vanished” after August 1945. From this moment, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Micronesians were liberated from Japanese rule, even though they had neither defeated Japan on the battlefield nor persuaded it to grant them independence at the negotiating table. By the same token, Japan was “liberated” from the burdens of dealing

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with its former colonies. At the close of the war, two million “former” Japanese— residents from the colony of Korea living in Japan—were summarily stripped of their Japanese citizenship.6 At the same time, millions of Japanese who had lived in the colonies were repatriated to a homeland that many saw for the first time. Yuasa Katsuei, a Japanese writer who had spent most of his life prior to 1945 in Korea, wrote an essay called “Kokyō ni tsuite” (About My Hometown), in which he describes the strange experience of returning to a “hometown” he did not know.7 With the liquidation of Japan’s colonial enterprise, its former colonies of Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria became the setting for fratricidal civil wars and its territories in Southeast Asia became embroiled in anticolonial wars. In general, these civil wars and anticolonial struggles became the “problem of other nations.”8 This cataclysmic end to the Japanese empire facilitated the subsequent amnesia about the empire and a refusal to confront the ghosts of the past, which continued to shape perceptions of Japan’s imperial culture long after 1945. Furthermore, well-known writers in the postwar period had their colonialthemed writings removed from their collected works or otherwise disowned them. In addition, literary scholars in the postwar period omitted to study works tainted by association with a shameful past, perhaps because they were reluctant to cast a blot on the careers of highly respected writers. Beyond the individual choices of Japanese writers and of scholars who study their works, the disciplinary boundaries of Japanese national literature were redrawn after the war in ways that effectively marginalized colonial literature and prevented it from becoming the object of study. Mirroring the shrinking borders of the nation, national literature (kokubungaku) became an insular affair that no longer welcomed works set in Japan’s excolonies, whether these happened to be written by Japanese authors or by colonized writers literate in Japanese. The latter were foreigners excluded from the Japanese ethnic nation, while the former spoke of places that were no longer located on the map of Japan. Rather than being forgotten, it would be more accurate to say that these works were repressed, in the sense Foucault gives to this word in his History of Sexuality: “Repression functions well as a sentence to disappear, but also an injunction to silence, affirmation of non-existence; and consequently states that of all this there is nothing to say, to see, to know.”9 Referring to the state of the colonial archive in 1994, Kawamura Minato, Japan’s preeminent scholar of colonial-period literature, writes: “The reason that I thought I must research colonial-period literature is that colonial literature as a part of Japan’s modern literature would simply disappear if I did not trace its history, and in fifty or a hundred years, it would be as though it had never existed.”10 Last, the end of the Showa period in 1988 and the cessation of the Cold War have clearly ushered in a “return of the colonial repressed.” In the past two decades, scholars and publishers have excavated many works from the colonial literary archive and debunked the assumption that it contains “nothing to say, to see, to

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know.” Each year, publishers reissue multivolume sets from the period, colonial literary anthologies have appeared in print, and more and more scholars in Japan and overseas publish studies of Japan’s culture of empire. This book would not have been possible without the pioneering works of these scholars and the efforts of Japanese publishers to preserve this vanished past. C A N N I BA L S I N T H E E N D G A M E OF E M P I R E

While I have focused my attention in this book on elucidating figures of the savage in Japanese literature from the colonial period proper, I conclude by considering what happened to this body of tropes and representations after the liquidation of the Japanese empire. Did writers continue to write works on savages, and if so, do these works show continuities or discontinuities with prewar literature in the tropes they employ? Here I restrict my focus to the first decade after the Second World War and to novels that feature memorable figures of savagery. During the colonial period, the headhunter was the dominant trope for prewar works on Taiwan and the happy primitive a stock figure for natives of the South Seas. By contrast, three major novels written in the immediate postwar period feature cannibals and acts of cannibalism as the main trope for savagery. In this book, I have said little about cannibals or cannibalism. Indeed, by comparison with the headhunter, the cannibal is certainly not an important figure in Japanese representations of savagery. One reason is, of course, that cannibalism was not practiced in any of the territories making up the Japanese empire. To be sure, the fact that cannibals did not exist in the Japanese colonies does not mean that they were totally absent from Japan’s colonial discourse. Media reports at the time of the Taiwan expedition of 1874 frequently refer to cannibalistic Taiwanese “raw savages,” notwithstanding the fact that none of the groups in question practiced cannibalism. Dispatched by the Meiji government to investigate a massacre of Japanese sailors in the Marshall Islands in 1884, the explorer Suzuki Keikun wrote a detailed account of his voyage, Nan’yō tanken jikki (A True Record of My Explorations of the South Seas), in which he gives detailed descriptions of cannibalistic practices he witnessed there. In a recent study of this book, however, Takayama Jun debunks the notion that Suzuki actually reached the Marshall Islands at all and argues that he probably pillaged his description from Western works on the South Seas.11 In later Japanese reports from Taiwan and Micronesia, one finds only scattered references to acts of cannibalism among the natives. For example, cannibalistic islanders also figure in Bōken Dankichi (The Adventures of Dankichi), the most famous manga on the theme of the South Seas, and in popular adventure tales in boys’ magazines as well. Notwithstanding these traces scattered throughout Japan’s colonial archive, the cannibal never became a familiar or prevalent figure of the savage in Japanese colonial discourse.

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By contrast, the cannibal was the figure of savagery par excellence in the West. From the journal of Christopher Columbus to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the cannibal was the emblem of the monstrous other in Western colonial discourse, a figure which inspired terror, revulsion, and fascination. In addition, the taboo against cannibalism has, in conjunction with that against incest, provided anthropologists and psychoanalysts with a schema of intelligibility to interpret primitive man. Indeed, the prohibition of cannibalism and the taboo against incest constitute the dividing line that separates the state of nature and culture in thinkers as diverse as Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, and Freud.12 Why then did the cannibal, the dominant trope for savagery in the West, come to play an important part in early postwar Japanese literature? One reason may be that there were actual incidents of cannibalism involving Japanese soldiers during the final days of the Pacific war, notably in the battlefields of the South Seas. Soldiers who survived the horrors of war wrote about episodes of cannibalism in the jungles of the Philippines and New Guinea, sometimes involving the consumption of dead Japanese soldiers. In oral histories of the war, cannibalism figures regularly alongside atrocities such as Unit 731, the Nanking massacre, and the government system of sexual slavery (“comfort women”). As a rule, the narrators of such accounts write about incidents that they witnessed or simply heard about rather than acts in which they participated. For example, Ogawa Masatsugu writes as follows: “I once saw a soldier’s body with the thigh flesh gouged out, lying by the path. The stories I heard made me shiver and left me chilled to the bone. Not all the men in New Guinea were cannibals but it wasn’t just once or twice.”13 That such acts occurred during the last days of the Pacific War is also corroborated by the postwar trial records of war criminals.14 And acts of cannibalism are central to Hara Kazuo’s shocking documentary about Okumura Kenzō (Yukiyukite shingun [The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On; 1987]), in which Okumura, a war veteran from the New Guinea campaign, tracks down and confronts the officers of his military unit guilty of killing and eating two fellow soldiers. However, the Japanese are not the only source of information about cannibalism within the Japanese army in the final days of the war. In recent years, the Taiwanese aborigines, Japan’s former savages, have stepped forward with their own eyewitness reports from the jungles of the southern theater of war. After 1942, several thousand aborigines, organized into the so-called Takasago giyūtai (Takasago Volunteers), fought alongside the Japanese in the front lines of Philippines, Burma, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Rabaul, and other battlefields of the Pacific War.15 The long silence surrounding these so-called volunteers was broken when a “Japanese” soldier surfaced on the island of Morotai in Indonesia in 1974, where he had lived alone for nearly thirty years, beginning each day with worship of the Japanese emperor. Ignorant that the war had ended, this valiant survivor of the imperial army returned not to Japan but to his home in Hualien, Taiwan.16

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Since 1992, Japanese journalists have interviewed both former Japanese officers and aboriginal ex-soldiers and published at least five books about this forgotten history. In these accounts, the former Japanese officers are often effusive in their praise and expressions of gratitude for the Takasago Volunteers. Naoto Yahaneda mentions “some of the Takasago personnel had tattoos on their foreheads. Previously I would have thought this a sign of savagery, but I came to discover that they were braver than Japanese soldiers.”17 Another officer recalls their spirit of self-sacrifice: “They took turns carrying the sick. They accomplished their jobs under circumstances of extreme food shortage. Seeing such all-out and selfless efforts, I had to bow to them in respect, even though they were my subordinates.”18 By contrast with the Japanese officers, none of whom mentions cannibalism, the Takasago Volunteers speak of cannibalism as their most distressing memory of the war. Buyan Nawi writes: “When I was moving alone in the jungle, I witnessed many incidents in which Japanese soldiers killed their comrades and ate their flesh. Even though they were the emperor’s soldiers, they would still lose their senses when no food was available. Even the high-ranking officers partook of the corpses of their own comrades.”19 Other aborigines make pained confessions of their participation in these horrors and of the deep remorse they continue to feel. “As a human being, this is the most painful thing I have ever done. We ate the flesh of an Australian soldier. . . . This is the regret of my life. In retrospect it was extremely cruel but a man has no choice if he wants to guarantee his own survival. If I had been alone, perhaps I would not have done such a thing, but there was a sense of security committing such a crime in a group.”20 These postcolonial memoirs show that the exsavages of the Japanese empire witnessed incidents of cannibalism involving Japanese soldiers. What is at stake in these writings is not simply the addition of the cannibal to the panoply of colonial tropes for savagery, but rather the inversion of the colonial relationship in postcolonial reminiscence. In the retrospective views of the Japanese officers, the aborigines embody the ideals of patriotism, fighting spirit, courage, and self-sacrifice that had been the guiding ideals of the Japanese army. By contrast, the aborigines are stunned to see their former colonizers descend to cannibalism as a result of military defeat, material deprivation, illness, and the ruthless competition for survival. These memoirs of the Takasago Volunteers offer an interesting case of mutual viewing of colonizer and colonized in a postcolonial situation, in which the former “civilized” masters become the new savages in the endgame of empire. C A N N I BA L S , T H E E M P E ROR , A N D T H E JA PA N E SE

Besides appearing in postwar memoirs and oral histories, cannibals are featured in three renowned antiwar and humanistic novels from the postwar period: Takeyama Michio’s Biruma no tategoto (Harp of Burma), Ōoka Shōhei’s Nobi (Fires on the

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Plain), and Takeda Taijun’s Hikarigoke (Luminous Moss).21 In the first of these three works, the cannibal is the cruel and violent other that threatens the Japanese protagonist. In the other two, he is the Japanese soldier reduced to savagery in order to survive in the extremities of war. In different ways, these writers employ the figure of the cannibal to explore the identity of postimperial Japan and to reflect on their wartime experiences. Though they attribute different meanings to savagery, they show that the trope of savagery both continued to flourish and assumed a radically new form in literature of the postwar period. Written in 1946, Takeyama’s best-selling Harp of Burma is the earliest of these works, and perhaps, for that reason, the work displays the greatest degree of continuity with Japan’s prewar discourses on savagery. Takeyama’s novel has been compared to a requiem mass for the souls of the Japanese war dead through its depiction of the life of Private Mizushima, a Japanese soldier who disguises himself as a Burmese monk and stays behind in Burma to bury the mortal remains of his former comrades and pray for the repose of their souls. In a chapter from the third part of this novel, titled “Sō no tegami” (The Monk’s Letter), the hero sends a letter to his former commander and fellow soldiers, in which he recounts his adventures since the war ended. Cannibals appear in one of these episodes. Wounded by a stray bullet, Mizushima falls unconscious and is rescued by the members of a savage tribe in the Burmese highlands.22 They feed him and take care of him in order to offer him up as a human sacrifice. At the crack of dawn the following morning, I was stripped of my clothes and pinned down on a rock in the middle of the river where my body was so thoroughly scrubbed clean that it ached everywhere. The natives were purifying my body. Afterwards, I was put in a decorated cage. I sat inside the cage holding my harp in my hands. The native lifted up the cage and carried it to the front of a shrine in the center of the village. There they set it down.23

In the end, though, he is not eaten: Mizushima is freed thanks to the intercession of the shy, sweet daughter of the chieftain (shūchō no musume),24 who falls in love with him: “But his daughter threw her arms around her father and pleaded for my life. That was how the festival ended. Afterward the tribe released me.”25 The Burmese highlanders in Takeyama’s novel, a tribe of cannibals “said to number 250,000,” live in straw-thatched houses, tattoo themselves, are practically naked, and practice headhunting. When he describes them as headhunters, Takeyama follows the well-worn path of Japanese writers on the Taiwanese aborigines, who were often represented as headhunters. While Takeyama never traveled to Burma, he made a brief trip to Taiwan in the 1920s and apparently based his descriptions of the Burmese tribe partly on his experience of Taiwanese “raw savages.” However, neither the Taiwanese aborigines nor the Burmese minorities practiced cannibalism. While Takeyama drew on his travel experiences to describe the village in this

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scene, he ultimately fashioned them into a narrative by reworking a very widely disseminated story from the seventeenth century. The template for Takeyama—and for countless other colonial romances in world literature—was, of course, the famous story of Pocahontas and her friendship with the English settler John Smith during the early days of the Virginia colony. By appropriating the narrative frame of Pocahontas in his novel, Takeyama displays an extraordinary continuity with four hundred years of Western colonial discourse, in which the colonizer justifies his superiority over the native cultures by labeling them as cannibals.26 In that respect, his novel shares with Japanese colonial literature a tendency toward mimesis of the West, in which Japanese relations with savage others are mediated and refracted by Western narratives. Indeed, Takeyama stands closer to his Western model than the writers I have considered in this study precisely because he was not constrained by any actual interaction with the colonized at the time he wrote this book. Writing at a time that the Japanese empire no longer existed, Takeyama exhibits none of the ambivalences that make for the complexity of Sato’s stories on Taiwan or Nakajima’s South Seas works. In the Harp of Burma, the Japanese hero has no tension-filled relationship with the West, nor does he surreptitiously identify himself with the colonized. Notwithstanding the fact that chieftain’s daughter saves his life out of love, the hero expresses no gratitude to her for the rescue and does not initiate a colonial romance with her. Indeed, the work has a totally different denoument and atmosphere from the late-colonial narrative in Ōshika’s “The Savage.” With the disappearance of the empire as a geopolitical reality, the complexities of Japanese triangulated imperial culture also lost their raison d’être. Mizushima escapes from the village without redeeming the cannibals who had held him prisoner and without discovering the underlying brotherhood that tied him to them. As a result, this episode strikes the reader as a detour from the main story and an arbitrary addition to the narrative. Leaving the cannibals to their fate, the hero eventually discovers his true mission: to bury and mourn the Japanese soldiers left behind on the battlefield of Japan’s defunct empire. Nevertheless, the insertion of this seemingly gratuitous scene in the novel is not without a function in the economy of this postcolonial novel. In Harp of Burma, Takeyama appears to lay the foundation for Japan’s subsequent reconciliation with its wartime enemies and its reintegration into the club of the civilized nations. In one of the most famous scenes of the Harp of Burma, the soldiers of a beleaguered and cornered Japanese unit sing “Hanyū no yado” and the enemy British soldiers chime in with a chorus of “Home Sweet Home.” Though they are singing in mutually unintelligible languages, this melody becomes a great unifier across enemy lines. If music represents a positive symbol of the unifying forces of civilization that unite nations divided by war and language, the cannibalistic tribe offers a negative image of the other of civilization, to which the forces of civilization stand opposed. If Takeyama treats cannibalism as the identifying mark of the savage other, Ōoka

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and Takeda use the same trope to write about the Japanese self and to explore the theme of war memory. Cannibalism is a major theme of Fires on the Plain, a celebrated antiwar novel that Ōoka’s Shōhei began to write in 1948 and published in its present form in 1952. The novel Fires on the Plain is told in the first person by Private First Class Tamura, who recounts his experiences in the Philippines after the war. At the time that he was writing, Tamura was recovering from amnesia in a mental institution into which he voluntarily committed himself after suffering a mental breakdown. Writing as the Korean War (1950–53) is being fought, he denounces Japan’s postwar leaders, “experts in mass psychology” and media propagandists who are manipulating the war-weary Japanese people to support another useless war.27 We learn in the course of the novel that protagonist had a mental collapse after he broke the taboo against cannibalism. At the start of the novel Tamura is expelled from his unit and left to his own fate because he is sick and has no food supply; he is treated as the detritus of an imperial army which is itself on the verge of terminal collapse. Reduced to extreme hunger during his wanderings through the landscape of war-torn Philippines, he discovers within himself a “desire to eat human flesh,” notwithstanding “the shadow of a long history and ancient custom we could not think, without an access of abhorrence, of ourselves fornicating with our mothers or eating human flesh.”28 After he collapses from exhaustion and hunger, he is rescued by Nagamatsu, a former companion at arms who has been hunting down stragglers from the Japanese army. Nagamatsu saves Tamura and offers him a “black rice cracker [senbei]” that has the “flavor of dried cardboard.” “Although it was dry and hard, the fatty flavor that spread through my mouth was one that I had not tasted for any number of months since I had left my unit.” Nagamatsu explains that the proffered food was “monkey meat,” but Tamura is skeptical and asks him: “You didn’t by any chance mistake me for a monkey, did you?”29 Several days later, when Nagamatsu disappears in the woods to hunt for monkeys, Tamura’s suspicions aroused, Tamura secretly follows him and sees the fleeing figure of a Japanese soldier after he hears the sound of Nagamatsu’s rifle shot. Tamura’s memory breaks off (and he begins his descent into madness) from the moment that he kills Nagamatsu. Subject to messianic delusions, he feels that he is being watched by an outside observer, whom he identifies with God and whose instrument he becomes. “If as a result of starvation men are forced to eat one another, then this world is nothing more than the result of God’s wrath. . . . I must be an angel, an instrument of God’s wrath.”30 Besides being the trigger for Tamura’s descent to madness, cannibalism serves as a metaphor for the autopredation of the Japanese imperial army, whose starving members, after plundering the food resources of the indigenous population, were literally reduced to devouring one another. It represents the ultimate collapse of ethical values and discipline in the Japanese army that occurred with its defeat in the Second World War. Shaped by his experience of defeat, Ōoka deploys the trope of

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savagery to different ends from that of colonial period authors. In colonial-period narratives, the writer not infrequently inverts the hierarchy of civilization and savagery in an allegorical critique of Japanese empire. The hero of Ōshika Taku’s “The Savage” becomes an aboriginal headhunter in the wilds of Taiwan. While the Japanese soldiers in Fires on the Plain become cannibals in the jungles of the Philippines, they neither identify themselves with savages nor situate themselves within a colonial relationship. In an earlier scene of Fires on the Plain, Tamura kills a Philippine woman in an abandoned church where he finds a hiding place, but he does so “without regret”; he is not troubled by guilt for his cold-blooded murder. When the soldiers commit acts of cannibalism, their actions refer allegorically to an army that has been forced to cannibalize itself in order to prosecute the war. In addition, the protagonist’s intense sense of culpability for his descent to cannibalism reflects a strong preoccupation—noteworthy in the years after Japan’s defeat—with collective guilt over the war. Although the protagonist of Fires on the Plain describes his consumption of human flesh (black rice crackers) in quite graphic terms, he later expunges all recollection of his cannibalism from his memory. Thus, by the final chapter of the book, he writes, “I killed them [Yasuda, Nagamatsu, the Philippine woman] but I did not eat them. I killed them because of war, God, chance—forces outside myself; but it was assuredly because of my own will that I did not eat them. This is why I can now gaze, along with them, at the black sun in this country of the dead.”31 When he denies that he ever ate human flesh, he draws a clear line between himself and the cannibal “other,” that is, the debased Japanese soldiers such as Nagamatsu, just as Takeyama separates his protagonist from the cannibalistic savages living in the jungles of Burma. Suffering from amnesia and a self-professed madman, Tamura is the epitome of the unreliable narrator, and so we should not necessarily lend much credence to his words. Interestingly, however, Ōoka Shōhei, his creator, in an essay called “Nobi no ito” (The Intention of Fires on the Plain), which appeared one year after the novel was published, denied that his fictional hero was a cannibal: “Although the protagonist wants to eat human flesh, he is unable to do so and spits it out instead.”32 Curiously, most later critics of the novel as well as Kon Ichikawa, who made a film based on the work in 1959, have tended to follow Ōoka’s disavowal of the protagonist’s cannibalism in his 1953 essay rather than be guided by the text of the novel. This change in views about the protagonist’s culpability reflects a broader shift in postwar discourse from an early preoccupation with national war guilt to a later emphasis on Japan as war victim symbolized by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ōoka wrote his article after “the end of the American Occupation of Japan, an increase in American nuclear testing in the Pacific, and a rise in the prominence and breadth of Japan’s discourse of victimhood.”33 His retrospective interpretation of the novel offers a clear index of this changing political environment.

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By contrast with Ōoka’s war novel, Takeda Taijun uses the theme of cannibalism to pen a radical indictment of the emperor’s war responsibility and his cannibalistic relationship to the Japanese people in Luminous Moss, published in 1954. Unlike the two works considered above, Takeda’s novel is set in northern Japan rather than in the southern colonies. In addition, it effectively criticizes the colonial discourse of savagery that, in quite different ways, Takeyama and Ōoka simply reproduce in an unreflective fashion. Though critics have generally read Luminous Moss as a religious or existential parable about man’s loss of values in extreme situations, I interpret this work in relation to the immediate circumstances of its production and to the long-standing rhetoric of savagery that both grew out of Japanese imperialism and survived its demise. Luminous Moss has a complex narrative structure: the first half of the work recounts the narrator’s trip to Japan’s new northern borderland of Hokkaido,34 where he learns about the so-called Pekin Promontory incident, and the second is a twoact play, which the narrator describes as a “play for reading” that would “be impossible to stage.” In the first part, the first-person narrator visits the Makkaushi caves in northern Hokkaido, learns about an incident of cannibalism from his guide, the principal of a junior high school, and eventually reads an account of the incident from the character S, portions of which are inserted into the narration. According to the different sources that he pieces together in his narration, a Japanese war vessel in 1944 capsized near the Pekin Promontory in northern Hokkaido, and the four survivors—the ship captain and three soldiers—sought refuge in a cave where they eventually devoured each other, the lone survivor being the ship’s captain. The first act of the ensuing two-part play reenacts this wartime incident of cannibalism in a cave in Hokkaido, while the second consists of a military trial of the ship captain taking place later the same year. In the first part of his novel, the narrator deliberately situates his work in the context of postwar literary works on cannibalism, including Ōoka’s novel, or rather, to be precise, to Ōoka’s interpretation of his novel in his later essay “The Intention of Fires on the Plain.” He notes somewhat caustically that Tamura “is given a piece of human flesh by his comrades and puts it into his mouth but he ultimately does not get it down any further than his throat. . . . This soldier shoots and kills a native woman for no reason, but he is also capable of moral reflection: ‘I killed but I did not eat.’ ” Takeda’s narrator taunts this protagonist who is “so puffed up with his civilized status [bunmeijin butteiru]” that he takes himself for a civilized hero. In his view, Tamura suffers from the “delusion” that he belongs to “a superior nation and an advanced race [yūshū minzoku senshin jinshu],” and, ipso facto, cannot be guilty of cannibalism.35 Far from exalting his ethical heroism, Tamura’s rationalizations epitomize his complacency and moral blindness. The narrator goes on to assail the very binary of civilization and savagery that underlies Tamura’s “delusion.” He notes that “mur-

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derers” are “commonplace” among civilized men in the twentieth century. Among the recent “crimes” of the civilized, he singles out “the mass murder on the Korean peninsula.” Civilized states commit mass murder using the most advanced and modern weapons, which are “proud manifestations of the power of civilization.” Indeed, wars occur with such frequency that we are inured to them and they no longer inspire us with “nausea.” By contrast with “civilized murderers,” cannibals and other “savage barbarian” still have the power to “fill us with hatred and to make us shudder.” Indeed, precisely because we have no “relationship” with cannibals, we think that the murderer belongs to a “higher class” of man but place the cannibal in an extremely “low class” or treat him as a special case. For that reason, “civilized men” commit murder but they would never eat human flesh because it would destroy their “reputation.”36 Writing after the collapse of the Japanese empire, the narrator exposes the hollowness of the rhetoric of civilization and savagery by turning this famous binary into a bitter caricature of itself. First, he ridicules Tamura’s postwar complacency by having him mouth terms that belong to wartime rhetoric on the “superior nation and an advanced race” at a time when they have lost all credibility. Next, he ironically identifies civilization with “murder” and “war” rather than with peace and progress. Indeed, he argues that the civilized man bases his moral ascendancy over the savage only on the technical superiority of his weapons of destruction and his heightened concern for his reputation. When he refers to the Korean War, a war fought over the spoils of the Japanese empire, he implicitly criticizes the cannibalistic stance adopted by Japan, which was battening itself at the expense of its ruined excolony during the so-called Korean War boom, which one Japanese leader called “a gift from the gods.”37 Second, when he set this story on Hokkaido, Japan’s first colony, Takeda places his work in counterpoint with the discourse of savagery developed by Japanese ethnographers from the early Meiji period. I have already noted that Japanese ethnographers, stimulated by Morse’s speculation that the earliest inhabitants of Japan were cannibals, directed their attention first to the Ainu population, seen as the savages of Japan. Before he narrates the story of wartime cannibalism, the narrator meets M, who has just attended a scholarly conference on the Ainu held in Sapporo. An old friend and an expert on Ainu cultures, M expresses his annoyance with Japanese scholarship on the Ainu and attacks one scholar in particular, who asserted in his presentation that the members of one Ainu “tribe” practiced cannibalism “in the distant past.” The narrator of Luminous Moss is moved to sympathy “by the look of suffocation, a mixture of disdain, loneliness, and pain,” that he finds on the face of this “highest intellectual of Ainu descent.” He adds that if M had known the incident of wartime cannibalism that he is about to tell, M could have pointed out to the scholars at the conference that cannibals existed “among the Japanese people under the glorious reign of the emperor” and suggested that these contem-

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porary Japanese cannibals be “questioned from every angle of ethnology, ethics, medicine, psychology, economics, and politics.”38 Like the learned M, many of the scholars at the conference mentioned in Takeda’s novel work were “of Ainu extraction.” Besides placing his story in the context of Japan’s science of savagery, he inverts the focus of colonial ethnography when he proposes that a group made up of Ainu scholars turn their attention to Japanese cannibals, rather than to Ainu “from the ancient past.”39 Yet perhaps the most radical critique that the author makes of cannibalism in this novella occurs during the trial scene. Though the trial is set in 1944, only months after the incident of cannibalism occurred, Takeda published this work in 1954, years after the Tokyo War trials that juridically settled the matter of war responsibility. The narrator does not refer to the Tokyo trials in Luminous Moss, but he implicitly criticizes the judges in these trials for granting immunity from prosecution to the emperor, the supreme wartime commander of the Japanese military forces, and allowing him to remain on the throne in the postwar period.40 More radically, he accuses the emperor of cannibalism by pointing to the equivalences between the ship captain and the emperor. Consider the following exchange during the court scene: Prosecutor: Now I’ve got you! You probably want to say that no one in this court has the right to judge you. Just because you say that we are as much human being as you are, you think that you should be able to escape punishment for your crime. No I won’t stand for that! Now, let me remind you of the crime you committed. When you ate Hachizō, did you start by eating his fingers or his ears? Did you start to peel Nishikawa’s skin from his belly or his back? When you tore off the nails, what sound did they make? When you nibbled at their flesh, how did it feel in your mouth? . . . Captain: Mr. Prosecutor, perhaps you ought not to let your imagination run wild on things you haven’t experienced. Prosecutor: You are totally without shame, I tell you. Captain: I am simply enduring [gaman shite iru].41 Prosecutor: What you’ve done is bound to blemish the dignity of all the Japanese people! It is bound to degrade the dignity of the nation. Have you no sorrow for the emperor that you’ve done such things? Captain: It seems to me that there is not such a great difference between that person [ano kata] and me. Prosecutor: What are you saying! You! Captain: Isn’t that person not also merely enduring [gaman shite irareru]? (The court is thrown into an uproar. The judge furiously bangs his gavel.) Judge: The defendant’s words are forbidden.42

In this scene, the captain states clearly what all people present (and, implicitly, his readers) know perfectly well but are forbidden to say: that there is no great dif-

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ference between the emperor and a war criminal like the captain. By breaking the taboo of silence surrounding the emperor, he provokes “an uproar” in the court and is censored by the judge. By their swift reaction to his words, the prosecutor and judge show that they recognize the paradoxical equivalence between the emperor’s “endurance” and that of the captain. Like the captain, the emperor is guilty of atrocities, but, unlike him, he is not held to account for his crimes.43 This court scene takes on its full significance when it is read against the background of earlier snatches of conversation among the men in the previous scene, the scene of cannibalism. As the hungry men realize that they have become predators and prey for one another, they become aware that their bodies, strictly speaking, are no longer theirs to dispose of as they wish. Nishikawa notes that they are “soldiers in the service of the imperial majesty [tennō heika no gunzoku],” rather than simply soldiers in the squadron where they serve, since they are prosecuting a “holy war” in the name of the emperor.44 Not only do the soldiers belong to the emperor, but they also carry a spark of the emperor within their bodies. For that reason, they are not permitted to let their bodies perish from hunger since that would represent a violation to his majesty’s authority over them. As the ship captain orders one of his men, “Your bodies are not yours. They are the emperor’s. If the emperor orders you to kill an American, you have to kill him. If you are ordered to stay alive, you have to stay alive. If you are ordered to eat Gosuke in order to stay alive, you have to eat him.”45 In order not to kill the portion of the emperor that he carries within his body and to serve the nation, the soldiers are forced to eat one another. In addition, the relationship of the emperor to the Japanese empire is treated as analogous to that of the men toward one another. After Gosuke suggests that they summon the hungry emperor to appear in the cave (“Why not just bring the emperor right here to this goddamn hole then?”), the men discuss a newspaper article which reports that the emperor ate tokkari (seal meat), that is to say, the same foodstuff which the men initially lived on after their shipwreck in northern Hokkaido. Hachizō says: “Didn’t you read the menu in the paper for the New Year’s ceremony at the Imperial Palace? Filet of tokkari from Hokkaido and a raw coconut from the South Pacific. By eating such stuff, the emperor paid his respects to the pains of the soldiers at the front.”46 In this New Year banquet, the emperor feasts on foodstuffs representing the entire geographical extent of the Japanese empire in order to commune with the soldiers defending the empire’s frontiers. When Gosuke describes the preparation of tokkari—“you chop up the seal’s guts—bowels, lungs, liver—into tiny pieces and dump in the moustache and the brains too”—with the delectation of a starving man, he associates the emperor’s banquet with a cannibal’s feast. Indeed, the emperor’s relation to the empire—both to the products that he consumes and the soldiers he sends to death—serves as a metaphor for the relationship of the cannibal to the human being that he devours.

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Tropics of Savagery has been a study about the figure of the savage in literature of the Japanese colonial period. A second book remains to be written on the evolution of this figure in the postwar period. This second book would study the later transformations of the savage in relation to Japan’s loss of empire and efforts by writers to come to terms with this new historical situation. In recent years, scholars have noted the relation between the loss of Japan’s South Seas empire and the development of the Japanese monster movie. In a study of Godzilla (1954), Yomota Inuhiko notes that this surviving dinosaur has its origins in a remote island of the South Seas and is worshipped by the primitive islanders living there.47 In his article “Mothra’s Gigantic Egg,” Igarashi Yoshikuni also notes that monsters in Japanese postwar films come from the South Seas, but he shows how these monsters are transformed from horrifying entities to loveable creatures during the 1960s high growth period. He argues that the South Seas and their inhabitants in the postwar period were reconfigured in the Japanese imagination as a pristine space free from the evils of consumerism and commercial greed at the very time that Japan was rapidly becoming a consumer society. Ironically, this reconfiguration of the South was mediated in the form of consumer products, at first tropical fruits such as the pineapple or banana, but later a wide array of products including toys, clothing, songs, and, of course, the films themselves. While the South was associated with real products that offered exotic pleasures to Japanese consumers, it was also a lost paradise peopled by noble savages that could be used, allegorically, to criticize Japan’s consumer society. The fact that Japan once controlled a vast empire in the South is never evoked in these films, but the South as an imaginary locus is repackaged for consumption whether in the form of specific goods or as an allegory criticizing consumerism. Just as prewar writers wrote stories set in the South Seas to talk about themselves, the South Seas in these films acquire their sense as allegories in the context of Japan’s domestic dramas.48 To be sure, this commodification of South Seas is not an entirely new phenomenon. Indeed, commodification is already evident in the popular culture of the colonial period, in manga such as The Adventures of Dankichi and in the hit songs of the Taisho and early Showa periods. During the colonial period, however the commodification of “savagery” went hand in hand with the imperial expansion. By contrast, in the postwar, it served as a substitute for and form of forgetting about empire. Though I find this topic fascinating, a full study of commodification would take me beyond the frame of this book. Nevertheless, a brief examination of three postwar works shows that the figure of the savage flourished in the antiwar and humanistic literature of the early postwar period. I have shown that Takeyama and Ōoka manifest continuity with the colonial-period discourse on savagery. In the cannibal episode of Takeyama’s Harp of Burma, the savage is the abject other and the Japanese protagonist is his civilized and innocent victim. Besides being a gratuitous digression from the main plot of the work, this episode offers a striking il-

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lustration of an imitation of Western colonial tropes of savagery at a time after Japan no longer ruled over savages and therefore had no real engagement with them. By contrast, the cannibal in Ōoka’s Fires on the Plain is a trope for the Japanese military, reduced to the extremities of autopredation in the jungles of war. However, Ōoka’s protagonist still defines himself as a civilized victim by his denial of his own participation in cannibalism, which directly contradicts the evidence of the text. In addition, through his paratextual comments published after the novel, Ōoka reinterprets his book to accord with the rewriting of history in which Japan is, above all, a victim of the war. By contrast with both these writers, Takeda Taijun seeks less to probe the secrets of the cannibal than to analyze the discourse on cannibalism. He signals his reflexive intention to the reader by the way he narrates the story and by his acerbic and intertextual commentary on Ōoka’s Fires on the Plain. Throughout Luminous Moss, he finds subtle ways to undermine the discourse on cannibalism and to overturn the binary of civilization and savagery on which it is based. Takeda also deploys the trope of the cannibal to demand a reconsideration of this past, notably when he turns the emperor, exonerated from all war responsibility by the Tokyo Trial, into the supreme cannibal.

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Notes

I N T RODU C T ION

1. Terms such as “savagery” and “savages” should always be enclosed in quotation marks. While I employ these words in a critical spirit, I have decided, as a general rule, to dispense with quotation marks throughout this book. 2. Thomas, 1994, p. 16. 3. Althusser, 2001, p. 152. 4. Treaty revision was a priority of the Meiji government from the very beginning. Western powers stipulated that they would negotiate treaty revisions with Japan only if Japan met a range of conditions, including the adoption of Western-style law codes, the abolition of punishments such as torture, and the reform of many social practices. In 1894, just before the Sino-Japanese War, the British agreed to abolish extraterritorial rights that British subjects had held in Japan since the 1850s. Only in 1911, six years after the Russo-Japanese War, did Japan recover the autonomy to set its own tariff rates and revise its unequal treaties with the United States. 5. Clifford, 1986, p. 98. 6. Frye, 1957, p. 91. 7. Cf. Todorov, 1973: “Allegory implies the existence of at least two meanings for the same words; according to some critics, the first meaning must disappear, while others require that the two be present together. Secondly, this double meaning is indicated in the work in an explicit fashion” (p. 63). 8. See notably Owens, 1992, and Benjamin, 1998. In his influential study The Origins of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin treats allegory as a dialectical movement between two different levels of the text. The movement between these two levels gives the reader a “secular explanation of history” (p. 165). Benjamin also suggests that the allegorical text privileges neither of the two registers on which it can be read. I would argue, to the contrary, that in 199

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the literature I examine, the relationship between different registers of the text is not one of equality. 9. Professor Steven Carter suggested this idea to me in a conversation in January 2005. 10. Frye, 1957, p. 89. 11. From the “Covenant of the League of Nations,” cited in Peattie, 1988, pp. 54–60, 81–82. 12. To be sure, this dichotomy is also a simplification. As I will show in this book, some Japanese writers depicted South Seas islanders as savages and cannibals, while others romanticized Taiwan aborigines in their works. 13. Hulme, 1986. 14. A Japanese discourse on primitivism had already developed in the early modern period. During the late eighteenth century, Japanese officials and explorers visited the Ainu lands and wrote detailed descriptions of Ainu customs and practices. In their works, they often expressed their ambivalence toward the Ainu in a form that resembles the bifurcated discourse on savages of the modern period. Nevertheless, there is a clear break between modern ethnographic and travel writings and their precursors that flourished during the Edo period. Modern constructions of savagery have a distinct history of their own even if they were added on to the complex palimpsest of earlier writings. Morris-Suzuki, 1998, pp. 17–21. 15. Peattie, 1984, p. 7. 16. Kawahara, 1997a, pp. 69–105. 17. A recent exhibit of painting and sculptures by Japanese who visited prewar Micronesia held at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts (from April 12 to June 22, 2008) features works by dozens of artists. 18. For background on this literature and plot summaries, see Peattie, 1988, pp. 14–15. 19. Yano Ryūkei (1851–1931) was a liberal politician and writer of political fiction. Oshikawa Shunrō (1876–1914) was a major writer of boys’ adventure tales and his 1900 novel is a forerunner of the science fiction novel. 20. Trouillot, 1991, pp. 17–44. 21. Prakash, 1992, p. 8. 22. Said, 1978, p. 3. 23. Spivak, 1999, p. 209. Spivak tackles the diversity of Asian colonial histories in her recent Other Asias. 24. Cf. R. Young 1995, p. 166. 25. Hassan and Saunders, 2003, pp. 22, 18. For a critique of the discipline of postcolonial studies from a Marxist perspective, see Harootunian, 2002, pp. 150–74; and Dirlik 1994, pp. 328–56. 26. When the case of Japan is invoked, it is generally used to show that Japan offers an example that confirms their general theories or, contrarily, to claim that Japan is the exception that proves the rule. Taking the first course, Benedict Anderson aligns Meiji “official nationalism” with that of Great Britain, the Habsburg empire and czarist Russia. But he ignores that Japanese print capitalism, which he sees as spearheading the formation of national communities, began in the eighteenth century, and simplifies when he implies that Japanese nationalism was an artificial construction imposed on the population by modernizing elites skilled in the manipulation of ancient symbols. By contrast, Mark Peattie catalogs the following unique traits of Japan as imperialist power in his excellent introduction to The Japa-

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nese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945: “Japanese beliefs in the mythical origins of the Japanese race, the divine creation and inherent virtue of the Japanese Imperial House, and the mystic link between the emperor and his people. The relative isolation of the country.” Peattie, 1984, p. 13. In this book, I attempt to navigate between the Scylla of making a fetish of Japan’s uniqueness and the Charybdis of reducing it to an application of a universal rule. 27. Robertson, 1998, p. 98. 28. For a detailed critique of area studies, see Harootunian, 2002. 29. Ching, 2001, p. 30; see also pp. 39–42. 30. Like Japan, Germany was a latecomer to colonial empire and to modern nationhood. In Colonial Fantasies, Suzanne Zantop studies German literary and popular cultural production between 1770 and 1870 as fantasies that preceded Germany’s formal acquisition of colonies. These precolonial texts are often “adaptations of English and French models into which German writers inscribe not just a German perspective, but German protagonists as ‘new’ and different colonial agents.” Zantop, 1997, p. 101. In addition, German writers define Germany’s superiority both in relation to the people they colonize, who are constructed in need of German tutelage, and in relation to the older European powers with which their nation competes. The dynamic that Zantop describes is not identical to that of Japan, a nonWestern nation that was semicolonized during the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it differs sufficiently from dominant postcolonial paradigms to suggest that historically specific studies can help to expand our understanding of the global phenomenon of colonialism. 31. Bhabha, 1994, p. 86. 32. Ibid., pp. 86, 90–91. 33. Duus, 1995, p. 424. 34. Ibid., pp. 423, 434. 35. Takekoshi, 1907, p. vii. 36. In addition, the Japanese government sought to force the Qing court to recognize its sovereignty over the Ryūkyū kingdom. By acting on behalf of the murdered fishermen, Japan asserted a claim to sovereignty over the Ryūkyū kingdom, whose international status was ambiguous at this time. This claim was vigorously disputed by the rulers of Qing China. 37. Eskildsen, 2002, p. 399. 38. Ibid., p. 415. 39. Natsume, 1995b, pp. 430–36. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 40. Natsume, 2000, pp. 38–39. 41. Japanese modern literature is a hybrid product of an encounter with the West and of translations from Western languages. Futabatei Shimei invented the language of Japan’s modern fiction when he translated Turgenev’s “The Rendezvous” into Japanese and later applied his discovery to the writing of Ukigumo, considered Japan’s first modern novel. Indeed, he found it easier to write parts of his novel Ukigumo in Russian and then translate them back into Japanese. For more on the role of mimicry and translation in the establishment of modern literature, see Karatani, 1994; and Levy, 2006, p. 60. 42. For a study of Japan’s use of international law to colonize Korea, see Dudden, 2004. 43. As Peter Duus writes, “the pursuit of an expansionist agenda was part and parcel of the larger mimetic project of the Meiji elites.” Duus, 1995, p. 12. 44. Motoori expressed his views on the superiority of the Japanese in esthetic terms, but

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they “provided a framework onto which notions of racial superiority could easily be grafted.” Morris-Suzuki, 1998, p. 49. 45. Bhabha, 1994, p. 89. 46. For a discussion of colored imperialism, see Oguma, 1998, pp. 661–67. 47. Taguchi Ukichi, whose theories I discuss later, argued that the Japanese were an Aryan race. 48. Natsume, 1995a, p. 44. 49. Cited in Lopez, 2000, p. 167. 50. Iriye, 1972, pp. 104–5. 51. The agreement restricted immigration to close relatives of Japanese already present in the United States. 52. Miwa Kimitada notes that this incident inspired the prominent journalist and politician Tokutomi Sohō to write: “July 1st—the day that the Immigration Act came into effect— this is the day when Japan’s foreign policy swings away from the West, disentangling itself from the United States in order to clasp hands with its Asian brothers.” Miwa, 2007, p. 28. 53. A third powerful ideological current, embodied by the Chinese demonstrators, is that of the growing communist movement. 54. To be sure, Shanghai was an international city where Japanese and Western powers jointly exercised colonial authority over the native Chinese. Nevertheless, Japanese writers evince a similar psychology even in situations where Westerners are absent. Yokomitsu, 2001, pp. 52–53. 55. Oguma, 1998, pp. 661–67. 56. The liberal Yoshino Sakuzō questioned the qualifications of Japan to pose as the standard bearer of principles of racial equality while it refused to grant equal rights to the Koreans. Yoshino, 1996. 57. Oguma, 1998, p. 664. 58. Russia may offer the best and most fruitful analogy to the situation of Meiji Japan because of its mimicry of Western modernity from the time of Peter the Great, its cultural hybridity as a nation with portions in both Asia and Europe, and its cultural ambivalence toward the West. 59. Following the distinction made by Paul Ricoeur, I use the term “mimesis” in the productive sense that Aristotle gave to the term, rather than in the more passive Platonic sense. In Plato, the products of mimesis are weakened copies of things, whereas things themselves owe their existence to their intelligible models, the Ideas. By contrast, Aristotle treats mimesis as a creative action in which the mimic does not simply make a copy of a preexisting model but actively produces something original through a process of creation. Ricoeur, 1991, pp. 137–38. 60. For more on Japanese racial terminology, see Robertson, 2002, pp. 191–95. 61. Fukuzawa, 1959a, pp. 459 and 461. 62. Ibid., pp. 462–63. 63. Originally a Chinese term designating one of the four seas surrounding the middle kingdom, the term emerged during the bakumatsu period and was popularized by Meiji period intellectuals. For a history of this term, see Ōji Toshiaki, 2006, p. 334. 64. Shiga, 1887, p. 105.

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65. Ibid., p. 7. 66. Ibid., pp. 3–7. 67. The plan to abolish special quarters for foreigners and allow their free circulation within Japan was an essential measure that the government needed to implement in order to renegotiate the unequal treaties with Western powers. This plan was implemented in 1899, thereby putting an end to the debate. For more on the background of this controversy, see Oguma, 1995, p. 33. 68. Inoue Tetsujirō, Naichi zakkyoron (On Mixed Residence in Japan), cited in Oguma, 1995, p. 39. 69. Taguchi, 1905, p. 187. 70. Ibid., cited in Kawanishi, 2001b, pp. 136–37. 71. See Henning, 2007, p. 157. 72. Inoue, 1915, pp. 17–18. 73. See Morris-Suzuki, 1998, pp. 20–34. 74. Within the bakuhan political order of the Edo period (1600–1868), people demonstrated their degree of civilization by participating in the status system (mibunsei) that governed the behavior of all subjects. Depending on their status, individuals adopted distinctive customs (fūzoku) governing things such as hairstyle, dress, behavior, and so on. David Howell notes that Tokugawa and Meiji notions of civilization differed in that the former was chiefly concerned with external and visible appearances, whereas the latter had to do with the inner lives of the subjects. Howell, 2005, pp. 124–25. 75. Cf. Morris-Suzuki, 1998, pp. 20–34. 76. To be sure, the more common terminology for these three phases is: savage, barbarian, and civilized. Fukuzawa avoids the common translation of the term “barbarian” by the Sino-Japanese yaban and replaces it with the neologism hankai (half-civilized). The term “half-civilized” implied that Japan already stood at the halfway mark to the ultimate goal of civilization even before it embarked on “Civilization and Enlightenment.” Fukuzawa, 1959b, p. 17. 77. In his 1869 “Shōchū bankoku ichiran” (Catalog of the World’s Countries in the Palm of One’s Hand), Fukuzawa wrote of four stages of civilization: chaotic (konton), barbarian, undeveloped (mikai), and civilized. He places Japan in the undeveloped stage. In Outline of a Theory of Civilization, he renames this stage half-civilized and eliminates the “chaotic” stage. Fukuzawa, 1959a, pp. 463–64. 78. Fukuzawa, 1959b, p. 16. 79. Francois Guizot first published his Histoire de la civilization en Europe in 1828. Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of Civilization in England appeared in 1857. For more on the influence of these thinkers on Fukuzawa, see Dillworth and Hurst, 1973, pp. xix–xxii. 80. In the last chapter of this book, “Jikoku no dokuritsu o ronzu” (A Discussion of Our National Independence), Fukuzawa argues that the Japanese can only preserve the independence of their nation if they continue to progress along the path of civilization. For him, national independence is the ultimate goal and civilization is the means to achieve that end. Fukuzawa, 1959b, pp. 183–212. 81. Miwa notes that Fukuzawa had bitter memories of being slighted as a non-European during his trips abroad before the Meiji restoration. “I am a Japanese. I wished that some-

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time in the future I should be able to glorify the national strength, treating the natives of India and China not only the way the English had been doing, but even taking away the power from the English in East Asia to monopolize it for Japan.” Miwa, 1968, p. 13. 82. Fukuzawa, 1959b, p. 17. As Japan’s first colony, Hokkaido served as a model for Japan’s later colonization of Asia and the Ainu (or Ezo) provided a boilerplate for Japanese images of “primitive” societies. Even today, many Japanese, including those sympathetic to Ainu cultures, continue to use the language of “stages of civilization” when they speak of the Ainu as remnants from a more primitive stage of history. For example, Umehara Takeshi: “The huntergatherer culture of Japan’s Jōmon period continues to exist in Ainu society in its pure form.” Cited in Morris-Suzuki, 1998, p. 30. 83. The title datsuron was coined from the Chinese ideographs of dashutsu (escape) and Ajia (Asia). Fukuzawa, 1960b, pp. 239. 84. Fukuzawa, 1960b, pp. 239–40. Urs Matthias Zachmann argues that for Fukuzawa “actively spreading Western civilization functioned, as it were, as a sort of vaccination.” Zachmann, 2007, p. 352. 85. Referring to Fukuzawa’s “Datsuaron,” Komori Yōichi makes a similar argument that Japan’s “civilization and enlightenment” was a form of self-colonization that Japan undertook to avoid being colonized by the threatening Western powers. “Japan hid the fact that it faced the imminent danger of colonization by Western powers and presented its own ‘civilization and enlightenment’ as a spontaneous program undertaken as an act of free will. It concealed the self-colonization implicit in copying the Western powers and consigned it to oblivion; in that way, the nation’s colonial unconscious was formed. Later, Japan had to discover ‘savages’ in its neighborhood and take control of their territories in order to prove that it was indeed civilized” (italics are Komori’s). Komori, 2001, p. 15. I agree with Komori that the dynamic of Japanese colonialism must be seen in relation to a previous self-colonization, but I am unconvinced by his contention that Japan repressed all memories of this process and formed a colonial “unconscious.” In the first place, I question whether it is legitimate to transfer to collective entities (such as nations) psychological notions that were developed to explain the behavior of individuals. In addition, I have found that, empirically, the agents of Japanese imperialism were conscious of what they were doing and did not repress all recollection of Western intrusion from their memories. 86. Fukuzawa, 1960a, p. 196. 87. Ibid., p. 198. 88. Harumi Befu refers to the attitude of the Japanese elite during the Meiji period as one of auto-Orientalism that signified “internalization by the orientalized people of the observation and judgment of the West toward it.” Befu, 1995, pp. 246–47. 89. Kawamura, 1993b, p. 120. 90. Nitobe, 1972, p. 226. 91. In Nakamura Chihei’s story “Banjin no musume” (The Young Aboriginal Woman), a character remarks that “since the aborigines [banjin] believe that they have the same ancestors as the Japanese, they become emotionally attached to the Japanese.” Nakamura, 2000, p. 72. 92. In the early twentieth century, the Okinawan scholar Ifa Fuyū was the main proponent of the theory that the Japanese and the Okinawans shared a common ancestor. Like other Okinawans intellectuals, Ifa marshaled these arguments in order to demand that Ok-

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inawans be treated the same as the inhabitants of other prefectures. In addition, many Korean intellectuals during the colonial period also subscribed to the theory of common origin of Japanese and Koreans, including the writer Yi Kwang-su, one of the founders of modern Korean literature. 93. Takekoshi, 1907, pp. 218–19. 94. Becky Nickerson brought this work to my attention. Fujiwara, 1934, p. 127. 95. It goes without saying that such a theory not only assimilated the Korean language (and the languages of Ryūkyū) into Japanese. It also tended to reduce the multiplicity of these languages to a single homogeneous language as the necessary condition for assimilating them as subordinate dialects of Japanese. In the case of the languages of Ryūkyū, it is not clear that these languages are related to one another, let alone that they are all related to Japanese. 96. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was commonly accepted by anthropologists that races could be scientifically categorized by measuring different body parts and brain sizes. In addition to justifying the ranking of different “races” in a hierarchy, these measurements could be offered as evidence of biological kinship among different races. Adducing a number of similarities between the present-day Japanese and the colonized, anthropologists projected these similarities back into the distant past and then argued that they proved a common origin. For example, in a 1930 survey involving thousands of women, Ueda Tsunekichi (1887–1966), a professor at Keijo University and a specialist on the use of statistics in anthropology, concluded that “Koreans and Japanese are extremely closely related races,” and in particular that “Koreans living in the central regions are very closely related to Japanese in the Kansai region of Japan and that the difference between these two groups is much smaller than the differences between Kansai Japanese and Japanese from different regions.” Oguma, 1995, p. 245. 97. Kume based his theory on a meticulous study of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, which both contained mythical accounts of the early history of the Japanese dynasty. Hoshino argued that the ancestors of the Japanese imperial family were the kings of the Shilla dynasty in Korea. 98. It is noteworthy that the Japanese did not claim common racial ancestry or blood ties with the Chinese although they stressed common cultural ties. As Prasenjit Duara notes, Shiratori Kurakichi, founder of Japan’s Oriental studies, appealed to the Ural Altaic thesis in order to show that Japan’s cultural roots were in Northeast Asia and “to separate Japanese essence and spirit from China.” Duara, 2003, pp. 182–83. 99. John Comaroff, the American anthropologist, claims that the difference in governance in the metropole and in the colonies is that “one depended, for its existence, on the ideological work of manufacturing sameness, of engendering a horizontal sense of fraternity; the other . . . was concerned with the practical management of difference.” Comaroff, 1997, p. 16. 100. To be sure, Japan was not the only power to rule over colonized people who closely resembled the colonizer. The relation between England and Ireland (or Russia and Ukraine) offers a closer parallel for Japan’s relation to Korea than England’s relation with India. However, even in the case of the Irish, who were certainly as “close” to the British as the Japanese were to the Koreans, British travelers tended to write that Irish “were beings who seemed to form a different race from the rest of mankind” or “were the missing link between the gorilla and the Negro.” Cited in Nadel-Klein, 1995, p. 110.

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101. Cf., from Hyun Ok Park, “The relationship of the colonizer and the colonized in the Japanese empire . . . escaped the simple binary opposition of the self and the Other, as evoked in European empires. Instead of otherness, sameness was the mode of rule in the Japanese empire.” Park, 2000, p. 194. 102. For example, Japan shared Chinese writing, Confucianism, and Mahayana Buddhism with Taiwan and Korea, its most important colonies. Peattie, 1984, p. 17. 103. Leo Ching describes dōka policy as “the ideology par excellence for concealing the gap between political and economic discrimination and cultural assimilation.” Ching, 2001, p. 106. 104. Iriye, 1972, pp. 104–5. 105. A paper read at the Central Asian Academy, January 11, 1905. Suematsu, 1905, pp. 294–95. 106. Duus, 1995, p. 399. 107. Cf.: “On the one hand, Japan needed to respond to the prevalent racist thinking in order to elevate itself above and differentiate itself from the wretched of the earth in identification with the ‘white’ colonial powers. Yet on the other hand, paradoxically . . . it constructed a racial and cultural interconnectedness with its ‘yellow’ neighbors in justifying its own colonial endeavor.” Ching, 1998, pp. 67–68. 108. “Kyōiku seifukuron” (The Logic of Conquering by Education), Taiwan Kyōikukai Zasshi (Journal of Taiwan Education), cited in Oguma, 1998, p. 89. 109. I should add that Japanese imperialism was not unique in seeking to justify colonization of its neighbors by advancing the argument that the Japanese and those they ruled were similar. As in pan-Asianism, intellectuals who supported other pan-movements in Europe (pan-Slavism and pan-Germanism) regularly made similar claims to justify the hegemony of one political power over ethnically and racially related peoples. In addition, Ignacio Tifino Quesada notes that ideologists of empire in Spain, often regarded as the Orient of Europe, made much of Spain’s Muslim past and its “Oriental” identity, to justify Spanish colonial projects in Morocco and the Spanish Sahara on the basis of its “African vocation.” TofinoQuesada, 2003, pp. 142–43. 110. Ōkuma, 1910, pp. 6–7. 111. Ibid., p. 7. 112. Later, Kita Sadakichi and Yoshino Sakuzō called on the Japanese state to extend the rights of the Meiji constitution and a measure of self-rule to the population of Taiwan and Korea. 113. Iriye, 1972, p. 92. 114. Duus, 1996, pp. 58–59, 71. 115. In the first years of Taiwan’s colonization, the politician Hara Kei, who eventually became prime minister, argued that Japan should incorporate Taiwan as a prefecture rather than rule it as a colony. He believed that Taiwan could be integrated into the nation just as easily as Okinawa because of its proximity, similarity, ease of communication, and transportation. Oguma, 1998, pp. 83–84. 116. Hara Kei, “Taiwan mondai ni an” (Two Proposals on the Taiwan Problem; 1895), cited in Oguma, 1998, p. 83. 117. The 1879 incorporation of Okinawa into the Japanese nation, referred to as the

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Ryūkyū shobun (the disposition of the Ryūkyū), offers a precedent for the use of euphemisms to disguise Japan’s imperial expansion. 118. Okinawa, for example, was forcibly annexed by Japan in 1879 and later placed under a system of paternalistic rule. Japanese officials pursued policies of cultural assimilation that differed little from those imposed in the colonies. In contrast to the colonies, Okinawa was accorded the status of a prefecture rather than ruled by a colonial regime (sōtokufu). In 1908, the Japanese Diet debated a proposal that Okinawa be attached to the Taiwan and ruled by the Taiwan governor-general, arousing panic among Okinawan intellectuals. Though this proposal was never implemented, the mere fact that it was contemplated at all suggests that Okinawa occupied a liminal space in Japan. As a prefecture, Okinawa was part of naichi, but to cite Allen Christy, “in the Japanese and the Okinawan social imaginaries, it was almost always considered outside the naichi.” Christy, 1997, p. 163. 119. The later wartime slogans that the “the hearts of a hundred million beat as one” included the colonized in the population tally of Japan. 120. Satō Haruo, 2000d, pp. 133–34. 1 . F ROM TA M I NG S AVAG E S TO G OI NG NAT I V E

Epigraphs: Tayama, 1918, p. 357; Kano, 1941, pp. 324–25. 1. Mark Peattie acknowledges that “resistance by (Taiwan) aboriginal tribes smoldered for decades” after the Japanese “pacification” campaign. He then seemingly contradicts himself when he claims: “In the development of Taiwan, Japan’s colonial authorities were fortunate to have the passive acquiescence of a thoroughly submissive population.” Peattie, 1984, p. 19. 2. In the colonial wars in Taiwan, 9,592 Japanese troops died, more than the 8,395 who died in the Sino-Japanese War. Ōe, 1993, p. 10. 3. Cited in Ōe, 1993, p. 10. 4. Japanese officials posted on the aboriginal frontier numbered fewer than one hundred during the first years of Japanese rule. Given their small numbers, they could do little more than serve as mediators between the Governor-Generalship and an aboriginal population estimated at over a hundred thousand. Citation in Barclay, 2003b, p. 81. 5. Kabayama, 1918, p. 2. 6. The bukonsho were abolished in 1898 and relations with aborigines were next taken over by district administrators and the police bureau. After defeating Chinese guerrillas in 1902, the colonial state created a Bureau of Aboriginal Affairs that centralized government control of relations with the aborigines. Citation of Mizuno Jun in Barclay, 2003, p. 9. 7. This is the first mention that I have come across in the colonial archive concerning the consanguinity of the Japanese and the aborigines, a recurring trope of later colonial discourse. Hashiguchi, 1895, pp. 321–22. 8. Barclay, 2003a, pp. 230–31. 9. Camphor was used to manufacture celluloid and smokeless gunpowder and Taiwanese camphor dominated the world market. Paul Barclay argues that “the world price of camphor, the colony’s need for money and Taiwan’s lack of other quickly exportable items . . . combined to make the conquest of the mountains an imperative of rule on the island.” Ibid., p. 230. 10. Cited in Ton, 2001b, p. 79. Takekoshi Yosaburō, who visited Taiwan in 1904, devel-

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oped a line of argument similar to that of Kodama in his book on Japanese colonial rule. “It’s a question how much longer the Japanese authorities will be willing to pursue their present policy of moderation and goodwill, and leave nearly half the island in [the aborigines’] hands. . . . If there were a prospect of their becoming more manageable in ten or even twenty years, the present policy might be continued . . . but if the process should require a century or so, it is quite out of the question, as we have not that length of time to spare.” Takekoshi, 1907, p. 230. 11. Sakuma Samata (1844–1915) served in the Taiwan Expedition of 1874, was a military governor of occupied areas of China in 1894, and was a commander of the Tokyo garrison in 1905. He served as governor-general in Taiwan for ten years, the longest term of any of Japan’s nineteen governors general. Itō, 1993, p. 95. 12. The great majority of the casualties reported by the Bureau of Aboriginal Affairs between the years 1903 and 1909 were Taiwanese. Barclay, 1999, pp. 146–47. 13. Like the Offices of Pacification and Reclamation (bukonsho), the guard line (aiyū) (Ch: aiyong) was a revival of the traditional Chinese strategy of building earthen walls to separate barbarians submitted to Qing rule (shufan, or cooked savages) from those that lay outside the reach of Qing influence (shengfan, or raw savages). During the late Qing period, important families hired shufan and Chinese guards to man guard lines surrounding their agricultural lands or camphor forests. Private guard lines were supplemented by cordons established by Qing expeditionary troops who sought to establish outposts in the highlands. Shepherd, 1993, pp. 300, 305. 14. Kondō, 1992, p. 37. 15. Ōe notes that the Japanese copied British tactics, but that they reproduced them on an incomparably greater and crueler scale. Ōe, 1993, p. 16. The writer Satō Haruo depicts the brutal destruction of aboriginal villages in his 1923 “Demon Bird,” which I discuss in chapter 2. 16. Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines, I. Chang, and Lava Kau, 1995, p. 360. 17. Matsuda, 2008, p. 99. 18. Kondō, 1992, p. 36. 19. The police compiled household registers for every family, recorded birth and deaths and kept regular population censuses. Statistics are from ibid., p. 37. 20. Ching, 2001, pp. 136–37. 21. Gotō, 1901, p. 34. 22. Born in 1867 in Fukushima Prefecture, Mochiji Rokusaburō studied in the law department of Tokyo University and worked in the Ministry of Finance and the Home Ministry, before being recruited by civil administrator Gotō Shinpei to serve in the Taiwan colonial government in 1900. After ten years service in Taiwan, he became professor of colonial policy studies at Keio University. In Taiwan shokumin seisaku (Colonial Policies in Taiwan), he argued that the ethnic minorities in Taiwan had to be sacrificed to the imperatives of economic development. “Policies toward the aborigines are in the final analysis nothing but a reflection of the ethnic struggle for survival that accompanies the process of economic development.” Mochiji, 1998, p. 395. Mochiji later occupied several senior posts within the Korean governor-generalship under the military administrations (budan seiji) of Terauchi, Hasegawa, and Saitō. On Mochiji’s career, see Kaneko, 1979, pp. 119–28.

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23. The full text of Mochiji’s opinion is reprinted in Riban shikō, a collection of Taiwan policy statements toward aborigines published in 1918. Mochiji, 1918, pp. 179–228. 24. Ibid., pp. 180–82; italics added. 25. When he defined the aboriginal problem as a land problem, Mochiji acknowledged that the “savages” at that time enjoyed de facto control over their territories and political autonomy from the Japanese state. 26. Ibid., pp. 202–3. 27. Okamatsu Santarō (1871–1921), professor of law at Kyoto University, was hired by Gotō Shinpei to conduct the Research Survey of Old Customs, which sought to adjudicate land claims in Taiwan Chinese areas. Okamatsu later served as the first director of the Research Bureau of the Southern Manchuria Railway Company under Gotō. 28. According to the third article, the Japanese authorities extended to the Taiwan Chinese the option of either becoming subjects to Japanese rule or leaving Taiwan for China within a period of two years dating from the signature of the peace treaty. While a small minority left Taiwan, most remained and worked the land. As Leo Ching notes, the aborigines practiced a form of slash-and-burn agriculture and worked the land communally. “Their lack of class differentiation and their intimate bond with the land prevented the Japanese from taking advantage of existing class relations; thus they had to confront the aborigines in their entirety.” Ching, 2001, p. 135. 29. Mochiji, 1918, pp. 181–86. 30. Agamben, 1998, pp. 15–29. Liminal spaces and states of exception have an important relevance to contemporary American society. In the case of the “war on terror,” the U.S. government has held thousands of prisoners of war seized from battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq or elsewhere. It has also used liminal geographic spaces such as Guantanamo Bay, Diego Garcia, and other places as prison sites to hold and to interrogate in secret the socalled “illegal combatants” in order to circumvent human rights agreements and the protections of U.S. law. The invention of the category “illegal combatants” to denote members of the al-Qaeda network and Taliban regime captured in Afghanistan or elsewhere is an excellent example of an exercise of state sovereignty that establishes exceptions to its own laws and creates lawless spaces beyond the reach of its own jurisdiction. Unlike “enemy combatants,” “illegal combatants” are not protected by the Geneva Convention. Unlike “legal” criminals that commit ordinary crimes, they can be held indefinitely without being charged or put on trial. 31. It should be added that later colonial thinkers became the most fervent believers in the Arcadian past of the aborigines. Mochiji, 1998, p. 298. 32. The same geography text lists the “tallest mountain in Japan” as Niitakayama (known as Yushan or Jade Mountain in Chinese) on the island of Taiwan, some two hundred meters taller than Mount Fuji, the highest peak in the Japanese archipelago. 33. Nihon chiri taikei, 1930, pp. 325–29. In this section, I have been particularly stimulated by the comments of Masaki, 1995, pp. 10–12. 34. Eskildsen, 2002, p. 402. 35. Hashiguchi, 1895, p. 321–22. 36. Takekoshi, 1907, p. 228. 37. The other three achievements are: the repression of brigandage, the gradual elimi-

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nation of opium smoking and improvements in hygiene. Nitobe contrasts Japan’s success with China’s failures and cites Li Hung Chang’s view that Taiwan was not amenable to good government because of brigandage, opium smoking, an insalubrious climate, and the presence of headhunting tribes. Nitobe, 1972, p. 213. 38. Ibid., p. 224. 39. By contrast, anthropologists argued that headhunting was only practiced on special situations and had a precise spiritual meaning for its practitioners. I discuss these views in chapter 2. 40. Tayama Katai’s Yama no junsatachi (The Policemen in the Mountains), published in the periodical Yūben (Eloquence) in 1918, is another conquest narrative that justifies Japanese rule. Katai’s story is loosely based on Yanagita Kunio’s trip to Taiwan to visit his uncle Andō Sadami, the sixth governor-general of Taiwan and the successor of Sakuma. In Katai’s story, A, a senior government official from Tokyo, travels around Taiwan to give a series of lectures about the “economy and business development” and to survey the achievements of the colonial regime. Arriving shortly after the military subjugation of the tribes, he feels a “romantic” fascination with the lifestyle of wild aborigines who lie beyond the guard lines, a fascination that grows as he slowly moves from the coastal cities to the island’s mountainous interior and then from the administrative centers in the highlands to an isolated outpost where Japanese police confront unsubmitted tribes across the guard line. As he approaches the aboriginal interior, A feels as though he has stepped into the colorful world of adventure tales that had fascinated him as a child and the colonial tales of European writers that that he had read as a student. Nevertheless, he is thoroughly disillusioned when he actually visits an aboriginal village: “It was enough to see one or two houses to get some idea of the filth and unhygienic life of the barbarians. The dirty women had tattooed faces, his nose was assaulted by the unbearable smell of their huts that were like pigsties, etc.” Yet even on his way back to Japan, he can not help but fantasize onboard the ocean liner that returns him to civilization about “the unsurrendered members of the B tribe pushed deep into the mountains, the life of the mountain police.” While Katai uses the trope of the headhunter in this narrative written shortly after the Sakuma conquests, he also fantasizes about the romantic possibilities of the men on the edge of civilization and the exoticism of the primitive tribes. This fascination and attraction to the exotic will take on a bigger presence in the later literature as the aboriginal resistance is gradually reduced. Tayama, 1918, pp. 357–84. 41. The term interpreter (tsūji) was the title of a Qing official who acted as mediator between Taiwan Chinese settlers and aborigines who had not submitted to the Qing authorities. For studies of the Go Hō legend see Ching, 2001, pp. 153–58; Komagome, 1996, pp. 166–85. 42. Ibid., pp. 166–67. 43. Such views are also to be found in accounts by foreign commentators of Japan’s early colonization of Taiwan. Discussing how “uncivilized’ the Taiwanese “savages” were, J. Stafford Ransome notes that the aboriginal tribal chiefs requested the Japanese authorities “should kill the necessary number of Chinamen and send them the heads at the time required for the propitiation of the gods” in religious ceremonies. Ransome, 1899, pp. 301–2. 44. Mori, 1917b, p. 174. 45. Komagome, 1996, p. 174.

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46. The Go Hō myth was not the only legend that the state used in its educational textbooks in Taiwan. If the legend of Go Hō depicted the Taiwan Chinese as bearers of civilization to the barbarous aborigines, the story of Kitashirakawa Shinnō Yoshihisa, a member of the imperial family who died of illness during the conquest of Taiwan, was represented as a Japanese cultural hero who brought civilization to the Taiwan Chinese. Go Hō was honored by the Chinese and Japanese alike, but Yoshihisa was an object of veneration for the Japanese alone. Just as Go Hō sacrificed himself to persuade the aborigines to give up headhunting, Yoshihisa sacrificed himself to bring modern infrastructure and hygienic thought to the Taiwan Chinese where previously there were “neither trains nor sewers” and “only a variety of bad diseases flourished.” If Go Hō served as an ideological weapon that associated the Chinese with the colonial state in the battle to suppress aboriginal resistance to colonial rule, Yoshihisa was used to depict Chinese resistance to Japanese colonialism as lawlessness and opposition to modernization. What the two stories have in common is the theme of self-sacrifice: Yoshihisa brings civilization to the Taiwanese by sacrificing himself and Go Hō brings civilization to savages by a similar act of self-sacrifice. Perhaps because it depicts Chinese culture as civilized and the Chinese as standard bearers of civilization, the legend of Go Hō was much more popular among the Taiwan Chinese than that of Yoshihisa. Ibid., pp. 184–85. 47. Ibid., p. 176. 48. Ibid., pp. 169–73. 49. To this day, Taiwanese burn silver and gold paper after the death of their family members. 50. The aborigines who had contact with the Japanese plainly did not enjoy being depicted as violent headhunters. In “Musha,” Satō Haruo notes that the aboriginal porters are offended when the police officer teases them by remarking that they use their swords to cut off the heads of their enemies. “Not only these porters, but many aborigines who have contact with Japanese seem very offended when they are told that they use their swords to cut off people’s heads.” Satō, 2000d, pp. 157–58. 51. The colonial regime honored guardsmen who were killed or wounded in the execution of their duties just as it rewarded Japanese police officers. In addition, it published exemplary stories (bidan) that glorified the brave deeds and self-sacrificing spirit of the guardsmen. Matsuda, 2008, p. 104. 52. For more, see Smith, 1959. 53. Nan Bujin notes that the Go Hō myth was also a fixture of Korean textbooks. In this case, rather than being a legend that was transmitted from Japan to Korea, it followed the circuitous route from Taiwan to Japan to Korea, suggesting the complexity of the circulation of colonial discourses. Though the legend was removed from textbooks in postwar Japan, it survived in the neocolonial order of both postwar Taiwan and Korea. Nan, 2006, pp. 251–64. 54. Freud, 1961, p. 97. 55. Lawrence, 1961, p. 548. 56. Torgovnick, 1990, p. 23. 57. Ibid., 245. Analyzing Qing period discourse and travel writing about the Taiwan aborigines, Emma Teng draws a similar dichotomy. She distinguishes between a “rhetoric of privation,” which demonizes the aborigines for their lack of civility, and a “rhetoric of primitivism,” which is close to Western myths of the “noble savage.” Teng, 1999, p. 448.

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58. Kawamura, 1994b, p. 35. 59. Yamaji, 2004, p. 87. 60. Tao Qian’s Taohua yuan ji (An Account of Peach Blossom Spring), written in the fourth century, tells of mythical refuge at Wuling where people had fled the oppressive Qin dynasty (221–206 b.c.e.) and lived in a timeless, utopian world. 61. Yamaji, 2004, pp. 100–101. 62. Ibid., p. 101. 63. Inō, 1898, cited in ibid., p. 96. 64. “Kyōkaidō e no ichiretsu” (Procession to a Church), Ogawa, 1932, p. 165. 65. For example, commenting on Ainu and Taiwanese aboriginal arts, “They cannot tell the good from the bad. It will take the Japanese to discern the beauty [for them]. . . . Therefore it is the duty of the Japanese to raise their consciousness of beauty first by recognizing and respecting their own art as something worthy.” Yanagi, cited by Kleeman, 2003, p. 83. 66. Nakamura attended high school in Taiwan in the 1920s and returned to the island in the late 1930s. He is well known for his exotic stories about Taiwan aborigines and his recording of aboriginal folk legends. He wrote of his fascination with the exotic South: “I think my nostalgia for the South, longing for the South, and love of the South will never change as long as I am alive.” Nakamura, 2000, p. 273. Masugi Shizue, who spent most of her youth in Taipei, is one of the few female writers to have written about the Japanese settler community there, especially about Japanese women. 67. The largest national parks included the Tsugitara Taroko (272,590 hectares) and Niitaka Arisan (189, 980 hectares), both located in aboriginal districts. Kerr, 1974, p. 151. 68. The publication of this book coincided with a large influx of tourists from Japan to attend the 1935 Taiwan Exposition that celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Japanese rule. See Matsuda, 2005, p. 169. 69. Nakamura, 2000, pp. 213–14. 70. Masugi, 2000a, pp. 211, 219. 71. Ibid., p. 259. 72. In an unpublished conference paper, Peichen Wu argues that both stories are adaptations of Sayon’s Bell, a story of an aboriginal woman who sacrifices her life for a Japanese man drafted into the army. These works can also be also regarded as products of the wartime propaganda policy. Wu, 2004. 73. Masugi, 2000b, pp. 257–58. 74. The conventional wisdom at this time held that, as a character in Nakamura Chihei’s story “Banjin no musume” puts it, “whenever troubles break out in the savage lands, there is always a woman behind them.” Nakamura, 2000, p. 72. 75. Mori, 1917a, pp. 24–25. 76. Nakamura, 2000, p. 60. 77. As Barclay notes, the use of the term junshi to refer to aboriginal honor suicides is found in Japanese language press in Taiwan. Paul Barclay, personal communication, 2008. 78. Rather than serving as a symbol of aboriginal violence, headhunting also becomes the object of aesthetic contemplation and enjoyment in the late colonial period. At the Ninth Annual Taiwan Fine Arts Exposition, held in 1935, the jury awarded the first prize in the

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Oriental (Tōyō) Arts Division to a painting that represents aboriginal headhunting. Matsuda, 2005, p. 173. 79. From the late Heian period, Japanese warriors customarily took the heads of their defeated enemies. After the battle was over, the military commanders carried out an inspection of enemy heads (kubijikken) taken by warriors under their command. The purpose of this inspection was to determine rewards of the warriors, which varied according to the status of the enemy killed. Varley, 1994, p. 27. 80. Cited in Barclay, 1999, p. 219. 81. In a recent biography of Saigō Takamori, Mark Ravina notes that, after the Seinan War (1878), nishikie artists published prints showing the formal presentation of Saigō’s head (along with those of other defeated rebels) to Yamagata Aritomo and Arisugawanomiya, leaders of the imperial army, in a clear allusion to the medieval tradition of kubijikken. In 1897, Kawasaki Saburō added the final touches to this legend by reporting that Yamagata treated Saigō’s head with great reverence, washed it in clear water, and shed tears for his fallen comrade. Ravina, 2004, pp. 1–3 and 211–14. 82. Davidson, 1902, pp. 139–40. 83. Nishikawa, 1986. 84. This “most eccentric of Tanizaki’s works” was serialized in the mass-market publication Shinseinen between October 1931 and November 1932 and later revised for book publication in 1935. Shinseinen, a slick and sophisticated publication, specialized in fantasies, satires, and detective fiction. Chambers, 1994, p. 17. 85. Tanizaki, 1982, p. 30. 86. Freud, 1955, p. 1. 87. Ōshika is probably the only modern Japanese writer who majored in mining and metallurgy in college. Besides his Taiwan stories, he is best known today for his novels that deal with environmental destruction and pollution. His Watarasegawa (1948) and Yanakamura jiken (Yanakamura Incident; 1972) tell the story of the village headman and diet representative Tanaka Shōzō (1814–1913), who led a valiant, solitary fight against the Ashio Copper Mine during the Meiji period. There is a thematic continuity between Ōshika’s works in aboriginal Taiwan and his “environmental fiction,” mainly published in the postwar period. Ōshika first fled from industrialized and polluted Japan to discover pristine nature in primitive Taiwan, but later he turned to writing the history of Japan’s antipollution struggle within the borders of the postwar nation-state. Kawahara, 1997a, pp. 52–68. 88. The cultural anthropologist Yamaguchi Masao makes this comparison in a dialogue with Kawamura Minato and Karatani Kojin, in Kawamura, Karatani, Yamaguchi, 1992, p. 21. 89. For more on Conrad, see Saitō, 1999, pp. 54–56. 90. To be sure, there are crucial differences between these two works. There is no equivalent of the ambiguous Mr. Marlowe in Ōshika, the inserted narrator who distances the primary narrator from the story he is telling. In addition, Ōshika seems to celebrate the going native of his protagonist, whereas Marlowe implicitly condemns Kurtz. 91. Ōshika was a contemporary of the Western artists who rediscovered primitive society as an object of desire. In that respect, his work differs greatly from Conrad’s fin-desiècle masterpiece.

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92. Ōshika, 1935, pp. 60–63. 93. Ōshika develops this anticapitalist theme in “Sō no yokubō” (Sō’s Desire; the first title of the story was simply “Desire”). Sō is an evil Chinese merchant and interpreter who enriches himself and undermines Japanese rule by selling weapons to the naïve aborigines. If Ōshika romanticizes the natives in his Taiwan fiction, he demonizes the Chinese in this story. The portrayal of Sō harkens back to the earliest period of Japanese rule, when the Japanese posed as protectors of the simple aborigines and considered Chinese middlemen as untrustworthy and exploitative. In addition, this story reflects a new anti-Chinese sentiment growing out of the Manchurian Incident and the expanding war in China. Sō is depicted both as a predator-swindler and as a subversive nationalist who seeks to undermine Japanese rule; by contrast, the aborigines are gullible victims and potential allies of the Japanese. Ōshika, 2000c, pp. 247–72. 94. Ōshika, 2000b, p. 5. 95. “The Savage” is loosely based on the biography of Kondō Katsusaburō (1873–?), a Japanese who spent most of his life in Taiwan, married the daughter of an aboriginal headman, and established trading posts on the aboriginal frontier. Kondō won the nickname “Seiban Kondō” (Kondō the Savage). Paul Barclay has republished an account of Kondo’s life that was first serialized in the columns of Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō (Taiwan Daily Newspaper) in 1931, that is, one year after the Musha Incident. Barclay, 2004, 105–51. 96. For a general discussion of this intellectual current, see Harootunian and Najita, 1988, pp. 711–84. 97. Ōshika, 2000b, pp. 35–36. 98. Ibid., p. 5. 99. As in the later rape scene, part of this scene was blacked out when the text was first published in Japan because of its graphic depiction of violence. An uncensored version appeared after the war. Faye Yuan Kleeman translates the censored passages as follows: “Chopping off the dead man’s fingers one by one, he next moved to stab his throat. The barbarian knife thrust in halfway and then stopped. ‘Shit! Shit!’ ” Kleeman, 2003, p. 25. 100. Ibid., pp. 29–30. 101. When the narrator joins the savages, he tries to restore his masculinity both by engaging in tribal warrior and by taking an aboriginal woman as his wife. As Donald Roden notes in his study of the interwar period, conservative commentators in Japan were wont to lament that Japanese men had grown effeminate as a result of modern Japan’s cosmopolitan culture and the influence of decadent Western literature. Tazawa’s desire for an aboriginal woman and his emulation of the manly aboriginal warriors mirror a similar anxiety about the widespread androgyny in early twentieth-century Japanese culture and the effacement of sexual differences. See Roden, 1990, pp. 37–55. 102. Ōshika, 2000b, pp. 44–46. 103. Faye Yuan Kleeman offers the following translation from the unexpurgated version after the war, in which underlined sections represent passages blacked out by the censors. “He pulled her into his arms suddenly. The smell of animal skin assaulted his nose. The foul smell numbed his brain; he forgot about all other concerns and turned into a man of violence. He dragged her into the deep woods. She was surprised by Tazawa’s aggressive transformation. Her eyes filled with fear and she wriggled instinctively, but before long the fear turned to

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excitement and pleasure. She fell to the ground and let her body go. The deep grass surrounding the two bodies rustled.” Kleeman, 2003, p. 25. 104. Ōshika, 2000b, p. 58. 105. Ōshika, 2000a, p. 246. 106. Lamley, 1999, p. 234. 107. Kawano and Kawakami, 1931, pp. 121–32. 108. Nakamura Chihei, in his 1939 “Kiri no bansha” (The Mist-Enshrouded Aboriginal Village) also depicts the Musha Incident as an expression of innate savagery, repressed by the Japanese policies of assimilation, and he compares it to the stage of menopause in the life of a woman. “In all likelihood, the simple nature (of these people) had been weakened and subdued by the so-called culture that the authorities introduced successfully with their assimilation policies. Much like a middle-aged woman who is on the verge of losing her biological functions as a woman, the ferocity and primitiveness of these people had already passed its peak. . . . Sometimes a woman, facing old age, is driven to unexpected action by her yearning and attachment to youth, aggravated by her physiological impatience and trouble. Similarly these savages were driven by their lingering savagery and violent nature to undertake one last, desperate battle with civilization, a form of life that did not suit their natures.” Nakamura Chihei, 2000, p. 38. 109. In many works of twentieth-century Japanese literature, the male protagonist has more than one father figure, among them the unnamed narrator of Kokoro, Segawa Ushimatsu in Hakai, and so on. Faced with the two alternatives represented by these figures, these characters generally select the nonbiological father as a model for emulation and identification. Tazawa in “The Savage” offers a colonial variant of this paradigmatic situation in modern Japanese fiction. 110. Ōshika, 2000b, p. 16. 111. “Affiliation becomes a form of representing the filiative processes found in nature, although affiliation takes validated non-biological social and cultural forms.” Said, 1983, p. 23. 112. The promotion of brokered marriages as an instrument of colonial rule was not unique to the Japanese governance of the aboriginal lands. The 1920 marriage between the crown prince of Korea and a Japanese princess was certainly the most famous brokered marriage of the entire colonial period. The government arranged this strategic match to promote the new policies of cultural rule and to combat the Korean independence movement (March First Movement of 1919). 113. For the aboriginal headmen, the practice of marrying out daughters offered the advantage of bringing trading benefits to the tribe and creating political alliances. While it promoted strategic alliances between policemen and prominent aboriginal women, the Japanese government discouraged marriages between Japanese freebooters and local women, common practice in the early period of colonial rule and the Qing period. Barclay, 2005, p. 347. 114. Ibid., p. 325. 115. Ibid., p. 344. For example, Kondō Gisaburō, a policeman assigned to rule the aboriginal area of central Taiwan, married Diwao Rudao, sister of Mona Rudao. In 1913, overhearing a plan from her brother, she alerted her husband who in turn sounded the alarm and averted an imminent catastrophe for the Japanese. In 1916, however, the same Kondō

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disappeared on his way to a new posting at Huwairen and was rumored to have abandoned his wife deliberately, leaving her bereft and dishonored. Mona Rudao’s sympathy for his sister and resentment at the authorities were cited among the causes of the Musha Incident. 116. Ōshika, 2000b, p. 43. 117. Nakagawa notes that at the time of the Slamao rebellion of 1920, the Japanese authorities mobilized “friendly tribes” to defeat the rebels and permitted them to take the heads of their enemies in order to whip up their martial spirit. Likewise, after the 1930 Musha Incident, the authorities not only encouraged their allies to take the heads of the rebels in battle but also offered them rewards for the number of heads taken. In the counterattack after the Musha Incident, “friendly tribes” decapitated an estimated eighty-seven of their enemies. A year later, pro-Japanese tribes killed a further 216 of the surviving Ataiyal by attacking the detention centers in which they were held and offered these heads to the Japanese authorities for monetary rewards. A famous photo from this period shows some 101 decapitated heads lined up on the ground with a crowd of aboriginal tribal warriors and a Japanese officer sitting proudly in the background. Nakagawa and Wakamori, 1980, pp. 59–77 and pp. 131–32. 118. Ōshika, 2000b, p. 27. 119. Ibid., p. 1. 120. Oguma, 1995. Long before the publication of Oguma’s book, Kamishima Jirō had already noted: “In prewar Japan, everyone said that the Yamato people are hybrid people [zasshu minzoku] and mixed people [kongō minzoku]. . . . But strangely, in the postwar period, even progressive intellectuals began to say that Japan is monoethnic. There is no basis for this.” Kamishima, 1961, pp. 17–18. 121. Oguma, 1995, p. 108, citing Tsuboi. 122. Ibid., pp. 284–85, quoting Shiratori. 123. La Fleur, 1990, p. 254, quoting Watsuji. 124. Kishida, 1991, p. 183. 125. Robertson, 1998, p. 97. 126. Ri Koran (Chinese name Li Xianglin) was the most famous cross-ethnicking performer in the Japanese empire. Born to the name of Yamaguchi Yoshiko, she grew up in northeast China, where her father worked for the Southern Manchurian Railroad Company; she learned Chinese so well that she was able to pass for a Chinese. With her exotic features, her bilingualism, and her singing talent, Yamaguchi went on to become an actress, performing in many Chinese and Manchurian roles in productions of Manei, the Manchurian Motion Picture Company, as well as in works for Japanese film studios. During the wartime years, her Japanese identity was concealed from her public. Indeed, much of her appeal was based on her chameleon-like ability to imitate the dress and speech of other Asian ethnicities and to pass as non-Japanese. Nor did her chameleon- like career end with the war and the Japanese empire. In the postwar period, Yamaguchi went on to perform in Hollywood under the name Shirley Yamaguchi. Baskett, 2006, p. 129. 127. At the time that this book was published, the colonial government actively promoted the Japanization of the everyday life of the aborigine as part of its cultural improvement movement. This included inculcating the aborigines with the virtues of punctuality and thrift, the wearing of Japanese clothing, the construction of Japanese-style housing, the use of chopsticks to eat, and so on.

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128. Ōshika, 2000b, p. 53. Toward the end of the story, he notices his wife “using two thin branches as chopsticks and picking up pebbles and carrying them to her mouth. She was having trouble picking them up and beads of sweat formed on her brow. He felt ashamed of himself. He had scolded his wife when she had picked up food with her hands every time they had a meal. That was a mistake.” Ibid., p. 55. 129. Anne McClintock coined the term “ethnic cross-dressing” in Imperial Leather, her study of race, gender, and class in British imperialism. In an analysis of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, she writes: “The transvestite Kim blurs the distinction between colonizer and colonized but only in order to suggest a reformed colonial control.” Kim’s passing is the privilege of whiteness. His passing as Indian is “not a technique of colonial subversion but of surveillance.” McClintock, 1995 pp. 69–70. 130. Ōshika, 2000b, p. 6. 131. Ibid., p. 7. 132. Ibid., p. 8. 2 . E T H NO G R A P H Y A N D L I T E R AT U R E

Epigraphs: Barthes, 1975, p. 87; Mōnanon, 2002, p. 7. Mōnanon is a contemporary poet and a leader of the Taiwan aboriginal rights movement. 1. Lev Mechnikov, cited in Konishi, 2007, p. 123. In Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, the character Passepartout, the French servant to the English gentleman Phineas Fogg, contrasted the great variety of Japanese “facial complexions—from dark copper tints to dull white—with the uniformity of the Chinese, who—in his view—all had the same yellow faces.” Verne, 1994, p. 95. 2. In his 1876 The Mikado’s Empire, William E. Griffis spoke of the Japanese as a melting pot of distinct races including “Ainō, Malay, Nigrito, Corean and Yamato.” The Japanese are also “distinct from the Chinese ethnologically, physically and spiritually.” Griffis, 2000, p. 96. 3. For an interesting discussion of this archeological discovery, see Tanaka, 2004, pp. 40–48. Tanaka stresses that archaeology led Japanese thinkers to make a radical epistemological break with earlier views of historical time, but I would add that archaeological excavations themselves were not an entirely new phenomenon. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Japanese intellectuals had collected stone tools, ancient bronzes, and shards of pottery, met to discuss their findings, and written books about them. Arai Hakuseki, for example, argued that stone tools found throughout Japan were left behind by a nation called Shukushin, which had migrated to Japan from the Asian continent. Nevertheless, modern archaeology clearly represents a break with earlier conceptions of historical time in its methodology and theories. On the one hand, archaeologists initiated the systematic excavation of the physical remains of the past (ruins, pottery shards, fossils) from ancient sites. On the other, they treated the relics and traces they discovered as fragments that could be used to reconstruct ancient societies. 4. Sakano, 2005, p. 20. 5. Oguma, 1995, p. 29. 6. Tsuboi was no means anti-Western or conservative. Oguma Eiji describes him as a

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young scholar “from a developing country who burned with a strong feeling of opposition to the West, but at the same time believed that to compete, it was necessary to absorb modern Western sciences as quickly as possible and build an independent Japanese scholarship and civilization.” Oguma, 2002, p. 13. 7. Torii, 1974, p. 133. 8. I use the terms “ethnography” and “anthropology” interchangeably in referring to this early period of the discipline. 9. The British geologist John Milne (1850–1913) named the pre-Ainu group the Koropokgrus in a lecture to the Asiatic Society of Japan called “Notes on the Koro-pok-gru or Pitdwellers of Yezo and Kurile Islands.” He learned this term from the Anglican pastor John Batchelor, who, in turn, came across it in his transcriptions of Ainu legends. 10. Shimizu, 1999, p. 125. 11. Tsuboi, 1887, p. 274. Magatama are literally “curved beads” associated with the ruling elite of Japan, often made of jade, jasper, quartz, or agate. 12. In his account of Japanese culture, Yanagita situated the South Seas at the very heart of Japanese culture. The ancestors of the Japanese had long ago traveled the “path of the sea” (kaijō no michi) that linked the islands of the South Seas to Japan. At the same time, Yanagita drew a sharp line of demarcation between contemporary Japanese and South Seas islanders when he located the latter in a distant past, idealized and lying outside of historical development. See Yanagita, 1961. 13. Shimizu, 1999, pp. 115–26; Tomiyama, 1994, pp. 37–56; Oguma, 1995, pp. 19–32. 14. Torii Ryūzō described the early Japanese as a masculine, conquering race and compared them to the Teutons of Europe. Torii, 1937, p. 22. 15. Shimizu, 1999, p. 123. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the borderlands of Japan and the people that lived there had occasionally been objects of ethnographic interest. The Tokugawa government dispatched important exploratory expeditions to the northern islands in reaction to Russian initiatives to establish trade and diplomatic ties. These explorers left records of their missions that remain a valuable source of historical and ethnographic information on the Ainu today. While they often characterized the Ainu as barbarians, they did not describe the Ainu as a dying race nor did they view them as throwbacks to a distant Japanese past. 16. Sakano, 2005, pp. 240–46. 17. Torii later conducted fieldwork in Mongolia and Manchuria in 1905, Korea in 1910, Siberia in 1918, northern China and Manchuria in the 1920s. The successive sites where he worked mirror the different phases of expansion of the Japanese empire. Shimizu, 1999, pp. 132–33. 18. Torii, 1976, p. 4. 19. Ibid., p. 5. 20. Mori, 1917a, p. 16. The ethnographer Inō Kanori also wrote, “Excepting one or two customs, we should not consider the manners and customs (of the aborigines) as uncivilized.” Inō, 1900, p. 282. 21. Mori, 1917b, p. 315. 22. To some extent, every science constitutes its object by abstraction and a selective apprehension of reality. Mori studied aboriginal customs by privileging the internal dynamics

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of aboriginal societies and by rejecting as extraneous external factors such as the Japanese conquest, colonial policies, and so on. 23. Blumenbach’s classification of the peoples of the world into five races (Mongolian, Caucasian, Ethiopian, Malay, and American) had been widely popularized in school textbooks and popular journals from the early Meiji period. 24. Barclay, 2003a, pp. 226–27. Emma Teng argues that these categorizations were first invented to distinguish friendly from hostile aborigines and that their meanings shifted over time. Indeed, the “raw savages” later became “the symbols of cultural difference, in both the positive and negative sense” for Qing travel writers, prefiguring and anticipating some of the tendencies of Japanese colonial discourse. Teng, 1999, p. 460. 25. Sakano, 2005, p. 236. 26. Thomas, 1994, pp. 66–104. 27. Barclay, 2003a, pp. 220–21. 28. Mori often referred to the tribes as “nations.” 29. Sakano, 2005, p. 253. 30. While the Japanese employed their superior military power to crush the numerous rebellions that punctuated their rule of Taiwan, they also made use of colonial forms of knowledge such as the land survey, population census, and ethnographic classification to deny the resistance any hiding place. For an excellent study of the land survey and census, see Yao, 2006, pp. 37–61. 31. Kasahara Masaharu and Miyaoka Maoko recently translated Yang’s work into Japanese. Yang, 2005. 32. Mori, 1917a, p. 2. 33. Mori, 1924, pp. 106–7. 34. For a listing of Mori’s publications see Miyaoka, 1997a, pp. 189–99. 35. Mori, 1917a, pp. 4–5. 36. Inō Kanori also stressed that knowledge of the customs, languages, and mentalities of the Taiwan aboriginal groups would aid the colonizing state to extend its control throughout the island. Inō, 1905, cited in Barclay, 2001, p. 124. 37. This speech was later reprinted under the title “Taiwan banzoku ni tsuite” (Regarding the Taiwan Aborigines) and published as the preface to Mori’s 1917 Taiwan banzokushi (An Ethnography of the Taiwan Aborigines). 38. The narrator of Satō Haruo’s story “Under a Japanese Flag” is based on Mori (he is named M in the story). In this work, M reminisces about his experiences serving as intermediary between the tribes and the Japanese state in the first years of Japanese rule. In one incident, he counsels the state on how to deal with the resistance of a tribe and how to uphold the colonial order while causing minimal conflict. While he serves as advisor to the state, he is also friend of the tribal chief and uses his expertise to shield the members of a tribe from state punishment. As a reward for his successful mediation, he is adopted into the tribe and showered with gifts by the chief. 39. Mori, 1917a, pp. 18–19. 40. Ibid., p. 19. 41. Rosaldo, 1989, pp. 69–70. 42. Mori, 1917a, p. 2.

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43. According to Yang Nanjun, Mori lobbied Japanese newspapers and the colonial government in the early 1920s to raise money and implement his plan to establish a model reservation for the aborigines (banjin dairakuen) in the Bunun districts of Taiwan, among the last holdouts against the subjugation policies of the Japanese army. He envisaged this reserve as a self-governing aboriginal district that would offer financial support for the aborigines to preserve their customs and traditional way of life. Yang speculates that Mori’s failure to win financial support and state backing for this endeavor led to his decision to take his own life by jumping from a ship while returning to Japan in 1926. Yang, 2005, pp. 77–93. 44. Satō describes the circumstances of his trip and his state of mind in “Ka no ichinatsu no ki” (A Record of That Summer), the afterword of Musha, an anthology of the author’s Taiwan stories published in 1936. Suffering from an “ennui that was hard to bear,” Satō returned to his hometown of Shingū and there ran into Higashi Kiichi, an old friend who had since established a dental practice in the city of Kaohsiung (Japanese: Takao). Encouraged by Higashi to visit Taiwan, he left Japan in June 1920 and remained in Taiwan till October of the same year. Satō Haruo, 2000f, pp. 253–60. The Shingū shiritsu Satō Haruo kinenkan recently published a collection of letters that Mori sent to Satō during his trip to Taiwan. In addition to drawing up a travel plan to the aboriginal districts, Mori encouraged Satō to cross the Taiwan Straits and visit the city of Amoy in Fujian Province. Mori, 2003. Shimomura Hiroshi, a legal specialist and exponent of liberalism, served under two governors-general of Taiwan, Akashi Motojirō (1918–19) and Den Kenjirō (1919–23). Rubinstein, 1999, p. 220. 45. Satō Haruo, 2000d, p. 137. 46. Fujii, 2003, p. 47. 47. Satō, 2000d, p. 176. In one scene of his travel memoir, the aboriginal maid in an inn where Satō stays is fascinated by the illustrations in the volume of Mori’s ethnography (Taiwan banzokushi), which Satō brought with him on his travels. 48. Ibid., p. 142. 49. Ibid., p. 145–46, 147, 150. 50. Satō published works based on his experiences in Taiwan and Fujian Province in a variety of literary venues between 1921 and 1932. In 1921, he published “Hoshi” (Star), a fairy tale based on a Chinese legend, in the January issue of Kaizō, and “Inago no dairyokō” (The Locust’s Great Journey), a children’s story set in Taiwan, in the September issue of Dōwa. The same year he brought out two travel records: “Nanpō kikō” (Travel Record of the South) in Shinchō, and “Kawatta hishochi: Nichigetustan ni asobu ki” (A Strange Summer Resort: An Account of My Stay in Nichigetsutan) in Kaizō. In 1923, he published two works in Chūō Kōron, “Yiennuanhwei” (Eagle’s Claw Blossom), a travel piece, and “Machō” (Demon Bird), based on an aboriginal legend, in the August and October issues respectively. In June 1924, “Tabibito” (Voyager), a portrait of a Japanese maid he met at an inn on his trip to aboriginal lands, appeared in Shinchō. In 1925, he published Musha, in the March issue of Kaizō, and Jokaisenkitan (Strange Tale of the “Precepts for Women”), one of his best-known and most artistically accomplished works, in the May issue of Josei. In 1928, he wrote the story “Kidan” (Strange Tale)—later retitled “Nisshōki no shita” (Under the Japanese Flag). Finally, in 1932, twelve years after his visit to Taiwan, he published “Shokuminchi no tabi” (Travels in the Colony) in the September and October issues of Chūō Kōron. For an excellent general

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overview of Satō’s literary production based on his experiences in Taiwan, see Kawahara Isao, 1997b, pp. 3–23. 51. Mori cites two cases in which the villagers destroyed entire families suspected of being mahafune by burning down their homes. In this passage, he uses both the aboriginal terms hafune and mahafune and the Japanese translation of these terms that Satō uses. This description appears in a section of the chapter titled “Meishin” (Superstitions). Mori, 1917b, p. 288. 52. For example, part 12 of “Demon Bird” offers a detailed description of aboriginal beliefs in the afterlife, serves as an extended footnote to the previous section, and is enclosed in parentheses. This section paraphrases Mori’s description of Ataiyal beliefs in “Shinkō oyobi seishinteki jōtai” (Beliefs and the Spiritual State). Ibid., pp. 279–81. 53. Satō Haruo, 1998, p. 373. At the same time, the narrator’s terminology betrays his basic social-Darwinist assumptions about evolutionary progress and civilization. “The superstitions of the savages are intuitive and splendid, while those of the civilized are complicated and argumentative [rikutsuppoi].” In line with the primitivist ethos of modern ethnography, on aesthetic grounds he expresses a preference for the “intuitive” and “splendid” superstitions of the savages over the “argumentative” myths of the civilized. 54. Ibid., p. 374. 55. Ibid., p. 373. 56. Satō’s engagement with ethnography in his Taiwan works also represents a turning point in his conception of “culture,” one that can be observed more generally in Taisho literature. Satō’s earliest works, such as Den’en no yūutsu (Pastoral Ennui; 1919) or “Utsukushii machi” (Beautiful Town; 1921), are often seen as expressions of a concern with self-cultivation and withdrawal from society. In the 1930s, Satō returned like many other writers to themes of Japanese traditional culture and cultural identity. His Taiwan works represent a transition in his idea of culture, from spiritual development and individual self-cultivation to the traditions and practices of a particular cultural group. One important link between his earlier work and the Taiwan works is the important role played by liminal and peripheral spaces. For example, in Pastoral Ennui, the narrator flees the commotion of Tokyo to seek solace and a simple life in a thatched cottage in the suburbs of Tokyo, a kind of borderland between the city and the countryside. To his disillusionment, he discovers this borderland has already been polluted by urban modernity, a pollution symbolized by the roses in the garden that turn out to be infested with tiny insects. Stephen Dodd writes of this work: “Satō’s appropriation of the empty countryside for his own purposes confirmed an imperial impulse emanating from Tokyo, the imperial center that began earlier with the seizure of Taiwan and Korea.” In 1920, Satō’s “flight from ennui” is displaced from the metropolis onto the actual colony of Taiwan, and particularly onto its aboriginal lands, romanticized as virginal and unspoiled spaces. Like the suburbs of Tokyo, the aboriginal highlands are a borderland threatened by the encroachments of modernity and already polluted. Satō’s travel account of his visit to the Taiwan highlands recalls the mood of spiritual ennui and nostalgia that are so evident in Pastoral Ennui and anticipate a concern with cultural authenticity and a nostalgia for a cultural homeland in his later works. Dodd, 1994, pp. 313–14. 57. Satō Haruo, 1998, pp. 375–76. 58. Whereas the mahafune is described as a central belief of aboriginal society, head-

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hunting plays an ancillary role in the story. “Demon Bird” ends with a scene of headhunting. After the death of his sister, Pira, the young Kōre abandons the hut where they have settled to wander through the forest. He eventually comes to the edge of cliff overlooking the sea: “Wearing rattan garments embroidered with red patterns, a group of savages [banjin] were lurking in their hiding place in the forest and getting ready for the hunt. They had cornered a deer and waited for it to emerge from its hiding place. Suddenly, one of them noticed a little boy standing off in the distance with his back turned toward them. They crept up to him, trying not to make any noise. When they realized he was not a member of their tribe, one of them aimed his rifle at him and fired a shot. The boy fell to the ground. Crawling through the undergrowth, they came out into the clearing. One of the hunters raised his hand to beckon the stragglers behind him. ‘Come quickly. Hey, you should cut off his head. Here is your chance to qualify for taking a bride.’ A young man appeared, looked down at this boy whom he had never seen before in his life, and lopped off his head with a stroke of his broad-edged sword.” Rather than serving as a trope for irrational savagery, headhunting is here depicted as a rite of passage for a young man in the hunting party, following Mori’s interpretation of the significance of aboriginal headhunting. In this scene, headhunting is treated as an example of the more fundamental mechanism of borders constituted by exclusion of and violence against outsiders. The young boy Kōre is murdered because he happens to belong to “a different tribe” from the hunters he fortuitously encounters. In “Demon Bird,” the mahafune replaces the headhunter as the central trope for interpreting aboriginal society. Ibid., p. 381. 59. Ibid., p. 377. 60. Here I must qualify the narrator’s assertion that the aborigines interpreted the military conquest of their lands as a “disaster that had befallen their community” and that they turned their violence against innocent victims. In fact, many aborigines assigned the blame for colonial violence to its actual perpetrators—the colonial regime—and resisted all attempts to subjugate their lands. If the aborigines had not resisted fiercely, the colonial authorities would not have taken so long or sacrificed so many lives to subjugate the highlands. 61. Ibid., pp. 378–79. I have found no specific evidence linking this description to a specific event, but I have read numerous documents that show that the army massacred entire aboriginal villages—men, women, and children—during this campaign and treated prisoners like animals. Kerr, 1974, p. 104. 62. “For aboriginal society, it was inconceivable that such a woman would be allowed to remain in the community.” Mori explains this idea of “impurity” as follows: “Once a woman had sexual intercourse or married a member of a different tribe, she was considered to be ‘impure’ and could not remarry a member of her own community.” Mori, 1917b, p. 180. 63. Satō Haruo, 1998, p. 380. 64. With respect to Kōre’s firing an arrow at the new moon, Mori notes that when an aborigine is unable to carry out the obligation of revenge, “he should fire a shot of his rifle into the sky of the enemy’s village as a form of revenge.” Mori, 1917b, p. 290. 65. As previously mentioned, M in this narrative refers to Mori Ushinosuke. Satō Haruo, 2000d, pp. 176–77. 66. Satō Haruo, 1998, p. 378. 67. Pratt, 1992, p. 4.

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68. Cf. Torii’s account of the ethnographic survey conducted by himself and Mori Ushinosuke in 1900. “Mr. Okuma, head of the district office and his secretary Mr. Yoshikawa saw us off . . . and assigned Mr. Kusunoki to accompany us. We were also accompanied by reserve infantry Lieutenant Takabane of the Bunun trading post and by Mr. Kondō, interpreter of the northern tribes. I left Puli village with Mori, Yasui, and the above-mentioned individuals.” Torii, 1901, pp. 130–31. 69. Caruth, 1996, p. 4. 70. The meaning of “Demon Bird” lies not in one or the other of the two stories it tells, but rather in the very space that both separates and connects them. By hinting at the links between the two stories, the narrator invites the reader to make a double reading of the work. Ultimately, the text cannot be reduced to a single level, in which one meaning excludes or cancels the other, but must be read at two distinct levels that coexist in a relationship of tense equilibrium. 71. Weiner, 1989, pp. 172, 176, 178. 72. Satō Haruo, 2000e, p. 290. For more on Satō Haruo’s activities at this time, see Kimura, 1997, pp. 191–92; and Morizaki, 2003, p. 9. 73. Clifford, 1986, p. 100. 74. Kisaki Katsu, an editor of the Chūō Kōron, provides an interesting account of the circumstances surrounding this issue in his diary, Kisaki Katsu nikki. Though the earthquake struck a devastating blow at the entire Japanese publishing industry, the main offices of the periodical, a central organ of the Taisho democracy period, were hardly damaged, and the Shūeisha Company, which printed it, also escaped from the conflagration. Editors worked out of the house of the editor-in-chief, Takita Choin, in the weeks after the quake mainly because they had trouble traveling to the head office in Marunouchi after the destruction of all means of transportation. According to Kisaki, editors began to plan a special issue on the earthquake and solicit manuscripts from as early as September 3. Besides offering background on the circumstances of publication of this edition, Kisaki’s diary offers us a glimpse into the thinking of an editor of the Chūō Kōron at an extraordinary historical moment. He notes the spread of rumors (“Since no newspapers were coming out at first, we had no way to gauge the scope of the catastrophe other than rumors”; September 25, Kisaki, 1976, p. 331), and the ongoing persecution of Koreans. Kisaki also mentions reading the first newspaper report on the assassination of Ōsugi Sakae, Itō Noe, and his nephew Tachiba Soichi on September 25, and notes that he first read about the Kameido Incident on October 11. While Kisaki does not refer specifically to Satō’s “Machō,” he does mention asking the writer to write a commemorative piece on Ōsugi Sakae (entry of October 6, p. 333)—this article appeared in the November issue of the Chūō Kōron. As he writes on October 11: “Soon after the earthquake, rumors about plots by Koreans and socialists were spread, and as is well known, the resentment and hatred of the masses led to the slaughter of Koreans. The Kameido Incident is the first case of a massacre of socialists to come to light.” 75. Japanese censors may have failed to discern the hidden allegorical meaning in the text or assumed that the readers would not be cognizant of its cryptic message. Alternatively, they may have sympathized with its veiled message and knew it would be “safe” to let it pass. 76. Satō Haruo, 1963, p. 283. 77. Satō Kenji, 1995, pp. 137, 146.

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78. Clifford, 1986, p. 99. 79. Aiyaru goshū (Ataiyal Word List), pp. 155, 147, 133. Yamaji Hiroaki, 1977. 80. In The Origins of German Tragic Drama, Walter Benjamin underlines the importance of ciphers in his theory of allegory. Allegorical ciphers are compared to the enigmatic hieroglyphs that Renaissance scholars tried to decipher and distinguished from the ordinary use of words as phonetic signs. Morizaki, 2003, p. 10; Benjamin, 1998, pp. 167–74. 81. Satō Haruo, 1998, pp. 376. 82. As Fujii Shōzō points out, there were other links between Satō’s hometown and Taiwan. Shingū, located in the Kumano River basin, developed as an entrepôt for the lumber trade and became home to numerous lumberyards and sawmills by the end of the Meiji period. According to records of the Shingū city government, more than half of the lumber exported from Japan to Taiwan between 1905 and 1914 passed through the Shingū port, while Shingū entrepreneurs dominated most of the imports of high quality Taiwan cypress to Japan. See Fujii, 2003, pp. 44–45. 83. These words are attributed to Ōishi Seinosuke. 84. Satō Haruo, 2000a, pp. 107–8. 85. For a general analysis of the relation between Satō’s later writings and the Great Treason Trial, see Satō Tsuguo, 2007. 86. Barbara Brooks notes that the expression senjin-gari (Korean hunts), which referred to the campaigns of postearthquake vigilante groups to terrorize and kill Korean residents, was originally used to describe punitive raids of the Korean colonial government in pursuit of Korean partisans in Manchuria. Brooks, 1998, p. 31. 87. Oguma, 1998, pp. 3–4. 88. Many Koreans farmers went to work in Japanese factories because they lost their land under Japanese-inspired land reforms. In addition, Japanese industry required the cheap colonial labor force both to meet expanded demand during the war boom and, later, to put pressure on the wages of Japanese workers during the postwar recession. The size of the Korean population in Japan grew from less than a thousand in 1910 to almost eighty thousand by 1923. Japanese workers tended to regard their competitors on the labor market with scorn and prejudice, a factor which contributed to the massacre of Koreans during the earthquake. Yamada, 1994, pp. 184–85. 89. While the Japanese often insisted on the physical similarities between Koreans and themselves, they also claimed that, upon closer examination, the two were recognizably different. For the education of law enforcement officers, bureaucrats from the Ministry of Home Affairs compiled a list of “typical” Korean traits that would mark them as different from Japanese: straight posture, the relative absence of facial hair, flat backs of head, and so on. Lee, 2007. 90. To abolish discrimination against Koreans, Nakayama advocated the adoption of more far-reaching assimilation policies, including compelling Koreans to use Japanese names. Nakayama Satoru, cited in Oguma, 1995, pp. 170–71. 91. Tai, 1999, p. 516. 92. Both physical appearance and language were extremely inaccurate predictors of a person’s ethnicity, as is proven by the fact that vigilante groups also killed hundreds of Japanese and Chinese, taken for Koreans, by mistake. In his autobiography, the film director Kurosawa Akira recounts that his Japanese father was almost clubbed to death by a mob after the

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Kanto earthquake simply because he had a full beard, and could therefore “not possibly be Japanese.” Kurosawa, 1983, p. 51. 93. Kan, 1975, pp. 111–12. The poet Tsuboi Hanji, in an article called “15 Yen 55 Sen,” published in the periodical Senki in September 1928, elaborates: “People were made to pronounce words with voiced consonants in order to determine whether or not they were Korean. Some people were killed by vigilantes on the spot because they pronounced zabuton as zafuton. And then there was the incident I witnessed on the train. It was not hard to imagine the fate that befell that worker who was unable to pronounce correctly 15 en 55 sen, an expression with many voiced consonants.” Kan 1975, pp. 111–12; also Gendaishi no Kai, eds., 1984, pp. 134–39. 94. I have already shown that the scientific classification of Taiwan ethnic groups, its appearance of objectivity notwithstanding, was predicated on the violent subjugation of the aborigines to the colonial state. In the same way, the standardization of national languages, far from being the neutral effect of capitalist modernization, required the forcible imposition of state norms on the periphery of the nation-state and was accompanied by violence. At the moment of the Great Kanto Earthquake, the violence of the national language, generally hidden and latent, became open and explicit. 95. Ching, 1998, pp. 65–67. 96. Fujii, 2000, p. 5. 97. Shū, 2004, p. 96. 98. Kleeman, 2003, p. 39. 99. Kimura, 1997, pp. 183–97; Kurokawa, 1998, pp. 207–28. 100. Andrew Gordon coins the term “imperial democracy” to describe the new ideology and structure of rule in Japan during the Taisho period. These imperial democrats— whether they were politicians, professionals, landowners, or bureaucrats—were both in favor of empire and committed to liberalism and reform and did not view these two positions as contradictory. Satō’s critique of colonialism belongs to this same historical moment. Gordon, 1991, p. 50. 101. Shū, 2004, p. 81. 102. Satō Haruo, 2000d, pp. 148–49. 103. Ibid., p. 259. - I N T H E S OU T H SE A S 3 . T H E A DV E N T U R E S OF MOMO TA R O

Epigraphs: Bakhtin, 1984, p. 66; Tsurumi Yūsuke, 1917, p. 6. 1. Shimizu Hajime distinguishes three periods of southern expansionist (nanshinron) discourse: the 1880s, the First World War decade, and the decade of the 1930s. Shiga Shigetaka, a representative figure from the first period, called for Japan to pursue a long-term policy of developing manufacturing industries and fostering commercial exchange with the Pacific Islands and Australia. By contrast, Murobuse Kōshin, who wrote Nanshinron (Thoughts of the Southern Advance; 1936), advocated a military advance toward the Western-dominated Southeast Asia, an idea that became the official policy of the Japanese state from 1940. Shimizu treats the 1910s as a transitional phase between these two periods. Shimizu Hajime, 1987, pp. 386–88.

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2. At the beginning of 1915, the South Seas Association was established with government backing to promote Japan’s peaceful economic advance toward Southeast Asia. From 1914 to 1925, Japanese exports to the populous and resource-rich territories of Southeast Asia increased eightfold and imports increased more than fivefold while the Japanese population in the region rose from 11,845 in 1913 to 23,967 in 1918. With a growing economic stake in the area, the Japanese government established consulates in Southeast Asian cities, while large Japanese shipping lines, banks, schools, and Japanese–language newspapers boosted their presence throughout the region. Shimizu Hajime, 1993, pp. 164–65. 3. Torii Ryūzō, in Gakusei, May 1915, cited in Tsuchiya, 2002, p. 263. 4. Jitsugyō no Nihon, 1914, p. 82. The former pavilions showcased territories already under Japanese rule whereas the South Seas Pavilion raised public attention to areas marked out as future areas for Japanese expansion. Similarly, the later 1920 Taisho Exhibition featured a Siberian Pavilion, in anticipation of future territorial gains that might accrue from Japan’s ongoing Siberian expedition against the Soviet Union. 5. Tsuchiya, 2002, p. 257. 6. Tayama, 1981, p. 55. 7. Kodama Onmatsu was an adventurer who traveled to the South Seas in the early twentieth century. His Nan’yō, first serialized in the Asahi newspaper in 1912, appeared the same year as Sōseki’s novel. 8. See Natsume, 1952, pp. 16–18. Sōseki is a bellwether of shifts in imperial discourse in the early twentieth century. In 1910, the year that Korea became a Japanese colony, many young Japanese rushed to the peninsula to take advantage of new opportunities there, a phenomenon called tōkannetsu (Korean fever). That same year, Sōseki wrote the novel Mon whose protagonists discuss the assassination of Itō Hirobumi by a Korean nationalist and exchange views on career prospects in Korea and Manchuria. Two years later, at the time of the “South Seas fever,” his hero dreams of becoming wealthy in the South Seas after his encounter with the adventurer Morimoto. For a general discussion of the relationship between the fiction of Sōseki and Japanese colonialism, see Komori, 2001, pp. 49–83. 9. Shiga’s novel began to be serialized in 1921, but this is probably a reference to the 1914 Taisho Tokyo Exhibition. Shiga, 1976, p. 187. 10. For an analysis of Zō, see Chō, 2000, pp. 35–54. 11. Japanese expansionists were in general agreement that Japan needed to increase its territories but they differed as to whether the nation should expand to the north or to the south. Influential in the army, advocates of the former position favored expansion into Manchuria and northern China, while supporters of the latter, strong in naval circles, promoted maritime expansion to the resource-rich South Seas. See Shimizu Hajime, 1987, p. 389. 12. Yano Tōru calls this slogan the pillow word (makurakotoba) of theorists of the southern expansionism. Yano, 1979, pp. 46–49. 13. Takekoshi, 1910, pp. 1–12. 14. Takekoshi, 1908, p. 7. 15. Tsurumi Yūsuke, 1917, pp. 1–2. Tsurumi also mentions being stimulated as a young man by reading Stanley’s In Darkest Africa. 16. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 17. Ibid., p. 5.

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18. Rohan predicted Japan would soon create a maritime literature commensurate with its new status as a maritime power. Kōda, 1979, pp. 360–65. Oguma, 1995, pp. 92–96. 19. For an analysis of the use of kiki myths in journalism and history textbooks, see Oguma, 1995, pp. 88–92. 20. Oguma, 1998, p. 449. 21. The tribulations and the death of Yoshitsune are the main subject matter of the narrative epic Gikeiki (Tale of Yoshitsune). Ivan Morris describes the hero as the “perfect exemplar of heroic failure” in Japanese culture. The expression hōgan biiki, or sympathy with the underdog, takes its named from Yoshitsune’s court title. Morris, 1976, p. 101. 22. According to other legends, Yoshitsune fled to Hokkaido and fought alongside the Ainu in their campaigns against their enemies: the Ainu chose him as their leader and even began to worship him as the Ainu god Okikurumi after his death. Yoshitsune’s adventures in Hokkaido are the theme of Chikamatsu Monzaemon puppet play Gikei shōgikyō (The Tale of Minamoto Yoshitsune’s Chess Game; 1706). During the Meiji period, Japanese settlers cited Ainu worship of Yoshitsune as proof of the historical domination of the Ainu by the Japanese. Interestingly, John Batchelor, an English missionary who devoted most of his life to the education of the Ainu, ridicules the notion that the Ainu had ever worshipped Yoshitsune as a god and attributes it to legends spread by Japanese settlers. Batchelor, 1901, p. 81. 23. For a study of Yoshitsune survival myths in the modern period, see Matsuyama, 1993, pp. 277–305. 24. Suematsu, 1879, p. 138. 25. Suematsu’s book, which appeared first in English, was translated into Japanese in 1885 by Uchida Yahachi under the title Gikei saikōki (The Tale of the Revival of Yoshitsune). 26. Oyabe is well known for his 1929 book Nihon oyobi nihon kokumin no kigen (The Origin of Japan and the Japanese Race), in which he argues, on the basis of similarities between the Bible and the Kojiki, that the Japanese are related to the ancient Hebrews. For an interesting discussion of Oyabe, see Matsuyama, 1993, pp. 289–98. 27. Morimura, 2005, pp. 191–96. 28. Nor were they the only ones. Zheng Chenggong, better known by his Dutch name Coxinga, is another such hero, partly historical and partly legendary. Born in Nagasaki to a Japanese mother and a Chinese father, Zheng was a Ming loyalist who fought against the Manchu armies in China and eventually escaped to Taiwan, where he drove out the Dutch rulers of the island. In Japan, he is best known as the protagonist of the historical drama Kokusenya gassen (The Battles of Coxinga), by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724). Since he was born in Japan and had a Japanese mother, he was honored as a bridge between Taiwan and Japan during the period of colonial rule of Taiwan. Kabayama Sukenori, the first colonial governor of Taiwan, proposed that both Coxinga and his Japanese mother be inducted into the pantheon of Shinto deities that protected the island. Kerr, 1974, p. 99. Lastly, the story of the early Edo-period hero Yamada Nagamasa was also resurrected in the early twentieth century by local historians in his native Shizuoka Prefecture. Yamada was a Japanese adventurer who settled in Siam, became a trusted military leader of the king of Siam in the early seventeenth century, and was appointed as the ruler of Nakhon si Thammasart Province. A hero in his own right, Yamada was also a representative figure of the Japanese communities that flourished in Southeast Asia in the early Edo period. At this time, the Japanese

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had been an expanding, adventurous people, but their activities were curbed by the Tokugawa edict to close the country. At the present time, statues commemorating Yamada exist both in Ayuthhaya, Thailand, and in his native Shizuoka, Japan. In the 1940s, Kobayashi Shizuo authored a Noh play based on his adventures, and Satō Haruo wrote a biographical novel about his life in 1943. 29. Momotarō was treated as the typical Japanese folktale both abroad and in Japan. Mitford included the tale in his 1871 Tales of Old Japan and it came be to the best-known Japanese folktale in the West. In 1933, Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962) published Momotarō no tanjō (The Birth of Momotarō), a study of five important folktales, in which he argues that folktales in general and ones about Momotarō in particular are an expression of the abiding essence of the Japanese people (jōmin). Yanagita, 1998, pp. 243–72. 30. Namekawa, 1981, pp. 2–9. 31. For an example of Momotarō on stage, see “Sono ato no Momotarō” (The Later Days of Momotarō), in Takahashi, 1999, pp. 29–42. 32. Takizawa, 1975, pp. 447–52. 33. This term was first used to describe popular folktales published in collections of setsuwa, picture books or other published forms during the Edo period. Takizawa Bakin also singled out these five works for detailed commentary. During the Meiji period, the term acquired a more canonical meaning of folktales selected by the government for inclusion in national school textbooks. Edo-period versions of these tales were not standardized and varied depending on region, but the Meiji folktales acquired a standard form in their schoolbook versions. Nihon mukashibanashi jiten, 1977, pp. 344–45. 34. Concerning the reaction against the excesses of Westernization policies in the 1880s, see Pyle, 1969. 35. In his genealogy of Momotarō, Klaus Antoni contends that Momotarō represents a xenophobic strain in Japanese culture that can be traced back to the eighth century. The object of Momotarō’s quest, the island of the ogres, is identified with lands on Japan’s periphery whose inhabitants the Japanese viewed as barbaric, demonic, and nonhuman. Antoni concludes that “a direct line of tradition leads from Yamato Takeru by way of Yoshitsune and Tametomo directly to Momotarō.” Antoni, 1991, p. 179. While Antoni cogently traces the Momotarō myth back to its antecedents in Japanese folklore, I would argue that xenophobia and imperialism are modern phenomena growing out of the development of the modern nation-state rather than survivals of an ancient past. 36. Namekawa Michio and Torigoe Shin have cataloged the avatars of Momotarō during the twentieth century. In Momotarōzō no henyō (Changes in the Image of Momotarō), Namekawa lists and summarizes many different versions of Momotarō, which he divides by media and genre: picture books, textbooks, folktales, poetry, literature, plays and movies, education treatises. By contrast, in Momotarō no unmei (The Destiny of Momotarō), Torigoe Shin analyzes Momotarō as a “child of the times” against a background of cultural and political change. Essentially he considers five different figures of Momotarō: nationalist hero, hero of children’s literature (dōwa), proletarian hero, courageous invader during wartime, and finally as democratic hero in the postwar period. I have followed Torigoe’s historical division in my discussion here.

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37. Torigoe, 2004, pp. 33–35. 38. Iwaya, cited in ibid., pp. 13–14. 39. Sōma, 1914. 40. On Kitakawa’s story, see Torigoe, 2004, pp. 69–72. 41. Torigoe discusses both works in his chapter on children’s literature featuring Momotarō between 1927 and 1932. See Torigoe, 2004, pp. 93–134. 42. Dower, 1986, pp. 251–57. An earlier cartoon, Sora no Momotarō (Momotarō of the Sky), was set not in the South Seas but rather in the South Pole. A group of penguins ask the hero to free them from a huge eagle that is killing them off one by one. During a prolonged air battle, Momotarō kills the eagle in a burst of machine-gun fire. The film can be seen as an allegory of future war with the United States (symbolized by the eagle), a popular theme in children’s magazines at the time the cartoon appeared (1931). High, 2003, pp. 471–72. 43. Robertson, 1998, pp. 104–6. 44. The belief that Momotarō originated in Okayama Prefecture is widely accepted both by residents of the prefecture and by people throughout Japan. Peaches and kibidango, or millet dumplings (kibi, which means millet, is pronounced the same but written differently from Kibi, the ancient name of Okayama Prefecture), both essential elements of the story, also happen to be renowned specialties of Okayama Prefecture. In the postwar period, localities in Okayama have adopted Momotarō as a symbol of local identity and used the folktale to create events, commodities, and tourist attractions that will revitalize local towns. More recently, local communities in Okayama have used Momotarō as a symbol of their cultural identity to forge new ties with lands overseas. For a fascinating study of the OkayamaMomotarō connection, see Kahara, 2004. 45. Published in the periodical Yōgakusei in 1893. Cited in Namekawa, 1981, p. 236. 46. Within the same box of sweets, they first discover a trumpet and a Japanese flag, which announce Momotarō’s later apparition. 47. Kyō, 1895. 48. From 1930, the Asahi newspaper sponsored a campaign called the “Momotarō sagashi” (Momotarō Search), with support from the Ministry of Education. The purpose of this campaign was to honor Japanese boys and girls of superlative physique selected in a nationwide competition. Held every year, winners were presented with a bust of Momotarō at a ceremony that took place at Asahi Tokyo Hall on May 5, a holiday known as boys’ day in the prewar period. After 1938, with the onset of the Japan-China war, mothers of outstanding children were also presented with awards. This Momotarō search continued until 1978 but it included girls as well as boys in the postwar period. Kano, 2001, pp. 62–66. 49. Among his biographies of great men, I would mention Uiriamupen den (William Penn; 1894) and Ijin gunzō (Portraits of Great Men; 1931). Nitobe’s best-known characterbuilding tracts are Shūyō (Self-Cultivation; 1911) and Jikei (Self-Discipline; 1916). For a study of Nitobe’s didacticism, see Roden, 1995, pp. 139–46. 50. Besides their common interest in folklore, all three played key roles in the expansion of Japan. In 1910, Yanagita was chief of the Records Section of the Japanese cabinet and was responsible for working out legal problems entailed by Japan’s annexation of Korea. Nitobe served as an economic adviser to the governor-general of Taiwan and became Japan’s first

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professor of colonial policy studies. Kindaichi Kyōsuke, the founder of modern ethnographic studies about the Ainu, also supported the rapid assimilation of the Ainu into the Japanese nation. On Yanagita, see R. Morse, 1990, p. 57. 51. For more on the activities of this association, see Miwa, 1995, pp. 168–69. 52. Nitobe, 1970, pp. 186–87. 53. After his defeat in the Hōgen rebellion, the historical Minamoto no Tametomo was banished to the Izu Islands in eastern Japan by the victorious supporters of Emperor GoShirakawa. The exiled Tametomo brought these islands under his control and then set out to conquer a neighboring island inhabited by monsters “over ten feet tall, covered with black hair, and speaking an incomprehensible language.” These monsters subsisted on a diet of fish and birds, but knew nothing of agriculture or the art of warfare. The natives told Tametomo that the island was called the land of ogres and its inhabitants were descendants of these ogres. When the frightened monsters submitted to Tametomo, he took possession of the island, changed its name to “reed island,” and made its inhabitants pay tribute to the Hachiojima in the Izu group. Wilson, 2001, pp. 102–7. 54. Nitobe, 1970, p. 188. 55. Ibid., pp. 191–92. 56. Oguma Eiji has shown that most Japanese writers in the prewar period subscribed to the notion that the Japanese were a heterogeneous people formed in the prehistoric past by the merger of many different racial strains. Oguma, 1995. Long before Oguma’s book, Kamishima Jirō had already noted: “In prewar Japan, everyone said that the Yamato people are hybrid people [zasshu minzoku] and mixed people [kongō minzoku]. . . . But strangely, in the postwar period, even progressive intellectuals began to say that Japan is monoethnic. There is no basis for this.” Kamishima, 1961, pp. 17–18. 57. One can find a similar rhetoric in Nitobe’s Bushidō (The Way of the Samurai), a work published between the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. Writing in English, Nitobe argues that bushidō is ultimately compatible with Christian ethics while he strips it of its connections to Confucian values, central to Japanese moral and ethical education for centuries. In Nitobe’s reinvention of feudal moral codes, the samurai is above all the counterpart of the British gentleman. 58. Nitobe, 1970, p. 192. Bakin distinguished two versions of the story of Momotarō’s miraculous birth. In the first, the old woman found him inside a peach floating down a river (Bakin refers to this as the “birth from a fruit” type), and in the second the elderly couple became younger after eating the peach, have sexual intercourse, and produce Momotarō (Bakin calls this the “rejuvenation” type). While the latter version predominated in premodern versions of the folktale, the former got the upper hand from the Meiji period onward. Nitobe expresses a clear preference for the immaculate conception of Momotarō, that is, the birth from a fruit version, since it is “more suitable for moral teaching.” 59. Roden, 1995, pp. 133–56. 60. Nitobe, 1969a, p. 471. 61. Nitobe, 1987, p. 111. 62. Nitobe, 1970, p. 193. 63. Weiner, 1997, pp. 110–11. 64. As David Ambaras argues, Christian social reformers associated with the Salvation

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Army enjoyed close ties with the Home Ministry, played a key role in orienting state action to deal with “social problems,” and were often subcontracted by the state to carry out social work at the local level. Ambaras, 1998. 65. For the conflation of the urban slum with the colony in the European context, see “The Conversion of Englishmen and the Conversion of the World Inseparable: Missionary Imperialism and the Language of Class in Early Industrial Britain,” Cooper and Stoler, eds., 1997, pp. 238–62. 66. Even before he left Japan, Momotarō already knew that the South Seas held treasures. In his interpretation, Nitobe displays little interest in the question of Momotarō’s birth. 67. Nitobe, 1970, p. 195; Nitobe develops a similar argument in a 1915 lecture to Taiwan students. Nitobe, 2001a, pp. 161–62. 68. Cited in Tsuchiya, 2002, p. 113. 69. Fukuzawa, Hibi no oshie, 1871, cited in Kuwabara, 1996, pp. 4–5. 70. Oguma Eji cites an 1895 article by Shinda Kazunori, a teacher at the Okinawa Normal School, in the periodical Ryūkyū Kyōiku (Ryūkyū Education), which argues for replacing the appellation Ryūkyū by that of Okinawa. According to Shinda, Ryūkyū is a Chinese name, which signifies the unnatural position of the unchaste girl who simultaneously belongs to two masters (China and Japan), while Okinawa is the original name of a chaste girl who will give birth to a Japanese boy. Noting that Okinawa has been part of the family since long ago, he refers to the Taiwanese as a totally different people who have been adopted into the family. Shinda ends by saying that the Chinese historical documents that refer to the Ryūkyūans as cannibals could not possibly have been written about Okinawas, who were never the descendants of a barbarian people that ate human flesh. Rather they must have been referring to the aborigines of Taiwan, about whose cannibalism many articles had appeared in the Japanese press. Oguma, 1998, p. 47. 71. Writing in 1932 about Manchuria, and without referring to Momotarō, Nitobe later noted that “Japan’s advance . . . in search of a life-line, is as irresistible an economic force as the westward march of the Anglo-Saxon empires.” Burkman, 1995, pp. 180–81. 72. Kamishima, 1961, p. 202. 73. Most of Nitobe’s colonial policy writings are in volume 4 of his complete works, Nitobe Inazō zenshū. While he was professor of colonial policy, Nitobe also wrote regularly for general publications such as Jitsugyō no Nihon (Business Japan) or the short-lived Shokumin Sekai (Colonial World), in which he popularized his theories on colonialism. 74. Reminiscing about his formative experiences, he later writes in his essay “Japanese Colonization”: “The colonization of Hokkaido was not fraught with difficulties, as the natives—the Ainu—were a timid and fast-vanishing race.” Nitobe, 1987, p. 112. 75. According to Takekoshi, Baron Gotō once remarked: “You know, we look upon the governor-general’s office as a kind of university where one may study the theories and principles of colonization, in which branch of knowledge we, Japanese, are not over-well-posted [sic].” Takekoshi, 1907, p. 22. 76. Nitobe, 1969, pp. 346–47. As Dudden argues, by choosing a kanji (Chinese character) that did not exist in the Chinese language to represent the Western idea of colony, Nitobe both declared his independence from China and linked Japan to the imperializing nations of West. Dudden 2004, pp. 136–37.

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77. Dudden, 2004, p. 132. 78. Nitobe, 2001, p. 276. In the same article, Nitobe notes that many Japanese fail to live up to this ideal. Recalling a recent tour of the South Seas, he notes that many Japanese emigrants bring shame to their home country, singling out the numerous Japanese prostitutes in the South Seas as a particular embarrassment. Rather than encouraging destitute Japanese to seek their fortune overseas, he argues that men of means “who have no special reason to flee because of problems in their home country” should go abroad and establish enterprises there. 79. Nitobe, “Manshū Chōsen Shisatsu Ryokō Shokan,” quoted in Oguma, 2000, p. 176. 80. Yanaihara, 1936, pp. 408–9. 81. Nitobe did not know Turner, but both men studied at Johns Hopkins University under Herbert Baxter Adams and Richard Theodore Ely, who introduced their students to social Darwinism and the civilizing missions of “enlightened” societies. Burkham, 1995, p. 180. 82. Quoted in Dudden, 2004, pp. 135–36. 83. Nitobe, 1969e, pp. 354–72. 84. Nitobe, 1969b, p. 334. 85. By contrast, Yanaihara Tadao, Nitobe’s successor to the chair of colonial policy studies, stressed the software of empire: assimilation, education, and cultural policies toward the colonized. This difference in emphasis reflects a shift in policy in response to the 1919 March First Movement in Korea and the growing movement for self-rule in Taiwan. For an interesting comparison of the colonial theories of Nitobe and Yanaihara and their relevance to contemporary theories of economic development of the “developing” world, see Oguma, 2000. 86. Nitobe began his lectures on colonial policy in the 1910s by writing this phrase on the blackboard: “shokumin wa bunmei no denban” (colonialism is the spread of civilization). Dudden, 2004, p. 134. 87. Regarding Haiti, see Nitobe, 1969d, p. 144; and Nitobe, 1969b, p. 342. 88. Nitobe cited in Oguma, 2000, p. 178. 89. The connection between climate and race has a long history, going back to the midnineteenth century. According to these theories, darker races had stagnated and were incapable of developing civilization on their own. Climate played a key role in inducing these races to fall into sloth and indolence, which rendered their autonomous advancement impossible. Nitobe, 1915, pp. 7–8. 90. For Nitobe’s views on assimilation, see Nitobe, 1969d, pp. 158–64. 91. Nitobe, 2001a, p. 71. 92. Nitobe, 1970, p. 187. 93. Torii cited in Oguma, 1995, pp. 157–60. 94. Cited in Kawanishi, 2001b, p. 133. 95. Takayama Chogyū conducted a comparative study of Polynesians and Japanese myths and ancient language and concluded that the Japanese originally came from Tonga and Samoa. Ibid., p. 135. 96. Takekoshi, 1907, pp. 218–19. 97. Inoue, 1915, p. 18. 98. Niimura, cited in Kawanishi, 2001b, p. 127. 99. Fabian, 1983, p. 131.

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100. Nitobe, 1915, p. 12. 101. Just as Tōgō analyzes fairy tales to discover traditional Japanese attitudes toward colonization, he claims to discover the prototypes for theories of northern and southern expansionism (hokushinron and nanshinron, respectively) in the creation myths of Izanagi and Izanami. Tōgō, 1926, pp. 131–32. 102. Ibid., p. 119. 103. Ibid., p. 121. 104. Ibid., p. 122. 105. If Momotarō stands for the colonizer as plunderer, Urashima Tarō represents the failed colonizer. Unaccompanied by his wife, Urashima typifies the colonizer who grows homesick and leaves the colony or marries a native woman and leaves behind mixed-race descendants. Japanese settlers established significant trading communities in Southeast Asia in the early seventeenth century, but contact with these southern regions was restricted after 1639, and the communities gradually disappeared. For a study of these communities see Iwao, 1966. 106. Tōgō, 1926, p. 122. 107. In his critique of Japanese colonial policy, Tōgō sets forth the standard litany on the shortcomings of Japanese settlers: their short-term horizons, impatience for gain, and lack of staying power, their arrogant attitudes, and failure to bring any benefits to the colonized. Ibid., p. 125. 108. Schneider, 1999, p. 123. 109. Tōgō, 1928, pp. 6–10. 110. Originally published in Taiwan Jitsugyōkai in September 1934, Takehisa Yasutaka republished this play with an introductory essay in the journal Problematique. See Takehisa, 2005. 111. Such grievances by the settlers and dissatisfaction with assimilation policies were not unique to Taiwan. Jun Uchida notes that leading Japanese merchants in the Seoul Chamber of Commerce in the late 1920s protested against Governor-General Saito’s “Korean centered reforms and his neglect of Japanese settlers.” Uchida, 2005, p. 157. 112. Takehisa, 2005, p. 124. 113. Ibid., pp. 125–27. 114. Miyagawa, 2005, pp. 132–33. 115. Ibid., pp. 132–33. 116. Takehisa, 2006, pp. 44–53. 117. Akutagawa was not the first to treat him as an imperialist. The early socialist thinker Yamaguchi Koken (1883–1920) anticipates his criticism of Momotarō in Hateikokushugiron (Against Imperialism; 1910). “In the best of cases, Momotarō was a plundering hero, and in the worst, he was a bandit who despoiled treasures of the island of the ogres. In fact, he carried out a violent imperialist invasion.” Nishida, 2004, p. 4. 118. Kanda, 2004, pp. 117–27. 119. Sekiguchi, 2005, pp. 114–16. 120. In addition to criticizing Japanese fabrications of national history, “General Kin,” like “Momotarō,” also hints at the alternative perspective of the colonized. Akutagawa, 1996d, pp. 266–70.

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121. Sekiguchi, 2005, pp. 97–100. 122. After the 1911 revolution, Chang retired from politics to devote himself to scholarship. Sekiguchi, 1982, pp. 99–100. 123. Akutagawa, 1996b, pp. 199–200. 124. Sekiguchi argues that Chang’s comments sparked Akutagawa’s interest and inspired him to write “Momotarō.” In his view, the story should be read as the author’s critical response to contemporary events such as the suppression of the March First Movement in Korea and the Twenty-one Demands imposed by Japan on China. Sekiguchi, 2004, p. 114. 125. Akutagawa, 1996b, p. 159. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid., p. 160. 129. In this passage, Akutagawa anticipates the later figures of Momotarō as capitalist exploiter that appeared in proletarian children’s literature. 130. Ibid., p. 160. In Japanese folklore, unusual behavior of the pheasant (and the catfish) was viewed as a portent of an imminent earthquake. In referring to the pheasant’s “expertise in seismology,” Akutagawa both gestures to this popular belief and casts ridicule upon the new science of seismology. I should add that “Momotarō” was published about one year after the Great Kanto Earthquake, a catastrophe that no seismologists had predicted. As Clancey argues in Earthquake Nation, this “failure” on the part of seismologists led many to question the scientific status of seismology and discredited the project of predicting earthquakes. Clancey, 2006, pp. 220–26. 131. Akutagawa, 1996b, p. 161. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid., pp. 163–64. 134. When Japanese troops entered the Chinese capital on December 13, 1937, they began a six-week bloodbath of the residents of the city and killed an estimated three hundred thousand Chinese. The soldiers responsible for these atrocities were for the most part simple recruits drafted from poor agricultural villages in Japan. For the analogy between Akutagawa’s story and the rape of Nanjing, see Nakamura Seishi, 1982, p. 84. 135. Akutagawa, 1996b, p. 163. 136. In a draft version of the story, Akutagawa describes the dog as “militaristic.” “After Momotarō returned to his home country, the militaristic dog became the governor of the ogres’ island.” As governor, he decrees that “any ogre that grows horns will be punished by the death penalty,” inasmuch as none of Momotarō’s retainers has horns. Akutagawa, 1997a, p. 406. For an analysis of social satire in Momotarō, see Yu, 1972, pp. 52–53. 137. Akutagawa, 1996a, p. 162. 138. From the earliest surveys of Micronesia in 1914, the islanders were described as “lazy and oversexed.” See Sakano, 2005, p. 356. 139. Two years before “Momotarō” appeared, Akutagawa published a historical tale called “Shunkan” in the Chūō Kōron that offers an interesting forerunner to his depiction of the island of the ogres. Based on the episode of Shunkan’s exile to Kigaigashima in the Tale of the Heike, “Shunkan” purports to be a description of Shunkan’s life in exile as reported by his

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acolyte Ariō. As Antoni has observed, the Kikiaigashima episode is one of the sources for images of the island of the ogres in Momotarō. The Heike version treats Kikaigashima as a barren waste and the island inhabitants as creatures “as black as oxen and inordinately hairy.” The character of Shunkan in Akutagawa’s story, by contrast, finds the island an eminently livable place. While he acknowledges that the islanders have different standards of beauty and customs from the Japanese, he is a cultural relativist who refuses to judge others by the standards of his own culture and attempts to appreciate them on their own terms. For the Heike passage, see McCullough, 1988, p. 82. For Akutagawa’s work see Akutagawa, 1996c, pp. 128–56. 140. Michael Foster notes that Akutagawa’s Kappa is a “social satire in a Swiftean vein” in which the author draws on “intimate knowledge of kappa folklore, but embellishes it with imagination and wit.” Foster, 1998, p. 13. 141. The story resembles the fiction of Oshikawa Shunrō, a popular writer of boys’ adventure tales in the early twentieth century. Akutagawa, 1997b. 142. Akutagawa, 1996a, pp. 164–65. 143. Ibid., p. 165. 144. Ibid., p. 166. 145. Ibid. 146. Yamanaka, 1991, p. 286. 147. Yamanaka, 1991. 148. Shimada, 1976. 149. Dankichi begins the story wearing a school cap, short pants, and a shirt, but he later replaces these with a grass skirt and a crown. The islanders are dark-skinned and thick-lipped and resemble Western stereotypical images of Africans, while Dankichi is white. 4 . T H E C OLON IA L EY E G L A S SE S OF NA KAJ I M A AT SU SH I

Epigraph: Nakajima, 2001c, p. 280. 1. Masaki had been a staunch adherent of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in his youthful days. He is known for translating into Japanese Peter Hulme’s seminal study of European colonial narratives, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492– 1797. Masaki, 1995, pp. 242–47. 2. This poster is reproduced in Dower, 1984, p. 200. 3. Masaki’s metaphor of “Western-tinted eyeglasses” may prove more appropriate in a study of colonial representations of the South Seas than of Korea or China. The Japanese “discovered” the South Seas at a time when it had been subjugated by Western powers and adopted a Western frame of reference toward the region. Prior to being colonized by Japan, Micronesia was ruled by the Germans and Spanish and Taiwan was governed by the Qing dynasty, Holland and Portugal. By contrast, the Japanese had a long history of cultural and political interaction with the Asian mainland. During the colonial period, images of its neighbors formed during the premodern period competed with and complicated modern representations borrowed from the West. 4. Kawamura, 1993a, pp. 19–20.

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5. For example, Nakajima’s “Junsa no iru fūkei” (Landscape with a Policeman), “Pūru no soba de” (By the Pool) and “Toragari” (Tiger Hunt) are all set in Korea while “D-shi shichigatsu jokei” (Sketches of D. City in July) and “Aru seikatsu” (A Certain Lifestyle) are set in Manchuria. 6. Segalen’s Essay on Exoticism, a collection of unfinished fragments, was written over a period of fourteen years, from 1904 to 1918. Segalen, 2002. 7. When Japan was defeated in the Second World War, Micronesia fell under the control of the United States and was governed as a trust territory under a new mandate of the United Nations. Peattie, 1988, p. 244. 8. Prior to Nakajima’s arrival in 1941, there had been four previous editions of the language textbooks used in the archipelago, the most recent one dating back to the period from 1933 to 1937. In each of these cases, the Nan’yōchō had assigned administrative staff on a temporary basis to carry out textbook revision. Only with this fifth revision (that is, with Nakajima’s term) did it create a permanent staff position. For more on educational policies in Micronesia, see Matsushita, 1997, pp. 55–59. 9. This passage occurs in his autobiographical text “Mahiru” (High Noon), which I discuss later in this chapter. Nakajima, 2001c, p. 278. 10. A contemporary of Nakajima, the writer Ishikawa Tatsuzō also paid a visit to a school for indigenous children in Palau in 1941 and wrote of his experience in his travel diary “Akamushijima nisshi ” (Diary of Red Insect Island). He describes a scene where the school principal, a man who spoke the dialect of Akita Prefecture, tries to teach young Palauan girls to sing patriotic Japanese songs. “I felt a little betrayed when I heard them singing in perfect Japanese. The girls were singing patriotic marching songs, one for the war god Captain Hirose and another for Kojima Kōtoku. These native girls, incapable of understanding the Japanese tradition, had no possibility of understanding ‘the spirit of eight corners under one heaven’ and the concept of ‘dying to serve one’s country.’ It was a beautiful chorus of parrots.” While Ishikawa ridicules the absurdities of colonial education, unlike Nakajima, he does not criticize the Japanese colonial authorities for imposing an authoritarian and militarized system on the colonized. Rather he treats the Micronesians as mere “parrots” who can only mimic the external gestures of the colonizer but who are “incapable of understanding” the ideals that underlie these gestures. Ishikawa, 1957, p. 234. 11. Ookuninushi no mikoto, a god mentioned in the Kojiki, is the descendant of the deity Susanō and the main god of Izumo Province, where today he is still an object of worship at the Izumo Shrine. A central part of educational policies during the kōminka (imperial subjectification) period involved inculcating young Japanese (and their colonized subjects) in nationalist myths about the origins of Japan. The length of this god’s name presumably made it a particularly difficult word for young Micronesians to pronounce. 12. Nakajima, 2001j, p. 484. 13. Ibid., 631. 14. Peattie, 1988, p. 301. 15. Nakajima, 2001j, pp. 607, 627–28. 16. Nakajima, 2001l, p. 588. 17. Nakajima, 2001i, p. 607. 18. Nakajima, 2001j, p. 266.

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19. Nakajima, 2001i, pp. 264, 265. Two other writers associated with colonial exoticism also appear in “Henreki”—Andre Gide: “At times I would wander with the young Gide in the fields brimming with the force of life”; and Arthur Rimbaud (also cited in “High Noon”): “At times, like Rimbaud, my heart stretches endlessly like the torrid deserts of Arabia.” Ibid., p. 263. 20. Yasuoka, 2002, pp. 66–67. 21. Stevenson’s diary entries make up the oddly numbered chapters of Light, Wind, and Dreams, while the biographical notes constitute the even-numbered chapters. For a complete listing of the source texts that Nakajima’s text is based on, see Ochner, 1984, pp. 243–44. 22. Keene, 1984, p. 941. 23. In a recent study of English literature in Japan, Saitō Hajime discusses the relationship between Nakajima’s novel and contemporary discourse at the time of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the early 1940s, Japanese publishing houses put out numerous translations of Western works that were critical of Western imperialism, but these translated works also implicitly served to legitimate the Japanese project of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and to support its claims to have “transcended” the Western model. Saitō notes that translators in prefaces to these works stressed the differences between Japanese and Western imperialism while minimizing their similarities. Saitō, 2006, pp. 71–73. 24. Nakajima, 2001a, p. 107. 25. Ibid., p. 216. 26. Wada, 1989, p. 154. 27. Critical commentary on this novel has revolved around two issues, namely, the relationship between Nakajima and Stevenson and the genre to which the work rightfully belongs. Some critics have claimed that Nakajima was faithful to his sources in Stevenson’s writings while others contend that he used these sources freely and turned Stevenson into a spokesman for his own views. Another concern of scholars has been to determine the genre to which Light, Wind, and Dreams belongs. Is it a historical work, a biography (as its diary form suggests), or simply a fictional work loosely based on the life of a historical figure? Some claim that the work is too faithful to its sources to be considered pure fiction, while others find it too full of “distortions” to be considered a biography. For more information on these controversies, see Ochner, 1984, pp. 230–337. 28. Shiga Shigetaka, 1887, p. 158. Nan’yō jiji (Conditions of the South Seas) marked the start of Shiga’s career as a journalist and a political activist. The work was a great success and was reprinted in 1889 and 1891. As Miwa Kimitada argues, it “might best be described as commentary on Japan’s 1887 domestic and foreign policies and a warning about Japan’s future.” Miwa, 1970, p. 7. Masako Gavin, in a study of Shiga, speculates that the writer couched his warning in the form of a dream story, “in order to protect himself from the government, which could with the Hōan jōrei [Security Act] expel opponents of its Westernization schemes from Tokyo.” The dreamed encounter with Tangaloa, the national god of Samoa, one of the most dramatic moments of the work, is also a thinly disguised political allegory in which Shiga conveys his fears for Japan’s future. Gavin, 2001, p. 86. 29. Such a political reading also offers some insight into problems that have baffled critics of Light, Wind, and Dreams. If one reads the novel as a text in which Nakajima experi-

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ments with Stevenson’s point of view, then it will be impossible to draw a clear textual boundary between what belongs to Stevenson and what to Nakajima: the two are blended into an amalgam. The same may be said of the problem of the work’s genre, which is irreducibly hybrid. 30. Past critics of Nakajima’s works have generally treated “High Noon” either in terms of its content or in strictly stylistic terms. For example, Okuno Masamoto views the work primarily as an unvarnished personal confession in which Nakajima sets forth “almost without any embellishment his raw reactions to and impressions of the South Seas.” Okuno, 1985, p. 186. In contrast, Sudō Naoto interprets the work as a stylistic “regression to the self-centered prose without rhythm or tempo of Nakajima’s earlier writings in the collection Kakochō [Notebook of the Past].” Sudō, 1998, p. 87. 31. Nakajima, 2001c, p. 277. 32. The narrator describes himself as a man coming from the north. He associates Japan with the “vivid sensation of the winter cold penetrating my flesh” and the tropical south with “dark-skinned, sturdy young girls.” These geographic-climactic terms underwrite a series of binary oppositions that the narrator then proceeds to construct. The North is the world of time (deadlines, seasons), of painful memories, of self-tormenting thought and anxiety and worries from which the narrator seeks a cure, while the South is idleness, oblivion, rest, happiness, and healing. In this system of binary oppositions, the South offers not only the contrary but, most important, the remedy or the antidote to the corresponding “northern” condition. 33. Ibid., p. 278; my italics. 34. Nakajima uses the same metaphor of the “membrane” in the unfinished novel Hoppōkō (Heading North), in a passage in which the protagonist, Kuroki Sanzō, sets off on a voyage to Beijing in search of “something wild, strong, violent, tempestuous.” Kuroki claims that this membrane “distorts his vision like a kind of jelly” but he also views it as a kind of badge of “civilization.” “When did it first occur to him? He discovered that there was a thin membrane drawn between reality and himself. This membrane gradually thickened till it became difficult to break through it. He reached the point where he could only see reality through this translucent membrane, which distorted his vision like a kind of jelly. He could not come into direct contact with things as they really are. . . . Strangely enough, he was pleased with this discovery at the beginning. He even reflected that this is perhaps the final qualification of the intellectual, of the civilized man.” Nakajima, 2001b, pp. 108–9. 35. Nakajima, 2001c, pp. 278–79. 36. Ibid., 279. 37. Nicole, 2001, p. 87. European images of the South Seas date back to the first explorations conducted by Bougainville and Captain Cook. Nakajima is most influenced by Loti, Gauguin, Stevenson, and Rimbaud, that is, late nineteenth-century writers and artists who imagined the tropics as the polar opposite of the industrial, urban societies from which they sought escape. 38. Said, 1978, p. 94. 39. Nakajima, 2001c, p. 279. 40. Ibid., p. 280. 41. Nakajima, 2001k, pp. 379, 392–93.

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42. Nakajima, 2001c, p. 279. 43. See Nakamura, 2000, p. 27. 44. Nakajima both yearns for a return to an “authentic Japan” and rejects this temptation as a deceptive lure. In this he resembles the contemporary Japanese writers such as Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Kawabata Yasunari, and Yokomitsu Riichi, who also express a desire to return to an “authentic” Japan, identified with its traditional culture at this time. In his In Praise of Shadows, Tanizaki writes movingly of his nostalgia for Japan’s premodern culture, but he also concedes that this traditional culture has been lost beyond recovery. Like Nakajima, Tanizaki was intensely aware of his nation’s cultural colonization. 45. Nakajima, 2001c, p. 280. 46. Nakamura Kazue, 1997, pp. 87–91. 47. Nakajima, 2001d, p. 283. 48. Nakajima did not occupy a particularly exalted position within the colonial hierarchy, but his colleagues in the colonial service resented the favoritism shown in his hiring. He was parachuted into his position thanks to his ties to the “old boy” network of Tokyo University graduates and was paid a salary much higher than many long-term employees of the South Seas Agency. 49. Shimao Toshio offers the following nuanced evaluation of Nakajima’s fiction: “In the end, since Nakajima was sent to Micronesia by the Ministry of Education as editor of Japanese language textbooks for the South Seas Agency, he was unable to free himself completely from the perspective of the “helmeted official,” even if he was also prevented by his character from making full use of his authority. . . . Even though he was a perceptive observer of (Micronesia), one can sense an undercurrent of emotional distance and estrangement in the depictions of the islanders in his works.” Shimao, 2001, p. 72. Shimao’s reference to the “helmeted official” alludes to an anecdote from a travel sketch by Nakajima, titled “Yaroot.” In this sketch the narrator speaks of the colonial helmet as a badge of authority, which confers on its wearer almost magical powers, like Aladdin’s lamp. He draws a contrast between himself in his worn panama and his helmeted guide M from the government office. The day before he leaves Yaroot, he visits a market to purchase souvenirs. “I have the island boy who is accompanying me ask the price of a (straw basket). ‘Three yen,’ I am told. . . . At this point, M appears and also has the youth ask the price of the basket. Then the woman darts a quick glance at me as if to compare me with M, or rather she looks at the helmet he is wearing. She answers promptly, ‘Two yen.’ Then the woman begins to mumble something under her breath as if she has lost her self-confidence. ‘The price is two yen, but you can have it for 1.5 yen,’ she adds. I stand there in speechless wonder while M purchases the basket for 1.5 yen. When we return to M’s lodging, I pick up his helmet and take a good look at it. It is a commonplace helmet, bent out of shape, stained, and has a foul smell. Still I can’t help but think that it possesses some spiritual power like Aladdin’s lamp.” Nakajima, 2001e, pp. 299– 300. 50. Hijikata, 1991a, p. 194. 51. Okaya, 1990, p. 113. 52. Hijikata, 1991a, p. 188. 53. As a teacher, Hijikata strove to revive Micronesian traditions and train young Micronesian artists in new crafts. He is considered to be an important force behind the creation

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of “story boards,” carved pieces of wood that depict Palauan scenes and legends on the walls of the bais, village centers, and meeting places in Palauan villages. At a time when the bais were dying out, Hijikata encouraged his students to carve traditional scenes, using traditional styles and colors, but on small pieces of wood. Hijikata’s plan was to revive the bais, and also to create a new kind of souvenir for the increasing numbers of Japanese tourists in Palau; they remain an important souvenir and source of revenue to this day. 54. Despite his reputation as the “Japanese Gauguin,” he is much better known today for his detailed ethnographies of Micronesian culture and society than for his paintings and sculptures. As for his major artwork on South Seas themes, he created many of his sculptures and painted all of his watercolors during the postwar period, years after he departed from Micronesia. 55. Hijikata, 1991b, p. 76. 56. Indeed, Hijikata’s first two books were entitled Parau no shinwa to densetsu (Myths and Legends of Palau) and Parau no kami to shinkō (Gods and Religions of Palau). 57. In this respect, he had recourse to the same methods that he employed to compose his Stevenson novel or his Chinese stories: that is, he first encountered a text that interested him, selected passages, and combined them in new ways, transforming his sources in ways that the original author could never have predicted. 58. Nakajima, 2001j, pp. 488–89. 59. Nakajima, 2001d, p. 288. 60. Kramer, who made five trips to the Pacific before the First World War, wrote several ethnographic studies of Hawaii, Micronesia, and Samoa. For information on Kramer’s career, see Liebersohn, 2003, pp. 38–46. 61. Nakajima, 2001d, p. 284. 62. Ibid., p. 288. 63. The narrator not only enjoys a seigneurial right of oversight over Mariyan; he also has the privilege of entering her room whenever he wishes. There are several passages in the stories of Atolls where he writes of walking without the slightest hesitation into the homes of islanders as though it were his prerogative as a colonial master to enter their homes whenever he chooses. For example, there is the following passage from “Woman in the House of Oleanders”: “Since it was the house of an islander, I saw no reason to be diffident, and took the liberty to go into the house and take a rest.” Nakajima, 2001h, p. 261. 64. Nakajima, 2001d, p. 282. 65. For a discussion of the class and ethnic hierarchy of colonial society, Yui, 2002. 66. Peattie, 1988, pp. 111–12. Yanaihara Tadao, a professor of colonial policy studies at Tokyo University who researched colonial Micronesia, shows how this status hierarchy was translated into wage differentials among the different groups. Studying a phosphate mine in Angaul Island in 1940, he discovered that the daily pay of Japanese workers was ¥3. 45 yen, while an Okinawan earned ¥2.53, a Chamorro ¥1.40, and a Kanaka ¥.70. Yanaihara, 1940b, p. 114. 67. Umesao Tadao, who took part in Imanishi Kinji’s 1941 Nan’yō Research Team on the island of Ponape, noted that the indigenous islanders perceived their own social status as higher than that of the Okinawans, mainly poor migrants who made up nearly half of the Japanese in Micronesia. “The Okinawans and Koreans were manual laborers, an occupation

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that highborn Micronesians regarded with contempt. Upper-class and educated Micronesians who spoke Japanese reasonably well were shocked by the poor Japanese of the Koreans . . . and were aware that Okinawan speech and behavior were incomprehensible to the Japanese.” Tomiyama, 2002, pp. 60–62. 68. Yano Tōru coins the term the bōken Dankichi syndrome to characterize popular images of the South Seas in the 1920s and 1930s. Yano Tōru, 1979, pp. 152–56. See also Kawamura, 1993b, pp. 107–11. 69. In Japanese prewar discourse, South Seas islanders are routinely referred to as blacks and conversely the term kuronbō generally designates South Seas islanders. The narrator also associates Mariyan with the black people in North America. In a later scene, H begins to sing his favorite opera arias while Mariyan whistles tunes of Stephen Foster. “When she whistled, her thick full lips projected roundly from her face. Her entire repertoire consisted of the sentimental songs of Stephen Foster and not a single one of the difficult opera passages. Listening to her, I remembered all of a sudden that these were originally the sad songs of black people in North America.” Nakajima, 2001d, p. 289. While the narrator draws a sharp contrast between Hijikata’s high culture imitation of European opera and Mariyan’s whistling of Foster’s songs, he evokes the plight of the black people in North America with sympathy. While one can point to negative popular imagery of blacks in this period in the popular media, one should not overlook the fact that many Japanese intellectuals and writers from this time had close contacts with leading African-American writers and thinkers. For more on this forgotten history, see Koshiro, 2003. 70. The “Chief ’s Daughter” was made into a film set in the Marshall Islands in 1930, directed by Ishihara Eikichi. Other popular songs that evoke island women include “Banana Maiden” and “South Seas Beauty.” Baskett, 2008, pp. 54 and 182; and Kawamura, 1994b, p. 88. 71. Nakajima, 2001f, pp. 405–8. The film in question is not named. Around the time that Nakajima wrote this story, Japanese film makers were making films about nan’yō, notably the famous 1933 Umi no seimeisen (The Lifeline of the Sea), a propaganda film made by the Yokohama Cinema Company with financial backing from the Japanese navy. This film offers an ethnographic record of the daily lives of the natives of the Marianas, the Caroline Islands, and the Marshall Islands, but also emphasizes how important these islands are to Japan’s national defense. The film was a big hit and was shown throughout Japan. Normes and Fukushima, 1994, pp. 197–98. 72. Oguma Eiji analyzes Japanese eugenics in Tanitsu minzoku shinwa no kigen (The Origins of the Myth of the Homogeneous Japanese), a study of colonial-era Japanese discourse on the heterogeneity of the Japanese race. Charting the institutional and discursive evolution of eugenics, he shows that prewar eugenicists played a strategic role in the paradigm shift from the prewar discourse on the Japanese as a mixed race to the postwar discourse on the Japanese as a pure and homogeneous race. In Oguma’s narrative, the eugenicists were a pressure group concerned with domestic policy which eventually gained a voice in international policy making through their alliance with bureaucrats in the Ministry of Health, who worried about the “dangers” to the purity of the Japanese race posed by the large numbers of Japanese living overseas (who might marry non-Japanese) and by the importation of foreign workers (who might marry Japanese) into Japan. By contrast, colonial bureaucrats in Taiwan and Korea strongly disagreed with these “German” conceptions of racial purity. From

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the late 1930s, they promoted and even rewarded interethnic marriages as a means to foster assimilation of the colonized into Japan. Oguma, 1995, pp. 235–70. By contrast, Jennifer Robertson, who has studied mainly the discourse of eugenicists in the domestic context, considers the discourse of blood in the constitution of Japan as a family-state. She shows how the activities of eugenicist groups to promote exogamous marriages and organize beauty pageants played crucial roles in the bio-politics of modern Japan and in the extension of state control over the bodies of Japanese subjects. Robertson, 2002. 73. Suzuki Zenji, 1983, pp. 27–32. 74. Robertson, 2002, pp. 197–98. 75. Ibid., p. 198. 76. Consider the following description of a woman in the story “Woman in the House with Oleanders,” also in the collection Atolls: “In fact, I can say that the young wife was a real beauty. Since she had unusually well-defined features for a Palauan woman, I assumed she must be a half-breed with some Japanese [naichi] blood in her. Her facial color was not the usual bright black, but was a swarthy hue without luster.” Nakajima, 2001h, p. 57. 77. If Mariyan is the best reader in Koror, this is, the narrator implies, because she was already partly Japanese to start with. One finds a similar insinuation in “Toragari“ (Tiger Hunt), another of the author’s colonial works. Written in 1934, this work is set in Japanese ruled Korea where Nakajima resided during his middle school years. Just as Mariyan is depicted as partly Japanese because of her education, the narrator describes a Korean classmate as a half-breed because he attends a school established primarily for Japanese. “My friend’s name was Chō Taikan. He was a Korean [hantōjin]. Everyone said that his mother was Japanese [naichijin]. I seem to recall hearing this story from him, or perhaps I simply made it up myself and convinced myself of its reality. Even though we were such close friends, I never actually met his mother.” Unlike the narrator of Mariyan, this narrator treats the claim that Chō is a child of mixed blood as an uncertain hypothesis that he is unable to verify. Nakajima, 2001g, p. 74. 78. Geographical terms here are used in a figurative way to refer to mutually exclusive value systems and aesthetic standards. In Fūdo (Climate), the philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō develops a theory about the importance of place and climate in the determination of culture and shaping of character. Watsuji was influenced by Motoori’s philosophy of Japanese culture and by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, although he rejects the latter’s emphasis on time and tries to understand culture through a spatial analysis. The regular cycles of nature fundamentally shape human culture in different parts of the world; they both account for the continuity of particular cultures and explain cultural, and implicitly geopolitical, differences between one society and another. Watsuji defines three types of climatic environment: monsoon (India), desert (Middle East), and grassland (Mediterranean). According to his theory, Japan belongs in a unique category that is distinct from the both the monsoon climate of Asia and the grassland climate of Europe. On the one hand, it resembles monsoon Asia since it has moist and hot summers. On the other hand, it resembles Europe because its winters are dry and cold. Due to its unique climate, Japan combines the advantages of Asian and European civilizations. Watsuji, 1979. 79. Nakajima, 2001d, p. 283. 80. Both these passages are cited from Nakajima, 2001n, p. 529.

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81. Kuriyagawa Hakuson (1880–1923) was a professor of English literature at Kyoto University who did much to popularize modern Western literature in Japan. He is best known for the work Kindai no ren’aikan (Modern Views of Love). Pierre Loti (1850–1923) is the pen name of Jacques Viaud, a French novelist. Le mariage de Loti (1882) is a semiautobiographical account of the romance between a young naval officer and Rarahu, a fourteen-year-old Tahitian girl. 82. Nakajima, 2001d, pp. 285–86. 83. Ibid., pp. 287–88. A similar passage appears in Nakajima’s letter to his wife dated January 9, 1942: “On Christmas day, I went to see mass at the Spanish Church. There were many islanders in the assembly. There was a black girl in her Sunday best, who had plastered her face with rice powder (or so I thought), which looked really odd. The gloss of her black face was almost extinguished. In addition, she was wearing Japanese style geta that were painted red. It was very strange.” Nakajima, 2001i, p. 659. 84. In a letter to his wife dated December 7, 1941, Nakajima describes visiting a Micronesian church in Saipan, where he notices a Japanese woman seated in a row behind the island women. Nakajima uses the word “distress” (itamashisa) to describe his reaction: “I never used to find anything strange about seeing a Japanese Catholic believer worshipping at a Catholic church in Japan, but I felt really distressed to see a single Japanese woman mixed among the islanders and bowing her head in unison with their prayers in their local language.” Here it is the Japanese woman’s presence as worshipper in a Micronesian church and her partaking of the local ritual that causes the narrator pain. By contrast, he finds nothing odd about the woman’s Catholic beliefs per se, and finds her presence in a church in Japan (presumably with Westerners in attendance) to be natural. Nakajima, 2001j, p. 651. 85. Bhabha, 1994, p. 86. 86. From the “Covenant of the League of Nations,” cited in Peattie, 1988, pp. 81–82. 87. Ironically, Nakajima’s literary reputation is primarily that of a gifted rewriter of tales written by others. In his stories, he often sought to amplify and comment on other literary works that inspired his own work. For example, in the story “Toragari” (Tiger Hunt), he refers to Daudet’s Tartarin, a story about a tiger hunt which contains a scene in which the Germans who occupy part of France announce that henceforth the official language will be German. This story intersects with an important theme in “Tiger Hunt,” namely the Japanese language policies in Korea. In “Pūru no soba de” (By the Pool), a work about the narrator’s sexual awakening as a young Japanese growing up in Korea, he alludes to the colonial love story Paul et Virginie. 88. As Loti writes in his dedication to Madame Chrysanthème: “Even though the principal role is apparently played by Madame Chrysanthème, it is certain that the three principal characters are myself, Japan, and the effect that this country has made on me.” Loti, 1991, p. 43. That is, Japan is envisioned as a source of exotic and sexual “effects” for the Western witness whose primary role is to observe and represent the foreign locale. For that reason, Mme. Chrysanthème, who is described throughout as a doll and “a darling little fairy,” is only a secondary character in this novel that bears her name. Of course, Loti is not content to simply observe the exotic: he also wishes to purchase a wife for the duration of his stay to ward off boredom and to experiment with an exotic identity (that is, a fictional identity epitomized by the pseudonym Loti, originally a Tahitian term). In all these respects,

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The Marriage of Loti is the Tahitian version of Madame Chrysanthème (cf. Nakamura Kazue, 2002, p. 77). That said, as Colleen Lye notes, Madame Chrysanthème differs in one important respect from The Marriage of Loti: it undermines the exotic and romantic conventions that Loti is associated with by calling attention to the conscious economic relationship upon which the narrator’s cross-cultural marriage with Mme. Chrysanthème was based. While the narrator may imagine that Mme. Chrysanthème is passionately attached to him and will grieve when he leaves Japan, he discovers that, far from being sorrowful, she is cheerfully counting the wages earned from the “marriage” when he visits her at the end of the novel. As Lye notes, Loti’s textual reaction to Japan is complex: he represents Japan as diminutive and backward, but he also registers a discomfort with Japanese modernity. At the time that Loti wrote the novel, Japan was already emerging as a rival for France in the global imperial order. For more on Loti, see Colleen Lye, 1995, pp. 260–89. 89. Loti, 1991, pp. 199 and 209. 90. Ono, 1972, p. 59. In Vers Ispahan (Calmann-Levy, 1904), Loti later wrote: “I could understand this kind of imitation if we were among Hottentots or Kaffirs. But when you have the honor of being . . . Japanese—in other words of having been ahead of us by several centuries in all kinds of refinements, people who, well before us, had their own exquisite art and architecture, elegant, graceful customs, furniture and costume—it really is coming down in the world to copy us.” Quoted in Hargreaves, 1981, p. 37. 91. Nakajima, 2001d, p. 288. 92. Sedgwick, 1985, pp. 1–20. As two men ostensibly discussing Mariyan’s remarriage, H and the narrator act out their authority as Japanese men in this colonial context. Eve Sedgwick notes that this type of homosocial bond is fundamental to the social and political power in any patriarchal society and that this homosociality exists on a continuum with homoeroticism. In fact, there is also an unexplored erotic tension between the narrator and H, but it is displaced onto Mariyan. H is present during the encounters between the narrator and Mariyan, and he seems to encourage the narrator to take Mariyan as his “island wife,” but the narrator, who has anxiety about his own colonial authority, clearly rejects this option. Later, when Mariyan imitates H in referring to the narrator as Tonchan, the narrator accepts this reversal in his role with Mariyan—perhaps because he is performing a feminine role to seduce H. Nakajima, who based many of his fictional works on Hijikata’s notes, sent the latter copies of his stories, but he did not send him a copy of “Mariyan.” 93. Lévi-Strauss, 1969, p. 115. 94. Peattie notes that Micronesians could only acquire the status of “imperial subjects” by naturalization or marriage, but that only a tiny percentage of the Micronesians women married to Japanese men acquired Japanese citizenship. Peattie, 1988, p. 112. 95. Paul Gauguin’s Noa Noa contains a tragic departure scene that might have served as a model that Nakajima reworks in “Mariyan.” Gauguin, 1994, pp. 60–62. 96. Nakajima, 2001d, pp. 289–90. 97. Ibid., pp. 283–84. 98. The same motif appears in a different form in “The Woman in the House of Oleanders,” another story from Atolls which deals specifically with the theme of sexual desire. The narrator recovering from dengue fever believes that he is the object of the sexual desire of the woman of the title, a woman who “likes all the men from Japan [naichi].” While the nar-

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rator projects sexual desire onto the woman, who is significantly described as being of “mixed blood,” he wonders whether he may not be deluding himself under the influence of fever, and he is shocked that that his convalescent body could elicit this sort of attention from the woman. Nakajima, 2001h, pp. 260–65. 99. Bhabha, 1994, p. 88. 100. Nakajima, 2001d, p. 290. 101. Pratt, 1992, pp. 7, 38–85. 102. Harootunian, 1990, p. 125. C ONC LU SION

1. Abe, a postwar novelist best known for his science-fiction explorations of anomie in postwar Japanese society, grew up in Manchuria during the Manchukuo period. In 1957, he published Kemonotachi wa kōkyō o mezashite (The Beasts Head Home), which is based on his desperate flight from Manchuria to Japan after the war. After making their way through countless dangers to a ship bearing them back to Japan, the protagonists of this novel are unable to land in a Japanese port due to a cholera outbreak onboard the ship and become stateless and homeless “beasts” without a country. Japan in the end becomes a phantom homeland (kokyō) to which the beasts are drawn but which they are prevented from reaching. 2. Kawamura, 1990, pp. 140–49. 3. Jansen, 1984, p. 76. 4. I will not try to respond to Jansen’s judgment on Japan’s colonial literature per se. However, I believe that this book—and the several major works of fiction that have been its central object—constitutes a compelling refutation of the view that Japan’s colonial literature deserves to be forgotten. 5. I would argue, to the contrary, that the ghosts of the imperial period, far from being laid to rest, continue to haunt East Asia. Japan’s imperialism as a form of cultural domination in East Asia has doubtless come to an end, but traces of this past linger on into our present. For this reason, the question of how this past is remembered, forgotten, represented, and taught is a highly contentious issue that continues to dominate public debate in the region. Present-day disputes between Japan and its East Asian neighbors have deep roots in the colonial period, as is shown by protests in China and Korea regarding official visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, ongoing lawsuits about war reparations, and controversies over school textbooks. Just as we cannot neglect to examine this imperial past to make sense of Japan’s twentieth-century history, we must attend to the archive of the colonial period to get a complete picture of Japan’s modern literature. 6. There were 2.4 million Koreans in Japan in 1945, but most were repatriated to the Korean peninsula in the next few years and only 590,000 remained in Japan by 1948. Wagner, 1951, p. 95. 7. Yuasa, 1995, pp. 454–58. 8. Ching, 2001, pp. 34–38, 47. 9. Foucault, 1990, p. 4. 10. Kawamura 1994b, p. 16. 11. Takayama, 1995.

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notes to pages 186–191

12. On the relation of the cannibal to modern conceptions of culture, see Foucault, 1999, pp. 92–96. 13. Cook and Cook, 1992, p. 274. See also Gibney, 2007, pp. 153–56. 14. For trials of Japanese soldiers accused of cannibalism in Australia, see Hayashi Hiroshi, 2005, pp. 88–93. For a harrowing accounts of cannibalism in Philippines, see Nagao, 1996. 15. Huang, 2001, p. 225. 16. Though the soldier, a member of the Ami aboriginal group, was named Sumiyon, this incident is known in Japan as the Nakamura Teruo incident (after his Japanese name), while in Taiwan it is called the Lee Kuang Huei incident (after his Chinese name). The KMT followed the Japanese colonial policy of forcing indigenous people to give up their original names and adopt new names of the ruling power, in this case, a Chinese one. Ibid., p. 225. 17. Hayashi, 1994, pp. 290–91, cited in Huang, 2001, p. 227. 18. Ibid., p. 267, cited in Huang, 2001, p. 227. 19. Huang, 2001, p. 231. 20. Ibid., pp. 232–33. 21. Cannibalism plays an important part in postwar film as well. Besides Hara’s Yukiyukite shingun (The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On; 1987), I would mention Fukasaku Kinji’s Gunki hatameku moto ni (Under the Flag of the Rising Sun; 1972). 22. Since Takeyama’s novel was published, it has been adapted for cinema twice. Both film versions omit this scene. 23. Takeyama, 1959, p. 151. 24. I have already noted the popularity of the figure of the chieftain’s daughter in prewar imperial discourse. In Taiwan, the colonial regime promoted strategic marriages between colonial policemen and the daughters of aboriginal chiefs. As a figure of romantic exoticism, the daughter of the chief was celebrated in popular songs such as “Manshū musume” (Manchurian Girl) and “Nan’yō musume” (Girl from the South Seas). 25. Takeyama, 1959, p. 159; Takeyama, 2001, p. 112. 26. Masaki notes that Takeyama set his novel in Burma (a country about which he knew practically nothing) primarily because the novel had to be set in an English colony. Masaki, 1995, pp. 1–15. 27. He seems to argue that the Japanese people continue to be manipulated by an evil cabal just as they were during the war. That is, they are the passive victims of their leaders’ machinations rather than agents of victimization in their own rights. This commentary appears in the final three chapters of the book making up the epilogue, which Ōoka wrote during the Korean War, a conflict he bitterly opposed. 28. Ōoka, 1998, p. 125. 29. Ibid., p. 141. 30. Ibid., p. 160. 31. Ibid., pp. 175–76. 32. Ōoka, 1982, p. 431. 33. Lofgren, 2004, p. 402. Eric Lofgren suggests that this change in views about the protagonist’s culpability reflects a broader shift in postwar discourse from an early preoccupation with national war guilt—promoted by the Occupation authorities—to a later emphasis on Japan as the major victim of the war.

notes to pages 192–196

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34. The narrator notes that Rausu in Hokkaido, where the caves of Makkaisui are located, is situated right across from the island of Kunashiri, occupied at the end of the war by the Soviet Union. During the colonial period, both the Kuril Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin were under Japanese rule. 35. Takeda, 1971, p. 184. 36. Ibid., pp. 184–85. 37. U.S. “special procurements” for the Korean War injected billions of dollars into Japan, stimulating industrial production in many sectors of its economy and sparking a wartime boom. Japan produced ammunition, weapons, and bombs for the U.S. forces and carried out repair work on U.S. tanks, planes, and military vehicles. The conflict in Japan’s former colony was, in the words of Prime Minister Yoshida, “a gift from the gods.” Dower, 1999, pp. 541–46. 38. Takeda, 1971, pp. 178–79. 39. Prior to the G-8 summit held in Toyako, Hokkaido, in 2008, the Japanese parliament approved a resolution that for the first time in history recognizes that the Ainu “are an indigenous people with a distinct language, religion, and culture.” 40. For more on the relation of this story to the 1954 discourse on the Tokyo trials, see Shinjō, 2007, pp. 90–108. 41. After eating two of his crew, the captain confesses to his subordinate Nishikawa that he is “enduring what cannot be endured.” Although the wording is slightly different, this comment echoes a phrase from Hirohito’s speech broadcast by radio on August 15, 1945, announcing Japan’s surrender and the end of the war (taegataki o tae, shinobigataki o shinobi). 42. Takeda, 1971, pp. 203–4. 43. According to Hachizō, a ring of light (hikari no wa) is formed behind the neck of someone who has eaten human flesh; this light is visible to someone who has not eaten human flesh, but not to the cannibal himself. At the end of the trial scene, the ring of light forms behind the judge and all the other characters in the court, but only the captain can see it, throwing the court into utter confusion. Since all of them wear the circle of light, they all have become cannibals although they have not yet recognized it. 44. Ibid., p. 187. 45. Ibid., p. 192. 46. Ibid., p. 187. 47. Yomota argues that Godzilla, this “menace from the South Seas,” recalls the bombing raids of major Japanese cities by U.S. fighter planes in the last year of the war and, above all, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the 1954 exposure of a Japanese fishing boat to radiation during a U.S. H–bomb test in the Marshall Islands. In addition, it is the “embodiment of the unquiet ghosts” of the Japanese soldiers that perished in the South Seas during the Pacific War. Yomota, 2007, pp. 102–11. 48. Igarashi, 2006, pp. 83–102.

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Glossary of Japanese Terms

banchi

蕃地

aboriginal land in Taiwan

banfu

蕃婦

aboriginal women

banjō

蕃情

situation in aboriginal lands

Banmuhonchō chōsaka

蕃務本庁調査課

Survey Section of the Bureau for the Control of Aborigines

budan seiji

武断政治

military rule of colonies, referring to Japan’s early colonial rule

bunka seiji

文化政治

cultural rule of colonies, referring to Japan’s rule after World War I

bunmei kaika

文明開化

civilization and enlightenment

bushidō

武士道

the way of the warrior or samurai; also, the title of a famous book by Nitobe Inazō

dojin

土人

native, indigenous person or people

dōka

同化

assimilation policy

dōkaryoku

同化力

the ability or capacity to assimilate others

fuseji

伏せ字

hidden characters (in censorship)

gaichi

外地

external lands (colonies) in Japanese discourse

genshi

原始

primitive

godai mukashibanashi

五大昔話

Japan’s five great fairy tales, including “Momotarō”

Gohō

吾鳳

name of Qing official in colonial-period legend

249

250

Glossary of Japanese Terms

hankai

半開

half-civilized (the middle stage in Fukuzawa’s theory of civilization)

hantōjin

半島人

inhabitants of Korea in Japan’s colonial discourse

heigō

併合

merger, official term for unification of Japan and Korea; heigō suru is the verb “to merge”

hokushinron

北進論

theory that Japan should expand further on Asian continent, defended strongly by army circles

itamashisa

痛ましさ

distress or pain; in Nakajima’s story “Mariyan,” the word describes the narrator’s reaction to Mariyan, a Micronesian woman; the adjectival form is itamashii

jinshu

人種

race as distinguished from ethnicity (minzoku); in practice the two terms overlapped

jōmon

縄文

a style of ancient pottery in Japan and a name for the Neolithic period when it was produced (ca. 12,000 b.c.e. to ca. 350 b.c.e.); this word is written with the characters for “rope” and “writing”

jukuban

熟蕃

“cooked savages,” a term used to describe Taiwan aborigines assimilated to Chinese customs and submitted to colonial rule; the term is a Japanese pronunciation for the Chinese shufan

kanaka

カナカ

a derogatory term used to describe South Seas islanders, particularly natives of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in contradistinction to the Chamorros of the Marianas; adapted from the Polynesian kanaka, which means “human being”

kanbun

漢文

texts written in Chinese but read by Japanese readers in Japanese pronunciation

Kantō daishinsai

関東大震災

Great Kanto Earthquake

katsujō

割譲

cession, used to describe Qing granting Taiwan to Japan after Sino-Japanese War; katsujō suru is the verb “to cede”

kegai no min

化外の民

people outside the pale of civilization

kōhaku zakkon

黄白雑婚

intermarriage of white and yellow races, a term used in Takahashi’s Nihon jinshu

Glossary of Japanese Terms

251

kairyōron (Theory on the Improvement of the Japanese Race; 1884) kokubungaku

国文学

national—that is, Japanese—literature, a creation of the modern nation state in the Meiji period

kokugo

国語

the national language, Japanese

kōminka

皇民化

imperialization policies in Japan’s colonies in the 1930s

kongō minzoku

混合民俗

notion that Japanese are a mixed race, dominant in prewar Japanese discourse

konketsu

混血

of mixed blood

konketsuji

混血児

a child of mixed birth

Koropokgru (koropokkuru)

コロポックル

the name of a prehistoric indigenous population of Japan referred to in Ainu literature

kuronbō

黒ん坊

a black, used to refer to people in the South Seas in Japanese colonial discourse

kyōban

凶蕃

evil (i.e., violent and rebellious) aborigines

kyōka

教化

policy of acculturation, applied to Taiwan aborigines

kyūdojin

旧土人

exnative; term used to describe Ainu of Hokkaido

machō

魔鳥

demon bird in Ataiyal superstition, called hafune in Ataiyal

machōtsukai

魔鳥使い

manipulator of the hafune or demon bird (Ataiyal); called mahafune in Ataiyal

mikai

未開

uncivilized, savage

mikata ban

味方蕃

aboriginal tribe allied with the Japanese

minzoku

民族

ethnicity as distinguished from race ( jinshu); in practice the two terms overlapped

Momotarō

桃太郎

the peach boy, most famous Japanese folktale

Musha jiken

霧社事件

Musha incident of 1930

naichi

内地

internal land (home islands of Japan in colonial period discourse as distinct from colonies)

naichijin

内地人

Japanese living in colonies

nanshinron

南進論

theory that Japan should expand to the South Seas, popular in naval circles

252

Glossary of Japanese Terms

nan’yō

南洋

the South Seas, refers to vague geographical area to the south of Japan

Nan’yōchō

南洋庁

South Seas Agency, name of the colonial government of Micronesia

nan’yō dojin

南洋土人

South Seas native (pejorative)

Nan’yō guntō

南洋群島

the South Seas Islands (Micronesia)

nihonjin

日本人

the Japanese, a term that included both Japanese and those ruled by Japan in colonies

nissen dōsoron

日鮮同祖論

theory of common ancestry of Japanese and Koreans

oni

鬼

ogre

oyatoi gaikokujin

お雇い外国人

foreigners hired by early Meiji state as advisors or teachers

riban

理蕃

savage control or management, used to describe policies toward the Taiwan aborigines

ryūgen higo

流言飛語

wild rumors, especially used to refer to rumors about alleged Korean malefactors during the Great Kanto Earthquake

Ryūkyū shobun

琉球処分

disposition of Ryūkyū Islands, 1879 incorporation of Ryūkyū into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture

sandoku

三毒

the three Poisons, a Buddhist term for the three causes of all human suffering: greed, anger, and delusion

sasshin jōnin

殺身成仁

sacrificing one’s body and realizing benevolence, a Confucian notion epitomized by Go Hō

seiban

生蕃

“raw savages,” a term for Taiwanese aborigines unsubmitted to Japanese rule; the term is a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese zhengton

seibatsu

征伐

policy of punitive raids, applied to Taiwan aborigines

shin Nihon

新日本

literally, “new Japan,” a term frequently used to refer to Japan’s colonies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; shin nihonjin (新日本人) was a related term that meant the colonized people living in these “new Japans”

shokumin

植民/殖民

a colonizer, or to colonize, written with two different graphs in early colonial period

Glossary of Japanese Terms

253

shokuminchi

植民地/殖民地

the Japanese term for “colony”; the same term also signified a place where Japanese emigrated at the turn of the century, this word could be written with two different characters, but Nitobe Inazō standardized the first of these as the proper equivalent to the Western term “colony”

sōtokufu

総督府

the government-general, the term used to name Japan’s colonial regime in Taiwan and Korea, as in the term Taiwan sōtokufu; sōtoku means “governor-general”

soto nan’yō

外南洋

outer South Seas, Pacific Islands, and Southeast Asia not ruled by Japan; opposed to uchi nan’yō

Taiwan shuppei

台湾出兵

the Taiwan Expedition, Japan’s first military incursion overseas; this “expedition” was undertaken in 1874 to punish Taiwan aborigines who had massacred the crew of a Ryūkyū ship

Takasago giyūtai

高砂義勇隊

“Takasago Volunteers,” or Taiwan aborigines who fought with Japanese soldiers on the battlefields of the Pacific War

takasagozoku

高砂族

an appellation for the Taiwan aborigines, widely used in the 1930s and 1940s in place of terms such as seiban and jukuban; Takasago is an ancient appellation for Taiwan

tanitsu minzoku

単一民族

notion that Japanese form a homogeneous race, the dominant paradigm in postwar period

tekiban

敵蕃

aborigines that fought against Japanese rule

uchi nan’yō

内南洋

inner South Seas, Japanese-ruled Micronesia

yaban

野蛮

savagery

yūseigaku

優生学

eugenics

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Index

Abe Kōbō, 183, 245n1 “About My Hometown.” See “Kōkyō ni tsuite” “Account of the Outlying Southern Islands.” See “Nanpō ritōki” Adams, Herbert Baxter, 232n81 Adventures of Dankichi, The (manga series), 144–46, 167, 185, 196, 235n149 affiliation, 72, 215n111 Africa, 63, 162–63 African-American writers, 241n69 Africans, in Japanese racial hierarchy, 22–23 Ainu people: anthropological view of, 78, 80; assimilation of, 230n50; cannibalism trope and, 193–94; as Caucasians, 24; conflicting Japanese views of, 200n14; declared indigenous people, 247n39; ethnographic research on, 193–94, 218n15; folk art of, 57, 212n65; Fukuzawa civilization theory and, 204n82; Hokkaido colonization and, 231n74; in Japanese racial hierarchy, 23; Japanese terms used to describe, 8; Minamoto no Yoshitsune and, 227n22; pre-Ainu group, 80, 218n9 akabon (children’s book form), 117 Akai Tori (journal), 56–57 “Akamushijima nisshi” (Ishikawa), 236n10 Akashi Motojirō, 220n44 Akutagawa Prize, 154, 183 Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 1, 3, 6, 137–38. See also “Momotarō”

“Allegorical Sense of Momotarō.” See “Momotarō no hanashi no gūi” allegory: ciphers and, 224n80; critical potential of, 5; as dialectical movement, 199–200n8; double meaning of, 199n7; Japanese colonial literature as, 4–6; Momotarō as, 121–25, 127, 130–33, 134–36, 182; types of, 5. See also under specific work allochronic primitivism, 141 Althusser, Louis, 3 Amakasu Masahiko, 116 Ambaras, David, 230–31n64 Analects (Confucius), 51 Anderson, Benedict, 200n26 Andō Sadami, 210n40 Angaul Island, 240n66 anime (cartoons), 119 anthropology, 25; colonies as objects of, 2, 82– 85; introduced in Japan, 2, 18, 36, 78–81; Japanese racial origins studied in, 79–81; racial categorization in, 205n96; as “science of savagery,” 182–83; use of term, 218n8. See also ethnography anticapitalism, 214n93 anticonquest narratives, 179–80 anti-imperialism, 34, 148 Antoni, Klaus, 228n35, 235n139 Anya kōro (Shiga), 112, 226n9 Aotokage no yume (Hijikata), 163 Arai Hakuseki, 217n3

287

288

index

archaeology, 2, 80, 217n3 Arendt, Hannah, 33 Aristotle, 202n59 Arisugawanomiya, 213n81 Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne), 217n1 Arthur, George, 41 “Aru seikatsu” (Nakajima), 236n5 Asahi (newspaper), 226n7, 229n44 Ashio Copper Mine, 213n87 Asians, in Japanese racial hierarchy, 22–23, 147–48 Asiatic Society of Japan, 218n9 assimilation policies: contradictory expectations from, 14; cultural hybridity as result of, 172; ethnic cross-dressing and, 73–74; gradualism in, 129–30; indirect rule vs., 32; interethnic marriages and, 241–42n72; Japanese language and, 104; Japanese settler discontent with, 233n111; Japanization, 216n127; for Koreans in Japan, 74, 224n90; as mask for discrimination, 206n103; in Okinawa, 207n118; opposition to, 134–35; sameness/ similarity rhetoric and, 30, 205n95; shifting emphasis on, 232n85; in South Seas, 129–30, 180; in Taiwan, 43, 134–35, 216n127 Ataiyal aborigines, 11, 41, 64–65, 83, 134, 221n52 Ataiyal language, 100 Atolls (Nakajima). See Kanshō atomic bomb, 191, 247n47 Austronesian aborigines, 39 auto-Orientalism, 28, 204n88 Ayuthhaya (Thailand), 228n28 Baelz, Erwin von, 79 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 110, 225 “Banana Maiden” (pop song), 241n70 banchi (Taiwanese aboriginal land), 7, 44, 93 “Banfu” (Ōshika), 63 banfu (Taiwanese savage woman), 7, 67, 76 “Banjin no musume” (Nakamura), 204n91, 212n74 banjō (Taiwanese savage condition), 7–8 “Banjo Rion” (Masugi), 59 “Bankai no onna” (Nakamura), 58 Banmuhonchō chōsaka (paramilitary group), 86 “Bansei mondai ni kan suru ikensho” (Mochiji), 44–46 Barclay, Paul, 207n9, 212n77, 214n95 Barthes, Roland, 78 Batchelor, John, 218n9, 227n22

Battleship at the Bottom of the Sea (Oshikawa). See Kaitei gunkan Beasts Head Home. See Kemonotachi wa kōkyō o mezashite “Beautiful Town.” See “Utsukushii machi” beauty, temperate vs. tropical standards of, 170–72 Becoming Japanese (Ching), 4, 209n28 Befu, Harumi, 204n88 Benjamin, Walter, 199–200n8, 224n80 Bhabha, Homi: British colonization of India and, 12–13; colonial mimicry theory of, 14, 17, 18, 174, 179; postcolonial hybridity and, 161 biological determinism, 45, 46–47 Birth of Momotarō. See Momotarō no tanjō Biruma no tategoto (Takeyama), 187–89, 196– 97, 246n22 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 219n23 Bōken Dankichi (manga series). See Adventures of Dankichi, The (manga series) bōken Dankichi syndrome, 241n68 border markers, 103–5, 106–7, 225n93 Botan aborigines, 15–16, 61–62 Botel-Tobago (Taiwan), 83 boy-heroes, 143–46 “Boy-King of the South Seas.” See “Nan’yō no Shōnen ō” boys’ magazines, 120, 144–46, 185 brigandage, repression of, 209n37 British Empire, 9, 12–13, 180, 199n4, 205n100 Brooks, Barbara, 224n86 Buckle, Henry Thomas, 26, 203n80 Bungakukai (literary periodical), 154 “Bunmei kokumin nanka no taisei” (Nitobe), 123 “Bunmei no nanshin” (Nitobe), 130 Bunmeiron no gairyaku (Fukuzawa), 25–27, 66, 203n78 Bunun tribe, 41, 220n43 Bureau of Aboriginal Affairs, 56, 86, 87, 207n6, 208n12 Burkman, Thomas, 125 Burma, 246n26 Bushidō (Nitobe), 230n57 bushidō (way of the warrior), 60, 137, 230n57 Bushukō hiwa (Tanizaki), 62, 213n84 Buyan Nawi, 187 “By the Pool.” See “Pūru no soba de” camphor, 39–40, 207n9 cannibalism: emperor and, 192–95, 197; Japanese instances of, 79, 185–87; in post-WWII

index Japanese film, 246n21; in post-WWII Japanese literature, 37, 188–95; in South Seas, 111; taboo against, 186; as trope, 15– 16, 231n70; in Western discourse, 186. See also headhunters/headhunting; headhunter trope capitalism, 43, 65–66, 71, 140, 181, 200n26, 214n93 Caroline Islands, 8, 151, 166, 241n71 Catalog of the World’s Countries in the Palm of One’s Hand. See Shōchū bankoku ichiran Caucasians, in Japanese racial hierarchy, 22–23 cave-dweller trope, 15–16 censorship, 70, 98–99, 137, 223n75 censuses, 219n30 “Certain Lifestyle.” See “Aru seikatsu” “Chameleon Diary.” See “Kamereon nikki” Chamorros, 8, 167 Changes in the Image of Momotarō. See Momotarōzō no henyō Chang Ping Lin, 138, 234nn122, 124 Chiba Yasuki, 52 “Chief ’s Daughter.” See “Nan’yō musume” chieftain’s daughter figure, 246n24 Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 227nn22, 28 children, savages as, 55, 56–57 children’s literature, 117–18, 143–44, 185, 234n124 China: Akutagawa’s travels in, 137–38; antiJapanese protests in, 245n5; ethnographic fieldwork in, 218n17; in Japanese colonial discourse, 27; in Japanese expansionist debate, 226n11; Twenty-One Demands imposed on, 234n124. See also Qing dynasty; Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895); SinoJapanese War (1937–1945) Chinese, 74; demonization of, 214n93; Go Hō legend and, 211n46; Japanese sameness rhetoric toward, 205n98; murders of, after Kanto Earthquake, 224n92. See also Taiwan Chinese Chinese communists, 136 Chinese writing, 206n102 Ching, Leo, 4, 206n103, 209n28 Choppuran tō hyōryūki (Nishikawa), 62 Chōshū type, 79 Christian social reformers, 123, 230–31n64 Chūō Kōron (periodical), 65, 70, 71, 90, 98–99, 220n50, 223n74, 234n139 Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud), 54 civilization discourse: cannibalism trope and,

289

197; differing Japanese notions of, 203n74; European influence on, 63–64; evolutionary narratives, 145; Fukuzawa’s tripartite theory of, 25–28, 54, 66–67, 203nn77–78, 204n82; Go Hō legend and, 50, 53–54; headhunter trope and, 48–50; as mimetic, 17–18, 22; primitivism and, 54, 169–72; social-Darwinist assumptions about, 221n52 “Civilization of Modern-day Japan, The” (Natsume), 16 civilizing missions, rhetoric of, 6, 21, 50, 232n81 Clancey, Gregory, 234n130 Clifford, James, 5, 98 Climate. See Fūdo climate-centered discourse, 169–72, 232n85, 242n78 Cold War, cessation of, 184 Colonial Encounters (Hulme), 235n149 Colonial Fantasy. See Shokuminchi gensō colonialism, 20, 128–29. See also imperialism; Japanese imperialism colonial mimicry, 14–16, 17, 18, 37, 179 Colonial Policies in Taiwan. See Taiwan shokumin seisaku colonial policy studies, 2, 125–33, 231n73, 232n85 colonial unconscious, 204n85 Columbus, Christopher, 186 Comaroff, John, 205n99 communism, 202n53 Compendium of Japanese Geography. See Sekai kunizukushi Conditions of the South Seas. See Nan’yō jiji Confucianism, 51, 53, 123, 206n102, 230n57 “Conquest of the Sun.” See “Taiyō no seibatsu” Conrad, Joseph, 63, 64, 213nn88, 90–91 consumerism, 196 control, rhetoric of, 55 Co-Prosperity Sphere. See Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere cosmopolitanism, 161, 172, 214n101 Coxinga (folk hero), 227n28 cross-ethnicking, 73–77, 216n126, 217nn128–29 cultural hybridity, 202n58 cultural policy, 232n85 cultural primitivism, 141 Dakekan (Taiwan), 39 Dankichi (manga boy-hero), 144–46, 167, 235n149 Dark Night’s Passing. See Anya kōro

290

index

“Datsuaron” (Fukuzawa), 27, 204n85 Daudet, Alphonse, 243n87 Days of My Youth. See Waga seishun no toki “Death of a Fool.” See “Gusha no shi” Death of Tsusitala, The (Nakajima), 154. See also Light, Wind, and Dreams (Nakajima) Defoe, Daniel, 12, 186 “Demon Bird” (Satō): allegory as used in, 5, 6, 36, 97, 98–105, 107, 223nn70, 75; censorship and, 223n75; civilized/savage parallelism in, 100–101; colonial violence as linking mechanism in, 102–5, 106–7, 108, 208n15; ethnographic influence on, 90–92, 106–7, 221n52; headhunter trope in, 222n58; hidden language/ code used in, 99, 100; mahafune legend in, 91–97, 100–101, 102–5, 221–22n58; publishing of, 98–99, 106, 220n50, 223n74; reader reaction to, 99; readership of, 108; recent scholarship on, 106; uniqueness of, 105–6; weaknesses of, 107–9 Den’en no yūutsu (Satō), 221n56 Den Kenjirō, 220n44 desire: rhetoric of, 55; sexual, 244–45n97 Destiny of Momotarō. See Momotarō no unmei Detailed Account of the Musha Incident. See Musha jiken no tenmatsu “Diary of Red Insect Island.” See “Akamushijima nisshi” “Disassociation from Asia.” See “Datsuaron” “Distorted Views.” See “Hekiken” Dodd, Stephen, 221n56 Doenitz, Wilhelm, 79 dojin (backward/primitive person), 8. See also nan’yō dojin dōka (assimilation), 30, 206n103 domin (South Sea islander), 8 Dōwa (journal), 220n50 Dower, John, 119 Dream of the Blue Lizard. See Aotokage no yume Driftwood. See Ryūboku “D-shi shichigatsu jokei” (Nakajima), 236n5 Duara, Prasenjit, 205n98 Dudden, Alexis, 231n76 Durkheim, Émile, 186 Dutch East Indies, 148–49 Duus, Peter, 15, 201n43 “Eagle’s Claw Blossom” (Satō), 220n50 Earthquake Nation (Clancey), 234n130 Edo period, 203n74, 227–28n28, 228n33

education policy, 152, 232n85, 236n8, 236nn10– 11. See also school textbooks Ely, Richard Theodore, 232n81 emperor ideology, 138, 192–95, 197 Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On. See Yukiyukite shingun Enseki zasshi (Takizawa), 117 Essay on Exoticism (Segalen), 236n6 Essays (Stevenson), 155 ethnic cross-dressing, 73–77, 216n126, 217nn128–29 ethnic nationalism, 133 ethnography: as accomplice to imperialism, 86–87; cannibalism and, 193–94; colonial objectives of, 83, 88, 219n36; colonies as objects of, 2, 36, 82–85; headhunter trope and, 11, 48; introduced in Japan, 2, 36, 79– 81, 218n15; Nakajima influenced by, 11, 162–64, 183; primitivist ethos informing, 221n52; Satō influenced by, 6, 11, 36, 90–92, 106–7, 183; as “science of savagery,” 182–83; use of term, 218n8. See also anthropology; Hijikata Hisakatsu; Kindaichi Kyōsuke; Mori Ushinosuke; Torii Ryūzō; Tsuboi Shōgorō; Yanagita Kunio; specific ethnographer Ethnography of the Taiwan Aborigines, An (Mori), 83, 88, 90–91 eugenics, 2, 22, 168–69, 241–42n72 Eurocentrism, 12, 22, 28 Everyday Teaching. See Hibi no oshie exception, states of, 209n30 exoticism, 151, 154, 156, 210n40, 237n19, 243– 44n88, 246n24 expropriation. See land dispossession Fabian, Johannes, 132 “Fairy Tale Drama: Momotarō Conquered.” See “Otogigeki seibatsu sareru Momotarō” father figures, 65, 71–72, 215n109 feminization, 178–79, 214n101 fetishism, and warrior tradition, 62–63 Fiji Islands, 23 filiation, 72, 215n111 film: cannibalism in, 186, 246n21; Go Hō legend in, 52; Momotarō in, 119, 136; post-WWII, 196, 247n47; South Seas as portrayed in, 167–68, 241nn70–71 Fires on the Plain. See Nobi “Five Year Plan to Conquer the Northern Tribes,” 40–41 folk art, 57

index folk heroes, 115–17, 227nn21–22, 227–28n28. See also Go Hō legend; Minamoto no Yoshitsune; Momotarō (folk hero) folklore, 2, 115–17, 133, 235n140. See also Momotarō (folk hero) Footnote to History, A (Stevenson), 155 Foster, Michael, 235n140 Foucault, Michel, 160, 184 France, 20, 180, 244n88 Freud, Sigmund, 54, 62–63, 186 frontier thesis, 127–28 Frye, Northrop, 6 Fudō (Watsuji), 242n78 Fujiwara no Hidehira, 116 Fujiwara Toyo, 29 Fujui Shōzō, 106, 224n82 Fukasaku Kinji, 246n21 Fūkeiga (poetry magazine), 63 Fukuda Kyūya, 154 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 203–4n81; on Momotarō as thief, 125; national independence as goal of, 203n76; Ōshika’s views of primitive, compared to, 66–67; racial discrimination experienced by, 203–4n81; racial hierarchy of, 22–23; Sino-Japanese War as viewed by, 31; tripartite civilization theory of, 25–28, 54, 66–67, 203nn77–78, 204n82; Western influences on, 25–26, 203n80 fuseji (hidden characters), 70, 98 Futabatei Shimei, 201n41 gaichi (colonies), 34–35, 183 “Gaikōron” (Fukuzawa), 27–28 Gauguin, Paul, 159, 163, 238n37 Gavin, Masako, 237n28 G-8 summit (Toyako, Hokkaido; 2008), 247n39 “General Kim.” See “Kin Shōgun” Genghis Khan, 116–17 Genghis Khan Was Indeed Yoshitsune. See Jingisu-kan wa Minamoto no Yoshitsune nari Genpei Wars, 116 Genroku period, 117 genshi (primitive), 7 Gentleman’s Agreement (1907), 19 Germany: colonial culture of, 14, 201n30; Micronesia ruled by, 9, 110–11, 151, 164, 235n3; pan-Germanism, 33, 206n109; as racial other, 20; southern longings of, 132; Stevenson criticism of, 155 Gibbon, Edward, 164–65

291

Gide, André, 54, 237n19 Gijin Gohō (film; 1932), 52 Gikeiki (epic), 227n21 Gikei saikōki (Suematsu), 227n25 Gikei shōgikyō (Chikamatsu), 227n22 “Girl from the South Seas.” See “Nan’yō musume” godai mukashibanashi (five great national folktales), 117, 228n33 Gods and Religions of Palau (Hijikata), 240n56 Godzilla (film; 1954), 196, 247n47 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 132 Go Hō legend, 36, 50–54, 136, 211n46 Gordon, Andrew, 225n100 “Go south, young man!” slogan, 112, 226n12 Gotō Fumio, 42, 49 Gotō Shinpei: Chinese old customs research project initiated by, 82, 209n27; on Japanese assimilation policy, 130; Mochiji recruited by, 208n22; Nitobe recruited by, 126; as Southern Manchuria Railway president, 126, 209n27; as Taiwan civil administrator, 43, 82, 208n22, 231n75; on Taiwanese living history, 43 Great Britain, 112–13, 122, 180, 200n26 Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere: economic ideologies of, 125; Japanese racial hierarchy and, 12; Masaki as supporter of, 235n149; Nakajima’s South Seas fiction and, 3, 37, 157, 180, 237n23; sameness rhetoric of, 33; “Western-tinted eyeglasses” metaphor and, 147, 148–49 Great Kanto Earthquake (1923): Chūō Kōron issue devoted to, 98–99, 223n74; colonial violence exposed by, 107; deaths because of mistaken identity, 224–25n92; “Demon Bird” as allegory of, 5, 6, 36, 97, 98–105, 107, 223nn70, 75; Japanese language as border marker following, 104–5, 225n93, 225n94; Koreans massacred as scapegoats for, 5, 97– 98, 99, 103–5, 106–7, 223n74, 225n93; socialists murdered following, 223n74; as unpredicted, 234n130 Great Treason Trial (1910), 101–2 Greek Empire, 44 Griffis, William Elliot, 24, 217n2 guard lines, 40–41, 208n13 Guizot, François, 26, 203n80 gunboat diplomacy, 15 Gunki hatameku motoni (film; 1972), 246n21 “Gusha no shi” (Satō), 101–2

292

index

Habsburg Empire, 200n26 Hachiojima, 124 Haiti, 129 half-breeds, 242nn76–77 Halle University (Germany), 126 Hanaoka Ichirō, 60–61 Hanaoka Jirō, 60–61 Han Chinese. See Taiwan Chinese hankai (half-civilized), 26, 203n77 “Hankechi” (The Handkerchief; Nitobe), 137 Hara Kazuo, 186, 246n21 Hara Kei, 34, 206n115 Harootunian, Harry, 181 Harp of Burma. See Biruma no tategoto Hashiguchi Bunzō, 39, 48 Hateikokushugiron (Yamaguchi), 233n117 Hawaii, 23–24, 240n60 headhunters/headhunting: aboriginal renunciation of, 52, 61; as anthropological object, 11, 83–84; ban exemptions, 73; civilization discourse and, 11; cultural meanings of, 83; depoliticization of, 83–84; foreign commentary on, 210n43; Go Hō legend and, 36; Japanese “taking of heads,” in warrior tradition, 61–62, 213nn79, 81; political significance of, 48; pseudoethnographic descriptions of, 51; reevaluation of, 45, 61– 62, 212–13n78, 216n117; as rite of passage, 222n58; sameness/similarity rhetoric and, 28; as Taiwanese aboriginal stereotype, 83. See also cannibalism headhunter trope, 47–54, 210n40; aboriginal opinion of, 211n50; in “Demon Bird,” 222n58; as dominant “savagery” trope, 10, 48; double colonial logic behind, 47–48; in Japanese colonial discourse, 2; Japanese colonial violence justified through, 48–50; in Japanese conquest narratives, 50–54; in Japanese popular media, 48; sameness/ similarity rhetoric and, 53–54; in “The Savage,” 36, 67–68, 191 Heading North. See Hoppōkō Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 63, 64, 213nn88, 90–91 Hebrews, Japanese as related to, 227n26 Heian period, 213n79 Heidegger, Martin, 242n78 “Hekiken” (Akutagawa), 138 “Henreki” (Nakajima), 154, 237n19 “Hens.” See “Niwatori” Hibi no oshie (Fukuzawa), 125

Higan sugi made (Natsume), 111–12 Higashi Kiichi, 220n44 “High Noon.” See “Mahiru” Hijikata Hisakatsu, 151, 241n69; artwork of, 240n54; ethnographic research of, 163, 183, 240nn54, 56; Gauguin, compared to, 163; Nakajima influenced by, 163–64; savagery as trope in, 1; views of primitive art, 162–63, 239–40n53 Hikarigoke (Takeda), 188, 192–95, 197 Hikari to kaze to yume (Nakajima), 154. See also Light, Wind, and Dreams (Nakajima) Hirohito, Emperor, 194–95, 247n41 Hiroshima, atomic bombing of (1945), 191, 247n47 Histoire de la civilization en Europe (Guizot), 203n80 History of Civilization in England (Buckle), 203n80 History of Sexuality (Foucault), 184 Hōan jōrei, 237n28 hogan biiki (sympathy for the underdog), 227n21 Hōgen monogatari (medieval chronicle), 121 Hōgen rebellion, 230n53 Hokkaido, 247n39; anthropological research in, 80; cannibalism trope in, 192; G-8 summit held in (2008), 247n34; in Japanese colonial discourse, 204n82; Japanese colonization of, 126, 204n82, 231n74; Minamoto no Yoshitsune worshipped in, 227n22; pavilion of, in Tokyo Taisho Exhibition (1914), 111. See also Ainu people hokuban (northern Taiwanese savage), 7 Holland, 148–49, 235n3 Home Ministry, 230–31n64 homosociality, 244n91 Hoppōkō (Nakajima), 150, 238n30 Horiguchi Daigaku, 98 “Hoshi” (Satō), 220n50 Hoshino Hisashi, 29, 115, 205n97 Howell, David, 203n74 Hulme, Peter, 235n149 Hungarians, Japanese as related to, 24 hybridity, 2, 160–61 hygiene, improvements in, 210n37 Identity of the Great Conqueror Genghis Khan with the Japanese Hero Yoshitsune, The (Suematsu), 116, 227n25 Ifa Fuyū, 204–5n92

index Igarashi Yoshikuni, 196 Ijichi Susumu, 169 “Ima Momotarō” (Kyō no Warabei), 120 Immigration Act (U.S.; 1924), 19, 202n52 imperial democracy, 225n100 imperialism: anti-imperialism, 34, 148; colored, 18–20; continental, 33; folk, 114–20; liberal, 107–9; mimetic, 16–18; varying types of, 13; as “Western” phenomenon, 13. See also Japanese imperialism; Western imperialism imperialization, 43, 151, 236n11 Imperial Leather (McClintock), 217n129 imperial nostalgia, 88, 174, 180–81 imperial ventriloquism, 28 “Inago no dairyokō” (Satō), 220n50 incest, prohibition of, 186 In Darkest Africa (Stanley), 123, 226n15 India, 12–13, 205n100 Indian Ocean, 111 inferiority complex, 15, 17, 19–20, 24 Inō Kanori, 56, 63, 82, 218n20, 219n36 Inoue Masaji, 24–25, 132 Inoue Tetsujirō, 23–24 In Praise of Shadows (Tanizaki), 239n44 “Intention of Fires on the Plain.” See “Nobi no ito” interethnic marriage: abandonments as result of, 90, 177–78, 215–16n115; brokered, as political instrument, 72–73, 215nn112–13, 246n24; imperial subject status and, 244n93; Japanese eugenics and, 168–69, 241–42n72; in “Mariyan,” 168, 176–78; Musha Incident and, 216n115; in “The Savage,” 72–73 international law, 17–18, 45–47 Interpreter Go Hō. See Sasshin jōnin tsūji Gohō In the South Seas (Stevenson), 155 “Inu ni au made: Momotarō san no hanashi” (Kitagawa), 118 Iraq, 9 Ireland, 205n100 Ishida Ishimatsu, 167 Ishihara Eikichi, 241n70 Ishii Shinji, 61 Ishikawa Tatsuzō, 236n10 Island Night’s Entertainment (Stevenson), 113, 114 Itō Hirobumi, 226n8 Itō Noe, 116, 223n74 Iwakura Mission (1871–1873), 124 Iwanami Shoten (publishers), 172–74 Iwaya Sazanami, 118, 138

293

Izu Islands, 230n53 Izumo Shrine, 236n11 Jaluit, 153 Jansen, Marius, 183, 245n4 Japan: American Occupation of, 191; anthropology introduced in, 78–81, 218n15; antipollution struggle in, 213n87; archaeological finds in, 217n3; “authentic,” return to, 239n44; Christian social reformers in, 123; climate of, 242n78; colonial unconscious of, 204n85; cultural roots of, 205n99; cultural uniqueness of, 31–32; economic crisis in (1930s), 135; as exotic, 243–44n88; German alliance with, 155; Great Britain as model for, 122; Korean population of, 245n6; modernization of, 14, 16, 147; as multiethnic entity, 74–75; national borders of, 103–5; national language policy, 104–5; national past of, 55; in postcolonial theory, 12–14; post-WWII industrial boom in, 247n37; relationship with colonies, 2; residential segregation in, 23–24; Security Act, 237n28; victimhood discourse in, 191, 246nn27, 33. See also unequal treaties, Japanese “Japan as Colonizer” (Nitobe), 49–50 Japanese colonial discourse: biological determinism in, 45, 46–47; circulation of, 211n53; civilization in, 25–28; colonized participation in, 28–29; dichotomies in, 211n57; double logic of, 47–48; international law in, 45–46; justifications for expropriation of Taiwanese aboriginal land, 44–47; primitive figure types in, 55; Qing travel writing as prefiguring of, 219n24; race in, 21–25; sameness/similarity rhetoric, 28–35; in “The Savage,” 71–73; shifts in, 226n8; superiority of colonizer in, 145–46, 212n65; Taiwanese aborigines in, 211n57; triangular structure of, 21–28. See also civilization discourse; sameness/similarity rhetoric Japanese colonial gaze, 147–48, 149–50 Japanese colonial literature: as allegories of the self, 4–6; children’s, 117–18, 143–44; civilization discourse in, 66–70; colonial heroes in, 116–18; ethnographic influence on, 89–97, 182–83; ideology and, 3, 180; Japanese southern expansion in, 111–13; as mimetic, 4, 17, 63–64, 91–92, 153–57, 174–76; primitive discourse in, 55, 90, 169–72; proletarian, 118–19, 137; recent republishing of, 184–85;

294

index

Japanese colonial literature (continued) sameness/similarity rhetoric in, 33–34; scholarship on, 183–85, 245n4; social discourses connected to, 2–3; Western-oriented paradigms applied to, 3–4. See also specific author Japanese colonial violence: blame for, 222n60; in “Demon Bird,” 102–5, 106–7, 108, 208n15; headhunter trope as justification for, 48–50; Japanese language and, 104–5, 225nn93–94; mahafune legend as reenactment of, 94–97; state violence against intellectuals linked to, 101–3 “Japanese Colonization” (Nitobe), 123; 231n74 Japanese Diet, 207n118 Japanese immigrants, 19, 113–14, 126–28 Japanese imperialism: achievements of (Nitobe), 49, 209–10n37; ambivalences of, 5, 18–20; as colored, 18–20; education policies, 152, 232n85, 236n8, 236nn10–11; emergence of, 3; end of, 183–84, 236n7; expansionism debate, 226n11; folklore mobilized in support of, 114–20; legitimization of, 2, 127; liberal critique of, 107–9; lingering effects of, 245n5; as mimetic, 4, 14–18, 20–21, 37, 174– 76, 201n43; mythical justifications for, 115– 17, 119–20, 124–25, 127, 233n101; racism institutionalized in, 166–67; satires of, 137, 138–43; scholarship on, 183; shortcomings of, 233n107; unique traits of, 200–201n26; wars fought to promote, 38–39, 207n2; Western-oriented paradigms applied to, 3– 4; “Western-tinted eyeglasses” metaphor and, 149–50. See also assimilation policies Japanese language, 205n95; as border marker, 104–5, 225nn93–94; inculcation of, 151; violence of, 225n94 Japanese literature: children’s, 117–18, 143–44, 185, 234n124; father figures in, 215n109; modern, 201n41; post-WWII, 37, 188–95; proletarian, 118–19, 137, 234n124. See also Japanese colonial literature Japanese “Orientalism,” 32, 204n88, 243–44n88 Japanese people: anthropology and racial origins of, 79–81, 218n12; assimilating prowess of, 122; as cannibals, during WWII, 185–87; as heterogeneous race, 74–75, 78–79, 122, 216n120, 217nn1–2, 230n56, 241–42n72; as homogenous race, 241n72; insularity of, 114, 122, 228n35; murders of, after Kanto Earthquake, 224–25n92; post-WWI

repatriation of, from colonies, 184; racial superiority of, 201–2n44; related to Koreans, 29, 205n96; as southern people, 112, 130–33, 232n85 Japanese translations, 172–74, 237n23 Jiji Shinpō (newspaper), 27 Jingisu-kan wa Minamoto no Yoshitsune nari (Oyabe), 116–17 Jinmu (emperor), 131 Jinshinroku, 137 jinshu (race), 22 Jitsugyō no Nihon (periodical), 111, 231n73 Johns Hopkins University (U.S.), 126, 232n81 Jojōshi (poetry magazine), 63 Jokaisenkitan (Satō), 220n50 jōmon (prehistoric pottery), 79 Jōmon period, 79, 204n82 Josei (journal), 220n50 jukuban (“cooked”/acculturated savage), 7 “Junsa no iru fūkei” (Nakajima), 236n5 Jun Uchida, 233n111 Kabayama Sukenori, 39, 227n28 Kabuki theater, 75, 117, 161 Kaijō no michi (Yanagita), 131 Kaitei gunkan (Oshikawa), 11 Kaizō (journal), 220n50 Kakochō (Nakajima), 238n30 Kameido Incident (1923), 223n74 “Kamereon nikki” (Nakajima), 160 Kamishima Jirō, 125, 216n120, 230n56 Kamiyama Mannoshin, 42 kanaka (South Sea islander), 8, 166, 167, 169, 175 Kanazawa Shōzaburō, 29 Kaneko Kentarō, 31 Kaneko Mitsuharu, 63 Kanghwa Treaty (1876), 15 Kanji culture, 160 “Ka no ichinatsu no ki” (Satō), 109, 220n44 Kano Tadao, 38 Kanshō (Nakajima), 153, 158 Kantō daishinsai (Kan), 105 Kanto earthquake. See Great Kanto Earthquake (1923) Kan Tokusan, 105 Kappa (Akutagawa), 141, 235n140 Karafuto, 111, 126 Karatani Kojin, 213n88 Katō Hiroyuki, 168 Kawabata Yasunari, 239n44

index Kawahara Isao, 71 Kawakami Jōtarō, 71 Kawamura Minato, 12, 144, 184, 213n88 Kawano Mitsu, 71 “Kawatta hishochi: Nichigetustan ni asobu ki” (Satō), 220n50 Kemonotachi wa kōkyō o mezashite (Abe), 245n1 “Kidan” (Satō). See “Under a Japanese Flag” (Satō) Kigaigashima, 234–35n139 Kikusan (Loti), 175. See also Madame Chrysanthème Kim (Kipling), 217n129 Kim Ōzui, 137, 233n120 Kimura Kazuaki, 106 Kindaichi Kyōsuke, 120, 230n50 Kindai no ren’aikan (Kuriyagawa), 243n81 Kinji Hasegawa, 137 kinship ties, through marriage, 72–73 “Kin Shōgun” (Akutagawa), 137 Kipling, Rudyard, 6, 183, 217n129 “Kiri no bansha” (Nakamura), 60–61, 215n108 Kisaki Katsu, 223n74 Kishida Kunio, 75 Kitagawa Chiyo, 118 Kita Sadakichi, 206n112 Kitashirakawa Shinnō Yoshihisa, 211n46 Kleeman, Faye Yuan, 4, 106, 214–15n103, 214n99 Kobayashi Shizuo, 228n28 Kodama Gentarō, 39–40, 49, 208n10 Kodama Onmatsu, 111, 226n7 Koda Rōhan, 114, 227n18 Koganei Yoshikiyo, 80 Koiso Kuniaki, 116 Kojiki (chronicle), 115, 138, 205n97, 227n26, 236n11; Amaterasu (sun goddess), 115; Izanagi myth 233n101; Izanami myth, 233n101; Jingū (empress), 115–16; Susanō no mikoto (Japanese deity), 115–16, 236n11 kokugo (national language), 104–5 “Kōkyō ni tsuite” (Yuasa), 184 Komagome Takeshi, 51 kōminka (imperialization) policies, 151, 236n11 Komori Yōichi, 204n85 Kondō Gisaburō, 215–16n115 Kondō Katsusaburō, 214n95 Konishi Yukinaga, 137 Korea: anti-Japanese protests in, 245n5; assimilation policies in, 233n111; brokered marriages in, 215n112; ethnographic fieldwork

295

in, 218n17; Go Hō legend in, 211n53; Hideyoshi’s invasion of, 137; interethnic marriages promoted in, 241–42n72; Japanese annexation of, 29, 34, 74, 115–16, 128; in Japanese colonial discourse, 27, 29, 33; in Japanese colonial literature, 236n5; as Japanese colony, 126, 148; Japanese cultural similarities with, 206n102; Japanese imperialist moves toward, 15; Japanese opportunism in, 226n8; Japanese repression in, 20, 31, 102–3, 137; liberation of, 183–84; mythical justifications for annexation of, 115–16; in Nakajima Atsushi’s early fiction, 150, 236n5; opposition movements in, 10, 215n112, 232n85, 234n124; self-rule proposed for, 206n112; in Taisho Exhibition (1914), 111 Korean language, 205n95 Koreans: equal rights refused to, 202n56; Japanese assimilation of, 74, 224n90; in Japanese population, 245n6; Japanese sameness rhetoric toward, 205nn92, 96, 205n97, 205n100, 224n89; massacres of, 5, 97–98, 99, 103–5, 106–7, 223n74, 225n93; raids against, in Manchuria, 224n86; in South Seas racial hierarchy, 167, 240–41n67; Tokyo population, 224n88 Korean War, 184, 190, 193, 246n27, 247n37 Koropokgru (pre-Ainu group), 80, 218n9 Koror (Palau), 170, 171, 172, 176–77 Kōtoku Shūsui, 101 “Kotozuke” (Masugi), 59 Kōyūkai Zasshi (Tokyo First Higher School magazine), 150 Kramer, Augustin, 164, 240n60 kubijikken (inspection of enemy heads), 213nn79, 81 Kugimoto Hisaharu, 151 Kume Kunitake, 29, 114, 124–25, 205n97 Kunashiri Island, 247n34 Kuomintang, 54, 136, 246n16 Kuriyagawa Hakuson, 172–73, 243n81 Kurokawa Sō, 106 kuronbō (South Seas islanders), 241n69 Kurosawa Akira, 224–25n92 kuzazōshi (printed works with illustrations), 117 Kwantung army, 148 kyōban (violent Taiwanese savage), 8 “Kyōchikutō no ie no onna” (Nakajima), 240n63, 242n76, 244–45n97 Kyōdokai (Home Customs Association), 120–21 “Kyōkaidō e no ichiretsu” (Ogawa), 57

296

index

Kyō no Warabei, 120 Kyoto University, 243n81 kyūdojin (former native), 8 Kyushu, 131 land, undeveloped, 128–29 land claims, in Taiwan, 209n27 land dispossession, 9, 43, 44–47, 48, 209n25 land mines, 40 “Landscape with a Policeman.” See “Junsa no iru fūkei” land surveys, 219n30 Lantal Island (Taiwan), 131 “Last Days of Momotarō.” See “Sono ato no Momotarō” Lawrence, D. H., 54 League of Nations, 9, 19, 110, 126, 148, 174 Lee Kuang Huei incident, 186, 246n16 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 177 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 186 Lifeline of the Sea. See Umi no seimeisen “Life of the Ataiyal Tribe.” See “Taiyaruzoku no seikatsu” Light, Wind, and Dreams (Nakajima): chapter numbering in, 237n19; Co-Prosperity Sphere and, 237n23; critical commentary on, 237n27, 237–38n29; hybrid genre of, 237n27; as political allegory, 155, 237– 38n29; renaming of, 154; Stevenson as influence on, 17, 154–57, 174, 237nn21, 27, 238n29 Li Ling (Nakajima), 149 liminal spaces, 46, 107, 209n30, 221n56 Li Xianglin, 216n126 “Locust’s Great Journey.” See “Inago no dairyokō” Lofgren, Eric, 246n33 Loti, Pierre, 243n81; exoticism of, 243–44n88; on Japanese mimesis, 244n90; in “Mariyan,” 172–76, 178, 179–80; Nakajima influenced by, 153, 159, 238n37. See also Marriage of Loti, The; Madame Chrysanthème; Vers Ispahan Luminous Moss. See Hikarigoke Lye, Colleen, 244n88 “Machō” (Satō). See “Demon Bird” (Satō) Madame Chrysanthème (Loti), 175, 243–44n88 magatama, 80, 218n11 mahafune legend: in “Demon Bird,” 91–97, 100– 101, 102–5, 221–22n58; as metonym for primitive society, 97; Mori on, 90–91; as reenact-

ment of colonial violence, 94–97; scapegoat mechanism in, 92–93, 102–5, 221n51 “Mahiru” (Nakajima), 158–61, 180–81, 238n30 Mainichi (newspaper), 136–37 Makkaushi caves (Hokkaido), 192, 247n34 Malay race/tribes: in early ethnographic racial classifications, 79, 84; Japanese as racially related to, 79, 112, 130, 131–32; Momotarō as personification of, 122; sameness/similarity rhetoric and, 28, 74 Manchukuo, mythical justifications for annexation of, 117 Manchuria, 245n1; civil war in, 184; ethnographic fieldwork in, 218n17; as frontier, 127; intermarriage advocated in, 169; in Japanese colonial discourse, 31–32; in Japanese colonial literature, 236n5; Japanese expansionism in, 226n11, 231n71; Japanese invasion of, 34; Korean partisans in, 224n86 “Manchurian Girl.” See “Manshū musume” Manchurian Incident (1931), 148, 214n93 Manchurian Motion Picture Company (Man’ei), 216n126 manga (comics), 143–46, 167, 185, 196, 235n149 manifest destiny, 124–25 manliness. See masculinity “Manshū musume” (pop song), 246n24 Manshū Nichinichi (newspaper), 117 March First Independence Movement (Korea), 20, 102–3, 215n112, 232n85, 234n124 Mariana Islands, 8, 10, 151, 167, 241n71 “Mariyan” (Nakajima): ambivalences of, 172–80; as anticonquest narrative, 176–80; climatecentered discourse in, 169–72; cultural hybridity in, 172; cultural mimicry in, 164– 65, 174–76, 179, 241n69; ethnographic influence on, 162–64; “High Noon” and, 180–81; homosociality in, 244n91; intermarriage in, 176–78; model for, 164; narrator as colonizer in, 162, 240n63; Pierre Loti and, 172–76; race as portrayed in, 241n69, 242n77; South Seas women as discursive creation in, 161, 164–69; voyeurism as narrative structure of, 165–66; writing of, 180 Marriage of Loti, The (Loti), 172–76, 243n81, 244n88 marriages, interethnic. See interethnic marriage Marshall Islands, 8, 151, 153, 166, 185, 241nn70–71, 247n47 Masaki Tsuneo, 147, 148, 149–50, 158, 235n1

index masculinity: interwar Japanese worries about, 214n101; Momotarō legend and, 121, 122– 23; in Nakajima’s South Seas fiction, 178– 79, 244–45n97; in Nitobe’s Momotarō doctrine, 123; samurai tradition and, 60; Taiwanese aboriginal warrior spirit and, 60, 65; “Western-tinted eyeglasses” metaphor and, 148–49 Masugi Shizue, 57–59, 212n66 Matsubara Iwagorō, 123 Maupassant, Guy de, 58 May Fourth Movement, 137 McClintock, Anne, 217n129 measles, 27 Mechnikov, Lev, 78–79 Meiji constitution, 206n112 Meiji emperor, 61, 115 Meiji Era: auto-Orientalism during, 204n88; civilization discourse during, 27, 203n74; discourse of enlightenment, 7; folktales canonized during, 228n33; imperialism during, 15–16; overseas settlement encouraged during, 113–14; racial classifications during, 219n23; Tokugawa status system abolished during, 8; treaty revision during, 199n4 Meiji Restoration, 160 Melville, Herman, 159 Memories and Portraits (Stevenson), 155 “Message, The” (Masugi), 59 Micronesia: artisan training in, 239–40n53; colonial education policies in, 236nn8, 10– 11; ethnographers of, 162–64, 183, 240nn56, 60; German rule of, 9, 110–11, 151, 164, 235n3; imperial nostalgia in, 180–81; imperial subject status in, 244n93; interethnic marriage in, 244n93; Japanese acquisition of, 9, 110–11, 148, 151, 174; Japanese Catholics in, 243n84; in Japanese literature, 11; Japanese racism institutionalized in, 166–67, 240–41nn66–67; Japanese repression in, 31; Japanese settlement of, 9–10; Japanese terms used to describe, 8; liberation of, 183– 84; post-WWII U.S. control of, 236n7; stereotypes of, 234n138; tropes used to describe, 10, 236n10. See also “Mariyan” (Nakajima); South Sea islands Mikado’s Empire, The (Griffis), 217n2 mikai (unenlightened), 7 mikita ban (allied Taiwanese savage), 7 militarism, 137–38, 140, 234n136

297

Milne, John, 218n9 Mimic Men, The (Naipaul), 17 mimicry, 14–18; colonial mimicry, 14–16, 17, 18, 179; expansionism and, 201n43; imperial mimicry, 16; in Japanese colonial literature, 4, 17, 63–64, 91–92, 153–57, 174–76, 179, 189; in Japanese modern literature, 201n41; Nakajima’s criticism of, 174–76; use of term, 202n59; of Western imperialism, 3–4, 16–18, 20–21 Minami Hiroshi, 56 Minamoto no Tametomo, 230n53 Minamoto no Yoritomo, 116 Minamoto no Yoshitsune, 116–17, 227n21, 228n35 mingei (folk crafts) movement, 57 Ministry of Education, 229n44 Ministry of Health, 241n72 minzoku (as a term for race), 22 “Mist-Enshrouded Aboriginal Village.” See “Kiri no bansha” Miwa Kimitada, 202n52, 203–4n81, 237n28 Miyagawa Jirō, 134–36 Mochiji Rokusaburō, 43–46, 208n22, 209n25 modernity, 66, 181 Modern Views of Love. See Kindai no ren’aikan “Momotarō” (Akutagawa), 233n117; allegory as used in, 6, 138, 234nn130, 136; colonial violence in, 142–43; forerunners of, 234– 35n139; inspiration for, 234n124; narrative innovations in, 138–42; publishing of, 136– 37, 234n130; as satire, 36, 137, 138–43; South Seas setting of, 141–42 Momotarō (folk hero), 12; as allegory, 121–25, 127, 130–33, 134–36, 182; animal retainers of, 135–36, 139–41, 234nn130, 136; boyheroes influenced by, 143–46, 235n149; Confucian virtues of, 123; as contested figure, 36–37, 118; emergence of, 117; as folk tale, 117–18, 228n29; Japanese imperialism criticized through, 36–37, 133–36; Japanese imperialism justified through, 36, 119–20, 124–25, 130–33, 233n117; Japanese xenophobia and, 228n35; miraculous birth of, 230n58, 231n66; national canonization of, 117–18, 228n29; origins of, 121, 122, 138, 229n44; parodies of, 137; postcolonial Taiwan and, 136; post-WWI metamorphoses of, 133– 36, 234n124; South Seas homecoming of, 130– 33, 142; versions of, 117, 118–19, 228n36, 229n42; as youth role model, 120, 122–23

298

index

“Momotarō” (Iwaya), 118 Momotarō, Conqueror of the Ogres. See Oniseibatsu no Momotarō Momotarō: Umi no shimpei (Momotarō’s Divine Ocean Warriors; film; 1945), 119 Momotarōism, 182 “Momotarō no enseidan” (“Momotarō’s Conquest”; lecture; Nitobe), 120 “Momotarō no hanashi no gūi,” 119–20 Momotarō no imōto (Soma), 118 “Momotarō no mukashibanashi” (Nitobe), 120 Momotarō no tanjō (Yanagita), 228n29 Momotarō no umiwashi (Momotarō’s Sea Eagles; film; 1942), 119 Momotarō no unmei (Torigoe), 228n36 Momotarō of the Sky (cartoon). See Sora no Momotarō “Momotarō sagashi” (Momotarō Search campaign), 229n44 Momotarō’s Great War with the Island of the Ogres (film; 1961), 136 “Momotarō Today.” See “Ima Momotarō” Momotarōzō no henyō (Namekawa), 228n36 Mon (Natsume), 226n8 Mōnanon (Ami poet), 78, 108 Mongolia, 218n17 Mongoloid racial strain, 79 Mori Ushinosuke: aboriginal language manuals of, 100; cultural understanding promoted by, 86–87; death of, 220n43; “Demon Bird” influenced by, 90–92, 100; education of, 86; on “impure” aboriginal women, 222n62; Japanese colonial policies criticized by, 87– 88; on mahafune, deaths from, 221n51; primitivist ethos informing, 90; salvage mission of, 88–89, 220n43; Satō and, 36, 89–90, 219n38; on Slamao Incident, 89; on Taiwanese aboriginal warrior spirit, 60; Taiwanese ethnographic research of, 82, 85– 90, 108, 223n68; Taiwanese headhunting classified by, 51, 83–84 Morizaki Mitsuko, 100 Morotai, 186 Morris, Ivan, 227n21 Morse, Edward Sylvester, 79, 193 “Mothra’s Gigantic Egg” (Igarashi), 196 Motoori Norinaga, 18, 115, 201–2n44, 242n78 mukashibanashi, 117 Murobuse Kōshin, 225n1 Murō Saisei, 98 Musha (Satō), 35, 89, 94–95, 106, 109, 220nn44,50

Musha (Taiwan), 89 Musha Incident (1930): causes of, 59–60, 215– 16n115; colonial crisis caused by, 9, 42–43; Go Hō legend and, 52; headhunting encouraged following, 216n117; in Japanese colonial literature, 11, 35; official investigation of, 71; Ōshika’s works as reaction to, 70–71; policy reform following, 42–43, 56; samurai tradition and, 60–61; as savagery, 215n108 Musha jiken no tenmatsu (booklet), 71 music, popular, 167, 196, 241n70, 246n24 myth, 115–17, 119–20, 124–25, 127, 233n101, 236n11 Myths and Legends of Palau. See Parau no shinwa to densetsu Nagasaki, atomic bombing of (1945), 191, 247n47 naichi (Japan), 34–35 Naipaul, V. S., 17 Nakagawa Koichi, 216n117 Nakajima Atsushi, 1; allegory as used by, 5, 155; correspondence of, 243nn83–84; critical commentary on, 238n30; education/early career of, 150–51, 156, 236n5; ethnographic influence on, 11, 162–64, 183; European influences on, 238n37; identity problems of, 158–61, 172; Japanese imperialism as portrayed in, 3; literary significance of, 149, 243n87; “membrane” metaphor of, 158–59, 238n34; race as portrayed in, 243nn83–84; South Seas fiction of, 37, 149, 163–64, 238n30, 239n49; South Seas work/travel of, 35, 37, 151–53, 239nn48–49; Stevenson as literary model for, 4, 17, 153–57, 174, 180; “Western-tinted eyeglasses” metaphor of, 147, 150, 176. See also Light, Wind, and Dreams; “Mariyan” Nakamura Chihei, 57–58, 60–61, 204n91, 212n66, 212n74, 215n108 Nakamura Kazue, 161 Nakamura Teruo incident, 186, 246n16 Nakano Yoshio, 64 Nakata Naohisa, 51 Nakayama Satoru, 104, 224n90 Namekawa Michio, 228n36 nanban (southern Taiwanese savage), 7 Nan Bujin, 211n53 Nangokuki (Takekoshi), 112 Nanjing (Nanking) Massacre (1937), 140, 186, 234n134

index “Nanpō kikō” (Satō), 220n50 “Nanpō ritōki” (Hijikata), 163–64 Nantōtan (Nakajima), 153 Nan’yō (Kodama), 226n7 nan’yō (South Seas), 110–11, 112, 202n63. See also Micronesia; southern expansionist discourse; South Sea islands Nan’yōchō, 236n8 nan’yō dojin (South Sea islander), 8, 139 Nan’yō jiji (Shiga), 23, 156–57, 237n28 “Nan’yō musume” (pop song), 246n24 “Nan’yō no Shōnen ō” (Yamanaka), 144 Nan’yō Research Team, 240n67 Nan’yō tanken jikki (Suzuki), 185 Nan’yō yūki (Tsurumi), 112–14 Naoki Prize, 183 Naoto Yahaneda, 187 “Naporeon” (“Napoleon”; Nakajima), 163–64 Nara period, Chinese institutions assimilated during, 74 nationalism, 34, 104, 120, 133, 136, 200n26 Native Americans, in Japanese racial hierarchy, 22–23 Natsume Sōseki: as “colored” man in London, 19; on Japanese mimicry of West, 16–17; Japanese southern expansion in, 111–12, 226n8; Meiji dreamers in, 54; racial superiority rhetoric of, 31–32; as teacher, 113, 114 Negritos, 131 New Guinea, 186 New Japanese, 34 Nicole, Robert, 159–60 Nihon chiri taikei, 47, 209n32 Nihon oyobi nihon kokumin no kigen (Oyabe), 227n26 Nihon shoki (ancient Japanese history), 137, 205n97 Niimura Ide, 132 “Nishhōkino shita” (Satō). See “Under a Japanese Flag” (Satō) Nishikawa Mitsuru, 62 nishikie art, 213n81 nissen dōsoron (common ancestors) theory, 131 Nitobe Inazō, 1; allegory as used by, 5, 121–25; as colonial policy studies pioneer, 126–27, 229–30n50, 231nn73, 76, 232nn81, 85; ethnographic influence on, 11; folklore mobilized for imperialist aims by, 36, 120–21, 133; frontier thesis and, 127–28; gradualist assimilation policies of, 129–30; headhunter trope and, 11, 49–50; internationalist career of,

299

126; Japanese expansionism promoted by, 120–21, 229–30n50, 231n71; Japanese imperialism as portrayed in, 3, 12, 49, 209– 10n37; on Japanese racial origins, 130; manliness as colonial trope for, 123; Momotarō doctrine of, 121–25, 127–28, 130–33, 182, 231n66; moralizing aims of, 120, 122–24; religious views of, 129; sameness/similarity rhetoric used by, 28, 29–30, 122, 230n57, 231n76. See also Momotarō (folk hero) “Niwatori” (Nakajima), 163–64 Nobi (Ōoka), 187–88, 189–91, 197, 246n27 “Nobi no ito” (Ōoka), 191, 192 “noble savages,” 2, 169–72, 196 Nogami Toyoichirō, 175 Nogi Maresuke, 61 Noh plays, 228n28 nostalgia, 88, 174, 180–81 Notebook of the Past. See Kakochō nuclear war, 191, 247n47 Oceania, 111 Ōe Shinobu, 208n15 Offices of Pacification and Reclamation (Taiwan), 39, 207n6, 208n13 Ogawa Masatsugu, 186 Ogawa Mimei, 57 ogres trope. See Momotarō (folk hero) Oguma Eiji, 217–18n6, 230n56, 231n70, 241– 42n72 oikoumene, 128 Ōishi Seinosuke, 101–2 Okamatsu Santarō, 45, 46, 209n27 Okawa Shūmei, 116 Okayama Prefecture (Japan), 119, 229n44 Okikurumi (Ainu deity), 227n22 Okinawa, 9, 34–35, 80–81, 131, 206–7nn117–18. See also Ryukyu Islands Okinawans, 167, 204–5n92, 231n70, 240–41n67 “Okuchi no hitobito” (Ōshika), 63 Ōkuma Shigenobu, 32–33 Okumura Kenzō, 186 Okuno Masamoto, 238n30 Omori (Japan) shell mounds, 79–80 “On Diplomacy.” See “Gaikōron” Onigashima, 125 Oniseibatsu no Momotarō, 118–19 onnagata, 75 “On the Word Colony.” See “Shokumin naru meiji ni tsukite” Ōoka Shōhei, 187–88, 189–91, 192, 197, 246n27

300

index

Ookuninushi no mikoto (Japanese deity), 236n11 “Opinion on the Aboriginal Problem.” See “Bansei mondai ni kan suru ikensho” opium smoking, elimination of, 209–10n37 Orchard Island (Taiwan), 56 Orientalism, 12, 32, 144–46, 167–68, 204n88, 243–44n88 Origin of Japan and the Japanese Race. See Nihon oyobi nihon kokumin no kigen Origins of German Tragic Drama, The (Benjamin), 224n80 Origins of the Myth of the Homogenous Japanese. See Tanitsu minzoku shinwa no kigen Osaka Mainichi (newspaper), 137 Ōshika Taku, 1; allegory as used by, 6, 69–70; educational background of, 213n87; environmental fiction of, 213n87; Japanese imperialism as portrayed in, 3; literary career of, 63; scholarship on, 183. See also “Savage, The” Oshikawa Shunrō, 11, 200n19, 235n141 Ōsugi Sakae, 116, 223n74 otherness, 55, 74–76 “Otogigeki seibatsu sareru Momotarō” (fairy tale drama), 134, 233n110 Outline of a Theory of Civilization. See Bunmeiron no gairyaku Oyabe Zenichirō, 116–17, 227n26 Ozaki Kōyō, 138 Ozawa, Takao, 19 Ozawa v. United States, 19 Palau, 17, 35, 37, 151–53, 163, 236n10, 240n53 pan-Asianism, 20, 206n109 pan-Germanism, 33, 206n109 pan-Slavism, 33, 206n109 Parau no kami to shinkō (Hijikata), 240n56 Parau no shinwa to densetsu (Hijikata), 240n56 Pastoral Ennui. See Den’en no yūutsu peasants, 15, 29 Peattie, Mark, 152, 200–201n26, 207n1 Pekin Promontory incident, 192 Penn, William, 120 “People of the Inlands.” See “Okuchi no hitobito” Permanent Mandatory Commission, 151 Perry, Matthew C., 3, 15, 16 Peter the Great (Russian czar), 202n58 Philippines, 148, 186 Picasso, Pablo, 163 “Pilgrimages.” See “Henreki”

Plato, 202n59 Pocahontas story, 189 poison gas, 42 police, 41–42, 56, 207n2 Policemen in the Mountains. See Yama no Junsatachi Ponape, 240n67 pop songs, 167, 196, 241n70, 246n24 Portugal, 235n3 postcolonialism/postcolonial theory: aims of, 12; dyadic models underlying, 4; Japan in, 12–14; as misleading term, 6; Momotarō and, 136 postcolonial literature, “Mariyan” as, 161 postcolonial self, 161 Prakash, Gyan, 12 Pratt, Mary Louise, 179–80 primitive, the, 7–9, 54–63; ambivalences of, 172–80; civilization as corrupter of, 169–72; as object of desire, 213n91 Primitive Passion (Torgovnick), 54–55 primitive society, 2 primitivism: aborigines as children, 56–57; aborigines as romantic partners, 57–60; aborigines as warriors, 60–63; discourses of, 141; ethnography and, 221n52; in Japanese colonial literature, 55; Japanese discourse on, 200n14; South Seas as paradise, 158–61; in Western discourse, 54–55 print capitalism, 200n26 Problematique (journal), 233n110 proletarian movement, 65, 118–19, 137, 234n124 propaganda, 119, 190, 212n72, 241n71 prostitution, 90, 232n78 Provisional Section for the Investigation of Affairs in Aboriginal Lands, 43 psychological warfare, 41, 43 “Pūru no soba de” (Nakajima), 236n5, 243n87 Qing dynasty: guard lines during, 208n13; interethnic marriage customs during, 72; Ryūkyū Islands dispute, 201n36; savagery in travel writing during, 219n24; Taiwan ceded by, 34, 38–39; Taiwanese aborigines seen as savages in, 45 Quesada, Ignacio Tifino, 206n109 “Quilt, The” (Tayama), 111 race: anthropological categories, 205n96; climate-centered discourse on, 169–72, 232n89, 242n78; color-coded groupings,

index 22–23, 148, 219nn23–24; colored imperialism, 18–20; half-breeds, 242nn76–77; imperial mimicry and, 17–18, 148; in Japanese colonial discourse, 21–25, 29–30, 31– 32, 166–69, 202n56; in manga boy-heroes, 145. See also interethnic marriage racism: Japanese institutionalization of, 166–69, 240–41nn66–67; Western, 19, 202n52 Rahoare (Bunun chieftain), 41 raids, 43, 46, 66 Rakuen shisha (literary group), 63 Ransome, J. Stafford, 210n43 rape, 67, 68, 72, 93–94, 123, 140, 214n99 Ravina, Mark, 213n81 “Record of a Strange Illness.” See “Roshituski” Record of Jinshin, A, 137 Record of Old Peach’s Great Conquest of the Bandits, The (film; 1961), 136 “Record of That Summer, A” (Satō), 109, 220n44 Record of the Castaways to Choppuran Island. See Choppuran tō hyōryuki “Record of the Mountain and the Moon.” See “Sangetsuki” Research Survey of Old Customs, 209n27 residential segregation, 23–24 “return to Japan” movement, 3 riban policies, 43–44 Ricoeur, Paul, 202n59 Righteous Go Hō. See Gijin Gohō Ri Koran, 216n126 Rimbaud, Arthur, 160, 237n19, 238n37 “Rion Hayon no tani” (Masugi), 58–59 Riryō (Nakajima), 149 Robertson, Jennifer, 75, 242n72 Robinson Crusoe (Defoe), 12, 186 Roden, Donald, 214n101 Roman Empire, 44 Rosaldo, Renato, 88 “Roshituski” (Nakajima), 167–68 Rudao, Diwao, 215–16n115 Rudao, Mona, 215–16n115 rumors, 99 Russia, 200n26, 202n58, 205n100 Russian Revolution, 34 Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), 19, 24, 38, 118, 199n4 Ryūboku (Hijikata), 163 ryūgen higo (rumors), 99 Ryukyu Islands, 80, 124, 125, 201n36, 205n95, 231n70. See also Okinawa Ryūkyū Kyōiku (periodical), 231n70

301

Said, Edward, 12, 72 Saigō Takamori, 213n81 Saipan, 9 Saitō Hajime, 237n23 Saito Makoto (Taiwan Governor-General), 233n111 Sakai tribe, 111 Sakuhin (journal), 69 Sakuma Samata, 48; biographical sketch of, 208n11; ethnographic research during administration of, 86; Go Hō legend and, 51; interethnic marriages during administration of, 72; Mori’s criticism of, 87; Taiwanese aboriginal pacification campaign led by, 8–9, 40–41, 102; as Taiwan governor-general, 40 Salvation Army, 123, 230–31n64 sameness/similarity rhetoric, 28–35; assimilation policies and, 30, 205n95; colonized participation in, 28–29; downplaying of, 31; fictive unity through, 33–34; headhunter trope and, 53–54; horizontal sense of fraternity in, 205n99; hypocrisy of, 30–31; in Japanese colonial literature, 33–34; physical resemblance, 29, 205n96, 224n89, 224–25n92; racial origin theories, 29; in southward expansion, 130–33; strong vs. weak forms, 34; as temporal distancing, 132; toward the colonized, 31–32, 132, 204–5nn91–92, 205n100; toward the West, 32–33; Western examples, 205n100, 206n109; Western “otherness” discourse vs., 30, 206n101 Samoa, 150, 154–57, 232n85 samurai, 15, 55, 60–63, 230n57 San Francisco (Calif.), 19 “Sangetsuki” (Nakajima), 149 Sapporo Agricultural College, 126 Sasshin jōnin tsūji Gohō (Nakata), 51 Satō Haruo, 1; allegory as used by, 5, 6; ethnographic influence on, 11, 36, 108–9, 183, 219n38, 221n56; Great Treason Trial and, 101–2; as humanist, 108–9; Japanese imperialism as portrayed in, 3; during Kanto earthquake, 97–98; memoirs of, 99, 109; Mori and, 89–90; Ōshika critiqued by, 65; recent scholarship on, 106; sameness/similarity rhetoric used by, 35; Taiwan travels of, 35, 89, 107, 220n44; Taiwan works of, 220– 21n50, 221n56; Yamada biographical novel of, 228n28. See also “Demon Bird” Satō Kenji, 99 Satsuma type, 79

302

index

“Savage, The” (Ōshika): allegory as used in, 6, 77; ambivalent conclusion of, 77; biographical model for, 214n95; censorship of, 214n99; civilization vs. savagery as central dichotomy of, 65–66, 70; colonial identities policed in, 75–77; as complicit with colonial discourse, 71–73; ethnic cross-dressing in, 73–74, 75–77, 217n128; father figures in, 215n109; headhunter trope in, 36, 67–68, 191; as Japanese Heart of Darkness, 63–64, 67, 213n88, 213nn90–91; late-colonial disillusionment in, 64–65, 66; protagonist’s self-transformation to savage in, 66–70, 77; as reaction to Musha Incident, 70–71; as transgressive work, 70–71; uncensored version, 214n99, 214–15n103; writing of, 65 “Savage Rion.” See “Banjo Rion” savagery: commodification of, 196; conflicting Japanese views of, 7–12, 200n12; headhunter trope as dominant representation of, 48; as imaginary Japanese construct, 7; Japanese terms used for, 7–8; as polyvalent trope, 1– 2, 4; primitive figure types, 55; romanticization of, 4–5, 69; use of term, 199n1. See also tropes of savagery “Savage Women.” See “Banfu” Sawatal, 163 Sayon no kane (Sayon’s Bell; film), 212n72 school textbooks: controversies over, 245n5; folk heroes in, 115–16, 117–18, 228n33; Go Hō legend in, 54, 211nn46, 53; government control of, 117–18; headhunter trope in, 11, 50; Japanese colonial literature and, 2; Japanese imperialism euphemized in postwar period, 34; Japanese-language, in South Seas, 17, 37, 151, 152, 236n8; Momotarō in, 118, 119; Nakajima in, 149; racial classifications in, 22, 219n23 “Sea and Japanese Literature.” See “Umi to Nihon bungaku” Second Musha Incident (1931), 42 Secret History of Lord Musashi. See Bushukō hiwa Security Act, 237n28 Sedeq aborigines, 9, 42 Sedgewick, Eve, 244n91 Segalen, Victor, 151, 236n6 seiban (raw savage), 7, 29, 45–46 seismology, 234n130 Sekai kunizukushi (Fukuzawa), 22 Sekiguchi Yasukazu, 138, 234n124

self-colonization, 28, 161, 204n85 self-determination, 34 senjin-gari (Korean hunts), 224n86 Senki (journal), 225n93 Seo Mitsuyo, 119 Seoul (Korea), 20, 150 Seoul Chamber of Commerce, 233n111 setsuwa, 228n33 sexuality, and colonial power, 58–59, 68, 93– 94,123, 178–79, 244–45n97 sexual slavery, 186 Shanghai, 138, 202n54 Shao Luo Hui, 136 shell mounds, 79–80 “Shell Mounds of Omori, Japan, The” (Morse), 79 Shibun hanseiki (Satō), 99 Shiga Naoya, 112, 226n9 Shiga Shigetaka, 23, 24, 125, 156–57, 225n1, 237n28 Shilla Dynasty (Korea), 205n97 Shimada Keizō, 144 Shimao Toshio, 239n49 Shimizu Hajime, 137, 225n1 Shimomura Hiroshi, 89 Shimonoseki Treaty (1895), 8, 38–39, 45–46 Shinchō (journal), 220n50 Shinda Kazunori, 231n70 Shingū (Wakayama Pref., Japan), 101–2, 220n44, 224n82 shinheimin (new commoner), 8 Shinseinen (periodical), 62, 213n84 Shiratori Kurakichi, 74, 205n98 Shizuoka Prefecture (Japan), 227–28n28 Shōchū bankoku ichiran (Fukuzawa), 22, 203n77 shokumin (colony), 126 Shokuminchi gensō (Masaki), 147 Shokuminchi no shūkyoku mokuteki (Nitobe), 128 “Shokuminchi no tabi” (Satō), 220n50 “Shokumin naru meiji ni tsukite” (Nitobe), 126 Shokumin Sekai (periodical), 231n73 Shōnen Kurabu, 144 Shōwa Dynasty, 65, 184, 196 “Shūchō no musume” (pop song; Ishida), 167, 241n70 Shū Eikō, 106 “Shunkan” (Akutagawa), 234–35n139 Siam, 227–28n28 Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), 8, 39, 85, 118, 207n2, 234n134

index Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), 140, 186, 234n134 “Sketches of D. City in July.” See “D-shi shichigatsu jokei” Slamao district (Taiwan), 42 Slamao Incident (1920), 70, 89, 109, 216n117 Smith, John, 189 social Darwinism, 23, 24, 221n52, 232n81 socialism, 223n74, 233n117 Soma Taizō, 118 “Sono ato no Momotarō,” 119 “Sō no yokubō” (“Sō’s Desire”; Ōshika), 63, 214n93 Sora no Momotarō (cartoon), 229n42 Southeast Asia, 110–11, 184, 225n1, 226n2, 227–28n28 southern expansionist discourse: debate over, 226n11; myth and, 233n101; ogres trope in, 129–30; race in, 24–25; sameness/similarity rhetoric in, 130–33; slogans in, 112, 226n12; South Seas fever, 110–14; three periods of, 225n1; “Western-tinted eyeglasses” metaphor and, 235n3. See also Momotarō (folk hero) “Southern Expansion of Civilization.” See “Bunmei no nanshin” Southern Manchuria Railway Company, 126, 209n27 South Pole, Momotarō at, 229n42 South Sea islands: boy-heroes as conquerors of, 143–46; defined, 111; earliest depictions of, 11; ethnic linkage of Japanese to, 218n12; European images of, 238n37; European settlement of, 23–24; folklore as link between Japan and, 121; imperial nostalgia and, 180– 81; inner vs. outer, 111; intermarriage in, 168–69; in Japanese colonial literature, 111– 13; Japanese colonization of, 12, 119–20; Japanese commercial ties with, 12, 110–11, 124–25, 225n1, 226n2; in Japanese expansionist debate, 226n11; Japanese origins in, 24–25, 130–33; in Japanese post-WWII film, 247n47; Japanese prostitutes in, 232n78; in Japanese racial hierarchy, 22–23; Japanese reconfiguration of, 5; Japanese terms used to describe, 8, 202n63, 241n69; Japanese war mobilizations in, 152–53; media images of, 167–68, 241n68, 241nn70–71; Meiji-era encouragement of travel to, 113–14; Momotarō legend and, 119–20, 124–25, 127–28, 133–34; Nakajima’s literary discovery of, 153–57; natural resources in, 129; Okinawa

303

and, 218n12; post-WWII reconfiguration of, 196; stereotypes of, 111, 139, 141, 158– 61, 167–68, 234n138; in Taisho Exhibition (1914), 111, 112; tropes used to describe, 10, 35, 200n12; “Western-tinted eyeglasses” metaphor and, 235n3; women of, as discursive creation, 161, 164–69. See also “Mariyan” (Nakajima); Momotarō South Seas Administration, 239n49 South Seas Agency, Regional Section of, 151 South Seas Association, 226n2 “South Seas Beauty” (pop song), 241n70 Soviet Union, 247n34 Spanish Empire, 206n109, 235n3 spiritual primitivism, 141 Spivak, Gayatri, 12–13, 200n23 Stanley, Henry Morton, 63, 123, 226n15 “Star.” See “Hoshi” Stevenson, Robert Louis: contemporary of Shiga Shigetaka, 156; diary of, 237n21; as Nakajima model, 4, 17, 150, 153–57, 174, 180, 237n21, 238n37; South Seas residence of, 17; Tsurumi influenced by, 113 “story boards,” 240n53 “Strange Event on a Desert Island.” See “Zettō no kaiji” “Strange Summer Resort.” See “Kawatta hishochi: Nichigetustan ni asobu ki” “Strange Tale” (Satō). See “Under a Japanese Flag” (Satō) “Strange Tale of the ‘Precepts for Women.’” See Jokaisenkitan Subaru (journal), 101–2 Sudō Naoto, 238n30 Suematsu Kenchō, 31, 116–17, 227n25 superiority complex, 17, 19–20, 21, 31–32, 145– 46, 201–2n44 Suzuki Keikun, 185 Swallow Stone Miscellany. See Enseki zasshi syphilis, 90 “Tabibito” (Satō), 220n50 Tachiba Soichi, 223n74 Taft-Katsura agreement, 148 Taguchi Ukichi, 24 Taikokan (Taiwan), 39 Taipei Museum, 89 Taisei Yokusankai, 75 Taisho Exhibition (1920), 226n4 Taisho period, 110, 118, 196, 225n100 Taisho Tokyo Exhibition (1914), 111, 112, 226n9

304

index

Taiwan: assimilation policies in, 32, 131–32, 134–35, 233n111, 246n16; camphor-growing regions of, 39–40, 207n9; ceded to Japan, 8, 34, 38–39; civil war in, 184; colonial police in, 41–42, 56, 207n2; colonial war in, 38– 43; ethnographic fieldwork in, 183, 212n66; Go Hō legend in, 211n53; guard lines in, 208n13; incorporation proposed for, 206n115; interethnic marriages promoted in, 241– 42n72, 246n24; in Japanese colonial discourse, 33; Japanese colonization of, 8–9, 38–43, 125, 126; Japanese cultural similarities with, 206n102; Japanese repression in, 31, 219n30; Japanese tourism in, 58, 212n68; liberation of, 183–84; mythical justifications for colonization of, 120; national parks in, 212n67; opposition movements in, 10, 207n6, 219n30; self-rule proposed for, 206n112, 232n85; Shingū connected to, 224n82; in Taisho Exhibition (1914), 111; war casualties in, 207n2, 208n12; Western abandonment of, 148 Taiwan banzokushi (Mori), 83, 88, 90–91 Taiwan Chinese, 211n46; aboriginal headhunting and, 48; Go Hō legend and, 51–53, 211n46; Japan/aboriginal alliance against, 8; Japanese alliance with, 40; in Japanese colonial literature, 11; Japanese colonial system imposed upon, 9, 43, 45; land claims in areas of, 209n27; mediation between aborigines and Taiwan settlers by interpreters, 210n41 Taiwanese aborigines, 204n91, 246n16; as anthropological object, 36, 82–85, 131, 219n36; as cannibals, 187, 231n70; as children, 56–57, 212n65; “civilized diseases” among, 90; class relations among, 209n28; dispossession of, 44–47, 209n25; extermination strategy against, 40–41, 222nn60–61; folk art of, 57, 212n65; foreign commentary on, 210n43; as headhunters, 52; interethnic marriages to, 72–73, 90, 246n24; intertribal borders demarcated, 84–85; intertribal rivalries, 44– 45; Japanese alliance with, 39, 73, 214n93, 216n117; in Japanese colonial discourse, 28, 44–47, 211n57; Japanese fictional works about, 10–11; Japanese subjugation of, 8– 9, 35–36, 39–43, 53, 102, 209n28, 225n94; Japanese terms used to describe, 7–8; Japanization of, 216n127; late-colonial disillusionment in managing of, 64–65; national

parks in lands of, 212n67; psychological warfare against, 41, 43; racial classification of, 84, 225n94; religious beliefs of, 221n52; reservations for, 42, 220n43; resistance movement, 207n1; romantic love affairs with, 57–60, 68, 212nn72, 74; samurai tradition displayed by, 60–63; skull cases of, 47–48; slash-and-burn agriculture of, 209n28; suicides of, 60–61, 212n77; as tourist attraction, 58; tropes used to describe, 10, 11, 15–16, 35, 47–54, 56–63, 200n12; war casualties among, 208n12; WWII volunteer group, 186–87. See also “Demon Bird (Satō); headhunter trope; “Savage, The” (Ōshika); specific tribe Taiwan Expedition (1874), 11, 48, 61–62, 208n11 Taiwan Exposition (1935), 212n68 Taiwan Fine Arts Exposition (1935), 212–13n78 Taiwan Government-General, 72, 87, 207n118, 231n76 Taiwan Jihō (journal), 86 Taiwan Jitsugyōkai (journal), 134, 135, 233n110 Taiwan minshutō (Taiwan Popular Party), 71 Taiwan Museum, 86, 88–89 Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō (newspaper), 214n95 Taiwan no tabi (tourist guidebook), 58, 212n68 Taiwan shokumin seisaku (Mochiji), 208n22 “Taiyaruzoku no seikatsu” (Ōshika), 64–65 “Taiyō no seibatsu” (Ataiyal fable), 134 Taizhong Normal School (Taiwan), 60 Takahashi Yoshio, 168 Takarazuka theater troupes, 75, 119 Takasago giyūtai (Taiwan aboriginal volunteer group), 186–87 takasagozoku, 8 Takayama Chogyū, 232n85 Takayama Jun, 185 Takeda Taijun, 188, 192–95 Takehisa Yasutaka, 134, 136, 233n110 Takekoshi Yosaburō, 231n75; “Go south, young man!” slogan coined by, 112; on Japanese policy towards Taiwanese aborigines, 208n10; sameness/similarity rhetoric of, 29, 131–32; Southern expansionist discourse and, 112; Taiwanese aboriginal headhunting as viewed by, 48, 84; Taiwan travels of, 207–8n10; Western imperialism mimicked by, 15 Takeyama Michio, 187–89, 196–97, 246nn22, 26 Takita Choin, 223n74

index Takizawa (Kyokutei) Bakin, 117, 121, 228n33, 230n58 Takushoku University, 126 Tale of Hōgen, The (medieval chronicle), 121 Tale of Minamoto Yoshitsune’s Chess Game. See Gikei Shōgikyō “Tale of Momotarō, The” (Nitobe), 120 Tale of the Floating Castle. See Ukishiro monogatari Tale of the Revival of Yoshitsune, The (Suematsu), 227n25 Tale of Yoshitsune (epic), 227n21 Tales of Old Japan (Mitford), 228n29 Tales of the Heike, 234–35n139 Tales of the Southern Islands. See Nantōtan Tanaka, Stefan, 217n3 Tanaka Shōzō, 213n87 Tanitsu minzoku shinwa no kigen (Oguma), 241– 42n72 Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, 62, 112, 213n84, 239n44 Tartarin (Daudet), 243n87 Tasmania, British extermination strategy in, 41 “Tatsutaka dōbutsuen” (“Tatsutaka Zoo”; Ōshika), 63, 69–70, 77 tattoos, 77, 93, 187 Tayama Katai, 38, 111, 210n40 tekiban (enemy Taiwanese savage), 7 temporal distancing, 132 “Tendency of Civilized Nations to Go South.” See “Bunmei kokumin nanka no taisei” Teng, Emma, 211n57, 219n24 Thomas, Nicholas, 1 Thomas, Norman, 84 “Tiger Hunt.” See “Toragari” Time and the Other (Fabian), 132 Todorov, Tristan, 199n7 Tōgō Minoru, 133–34, 233nn101, 107 tōkannetsu (Korean fever), 226n8 tokkari (seal meat), 195 Tokugawa shogunate: civilization discourse during, 203n74; ethnographic expeditions dispatched by, 218n15; national seclusion during, 114, 228n28; status system of abolished, 8; unequal treaties signed by, 3 Tokutomi Sōhō, 202n52 Tokyo: Korean population of, 224n88; Koreans massacred in (1923), 5, 97–98, 99, 103–5, 106–7, 223n74, 225n93; Taisho Exhibition (1914), 111, 112, 226n9; urban slums of, as jungle, 123–24

305

Tokyo Anthropological Society (Tōkyō jinruigaku kyōkai), 80, 86 Tōkyō Jinruigaku Zasshi (journal), 80, 86 Tokyo University, 79, 82, 126, 182, 208n22, 239n48, 240n66 Tokyo War Trials, 194, 197 Tonga, 23, 232n85 “Toragari” (Nakajima), 236n5, 242n77, 243n87 Torgovnick, Marianna, 54–55 Torigoe Shin, 228n36 Torii Ryūzō: on early Japanese race, 218n14; ethnographic fieldwork of, 82–83, 86, 218n17, 223n68; Japanese origins as viewed by, 131; Mori as student of, 86; on South Seas terminology, 111; Taiwanese aborigines as viewed by, 88; on Tsuboi and Omori shell mounds, 79–80 Totem and Taboo (Freud), 63 To the Spring Equinox and Beyond. See Higan sugi made tourism, 58, 108–9 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 18, 137 translations, 17–18, 64, 172–73, 201n41, 237n23 “Travel Record of the South.” See “Nanpō kikō” “Travels in the Colony.” See “Shokuminchi no Tabi” Travel Sketches of the South Seas. See Nan’yō yūki tropes, 1 tropes of savagery, 35; ambivalences of, 7–12; continuities in, 37; in Japanese colonial literature, 1–2; modern comeback of, 6; post-WWII, 185; usage of, 8. See also cannibalism; headhunter trope; Momotarō (folk hero) tropics, dual meaning of, 1 Tropics of Discourse (White), 1 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 12 True Record of My Explorations in the South Seas. See Nan’yō tanken jikki Tsuboi Hanji, 225n93 Tsuboi Shōgorō, 74, 79–81, 82, 131, 217–18n6 tsūji (interpreter), 210n41 Tsurumi Yūsuke, 110, 112–14, 226n15 Tsusitara no shi (Nakajima), 154. See also Light, Wind, and Dreams (Nakajima) Turner, Frederick Jackson, 127–28, 232n81 Twenty-One Demands, 234n124 Uchida Yahachi, 227n25 Ueda Tsunekichi, 205n96 Ukigomo (Futabatei), 201n41

306

index

Ukishiro monogatari (Yano), 11 Ukraine, 205n100 Ultimate Goal of Colonization. See Shokuminchi no shūkyoku mokuteki Umehara Takeshi, 204n82 Umesao Tadao, 240–41n67 Umi no seimeisen (film; 1933), 241n71 “Umi to Nihon bungaku” (Koda), 114 “Under a Japanese Flag” (Satō), 219n38, 220n50 Under an Imperial Sun (Kleeman), 4 Under the Flag of the Rising Sun. See Gunki hatameku motoni unequal treaties, Japanese: with Asian countries, 3; civilization discourse and, 66; Japanese imperial mimicry and, 15, 17; renegotiation of, 3, 81, 199n4, 203n67; with the West, 3; Western civilizing mission and, 21 United States: allegories of war with, 229n42; atomic tests of, 247n47; East Asian studies in, 13; in Japanese colonial discourse, 26; Japanese relations with, 202n52; liminal spaces as used by, 209n30; post-WWII control of Micronesia, 236n7; post-WWII occupation of Japan, 191; as racial other, 20; racism in, 19, 202n52; unequal treaties with Japan, 199n4. See also Korean War; World War II United States Supreme Court, 19 Unit 731, 186 “Until the Meeting with the Dog: The Tale of Momotarō.” See “Inu ni au made: Momotarō san no hanashi” Ural Altaic thesis, 205n98 Urashima Tarō, 233n105 Ushigawa Yuriko, 98 “Utsukushii machi” (Satō), 221n56 Vailima Letters (Stevenson), 155 “Valley of Rion.” See “Rion no tani” Verne, Jules, 217n1 Vers Ispahan (Loti), 244n90 Viaud, Jacques. See Loti, Pierre victimhood discourse, 191 “Voyager.” See “Tabibito” voyeurism, 165–66 Wada Hirobumi, 156 Waga seishun no toki (Hijikata), 162, 163 war crimes, 136, 194–95 war guilt, 246n33 “war on terror,” liminal spaces used in, 209n30

Watarasegawa (Ōshika), 213n87 Watsuji Tetsurō, 74–75, 242n78 Way of the Sea. See Kaijō no michi West, the: Japanese inferiority complex towards, 19–20; Japanese mimicry of, 14–16, 147–48, 189, 201n41; Japanese sameness rhetoric toward, 32–33; primitivism in, 54–55; racial hierarchy in, 148; Russian mimicry of, 202n58 Western imperialism: in East Asia, 114; Japan as victim of, 19; Japanese deviations from, 182, 237n23; Japanese expansionism and liberation of Asia from, 21, 148–49; Japanese imperialism as mimetic of, 3–4, 14–16, 147– 48, 174, 182; pan-Asianism and, 33; in South Seas, 21, 23, 155, 157; Stevenson criticism of, 155, 157 Westernization, 237n28 Western literature, 214n101; colonial, 63–64, 114; Japanese mimicry of, 36; popularization of, 243n81; translations of, 63–64, 173; tropes of, 17, 36 “Western-tinted eyeglasses” metaphor: applicability of, 235n3; Japanese colonial gaze and, 147–48, 149–50; problems of, 149– 50, 176 White, Hayden, 1 “white man’s burden,” 15 whiteness, 18 Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (Goethe), 132 Wilson, Woodrow, 34 “Woman in the House of Oleanders.” See “Kyōchikutō no ie no onna” “Woman Who Rode Away, The” (Lawrence), 54 women: aboriginal, as sexualized figure, 55, 57– 60, 68, 222n62; all-female theater troupes, 75; as masculine, 178–79; Micronesian, as discursive creation, 161, 164–69; temperate vs. tropical beauty standards, 170–72 wood-block prints, 15 World Geography. See Sekai kunizukushi World War I, 9, 19, 103–4, 110, 225n1 World War II: end of, 183–84, 236n7; Japanese cannibalism during final stage of, 185–87; Momotarō transfigured following, 136; Momotarō used in propaganda during, 119; pan-Asianism during, 33; South Seas mobilization for, 152–53; victimhood discourse following, 191, 246nn27, 33 Wu, Peichen, 212n72

index xenophobia, 228n35 yaban (barbaric), 7, 203n77 “Yabanjin” (Ōshika). See “Savage, The” (Ōshika) Yamada Nagamasa, 227–28n28 Yamagata Aritomo, 213n81 Yamaguchi, Shirley, 216n126 Yamaguchi Koken, 233n117 Yamaguchi Masao, 63, 213n88 Yamaguchi Yoshiko, 216n126 Yamaji Hiroaki, 100 Yamanaka Minetarō, 144 Yama no junsatachi (Tayama), 210n40 Yamato people, 216n120, 230n56 Yamato Takeru, 228n35 Yami tribe, 56, 82–83, 131 Yanagi Sōetsu, 57 Yanagita Kunio: folklore mobilized for imperialist aims by, 120; folktales published by, 228n29; Japanese expansionism promoted by, 229n50; Japanese origins as viewed by, 81, 131; rural village nostalgia of, 181; South Seas linked to Japan by, 218n12; Taiwan travels of, 210n40 Yanaihara Tadao, 126, 232n85, 240n66 Yanakamura jiken (Yanakamura Incident; Ōshika), 213n87

307

Yang Nanjun, 85, 220n43 Yano Ryūkei, 11, 200n19 Yano Tōru, 226n12, 241n68 Yasukuni Shrine, protests over official visits to, 245n5 Yasuoka Shotarō, 154 Yellow Peril, 19, 31 “Yiennuanhwei” (Satō), 220n50 Yi Kwang-su, 205n92 Yokohama Cinema Company, 241n71 Yokohama Girls’ School, 150, 156 Yokomitsu Riichi, 19–20, 63, 239n44 Yomiuri Shinbun (newspaper), 99 Yomota Inuhiko, 196, 247n47 Yosano Akiko, 183 Yoshida Shigeru, 247n37 Yoshino Sakuzō, 202n56, 206n112 “Young Aboriginal Woman.” See “Banjin no musume” Yuasa Katsuei, 184 Yukiyukite shingun (documentary film; 1987), 186, 246n21 yūseigaku (eugenics), 168. See also eugenics Zantop, Suzanne, 14, 201n30 “Zettō no kaiji” (Akutagawa), 142, 235n141 Zheng Chenggong, 227n28 Zō (Tanizaki), 112