Wartime Japanese anthropology in Asia and the Pacific 9784901906210, 4901906216

Citation preview

CU J ‘

J

Senri Ethnological Studies No. 65

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

Edited by Akitoshi Shimizu

and Jan van Bremen

National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka 2003

Qrr^«'al Ubray System tfn'vofsity of Wisconsin - MacHson 72j Stilts Street V3d‘5on.Wi 53706-1404 U.S.A. The National Museum of Ethnology Senri Expo Park. Suita Osaka S65-SS11. Japan ©2003 by The National Museum of Ethnology All nghts reserved. Printed in Japan.

Publication Data Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific (Senri Ethnological Studies 65). Edited by A. Shimizu and J. van Bremen. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 4-901906-21 C3039 ISSN 0387-6004 1. wartime anthropology. 2. anthropology in Japan. 3. the Asia and Pacific War (1931-45) I. Shimizu, Akitoshi. 11. Bremen, Jan van. Typeset by Nakanishi Printing Co., Ltd.

LIB RARIES UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

Gift of

National Museum of Ethnology,

Japan

/Afc/A

^70(3/^

W37 2003 Contents

Notes on contributors Introduction Akitoshi Shimizu Jan van Bremen

Wartime Anthropology: A Global Perspective Jan van Bremen

I3

Anthropology and the Wartime Situation of the 1930s and 1940s: Masao Oka, Yoshitaro Hirano, Eiichiro Ehjda and Their Negotiations with the Situation Akitoshi Shimizu

49

Nakano Seiichi and Colonial Fthnio Studies Kevin M. Doak

109

Selves and Others in Japanese Anthropology Terwo Sekimoto

I3I

Physical Anthropology in Wartime Japan

I43

Atsushi NOBAYASHI

Anthropological Studies of the Indigenous Peoples in Sakhalin in Pre-Wartime and Wartime Japan Shird Sasaki

151

War and Ethnology/Folklore in Colonial Korea: The Case of Ajoba Takashi Ch'OE KilsUng

169

For Science, Co-Prosperity, and Love: The Re-imagination of Taiwanese Folklore and Japan’s Greater East Asian War Tsu Yun Hui

189

Studies of Chinese Peasant Society in Japan; Before and During World War II N/e Lili

209

1

ii

Colonial Anthropology in the Netherlands and Wartime........................................... Anthropology in Japan Miyazaki Koji

223

Mabuchi Toichi in Makassar............................................................................................ 239 Nakao Katsumi

Resuscitating Nationalism: Brunei under the Japanese Military....................................... 273 Administration (1941-1945) B. A. Hussainmiya

I

Acknowledgements

The current volume is based on the workshop ‘Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and Oceania' that took place in December 1999 at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. The workshop was planned and conducted as part of the ‘Anthropology and History’ project of the National Museum of Ethnology. We should like to thank the National Museum of Ethnology for its support and in particular the Director General at the time, Professor Naomichi Ishige, and the administrative staff. We should also like to thank the participants from Japan and abroad. Special gratitude is due to Professor George W. Stocking, Jr. of the University of Chicago, who participated in the workshop and lead the discussions in the sessions. On the occasion of the workshop he delivered a special lecture, entitled ‘From Eurocentric Anthropology to National Anthropologies and Beyond: Reflections of an Anglophone Historian of Anthropology,’ to a general academic audience. We hope that this volume will contribute to the growing exchange of ideas between Asian and Western anthropologists. It took a considerable amount of time to turn the idea to convene a workshop on wartime anthropology into reality. It was made possible with the support of the National Museum of Ethnology. It also took time to edit and prepare this volume for publication. We gladly acknowledge the full-hearted support that we received from organisations and individual scholars. The National Museum of Ethnology again gave us its full support in helping to produce this publication. We should also like to acknowledge the support received from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research in the editing stage of the project.

A. S. J. van B.

ill

Notes on Contributors

Jan van Bremen obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He worked in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (1975-1986) before joining the Centre for Japanese and Korean Studies in Leiden University in 1987, His specialisations are anthropology, folklore studies, intellectual history, religion and society in Japan. He edited Ceremony and ritual in Japan: Religious practices in an industrialized society with D. P. Martinez (1995); Horizons of understanding: An anthology of theoretical anthropology in Europe with Vesna Godina and Jos Platenkamp (1996); and Anthropology and colonialism in Asia and Oceania with Akitoshi SHIMIZU (1999). Presently he is editing a volume on Ghosts and modernity in Asia with John Knight, and a volume on Aslan anthropology with Eyal Ben-Ari and Sayed Farid Alatas. Ch’oe Kilsung (ffi^lS) is Professor of Social Anthropology at Hiroshima University, He graduated from Seoul National University and obtained his Pb,D, from Tsukuba University, He published numerous articles and books on shamanism, ancestor worship and colonisation in Korea and Japan. For several years he has been conducting research on the legacy of Japanese rule in Sakhalin, Russia. In this regard, he edited {The Japanese rule and acculturation in Korea, 1994).

Kevin M. Doak, M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1983,1989), is the Nippon Foundation Endowed Chair and Chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Georgetown University. He is the author of Dreams of difference: The Japan Romantic School and the crisis of modernity (University of California, 1994) and more recently the co-editor of Constructing nationhood in modern East Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2001) and the author of ‘Building national identity through ethnicity’ {The journal of Japanese studies, 2001) and many other articles and chapters. He is currently writing a book on the problem of ethnicity and national identity in modem Japan. Bachamiya Abdul Hussainmlya, B.Ed. (Hons.), B.A. (Hons.), Ph.D., Associate Professor of History at University of Brunei Darussalam, and a Consultant to the Brunei History Centre. His publications include Orang Rejimen: The Malays of the Ceylon Rife Regiment (1990); Lost cousins: The Malays of Sri Lanka (IBKKM Monograph 2, 1986); Sultan Omar AU Saifuddin HI and Britain; The making of Brunei Darussalam (1995); and The Brunei Constitution of1959; An inside history (2000).

Nib Lili (SrSUTO) is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Tokyo Woman's Christian University. She obtained her M.A. in sociology at Beijing University, and Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at the University of Tokyo in 1990. She conducted research in China and published {Liu Village: Lineage and change in northeastern China, 1992). She also co-edited t ESJ {Living earth: The thought and practice of Chinese geomancy, 2000). Her current

interests of research include the mobility and autonomy of Koreans in China, the memory of damages by Japanese germ warfare in the Second World War, and text-analysis of revolutionary songs from the viewpoint of ideological influence of totalitarian socialist regime on the Chinese people. Miyazaki Koji obtained his Ph.D, at Leiden University in 1988. He is cunently Professor at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He has been conducting research on the Javanese and Malay folk knowledge and on migration in the Insular Southeast Asia. He edited Making of multi­ cultural Sabah (2003), and published numerous papers including ‘Javanese-Malay: Between adaptation and alienation’ {Sojourn 15(1), 76-99,2000). Nakao Katsumi (4’^fiB^) is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences, Osaka City University. His research interests have been in the family, kinship and village organisations in China. He has been exploring a historical review of Japanese anthropology, particularly in the context of World War 11. He edited OSSJ {Perspectives on colonial anthropology, 2000), and published {Power structure and social change in Chinese villages, 1990) as well as numerous papers.

Atsushi Nobayashi is Associate Professor al the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Advanced Studies. His research interests are in ethno-archaeological studies of Aboriginal peoples in Taiwan, particularly of hunting activity of Paiwan and Tsou people. He has been conducting research in Taiwan and Yunnan, and has published numerous papers including 'Methodological discussion of the interpretation of faunal remains {Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology 25(2), 2000). Shiro Sasaki (iU)tfe), In archaeology; Ichiro Yawata (Aft—SB), In folktale studies: Yasumoto Tokunaoa (ffi^iJlTC) and Keigo Soa (HSS), In linguistics: Takeshi ShibaTA (55HI^), In religious studies: Shoko Watanabe (SSiSlSiS). For other fourteen persons their primaiy disciplines are unidentifiable {JJE 1(7): 73, 1943; JJE 2(4/5): 71,1944). As already noted, this classification is rather artificial, but it roughly indicates the interdisciplinaty nature of the institute. The institute dispatched staff members abroad for field research: Nanuo Egami and Yasumoto Tokunaoa to North China and Inner Mongolia for one month in 1943, Eizo Koyama, Chikayuki Hattori and Tdru Saguchi to Manchuria and North China for one monfoin 1943 to collect data on ethnic policy (j7£ 1(8): 76, 1943), Tatsumi Makino and Kanji NaitO to Hainan Island for two months (by commission of the Navy) and then to South China for one month {JJE 1 (10): 85,1943), Kiyoto Furuno and Hiroshi Oikawa to the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Celebes, French Indochina and Thai from the end of 1943 (or the beginning of 1944) for six months (at the commission of the Army), Masao Oka and Motomu Matsuura to Manchuria (at the invitation of Manchukuo) and to North China, for one month altogether in 1944 {JJE 2(2/3): 66; Minioka kenkyu 3(I>2): 40, 1945), Masao Oka to Manchukuo, North China and Inner Mongolia for forty days for the sake of co­ ordination among related research institutes in those areas {Mimoka kenkyu 3(1/2): 40,1945), Shinobu Iwamura, Shinobu Ono, Toru Saguchi and Masami Kawanishi to North China and Inner Mongolia for three months in 1944 for Muslim studies, Namio Egami to Inner Mongolia for three months in 1994 for research of Lama Buddhism, Shoko Watanabe and Koichiro Kojima to Tibet and Chinhai for three months In 1944, Tadamitsu Asano to Yunnan, etc., for two months in 1944 for research on the tusi (local chief) system,® Eizo Koyama to Manchuria and North China for one month in 1944, and MinoruASANO to Xinjiang for three months in 1944 (Afiwohzte/iilyfl 3(1/2): 40, 1945). The journal fliat the Society of Ethnology published under the title of Mimoku kenkyu had only one number issued, with the indication of ‘vol. 3, nos. 1/2,’ on 30 August 1945, i.e. foe end of foe month in the middle of which Japan had surrendered to foe Allied Powers. This issue announced foe decision foal fourteen staff members were to be sent to Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and North China for six months {Mimoku kenfya KViy. 42 1945). They actually went to their destinations in July 1945 in the midst of chaotic turbulence.

68

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacdtc All research teams except one were dispatched to the areas in and around China, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. Numerous though the occasions of field research was, each research team spent only a brief period compared with a standard field research conducted in later years such the as 1980s and 1990s. This institute will be further discussed below. In the colonies, Taihoku Imperial University had the Nanpo Jinbun Kenkyujo the Institute of Southern Cultures) in 1943. The staff members of the institute were recruited from the Institute of Ethnology (Dozoku-jinshugaku Koza) at the university; Nenozo Utsusiiikawa and Nobuto Miyamoto ('S'-l^liiA). Toichi Mabuchi and Tadao Kano also joined the institute (see Nakaow this volume). The Tafriku Sigenkagaku Kenkyujo the Research Institute for the Continental Resource Sciences) was established in Keijo Imperial University in 1945. It was in July of that year when the Institute sent Seiichi Izuwi out to Mongolia for research (IzuMi 1972). After Manchukuo was created by the Guandong Army, several research institutes were established in Manchuria and neighbouring areas. The Moko Zenrin Kyokai the Mongolian Friendship Association) was created with an aid from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1934. Some sources on the Association mention the Chosabu (MSnR, the Research Department) and the Moko Kenkyujo the Mongolian Research Institute). It is not clear whether the two were one and the same. The research function of the Association was later restructured into the Seihoku Kenkyujo (Sdfc5I15vRfr, the Northwest Institute), with several anthropologists among its staff members, such as Kinji Imanishi fSS]), Eiichiro Ishida and Tadao Umesao (Minzoku kenkyii 3(1/2); 40-1, 1945). The Inner Mongolian Government, a local government supported and controlled by the Japanese Army, had the Moko Bunka Kenkyujo Mongolian Cultural Institute). The Ethnic Research Institute conducted its last research project by dispatching a group of fourteen researchers to Mongolia, Manchuria and North China in July 1945. It was reported that the project was to be conducted with the aid from the Northwest Institute and the Mongoian Cultural Institute (Minzoku kenkyu 3(1/2): 42 1945). Manchukuo established Kenkoku (Jianguo) University which had a Department of Ethnology. This can also be considered inrelation to the wartime situation in Manchuria. Tokuzo Gmachi, who had worked under the folklorist Kunio Yanaqita, was a leading figure of the department (Nakao 1994).

Anthropologisation ofthe needed knowledge in the developing war The various institutes, which I have surveyed either along the axis lines or the secondary developments of the scientific mobilisation, recruited anthropologists among their staff members. In most cases, the mobilisation of anthropologists and/or anthropological knowledge was conducted by the initiative of agents external to anthropology. Anthropologists passively responded to the request from the mobilisation agents. The only exception to this general trend was the Ethnic Research Institute that, according to the idea broadly held by Japanese anthropologists today, was established in response to an active request made by anthropologists. Another feature discernible in the way anthropologists were mobilised was that most mobilisation agents incorporated anthropologists into the scientific frameworks they had already formulated. As noted before, anthropology was generally considered a special discipline on primitive peoples and cultures. There were, however, two exceptional agents that tried to give a new, enlarged definition to anthropology into which to incorporate anthropological knowledge. One of the two was the Ethnic Research Institute; it was exceptional both in making a positive approach to the scientific

Ahthropolooy and the Wartime Situation of the 1930s and 1940s

69

mobilisation from within anthropology, and in that it tried to innovate anthropology. The other agent that tried to encourage a substantial change in anthropology was the Institute of the Pacific. In contrast to the Ethnic Research Institute, the Institute of the Pacific approached anthropology from without and tried to re-interpret anthropology in terms of new missions. Chronologically, the project of the Institute of the Pacific preceded the establishment of the Ethnic Research Institute. To look back upon the scientific mobilisation in humanities and social sciences in general, the kind of knowledge that was urgently needed was basically anthropological in that the knowledge was concerned with peoples of exotic cultures in foreign lands, particularly the local peoples in the battlefields whose military forces Japan was fighting against, and whose civilians Japan had to govern. It was all the more important when the needed knowledge was sharply focused on a particular people of a particular place in a particular situation in the process of war. As was noted above, when a body of encyclopaedic knowledge could answer the request of information, as was the case with early publications of the East-Asiatic Economic Investigation Bureau (the series of publications on the South, for instance), anthropology used to be assigned the classic role of the provider of information on primitive culture of minority peoples in the peripheries. Specialists of other disciplines could collect such anthropological knowledge from literary sources. The necessity of anthropological knowledge did not immediately mean the necessity of anthropologists. When the developing war urged social scientists to provide more practically reliable knowledge on the areas where actual battles and administration had to be conducted, responsible social scientists could turn to anthropology, not only as a source of knowledge but also as a pertinent, empirical method for obtaining the needed knowledge.

IV Approach to anthropology from without: Yoshitaro Hirano’s Ethno-Politik and the Institute of the Pacific ’Yoshitaro HiraNO

Yoshitaro Hirano who lead the academic research and publications of the Institute of the Pacific, was typical of those social scientists who approached anthropology from without. Before examining Hirano’s contributions to and impacts on anthropology, it is necessary to have a look at his life as a whole, since several commentators have published critical reviews of his academic works, but uniformly ignored his approach to anthropology. In the context of social sciences in Japan at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it may appear entirely strange to try to examine the wartime Hirano from the perspective of his relationship with anthropology, which is exactly what I am going to do here. The commentators concentrated their attention to the tenko (conversion or apostasy) he made in the late 1930s and to the contrast, or the contradictions, found between the theories and philosophies he expressed in his publications before and after the conversion. A brief summary of his life is helpful to understand why the current attempt in this chapter may appear strange in relation with the preceding reviews of his life and works. Hirano lived a dramatic life marked by a conversion he made in the 1930s and by another he made just after the war. In the late 1920s, he made a brilliant debut as a promising

70

Wajitimb Japanese Aktoropoloov w Asia and the Paorc

scholar with his Marxist interpretation of civil and labour laws. In 1930, he met with a sanction by the Special High Police and was ousted from the Imperial University of Tokyo, where he had been associate professor at the Faculty of Law. Then as a free scholar out of office in any university, he joined the group of Marxist social scientists that edited and published the series of books known as the Nihon shihonshugi hattatsu-shi k5za (Standard lectures on the developmental history of the Japanese capitalism) (NoRO et al. 1932-33). The publication of the series provoked a heated controversy between the editors and their supporters, named after the series as the Koza-ha (S!® jift, the Standard Lecture School), and another group of Marxist economists known as the Rono-ha the Labourer-Peasant School). Hirano lead the Koza-ha in that controversy. The primary issues of debate were how to define the politico-economic class-structure of the Japanese imperial regime that had been maintained since the Meiji Restoration, and how to formulate the programme of revolution for reiterating a socialist regime in Japan. Most social scientists of the Koza-ha were closely associated with the then unlawful Japanese Communist Party, and they accepted the theoretical instructions given by the Communist International. The controversy continued for several years until 1936 when it was forcibly terminated with the arrest of the primary Koza-ha discussants, including Hirano. Soon after that incident, the leading discussants of the R6no-ha were also arrested. Hirano was released without being indicted; it was publicly propagated that he had stated tenkd (Naqaoka 1984,1985). Then Hirano transformed himself into a vehement Asianist ideologue. In 1939, he joined the Institute of the Pacific as the head of the Planning Department (later as the head of the Research Department) and lead a large part of the research projects and publications of the institute until the institute ceased to ftmction in 1946. Under his leadership, the institute was extremely productive in disseminating practical information on Southeast Asia and the South Pacific (see below). In the early years when he worked for the institute, he also participated in the research on rural customs in North China, a project of the Sixth Research Committee at the East Asia Institute (Fukushima 1981). Besides those contributions to the projects of the two institutes, he published numerous articles and books and presented his own Asianist philosophy on the one hand and his ideas on the colonial and military administration of the South on the other. It is through the projects of the Institute of the Pacific that he made an active approach to anthropology. No sooner than the war ended, however, he successfully managed to recover his academic authority at least in a Marxist circle of intellectuals and socio-political movements. He apparently made a second tenkd to survive the drastic change in the academic sector of society, which was brought about by the occupation administration of the Allied Powers. He lived the rest of his life as a prominent figure in numerous organisations, both international and domestic, that worked for democracy-promoting, anti­ imperialist and peace-seeking movements, all closely associated with the Japanese Communist Party. Academically he was extremely productive, too, although he regained no position in universities until he was appointed professor at Ryukoku University when he was sixty-nine (Biographical note, Hirano Yositaro Hito To Gakumon Henshuiinkai 1981). Thus Hirano’s life consisted of three periods distinguished by two times of conversion. In the first period, he was a leading Marxist social scientist and categorically critical of the autocratic imperial regime. In the second period, he was an active advocate of the Asianist

AhfTHROPOLOGY AND THE Waritme Situation OP THE i930s AND 1940s

71

ideology and gave his enthusiastic support to the same regime. As the war ended, he made a second conversion in the exactly opposite direction to the first. The two conversions altogether make his whole life appear like this (which accords to the view commonly presenwd by the reviewers of his life and works): with the first conversion, he made a ‘deviation’ from the initial course, but with the second he abandoned the ‘deviated’ course and made another start along a course that was in the same line as his ‘own’ initial course. This is an extremely simplified summary of his life, which should actually have been full of dramas accompanied with interpretations and re-interpretations. It is inferred that he should have struggled strenuously with the circumstances in which he strived for retaining or recovering authority through his second conversion, because any organisations in which he attempted to obtain a position of authority accused, at least in appearance, any agents, both individuals and organisations, that could be suspected of complicity with the wartime autocratic regime. He had to join the accusation of complicity and at the same time he bad to avoid being blamed by the same accusation. He was not alone in that struggle, so that he could be a source of political turmoil within the circle to which he sought affiliation. He eventually managed to recover his authority in Marxist-wing academy, social movements and political organisations. Once he succeeded in this, his authority in turn suppressed the memory of his past complicity with the wartime autocratic regime, at least among his fellows and followers. When he passed away in 1980 at the age of eighty-two, quite a few journals of law dedicated special issues to his memory, but none of them frankly mentioned his works in the early 1940s. Very little has been written, either by himself or by others, about his life during the years of complicity with the wartime regime and his life during the years immediately after the war. The unique life of Hirano attracted several commentators, who commonly reviewed his life and works out of an ethical interest in social responsibilities of intellectuals in the wartime situation. Hence, only the first of Hirano’s two conversions was highlighted; with that conversion, he betrayed, so the commentators criticised, not only himself, the prominent Marxist theorist Hrano, but also the roles that the commentators expected Marxist intellectuals to have played in pre-war years in criticising and resisting Japan’s imperial autocracy. In their views. HtRANO’s works in the second period of his life scarcely deserved a serious examination; it needs to be referred to only in order to ascertain how contradictory the ideology he presented in the second period was to that of the first period. The reviewers found only one clue that might possibly interpret his first conversion: his discussions about moral solidarity of rural communities. Hirano insisted in the second period that communal solidarity was one of the moral principles upon which the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere should be based. He continued to intensively study Chinese society during his years at the Institute of the Pacific and argued that both Japanese and Chinese rural communities were integrated upon a similar kind of familial or fraternal solidarity that should be the common moral basis for Japan’s project of constructing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Some commentators found that, in his early works as a Marxist scholar, he had argued for the Germanic tradition of law in Europe as a better model to be applied to Japanese society; that tradition comprised the communal title of land in contrast to the Roman tradition comprising the private title. Hirano was, so the reviewers concluded.

72

Wartime Japanese AfmiROPOLOOY in Asia and the Paqfic

among those left-wing intellectuals who converted from Marxism to Japanese or Oriental communalism. Thus, even if the reviewers tried to probe into Hirano’s works in the second period, they only referred to his works on China (Nagaoka 1984, 1985; Ishida, T. 1984; Ogura 1989; Akisada 1996). Because of the implicit assumption that they shared, the reviewers commonly failed to examine Hirano’s works in the second period of his life as a whole. My interest in Hirano is primary focused on his positive approach to anthropology, which he made while carrying out his project at the Institute of the Pacific. In order to examine this aspect of his project, it is indispensable to make an entirely different approach to Hirano than that of the reviewers. Moral implications of the whole trajectory of his life, comprising two times of conversion, are a matter of secondary concern in this paper. First, it is necessary to analytically separate the second period of his life from other periods and to examine what he academically conducted through his affiliation with the Institute of the Pacific. Hirano’s project on the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

With those preparatory considerations, I can now proceed to an examination of Hirano’s works that had to do with anthropology. As noted before, he joined the Institute of the Pacific in 1939. What is conspicuous with the works he conducted at the institute is that from the beginning he appears to have had a well articulated programme for his project and attempted to reiterate it even until the last months of the war when it was undoubtedly apparent to informed people, including himself, that Japan had no other choice than to surrender to the Allied Powers. In 1940 he made two trips to the South, first to Hainan Island and then to Japanese Micronesia, the Philippines, and Celebes in Dutch Indonesia. He was accompanied by Kenji Kiyono on the second trip. At the beginning of the next year, and soon after Japan started the war against the USA and the Allied Powers, Hirano together with Kiyono published a book that, according to the epigraph, was supposed to be the report of their joint fieldtrip to the South (Hirano and Kiyono 1942). It was the first book he published after he joined the institute. In his part of the book, Hirano presented his ideas on a variety of topics that altogether constituted a sort of general outline of the whole works that he was to conduct in the following years at the institute. In the consecutive years until 1945, he published three separate books (1943d, 1944b, 1945b), each containing freshly written papers as well as those papers already published elsewhere. The last of those books, in which he presented his grand ideology of Great Asianism most comprehensively, was released in June 1945. It means that he publicised his ideological complicity with the imperial regime in a most conclusive form only two months before Japan surrendered. In two other books, he elaborated his arguments on ethnic government (or policy) in more detail, but he eventually gave no substantial change to the ideas he had presented in the first book. This is why 1 noted that from the beginning he had a well-articulated programme for his project at the institute. According to this programme, Hirano’s ultimate purpose was to provide the autocratic imperial regime with scientific endorsement for the regime’s project of constructing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Hirano interpreted the project in terms of the following tasks (the numbers are added):

Anthropology AND THE Wartime Situation OF THE 1930s AND 1940s

73

1) Japan shall be the leading super-power to the whole Go-Prosperity Sphere; 2) The nations and ethnicities in the Pacific region shall be induced to positively co-operate with Japan in the construction of the Co-Prosperity Sphere; 3) The Co-Prosperity Sphere shall establish a broad and self-sufficient regional economy; 4) The natural resources in the Western colonies that the American and British imperialism has wilfully left neglected shall be exploited; 5) Any attempts of international invasion made by the USA and Britain shall be responded with the allied military defence of member nations; 6) The nations and ethnicities that have been exploited by the USA, Britain and other [Western] powers shall be liberated; 7) The nations and ethnicities within the Co-Prosperity Sphere shall develop trade relations with one another, 8) The fraternal nations and ethnicities neighbouring with each other in the Co-Prosperity Sphere shall be united spiritually and culturally, through good-will friendship relations: and 9) Thus the nations and ethnicities in the Co-Prosperity Sphere shall attain the development ofthe whole of East Asia, (Hirano’s ‘Introduction’, HiRANOand Kiyono 1942: 1) Those issues can be further grouped into the following three agendas. In order to construct the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (task 9),

A) Culturally and spiritually, Japan has to unite the supposed member nations through a unique, communal and fraternal solidarity (tasks 1,2 and 8). B) Militarily, Japan and the member nations have to communally defend themselves against, and liberate themselves from, the imperial invasion and domination by the Western countries, and the USA and Britain in particular (tasks 5 and 6). C) Economically, Japan and member states have to develop a self-sufficient regional economy through exploitation of so far intact natural resources and organising internal trade (Usks 3, 4 and 7). In theory, those agendas should be equally pursued throughout the supposed Co-Prosperity Sphere, but were further ramified by another factor, the regional division of the Co­ Prosperity Sphere. Hirano adopted the then commonly accepted idea to conceive the Co­ Prosperity Sphere in terms of two sub-divisions: the so-called Japan-Manchuria-China Block in the north and the Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere in the south, i.e. the tropical area comprising Thailand and the Western colonies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The former was supposed to constitute the core of the whole Co-Prosperity Sphere under the auspices of Japan. In respect to the latter, Hkano shared the stereotypical conception of the tropical South: the natural environments in the South are so fecund that tropical peoples have failed to advance towards civilisation but sUyed in a low level of social and cultural evolution. Hirano thought it necessary for them to make a huge spiritual advancement by their own endeavour if they were to be accepted into the Co-Prosperity Sphere as independent member nations. Otherwise, they should only be induced to willingly co-operate with Japan on the construction of the Co-Prosperity Sphere (task 2). Hence, agenda A was not so much concerned with the Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere as with the northern block of Japan, Manchuria and China. On the contrary, agenda B, particularly tasks 4 and 7, were more concerned with the South, Agenda C was also a matter ofthe South

74

Wartimb Japanese Akthropology o Asu and the Paofic

Great Asianism on the North

HiRANO approached the northern part of the Co-Prosperity Sphere in respect to agenda A and only speculated about the grand philosophy of Japan’s project. He tried to legitimise Japan’s policy of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere by elaborating his argument for what he called Dai-ajia-shugi {-^7 V 7^.ffi) or Great Asianism. By the Great Asianism he meant a category of political philosophy that advocated for a democratic alliance of East Asian peoples, particularly the Japanese and Chinese. His conception of the Great Asianism was based on a conceptual construction of the ideological genealogy from Nobuhiro SatO i3iS) of the early nineteenth century, through Tokichi Tarui and Kentaro 01 (:^ both of the middle Meiji Era, to the contemporary ideologues, including himself, who advocated for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. He presented an outline of this idea of Great Asianism in the first book he published after he was affiliated to the institute (Hirano and Kiyono 1942; 13-30). He then elaborated it in the last book he published during the war (1945b). He interpreted that Sun Zhong-shan (K^PllJ), the leader of the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty, advocated the same Great Asianism and attempted to attain Chinese revolution through an alliance of the Chinese and Japanese people (Hirano and Kiyono 1942: 24, 173-9, 224-5; Hirano 1945b; 1-135). This interpretation later aroused great anger from Yoshimi Takeuchi (ttl^JF), a prominent scholar on Chinese literature, who criticised Hirano as deforming SUN Zhong-shan's philosophy (1993). As another effort of arguing for the project of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Hirano tried to place that project on a sound moral base common to Oriental societies, and he found it in a familial and/or fraternal solidarity integrating rural communities. Although he mentioned rural communities in Java and the Philippines (Hirano 1943c: 174-83; 1944b: 21-5), he primarily analysed the fraternal integration of rural communities in China as an empirical endorsement of his argument (1945b). Indirect rule on the South: Ethno-Politik and anthropology

In contrast to China, he expected Southeast Asia to be an abundant source of vital resources, but the local peoples were not partners with whom Japan should jointly construct the Co­ Prosperity Sphere. As already noted above, Hirano represented tropical peoples in terms of innate inability to advance towards civilisation; they should at best be guided to voluntarily devote themselves to the victory of Japan. The most pertinent approach to them should be what he called minzoku-seiji ethnic government or policy), which in later years he rephrased in more authoritarian terms as minzoku-shidd (fiffiJe®, ethnic instruction). Hirano’s conclusion on the Japanese policy for the South was the ethnic government of indirect rule, a fonn of domination which he thought should be based on anthropology and what he called ‘ethno-politics.’ When Hirano started his project at the Institute of the Pacific, Japanese military forces were still fighting with Chiang Kai-shek’s Government (and the Communists) in China, but the largest military target had shifted from that government itself to the several routes of international aid supporting that government It was for the sake of blocking those routes that Japan advanced its military front towards south, first to Guangdong, then to Hainan Island

Anthropology and the Wartime Situation op the 1930s and 1940s

75

(1939) and to the northern part of French Indo-China (1940). Concomitantly, the USA. Britain and Dutch Indonesia began to sanction Japan with a broad range of economic embargos, in response to which Japan further intensified its military expansionism towards the whole area of the supposed Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere. Therefore, in reference to the South, agendas B and C, particularly tasks 3,4, 5 and 6, were closely related to each other. In order to formulate the Japanese policy for the South, Hirano heavily relied upon two realms of scientific research, which he indicated in German (as well as in Japanese) as GeoPoUtik and Etbno-Politik. Probably agenda B was too specialised a matter for Hirano to try an original formulation. Instead, the Geo-Politik provided Hirano with a framework and vocabulary in terms of which he identified the areas of military and strategic importance, where he then concentrated intensive investigations. He learned from Haushofer’s geo­ political outlook on the Pacific (1942) that was published in the same year as Hirano's first book was. As mentioned above, soon after he joined the institute, he made two trips to the South: from January to February 1941, he travelled Xiamen, Guangdong and Hainan Island in South China. He then made another trip in May and June 1941. this time with KivoNO, and visited Palau in the Japanese territory in Micronesia, South Mindanao in the Philippines, and Celebes in Dutch Indonesia. He interpreted the two routes of his trip as cross-cutting the strategic line that connected Manila, Hong Kong and Singapore, a line demarcating the Asian area dominated by the Western powers of the USA, Britain and Dutch Indonesia (Hirano and Kjyono 1942: 33-43 et al.).« By the first trip, Hirano traced the route along which the Japanese military forces had advanced to North Indo-China, where Hirano had once been. By the second trip, he made a hasty survey of the Western colonies that were to be occupied by the Japanese mUitary forces within half a year. When he made the second trip, informed people like him could probably foresee a development of Japan’s war towards Southeast Asia in a near future. Hirano might have simply shared a commonsensical view on the war, but his knowledge of Haushofer’s (1942) geo-politics enabled him to recapitulate the commonsensical view in a weU-articulated perspective, in which he situated his future projects at the Institute of the Pacific. Hirano’s trips to the South, as well as his former trip to China, gave him occasions of directly experiencing local situations - climatic, environmental, material, economic, social, political, religious and whatsoever - of the visited areas (Hirano’s part of Hirano and Kiyono 1942: 33-214), It is inferred that he learned through those experiences the importance for Japanese, who might have to do with local peoples in foreign lands, to know the local situations in concrete terms. He tried to formulate an area of research that he thought indispensable for making a practical approach to the local situations in the Co­ Prosperity Sphere and coined the word Ethno-Politik.

The objectives of the current volume is to deepen our recognition of those peoples with whom the future policies of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperiiy Sphere should be concerned and, on the basis of such recognition, to make the policies scientific. [...J Since seiji (KiS, govenunerU or policies) always have to be directed at a particular minzoku (people, nation or ethnicity), we can add the term mimoku to seiji-gaku (political science) and conceptualise minzoku-seiji-gaku (K IS ■ or Eihno-Politlk. We (the authors] think, it is the time to establish Ethno-Politik as well as Geo-Politik; this is why our book is titled ‘Ethno-Politik.’ (Hkano and Kiyono 1942:2-3)

76

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Paotic

He dedicated a chapter in the book to the topic of minzoku-seiji (ethnic government or policy), in which he presented his idea on anthropology (then called minzoku-gaku qt ethnology) and Ethno-Politik in more detail. What we mean by ethnic government is a basic consideration for the policies ofhow Japan can get together the peoples (or nations) inhabiting in the Greater East Asia Go-Prosperity Sphere and guide those native peoples to voluntarily wish to be active members of the Go-Prosperity Sphere. [...] In order to construct [Japan as] a highly defensible state and to construct a selfsufficient economic block, there are important issues to be solved concerning the exploitation of indispensable natural resources, economic and trade issues, etc. At the same time, it is the local native peoples that work for resource exploitation, production and transportation. If we fail to recognise the significance of their culture, life style and customs, and if we don’t know how to mobilise those local peoples, then we shall fail in resource exploitation, too. Moreover, the government of East Asia for the sake of the East Asian peoples shall finally be in the hand of those native peoples themselves. Therefore, the ethnic government [...] shall be paid more attention than before, and we need to establish it firmly, [...] without which the true Greater East Asia Go-Prosperity Sphere cannot be constructed (ibid.: 217-8). The peoples [in the Go-Prosperity Sphere] are extremely various and complicated in their race, culture and polity, so that we shall adopt the policies that are fully customised to the actual situations of those peoples [...]. Ethnology and sociology, which shall be in charge of observing those people’s contemporary situations, investigating their unique cultures, and recognising their history, traditions, folk customs and social organisations, shall now inspire themselves and, in collaboration with each other and with human geography, provide pertinent data for constructing our ethnic policies. Moreover, those disciplines should positively propose a guideline for the construction of our ethnic policies (ibid.; 220).

Although he mentioned sociology as well as ethnology in this citation, he elaborated his discussion about ethnology in more detail and, mentioning a rising interest in political or practical ethnology in Australia (the source of this information was Suqiura, see below), he wrote: Now at the present point of time, the political philosophy, including those cultural policies, shall be constructed on the basis of ethnology. Then we can for the first time have scientific ethno-politics (ibid,: 220). The formulation of concrete policies for each particular people [...] should be conducted separately from an axiomatic study of principles and final objectives of government [...]. Goncrete policy planning shall be conducted in close collaboration with Angewandte Elhnologie (applied ethnology), which in turn should be fully informative of the folk culture and life customs of the peoples (ibid.: 222). While ethnic-politics is imagined as a comprehensive scientific approach to the minzoku seiji (ethnic government or policy), anthropology as ‘applied ethnology’ is expected to be a scientific medium for articulating ethnic government of indirect rule with the cultural conditions of the ruled peoples. Almost everywhere in his discussion of ethnic government, Hirano mentioned a broad variety of topics of applied ethnology (1943d, 1944b, 1944c). A comprehensive understanding of the local peoples under Japanese rule — their social

Antorotology and the Wartime Sttuatton of the 1930s and 1940s s^cture, customs, economic life, religious conceptions, hygienic and medical conditions according to which specific policies should be fonnulated to placate administer and mobilise them. He even mentioned every detail of how Japanese should

1943d 42 3? 1

5^;

?■

peoples

’^t«ellion through a judicial system (1944b 7687) how to court primitive people’s favour through gift-giving (1944b; 164-8; 1944c) etc XX of the South was another important task he expected from ethnology and other sciences (Hirano and Kiyono 1942; 49-50). He apparently assigned applied ethnology the task of providing detailed technical advices. whereasL phdosophTof ethmc government was considered a matter of ethnic-politics.

Hirano’s projectfor his own publications stn7b X’ «« P-Pl- - the South ?oXtneX r™' instruction. In his argument for the Greater East Asia AnZh denounced the Western imperial domination of Asia theT^tchX' ““tiel for Japan’s approach to Southeast Asia in the Dutch colonial administration of Indonesia. According to his summary, the Dutch Xc2sdXr

™ of strategic policies: to maintain the absolute authority of Dutch snhi?f ‘liem control their subjects in accordance to the native system of law and order; and to thoroughly restrict external inteirention into native affairs as far as naive peoples are effectively controlled by the appointed native chiefs. The first policy was reiterated by constructing a caste-like ^stance be^een the Dutch officers and ±e native chiefs, and also by severe punishment of borough neglect of providmg natives with facilities of high education, a restriction of

Com ® 7! polXf’d, Ph )

t

economic development of native peoples of assimilation in Indo-China and the American cultural

M Indonesia by Japan. Hence he described the administrative system of utch Indonesia m detail (Hirano and Kiyono 1942: 88-116). The book in which he presented this idea of ethmc government on Southeast Asia was released in February 1942 1 O41‘7"7^ introduction to the book as the 8-^ of December 941, the day on which Japan’s naval air force attacked Pearl Harbor (ibid • 3) Japanese dX ft r, Southeast Asia during the p^od of r^o militarv f f Z vX 7 Japanese mihtery forces took charge of governing Western colonies in Southeast Asia adminiP,^7"'7’!7 recurrently addressed the Dutch colonial eXXv '*7 22-65. 137-214; 1944b: 54-75). ITiough he expanded his reference to Dutch sources of colonial policies in his later publications and even mentioned a Dutch scholar who advocated a pro-independence policy, he always

78

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

returned to his original idea of indirect rule, presented in 1942, which he thought the Dutch colonial administration reiterated in an ideal form. He then interpreted the policy of the Japanese military governments in Indonesia as conforming to his idea. Ironically, he was getting more conservative as the political situations of the South changed drastically. From his point of view, the peoples of the Philippines were entirely premature to have an independent nation-state (Hirano 1942). Even though the Philippines gained nominal independence in 1943, he did not change his recognition of the Philippines and interpreted its independence as solely due to the generosity granted by the Emperor (Hirano 1944b: 46-8). Symbolic of the tendency that Hirano was getting behind the times is his reference to the Old-Custom Research Committee that the Japanese military government of Java created. He mentioned the membership of the committee, the majority of which consisted of most influential Indonesian political and religious leaders. He interpreted the role of the committee solely in terms of the academic research of old customs that should be conduced for the sake of the Japanese military administration (1943d: 198). In reality, the committee was not created for academic research, but as a political body in the process of tactical inter-plays between the Indonesian leaders and the Japanese military government. By this body, the military government expected to control the Indonesian leaders who sought full independence of the whole of Indonesia as early as possible (Waseda University 1959: 4035). Hirano’s conservatism is also indicative of the fact that the Japanese military authorities in Indonesia, and probably in other areas, were far better informed of the volatile situations of peoples under their rule, and therefore more plastic in designing their policy of administration, than uninformed scholars staying in distant Japan. It may be argued that, to that extent, the Japanese military authorities in the South were more realistic than conservative ideologues like Hirano in revising their programme for the war efforts. The rise of nationalism under Japanese military rule in Indonesia, as well as in Brunei, can be understood in this perspective (see Hussainmiya in this volume). Within the framework of indirect rule, Hirano made approaches to more practical issues concerning ethnic government. The most practical objective for which Japan militarily occupied Western colonies in Southeast Asia was to secure abundant sources of vital natural resources. Exploitation of those resources should at best be conducted with voluntary co­ operation of the local peoples, who should be governed and mobilised effectively. As already noted above in reference to his idea of ethno-politics, Hirano thought that Japanese organisations and individuals should be well informed of the actual situations of local peoples in concrete terms. From this perspective, he extensively organised academic research on Southeast Asia and the Pacific; he himself published numerous articles and volumes on related topics; and he contributed to the publication of numerous books as a general editor. In his own publications on ethnic-politics for the Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere, Hirano addressed a broad variety of topics, among which were those issues directly related to the military government of the occupied areas: the plural social structure, adat law and customs, the judicial system of Islam, judicial concerns of security and order, as well as the colonial history and the colonial administrative system, of Dutch Indonesia; economic restructuring of Indonesia under the Japanese rule; and policies of resource exploitation and trades in the South (1943d, 1944b). Moreover, he even ventured to discuss anthropological topics such as:

Anthropology and the Wartime Situation of tub 1930s and 1940s

79

the ethnic characters of major mimoku (peoples) in Indonesia in their industrial and political lives (1944b: 93-102); a theoretical survey of primitive economy and subsistence, conducted from an evolutionary perspective (1943d; 215-45: 1944b: 121-96); various forms of beliefs in the sun and heaven in Southeast Asia and China as a possible bridge for guiding peoples of those areas to the worship of the flag of the Rising Sun and to the spirits represented by the flag (1943d: 95-114). His interest in primitive economy was combined with another interest in taxation and labour recruitment in the areas of primitive economy (1943d: 24658). Hirano, while discussing those ethno-political topics, never failed to pay attention to the Japanese scientists who had been and were conducting field research, and the scientific institutes established by Japanese agents in the South. He emphasised the necessity of comprehensive and systematic field research on the South and listed research topics such as: geology of petroleum and mining, chemical technology, tropical agriculture, botanical and zoological studies of tropical environments, water supply and hydroelectricity, geography, medical science and Japanese adaptability, and especially ethnology for ethnic government (Hirano and Kiyono 1942: 45. 49, 52-3, 75-7; Hirano 1943b: 3; 1943d: 78-85, 289-312; 1944b: 103-20). Hirano himself never went to the South again after the war began. The Institute of the Pacific organised no projects of its own for overseas field research. But, it does not mean that Hirano and the institute were indifferent to field research. When the Navy dispatched an expedition to New Guinea, the institute co-operated with the Navy in recruiting scholars (Hirano 1943a: 3), Seiichi Izumi joined the expedition (see below), but his biographical chronology indicates that he was commissioned the task of research by the Institute of the Pacific (Izumi 1972).

Rikano’s projectfor the publications ofthe Institute ofthe Pacific On the other hand, Hirano was quite industrial in disseminating knowledge about the South tn relation to Japan’s war efforts. The Institute of the Pacific itself published the journal Taiheiy5 (*¥t¥. The Pacific) and books; the institute also had numerous books published by commercial publishers under the editorship of the institute. Hirano’s contribution to those publications as a general editor is ascertained either by his contribution of introductions to them or by the colophons having his name. Among the publications edited by Hirano are found the following books:

French Indo-Chlna: Government and economy, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, October 1940. A general sourcebook with emphasis on government, industry, trade and immigrant Chinese. This volume was broadly accepted and the seventh printing was issued within two years after the initial release. South Sea Islands; Its [sic] geography and its resources, edited by the Institute of the Pacific. December 1940. A collection of academic papers on miscellaneous topics of natural r** ® specialist The physical anthropologist Kotondo Hasebe (fi© KHA) contributed a chapter on the physics of the Para-Micronesian Islands. Great South Seas: Its [sic] culture and Its soil, edited by the Institute of die Pacific, May 1941. Also a collection of academic papers on miscellaneous topics, each authored by a specialist. The anthropologists Ken’ichi Sugiura contributed an essay on colonial administration.

80

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Paotic Nature and peoples of the Philippines, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, June 1942. A sourcebook on natural geography, peoples and cultures, economy, and political status. Each chapter is authored by an identifiable person. When this volume was issued, the Philippine^ had already been under Japan’s military rule. Tadao Kano, Tomokazu MiYOSHi Ichiro Yawata and Kenji Kiyono contributed chapters cm biology, dominant peoples and primitive cultures. New Guinea: Peoples and natural environments, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, May 1943. Of twenty-three chapters, only four were contributed by Japanese, including Kiyono on the ethnography of West New Guinea. The rest were all translations of Dutch sources. Kenji Kiyono, The Pacific ethnology, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, May 1943. An ethnographic overview of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, written in the old style characteristic of colonial anthropology. Although this volume was published as authored by Kiyono, it w^ a summary compilation based on a German sourcebook. Soon after this book was published, a reviewer seriously doubted Kiyono’s academic morality {Kohma 1943). The Solomon Islands and adjacent islands: Geography and peoples, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, August 1943. A collection of papers on natural geography,, ethnology, ethnography, religion and culture change, covering a broad area comprising the Solomons, New Hebrides, New Guinea, and some parts of Polynesia. Hirano in his introduction admitted that this volume was planned as the military forefront had extended to the Solomons (Hirano 1943b: 5). When this volume was published, battles were still fought in the area. Kenji Kiyono contributed a chapter on Melanesian ethnography And geography and another on the New Guinean ethnography. Sugiura on the natives of the Solomons, and Michio Aoyama (^IIjBS:) on the customary law of the Trobriands. Hirano himself wrote a long chapter on Melanesian primitive society and economy (Hirano 1943b). The volume contains three translated chapters of R. C. Thurnwald, H. 1, Hogbin and M. Mead on Bougainville, the Ontong Java and Samoa, respectively. Kenji Kiyono, Sumatran studies, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, August 1943. Only one among the three parts of this volume was Kiyono’s work. The other two parts consisted of ethnography on major peoples in Sumatra, all translated anthologies of Western sources. The ocean and rivers in the Pacific, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, December 1943. An academic collection of geological and geographical papers. Kenji Kiyono contributed a chapter on the records of Japanese who drifted through the Pacific in the Edo era. New Caledonia and adjacent islands, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, May 1944. An encyclopaedic sourcebook on the New Hebrides, the Torres Strait Islands. Uvea and Futuna, in addition to New Caledonia. Although those islands were on the other side of the forefront of Japan's Navy, Hirano explains that the area deserves scientific studies because of their geo-political importance (Hirano 1944a). Kenji Kiyono contributed a chapter on ethnography of New Caledonia and the Royalty Islands. The majority of chapters were authored by ‘Research Department, Institute of the Pacific,’ i.e. actually by anonymous writers. The Pacific Region: Peoples and cultures, vol 1, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, May 1944, A collection of academic papers, each authored by a specialist As anthropological essays, Tadashi Ol (X#iE) contributed a chapter on ‘The Islam among primitive peoples in Indonesia,’ Nobuhiro Matsumoto (t&*'B|g) on ‘The origin of the Annamese,’ Tadao Kano on ‘The Yami of Botel Tobago and flying fish,’ and Hisakatsu Hmikata on ‘The Palauas in their legends and ruins.' This volume may be seen as edited io a way entirely free from practical considerations of academic knowledge. For those who volunteer for service in the South, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, June 1944. A small sized book providing practical know-how to adapt to the environments in the South, particularly to the tropical climates, diseases and native peoples.

Anthropology and the Warumb Situation of the 1930s and 1940s

81

Edward H. Man, The Nicobar Islands and their people, edited and translated by the Institute of the Pacific, September 1944. Hirano’s introduction emphasises the geo-political importance of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, mentioning the symbolic implications of the Andamanese penal colony for the Indian independence movement. Moreover, he details what is expected of ethnology in the context of military approach to primitive peoples like the inhabitants of the Nicobars and the Andamans (Hirano 1944c). Seiichi Fujihara, The New Hebrides Islands, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, November 1944. Hirano in his introduction to this volume emphasised the geo-political importance of the New Hebrides Islands, foresaw that they could be a Japanese military base in a near future, and explained that this volume was meant to be a military topography, although not fully complete (Hirano 1944b). Seiichi Izumi and Makoto Suzuki (ft*K), Peoples in IVesl New Guinea, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, November 1944. Ethnography based on the authors’ field research. They joined the Naval expedition to West New Guinea (see below). Hiroshi Kobayashi (zh#S«) and Bin Hattori (lIBWIft), Hygienic conditions in West New Guinea, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, February 1945. The authors joined the same Naval expedition as Izumi and Suzuki did. This book was written as a practical guide for the emigrants, containing information on local hygienic conditions, endemic diseases, climates, food and the necessary goods to be carried. Sadao Mitsumori (tlSSSS), Burma and Shan: Peoples and natural environments, edited by the Institute of the Pacific, February 1945. In his introduction, Hirano mentioned the three main routes connecting Burma and Yunnan, all running through the area addressed in this volume (Hirano 1945a). When he wrote the introduction in June 1944, the Japanese Army was still fighting in the area. Hirano as a producer ofethno-politics and anthropology

The list of publications is in itself impressive. The volumes edited as collections of academic papers are all voluminous, consisting of original works. On the other hand, the majority of the sourcebooks on particular areas were hastily produced and may be doubted for their academic level and practical usefulness. Probably the quality of the information provided in those sourcebooks was mixed and remained to be of a kind of military topography at best. The information on local society, economy and culture in particular was mostly extracted from published Western sources, and inevitably had to do with past affairs. The sourcebooks could not provide the kind of information that was concerned with the on-going affairs in each area, with which the Japanese agents, military and civil, should negotiate. In this respect, Hirano and the Institute of the Pacific could not be compared to the Mantetsu Research Department in China. In terms of timing, most sourcebooks were published too late to be actually used by military people on site. Some of them were released even after Japanese troops had already retreated from the areas. But, some of them were concerned with the areas where Japanese military forces could not afford to reach. Thus those volumes emphatically attest Hirano's endeavour to foresee or follow the geographical development of the war in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and publish sourcebooks on the areas that turned out to be of crucial geo-political significance for Japan’s military operations. His attention to the practical value of anthropology and related sciences is well represented in the publication of manuals for tropical life, too. Very little is known about the internal organisation of the Institute of the Pacific. It does

82

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and toe Pacirc

not appear to have had a large body of staff members. Kenji Kjyono was a regular associate of the institute; he was a close partner of Hirano in the latter’s project, particularly in respect to ethnographic information. Perhaps Hirano alone was the regular member of the institute in charge of his project. Several sourcebooks in the list contain anonymously authored chapters. Most chapters in the sourcebooks were based on information from Western sources, which had to be translated into Japanese. It is inferred that Hirano had a large workforce of anonymous writers and translators behind the project, If it was actually the case, Hirano was competent in managing the project of publishing those volumes. Moreover, the project of publishing those sourcebooks on strategic areas was coupled with his ethno-political speculation on military and colonial administration, and further with his ideology of Great Asianism. In the abilities of allocating intensive area studies within the grand perspective of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, foreseeing or following the geographical development of military operations, designing a set of relevant research on each targeted area, and organising researchers and authors, no anthropologists could have rivalled Hirano. An episode emphatically illustrates how Hirano was different from professional anthropologists. The last wartime issue, released in August 1945, of the journal of the Society of Ethnology contained the record of a round-table discussion, held in September 1944. In that discussion, Masao Oka, the head of the Administrative Department at the Ethnic Research Institute, regretfiilly stated: ‘If anthropologists had realised the importance of studying the Katchin, then [our] ethnic studies could have sufficiently served in the current war in North Burma’ (Oka in Uno et al. 1945: 27). In contrast, Hirano had published Mitsumori’s sourcebook on the Shan and the Katchin, even as late as February 1945, and explained in the introduction he contributed to the book, dated in June 1944, the strategic importance of the areas inhabited by the two peoples for Japanese military operations (Hirano 1945a). In summary, Hirano worked as a competent and productive agent of scientific and ideological mobilisation. He recognised the wartime situation of Japan and the alleged Co­ Prosperity Sphere in a broad, comprehensive perspective, in which he identified the expected roles of sciences, including anthropology. Standing in this perspective, he designed a wellarticulated project of scientific research, although mostly based on literary works. He made an active approach to anthropology and mobilised several anthropologists within his project He himself obtained and utilised anthropological knowledge in his ideological speculation. In his post-war years, he did not maintain relations with those anthropologists with whom he had worked together in his wartime project He never showed interest in anthropology in his post-war academic and political activities. Among the several commentators who reviewed his life and works, no one eventually paid serious attention to his project at the Institute of the Pacific as a whole, and his relations with anthropology and anthropologists in particular. No one, including himself, considered him anthropologist, either. Nevertheless, in respect to an important part of his wartime works, he can be identified as a practical anthropologist. As was the case with his contemporaiy anthropologists such as Masao Oka (see below), he fell in complicity with the autocratic regime in his endeavour to utilise his academic ability for the sake of the regime s war efforts. Compared with them, he had much better and sounder comprehension of the relevance of anthropological knowledge - its potential utility and

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE WARTIME SITUATION OF THE 1930s AND 1940s

83

expected roles - in the wartime situation in concrete terms. He had a full recognition of the situation in which he found himself located, and he fully recognised, if not fully controlled, his complicitous project conducted in that situation.'* Y Expansion of anthropology from within

The Ethnic Research Institute

As mentioned in a preceding sub-section, the government established the Ethnic Research Institute as a national institute at the metropolitan centre in 1943. Only a few anthropologists paid attention to and described it in their post-war writings. The projects of field research organised by the institute used to be interpreted as anthropological research. The only source of information on the academic works of the institute was the Japanesejournal ofethnology, the official journal of the Japanese Society of Ethnology, which was restructured into the only civil satellite organisation of the institute at the time when the institute was established.’’ Those circumstantial conditions altogether have made Japanese anthropologists think that the Ethnic Research Institute was a national institute primarily dedicated to anthropology, or ‘ethnology’ in the vocabulary of those years, and that the institute was a successful attainment, even though made in the notorious wartime situation, for the discipline that had scarcely received official support of the government (cf. Nakane 1984). This understanding is commonly held even by present-day Japanese anthropologists.*’ But this understanding is apparently a conceptual construction made by anthropologists in the post-war social and intellectual situation of Japan. 1 would argue that the institute was not an institute dedicated to ‘anthropology’ in the sense of the term as used in post-war years. However, I would argue that the institute was an institute of ‘anthropology’ in the sense of the term in which the institute attempted to re-define the discipline. The issue here is an attempt to change the definition of anthropology made within anthropology in the wartime situation of the scientific mobilisation, and another attempt made in the years just after the war to ‘purify’ anthropology from wartime ‘contaminations,’ so to speak, and rehabilitate the discipline. Present-day Japanese anthropologists commonly believe, partly due to Oka’s own writings (1979:481-9), that he led the lobbying activities of anthropologists who approached the government authorities for the sake of the establishment of an institute for ethnic or ethnological research. In order to understand Oka’s activities for the institute, a brief survey of his life in the 1930s is suggestive. In 1929, after a conflict, personal and also philosophical, with Yanagita, he left Japan for Austria to conduct research on the archaic Japanese culture at Vienna University. He re­ constructed the historical composition of the archaic Japanese culture by synthesising materials of Japanese folklore, comprising what Yanagita and his followers had collected, in a diftusionist framework of the Viennese style, But, no sooner than he completed the study into his Ph.D. dissertation in 1933, he considered his style of ethnological study already obsolete. Then, he travelled through Central Europe and the Balkans several times within a brief period (Biographical note in Oka 1979). It is inferred that the rapidly growing turbulences that German Nazi’s expansionism created in

84

Wartime Jafanesb Aotirokxooy in Asia and the Pacific those areas attracted Oka’s attention. In 1935, he returned to Japan and attended the meeting of folklorists celebrating Yanagita’s sixtieth anniversary. On that occasion he read a paper on the history of Volkskunde (folklore studies) in Germany, in which he detailed the concept of minzoku (rIk, Volk, nation, people and/or ethnicity) and the present-oriented social studies as elaborated by German folklorists (Oka 1935). He then went back to Europe and witnessed how the German troop made a triumphal entry into Vienna and annexed Austria. He was appointed the head of the newly established Institute of Japanese Studies at Vienna University. Every two weeks he commuted to Budapest to give a lecture on Japanese culture in a university there, which gave him ample occasions to travel Central Europe and the Balkans. Eiichiro Ishida also lived in Vienna in those years and studied ethnology at Vienna University, from where Pater W. Schmidt and Pater W. Koppers. the leading diffiisionist ethnologists from whom Ishida most hoped to learn, had exiled themselves. In 1940, Oka returned to Japan because of the war in Europe. Oka made an appearance in the May issue of the opinion journal Kalzo in a dialogue with Hitoshi Ashida (^fflW). in which he impressed the reader as a well informed expert on the ethnic situation of the Balkans (Ashida and Oka 1941). Soon after that, he contributed a brief article to the August issue of the same journal and appealed for the necessity of establishing research institutes based on a new idea of minzoku kenkyu (SJRSf^ ethnic research) (Oka 1941). In the paper of 1935, he mentioned a prospect of changes in German Volkskunde due to the Nazi government, but Iw primarily talked about the development of German Volkskunde up to the 1930s. In the artide of 1941, he explained about the new Faculty of Foreign Studies (Auslands wissenschaftliche Fakultat) at Berlin University, in which the old University of Foreign Languages and the new University of Political Science, established by the Nazi government, had been combined. Although he depicted minzoku-gaku (ethnology) as the basic element of minzoku kenkyil (ethnic research), he emphatically argued that the old-styled ethnology (characterised as a historicist study of primitive, non-Uterate peoples) must be reformed into the new presetoriented ethnic research that should investigate actual minozku (nations, peoples), including political minzoku (nations) of high culture, through local languages. He ^so interpreted t^ present-oriented ethnic research as consisting of the trinity of political science, the reformed ethnology and foreign language studies. He found the afore-mentioned Faculty of Foreign Studies at Berlin University as the ideal case that reiterated the new ethnic research. As conclusion, he pointed out the urgent necessity of establishing research institutes for that kind of ethnic research in Japan where there had been none (Oka 1941). As a practical step for the establishment of the institute, the government set up a planning committee for the institute in May 1941. The military authorities (the Army and the Navy), major ministries (ofcducation and oftieis), two Imperial Universities (at Tokyo and Kyoto) and the Research Institute of the Total War Abilities were represented in the committee. Yasuma Takata, who was to be appointed the director-general of the institute, joined the committee from Kyoto Imperial University. Oka, Furuno, Yawata, Egam and Iwamura, who were to be employed by the institute, were also appointed as members of the committee. Moreover, the Asianist ideologue Sumei Okawa was one of the members. The chronological order suggests that Oka should have been appointed membership when he contributed the afore-mentioned article to KaizS. The actual plan was discussed and negotiated among those agents, in which process Oka’s appeal should be incorporated. Among the documents produced in this process, there was a report about research institutions of minzoku kenkyu in major Western countries, the Soviet Union and China, which comprehensively enumerated, from country to country, the academic institutions (faculties in universities, research institutes and museums) related to what the reporter considered the minzoku kenkyu (Kikaku-in 1941). The list is compiled basically according to the same idea as Oka’s; Germany comes atop of the report and, after a

Anthropology and the Wartime Situation of the 1930s and 1940s

85

list of ^logical museums, the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Berlin University is explained m detail. The section on Germany has a sub-section on the institutions for foreign languages The report listed up not only institutions for ethnology and foreign languages, but also mstitutes of Onental, Islamic and colonial studies. This document endorses the leading role of Oka s initiative. It also implies that, in the context of the planning committee, the mimoku kenfyu was constructed as broad, inter-disciplinary studies of foreign mlnzoku (peoples or nations), comparable to the area studies that developed in post-war years ft, ■’’T' “ P®P"- ‘The agenda of contemporary *“ P«“"‘ed the same idea of ethnic research as that of his •L appealed for self-innovation of anthropology in order to become the basis of ethnic policies for administering the mifuoku (peoples or nations) under Japanese authority. The content of what the institute considered ‘ethnic research’ can be reconstructed from several senes of lectures that the institute offered to the general public. For instance, a series of Lectures on ethnic research’ were given for three days in Osaka in 1945. On the first day introductory lectures were given under the title of ‘Ethnology and ethno-politics’; the lectures were on the ethnic theory, introductory ethnology, social ethnology, linguistic ethnology, ethnic (ornational) movements (their history and theory), colonial policy, and the problems of ethnic (or national) culture. On the second and third days, fourteen lectures were given for m/nzoiu (peoples or nations) of different areas in Asia (Afinzoht kenkya 3(1/2); 42 1945). The topics of those lectures altogether should be supposed to represent the ethnic research as conceptualised by the institute. It is also noted that at that point of time in 1945 mimoku kenfyu (ethnic research) and minzoku-gaku (ethnology) were used interchangeably. ■ In August 1945, the Society of Ethnology changed the Japanese title of its journal from Minzofni-gaku kenfyu (literally meaning ‘Ethnological studies’; the English title used to be the Japansese Journal of ethnology} to Minzoku kenkyu (meaning ‘Ethnic research’) (A/rnroh/3(1/2): 42 1945). It may be doubted to what extent Oka’s proposal - the conceptual construction of ethnic research by die Ethnic Research Institute - and the decision of the Society of Ethnology to change the title of its journal were supported by Japanese anthropologists in general. But at iMSt It is reasonable to conclude that the leading authorities among Japanese anthropologists of those years attempted to give a new, enlarged definition to anthropology and innovate their discipline. Oka’s initiative can be examined in two respects; what he refused and what he tried to create. In terms of the former, Oka was innovative in criticising and abandoning the type of anthropology that had specifically been created and maintained in the colonial situation. As for the latter point, if his proposal is interpreted as an approach to a particular people as they are living their contemporary life in a broader social context, Oka’s proposal was also innovative in the sense that the necessity of such an approach was seriously recognised among post-structural anthropologists of Western metropolitan centres as late as in the 1980s.

The wartime construction ofpractical anthropology from without and within

As already noted before, no anthropologists have ever paid any attention to Hirano’s

86

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

contribution to anthropology. His wartime works were simply abandoned as trash as other numerous, hastily prepared wartime publications on Southeast Asia and the Pacific were. But, if the wartime works of anthropologists deserve a serious consideration, Hirano’s works do for the same reason. In reality, there are several parallels of grave importance between them. First of all, Hirano and Oka expressed their project of innovating anthropology by similar key concepts, ethno-politics and ethnic studies, respectively. Their ideas commonly based on a combination of seiji (Ri&, politics, policy or government) and anthropology; policies should be based on anthropological knowledge, and anthropology has to be innovated so that it can contribute to policy-making. As a specialist of anthropology. Oka specified in relevant terms how anthropology should be innovated; he proposed to abandon the premises of colonial anthropology, and adopt a new approach to understand minzoku (peoples or nations) as they are imbedded in the contemporary social (colonial or imperial or global) situation. With the combination of seiji and anthropology, the two scholars emphasised that anthropologists should contribute to Japan’s policy towards other peoples in Asia and the Pacific. Thus, they commonly recognised, although in the vocabulary of the wartime situation, the worldliness of anthropology and anthropologists. The parallels between them cease to exist beyond those points. Hirano had another key concept of geo-politics and a grand ideology of his own, Great Asianism. Even if Oka stated his support of the regime’s policy of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Oka did not present an understanding of it in an articulate way. He did not indicate in concrete terms what kinds of contribution anthropology as a whole should make in the political climate of the years; he did not even specify how anthropological information could be useful; he simply requested anthropologists to provide information on the contemporary states of the people they studied. The Ethnic Research Institute had numerous projects of field research, for the sake of which staff members busily travelled around. Nevertheless, the impression cannot be erased that the institute had no overall plan to systematically integrate the numerous research projects. Specialists of anthropology could have passively responded to the call of mobilisation made by external agents. They could have taken advantage of what they were provided with — occupations, topics of research and occasions for fieldwork — for the sake of themselves and anthropology. But, lacking a broader geo-political perspective, they had no ability to interpret their actions towards the circumstantial agents in articulate language. If one looks for practical anthropology reiterated during those wartime years in Japan, it is best represented, not by the writings of Oka or Sugiura, but by those of Hirano. One can obtain a scheme of practical anthropology, although phrased in the vocabulary of complicity with the imperial regime’s policy, in Hirano’s three books (Hirano and Kiyono 1942; Hirano 1943d, 1944b), and in the chapters on ethnic government and ethno-politics, in particular.

Changing methods and epistemology in anthropology The wartime situation naturally had great impacts on anthropology. In former times, anthropology (in the sense used in this volume, i.e. ethnology or socio-cultural anthropology) had acquired only a few positions in universities, all in the colonies. In the metropolitan centre, it was only in the years when anthropology was getting involved in the wartime situation that Ken’ichi Sugiura was associated with the Institute of Anthropology at the

Anthropology AND THE Wartime Situation OF THE 1930s and 1940s

87

Impenal University of Tokyo. The institute had been the organisational centre of general anthropology in Japan, in which Sugiura was unique in the sense that he had neither interests in physical anthropology nor in archaeology. The Japanese Society of Ethnology had been the only institutional basis for ethnology. Now in the wartime situation anthropology was offered several positions in newly established research institutions. Many of those who were recruited by these institutions were assigned literary works, but there were also many who went out to battlefields or occupied areas and conducted fieldwork. Since field survey had already had a long history in Japanese anthropology, this was a new trend only m a limited sense; if we confine our sight to the ethnologists in the metropolitan centre, it was in the wartime situation that fieldwork became a regular part of anthropological studies. The wartime situation pressed anthropologists to pay attention, no matter how indirectly, to an empirical approach to their research subjects and also to practical applicability of their findings. To probe into the discipline beyond those external changes, however, it is difficult to identify substantial changes in the methods and epistemology of anthropology. This difficulty IS partly due to the brief span of the wartime situation. If an anthropological project starts with fieldwork and arrives at a goal (if not the final goal) with the publication of an ethnographic report, very few Japanese anthropologists completed this cycle within the span of the wartime situation. Ken’ichi Sugiura, for instance, was one of the rare Japanese anthropologists who discussed, in the 1940s. the colonial administration from the point of view of practical anthropology. While extensively referring to works of Western anthropologists on colonial administration in the Pacific (1941), he analysed certain aspects of the Japanese administration of the Micronesian Mandate, the data of which he himself had collected through fieldwork when the area was still in a peaceful situation (1941, 1942, 1944). SuGiURA’s discussion shared the same limitation with his contemporaries in the West; both accepted the domination of the colonies by their countries as an unquestionable framework, within which they tried to specify technically appropriate ways to adjust administrative policies to the political, social and cultural conditions of the native peoples. Sugiura, as well as his contemporaries in the West, emphasised the importance of accurate anthropological knowledge on the native cultures as the basis of colonial administration In this context, they inevitably supported the idea of indirect rule. Sugiura’s discussion of practical anthropology could better be interpreted as belonging to colonial anthropology, even though he was pressed by the wartime situation and elaborated his ideas on practical anthropology. On the other hand, most anthropologists who went abroad to do fieldwork in the wartime situation had not enough time to have their ethnographic reports published before the war ended. During the period of several years after the war, they were entirely deprived of the occasion of overseas field research and instead published ethnographic reports based on the fieldwork they had conducted during the war. In the same post-war years, the social circumstances of science were generally critical of any individuals and organisations that could be suspected of participating in. or contributing to. the war efforts of the totalitarian autocracy. When publishing their ethnographic works, most anthropologists deliberately e iminated any remarks that might indicate their positive engagements in the scientific

88

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

mobilisation. Anthropological works published in the post-war years, even if they were based on fieldwork conducted in the wartime situation, must be seen as products of the post­ war situation. A survey of wartime anthropology in Japan revealed two works that exceptionally completed the above-mentioned cycle of anthropological works within the wartime situation, Eiichiro Ishida’s work on Sakhalin and Seiichi IzuMl’s on (former) Dutch West New Guinea. Ishida was sent to South Sakhalin by the Imperial Academy in one of the Academy’s wartime projects in 1941. He collected ethnographic data on native peoples, and published an ethnographic record on the people then known as the Orokko (currently called Uilta). It was his first experience of collecting data in the field; he worked on that for two weeks, too brief a period even according to the standard understanding of fieldwork held by Japanese anthropologists in those years. His ethnographic report was published in an academic journal issued by the Institute of Ethnology, a daughter organisation of the Japanese Society of Ethnology (Ishida 1941). In that paper, he presented his understanding of the people, particularly of the clan and marriage systems, in a comprehensive way. He compiled literary data on the history of the people, tried to re-construct the history of clans, and mentioned the modem history through which the people became dominated by Russia and Japan. But the contemporary state of the people under the Japanese rule was not among his topics to be investigated systematically (for further detail on Ishida’s work, see Sasaki in this volume). When he was recruited by the Imperial Academy, he had just returned from Vienna, where he studied ethnology in the Viennese difiusionist style. Ishida was not ready to explain the state of the people whom he visited, the Orokko, in the context of wartime Sakhalin or even in that of colonial administration. His approach may be interpreted in terms of colonial anthropology in that he maintained the premise of salvaging primitive cultural traits of the people in an abstract way of extracting the people from the broader social context. Seiichi IzuMi (&J#“) was recruited by the Navy and joined the Kaigun New Guinea (Shigen) Chosa-tai (i®M—i—4^— 7 [WiS] the Navy’s New Guinean [Resource] Expedition), in which he and an assistant formed the ethnological party. In collaboration with other parties, the two conducted a survey in die area of Geelvink Bay in West New Guinea in 1943. They spent eighty-four days altogether for the survey. Izumi wrote two reports of the survey during the war: a confidential report submitted to the Navy and a volume in the series on the South Pacific published by the Institute of the Pacific. Although he relied on the same body of information, he wrote the two in different styles. In the Navy’s report, which was authored by Izumi and his assistant Inao Nakayama (t^lUfiaiS), the conclusion was placed at the opening section, an allocation apparently reflecting the mission of the expedition. The conclusion consisted of four points of attention for the military government: an estimation of the number of the male and female local people who could possibly be mobilised as a labour force; Koreans and Chinese as a better source of labour force than Javanese and Philippinos to be imported to New Guinea (because of the different adaptabilities of those peoples to the climate of New Guinea); action plans to be taken for the effective suppression of the millennial cult then rapidly expanding in the investigated area; and the urgent necessity of anthropological research to be conducted on the local peoples

Anthropology AND THE Wartime Situation ofthe 1930s and 1940s

89

under the military administration and the necessity to establish a system of training administrative officers on the entirely different cultures, customs and temperaments ofthe peoples under the Japanese rule (Kaigun New Guinea Chosa-tai 1944). We have already had a look at the other report, as listed among the publications ofthe Institute ofthe Pacific that were edited by Hirano. In that book, Izumi wrote all chapters except for one that Makoto Suzuki wrote on physical anthropology (Izumi and Suzuki 1944). The inttoduction tells that the book is intended to be a practical guide for ‘those people who will work there, having contact with the natives’ in West New Guinea, so that, ‘no matter how anthropologically interesting it may be, any information that is useless from the practical point of view shall be omitted. [...] In order to attain the self-supply of food on the spot, it is first necessary to have a thorough understanding of the natives’ who were to be ‘mobilised as labourers’ (ibid: i-ii). By the ‘self-supply of food’ the authors meant the self­ subsistence to be attamed by the Japanese, military and civil, who were to settle the surveyed area. Izumi apparently wrote the chapters ofthe book out ofthe same strong motivation as he wrote the report to the Navy. In both writings, he tried to answer the questions finely focused on the sheer necessities of the occupation troops that had to pacify and administer the local peoples, while subsisting without sufficient supply of food from distant Japan. In the book ofthe Institute of the Pacific, however, Izumi presented comprehensive ethnographic information covering almost all aspects of the local cultures. The book is far more informative on the local peoples and their life than the Navy’s report. However, the latter presents more detailed information on two topics: the inter-tribal relations of hostility and 4e pacification of the millennial cult The book details the tribal societies but does not mention the inter-tribal hostility. It describes the conspicuous features ofthe millennial cult but only the Navy’s report describes how the naval administration tried to suppress the cult by dispatching a troop that was eventually driven into a retreat by a strong reaction of aimed cult members (Izumi and Suzuki 1944: 88-134; Kaigun New Guinea Chosa-tai 1944: 26-34). The stated policy on the selection of contents - ‘any information unless from the practical point of view shall be omitted’ - appears to have been more strictly applied to the Navy’s report than to the book. The writing style ofthe book appears to be more academic in the sense that the information is presented in a more distanced way from the finely focused practical purposes. This apparently academic character may reflect the character of the medium, of which the book was a part. Even if the authors might have intended to write the book as a practical guide for a particular kind of people, the Institute ofthe Pacific published the book to be bought and read by the general public. The authors eventually adjusted the contents and the writing style ofthe book to this character ofthe medium. It might otherwise be the Institute of the Pacific, or the editor of the book Yoshitaro Hirano, to whom the authors paid acknowledgement in the introduction, that lead the authors to control the contents of the book in an academic way. Even if Izumi s description in the book appears to be presented in an academic way the framework of his ethnographic work is markedly different from those of his contemporaries. Ishida, for instance, conducted his work on Sakhalin within the tradition of colonial, salvage anthropology. Izumi was entirely free from the premises of salvage anthropology' He for instance, wrote his ethnography on West New Guinea in the present tense, but it was riot a

90

Wartime Japanese Anthropolooy in Asia and the Pacihc

hypothetical ethnographic present; he described what he observed at the time of his fieldwork. In this respect, his work on West New Guinea appears to be more suited to the wartime situation, but the characteristic apparent in this work was also found in his ethnographic work on the seaside villages in Cheju Island, Korea (IZUMI 1938), a work that he conducted rather in a colonial situation than in a wartime situation. It can be concluded for him that the styles of fieldwork and writing, both internalised from the inception of his academic life as an anthropologist, were suitably responsive to a request for contributions made to anthropologists in the wartime situation as part of the scientific mobilisation.

VI. The maintained and recovered continuity in anthropology before and after the wartime situation Anthropology in the post-war order As the war ended and the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Allied Powers took charge of governing Japan, almost all aspects of social situation for intellectuals and scholars drastically changed. The leading philosophy of the government changed from the imperial autocracy to democracy, although it was not immediately clear whether the imperial monarchism could be maintained. Imperialist expansionism should be abandoned and some kind of internationalism had to be imagined. The relentless suppression of anti-autocratic thoughts, as well as the official propagation of imperial nationalism, was abolished and the convicts and suspects of violating the Law of the Maintenance of Public Peace were released from jails. The freedom of thought was, at least in theory, officially guaranteed. For a limited number of intellectuals, those changes meant not only liberation from the suppressive autocracy, but also a freedom of pursuing their ideals in academic and socio-political activities. But, those m^y intellectuals, who had managed to survive the wartime situation by stating tenko and giving some kind of co-operation to the autocratic regime, had to make another effort of survival in the post-war situation, because any kind of collaboration with the imperial autocracy during the war could now turn out to be a stigma. They were pressed by the new situation to make another tenko. For anthropology, which had benefited greatly from wartime measures of the scientific mobilisation, the new situation meant a variety of hardship. Anthropology lost almost everything vital for its existence as an academic discipline. The research institutes that had been established as part of the scientific mobilisation and that had provided anthropologists with occupations and chances of research, either desk work at home or fieldwork in battlefields abroad, were altogether abolished. Among the only three universities that had some seats for ethnology or related disciplines, two, both in the colonies, were also closed. The only institutional bases left to ethnology — that part of anthropology primarily concerned with socio-cultural interests - were the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tokyo, which was no longer an imperial university, and the Society of Ethnology. The Anthropology Department, however, was not prepared to function effectively as an institutional basis for ethnology. The department maintained the old name of dozokugaku (literally meaning the studies of vulgar customs) for ethnology, a fact symbolic of the peripheral position assigned to ethnology in that department. It was also indicative of a

Anthropology and ms Wartime Situation op the 1930s and 1940s

91

peripheral position of the department in ethnology in Japan in those years. Ken'ichi Sugiura was once employed as a temporal assistant at the department before he joined the Ethnic Research Institute, and he retained that position soon after the war ended. Hence, he alone worked as an intermediary between the department and other ethnologists. Then, it was the Society of Ethnology that remained the unique basis for (socio-cultural) anthropologists upon which to conduct whatever kinds of academic activity. The general deprivation of institutional bases meant another general deprivation of the occasion of field research to be conducted in foreign lands. In the post-war situation, anthropologists (or ethnologists) had to make a renewed start of their academic works by relying upon the society, which was only able to provide a facility for publication, the official journal. The society began to publish the Japanese journal ofethnology as early as in September 1946. Anthropology was not only deprived of what it bad benefited before, but was now to be blamed for the complicity with the wartime autocracy. The complicity of anthropology with that regime was not simply self-evident at the time when the post-war era started. Anthropology was getting stigmatised as the post-war orders in the society at large, and those of academic people in particular, were negotiated and eventually established. Ironically, anthropology was discovered as war criminal in the same process in which Hirano recovered authority among a circle of left-wing movements. The initialpost-war situation for intellectuals

As the post-war era started under the authority of the General Headquarters, many measures that characterised the wartime regime were suspended. In a situation in which everything appeared undetermined, intellectuals started to imagine a variety of new orders to be reiterated in co-operation to, or in competition with, the GHQ and the Japanese government that was under the control of the GHQ. Among various attempts of organising intellectuals and scholars, the earliest and the most influential was the Minshushugi Kagakusha Kyokai also called briefly as Minka; Democratic Scientists’ Society), which was created in January 1946 on the initiative of those intellectuals who had met with violent sanctions by the wartime autocracy. The Minka made a successful start with about two hundred members, and rapidly increased the membership, which recorded the maximum of two thousand in 1949 and 1950 in its history. Initially a broad variety of prominent scholars, from communists to liberalists and even nationalists, joined it. As the name of the society suggests, it sought to re-construct scientific research and education in Japan according to the principle of democracy. When it came to the task of specifying action plans for reiterating the principle, one of the most serious issues was that of reviewing the wartime regime’s policy of scientific mobilisation. The re-constructed scientific research and education in the new age should not repeat the fault of the wartime scientific mobilisation. Then, the same criticism should be directed to those intellectuals and scholars who joined, collaborated with, or benefited from, the mobilisation. In this context, the activities of Hirano and his fellows were meaningful. Hirano in the post-war situation

As the war ended, Yusuke Tsurumi, a prominent politician who had always been close to the

Wartime Japanese Anthropqloqy in Asia and the Paohc

core political elite, voluntarily resigned from the director-general of the Institute of the Pacific and banded a large part of the remaining property, estates and facilities of the institute to Hirano. Saburo Kuoai who worked under Hirano as a research assisUnt at the institute, wrote in a commemoration of Hirano that even during the war Hirano utilised the rights and authority assigned to him in the institute and assisted quite a few people who had to endure needy circumstances because of having been sanctioned by the special police. He provided them with temporary sources of income by assigning them such works as translating Western publications into Japanese, writing articles for journals, and the like. Thus, Hirano endeavoured to maintain a network of intellectuals and scholars, most of whom had been fellows or supporters of Hirano when he was leading the Koza-ha school. Towards the end of the war, Hirano also organised a regular seminar on China, by which, according to Kugai, Hirano was preparing for the post-war days that were apparently a near future. Once the war ended and a large share of the property of the institute was transferred to Hirano, the institute became a shelter where quite a few of his friends used to visit on returning from places of refuge, from abroad or from jails. Then the institute became a meeting place for them, where a lot of institutes and organisations were planned and developed into reiteration. Thus, according to KuGAl, the institute functioned as a catalyst for lots of important research institutes and academic organisations, and Hirano actively participated as a leader in those constructive processes. It was the case with the Chugoku Kcnkyujo the Institute for Chinese Studies), for instance, which was created as early as in January 1946 with Hirano as the first director-general. The Minka was also one of the organisations that developed from the gatherings of intellectuals at the institute (Kuoai 1980). Other sources suggest that he was quite influential in the process of re-structuring such major research institutes as the East Asia institute (Tsuge 1979). Yasoji Kazahaya (M-?- A+ZI), one of his closest friends, wrote in a brief commemoration of Hirano at his death that those people of Hirano’s network who gathered together at Ithe institute initially attempted to ascertain their mutual confidence as comrades that they had-- shared; once they first recognised their common faults of having betrayed their classes and collaborated with the imperial regime during the wartime years; then, they jointly determined to devote themselves for the democratic revolution of Japan. No one dared to openly criticise Hirano, and Hirano himself neither uttered any words of apology, nor participated in the discussion, but simply sat together with others, silently. Kazahaya, who had witnessed Hirano’s vehement contribution to the autocratic regime during the war, thought that Hirano should have made in his heart a firm decision of devotion for the sake of their joint efforts, a fact which, so remarked Kazahaya, was sufficiently attested by his selfsacrificial practice that characterised Hirano’s life throughout the post-war years until his death (Kazahaya 1981a, 1981b). Hirano’s strategy ofsurvival and anthropology

The first issues of the Minshushugi kagaku (I5±±^?F^, Democratic science), the journal of the Minka, reported that the Minka demanded the government to purge ‘war-responsible’ scholars from public service. The Minka also decided to make a list of the war-responsible scholars on its own initiative. The second extra general meeting, held in June 1946, passed

Anthropology and the Wartime Situation of the 1930s and 1940s the resolution approving the proposed list of the war-responsible who should be purged from any responsible positions and prohibited from any ‘cultural’ activities. The list, published in number four of the journal, enumerated ninety persons altogether, divided in five groups: political science, economics, history and geography, philosophy and ideology, and agriculture. Yasuma Takata was included in the list for the group of economists comprising eighteen persons, and Masao Oka and Etzo Koyama in the group of sixteen historians and geographers. It is inferred that the three were blamed for their common affiliation to the Ethnic Research Institute. Interestingly, the list did not include the name of Yoshitaro HiRANO. The same issue of the journal contained a report from the History Division of Minka, which announced that the Division decided to continue investigation of the war­ responsible and augment the list of the identified scholars ‘in geography and ethnology’ {Minshushugi kagaku 4: 93,1946). Those decisions from Minka suggest that Hirano successfully escaped being blamed as a ‘war-responsible’ scholar, whereas ethnology, as well as geography, was identified as a discipline most suspected of being ‘war-responsible,’ at least in the context of Minka in the middle of 1946. The process in which Hirano recovered authority in the Minka further suggests how ethnology was stigmatised as a ‘war-responsible’ discipline. Even though a lot of early members of the Minka wrote that Hirano was one of the most active organisers of the association, he was not elected in the initial executive body of fifty-seven members (Minshushugi kagaku 1(1): 91, 1946). One of the leading members wrote in retrospect that, even though the investigation and accusation of the academic ‘war criminals’ were proposed as an urgent issue in the early years of the Minka, the issue ended without either being thoroughly discussed or arriving at a final conclusion. He suggested a commonly held fear as an important factor that a thorough discussion of the issue should have blamed some leading members of the association (TsuGE 1979: 14-5; 1980: 71-4). As noted before, very little was written about Hirano’s struggle for survival in the post­ war years, but it is inferred that, while initially he remained an authority behind the scenes, he had his authority openly recognised in the Minka until the middle of 1947. He contributed an article concerning the general principle of cultural policy to the Minka journal, which appeared as the opening article in issue six of the journal (Hirano 1947). It was based on his report that he, as a representative of the Minka, made at the first general meeting of ZenNihon Minshusugi Bunka Kaigi All Japan Democratic Cultural Congress) held in July 1947. Thus, Hirano started his post-war life as a prominent leader within a Marxist wing, on which Kazahaya wrote: notwithstanding his wartime ‘faults,’ he devoted himself straightforwardly throughout his life for the reiteration of the ideal that he had constructed by his pre-war attainments as a Marxist social scientist (Kazahaya 1981a). This was apparently a construction of Hirano’s life that Kazahaya represented retrospectively at the time of Hirano’s death. This was also the design of life that Hirano himself attempted to reiterate by living his own life. He tried to construct his post-war life in such a way as to graft it to his life in the 1920s and 1930s when he was a prominent Marxist social scientist. As a political leader, he was always in line with the Japanese Communist Party as he was in the 1930s. Among his numerous articles and books published in his post-war years were a lot of reprints

94

Wartime Japanese Anthrotolocy in Asia and the Paofic

of his publications in the 1920s and 1930s. which remained to be the source of his academic authority until his death. On the other hand, Hirano never made any sort of approach to anthropology in his post­ war life; he never addressed ethno-political topics again. On a rare occasion on which he mentioned his conduct during the wartime years, he remarked; ‘One of the two trends that opposed our opinion was the power of the police and the military policy, which suppressed our research. [...] 1 had no other choice than to break my pen’ (Hirano 1948: 7). The implication was that his abundant publications during his years at the Institute of the Pacific were what he authored with a ‘broken pen.’ So, he never published reprints of those wartime publications in post-war years. In this construction of his life, anthropology was depicted as having no intrinsic values; it was represented as an intermediary of the unique ‘fault’ that he committed throughout his life. As he denied his life of complicity with the wartime regime, he abandoned anthropology as a scapegoat of disgrace. To the extent that Hirano appeared a renowned scholar in social sciences in his post-war life, anthropology was stigmatised as the source of his hidden complicity with the wartime autocratic regime.

Conversion ofanthropology and anthropologists As fat as anthropology in Japan is concerned, continuity is more explicit than differences before and after World War ff (see Sekimoto in this volume). The phase of anthropology just before the war can be represented by Ishida. As previously stated, his field trip to Sakhalin was apparently made in a wartime situation; he was dispatched by the Impenal Academy in one of the Academy’s wartime projects. But, Ishida was not well prepared to conduct his research with enough sensitivity to the wartime situation of Sakhalin. He still maintained the premise of salvaging a purely primitive culture there, a characteristic of colonial anthro­ pology. In this sense, he was a contemporary of Utsushkawa, who conducted research on the genealogical relationships among Taiwanese Aboriginals several years before. In the preface of the report, he mentioned the Musha Incident, the largest Aboriginal rebellion in the history of Japan’s rule of Taiwan. He wrote that, if he had not happened to put off his departure for a day, he should have been killed by revolting aborigines (Utsushikawa et al. 1935: v). Even though the field survey was conducted in such a volatile situation, the report never paid attention to the actual conditions of the Aboriginals living in that situation. Mabuchi returned from Celebes and re-started his post-war academic activities with what knowledge he learned from the Dutch academic legacy on Indonesia (Miyazaki and Nakao in this volume). He may be seen as representing the point of departure for post-war anthropology in Japan. Mabuchi, in this post-war situation, was a better match for LeviStrauss than for Leach. Both Mabuchi and L6vi-Strauss were sharp analysts of the static structure of symbols, but not of social dynamics. In that sense, they revived that old style of anthropology that was more inclined to salvaging pure ethnic cultures. The apparent continuity between pre-war and post-war anthropology in Japan was never a natural passage of affairs, but was intentionally created. Anthropology attempted to save itself from the assigned stigma of being a ‘war-responsible’ discipline by strategically grafting itself to the innocent anthropology of the years not yet involved into the wartime scientific mobilisation. Ironically, the strategy adopted by anthropology was a double

Anthropology and the Wartime Situation of the 1930s and 1940s

95

conversion, an exact parallel with that of Hirano and other communist intellectuals who survived the changing situations before and after the wartime situation. It was Ishida who attempted to lead anthropology along this line. I have already described Ishida’s project elsewhere (Shimizu 1999). While most anthropologists kept silent about the moral implications of their collaboration with the wartime situation, Ishida alone presented emphaticaUy what he thought ought to be the moral basis for the new age of anthropology. As previously noted, in the initial post-war years, anthropology was deprived of all institutional bases except for the ethnological society and Its journal, the Japanese journal of ethnology. The journal began publication in September 1946. It was also in the middle of 1946 that Ishida came back from China, ^though he did not write about his life in those days, it is inferred that, since he maintained interests in communism (he published Japanese translation of Engels’ Anti-Diihring [Herm Eugen Duhrings Umwalmng der Wissenschaft] in 1948), he should have soon recognised the difficult situation for anthropology and anthropologists, particularly a close friend of his. Oka. in the context of left-wing intellectuals. In December 1948, he was appointed the editor of the journal. He contributed a brief article to the first number issued under his editorship. The English title he gave to the article explicitly indicates what he meant; ‘For the sake of ethnology.’

The investigations ethnologists of our country conducted on peoples of the so-called ‘Greater East Asia’ could perhaps be seen as spearheading the militarist invasion. (...] But, the political fwwer which forced (enabled) them to conduct those investigations and the academic value of me investigations should naturally be distinguished. (Ishida 1948* 85) At the same tune, he categorically refused ethnic movements, ethnic problems and ethnic policies as topics of ethnological research (ibid.: 85). Ishida did not explicitly mention Oka and his arguments for ethnology’s collaboration with Japan’s project of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Oka 1943), but he apparently refuted Oka’s arguments one by one. While Oka had emphasised the practical contribution that anthropology, if properly innovated, could make to the broader society in which anthropology was situated, Ishida emphasised the academic value of anthropological research that should most pertinently be recognised in a de-contcxtualised state. For Oka, collaboration with the contemporary situation was an inevitable factor for the value of anthropology, but Ishida refused the same collaboration as a source of derogation. Through this argument. Ishida tried to save anthropology from the deviation into which Oka and his fellows had driven anthropology. In the same issue of the journal in which Ishida published his editorial policy. Oka contributed a brief article ‘in response to the editor’s suggestion.’ It was the first article he published after the war. In that article, he argued for historical ethnology, responded to certain criticisms against the culture-historical method of the Viennese school, and emphasised that the present-oriented sociological method alone cannot clarify the minzoku (people or nation), the primary subject of ethnological inquiries (Oka 1948). The implicit messages of this article were that he abandoned his wartime project of innovating anthropology (this was his second lenkd, so to speak) and that he would revert to the culture-

96

Wartime Japanese ANniROPOLOOY in Asia and the Pacific

historical ethnology, which he had once abandoned (this was his first tenko). Ishida edited an issue published one year later as a special issue on the ‘Origin of the Japanese people and culture’ (Ishida ed. 1949), in which Oka presented a summary of his idea that he had developed into his doctoral dissertation at Vienna University. As noted above, no sooner than he completed the dissertation, he realised that both topic and method were entirely obsolete in the context of Europe in the 1930s. Although his dissertation had been unknown in Japan until he himself presented its essence in this special issue, it had already been renowned among European Japanologists. Thus, it could be a source of academic authority for Oka who was to make a renewed start in post-war years. Interestingly, Sugiura also contributed an essay to the first issue edited by Ishida (Suoiura 1948). He wrote the essay in commemoration of F. Boas and B. Malinowski, whose deaths were unknown to Japanese anthropologists until the war ended. He praised Malinowski’s contributions, but he failed to mention Malinowski’s proposal of practical anthropology, which SuGlURA should have studied when he wrote on anthropology and colonial administration during the war. Ishida, Oka and Sugiura commonly adopted the same strategy by which they liked to deny the characteristics of wartime anthropology and revert to an older set of characteristics in anthropology. In the situation in which anthropology was stigmatised as a ‘war­ responsible’ discipline, especially by leading scholars of the Minka, it was imperative for anthropologists to publicise that anthropology was determined to depart from the wartime deviation. Ishida took the lead for the sake of anthropology; Oka, Sugiura and others joined, followed or co-operated with him. Although Ishida chose to de-contextualise wartime anthropological research in order to emphasise its academic value, he was not apolitical altogether. As previously stated, he edited a special issue for the topic of the 'Origin of the Japanese people and culture,’ in which he tried to show the relevance of anthropology to the scientific interests in the history of the Japanese people; with respect to the origin of the Japanese, Oka’s theory suggested multiple origins and cosmopolitan bases of the Japanese culture; with respect to the origin of the Japanese monarchism. Oka’s and Egami’s contributions showed that anthropology was able to challenge the mythical inteipreution once authorised by the autocracy. The special issue broadly attracted popular interests, because the issue discussed sensitive topics in the context of the time. Ishida also edited a special issue on The chrysanthemum and Ike sword by Ruth Benedict, by which Ishida tried to impress Japanese intellectuals with the superiority of American wartime anthropology (Ishida, ed. 1950). Benedict’s book attracted broad popular interests, too. The fact of Japan’s surrender aroused reflexive interests in the characteristics of the Japanese, their society and culture. This post-war situation encouraged social scientists and psychologists to inquire, mostly critically, into the Japanese character. Benedict’s book, soon translated into Japanese (Benedict 1949), contributed greatly to enhance the popularity of anthropology (see Sekimoto in this volume). It remains to be examined to what extent Ishida’s policy was persuasive outside of anthropology. However, his policy to a large extent reflected a common recognition of anthropologists and it surely delimited the direction of the later development of anthropology in Japan. For a long time, Japanese anthropologists pursued static topics such as social and

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE WARTIME SITUATION OP THE 1930s AND 1940s

97

symbolic structures of particular peoples, their ecological adaptation to natural environments, and the like, all observed and analysed without reference to the broader social context in which the peoples were situated. The situation of anthropological research was also out of anthropologists’ scope, as well. It was as late as the late 1960s that Japanese anthropologists began to seriously question the social effects of anthropological practices; until the late 1980s the term ‘primitive’ remained a key word in anthropological literature; social and economic development began to be a topic of serious study in the late 1980s.

Conclusion So far I have traced the trajectory of anthropology and anthropologists in Japan in the wartime situation of the 1930s and 1940s and thereafter. Apparently the trajectory contained issues of morality on the side of anthropologists, but I have refrained from giving ethical judgements to the conducts of anthropologists. If their conducts were evaluated only retrospectively from the present point of view at the turn of the century, the judgement could be a political criticism but could not be an ethical judgement. It is easy to point out, from the present-day point of view, the vices of the past wartime situation in which anthropology was involved. It was not so easy for anthropologists who were living in the wartime situation to comprehend the political, intellectual and ethical implications of their circumstances. In order to consider some moral issues involved in the wartime anthropology that I have so far surveyed, an analytical preparation is necessary. ■ In the years when Japanese anthropologists were not yet involved in the wartime scientific mobilisation, they rarely paid attention to whether their academic representation of the peoples in Japan’s colonies could have practical utilities in other non-academic sectors of society (the only exception was Ken’ich Suoiura who at the commission of the colonial government investigated the land tenure systems in the Japanese mandate in Micronesia). Since they were preoccupied with the research of primitive or folk cultures, their style of representation may be compared with the Orientalism conceived of as a form of colonial domination (in this case not by Western powers but by Japan, an Oriental power) of the colonised Oriental peoples (Said 1978). If it might have been the case, however, the form of domination that the Japanese anthropologists took charge of was not of a socio-political kind. The colonial domination in the administrative and business sectors appeared to the anthropologists as simply destroying the primitive cultures they sought to study. From the point of view of the administrative and business agents, the ethnographic knowledge provided by anthropologists (either through their deskwork or fieldwork) had few utUity values. It is more appropriate to consider the contribution of anthropologists in the pre-war peacetime situation in complementary terms; while Japan dominated its colonies politicoeconomically and destroyed indigenous cultures thereof, Japanese anthropologists considered it their mission to salvage the vanishing indigenous cultures through their academic research. Although the colonial agents and anthropologists were related with the same peoples in the colonies, the relationships of the two with those peoples, one politicoeconomically practical and the other academic, were basically disconnected with each other. It was exactly that type of colonial anthropology, characteristic of the pre-war peacetime

98

Wartime Japanese Akthropology in Asia and the Pacific

situation, that Oka emphatically urged his fellow anthropologists to abandon. To analyse his proposal in terms of the relationship pattern of colonial anthropology, Oka attempted to connect together the two relationships to the colonised peoples, that of the agents of practical domination and that of anthropologists. The key concept to hinge the two relationships was practical utility. While Oka tried to internally correlate anthropology to the practical agents of domination (in this case the military and government agents in the battlefields), Hirano sought to externally mobilise anthropology and mediate it into the same agents of domination. Both in Oka’s and Hirano’s projects, anthropologists were related to the peoples not only directly through their academic practices (i.e. research and writings), but also indirectly through the domination of the same peoples by the government and military authorities. Moreover, the ultimate power to define the practical utility of anthropological representation was no longer in the hand of anthropologists; the intermediary agents held it. Thus, the introduction of the value of practical utility at the same time reduced the possibility of subjective intervention by which anthropologists could control the practical usage of their academic output. With this understanding of the structure of the wartime situation in which Japanese anthropologists were related with the peoples they studied, I can now proceed to some ethical issues implicit in their relations with the wartime situation. As I pointed earlier, a retrospective evaluation of the conduct of a person in the past should be combined with a situational analysis of the same conduct. Once a situational analysis is introduced, it expands the perspective of ethical consideration to other related situations. For instance, Japanese anthropologists in the wartime situation in the 1930s and 1940s can be compared with anthropologists in the present-day \rartime situations at the turn of the century. Moreover, since the key factor that located Japanese anthropologists in the wartime situation was practical utility, one may expand one’s consideration of ethical issues to those situations in general in which anthropological information is needed for its practical utility, such as projects of economic, social, educational and/or cultural development. To consider the conditions of ethical judgement in a situational perspective, the issue to be solved first is not the ethical judgment itself but the process in which to attaint that judgement. To take account of the Japanese anthropologists who co-operated with the government and military authorities in the wartime situation, the issue to be first addressed is how the anthropologists, who were living that situation, could arrive at the judgement that their practices were to be blamed as constituting complicity with what should be blamed as the military expansionism of the wartime regime. The difficulty of the issue can be understood if one tries to transpose the position of moral judgement to the present-day anthropologists who are required to respond positively to the call of support made by their country at war or to the call of co-operation to a developmental project. In this respect, the most problematic in the conducts of Oka and his contemporary anthropologists was that they conceded the ability of defining the practical utility of anthropological knowledge to the mobilisation agent like Hirano and to the wartime regime itself. Hirano’s approach to anthropology suggests that anthropologists who conducted academic practices in the wartime situation, even if their conducts ended in complicity with the wartime regime, should have accurately comprehended the reality of the whole wartime

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE Wartime Siwation op the

1930s and 1940s

99

situation and the relationship of their conducts with that situation, to the extent that they could counteract the intermediate agents like Hirano. Moreover, if anthropologists could have retained some control on their academic practices, their control should be articulated in terms of their relationships with the mobilisation agents, on the one hand, and with the peoples on whom anthropologists were to conduct research and whom the government and military authority were to dominate and govern, on the other. In the wartime situation, as 1 noted before, Japanese anthropologists were doubly related with their subjects; in their direct relationship, they conducted research on the people, either through literature studies or through fieldwork; and in their indirect, mediated relationship, the knowledge they provided on the people was to be utilised in the policy of the wartime regime on the same people. To proceed further in pursuing ethical issues, the case of the Mantetsu Research Department is suggestive. I mentioned previously that the Mantetsu Research Department, in its final Compre­ hensive Research Projects in China, produced reports that connoted criticisms of the war efforts of the regime, which eventually invited a violent suppression by the wartime regime. Although the staff members of the research department were not unitary in their attitudes to the projects, they may be considered highly sophisticated in several senses. First, they recognised through their field research the contradictions between the war purposes of the Japanese autocratic regime, on the one hand, and the worsening economic difficulties in China and Japan that, so they concluded through their fieldwork in China, were caused by the war efforts by the Japanese regime, on the other. Secondly, they were realistic enough to foresee that their report could invite the suppression by the regime. Thirdly, for them ethics were not simply a matter of their academic practices, but a matter of their whole social practices. As previously noted, many of the staff members of the research department had gone through suppression by the wartime regime and survived it by stating tenkd. At least for some of them, the Comprehensive Research Projects constituted another front for their struggle against the wartime regime, although it was a retreated one in the realm of applied science. Instead of directly criticising the policy of the regime, which should have surely caused suppression by the regime, the leading members of the department tried to induce the regime to revise its policy by implicitly pointing out, through their reports of the projects, the inadequacies of the regime’s policy of war. Therefore, the extent to which they would invest their reports with their critical findings concerning the regime’s policy was not a matter of scientific accuracy but a matter of tactical negotiation with the situation. At least for some leading members of the Mantetsu Research Department, their research and reports were part of their political struggle, so that they were able to discuss, in a debate made in post-war years (IshidO 1978; Anonymous 1982; IshidO et al. 1986; Nonomura 1986), whether their control on their research activities was a tactical failure or a strategic failure or both of them. They might have made a tactical failure, so admitted those members who lead the Comprehensive Research Projects, because their reports triggered more severe suppression by the regime than they expected, but the plan of the Comprehensive Projects was strategically right. The Comprehensive Projects, according to some other members who kept negative to the projects, but who were suppressed together with the leading members by the military police, were a strategic failure. The last argument is concerned with what I

100

Waktimb Japanese Anthrotolooy in Asia and the Pacific

consider the fourth aspect of their sophistication. At the time when the Comprehensive Projects were planned, the autocratic regime of Japan had no longer an ability to change their policy of war according to the logic of reason. In such an extremely difficult situation it was strategically wrong to expect to attain a change in the policy of the wartime regime by sending to it a report, implicitly criticising the regime’s policy. Actually, they later realised that the regime had had an accurate recognition of the whole difficulties in China and Japan as caused by the very policy of the regime itself (IsHloO et al. 1986), Although the staff members of the Mantetsu Research Department might have doubly failed in their practices in relation to the wartime regime, I think that, as intellectuals who lived in the wartime situation with a critical stance, they endeavoured well in whatever they should and could do in resisting and/or struggling against the wartime regime. When a political regime carries out a total war, it will fight against any intellectual enemies as seriously as against its military enemies. The experience of the Mantetsu Research Department suggests that, to the extent that the regime is autocratic, those intellectuals and scholars who are critical of the regime’s policy of war will have no other choice than to fight a total war with the regime. To turn our attention back to anthropology, perhaps the fourth aspect of the sophis­ tication 1 found among the Mantetsu researchers might be beyond what could actually be expected of Japanese anthropologists who lived in the same wartime situation. The method and theory of anthropology alone could not recognise the wartime situation as compre­ hensively and realistically as the Marxist theories of those years did. But, the experience of Japanese anthropologists indicates in categorical terms that anthropologists must have a comprehensive recognition of the whole situation in which their research is located and also of the whole situation in which their academic practices are conducted. Even if anthropologists may have insufficient recognition of those situations, they are equipped with enough methods and theories to find contradictions between the realities of the people they study and the approaches that the external agents of practical domination (or project) make to the same people. This is a factor comparable with what 1 considered the first aspect of the sophistication found among the Mantetsu researchers. This factor is located between the two relationships that anthropologists have with the people they study. When anthropologists find any serious contradictions between the realities of the people whom they observe through their research and the policies of the external agents that approach the same people, the contradictions should dictate the kinds of anthropological practice. Those contradictions should be the initial and minimum moment for the recognition and consideration of ethical issues for anthropologists. As for the further steps of practice, the choice made by the stoff members of the Mantetsu Research Department in the wartime situation of the 1930s and 1940s can be a positive model for anthropologists. The choice of Oka and his contemporary Japanese anthropologists, who appeared to have only taken advantage of the wartime situation for their own interests, without fully recognising the implications of their conduct in relation to the wartime situation, should be a negative model. In order to place one’s position among these and other possible models, each anthropologist should make a decision on his or her attitude to the broader situation, a decision comparable to that apparent in what I considered the second and third aspects of sophistication found in the Mantetsu Research Department.

Anthropology and ths Wartime Situation of the 1930s and 1940s

101

Notes 1) The constitution of the Institute of the Pacific was printed on the back cover of each issue of Taiheiyo (The Pacific), the monthly journal published by the institute. 2) A note on the institute that appeared on the Japanese Journal of ethnology issued in 1944 announced that Seiichi Nakano accompanied Asano (Japanese Journal of ethnology 2(2/3); 66), but another article does not mention NaKano (Mlnzoku kenkyd 3(1/2): 40, 1945). 3) It was when they visited Palau that they met Hisakatsu Hijikata, who was later recruited by KiYONO to work for the military govern itH-nt in North Borneo. 4) The first book Hirano published after he joined the Institute of the Pacific was co-authored by KiYONO (1942). Kiyono expressed his support of Japan’s project of Co-Prosperity Sphere in flattering terras similarly as Hirano did. But, no reader of the book could fail to find that apparently Kiyono was not realistic enough to grasp the wartime situation and what roles anthropology could be expected to play in that situation, as Hirano did. 5) The Japanese Society of Ethnology reorganised itself and changed its official name several times during and after World War U. See Shimizu 1999. 6) NAKAo(l997,alsohischaptermthis volume) interprets the institute as an ethnological institute. References

Akisada, Yoshikazu (fk^Xft)

TSiKJ pp, 583-640, (Wartime Asian studies by social scientists; The case of Yoshitaro Hirano. In Recognition ofAsia in modem Japan (ed.) Tetsuo Furuya, pp. 583-640, Tokyo; Ryokuin Shobo.) Anonymous (Noma Kiyoshi, Bf ^^) 1982 rwstj rsaisiei5i!^^^2ffig9j pp. 3-58. wsr: aE-yes. (introduction. In The report of the Comprehensive Research Projects, pp. 3-58. Tokyo; Aki ShobS.) Ashioa Hitoshi and Masao Oka (^HJ^ • P^iE®) 1941 r(BSl) rafeSJ 5, 282-303. (inside the Balkans. KaizS 5, 282-303.) Ashizawa Noriyuki (»IRWit) 1972 10.73-95. (The document: the Institute of Total War Abilities. History and persons 10,73-95.) Benedict, R., (trans.) Matsuji Hasegawa 1949 FSEhTJ IRSC i th^.©iStt6F5t^iIllSSK. (The chrysanthemum and the sward. Tokyo: Shakai Shiso-sha.) Fujihara Seiichi (IS±IRiff-), (ed.) Institute of the Pacific (A¥i$®t®) 1944 (The New Hebrides Islands. Toicyo-. Nihon Hyoron-sha.) Fukushima Masao (IHSiEjfe) 1981 ---- At ^fHIJ pp. 78-80, JRK i (HiRANO-sensei and the research on the Chinese rural customs. In YoshltarS Hirano: His personality and academic works (ed.) Hirano

Wartime Japanese Akihropolooy in Asia and the Pacific

102

Yoshitaro Hilo to Gakumon Henshuiinkai. pp. 78-80. Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten.) Goto Soichiro (ed.) 1988 rWHIHMfiJ

{The biography of Kunio Yanaoita. Tokyo; San’itsu

Shobo.) Hara Kakutea (IRS^) 1984 rsftr vTefKffiaaiss—w«iw • kwjSBif • ipr j jksc : saiJSS. historical study ofthe creation of the studies ofmodern Asia. Tokyo; Keiso Shobo.) Haushofer, Karl (ed.) Institute of the Pacific, (trans.) Shoichiro SatO 1942 : Si£«lS. (Geopoiitik des Pazifischen Ozeans. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.) Hirano Yoshitaro 1942 rff-J r^-f 'J 7 pp. 1-6, KSt: (Introduction. In Wflture and peoples of the Philippines (ed.) Institute of the Pacific, pp. 1-6. Tokyo:

Kawade Shobo.) 1943a r»J f x.x -r o St EKJ pp. 1-7. KS : (Introduction. In New Guinea: Peoples and natural environments (ed.) Institute of the Pacific, pp. 1-7. Tokyo: Nihon Hyoron-sha.) 1943b rffj rvD-t'z^gt-tfOWliE---- ttjHltEffiJ pp. 1-6, SISC: tblSgli. (Introduction. In T/ie Solomon Islands and adjacent islands: Geography and peoples (ed.) Institute of the Pacific, pp. 1-6. Tokyo: Institute ofthe Pacific Press.) 1943c —wiatRKJ pp. 273-354, «J(: (Society and economy in Melanesia. In The Solomon Islands and adjacent islands: Geography and peoples (ed.) institute of the Pacific, pp. 273-354. Tokyo: Institute of the Pacific Press.) 1943d : H;$:8fsS4fc. {The theory of elhno-politics. Tokyo: Nihon Hyoron-sha. 1944a r^J (xj.-* k RxT ■ -f-OSaj pp. 1-9, WK : (Introduction. In New Caledonia and adjacent islands (ed.) Institute of the Pacific, pp. 19. Tokyo: Institute of the Pacific.) 1944b J WK : /htliSfi. (77ie basic issues of ethno-polltics. Tokyo: Koyama Shoten.) 1944c Edward H. Man fx3/TR/Sfc-5- A-^ J WK: B(/or lAose wAo vo/«nrecrybr serwee in rAe South. Tokyo: Nihon Hyoron-sha.) 1944d rA¥f$J 7(4). 45. (Report on the institute of the Pacific. 7AcPa«yic 45.) 1948

rifJ

104

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacihc

Ishida EiichirS(GtB3£-fill) 1941 (-)J 3. 343-89. (On ±e clans of Orokko of Sakhalin (1). An/iua! report of ethnology 3, 343-89. Institute of Ethnology.) 1948 12(4), 363-8. (For the sake of ethnology: Editor’s note. Japanese Journal ofethnology 12(4), 363-8.) Ishida Eilchiro (cd.) (SmjiS-g|l)8) 1949 rg. (Ethnology and native administration in Micronesia. In Great South Seas: Its culture and its soil (ed.) Institute of the Pacific, pp. 173-218. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo.) 1942 r 5 rsrEfflaj 7 53-69. (Religious policy on the Micronesian islanders. New Asia July, 53-69. Tokyo: Mantetsu East-Asiatic Economic Investigation Bureau.) 1944 l. I67-36O. (Land tenure among the indigenous peoples of the South Sea Islands. Bulletin of the Ethnic Research Institute 1, 167-360.) 1948 FF-.-lJ-TXt rKStWJEJ 12(4), 339-44. (Franz Boas and . Bronislaw Malinowski. Japanese Journal ofethnology 12(4), 339-44.) Takeuchi Yoshimi (-H’F'lJf) 1993 ra^:tO7->-7±«J rH:$:t7->7j pp. 287-354, 3K» : (IJllB 1963). (Asianism in Japan. In Y. Takeuchi, Japan and Asia. pp. 287-354. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo. First published in 1963.) Tsuge Hideomi (SiW^E) ---- ffi'PaaXoEa-J (The East A.sia Institute and t: Testimony ofa wartime intellectual. Tokyo: Keiso Shobo.) 1980 rS^l-iS,---- %i^-.^V^^^.(TheMinka and I: How a scientist lived post-war years. Tokyo: Keiso Shobo.) Uno Enku et al. (?5J®I$(i:i^) 1945 {ffigl-&)j rKKefJCSfflJ 3(1-2), 15-29. (A round-table discussion on the issues of ethnology: Its history and tasks in Japan. Ethnic research newsletter, 3(1/2), 15-29.) University of Tokyo, Committee for the Centenary History (ed.) 1987 (2)J pp. 556-71, gjC: «K-A^£U«E (The Institute of Anthropology. In The hundred years of the University of Tokyo: Faculties, vol 2, pp. 556-71. Tolg^o: University of Tol^o Press.) Utsushikawa Nenozo, Nobuto Miyamoto and Toichi Mabuchi • SiQK—) 1935 (The Formosan native tribes: A genealogical and classificatory study. Tokyo: Toko Shoin.) Waseda University, Okuma Kinen Shakai-kagalai Kenkyujo 1959 r-f (A study of the Japanese military government ofIndonesia. Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten.)

1979

Nakano Seiichi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

Kevin M. Doak

Introduction In tracing the development of Japanese wartime anthropology, it is helpful to think against the grain of specialization that so often characterizes writing about Japanese academics. For institutional and personal reasons, Japanese academics and intellectuals have often been ensnared in what Maruyama Masao (AlURS) famously called the “octopus trap” of modem Japanese institutional structure: the narrow proprietary claims imposed by professionalization and disciplinization (Maruyama 1957: 163). To adopt a perspective that seeks to break free from this octopus trap runs risks of its own; specifically, the risk of ignoring the deep personal loyalties and close relationships that do in fact underlay professional academic research, in Japan as elsewhere. Yet, too tight a focus on such personal relationships may lead to an under-appreciation of the cross-fertilization that happens when academics and intellectuals follow their own intellectual curiosities and interests, when they read articles and books on related topics from other fields, and especially when a discipline is undergoing transformation or even new formation, as was the case with ethnology in wartime Japan. Ideas, it turns out, are exceedingly difficult to control. A full understanding of how ethnology turned towards “ethnic studies” during the war years requires a more interdisciplinary approach than merely a focus within the boundaries of ethnology, or even anthropology. My argument for a more interdisciplinary perspective is not entirely original. I follow Shimizu Akitoshi (iW2kieiS)’s nuanced approach that traces the origins of anthropological interests in Japan to a variety of sub-fields in the social sciences. Shimizu’s suggestion that we need to include as anthropologists “those intellectuals with anthropological interests” (Shimizu 1999: 116) seems on the mark, not only in explaining how anthropology moved toward ethnology, but especially in trying to explain the shift from ethnology to ethnic studies during the late 1930s. Undoubtedly, the introduction of German Volkerkunde by Oka Masao (Ri^IEffi) played a key role in encouraging this turn to ethnic studies among Japanese ethnologists (Nakao 1997: 50-1). But the social sciences, and particularly sociology, were at least as important in turning anthropologists and ethnologists from professional ethnology to a broader concern with minzoku (S^, nationality) as a principle for reforming imperial policy and colonial governance. The relationship of ethnicity to, national identity was an important, perhaps the most important, topic of research among social scientists in Japan during the 1930s (Barshay 1996). Sociologists were especially involved, and they brought to the concept of “ethnos” a distinctly national frame of reference. The reasons for this are complex, but may be analyzed as a set of two distinctive theoretical problems. First, sociology, particularly as the modem

109

110

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the PAanc

discipline founded by Durkheim and Weber, was informed at its inception by the new national social reality that emerged out of the French Revolution. As Greenfeld observed, modem societies are now national societies, and sociology was as founded on that premise as it was on the distinction between the political state and the nationalized sense of the people that generally informed modem sociologists’ assumption of what in fact “society” was (Greenfeld 1996). Moreover, Greenfeld’s point seems particularly accurate in the case of Japan, due to the enormous influence that Durkheim and Weber have had on the formation of Japanese sociology. Second, the history of the formation of Japanese sociology supports this interpretation of the close connection between national=the people concerns and the emergence of the modem discipline of sociology. The convoluted process by which the concept of society became translated and codified into modern Japanese in the late nineteenth century suggests that those most concerned with the problem of understanding society were also deeply concerned with providing a conceptual frame for a new sense of the Japanese people as a national unit. This national concern emerged early in the formation of modern sociology in Japan, and is evident in the Social Policy Association which was founded in 1897. Two of the early members of the Social Policy Association, Kuwata Kumazo (^EO/iSS) and Kanai En 5g), tried from the beginning to work out a conceptual ordering of the distinctive claims of shakai (tt^, society) and the kokka (BIS, state), but without much success (Ishida, 1984). By the time Kuwata and Kanai died (1932 and 1933 respectively), Japanese sociology was on the verge of reconsidering its failure to account adequately for the national people as a distinctive object of study separate from the political state. Between the late nineteenth century and the 1930s, significant changes had occurred that would reshape the discourse on society by incorporating the issue of ethnicity. This interest in ethnicity was in one sense a reflection of the fact that Imperial Japan now had a formal empire and the sense of kokuminsei (SStt. nationality) had extended beyond its origins in a domestic debate over the role of the Japanese people versus the power of their state. It now signified multi-ethnic membership in an imperial state rather than the contours of national sovereignty per se. In addition, nationalist movements within the empire converged with international rhetoric on nationality to emphasize a specifically ethnic sense of national identity. From the late Meiji period, but especially in Taisho and the years around World War I, a discourse on minzokusei (SStt, ethnic nationality) was being mobilized by liberal theorists of nationality, political theory and colonialism. Social scientists from a wide range of specializations, including the marxist Oyama Ikuo (>ciljfi5^), colonial theorist Yanaihara Tadao and the folklorist Yanaoita Kunio were but a few of those who found this concept of minzoku appealing from a liberal perspective (Doak 1995; Shimizu 1999). This self-avowedly liberal discourse on minzoku was highly conscious of ethnic identity as a cultural and social phenomenon, and frequently emphasized the distinction between ethnic nationality and biological race. Here, Japanese social scientists were participating in a global turn from biologically determined concepts of race in favor of an increasing fascination with a more culturally informed sense of “race” or ethnicity (Stocking, Jr. 1993). In early twentieth century Japan, the discourse on Jinshu (AS, race) was following this

Nakano Seuchi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

111

global trend and was increasingly displaced by or incorporated into a new concern with ethnos or the nation as minzoku (Doak 1998; Shimizu 1999). Especially after Wilson’s proclamation of ethnic national self-determination (mimoku Jiketsu, SSSft), the problem of mtnzoku and its relationship to political categories like nationhood increasingly intersected with anthropological, sociological and economic theories. “Liberal” theorists of national identiy embraced cultural and subjective factors as determining minzoht identity, while a few die-hard objectivists held fast to racial markers as the key to minzoku identity. But the racidists were in decline, and social theories helped accelerate that decline, even while making the concept of minzoku identity seem more respectable. By the middle of the 1930s, the discourse over minzoku had moved from a marginal debate over racial characteristics to play a central role in defining social and political Identity. This line of inquiry into ethnic studies first approached minzoku not from the distmction between race and ethnos, but by drawing on earlier distinctions between state and society in order to re-define society along ethnic lines. The origins of this development may be traced to the demise of Toan Ryuzo (^g««)’s racial studies approach in the mid 1920s. But a more decisive turning point may well be identified around 1935. In 1934, a new Japanese Society of Edinology was established to provide a new focus to the discipline of ethnos-studies as a “discipline distinct from physical anthropology and race-studies on the one hand and from folklore studies on the other” (Shimizu 1999: 147). Also in 1934 the Japan Swiology Association published its annual report Sociology that was entirely taken up with artcles on minzoku and the problem of national or ethnic identity. Contributors included Usui Jisho (a#_|^), Kada Tetsuji (iDffle—) and Koyama Eizo (/J'L1j55=). whose ideas on minzoku were particularly influential during the following years (Otaka 1934). The turn towards ethnic concepts of national identity was strong and ubiquitous from 1935 on, affecting literature through works by Yokomitsu Riichi (^56^iJ-)and the Japan Romantic School, philosophy through the Kyoto School, and sociology in particular through Takata Yasuma (®[a«^), Nakano Seiichi (cpH-fg-), and Oyama Hikoichi (:*:til5-) (the latter two had direct experience in Manchuria). This interdisciplinary influence on ethnic studies w« felt in the organization of the Japanese Society of Ethnology, as Shimizu has already point out (Shimizu 1999: 149), Here I want to focus on the role of Nakano Seiichi as an example of the contribution of sociology to the new direction of ethnic studies, especially in providing a national focus to the problem of ethnic identity after 1935. I. Towards a Sociology of Ethnicity: Nakano’s Otaru Years

Nakano Seiichi (1905-1993) studied sociology at Kyushu Imperial University from 1926 to 1930 under the direction of Takata Yasuma, who later served as the director of the Ethnic Research Institute. In 1930, Nakano joined the faculty of Otaru Higher School of Commerce in Hokkaido where he would remain until moving in 1939 to Foundation University (Kenkoku Daigaku. aS:^^) in Manshukoku (Manchukuo). The decade spent at Otaru Higher Commercial School was a formative period in the development of Nakano’s approach to ethnic studies, just as it was an important turning point in the broader Japanese discourse on mimoim identity, as noted above. Takata’s influence on Nakano’s approach is

112

Wartime Japanese Ahthropoloqy in Asia and the Pacific

evident and acknowledged in Nakano's writings, but so are various other sources, including the Japan Sociology Association's 1934 report on minzoku and the problem of nationality. As a young sociologist, Nakano read the report carefully and cited it, along with Takata, Yanaihara Tadao and various European (especially German} theorists on the problem of nation and nationality. After the publication of the Sociology Association’s 1934 report, Nakano begun publishing a flurry of articles on minzoku and nationality, mainly in Otaru Higher School of Commerce’s in-house journal Shogaku TSkyii These writings provided the foundation for his ideas about ethnicity and nationality that would inform his later proposal on how to solve the minzoku no mondai (KiSOW®, problem of nationality) in wartime Imperial Japan. In order to understand his contribution to colonial ethnic theory in wartime Japan, it is necessary to see first how his sociological approach, and especially how his thinking on ethnic nationality, provided an important theoretical justification for legitimating minzoku as a contingent, cultural apprehension of social identity. Nakano’s first intervention in the discourse on minzoku built on an earlier liberal discourse on ethnic nationality. In his 1934 Minzoku to Heiwa, Yanaihara Tadao tried to clanfy the meaning of minzoku, arguing that a misunderstanding of what nationality was had led to a reluctance among liberals and leftists to continue using the concept of minzoku (Doak 1995). This insistence on a proper grasp of the meaning of the term minzoku was of course an indication of the contested nature of the concept at the time. But beyond the mere indication of the contested nature of what minzoku signified, one senses that Nakano was participating in a broader, discursive shift that was moving from a racial understanding of minzoku towards a social, cultural and national signification. Sociology in particular had an important contribution to the understanding of nationality since Nakano felt the problem of nationality, as a kind of group theory, was deeply connected to the very origins of the discipline of sociology. In an early article published in 1935, Nakano drew from this liberal approach to national identity as a subjective phenomenon to criticize Nazi yinsAushugi racism), Italian fascism and even Japanese kokumin seishinshugi national spiritualism) for trying to base their sense of national identity on a kind of racial objectivism. Against those racialist interpretations, Nakano emphasized the Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer’s subjectivist theory that a nation {minzoku) is a community of fate (Schicksalsgemeinshaft) (Nakano 1935: 92). Nakano explicitly positioned this sense of nationality (here, consistently used in the ethnic sense as minzoku, not kokumin) as a community of fate against the biological detcrminist view of nationality based on race, arguing that Bauer’s concept allows for a more dynamic understanding of ethnic nationality as an always incomplete group identity (minzoku o taezu seisei shitsutsu aru shudan, (Nakano 1935: 117). Yet, Nakano criticized Bauer for not sufficiently grasping the subjective conditions of national identity as a form of social consciousness. Bauer’s marxist reduction of consciousness to a materialist base led him to attribute the consciousness of being a community of fate to the existence of the community itself. Nakano countered that national consciousness was even more subjective than Bauer allowed, and that national identity ultimately existed not “in reality” but only as an abstract ideal (Nakano 1935: 117-9), Moreover, Nakano argued that Bauer’s theory could not adequately explain why a

Nakano Seuchi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

113

community of fate had to take on a specifically national scope and why communities of fate in premodem times were not considered nations. In conclusion, Nakano recognized the advantages of Bauer’s approach to nationality that stemmed from his attempt to offer an alternative to French theories of nationality that emphasized the stete, legal and political orders at the expense of ethnicity. But Nakano suggested that a reconsideration of certain aspects of the French approach to nationality, especially as it related to the problem of modernity, was necessary to fully explain what made a nation a nation. Nakano’s next major intervention in the growing discourse on ethnicity returned to Bauer to focus more closely on the problem of class and its relationship to nationality. Nakano was not the first Japanese social theorist to deal with the problem of ethnic nationality and class, and in fact his approach may be best understood as an attempt to offer a new understanding of the relationship between these two important sociological concepts. Perhaps the earliest ami most important Japanese social theorist to offer a definition of the relationship between nationality and class was Oyama Ikuo in his 1923 The social foundations ofpolitics. In that book Oyama introduced Bauer’s theories on nationality to suggest a marxian use ofmimoku as a form of resistance against the capitalist state (Oyama 1923:218-37). Ten years later, with the rise of national socialism in Germany, the debate on class and nationality had reached an impasse, with marxists like Bauer upholding ethnic nationality as a kind of proletarian nationalism and Nazi theorists like Koellreuter rejecting the concept of class in favor of the homogeneous ethnic nation. Nakano pointed out that both sides, the Marxists and the Nazis, shared an ethnic or volkisch understanding of nationality and that both groups approached the problem of ethnic nationality from a political rather than a cultural perspective. Against such political determinism, Nakano explored Yanaihara Tadao’s concept of ethnic nationality as a “cultural community’’ and “class as a composite element of the ethmc nation, not as a force for the disintegration of the ethnic nation.” (Yanaihara, cited in Nakano 1937a: 110), Class was subordinated to culture, and class struggle was seen as an internecine struggle among members of the same cultural community. Quoting his mentor Takata Yasuma, Nakano noted that “the reason one finds a tendency towards unity among the proletariat of various countries today stems mainly from the class struggles within their own countries. The day after this struggle is over, they will lose their strong motive for forming associations with foreigners” (Takata, cited in Nakano 1937a: 127). In short, Nakano accepted much of the evidence Bauer presented for the priority of national consciousness over class consciousness, but he found little reason to characterize this national consciousness through the rhetoric of class struggle. Ethnic nationality remained a mode of social consciousness, and as such was amenable to all sorts of practical uses. The key point in terms of the relationship of this cultural sense of nationality to politics was the difference between ethnic nationality and other social groups like the state. Ethnic nationality had to be sharply distinguished from the state since, unlike the state, it lacked an existing organizational structure, even though it certainly bad the potential for creating one (Nakano 1937a; 119). Consequently, Nakano approached ethnic nationality from a cultural perspective, emphasizing the nation as a subjective, volunteerist phenomenon that resulted from the sentiments of those who felt a common affiliation as an ethnir group. Drawing on

114

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

Takata, Nakano concluded that differences in the kind of subjective consciousness led to differences in the modernity of ethnic nationality: ethnic groups conceived in the narrow sense (kyogi no minzoku gainen, were merely groups with a common sentiment {kanjo shudan, whereas the concept of the ethnic nation in the broader sense (kogi no minzoku gainen, was a true modem ethnic nation {kindai minzoku, that was a group possessed of a common purpose {ishi shudan sunawachi kindai minzoku, (Nakano 1937a: 120). It is important to recognize that Nakano’s imderstanding of modernity here was sociological and not historical in nature. He made no argument against the possibility that “modem ethnic nations” and sentimental ethnic nations could coexist simultaneously in different places. Nakano was working his way towards a theory of social typologies, not suggesting some historical break in patterns of human development, and while there certainly was a modernist bias to his theory, he did not fully subscribe to a universalist model of developmental patterns. The determination of whether a nation became a “modem ethnic nation” remained a subjective decision by members of a specific ethnic group. Nakano’s next move was to explore the role of tradition in establishing this difference between the concept of the modern ethnic nation and the concept of Volk in the nanow sense. It is worth exploring this problem in more depth, since this distinction would prove crucial in Nakano’s later theories for ethnology in wartime Imperial Japan. Moreover, it is interesting to note that Nakano himself offered this essay in the belief that it would provide an important theoretical challenge to the vulgar theories of ethnicity that were taking over public discourse by May of 1937 when he wrote the essay (Nakano 1937b: 28). Nakano set out to contest the vulgar belief that national identity was best understood as a continuation of tradition as embodied in ethnic identity. Instead, he argued that the relationship of tradition to ethnicity was not.a simple equation, but a theoretical question that itself was informed by three stages in the development of the concept of ethnic nationality. The first stage merely clarifies the nature of the group that is called “ethnic” and gives priority to the ethnic group over all other concepts of collective identity, while pointing out the differences between the ethnic group and other subordinate collective identities. The second stage looks at ethnicity theoretically and scrutinizes those marks of identity that distinguish groups at this level, especially ethnic groups. The third stage is the exploration of the broadest use of the term minzoku, especially to clarify the circumstances that lead to a distinction between those groups called minzoku that correspond to a Volk and others called kindai minzoku or kokumin that correspond to a nation. Much of the current confusion over the meaning of minzoku, Nakano concluded, was due to the failure of most commentators to reach the third level of theoretical imderstanding, that is to say, to understand that the problem of minzoku was essentially a problem of national identity. (Nakano 1937b: 4-5). Once the problem of minzoku is properly understood as a conceptual question of national identity, then the relationship of tradition to minzola4 can be addressed. Here, Nakano drew from F. Hertz’s sociology of the nation to argue that, while ethnicity itself is not determined directly by tradition (or blood), the concept of Volk as a social union {ketsugo, ) is always premised on a belief in “traditionality” {dentosei, g^te). By drawing attention to the way that modernity always mediates tradition, Nakano argued that a mediated tradition gives rise to a

Nakano Seuchi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

115

broader sense of ethnicity in the modem nation {kindai minzoku; kakumin). Nakano had done more than simply refute popular beliefs that ethnic nationality presupposed the authenticity of tradition. He had subjected tradition itself to a rigorous theoretical critique that revealed the modem nature of tradition as a theory not only of the past but of the present and future as well (Nakano 1937b: 26-7). His conclusion, that different approximations of tradition would lead to different understandings of minzoku and nationality, would play a significant role in subordinating ethnic research to the goals of imperialism in the years ahead. In the following years, Nakano addressed the problem of minzoku through its role in social differentiation and unification, emphasizing the contingency and unsettled nature of ethnic identity. His conclusion that ethnic national opposition is not a realistic endpoint, but merely an ideal extreme principle through which some chose to see the world (Nakano 1937c: 30-2) foreshadowed his later contribution towards an ethnic national policy that would be premised on regional unity rather than accepting ethnicity as the basis of national differentiation and conflict in East Asia. Throughout he insisted on the plasticity of ethnicity as a form of social group identity, and he reminded his readers that ethnicity as a form of nationalism is a modem, mediated social identity. His writings were as concerned with the conditions of modem social unity as they were with national identity, and ethnicity remained for him the key to understanding all forms of modem group identity. Nakano’s final statement on a theory of national identity during this formative period at Otaru Higher School of Commerce returned to the 1934 annals of the Japan Sociological Association. In the annals, Usui Jisho had published the lead article on “The Concept of Nation” {kokumin no gainen SROSl^) in which he offered a distinction between the Staatsnation and the Kulturnation. Nakano admitted that Usui’s translation of these concepts as kokka minzoku (S^SK) and bunka minzoku (SftSiS) were technically accurate, but he noted that the Japanese words were rife with polysemy and therefore he chose to retain the original German words in his own essay (Nakano 1938: 1). In short, Nakano was finally making his promised return to the “French” theory of nationality that rested in the political state while considering this theory of nationality in the context of his previous work on ethnicity. But Nakano’s argument did not employ a simple dichotomy between a French republican nationalism and a German ethnic nationalism - a common approach to the theory of nationality but one which often merely nationalizes the difference between ethnic and political nationalism (Brubaker 1992). Instead, Nakano kept his argument at the level of representation, demonstrating how the distinction between a cultural nation and the political state (which historically stemmed from Fichte) had been revived during the twentieth century. Nakano refuted Kirchhoff’s argument that the essence of ethnicity was found only in a common state by pointing to Ireland and Poland as examples of ethnic groups that have either not achieved or have not consistently maintained a stable mono-ethnic state. Yet Nakano was not willing to conclude that this distinction, even if it were only a theoretical one, lacked significance. Nakano rejected the historicism that underlay Kjellen’s ethnic determinism (the nation is “eine ethnisches Individuum"), Hartmann’s evolutionary reduction of the distinction to different stages of the same organic unity, and Wieser’s belief that the political nation is the completion of the ethnic identity.

116

Wartime Japanese Axthropolooy m Asia and the Pacific

arguing that all three ignored the real impact that this conceptual distinction between the sense of cultural nationality and political nationality has had on the formation of social identity (Nakano 1938b: 3-10). In refuting these evolutionary theories, Nakano’s own form of modernism is most clearly visible. Nakano’s modernism disallowed the notion that nations like France or Germany have intrinsic nationalist styles that rested on some putatively unmediated sense of national tradition. But it also rejected the homogenizing schema that underlay historical determinism (whether of the ethnic or evolutionary kind) that allowed for only one authentic form of nationalism (whether ethnic or political) in the modem world. In contrast, Nakano’s modernism was a mediated, pluralist modernism that accepted the distinction between the Kulturnation and the SlaaCsnation, while providing a theoretical explanation for the conditions that led to the co-existence of both within modem society. To summarize, the time Nakano spent at Otaru Higher School of Commerce, roughly the entire decade of the 1930s, coincided with the rise ofmimoku consciousness to the forefront of Japanese public discourse. Nakano was very much influenced by that discourse, even as he sought to intervene in it and make his own original contribution to understanding the problem of minzoku. He came to the problem well-prepared from his training in sociology under Takata Yasuma, which predisposed him to see ethnicity in relation to other theories of social group formation. Nakano saw the concept of minzoku as fundamental to modem social theory, noting its differentiation into a tradition-informed sense of Volk and a more mediated concept of modern national identity found at the level of social consciousness rather than the political state. This social sense of national identity was expressed in two distinctive modes of ethnic identity: a sense of the broader minzoku that was expressed as a modem ethnic nation or simply as “nationality” and a narrow concept of minzoku that reflected a more traditional sense of ethnic identity as Volk, Nakano’s modernist approach to ethnic identity began from a realization that both forms of ethnic identity, like all forms of group identity, rested on representational strategies that were open-ended and always subject to change. This sense of ethnicity as a contingent form of social group identity, rather than an expression of ethnic primordialism, defined Nakano’s modernist approach to national theory and provided him with a particularly useful means of responding to the problem of national identity in the newly formed state of Manshukoku.

II. Manchuria as a Laboratory for Social Reform The next stage in the development of Nakano’s contribution to wartime ethnic studies began with his acceptance of a position as an assistant professor at Manshukoku Foundation University in April 1939. One can only speculate on the reasons for Nakano’s decision to move to Foundation University. It is impossible to rule out various kinds of informal pressures on Nakano to take a position at Foundation University, as evidence suggests many other scholars in Japan felt pressured to respond to the demand for Japanese scholars in Manshukoku (Tsukase 1998: 121). Yet, we need not view Nakano’s decision to leave Hokkaido as an entirely reluctant one. Japanese academics who took positions on the faculty of Foundation University generally were attracted by higher salaries, research funds and

Nakano Sehchi and Colonial ErtrNrc Studies

117

other perks of working at a premier research institute (Miyazawa 1997; 105-6). Minami Hiroko believes that Nakano’s decision to move to Foundation University stemmed from his desire “to throw himself into the reality of a multi-ethnic Manchuria” (Minami 1998: 575). Certainly Nakano welcomed the opportunity to take what had been to that point mainly an academic concern with nationality and apply his ideas to the exciting world of Manshukoku, where the issue of ethnicity was intricately involved in the founding principles of the state, a "moral paradise” based on cooperation among ethnically defined groups (minzoku kyowa, Whatever his reasons for going to Foundation University, Nakano was affected by his exposure to the multi-ethnic world of Manshukoku. By training and inclination, Nakano may well be regarded as a “metropolitan anthropologist,” but once in Manshukoku he came into close contact with those whom Shimizu has called “amateur ethnographers” (Shimizu 1999: 117). This new experience precipitated a shift in Nakano’s approach to the problem of ethnicity, a move from focussing on basic research on nationality and ethnicity based largely on European sources to applied work on ethnicity and nationality in East Asia. At the same time, Nakano was participating in a broader ideological project, especially favored by reform bureaucrats and elements io the Kwantung Army, who conceived of Manshukoku as a laboratory state where they would experiment with concepts of planning and national formation that could never be carried out in Japan (Yamamuro 1993: 267-71). In this sense, the short time Nakano spent in Manshukoku was extremely important in transforming him from an academic sociologist interested in theoretical issues to an active ideologue who participated in attempts at social and political reform. Foundation University was an ideal base for Nakano and his use of theories on ethnicity for social engineering. At Foundation University, sociology was taught in the department of ethnology, and ethnologists there had often trained originally as sociologists. Nakano’s colleague Oyama Hikoichi was trained as a sociologist, but was an active ethnologist, lecturing on ethnology at the University and organizing the Manchuria Ethnological Association in 1941 (Nakao 1994: 136). Indeed, it may have been Oyama who recruited Nakano to join Manchuria Foundation University, as Oyama had also been a student of Takata Yasuma. In any event, Nakano found a very different atmosphere in Manchuria for his studies, an atmosphere shaped by military and colonial officers for whom the questions of ethnicity and nationality were immediate everyday concerns. One of the most important forces behind the establishment of Foundation University was Ishiwara Kanji (5IR^W), who hoped the university would serve as a policy institute for addressing ethnic harmony while constructing a sense of Manshukoku nationality. Ishiwara’s proposal was not completely realized^ but the university and its faculty reflected in part Ishiwara’s belief that they had an unprecedented role to play in reshaping national identity for Manshukoku (Miyazawa 1997). Sociologists, particularly those like Oyama and Nakano who had studied under Takata Yasuma, were strongly inclined by their professional training to see Manshukoku as a laboratory for engineering a new sense of national identity through their ethnological theories. It is not surprising that after moving to Manshukoku, Nakano’s writings immediately took a more pragmatic, polity oriented approach to the problem of ethnic identity in Asia.

118

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and toe Paotic

The first evidence of Nakano’s new policy-oriented approach to ethnic studies is a lengthy essay he wrote.on “The requirements for a policy on ethnic nationality for Manshukoku” which was intended as the first part of a broader theory on ethnic national policy in Manshukoku. The essay was published in the first volume of the Research reports of the Research Institute of Foundation University in 1941, the same year that Nakano was promoted to full professor. Nakano argued for a revision of existing policies on ethnicity in order to accommodate the new geopolitical realities unfolding in the early 1940s. Current policies were largely subsumed under two approaches; the Wilsonian goal of ethnic national self-determination which was too idealistic and Czarist Russia’s nationality policies which were not idealistic enough (i.e., were too oppressive of ethnic minorities). Nakano argued that it was time for an ethnic national policy that struck a more equal balance between ideals and the realities of power politics. By a more idealistic ethnic national policy, he meant that Japan’s minzoku seisaku (SK&M, ethnic national policies) could no longer be framed from the perspective of dominance over other ethnic nationalities. Perhaps most innovative was Nakano’s unpacking of what “reality” meant in the context of setting ethnic national policies. His earlier work on the sociological theories of nationality led him to appreciate national identity as a conceptual effect rather than an enduring primordial reality. Consequently, Nakano argued that "reality” was not a mere reflection of existing group identities, but that in fact there were various levels and kinds of realities at work in the production of ethnic and national identity. A satisfactory nationality policy for Manshukoku therefore would have to consider at least three “realities”; a global geopolitical reality, the reality of neighboring states, and the reality of various ethnic groups within Manshukoku. Nakano admitted the complexity of the problem, promising to take up die latter two themes in subsequent installments of his overall theory on ethnic national policy for Manshukoku (Nakano 1941; 19-26). Yet. even from the outset it was clear that Nakano’s policy sought to encompass and transcend more narrow ethnological studies that merely described aspects of existing ethnic national identities in the region. Nakano s policy was informed by his theoretical interests, even as his theories reflected a more intimate

concern with the realities of power in the region. The core of Nakano’s policy paper on ethnic nationality policy for Manshukoku rested on geopolitical reality as a factor in the formation of national identity. Consistent with his early theoretical work, Nakano argued that national identity is not rooted in some primordial fixed identity, but is a sociological construct formed in light of a host of shifting conditions. The most significant condition for the problem of national identity during the early 1940s was region, as the world increasingly was being structured into koikidan broad regional blocks). He recognized some degree of truth in the argument that a common experience of exploitation by the white race provided the yellow race with a sense of common fate that, along with shared race, culture and history, yielded a single national identity as a tda minzoku (WSSKIK. East Asian ethnic nation). But he cautioned that these economic grounds alone were not sufficient to form a single new national identity in East Asia (Nakano 1941: 37). Economic realities had to be considered in the context of political realities, in which regional experiences were mediated by membership in political states. The problem political states created for regional stability was that each vied for

Nakano Sehchi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

119

dominance over the others. Therefore, “the structure which regional blocks must establish is one in which an appropriate framework for a leadership relationship among the states will be built without encroaching on the equal sovereignty of the states” (Nakano 1941: 43). This was no small task. Nakano recognized that the ideal of absolute state sovereignty was a universal feature of modem political life, but he also noted that actual power politics often left that ideal unrealized in reality, as states inevitably establish real power relations on a hierarchical model. He rejected international organizations like the League of Nations (not surprisingly, given the League’s refusal to recognize the Manshukoku stale) and suggested that broad regional blocks were the best geopolitical and realistic framework for ensuring the expression of every state’s ideal right to sovereignty. It was the problem of how to regulate relationships among ethnic groups within these broad regional units that most concerned Nakano as a sociologist, and now amateur ethnologist, of everyday life. Against those who insisted on homogeneous race as the key characteristic of these broad regional blocks, Nakano maintained that every regional block is actually composed of multiple ethnic groups. Here, he drew a parallel from his analysis of state relations to argue that just as there is an ideal equality among ethnic groups in the sense that they all have an equal claim to recognition of their ethnic identity, nonetheless not all ethnic groups are equal in terms of their development towards achieving their own political state. Specifically, Nakano listed three types of minzoku (ethnic groups) in the East Asian regional block. The first type was those ethnic groups that belong to one of the region’s states but which have achieved a developmental stage that puts them in a leading role. “Needless to say," Nakano said, “the Japanese ethnic nation belongs to this first type” (Nakano 1941: 48). The second type was those ethnic groups that also belonged to a regional stete but whose developmental stage left them under circumstances that required leadership from a true ethnic nation. And the third type was ethnic groups that did not belong to any state nor that possessed their own state but which were scattered across various states in the region, Nakano placed most of the ethnic groups in the South Pacific territories (other than the Tai ethnic group) in this category. Previous attempts at constructing a policy for incorporating ethnic nations into a regional order had failed because they had ignored the reality that not all ethnic groups were at the same level of political development (Nakano 1941; 48-9). Based on these three types of ethnic groups, Nakano developed a policy for nationality in the East Asian region that sought to account simultaneously for regional identification and ethnic differentiation. In keeping with the dominant strains of imperial ideology in Nakano emphasized the different roles that those in these three different types of ethnic groups must play. But in the process of outlining this policy, Nakano offered some surprising features of this policy. First, while Nakano predictably argued that it was the Japanese nation’s obligation to take the lead in developing other ethnic groups towards a modem sense of national identity, he did not argue that kokumin (national identity) must reflect minzoku (ethnic identity). This is particularly noteworthy, since Nakano was living in Manshukoku, a state whose very rationale for existence rested in great measure on claims for an ethnic homeland for the Manchu ethnic people. Nakano’s modernism rejected the sense that ethnicity alone was a sufficient principle of political life, and he emphasized instead the principle of minzoku kyowa (harmony among the ethnic groups) of Manchuria as the

120

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacihc

foundation for the construction of a more inclusive, multi-ethnic political sense of Manshukoku national identity. It was the duty of the Japanese nation to lead the various ethnic groups in Manshukoku to this common sense of kokumin (political nationality) that Nakano felt underwrote any truly modem national state (Nakano 1941: 50-1). In return, it was the obligation of members of the Manshu kokumin to set aside ethnic prejudice and accept Japanese guidance as a necessary condition in the construction of their own political

nationality. A provocative feature of this policy was a challenge to the assumption that a common political nationality is a sufficient condition for political independence. While Nakano’s approach was informed by modernist attitudes, he did not argue for a universal pattern of development from ethnic identity to political nation to independent state. Even while maintaining that the Japanese nation must lead the Manshu nation towards a more multiethnic sense of national identity as a single kokumin, this political nationality also did not guarantee the absolute independence of Manshukoku from Japanese influence. Regional considerations overrode national interests in determining which nations-could have independent states and which nations could not. In contrast to Manshukoku, where the Japanese policy should be the encouragement of a multiethnic political nationality without a fully independent state, the South Pacific territories required a different policy on nationality that reflected the different situation in that area. Here, Nakano argued that nationality policy should reflect the need to liberate the various ethnic groups from the control of states foreign to the region. The best means of achieving this regional integration was Japanese support for full independence. He rejected Kada Tetsuji’s position that most of the ethnic groups in the South Pacific were too small to qualify as viable independent nations as merely a rehashing of the old objectivist determination of nationality. Instead, he suggested that these groups should either be incorporated as equal members of a kokumin of already existing states of the region or else be provided with their own political independence (Nakano 1941: 53-4). Either method was equally suitable, which is to say that nationalism was not premised on an ethnic national right to self-determination. In the final analysis, the determination of what kind of nation would be formed, which nation specific ethnic groups would join, and whether even large ethnic groups like the Manchu would have their own independent state were all matters to be decided on the basis of the particular circumstances of individual groups and how they would affect the interests of regional stability (Nakano 1941: 54). Of course, for Nakano, there was no question that Japan, as the leading nation of the region, was to decide

ultimately what those regional interests were. But one of the most startling aspects of this nationality policy was the emphasis on creating various political, multi-ethnic kokumin (national identities) throughout the region as the ultimate objective of Japanese nationality policy. Nakano’s modernism, as we have seen, emphasized the eventual need for a sense of nationality that went beyond ethnic identity to incorporate the multiple ethnic groups of a tenitory into a broader national community that would in turn provide the foundations for a political state. His view was neither that of an ethnic nationalist nor that of a sUtist. In fact, Nakano’s nationality policy for Manshukoku and by extension for East Asia - drew from his early sociological interest in the formation of a contingent and constructed national identity that, while supportive of a multiethnic state,

Nakano SEnciii and Colonial Ethnic Studies

121

remained distinct from and more fundamental to social identity than to membership in a political state. It was precisely because of its close proximity to the conceptual boundaries of “society” and because of its malleable and constructed nature that Nakano found this concept of the nation as a kokumin more appealing than either ethnicity itself or the political state. Although his policy emphasized the development of an ethnically integrated sense of political national identity, Nakano’s policy held that it was neither necessary nor sufficient merely to discard the sense of minzoku (ethnic nationality). Consistent with his constructivist view of social reality, he suggested it simply could be re-invented to serve new purposes. Having already rejected the objectivist, biologically driven models of ethnic nationality based solely on blood in favor of a subjectivist model that combined common fate, culture and history, and now concerned with enhancing regional bonds within East Asia, Nakano found it only a short step to suggest a regional sense of ethnic nationality {toa minzoku) as the basis for a common East Asian regional identity (Nakano 1941: 61). This sense of a broader identity as membership in a single East Asian “ethnic nation” promised several solutions to the dilemma of nationality and regional interest. It avoided the errors of linking ethnic identity and the modern state (which Nakano had already demonstrated was untenable) or of disconnecting (he problem of minzoku (ethnicity) from that of minzokushugi (S2S±ft, ethnic nationalism). From the perspective of regional interests, Nakano argued it was necessary to return to the connection between ethnicity and ethnic nationalism but relocate ethnic nationalism from national identity to that of regional identity (Nakano 1941: 62-3). His main insight was that ethnic nationalism had proven more useful as a mechanism for creating social identity than for establishing stable political states. But ethnic nationalism also had been a useful mechanism for drawing attention to the oppression by powers from outside East Asia over weaker members of the region. By encouraging a sense of common identity as members of a single East Asian ethnic nation, Nakano proposed strengthening the sense of cultural identity as East Asians in relationship to a specific historical legacy of political opposition to outside interference. In this sense, he could claim that his propQ.sal for relocating ethnic identity from the national to the regional level was not abandoning the principle of ethnicity but a new departure for the principle of ethnicity (minzoku genri no sai-shuppatsu, SMISSOWffiy-) (Nakano 1941: 75). He concluded his policy on ethnic nationality for Manshukoku by reinforcing the point that a nationality policy in Manshukoku must be but one element in a broader attempt to establish an East Asian, mutually dependent kind of ethnic nationalism (toa-teki na sokan-teki na minzokushugi, (Nakano 1941: 77). In the end, Nakano had inverted the usual relationship of colonial ethnographers to metropolitan anthropologists. Writing from the colonies and on the issue of ethnicity, he suggested that ethnicity and ethnography must be returned to a metropolitan perspective in which the interests of the entire region are expressed through ethnology while the problems of national identity in the colonies must find expression not through ethnicity but through metropolitan principles of multiethnic, regional political structures. Shortly after Nakano’s outline of a policy on ethnic nationality in Manshukoku was published, work began on establishing an Ethnic Research Institute in Tokyo that would

122

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and toe Paohc

serve as the metropolitan center of a network of ethnology institutes that spanned the empire. The Institute was the product of a sustained effort over several years by Oka Masao and other members of the Japanese Society of Ethnology who sought a more politically relevant approach to ethnic studies. There was probably some tension between Oka, an ethnologist who played an important role in conceiving and lobbying for the Institute, and Takata Yasuma, a sociologist who was appointed the director of the Institute instead of Oka. Yet, both shared a conviction that the study of ethnicity must be conducted in a more pragmatic way, with a close eye on public policy and the usefulness of ethnic theories for the new imperial order unfolding throughout East Asia. Takata’s pragmatic approach is best seen through his influence on his student Nakano, but Oka also argued for a more policyoriented approach in a paper he read on “The agenda of contemporary ethnos-studies” at the first seminar of the Ethnological Foundation on October 8, 1942 at the Gakushi Hall in Tokyo. Significantly, Oka himself traced the influence of this pragmatic approach to ethnic studies to Wilhelm H. Riehl’s sociological study of the German ^olk (Shimizu 1999: 151-2, 165). The decision to appoint Takata, instead of Oka, as the first director of the Institute appears to have been a reflection not only of Takata’s national repuution as the author of several influential books on the problem of ethnicity but a belief that his sociological approach to ethnic studies would ensure a close relationship between ethnic studies and socially constructive purposes throughout the empire. Takata’s sociological approach to ethnic nationality, and especially his provocative imagination of a new, single East Asian ethnic nationality, provided a clear guideline for the Institute's activities and is reflected in the first volume of Tke Bulletin of the Ethnic Research Institute, published in March 1944. The Bulletin carried specialized studies by Egami Namio on the Hsiung-nu and Huns, Iwamura Shinobu (SHS) on Muslims in Gansu, SugIura Ken’ichi ) on the land system of South Pacific islanders, and Watanabe Shoko (80®$) on Rama Krishna’s life and religious movement. But the more important articles were the lead essays by Takata and Nakano. Takata’s modernist proclivities led him to define ethnic national policy as an attempt by modem nations to deal with koshin minzoku or "backward yolE’. But Takata rejected what he called the Anglo-Dutch kyoriseisaku distance policy) as a liberalism that was too unconcerned with the fate of backward FoZfc. Instead, he promoted a sekkin seisaku policy of proximity) as the basis for Japan’s more modem ethnic national policy, a policy that encouraged recognition of commonality between Japan and the backward Volk of Asia as a means of working toward the goal of constructing an East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Takata recognized fears that too much proximity could lead to complete cultural assimilation of Japan within Asia, thereby erasing the distinctiveness that gave Japan the right to its position of leadership, so he offered pragmatic limitations to proximity;

[W]hal I call proximity policy does not mean complete proximity and assimilation, just as it does not mean equalization of positions and functions. [...] Fundamentally, it has as its inevitable conclusion ihe unification of East Asia in one body and a division of labor for mutual aid. To accomplish the mission of East Asia’s liberation and independence requires a clear organization and someone to take charge of the functions within this organization. On this point, the fact that there are limits to this proximity policy is self-evident (Takata 1944:17-8)

Nakano Skichi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

123

And indeed there were. Even while Takata called for a new, “broader ethnic nation” that would encompass all of East Asia, he remained opposed to complete assimilation of ethnic national identities within this single East Asian identity. Ethnic identity cut both ways. It provided a prospectus for social change by shifting from the natural constraints of race toward the sense that ethnic nations were constructed through a consciousness of identity. Yet, if culture provided the grounds for social adaptability it also made claims on social identity, and Takata saw no reason for social groups to surrender their own particular cultural forms they had built up over time. Social differentiation occurred within the East Asian cultural order, just as it did in other societies, but in this case social differentiation was raised to the level of a differentiation among ethnic groups that brought with it a hierarchy of functions (Yasuda 1997: 292). As Takata’s former student and now colleague in the Institute, Nakano followed Takata with his own essay, “An unfolding of the ethnic nationality principle in East Asia.” Nakano began by clarifying the problem, defining the object of his inquiry, mimoku genri (KteffiS). as a close approximation of the German concept of Nationalltatsprinzip. Nakano conceded that minzoku genri was related to the German concept in order to stress the difference between minzoku, a socially constructed group identity, and race, a natural category based on biology and blood. But after the outbreak of the Pacific War and the growing pan-Asianist sentiment in Japan, Nakano began to emphasize differences between his theories and European social theories. “Minzoku genri," he argued, may have stemmed from German theories about nationality, but it now signified something else that transcended Western ideas about national and ethnic identity. This attempt to transcend the West marks a major shift in Nakano’s approach to nationality and therefore deserves closer attention. Nakano’s first step towards overcoming Western theories of nationality began with an overview of prevailing European theories on nationality, which he separated into three traditions: (1) the Western European principle of ichi minzoku ichi kokka BijC, one ethnic nation in each state), anchored by an implicit minzokushugi (ethnic nationalism); (2) the central and eastern European principle of minzoku jiritsu ethnic autonomy) which recognized inherent difficulties with ethnic nationalism and instead advocated multi­ ethnic states in which political affairs would be handled by the state while culture could safely be left to ethnic self-rule: and (3) the Soviet principle of minzoku jiketsu (K^S^, ethnic national self-determination). The first theory of ethnic nationalism had been shown to be impractical (given the multi-ethnic nature of modem societies) and unnecessary (given the fact that ethnicity Is a malleable social reality rather than a natural constraint). So Nakano returned once again to Otto Bauer, whose theories of ethnic nationality had played such a large role in his earlier work, as discussed above. With Japanese Marxists like Oyama Ikuo who had been influenced by Bauer now either in prison or in exile, Nakano no longer saw Bauer as a Marxist but as offering the most compelling of Western liberal theories that served to suppress ethnic national liberation. Bauer’s ethnic autonomy was merely a return to the old distinction between the “political state” and the “cultural nation” which feUed to provide a mechanism by which ethnic autonomy would be translated into ethnic national self-determination (Nakano 1944: 34-42). Nakano rejected Bauer’s theories, not only for

124

Wartmb Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

failing to address subjective desires for ethnic national independence, but also for a concept of ethnicity that, even if transferred from politics to the level of culture, nonetheless retaining significant degrees of essentialized properties. Under Stalin’s influence, Marxists had been performing a delicate balancing act of promoting a politically determined ethnic nationalism while trying to distance themselves from ethnic determinism. This third approach to ethnic nationalism was overly political, defining as legitimate only those nationalist movements against Western capitalism, not against the Soviet Union itself. If Bauer’s theory was politically naive, Stalin’s theory was culturally and sociologically impoverished. Nakano concluded that neither Bauer’s ethnic autonomy nor Stalin’s ethnic national self-determination went beyond a European dualistic approach to the problem of nationality that created more international conflict by setting nations against each other, or else merely transferred ethnic conflict to an intra-national level by separating the political state from the cultural nation. Nor had the Wilsonian principle of (ethnic) national self-determination done more than fan the flames of social chaos and political instability in central and eastern Europe. Nakano suggested the time was ripe to overcome the West’s oppositional understanding of nationality with a more comprehensive approach that took more seriously the role of a common regional identity. The solution was to understand ethnic nationality not as an end in itself, but as a supplementary element within a broader concept of nationality. Nakano drew on Takata s concept of a kd minzoku broader ethnic nation) embodied in a single toa minzoku East Asian ethnic nation) as the key (Yasuda 1997: 293). Nakano admitted “petty differences” among the various ethnic nationalities of East Asia, but stressed that these petty differences should not be emphasized to the detriment of the greater similarities that existed among East Asians. Yet, other than pointing to a culture shaped by agriculture and a general attitude of resignation, Nakano was unable to define these “greater similarities’’ among East Asian peoples. The important thing was not to quibble over details, but to join in the effort to support this consciousness of common membership in an East Asian ethnic nation. Competition among members of the East Asian ethnic nation would continue, to be sure, but as a komei naru kyosd open competition) regulated by what Oka Masao had termed a ‘‘‘minzoku chitsujo" (SKftiP, ethnic national hierarchy) in which everyone knows each others’ rights and responsibilities (Nakano 1944: 64; Doak 2001: 28-30). “Taking one’s place” meant both establishing an East Asian regional identity and an acceptance by each member of the East Asian ethnic nation of their specific supplemental roles within it. In short, the ideology of taking one’s place as an ethnic group built on sociological theories of social differentiation and transferred those principles from the realm of society to the realm of the East Asian region. Reconceiving the region as a single “ethnic nation” rather than a realm composed of independent political states helped encourage the use of sociological concepts, since the concept of ethnic nationality had emerged among Japanese social scientists as one means of capturing the sense of social cohesion that remained outside of the Meiji sute and its process of political nation building {kokumin keisei, At the same time, the concept of East Asia as a single ethnic nation drew on the appeal of national liberation from Western imperialism while transferring social distinctiveness from the national society to that of the region itself. This aspect of

Nakano Sehchi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

125

Nakano’s theory of national identity was new, and it was clearly a response to the new emphasis on the war, after 1941, as a war for the liberation of East Asia from the West Conclusion: Nakano’s Role in Wartime Japanese Anthropology

Recent studies have drawn attention to the central role of the Ethnic Research Institute in coordinating, directing and funding ethnic studies in wartime Japan (Asano 2000- van Bremen and Shimizu, 1999; Nakao 1997; Yasuda 1997). A shared concern for members of the Institute, whetiier trained as ethnologists or sociologists, was the problem of ethnicity and national identity in Asia and Oceania and the value of ethnic identity within a new logic of regional identity that would incorporate the growing claims of ethnic distinctiveness in the region. In evaluating the role of the Institute and particularly Nakano’s contribution to it, it is important not to insist on a narrow approach when evaluating disciplines, personal influence or the ways in which minzoku was understood by ethnologists and others who participaW in the Institute’s activities. Rather, the Institute was by design a comprehensive, interdisciplinary center where scholars of various backgrounds and interests could benefit from ideas and research on ethnicity, broadly conceived. Yet, there was a structure to this wide ranging and ambitious project that reflected two overarching concerns. First, the Institute was primarily concerned with the problem of ethnicity within Asia and Oceania rather than ethnicity as a purely global or Western phenomenon. Second, the Institute from its inception was designed to develop a more policy-oriented framework within which basic ethnological research and fieldwork would gain its new significance. When Oka announced the Foundation's position on the need for the new wartime ethnic studies to proceed with a practical approach to the problem of ethnic identity, Nakano was well positioned to respond. Nakano brought to the Institute two distinct contributions. During the 1930s. he had developed a wide-ranging study on theories of nationality that built on Western sociological approaches and which emphasized the contingency of ethnic, national and other social identities. He was able to write with authority on how leading theorists in the West understood ethnicity and nationality and also about the limitations of their theories. But by the time the Institute was established, Nakano also brought to these theories the kind of personal experience in the field that anthropologists frequently invoke to support the authority of their claims to have understood different cultures and ethnic groups. Manshukoku was a particularly useful base for making these claims to authority, since there were few places in the world where ethnic relations and the problems of national independence had been as central to the very formation of a new national state. In this sense, one can see Nakano as bridging the gap between pure, metropolitan theorists like Takata and the more fieldwork-based scholarship of ethnologists like Sugiura Ken’ichi. In the end, Nakano’s approach was closer to that of the metropolitian theorists, even if his residence in Manshukoku provided him with ethnological cover. In spite of Nakano's residence in Manshukoku, he participated fully in the metropolitan scholars’ attempt to build a field of ethnic studies that would provide a broad, new theoretical context for the study of ethnicity, What makes Nakano so important in that attempt was his combination of a sociological approach to ethnicity, learned from his mentor Takata

126

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the PAcmc

Yasuma, and his own lived experience that led him to connect sociological theories with the social realities of the multi-ethnic Manshukoku. There were theorists of ethnicity who had not lived outside of Japan for any length of time, and there were ethnologists with substantial fieldwork experience, but few had connected experience and theory as powerfully as Nakano did. Undoubtedly, both his theoretical insight and the fact that he wrote as a professor at Foundation University made his work invaluable to the Institute for Ethnic Research. There is little evidence that colonial ethnologists explicitly cited Nakano’s theories in their own fieldwork. Nonetheless, that is not the only, or even the best, way to assess his influence. Arguably, the Institute and Nakano were less interested in their influence on professional ethnology than in incorporating ethnology within a broader policy on ethnicity for the multi-ethnic Japanese Empire. This shift might also be understood as one from ethnological research to “national studies,” so long as it is clear that this definition of “nation” was a thoroughly ethnic one. It was precisely because of this attempt to shift attention from ethnology per se to the broader field of ethnic (national) studies that the sociological theories of Takata Yasuma and Nakano Seiichi were consistently highlighted in the publications of the Institute. What Nakano and his mentor provided was an overall framework for a policy that justified continued research on ethnicity in an empire where ethnicity, if not carefully controlled, could erupt at any minute into ethnic nationalist movements for independence. Furthermore, Nakano’s work not only justified the continuation of ethnic studies under a multi-ethnic Japanese empire, but provided an outline for how ethnic studies could contribute to the strengthening of regional stability under Japanese imperial rule. Nakano provided a regional framework in which research on ethnic groups in East Asia (especially those deemed “backward was more than merely tolerated: it was essential to intra-regional stability. Ethnic research was part of a broader structure in which it was the obligation of the advanced modern Japanese “ethnic nation” to lead other less developed ethnic groups towards eventual national expression. Inherent in this argument was Nakano’s sociological approach that grasped ethnic identity as an expression of subjective consciousness and therefore as malleable. Because ethnicity was not grounded in nature like race, ethnic identity could be shaped in infinite ways. Moreover, by introducing the distinction between ethnic and civic forms of nationality and by insisting on the necessity of mediating relationships between ethnicity and the political state, Nakano provided a theory for ethnic research that legitimated and even mandated the participation of Japanese scholars and officials in the shaping of ethnic and national identities in the Asian region. Yet, the ultimate emphasis was not on ethnicity. Nakano’s policy on ethnicity legitimated research on ethnic studies, but only insofar as the broader framework remained a multi-ethnic, political sense of nationality that all groups eventually would reach as they modernized. At present, he argued, that stage was only realized by the Japanese nation, and therefore if ethnic strife were to be avoided in the region, the Japanese state was the only force capable of preventing it. Perhaps Nakano’s greatest contribution to the debates on ethnicity during the 1930s and early 1940s was his attempt to reconcile ethnic identity with the obvious multi-ethnic realities of modem social life. While his conceptualization was not entirely original (he drew

Nakano SencHi and Colonial Ethnic Studies

127

much of it from Takata), he added a more regional and pragmatic focus to these attempts to reshape ethnic nationality. Moreover, close attention to Nakano’s theories on ethnic nationality reveals how even a liberalism premised on promoting multi-ethnic societies joined forces with less liberal theories derived from Nazi concepts of the Volk in the minzoku maelstrom of imperial Japan. There is undoubtedly much to learn from Nakano about Japanese imperialism, wartime Japanese anthropology, and even about the problem of ethnicity for present-day ethnologists and anthropologists around the world. Certainly, the lessons of Nakano’s ethnic studies are not limited to anthropologists or to Japan. They are timely lessons for any state or transnational organization that attempts to engage in ethnic intervention in the hopes of engineering more multi-ethnic political bodies.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Nakao Katsumi (4*4^^), Tachibana Mikiko (fSsS^ ^), Takada Eriko (KEB.15S7-) and Yasuda Toshiaki for their invaluable research assistance. References

Asano, Toyomi 2000 (1943) S'ft CoTj 10, 45-63. (The missing link: Japanese anthropology and ■ Institute of Pacific Relations before and during World War II. Smbusah'a kenl^u 10, 4563.) Barshay, Andrew E. 1996 Toward a history of the social sciences in Japan. Positions 4(2), 217-51. Brubaker, Rogers 1992 Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Doak, Kevin M. 1995 Colonialism and ethnic nationalism in the political thought of Yanahara Tadao (18931961). East Asian history 10, 79-98. 1998 Culture, ethnicity and the state in early Twentieth Century Japan. In Japan's competing modernities: Issues in culture and democracy 1900-1930 (ed.) Sharon Minichiello. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. 2001 Building national identity through ethnicity. The journal ofJapanese studies 27, 1-39. Greenfeld, Liah 1996 Nationalism and modernity. Social research 63(1), 3-40. Ishida Takeshi (SElifi) 1984 (Japanese social science. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.) Maruyama Masao (AlhSJ?) 1957(1996) 55 7 e, (On the status of

128

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Paohc

thought. Reprinted in Collected works of Makuyama Masao, vol. 7, pp. 151-74. Tokyo; Iwanami Shoten.) Minami Hiroko 1998 rif&is-j rsaftH Kir: sk (Nakano Seiichi. In ,4 biographical sketch of modern Japanese sociologists: A bibliographic study (eds) Kawai Takao and TaKEMURa Hideki. Tokyo; Keis5 Shobo.) Miyazawa Eriko 1997 Kir : (Foundation University and ethnic harmony. Tokyo: Fuma Shobo.) Nakano Seiichi 1935 = lo A^S-, 91-122. (A close examination of the nation as community of fate theory. ShSgaku idkyU (October), 91-122.) 1937a rsi^hpg«lj ---- 05. 109-31. (Society and class. Social science: Annals of the Japanese Social Scientists (ed. Odaka Kunio) 5, 10931. Tokyo; Iwanami-shoten.) 1937b 6 1-28. (Nation and tradition. Shogaku tSkyii (Joao), 128.) 1937c 12 1-32. (Nation and social cultural tendencies. Shogaku tokyu (December), 1-32.) 1938a riS=^ftfKJ 6 fl 86-112. (The concept of unity in the ethnic group. SftSgafo tokyu (June), 86-112.) 1938b rStaatsnation t KulturnationJ fS^WJEJ 12 fl-?-, 1-30. (Staaisnatlon and Kultumarion. Shdgaku tokyii (December), 1-30.) 1941 —ssifflasKam rwsEKEj 1.15-77, isa* (The requirements for a policy on nationality for Manshukoku: The outline of the nationality policy for Manshukoku, part 1. Research reports of the Research Institute ofFoundation University 1,15-77. Graduate School, Foundation University.) 1944 rKKW^EKrfiSJ 1. 19-6. KK : KKW?e0f. (An unfolding of the principle of nationality in East Asia. Bulletin of the Ethnic Research Institute 1,19-69. Tokyo: Ethnic Research Institute.) Nakao Katsumi (4*4®^) 1994 52,135-43. kk : sawis. (Colonial cdinology: The activities of the Manshu Ethnological Association. Hermes 52, 135-43. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.) 1997 rSKBfjeBrOffiatffiBl---- 62(1), 47-65. (The organisation and activities of the Institute of Ethnology; Japanese ethnology during the Second World War. JapaneseJournal ofethnology 62(1), 47-65.) Odaka Kunio (ed.) (^K^ttlB) 1934 FfeefKl---- 2, KK : (Social science: Annals of the Japanese Social Scientists 5. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.) Oyama Ikuo (:A;i1j8(^) 1923(1947) rSr&oittWKiSlS—r:*:UJ^ilS IP 1 KK 1 (The social foundation of politics: Political scientific

Nakano Sehcm and Colonial Ethnic Studies

129

reflections on social struggles over state policy. Reprinted in Collecled works o/Otmu Ikuo, vol. I. Tokyo: ChQo Koron-sha.) Shimizu Akitoshi 1999 Colonialism and the development of modem anthropology in Japan. In Anthropology and colonialism in Asia and Oceania (eds) Jan van Bremen and Akitoshi Shimizu. London: Curzon Press, Stocking, George W., Jr. 1993 The tum-of-the-century concept of race. Modernlsm\modernlty 1,4-16. Takata Yasuma 1944 rSKfifSSSfeSJ l, 2-I8. KK ; (Basic issues for a nationality policy. Bulletin of the Ethnic Research Institute 1. 2-18. Tokyo: Ethnic Research Institute.) Tsukase Susumu (^SiSiS) 1998 rStSIIS CRKfifilJ (Manshukoku: The true face of 'Ethnic karmorgi'. Tokyo: Yoshilcawa-kohnnkan )

Selves and Others in Japanese Anthropology

Teruo Sekimoto

I. Introduction

One way to understand the general characteristics of, and long-term trends in, Japanese anthropology is to examine the geographical distribution of its anthropological research. This paper raises two initial questions. The first question is on which geographical areas Japanese anthropologists have been focusing in the last six decades. The second question is how its pattern of area focus has been changing over the years. A simple, practical way to answer these questions is a statistical survey of the articles published in Japanese anthropological journals.'* The Japanese Society of Ethnology, the national association of socio-cultural anthropologists in Japan, was founded in 1934. The inaugural number of its quarterly journal, Mimokugaku kenkyu came out the next year. The journal was given the English title, the Japanese journal of ethnology (referred to as JJE below), some years later. The journal has been published for nearly seventy years up to the present. Although a couple of newer anthropological periodicals have appeared in Japan since the 1960s, the JJE remains the main publication for Japanese anthropologists, thus reflecting the general, long­ term trends in Japanese anthropology. Between its start in 1935 and the year 1994, the JJE carried a total of 1,267 articles with a specific area focus, besides a few that were theoretical or comparative. The breakdown of the 1,267 articles, firstly by the different time periods of their publication, and secondly by their geographical focus, will enable us to grasp the changing pattern of the area focus in Japanese anthropology. II. The classification of periods and areas For the purpose of temporal classification, the sixty years during which the JJE has been published are divided into six consecutive periods, each covering about ten years, corresponding to ten volumes of the journal. The first period from 1935 to 1944 was the time of war and militarism, which benefited the first generation of modern Japanese anthropologists. The government and the military supported anthropological research in the colonies and the newly occupied territories in East and Southeast Asia, even though the support was only for a short duration. The second period covers the years from 1946, when the publication of the JJE resumed after two years of interruption, through 1956. It was a period of devastation immediately after the war, when the Japanese government and Japanese society were undergoing fundamental changes, and were striving to achieve economic survival and reconstruction. The third period, from 1957 to 1966, roughly

131

132

Warumb Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

corresponds to the initial stage of Japan’s high-speed economic growth, when an increasing number of Japanese began to enjoy a steadily rising standard of living but still considered themselves far behind the big powers in the West. Then, from 1966 on, came the fourth, fifth and sixth periods, during which Japan emerged as a major economic power. Japanese anthropologists during the second and third periods had little chance of travelling abroad. In the years immediately after the war, they had almost no funding resources. Even when the signs of economic recovery became apparent later, the government’s highly restrictive policy on foreign exchange prevented them from going abroad. The situation changed drastically in the 1970s. Finally, they had far better chances of doing long-term overseas field research, thanks to generous research funding by the government and the rapidly rising value of the yen. As will be shown below, these changes over the last sixty years have deeply affected the way in which Japanese anthropologists have conducted their research. The selection of geographical areas is directly related to the main point in this paper, which is concerned with the area focus of Japanese anthropological research. However, this issue is far more problematic than the temporal division discussed above. Since geographical boundaries are determined by political and cultural factors, they are inherently ambiguous and unstable. To ask to what extent Japanese anthropologists have conducted research in Japan rather than in foreign countries immediately raises the question: where does Japan’s home territory end and where does that of foreign countries begin? There is no fixed answer to this question, for the political boundaries of Japan have moved back and forth since the formation of the modem state in the nineteenth century. The problem is not simply the chronological shifts in the definition of Japan in administrative and diplomatic terms, but involves diversified, and often contested, images of Japan as a bounded entity on the world map.^’ The Japanese modern state in the pre-war and wartime years had its colonies. The definition of the term "colony,” however, is far from being clear-cut. There is a unanimous consensus that Korea was a Japanese colony under modem Japanese colonial expansion. Present-day Japanese are accustomed to thinking that Japan surrendered all its former colonies in the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952. However, it must be remembered that Hokkaido and Okinawa, which are part of today’s Japanese territory, were colonized by Japan through a long historical process in pre-modem times. The demarcation between Japan, the suzerain, and its colonies contains other ambiguities, too. The wartime cliche, “we, the one hundred million imperial subjects (—SEK)’’ included people in the colonies and, on world atlases published in Japan, both Japan and its colonies were painted red. Nevertheless, there was a clear-cut dichotomy between the so-called “homeland” (natchi, F*3 St) and the “overseas areas” (gaichi, i'Ufe). 1 remember from my boyhood days in Hokkaido in the 1950s that people there referred only to the lands beyond the Tsugaru Strait as naichi. The geographical location of borders has been changing all through Japanese modem history, but the Japanese have retained a belief in the existence of a border between the “homeland” and the “territories overseas,” and the inherent homogeneity of the people living within the first area. The historical formation of this awareness of Japan as a bounded entity deeply influenced the formation and resultant shape of Japanese anthropology. As I shall argue in this paper, the move “beyond the border” has been one of its basic driving forces,

Selves and Others in Japanese Anthropoloqy but without a serious contemplation of the problematics of Japanese border formation, both in political and social-psychological terms. As shown in Table 1, I first divide the world into seventeen sub-areas. These sub-areas are so divided and arranged as to make concentric circles with the core area of Japan at the centre. Then, the sub-areas are grouped into five larger areas, each of which has historically held a different type of relation to the modem Japanese state. Area I represents what I call “Core Japan,” from which the formation of the modem Japanese state started in 1868. It roughly corresponds to the present territory of the Japanese state, but excludes Hokkaido. Okinawa, and Amami. Basically the JJE articles dealing with Areal are about ethnic Japanese. This area may well be called Yamato, one of the old names standing for Japan, but there is no consensus among present-day Japanese anthropologists

Table 1

The area distribution of the articles in the Japanese loumal of elhnoloav from 193510 1994

Period

I

n

lU

IV

V

VI

1935 -44

1946 -56

1957 -66

1966 -76

1976 -86

1986 -94

53

46

41

27

327

23 19 42

12 3 15

13 4 17

14 4 IS

94 70 164

Area UL Colonized territories Sakhalin/Kuril 26 11 11 Korea 845 Taiwan 33 21 8 Micronesia Ig 2 6 Subtotal 85 38 30

1 4 5 5 15

2 11 9 5 27

3 5 8 0 14

52 37 84 36 209

during WWII 14 9 14 37 28 46

14 27 4]

134 128 262

5 13 1 2 27 5 5 7 65

9 22 0 5 7 8 9 4 64

40 64 fl

Area Areal Japan (Core area)

95 63 Area U. Temlories of Japan’s early expan^inn Okinawa/Amami 9 23 Hokkaido 10 30 Subtotal 19 S3

Area IV. lerrtlories under Japanese military invasion before and China/MoneoHa 41 33 23 Southeast Asia 18 4 28 Subtotal 59 37 51

Tout ""

Area V. Other areas

Oceania (excluding Micronesia) South Asia Central Asia Middle East Africa Europe US/Canada Latin America Subtotal total

6 3 2 0 1 6 3 1 22

7 5 3 2 1 10 9 6 43

2 9 2 2 0 2 10 5 32

II 12 0 12 23 7 4 10 79

23 59 38 40 33 305

280 234 208 171 210 164 1,267 TJ-.2 figures indicate the number of articles that deal with each geographical area for every ten-year period, inew! aiT few articles which are theoretical or cross-cultural without a specific area focus. They are exciUaCa tron the table. **

134

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and ths Paqfic

about the proper choice of a word. It is just an unmarked category, lacking a well-established

name. Area n consists of Hokkaido and Okinawa-Amami. The former is the northernmost of the four major islands of Japan, while the latter is a long island chain extending between Kyudm and Taiwan, forming the southernmost territory of Japan today. It is in Area II that the modern Japanese state embarked on its first attempt at territorial expansion and colonization. When the Meiji government began its efforts to build the modem nation-state of Japan in the 1860s, the status of those areas was still ambiguous. Hokkaido, before the Meiji era, was called Ezochi (SW%). the land of the Ezo (Ainu). It was not considered a part of Japan, but an outer territory inhabited by barbarians, The Meiji government gave it a new name, Hokkaido, which means “Northern Province," and started a major scheme to colonize with ethnic Japanese the then sparsely populated frontier. Hokkaido was soon fully incorporated into Japan’s territory. The Ainu people were far outnumbered and marginalized by the new settlers. Okinawa and Amami, however, have followed a different path of history from that of Hokkaido. The area used to form the domain of the small semi-autonomous Kingdom of the Ryukyus, which had long been a tributary of the Ming and Qing dynasties of China. The feudal lord of the Satsuma domain in southern Kyushu subjugated the Ryukyus in the seventeenth century, annexed Amami and, since that time, exploited the kingdom of the Ryukyus - now reduced to the territory to Okinawa - economically, but the Japanese overlords at Satsuma continued to respect its status as a tributary of Qing for the sake of their economic interests. Thus, the Ryukyus were mostly autonomous but in a double-tributary relationship to China and Satsuma. The Meiji government was determined to fully annex the Ryukyus as part of Japan. Of the many islands stretching over the ocean, the southern twothirds became Okinawa Prefecture, while the northern part of the islands, Amami, were incorporated into Kagoshima Prefecture (the former domain of Satsuma). Instead of sending a large number of ethnic Japanese to colonize Okinawa, the Meiji government adopted an assimilation policy, to make faithful members of the Japanese nation out of the local people. For that purpose an intense cultural inculcation and strict discipline were imposed on them for a long time after the annexation of Okinawa. At present, the two areas, Hokkaido and Okinawa-Amami, are fully incorporated into Japan. It is, however, in those areas that the notion of national homogeneity is most often betrayed by reality. In Hokkaido, the long marginalized Ainu are building up their ethnic awareness. In response to this movement, the government set up an advisory group on Ainu affairs, which proposed in 1996 that the Ainu be officially recognized as a minority ethnic group within the Japanese nation. This is remarkable, because after World War II the government had long stuck to the assumption of the mono-ethnic composition of the Japanese nation. Unlike the Ainu, who are a very small, scattered minority among the population of Hokkaido, Okinawans are the great majority in their home islands. They have suffered continuously from their marginal status in modem Japan: from one of the fiercest battles in World War II, with heavy civilian casualties; from the U.S. military occupation up to 1972; and from a heavy concentration of U.S. military bases until now. The shared experience of these sufferings, coupled with their own cultural heritage from the pre-modern

Selves and Others in Japanese Anthropology

135

past, sometimes unites them against the mainland Japanese, at least in cultural terms.’' Area III includes Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, Korea, Taiwan and the former mandated islands under Japanese rule in Micronesia. They are former Japanese colonies that gained independence or were incorporated into other nations after World War 11. Area IV is China, Mongolia and Southeast Asia. Japan, in the process of imperialist expansion, once considered these areas to be strategically of vital importance. A puppet government was established in Manchuria m the 1930s, which later brought about the Japanese invasion of other parts of China. Next, Southeast Asia experienced a Japanese invasion and occupation as part of its all-out war against the Allied powers. Area III formed the outer territories of the Japanese Empire, while Area IV belonged to the “Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere." It should be noted, howeva-, that Japanese imperialist involvement with China had a much deeper historical background than with Southeast Asia. Finally, Area V represents all other areas in the world. in. Analysis

Figure I shows the proportion of the JJE articles dealing with the five areas for each of the ten-year periods. I thus make a five-fold classification of world areas in order to examine how Japanese anthropological research has been, and is. determined by the changing boundaries and foreign relations of the Japanese state. I, however, do not maintain that Japanese anthropological research has consistently and intentionally served the state’s political interests. But, it is true that Japanese anthropology was implicitly involved with state policy, and sometimes even rather directly. Ishida Eiichiro writes on his wartime memory: In the wartime, some ethnologists persuaded the military to set up the National Institute of Ethnic Studies and made the Japanese Society of Ethnology into its affiliated institution, thus demonstrating their eagerness to mobilize Japanese ethnology in service of the state’s ethnic policies of the so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prospority Sphere. This attitude has left a long-lasting impression that ethnology is guilty of war crimes, which led Japan to its final catastrophe. [.,.] I had a lot of bad feelings against both the public and the private life of those senior ethnologists at the time who were proudly following the haughty high officers of the army. (Ishida 1970; 17,19) Japanese anthropologists have not discussed publicly what this involvement by ethnologists in the war effort meant to their own discipline. Rather, the problem was treated as off-therecord stories and personal episodes. This attitude was, and still is, detrimental to the development of Japanese anthropology. It is irrelevant here to classify scientific disciplines into those who were guilty of war and those who were not. It is, however, also not necessary to defend those ethnologists with the plea that they could not but cooperate with the military in those days, What we should examine is not the particular attitude and behavior of particular anthropologists at a specific time, but the whole historical context of modem Japan within which Japanese anthropology has so far developed. The problem is what kind of historical formation of modem Japan has determined the shape of Japanese anthropology.

136

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia ano tub Pacific

and how the way of conducting anthropology is related to Japan’s modem history. The majority of Japanese anthropologists, in each epoch of modem history, passively took the geo-political environment of the modem Japanese state as a given factor without questioning it. In so doing, they pursued personal dreams while putting contemporary political problems in parentheses. Most anthropologists have not made any political commitments, but remained part of the apolitical mass of people who have just followed the trends of each historical period. What were the effects on Japanese anthropology that were caused by this tendency ofclimbing on the bandwagon? Here, 1 return to, and analyze, the statistics on the geographical focus of Japanese ethnographic research. What patterns of change over the last sixty years emerge from Table I? Among the patterns of change, some clearly reflect the whole pattern of the national historical process over the past sixty years, that is, from the imperialistic expansion leading to the war, the defeat in World War II, the subsequent reduction of Japan’s territory and foreign relations, and finally to Japan’s re-emergence as a major economic power due to its rapid economic growth. On the other hand, some patterns of change are not directly related to that general process of history. This is particularly clear in Area 1, or “Yamato.” First, let us examine those patterns of change that refiect the national historical process. First, we notice that the percentage of research in the countries in Area III was the highest in the first period when Japan still ruled them as overseas colonies, but that it has been declining fast since then. Secondly, the percentage of research for the countries of Area V was very low during the first three periods (1935-1966), but increased steeply after that, to the extent that it surpassed all the other areas. This is the result of Japan’s rise as an economic power. Area IV shows no clear pattern of change. If, however, we look into figures for each sub-area in Area IV, Southeast Asia shares the same pattern of sudden increase as Area V. This is in strong contrast to China and Mongolia, whose percentage, like that of Area III, has been constantly declining from its height in the first period. The statistics thus reveal the marked priority that Japanese anthropologists have given to more remote countries over neighboring areas, once the rapid growth of the Japanese economy freed researchers

from various obstacles to their research Japanese anthropologists before and during World War II focused their research heavily on people in the colonized and occupied territories. In that respect they followed a path similar to that of their colleagues in the West.*' The percentage for Area HI dropped abruptly after the war. The loss of its colonies, the anti-Japanese sentiment and policies in those areas, and economic hardship were the simple reasons for that. It is striking, however, that the percentage dropped further after 1966 and has remained low until now. even though external factors hindering research have been removed. The reason for this is not simple, if we take into consideration the differences among the sub-areas within Area III. The JJE articles dealing with Korea, for example, have been relatively small in number and show no meaningful pattern of change. The number was small even during the 1935-1944 period, when Korea was still Japan’s largest and most important colony. For Japanese anthropologists then, with their strong orientation toward “primitive” societies, Korea might not have been a favorite site for research. The relative lack of interest in Area III in ±e periods after 1966, however, is attributable to the marked rise of research on Area V, which

Selves and Others in Japanese Anthropology

137 PO-er, Japanese ant^opologists have gained newer and wider possibilities of research all over lhe globe As

’» P«"°ds V-VI, and South Asia in Penod VI are conspicuous examples of their move toward new. more remote areas These tZcXT ^‘f^°Pologists much more than the former colonies, even his? n’ " "« geographically and historically, but also in terras of accumulated scientific knowledge.

" centriftigal tendency to move out of Japan and farther Zluh^H r" 7 T"*** •« ''«P «ne's distance from the accumulated Uadition of previous research The centrifugal tendency is seen in Area 11. as well m which we found a different pattern of change from the other areas. The percentage for Area H was at its highest dunng the first two decades after the war (1946-1966) but ve^ Xnfr 7 Al lhe time centnfiigal tendency in Japanese anthropology could find its only niche in the study of Okinawa-Araami and the Ainu in Hokkaido. to the last sixty years of its history, Japanese anthropology has been seeking people in the

"7 been defined differently at various times by national and international politics. The centrifugal 7a is « search for the “maximally other.” The colonized peop es (Area III) m Period I, the marginalized peoples (Area II) in Periods IMII and the peoples IO faraway countries (Area V and Southeast Asia) in Periods IV-VI have successively exemplified the “maximally other” to Japanese anthropologists. However they have not so far seriously questioned the political space within which this otherness was defined but have passively accepted it as a given fact. Political space has not just been an external factor himtmg the centriftigal tendency of anthropologists. Rather, the latter has been a product of the former. Anthropologists create “others” not in opposition to the political space but, rather, out of it. The changing pattern of anthropological research in Japan has thus closely reflected the changing position of the Japanese state in the world over the years. Area I. however is an anomaly in this regard. The percentage of the JJE articles on ethnic Japanese (Area I) was very high in the first period (1935-1944) but has dropped since then, with the lowest point in toe latest penod (1986-1994). Unlike other areas, however, the changes in the percentage we 7or1d in ‘he 7- H 77* 7^ during the first and second Au" Percentage for Area I did not decrease during the third and fourth periods. The percentage stayed very high for the first thirty years after the

7’ 751

Area I thus seems less affected by the short-term changes Japan has experienced over the years than the other areas A closer look at the articles for Area I will reveal the reasons for its distinctiveness Of the //£ contrtoutors in the first period, those who focused on the ethnic Japanese stand out because of the diversity of their disciplinary backgrounds. Included are such fields as folklore, rural and urban sociology, linguistics, mythology, history of religion, and Japanese

r 138

Wartime Japanese Anthropology w Asia and the Pacihc

archaeology among others. Folklorists contributed many articles to the indr^ng four by Hayakawa Kdtaro and two by Miyamoto Tsuneichi )• Rural sociologists such as Suzuki Eitaro were another group of outstanding contributors. Also appearing in the JJE in the first period were artKles by such famo^ scholars as Harada Toshiaki (KiafeW). Takeda Hisakichi (SlfflAif), Seki Keigo (TO MA-reuMURA Takeo and Kon Wajiro The in its first penod, wai not so much a journal of a well-established discipline as that of a small circle of independent scholars gathering around Shibusawa Keizo (i&iSS!c=) as their patron and mentor. Prewar and wartime anthropologists did not have positions in Japanese unwcrsities, with the exceptions of Keijo Imperial University and Taihoku Imperial University in the colonies For these independent scholars who were connected among others by personal ties, the broad variety of contributions in the JJE might not have been strange in any sense. Under the generic title of Japanese ethnology, the cooperation across disciplines persisted till the 1970s Their common interest was a search for the socio-cultural distinctiveness of the Japanese, and the scholars with different backgrounds gathered around the JJE to discuss the theme across disciplinary boundaries. That was possible because the Japanese Society of Ethnology which publishes the JJE, was a congregation of independent scholars without positions in universities and research institutions.” The present-day Japanese anthropologists especially the younger generation among them, however, could not imagine their historical descent from this congregation of scholars of various interests. Professional ttam.^ of anthropologists in higher educational institutions only began after the 1950s. What eventually resulted was a discipline of anthropology that was based on the methods and theories of Durkheim, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard and other notable Western scholars. adopting fieldwork in different cultures as the core method. The high percentage of research in Area I, in the first period, reflected the role ofthey/fi during that time as a trans-disciplinary medium for free-spirited (and scientifically nonrigorous) ethnological search into the origins and distinctive character of the Japanese. This tradition of scientific boundary crossing persisted long after the end of the war, most prominently among the researchers in the field of ethnic Japanese studies and. secondly, among researchers working on the marginalized people in Area 11. This is the reason why the proportion of the articles on Area I did not decline up to the 1970s. In contrast, the.JJE articles focusing on outer areas (Areas in to V) were mostly written by more disciplineoriented anthropologists, even in the early period. The proportion of the articles on Area 1 dropped rather sharply in the periods after 1976 because anthropology had become more institutionalized, and the scientific boundary crossing m search of the origins and distinctiveness of the ethnic Japanese has lost its popularity amoi^ the younger generation of scholars. Also lost were the personal ties that united the independent scholars. Because scholars with different disciplinary orientations such as folklorists, rural sociologists and Japanese arohaeologists were now contributing to journals of their own, the JJE became a journal for fully specialized anthropology. Without the habit of disciplinary border crossing, anthropology per se is now dominated by the aforementioned centrifugal tendency of moving away from Japan. That has been the way Japanese anthropology has developed after World War 11.

I

: j

j

j , . | .

I 1 j j .1 3 9 I

Selves and Others in Japanese Anthropology

139

Because anthropology was fashioned as the study of Native Americans in the U.S.A., and as African and Australian studies in Britain, anthropology has colonial studies as its origin. Contrary to this, Japanese anthropology, in its formative years, showed much interest in the Japanese people and culture. As we have seen above, however, the institutionalization of post-war Japanese anthropology, with its securing of teaching positions in universities, led to the centrifugal tendency to move away from Japan. Even today, some Japanese anthropologists are working on Japan proper, or “Yamato," but most of their research is case studies done in a haphazard way, trying to apply anthropological theories, concepts and methods to arbitrary cases within the national border. What is lacking is a systematic program for Japanese studies by anthropologists. In quantitative tenns, fieldworks conducted in Japan are relatively scarce without the systematic accumulation of results, thus not forming an established field of study. Once, for a decade or two just after World War n, a sizable number of researchers worked on Okinawa and the Ainu in Hokkaido on the fringe of the national territory, but this small boom was a story of the past within Japanese anthropology. Whereas groups of specialists are formed and research results are accumulated in the anthropological research of Asia, Oceania, Africa and Latin America, Japanese studies lack such a concentration and accumulation. Japanese anthropology has no firm platform of discussion in the field of Japanese studies. Some Japanese anthropologists became extremely popular outside academia on account of their theories of the Japanese in comparative perspective. Two best-selling books, Umesao Tadao’s Bunmei no se'uai shikan (Umesao 1967) and Nakane Chie's Tate shakai no ningen kankei (Nakane 1967). had a tremendous impact and contributed to the popularizing of anthropology among the general reading public in Japan. At the time of publication, both these authors were already well established as leading anthropologists on account of their work abroad. Their theories on the Japanese, however, are based on personal intuition and imagination, lacking a clearly defined method that can be transmitted to students by professional training. In the current system of high education in Japan, graduate students of anthropology are trained in long-term field research in small communities abroad. Then, they develop their own style of research through direct and indirect dialogue with the local people of their fields. Looking back from the current state of affairs, the centrifugal tendency in Japanese anthropology was determined by the logic of disciplinary institutionalization. In the early decades, Japanese anthropology was a loosely defined discipline, shared by free-spirited independent scholars. After it secured positions in universities with its own professional training system, it needed its own subject matter and methods of research to clearly set itself apart from other competing disciplines that had since long well-established. Then, anthropologists found their subject matter in tribal and peasant societies in the Third World, and their method in long-term, intensive research. Together with these developments toward institutionalization, the training was routinized for graduate students of anthropology to become professionals by conducting field research abroad and publishing the results in anthropological journals. This process of change was a gradual one, taking place between the 1950s and 1970s. First, a few university positions were opened to anthropologists. Then, established anthropological theories and methods were brought in from Western Europe and

140

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

North America. Finally, chances for overseas field research were opened to more and more anthropologists. During this long process of change, the loosely defined interest in the Japanese and their way of life in general, which early anthropologists shared with Yanagita Kunio (WfflSS), Shibusawa Keizo, Miyamoto Tsuneichi and others, receded into the background. So long as “Japan and the Japanese” had been the main subject of research, it would have been hard for anthropologists to demonstrate a disciplinary uniqueness of their own. In order to insist that anthropology had its own subject and method, field research in the Third World was the best choice for them. Explaining the centrifugal tendency of Japanese anthropology by the logic of its disciplinary institutionalization, however, is no more than an a posteriori reasoning, since gradual development was apparently a smooth process without much overt tension or debate. Anthropologists did not ask themselves why they moved their focus from Japan to the Third World. Serious self-reflection about the methodology of Japanese anthropology was lacking. Moreover, they shared an implicit and personal desire to be away from Japan without the effort of building a new methodology by turning their desire into a clear logic. By the mid-1930s, pioneers of Japanese anthropology such as Oka Masao (ISHEffi) parted with the group of Japanese folklorists led by Yanagita. Instead of following YanaGita’s insistence to limit their research only to the Japanese themselves, they sought wider comparative studies of different peoples, or ethnology. Several recollections and research exist about how this early stage of Japanese anthropology took place, though mostly in an anecdotic way (Miyamoto 1972; Kamishima 1973). The fact that a high percentage of the JJE articles were devoted to studies of ethnic Japanese until the mid-1970s might seem counter to the argument of the centrifugal tendency of Japanese anthropological research discussed above. However, the tendency was already strong among the early leaders of Japanese anthropology, and eventually resulted in its institutionalization. Since many JJE contributors in the field of ethnic Japanese studies had disciplinary backgrounds other than anthropology, they had no need to institutionalize it as a separate discipline. On the other hand, the early leaders of Japanese anthropology strove hard for the recognition and institutionalization of anthropology. In its early years, Japanese anthropology was formed and developed around a loosely defined interest in the Japanese. However, so long as its object of research was the Japanese, it had difficulty in establishing its own subject matter and methods of research in competition with older, better-established disciplines. The hidden tension between its original interest in the Japanese and its centrifugal tendency was eventually resolved in favor of the latter. As Japanese anthropology gradually transformed itself from a congregation of independent scholars outside academia to a university-based discipline, anthropologists shifted their focus more and more exclusively to tribal and peasant societies in the Third World. This was also a transition from the period of self-made anthropologists to that of anthropological training in universities, and the method of intensive fieldwork. This transformation, which took place gradually from the late 19SOs through the 1970s, was apparently a smooth process without much tension or debate. It was smooth because Japanese anthropologists could find ready-made models in British and American anthropology. Moreover, the transformation coincided with Japan’s rise as an economic

Selves and Others in Japanese Anthropology

141

power. In the 1970s and I9S0s, many universities and research institutions opened new posttions for anthropologists. Funding resources were expanded for anthropological research. Since that time, Japanese anthropologists have been conducting field research all over the world. In retrospect, though, some critical questions were left unexamined in this seemingly prosperous state of Japanese anthropology. One of them is that of the centrifugal tendency Why do so many Japanese anthropologists prefer foreign countries for their research and more remote countries for that matter? The typical answers given to this question say that anthropology is the comparative study of different human groups instead of a narrowly egocentric study of one’s own group; that it can relativize itself in juxtaposition to others; that one can better understand oneself by knowing others, and so on. Despite their merits as moral admonitions, these answers present a difficulty in that they are given without the historical context. The centrifugal tendency has led Japanese anthropologists to go in search of “others” as a category opposite to that of themselves. As has been shown above, however, the Japanese state and the larger political circumstances surrounding it basically determine who the “others” are. In Japanese anthropology, both the centrifugal tendency and the romanticized search for the ethnic Japanese have accepted this political space as a given fact, and worked in ways complementary to each other, one from without and the other from within. To ask why anthropologists study “others” may seem an unfhiitfiil question, but one can ask how “selves” and “others” for the Japanese have been constructed in the process of state formation and nation-building, and how the shape of Japanese anthropology has been determined by that process. Notes 1) In Japan, physical anthropologists have a much older organization of their own, from which socio­ cultural anthropologists, as newcomers to Japanese academia, have been institutionally separated. The termi! “anthropology” and “anthropologists” are used in this paper as shorthand for socio­ cultural anthropology and socio-cultural anthropologists. 2) In Anderson’s words it is “a detachable piece of a jigsaw puzzle” or “the map-as-logo ” (Anderson 1991:175) 3) The twenty-six years of the American occupation brought about a peculiar twist to the Okinawan’s sense of regional autonomy. During that period “Return Okinawa to the Fatherland” became the dominant slogan among them, and the “Fatherland” meant Japan. Now, twenty-four years after its reunification with Japan, voices for Okinawa’s cultural autonomy are again gaining strength. 4) There was, however, a significant difiercnce between the Japanese and Western anthropologists at the time. Figure I mdicates that “anthropology at home” was as important for the Japanese anthropologists as “colonial anthropology,” seeing that the percentage of the JJE articles devoted to Area I (the ethnic Japanese) in the first period was even higher than for Area 11! (colonized territories). I will return to this later. 5) A couple of universities began offering positions to socio-cultural anthropologists in the 1950s, but It IS only since the 1970s that the positions multiplied and programs for anthropology began to flourish in Japanese universities,

142

Wartime Japanese Anthsotolooy in Asia and the Paopic

References Anderson, Benedict 1991 Imagined communilies. 2nd edition. London; Verso. IsinoA Eiichiro (EHK—®) 1970 ---- S-(tAa^=O^J rGB55-®^»J « 4 aiSC: (In search of humankind: Thirty years in cultural anthropology. In The collected works of Ishida Eiichiro, vol. 4. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo.) Miyamoto Keitaro ATP) :4±^A©>^a5fi)f5E—-SiSftSA&Si-^Sga^feSsXaj O : (Professor FURUNO Kiyoto and the time when ethnology was created in Japan. In Religion and culture among contemporary peoples: Social anthropological essays dedicated to Professor Furuno Kiyoto in commemoration of his seventieth anniversary (cd.) Commemoration Committee. Tokyo: Shakai Shiso-sha.) Nakane Chic (fpffi-f-S) 1967 (Human relations in a vertical society. Tokyo: Kodan-sha.) Umesao Tadao \3(,1 Sit: (A theory of the ecological history of civilisations. Tokyo; Chilo Koron-sha.)

Physical Anthropology in Wartime Japan

Atsushi Nobavashi

Introduction The research of physical anthropology is carried out with techniques of natural science. Therefore physical anthropology tends to easily accept a new technique. A good example is how DNA analysis reaches its peak in the physical anthropology of today. On the other hand, the purpose of physical anthropology in Japan has been consistent, even if it changes its method or analytical techniques. The purpose of physical anthropology is to investigate the morphology and physiological phenomena of human beings, to know the variation of them among each group and then to discuss the process of changing of human beings or each population in the past, present and future (Hasebe 1927: 7). Physical anthropology in Japan has progressed in line with this purpose and pursued a concrete issue. It is the origin of the Japanese race. When they refer to themselves, Japanese use various terms: Nihon-jin (B $ A, the people of Japan), Nihon-minzoku the mimoku of Nihon), Wa-jin (fUA, the people of Wa), Yamato-minzoku (the minzoku of Yamato), etc. All these terms seem to include a nuance of the Japanese as a homogeneous race. When physical anthropologists try to know the evolutional background of a particular group, they may compare it with its expected ancestors, living neighborhood groups and the expected ancestral neighborhood. Today, physical anthropologists advance such a study through genetic studies. They try to take DNA or protein from a living body or unearthed bones or teeth of human beings and analyze them. Morphology was the important and only method of investigating the relation between different populations before genetic sciences developed like today. Physical anthropologists had to observe and measure the living body or bones of human beings for (heir study. It is inappropriate to discuss the rights and wrongs of these methods in this paper. In order to understand the purpose and method of physical anthropology, this paper tries to discuss how the pursuit of the origin of the Japanese race was carried out and how the results of physical anthropology was used by others, especially those in political power.

I. Development of physical anthropology in Japan from its beginning to the end of WWII The history of Japanese anthropology has already been described by Kazuo Terada ^) in Japanese (Terada 1975). I will try to write a brief review on physical anthropology, before and after WWII with quantitative data on the number of articles on physical anthropology while referring to Terada’s work. Figure 1 adds up the number of articles

143

Wartime Japanese Anthropolocy in Asia and tub Pacdtc

144

every five years from 1885 to the end of WWII and later. The materials were a series of reports by Akiyoshi Suda (SaraW (Suda 1948, 1949, 1950a, 1950b, 1951, 1952, 1953b). It is pointed out that the number of articles increased suddenly from the end of the Taisho period. This is because the medical colleges of Japan were reorganized into universities by the University Establishment Ordinance in 1918. Physical anthropology became prosperous in the department of anatomy or forensic medicine expanded in this period. Terada comments on the situation of these days as follows: In the medical department, most graduates wanted a degree. It was the custom that they belonged to the department of basic medicine as postgraduates and did a study for a thesis to appear under a lesson of their supervisors. Most of the department of anatomy got many researchers in the making and conducted large-scale organized investigation. (Terada 1975:191) Japanese anthropology started in 1884 with Shogoro TsuBOl as the leader. He established the anthropological society of Tokyo with some scholars who specialized in various fields. Anthropology in Japan at that time contained physical and cultural anthropology, archaeology or prehistory, and ethnic study. A course in anthropology was established at the Imperial University of Tokyo in the early days. It, however, was not until the Showa era that the course accepted enrolled students to train as experts in anthropology. Accordingly, there were a few researchers who majored in anthropology in the early days, and the scholars from the medical departments or colleges did physical anthropological

studies. The origin of the Japanese race had already been an important theme. Anthropologists tried to investigate the relation between the Japanese people and others. The compared populations were different every time. We know that the Ainu were the first object of

—•—Ainu —•—Korea —•—Taiwan Chinese » Taiwan Natives —•— Mainland China -••-■Mongol -■"Philippina -•-Indonesia - - • - - Micronesia

Fig. 1

The Number of Articles on Physical Anthropology in Japan

Physical Anthropolooy in Wartime Japan

145

comparison with the Japanese. Most articles that appeared on this topic between 1880 and 1890 were written by Yoshikiyo Koganei These caused the “Kolobokle-Ainu dispute” with TsuBOi. Looking to Taiwan, investigations in physical anthropology was done from the early days in the colonial period. Ryuzo TORii principally did physical anthropological investigation m the early days. Toru received lessons from TsUBOl and practiced general anthropology. In Taiwan, where the political situation was still unstable, he conducted his research, including the morphological study of Taiwan aborigines. After 1920, the number of articles mcreased. From those days, the Governor-General could set their work on its way. It especially came to be able to control native Taiwanese according Io its development policy. There were more articles on Taiwan than other areas, after WWI. Takeo Kanaseki 3t:fc) contributed to physical anthropology in Taiwan during the colonial period and after the war. Kanaseki graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto Imperial University m 1923, and was immediately appointed an assistant professor of the Department of Anatomy. The well-known researchers Buntaro Adachi and Kenji Kjyono belonged to the Department of Anatomy, and Kanaseki came to have interests in physical anthropology. Kanaseki published essays on the origin of the Japanese race later and was one of the researchers who dealt with the origin of the Japanese race. In 1936, Kanaseki was promoted to a new post at Taihokui Imperial University and advanced his physical anthropological investigation energetically in Taiwan, Hainan Island, south China and Indonesia. Even after the war, Kanaseki continued his work at the medical school of the National Taiwan University, which Taihoku Imperial University had taken over, according to the request of the Republic of China. Kanaseki continued his research with Naoichi Kokubu and Taiwanese staff members of the Department of Anthropology, which the Institute of Ethnology had taken over, until 1949, This was a unique phenomenon that was not found in other foreign areas. Statistical techniques were introduced in physical anthropology before WWI. As statistical analysis was introduced, a change occurred in the methodology of physical anthropology. A large number of objects came to be needed to operate statistical analysis. Scholars were able to insist on a more persuasive theory with the result by statistical analysis if they secured samples. Tsunekichi Ueda {± was a professor of the Department of Anatomy at Keijo Imperial University. He contributed mostly to the introduction of statistical techniques in physical anthropology. In an interesting episode, Ueda once pointed out a defect in Kiyono’s statistical analysis, Kiyono then dispatched one of his students to Keijo to let him attend Ueda’s lecture on statistics for half a year (Terada 1975: 202). The Department of Anatomy at Keijo Imperial University, which was founded in 1924, hegame the center for the study of physical anthropology in Korea. The department conducted largescale organized investigation. One of the most important research projects done was a somatological survey on living Korean people from 1930 to the year of the end of WWII. We can understand their attitude to physical anthropology from the article “A physical anthropological study of Korean peoples in Keiki province,” co-authored by five scholars including Ueda (Ueda et al, 1942).

Wartime Japanese Anthropolocy in Asia and tjib PAcmc

146

Our department has already carried out an investigation measuring body sizes of Korean people until 1930. We published the result in the Journal of medicine in Korea in January 1934 We selected one group from each prefecture, did measurement of their body sizes and compared these results with the representative examples in each prefecture. However, we did not obtain enough samples and therefore we wanted to add more the new data. We did measurement of the body sizes of Korean people in Keiki-do, by family units, to wcct heredity in terms of quantitative hereditary characters or indexes. (Veda cl al. 1942. 4) Ueda and his colleagues argued that the physical differences between the Koreans in the middle Korea and the Japanese in the Kinki area were less than those among the Japanese in different areas in Japan. Ironically, this fact was very convenient for the Governor-General of Korea to govern the colony with the assimilation policy. 1 do not have enough data to discuss the effects that the Governor-General of Korea gave to Ueda and his department. But 1 can say that the stability- of public peace for the Japanese scholars in colonial Korea allowed Ueda and his colleagues to do the investigations with statistical analysis. It matured Keijo Imperial University into one of the centers for physical anthropology. In this paper, it is difficult to refer to the results on Indonesia or Micronesia owing to the scarcity of materials. In conclusion, a trend of increasing number of papers on physical anthropology corresponded to the expansion of areas where Japan controlled.

II. Homogeneous or heterogeneous

Physical anthropologists continued to pursuit the origin of the Japanese race. The interest of physical anthropology, however, was also a very important issue to governing colonial areas. When Japan governed its colonial areas, especially under the kominka (SRIt. Japanization) policy in the 1930s and 1'9403, it needed the proper reason for governing others. It was true that the model of the formation of the Japanese race, which physical anthropology had formulated, supported the formation of colonial ideology for governing colonial areas. At the Meiji Restoration. Japan was not poUticaUy or economically on equal footing with the Western powers. Academia was no exception to this rule. The Western scholars addressed firstly the origin of the Japanese race. Most of them regarded that the Japanese race had been formed as a result of mixed blood among different races. On the other hand, the origin of Japanese race has also been discussed for a long time in Japan. One of the earliest descriptions came from the Hitachikoh, fudoki in the eighth century and Hakuseki AraI who was a representative thinker of the eighteenth century in the Edo period, referred to the ancient stone tools. Western civilization, however, gave a strong impact on traditional values of Japanese. Japanese anthropologists were forced to begin their study with the outline set by Western scholars. Almost aU Japanese scholars agreed that the Japanese race was heterogeneous. But some scholars and intellectuals insisted that Japanese people were and must have been a homogeneous race. Myths such as Kojiki someume provided a basis for the homogeneity theory of the Japanese race. It advanced Kokutat-ron later (Oguma 1995:49-72). The two arguments later conflicted. It was true that the Japanese colonial government of Korea and Taiwan adopted the policy of assimilation. Japan could not find the proper reason for expanding its territory and

Physical Anthropology in Wartime Japan

147

admitting other nations as Japanese people, if they regarded Japanese as a homogeneous nation. Some people in the homeland, who believed in eugenics or racism, objected to the assimilation. Assimilation fundamentally pennits racial mixture between the colonizer and the colonized. The Japanese colonial government encouraged the raarriage between Japanese and colonial people, especially in Korea. The Governor-General of Korea positively adopted the reports of Ueda, which depicted that the Japanese and Korean peoples had common ancestors. As with Ueda, Kotondo Hasebe (fiSSS&A) and Kiyono brought new aspects to physical anthropology by introducing a statistical technique. At the same time, Tanemoto Furuhata who was a specialist of forensic medicine, had an effect on the academic world with his blood type study. The effect of their studies was not limited to physical anthropology, but extended to political circumstances. Their arguments were used by racists. The activities of racist were described by Oguma (1995: 249-70) in detail. They bad something to do with the association of ethnic hygiene of Japan. This association was established m 1930 as a bastion for racists and published the journal “Race hygiene.” The association’s platform was to exterminate the descent of those people who had hereditary diseases and infenor qualities, to encourage eugenic marriages and to increase the number of the Japanese race. (Oguma 1995:249). Furuhata insisted that the ratio of blood types differed between the Japanese and the neighboring populations and it meant that the Japanese race had been formed inside the Japanese blands a long time ago (Furuhata 1935). His argument implied that the Japanese race was homogeneous. Furuhata’s hypothesis suit eugenicists because they stressed that each race or ethnic group had their own ratio of blood types and it should be an index of the character or the ability of each population. Hasebe and Kiyono got involved with eugenicists or racists in the process of pursuing the origm of Japanese race. Hasebe graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the Imperial University of Tokyo and then successively joined the staff of the Imperial Universities at Kyoto, Tohoku, and Tokyo. One of his most important contributions was that to the establishment of the Department of Anthropology at the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1939. His effort allowed physical anthropology to train specialists in the discipline. Hasebe considered that the Japanese in the homeland consisted of mixed blood of two different populations, the Ishikawa and Okayama types. The latter was similar to what he considered the Korean people in his early work (Hasebe 1917). He, on the other hand, suggested the continuity from the people of the Stone Age (comprising Jomon and Yayoi periods) to the modern Japanese in the homeland (Hasebe 1917). Kiyono also made a similar argument to Hasebe. Kjyono especially referred to the relation beUveen the Ainu people and the stone age people. Kiyono argued that there was an original population in the Japan Islands and it had revolved to the Ainu or the modem Japanese while mixing blood with neighboring groups in northern and southern areas (Kiyono and Miyamoto 1926). These hypotheses of Hasebe and Kiyono do not necessarily deny the heterogeneity of the Japanese race. They, however, devoted themselves to the homogeneous Japanese race before and after wartime. They, in their writings or lectures, insisted that the mixture of blood had hardly had an influence on the formation of the Japanese race.

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific

148

HI. Physical anthropology in wartime As far as I referred to the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Nippon, physical anthropologists did not focus on colonial peoples or other foreign peoples during wartime. They canied out physical anthropological and archaeological investigations in the main islands of Japan. In other words, physical anthropologists continued to investigate their mam

issue, the origin of Japanese people. Most studies of physical anthropology in Japan had been conducted to determine the origin of the Japanese race. However, some investigations conducted during the war had nothing to do with that issue. Goto Uckida (WlHifil?) published a report of his research on the British and Australian prisoners of war (Uchida 1944a: 18-31; 1944b: 27-44). The investigation seems to have been done systematically in the prisoner’s camp. There had been few physical anthropological studies on Western people. The war gave Japanese anthropologists an opportunity for their survey on other races. Western people were an obvious other race to Japanese people. Interestingly he reported the colors of the eye and hair and the blood types at first Perhaps it should be important for him whether the objects were obvious others or not. If the objects were obvious others, the difference might be stressed. The war also guided physical anthropology to be a practical science. Hisashi Suzuki (» discussed the wartime project of trial manufacturing of gasmasks. Almost all ready­ made garments tend to be made without knowing the body sizes or shapes of the supposed users It is most regrettable that no one pays attention to such an issue, especially a loss on our social economy (Suzuki 1948: 7). Suzuki might have intended that this study should be made useful as a practical science. I once interviewed with Suzuki about the background of this article. Suzuki commented as follows: Ulis work was done in wartime. In those days. Japanese used gasmasks, which were designed in Europe. They were not necessarily fitted to Japanese people because the shape of face of Jananese people differed from lhai of European people. 1, therefore, tried to design the m^k fittine for Japanese. In wartime, gasmasks were used for pilots of high altitude airplanea. The war was finished before completing this study and no gasmasks were made either as producu or as a trial product. (Suzuki, personal communication) This kind of study may be interpreted as a by-product of the war. It. however, does not seem strange that almost all physical anthropologists, who were trained as doctors in the Faculty of Medicine, intended to apply physical anthropology to practical issues. This study was the first trial’for practical science to Japanese physical anthropology. When most scholars concentrated their interest on the origin of the Japanese race. Suzuki groped another direction of physical anthropology and his effort was tied to human engineering of later years

in Japan. Brief concluding remarks

It was true that the expansion of Japan gave physical anthropologists new fields for their studies. People of almost all areas where Japan controlled, were similar to the Japanese

Physkal Anthropology [n Wartime Japan

149

^ples in appearance. It is important that Japan did not control remote areas as the West did. Therefore, physical anthropologists were interested in the relation between the Japanese people and neighbonng peoples. It was an important key to discuss the origin of the Japanese race. Physical anthropology investigated living bodies, and unearthed bones and teeth of human beings with natural scientific techniques. The results of physical anthropology are only the biological background of human population. It has nothing to do with superiority or inf^onty of a specific group. On the other hand, it was true that the results from physical anthropologists were used by the various influences. The knowledge provided by physical anthropology has been based on the authority of natural science, and people are forced to accept them, It, therefore, may create a new myth regardless of the purpose of physical anthropology or the intentions of physical anthropologists. References

Furuhata Tanemoto (SifflaS) 1935 (Japanese people of .heir wood types. In The Japanese Race (ed.) The Anthropological Society of Nippon) Hasebe Kotondo A) 1927 IB^SAa^SJ : raftR,(,4n introduciion lo physical anthropology. Tokyo: Oka Shoin.) Kanaseki Takeo Je) 1976 ^rhe origin of,he Japanese. Tokyo: Hosei Univesity Press.) Kiyono Kenji and Miyamoto Hiroto • 'g^rl^A) 1926 16{8).(On the men of ±e stone age in Japan. Archaeologicaljournal 16(8).) Oguma Eiji (d'flS?e“)

1995

IMShin’yS-sha.) Suda Akiyoshi (SfHBS^)

1948

^^37)’*'*^

{The myth of a homogeneous nation. Tokyo:

(AK^SEEGJ 60(3). 123-36. (Bibliogmphy on physical Koreans. Jounw/ of the Anthropological Society of Nippon 6a{3},

r^^^SEAoAS^tcBarsiKJ rAffl^SJSBJ 61(1), 33-40, (Bibliography on physical anthropology of the Chinese in Formosa. Journal of the Anthropological Society ofNippon 61(1), 33-40.) 1950a (¥hlKS:^£r) 4i«J lASi^SSJ 61(2), 39-46. (Bibliography on physical anthropology of the aborigines (including Peipo) in Formosa. Journal ofthe Anthropological Society ofNippon 39-46 ) 1950b lASB^aiKJ 61(4), 34-48. (Bibliography on physical anthropology of the Amu. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Nippon 61(4), 341949

Wartimb Japakbss Antheopolooy in Asia and toe PAcmc

ISO 1951

1952

1953

TAS^iSKJ 62(1), 35-46, (Bibliography on physical anthropology of the Chinese. Journal ofthe Anthropological Society ofNippon 62(1), 3546.) rSfiA0Aa^UI15t«.Xiaj fAJS^JSSSJ 62(2). 40-6. (Bibliography on physical anthropology of the Mongol. Journal of the Anthropological Society ofNippon 62(2), 406.)

FAS^KUJ 62(3), 41-4. (Bibliography on physical anthropology of the South Chinese and the South Sea Islanders. Journal of the Anthropological Society ofNippon 62(3), 41-4.) 1953 FA ? D^vTAiOAS^lAM-r^iSHJ FAS^itBJ 62{3), 45-58. (Bibliography on physical anthropology of the Micronesia. Journal of the Anthropological Society of

Nippon 62(3), 45-58.) Suzuki Hisashi (i^Ai=i) 1948 rA®=^*SKJ 60(2), 55-62. (On the production of gasmasks suitable for the Japanese. Journal of the Anthropological Society ofNippon 60(2), 55-62.) Terada Kazuo (^d®^) 1975 (Anthropology in Japan. Tokyo; Shisaku-sha) UCHiDA Goro (rtniSSK) 1944a r?^@A®.t/SifflAmi opOKon. 3mH0zpa