Please submit a 2-page response paper on “Competing U.S.-Japan Colonial Imaginaries in the Pacific”
Read all the attached documents and summarize them into a cohesive, analytical, 2-page essay.
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3
The Adventures of Momotar in the South Seas
Folklore, Colonial Policy, Parody
The foundation of the expansion of the Japanese race must be laid while our youth are still in their cradles.
Imperialism must spark their desire for exotic lands and fire their dreams.
TSURUMI Y SUKE
Certain essential aspects of the world are accessible only to laughter.
MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
GO SOUTH, YOUNG MAN!
Between 1880 and 1945, Japanese journalists, writers, politicians, and patriots often promoted
Japan’s expansion into the South Seas (nan’y ), an area long dominated by Western powers.
The early twentieth century was the key turning point in the development of this expansionist
discourse. From this time on, the goal shifted from the development of trade ties with the
Pacific region to a more aggressive drive to increase the territory of the nation by conquest and
foreign settlement. During the Taisho period (1912–26), an “untiring spate of publications,
stereotypes, and slogans exerted considerable influence on the emergence of a South Seas
fever, an unmistakable mood for southern expansion.”1 These “publications, stereotypes, and
slogans” accompanied an important historical expansion of the Japanese empire toward the
South Seas. At the start of the First World War, Japan seized the islands of German-controlled
Micronesia and later ruled them in the interwar period under the mandate system of the League
of Nations. During the war, Japanese business firms took advantage of trade disruption
between Western powers and their colonies in Southeast Asia and vastly expanded their
commercial ties and economic presence in the region.2
The growing Japanese business stake in Southeast Asia led to a shift in the meaning of the
term nan’y , or the South Seas in Japanese parlance. After Japan acquired German possessions
of Micronesia in 1915, this new colony was referred to as the inner South Seas (uchi nan’y ),
to be distinguished from the much vaster and richer outer South Seas (soto nan’y ), which
designated areas not colonized by Japan. Moreover, the contours of nan’y shifted over this
time, sometimes including the Indian Ocean as well as Oceania and littoral Southeast Asia. In a
1915 article called “Waga nan’y dojin no kish ” (The Strange Customs of Our South Seas
Natives), Torii Ry z wrote: “What we Japanese call the South Seas [nan’y ] is practically a
meaningless term. The scope of the term differs according to who is using it, and it is a
nonscientific term; an equivalent term for what we call the South Seas does not exist in
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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Western countries.”3
In the home islands, the 1914 Tokyo Taisho Exhibition boosted public awareness of Japan’s
present footholds and future prospects in this vaguely defined region. The Taisho Exhibition
included colonial pavilions displaying Korea, Taiwan, Hokkaido, Karafuto, and, for the first
time, a South Seas pavilion, complete with tropical products and human showcases of South
Seas islanders. A columnist in the Jitsugy no Nihon (Business Japan) periodical in 1914
wrote: “When you enter the South Seas Pavilion, you feel as if surrounded by the atmosphere
of the South Seas. Against a backdrop of South Seas scenery, various tropical plants grow
luxuriantly while dolls representing the natives are hunting for gorillas and boa constrictors.
. . . The biggest novelty is a live display in which one can experience native islanders (twenty-
five in all) living in realistically constructed huts.”4 These “native islanders” included
representatives of the wild Sakai tribe, reputed to be cannibals. The journalist notes that,
notwithstanding their fearsome reputation, these natives were extremely “mild and well-
behaved when one actually met them” and that their cannibalism was “a thing of the past.”5
Nevertheless, the exhibit of live, albeit tamed, “cannibals” not only drew many curious
Japanese spectators to the pavilion but also served to confirm their own standpoint as civilized
spectators from an advanced country. Such media events in metropolitan Japan served to
reinforce stereotypes of the South Seas as a land inhabited by primitive peoples and wild
animals.
Aside from human showcases and imperial exhibitions, one can catch a glimpse of this
fascination with the South Seas in early twentieth-century Japanese fiction. Takenaka Tokio,
the protagonist of Tayama Katai’s 1907 story “The Quilt,” fantasizes about “cast[ing] himself
away in some colony in the South Seas” to escape from his infatuation with the aspiring female
writer Yoshiko who is placed under his charge.6 Tagawa Keitar , the hero of Natsume S seki’s
1912 Higan sugi made (To the Spring Equinox and Beyond), avidly reads Kodama Onmatsu’s
account of his exploration of Borneo and is especially fascinated by passages “describing
Onmatsu’s fight with an octopus monster that had escaped from its den.”7 While hunting
octopuses is “too fanciful an adventure to be contemplated,” Keitar imagines himself as the
superintendent of a rubber plantation, “his bungalow in the midst of a limitless plain filled with
millions of well-kept rubber trees.”8 If S seki shows how Japanese southern expansion shapes
the fantasy life of his young protagonist, in Anya k ro (A Dark Night’s Passing), published
between 1921 and 1937 in Kaiz , Shiga Naoya depicts the South Seas as a public, everyday
spectacle within urban Japan. Miyamoto, a young friend of the protagonist, Tokito Kensaku,
visits the aforementioned South Seas Pavilion several times to watch the dances of native
peoples.9 Finally, the young Tanizaki Jun’ichir publishes a one-act play called Z (The
Elephant) in 1910 about the reactions of ordinary Edo townsmen to a procession including an
elephant sent to Japan from an unnamed Southeast Asian kingdom located between India and
China. Though the work is set in the early Tokugawa period (1600–1867), it is also a spoof of
early twentieth-century expansionist discourse.10
Most writings about the South Seas were not works of literature but rather nonfiction
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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writings by advocates of Japan’s expansion toward the South (nanshinron).11 In his 1910
bestseller Nangokuki (An Account of the Southern Countries), the liberal politician Takekoshi
Yosabur coins the slogan “Go south, young man!” thereby inaugurating this outbreak of South
Seas fever.12 He also sets forth pell-mell several themes that become the stock-in-trade of later
works on the same subject: the Japanese are, by nature, a southern people and are racially
related to the Malays; the South Seas constitute a treasure trove of resources without which
“civilized” nations could not maintain their “present-day civilization and lifestyle”; for that
reason, “he who controls the resources of the tropics will control the markets of the world”;
finally, the future of Japan lies in the South Seas and its people should turn their attention to the
great task of “making the Pacific Ocean a Japanese lake.”13 Takekoshi devotes the last chapter
of his work to the topic of literature, which in his view separates the civilized Japanese from
the underdeveloped peoples of the South Seas and aligns them with the Western colonial
powers. He urges Japanese writers to emulate their Western counterparts and to establish a
“colonial literature that will stimulate the flagging energies of our youth by narrating the stories
and exploits of colonial pioneers.”14
Several years later, Tsurumi Y suke returns to the theme of “literature” in the preface to his
massive and lavishly illustrated travel book Nan’y y ki (Travel Sketches of the South Seas), a
summum of southern expansionist writing. For Tsurumi, the very word nan’y conjures up
visions of exotic tropical lands and a mood of nostalgic longing: “Rather than pondering the
political and economic question of developing the lands and ruling the people, I am more
deeply moved by the image of moonlight shining through the leaves of a palm tree or a human
figure wearing a sarong in the shadow of a mango tree.” He confesses that his own longing for
the South Seas was first piqued not by actual experience of travel but rather by his encounters
with the exotic stories of European writers:
“I first caught a glimpse of that island when it was neither night nor morning . . . ” Wearing a dark blue suit, Professor
Natsume S seki strode into our third year English class at the First Higher School and read to us in his casual and fluent
English. It was the opening passage to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Island Night’s Entertainment. At the time, S seki was a
rising star in literary world and had already published London Tower and I Am a Cat. With the innocent longings of youth,
we eagerly awaited being taught by this celebrity in the new school year. . . . Subsequently, I devoured many works by
Stevenson but none of them made as deep an impression on me as this Island Night’s Entertainment. The deep blue
waters of the South Pacific, a solitary island surrounded by the vast ocean, the gentle winds that bore the salty air and the
fragrance of various tropical plants, the natives with their childish thoughts who lived in the midst of this scenery, their
minor cares and troubles: I felt as if the atmosphere of the South Seas impregnated the entire volume and each page
brought a fresh delight. I imagined the life of the author who spent his final years amid these surroundings and with these
people. Afterward, the South Seas were always in my head.
Later, he confides to the reader: “I am deeply convinced that our literary and poetic interests
have far deeper roots than our thirst for knowledge and intellectual interests.”15 In his
reminiscences of his encounter with the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Tsurumi illustrates
the marriage of imperial strategy with imagination, of romance with realpolitik, which is an
essential part of all modern empires. Interestingly, he was himself first inspired not by
Japanese novels but by the romantic visions that Western writers had created during an earlier
phase of the colonization of the South Seas. Based on his own experience, he goes on to argue
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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that literature, and particularly children’s literature, must play an important part in fostering the
emotional disposition that underlies any successful imperial project.
Recently, more and more writers have raised their voices to call for our nation to expand . . . to the rich and fertile lands of
the south. I welcome this trend, but cannot believe that a southern expansion policy that promotes only expanded
production or emigration is enough. People will not easily summon the will to leave the land of their ancestors unless they
also are stimulated to feel fascination and longing for the South Seas. This longing arises most easily during boyhood and
youth when our imaginations are most active and our perceptions sharpest. The foundation of the expansion of the
Japanese race must be laid while our youth are still in their cradles: imperialism must spark their desire for exotic lands and
fire their dreams.16
The “opening” of Japan meant not only that foreigners could travel to Japan but also that
Japanese people would overcome their inertia, go overseas, and settle there. Just as the Meiji
state required that citizens become active participants in national institutions such as the armed
forces and the public schools, it also encouraged them to seize new opportunities and
transplant themselves abroad. Accordingly, Tsurumi concludes that the success or failure of
Japan’s empire will depend “on the subjective attitude of the Japanese people.”17 He
concedes, however, that ordinary Japanese are often reluctant to forsake “the land of their
ancestors” and that intellectual arguments will not overcome their resistance. If people are to
transplant themselves overseas, an appetite for exotic lands must be artificially stimulated in
them. Conversely, to induce this “longing for exotic countries,” writers should appeal to their
readers’ imaginations. Last but not least, the best time to touch the imagination of these readers
was when they were still in their cradles.
CREATING FOLK IMPERIALISM
Japan’s modern imperialism is unthinkable without taking into account the mid-nineteenth-
century intrusion of Western imperialism into East Asia, the mimetic imperialism of the Meiji
period, and the appropriation of Western discourses of “civilization” and “racial hierarchy” by
Japanese intellectuals. When Tsurumi mentions Stevenson’s Island Night’s Entertainment, he
calls attention to another piece in the gestalt of Japan’s imperialism: namely, the fashioning of
an imperialist sensibility among the Japanese elite formed by reading the Western literature of
empire. Tsurumi was a member in good standing of the elite, having attended the exclusive
First Higher School and studied under Natsume S seki. However, he voiced his deepest
concerns not about the elite but rather about the Japanese people in general, who also needed
to develop the proper “subjective attitudes” if the nation’s imperial projects were not to
miscarry. He argued that it is imperative to reach young Japanese at the period of their lives
when they are most impressionable. One serious obstacle, however, stood in the way of
fostering a popular imperialist sensibility among Japanese youth: the relative paucity of
colonial prototypes and heroes in Japanese culture and history.
Tsurumi was hardly the first modern writer to express this concern. In his 1900 “Umi to
Nihon bungaku” (The Sea and Japanese Literature), K da Rohan lamented that the Japanese,
unlike the seafaring and adventurous Anglo-Saxons, had failed to create a maritime literature
worthy of the name, even though Japan was no less an island nation than Great Britain. He
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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assigned the blame for this failure squarely on Japan’s rulers during the Tokugawa period, who
had prohibited Japanese from leaving the archipelago under the policy of national seclusion.
Besides fostering an insular attitude toward the outside world, this long period of seclusion
had deprived the Japanese of valuable historical experience and reduced their store of
practical wisdom regarding colonialism. In 1894, Kume Kunitake wrote a series of articles on
the insular mentality of the Japanese that appeared in Kokumin no Tomo, on the eve of the
Sino-Japanese War. He argued that in the ancient period, the Japanese people had
demonstrated an enterprising and belligerent attitude toward the outside world, but that this
spirit had disappeared with the closing of the country. After this long interruption, Japanese
had recovered the enterprising attitude they had shown in the past. With the progress in trade
and the building of a naval forces, Japan could play in the Pacific region the role that England
played in the Atlantic.18
In light of these historical constraints, ideologues of empire sought for models of colonial
heroes, not in the annals of Japanese history and literature, but rather in myth and folklore.
Unlike the exotic literature of the West, folklore was a domestic resource, not a foreign
product. In addition, folktales were simple, easy to understand, and suitable for dissemination
to the masses through the national system of elementary education. Just as narratives like
Robinson Crusoe and the story of Pocahontas had shaped the imaginations of generations of
English-speaking boys and girls, Japanese myths and folktales were the proper vehicle to
instill in the nation’s youth an urge to empire. Beyond their use in the training of young
Japanese, the mobilization of folktales on behalf of imperialism suggested that the Japanese
empire had a cultural basis in the Japanese past and traditional culture. I have already argued
that Japan established the legitimacy of its empire in the transnational idiom that Western
powers used to justify their own empires. At the same time, Japan’s embrace of this Western
idiom implied an estrangement from its own past, a repudiation of its history, and an alienation
from its own culture. Yet even as Japan eagerly absorbed Western influences, it also sought to
assert its own cultural identity and to reclaim its own heritage, notably through embrace of folk
culture said to embody the primordial spirit of the nation. While the rise of folklore studies in
the late Meiji and Taisho periods reflects a growing dissatisfaction with modernity and a
nostalgia for lost traditions, the mobilization of folklore for empire served to show that
Japanese imperialism was not simply an imitation of Western empires but an inalienable part
of its cultural heritage. Traditional tales not only enabled people to discover their roots in the
past but they also helped them to chart their own future in a modern world.
If myths and folktales were to be rendered useful in political propaganda, they first had to be
substantially revised to accord with the needs of the early twentieth century. The Meiji regime
had mobilized ancient myths from the eighth-century Kojiki to trace the imperial line back to
the sun goddess Amaterasu, but the myths also helped to legitimate a modern monarchy which
had no precedent in the past. In a similar way, ancient myths were invoked to justify Japan’s
modern expansion overseas, but they were also substantially transformed in the process of
rewriting. Borrowing from the national studies scholar Motoori Norinaga, the historian
Hoshino Hisashi (1839–1917) claimed that Susan no mikoto, brother to the sun goddess
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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Amaterasu, had ruled ancient Shilla Korea and traveled back and forth between the peninsula
and the Japanese islands until he quarreled with his illustrious sister. Thereafter, the two
kingdoms remained estranged for ages, until another mythical figure, the empress Jing ,
invaded the peninsula and reestablished Japanese rule there. The continental exploits of Susan
and the empress Jing became standard fixtures of history textbooks during the colonial period;
these stories suggested to their readers that the annexation of Korea by Japan was simply the
restoration of a status quo ante and showed that the Japanese possessed a long-standing
capacity for assimilating foreigners.19 As late as 1942, the governor-general of Korea, Koiso
Kuniaki, stated that all twenty-two million Koreans were the offspring of Susan .20
In a similar vein, Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159–89), perhaps Japan’s most brilliant
military strategist and certainly its most beloved warrior-hero, was pressed into service to
promote Japan’s later push onto the Asian continent. Yoshitsune led the Minamoto clan in the
decisive battles against the Taira during the twelfth-century Genpei Wars, but he was later
pursued by his half-brother Minamoto no Yoritomo, who feared him as a rival, and became a
fugitive with Fujiwara no Hidehira, the powerful feudal leader of northern Japan. When
Yasuhira succeeded his father Hidehira in 1187, he succumbed to pressures from Yoritomo and
sent an expeditionary force against Yoshitsune, who took his own life after killing his wife and
daughter.21 Writers during the Edo period, who were not content to let such an illustrious hero
die in such pitiful circumstances, developed bizarre theories of Yoshitsune’s survival and
circulated stories of his posthumous exploits.22 According to one theory, Yoshitsune crossed
from Hokkaido to the island of Sakhalin and eventually reached Mongolia, where he
reappeared as Genghis Khan, unified the tribes of Mongolia, and led his armies to their
glorious conquests in Asia and Europe.23 In 1879, while he was a student in England, the young
Suematsu Kench published a work in English titled The Identity of the Great Conqueror
Genghis Khan with the Japanese Hero Yoshitsune, in which he cites a variety of written
sources to prove his central thesis. In the final chapter, he clinches his argument on the hero’s
identity by asserting that “a wild and uncivilized region [Mongolia] could never have
produced a man of such discipline and experience [Genghis Khan], whom even the heroes of
the civilized world have scarcely equaled.”24 Since he could not possibly have been a Mongol,
Suematsu concludes he must have been Japanese. Basing his hypothesis on Western notions of
“civilization and progress” that had only recently been introduced to Japan, Suematsu sought to
lift Japan’s reputation in the West by showing that the nation had produced a hero who could
hold his own against Western conquerors such as Alexander the Great or Napoleon.25
In 1924, Oyabe Zenichir (1868–1941), published a Jingisu-kan wa Minamoto no
Yoshitsune nari (Genghis Khan Was Indeed Yoshitsune),26 a work that reflects the growing
influence of Pan-Asianism. Pan-Asian propagandists such as Amakasu Masahiko (best known
as the military police lieutenant who ordered the murder of It Noe, sugi Sakae, and his
nephew after the Great Kanto Earthquake), and Okawa Sh mei praised the book and members
of the imperial family honored it by “inspecting” it, but prominent Japanese historians,
linguists, and anthropologists dismissed it as an absurd hoax. Despite the unanimous
condemnation of the experts, Oyabe’s book became a best seller. Whereas Suematsu had sought
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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to convince Europeans that Japan had produced a world-class hero, Oyabe used Japanese
claims of kinship with Asia to justify its further expansion on the continent. After the creation
of Manchukuo in 1932, articles in Mansh Nichinichi (Manchuria Daily) newspaper regularly
reported discoveries of traces of Yoshitsune on the Asian continent while the theme of
Yoshitsune as Genghis Khan influenced artworks, including a Noh play performed in 1941.27
As these two examples show, academic and amateur historians alike re-created a variety of
mythical characters and semihistorical figures to justify Japan’s expansion onto the Asian
continent.28 Yoshitsune and Susan were well-known heroes, but the expansionist legends that
accreted around their names probably failed to leave a profound mark on the imagination of
Japanese youth. In contrast, Momotar proved a much more durable model and a more
compelling figure. Whether he actually “fired the imagination” of young Japanese for imperial
conquest lies beyond the scope of this study, but it can be safely affirmed that Momotar was a
ubiquitous presence in prewar Japan.
Momotar is the quintessential Japanese folktale.29 In the standard, schoolbook version, the
tiny boy Momotar , floating down a river inside a peach, is discovered by an elderly couple
who decide to bring him up as their own son. When he grows up, he sets off to conquer the
island of the ogres and recruits three animal retainers to accompany him: a dog, a monkey, and
a pheasant. Overcoming the powerful ogres, Momotar seizes their treasures and returns to his
village in triumph. It would be unfair to single out Momotar —among all Japanese folk heroes
—for being uniquely expansionist. Nevertheless, educators and political propagandists alike
found in this seemingly innocuous tale a wonderful tool to inculcate imperial awareness in
Japanese youth.
“Momotar ” came into existence in oral form during the late Muromachi period (1333–
1568) and appeared in written versions during the Genroku period (1688–1704).30 There are
more than eighty versions of Momotar ’s legend extant in kusaz shi (printed works combining
picture and text), particularly in the well-illustrated akabon, a book form specifically directed
at an audience of children. The story was also performed on the kabuki stage during the late
Tokugawa period.31 In addition, Takizawa (Kyokutei) Bakin (1767–1848), a contemporary of
the Grimm brothers, studied the origins and main motifs of Momotar and provided variants of
the legend in an essay published in his 1810 Enseki zasshi (Swallow Stone Miscellany).32
In the modern period, Momotar was rediscovered as a national folktale and classified as
one of five great Japanese folktales (godai mukashibanashi).33 Like the term mukashibanashi
itself, this canonization of five national folktales appears to be a product of the educational
system, especially of elementary-school readers. “Momotar ” was among the first folktales to
be included in these readers at a time of growing nationalism and increasing government
control over textbooks.34 In 1888, the Ministry of Education established a formal screening
system for textbooks. These new national textbooks became a vehicle to instill in the Japanese
people a sense of national culture and a means to promote a standardized national language. In
the case of Momotar , this meant replacing local versions of the folktale with a single
standardized version authorized by the Ministry of Education—essentially nationalizing
“Momotar .” This nationalized “Momotar ,” a creation of the mid–Meiji period, was a fixture
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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of Japanese textbooks until 1945, and it came to be closely associated with emperor-centered
ideology.35
But Momotar was also a contested figure that was continually reinvented throughout the
modern period. Appearing in almost six hundred versions, this folk hero inspired generations
of Japanese artists, writers, and educators and proved to be among the most protean creations
of twentieth-century Japan.36 During the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, Momotar
was depicted as a standard-bearer of military valor and an emblem of the imperial state.37 In
Iwaya Sazanami’s “Momotar ” (1894), he is sent to an “island where ogres live, located to the
northeast of Japan far across the seas. These ogres, evil by nature, not only refused to obey the
commands of our sacred emperor, but became the enemies of our reed land and stole our
treasures and grains.”38 Given the historical context of this work, it is clear that Iwaya
identified the ogres with Qing China. In picture books at the time of the Russo-Japanese War
(1904–5), Momotar , dressed in a Japanese military uniform, led his animal retainers in
military battle with Russia.
In contrast with these wartime versions, writers of children’s literature in the Taisho period
often depicted Momotar as the archetype of childhood innocence.39 These versions of
Momotar downplay the aggressive implications of the hero’s conquest of the ogres. In the
aptly named “Inu ni au made: Momotar san no hanashi” (Until the Meeting with the Dog: The
Tale of Momotar ), Kitagawa Chiyo narrates the adventures of Momotar only up to the point
when he meets the first of his three animal retainers.40 Rather than omitting the conquest of ogre
island altogether, Soma Taiz , in her Momotar no im to (Momotar ’s Younger Sister), reduces
it to a plot device that serves to bring about the happy reunion of brother and sister at the close
of the story. In the climactic scene of this tale, Omomo, Momotar ’s sister, is awarded a
“sword of peace” by the king of a prosperous society and told that the sword will protect its
bearer from any danger as long it is not employed to shed blood. The “sword of peace” thus
serves as a metaphor to criticize adult society and Japanese militarism. In still other versions,
Momotar does not seize the treasures of the ogres: the ogres give them to him voluntarily after
they promise not to cause any more harm and he “forgives” them.
With the eclipse of children’s literature in the late 1920s, writers associated with
proletarian literature offered new images of Momotar as an allegorical figure in the class
struggles of Japanese society. In Oniseibatsu no Momotar (Momotar , Conqueror of the
Ogres), Momotar is a revolutionary leader who liberates his animal retainers, who stand for
exploited peasants and workers, from evil factory and land owners, who represent the ogres.
However, in “Sono ato no Momotar ” (The Later Days of Momotar ), Momotar himself is a
profiteering capitalist who hoards all of the ogres’ treasures and ruthlessly exploits his
retainers until they go on strike and demand that Momotar stop initiating war with other
countries and fairly compensate those he employs.41
In World War II propaganda, the figure of Momotar is ubiquitous in cartoons, Takarazuka
revues, posters, songs, picture books, and animation. John Dower speaks of a Momotar
paradigm in World War II propaganda, according to which a “pure Japanese self” (often
identified with the self-sacrificing pilots of the Special Attack Forces) liberates the childlike
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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peoples of Southeast Asia from the clutches of the Allied powers, represented as oppressive
demons (American and English beasts and devils). Among other examples, he cites two early,
feature-length animated films starring the peach boy, both directed by Seo Mitsuyo. In
Momotar no umiwashi (Momotar ’s Sea Eagles; 1942), Momotar is a Japanese military
commander who leads his animal retainers in the attack on Pearl Harbor; in Momotar : Umi
no shinpei (Momotar ’s Divine Ocean Warriors; 1945), he leads an army made up of rabbits,
dogs, and other domesticated animals (the Japanese) as they train wild animals like elephants
and crocodiles (South Seas islanders) to destroy a devilish enemy (the British) in a battle
representing the fall of Singapore.42 These early cartoons, in addition to being early examples
of the technological development of Japanese anime, use the Momotar story as an allegory for
interpreting contemporary history. Besides animation, Momotar was adapted in Takarazuka
productions as well as in local theaters throughout occupied lands during the Pacific War,
including one called Taiy no kodomotachi (Children of the Sun). In this wartime Takarazuka
production, Momotar recruits followers from Indonesia, China, and the Philippines to free
Asia from American and European ogres.43
Partly because of his association with wartime propaganda, Momotar was “purged” from
school textbooks by the U.S.-occupation authorities. Postwar scholars attempted to retrieve
Momotar as a hero of postwar democratic and peace-loving Japan and to exonerate him from
the taint of war crimes. While Momotar continued to be an important national hero into the
postwar period, he also embarked on a new career as a symbol of regional cultural identities,
particularly in Okayama Prefecture, where he is used to this day to promote tourism and town
revitalization (machi okoshi).44
Yet the association of Momotar with aggressive Japanese imperialism long predates the
battles of the Second World War. Before Momotar became a hero in the battles of Hawaii or
Singapore, he had long been associated with imperialism in the South Seas. For example, the
author of the 1893 “Momotar no hanashi no g i” (The Allegorical Sense of Momotar )
advises his readers to emulate Momotar and “to cross the equator to the islands near
Australia, attack and seize better places than ogres’ island, subjugate the blacks who look like
ogres, and bring back the many treasures of the South such as copra and pearls.”45 Ky no
Warabei’s “Ima Momotar ” (Momotar Today), which appeared in the boys’ publication Sh
nen Sekai (Boys’ World) in 1895, concerns a contemporary Momotar whom an elderly couple
discover inside a peach-shaped Japanese confectionary containing a surprise toy.46 When
Momotar later becomes a Japanese general, the island of the ogres is the recently won colony
of Taiwan, and the ogres’ treasure is Taiwan’s sugar-cane industry.47 Nevertheless it is in first
two decades of the twentieth century—at the time of the South Seas fever—that prominent
writers developed theories showing a connection between this folktale and the expansion of
the Japanese empire. From this time, Momotar became a role model for youth to emulate.48
His expedition to the island of ogres came to be seen as a parable for Japanese expansion
overseas, and especially toward the South Seas.
NITOBE INAZO, MOMOTARO, AND COLONIAL POLICY STUDIES
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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In 1907, Nitobe Inaz (1862–1933) gave a lecture titled “Momotar no enseidan” (Momotar ’s
Conquest), which he later published in essay form under the title of “Monotar no
mukashibanashi” (The Tale of Momotar ). Rather than retell the story, he teases out moral
lessons for contemporary Japanese youth from the standard version. This essay stands at the
intersection of two major currents of Nitobe’s thought: his concern with moral development of
youth and his interest in the study of folklore. He pursued his moralizing aims through
biographies of great men and character-building tracts.49 Just as in one of his early works he
champions William Penn, the early American colonist and Quaker, as a model to be emulated,
he upholds Momotar as a culture hero who can help to inculcate desirable character traits
among the Japanese. To be sure, the Momotar lecture differs from Nitobe’s other pedagogical
works. As a teacher in Japan’s most prestigious educational establishments, Nitobe was
responsible for training cosmopolitan leaders able to deal on equal terms with their
counterparts in other “civilized” powers. By contrast, in this lecture, he is concerned with the
education of the subalterns of Japan’s modernization, whom he sought to transform into active
agents of the nation’s expansion. Momotar offered an all-Japanese model of overseas
expansionism for the masses that fostered a sense of national grandeur and perhaps turned them
away from pressing demands for social change within Japan.
Besides reflecting his didactic concerns, the Momotar essay indicates Nitobe’s new interest
in the study of folklore to promote a nationalist and imperial consciousness. In 1910, the year
that Japan annexed Korea,50 he joined with Yanagita Kunio and Kindaichi Ky suke to
inaugurate the Ky dokai (Home Customs Association). Besides serving to nationalize folk
traditions, this study group strove to make the Japanese more receptive to the rationale for
imperialism and to promote the integration of overseas colonies (or, in the case of the
Hokkaido, of domestic frontiers) into the nation. It sought to achieve these goals by mapping
out zones of cultural affinity that transcended the borders of the nation.51 Though Nitobe’s
lecture on Momotar antedates his involvement in this association, it offers a concrete and
compelling example of the mobilization of folklore to foster a sense of linkage between the
Japanese and the people of the South Seas.
Nitobe begins his lecture by noting that educators must transmit “the abilities of our
ancestors and the lessons they have handed down in tales from ancient times.” In particular,
they should not overlook folklore traditions that “can increase national vigor.” Such traditions
constitute a “genetic inheritance” that has sustained the Japanese people for millennia and
“give the Japanese a spiritual motive” for their actions. Among these folktales tied to the nation
and handed down by the ancient ancestors of the Japanese, Nitobe argues, Momotar occupies
a privileged place. Often the first folktale that children are told, it “leaves an indelible
impression on their young minds.” While most Japanese folktales are restricted to a particular
region or a period of time, the story of Momotar is both timeless and national in scope.
Finally, it has a “simple, well-crafted plot, a beautiful construction, and a fresh and manly
character.”52
Even though all Japanese are familiar with the story of Momotar , Nitobe laments that adults
and children fail to grasp its broader implications. When he states that folklore is part of the
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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Japanese people’s “genetic inheritance,” Nitobe implies that Momotar emerged from the folk
culture and belongs to the people. When he goes on to claim that Japanese have failed to grasp
the broader implications of this folktale, he implies that the people need to be reeducated to
take possession of their “genetic inheritance.” One might say that the goal of his lecture is to
remake the folklore hero to fit a national ideal and to remake the people in the image of their
folk hero. To accomplish both tasks, Nitobe stresses the multiple levels of meaning in the story
—historical, moral, and economic—and seeks to show how this timeless tale has a special
relevance to twentieth-century Japan. In his analysis of Momotar ’s historical meaning, Nitobe
mentions Takizawa Bakin’s theory that the character of Momotar is based on the hero of the
medieval chronicle H gen monogatari (The Tale of H gen), Minamoto no Tametomo, and his
banishment to the Izu Islands.53 In the same breath, however, he argues that a historical reading
cannot exhaust the latent importance of a folktale. History, he writes, is “concrete and
objective” while folktales are “archetypical and subjective.”54
Like many of his contemporaries, Nitobe deplored the fact that Japanese history featured
few overseas adventurers. As an adventurer willing to confront a fearsome enemy overseas,
Momotar was merely the exception that proves the rule. Besides the absence of historical
figures to draw on, Nitobe might have seen real advantages in using folk heroes as role models
for youth. The very lack of reality of the peach boy conferred upon the person retelling his
story full license to interpret his adventures without interference from historical facts. Availing
himself of this license, Nitobe reads Momotar as an allegory for his fellow countrymen,
places the ogres on the map, and fixes this timeless tale in historical time. His version of
Momotar serves a precise educational purpose: to help ordinary Japanese overcome their
insularity (shimaguni konj ) and acquire a broader outlook on the world, one more in tune
with Japan’s position as a great power.
Nitobe treats Momotar as a folktale or fiction rather than as a legend based on the historical
Tametomo. This fiction is a prism through which he claims to discover, not the history, but
rather the prehistory of the Japanese race. Whereas Momotar is the quintessentially Japanese
folk hero, Nitobe paradoxically emphasizes his foreign origins. Just as the peach (momo) from
which he takes his name is not native to Japan, Momotar is the personification of the Malay
adventurers who reached Japan in large numbers (momo also means multitudes or great
quantities) in ancient times. Momotar ’s three animal retainers, for their part, stand for archaic
indigenous societies that he conquered and recruited to join his campaign.55 Momotar ’s
foreign origin and his capacity to absorb other racial groups both prefigure the multiracial and
assimilating prowess of the Japanese race in modern times. In this interpretation, Nitobe
concurs with many prewar writers who assumed that the Japanese people were racially hybrid
and possessed a talent for absorbing foreign races. Such theories were often invoked to justify
Japan’s pursuit of empire in the modern period.56 Just as the Japanese had long ago assimilated
many different peoples from different racial backgrounds, they were confident that they could
repeat this success as a colonial power.
If Nitobe discovers a prehistorical basis for expansion in the mixed racial origins of the
Japanese, he finds a model for contemporary Japan to emulate in Great Britain. In his English-
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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language works, Nitobe often stressed the resemblances between the culture and history of
Japan and those of Western nations. In this essay, he refers especially to Great Britain as a
future model that Japan should emulate, an island nation that is not “insular” or inward-
looking. While “insularity” is synonymous with timidity and small-mindedness, Great Britain,
ruler of the world’s largest empire, proves that geography does not determine historical
destiny. By positing an analogy between Japan and Great Britain, Nitobe shows that Japan’s
historical development is comparable with that of the most advanced nation of the West and he
distinguishes Japan from an Asian continent characterized as stagnant and backward.57
If Nitobe makes use of the “historical” meaning of Momotar to define a racial talent for
colonization, he turns next to the “ethical” dimension of the tale. He notes approvingly that
there is nothing even remotely erotic in the tale: “I believe that the old man and women were
selected precisely to eliminate ‘eros’ from the tale and to reinforce its moral message.”58 If the
“manly” Momotar is a perfect role model for young boys, then manliness is an important
colonial trope in Nitobe’s writings.59 Nitobe often characterizes imperialism in explicitly
gendered terms, in which the Japanese colonizers are male and the colony is a female who
offers herself to the male. In his essay “Bunmei kokumin nanka no taisei” (The Tendency of
Civilized Nations to Go South), Nitobe writes, “Just as a young girl desires a red belt when
she comes of age, a nation that has developed wants to acquire territory near the equator.”60 In
Japanese, the terms “red belt” (akai obi) and “equator” (sekid ) are written with the same
characters; traditionally, a young woman wore a red belt when she was pregnant. While Nitobe
compares the young girl with a red belt to Japan, he also suggests that Japanese colonization
impregnates the fertile lands of the tropics that Japan wants to “acquire” now that it is
“developed.” If the colonized refused to submit to the advances of the masculine colonizer, she
might be taken by force. In the 1920 essay called “Japanese Colonization” he writes: “The
merciless law of the survival of the fittest . . . has only justified the expansion of virile
nations,” which follow the law of organic growth and become conquering or colonial powers.
In contrast, “those [such as Korea] who, like the Foolish Virgins of the parable, were not ready
to act at the call of the century were bereft of their independence.”61 Nitobe suggests that
colonization is an act of metaphorical “rape” that is ordained by the very “laws” of nature.
If Momotar embodies manliness and valor, his three animal retainers stand for the
Confucian virtues of wisdom (the monkey), benevolence (the loyal dog), and courage (the
pheasant). The virile hero can defeat the ogres because he is endowed with these virtues.
Nitobe directs the attention of religious leaders, moralists, and educators to this “moral”
aspect of the tale and compares Momotar ’s heroic subjugation of the ogres to the missionary
endeavors of “soldiers” of the Salvation Army in the evil slums of the modern cities.62 In this
construction, Momotar does not undertake his expedition to retaliate for previous attacks by
the ogres; rather he is driven by a missionary zeal to right the moral failings represented by the
very fact that “ogres” exist. In late nineteenth-century discourse, the urban slum was
“represented in contemporary newspapers and journals as the symbolic opposite of
civilization [bunmei] . . . its inhabitants were depicted as the descendants of ‘remote foreign
races’ on whom images of both savagery [yaban] and barbarism [ikai] were projected.”63
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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Matsubara Iwagor significantly titled his 1893 report on the slums of Tokyo Saiankoku no
Tokyo (In Darkest Tokyo), a clear reference to Henry Morton Stanley’s famous account of his
1887–88 exploration of Africa (In Darkest Africa; 1890). Like Stanley, Matsubara saw the
urban slum as a jungle inhabited by savages. Such reports on city slums horrified his educated
audience and galvanized action by Home Ministry officials and nongovernmental organizations
alike, who viewed the slums as breeding grounds for disease and social disorder.64 Just as
Christian social reformers in Japan viewed the lower classes in the urban slums as savages in
need of taming, Nitobe’s colonizer considers the “ogres” on Japan’s periphery as barbarians
that must be domesticated. After the Japanese successfully contained savagery within the
delimited space of the slum, they imagined that it continued to exist outside the spatial
boundaries of civilized Japan. In Nitobe’s formulation, colonization is a form of missionary
social work that finds its field of exercise outside the boundaries of the nation and is justified
as the onward march of a superior civilization. Indeed, one could argue that conquering
domestic savages demonstrated the nation’s self-mastery and thus proved its competence to
rule others in an imperialist world system.65
Nevertheless, for Nitobe, the main allegorical lesson of Momotar ’s mission to subdue the
island of the ogres is “economic.” By spelling out this economic meaning, he offers a solution
to one of the greatest mysteries surrounding the folktale: Momotar ’s motives for setting out to
conquer the island of ogres in the first place.66
I believe that the tale of Momotar ’s overseas expedition undoubtedly expresses the interest the Japanese people feel
toward the outside world and their expansionist drive. As for the island of the ogres, it is a general term for the islands of
the South Seas. In the time of Tametomo, the boundaries of Japan did not extend beyond the eight provinces, and
Hachiojima was the island of the ogres. But when Japanese settled in Hachiojima, its ogres disappeared. . . . Thereafter,
people called the Ry ky the island of the ogres. Now, however, the Ry ky has become part of Japanese territory and
the Ry ky people have begun to learn Japanese. . . . With each step we take southward, Onigashima is displaced even
further south. . . . Until 1895, Taiwan was the island of the ogres. Now, more than a decade after we have occupied the
island, many Japanese still regard it as the island of the ogres . . . because of our differences in language and customs. The
Momotar of today will expand and conquer islands of ogres much further south. As for the treasures of the islands, they
are naturally the products of the tropical zone, the treasures of the earth [takara]. The war booty that Momotar brings
back to Japan—the magical cloak, the cape of invisibility, and the lucky hammer [kakure mino, kakurekasa, and uchide
no kozuchi]—are the tropical products that he supplies to his home country.67
In this long passage, Nitobe construes the Momotar story as a metaphor for Japan’s
manifest destiny, its irrepressible drive to expand. This drive expresses itself in the conquest
of southern islands and the seizure of tropical products to be exported to Japan. Indeed,
Nitobe’s view of the South Seas as a treasure chest of natural resources is a staple of most
writings about nan’y from the days of the Iwakura Mission of 1871–73. Writing about his
return from the mission to Japan by way of Africa and Asia, Kume Kunitake noted that the
prosperity of the Western countries was based on their historical rule of colonial territories in
the south. “Most of the raw materials used to manufacture the European products [hakuraihin]
that Japan imports actually originate in the South Seas. These raw materials are processed in
Europe, fashioned into manufactured goods, and then sold to Japan for a profit. Only when this
geography of production becomes widely known will we see the fruit of Japan’s national
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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strengthening ripen.”68 In 1887, Shiga Shigetaka published his Nan’y jiji (Conditions of the
South Seas), in which he advocated expansion to the South Seas through trade.
Despite these thematic continuities, Nitobe’s views of Japan’s expansion to the south differ
greatly from the promotion of commercial exchange associated with writers such as Shiga or
Kume. They are also unlike the ideologies of the Co-Prosperity Sphere that stressed the
material benefits that Japan’s expansion brought to the southern territories. As an economic
parable, the Momotar story justifies Japan’s expansion as a form of primitive accumulation.
Momotar conquers the islands of the tropics, seizes their treasures, and brings them back to
the home country as “war booty.” In effect, he dispossesses the original owners of their wealth,
without offering any compensation in return or engaging in any commercial exchange. In 1871,
the liberal thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi singled out this precise aspect of the folktale for
unequivocal condemnation in his Hibi no oshie (Everyday Teaching): “Momotar is said to
have gone to the island of the ogres in order to steal treasures. Isn’t this an unforgivable act?
The ogres were the rightful owners of these treasures, which they valued and stowed away. We
should regard Momotar as a thief and villain [warumono] because, for no good reason, he
went to steal a treasure that was someone else’s property.”69 If Fukuzawa treated the folk hero
as a thief and condemned his behavior, Nitobe holds him up as a model to be emulated since
his seizure of the “treasures of the tropics” enriches the Japanese nation. Nitobe’s economic
interpretation of the tale suggests that primitive accumulation is the indispensable precondition
for the imagining of empire.
As the ogres flee from the previous encroachments of the Japanese, the location of their
island changes over time. As Nitobe was telling the story, Japan had already conquered the Ry
ky s (1879) and Taiwan (1895) and was setting its sights on territories further to the south.
The year 1895, in some respects, marks a crucial turning point in this progression. From this
moment, pressure grows within Japan to accelerate the assimilation of the Ry ky an population
and to rename the Ry ky s as Okinawa.70 If the Okinawans are henceforth to be rapidly
assimilated, the Taiwanese are depicted as savages as a pretext for conquering them. Momotar
’s conquest of Onigashima becomes an allegory for the Japanese empire that advances
continuously to the south, eventually assimilating the ogres it captures.
Thomas Burkman describes Nitobe’s Momotar doctrine as a theory of irresistible
expansion, a Japanese version of manifest destiny.71 Referring to Nitobe’s essay, Kamishima
Jir argues that Momotar -ism was an unstable compound composed of a spontaneous, natural
desire for expansion—shizen yokub —and militarism.72 Outside this essay, Nitobe stresses the
applicability of the Momotar model to Japanese colonialism also in his scholarly lectures and
his articles in mass-circulation periodicals.73 In these works, he reinterprets the figure and
makes some interesting additions to his tale.
Nitobe’s distinguished career as Japan’s premier internationalist was closely intertwined
with Japanese imperialism. As a young man, he studied agricultural science at the Sapporo
Agricultural College (today’s University of Hokkaido) and took part in the nation’s first
colonial project: the colonization of Hokkaido and of its indigenous people.74 In 1901, he was
recruited by Got Shinpei to work in the colonial government of Taiwan, which was, in Got ’s
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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words, Japan’s first “colonial university.”75 After receiving his first degree in colonial studies
from that “university,” Nitobe completed formal academic training in international political
science at Johns Hopkins in the United States, at Halle University in Germany, and at Kyoto
University. From 1908, his former sponsor in Taiwan, Got Shinpei, then president of the
Southern Manchurian Railway Company, was instrumental in creating a chair in colonial
policies at Tokyo Imperial University and in appointing Nitobe as the first to occupy it. If
Tokyo University was established to train officials to serve the government, then the chair in
colonial policy studies served to educate a corps of officials to administer the colonies. At
Tokyo Imperial University and Takushoku (Colonial) University (an institution whose name
evokes the imbrication of knowledge and empire), Nitobe created the basic curriculum for this
new field of study and trained the next generation of specialists who were to play important
roles in the Japanese empire. He continued to teach until he was named undersecretary general
of the League of Nations (1920–26), at which time Yanaihara Tadao replaced him.
As Japan’s first professor of colonial policy studies, Nitobe standardized the terminology
for “colony” in later Japanese discourse and set forth the fundamental concepts of this field. In
a 1911 article, “Shokumin naru meiji ni tsukite” (On the Word Colony), Nitobe noted that
Taiwan was not referred to as a “colony” in official Japanese discourse as late as 1910. He
observed that the term shokumin in colloquial usage signified both colonization and
emigration, two closely related modalities of national expansion. In addition, it could be
written with two different but phonetically identical characters: the first signified to “plant
people” and the second to “increase people.” Reflecting this linguistic usage, the journal
Shokumin Sekai (Colonial World; published in 1908, written with the second of these two
characters) carried stories about Japanese emigrants to Hawaii and South America side by
side with articles on career prospects in Korea and Taiwan. To eliminate such semantic and
graphic ambiguities, Nitobe argued that the government should adopt the former character since
it was closer in meaning to what “colony” signified in European languages, which derived
from the Latin colonus, or “planting of people.” Noting that the “Chinese language lacks any
meaningful term for colony,” Nitobe went on to write: “Whenever names of places like Korea,
Taiwan, and Karafuto are mentioned . . . they are referred to as ‘new additions to the empire.’
Does it suffice to name these newly occupied territories with old expressions? Wouldn’t it be
better to use the new term for colony [shokuminchi]?”76
Besides coining a new term for “colony,” Nitobe also spearheaded the creation of colonial
policy studies in Japan. He undertook a systematic and comparative study of colonial
institutions around the globe and placed Japanese colonial policies within this global
framework. The creation of this new field played an important part both in legitimizing Japan’s
growing empire and in showing that it was based on knowledge. Not only did it demonstrate
that the empire was built in accordance with international norms, but it “gave authoritative,
academic explanations to the international terms that defined Japan’s empire.”77
In Nitobe’s later colonial policy writings, he often pointed to the limitations and
imperfections of Momotar as an allegory of empire. Momotar conquers the ogres, but he
returns later to his rural village and leaves them alone. Nitobe wanted to amend the figure of
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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Momotar and to refashion him as a long-term settler who remains in the colony and develops
its resources, rather than being simply an invader who annexes new territory and incorporates
it into the home country. To have Momotar approximate this ideal, he supplements what is
missing in the tale by adding new elements to the plot and substantially reworking the legend.
In 1916, he writes: “I love Momotar and have frequently had occasion to refer to his story.
Nevertheless, I believe that we need to revise this folktale to make it fit the new Japan. In this
new version, Momotar goes to the island of ogres, settles down, and does not return to his
home country. Rather than bringing the treasures of the island back to Japan, he invites the old
man and old woman to join him and plans to build a happy home in this new land.”78
If Momotar later became a long-term settler in the land, he began his career as a conqueror
with a boundless urge to expand. The island of the ogres in both versions was the frontier
where Momotar steeled his will and became a “man”:79 “The frontier rejuvenates the human
nature which we are apt to forget and lose. For human life there must always be a frontier. If it
were not for it, man would be reduced to a trifling existence under the pressure of the customs
and traditions of society.” A fascination with the frontier is a constant throughout Nitobe’s life
and career, from his early education in Sapporo to his final days spent justifying Japan’s
expansion into Manchuria to skeptical Americans. On an observation tour of Manchuria in
1932, he wrote, “If only I were still in my twenties, I would like to go and settle in Manchuria.
. . . Man’s timeless hope is to be part of the first generation of nation builders, cultivating
barren lands, opening roads through the impenetrable forests, developing natural resources that
people had never given a thought to, building a base there and making it one’s home.”80
Though he refers to the territories into which imperial Japan expands as a “frontier,” this
frontier is more a vector of expansion than a bounded space. Indeed, the frontier in Nitobe’s
theories serves as the functional equivalent of Turner’s frontier in his thesis on U.S. history.
Turner had argued that the American character had been formed by the nation’s experience on
the Western frontier, where civilization and barbarism met. Like the West in Turner’s thesis, the
South Seas for Nitobe was the crucible where Japanese national character must be forged.81
However, Nitobe’s Momotar doctrine differs from Turner’s frontier thesis in that it is oriented
toward the future, while Turner sought to account for America’s past at a time when the
western frontier had closed. Indeed, notwithstanding his argument that the folktale expressed
the southern origins of the Japanese, the vector of Momotar ’s expansion did not necessarily
point south. After the annexation of Korea in 1910, Nitobe saw Japan’s expansion moving in
the opposite direction: the outer perimeter of the nation now spread northward in concentric
circles to embrace southern Manchuria, Karafuto, and northern Manchuria. He wrote:
If one were to draw a circle with a radius of 180 ri [a ri = 3.9273 kilometers] centered on the Noto peninsula at Hokutan
point and include Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Korea inside the circle, it would extend right to the Tumen River. If the circle’s
radius were increased to 320 ri and its center were shifted to 40 degrees north latitude and 135 degrees east longitude,
southern Manchuria and the Liaoting peninsula would fit inside, and the circle would extend right to 50 degrees north
latitude in Karafuto. And if the circle’s radius were increased to 380 ri and its center moved just a little, naturally Harbin
would fit inside as would Chichihar in northern Manchuria.
Noting the new dimensions of the nation after the annexation of Korea, he went on to write,
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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“The first circle is already a reality.”82 In this way, the Momotar “doctrine” became a flexible
paradigm that could be adapted to the vicissitudes and changes of direction in Japan’s imperial
trajectory.
In Shokuminchi no sh kyoku mokuteki (The Ultimate Goal of Colonization), Nitobe wrote
that the final aim of colonialism is the expansion of the oikoumene, a Greek word he defines as
“the land in which humans can dwell [ningen no sumieru tochi].”83 In his view, man, as
steward of the earth’s riches, has a responsibility to exploit the resources of the earth and, in
particular, to develop land that is neglected by its feckless inhabitants. Viewing undeveloped
land as a patient in a “state of illness,” he argued that the patient would never recover if left
only to his own devices; only by following the medical prescriptions of colonial policy could
the land regain its “health.” In “Igaku no shinpo to shokumin hatten” (Medical Progress and
Colonial Development), Nitobe identifies endemic tropical illness as the “ogres” that must be
expelled if the resources of the tropics are to be developed: The “red and blue ogres” are the
“bacteria and protozoa that cause the endemic diseases of the tropics.”84 In this disease model
of colonialism, the colony is infected by malignant “ogres” that frighten away would-be
colonists and impede development. In order to take control of the “treasures they desire,” the
Japanese must first expel the ogres that block access to the land.
Starting from the premise that “the one who made best use of the land, or in other words,
loved the land most, ought by rights to be the true owner of the land,” he concluded that the
original inhabitants should hand the land over to the colonist best able to realize its potential.
He saw colonization primarily as the provision of a proper infrastructure of empire,85
consisting of courts of law, public hygiene, new industries, and schools. Ultimately,
colonization was merely “the spread of civilization itself,”86 a beneficial process in which
advanced peoples offered their knowledge, technologies, and capital to contribute to the
development of undeveloped land. If, however, the colonized refuse the civilization offered by
the colonizer, they are doomed to regress to their original state as “ogres.” Such was the fate of
the former French colony of Haiti, a flourishing plantation economy under French rule, which
became a place of disease and stagnation—in a word, “the island of the ogres”—after it
achieved independence.87
Like earlier and later writers of southern expansionism, Nitobe believed that the greatest
treasure trove of the earth’s natural resources was to be found in the tropical south. The tropics
were the place where the human race was born, but humanity had progressed and developed in
more temperate climates. Whereas the tropics contained “raw and unfinished material,” the
temperate zone acquires this raw material, polishes it, and purifies it,”88 and in the end turns it
into finished products that can be traded. The people of the South Seas also represented an
early, raw stage in the evolution of humanity, which stronger nations needed to mold and
“develop” by introducing civilization. “When we consider the condition of barbarians who
still inhabit the world today, we see that these people rarely stir themselves to make progress
because, having no shortage of the basic necessities of life, they lack any motivation to do so.
Only where the heavens bestowed cold weather, does it appear that people have been made to
feel the necessity of working to satisfy their basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter.”89 Since
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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human beings develop only where they meet resistance and are forced to overcome obstacles,
the inhabitants of the tropics are unable to progress on their own. Rather, the tropics are for
those “who have conquered the north and developed the power to shape their external
environment as they desire” to exercise their will most efficiently. As a descendant of Malay
adventurers, Momotar —and the Japanese race—are ones who, originally coming from the
south, have “conquered the north” and thus are uniquely qualified to promote the “southern
expansion of civilization.”
If Nitobe lays stress on the development of resources of the south, he says relatively little
about policies toward the colonized. As the peach boy advances to the south, he demonizes the
inhabitants there. However, the term oni or “ogre” does not denote a malevolent, unchanging
nature. A devout Quaker, Nitobe argues that the Japanese will discern the humanity of the
colonized “other” when the latter learns to speak Japanese and adopts Japanese customs.
However, this discovery of a common humanity does not lead Nitobe to favor equality between
colonizer and colonized. The ogres are no longer “demonic others,” but they are not equals
either. If the “ogres” accept colonization by the superior civilization, they will eventually
progress to the level of human beings, thanks to the effort of their colonizers, although complete
assimilation might take centuries. Gradualism was the watchword for Nitobe’s ideas about the
assimilation of the colonized. Nitobe believed that Japanese law and institutions should be
gradually extended to the colony according to the level of development of the colonized. Got
Shinpei famously remarked that it would take at least eighty years before the Taiwanese could
be elevated to the level of the Japanese, but Nitobe multiplied this figure by ten in his lectures
on colonial policy. In addition, he was opposed to any attempts to hurry this slow process
along by interfering with and aggressively changing the culture of the colonized. Since each
society had its own cultural peculiarities, he argued that assimilation policies that aimed to
destroy the culture of the colonized were doomed to fail.90
This gradualist view of assimilation coexists in uneasy equilibrium with a completely
different narrative. Nitobe had long believed that the racial origins of the Japanese were in the
South Seas: “I believe that the Japanese people belong to the Malay race. We are probably a
race that was first born in the South Seas. Of course, there are also many of us that came from
the north as well. Even though there are many (of our ancestors) who came from China and
Korea, I still believe that most of the blood flowing in our veins is from the south.”91 In a 1915
article titled “Bunmei no nanshin” (The Southern Expansion of Civilization), he goes a step
further and claims that the “ogres” of the Momotar tale are proto-Japanese. Since the
ancestors of the Japanese originally migrated from the South Seas, present-day ogres
presumably descend from the same ancestors as the Japanese. Unlike their illustrious cousins,
they languish in a stagnant primitive culture that has stood still for centuries as history has
moved on and Japan has become a great empire. As a result, the encounter between the
Japanese and the ogres occurs not only through a displacement in space but also by means of
time travel to this distant past. Nitobe’s Momotar retraces the path that the ancient Japanese
took when they traveled to Japan long ago. Consistent with this reasoning, Nitobe reinterprets
the metaphor of Momotar ’s homecoming, a central motif of the tale; since the “ancestors of the
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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Japanese probably came from the South Seas, our southern expansion today can be thought of
as the homecoming of one, crowned with laurels, who long ago left his hometown, traveled to
the north, and carried out great deeds.” Momotar ’s homecoming, the happy ending of his
success story, takes place not when he returns to the village of the old man and woman—who
have no blood relation to him—but rather when he arrives in the island of ogres in the first
place. If the ogres show Momotar his past, he in turn points them in the direction of their
future. He also offers them the possibility of their acceptance as Japanese, at the cost of
submission to Japanese cultural, social, and political norms.92
In this interpretation of Momotar ’s quest as a homecoming to the land of his ancestors,
Nitobe calls attention to an important aspect of Japanese colonial rhetoric: the notion that the
Japanese were blood relatives of the people they colonized. Like Nitobe, many prewar
Japanese speculated that the ancestors of the Japanese came from the south, while others
argued that they were from the north, and others still proposed that they were a mixture of
northern and southern peoples. Torii Ry z (1870–1953), a towering figure in prewar Japanese
anthropology, synthesized these different views and argued that the Japanese were a mixture of
Ainu, continental peoples, and southern peoples (Indonesians and Indo-Chinese).93
While I have already mentioned the theory that Japanese and Koreans had common ancestors
(nissen d soron), a theory that many Japanese writers subscribed to during the colonial period,
I will add that similar theories were advanced with regard to the Japanese and the people of
the South Seas. If historians and social scientists could point to a long recorded history of
interactions between Japan and Korea, they stood on shakier ground when they asserted that the
Japanese were related to South Seas islanders. Nevertheless, anthropologists, historians,
linguists, and folklore specialists concocted similar theories to demonstrate that Japanese
shared common ancestry with southern peoples as well. Torii Ry z , who undertook extensive
anthropometric surveys of the Yami aborigines on Lantal Island in Taiwan, argued that they
were related to the Negritos, one of several racial strains he believed made up the Japanese
race. If Torii investigated physical similarities between the Japanese and Taiwanese
aborigines, Tsuboi Sh gor , the founder of Japanese anthropology, concentrated on cultural ties
between the Japanese and the Malay races, arguing that “Japanese ancient copper swords
excavated from sites in Kyushu resembled in shape the dagger [kris] used by contemporary
Malay.”94 Besides these two prominent anthropologists, numerous linguists, mythologists, and
historians also offered other theories linking the Japanese with Malay, Polynesian, or
Austronesian peoples.95 Later, Yanagita Kunio, the founder of Japanese folklore studies,
advanced the theory that the Japanese had migrated to their present home from the South Seas
in the distant past; he viewed Okinawa—which was a kind of relay station between Japan and
its origins—as the key to understanding the nation’s prehistoric past. In his Kaij no michi (The
Way of the Sea; 1961), he attempts to recover Japan’s ancient history by examining traces of
archaic Japanese culture in contemporary Okinawa.
Such speculations circulated widely in popular books and periodicals, particularly during
the boom periods of southern expansionism. Like Nitobe in his 1915 essay, Takekoshi Yosabur
believed that the original “Japanese” were of Malayan origin and hence related to both the
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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Taiwanese aborigines and the South Seas islanders. Of the former, he wrote: “I entertain a firm
conviction that our Japanese ancestors and these savages are in some way blood relations.”
Indeed, he recommended that specialists undertake a historical study to compare the Taiwan
savages with “the Kumaso family in Kyushu . . . or with the ferocious chieftain Nagasunehiko,”
the leader of a clan that resisted Emperor Jinmu in his subjugation of the eastern territories of
Japan in the ancient past.96 Since the Taiwanese had once been “cousins” of the “Japanese,”
they could once again become Japanese under Japan’s assimilation policies. In his later book
Nangokuki, Takekoshi claimed that the Japanese were racially related to the Malay population
of Southeast Asia and he cited both physical similarities and cultural resemblances to support
his claim. Inoue Masaji, another proponent of southern expansionism, claimed that the
Japanese, by advancing into the South Seas, were returning to their place of origin: “For
Japanese to advance into nan’y is to return to the ancient time before Emperor Jinmu.”97 In
1942, Niimura Ide (better known as the editor of Kojien dictionary) treated the early military
victories in the Pacific War as a kind of homing instinct of the Japanese race, when he wrote,
“The advancement of the Japanese to the southern regions is perhaps based on the longing that
each of us unwittingly harbors for the place of birth of our people.”98
While the Japanese claimed that they were linked to those they colonized and shared
common ancestors with them, they distanced themselves from the colonized by interpreting
their present condition as Japan’s ancient—indeed primordial—past. In Time a;nd the Other:
How Anthropology Makes Its Objects, Johannes Fabian refers to this form of temporal
distancing as the “denial of coevalness,” arguing that it is a key way of constituting others as
primitive or backward in relation to the modernity of Western civilization. This “denial of
coevalness” lends intellectual support, not only to the discourse of anthropologists and
colonial policy scholars, but more generally to relations of domination between observer and
observed.99 When Nitobe spoke of Momotar ’s homecoming and Takekoshi compared
Taiwanese savages with the tribal leaders of Japan’s mythical past, they were both engaged in
this temporal distancing. The Japanese found traces of their origins, their early history, and a
primitive version of their culture in the South Seas. Imagining themselves the evolutionary
fulfillment of their putative ancestors, the Japanese assigned themselves the mission of bringing
their backward racial brothers forward in time.
By reinterpreting his arrival as homecoming, Nitobe naturalizes Momotar ’s conquest and
sets it on a genetic foundation. To begin with, he construes Momotar ’s desire to conquer the
island of the ogres as an obscure racial instinct to return to the home of his ancestors. Nitobe
compares the Momotar tale to Mignon’s song in Goethe’s famous bildungsroman Wilhelm
Meister’s Apprenticeship. While still an infant, Mignon was kidnapped by an evil spirit,
whereupon she lost all memory of her parents and her native land. Asked one day where her
home is, she replies with a song containing the celebrated verse: “Kennst du das Land, wo die
Zitronen blumen?” (Do you not know the land where the lemon trees grow?). This song,
familiar to all Germans, expresses “the longing felt by the German people for the warmer lands
of the south and their ethnic destiny of southern expansion.” Nitobe concludes: “Since even the
Germans, a northern race par excellence, feel such longing, how much more natural it must be
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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that a southern race like the Japanese feel an instinctual yearning for the south?” Besides
naturalizing the yearning that the Japanese feel for the south, Nitobe claims that the Japanese
are best suited to introduce progress and civilization to the tropics because of their racial
origins. Nitobe concludes this essay by writing that “nothing will rival [Momotar ’s] great
power of influence over the expansion of the Japanese nation.”100
THE METAMORPHOSES OF MOMOTAR IN LATER COLONIAL POLICY DISCOURSE
If, in Nitobe’s view, Momotar provides an ideal model for Japan’s imperial mission, he
becomes a far more problematic figure for later writers on Japanese colonial policy. T g
Minoru (1881–1959), a student of Nitobe, vigorously disputes the latter’s claim that this folk
hero is a useful model for the Japanese of his time; T g thinks of him as the negative model of
the bad Japanese colonist. While the two writers took diametrically opposed attitudes toward
Momotar , they agreed in treating him as an allegorical figure of Japanese imperialism,
particularly toward the South Seas. This difference in evaluation is clearly related to the
different periods in which these two scholars of colonial policy studies were writing. Whereas
Nitobe’s writings on colonial policy epitomize the early twentieth-century period of Japanese
colonization, T g ’s reflect new concerns with governance of the colonies that emerged in the
post–World War I period. Facing growing political movements in the colonies demanding self-
determination, Japanese colonial authorities implemented new cultural policies to co-opt
colonial elites, policies often referred to as cultural rule (bunka seiji). A staunch advocate of
Japanese expansion, T g attempted to reconcile continued Japanese rule with postwar
internationalism and the rise of ethnic nationalism in the colonies. In his view, Momotar
constituted an inappropriate model at this new historical conjuncture.
T g agreed with Nitobe that fairy tales offer insight into Japanese historical experience and
folk wisdom regarding overseas expansion. One can “discover flashes of the national character
of a people” if one pays attention to “a nation’s myths,101 legends, proverbs, literature, and fine
arts.”102 In Momotar , he claims to discover not lessons to be learned but rather “the basis for
mistakes in the Japanese colonial enterprise,”103 and indeed the “shortcomings” of Japanese
colonizers.104 In particular, Momotar epitomizes the aggressive and plundering nature of
Japanese colonization and the lack of patience and perseverance of Japanese colonists.105
T g also follows Nitobe in situating Momotar ’s adventures in the South Seas. From the
perspective of colonial studies, he is a youth endowed with the virtues of wisdom,
benevolence, and courage, who sets off to conquer an undeveloped island in the south,
conquers the barbarians (banjin) living there, seizes a plethora of treasures, and returns to
Japan to please his parents.106 This simple tale “expresses the sense of the Japanese race’s
overseas expansion in the distant past,” but in T g ’s view, therein lies its problem:
Applying to Momotar ’s conquest of the isle of the ogres the categories of colonial policy studies, one would describe it as
an invaded colony. It differs from the agricultural colony in which the colonizer develops the undeveloped plains by tilling
the soil with his labor and establishing new companies and launching new enterprises. All Momotar does is to use the
power of the sword to seize every treasure possessed by the natives of the land, whether it be gold and silver, coral, flax,
or cotton. This is so-called despoiling colonial policy or plundering policy and has nothing to do with permanent-settlement
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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colonizing. Momotar ’s conquest of the isle of the ogres faithfully expresses the national character of the Japanese race
that seeks to “return to their hometown bedecked in brocade.”107
Rejecting the indigenous Momotar as model, T g instead calls on the Japanese to study a
fable of the Ataiyal, an aboriginal group in north Taiwan, in order to remedy the deficiencies
of the Japanese colonial model.108 This fable, “Taiy no seibatsu” (Conquest of the Sun), offers
a mythical explanation of the alternation of night and day. In the ancient past, two suns shone in
the sky, bathing the earth in such constant sunlight that the rivers evaporated, living creatures
were roasted, and the forests withered. The members of one village decided to launch an
expedition to remove one of the suns from the sky; over the course of generations it took to
reach the sun, a “savage [seiban] Momotar ” finally appeared and slew the second sun by
firing a supernatural arrow. T g draws the following moral lesson from this fable: “There is
no greater enterprise than an effort such as this, carried out over not one but two or three
generations, to relieve the suffering of all living things and usher in an age of global peace.”109
Learning from the colonized, T g argues that the Ataiyal myth is a better paradigm for long-
term colonization than the tale of Momotar , and one more suited to realities of ruling a
multicultural empire in the 1920s.
Later writers continued to treat Momotar as an allegorical figure for the Japanese empire,
notably Japanese settlers in the colonies. Miyagawa Jir , the editor of a Taiwan Jitsugy kai
(Taiwan Business World), published a scenario titled “Otogigeki seibatsu sareru Momotar ”
(Fairy Tale Drama: Momotar Conquered) in 1934, which was recently reprinted by Takehisa
Yasutaka. In this fairy tale drama, Momotar is neither a metaphor for Japanese colonialism per
se nor a model to be followed or shunned; rather he represents the colonial government of
Taiwan as seen from the perspective of the Japanese settler community in Taiwan.110
Though he had formerly worked in the Taiwan Government-General, Miyagawa became the
self-appointed spokesman of the Japanese settler community when he assumed the position of
editor of the Taiwan Jitsugy kai in 1929. The settlers, a small, privileged minority living
among an alien majority, sometimes felt as though they were under siege. On the one hand, they
feared the specter of resurgent Taiwanese nationalism. On the other, they opposed policies
promoting the “assimilation” of the Taiwanese, which, in their view, would result in Japanese
being treated no differently from the Taiwanese. Miyagawa excoriated Japanese colonial
officials in the columns of his journal and fulminated against their neglect of the interests of
Japanese residents. As deep economic crisis struck the home islands in the early 1930s,
thousands of unemployed Japanese fled to Taiwan in search of work, while long-term Japanese
residents of Taiwan faced stiff competition from Chinese business rivals on the island.
Increasingly, settlers demanded that the governor-general offer economic relief for lower strata
of Japanese migrating to the colonies and protective legislation for members of the long-
standing Japanese business community. Above all, they wanted the government to uphold the
elite status of each and every Japanese settler vis-à-vis the Taiwanese, since they—the settlers
—constituted the very “foundation of colonial rule” and were an extension of the Japanese
homeland. Detailing settler complaints, reporters in Taiwan Jitsugy kai noted that the colonial
government was damaging the vital interests of its own people under the slogan of fostering the
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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union of Japan and its colony.111 In his view, the Japanese (naichijin) faced the danger of
“being overwhelmed economically” by the “Taiwanese people” and forced to live a “pitiful
life.”112 Notwithstanding the economic hardships of the settlers, journalists claimed that
Japanese officials listened sympathetically to Taiwanese complaints about the unfairness of
colonial rule and gave in to their “insatiable” demands, thereby undermining the very basis for
colonial rule. According to Miyagawa, “foolish officials,” in the name of “fairness and
equality,” favored Taiwanese business interest in order to protect their own position with
respect to the local (Chinese) population. At the same time, the Chinese, who lacked any sense
of “national consciousness,” were insatiable and would never be content with the crumbs
being thrown to them.113 Ultimately, concessions would embolden rather than placate the
colonized, inciting them to demand complete independence.
This is exactly what occurs in Miyagawa’s “Otogigeki seibatsu sareru Momotar ” (Fairy
Drama: Momotar Conquered), a short work that tells of the latter days of Momotar . While
Momotar stands for the Japanese colonial regime, his animal retainers are Japanese settlers in
the colony, while the descendants of the ogres, also identified as different species of animals,
are the indigenous population of Taiwan. In the opening scene, Momotar , the governor-general
of Taiwan, proclaims: “Since the island has been freed from ogres, I will distribute equally to
all inhabitants and their children the millet dumplings that the old couple made.” When one of
his animal retainers complains that Momotar is spoiling the indigenous people out of
misguided good will, the governor-general dismisses him and resolves to carry out his policy
of fairness and equal treatment to all. Afterward, a monkey and a raccoon (representing the
colonized) complain to Momotar that his retainers abuse their power and torment the local
population. In reply, the governor-general vows to end such abuses.114
In the second scene, the islanders complain that the millet dumplings they are given are “too
small” and “all but inedible.” Rather than dumplings, what they really want is Momotar ’s
sword and uniform. In the final scene, the monkey, fox, and badger (animals associated with
trickery and disguises) ply Momotar with drinks, tricking him into giving up his sword and
uniform, the symbols of his authority in Taiwan. Taking advantage of Momotar ’s
guilelessness, the ogres disarm him and reverse the colonial conquest, leaving Momotar
“conquered.”115 While Momotar begins by offering to share the millet dumplings (economic
prosperity) supplied from the home country with his colonial subjects, the colonized are
primarily interested in acquiring the trappings of political power.
From Nitobe to Miyagawa, Momotar has served as a trope for colonialism and his name
has been invoked in debates on colonial policy. Indeed, the tale of Momotar as conqueror
survived, nearly intact, the demise of the Japanese empire in postcolonial Taiwan. I have
already noted that the figure of Momotar was extensively transfigured in postwar Japan. On
the one hand, Japanese writers sought to free Momotar from the taint of war crimes and made
him a symbol of a peaceful and democratic nation, a fitting metaphor for postwar Japan. On the
other hand, Japanese regions enlisted him as a symbol of local identity and mobilized his
image to promote regional revitalization and tourism. Paradoxically, he maintained his martial
qualities in a Taiwan ruled by the Kuomintang (KMT) and placed under martial law until the
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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late 1980s. While the Taiwan regime was acutely aware of the wartime manipulation of
Momotar as a symbol of Japan, they also countenanced the refashioning of this familiar and
malleable figure into an icon of Taiwan popular culture. In 1961, the Taiwanese film director
Shao Luo Hui directed Momotar ’s Great War with the Island of the Ogres. Takehisa Yasutaka
studies this film, of which no print survives, by examining surviving posters and newspaper
articles about the film that appeared in the Chinese-language press. He argues that the KMT
regime decided to make use of the folktale as a vehicle for its own anti-communist ideology,
much as it had also recuperated the Go H legend to support its civilizing mission toward the
Taiwanese aborigines. The film was renamed The Record of Old Peach’s Great Conquest of
the Bandits, incorporating Momotar as a Chinese figure (Old Peach) and assimilating his
enemies with bandits. The “bandits” that the hero conquers were identified with the Chinese
communists that ruled the mainland. In this new guise, Momotar became a KMT hero who
liberates the mainland from the communists (bandits).116 This postcolonial Momotar
illustrates the continuity between colonial ideologies and postwar nationalism but also
exemplifies the radical change in the uses to which such a popular figure can be put.
MOMOTARO AS VILLAIN AND THE DISCOVERY OF TROPICAL PARADISE
If Miyagawa caricatures Momotar as a feckless colonial governor of Taiwan, Akutagawa Ry
nosuke debunks him as a repellent symbol of Japanese imperialism in his short story “Momotar
.” First appearing in the Sunday Mainichi on July 1, 1924, this story is an entertaining parody
of the folktale and belongs to a rich tradition of sequels, parodies, and rewritings of Momotar ,
which began in the seventeenth-century period. While Akutagawa inherits and carries on this
long-standing tradition, he directs his satiric barbs at contemporary Japanese imperialism and,
in particular, at the “South Seas fever,” to use Shimizu’s term.
Akutakawa was perhaps the first writer to satirize this ideal Japanese boy as an aggressive
invader and to cast the ogres as peace-loving islanders.117 Consequently, his Momotar is a
parody of the model hero proposed by Nitobe. Though I have no evidence that Akutagawa had
read Nitobe’s essay on Momotar , he was a student at the First Higher School when Nitobe
was headmaster and later caricatured him as a poseur in his story “Hankechi” (The
Handkerchief). Professor Kinji Hasegawa, the protagonist of this story, is “a professor of
colonial studies” and a strong proponent of Bushid , that is to say an unmistakable stand-in for
Nitobe. “The Handkerchief” not only caricatures Nitobe but also lampoons contemporary
imperial rhetoric.118
“Momotar ” also expresses Akutagawa’s disgust with Japanese military aggression on the
Asian mainland and his flirtation with proletarian literature. While Akutagawa is best known
today as an apolitical and self-absorbed writer, he wrote a number of works in the early 1920s
that are strongly critical of Japan’s imperialism, militarism, and its distortions of national
history. An interesting example of these anti-imperialist works is the story “Kin Sh gun”
(General Kim), which was published the same year that “Momotar ” appeared. Relying on the
Korean accounts of Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea, the narrator of “General Kim” recounts the
exploits of Kim zui, a Korean national hero whose exploits are recounted in the Jinshinroku
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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(A Record of Jinshin, 1592), a book banned during the Japanese colonization of Korea.119
Endowed with supernatural powers from birth, Kim assassinates Konishi Yukinaga, one of
Hideyoshi’s top generals, and kills a kisaeng (female Korean entertainer) who is bearing
Konishi’s child. The work concludes as follows: “And that was the end of Konishi Yukinaga as
it has been handed down in Korean legend. To be sure, Yukinaga did not lose his life on the
battlefield during the invasion of Korea. But the Koreans are not the only ones to embellish
their history. In Japan, too, the history that is taught to children—or to youth who are not so
different from children—is filled to the brim with such legends.” In support of his point, the
narrator cites a passage from the Nihon shoki (an ancient history of Japan) describing a
Japanese military defeat on the Asian continent that is absent from Japanese history textbooks,
and concludes: “Every national history is the history of that nation’s glorious deeds. The
legend of General Kim is far from being the only one that deserves our laughter.”120
We must understand these works in light of the writer’s personal experience as
correspondent for the Osaka Mainichi in China in 1920. Akutagawa traveled in China within
one year of the May Fourth Movement, met with several Chinese intellectuals and
revolutionaries, and carefully recorded in his travel journals the anti-Japanese graffiti he saw
there.121 In Shanghai, Akutagawa met Chang Ping Lin, a leading political figure at the time of
the first Chinese revolution;122 he later described their meeting in an essay titled “Hekiken”
(Distorted Views):
When I visited Mr. Chang Ping Lin in the French settlement of Shanghai, we discussed Sino-Japanese relations in the
study room, which had a stuffed alligator mounted on the wall. Even today, his words continue to echo in my ears.
“The Japanese I most detest is the Momotar , who conquered the land of the ogres. I can’t suppress a feeling of
antipathy for Japanese who love Momotar .”
Mr. Chang is a true sage. I have heard many foreigners who are knowledgeable about Japan hold Prince Yamagata up
to ridicule, praise Katsushika Hokusai to the skies, or shower abuse on Viscount Shibusawa. . . . However, up to now, I
have never heard any of these so-called Japan experts utter a word of criticism about Momotar , who was born from a
peach. What’s more, Chang’s words contained more truth than all the eloquence of these experts.123
More perspicacious than other foreign “experts” on Japan, Chang unmasks the relation
between a folktale hero and Japanese imperialist ideology. In an analysis of this passage, the
critic Sekiguchi Yasuyoshi proposes a simple allegorical grid for reading Akutagawa’s
“Momotar ”: the island of the ogres is China, the ogres are the pacifistic Chinese, Momotar
and his followers are aggressive Japanese imperialists.124 Yet Sekiguchi has little to say on the
nature of this text or on its allusions to southern expansionism. A close reading of the work
will help us to situate Akutagawa’s “Momotar ” more precisely within Japanese colonial
discourse.
Whereas Nitobe bases his didactic interpretation on the standardized Momotar of the
national school reader, Akutagawa recasts the story as a satire by mixing stylistic features of
the fairy tale (for example, the formulaic “long, long ago,” mukashi, mukashi mukashi) with
realistic details and pointed criticism. Writing for an adult reader whose familiarity with the
standard versions of the folktale is assumed, Akutagawa dispenses with recapitulating whole
sections of the story. “After the fruit bearing a baby inside left the deep mountain fastness, what
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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sort of human being first retrieved him from the river? There is hardly any need for me to
mention that there was an old woman at the lower end of the valley, since every child in Japan
knows that she was washing clothes while her husband was out cutting firewood.”125
In addition, he plays with earlier literary versions of Momotar , notably the works of
celebrated writers such as Iwaya Sazanami and Ozaki K y . Like Iwaya’s Momotar ,
Akutagawa’s hero is adorned with the symbols of the nation (he has a fan with the hinomaru)
and is linked to the emperor ideology (he traces the origins of Momotar back to the creation
myths of the Kojiki). Like Ozaki, Akutagawa reverses the perspective of the standard tale and
attempts to tell the story from the point of view of the ogres. In the end, his chief narrative
innovations consist in his iconoclastic attitude toward Momotar and his portrayal of the ogres’
community as peaceful and fun-loving. Since Momotar is identified with the Japanese nation,
the writer encourages the reader to take a critical look at Japanese imperialism and to
reconsider it from the perspective of the colonized.
Akutagawa overturns the standard version mainly by inverting the basic elements of the tale.
Rather than a hero, Momotar is a villain driven only by his lust for power and a drive to get
rich quick. If the old man and woman in the story are ordinary hard-working peasants in rural
Japan, Momotar himself is a lazy good-for-nothing, who sets off to conquer the island of the
ogres simply to escape from the drudgery of farm labor: “He had an aversion for the kind of
life the old man and women led, going out to labor in the fields and streams.”126 By portraying
Momotar as lazy, Akutagawa reverses the conventional Japanese rhetoric about the people of
the South Seas. As noted, Nitobe associated the trait of laziness with the heedless South Seas
islanders (nan’y dojin) and contrasted them with the hard-working and diligent Japanese. Far
from discouraging him from leaving, the old man and woman were anxious to be rid of him
since they were “at their wits end in dealing with this spoiled brat.” To send him on his way,
“they willingly acquiesced to his every demand, whether it was a flag, a sword, or a battle
coat. At Momotar ’s request, they also made millet dumplings as provisions for his trip.”127
For the old man and woman, Momotar ’s overseas expedition is viewed as a serendipitous
solution to their problem of dealing with their headstrong and mischievous offspring. If the
parents represent a metropolitan view of colonial space, they view it as a dumping ground for
Japan’s social misfits.
On his way to the island of ogres, Momotar encounters three animals that he entices to join
him. In these scenes, he is a manipulative leader who wins others to his cause with deception
and cunning. He “naturally had no idea whether the dumplings were really the best in Japan,”
but he advertises them as such.128 He is also a shrewd businessman who pulls out his abacus
when the animal retainers offer to work for him. Taking full advantage of his monopolistic
position, he slashes their salaries from one millet dumpling to half a dumpling per retainer.129
Rather than earning their trust and loyalty, he gains power over them by preying upon their
gullibility and hunger.
Instead of paragons of Confucian virtue, these three animals are perhaps allegorical figures
for the three poisons (sandoku) that, according to Buddhist teaching, cause all of our
misfortunes: anger, greed, and delusion. The stray dog stands not for benevolence but for anger,
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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the clever monkey for greed, and the pheasant for delusion rather than courage. These three
animals openly hate one other and fight constantly. The dog threatens the cowardly monkey
with his huge fangs, the monkey with his commercial acumen feels nothing but contempt for the
impractical pheasant, while the pheasant “with his expertise in seismology,”130 despises the
stupid dog. Nevertheless, when the exasperated dog attacks the monkey, the pheasant
interposes itself as referee and “preaches to both the ethics of loyalty and obedience.”131
Ultimately, Momotar enforces order in the ranks of his unruly followers not by spouting the
platitudes of emperor ideology but by promising them a share in the war booty. When the
monkey threatens to walk out on the whole venture, he warns: “You can leave if you want. But
in return, you won’t get a share of the treasures when we take over the island.”132
If the animals are a quarrelsome crew on their way to the island, they become veritable
monsters when they arrive. Holding a plum banner in one hand and shaking his hinomaru fan in
the other, Momotar sets his followers free to plunder and pillage: “Attack! Attack! If you spot
an ogre, kill him. Kill every last one of them!” Malnourished and brainwashed, his retainers
prove brutal, not an unexpected outcome since “no one can be such a paragon of military
courage as a starving animal.” The dog bites the ogre youth in half with his fangs, the pheasant
pecks out the eyes of the children, and the monkey, perhaps because of his “close resemblance
to man,” strangles the young ogre women to death “only after ravishing them to his heart’s
delight.”133 Nitobe had treated colonization as a metaphorical rape in his essay, but there is
nothing metaphorical about the rape in Akutagawa’s story. Indeed, according to one critic,
Momotar ’s cruel invasion anticipates prophetically the rape of Nanjing.134 In this story, the
villainous ogres are plainly Momotar and his three animal helpers.
By contrast, in the topsy-turvy world of this story, the ogres are humanized. Before Momotar
’s invasion, they are portrayed as living happy lives in peace and harmony. Just as humans are
taught to fear ogres, ogre children are warned about the evils of the mythical human realm. A
white-haired nurse admonishes her charges: “You had better behave yourselves or I will have
to send you off to the island of human beings. You will be killed just like the kidnapper Shutend
ji of ancient legend who was sent away to the human island. What are these beings like, you
ask? Well, they lack horns, have pale faces, pale arms and legs. They are quite repulsive
creatures . . . they are greedy, jealous and conceited liars. They like to burn things down and
steal. They love to kill. There is no way to control them. They are beastly creatures.”135 Here
the projection of colonial stereotypes is reversed by a change of perspective: if colonial
narratives dehumanize the colonized other, Akutagawa shows how the colonized view
colonizers as savage beasts.
Nevertheless, Akutagawa’s “Momotar ” is not merely an allegory about universal human
failings. Just as Nitobe and T g discover layers of meaning in the folktale that relate to
contemporary Japan, Akutagawa adds details that make his story a pointed satire on the
Japanese imperialism of his time. If the peach boy symbolizes Japanese imperialism, his
retainers stand for different social groups that backed and encouraged it: the war-mongering
military is represented by the violent dog, Japanese capitalists by the profit-minded monkey,
and deluded intellectuals by the pheasant.136 In Akutagawas satire, these different groups are
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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unmasked as a criminal band whose words, stripped of any ideological finery, are simple
justifications for pillage.
However, there is a second way in which Akutagawa’s tale parodies contemporary
imperialism: the setting of the story. Whereas the ogres in standard accounts are fierce fighters
protected by an impregnable fortress on a craggy island, Akutagawa’s ogres live on a distant
tropical island and lack any means of self-defense besides their isolation.
The ogres lived on a solitary island in the far-off sea. It was not a craggy, hilly place as people tend to think. In fact, it was
a beautiful natural paradise in which palm trees soared and birds of paradise chirped. The so-called ogres seemed to be a
much more pleasure-loving race than we humans. The ogres in the story “How an Old Man Lost His Wen” danced the
night away while the hero of “The One-Inch Boy” totally forgot the personal danger he faced when he became infatuated
with the young princess he spotted at the temple. . . . In the midst of this tropical scenery, the ogres lived in peace and
passed their time strumming the strings of the koto, dancing, and singing the verses of the ancient poets. The daughters
and wives of the ogres wove cloth, brewed sake, made bouquets of orchids, and lived lives that were not in the least
different from those of our human wives and daughters.137
Writing at a time of South Seas fever, Akutagawa sets his story not on the Asian continent but
rather on a tropical island in the South Seas. Just as Nitobe has recourse to stereotypes of
tropical islanders as backward savages, Akutagawa deploys the conventional tropical images
(palm trees, birds of paradise, orchids, lovely moonlight, bananas, and coconuts) to depict his
southern island as a tropical paradise and to cast the ogres as carefree, happy creatures, fond
of drink and given to sensuality and childlike pleasures.138 Akutagawa’s ogres stand at the
crossroads of at least three discourses on primitivism. In accordance with a cultural
primitivism that believes that the savage is superior to the civilized, they are children who
spend their time at play while civilized adults slave away at work. Second, they know nothing
of warfare or sin, while their civilized counterparts are brutalized and corrupted by
civilization; this is a form of spiritual primitivism associated with the biblical myth of Eden.139
Finally, the islanders are compared to ancient Japanese who play the koto and recite old
narrative poems. In this allochronic primitivism, the ogres embody values associated with a
more virtuous and simple past from which present-day Japanese have grown estranged. Like
his novella Kappa, Akutagawa’s “Momotar ” is an allegory in which the idealized ogres are
defined by reference to the humans, and are employed to criticize human society.140 Unlike the
ogres in Nitobe’s essay who are defined in terms of lack (development, civilization), these
islanders know contentment—it is rather Momotar and his followers who are lacking in
contentment and therefore rapacious and insatiable. Accordingly, Akutagawa employs two
devices to make his critique of colonialism: he debunks the figure of the mythical Japanese
hero (Momotar ) and idealizes the society of the ogres as a utopia. The idealized others serve
as a foil which is contrasted with the flaws of the Japanese. I should add here that Akutagawa
never traveled to the South Seas but was familiar with the clichés and stereotypes that
circulated in Japan during the Taisho period. One of his earliest stories—“Zett no kaiji”
(Strange Event on a Desert Island)—is set on a South Seas island with palms and banana
trees.141
If colonialism is portrayed as naked violence, this violence is unredeemed by any civilizing
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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project that might justify it as a necessary means to a legitimate end. After the chief of the ogres
surrenders and hands over to Momotar the island’s treasures, he says:
“I believe that we become the target of your military might because we have in the past been guilty of disrespect toward
you. Nevertheless, none of us can recall the offense of which we are guilty. Could you not clarify the nature of this
infraction.”
“I, the greatest man in Japan, summoned the dog, monkey, and pheasant as my three faithful retainers and set forth to
conquer the island of the ogres.”
“In that case, what is the reason that you summoned those three individuals?”
“Since I had already made up my mind to conquer the island of the ogres, I engaged the services of my retainers by
giving them millet dumplings. That is enough. If you still do not understand my reasons, I will kill all of you.”142
We have seen that Nitobe characterizes colonization as the spread of civilization and as the
return of the Japanese to their ancestral home. For Akutagawa, colonization is an exercise in
futility. Ultimately, the conquest of the southern island brings few rewards to Momotar and
even fewer benefits to the islanders. Momotar makes a triumphal return to his hometown with
a treasure-laden cart drawn by ogre children, but he does not spend the rest of his life in the
happy retirement that a conquering hero expects as his due. When the captive children grow up,
they kill the pheasant, Momotar ’s personal bodyguard, and flee back to the safety of their
island. Other survivors, in search of revenge, sail across the ocean to attack Momotar ’s
palace, set it on fire, and kill the monkey. Troubled by nightmares, the hero confides to his
loyal dog:
“I am distressed that the ogres have remained so vindictive.’ ‘It is beyond comprehension,’ the dog acknowledged, ‘how
the ogres can disregard the generosity their veritable master has bestowed upon them.’ “143
In the end, Momotar is the fatally deluded colonizer who misunderstands how his own
actions galvanize and unite the colonized against him. Expecting his victims to welcome his
conquest as an expression of his disinterested “generosity,” he is distressed to discover their
“ingratitude” and “vindictiveness.” But as Akutagawa suggests, the peace-loving hedonistic
ogres only become “revenge-seeking ogres” after their island utopia has been destroyed by
Momotar ’s pillaging troops.
Akutagawas satire also suggests that Momotar has unwittingly set in motion a cycle of
violence that leads to defeat of the conqueror and the decolonization of the island. Colonial
conquest arouses “national” consciousness of the conquered people, awakens their desire for
independence, and prods them to resist the power that enslaves them. Learning lessons from
Momotar ’s tactics, the young ogres use materials readily available to build their own
weapons and fight for the “independence” of their island. “On the shores of the lonely island,
under the beautiful light of the tropical moon, a group of young ogres were stuffing the coconuts
with explosive materials in order to carry out their plan to win independence for their island.
Their eyeballs the size of tea saucers grew bright with happiness as they worked in silence, so
committed to their cause that not even the charms of the lovely ogre girls could distract
them.”144
The final image of this narrative—island men stuffing explosives into the hollowed-out
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
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shells of coconuts and immune to the charms of the young girls—is the poisoned fruit of
colonial conquest. Colonial conquest makes any return to the former tropical paradise all but
impossible. As a result of Momotar ’s conquest, the young men have forsaken their carefree
lives and become ascetic militants, who are no longer distracted by “the charms of the lovely
ogre girls.” In short, Akutagawa turns the propaganda figure of Momotar on its head. Momotar
’s benign expansion toward the south is unmasked as brutal conquest and exploitation, while
the gradual assimilation of the “ogres” is replaced by a story of resistance and liberation. In
the end, Akutagawa’s satire shows that a folktale can be a double-edged sword: serving as a
weapon for the political propagandist of Japanese imperialism and for those who wish to
lampoon his arguments.
MOMOTARO’S PROGENY AND “SOUTH SEAS” ORIENTALISM
Akutagawa does not end his story with this scene of ogres assembling their coconut explosives.
Rather, he returns to the opening of the story where he describes a mythical peach tree that
gives birth to a “genius” like Momotar only once every ten thousand years. He speculates
about the other peaches ripening on the branches of the same tree. “In these mountain fastnesses
unknown to human beings . . . countless other fruits are still ripening and we have no idea how
many future geniuses are still sleeping within them.”145 These “future geniuses” did not take
thousands or even hundreds of years to be born. They were released in the next two decades
after Akutagawa’s story appeared in print in a torrent of wartime picture books, cartoons,
Takarazuka plays, posters, songs, and animation.
However, even before these avatars of Momotar were enrolled to promote war and
invasion, popular writers associated with the children’s literature and manga wrote about boy-
heroes who set off to conquer the South Seas. Unlike Momotar , these boy-heroes were not of
supernatural birth and possessed neither extraordinary powers nor mythical helpers.
Nevertheless, they succeeded in setting themselves up as rulers over the tropical islanders
using only tricks or weapons they improvised or invented on the spot. In 1929, Yamanaka
Minetar published a short story titled “Nan’y no Sh nen ” (The Boy-King of the South Seas)
in the widely read Sh nen Kurabu. Kenkichi, the boy-king of the title, accompanies his uncle
on a trading trip to the South Seas and persuades his uncle to let him stay behind on a small
island in the Pacific “because he enjoys having naked natives bow and scrape before him.”
Entrusted with a revolver and a mirror from his uncle, Kenkichi gradually learns to speak the
indigenous language and “feels as if he had become a native [dojin] boy.” When his uncle
returns to the island a few weeks later, Kenkichi announces that he has no desire to return to
Japan since he “wants to make these islands a part of Japan . . . expand the territory and
eventually take over a bigger island.”146 Though he is still a boy, Kenkichi “is much smarter
than the natives” and teaches them to build wooden houses, to cook and season their food, and
to use fertilizer to grow their “banana, rubber, and coconut trees.” When he discovers that the
islanders worship the sun god, Kenkichi tricks the islanders into believing that he is the son of
the sun god by holding up the mirror given by his uncle in the palm of his hand to refract the
sunlight in their direction and dazzle them. When the inhabitants of a neighboring island attack,
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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Kenkichi drives off the invaders by firing his revolver at them and manipulating his mirror. Son
of a god and protector of the island, Kenkichi becomes king of the island, names the island
daiken koku, using the characters of his own name, creates a national flag (a white circle on a
red ground, an inversion of the colors of the Japanese flag), composes a national anthem,
promulgates a constitution, establishes an army, and expands the national territory by invading
and conquering neighboring territories, carrying out a mini–Meiji restoration complete with
colonial expansion. He wears a “strange crown made of leaves and ivy” on his head and is
borne about by his subjects on a portable throne. Two years after this story first appeared, it
was reissued in book form with eight other stories and became a best seller, selling more than
a hundred thousand copies.147
Perhaps the most famous of these boy-heroes was Dankichi, the hero of a popular manga
that appeared in the Sh nen Kurabu from 1933 to 1939.148 Indeed, Kawamura Minato singles
out the popular series B ken Dankichi (The Adventures of Dankichi) as the epitome of a
“popular Orientalism” that denigrates backward South Seas natives and contrasts them with
modern Japanese. The manga recounts the adventures of a young Dankichi who drifts to
Barbarian Island in the South Seas after falling asleep in his fishing boat. Shimada Keiz , the
creator of Dankichi, peoples his imaginary island with fauna not ordinarily associated with
Micronesia (lions, elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, camels, etc.). With the assistance of Karik
, a clever mouse, Dankichi establishes a private colony on the island, crowns himself king,
and domesticates the wild animals and the cannibals who live there (referred to as
“barbarians” and kuronb , or “darkies”). In a sense, The Adventures of Dankichi, which was
read by millions of young readers, realized on a massive scale what Nitobe had earlier
proposed to a much more limited audience in his Momotar lecture: it holds up an appealing
model of Japanese imperialism to Japanese youth.
In evolutionary narratives of civilization, savages were conceived of as the first stage of
human development, the first rung of a ladder leading step by step to civilization; by analogy to
the psychosocial development of the human individual, they were often thought of as immature
and undeveloped, as living in the childhood of humanity in general. A boy hero who conquers
adult savages, Dankichi represents the reductio ad absurdum of this evolutionary paradigm.
Smaller and younger than the natives, Dankichi is more than their match in terms of civilization
thanks to the edge provided by his primary school education and the few tokens of civilization
he carries with him such as his wristwatch and shoes. These infantilized natives submit without
a fight when confronted by the evidence of Dankichi’s irrefutable superiority. After crowning
himself king, Dankichi proceeds to tame and educate the natives and the wild animals on the
island. He introduces schools, postal services, banking, and other aspects of modern
civilization to the benighted inhabitants of the island, mimicking the civilizing mission of his
home country. Since he cannot pronounce their names, he assigns them numbers that are written
on the front of their bodies, effectively treating the natives as a tabula rasa without a past of
their own.
Dankichi’s superiority over the islanders is based, not only on his membership in an
advanced nation, but also on his racial difference from the natives: he is drawn with white skin
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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while the natives are dark-skinned and called “blacks” (kuronb ). 149 The racial difference
between Dankichi and the natives is the source of a good part of the visual humor in the comic
series. In an early episode, Dankichi daubs himself with mud to pass as black and escape
detection by the natives, but he is exposed as a white when a sudden rainstorm washes off his
disguise. In a later episode, the natives paint themselves white and impersonate the parents of
Dankichi in order to cure the boy of his homesickness. Whether he is superior because of his
race, nationality, or cultural identity, Dankichi illustrates one of the key ideas underlying
colonial discourse precisely because he is portrayed as an average and unremarkable boy: that
every Japanese colonizer, no matter how mediocre, is superior to any member of the conquered
people, no matter how outstanding, simply by virtue of being from a conquering country.
Thanks to this idea, even Dankichi, the lowest of emperor’s subjects, is immensely empowered
by colonialism and the obverse side, indeed the very condition of his empowerment, is the
denigration of the racially and culturally other natives.
A latter-day Momotar , Dankichi offers his readers an outlet for the projection of colonial
fantasies onto tropical islands, which are envisioned as places marked out in advance and
waiting for Japan to colonize them. His adventures suggest that colonialism is simple, fun, and,
above all, within the capacity of even the most ordinary and callow Japanese. While
entertaining his young readers, Dankichi also contributed to the formation of later generations
of imperial subjects, empowered and disciplined by the wish-fulfilling fantasies that he enacts
in their place.
Tierney, Robert Thomas. Tropics of Savagery : The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame, University of California Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=672390.
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NYU Press
Chapter Title: Overture: The Good News of Empire
Book Title: Strange Fruit of the Black Pacific
Book Subtitle: Imperialism’s Racial Justice and Its Fugitives
Book Author(s): Vince Schleitwiler
Published by: NYU Press. (2017)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bj4rqz.4
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Fruit of the Black Pacific
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1
Overture
Th e Good News of Empire
Diversity is America’s manifest destiny.
— Ronald T. Takaki
cipher
Th ey built a wall so they could keep him on the inside. (Justice.)
From time to time they try to get him to come out. (Love.)
When they see him they want to kill him. (Justice.)
Instead they give him a woman, so they can imagine
what he does to her. (Love.)
Some of them think a blonde one is worth six
of the black ones. (Race.)
Some of them think that’s a poor trade. (Gender.)
Now they want him on fi lm. (Love.)
Now they want him on stage. (Justice.)
Now they want him in the air. (Freedom.)
Now he is in the air.
What happened to the women? What happened to the monkey? What
happened to the cook?
Somewhere on the island, the women all live together. Th ere are caves
and a hidden beach. Before they came here, they used to work as extras.
“Where have they taken him?” asks one.
“To their own home,” says another.
“Will he come back?” asks the one.
“I think they have killed him,” says another.
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2 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
“Should we fi nd a new one?” asks the one.
“Th ey will make a new one,” says another.
“Will we protect him?” asks the one.
“He will fi nd care,” says another.
“Where will he fi nd it?” asks the one.
in want of a map
Th e best- loved celebration of lynching in U.S. popular culture locates
the origins of its savage victim- hero on a fi ctional island in Southeast
Asia. If you read this character as black, as the logic of white terror has
commonly been understood to imply, then King Kong must be the most
famous black fi gure to hail from the Asia/Pacifi c region until the rise
of a Hawai‘i- born, Jakarta- and Honolulu- raised law professor, orga-
nizer, and memoirist named Barack Obama. Of course, the election of
the fi rst African American commander in chief surely signifi es hope in
the unfolding promise of racial justice— in the teeth of a national history
of not only slavery and Jim Crow but also ongoing imperial warfare in
Asia. By contrast, admitting the presence of race in Kong’s story privi-
leges a history of sexualized violence, white supremacy, and conquest
that appears as the very antithesis of racial justice. Between these oddly
paired icons and the seemingly incompatible forces they represent lies
a terrain of forgotten and forgetful desires, of vivid and resonant shad-
ows, out of which is inscribed a hundred years or more of the history of
race— that epoch heralded in 1899 by W. E. B. Du Bois as the century of
the color line. It is a space and a time that this book asks you to enter.
Tempting as it may be, the “black Pacifi c” is not the appropriate name
for this terrain. Th at term I will reserve for a specifi c lure within it, the en-
gendering chaos of the object or essence posited by the erotic violence of
imperial race- making. Call it a historical nonentity, for it never actually ex-
isted except as speculative fantasy, yet its material consequences persist— a
paradoxical condition, to be sure, but one that should hardly be unfamiliar
to scholars of race. Th e black Pacifi c, you might say, is the indispensable
blank or blind spot on the map; the empirically observable terrain, within
which it makes its absence felt, is a transpacifi c fi eld, charted by imperial
competition and by the black and Asian movements and migrations shad-
owing the imperial powers. Within this fi eld, the fi ctive lure calls forth
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 3
contradictory processes of conquest that endlessly pursue it— so attend-
ing to this black Pacifi c may allow you to apprehend the bonds between
the unfolding promise of racial justice and the overwhelming sexualized
violence heralding the expansion of justice’s domain.
In describing this book’s geographic reach as transpacifi c, I refer less
to a fi xed oceanic unit than to a kind of tilting of space and time, a dizzy-
ing pivotal shift in the centrifugal and centripetal forces moving empires
and their shadows. Its measure might be taken from Georgia to Luzon
via Hong Kong, or, just as surely, between two towns in the Mississippi
Delta. Th e transpacifi c is not a place, but an orientation— if at times, as
you will see, a disorientingly occidented one. Similarly, the historical set-
ting, between the rise of the United States and Japan as Pacifi c imperial
powers in the 1890s and the aft ermath of the latter’s defeat in World War
II, is periodized less in the sense of termination or punctuation than of
a course of movement whose roiling currents might toss an observer’s
vessel to and fro, or of the calculation of an orbit based on the shift ing
relations of bodies and vantages across vast distances. Put diff erently, this
book conceptualizes its fi eld of inquiry, not through a singular racial, na-
tional, imperial, or even oceanic formation,1 but through the interrelation
of competing fi gures of movement— multiple circuits of black and Asian
migrations cutting across Du Bois’s meandering, world- belting color line.
Because the comparison necessary to this approach is also the method
every imperialism seeks to monopolize, this book reads comparison
against a horizon of imperial competition, in the period culminating in
U.S. ascendancy as heir to Western global power, even as its foregrounded
objects of analysis remain territorially bounded within U.S. rule.
Intersectional and contrapuntal readings in African American, Japa-
nese American, and Filipino literatures provide the book’s material and
method, tracing how each group’s collective yearnings, internal con-
fl icts, and speculative destinies were unevenly bound together along
the color line. Th eir interactions— matters of misapprehension and fric-
tion, as well as correspondence and coordination— at times gave rise to
captivating visions of freedom binding metropolitan antiracisms with
globalizing anti- imperialisms. Yet the links were fi rst forged by the para-
doxical processes of race- making in an aspiring empire: on one hand,
benevolent uplift through tutelage in civilization, and on the other, an
overwhelming sexualized violence. Imperialism’s racial justice is my term
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4 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
for these conjoined processes, a contradiction whose historical legacy
constitutes the tangled genealogies of racism, antiracism, imperialism,
and anti- imperialism. Because uplift and violence were logically incom-
mensurable but regularly indistinguishable in practice, imperialism’s
racial justice could be sustained only through an ongoing training of
perception in an aesthetics of racial terror. Th is book takes up the task of
reading, or learning how to read, the literatures that take form and fl ight
within the fi ssures of imperialism’s racial justice, while straining to hear
what the latter excludes, or what eludes it.
Th e method of this interdisciplinary book is ultimately literary, less
in the choice of its objects than the mode of its articulation, marshalling
the capacities of a peculiar tradition of reading destined to never stop
overreaching its own grasp. By glossing “reading” as “learning how to
read,” I invoke the characteristic linking of literature, in African Ameri-
can cultural traditions, with a knot of questions around literacy, wherein
the task of learning how to read is always problematized, critical, and
unfi nished, never reducible to formal processes of education. It troubles
the privileging of either print or oral media, the visual or the aural; it is
associated with mobility, as both dislocation and fl ight; it signifi es both
the possibility of freedom and the threat of its foreclosure. Put diff er-
ently, I emphasize that the task of learning how to read the literatures
of black and Asian migrations is not subsidiary to social and historical
analysis. It is not simply to use literary texts as evidence for a critique
of dominant histories, to mine them for traces of forgotten historical
formations, nor to locate their work within proper historical contexts. It
is also, and more importantly, to recognize that the work of these texts is
not fi nished, not limited to the past, and to activate them in the present,
undertaking one’s historical and theoretical preparations so that their
unpredictable agency might be called forth in the process of reading.
Th is book’s method, fi nally, is the expression of a political desire. It
is staked on the chance that the practice of reading as learning to read
could open social reality to imagination’s radically transformative power,
even as it pursues this chance by dwelling in moments of subjunctive ne-
gation and foreclosure, fi ngering their jagged grain. While I participate
in a broader aspiration to recuperate the antiracist and anti- imperialist
visions of twentieth- century black and Asian movements, what I will
term their third- conditional worlds, I do not presume that my hind-
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 5
sight suffi ces to liberate those visions from the racist and imperialist
discourses of their emergence, for to do so would be to posit a freedom
my present- day politics has not itself achieved. Instead, this book seeks
to read them as they take form and fl ight within structures of thought
whose presumptions I fi nd objectionable, on the chance that they might
diagnose a predicament of unfreedom I share.
Th e book is divided into three parts. Chapter 1 provides a histori-
cal overview, theoretical framework, and methodology of reading for
studying race across U.S. transpacifi c domains. It turns to the fi gure of
W. E. B. Du Bois on the threshold of the century he gave over to the
problem of the color line, recovering the transpacifi c geopolitical context
of that prophetic formulation, and the radical poetics of his response to
racial terror. Stepping back, it surveys two major aspects of an Asian/
Pacifi c interest within African American culture, exemplifi ed by impe-
rial Japan and the colonized Philippines, as well as corresponding black
presences in Filipino and Japanese American culture. Th e second part,
in two linked chapters, considers the ambivalent participation of African
Americans in the colonization of the Philippines, as soldiers, colonial of-
fi cials, intellectuals, and artists, alongside the development of an Anglo-
phone Filipino intelligentsia from the colony to the metropole. Pressing
the limits of the diaspora concept, it asks how these movements shaped
emerging gendered forms of Negro and Filipino collectivity over against
their confl ation by sexualized imperial violence, and how they bore the
echoes of alternative realms of belonging- across- diff erence that did not
come into being. Th e third part, also in two chapters, reads the history
of black urbanization alongside Japanese American incarceration and
resettlement, complicating the canonical modernizing narratives of
the Great Migration and the Internment. It explores how these forms
of nonwhite diff erence provided each other with aesthetic resources to
meditate on the distinction between freedom and graduated privilege,
and to recall and release the unspeakable violence by which this distinc-
tion is elided. Finally, a brief Aft erthought refl ects on the “passing” of
multiculturalism, inquiring into the ongoing transformations of impe-
rialism’s racial justice in the aft ermath of the Cold War and the election
of an African American president.
Th e remainder of this Overture introduces the book’s central themes,
in an extended refl ection on the glinting opacity of the epigraph, which
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6 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
the late Ron Takaki cheerily sprinkled through his lectures, interviews,
and writings. In turn, each section provides a gloss on a keyword from
the book’s title: imperialism’s racial justice, black Pacifi c, strange fruit, and
fugitives.
spreading gospel
Over the past fi ft een years, scholarship across ethnic studies, Ameri-
can studies, and postcolonial studies has critiqued the appropriation of
the grammar and lexicon of antiracism by U.S. imperialism, from the
consolidation of an offi cial multiculturalism in the fi rst Iraq war and its
deployments in the so- called War on Terror, to its historical precedents
in Cold War racial liberalism. With the post– Cold War dissolution of a
Th ird Worldist idea predicated on the continuity of antiracism and anti-
imperialism, it became necessary to rethink the relation between impe-
rialism and racial justice, within a broader account of the dramatic shift s
and mundane continuities of national and global racial orders aft er the
disavowal of segregation and colonialism.
Yet imperialism’s reliance on a language of racial justice is nothing
new. If you aim to identify what is distinctive or peculiar to a post–
World War II or post– civil rights racial regime, you should know that
the phenomenon of an imperialism enunciated as the expansion of ra-
cial justice, in word and deed, is no recent innovation. In this book, I
trace these concerns to a period when terms of racial justice are close
enough to seem familiar, even as the more genteel forms of white su-
premacism were hegemonic, and American exceptionalism found tri-
umphal expression in overseas territorial colonialism. Because the
post– World War II U.S. racial order claims the formal equality of races
(against white supremacism) and the formal independence of nations
(against colonialism) as the foundation of its disavowal of racism, which
it thereby represents as the very exemplar of injustice, it seems odd that
the language of racial uplift that once motivated an entire spectrum of
black political movements was deployed, in the name of Anglo- Saxon
superiority, to justify the conquest of the Philippines.
While lingering in this sense of historical disorientation might be
instructive, a few brief hypotheses on race, imperialism, and justice
should suffi ce to proceed. First, if the term “racism” refers at once to
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 7
structured relations of inequality and to patterns of attitude, thought,
and representation, then the latter must serve to uphold and extend the
former— which is to say, racism must be understood as always a justi-
fi cation of its own material conditions. Th is means, curiously enough,
that racism must always present itself as the proper form of racial justice,
its culmination or terminal phase, beyond which lies chaos or decay.
So if some of the more insidious recent forms of racist ideology claim
the legacy of civil rights, in the name of “color- blindness,” this is noth-
ing new, but a feature common to previous racisms— only the historical
terms of what is promised as racial justice have changed.
Second, imperialisms are always in competition, a claim that holds at
least on contingent empirical grounds in recent eras, if not defi nition-
ally. Th e late nineteenth- century rise of U.S. global power involved the
incitement of animosity toward Spanish decadence and cultivation of
racial fraternity with England, even as it aimed fi nally to supplant its
European predecessors. Such competition is never entirely friendly, but
neither is it entirely unfriendly— it served both U.S. and Spanish purposes
to stage the conclusion of the 1898 war in the Philippines as an exchange
between equals, with Filipinos excluded. Ultimately, imperialisms seek to
be universal and to fully and fi nally monopolize the very terms of uni-
versality— an impossible task. Yet because their power cannot be total,
because their dominion cannot be coextensive with the universe, impe-
rialisms must always pursue expansion— preemptively countering the
threat of encroachment by some other expansionist force, real or imag-
ined, out to universalize dominion on alien grounds. Imperialisms can-
not be satisfi ed with any victory because their aspiration to total power is
insatiable; as such, they will invent an enemy if none can be found.
Th ird, imperialism, in its various manifestations, is necessarily a
multiracial, multiracialist project. Imperialism is, among other things,
the desire to rule over diff erence. It seeks to extend its dominion across
peoples and territories thereby defi ned as other, a process necessarily
grounded in coercion rather than consent; yet it must always seek to
legitimize that extension, however violent, as the arrival of justice. Put
diff erently, racial justice is imperialism’s gospel, the good news it is com-
pelled to express in and as violence. Th e claim to do justice to diff erence
provides imperialism with its moral authority, political legitimacy, and
ideological engine. Writing amid the din of war in 2003, Edward Said
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8 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
asserted, “Every single empire in its offi cial discourse has said that it
is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has
a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it
uses force only as a last resort” (xxi). Exceptionalism, in other words, is
a formal characteristic of every imperialism’s claim to justice, a kind of
hallmark, in what is merely one of the phenomenon’s lesser paradoxes.
Th at the racialized population imperialism would rule must be con-
structed as incapable, or not yet capable, of giving their consent does
not cancel this requirement for justifi cation. Rather, justice emerges,
fi rst and foremost, as a terrain of struggle between competing imperial-
isms, and between the imperial subjects who constitute, at least in prin-
ciple, a transimperial community of judgment. Th is fi gurative gathering
is positioned above and before the possible engineering of a colonized
subject capable— again, in principle— of provisional membership in that
hierarchical community. On such terms, it may be easier to understand
how an annihilating violence may be one form of this justice. Yet even
then, the imperative of expansion guides violence in the direction of
inclusion. Just as those racializing processes typically understood as in-
clusion’s opposite actually prove to be modes of incorporation— for ex-
ample, Jim Crow segregation and Oriental exclusion, in practice, bound
unfree subjects within heavily restricted and regulated socioeconomic
locations— so, too, should processes of inclusion be understood as ne-
cessitating a diff erentiating and refi ning violence.
Readers who seek to refashion and reactivate the allied projects of an-
tiracism and anti- imperialism, rather than merely perform their critical
autopsy, may fi nd these propositions disabling. To think of contempo-
rary U.S. imperialism’s deployment of diversity- talk as an appropriation
requires imagining a chain of appropriations and counterappropriations
stretching back to the onset of European imperialism and the trans-
atlantic slave trade, and positing that the conception of racial justice
properly originates with the agents of conquest. Such a model may it-
self be too simplistic, in seeking to secure a transhistorical autonomy
of legitimate and illegitimate conceptions of justice— even if, in local
practice, it makes sense to oppose the pragmatic compromises of a lib-
eratory movement to the disingenuous propagandizing of an oppressive
regime. Nonetheless, I contend that imperialism’s racial justice should
be approached as an animating contradiction, logically necessary but
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 9
unpredictably volatile. No mere alibi, it must be taken seriously even—
especially— if you hope to reject it.
What readers of any political inclination may fi nd most diffi cult to
accept is that imperialism’s claims to justice are not immediately and
unambiguously debarred by its reliance on forms of excessive, repetitive,
and spectacular violence. Even so, it may be acknowledged that civiliz-
ing missions past and present have at times been indistinguishable in
practice from overwhelming violence. If such violence proceeds from
intentions and premises refl exively represented as benevolent, innocent,
and idealistic, this paradox may be explained away as betrayal, corrup-
tion, or human frailty, or dismissed as deception or bad faith. Across a
political spectrum, histories of imperial violence become separable from
theories of racial justice. Against this common sense, I contend that vio-
lence is the vehicle of imperialism’s racial justice, the very means of its
actualization, and that the practical identity between the two is experi-
enced as a quotidian reality. How, then, does their separation come to
be taken for granted?
To approach this question as a problem of ideology or epistemology
may not suffi ciently express how deeply the operations of race pervade
social experience. What manages the contradictions of race and justice is
also a matter of aesthetics: a set of enabling constraints on the senses that
conditions perception. Students of black literature and culture will be
familiar with its paradox of invisibility and hypervisibility, and scholars
of race will recall the duplicitous language of color- blindness, two exam-
ples of a larger dynamic not reducible to the visual or to any single sense.
Angela Davis captures it succinctly in asking why older forms of racism
are called “overt,” as if racism is somehow “hidden” in the post– civil rights
era (“Civil Rights”). Similarly, Patricia Williams describes the success-
ful police defense in the Rodney King case as less a rationalization than
a painstaking lesson in an “aesthetics of rationality” (54). An elaborate
system of looking, charged with fear and desire, which intuitively ap-
prehends a prone black body as a threat demanding overwhelming pre-
emptive force; or again, the socialized habits of perception that instruct
you to perceive mass incarceration as a natural function of government,
and that evoke the specter of the prisoner to teach you to see yourself
as free— such are the broader set of phenomena I conceptualize as an aes-
thetics of racial terror, a training of attention that allows its subjects to
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10 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
distinguish between forms of freedom and unfreedom, between diff er-
ently racialized and gendered bodies, and between the gospel of imperi-
alism’s racial justice and its expression as overwhelming violence.
Th e violence’s tendency toward repetition and excess points to its
intrinsic inability to fully and fi nally achieve its ends, revealing an anxi-
ety over the limits of domination and the nonidentity of coercion and
consent. By the same token, its corresponding tendency toward spec-
tacle and ritualization suggests how that anxiety demands a periodic
renewal of its lessons. Th ese must be compulsively reenacted in an in-
creasingly formalized manner, whose slightly disjunctive relation to
any given situation both extends their temporal reach and invites their
eventual collapse. Because the violent operation of imperialism’s ra-
cial justice is unable to fi x its terms, they are shown to be historically
contingent. What passes for racial justice under imperialism in one
period— expulsion, wholesale slaughter, engineered extinction, religious
conversion, cultural erasure— might provide the very defi nition of racial
injustice in another, even as the extent to which imperialism dominates
the terms of what can be imagined as racial justice in the present is dif-
fi cult to properly perceive.
Th is is why I do not turn to the past to recover an exemplary politics.
Such an impulse rests on unacknowledged presumptions regarding his-
tory as progressive enlightenment, upholding images of freedom’s betrayal
in an unfree past to train its optics to mistake the privileging of hindsight
for freedom of judgment in the present. By contrast, this book seeks to
dwell within the strangeness of the past as a means of defamiliarizing
the present, casting its lot within the predicaments of the past in order to
read a shared condition of unfreedom in the desire to become estranged
to it. Th is task of reading, or learning how to read, draws on the aesthetic
resources of black radical traditions that improvise a countertraining of
perception, whose appearance may be anticipated within the ritual sites
of training in the aesthetics of racial terror— in its very forms, practices,
and protocols. It pursues the chance that what imperial inclusion in the
violence of its embrace must exclude bears the clues to what yet eludes it.
* * *
Th e predominant form of imperialism’s racial justice discussed in this
book, recent enough to seem at once familiar and foreign, is racial uplift .
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 11
At the twentieth century’s dawn, uplift encompassed both the range of
projects to improve the social conditions of African Americans and the
guiding rationale for U.S. colonialism in the Philippines. Looking back
through a perspective shaped by post– World War II conjunctions of
formal racial equality and formal national independence, on one hand,
and Th ird Worldist antiracism and anti- imperialism, on the other, these
two senses appear incommensurable. Examples of Negro uplift , as col-
lective protest or moralizing conservativism, are regularly represented
as antecedents of various contemporary strains of African American
politics. By contrast, the attitudes and expressions of Anglo- Saxon uplift ,
when not ignored or discarded, are recognized as outmoded or racist.
Whether the racial politics of U.S. colonialism are seen as aberrations
or vestiges in an essentially benevolent tradition, or as alibis or pater-
nalistic delusions exposing the immorality of power, their discontinu-
ity from traditions of racial justice is taken for granted. Yet at the time,
black intellectuals regularly presumed the coherence and continuity of an
overarching category of uplift , upholding it most strongly when they
subjected its Anglo- Saxon variant to criticism. On what terms can this
continuity be understood?
In his infl uential work on uplift , Kevin Gaines argues that an older
sense of the term rooted in “antislavery folk religion” (Uplift ing the
Race, 1) largely gave way, aft er Reconstruction, to an ideology stressing
“self- help, racial solidarity, temperance, thrift , chastity, social purity, pa-
triarchal authority, and the accumulation of wealth.” While “espousing a
vision of racial solidarity uniting black elites with the masses,” Gaines ar-
gues, uplift ideology functioned to establish a fragile class division within
the race. In the teeth of racism, “many black elites sought status, moral au-
thority, and recognition of their humanity by distinguishing themselves, as
bourgeois agents of civilization, from the presumably undeveloped black
majority; hence the phrase, so purposeful and earnest, yet so oft en of am-
biguous signifi cance, ‘uplift ing the race’ ” (2). Tenuous and aspirational, this
social distinction intensifi ed the values and practices of service and duty to
the race, inscribing it even as they worked to overcome it.
Anglo- Saxon uplift was similarly concerned as much with its priv-
ileged subject as with its benighted objects. While the stated aim of
conquest was to better a native deemed unfi t for self- government, its
underlying objective was to establish a white American racialized
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12 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
capacity for imperial rule, as illustrated by Rudyard Kipling’s famously
bitter counsel to his Anglo- Saxon brethren to “take up the White Man’s
burden” in the Philippines. Th ough ingratitude, sabotage, and failure
may be the results of the colonizer’s eff orts, the poem suggests, he must
be satisfi ed by the “judgment of [his] peers,” veterans of other civilizing
missions, upon his “manhood.” Counterposing this racialized fraternity
to the sour travesty of “silent sullen peoples” impassively “weigh[ing] your
Gods and you,” the poem illustrates how imperialism constitutes white
manhood as a transimperial community of judgment, even as judgment
is thereby made available to appropriation by the colonized (291).
Th is understanding of U.S. conquest as a trial of white manhood,
a liberating burden, was not merely an invention of the poet. Cast in
decidedly sunnier terms, uplift was President William McKinley’s own
reported justifi cation for the war. In a notorious 1899 interview, fi rst
published by James Rusling in 1903, McKinley insists he had no initial
interest in colonization. Aft er nights of soul searching, however, he fi nds
no alternative: returning the islands to Spain “would be cowardly and
dishonorable,” handing them to another European power “would be bad
business and discreditable,” and recognizing their independence would be
disastrous, as “they were unfi t for self- government.” “Th ere was nothing
left for us to do,” he concludes, “but to take them all, and to educate the
Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s
grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow- men for whom
Christ also died” (22– 23). However authentic the anecdote, it accurately
illustrates the offi cial rationales for war, recast as a moral challenge—
encountered fi rst before a transimperial community of whiteness, as a
test of manhood (the gendered capacity for valor, honor, and credit),
and second, in the face of a racialized population, recognized only as
the object of responsibility. Uplift , in other words, is a moral duty, in the
form of conquest.
Broadly speaking, what’s historically particular to uplift as a form of
racial justice is its imagination of a benevolent relationship between sub-
jects positioned diff erently in a hierarchy of civilization. As it worked to
establish, certify, and justify inequality, its internal logic cast this relation-
ship as a form of tutelary love. McKinley’s offi cial policy of “benevolent
assimilation,” as Vicente Rafael glosses it, is “a moral imperative” de-
voted to a “civilizing love and the love of civilization” (21), manifested
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 13
primarily in education— the governing trope and signature policy con-
cern of Anglo- Saxon uplift in the Philippines, as well as a primary fi eld
of debate for competing visions of Negro uplift .
Th e problem of tutelage holds an inherent paradox, what you might
call uplift ’s miraculous core: it aims to produce a free, self- determining
subject through an imposed, coercive process disallowing that sub-
ject’s capacity to evaluate its fi tness for self- rule. While this process may
function in retrospect— an autonomous subject can narrate its passage
from dependence to independence— it is impossible when imagined
prospectively: to require another’s recognition of your capacity for self-
determination is to be incapable of self- determination. To wait upon the
grace of uplift is endless, for it is only ever bestowed aft er the fact.
In the colony, Anglo- Saxon uplift always deferred the autonomy it
claimed to produce. One way to resolve this problem required internal-
izing tutelage within the collective and individual racial body, which is
how Negro uplift sought its autonomy. By taking autonomy as a given,
retrospective accounts tend to obscure the unstable intraracial split such
tutelage produces— whether between the black middle- class subject and
the benighted masses or within that precarious middle- class subject
itself— behind the unifying force of racial pride as self- love. Both Anglo-
Saxon and Negro uplift , then, heralded the emergence of an internally
divided nonwhite subject who belongs in and to a transimperial realm
of civilization while remaining marginal to any existing state capable of
recognizing that subject as its citizen.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that these forms of uplift are equiv-
alent, nor that one is less authentic or derivative of the other. Negro
uplift diff ers in its primary emphasis on intraracial relations, though it
was nonetheless profoundly shaped by interactions with colonized non-
white populations, as well as the Anglo- Saxon uplift whose hypocrisies
it exposed— black observers could excoriate white soldiers and offi cials
in the Philippines while upholding the imperial mission’s ideals. But just
as Negro uplift saw itself as more fully and properly embodying the ide-
als proclaimed by Anglo- Saxon uplift , it also shared an essential rela-
tionship to violence, moralized and moralizing: unable to recognize the
autonomy of its inter- or intraracial object, racial uplift construes its pre-
rogative of coercion as benevolent. Similarly, their shared historical con-
ditions make them alienating to present- day sensibilities in analogous
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14 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
ways. As the prevailing form of racial justice in a period when white
supremacism was hegemonic, both forms of uplift contain elements that
appear to hindsight as unmistakably racist.
Th ey also shared a more curious feature: the presumption, as a struc-
tural premise, of inevitable European civilizational decline, against
which uplift ’s subject was positioned as subordinate but rising, through a
generative relation with its own, less civilized wards. Where uplift off ered
its lowly objects a tutelage in civilization leading, someday, to autonomous
selfh ood, it promised its advanced subjects protection from decadence
or “overcivilization” through reinvigorating contact with primitive vital-
ity. Underwriting uplift was a model of civilization joining hierarchical
classifi cation and the forward, upward movement of historical progress
to the cyclical rhythms of birth, maturation, reproduction, and death.
To be at the pinnacle of this civilizational schema is to anticipate a
natural decline. Both varieties of uplift sought to engineer new forms
of racial privilege as heirs- apparent to European empires, known and
constituted by intercourse with more primitive groups. Among Afri-
can American intellectuals in the period, the word “Occidentalism” was
sometimes used to distinguish a desire for Western ideals from a dis-
dain for white people who claimed them,2 a term even more striking if
you recall its etymological origin— the identifi cation of the west as the
direction of the setting sun. Hence, I take occidented as my term for this
shared orientation, upholding the primacy of Western civilization as the
very promise of its downfall.
the missing link
Th e recent resurgence of an Afro- Asian comparative interest out of dispa-
rate investments within African American and Asian American studies,
black diaspora studies and critical Asian studies, and American studies
and ethnic studies3 has largely evaded the gravitational pull of the term
“black Pacifi c,” as a parallel formation to Paul Gilroy’s phenomenally
successful if oft en misunderstood 1993 book, Th e Black Atlantic.4 How-
ever, the phrase appears in two critical interventions worth noting. In
“Toward a Black Pacifi c,” his aft erword to Heike Raphael- Hernandez
and Shannon Steen’s AfroAsian Encounters, Gary Okihiro points out
that “the Pacifi c” as metonym “oft en and mistakenly stands in place of
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 15
or in reference to Asia, especially East Asia” (313). As a brief corrective
to this erasure of indigenous histories, he sketches “three intersections
between Pacifi c Islanders and African Americans” (316): overlapping
histories of bonded labor migration linking enslaved Africans, Chinese
“coolies,” and Polynesian captives in Peru; networks of colonial educa-
tion tying Tuskegee and Hampton to Hawai‘i; and circuits of popular
culture bringing new styles of Hawaiian and African American music in
contact since the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, an excavation of the
historical confl uences of Pacifi c Islander and black cultures is beyond
the capacity of this book, whose comparative scope is already ambitious.
Th ough it cannot substantively redress the erasures of indigenous Pacifi c
histories and perspectives, I hope at least to unsettle their reinscription,
and I follow Okihiro in emphasizing the multiplicity of racial categories
that “the Pacifi c” invokes.
Another intervention is signaled by Etsuko Taketani’s essay, “Th e
Cartography of the Black Pacifi c: James Weldon Johnson’s Along Th is
Way,” which tracks the multiple accounts Johnson gave of his partici-
pation, as consul, in the 1912 U.S. intervention in Nicaragua that led to
twenty years of military occupation— an incident, he argued, that partly
responded to rising Japanese infl uence, and that would be cited to de-
fend Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Challenging the tendency in
recuperative scholarship to explain black sympathy for Japanese impe-
rialism as “mistaken,” Taketani rejects the unexamined assumption that
“African Americans are not accountable for globe- carving imperialism”
(82), arguing that Johnson’s agency cannot be severed from its position
within, and infl uence upon, a politics hindsight fi nds objectionable.
Recognizing “the complicity of imperial modes and a black internation-
alism” (103) leads her to an instructive reading of Johnson’s interrogation
of “the very continuity between his position and a position he repudiates
as evil” (91).5
In this book, I refer to the transpacifi c to account for diff erentiations
within imperial racial formation— noting, for example, that certain fea-
tures characterizing Filipino and Hawaiian racialization correspond with
Negro racialization in this period, by contrast with the racialization of
Chinese and Japanese. Acknowledging African Americans’ productive
complicity in U.S. imperialism reveals how this correspondence condi-
tioned the agency of black soldiers, colonial offi cials, and intellectuals,
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16 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
as they recast the meanings and destinies of race through encounters
with Philippine colonization, as well as how advocates of uplift pursued
autonomy through imaginative affi nities with imperial Japan. Attending
to the transpacifi c allows me to extend Taketani’s exploration of black
internationalism’s alignments with various imperialisms, while to nego-
tiating the continuity of black and Asian theories and representations of
race with positions that now appear unambiguously racist.
By contrast, this book poses the black Pacifi c with a certain irreduc-
ible irony. In its inherent volatility, the term might most precisely be
described as a joke. If it functions in scholarly endeavors as a lure that
misapprehends its own “discoveries,” then rather than disavowing the
desire that produced it, you might allow it to turn back on that desire as
instruction— in the same way the “joke” of passing played by the nar-
rator of James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man
turns back on his narrative as a bitter lesson on distance between racial
privilege and freedom. I propose “the black Pacifi c” to name, not a sub-
fi eld of academic enterprise, but a mythic preserve within which the
desired object of U.S. imperial violence was imagined to live and breed.
Like “race” more broadly, this black Pacifi c is a social fi ction with
material consequences, though none of the groups ensnared under its
particular manifestations sought to appropriate it as a category of af-
fi rmative collectivity. Hence it can be described more emphatically as
a historical nonentity, in that its existence, as a fantasy with real eff ects,
was recognized only through negation and disavowal. Indeed, it was an
indispensable negativity for a range of modernizing projects, the specter
each needed to invoke in order to exorcize. It was the object of a white
imperial desire, which sought at once to consume it and to banish it from
perception, whether through overwhelming violence or benevolent tute-
lage. As the violent tropical zone where Negro and Filipino racialization
did not merely overlap but actually converged, it was the slanderous pre-
condition of would- be autonomous forms of Negro and Filipino uplift ,
which sought to disprove it through the performance of civilized gender
norms. In extravagant revenge fantasies of the Negro incarnation of
Japanese imperial might, it off ered a teeming cache of speculative fan-
cies to projects of Negro and Nisei self- imagining, which learned to dis-
avow it as the price of fashioning a serious politics. Finally, it gave birth
to alternative political solidarities, from world- belting social movements
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 17
to inchoate aesthetic impulses, which aimed to displace it in the name
of the “darker races,” the “Afro- Asian,” or the “Th ird World”— names
that have come to evoke a nostalgia for worlds that never came to pass,
a feeling that bears whatever is left in these histories that still gives itself
to the chance of another world.
Th e black Pacifi c, to repeat, existed only as fantasy; it entered his-
tory to the extent that the denial of its entry into history was imag-
ined as history’s inauguration. Its sheer unreality, moreover, allowed it
to function as— to borrow Jacqueline Goldsby’s elaboration of Du Bois’s
phrase— “a terrible real” (166). Lest this seem too obscure, note that
its most celebrated denizen has already made an appearance on these
pages, passing under the cover of familiarity. You know him as Kong.
* * *
Invented for the classic 1933 fi lm that bears his name, King Kong’s broad
appeal and wide- ranging cultural aft erlife have never been signifi cantly
hampered by the widespread recognition that he serves as a metaphor
for racist fantasies of violent black sexuality. Nor has that metaphor been
disrupted by the largely ignored fact that Kong’s imagined origins lie not
in Africa but in Southeast Asia— more specifi cally, the fi ctitious Skull Is-
land somewhere west of Sumatra.6 A heart of darkness never penetrated
by white explorers, it proves irresistible to Carl Denham, a fast- talking
New York movie producer whose technological expertise, entrepreneur-
ial spirit, and cocky disregard for tradition embody U.S. modernity. His
dream of capturing on fi lm something “no white man has ever seen”
expresses the ambitions of U.S. whiteness in an arena of imperial com-
petition, and he guards the secret of their destination from his crew until
just before their arrival, aware that its existence has circulated in obscure
rumor. Th e captain, for example, admits to having heard the name Kong,
which he skeptically identifi es as “some native suspicion.”
Th ese words appear to be a minor alteration from the shooting script,
which refers instead to “some Malay suspicion” (22)— Malay being the
dubious racial- scientifi c category of the period that included Filipinos and
other Southeast Asians and Pacifi c Islanders. Within days of King Kong’s
March 24, 1933, premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Th eatre in Hollywood, the
California Supreme Court ruled, in Roldan v. Los Angeles County, that
because Filipinos were “Malays” rather than “Mongolians,” they did not
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18 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
fall under antimiscegenation laws targeting Chinese; less than two weeks
passed before the legislature amended California law to bar Malay- white
marriages (Baldoz 98– 101). Th reats of miscegenation reinvigorated anti-
Asiatic exclusion movements, which converged with the complex politics
of colonial nationalism to produce the Hare- Hawes- Cutting Act of 1933
and its successor, the 1934 Tydings- McDuffi e Act, promising the Philip-
pines formal independence within a decade while terminating Filipino
labor migration. In short, a consensus had formed that colonial rule
in the Philippines was more trouble than it was worth. Th e disappear-
ance of the word “Malay” from the fi lm’s dialogue parallels its broader
elision of the Philippines and other U.S. colonial possessions in the Pa-
cifi c. Similarly, the fi lm never purports to represent Negro characters,
but cast African American actors to portray Skull Island’s natives, in a
notorious confl ation of minstrel and savage stereotyping that recalls the
black- skinned, bug- eyed, wide- lipped Filipino natives of U.S. political
cartooning during the Philippine- American War.7
Th e accumulation of these elliptical references ultimately allows Kong
to emerge from a dense network of racial signifi ers, transubstantiating
empirical knowledge and imperial histories of race. Th e island’s edges
are littered with the wreckage of past imperial expeditions, circuited by
a wall the men hesitantly compare to “Egyptian” ruins or “Angkor,” built
by some “higher civilization” lost in the mists of time. While the current
islanders “have slipped back,” they ritually maintain the fortifi cations
sealing off the interior, and their language resembles that of the nearby
(nonfi ctitious) Nias Islanders enough for the captain to engage them in
crude dialogue. Th eir distance from the sleepy decadence of East Asian
civilization is further established by contrast with the ship’s cook, Char-
ley, a stock Chinese stereotype.
Th is distinction develops through a complex staging of racial and
gendered dynamics involving the frustrated romance between Ann
Darrow, the beautiful unknown cast by Denham as his fi lm’s lead, and
Jack Driscoll, the macho fi rst mate, a committed sailor hesitant around
modern women. In an extended sequence aft er the crew’s initial en-
counter with the islanders, whose chief had off ered six native women to
purchase Ann for the still- unidentifi ed Kong, the shooting script shows
Ann speculating about Kong’s identity with Charley, who exits suddenly
in pursuit of a playful monkey named Ignatz (King Kong shooting script
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 19
38– 39). On a ship full of men, only the reassuringly asexual cook and
the comical simian mascot allow her to relax. Th e fi lm elides this in-
troduction, getting straight to the dramatic action: a chance encounter
on the moonlit deck, where Ann tells Jack the islanders’ drumming has
kept her awake. Jack confesses to fearing for her safety, then to fearing
her, and fi nally, to being in love. When she retorts, “You hate women,”
he awkwardly replies, “I know, but you aren’t women,” and they kiss.
Th en, aft er the captain calls him away, two islanders suddenly appear to
kidnap her. Jack returns, fi nds only Charley, and heads off to her cabin,
but then Charley discovers a cowrie bracelet on the deck and sounds the
alarm, declaring: “Crazy black man been here!”
Th e modifi er black, in the Chinese cook’s broken English, does not
identify the absent kidnapper as African or Negro. Rather, it signi-
fi es his racialized capacity to violently assert masculine heterosexual
prerogative— unlike Jack or Charley, who are not man enough to act
upon their natural desires to possess the white woman. Th is racialized
capacity is merely transferred to the kidnappers as the agents of Kong, to
whom the white woman will be off ered; at a further remove, it transfers
from the islanders to Ann and Jack via the drumming that aurally condi-
tions their previously blocked embrace. While Charley’s own interest in
Ann is laughable— in a comic bit of business, he tries to join the search
party, waving his meat cleaver and babbling, “Me likey go too. Me likey
catch Missy,” before the white men, armed with guns and explosives,
wave him away— he provides a cautionary tale for Jack’s white manhood.
Just as the decline of Asiatic civilization resulted in emasculated, servile
“Chinamen,” Western modernity risked falling into decadence through
its supposed disruption of traditional gender roles. Th e fi gure of a beau-
tiful young woman, driven by ambition to venture, without husband or
father, fi rst to New York City and then to a savage ocean on a boat of
rough men, is terrifying enough to send the valiant, virile Jack scamper-
ing to the company of other sailors. What might forestall this collapse
into decadence is a tonic infusion of primal, violent sexuality, the es-
sence of a blackness embodied by Kong— “neither beast nor man,” Den-
ham puts it, but “monstrous, all- powerful.”
Kong’s blackness thus emerges through careful diff erentiation from all
existing racial categories to embody the ideal blackness posited by U.S.
imperial desire. His dominion is the fabled blank spot on the map that
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20 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
eluded all previous empires, an untouched state of nature, abstracted
from all the ongoing “race problems” left over from historical iterations
of the civilizing mission— genocidal conquest, enslavement and Recon-
struction, colonial rule in the Philippines. By implicit contrast to such
historical complications, Kong’s blackness appears as a fi ctive distillate
of the longed- for real: the primal essence that might rejuvenate a U.S.
whiteness imperiled by the perversions of overcivilization.
Th is essence must therefore be captured and carried to the metropoli-
tan center, its violent mastery enacted before an excited public. When his
fi lm is ruined and his crew ravaged, Denham redoubles his ambitions,
capturing and exhibiting not the image but the creature himself. Back in
New York, before a packed theater, he displays Kong in chains: “He was
a king and a god in the world he knew, but now he comes to civilization
merely a captive, a show to gratify your curiosity.” Th is performance is
heightened, for the cinematic audience, when Kong escapes, seizes Ann,
and runs amok in the city.8 Finally, he climbs the Empire State Building,
symbol of modern U.S. ascendancy, and briefl y fi ghts off a squadron of
planes before falling to his death below.
By the rules of the narrative, Kong’s death had already been assured,
if not by his status as a fi gure of terror, then by the notorious scene on
Skull Island where he partially undresses his blonde captive. In staging a
fantasy of white womanhood imperiled by black sexual violence, which
calls forth an overwhelming retributive violence to destroy the black
threat in public spectacle, the fi lm unmistakably repeats the logic— or
the training in an aesthetics of rationality— that structures ritualized lynch-
ing. Th is structure manifests as a narrative trajectory from prehistoric
to modern, vertiginously captured in the iconic image of the great ape
battling airplanes from the top of the skyscraper, and mediated by the
white woman’s body, as Dunham famously concludes: “It wasn’t the avia-
tors. It was Beauty killed the Beast.” Th e sacrifi ce and consumption of
a primal essence redeems a white nation threatened by overcivilization,
restoring its organic capacity for growth and regeneration: civilization’s
sublimation of the savage is a life- giving act of sexual violence. Kong’s
capture and killing make Jack more of a man, Ann more of a woman,
and their resulting heterosexual union more normatively white. Th is
ritualized narrative, what you might call the lynching form, miraculously
births whiteness through the violent incorporation of blackness, a
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 21
ceremony of communion whose celebration constitutes a white— that
is, imperial— nation.9
Th e resemblance between spectacle lynching and other communion
rites has long been noted, an analogy highlighting both the desire in-
vested in the sacrifi cial object and the endless repetition of ritual. Because
the reproduction of whiteness is the eff ect of a ceremonial performance
constituted by the screening of the fi lm, it is not actually represented
within the narrative: the conjugal union of Jack and Ann takes place
only aft er the story ends. If audiences tend to forget Jack, who is largely
superfl uous to the climactic sequence in Manhattan and never achieves
normative masculinity on screen; if their desires tend to fi x on Kong
and his captive, a primitivized fi gure of female sexual vulnerability not
yet restored to a properly gendered norm; if the fi lm reads as a tragedy
whose hero’s death is rescinded in the aft erlife of innumerable remakes
and new adventures across genres and media— all this may be a conse-
quence of the lynching form’s ritual temporality: it is cyclical, mortal,
always insuffi cient, requiring repetition, again and again and again.
Just as Filipinos and African Americans do not actually appear in the
fi lm, as signifi ers rendered “nonfi ctional” by troublesome histories of ra-
cialization, the fi ctional Kong appears extraneous to historical analyses of
U.S. imperialism and its production of racial categories. But Kong, you
might say, is the fabled “missing link” that makes the logic of U.S. impe-
rial racism coherent: because the black Pacifi c did not exist, he had to be
invented. His story portrays the logic, or aesthetic, of the bond between
discrepant racial subjects forged by the violence of the U.S. civilizing
mission, held together by the abstract ideal of a primal essence posited
by imperial desire. In seeking the embodiment of its sexual fantasy, this
violence functioned to confl ate Negro and Filipino racialization, and yet
all its ritual recurrences, whether in cinematic and literary representa-
tions or in grisly live reenactments, could never conjure the fantasy into
existence.
Indeed, for those African Americans who journeyed across the ocean,
on ships or in the pages of print or the shadows of the cinema, and for
Filipinos across empire, writing at the seam of metropolitan and colonial
racial formations, it was the discrepancy between racial forms, the dis-
junctive doubling of savage stereotype in the superimposition of Negro
and Filipino, that provided motive and mobility. Drawing on Brent
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22 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
Edwards’s theorization of décalage as the discrepancy or gap in articu-
lations of diaspora enabling movement, understood as the absence of
some artifi cial “prop or wedge” (“Uses” 65– 66), you might say that it was
the removal of the black Pacifi c “missing link” that allowed articulations
of Negro- Filipino relations to be set in motion. If the identity posited by
the fusion of these racial forms could only be a trap, the incitement of
violence, the diff erence between them might serve as a pivot in another
direction. How this diff erence was operated, in what manner and toward
what ends, I will take up throughout this book.
freedom from love
To state that King Kong is a celebratory reenactment of lynching is merely
to express an open secret, one consistent with lynching’s own logic: as
Jacqueline Goldsby has shown, the simultaneity of spectacle and secrecy
is crucial to understanding this violence. In the fi lm and its remakes,
audiences are called upon to simultaneously see and not see lynching’s
manifestation, the same training of perception that made the perpetra-
tors of spectacle lynching disappear before the sight of the law. Yet this
history of violence seems incompatible with the curious love adhering
to the character, in all his unlikely vagabondage through global popu-
lar culture. Where audiences’ love for the renegade ape largely serves
to dissociate their narrative investment in lynching’s reenactment, it
is the perceptual foregrounding of lynching, the insistent calling of at-
tention to the visual, olfactory, and kinesthetic evidence left in its wake,
that banishes explicit recognition of the erotic dynamics suff using Billie
Holiday’s performance of “Strange Fruit.” To love Kong, viewers of the
fi lm must all but forget they are enjoying a lynching; to attend to lynch-
ing, listeners to the song must all but forget that its performance gathers
in a space consecrated to love.
As a reader of such reenactments, learn not to forget there is danger
here.
Th e danger inheres, fi rst of all, in the condition of being overwhelmed,
which any attempt to speak the violence struggles to restrain but cannot
fully deny. When I sing it, it aff ects me so much I get sick, Holiday writes.10
It takes all the strength out of me (95). Earnestness or anger, a politics of
righteousness, may disavow its insuffi ciency only by substituting the work
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 23
of exorcism for the appeal to justice. For the dead have not been saved,
and justice has not come. It reminds me of how Pop died. To say other-
wise, to proclaim justice’s establishment in a haunted land, on behalf of
those living who would claim the name of the dead— as a nation, race,
or species; as rightful heirs— is to willfully misperceive your privilege as
freedom. To be open to the radical force of the appeal to justice demands
the vulnerability of understanding the violence as ongoing. But I have to
keep singing it, not only because people ask for it but because twenty years
aft er Pop died the things that killed him are still happening in the South
(95). In short, to speak of lynching is to render your own ethical failure,
whether you admit it or not— not only to acknowledge justice’s failure
to redress a harm but to bear forward the work of the violence out into
the world.
Coming aft er the fi rst is a second danger, weaving leisurely in its
course, but swift ly registered by a certain attentive presence within Holi-
day’s audience. For example, the civil rights journalist and community
leader Evelyn Cunningham recalled: “Many times in nightclubs when I
heard her sing the song it was not a sadness I sensed as much as there
was something else; it’s got to do with sexuality. Men and women would
hold hands, they would look at each other, and they would pretend
there was love going on, or something sexual. Th ey would get closer
together and yet there was a veneer— and just a veneer— of anger and
concern” (qtd. in Margolick 81). Th e hesitance in Cunningham’s guarded
testimony pauses over what seems to be an actual confusion, another
presence in the crowd, something else that is not but has got to do with
sexuality. Righteousness, a thin skin of aff ect as the badge of a politics,
fails to conceal what is nonetheless only pretense: as if “there was love
going on, or something sexual.” Looking at the stage and at each other,
holding hands, the men and women perform for Cunningham’s gaze,
in the dark, as if they do not know they are being watched, as if they do
not know what possesses them.
In her characteristically blunt memoirs, Holiday remarks on this
strange presence:
Over the years I’ve had a lot of weird experiences as a result of that song.
It has a way of separating the straight people from the squares and crip-
ples. One night in Los Angeles a bitch stood right up in the club where I
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24 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
was singing and said, “Billie, why don’t you sing that sexy song you’re so
famous for? You know, the one about the naked bodies swinging in the
trees.”
Needless to say, I didn’t. (95)
It is tempting to imagine the woman as merely unknowing, defi cient
in awareness or ability, what Holiday refers to as a square or cripple or
both. But her request, as Holiday reports it, suggests a more deliberate
cruelty.11 Unlike the cautious Cunningham or the unwitting couples she
observes, the fi gure called bitch bears knowledge but lacks care, setting
loose a force she cannot really control. Meeting her aff ront with greater
knowledge and equal fearlessness, Holiday’s account enacts a curt dis-
missal whose brevity contains volumes— outstripping speech not be-
cause there is nothing to say but because there is too much, an excess
of meaning. Yet it is needless to say because Holiday works the song to
elude the domain of what is said. How so?
Consider, for contrast, James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man,”
in which a white deputy sheriff ’s childhood memory of a lynching bee
remedies an episode of impotence, summoning fi gures of racist fantasy
to mediate intercourse with his wife. Or consider Kara Walker’s shame-
less exhumations of the imaginative domains of power, violence, and
sexual desire bequeathed by the history of slavery, loosed demons fl ut-
tering free from the profound moralism of Baldwin’s redemptive vision.
You might take such work as extrapolations of the knowledge implicit
in Holiday’s performance, in her auditory and kinesthetic shaping of the
words and again in the way she inhabited the iconicity the song helped
defi ne for her. Th ese extrapolations extend the knowledge’s reach by di-
minishing its ineff able force. Where Baldwin names white interracial
desire as the motive force formalized in lynching, exposing the racial-
izing and sexualizing violence on which white reproduction depends,
Holiday’s performance refrains from such naming, as it refrains from
putting its most powerful message into words, even as it enacts the ex-
posure of the history of sexuality that the song and all it reenacts has got
to do with.
In the words of the song, lynching’s bitter crop disrupts the pastoral
scene of trees and fl owers and birds and weather, its reversion to nature
leaving a perverse remainder: these bodies are not persons, but fruit, and
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 25
what makes them strange is what makes them black. Th ere must have
been persons here, once, in the bodies dehumanized in their blackening,
and as the agents of that blackening— absented, monstrous, horrifi c, one
feels obliged to say, inhuman. Although there must have been persons
here once, the song cannot imagine them in words. Blackness as death is
what the words can picture as presence; blackness as life- giving essence
has been absconded with by whiteness. In this way the words of the
song enact the same perceptual protocols that render the perpetrators
of lynching invisible before the eyes of the law, passing unmarked into
the community of whiteness aft er enacting its social reproduction, with
the same eff ortless slide of a movie camera away from the conjugal act.
Th e words were written by the left ist writer, lyricist, and composer
Abel Meeropol, published as a poem under his given name, and later
set to music under his professional name, Lewis Allan.12 By his own
account, they were written in response to a lynching photograph (N.
Baker 45), commonly taken to be the notorious image of the 1930 lynch-
ing of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana, which
prominently features a festive crowd of onlookers. Meeropol’s Jewish-
ness surely modulates the lyrics’ critical restaging of the lynching rite’s
aesthetic training— elsewhere, he put it quite succinctly: “I am a Jew, /
How may I tell? / Th e Negro lynched / Reminds me well / I am a Jew”
(qtd. in N. Baker 45). Yet even if this ethnoracial shading passes unre-
marked, at least two varieties of whiteness already appear in the space
evacuated by the lyrics, each constituted against the other. One gathers
to celebrate the violence, its communal rejuvenation in defi ant defense
against the threat of decadence manifested in the other, which is con-
stituted by the horrifi ed desire to read the participants in the lynching
bee out of history. Th at the latter form of whiteness has become hege-
monic may be registered by the quicksand fascination experienced by
present- day viewers of lynching photographs for their fi gures of white
onlookers.13 In the aft ermath of the civil rights era, that latter form still
shares in the national commemoration of lynching’s death through the
ritual consumption of the sacrifi ced black body, but the presence of
the former as an audience within the photographs exposes, for better or
for worse, lynching’s function to reproduce whiteness.
As written, the words respond to the photograph, to the experience
of its observation at a remove, within an alternate gathering of racial
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26 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
community, completing the process of the perpetrators’ disappearance.
As sung, Kevin Young proposes, the words constitute “a symbolic lynch-
ing photograph” that, “confronted with the crime of looking, . . . re-
sorts . . . to the abandoning of a self altogether” (219). Th at is, Young’s
reading attributes to Holiday’s voice the agency of a withholding of both
“I” and “you,”14 whose result he glosses precisely in an ambiguous riffi ng
quotation, “Look away, Dixieland” (220). “Lady Day embodies a strategy
of silence,” he argues, that in the performance of the words “talk[s] back
to the silence of lynching, which you can almost see in a lynching pho-
tograph” (220). Her performance, he concludes, “shelters and smuggles
meaning beyond the borders of what is acceptable— or even seen” (224).
Because the violence itself establishes these enabling borders, perceptual
before epistemological or ideological or moral, its agency lies outside
what can be seen or shown or said. Holiday’s performance moves out-
side to confront it.
Simply put, it does so through a contrast between the words of the
song and the conditions of its performance— the milieu from which it
emanates and the genius of its embodied voice— that improvises an aes-
thetic countertraining within the very observation of ritualized racial
terror. “I wondered then whether it made sense to sing a song in such
a milieu,” comments a listener quoted by David Margolick. “I thought
it belonged instead in a concert setting, without beer and whiskey and
cigarette smoke” (52). Presumably meant as a compliment— for jazz
music, it was prophecy— the attitude has many precedents. Before his
encounter with lynching, James Weldon Johnson’s ex- colored man, for
one, hoped to uplift the music from nightclub to concert hall. But it is the
music’s association with less respectable environments, of good times
and ill repute, that gives the performance its force. Th e association of
racial transgression, political radicalism, and the nightlife that defi ned
Café Society, the Greenwich Village nightclub where Holiday made the
song famous, was a recipe that set Harlem in vogue over a decade earlier.
To ask whether the amplifi cation of sexual desire served transgressive
politics or political sentiment merely licensed sexual transgression is
only to attempt to impose narrative order on what was, for good or ill,
an undeniably transformative historical dynamic.
For its part, jazz, like other forms of popular music and dance, has
historically fl ourished in spaces organized to profi t on its aphrodisiac
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 27
qualities, oft en involving fi xation on the singer. Th e nightclub, rather than
the concert hall, is the privileged setting for Holiday’s music, and if this
space sanctions alternative arrangements of social life experienced, in
all their ephemerality, as liberatory, it is only because the space itself is
dedicated to celebrating, conjuring, evoking, and enhancing erotic feel-
ing. While the music cannot be reduced to its aphrodisiac qualities or
their instrumentalization in courting or seduction, these qualities are
irreducible from its conditions of production and reception, even in the
devotions of a solitary fan.15
More than other singers, Holiday attracted such devotion, whose
most disturbing product is the condescending, oft en bizarre equation of
her artistry with the most salacious and tragic details of her biography—
physical and sexual abuse, child prostitution, drug addiction. It places
her in the front rank of a long tradition of singing black women, icons
shaped between the violently hypersexualizing attention of white de-
sire and the impossible resources of a longer tradition of black women’s
vocality.16 Th e racialized, gendered, sexualized dimensions of this at-
tention are structural, preceding the intentions or identifi cations of any
listener, but Holiday’s genius, as a prerequisite to its expression, involves
the refl ection, redirection, and reappropriation of this attention, work-
ing and reworking it for other purposes, turning and transforming its
force.
It is here that the impact of her performance becomes unavoidable.
Th e song’s lyrics observe the lynching form, evoking the racist fantasies
of black male sexual violence toward white women accompanying and
justifying it, against which any respectable antilynching politics, white
or black, needed to reaffi rm the boundaries of racial and sexual pro-
priety. Yet the song’s performance— the embodied voice issuing from
the nightlife milieu— exposes another history of sexual violence and
interracial desire, culminating in the fetish of a hypersexualized black
girl whose gift of singing beautifully is equated with her vulnerability to
sexual exploitation and sexual violence. By setting these two contradic-
tory histories in unbearable proximity, Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” renders
each radically unstable. On the one hand, she bends the most violently
sexist and racist desires conditioning her consumption as a performer
into a profound aff ective identifi cation with opposition to lynching.
On the other, she wrenches open a politics of respectability that stifl ed
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28 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
and suppressed poor black women in the name of uplift , schooling the
ideology that would deny her the moral standing and personal dignity
to bear witness against lynching’s violence. In both cases, the work of
Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” turns on an insight left unspoken, that refrains
from entering speech or sight: the violent, sexualizing, and racializing
desire that drives the formalization of lynching is the same mysterious
presence structuring the audience’s relation to the singer, incarnating
her as a singing body laid open to violence.
What works this presence, turning on an insight that may remain
unavailable to the audience, is a genius extending back, insistently pre-
vious, before the incarnation of the singing body. Th e fi gure of the hy-
persexualized, broken, helpless girl is revealed as a mere veil, fl ung like
a net over the Lady. In claiming her title, Lady Day did not wait on rec-
ognition; she did not seek inclusion or acceptance within respectability
so much as she rebuked it, put it to shame. Neither does the work of her
song depend on the audience’s conscious recognition of what’s happen-
ing, the eff ect of the words dissociating from the dynamics of the per-
formance, even as both at once demand the audience’s engagement. Th at
space where the lynchers are, the same perceptual nowhere inhabited by
persons unknown, is where the work of Holiday’s song takes place, even
as sight and speech remain trained on the lynched body, that bitter crop.
* * *
For twenty years she carried it with her, a gift and a curse, fi lial duty and
liberating burden, this song that helped make her a star and a target for
the law. She died young with a wrecked voice, everyone says, and if you
listen to recordings of the song over the course of her career it’s easy
to imagine you can feel the weight of it, borne across that time, all those
miles, all that way from poverty and scorn to international fame. Th is is,
of course, only an element of her artistry, to evoke a feeling that, sad or
happy, joyful or melancholy, is so full of longing it seems like intimacy,
like the most ecstatic identifi cation. Rather than art.
Perhaps this is why so many of Lady’s ardent devotees want to believe
that the music killed her— made her suff er, rode her down, burned her
up, ruined her, leaving her a defi ant shell of herself, far older than the
forty- four years given to her. To believe the music killed her is to imag-
ine she died for love, for a love she shared with you. But she was just
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 29
poor, and black, and a woman, which is explanation suffi cient to a life
of struggle and an early death, and there ought to be tragedy enough in
that statement if you would just leave the music out of it. For if there is
any freedom beyond mystery in her art, it is freedom from this love: the
music itself as her freedom from the engulfi ng love it conjured up in her
audience.
But the dead have not been saved, her song continues to tell you.
To marshal all of her artistry to sustain this perception, this condition
of being overwhelmed and unbearable longing for response, must have
been a perilous act. Dwelling in peril, in preparation and performance,
in her long commitment to the song, brought her fame and criticism,
celebration and condescension, oft en in the same breath. Th e song was
too serious, or not serious enough; it was ponderous or pandering; it
was beneath her, bad art, or it ruined her for the lighter and faster ma-
terial to which she was better suited. What frightens critics of the song
most of all, it seems, is its relation to that ambivalent yet terrifyingly
intense love it engendered, and perhaps this has as much to do as racism
and sexism and snobbery in explaining the bizarrely persistent notion
that the song’s full meaning was somehow beyond her ken.17
The controversial white promoter John Hammond famously
dismissed the song. “Th e beginning of the end for Billie was ‘Strange
Fruit,’ when she had become the darling of the left – wing intellectuals,” he
asserted, leading her to begin “taking herself very seriously, and think-
ing of herself as very important.” Opposing her to his icon of primi-
tive authenticity, Bessie Smith, he bemoaned her contamination by this
love, by her “success with white people,” and, worst of all, by “homo-
sexuals,” who “just fell for Billie” (qtd. in Margolick 78– 79). By contrast,
Cunningham, whose courageous reporting for the Pittsburgh Courier
won her the ironic title “lynching editor,” earned the right not to listen:
“Th ere comes a time in a black person’s life where you’re up to your
damned ears in lynching and discrimination, when sometimes you were
just so sick of it, but it was heresy to express it. She was a great artist and
she did great things with that song, but you would not admit you did not
want to hear it.” Yet Cunningham calls the song “an attention grabber,”
“a marketing device,” suggesting that Holiday never “really understood
or anticipated the serious attention” it brought. Against the evidence of
her own comments about the presence of something to do with sexuality
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30 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
in the interracial audience, she insists, “Th e song did not disturb me be-
cause I never had the feeling that this was something she was very, very
serious about” (qtd. in Margolick 81).
Earnest and self- fl attering yet prurient and titillating, condescending
in its benevolence and insatiable in its desire for violence— such con-
tradictions only feed the intensity of this love. What boggles me is that
would- be sympathetic auditors of Holiday so regularly turn away, in
fear, to presume her ignorance— as if her performance, night aft er night
and year aft er year, never prepared for such responses, as if there was no
sophistication to Lady’s rigorous education in and of this love. But her
artistry does not rely on the audience’s capacity to cognize its response,
being concerned, instead, with training their perception and responsi-
bility. Th e agency of her artistry may not be abated even as the audience
falls short of what it asks of them, or reports to have closed their ears.
And if sometimes Holiday refused to perform “Strange Fruit,” whether
out of frustration with the crowd or mere exhaustion, at other times you
might imagine her response to the desires of both critics and fans in the
phrases of a love song just as diffi cult to hear: hush now, don’t explain.
Is this what is meant when it is said that her voice sounds wise? Even
those convinced she didn’t understand the words she sang speak of her
singing in this fashion, but what does it mean to attribute wisdom to
the quality of her sound? (Lazy, they also call it, which may be easier to
understand, if you can recognize preparation and skill in achieving the
eff ect. “Lazy” sounds scornful, and oft en is, because laziness names
the confrontation between fantasies of imperial privilege and everyday
resistance, revolted and envious desire gazing down on a dream of free-
dom catching like a tune in the back of your head.) What kind of wisdom
is this?
Formally speaking, schools would not teach it, though it might be
learned there; what education Holiday received, in any case, is a matter
of lore. Schools were part of a complex of uplift ing institutions given
to violent intervention in Holiday’s transient family life; eluding one’s
embrace only brought on the attentions of another. Not yet ten, as Elea-
nora Gough, “cutting school on . . . a spectacular scale” got her hauled
to juvenile court and sentenced to a year at Baltimore’s House of the
Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, where, “for protection and confi den-
tiality,” she was known as “Madge” (Nicholson 23). Aft er nine months,
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 31
she was returned to her mother, Sadie. Th e following year, on Christmas
Eve, Sadie interrupted a neighbor in the act of raping her, and called the
police, who arrested the rapist but took his victim back to the reforma-
tory (25). It would take until February for Sadie to secure her daughter’s
release, aft er borrowing money for a lawyer (27).
In Lady Sings the Blues, the stays at the House of the Good Shepherd
are confl ated, and the institution, run by Catholic nuns, is a place of
nightmares. A girl, forced to wear a tattered red dress, is warned by the
Mother Superior that God will punish her, before fl ying from a swing
and breaking her neck. Later, Holiday is made to wear the same dress,
locked overnight in a room with a dead girl, and beats her hands against
the door until they bleed (17– 18). In Stuart Nicholson’s biography, how-
ever, the reformatory is a positive infl uence, “a disciplined environment”
off ering “the guidance and security that were missing in her life”; the
truancy bringing her there is a “cry for help” resulting from a lack of ma-
ternal attention (23). Her departure from the institution is reported with
melancholy impassivity— “Th e House of [the] Good Shepherd marked
her fi le, ‘Did not return to us’ ” (27)— as the poor girl follows her ne-
glectful mother into an underworld of nightlife and prostitution. Alter-
nately reported as benevolent and cruel, the reformatory, an explicitly
gendered and racialized institution of education and incarceration, em-
bodies all the contradictions of uplift from Baltimore to the Philippines.
In Julia Blackburn’s With Billie, the school is simply “an awful place,
very bleak and grim” (23); one of Holiday’s contemporaries recalls the
Mother Superior’s harsh discipline and systematic physical and sexual
abuse by the older inmates (24– 25). Another interviewee recalls Holi-
day’s visit to the institution a quarter- century later, seeking documenta-
tion for a passport. In this anecdote, the singer agrees to an impromptu
performance for the girls, choosing “My Man,” a song now notorious for
lyrics professing devotion to an abusive lover (28).18 Could this be true,
and if so, what lesson passes from an alumna to a group of girls eager
to identify with her escape? In the words of the song, love forecloses
freedom.
Returning to Nicholson, you will fi nd that the path from the refor-
matory leads to a diff erent education, set in a brothel but conducted by
Victrola: Holiday runs errands for the local madam so she can listen to
her recording of Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” (27). Nicholson
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32 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
notes that Holiday herself particularly favored this anecdote, recounting
it in her autobiography and multiple interviews, and though the jux-
taposition with the reformatory is his own, it seems clear she meant it
as a fable or origin myth of her own education. Its central elements in-
clude the setting, extravagant beauty defying disreputable poverty, the
aesthetic experience of wonder, and a lesson in technique: Armstrong’s
scat singing outstrips the impoverished meaning- making capacity of
words.19
So if there is a model, a place of identifi cation, a way out, it appears
where the music outruns words. Th is is what there might be, for those
who love the music, for poor black girls caught in uplift ’s cruel embrace,
for everyone not yet free, if you are willing to risk reading too much into
stories made of other stories, old lies, cultivated memories, and half-
forgotten desires. It should be a relief to know, as Farah Griffi n admits
in her book on Holiday, that you cannot “escape positing [your] own
version of Lady Day,” and you should not “want to escape doing so” (6),
because it is Holiday herself who escapes from behind all the tales. For
myself, I prefer to recall the girl who demanded her mother get her out
of that prison they called a school, and the struggling young woman
who found a way to do so. Sadie died young, too, six years older than
her daughter would, according to Nicholson’s careful accounting, or the
same age, according to the sly voice of the autobiography: “Mom got to
be thirty- eight when I was twenty- fi ve. She would never have more than
four candles on her birthday cake. So she was only thirty- eight when she
died. I’m going to do the same thing. She never cared what calendars
said, and neither do I” (125).20
no- way out
If the love of wayward mothers and daughters is to elude reformation,
it must be prepared to face an accounting with violence, for the love of
uplift is jealous and claims the violence as its prerogative. Even so, up-
lift ’s love fi nds fi rmer ground when it attempts to intercede between dark
fathers and their sons.
As with Kong, whose continuing fame, as well as proof of cultural
relevance, relies on a series of remakes, following an underlying logic:
he is reincarnated, every few decades, when new cinematic technologies
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 33
succumb to vertiginous fantasies of a lost, primal embodiment. More
forgettable are all the fi lms, cartoons, texts, and products that follow the
mercenary logic of the sequel— derivative eff orts to extract diminish-
ing revenue from the canon of the original and its remakes. Th e fi rst in
this line was hustled out in months by the original producers: “I don’t
care what you make,” Merian Cooper recalled telling his partner, Ernest
Schoedsack; “anything made called Son of Kong will make money” (qtd.
in Vaz 249).
What they made, it happens, was a comedy, cobbled around the fl imsy
premise of a racist joke: Kong’s son is white. Th ough still a monstrous
ape, he is drastically diminished in size, entirely white in color, and self-
lessly devoted to the service of Carl Denham, who has fl ed New York
in the aft ermath of the fi rst fi lm. Having dragged his father in chains to
his doom, Denham discovers mild feelings of obligation to “little Kong,”
who returns the sentiment in spades, giving his life to save his master
in Skull Island’s climactic destruction. Th e fi lm reads as imperialism’s
aff ectionate self- parody: white love’s chuckling acknowledgment of its
comical, loyal off spring.
Th ough Kong’s son deserves a thorough consideration of his own, as
a footnote to his father’s story, Son of Kong merely confi rms his entrap-
ment, securing one dubious line of escape: the benevolence of uplift and
the spectacle of conquest turn out to require the same sacrifi ce. Th at is, de-
spite his long aft erlife as a fi ctional celebrity, bigger than any vehicle pay-
ing his way, Kong remains trapped between the logic of the remake, which
continually reenacts his lynching under a gauzy veil of color- blindness,
and the logic of the sequel, which reimagines him as a pet— two manifes-
tations of the same violence. Is there no way out for Kong?
Well, why should anyone care? Isn’t Kong a fi gure for everything
antiracism seeks to abolish? Isn’t the task to get beyond Kong and the
white supremacist regime that gave him birth?
In a gesture both damning and profoundly generous, the eponymous
cycle of poems in Cornelius Eady’s Brutal Imagination responds to the
case of Susan Smith, a white South Carolina woman who drowned her
two young sons in 1994, by recovering a voice for the imaginary black
male kidnapper Smith invented to take the blame. Like the infamous
speakers who observe him in several intervening poems, including
“Uncle Tom” and “Uncle Ben,” this “black man pour[ed] from a / White
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34 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
woman’s head” (27) is granted an autonomous consciousness without
agency in the material world. Th e opening poem, “How I Got Born,” es-
tablishes that autonomy as a kind of limbo existence from which Smith
summons him— “an insistent previousness evading each and every natal
occasion,” to recite the Nathaniel Mackey epigraph to Fred Moten’s In
the Break. Th is fabricated black man is confi ned to Smith’s body, though
he shares neither her face nor her skin, making him both “a black man”
and “a mother” (16), a fantasy with real eff ects, materialized by her fear
and desire: “Everything she says about me is true” (6).
Th e empirical fi xity of this truth does not protect Smith as her story
unravels, so the cycle tracks his inexorable reabsorption into the body
of her character, as it is inscribed in law and public scandal. Th e fi nal
poem, “Birthing,” intersperses his voice among fragments of her actual
confession, concluding with his incarnation into their body in the mo-
ment she reenters the world aft er watching the car bearing her children
disappear into the lake. In an astonishing act of witness, Eady’s poem
keeps faith with all of Smith’s victims— the drowned children, the Afri-
can American community onto which she mustered the full force of the
police power— even as he fi nds the only possible way to empathize with
the murderer herself. For the black man she has invented to take the
blame, who is no one if not Smith herself, is the only one who can stand
with her as she stares out from the shore.
What the poem is proposing may be as simple as this: it is the task
given to a certain line of poetry to stand on the shore, to be the only one
standing with this woman, even as she murders her children, even as she
surrenders herself to the movement of an overwhelming violence that
bursts from her solitary act out into the long- remembered fl oodways of
the civilized world. Th e poem neither redeems nor excuses; it does not
ask if Smith was herself a victim, nor comment on the intimate violence
and sexual abuse known to have marked her upbringing. Whatever it
is in Smith that has been formed by the violence, in this poem, is that
which she surrenders to the violence to place herself on its lee side, the
side of mastery, and with it she surrenders her status as a mother and her
agency and responsibility as the murderer of her children. It is this sur-
rendered self that her imagination identifi es as black. And so what the
poem is also proposing is as simple as this: here too is a way blackness is
birthed into the world.
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Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re | 35
To imagine you can properly segregate the blackness that poured
from Smith’s head from that of the people who bore the violence she
unleashed— justice’s extension across the darkness, the long arm of the
law— is to disavow the everyday lived experience of blackness. But if
the truth did come out, for once, why concern yourself with this white
woman’s racist fantasies? Can’t you draw a line between this criminal
and the community she so recklessly slandered and endangered? You
may, the poem replies, but what would that line say if he could speak?
Th e truth came out, and the criminal was identifi ed as a white woman
named Susan Smith, but the poem also witnesses the moment when an-
tiracism is once again seized by the ongoing hatred of blackness. Under a
post– civil rights racial order, hegemonic antiracism requires fi gures such
as Smith, who justify the reproduction of whiteness, and lesser forms of
racial privilege, by embodying everything the enlightened and civilized
love to hate: that bred- in, inbred intellectual and moral defi ciency, piti-
able but requiring correction unto death, that agency of violence calling
an overwhelming violence onto itself as justice. We know it when we see
it, goes the protocol. We don’t call its name in polite company. We just
call the police. What the poem allows you to see is that the blackness that
poured from Smith’s head— in the act of explanation, subsequent to the
murder, as the only possible fi gure to bear the blame— is still entering
the world, and the desire to pretend you can reverse this birth and lock
it back up from whence it came, in the name of racial justice, is what
secrets and secures the ongoing hatred of blackness beyond the realm
of perception.
So the exercise of Eady’s imagination, recovering a voice for the fab-
ricated black man, is less about producing a speaking subject than about
the task of listening to what is constituted as inaudible, reading as learning
how to read, asking how to perceive freedom from his perspective. Eady’s
unyielding generosity, and the line in which it follows— say, James Bald-
win and Toni Morrison; Toshio Mori and Hisaye Yamamoto; Gwendolyn
Brooks and Edward P. Jones— serve as the horizon of my clumsy eff orts,
in this overture, to listen and learn from Kong.
Is there no way out for him? You may look to the book of Billie Holi-
day, the wisdom of her sound as textualized by black women auditors.
Griffi n’s title, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery, cites Rita Dove’s poem
“Canary,” which observes that “women under siege” learn “to sharpen
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36 | Ov e rt u re : T h e G o o d N ews o f E m pi re
love in the service of myth.” Because a question as to anyone’s freedom
pertains to all, this truth may be gendered but is not only for women.21
Th e point is that Holiday could not be free because the world was not.
Her “burned voice” (Dove) is lure and lament, alarm and alternative.
What alternative? Freedom is fugitive in an unfree world; it must
be denied to her because it is denied anywhere and everywhere short
of unfreedom’s general abolition, but Holiday did what she could in a
world not yet free, like your own, taking her freedom when and where
she could, could not. Th e way out of no way, as Fred Moten riff s in a
recent poem, may also be “a way into no way” (“test” 96), or, as he puts
it in an interview: “I believe in the world and want to be in it. I want to
be in it all the way to the end of it because I believe in another world in
the world and I want to be in that” (Harney and Moten 118). Th is is the
love sounded in Holiday’s music as a freedom from love, slipping from
one embrace to a larger one that cannot be seen because it is everywhere
all around, a love that does not turn away from the world it shows to be
broken but sounds and resounds it.
So Kong, the old trouper, may be released here. Rewind the fi lm to
the moment he slips from the skyscraper’s pinnacle, and switch it off as
he begins to fall.
(Let him take the “black Pacifi c” with him! Please remember that the
term functions, in this book, only in absence, as a prop removed, which
never actually existed except as a fantasy of violence. Th is book holds
no brief for a “black Pacifi c studies,” and whatever histories may emerge
from this space will refuse this name,22 eluding its claim of paternity to
reach back to a previousness beyond its imagining. In the pages to come,
whatever partial recuperations this book off ers will concern only what
has moved in and through its absence.)
Leave him in the air. Let him surrender to it, as Toni Morrison sug-
gests in Song of Solomon, in it all the way to the end of it and to what is
there, slipping imperialism’s embrace to give himself over to everything
you cannot imagine when you say justice. For to long for justice without
mercy is to surrender the world to a love for empire.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
t e x t
The Adventures of Dankichi
s h i m a d a k e i z ō
c o n t e x t
The South Seas/Micronesia, Taiwan,
China, Korea
c r i t i q u e
Popular Orientalism and
Japanese Views of Asia
k a w a m u r a m i n a t o
M a n g a a r t i s t Shimada Keizō (1900–1973) began his career as a political satirist, but turned to children’s manga in the early 1930s,
continuing to work in that field after World War II. Together with Tagawa
Suihō’s The Soldier Dog (Norakuro, 1931–1941), The Adventures of Dankichi,
Shimada’s bestknown work, is generally recognized as the most popular
manga before the appearance of those by Tezuka Osamu (1928–1989) in the
postwar era.
Reflecting the diversity of manga art at the time, The Adventures of Dan-
kichi, serialized in the Boys’ Club (Shōnen Kurabu) magazine from 1933 to
1939, is written in the picturestory format in which each page is split into
narrative and illustration sections. The story depicts the adventures of Dan
kichi and his mouse friend, Mister Kari, on a tropical island. Dankichi and
Mister Kari fall asleep while fishing, drift to the island of darkskinned “bar
barians,” and find themselves on the run. However, with his own quick
wit and Mister Kari’s resourcefulness, Dankichi beats back the natives and
becomes their king.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Regularly calling himself a cultural critic (bungei hyōronka) rather than
a scholar, Kawamura Minato writes on various genres of texts, including
manga, and on a wide variety of subjects, often those that complicate con
ventional notions of Japanese culture. He is wellknown for his pioneer
ing works that examine the relationship between colonialism and modern
Japanese literature, but this important contribution should be understood
as only one expression of his consistent interest in defamiliarizing the famil
iar. His numerous publications include Showa Literature as Literature of the
Other (Ikyō no Shōwa bungaku, 1990), Japanese Literature of the South Seas
and Sakhalin (Nan’yō/Karafuto no Nihon bungaku, 1994), and The Collapse of
Manchukuo (Manshū hōkai, 1997).
Kawamura’s essay “Popular Orientalism and Japanese Views of Asia”
(Taishū orientarizumu to Ajia ninshiki, 1993) offers a helpful synthesis of a
number of crucial issues covered in this volume and reflects his ability to
deftly navigate diverse genres and contexts.
Note Regarding Discriminatory Language and Imagery
The manga that follows, The Adventures of Dankichi, is included in this vol
ume as a historical document. Its discriminatory language and imagery were
typical of the time it was created and do not reflect the views and opinions
of the editors or Stanford University Press.
Given that an overarching aim of this anthology is to consider the perva
siveness of imperial ideology, the visuals and wording of this manga, while
disturbing and offensive to a modern audience, manifestly reveal the extent
to which such ideas were naturalized at every level of Japanese society.
Permission to translate and publish this text was graciously granted on
the condition it appear with Kawamura Minato’s essay “Popular Oriental
ism and Japanese Views of Asia,” which properly contextualizes its moment
of production. We strongly advise against any unlawful reproduction of
this work.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
It was a bright, clear day.
Until now, Dankichi had
been fishing in his boat.
Not catching a single fish,
Dankichi became sleepy.
“Oh my gosh! Dan-chan,
have you fallen asleep?”1
Before long, the eyes of
Dankichi’s good friend, the
black mouse Mister Kari
also glazed over.2 So the boat
began drifting along with the
waves and the breeze.
1. Chan is a diminutive suffix, which is attached to the end of names and indicates friend
liness and closeness. Thus, Dankichi and Danchan are the same character.
2. In Japanese the mouse is called Karikō, kō meaning “Sir” or “Mister.”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Suddenly Mister Kari
awoke, and, looking around,
he saw that the boat had
drifted to a strange land;
the scenery was unfamiliar.
What’s more, the boat was
teetering atop a large rock.
“Oh no! We’re in quite a
pickle here! The boat was
pulled by the tide, and now
it’s stuck on top of this
rock. Oh man, this is bad,”
exclaimed Kari.
Surprised, the ever-
responsible Mister Kari
looked at Dankichi, but
the boy was still pleasantly
snoring away. “Jeez, what a sleepyhead!”
Just then a strange wind
started to blow from behind
them. “Yikes!” When
Mister Kari turned around,
there was a strange and
mysterious bird swooping
down at Dankichi. “Holy
smokes! Dan-chan, look
out!”
Dankichi opened his eyes
at the sound of Mister Kari’s
absurd outburst, exclaiming,
“What’s the matter with
you? You’re so loud.”
“I’m not loud! Look!”
When Dankichi looked,
he saw a frightening and
mysterious bird with its
beak wide open, flying straight at him. “Oh my goodness! Th-this is
so terrible!”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
The boat was stuck on
top of a narrow rock, so
it shook with every move
they made. “Aah! Oh
gods, please help me!”
Dankichi pleaded. Isn’t
it funny how people only
ask the gods for help
when they’re in a pinch?
In a panic Dankichi
and Mister Kari tried
to hide in a corner. The
boat, along with the two
friends, fell from atop the
high rock with a banging
and rattling noise.
“Just as I thought,
the gods are good for
something,” said Dankichi.
The boat had completely
turned upside down during
the fall, saving Dankichi
from the sharp beak of the
mysterious bird.
“In such a close
call, it’s amazing you
remembered the gods,”
said Mister Kari with his
heart still pounding and
the overturned boat still
covering Dankichi. “Dan-
chan, the mysterious bird is
not here. Come on out!”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Finally crawling out from
under the boat, Dankichi
carefully surveyed his
surroundings. Dankichi
said, “Hey, this is a tropical
land. That’s one big palm
tree.” While looking around
restlessly at the surrounding
area for strange things, Kari
suddenly plunged into the
forest and brought back a
handy-looking branch and a
piece of strong-looking vine.
“Now Dankichi please make
a bow with this. Nothing
worries me more than being
in a place like this without a
weapon.”
“I bet you’re hungry,
I’m pretty hungry myself.
I wonder if there’s any
food around here,” said
Dankichi.
“The tropics are full of
food! There are coconuts,
bread fruit, pineapples,
bananas, and various other
things. Hey look, there’re
some coconuts. Let’s eat
’em.”
“But I’m not very good
at climbing trees.”
“Why not shoot it down
with the bow we just
made.”
“Wow Kari, you really
are smart!”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
He took aim, released
the arrow, and scored
a splendid hit on the
coconut. The coconut fell.
“Ouch! Who’s there?
What’s the big idea hitting
me with this in the middle
of my nap?” came a roar
from the jungle. Neither
Dankichi nor Mister Kari
could have known there
were lions living on the
island. Unaware of this,
they had carelessly shot
down the coconut.
“Oh no, Kari, this is bad.
It’s a lion!!”
Wild animals such as
lions will usually run away
from people, but when
attacked they will fight
back. The offended lion
was angry. If you could
understand lion-language,
this is what you would
have heard: “Wait ’til I
get my paws on you, you
rascal.” The lion chased
them.
“Aah. It’s dangerous!
Run! Run!” Dankichi
turned to shout, already
ten yards ahead.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Dankichi had the strong
legs of a marathon runner,
something that can’t just
be bought in a department
store. Running around the
mountains in confusion,
they saw signs of people.
“Kari, there are people!
There are people! There are
a lot of houses.” They were
ecstatic that this time they
would be saved by people
not gods. “Hey! Help us!”
shouted Dankichi, making
the biggest mistake of his
life. Sure they were people,
but they weren’t helpful
people. They were people
who ate people.
“Aah, cannibals!” Even
the athletic Dankichi felt
his legs shake. “Kari, what
should we do?”
“What should we do??
Stop talking already and
run!”
“So… it’s more running?”
“What choice do we
have?”
Since they didn’t have
any weapons there wasn’t
much else they could do.
Behind them, the lion! In
front, the cannibals! They
dashed to the right.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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“Phew, we’re finally in the
clear,” gasped Dankichi.
“What a shock! But we
aren’t out of the woods yet,
Dan-chan; the natives know
this area really well. They’ll
find us for sure. Hey! Why
don’t you use mud from this
river to disguise yourself?”
said Mister Kari.
“Disguise? But how?”
“Just dissolve some of it
in the water and plaster it
on your skin. Then you’ll
become a blackie!”
“Jeepers! Great idea Mister
Kari!” Dankichi said as he set
about applying his blackie camouflage.
“Oh wow, you did it!”
cried Mister Kari.
“You think this’ll be good
enough to fool them? I bet
I look like an honest to god
blackie.”
“For sure, you did a super
job!”
“Well then, I think it’s
time to make an appearance
over at the camp.”
“You think it’ll be ok?”
“Don’t fret, it’ll be fine.”
Dankichi is a Japanese
man, and on top of that, the
“Dan” in his name stands for
“danger,” so he fears nothing.
“Duuum, a little blackie is heading this way. Hey, little black boy,
where are you going?” said a guard at the gate of the natives’ camp.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
“Do you know who I
am? I’m the Chief ’s aunt’s
father’s son. You lot are
clearly inferior to me, so
show me to the Chief,”
Dankichi proclaimed.
“Huh? Oh really…that’s
kind of weird, but okay,” the
guard said and proceeded to
guide Dankichi to the Chief.
He was able to hoodwink
the Chief as well and a
massive feast was brought
out. Dankichi and Mister
Kari proceeded to stuff
themselves. As they feasted,
the sky suddenly clouded
over and it started to pour.
“Yikes! It’s raining,”
said Mister Kari as he
suddenly realized that
they were completely
wet. Dankichi’s disguise
had washed off, and
he had returned to his
original white appearance.
Unaware, Dankichi
continued to happily
munch on his banana.
The Chief ’s suspicious
face quickly melted into an
expression of great anger.
“Dummm. That’s a white
boy. He really fooled me,”
said the Chief.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
Previously, Dankichi had
disguised himself as a
blackie and snuck into
the natives’ camp to have
a feast. However, his
identity was revealed when
his disguise washed away
in the rain. The Chief,
realizing he’d been fooled,
was so furious he looked
like steam was going to
shoot out of his ears.
“You rat! How dare you
deceive me, the King!”
“Jeepers Creepers!”
yelped Dankichi as he had
only just now realized he
had turned back into a
white boy. But it was too
late; the Chief was charging at them with a spear in hand. The two
friends dodged the spear and ran off into the dense jungle foliage.
Mister Kari began to scramble around for something to use and
found a strong vine.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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“Kari, we’re in a quite a
hurry here. What’re you
doing, picking that thing
up?” asked Dankichi, a
little worried.
“With this we’ll capture
the Chief. Now I’m going
to make a loop, so please
hold this over there.”
As they hid in the
shadows of the trees, the
Chief ran up with puffs of
steam shooting from his
head. At that instant, his
foot was caught perfectly in
the loop the two had made
and, like a football, he
tumbled head over heels with a great thud!
It is true that savages are
simply lacking in wisdom.
After all, the Chief was
caught alive.
“Hey Mr. Barbarian, you
can’t match the wisdom
of the white man. If you
promise you won’t eat us
from now on, I’ll forgive
you.”
“Yes! We most certainly
will not eat the white
master. We’ve had quite
enough.” Tears like great
lumps of charcoal flowed
from the Chief ’s eyes as he
apologized. At this, Little
Dankichi unfastened the vine, seizing the crown and spear.
“As usual, Dan-chan never fails to amaze.”
“Kari, you yourself are quite amazing as well.”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
The crown Dankichi
captured was the symbol
of the king. With this
crown he could rule over
the savages. “Yahoo! From
now on I am the King of
this island, you know!”
Lost in his happiness,
Dankichi sang, “Yay!
Yippee!” and celebrated
with a native’s dance.
At that moment, a roar
loud enough to topple
a mountain came from
behind them. Startled, Kari
turned around only to see…
trouble! It was an elephant!
A most enormous elephant!
Of course the elephants
found in zoos, circuses,
and the like are quiet and
rather tame, but as for the
elephants of the wild, they
are bad-tempered beyond
belief. One will trample
and crush anything that
is in its path. Swinging a
trunk the size of a chimney,
it bounded closer, and
the startled Dankichi was
horrified. With a “Yikes!!”
he suddenly made as if to
run into the field, but Kari
hastily shouted out, “Dan-
chan, it’s dangerous to run
that way, escape this way
between these thick trees!”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Following Kari’s
command, Dankichi dove
between the two trees.
“Heyyy stupid Elephant.
Hey! Over here.” Kari, with
the wisdom of a seasoned
general, stood between the
two trees and ridiculed the
giant elephant thousands of
times bigger than himself.
In a rage, the elephant flew
towards him. This was
Kari’s plan. The elephant
was sandwiched between
the two trees and was
unable to move.
“Long live Dankichi…
even the elephant was caught alive!”
Once again saved from a jam by the quick thinking of Kari,
Dankichi returned to where
he’d disguised himself as a
blackie since he needed to
get his clothes.
“Kari, it was just around
here, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah it was just by the
stream over there.”
When Dankichi looked
forward, he was surprised by
what he saw. It seemed that
earlier, someone up in a tree
had seen Dankichi in his
clothes. Wobbling around
and looking very odd was a
monkey, wearing Dankichi’s
clothes and swinging
around a pair of pants.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
“What the heck!? What
should we do, Kari?”
Unfortunately, because
the monkey was quick, it
was able to escape. “Hey,
it’s going over there!”
squeaked Kari. Then the
monkey stopped, not
sure where to go.
“Alright! Let’s catch
him, Kari!” Dankichi
jumped across with
great concentration. The
monkey was surprised.
He had never seen a
white person wearing the
Chief ’s crown. He was
bewildered and climbed
up a tree to hop across the river.
“That darn monkey! But
I can jump over that river
no problem!” exclaimed
Dankichi.
“Are you sure that’s a
good idea?” asked Mister
Kari.
“Don’t worry about it.
Watch this!” Dankichi got
on his mark. He started
running. He made a
splendid jump!
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Usually Dankichi
wouldn’t have any problems
with a jump like this.
However, sometimes things
don’t go quite as planned.
The spear sank into the
muddy river bottom, and
Dankichi was stuck hanging
over the middle of the river.
“Dang!” cursed Dankichi,
but saying that wouldn’t
be any help to him now.
Hanging from the spear
like a piece of laundry on
a clothes- line, Dankichi
looked down and saw that
this time the danger was
very real.
Below him was a huge
alligator with its mouth
open wide, waiting for
Dankichi to fall. Surely if
he had known there were
alligators in this river, he
might have reconsidered
this plan. “Kari! I’m in real
trouble now!”
Kari, observing the
events, thought, “Hmm,
what can I do?” Soon
enough, the wise Kari had
something in mind. He
quickly ran up a tree, stick
in hand, and threw it at
the alligator.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
Kari’s aim was true and
the stick landed on target
in the alligator’s gaping
mouth. They had escaped
that deadly situation by a
hairsbreadth.
Dankichi’s weight pulled
him down towards the
alligator’s mouth at the
same time as the branch
landed. Naturally, the
alligator, unable to close
its mouth with the stick
there, was frantic. In that
instant, Dankichi and Kari
crossed the river.
“Thanks, Kari, you
saved me.”
As the two friends
searched here and there for
the mischievous monkey, it
started to get dark.
“Kari, it’s getting dark,
what should we do?”
“We don’t have any
choice but to sleep here
tonight; but we’re in the
wilderness, so wild animals
will probably come out
during the night. We
should make a fire to
frighten them off.”
Kari truly is a loyal
friend. He gathered some
branches together and
made a fire.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Gradually, the sun sank
below the horizon of this
untamed land. The awful
shriek of a strange bird
searching for prey and the
howls of the wild beasts
wandering through the
jungle made Dankichi
feel very uneasy.
“Kari, that was a
horrible sound, wasn’t
it? I wonder if we’ll be
okay…”
“As long as we keep the
fire going, we’ll be fine.
It’ll scare away the beasts
of this island.”
These two had fought
off danger all afternoon, so they were completely worn out, and
they went straight to sleep.
As night fell, the
crackling fire slowly
burned down to embers,
to the peril of Dankichi
and Kari. You see, this
is an island crawling
with hungry wild beasts.
When the fire went out
all of the beasts that had
been waiting gathered
in close as a pack. Our
heroes were awakened
by a loud noise in the
surrounding bush. They
rubbed the sleep from
their eyes only to see….
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
Our adventurer Dankichi, who had drifted ashore a barbaric
tropical island and had
gone on to have many
exciting adventures, was
now celebrating the New
Year. You see, this land
was so hot that all the
people had been burnt
black, so even when the
New Year came they could
still walk around naked.
“Ah, is everyone here?”
In the early morning on
New Year’s Day, Dankichi
gathered all his men in
the field in front of the
palace.
“Today, I’m going to tell
you about an interesting
plan I’ve made.”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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The plan was to make an
elite trooper corps from
the ten strongest men,
who could perform
military duties from now
on. The selection method
was a strange form of
sumo, in which the last ten
men remaining would be
chosen for the corps.
A sumo wrestling ring
was made. At last, the
ridiculous forehead sumo
began. “In this type of
sumo you can’t make use
of your limbs, only your
forehead,” said Dankichi.
“Come on Number
Twenty! Pull yourself
together!” cheered
Dankichi.
“Looks like Number
Eight also lost…”
You see, this is sumo
where you cannot move
your arms and legs. In this
strange sport you can only
move your head around
blindly, like a cow.
THUMP!
The men were stubborn,
so they continued to hit
their heads together. Both
contenders had lumps
on their heads and were on the verge of tears. All throughout, the
others cheered noisily and the fight continued.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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“I want all ten champs
to line up!” ordered
Dankichi. On his
command, the ten men
got in a line.
“Men, from this
moment forward, you
will be known as the New
Army Elite Troopers. You
get the honor of wearing
this cap,” Dankichi
proclaimed.
The caps that Dan-chan
proceeded to proudly
place on their heads were
actually coconuts cut in
half with a star insignia
drawn on to show honor.
The natives were
overjoyed. With
their special caps and
armbands, their loyalty to
King Dankichi grew and
their resolve strengthened.
“Our next mission is to
raise our glorious Japanese
flag at the highest point
on this island. I know
it seems like a difficult
mission, but I’m asking
you all to give 110%!”
Dankichi declared.
The preparations were
made.
“Alright, let’s move out!”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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Since becoming King
of the island, Dankichi
hadn’t explored his
territory at all. He had
no idea where they were
going. “Kari, is the flag
safe?” he asked.
“For sure, I’m keeping it
wrapped around me.”
They walked for a while
and ended up at a dead
end where a river blocked
their path. The current
was strong and there was
nothing to cross on.
Dan-chan is an excellent
swimmer, but it wouldn’t
do to get the Japanese flag
wet.
“Your Highness! I’ve
thought up a neat plan.
Just leave it to us,” said
trooper Number One.
After some discussion,
the troopers leaped into
the river one by one
and grabbed on to each
other. In the blink of an
eye, a human bridge had
formed.
“Gee whiz! These elite
troopers are the cat’s
pajamas! Let’s go ahead
and cross,” said Dankichi.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
With Number One’s
valuable stroke of genius,
they were able to cross the
river without any trouble.
The group had been
walking along a difficult
path and was now close to
a mountain’s peak. But then
they arrived at a steep cliff
and had to stop again.
“I aim to hang the flag on
the tree at the top of that
cliff, but it doesn’t seem
like we can get up there,”
said Dankichi. Of course,
the cliff wasn’t really that
tall, but Dankichi was just
too good to get dirty while
climbing.
“Have no fear, Your
Highness, we can surely
be of use to you. We’ll
build a stairway that you
can use to climb up,”
said Number One. He
had received three stars
on his gold stripe from
Dankichi and was still
giving it his all.
Number One yelled
out a strange command.
“Alright you lot, let’s
become a stairway for
His Highness!”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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c h a p t e r e i g h t
Dankichi and Mister
Kari watched as the natives
climbed on each other’s
back one by one, gathering
together into a jumble of
black bodies and spears.
Before long a ladder of
black men was made.
“Wow, simply amazing!
But the man at the very
the bottom must be quite
something. Well, Mister
Kari, climb on up after me
then!” Dan-chan began to
climb up with ease.
“The distance between
the spears is a bit too far,
so I’m going to borrow
your heads for just a moment,” said Mister Kari as he used the
heads of the natives as stepping-stones, climbing up the ladder with
small hops.
“Wow, just as I’d
expected of the highest
point on the island! What
a great view!”
Having reached the peak
of the mountain, Dan-chan
looked all around and let
out an “Oh no!” when
he looked at the base of a
palm tree. There, napping
lazily, lay an unbelievably
huge lion!
“Mi…Mister Kari, it’s a
lion! Wha…what are we
going to do?!”
“We’re in a pretty tight
spot, huh?”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
Even the great Dan-chan,
unable to approach any
closer, was at a loss. If he
could just call the natives
to drive it away, all would
be well. But if he raised
his voice, the lion would
awaken. It’d be perfect if
it would just wake up and
wander off, but if it were to
chase after him, he would
surely be lunchmeat.
“Hey Dan-chan, I thought
up something great.” Mister
Kari quietly whispered.
Then, he quietly approached
the lion holding a length of
rope.
After attaching the rope
to the lion’s tail, Mister
Kari tightly fastened the
other end to the palm tree.
“Dan-chan, you’re fast
on your feet, so rouse the
lion and run some laps
around that tree!”
“Gotcha.”
Dankichi understood
Mister Kari’s plan
completely. He woke the
lion right away and ran
round and round the tree
as the lion chased him.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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Completely unaware
that his tail was tied to
a rope, the roused lion
chased Dankichi around
and around, only to be
mortified to find himself
immobile.
“Ha ha ha! Mister Lion,
you’ve been beat after all,
haven’t you! Since you’re
there, allow me to borrow
you as a foothold.”
Having finally climbed
to the top of the tall pine
tree, Dankichi, along with
Mister Kari, was able to
unfurl the Rising Sun
flag into the New Year’s
morning breeze.
Ah, the fluttering of the
Rising Sun in the morning
breeze, how nostalgic! The
natives, who had climbed
up as well, stood admiring
Dankichi, whose eyes
glistened with tears.
“Even after coming to
this savage island, and
becoming the King… in
the end I’m still Japanese,”
thought Dankichi.
“Long live the Rising
Sun!” Dankichi shouted
out at the top of his lungs.
“Long live the Japanese
Empire!”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
Popular Orientalism
and Japanese Views of Asia
k a w a m u r a m i n a t o
t r a n s l a t i o n b y k o t a i n o u e & h e l e n j . s . l e e
I. Barbarity and Civilization
1 . a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i ’ s g l o b e
Billed as a “delightful comic tale,” Shimada Keizō’s Adventures of Dankichi
was serialized in the magazine Boys’ Club for six years, from 1933 to 1939.
While fishing in a boat, the young protagonist Dankichi falls asleep and
drifts away to a tropical island thickly forested with palm trees—an “is
land of barbarians.” The story develops around Dankichi’s adventures as
he, helped by the quick wit and wisdom of Karikō the black mouse, who
serves as his judicious consultant, becomes king of the island. The Adven-
tures of Dankichi was a very popular comic that mesmerized Japanese chil
dren at the time.
Adventures embodies possibly the best expression of images held by Japa
nese—in a general sense—of the “tropics,” “blackies,” “the South Seas,” “the
uncivilized,” and “barbarians” during the 1930s (although adventure and
expedition stories for boys set in the South Seas, such as Nan’yō Ichirō’s
The Green Desert Island and The Roaring Jungle, had been serialized in Boys’
Club and other magazines since the late 1920s and were enthusiastically
received). Adventures’ frequent use of discriminatory terms that would be
avoided in contemporary society, such as “cannibals,” “blackies,” “savages,”
“natives,” and “cannibalsavages,” only indicates the shallowness of social
consciousness regarding racial discrimination in this period, and the use of
those words should not be regarded as a sign of the text’s particularly blatant
prejudice. As the author himself admits, he had a preconceived idea that
“the tropical region in the South Seas was a place where dangerous beasts
and wild birds roamed in the jungle and where darkskinned headhunters
lived.”1 Reflecting this image, the story consists of a mishmash of animals
from all over the world that would generate the image of the “tropics” and
“uncivilized lands”—not only do African animals such as lions, elephants,
giraffes, and crocodiles appear in the story, but so do animals such as orang
utans, sea turtles, and camels from the Southeast Asian tropics, Arabian
desert, South America, New Guinea, and India.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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The story conveys a sense of what can be called Japanese “Orientalism”
toward “the southern region,” “the South Seas,” and the “tropics,” collec
tively.2 The author creates a tale of an imaginary and fantastical “tropical re
gion in the South Seas” that is markedly different from the reality in Africa
and Southeast Asia. Such a lack of national specificity was, of course, not
deemed problematic by the general public because the story was merely a
type of comic, a form of children’s amusement. Comics were granted the
privilege of ignoring the geographical restriction of a story, be it Africa,
Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea, Samoa, or the Marshall Islands. The mode
of expression called children’s comics was at the bottom rung of pop cul
ture, and one can say that its status as a marginalized genre helped justify its
preposterous content.
However, Adventures’ Orientalism toward “the tropical region in the
south” has a clear origin in its political and social context. The author,
Shimada Keizō, states that the idea of Adventures was “an extension of the
dream I’ve always had since my boyhood.” He continues: “Back then, all
boys seemed to share the same dream of becoming a cabinet minister or a
general, but for some unknown reason, an absurd dream sprouted in my
little head.” Shimada further explains his “irrepressible wishes, which were
growing like mushrooming clouds”: “The dream was to go somewhere in
the south where the climate was mild . . . and become a king on a deserted
island . . . where I’d be accompanied by animals as retainers . . . with no
worries about money . . . and no homework.” Shimada comments, “At that
time, the South Seas Islands were under Japan’s colonial mandate, and the
political idea of southward national expansion was on the rise in the name
of development projects. All eyes were on the southern region, so I figured
that a southern island would be the best setting for my Dankichi story.”3
He suggests that his original idea to set the story in a “tropical region in
the south” was because he envisioned the Micronesian Islands, which were
Japan’s colony at the time. Mori Koben, a Japanese pioneer of South Seas
development, who was active in the Truk Islands (presentday Chuuk in
the Eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia), is often said to be the model
for Dankichi, and this is perhaps because it is highly likely that Dankichi
would have fetched up on one of the Micronesian Islands.4 As an aside, it
should be noted that Yamanaka Minetarō’s 300 Miles across the Enemy Ter-
ritory, published by Kodansha in 1931, includes a novella called “The Boy
King in the South Seas.” It is a fiction set in the actual South Seas, in which
a boy named Ōtaki Kenkichi becomes king of an island in the Solomon
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
archipelago by conquering the people in the island using “tools of civiliza
tion,” such as mirrors, fertilizer, and pistols. It appears that Adventures was
directly inspired by the boy king of this “Kingdom of Daiken,” which was
named after the protagonist.5
Of course, in the South Seas, with the exception of Palau (Belau), which
has crocodiles (which were likely brought in from the outside), there are no
wild beasts such as lions, gorillas, or panthers, let alone primitive peoples
who could be described by a discriminatory term such as “cannibals.” On
Dankichi’s globe, the tropical region in the South Seas included the “dark
continent” of Africa, remote Borneo and Sumatra, the dense forests of New
Guinea, and the Amazonian jungles. All together, this was the world of
“primitives,” “barbarians,” and “natives.”
Viewing Adventures in this light, it is hardly meaningful to discuss what
the actual setting of the barbarian island was, or who the model for the pro
tagonist was. It is true that the South Seas Islands provided inspiration for
the creation of Dankichi’s island, but the tale was mostly created by the au
thor’s wild imagination. Or to put it in a critical light, the “delightful comic
tale” continued to be produced by his Orientalist images of the South Seas,
which were shaped by ignorance and popular misconceptions.
. . .
It is possible to view Adventures as a propaganda text endorsing Japan’s ex
pansionism and colonial domination, or as a text that underscores Japanese
superiority grounded in racial prejudices. Given the limited level of public
consciousness in the 1930s, however, it is hard to pass judgment by conclud
ing that the content of Adventures was particularly expansionist, colonialist,
or racist. The frequently used racist expressions mentioned earlier were part
of commonly used everyday language, and they do not suggest that Shi
mada had stronger racist inclinations than others.
However, what Adventures introduced into the underlying mentality of
the culture—literally, underground culture, rather than subculture—of the
late 1920s and early 1930s Japan was the very theme of “barbarity” discov
ered by “civilization.” In other words, a Japanese boy, Dankichi, who dons
only a grass skirt, appearing practically identical with the naked “savages,”
symbolizes “civilization” in contrast to the “barbarity” of the “blackies” by
the very fact that he wears a wristwatch and shoes. The watch and shoes are
evidence of his civilized self. And it is the small accessory—a wristwatch—
that functions as the symbolic device that decidedly separates the characters
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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into a hierarchal culture: Dankichi as the king, on the one hand, and the
“barbarian retainers” on the other (Shimada never forgot to draw Dankichi’s
watch on his left wrist, even in the smallest frame; this has already been
pointed out in Yano Akira’s Japanese Views of the History of the South Seas).
Dankichi is the one who rules “time” on the barbarian island, and it is his
unitary control and rule over “time” that becomes the source of his power
on the throne. Dankichi introduces to the uncivilized island—now his is
land—schools, hospitals, a military, a postal system, and money, and tries
to civilize his “barbarian retainers.” But what lies at the root of this “civi
lization” is none other than the watch, a sophisticated device that controls
“time.” Perhaps the watch also indicates that his superiority comes from
his familiarity with numbers and letters, which allows Dankichi to become
king among the “natives” (Dankichi does not want to be bothered by the
names of his “blackie” retainers, such as Banana, Pineapple, and Betel Nut,
so he writes numbers on their chests, calling them “Number One,” “Num
ber Two,” and so forth).
Wearing a watch (or wearing shoes), as Dankichi does, however, was a
relatively new phenomenon in modern Japanese history. In Meiji (1868–
1912) and Taisho (1912–1926) Japan, it was almost inconceivable for children
to wear watches, and even in 1933 (the first year of Adventures’ publication)
it was probably very rare to see a child with one. If a watch is a reflection
of civilization, it should be noted that Japan’s own civilization and enlight
enment did not have such a long history for Dankichi to boast of to his
“barbarian retainers.” Conversely, only by discovering the “barbarian retain
ers,” as well as other “savages” on the “barbarian island” such as the “Kūroi”
tribe, “Burakku” tribe, “Kankara” tribe, and “Yami” tribe,6 could Dankichi,
as a Japanese, become a “civilized individual.” By discovering the external
“barbaric Other,” one can find “civilization” within. In other words, it is fair
to say that by acquiring the “barbarous” colony that was the South Seas Is
lands—or, by incorporating “uncivilized” savages and barbarian islands into
its own territories—Japan, for the first time, came to have an awareness of
itself as a firstclass, “civilized nation.”
2 . d i s c o v e r i n g t h e “ n a t i v e ”
In Lesson Two of the ninth volume of the stateapproved grade school Japa
nese language textbook (of the third edition, which ran from 1918 to 1932) is
a reading entitled “A Letter from the Truk Islands.” It reads as follows:
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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t h e a d v e n t u r e s o f d a n k i c h i
April 10
Dear Shōtarō,
. . . It’s been three months since I came to the Truk Islands, and I now have
a good grasp of the lay of the land here. Both winter and spring are close to
summer in the Japanese mainland. I’ve heard that it’s as warm as it is now
throughout the year, and contrary to my initial worries, this seems to be
a pleasant place to live. Also, the islands in this area are governed by our
country, and many Japanese people have moved here, so I don’t feel lonely in
the least bit. The first thing you would notice upon arrival here is the plants.
Especially rare among them are the coconut palm trees and breadfruit trees.
Among the palm trees, the tall ones can reach as much as ninety feet. Leaves
that look like the wings of birds are clustered at the top of the trunk, where
bunches of fruit grow the size of an adult’s head. [ . . . ]
The natives are not very civilized yet, but they are meek and easily take to us.
Because our country has built many schools in recent years, the native chil
dren have learned to speak very good Japanese. I saw a girl about ten years
old singing the Japanese anthem Kimigayo the other day.
I will write again soon. Please give my best regards to your father and mother.
Your Uncle
The mandate of Micronesia was handed over to Japan from Germany in
1920, and it did not take long for the islands to be used as a topic in Japanese
textbooks. (Volume nine of the textbook was edited in 1920.) Takagi Ichi
nosuke, the author of this “letter,” was a scholar of Japanese literature who
worked as the editor of school textbooks for the Ministry of Education. He
later recounted that he composed the piece “without any direct knowledge of
the Truk Islands” and wrote it “solely relying on guidebooks of the islands.”7
Remarking, “It bothers me after all that the letter introduces a story about
the ‘natives’ at the end in an awkward manner,” he went on to offer selfcrit
icism saying, “Especially the line, ‘I saw a girl about ten years old singing the
Japanese anthem Kimigayo the other day,’ is very much an abstract expres
sion. You can write these conceptual things with flare if you’re writing from a
dogmatic standpoint, but they have nothing to do with reality.”
Setting aside Takagi’s selfcriticism, it is undeniable that these colonialist
materials were used in elementary school education and that they planted in
the minds of young subjects of the Japanese empire images of the “natives”
and the colony: unusual vegetation—such as palm and breadfruit trees—
and “yettobecivilized” “natives” in a strange and unfamiliar landscape. It
is not farfetched to say that the natives that appeared in grade school text
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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books prepared the way for “barbarian retainers” in Adventures and “violent
savages” in The Green Desert Island. And just as Dankichi ruled the “barbar
ian world” in the name of “civilization,” it was the Japanese language in
schools and the nationstate system of the “Japanese empire,” symbolized in
the Japanese anthem, that governed the uncivilized.
The Micronesian “natives” under Japan’s mandate were not the first
group of “natives,” “uncivilized people,” or “barbarians” that modern Japan
discovered. In fact, they were the last. Over the course of Japan’s moderniza
tion (that is, on its way to the national goal of “Civilization and Enlighten
ment”), the barbarous and uncivilized “natives” that stood in stark contrast
to the “civilized” Japanese were constructed one after another. They were the
Ainu, who were perfectly preserved as “former natives” in the law entitled
“The Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Law,” the “natives” who lived in
Otasu Forest near presentday Poronaisk in Sakhalin (that is, the northern
ethnic minorities such as the presentday Uiltas, Nivkhi, Yakuts), and the
“natives” who were called the “Takasago tribe” or “native savages” in Taiwan,
which became Japan’s colony soon after the SinoJapanese War (1894–1895).
. . .
The natives of the Truk Islands described in the textbook were “meek” and
“easily took to [Japanese].” Needless to say, these expressions conversely
presume that there were natives who were “not meek” and did not “easily
take to [Japanese].” For example, they point to the existence of ferocious
and vicious “savages” like the “natives” in the Marshall Islands depicted by
Suzuki Tsunenori in his True Record of the South Seas Expedition.8 Suzuki
and others headed out to the Marshall Islands to investigate a group of
shipwrecked Japanese fishermen and, as suggested by information passed
on by an English ship, concluded that the shipwreck was indeed caused by
an attack from “natives.” He describes socalled Marshallese “natives” in the
following terms:
The natives are very idle in nature, and more docile characters are hardly ever
found. However, they are unable to discern right from wrong and have no
sense of honor or judgment at all. They still exhibit a friendly and sociable
manner with each other, as though they were relatives, and very rarely fight
each other. Their deference to the king of the island is comparable to that of
a god, and the way in which people look up to him is more akin to worship
than paying respect. If a foreigner pays a visit and brings rare gifts or food,
they share it with their neighbors and friends. However, the custom from
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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the barbaric era persists in the way in which men oppress women. Men treat
women no differently from the way in which slaves were treated during the
Roman empire—quite close to the handling of furniture or property.
On the islands of Manowa9 and Arno in the archipelago, the atmosphere
is quite brutal, and the residents have not given up the custom of cannibal
ism. Some of the inhabitants on other islands are also vicious and evil, hav
ing a particular taste for human flesh. When they discover starving drifters
on their islands, they feed them food and make them believe that they have
been rescued. However, the islanders secretly slaughter the drifters later,
bury the dead bodies in the sand, wait until the middle of the night when
there is no one around, and dig up the bodies and eat them. This is what I
have heard. When I asked how they ate human flesh, I was told that they
tear off small pieces, wrap them with pandan leaves, and grill them on a
strong fire until the surface is roasted and turns the color of charcoal. Then
they take the grilled flesh out of the fire, peel off the roasted leaves, and eat
the human flesh inside that has turned white and become like tofu. The
taste of human flesh is said to be marvelously delicious.
The “barbaric customs,” characterized by cannibalism, idleness, adultery,
superstition, and tattooing, are definitive images of the “natives.” “South
Seas natives” has conjured these images of an uncivilized world, such as
“barbarians” and “savages,” ever since Suzuki’s time. Even when Japan later
took possession of the whole Micronesian region—including the Marshall
Islands—as a colony, the generalized image of the “natives” as uncivilized
and barbaric was handed down largely unaltered.
Taiwan’s “Takasago tribe,” which staged the Wushe Incident, left even
more grave and alarming marks of barbarism in the Japanese psyche than
the Marshallese “natives.”10 As a result of the SinoJapanese and Russo
Japanese wars, two wars of colonial expansion, Japan acquired colonies such
as Taiwan and Korea, but it also met with largescale resistance from the
indigenous peoples in the process of colonization. By the fact that those
resistance movements have been trivialized as disturbances and riots and
have not been understood as a part of the larger antiJapanese, anticolo
nial struggle, we can see the tendency to disregard accountability for Japan’s
modern colonial policies.
The Wushe Incident refers to the uprising of the “Takasago tribe” in Oc
tober 1930, in the indigenous village of Wushe, located in the midregion
of Taiwan. On October 27, about two hundred Takasago people from six
hamlets stormed into the playground of the Wushe local school on Sports
Day, killing Japanese and attacking police and governmental offices. One
hundred thirtyfour Japanese were killed. It appears that the incident was
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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understood on the Japanese mainland as a case of revolt by “the barbaric”
against “the civilized,” rather than an outcome of the antiJapanese move
ment in the colonies. The Takasago were generally known as “savages” who
practiced headhunting, adorned their bodies with tattoos, fought among
their clans, and continued to live in strife and conflict. Images of the Taka
sago swinging their machetes at the Japanese overlap with the scenes fre
quently seen in comics or films in which “cannibalistic natives” attack
explorers and travelers. Collectively delineated in these scenes are the re
actionary attacks of the “savages” on “civilization” through which Japanese
soberly recognized the presence of “barbarians” within the borders of their
own nation.
In his book, The Governor-General Office of Taiwan, Huang Zhaotang
explains that “the cause [of the Wushe Incident] was an eruption of re
sentment that had built up over the years against the military expeditions
and punishments meted out by the GovernorGeneral’s Office, in addition
to forced labor, insults against Takasago women, and dissatisfaction with
the arrogant local police.”11 However, the majority of Japanese at the time,
including intellectuals, saw the incident as a manifestation of “barbarity”
caused by the innate bestiality, infantile emotions, and truncated thought
processes of the “barbarians.” In her travelogue entitled Korea, Taiwan, and
South Seas Harbors, for instance, Nogami Yaeko, who had visited the site of
the uprising in Wushe, wrote the following about the cause of the incident
as told by a Japanese who was a policeman at the time.
Hōbo is one of the native hamlets located near Meishi at the foot of the
mountains. A man named Piposappo was an adoptee.12 His wife was an
exceptionally licentious woman and even ventured out to Puli in search of
young Japanese men from the mainland. Piposappo could not blame or
punish his wife. Instead, he was captivated by a strange heroism uniquely
inherent in the Taiwanese savages. He thought he could regain her love if he
demonstrated his manliness by hunting the heads of despicable mainland
Japanese men.
In the meantime, Chief Mona Rudao of the Mahebo clan had a new
problem, besides the one with his younger sister, who had just been divorced
by a Japanese police officer. A group of people led by his two sons insulted
two Japanese policemen as they happened upon them while deer hunting.
It was an explosion of frustrations that young people in general harbored.
The Japanese authorities had planned to quietly quash this incident, but
not knowing this, Mona Rudao worried about the possible punishment that
might befall his sons. Piposappo seized on his fear. His idea was to convince
the chief, who was respected by all native villages, to back his plan to rise up
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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against the Japanese authorities before Mona Rudao’s sons were humiliat
ingly punished, and, utilizing the opportunity, to engage in headhunting
and earn his wife’s praise.13
Needless to say, this was an account completely in line with the official
documentation of the incident. What is illuminated most forcefully in this
passage, however, is Nogami’s preconceived notion that the real cause of the
incident was the “barbarism” of the Takasago, characterized by their brutal
ity and infantilism, by heroism that only strikes the civilized as “odd,” by
cowardice and suspicion, sexual promiscuity, inferiority, and a hasty, self
centered thought process. She writes, “Even though the Japanese authorities
had planned to quietly quash this incident,” the Taiwanese savages rose up,
propelled by their own mysterious, infantile, and foolish heroism and cow
ardice. The responsibility of Japanese police authorities is not addressed. It
is assumed that the entire incident was a product of the imagination of the
“barbarian natives,” and was, in essence, rooted in their barbaric brutality
and lewdness.
One of the fictional depictions of the Wushe Incident is Nakamura Chi
hei’s “Foggy Native Village,” included in his Collected Taiwan Fictions.14
This story offers a more detailed depiction of the process leading up to the
“barbarian” uprising than Nogami Yaeko’s text, and it offers as the remote
cause of the incident the broken marriage between a native woman and a
Japanese police officer, who suffers torment over his interracial marriage.
Nakamura takes a rather sympathetic view of the Takasago by emphasiz
ing the obstacles that emerge from the lack of understanding between two
ethnic groups. In essence, however, he sees the Wushe Incident as desperate
resistance against “civilization” by the cornered “barbarians.”
Japan’s policies toward the Taiwanese natives are gradually achieving success,
and the natives’ unadorned wild nature is now being tamed in the face of
what we call culture. And their ethnic brutality and primitive lifestyle are al
ready beginning to deteriorate, just like the vitality of a menopausal woman
who is finally losing her biological female functions. [ . . . ] It was the case
that the Taiwanese savages galvanized what little wild or violent nature they
had left in them in order to recklessly attempt to fight, for the very last time,
the lifestyle incompatible with their character; that is, civilization.
Nogami and Nakamura observe the “barbarians” (yabanjin) from the po
sition of the “civilized.” Their overdetermined assumption—that they are on
the side of “civilization” and the Taiwanese natives are on the side of “barbar
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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ity” (yaban)—naturally never wavers.15 Even for Nakamura, who dramatized
the Wushe Incident as a tragedy between two ethnic groups, the solution was
for the civilized nation of Japan, which now included such “barbarians,” to
“civilize” and “enlighten” them faster, if only by a little, and to demonstrate
to an even greater extent the depths of Japan’s good intentions. In other
words, there was no other way to educate the “barbarians” than to treat them
with paternalistic sympathy, compassion, and protection in the same fashion
as the policy of segregation and protection suggested by the legal framework
in the Hokkaido Former Natives Protection Law for the Ainu.
3 . t h e m o d e o f t h o u g h t t h a t
f r a m e s “ b a r b a r i s m ”
In terms of the Wushe Incident’s impact on the cultural psyche of the Japa
nese “mainlanders,” however, one must point out the awakening of the Jap
anese—who had undergone civilization and enlightenment themselves—to
their “inner barbarity.” One fine example is Ōshika Taku’s anthology en
titled The Savage, which includes short stories centering on the themes of
the native settings and peoples of Taiwan.16 The stories include “Tattaka
Zoo,” “Savage Women,” “Zhang’s Desire,” “In the Forest,” “The People of
the Inlands,” and “The Savage,” among others. “Tattaka Zoo” was published
in 1931, “Savage Women” in 1933, and “Zhang’s Desire” and “The Savage”
in 1935. Ōshika began writing his “Takasago Tribe” stories one year after the
Wushe Incident, and this stream of “savage literature” was produced around
the same time that the heroic stories of Dankichi and his barbarian retainers
were published in Adventures.
In the collection, the title piece, “The Savage,” best exemplifies Ōshika’s
predilection for the concept of “barbarity.” The young Japanese protagonist
Tazawa joins a labor dispute in a Chikuho coal mine in Japan that his father
owns and engages in a fierce protest, even instigating the miners to flood
a portion of the mine. Practically disowned by his family, he is forced to
relocate himself to the “native land” of Taiwan. Tazawa, who is betrayed
by his trusted friend during the labor struggle, “feels as though he has lost
the foundation of his spirit,” and “almost as an act of selfabandonment,”
comes to work at the police station that guards the Taiwanese savages. He
then meets the native girl Taimorikaru, who possesses wild and unadorned
charm. She is looking for a Japanese husband from the mainland, and he
ends up reciprocating her simple, passionate advances.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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A riot among the Taiwanese natives erupts in a nearby community.
Tazawa joins in the “punitive expedition forces,” and in the heat of the mo
ment, with a machete, ends up beheading a native who attacks him. This
marks the surfacing of the barbarity that was latent in Tazawa, the petit
bourgeois intellectual and highly educated idler. Now, Tazawa has to recog
nize the wild, primitive nature and the barbaric essence inside him. How
ever, he is forced to admit that these traits are nevertheless restrained when
compared to the real “barbarity” displayed by Taimonamo, the younger sis
ter of Taimorikaru, who puts a curse on the severed head of the enemy that
Tazawa had brought back by saying, “Bring here the heads of your parents
and siblings. I’ll let them live with you here.” This passage follows:
Witnessing this attitude of Taimonamo, who was only 15, Tazawa was un
equivocally made aware of his weakness. He couldn’t simply believe that this
was all because the rough customs of this place affected her mind. He felt as
though he had caught the choking smell of barbarism handed down through
the blood. “No, it’s not just barbarism. That barbarism is like the solemn
pulse that throbs into the indomitable spirit of a giant tree—a colossal tree
that spreads its chest while suffering from merciless Mother Nature, yet sus
tained by its acerbic compassion. The sap continues to run throughout the
tree, and it gushes out from the tip of even a small branch. Compared to
this, I am only a feeble sapling, just transplanted.
It can be said that this passage depicts the catalyst for the transforma
tion from “civilization” to “barbarity.” While Tazawa is a young man who
“dropped out of school in Tokyo,” there is no question that he is a fellow
traveler, wouldbe intellectual who shows sympathy for labor organizing.
But the same Tazawa, the “civilized man” who possesses a higher intellectual
ability than most people, engages in an instinctive fight and carries out an
act of “headhunting” just like the Taiwanese natives. It proves that the regres
sion into barbarism from civilization can happen among Japanese, or those
from the mainland. However, such barbarity is still tinged with a delicate
shade compared to even Taimonamo, the native girl. If her wild, barbaric na
ture is something that has put down its roots deep into the ground, Tazawa’s
awakening to a “wild nature” is merely that of a transplanted sapling. And of
course, all this means nothing but the rediscovery of modern Japan’s “civi
lization and enlightenment” as a “transplanted civilization,” as well as an
awakening to the true, wild barbarity that existed before Japan’s modernity.
. . .
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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In the early Showa period (1926–1989), the Japanese could confirm their
own “civilized self ” by finding “barbarity” and “untamed nature” in the
“natives” and “savages” of the colony. But, within themselves, who were
supposed to be thoroughly civilized, they also were to discover a “barbarity”
as their hidden and secret passion. Tazawa chops off a man’s head with a
Taiwanese native’s sword and triumphantly comes home with it, and Dan
kichi subdues powerful enemy natives, pirates, and rascals with his military
power. In other words, this is a calling from an “untamed instinct” within
and an awakening of “barbarism.”
That such an awakening of “wild nature” and “barbarity” was the other
side of contempt and fear toward the native and savage is apparent without
being examined in the context of modern Japanese history. The awareness
of the tenuousness of transplanted Western civilization in Japan, on the one
hand, and the discovery of the “barbaric nature” of Japanese themselves,
which they had ostensibly expunged by introducing modern, systematic
ideas, on the other, were one and the same thing. The problem inherent
to modern Japan was that its own appropriation of a foreign culture and
civilization and its project to modernize and civilize native cultures—that
is, the “Orientalization” of the surrounding Asian and Pacific cultures and
the deOrientalization of Japan’s own traditional/AsiaPacific culture, which
was rooted in the AsiaPacific region—had to occur simultaneously.
This is to say that the discovery of “barbarity,” as in the case of Ōshika,
did not open a path to critique and overcome the “civilization” of the West
by uncovering Japan’s own uncivilized nature. Instead, it only valorized
barbarism as defined within the existing framework of civilization itself
(Ōshika himself regretted that his work was regarded as explorations of
“mere barbarism”). The ultimate goal of modern Japan, “Leaving Asia, En
tering Europe,” could not be achieved only by modernizing, civilizing, and
Westernizing Japan. It was also deeply implicated in treating other Asian
and Pacific ethnic groups and countries as uncivilized and in regarding
them as primitive and barbaric. In other words, Japan’s enlightenment and
civilization meant the transformation of other AsianPacific ethnicities and
countries, which historically had much in common with Japanese culture,
into a primitive and barbarous existence.
It is widely accepted in the study of world history that the divide be
tween the imperial master and the colony never occurred where there was
no gap in stages of civilization. Countries and ethnic groups that were on
a similar level in their cultures could never develop imperialpowerand
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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colony relationships with each other. Japan’s colonial acquisitions followed
the Western model—examples include England and India, France and
North Africa, Holland and Indonesia, etc.—and were always accompanied
by cultural invasion and deprivation in which other ethnicities and coun
tries were thoroughly despised, looked down upon, and regarded as “bar
barous,” while their customs, cultures, and conventions were degraded as
uncivilized. In some ways, the fanatic inculcation of Japanese spirit and
emperor ideology in the colony was an expression of the inferiority complex
felt by the Japanese themselves toward the transplanted Western civilization.
Such inculcation, functioning as a hot house for arrogant cultural chauvin
ism and narrowminded cultural nationalism, prepared for the absurd, yet
calamitous, situations in the regions under Japan’s colonial rule.
II. “Natives” in Asia
1 . c o o l i e s , b e g g a r s , a n d o p i u m a d d i c t s
The steamer came alongside a stone wharf that reminded me of the one at
Iida.17 It did so with such precision that I should never have believed I was at
sea. On the pier, there were crowds of people; most of the people there, how
ever, were Chinese coolies. Looking at any one of them, I had the immediate
impression of dirt. Any two together were an even more unpleasant sight.
That so many of them had gathered together struck me as most unwelcome
indeed. Standing on the deck, I contemplated this mob from my distant
observation point and thought to myself: “Goodness! What a strange place
I’ve come to!” [ . . . ]
I looked along the pier and noticed the horse carriages drawn up on the
landing place. There were also a large number of rickshaws. However, they
were pulled by the same crowd of bellowing men, so business did not ap
pear, compared with Japan at least, to be particularly good; most of the horse
carriages also seemed to be operated by the same people. Consequently, all
that was there was a load of dirty vehicles clanking away. Of the horse car
riages in particular, it had been rumored, at the time when the Russkies had
evacuated Dalian during the RussoJapanese War, that the Russkies had very
carefully dug holes and buried the vehicles in order to prevent their falling
into Japanese hands. Afterward, the Chinks walked about everywhere sniff
ing the ground; when they found the right smell, they nosily disinterred
one carriage, then another, in the same manner. Very soon, Dalian was
teeming with growling, muttering diggers of holes. These, of course, were
just rumours, and I do not know what really happened. In any event, of all
the rumours circulating from that time, this seems one of the cleverest, and
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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anybody could see with his own eyes that these carriages were indeed covered
in mud.18
Invited by Nakamura Korekimi (often known as Zekō), his friend and
thenpresident of the South Manchurian Railway Company, Natsume
Sōseki visited Korea and Manchuria for a month and a half, from Septem
ber to October 1909, and serialized his travel essay Travels in Manchuria and
Korea in a newspaper. The quotation above is the scene in which O.S.K.’s
Tetsureimaru, with Sōseki on board, sails into the port of Dalian, the entry
point to Manchuria. There are some who argue, based on this scene, that
Sōseki harbored disdain toward Asia and a discriminating sentiment toward
the Chinese, but here I simply want to point out that the colony “Man
churia” was first recognized as a very dirty place in the eyes of a representa
tive intellectual and writer from Japan. In this context, coolies are equated
with crowds of bellowing men, which are equated with “Chinks”; therefore
the whole of “Chinks” is represented by the “filthy,” “unsightly” coolies.
Sōseki’s first impression during his ManchuriaKorea trip was griminess and
strangeness, and from here, it would not have taken much to reach the gen
eralization of “dirty Chinese” and “filthy China.”
If the text simply stated that there were many grubby coolies in China, it
could be an objective statement, although tinged with a sense of disdain for
poor hygiene and filthiness. But one cannot help feeling in Sōseki’s rhetoric
a dehumanization of coolies, or, frankly, a gaze that treats them as animals
rather than as humans. One has to assume an unconscious intention to rep
resent the coolies as subhuman animallike creatures in sentences like, “The
steamer passed alongside the shore in a calm and dignified manner, skim
ming close by that curious throng of coolies, and finally coming to a halt.
As soon as we had docked, the crowd of coolies started buzzing and swarm
ing like angry wasps,”19 the frequent use of the phrase “crowd of bellowing
men,” or the expression “the Chinks walked about everywhere sniffing the
ground; when they found the right smell . . .” in the above passage.
In the interest of comparison, let us turn to Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,
written by the British woman Isabella Bird, who visited Japan in 1878. The
following is a scene in which her ship enters the port of Yokohama.
The first thing that impressed me on landing was that there were no loafers,
and that all the small, ugly, kindlylooking, shriveled, bandylegged, round
shouldered, concavechested, poorlooking beings in the streets had some
affairs of their own to mind. At the top of the landingsteps there was a
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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portable restaurant, a neat and most compact thing, with charcoal stove,
cooking and eating utensils complete; but it looked as if it were made by and
for dolls, and the mannikin who kept it was not five feet high.20
It is not easy to say whether the Japan of 1878, when Isabella Bird arrived at
Yokohama, was more “civilized” than the Manchuria (China) of 1909, when
Natsume Sōseki entered Dalian. But one has to conclude that in the area of
racial and ethnic prejudices, Sōseki scores higher. Of course, this is not to
say that Bird was completely free from racial prejudices. Upon meeting Ainu
in Hokkaido, she wrote, “They are uncivilisable and altogether irreclaim
able savages.” The words “uncivilised” and “savages” appear frequently in her
travel writing to describe the Ainu people. But she expresses disapproval of
her interpreter Ito’s extremely discriminatory words, “Treat Ainos [i.e., Ai
nus] politely! . . . They’re just dogs, not men.”21 She also writes the following
immediately after the earlier quote about the “irreclaimable savages”:
. . . yet they are attractive, and in some ways fascinating, and I hope I shall
never forget the music of their low, sweet voices, the soft light of their mild,
brown eyes, and the wonderful sweetness of their smile.22
Although the Japanese regard the Ainu as subhuman (dogs, indeed!), this
British woman with a great deal of curiosity writes about the attraction of
the Ainu as humans, all the while suffering from “filthiness,” such as swarms
of fleas and an unbearable stench. It is possible, of course, to identify here
the mental tendency toward the worship of the wild state and the natu
ral—as exemplified by the notion of the “noble savage”—in postRousseau
Europe. But even considering that, it is perhaps justified to say that Bird’s
gaze fairly captures the Ainu as “humans.” This British woman attempted to
overcome the gap between the civilized and the primitive by the concept of
universal humanity, but the Japanese (who were supposed to be only mar
ginally civilized themselves) tried to paint the “uncivilized” peoples with the
images of “dogs” and animals that were sniffing around the ground.
. . .
Let us consider another example. Imaeda Setsuo’s Strange Stories from Man-
churia was an astonishing best seller as a Manchurian guide book, reprinted
twentyfour times in five years after first being published in 1935 by Gekkan
Manshūsha. Unlike official guides to Manchurian immigration or textbook
like introductions to Manchuria, it reports on the hidden side of each Man
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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churian city—prostitutes, opium addicts, thieves’ markets, and so on—
while underscoring the bizarreness of it all. It is an interesting book that
depicts the underbelly and unknown side of Manchuria, which was strongly
associated with official slogans such as “Cooperation of Five Peoples” and
“Asian Paradise by Moral Rule.” The book is written in the form of a con
versation between a host and a guest. The following is an exchange in the
book’s section on Dalian, the entry port to Manchuria.
“Look at the main square. All kinds of cripples are clinging there like scabs.
Now, a Western lady might come out of the hotel and be pleased by the
flowers and the smell of the acacia along the boulevard. But she wouldn’t
find it easy to go out often if a cripple keeps pestering her the whole block,
would she?”
“In the olden days, they used to do a ‘beggar sweep’—shipping all those
picked up to Shandong peninsula in a boat and dumping them there.”
“All sent back to where they came from, you mean?”
“They were all kept on deck, of course, but one year, the boat was hit by
a storm. It tipped 45 degrees. Crashing waves were washing the deck. . . . Do
I need to say the rest? These guests on the boat were missing hands or legs,
you see. By the time the storm passed and calm clouds finally floated in the
sky, the deck was sparkling clean, just like when VIPs come aboard, I hear.”
“Geez! It must have been a screeching hell, literally!”
This is the tone of the conversation throughout. What is depicted is the
hidden side of the Japanese colony Manchukuo and its dark, social aspects,
valued entirely for its sensationalism. The content of the book was originally
serialized in the magazine Manchuria Monthly under the title Guide to the
Manchurian Special Scenic Zones, and it is nothing more than popular read
ing material that largely relies on exposé realism. However, compared to
the empty formalistic reports and travelogues written by mainland writers
and journalists who visited Manchukuo on junkets sponsored by the South
Manchurian Railway Company or newspaper companies, perhaps the
book’s value should be recognized, if only paradoxically, just for its mockery
of the official state slogans, such as “Cooperation of Five Peoples,” “Asian
Paradise by Moral Rule,” and “The Whole World under the Emperor.”
Of course, this is not to say that the book offers any fundamental criti
cism or negative perspective of the puppet state Manchukuo. The only
thing that can be found in the book is a gaze of the curious and the bizarre
that seeks things exotic, ugly, vulgar, peculiar, and rare; and it is nothing
but a gaze that fully intends to defamiliarize Manchuria, Manchukuo, and
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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Manchurians. Thieves’ markets, brothels, opium dens, underground scenes,
etc. fill the pages. Along with the “Manchurian sunset” and warlords, these
were the images of Manchuria shared among the Japanese masses, and they
often came from popular travelogues and travel essays of this kind.
. . .
Let us examine other material, a book called Dissection of Taikan’en. No
colophon, author’s name, or publisher’s name can be found in the book.
The front cover bears the two characters for “Top Secret,” and the title page
states, “Social Field Work on the Han People, Volume One.” This is a re
port on the building and facilities called Taikan’en in Fujiaden, the socalled
“Manchurian residential zone” in Harbin. The book declares that here can
be found every kind of vice and misery imaginable.
From under the carved letters “Taikan’en” a cavelike pathway opens up
heading north. Once you pass this gate, you will find yourself led into a
dark world filled with foul smells, profanity, and terror. Twostory buildings
that house flophouses, fortunetellers, morphine dealers, and miscellaneous
stores occupy both sides of the pathway. The conspicuous staircase in the
middle of the path leads to the flophouse upstairs. Naked corpses are often
found behind the staircase, but we see none today. The women, who are
standing, as if dazed, in small groups in front of the flophouse and near the
staircase, are the prostitutes who live in the hotel. Due to syphilis, their eyes
are clouded white, and their faces are blueblack and emaciated because of
excessive sex and drugs. The noisy crowds that surround them are those who
are haggling down the already miserable price of 40 sen apiece.23
The author depicts the world of the “foul smells, profanity, and terror” of
Taikan’en with the calmness of a surgeon and thoroughly objective investi
gation and analysis: morphine addicts, sex workers, gambling, vagabonds,
opium dens, morphine dealers, beggars, thieves, and corpses. Fujiaden,
the representative of the largest criminal underground of Manchukuo, and
Taikan’en, the symbol of its vice, immorality, filth, and degeneracy, were
nothing but the exact opposite of the ideal of “Asian Paradise by Moral Rule.”
But what we need to be aware of is that the author connects the existence
of Taikan’en and Fujiaden with the ethnic character of the Han. Any coun
try or ethnic group, to a varying degree, has a criminal underground, as
well as a dark side, such as brothels and slums. Its degree corresponds to the
level of political and economic development of the country, and it is now
common sense that it has nothing to do with ethnic or national character.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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But this author discusses the issue as a problem of ethnic culture. Thus we
find a passage like this one: “Contrary to the state and culture of the Japa
nese race, which always attempts to keep individual character pure, the Han
race’s society and culture are thoroughly instinctbased. They always seek to
live in wild abandon, as they are led by their instinct. Therefore, there is a
bad tendency in the social structure of Han society from the beginning that
tends to ignore national policies. The only decisive element in Han society
is the deepseated instinct that ignores human will and sneers at normal ef
forts by human beings.”24
In other words, the discriminatory gaze toward the Han race, that is the
Chinese, is dressed up in the attire of cultural comparison and is offered as
an observation of cultural difference between Japan, which seeks “pure char
acter,” and China, which is “thoroughly instinctbased.” Needless to say,
the discriminatory gaze toward China, disguised in this type of seemingly
objective cultural argument, intentionally conceals the grossly inhumane
and perversely immoral criminal acts committed on a national scale by Jap
anese who conspired to obtain large sums of money by taking advantage of
the vice, corruption, fear, and immorality in China: as exposed by Eguchi
Keiichi’s 1988 book Sino-Japan Opium War, the Japanese military and mer
chants were actually behind those Koreans and Chinese who participated in
the morphine and opium dealings. The opinion of Dissection of Taikan’en’s
author, that the result of “seek[ing] to live in wild abandon as they are led
by their instinct” is embodied in the opium addicts and sex workers, and
that such is the instinct of the Han people, can amply prove how much
narrowminded chauvinism and racism may be hidden in the objectivity of
cultural theory and cultural comparison.
These three writings on the Manchurians—a travel essay by a literary
author, a popular travel guide, and social research—are unlike each other
in their genres and periods. But what they have in common is the uncon
scious/conscious sense of discrimination that seeks to place the Manchurian
or Chinese people in a position inferior to the Japanese by emphasizing
their “dirtiness,” “misery,” “filth,” “foul smell,” “immorality,” and “instinct.”
It is nothing other than a gaze that regards all peoples other than its own as
subhuman and as animalistic, instinctdriven “natives.”
Of course, Japan has a long history of fondly regarding China as a de
veloped, civilized country, and of respecting it as if it were an older brother.
During the modern period, the reversal of the relationship of the “civilized”
to the “uncivilized” made it possible for Japan to colonize China. China was
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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the source of the powerful Chinese culture. Japan was influenced by the
overwhelming Chinese culture in all aspects of life, such as Chinese char
acters, Confucianism, Buddhism, codes of etiquette, cultural artifacts, arts,
clothing, city planning, and social institutions. And that is precisely why
Japan had to treat modern Chinese, the Han race, as “native.” Historical,
cultural inferiority could not be overcome without proving Japan’s cultural
superiority. Therefore, finding “Chinese” culture in coolies, beggars, and
opium addicts was necessary for the sake of maintaining the fiction and
vanity of the civilized nation of Japan.
2 . c u l t u r e a n d d i s c r i m i n a t i o n
The tendency to dismiss nonJapanese Asians as “native,” especially to treat
indigenous peoples in colonies or occupied lands discriminatorily, gradu
ally intensified as Japan accelerated imperial indoctrination based on an
emperorcentered historical view. Shibusawa Keizō lists the Ainu, Pacific is
landers, and Taiwanese natives as the “three major primitive peoples” within
official Japanese boundaries.25 Needless to say, the term “native” was origi
nally used in referring to these groups generally—they were also called “for
mer natives of Hokkaido,” “South Seas natives,” and “Taiwanese natives,”
respectively—with contempt.
An 1878 notice by the Hokkaido Development Commissioner officially
renamed the Ainu “former natives”—they were earlier also called “Ezo na
tives,” “Sakhalin natives,” and “Kurile natives.” The notice reads as follows:
“While the former Ezo people should be treated in the same way the general
population is treated for family registry and other matters, when a distinc
tion needs to be made in certain situations, ‘old subject,’ ‘native,’ or ‘former
native’ have been used for them, which was confusing. Therefore, from now
on, they should be called ‘former natives.’”26 The Ainu were, in effect, “el
evated” from “native” to “former native” at this point, but it actually meant
the transformation of the Ainu, who were “native,” into “common people.”
As Murai Osamu has pointed out, the concept of “former natives” emerged
in modern Japanese history in tandem with that of “new common people,”
the term the Meiji government gave exclusively to former outcastes, in ef
fect giving a new name to the old discrimination.27
The notice from the commissioner reveals that “native” was not a neu
tral term, but much later, in 1922, a literary work was published in which
the Koreans under Japanese colonial rule were called “native.” The novel,
Nakanishi Inosuke’s New Buds in the Red Soil, receives ambiguous reception
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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today.28 Written by an author who was well known as an early proletarian
writer, it is a serious, socially conscious novel that depicts a Japanese news
reporter’s anguish and Korean farmers’ suffering in a multilayered fashion.
One could highly praise it as a rare work by a Japanese writer who realisti
cally depicts Koreans as large as life, but at the same time one could identify
the author’s unconscious ethnocentrism and methodological error in his use
of the term “native.” Here is an example.
It was winter in Colony C. It was [censored] of the powerful country N
in the east. About 100 houses of the natives stood in the small settlement.
A stormy wind with yellowish sand blew from the west of the continent
and without restraint threatened the lives of the inhabitants, who had lived
a life of inertia and lethargy on this peninsula since ancient times. The
natives lived in small houses made of coarse mud—they were like sturdy
caves—in order to protect themselves from the storms. The houses seemed
like shelter that had progressed very little since the prehistoric age. Their
roofs were thatched with an abundant amount of straw and sorghum stalks.
On those roofs, or near the entrance of each house, blotchy snow covered
the lids of the large clay pots for pickles. Under the eaves hung chili pep
pers that were redder than nandina berries, as well as dried gourds the size
of human heads. The chili peppers were the only spice the natives possessed
to fend off the unbearable cold, and the gourds were used to scoop water to
wash the white robes that the natives regularly wore.
It would be difficult to defend the use of the term “native” here by saying
that it only refers to indigenous people or aborigines. The sentence, “The
houses seemed like shelter that had progressed very little since the prehis
toric age,” clearly equates “native” with “primitive” by association, and in
this case the term “native,” it can be said, is full of negative value judgment.
The attempt to turn the setting of the story into an abstract one through
such expressions as “Colony C” and “the powerful country N” can be at
tributed to the author’s intention to lessen the scrutiny of the censor, but
such consideration cannot be detected in references such as the one that
introduces the protagonist, “the native Kim Kiho.”
Furthermore, in these descriptions in which the term “native” and, specif
ically, Korean culture are linked, there is naturally the danger that a cultural
gap and cultural comparison lead to a culturalist hierarchy. Words such as
“large pots for pickles,” “chili pepper,” “gourds,” and “white robes” are all
expressions referring to Korean culture in the realm of clothing, food, and
shelter, but they end up leaving a strange and bizarre impression of the “na
tives’ customs.”
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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We may point out the sense of contempt for and ethnic superiority over
the local people and indigenous Koreans among the Japanese immigrants
in colonial Korea after the annexation of Korea in 1910. Discrimination
against the indigenous people of Korea (they were called “peninsula peo
ple” or “those from the peninsula,” but not Koreans) existed officially and
unofficially, with differing degrees of bluntness, in contrast to such slogans
as “Same Love for All” and “JapanKorea, United Body.” At the root of
this treatment festered a perverted ethnic sentiment of the Japanese that
sought a sense of superiority over those of the same nationality but of dif
ferent ethnicity, even though they had been “annexed” to Japan. The Japa
nese who tried to shut out the bad friends of Asia and the modern Japan
that attempted to achieve “Leaving Asia, Entering Europe” created a men
tal structure that allowed them to regard nonJapanese Asians as “native”
in an attempt to negate their own origins and to adopt Western modernity.
Hey, even the police are all Korean constables, I’m telling you. They’re all
in cahoots with each other and mocking us Japanese. When we came here
from Japan for the first time, it wasn’t like this at all. Koreans were so afraid
just to pass in front of us. That all changed since the war. “Koreans are
Japanese, too,” I keep hearing. We are too nice to them, so they are getting
cheeky these days and think it’s OK to jump a bill at a Japanese restaurant.
They won’t learn a lesson unless we beat them up real good. Heck, it’s OK
if we kill ’em.29
This is a passage from Tanaka Hidemitsu’s Drunken Ship (1949), in which
a Japanese restaurant owner is hitting a Korean boy who tried to eat and
run at his oden stew restaurant. This is probably one expression of honesty
among ordinary Japanese immigrants in Korea about official slogans such
as “Same Love for All” and “JapanKorea, United Body.” “Koreans should
feel afraid just to pass in front of a Japanese,” and “It’s OK to kill those
bastards who disobey or mock Japanese.” These are merciless utterances of
ethnic discrimination. However, we should see them as quite candid ex
pressions of some of the Japanese immigrants in Korea, rather than regard
them as exceptions. It is true, of course, that there were some Japanese
in Korea, such as Asakawa Takumi and Abe Yoshishige, who consistently
treated Korea, Koreans, and Korean culture with love and respect. But it
cannot be denied that many Japanese harbored ethnic prejudice against
Koreans in one way or another.
We must recognize that the function of journalism then was to discuss
cultural differences between Japan and Korea (or China)—not to end the
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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prejudice and discrimination but rather to promote it—and moreover, to
provide arguments for a hierarchical cultural comparison or a cultural gap
between the civilized and the uncivilized. Just to mention one instance, the
book entitled Complete Collection of Strange Customs in the World has a sec
tion on “Bizarre Marriage Customs,” where there is an entry on “Strange
Taiwanese Ways” after sections on India and China.30 It states, “There are
natives and aborigines in Taiwan, but the barbaric way of the aborigines
is truly awful. Readers will probably have heard of some examples, but I’ll
begin with the natives’ customs.” It proceeds to describe unusual marriage
proposals and engagement presents, as well as marriages for sale. The “Tai
wanese natives” in this case are actually the Han people, known as mainland
Chinese. It then introduces as “barbaric customs of the aborigines” the com
ing of age ceremony, the adoption system, and then the “extremely barbaric”
custom in which headhunting is assigned to the prospective soninlaw as
a condition for a marriage. After this section comes another, on “Strange
Korean Ways.” It first remarks, “Since Korea is Japan’s territory today, per
haps all things small and large may become Japanese style in ten years, but
the old ways cannot be dispensed with today or tomorrow. Therefore, there
are still some exceptionally strange practices intact, and marriage customs are
especially peculiar.” It goes on to describe the unusual custom of “soninlaw
hazing” and the practice of marrying older wives.
These unusual, strange, peculiar, and immoral customs are introduced
based solely on sensationalism. They are none other than “world customs”
that are viewed through curiosity, prejudice, a discriminatory consciousness,
and titillationseeking sensibilities. Here, cultural differences are turned into
an order of superiority, and we can detect cultural chauvinism that unques
tioningly presupposes the superiority of the author’s own culture. Obvi
ously, the differences in marriage customs should be discussed as cultural
divergence without value attached. But the book clearly depicts Taiwanese
natives’ headhunting customs and the Korean custom of “soninlaw haz
ing” as “primitive” practices, and inevitably discusses cultural differences in
folkways, customs, and traditional rituals in a discriminatory manner. (In
addition, these types of marriage customs can be observed in rural Japan;
and as for headhunting, the book intentionally overlooks the fact that sam
urai regularly competed for the head of the enemy for rewards.) The intro
duction of the customs of various Asian ethnic groups and regions, such
as India, China, Taiwan, and Korea, was not done in order to bridge the
cultural gaps among ethnicities. We should understand that such moves
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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were intended to exaggerate and underscore savagery, bizarreness, strange
ness, and peculiarity in order to somehow prove the cultural superiority of
the Japanese.
It should be acknowledged that academic disciplines such as anthro
pology, ethnography, and folklore have contributed to interpreting these
cultural differences within a comparative hierarchy, assuming the existence
of superior and inferior cultures or differing achievements of progress. We
have already seen how Dissection of Taikan’en, which claims to be a field
survey of Han society, actually argues for a fixed, fatalistic cultural gap from
an ethnocentric viewpoint, and that it “enlightened” the Japanese about the
Han ethnic group. In this sense, it cannot be denied that modern Japan’s
views of Asia, in various fields including literature, was distorted by the
persistent impetus to “leave Asia.”
. . .
The Japanese discovered the “native” in the South Pacific, Taiwan, and
Sakhalin. And at the same time, they also discovered the “native” in China,
Korea, Manchuria, and Southeast Asian regions. Needless to say, however,
there was no acknowledgment that the Japanese themselves were “Japanese
natives” living in the Japanese archipelago (although Kita Ikki and others
cynically called Japan a “country of natives”). Bunching together those who
are culturally inferior, backward, strange, or bizarre, as primitive, barbaric,
and “nativelike” people certainly helps foster a sense of pride that “we” are
civilized.
In that moment, the commonsensical notion that there were various cul
tures, and that one cannot easily establish the superiority or inferiority of
any ethnic culture, custom, or language, is thrown away. And the historical
perspective that Indian and Chinese civilizations, as well as Korean culture,
have greatly influenced Japan is also abandoned. Though the advantage they
enjoyed in military and economic matters was only temporary, the great
error of wartime Japanese lay in their belief that this advantage was the
sign of their cultural or ethnic superiority. And the belief was not limited
to military officers, merchants, or immigrants. Those who were called writ
ers, too, were not completely immune to the groundless idea of ethnic and
cultural superiority.
(What an attitude! He’s sitting with his legs wide open while I’m squeezing
myself into this narrow space. Why can’t he be more considerate?)
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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That would have been the sentiment if I verbalized it. Then it gradually
changed into this.
(What an attitude, you native! Sitting with your legs wide open, you lowly
native! Know your place as a native and be considerate of Japanese!)31
The protagonist in a story thus silently curses a Javanese, who is inso
lently occupying extra space in a bus with his outstretched legs. This is a
scene from Takami Jun’s novel Ethnic Peoples. After experiencing ideologi
cal conversion from the proletarian movement, Takami traveled to Indone
sia (occupied by the Dutch at the time), and began his career as a profes
sional writer with On a Fine Day, Ethnic Peoples, and other works that were
based on that trip. In other words, one might say that Takami attempted
to recover his encounters with people living at the forgotten bottom of
society, the experience he had during his proletarian activist days, in the
form of another encounter with a foreign culture and the foreign people
living in the area called the South Seas and the Southern Region. Perhaps
one can say that he began a new life as a writer by writing about those
regions and people. It would be reasonable to assume that this trajectory
had some influence on his later work as a novelist, but we cannot ignore
the fact that his experiences in encountering foreign ethnic groups, and
of interacting with foreign cultures, were for him something that could
be expressed in the inner voice that curses, “What an attitude, you native!
Know your place!”
Of course, I do not quote a passage from Takami’s work in order to de
nounce him for ethnic discrimination. I do so because I think the curse
“native,” which remains unvoiced by the protagonist, probably existed as a
word that resonated inside Takami, an ideologically converted writer. This
abusive language illustrates how common it was for those Japanese who
went to Asia during the war to mistreat Asians as “natives”—whether as an
actual practice or as a sentiment. At the same time, it precisely describes the
unfortunate encounter between the Japanese and other Asians. Hopefully it
is now obvious that the invective is more than an emotional word of explo
sive anger against a few impertinent Asians: it actually has a deep, cultural
and historical background. Takeda Taijun was mobilized to the Chinese
front as a soldier of the Japanese Army. He wrote a short essay called “The
Faces of the Dirt Peasants,” describing the faces of the Chinese he met there,
and printed it in 1938 in the literary journal Chinese Literature that he and
his friends were publishing.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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No matter how gently the Japanese army approaches, the Chinese people on
the warfront won’t open their hearts so easily to us. Even when they come
close to us armed soldiers, we must assume that they have mentally prepared
themselves. We saw many farmers who did not seem perturbed at all in spite
of their extreme facial expressions. Even when they were crying or joyful,
their eyes would be fixed at something unspecific in the air. The faces of the
dirt peasants are deeply tanned and appear uncomplicated, but their hearts
seem lost in a deep, blueblack chasm. Even the children hide their quick
minds! The Chinese we soldiers interact with are all these povertystricken
dirt peasants who have minds like these.32
Chinese history and culture form a layered “deep chasm” in the tanned,
simple faces of the “dirt peasants” whom Takeda met as a soldier of an “in
vading army.” He saw in those faces the culture of “dirt peasants,” that is,
“people who live with the earth.” The “povertystricken dirt peasants” may
appear similar to those “natives” without culture that the Japanese encoun
tered as invaders and colonialists, but, needless to say, they are not. Between
“natives” and “dirt peasants” it becomes necessary to recognize a gap and
divergence between two different views of Asia by the Japanese upon their
encounter with other Asians.
The Japanese called Europeans and Americans “demonbeasts” and de
scribed Asians in the colonies and occupied territories as “natives.” These
names were derived from the overbearing pride of the Japanese, who de
fined themselves as “humans” and “civilized people.” However, it is obvious
that their pride was tied to narrowminded chauvinism. Furthermore, it is
clear that those appellations were the result of their intentional attempt to
forget the fact that Japanese had made extracting themselves from the “na
tive kingdom” in the backwaters of Asia and achieving the goal of “Leaving
Asia, Entering Europe” their ardent goal. The “Japanese” versus “native.”
Now, half a century after the 1930s, when the perspective exemplified by
Dankichi’s globe dominated, the Japanese are being questioned seriously
by wider Asia about the responsibility for their own barbaric and primitive
“native”like behavior.
Notes
[Translator’s Note] The Adventures of Dankichi was a reading I, Helen J. S. Lee,
taught in an advanced reading class at the University of Florida during spring 2006,
and I would like to give credit where it is due—many thanks to David Elam, Eyal
Maidan, Kathleen Owens, and Simon Yu.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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Two versions of Kawamura’s essay exist. It first appeared as “Popular Oriental
ism and Japanese Views of Asia” (Taishū orientarizumu to Ajia ninshiki ) in Ōe
Shinobu et al., eds., Iwanami Seminar, Modern Japan and the Colonies (Iwanami
kōza kindai Nihon to shokuminchi ), 8 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1993), vol. 7:
107–36. A slightly modified version with a new title, “Colonialism and Oriental
ism: Adventurer Dankichi’s Globe” (Koroniarizumu to orientarizumu: “Bōken” Dan-
kichi no chikyūgi ), was included in Kawamura Minato, Japanese Literature of the
South Seas and Sakhalin (Nan’yō, Karafuto no Nihon bungaku) (Tokyo: Chikuma
shobō, 1994), 21–58. Our translation is based on the original version, but we have
incorporated most of the changes made in the second. All ellipses in the essay are
in Kawamura’s original text and have not been added by translators or editors. We
would like to thank Leslie Winston and Dustin Leavitt for carefully reading the
drafts in different stages, sometimes in spite of rather ungodly time constraints due
to the time difference between the translators. The translation has greatly benefited
from their discerning eyes.
1. Shimada Keizō, The Complete Collection of the Adventurer Dankichi Comic
(Bōken Dankichi manga zenshū) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1967). See preface.
2. Instead of narrowly signifying aesthetic Oriental taste or a study of the Orient
(tōyōgaku), the term “Orientalism” refers to the concept Edward W. Said developed
in his Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). For instance, “The Orient is
an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses
and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse
with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even co
lonial bureaucracies and colonial styles” (2). Reconceptualizing this Orient into the
larger nonWestern world, including the South Seas, I define modern Japan’s col
lective expressions and representations about Asia and the South Seas regions as
Japanese “Orientalism.”
3. Shimada, The Complete Collection. See preface.
4. Kobayashi Izumi, The Small Nations of Micronesia (Mikuroneshia no chīsana
kuniguni) (Tokyo: Chūō kōron sha, 1982), 5. Yano Akira has described the con
nection between Dankichi and the image of the “South Seas natives” as “the Ad
venturer Dankichi Syndrome.” See Yano Akira, Japanese Views of the History of the
South Seas (Nihon no nan’yōshikan) (Tokyo: Chūō kōron sha, 1979), 154.
5. [Translators’ Note] Abbreviated, the boy’s name would be pronounced
“ Daiken,” following Japanese phonetic rules.
6. [Translators’ Note] These tribal names Kawamura cites from Adventures ap
pear to be Shimada’s creation. “Kūroi” (black), “Burakku” (black), and “Yami”
(darkness) all refer to dark shades of color.
7. Takagi Ichinosuke, Japanese Language Reader for Normal Grade School (Jinjō
shōgakkō kokugo tokuhon) (Tokyo: Chūō kōron sha, 1976), 87–90.
8. Suzuki Tsunenori, The True Record of the South Seas Expedition (Nan’yō tan-
ken jikki) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1980), 78, 88. The original publication was by
Hakubunkan in 1892.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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9. [Translators’ Note] Manowa is the transliteration of the word as it appears in
the text, but we can find no evidence of the existence of an island with this name.
10. [Translators’ Note] The Wushe Incident is also known as the Musha Inci
dent. Wushe is the Mandarin pronunciation and the latter the Japanese rendering of
the name of the area in which the rebellion took place.
11. Huang Zhaotang, The Governor-General Office of Taiwan (Taiwan sōtokufu)
(Tokyo: Kyōikusha, 1981), 128.
12. [Translators’ Note] Hōbo and Piposappo are transliterations of the Japanese
words as they appear in the text. Given that they are rendered in katakana, we are
unable to confirm the accurate spelling in the original language.
13. Nogami Toyoichirō and Nogami Yaeko, Korea, Taiwan, and the South Seas
Harbors (Chōsen, Taiwan, kainan shokō) (Tokyo: Takunansha, 1942), 222.
14. Nakamura Chihei, Collected Taiwan Fictions (Tokyo: Bokusui shobō, 1941), 39.
15. [This note was originally embedded in the main text.] The character for ban
in banjin is different from the ban in yaban, and, consequently, the first ban sig
nifies something different from the second. The first ban means a place covered
with thick grass, and should not be confused with the second ban, which denotes
barbarity.
16. Ōshika Taku, The Savage (Yabanjin) (Tokyo: Sōrin shobō, 1936). A separate
volume with the same title was published by Hakuōshoin in 1949, but its content
differs from the earlier collection. The original book includes “The Savage” (Yaban-
jin), “Savage Women” (Banfu), “Tattaka Zoo” (Tattaka dōbutsuen), and “Zhang’s
Desire” (Sō no yokubō). The later edition does not have “Zhang’s Desire,” but in
cludes “In the Forest” (Shinrin no naka) and “People of the Inlands” (Okuchi no
hitobito) instead. The quotation in this section is from pp. 32–33 of the Hakuhō
shoin edition.
17. [Translators’ Note] An embankment on the Kanda River in Tokyo.
18. [Translators’ Note] The translation of this passage comes from Natsume
Sōseki, Rediscovering Natsume Sōseki, intro. and trans. Inger Sigrun Brodey and
Sammy I. Tsunematsu (Folkstone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental, 2000), 38–40.
19. [Translators’ Note] Ibid., 39.
20. [Translators’ Note] Isabella Lucy Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (London:
John Murray, 1881), vol. 1: 17.
21. [Translators’ Note] Ibid., vol. 2: 47.
22. [Translators’ Note] Ibid., 74.
23. As mentioned in the text, no colophon is provided in the book, and author’s
name, publisher’s name, and the publishing date are unknown. It is widely believed
that the book was edited by the Security Bureau of the Police Agency in Manchu
kuo in the 1930s.
24. Dissection of Taikan’en, 3, and preface, 1.
25. Shibusawa Keizō, Collected Works of Shibusawa Keizō (Shibusawa Keizō
chosakushū) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1992), vol. 1: 63.
26. Yamakawa Chikara, Politics and the Ainu (Seiji to Ainu minzoku) (Tokyo:
Miraisha, 1989), 77.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
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27. Yamaguchi Masao, Karatani Kōjin, Murai Osamu, and Kawamura Minato,
“Collective Discussion: Colonialism and Modern Japan” (Kyōdō tōgi: shokuminchi
shugi to kindai Nihon), Critical Space (Hihyō kūkan) 7 (Oct. 1992): 37.
28. Nakanishi Inosuke, New Buds in the Red Soil (Shakudo ni megumu mono)
(Tokyo: Kaizōsha, 1922), 2.
29. Tanaka Hidemitsu, Drunken Ship (Yoidore bune) (Tokyo: Koyamasha,
1949), 125.
30. Katō Rissen, Complete Collection of Strange Customs of the World (Sekai fūzoku
kibun zenshū) (Tokyo: Kōbunsha shuppanbu, date unknown), 10–16.
31. Takami Jun, Ethnic Peoples (Shominzoku) (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1942), 70–71.
Takami, On a Fine Day (Aru hareta hi ni) (Tokyo: Kawade shobō, 1941).
32. Takeda Taijun, The Banks of the Yangzi River: China and Its Human Wisdom
(Yōsukō no hotori: Chūgoku to sono ningengaku) (Tokyo: Haga shoten, 1971), 59.
Reading Colonial Japan : Text, Context, and Critique, edited by Michele Mason, and Helen Lee, Stanford University
Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=844030.
Created from ucsc on 2019-05-25 12:29:56.
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