Jan van Bremen, Akitoshi Shimizu, eds.. Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania. Richmond Surrey, U.K: Curzon Press, 1999. xi + 409 pp. $55.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-7007-0604-4.
Reviewed by Paul Barclay
Published on H-Asia (May, 2000)
The controversy surrounding anthropology's sufcient to warrant publication of this volume. relationship to "the West's" conquest and exploita‐ To "give the collection more historical and com‐ tion of "the rest" has generated a substantial body parative depth," several non-Japanese case studies of interdisciplinary scholarship over the past are also included--three articles on Dutch anthro‐ three decades. The question of whether anthro‐ pology in Southeast Asia, as well as chapters on pology is "the bastard of colonialism" or "the legit‐ British ethnology in India, Chinese anthropology imate ofspring of the Enlightenment" has been in Taiwan, a Danish-German expedition to Yemen, central to these inquiries, and is one of the over‐ German ethnography in Siberia, and American arching themes of this ambitious volume's four‐ anthropology in Japan. teen chapters. Editors Jan van Bremen and This collection originated at the workshop Shimizu Akitoshi promise to "bring to light an "Colonial Anthropology in East and South-East abundance of new data on colonial anthropology Asia: A Comparative View," held at the University in Asia and Oceania (1)." Much of these new data of Leiden, 18-20 May, 1995. The proceedings are are drawn from Japan's early twentieth-century organized into three main sections: "Anthropology empire, an area scholars have been slow to incor‐ in Colonial Contexts: Historical and Comparative porate into comparative studies of colonialism. Perspectives;" (four chapters) "Japanese Anthro‐ Dedicating the "lion's share" of the collection to pology in Colonial Contexts: East Asia, South-East "Greater Japan" opens up opportunities to global‐ Asia and Oceania;" (seven chapters) and "Dutch ize, or de-provincialize, prevailing Eurocentric bi‐ Anthropology in Colonial Contexts: South-East ases in this area of research. Considering the Asia" (three chapters). Shimizu's and van Bre‐ paucity of English-language scholarship on Japa‐ men's succinct introduction, plus a thoughtful and nese colonialism's intellectual and cultural mani‐ extensive afterword by Eyal Ben-Ari brings the to‐ festations, and the importance of this subject to tal to sixteen contributions. Though the topics East Asian history, the eight articles concerning should be of interest to all students of imperialism Japanese colonial anthropology would have been H-Net Reviews and especially Japanese colonial rule, the book is (description of peoples) emerged. The expedition's aimed primarily at anthropologists, and assumes journals were widely circulated and became semi‐ familiarity with ongoing debates and landmark nal texts in the history of anthropology. Ver‐ texts in the discipline. Non-anthropologists who meulen concludes that: make this 400-plus page journey will fnd them‐ "These data suggest that ethnography as selves considerably enriched and in possession of Voelker-Beschreibung came forth from the colo‐ an excellent guide to the secondary literature, not nial practice of German scholars working in the to mention a list of primary sources for further Russian empire (1733-1767)...and was then gener‐ research at this fascinating crossroads of anthro‐ alised into Voelkerkunde or ethnologia in the aca‐ pology, history, and cultural studies. demic centres of Goettingen and Vienna Part One features three detailed and well-doc‐ (1771-83)....As a result, ethnography in colonial umented studies of anthropology on the colonial Russia fowered early and abundantly, to such an peripheries of Russia, Japan and England in the extent that the institutionalisation of the disci‐ eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In chapters pline in Russia occurred much earlier than in one through three, Han F. Vermeulen, Margarita western Europe or the USA....At the Russian Acad‐ Winkel and Peter Pels provide a nuanced picture emy of Sciences...a chair in etnografya was estab‐ of imperial ethnography, folklore studies, and eth‐ lished as early as 1837...(29)." nology on the eve of Europe's and Japan's late Vermeulen writes that "the existence of a nineteenth century burst of territorial expansion. large number of cultural groups in Siberia led to Vermeulen's contribution, "Anthropology in the emergence of...Voelker-Beschreibung (13)" and Colonial Contexts: The Second Kamchatka Expedi‐ that these cultural groups "were actively studied tion (1733-1743) and the Danish-German Arabia in order (frst) to describe them, and (second) to Expedition (1761-1767)," demonstrates the impact be able to control and tax them (27)." As it turns of a tsar-sponsored scientifc mission to Siberia out, the cultural diversity of the Siberians them‐ upon European intellectual history. The second selves, the administrative goals of the imperial Kamchatka expedition was the "largest research sponsor, the logistical support rendered by the expedition ever sent out" of St. Petersburg. It em‐ military, and the intellectual equipment of the in‐ barked in 1733 "accompanied by draughtsmen, vestigators all played their part in the production surveyors, craftsmen, scribes, servants and troops of "a large variety of sources we still regard as of Cossacks (20)." In their travels through Siberia, ethnographically useful (27)." Vermeulen empha‐ the expedition's philologists and historians, all sizes the importance of Western European intel‐ Germans, collected word lists, material artifacts, lectual traditions among this variety of impulses and oral histories among the local peoples of Rus‐ by recourse to the comparative method. sia's Orient. The historical signifcance of the re‐ Like the second Kamchatka expedition, a late- sulting reports was their conceptualization of eighteenth-century (1761-1767) Danish-German Siberia's inhabitants as a plurality of peoples, expedition to Yemen was "well prepared and in‐ each having a distinct history and language, much terdisciplinary, had international membership, like Herderian nations. and [was] guided by specifc instructions as well According to Vermeulen, this view of diversi‐ as questionnaires (13)." To show that Baconian ty contrasted sharply with an earlier Muscovite and Linnean concepts were key to the develop‐ sensibility, one that registered human diference ment of ethnography, Vermeulen argues that the by religious instead of ethnic afliation. In this respective intellectual heritages of the Kamchatka way, the science of "Voelker-Beschreibung" and Yemen exploration teams made all of the dif‐
2 H-Net Reviews ference. During the Danish-German expedition to Kamchatka expedition itself. It also would have Yemen, the team's experts in philology, history, helped this reader if Vermeulen had illustrated and the languages of the region met their deaths the diference between ethnography and other en route to the expedition's goal. The sole survivor forms of travel writing with examples of pre- and author of the team's report was mathemati‐ Voelker-Beschreibung and "customs and man‐ cian Carsten Niebuhr, whose "observations did ners" taxonomies along side examples of early- not lead to the emergence of ethnographia." In‐ modern ethnographic taxonomies. stead, "Niebuhr saw the Arabian people as mak‐ In the fnal analysis, Vermeulen approvingly ing up 'one nation,' speaking various dialects quotes Talal Asad's now classic formulation: "the (14)." 'process of European global power has been cen‐ According to Vermeulen, the science of tral to the anthropological task of recording and ethnography was institutionalized in Swabia analyzing (29)." While Asad asserted that the con‐ (partly as a result of the Kamchatka expeditions) verse was not true, i.e., that anthropology had lit‐ while Niebuhr was in the feld, so his report could tle impact upon actual colonial administration, not be informed by its categories. But Vermeulen Vermeulen leaves open the possibility that the also leaves open the possibility that had the "Russian authorities at the Department of Siberi‐ philologists and historians survived the trip, re‐ an Afairs and the Senate of the Academy of Sci‐ ports closer to the Kamchatka journals might ences" made use of this data, and calls for further have emerged. Another factor is thrown in: research into this area (29). Niebuhr and his party were in Ottoman territory, Like Vermeulen's essay, Margarita Winkel's traveling under the protection of a Turkish "Academic Traditions, Urban Dynamics, and Colo‐ suzerain who considered all of his peoples one na‐ nial Threat: The Rise of Ethnography in Early tion united under Islam, a notion not conducive to Modern Japan" documents a vibrant early-mod‐ a pluralistic rendering of the Bedouin. Finally, the ern anthropological tradition. Winkel's essay does expedition to Yemen sought linguistic materials to not focus on particular expeditions or careers, aid Biblical exegesis (25), and had no relation to nor even colonial settings per se, but is a general Danish or German commercial or political inter‐ survey of pre-Meiji "customs and manners" writ‐ ests in the region; it was a mission whose goals ing and folklore studies. Winkel writes: could not have been more diferent than the one Although it lacked a specifc term, early Japa‐ sponsored by Peter the Great's successors in Mos‐ nese ethnography was not a coincidence of unre‐ cow. lated investigations by otherwise unconnected On the surface, Vermeulen's comparative his‐ scholars....Their research and debates formed the torical analysis was brilliantly conceived. But as basis of a new feld of study: the conscious schol‐ his exposition proceeds, one discovers that were arly study of manners and customs of socially, his‐ so many diferences between the second Kam‐ torically and geographically disparate groups. chatka and the Danish-German Arabian expedi‐ They investigated indigenous rural and urban tra‐ tions that it is impossible to isolate any particular ditions as well as facts about peoples of more re‐ variable as being responsible for the diferent out‐ mote areas (40)." comes. That Vermeulen himself supplies enough Winkel connects the development of Japanese factual information and conjecture to undermine ethnography to several well-known features of his own thesis is admirable, but I wondered if the the Tokugawa period (1600-1868): the national second case study really shed any light upon the seclusion policy, the culture of travel and pilgrim‐ larger themes in the volume or even upon the ages, urban middle-brow literary and dramatur‐
3 H-Net Reviews gic forms, and the proliferation of academies and In response to Russian merchant landings in literacy. Scholarly interest in Japanese "customs the "northern territories," the bakufu's senior and manners" and the advent of their systematic councilor Tanuma Okitsugu sent a team to survey and careful study had many sources. Government the Kuriles, Hokkaido, and Karafuto (Sakhalin) in academies encouraged the study of local products 1785-86. Among the participants was Mogami (bussangaku), which fomented an empirical spirit Tokunai (1754-1836), who spent two years in the of observation and the cataloging of regional di‐ north, learned to communicate with the Ainu in versity. Japanese Confucianism's turn to eviden‐ their languages, and wrote a description of them tial scholarship (Ch. kaosheng, J. kosho) away that circulated world-wide via Philipp Franz von from Neo-Confucianism augmented this tendency, Siebold's then authoritative Nippon. Mamiya Rin‐ and the assaults of the rangakusha (Dutch-Studies zo, also under Tokugawa employ, discovered that scholars) further discredited this "empty science." Sakhalin was indeed an island and not a peninsu‐ Motoori Norinaga's (1730-1801) researches into la, and left ethnographic descriptions of peoples the Japanese spirit elevated the study of rural inhabiting Manchuria. folkways to a search for "survivals" from the Age Winkel writes that these northern expedi‐ of the Gods and dignifed "customs and manners" tions were not given explicit instructions to gath‐ research for National Learning scholars. Private er ethnographic information. Rather, the govern‐ academies of all stripes competed for students in ment was more interested in geography and geol‐ a buyer's market, which led to eclectic approaches ogy. Ethnography was a sideline interest of ex‐ to research and teaching. Winkel argues that this plorers like Mogami and Mamiya. The main Toku‐ marketplace of ideas helped new felds like gawa developments that contributed to ethnogra‐ ethnography gain an institutional foothold in phy were those intellectual trends in Confucian, Japan. By the early nineteenth century, "interest Dutch, and National studies which pushed schol‐ in gathering ethnographic information was not ars towards an empirical outlook and made the restricted to one group or school; contemporary study of rural and working-class culture re‐ popular culture had become a common feld of in‐ spectable and important. Winkel concludes that terest among leading intellectuals (57)." linkages between early-modern anthropology in Around 1813, Ishihara Masaakira and Yashiro Japan and colonialism were quite weak. Hirokata compiled a 131-item questionnaire that The assertion that Meiji anthropologists "solicited information on contemporary local cus‐ adopted Western methods wholesale is perhaps toms relating to calendric customs, weddings, fu‐ too sweeping at this stage of research on the sub‐ nerals, house-raising celebrations, etc. (56)." This ject. There may be more connections between the booklet was circulated to like-minded scholars men and activities charted by Winkel and twenti‐ throughout Japan--twenty sets of responses are eth-century Japanese empire than Winkel's article extant. Winkel wonders why late nineteenth cen‐ lets on. One of Japan's most prolifc colonial tury Japanese anthropologists adopted Western ethnographers, student of Taiwanese society Ino methodologies wholesale when their own native Kanori, was keenly and publicly aware of his tradition was of comparable sophistication and debts to Mogami and Mamiya. Like his Tokugawa rigor (58). One can conclude from Winkel's essay predecessors, In was eclectic, and his career com‐ that Tokugawa Japan contained a population with bined Western methods with more time-tested Ja‐ sufcient literacy, variety, empirical-mindedness, panese traditions in folklore studies. The even and mobility to develop a rich domestic ethno‐ more famous Torii Ryuzo, who did research graphic tradition. throughout the Japanese empire, was a proponent
4 H-Net Reviews of a holistic anthropology reminiscent of the mix (1800-1894), Pels shows how "in the early 19th- of textual exegesis, material-culture studies and century administration of British India, oriental‐ oral tradition that Winkel has documented for the ism was...superseded by ethnology (66)." Edo period. [1] Quite fruitfully, Pels clearly distinguishes "ori‐ That eastward expansion out of St. Petersburg entalism" from "ethnology" before launching his and Moscow in the eighteenth century had a deci‐ argument. The former is defned as "a research sive impact upon the development of Russian, programme that created the 'oriental' through a German, and Japanese ethnographic traditions is search for his...foundational texts" and the latter interesting for a couple of reasons. First, one of as "a description of the Indian population in the purposes of this volume is to complicate a sto‐ terms of a physicalist paradigm of 'race' (66)." Pels ry too preoccupied with the meta-narrative of dates the birth of orientalist scholarship in India Western European maritime exploration and to the founding of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta colonial conquest. Here we have a contemporary in 1784 by William Jones. By locating the meaning and analogous process taking place overland, on of Hindu or Muslim culture in the translation, ex‐ the Eurasian land mass. Analogous but not fortu‐ egesis, and commentary of foundational texts, ori‐ itous; surely the notorious Europhile Peter the entalists constructed cultures they revered and Great did not set Russia on the course which land‐ admired, but cultures they nonetheless under‐ ed its forward agents in the Kuriles in the 1780s stood as foreign, exotic, and fundamentally non- for reasons unconnected to Western European ex‐ Western. In political terms, orientalist scholars fa‐ pansion into Africa, the Americas, and Asia. A few vored British policies which incorporated Indian paragraphs of global political economic back‐ languages and traditions into the colony's school ground might have strengthened the collective curriculums and law codes. Pels characterizes this impact of Vermeulen's and Winkel's articles on stance as "conservative relativism...[a] respect for the volume's thesis considerably. Winkel does (textual) tradition [which] nourished a sometimes note a parallel between movements towards evi‐ feudalist and paternalist respect for the unique‐ dential scholarship in East Asia and the "de‐ ness of cultures and their past (66)." mythologisation of curious facts (59)" in Western To unlock the mysteries and lessons of the European historical writing, but why these two Laws of Manu, the Vedas, the Upanishads and oth‐ very broad intellectual currents might be related er key texts, orientalists relied upon native Brah‐ is left for the reader to surmise. mins, pandits, clerics, and other fgures as collab‐ Rounding out this volume's early-modern sec‐ orators. One of the important impetuses and con‐ tion is Peter Pels' "From Texts to Bodies: Brian sequences of the transition to ethnology was the Houghton Hodgson and the Emergence of Ethnol‐ elimination of this stratum of local experts. ogy in India." Pels' contribution relates intellectu‐ Difering opinions among the British coloniz‐ al paradigm shifts to institutions and political ers about the value of orientalist knowledge was economy, while explaining the importance of divi‐ of utmost importance to the showdown between sions and conficts among both observers and ob‐ the "orientalist" and "Anglicist" parties in the 1835 served in colonial India. By focusing attention debate over how to educate Indian subjects. The upon the career and writings of one scholar and former party advocated a system based in San‐ the explication of one important historical skrit, Persian, and Arabic texts and traditions, process, Pels ably investigates the complex inter‐ while the latter saw the whole caboodle as so action of colonialism and anthropology from sev‐ much "'false history, false astronomy, false eral angles. Through the career of Hodgson medicine' and other 'monstrous superstitions
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(76).'" Generally speaking, the Anglicists had their graphers, as did "aborigines" in India. If we con‐ way, while during the same period a natural sci‐ sider the more topical case of Japanese colonial‐ ence model of describing subject peoples was ism in Taiwan, where the non-Han mountain peo‐ gaining currency among colonial ofcials. As bod‐ ples received the bulk of anthropological atten‐ ily measurements and lexicons replaced founda‐ tion, a pattern emerges, one explained well by tional texts as dominant clues to understanding Pels' study of India. Namely, that the invocation of natives, most colonialists' notion of the "real In‐ aboriginality and authenticity for societies out‐ dia" changed as well. The self-styled national side of the Big Traditions of colonized Asia dove‐ character and legendary past contained in epics tailed nicely with the notion that European and and religious texts as interpreted by Indian intel‐ Japanese imperial regimes constituted only the lectuals, bards, and religious fgures were super‐ most recent in a series of conquerors. Ethnology seded by the ethnological notion of the "aborigi‐ as defned by Pels was a colonial resource for por‐ nal" and authentic Indian. traying textually complex, and often politically in‐ With the "real India" defned as a land of abo‐ convenient, indigenous (oriental) systems of land rigines who had been subject to waves of invasion tenure, jurisprudence, and self-defnition as "arti‐ and exploitation by Aryans and Muslims, it was fcial" overlays obscuring and oppressing the real possible for ethnologically minded administrators owners of the territory in question. to imagine an alliance of interest between victim‐ Pels' distinction between orientalist and eth‐ ized aborigines and the British colonial govern‐ nological colonial projects might have illuminated ment. It is impossible to do justice to all of the in‐ Vermeulen's article, where clearly the Danish-Ger‐ teresting and relevant historical trajectories com‐ man expedition to Yemen represented the former, pacted into Pels' illuminating chapter. Discussions while the Kamchatka expedition came nearer the of the birth of statistics, the natural sciences as a latter. model for description, and the interplay between Fred Y. L. Chiu's "Nationalist Anthropology in academics in London and India are clearly pre‐ Taiwan 1945-1996--A Refexive Survey" concludes sented in Pels' article. I would like to ofer one Part One with an indictment of late twentieth-cen‐ point for global comparison, one suggested by tury anthropology in Taiwan. Between the late Frank Jenista in his study of U.S. colonial rule in 1940s and the 1970s, Taiwanese academic anthro‐ heavily "anthropologicized" Ifugao sub-province, pology reproduced a research program, discourse Philippines. on aborigines, and set of evaluative criteria for Jenista attributed what he perceived to be the "good ethnography" created by Japanese colonial mutual respect and goodwill that obtained be‐ anthropologists between 1895 and 1945. One of tween Americans and Ifugaos to their common Chiu's many points is that purportedly post-colo‐ enmity to lowland Catholic Filipinos. Extrapolat‐ nial Taiwan is anything but that for the non-Han ing from that example, Jenista argued that West‐ population. In colorful language, Chiu excoriates ern colonial agents from Malaysia to Vietnam, Taiwanese anthropologists "whose complacency whether British, French, American, or Dutch, ex‐ was based on nothing but a carrot hanging over perienced the same camaraderie with highland their necks as being accomplices of the chauvin‐ aborigines and aversion to lowland Muslims, Hin‐ ists, the powerful (103)." These Han chauvinists dus, Buddhists, and Confucians. [2] All of these stand accused, in this chapter, of being detached, lowland civilizations were "orientalized" in Pels's scholarly and politically uncommitted while the sense of the word. It was these highland groups Taiwanese government deprived the people they that drew the most attention from colonial ethno‐ studied of their basic human rights. The heroes of
6 H-Net Reviews this chapter are anthropologists who are political‐ based on a series of parallel dichotomies: the West ly committed to good causes and indigenous ac‐ versus the non-West, the power versus the power‐ tivists. The recent revival of interest in the Japa‐ less, and the observer (anthropologist) versus the nese ethnological record which has brought about observed. The set of ideas supporting the Western new translations of old colonial documents and defnition of anthropology logically excludes any facsimile reprint editions comes in for a special possibility of colonialist anthropology in Japan roasting: (115)." "Sentimentality and eagerness in arresting a If we accept Shimizu's premise, one con‐ historical memory that never existed were con‐ frmed by a look at any recent literature review or spicuously displayed in appraisals [of these docu‐ synthetic treatment of global imperialism, then ments] volunteered by various academicians... Part Two of this volume needs only to begin flling [This] made it evident that the politics involved in the huge empirical gaps in the English-lan‐ were further degenerated, from uncritical self-ori‐ guage literature to enrich the comparative study entalisation deteriorating into outright self-stig‐ of colonialism. Three of Part Two's chapters are matisation and self-victimisation. They are sub- primarily dedicated to this task, providing basic statists par excellence. It has been so not because surveys of the key fgures, texts, and develop‐ these interlocutors are so lazy as to plagiarise ments for their respective areas: Patrick Beille‐ their colonisers [sic] narrative in constituting vaire on folklore studies and ethnology in Ryukyu their pastiche, but because they escape from his‐ and Okinawa (chapter 6); Boudewijn Walraven on tories as well as shy away from the lebenswelt re‐ ethnology in colonial Korea (chapter 8); and Kat‐ sistances of their subaltern women's/men's sumi Nakao on colonial policy and anthropology colonised past (105)." in Manchuria (chapter 9). Shimizu's chapter is the Chiu's article is more than just praise-and- book's longest by far--it is nothing less than a his‐ blame activism; he provides interesting sum‐ torical overview of Japanese anthropology, in‐ maries of trends in Taiwanese anthropological re‐ formed by a comparison to the British case, which search and evidence of how deeply politicized the Shimizu uses as a proxy for Western anthropolo‐ feld has become for some. For another view, a re‐ gy to isolate what is unique about Japan's experi‐ cent essay by Hsieh Shih-chung, "On Three Defni‐ ence. tions of Han Ren: Images of the Majority People in Shimizu writes that British anthropology can Taiwan," is highly recommended.[3] be characterized by three major historical tenden‐ Co-editor Shimizu Akitoshi's "Colonialism and cies: movement from the study of race to culture; the Development of Modern Anthropology in a shift from humanity in general as a feld of Japan" introduces the book's longest section, Part study to "savages" in the colonies; and, the spe‐ Two, "Japanese Anthropology in Colonial Con‐ cialization of anthropology as a separate branch texts: East Asia, South-East Asia and Oceania." of academic inquiry. The striking diference for Shimizu opens this section with a statement that Japanese anthropological history is that studies of is pertinent to any study of Japanese colonialism Japanese peoples themselves have predominated. which strives to rise above the confnes of nation‐ Also in a comparative vein, Shimizu takes up the al narrative: relationship between metropolitan and colonial anthropology, recounting the familiar division of "Postmodern critiques of anthropology used labor between investigators on the spot, once to defne it as a specifcally Western discipline called "amateur ethnographers," and theorists in that constructed hegemonic representations of the metropole, once called "armchair anthropolo‐ colonial others in the non-West. This defnition is
7 H-Net Reviews gists." In the Japanese case, this division was not um, in settings devoid of colonial oppressors or as pronounced as in the early days of British an‐ the traumatic efects of Japanese relocation pro‐ thropology. One reason for this was that early or‐ grams. Instead of reconstructing imaginary pasts, ganized anthropology in Japan was preoccupied Malinowski argued that anthropologists should with questions of national origin and the related study current problems facing the societies under question of the Ainu's historical identity. There‐ investigation. Going one further, Chiu argues that fore, feld sites were close by, so even Japan's pre‐ anthropologists should become advocates and ac‐ mier candidate for armchair status, the urbane tivists as well. organizer/proselytizer Tsuboi Shogoro, relied on Shimizu concludes that Japanese colonial an‐ his own observations to write articles. But even as thropology was just as varied and responsive to the empire grew in geographic variety, and re‐ local circumstances or the personal idiosyncracies ports were published from throughout, no fgure of individual investigators as its Western counter‐ comparable to a Frazier, Radclife-Brown or Tylor part. He points to "Mabuchi [Toichi] as represen‐ emerged in Tokyo to synthesize and take credit tative of Taiwan...oriented towards the static and for the work of the Japanese colonial anthropolo‐ coherent aspects of 'primitive' societies; Izumi [Se‐ gists in Micronesia, Taiwan, Manchuria, and else‐ ichi] as a representative of Korea [who] ap‐ where. Tsuboi died in 1913, and his successor as proached complex and dynamic socio-cultural chair of anthropology at Tokyo University, Torii phenomena; and Sugiura [Ken'ichi] of Micronesia Ryuzo, remained committed to conducting his [who] studied the contemporary states of native own feld surveys and showed little inclination to societies from a practical point of view (160)." Un‐ build hierarchical, centripetal academic struc‐ like Western anthropology, which evolved as a sci‐ tures. ence of nationals secure in their political domi‐ Another point for comparison with Britain is nance over the observed culture-bearer or speci‐ the variety to be found within the category "colo‐ men, Japanese anthropology was institutionalized nial anthropology" over the course of the twenti‐ during a period when the Treaty Powers threat‐ eth century. Here, Shimizu juxtaposes Malinows‐ ened Japan and compromised its sovereignty. The ki's call for applied anthropology and a research frst published debate in the discipline was a re‐ agenda including studies of acculturation, change sponse to Western anthropological portrayals of over time, interaction with outsiders, and social stone age humans in Japan as cannibals. In a adjustment in colonial settings with Radclife- word, the Japanese were objects of ethnological Brown's structural functionalism, which in many discourse before they became subjects, and soon ways revived salvage anthropology in its search turned the tables to study Taiwanese, Koreans, for ideal-typical ceremonies and institutions. Okinawans, Micronesians, and Chinese as objects. Shimizu fnds it ironic that Malinowski's anthro‐ However, as stated earlier, the study of these colo‐ pological program is less ofensive to post-colonial nized Asians did not dominate Japanese anthro‐ minded observers than Radclife-Brown's superf‐ pology during colonial times, but rather studies of cially non-politicized anthropology, despite the the Self were the main topic, and continued to be forthrightly complicit nature of applied anthro‐ into the 1970s. pology and the claimed neutrality of structural That the relationship between Tokyo-based functionalism. The reasons for this are to be seen anthropologists and their rural or working-class in Fred Chiu's chapter on Taiwanese anthropolo‐ Japanese informants may have resembled colo‐ gy, where structural functionalists like Mabuchi nial ones is a possibility not seriously considered Toichi are taken to task for portraying Taiwan in Shimizu's article, nor in Winkel's chapter on Aborigines as timeless cultures living in equilibri‐
8 H-Net Reviews early modern Japanese ethnography. Boudewijn they were read to resolve land-ownership and in‐ Walraven mentions in her study of ethnology in heritance disputes. Where once Japanese scholars colonial Korea that there was a great deal of conti‐ poured over Yijing, now they combed the country‐ nuity between early Meiji ofcial investigations of side for title deeds. In addition, the 100-member- the "manners and mores of the people" and early strong Okamatsu team interviewed cultivators Japanese surveys of Korean society (219). Karen and examined property markers by personal in‐ Wigen's notion of the peripheries within Japan spection. might have been useful here. Could it be that Ja‐ The parallels here with Peter Pels' discussion panese ethnology's proclivity to study fellow na‐ of the transition in British India from orientalism tionals was no less a science of "otherness" than to ethnology are striking. Interestingly, Tsu notes those traditions which took non-nationals as foci? that Okamatsu's reports on Taiwanese political or‐ In what sense might this feature of the national ganization emphasized social control at the vil‐ tradition be an index of the social distance elites lage level, but omitted consideration of the so- felt from commoners in Japan from Tokugawa called gentry, those known as Mandarins in the times through the Pacifc War? West, who mediated relations between the village Timothy Y. Tsu's "Japanese Colonialism and and the central (Qing) government. Like the anti- the Investigation of Taiwanese 'Old Customs" does orientalist faction in British India, Okamatsu and not deal with anthropology per se, but is a study Goto found the "real Taiwan" in the apolitical, iso‐ of the important Provisional Commission for the lated village. In this view, the Japanese govern‐ Investigation of Taiwanese Old Customs. Estab‐ ment was the successor to a corrupt, negligent, lished in 1901 as a brainchild of Goto Shinpei un‐ and vaguely illegitimate Qing court. In both cases, der the leadership of Okamatsu Santaro, the Pro‐ as the balance of power shifted more decisively to visional Commission ascertained patterns of land the colonizing observer, there was a tendency to ownership and sought to understand Taiwanese eschew text-based elite self-representations, systems of inheritance, law, and order to rule Tai‐ "great traditions" mediated by native scholar-ex‐ wan "scientifcally." perts, and to enter into direct observation of culti‐ According to Tsu, the Okamatsu project was vators who yielded a diferent sort of information symptomatic of a sea-change in Japanese intellec‐ about the colony. This new form of data was given tual approaches to China and the Chinese. During meaning within the colonizers' intellectual and the early Tokugawa period, Chinese learning was administrative categories, whereas the earlier tex‐ pursued as a key to universals, as a system for tual studies of Indian and Chinese foundational furthering knowledge about Japan itself and to texts ofered their interpreters not only data, but provide normative methods and values. By the alternative metaphysical, religious, and philosphi‐ conclusion of the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, this cal systems, ones which often competed with reverence had diminished. The modern approach those of the colonizers themselves. to Chinese studies in Japan became much more Tsu also points out that the Got-Okamatsu anthropological. Now that Japanese were entering team went on to set up a similar survey of into economic and political relations with actual Manchurian old customs in 1907, which set the Chinese people, and increasingly from a position standard for more famous projects carried out by of relative power, Japanese interest in daily life, the South Manchurian Railway (Mantetsu) in vernacular Chinese, and material culture in‐ "Russia, Mongolia, North and South East China, creased. As colonial agents in Taiwan, Japanese and South East Asia (212)" though the 1940s. investigators still read old Chinese texts, but now
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Jennifer Robertson's "Staging Ethnography: what extent each of the academic peripheries Theatre and Japanese Colonialism" documents the mentioned in this volume have shaped the re‐ use of entertainment, specifcally popular theater search agendas of the international scholarly in the form of the all-female Takarazuka Revue, as community remains an open question. The arti‐ a mode "through which [the] Japanization of Asia cles by Fred Chiu and Shimizu Akitoshi indicate was pursued (266)." This chapter shows how an‐ that much ethnography in East Asia, even if of thropological knowledge could be used in didactic high quality, has been derivative theoretically. theater at home and in the colonies to teach Japa‐ With so many varieties of texts qualifying as nese and their colonized Asian populations the anthropological, it is not surprising that the edi‐ proper status hierarchy of the peoples in the "co- tors' summary statements are ambiguous at best. prosperity sphere." First they conclude that "we can distinguish two Part Three concludes the body of the book sorts of relationships between anthropologists with two chapters on Dutch studies of Indonesia, and colonies and colonial subjects: as researchers and a concluding article by co-editor Jan van Bre‐ and as administrators....They felt split between men, "The Japanese and Dutch Anthropology of scholarship and duty and experienced a deep an‐ Insular South-East Asia in the Colonial Period guish from the contradictory demands made 1879-1949." Van Bremen's article catalogs the ac‐ upon them (6-7)." Continuing in a similar vein, complishments, journals, and institutions adver‐ they write that "representations of colonial others tised in its title. He concludes that histories "of an‐ presented by anthropologists, no matter whether thropology in Europe and America underexpose professionals or amateurs, conveyed various, and anthropology in countries outside the western often self contradictory, ideological discourses de‐ hemisphere. India, China, Korea and Japan have pending on the context (8)." known professional and academic anthropology I recommend this book as a timely introduc‐ for much the same time as the West...(377)." Her‐ tion and thorough guide to the literature on an‐ bert Passin, a member of the Allied Occupation of thropology and colonialism. Its primary goal, as Japan, made this same observation regarding the stated, is to publish new data. If the editors have wealth of published Japanese ethnography in erred slightly on the side of inclusion, the bounty 1947. Passin, however, had a simple explanation of references to a wide variety of regions, time pe‐ for this state of afairs: Japanese anthropologists riods, and approaches, which will aid scholars published in Japanese, so their work appeared who wish to pursue the many suggested lines of doomed to obscurity until it could be translated. inquiry further, is more than enough compensa‐ [4] tion. With the evidence put forth in this volume, As the product of an international confer‐ no one could argue, if anyone ever has, that the ence, most of these articles are written by schol‐ accumulation of ethnographic data in published ars whose native language is not English. This is form has been a monopoly of the West. Especially admirable, and all of the writing in this volume is if one labels such a wide variety of writings intelligible. The editors at Curzon, however, could "data." Margarita Winkel captures the inclusive have done much more to eliminate the many in‐ spirit of the workshop by considering a text to be evitable grammatical and spelling errors or mis‐ ethnographic if it is "put forward by its author as takes in word choice that will occur in this type of a nonfction work intended to represent, interpret enterprise. There are no maps in this volume, or (perhaps best) translate a culture...for readers which is curious considering the number of re‐ who are...unfamiliar with that culture (40)." To
10 H-Net Reviews gions in question. On page 52, "Kamchatka" should be changed to "Sakhalin" or "Karafuto." Notes [1]. Kazunari Moriguchi, ed. Ino Kanori no Taiwan tosa nikki (Ino Kanori's Taiwan Expedi‐ tion Journals) (Taipei: Taiwan fubutsu zasshisha, 1992), 305; Torii Ryuzo, Aru rogakuto no shuki (Memoirs of an Old Scholar) (Tokyo: Asahi Shin‐ bun, 1950); Paul Barclay, "A Tale of Two Anthro‐ pologists: Ino Kanori and Torii Ryuzo in Taiwan," Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, March 10-12, 2000, http:// www.lafayette.edu/~barclayp/aas2000.html [2]. Frank L. Jenista, The White Apos: Ameri‐ can Governors on the Cordillera Central (Quezon City: New Day, 1987). [3]. Hsieh Shih-chung. "On Three Defnitions of Han Ren: Images of the Majority People in Tai‐ wan." In Making Majorities: Constituting the Na‐ tion in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States, edited by Dru C. Gladney, 95-105. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. [4]. Herbert Passin, "A Note on Japanese Re‐ search in Formosa," American Anthropologist 49 (1947): 514-518. Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights re‐ served. This work may be copied for non-proft educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ tact [email protected].
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Citation: Paul Barclay. Review of van Bremen, Jan; Shimizu, Akitoshi, eds. Anthropology and Colonialism in Asia and Oceania. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. May, 2000.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4148
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