The Cartographic Steppe: Mapping Environment and Ethnicity in Japan's Imperial Borderlands
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The Cartographic Steppe: Mapping Environment and Ethnicity in Japan's Imperial Borderlands The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Christmas, Sakura. 2016. The Cartographic Steppe: Mapping Environment and Ethnicity in Japan's Imperial Borderlands. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33840708 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Cartographic Steppe: Mapping Environment and Ethnicity in Japan’s Imperial Borderlands A dissertation presented by Sakura Marcelle Christmas to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2016 © 2016 Sakura Marcelle Christmas All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Ian Jared Miller Sakura Marcelle Christmas The Cartographic Steppe: Mapping Environment and Ethnicity in Japan’s Imperial Borderlands ABSTRACT This dissertation traces one of the origins of the autonomous region system in the People’s Republic of China to the Japanese imperial project by focusing on Inner Mongolia in the 1930s. Here, Japanese technocrats demarcated the borderlands through categories of ethnicity and livelihood. At the center of this endeavor was the perceived problem of nomadic decline: the loss of the region’s deep history of transhumance to Chinese agricultural expansion and capitalist extraction. As Japanese occupiers and their collaborators witnessed the social costs of state-led modernization, they began to pursue radical solutions in ethnic cleansing and environmental engineering on the steppe. These chapters show how Japanese administrators strove to reconstitute the relationship between land and nomad through theories of Social Darwinism, Marxian materialism, and cooperative evolution—theories they translated into technologies of rule on the periphery. Nomadism, often cast as incompatible to modernity, actually became integral to its conceit for the empire. Maps acted as the primary idiom through which Japanese planners sought to visualize the borderlands. Using Japanese, Chinese, and Mongolian sources, the dissertation challenges the nation- based paradigms that have come to dominate the environmental history of East Asia. To view the colonies from afar as an extractive frontier removes us from environmental consequences of imperialism as much as it did for those living on the archipelago at the time. Rather, the social scientific theories and land surveying technologies, as discussed in these chapters, combined to iii disrupt the lives of hunters, herders, and farmers with environmental consequences that persisted into the postwar. As such, the dissertation brings together the seemingly irreconcilable histories of the Japanese empire and the People’s Republic. The narrative here addresses the problematic practice in the literature on Japanese imperialism of overlooking the Mongolian territories as empty space. It also serves as an alternate understanding to the beginnings of the multiethnic framework of the People’s Republic. Instead of only seeing the beginnings of Communist rule as forged in the fires of war against the Japanese, the dissertation also points to the significance of the occupation in shaping the ethnic and ecological bounds of modern China. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iii LIST OF FIGURES vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix INTRODUCTION CARTOGRAPHIC CHAOS IN THE IMPERIAL BORDERLANDS 1 Imperialist Nostalgia in the Borderlands 11 Historiographical Borderlands and the “Mongolian Question” 27 Mapping the Dissertation 36 CHAPTER ONE DELIMITING AUTONOMY 41 Geographies of Sovereignty 43 The Politics of Demarcation 58 Settling and Unsettling the Pale 74 CHAPTER TWO RATIONALIZING NOMADS 90 The Pastoral Preserve 93 Concentration-Villages and the Five Year Plan 103 Hybrid Sheep in the Alfalfa Empire 123 CHAPTER THREE EXHAUSTING THE EARTH 141 Climate and the Interpreter of Maladies 144 Settler Colonialism in the Orphan Banner 156 Soybean Imperialism and Selenium Deficiency 176 CHAPTER FOUR DISASSEMBLING THE FEUDAL 186 Nomadic Feudalism in Marxist Thought 188 The Mongol Land Offer 197 The Mongol Land Management Plan 213 CHAPTER FIVE ADVANCING THE AERIAL 233 Empire up in the Air 236 Technologies of the Gaze 245 A Cartographic Way of Thinking 254 CONCLUSION IMPERIALISM, COMMUNISM, AND THE TRANSWAR 271 BIBLIOGRAPHY 283 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 0.1 “Owen Lattimore’s Map of the Mongolian Territories in Manchukuo” from 4 Owen Lattimore, The Mongols of Manchuria: Their Tribal Divisions, Geographical Distribution, Historical Relations with Manchus and Chinese, and Present Political Problems (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1935). Figure 0.2 “Owen Lattimore’s Map of Ethnic Groups in Eastern Inner Mongolia” from 13 Owen Lattimore, The Mongols of Manchuria: Their Tribal Divisions, Geographical Distribution, Historical Relations with Manchus and Chinese, and Present Political Problems (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1935). Figure 0.3 “Owen Lattimore’s Map of Mongolia, Manchukuo, and China” from 16 Owen Lattimore, The Mongols of Manchuria: Their Tribal Divisions, Geographical Distribution, Historical Relations with Manchus and Chinese, and Present Political Problems (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1935). Figure 1.1 “Banners and Counties in Eastern Inner Mongolia by Kikutake Jitsuz!” 45 from Yamamoto Sansei, ed., Nihon chiri taikei, bekkan: Mansh! oyobi Nan’y" hen, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kaiz!sha, 1930). Figure 1.2 “Map of Qing League and Manchukuo Provincial Boundaries” from 55 Takemura Shigeaki, M"chi no hanashi (K!an kyoku, 1939). Figure 1.3 “Map of Qing League and Manchukuo Provincial Boundaries in English” 56 by Sakura Christmas Figure 1.4 “Map of Khinggan Province and the Former Mongol Territories” by Sakura 59 Christmas Figure 1.5 “Banner Jurisdictions from Republican to Manchukuo Periods” from K!an 60 s!sho ch!saka, Shink" no K"an sh" gaikan (K!an s!sho ch!saka, 1934). Figure 1.6 “Map of Heilongjiang Province with League and County Boundaries” from 68 Heilongjiang sheng qingzhang quyu quantu (Shanghai: Shanghai zhonghua shuju, 1915). Figure 1.7 “Counties Disbanded within and Excised from Khinggan Province” from 72 Katakura Tadashi kankei monjo, Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room, National Diet Library, Tokyo, Japan. Figure 1.8 “Ethnic Composition of Khinggan Border Counties” from “K!an sh!ky! 77 mondai to sono kaiketsu an” (28 November 1933) in Riku Man mitsu dainikki S9–1–30, Japanese Ministry of Defense Archives. Figure 1.9 “Population Transfers into East Khinggan and Relief Aid” from 83 Manzhouguo zhengfu gongbao, No. 112 (29 March 1933); Maki Tokuji, “Keitoku hachi nendo K!an shink! k!saku kaisetsu” in M"ko kenky!, Vol. 3, No. 1 (April 1941); Mansh" teikoku ky!wakai ch!sabu, K"an M"ko (Shinky!: Mansh" jij! annaisho, 1943). Figure 2.1 “Map of Open and Closed Territories under Directive 105” from Takemura 98 Shigeaki, M"chi no hanashi (K!an kyoku, 1939). Figure 2.2 “Number and Cost in yuan of Livestock Borrowed per Banner” from 100 vi M!seibu, K"an kakush" sangy" gaikan (Typewritten manuscript, 1936), Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., United States. Figure 2.3 “Concentration-Villages Built in Manchukuo by Year” from S!saishitsu 113 k!h!ka, Mansh! ni okeru tokushu jichi seido (Dairen: Minami Mansh" tetsud! kabushiki kaisha s!saishitsu k!h!ka, 1938). Figure 2.4 “Map of Sir-a khar-a a#ula, Naiman Banner” from Muraoka Shigeo, “K!an 117 sei sh! Naman ki Nishi Saryokuk!rai ton no shizen j!ken oyobi k!shu gaiy!” in M"ko kenky!, Vol. 6, No. 2 (June 1944), 13–48. Figure 2.5 “Nomadic Households in Select Consolidated Villages of Jarud Banner” 119 from Minami Mansh" tetsud! kabushiki kaisha ch!sa bu, K"an sei sh" Satsurotoku ki Ajikajishin ki chikusan ch"sa h"koku (Minami Mansh" tetsud!, 1939). Figure 2.6 “Map of Seasonal Pastures in New Bara# Left Flank Banner” from K!an 120 kyoku ch!sa ka, K"an hoku sh" ni okeru bokuya narabini h"boku kank" ch"sa h"koku (Shinky!: K!an kyoku ch!sa ka, 1939). Figure 2.7 “Map of Nomadic Migrations in Old Bara# Banner” from K!an kyoku 121 ch!sa ka, K"an hoku sh" ni okeru bokuya narabini h"boku kank" ch"sa h"koku (Shinky!: K!an kyoku ch!sa ka, 1939). Figure 2.8 “Projected Yield for Target Crops in Khinggan Province for the Five Year 128 Plan” from Ishizaka Tadayuki, Mansh!koku sangy" kaihatsu gokanen keikaku no shiry"teki ch"sa kenky!, n"gy" bumon (Tokyo: T!-A kenky"jo, 1941). Figure 2.9 “Projected Surface Area for Target Crops in Khinggan Province for the Five 128 Year Plan” from Ishizaka Tadayuki, Mansh!koku sangy" kaihatsu gokanen keikaku no shiry"teki ch"sa kenky!, n"gy" bumon (Tokyo: T!-A kenky"jo, 1941). Figure 3.1 “Farming Village in Keshan County” from Kokuzan n!ji shikenj!, Kokuzan 142 chih" n"ka keizai (Shinky!: Sangy!bu daijin kanb! shiry!ka, 1937). Figure 3.2 “Chest Cavity X-Rays of Keshan Disease Patients” from Abe Toshio, 148 “Kokuzanby! ni tsuite” in Tokyo iji shinshi, Vol. 62, No. 3091 (9 July 1938). Figure 3.3 “Hieda Kentar!’s Photograph of Kashin-Beck Patients” from Hieda 149 Kentar!, Mansh! ni okeru chih"by" ni tsuite (Kant! kyoku imin eisei ch!sa iinkai, 1935). Figure 3.4 “Original Boundaries of Yekhe Ming#an Banner” from Karte des Banners 159 der Yeke Mingghan (Nonni-Tal, Heilungkiang), Die Ostasienabteilung, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, Germany. Figure 3.5 “Projected and Actual Rent for Yekhe Ming#an on Former Territories” 170 from K!an kyoku, Kakujirashi k"ki, Tojihaku tokki, Ikokumeian ki kaih" M"chi ch"sa h"kokusho (Shinky!: K!an kyoku, 1939). Figure 4.1 “Map of the Open Territories under the Land Offer” from K!an kyoku, 199 Kaih" M"chi h"j" kankei kiroku sh!sei (K!an kyoku, 1938).