Eaton Dissertation
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Governing Shōnan: The Japanese Administration of Wartime Singapore Clay Eaton Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Clay Eaton All rights reserved ABSTRACT Governing Shōnan: The Japanese Administration of Wartime Singapore Clay Eaton The Japanese military administration of Southeast Asia during the Second World War was meant to rebuild the prewar colonial system in the region under strong, centralized control. Different Japanese administrators disagreed over tactics, but their shared goal was to transform the inhabitants of the region into productive members of a new imperial formation, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Shōnan, the wartime name for Singapore, was meant to be the center of this Co-Prosperity Sphere in Southeast Asia. It was the strategic fulcrum of the region, one of its most important ports, and a center of culture and learning for the wartime Japanese. Home to thousands of Japanese administrators during the war and a linguistically, ethnically, and religiously diverse local population, Shōnan was a site of active debates over the future of the Sphere. Three assumptions undergirded these discussions: that of Japanese preeminence within the Sphere, the suitability of “rule by minzoku (race)” for Southeast Asians, and the importance of maintaining colonial social hierarchies even as Japanese administrators attempted to put the region on a total war footing. These goals were at odds with each other, and Japanese rule only upended social hierarchies and exacerbated racial tensions. The unintended legacy of the wartime empire lay, not only in the new opportunities that Japanese rule afforded to Southeast Asian revolutionaries, but in the end of the politics of accommodation with imperial power practiced by prewar Asian elites. The result of Japanese rule under the Co-Prosperity Sphere was the emergence of a new, confrontational form of politics that made it impossible to return to prewar colonial practice. Even in Singapore, the bastion of British power in Southeast Asia, Japanese rule undermined the Asian foundation that Western imperialism had been built on. Table of Contents List of Charts and Figures ii Acknowledgements iii Note on Romanization, Names, and Abbreviations viii Introduction – Shōnan and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 1 Prologue – The Politics of Accommodation in Prewar Colonial Singapore 24 Chapter 1 – Fighting for the Status Quo: Japanese War Plans for Southeast Asia 42 Chapter 2 – Identifying Japan’s Partners in Shōnan I: The Oversea Chinese Association 81 Chapter 3 – Identifying Japan’s Partners in Shōnan II: The Racial Framework of Japanese Social Policy 114 Chapter 4 – Patterns of Japanese Leadership in Shōnan: Colonel Watanabe Wataru and Mayor Ōdachi Shigeo 154 Chapter 5 – Policy Implementation in an Occupied City 216 Chapter 6 – An End to the Politics of Accommodation 271 Conclusion 297 Bibliography 307 Appendix: The Structure of the Japanese Occupation in Shōnan 321 i List of Charts and Figures Figure 1: Map of Singapore circa 1940 2 Figure 2: Zones of Occupation in Southeast Asia, circa 1942 3 Figure 3: Breakdown of Malayan Military Administration Staff 8 Figure 4: Ōdachi Shigeo and Manchukuo Prime Minster Zhang Jinghui 183 Figure 5: Watanabe Wataru in the Syonan Times 194 Figure 6: Ōdachi Shigeo in the Syonan Jitpoh 201 Figure 7: At the City Hall Cafeteria 210 Appendix Map 1 321 Appendix Chart 1 322 Appendix Chart 2 323 Appendix Chart 3 324 Appendix Map 2 325 ii Acknowledgements Every scholar relies on an academic community to support their work, and that has been particularly true for this dissertation. I chose to work on wartime Singapore because it would allow me to pursue my interests in different historical fields and three different languages. I was young and foolish, and curiosity may have killed the grad student were it not for the mentors, language teachers, friends, and family members who helped me wrap my mind around new histories, new grammars, and new understandings of myself. Any faults in this dissertation remain my own, but I could not have produced it without their support. This dissertation would never have been written without the encouragement of my advisor, Carol Gluck. Where others might have cautioned their advisees to tackle a narrower subject matter, Carol pushed me to learn new languages, interrogate new types of sources, and to always, always deepen my arguments. She also did her best to turn me into a good writer, which is still a work in progress. Carol offered me guidance as I turned from memory studies to wartime history and all the psychological support that an anxiety-ridden graduate student could ask for. I will always be in her debt. My project brought me into contact with a wide range of professors in the New York area who I can never adequately thank. Kim Brandt, Gregory Pflugfelder, and Max Moerman helped me to find my footing at the university and in Japanese history. Madeleine Zelin and Eugenia Lean were both sources of inspiration and knowledge of Chinese history, while Dorothy Ko helped me to expand my theoretical horizons. Susan Pedersen helped me explore connections between my project and European and imperial history, while Harry Harootunian, Pamela Smith, and Tomi Suzuki offered early support and encouragement to me as a graduate student. I will always be grateful to David Lurie, not only for introducing me to Classical Japanese, but also for iii teaching me to teach and offering critical and productive comments on a project more than one thousand years outside his field of expertise. I am grateful to Mark Mazower and Janis Mimura for serving on my dissertation defense committee and offering extensive comments on how I can broaden the scope of my research in the future. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Michael Laffan for humoring a young graduate student who hoped to expand his horizons in Southeast Asia by graciously taking the time to help me work through the history of the Malay world, often over Skype from Princeton or literally the opposite side of the world. Conversations and coursework with Oona Paredes, Duncan McCargo, and Alfred McCoy helped me to find my footing in Southeast Asian studies as well. In the field of Japanese studies, I am also lucky to have benefited from the advice of Ian Miller, Yukiko Koga, Alexis Dudden, Laura Nietzel, Jeremy Yellen, and Sarah Thal. My research would not have been possible without the many suggestions and tips given to me by Paul Kratoska, and I am also grateful to Akashi Yōji for his assistance and guidance. I also benefited greatly from the advice of Cheah Boon Kheng, Brian Farrell, Kevin Blackburn, Stephen Leong, and Michael Montesano in Singapore and Malaysia, as well as Gotō Ken’ichi, Kurasawa Aiko, and Matsuoka Masakazu in Japan. William Bradley Horton and Yamamoto Mayumi were constant sources of new leads and engaging debate over wartime Southeast Asia, while Watanabe Yōsuke and Arunima Datta provided feedback and companionship in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan. Early versions of different chapters of this dissertation also benefitted from the feedback of Wang Gungwu, Anoma Pieris, Amelia Liwe, Seiji Shirane, Sarah Kovner, Ethan Mark, Sayaka Chatani, Victor Louzon, Christopher McMorran, Rudolf Mrázek, James Collins, Frank Dhont, Hans Pols, Robert Cribb, Taihei Okada, and Itty Abraham. iv My research was made possible by the support of a Mellon Traveling Fellowship from the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Columbia, as well as a Fulbright Grant from the Japan-United States Educational Commission. Support for writing my dissertation came in the form of a Junior Fellowship in Japan Studies from the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. I am grateful to Prasenjit Duara and the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, as well as Naoyuki Umemori and the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, for hosting me during my years abroad. My many years of language training were financially and institutionally supported by Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Southeast East Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI), and the Institute of the Malay World and Civilization (ATMA) at the National University of Malaysia. I am indebted to the excellent staff of the National Archives of Singapore, the National Library Board (Singapore), the Arkib Negara Malaysia, the National Institute of Defense Studies (Japan), the National Diet Library (Japan), and the libraries of the National University of Singapore, the National University of Malaysia, Waseda University, and Columbia University. My work in these institutions benefited from the help of dozens of individuals, but I would like to thank Fiona Tan of the National Library Board and Tham Wai Fong at the Chinese library of the National University of Singapore in particular for their assistance. I would have not entered into Japan studies or history were it not for my undergraduate mentors at Lewis & Clark College. Andrew Bernstein and Bruce Suttmeier were both sources of inspiration, and I am grateful for the lasting support and friendship of Richard Peck, Joann Gedes, and Jane Hunter. Over the course of my academic career I have benefited from the expertise of dozens of language instructors, and while I do not have the space to thank them all here, I would like to v give special thanks to Fumiko Nazikian, Jisuk Park, Wang Xiaodan, Wang Zhirong, Wijnie de Groot, Amelia Liwe, Melisa Tjong, Jamaliah Isnin, and Mohd Tarmizi Hasrah for all they have done to help me tackle the linguistic challenges of my project. Finally, I would like to acknowledge all the friends and family that have supported me throughout my graduate work. Though they may not have realized it at the time, Yumi Kim, Sayaka Chatani, Arunabh Ghosh, Kristin Roebuck, Anatoly Detwyler, and Nan Hartmann helped me through some of my most difficult times as a young graduate student.