Japan's Asia-Pacific Migrations and the Making of the Japanese Empire, 1868-1945
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Japan's Asia-Pacific Migrations and the Making of the Japanese Empire, 1868-1945 Sidney Xu Lu University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Asian American Studies Commons, and the Asian History Commons Recommended Citation Lu, Sidney Xu, "Japan's Asia-Pacific Migrations and the Making of the Japanese Empire, 1868-1945" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 892. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/892 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/892 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Japan's Asia-Pacific Migrations and the Making of the Japanese Empire, 1868-1945 Abstract This dissertation argues that the Japanese modern nation was formed not only from the inside but also from the outside, through nationalizing Japanese emigrants around the Pacific Rim. The study examines critical roles of Japanese overseas emigrants in shaping the ideologies and social movements in the Japanese empire. It discusses how the efforts made by Japanese thinkers and social educators in nationalizing these dispersed and marginal subjects were crucial to the creation of Japanese modernity. This study defines Japanese imperialism as diasporic" " in three dimensions. First, it illustrates the close and dynamic connections Japanese migration to the empire's Asian colonies and to other parts of the world. In particular, it highlights the important yet unexpected ways in which Japanese American migration influenced and transformed Japan's colonial expansion in Asia. Second, the study examines how the Japanese diasporic communities on both sides of the Pacific shaped the Japanese nation and empire at home. Third, from a more theoretical level, it explores the dual identity of Japanese imperialism between colonizer and the colonized. By examining flows and linkages between Japanese colonial migration in Asia and Japanese labor migration to America, this study charts the evolving trajectory of Japan as a colored empire in the cultural and political space between Asia and the West. This dissertation is a study of the Japanese empire from the angle of Japan's global migration. It challenges the separation between the nation-based narrative of modern Japan and the history of Japanese overseas migration. It also moves beyond the territory-based study of the Japanese empire by bridging the disciplinary divide between Japanese colonial history and Japanese American history and brings a transnational and global perspective to our understanding of the Japanese empire. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Frederick Dickinson Keywords diaspora, expansionism, Japanese imperialism, overseas migration, prostitution, transnationalism Subject Categories Asian American Studies | Asian History | History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/892 DIASPORIC IMPERIALISM JAPAN’S ASIA-PACIFIC MIGRATIONS AND THE MAKING OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE, 1868-1945 Sidney Xu Lu A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Supervisor of Dissertation ____________ Frederick Dickinson, Professor of History Graduate Group Chairperson _____________ Benjamin Nathans, Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee Eiichiro Azuma, Alan Charles Kors Term Associate Professor of History Siyen Fei, Associate Professor of History Ayako Kano, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture DIASPORIC IMPERIALISM COPYRIGHT 2013 Sidney Xu Lu This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Ever since I started to pursue a graduate degree in Japanese history more than nine years ago, my journey as a student has been filled with much gratefulness to my teachers, friends and loved ones. To condense my doctoral research into a two-hundred-page dissertation is challenging, yet it is even more difficult to use just a few pages here to express even part of my gratitude. My mentor Frederick Dickinson was the most generous and patient supporter of my project. Holding the faith that a Chinese can also write a dissertation on Japanese history, he adopted me as his student five years ago, giving me a rigorous academic training and as much passion, encouragement, and tolerance as one could imagine. His graduate seminars transformed not only my knowledge of Japan and Asia, but also my understanding of history as a discipline. He read every word that I wrote at every stage of my graduate study and dissertation writing and contributed with his insights and motivation. With his broad knowledge, his passion and uncompromising spirit as a scholar, his responsibility and kindness as a teacher, and his charming personality as well as his great sense of humor, he has guided a naive student into the noble career of historian. I am equally blessed to have the opportunity to study with Eiichiro Azuma. One can tell how much his scholarship has influenced my research by just noting the title of my dissertation. It is his solid research in Japanese American history and Japanese history, as well as his incredible border-transcending insights that inspired me to start this iv research. He has generously shared with me not only his own collections and academic networks but also his knowledge and wisdom through many, many hours of conversation. With kindness and warmth, he also walked me through the most difficult time of my personal life. From any perspective, it would be an underestimation to say that I would not have been able to write this dissertation without his support. Siyen Fei has also provided me rigorous training in both teaching and research, and supported me with her wisdom and encouragement at each stage of my graduate study. Similarly, with great generosity and enthusiasm, Ayako Kano introduced me to exciting debates in Japanese feminism and pushed me to refine my arguments with insightful critiques. At Penn, I am also indebted to Peter Holquist, Kathy Peiss, Lynn Less, Jennifer Amyx, Michael Katz, Arthur Waldron, Anne Norton, Chi-ming Yang, Lisa Mitchell, Lee Cassanelli and Ian Petrie, who have guided my path of learning in different aspects. I would also like to extend special thanks to Rachel Troop, Vanessa Ogle, Amy Offner, Eve Powell and Heather Sharkey, who have contributed in various ways to the development of this project. Outside of Penn, Janet Chen's modern Chinese history seminar at Princeton has shaped my understanding of Chinese historiography. Jun Uchida, Barbara Andaya, William Clarence-Smith, Ken Ruoff, Bill Mihalopoulos, Hyung Gu Lynn and Symbol Lai offered valuable comments to refine this research. In Japan, I had the luxury to study with Takashi Fujitani at Doshisha University in Japan in 2011 when I conducted my dissertation research in Kyoto. He introduced me to v the excitement and sophistication of colonial/postcolonial theories and reminded me of the need of self-reflection and responsibility when serving as a humanist scholar. Special thanks also to Isomae Junichi at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, who pushed me to contemplate this project in a depth that I could have never imagined. From Kyoto to Toronto, from Doshisha to Penn, his enthusiasm and rigorous thinking have been a constant inspiration for me ever since we met in 2011. At Doshisha, I would like to thank Yoshida Ryo for sponsoring my one-year research trip, for inviting me to his lectures and seminars on Japanese American migration, and for guiding my study with his broad knowledge and deep insights. Thanks also to Okita Yukuji and Hara Makoto, who also kindly brought me to their seminars. I would like to thank Brian Hayashi from Kyoto University for generously sharing his personal collections and for offering valuable suggestions for this project, and to Yasutake Rumi at Konan Univeristy and Watari Hironori at Kyoto University for their constructive comments. In Fukuoka, when I went to Japan for the first time as an exchange student at Kyushu University and was still wondering what to do next, it was Nakashima Takuma and Ishikawa Shōji who inspired my initial interest in Japanese history, with their academic passion and warm encouragement. They kept supporting me in various ways even after I left Japan and started my doctoral study in the US. Additionally, I could not have completed this project without the financial support of the Japan Foundation and the Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences, and vi the Browne Center for International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I am grateful to Molly Jardin, Brian Vivier, and Alban Kojima at Penn for their great librarian support and to the Institute for the Study of Humanities and Social Sciences at Doshisha University, Tanaka Naoki at the Japanese Striving Society, and Denno Kazuko at Aoyama Gakuin University for their generous archivist support. Over the years of my graduate study, I was blessed to be surrounded by a group of wonderful friends. It is perhaps impossible to record my gratitude to Zheng Jiexi, Nagatomi Hirayama, Leander