POLICIES, PROMOTERS, AND PATTERNS OF JAPANESE-KOREAN AND JAPANESE-TAIWANESE MARRIAGES IN IMPERIAL JAPAN: MAKING A CASE FOR INCLUSIVE HISTORY A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Ai Baba August 2019 © 2019 Ai Baba POLICIES, PROMOTERS, AND PATTERNS OF JAPANESE-KOREAN AND JAPANESE-TAIWANESE MARRIAGES IN IMPERIAL JAPAN: MAKING A CASE FOR INCLUSIVE HISTORY Ai Baba, Ph.D. Cornell University 2019 This dissertation examines the policies, promoters, and patterns of Japanese- Korean marriages (naisen kekkon) and Japanese-Taiwanese marriages (naitai kyōkon) in imperial Japan. It seeks to answer why the Japanese empire sanctioned intermarriage when the Euro-American empires condemned marriage between colonizers and colonized subjects in the twentieth century. It also questions who were the people that promoted intermarriage and why people intermarried in Japan, where the government legalized intermarriage but did not promote it at the national level. This research further investigates what happened to people who intermarried before 1945 in postwar Japan, and why so little is known about the history of Japanese- Korean and Japanese-Taiwanese marriages in contemporary Japan. With existing studies on the history of intermarriage in the Japanese empire focusing on colonial Korea and Taiwan, this project focuses on Japan. Through analysis of internal and external influences on the discourse of intermarriage in the metropole, it first argues that imperial Japan’s sanctioning of intermarriage was based on its population policies and observations of its contemporaneous empires, thus should not be equated with the absence of racism in Japan and its isolation from the world. It then reveals that intermarriage was promoted in Japan at the local level by the members of the Harmony Association (Kyōwakai), district commissioners (hōmen’iin), and Japanese women. By studying the history of Japanese-Korean and Japanese-Taiwanese marriages together rather than separately, this research demonstrates the limitation of relying on categories such as “colonizer” and “colonized” alone in understanding the promoters and patterns of intermarriage, and proposes consideration of a/sexuality and ability in addition to race/ethnicity, gender, and class when studying colonizer-colonized relationships in modern empires. Lastly, this research traces the history of intermarriage post-1945 to reveal the existence of Japanese-Korean and Japanese-Taiwanese couples in postwar Japan and argues that it has been selectively remembered. Engaging with scholarship in modern Japanese history, imperial and colonial studies, and gender and sexuality studies, this dissertation ultimately makes a case for a more inclusive history that includes into history those who are marginalized in, excluded from, and/or forgotten in existing mainstream frameworks of history, to explain contemporary social issues of historical origin, such as disavowal of racism, in hopes of making a positive social change. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Ai Baba received a B.A. in history from University of California Santa Cruz in 2011, an M.A. in history from Cornell University in 2015, and will be conferred a Ph.D. in history from Cornell University in August 2019. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation exists thanks to the countless inspirations and support. I would first like to thank my dissertation committee members for making this dissertation possible. Thank you to Professor Naoki Sakai and Professor Vic Koschmann for allowing me to continue my studies at Cornell from second year onward and introducing me to the world of Japan Studies and modern Japanese history. I would like to think that I am less naïve than when I started research seven years ago and hope to share the knowledge imparted to me with people I encounter in and out of the academic world. Thank you to Professor Durba Ghosh for acquainting me with the field of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, which has greatly influenced this project, and keeping me on track throughout the Ph.D. program. I am working to and will continue to pay forward all the help that I received. This dissertation was also made possible by generous financial support from various sources. Language training was funded by the Biggerstaff Fellowship and the Kathryn Davis Fellows for Peace. Archival research in Japan was made possible by the Sage Fellowship and the Gilmore Fellowship, in addition to the travel grants from the Einaudi Center and the Society for the Humanities. Conference travel grants from the Graduate School also enabled me to present my research at conferences in Japan and the United States, and the last semesters of the writing phase were supported by the East Asia Program’s Robert J. Smith Fellowship and the dissertation writing group grants from the Society for the Humanities. A special thank you to Barb Donnell in the history department for processing all of the forms and documents so that I could vi progress forward in the graduate program. I am grateful to the staff, librarians, and archivists in Japan who helped me locate and access historical documents at the following locations: the National Diet Library, Tokyo Metropolitan Library, Shōwakan, History Museum of J-Koreans, Taiwan Kyōkai, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Kyoto Prefectural Library, Kyoto University Libraries, Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents, Rekisaikan, Kyoto International Manga Museum, Osaka Prefectural Archives, Osaka Prefectural Libraries, and Osaka Museum of History. I would like to further express my gratitude to Professor Komagome Takeshi for hosting me as a research student at Kyoto University and inviting me to join his seminars and lectures. Studying in Japan has been an eye-opening, stimulating, and challenging experience, which I was able to make the most out of thanks to him and the people I met in his graduate seminar. Thank you to Sunaga-san, Mino-san, Namgung-san, Wu-san, Chou-san, Yo-san, Boyan-san, Hanada-san, Yamaguchi-san, Matsushita-san, O-san, Chou Ayami-san, and To-san for offering valuable comments and feedback on my research. Lastly, I want to extend my appreciation to friends and peers who kept me company at Cornell. I am thankful for all the words of encouragement from fellow officers of the East Asia Program’s Graduate Student Steering Committee and folks I met through the Intergroup Dialogue Project. A big thank you to the members of my dissertation writing groups— Shiau-Yun Chen, Sujin Lee, Shoan Yin Cheung, Tinakrit Sireerat, and Ryan Buyco—for reading multiple parts of my dissertation, providing me with thoughtful advice and suggestions, and cheering me on. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch v Acknowledgements vi List of Figures ix Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Discourse of Intermarriage in Imperial Japan: Internal 26 Factors behind the Legalization and Lack of Promotion Chapter 3: Discourse of Intermarriage in Imperial Japan: External 64 Factors behind the Legalization and Lack of Promotion Chapter 4: Brokers of Empire at Home: Supporters of Intermarriage in 99 Wartime Japan Chapter 5: Examining the Patterns of Japanese-Korean and Japanese- 136 Taiwanese Marriages in Imperial Japan and Making a Case for Inclusive History Chapter 6: Selective Remembering and Forgetting of Japanese-Korean 169 and Japanese-Taiwanese Marriages in Postwar Japan Bibliography 208 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Example of Explicit Racism 17 Figure 2: Cycle of Socialization 20 Figure 3: Kekkon sōdanjo Application Form 124 Figure 4: Including Asexuality 160 Figure 5: Cycle of Liberation 205 ix Chapter 1 Introduction In Japan, before 1945, the numbers of Japanese-Korean marriages (naisen kekkon) and Japanese-Taiwanese marriages (naitai kyōkon) never exceeded more than one percent of the total number of endogamous marriages recorded between Japanese. Scholars who study intermarriages between Japanese and Koreans, or Japanese and Taiwanese, deduce that the numbers of common-law, unregistered marriages were most likely higher than the actual numbers recorded. Considering the general lack of awareness about its history and the limited studies on interethnic marriages in the Japanese empire, however, it was neither common nor a major phenomenon in history. Then why study the history of intermarriages in Japan? This dissertation examines the policies, promoters, and patterns of Japanese- Korean and Japanese-Taiwanese marriages in imperial Japan. I show that Japan’s government implemented and maintained policies to register interethnic marriages: there was never an outright ban against Japanese men and women marrying colonized subjects (as in other modern Euro-American empires) because the Japanese policymakers recognized the consequences of prohibiting intermarriage. Intermarriage, however, was not actively promoted by the government at the national level, and instead supported by groups at the local level. I examine this contradiction then analyze the patterns of intermarriage in prewar and wartime Japan to demonstrate how race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and ability intersected in determining people’s promotion of and engagement in Japanese-Korean and Japanese-Taiwanese 1 marriages in Japan. Lastly, I trace the cases of intermarriage into the postwar period, to explain why the history of intermarriage is little known in the contemporary period. Through engagement with historiography and scholarship