Rasa Island: What Industrialization to Remember and Forget

Rasa Island: What Industrialization To Remember and Forget

Hiromi Mizuno

Abstract: Rasa Island, a small, remote coral deserted island with no tree, no inhabitant, and atoll of Okinawa, was once a robust company virtually no topsoil left. town of Rasa Phosphate Industry Inc. Now abandoned and forgotten, the barren island nonetheless tells a rich story of Japan’s industrialization, a counter-narrative to the problematically simplified and celebratory history provided at the Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites recently inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. By using Rasa Island and critical heritage studies scholarship, this article examines the place of “industrial heritage” in post-industrial societies and what kind of heritage is performed at Japan’s World Heritage sites.

Keywords: Rasa Island, fertilizer, industrialization, World Heritage

Unlike the sites discussed in the other articles in this special issue, my site, Rasa Island, is a Okidaitōjima forgotten one. In fact, it is a site of abandonment. Because of that, it raises the issue of what is and should be “heritage,” and The island’s history is intimately tied to colonial what kind of narrative of industrialexpansion over centuries. Its first recorded development gets mobilized for “industrial sighting was by the Spanish navigator heritage” for Japan. I present the story of Rasa Bernando de la Torre, on September 25, 1543 Island here as a historical counter-inquiry into during his mission to find a return route for the the fixated meanings the official industrial Spanish military and trade ships from the heritage sites attempt to attach to industrial Philippines to New Spain. After that, ruins, such as Japan’s Meiji Revolution Sites Portuguese, Dutch, French, and other Spanish recently inscribed on the list of World Heritage traders and navigators sighted and charted the Sites. island and gave it various names on their maps. In 1815, the last Manila Galleon, the Spanish Rasa Island frigate San Fernando de Magallames, charted Rasa Island — also known as Oki Daitōjima— is the island as ‘Isla Rasa’ [the flat island], and 1 a coral atoll, located 220 miles southeast of the name stayed. While recognizing the Okinawa. Only 0.44 square miles, it is the existence of the island on their maps, however, smallest of the Daitō Islands group (with Kita the Europeans did not take any measures to Daitōjima and Minami Daitōjima). It is a claim the island.

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It was Okinawa prefecture that put the first nitrogen (N), potassium (K), and phosphorus flag on Daitō Islands. In 1885, the Meiji (P) —Guano had been a well-recognized government ordered the newly createdfertilizer throughout human history but came to Okinawa prefectural government to survey the be especially valued in the 19th century. As three Daito islands. Six researchers were such, seabird droppings were a powerful dispatched, along with the prefecturalhistorical agent. It moved the US Congress to governor, who erected a flag. Privateestablish a law, the Guano Islands Act of 1856, businessmen flocked to the Okinawa governor, resulting in what Jimmy Skaggs called “The pleading for the right to explore the islands. Great Guano Rush”: a large number of After fierce competition, a businessman and Americans raced across the Pacific and claimed explorer named Tamaoki Han’emon won the more than 100 islands as US territories under privilege.2 Rasa Island was officiallythe 1856 Act, creating a new type of territory incorporated into Japanese territory in 1900. termed the “insular area.”4 Guano also caused a war between Spain and the Peruvian-Chilean Why were these islands of such great interest? alliance (the Chincha Islands War, 1864-1866) It was because of seabirds, the short-tailed and the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) between albatross called “fool birds” [ahōdori] in Peru and Chile. After this war, Chile, the Japanese as they are extremely easy to capture. winner, became the world’s largest exporter of Some entrepreneurial Japanese discovered, as nitrate.5 soon as Japanese ports were opened up for trade with the West, that short-tailed albatross Meiji Japan too relied on Chile for nitrate (Chile feathers could be sold for a high price to saltpeter/salitre), and its import was costing Westerners who fetishized feather bedding and the nation as much as 5 million yen a year. In adored decorative feather ornaments and order to find a domestic alternative, the Meiji stuffed birds. Tamaoki was one of them. He government established the Fertilizer Mineral made a fortune out of the Hachijōshima islands, Research Institute in 1901 and searched for Torishima, and other small islands in the phosphate ore all over the country. Its first 1890s, where the birds were hunted in the director, Tsunetō Norikata (1857-1939), scale of millions, to the point of near extinction discovered that Rasa Island was a “gold” mine within a few decades.3 Tamaoki developed for phosphate. Tsunetō was one of the first sugarcane plantations on Minami Daitōjima and recipients of a doctorate in agricultural Kita Daitōjima for Tōyō Seito東洋製糖 /Dai sciences in Japan. A graduate of Komaba Nippon Seitō 大日本製糖. Dai Nippon Seito Agriculture College, Tsunetō had collaborated later also extracted alumina for aluminum with Max Fesca, a German agronomist, in 6 production, using its byproduct, ammonia surveying soil and geology in Japan. When the sulphate, for chemical fertilizer for its sugar Fertilizer Mineral Research Institute was plantations in Okinawa and Taiwan. Rasa Island closed only two years later, Tsunetō decided did not become a settler colony. As a result of not to seek another position and instead to fierce competition among explorer profiteers, a “devote my own meager savings to find different kind of entrepreneur eventually won phosphate ore in southern islands 南方諸島( ) 7 the privilege of monopolizing Rasa Island. This for the future of Japanese agriculture.” was not for seabirds; it was for something else “Imagine if and when phosphorous imports are that the island had — high-quality phosphate terminated for whatever reason. Our farmers deposits called Guano, made of seabirds’ would forever suffer from the lack of fertilizer,” 8 fossilized excrement. Tsunetō reasoned. One of the first things Tsunetō did was to send a team of researchers Rich in all three essential soil nutrients — to Rasa Island. The 1907 expedition came back

2 15 | 1 | 2 APJ | JF with a good report: Rasa Island hadcompanies, things began to take a turn for exceptionally good quality phosphorus rocks better soon. By 1913, Rasa Phosphate Company that contained more than 30% phosphate. After was selling phosphate to major fertilizer fierce competition and negotiation over the producers such as Japan Artificial Fertilizer right to explore the island, Tsunetō and one of Company and operated its own small fertilizer his competitors, Kuki Monshichi, agreed to factory in Tokyo. With the prospect of jointly invest in the development of the island. sustainable business in sight, the company Kuki, an affluent merchant who ran a fertilizer expanded infrastructure on the island. The and vegetable oil business in Yokkaichi, had 1919 publication by Rasa Phosphate Company, earlier attempted but failed to claim the island. The Authentic View of Rasa Island,lists an In 1911, Rasa Island Phosphate Company was impressive array of facilities: pit railways and launched, with Tsunetō as the president and roads that extended in multiple directions, four Kuki as the largest investor (it changed the piers, a water tank, a hospital, a Shinto shrine, name to Rasa Industry Inc., in 1934). This was a police station, a bath and bathrooms, several a big deal, as Rasa Island was virtually the only housing complexes for workers, miners, and place in Japan proper that had phosphorus farmers, an agricultural field large enough to rocks whose quality was good enough to be self-sufficient, and more.12 A radio mast and compete against imported phosphate.9 a weather observation tower were added (built by the government), after two company ships Development of the island was slow and were sunk by typhoons. Many buildings and difficult. Frequent typhoons and steep, rocky facilities on the island were repeatedly shorelines made the voyage dangerous and destroyed by typhoons as well, but the sometimes impossible to berth. When they first company managed to rebuild them each time reached the island, it was covered with thick and made them stronger. With this expanded trees, its surface buried under layers of fallen infrastructure, phosphate production and sales leaves. Clearing for roads was a laborious task dramatically increased. In 1911, Rasa Island requiring setting fire and burning trees. had shipped out 10,000 tons of phosphate Transporting equipment, food, and other rocks.13 By 1918, the annual sale of phosphate necessary items by ship and on the island took reached 182,624 tons.14 It was soon shipping time. The island produced no drinkable water, out 200,000 tons of phosphorus rocks annually which also made settlement extremelyat this time, providing one third of Japan’s challenging. Rails, a simple pier, housing domestic needs.15 Rasa Phosphate Company facilities, and storage spaces were eventually also diversified its business by absorbing Osaka built, and phosphate rocks began to beSulfuric Acid Company and selling chlorine, dynamited, extracted, and transported to the sulfuric acid, and soda. Its growth was so storage facility in Osaka, but the company remarkable that a 1920 stock advice book encountered an obstacle. Mitsui, which was the listed Rasa Phosphate as one of “the twenty major distributer of imported phosphate, seven company stocks one should buy.”16 attempted to obstruct the business of the newcomer in the industry, by orchestrating a Much of this growth had to do with WWI. When boycott.10 The Rasa Phosphate Company’s early the Great War broke out in Europe, Japan’s days were, in the words of Tsunetō, “utterly fertilizer imports ceased and its need for miserable, as if we were destined for a domestically produced fertilizers increased. tragedy.”11 The rice riots of 1918, triggered by the Siberian Intervention, caused domestic After tenacious toiling on the island and fertilizer needs to soar even higher. As the persistent negotiation with the fertilizerphosphate business grew so large and

3 15 | 1 | 2 APJ | JF lucrative, Rasa Phosphate sent five expedition opened a recruitment office in Naha. While teams to the Spratly Islands in the South China Tsunetô explained the reason to be “their Sea in search of more phosphate ores and excellent work performance,” most likely it was began digging in Itu Aba Island.17 The so-called because of cost.20 The company not only “fertilizer boom,” however, ended abruptly at transported new recruits by ship to the island the end of 1920. With the return of European but also needed to evacuate them and bring companies, the fertilizer market became too them back in time of emergency, such as an competitive and collapsed suddenly. Rasa unusually long spell of no rain that dried up the Phosphate went into debt, and mining at the island’s drinking water supply completely.21 As island stopped in 1922. Tsunetō repeatedly claims in the 1919 company publication, such measures were very costly. It It was another war that boosted its business is also likely that Okinawan miners were paid again. After drastic structural and managerial less than Japanese counterparts. The 1919 adjustment, the company finally freed itself of publication does not mention specific wages debt and changed its name to Rasa Industry in and describes labor relations on the island as 1934. The following year, it resumed Rasa rather peaceful, but we can detect signs of mining. But with the war in China, it grew to be dissatisfaction, such as the 1914 revolt by a major, multifaceted chemical company. In Okinawan laborers against Japanese office 1939, it built a large refinery in Miyako City, workers and police.22 Iwate Prefecture, where the tall chimney became — and remains to this day — the city’s Number of miners on Rasa Island23 signature. Metals and coals from Tagawa Coal Mines, Taiei Gold Mine (Korea), Kera Mine Okinawan Japanese from naichi (Okinawa), Taio Mine (Sado), and Tarō Mine 1911 0 160 (Iwate) that Rasa Industry acquired over these 1912 290 120 years were transported to the Miyako factory.18 1913 320 120 Rasa Island was (and still is) owned by Rasa 1914 384 120 Industry. It was a company town on an island. 1915 750 170 As many as 2000 people — all employees and 1916 1370 180 laborers shipped by the company — lived on this island of rocks at one time. The small 1917 1500 190 minority were company employees —men and women — sent from the Tokyo and Osaka offices and their families. The majority were As late as winter 1944, about three hundred miners. Initially, all miners were recruited from Rasa Industry employees and miners were inner prefectures. However, they all mining what little was left on the island. By “complained and demanded a return home” then, the island, once covered by lush greens, after bad weather and high ocean waves was reduced to “a skeleton, left over, that is destroyed the supply of drinking water and ghostly.”24 It is hard to believe the Imperial food. The company therefore recruited a Army and Navy in April 1944 sent 220 officers second group from coastal areas of Shikoku, and soldiers to this small island with little Kyûshû, Ogawasara Islands, and Izu Oshima phosphate deposit left, with the “gyokusai” Island, assuming they would be better 19 military order to commit suicide rather than accustomed to life on an island. From 1913 surrender in the event of battle. Seeing the onward, however, the company adapted a island on the map helps to understand why. It policy of recruiting miners from Okinawa and is located between Okinawa and Iwo Jima, on

4 15 | 1 | 2 APJ | JF the route along which US ships were expected Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, to advance. Evacuation of miners and office Shipbuilding and Coal Mining,“ inscribed on workers began in April 1944, but it was as late the UNESCO World Heritage List in the as January 22, 1945 that all civilian residents summer of 2015. Composed of 23 sites in were evacuated to Amami Island. A memoire Kyushu, Iwate, and Shizuoka, these sites, written by then Lieutenant Morita Yoshio, according to the UNESCO web page, commander of the Rasa garrison, describes in “represent the first successful transfer of detail the difficult lives of his troops on the industrialization from the West to a non- isolated island with virtually no communication Western nation.”26 They include Yawata Steel from Okinawa or Tokyo while facing repeated Works, a few oyatoi (foreign advisor) engineers’ attacks by the US Navy. The garrison unit houses, Mitsubishi shipbuilding yards, and survived the war and handed the island Miike and Hashima coalmines. Controversy peacefully to the US on October 12, 1945.25 surrounding this World Heritage inscription is still fresh in our memories: South Korea While Rasa Island is unique, the company’s criticized the inclusion of Hashima and six trajectory is a typical one for Japanese chemical other sites, where some 60,000 Koreans were fertilizer producers — established in the 1910s, forced to work during wartime. The Japanese became profitable during WWI, and expanded government defended its nomination by through colonial development and warinsisting that the World Heritage inscription economy in the 1930s and early 1940s. Rasa only concerned the period from the 1850s to Industry was a phosphate fertilizer company, 1910, not the 1940s. At the end, the Korean but nitrogenous fertilizer companies such as government conceded when Japan promised to Nihon Chisso fit this trajectory as well. include a description of wartime Korean forced labor at the site, and UNESCO officially Despite its peripheral location, Rasa Island has inscribed the industrial ruins as World Heritage witnessed, experienced, and enabled Japan’s Sites. rapid industrialization contingent on the expansion of Japanese capital and territorial As previously discussed by Takazane Yasunori acquision in the context of empire building. and William Underwood at Japan Focus, the After 1945, it experienced the rise of another periodization singling out the 1850s to 1910, is empire. Rasa Island, together with Okinawa awkward and problematic. Awkward because and other surrounding islands, were placed the Meiji period did not end in 1910. under the American rule. The island has been Problematic, not only because the year 1910 and still is a training site for the US Navy for seems to have been chosen to prevent the 1910 large force exercises, enduring the latest bomb Annexation of Korea from entering the picture, and anti-sub technology. That is, the island is but also because it does not represent also a witness to important postwar changes: Hashima’s development adequately. As the development of military expansion of what Takazane points out: Chalmers Johnson called the American garrison empire, and Japan’s joint military training with “the very fact that Hashima began to resemble the US, as well as Okinawa’s sacrifice in a battleship from afar – and thus acquired its exchange for Japan’s economic prosperity. famous nickname of Gunkanjima or Battleship Island – was due to the high-rise buildings on WHAT INDUSTRIALIZATION? the island, even the oldest of which was built only in 1916. There are no pre-1910 buildings In other words, Rasa Island is a site of Japan’s on the island today that could be added to the industrialization as powerful as — and in many World Heritage Register.”27 ways richer than — the “Sites of Meiji

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Koreans were not the only victims of wartime Town is not and has never been an industrial forced labor. Underwood reminds us that site. Shōkasonjuku, located at the edge of the nearly 40,000 Chinese men and boys, and castle town, was not an industrial site either. 35,000 Allied POWs, were forced to work in Its listing as a Meiji industrialization site is 1943-1945; the majority labored in Kyûshû, justified by the promotional committee as “a such as Moji port facilities, also part of the private school which produced many of the key Meiji Industrialization World Heritage sites.28 figures in Japan’s modernization and industrialization at the end of the 19th century.” What is also intriguing is the inclusion of Hagi The webpage that used to exist was indeed all Castle Town and Shōkasonjuku as industrial about Yoshida Shōin: “Shōin was only able to heritage sites. If the time frame of the 1850s to teach for less than three years. . . but during 1910 is as definitive as the Japanesethat time, 90 students studied there. Shōin government insisted, Hagi Castle Town has devoted himself to educating young Japanese little to do with the Meiji Industrial Revolution. and was recognized at the end of the Edo The castle town flourished as the political and Period as one of the most influential commercial center of the Chōshû domain intellectuals in Japan.”29 This page is now during the Tokugawa period. Hagi Castle, built replaced by a much shorter text, “Many of his in 1608, was taken down after the Meiji students became key figures in the Meiji Restoration, like many other castles throughout Restoration and drove the subsequent political Japan, as useless remnants of the feudal time and industrial modernization of Japan.”30 and has never been rebuilt. Designated as a Yoshida was a strong proponent of Japan’s national historic heritage site and welleventual colonial expansion, which his student preserved, the town attracts many tourists Ito Hirobumi dutifully followed. However, as because of the buildings, warehouses, and has been pointed out, the website makes no streets that retain their appearance from the mention of this aspect of his teaching and Tokugawa period. The website provides a brief solely focuses on his promotion of the adaption explanation in English, “Castle Town provides of western science and technology. As it the essential context for the birth of Japanese happens, Yamaguchi Prefecture is a hometown industrialization, without which the speed and of influential politicians such as Prime Minister extraordinary nature of JapaneseAbe Shinzō; his registered residence remains in industrialization would be difficult toYamaguchi Prefecture where his renowned comprehend.” This makes an informed reader maternal and paternal grandparents were from. wonder why Hagi was “the” essential context, It is fair to say that the UNESCO inscription of not others. Its Japanese text is different. It is these sites has a lot to do with Yamaguchi more modest and bolder at the same time than native politicians wanting to bring to their the English text: “Hagi Castle Town symbolizes hometown economic benefit and international the social structure of the feudal period, at the recognition expected from World Heritage end of which the Chōshû domain and its inscription. As Underwood argues, “A primary samurai challenged Western science [author’s goal of the UNESCO bid, in fact, may be to translation],” as if it were Chōshuō samurai provide a vehicle for repackaging and retelling who industrialized Japan. Did we forget that modern Japan’s story to the Japanese this castle town was the site of a large uprising themselves. If badly handled, the World by ex-samurai — the Hagi Rebellion of 1876 — Heritage listing could degenerate into a against the Meiji government’s modernization boastful nationalistic project for rehabilitating policy? While there is no denying of the the domestic narrative not only about forced significance of Chōshuō samurai for the Meiji labor in wartime Japan, but also about Imperial Restoration, the fact remains that Hagi Castle Japan’s aims and actions across the Asia

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Pacific.”31 the value of the Tomioka Silk Mill and Related Sites as illustrating “Japan’s desire to rapidly In the narrative put forth by Japan’saccess the best mass production techniques,” Department of Industrial Heritage, thedemonstrating “a model that enshrined Japan’s protagonists of Meiji Industrialization were the role in the global raw silk market at the samurai from Chōshū and foreign engineers beginning of the 20th century,” and bearing and businessmen they hired. No laborers “witness to the early advent of a shared appear. When the promotion committee for the international culture of sericulture.”33 The UNESCO inscription had the websitewebsite created by the prefectural office is explaining the values of the Meiji Industrial primarily about technologies imported and Revolution Sites, it at least contained a few improved in the Meiji period, such as the pages describing the hard labor of (Japanese) unique brick layering pattern, French machines miners. Now the website has been replaced by and engineers, and so on. The only woman one created by the Cabinet Secretaries Office, worker mentioned on the website is Wada Ei, and even those few pages are gone. daughter of a former samurai in Matsushiro, Nagano, who became a well-known silk-reeling Upholding the Meiji Restorationists and “their” instructor and engineer director at another silk industrialization by skipping the wartime factory. Wada was among the first recruits of period is a political act, for it determines the silk reelers that the government specifically historical narrative of modern Japanese history. sought from established families in order to The interpretation of the Meiji period carries a demonstrate the safe and respectable work heavy weight in Japanese historiography. As environment to future female workers. As we Laurajane Smith asserts, “heritage is aknow, these women were quickly replaced by multilayered performance — be this adaughters from poor families, who made up the performance of visiting, managing,majority of industrial workers in Japan during interpretation or conservation — that embodies the Meiji period. There is no mention of these acts of remembrance and commemoration “factory girls” on the Tomioka Silk Mill web while negotiating and constructing a sense of page. place, belonging and understanding in the 32 present.” Performative function of the two One may say silk, iron and steel, shipbuilding, Hagi sites — the symbol of the Chōshū legacy and coal mines commemorated at the Meiji — indeed needs to be recognized; it overlaps Industrial Revolution Sites and the Tomioka Chōshū and the nation, displays the heroic and Mill are representative of Japan’s linear narrative of the nation/Chōshū, and industrialization that began in the Meiji period. enforces a direct connection between the Meiji One may also think that Japanese ingenuity and Restoration and present-day Japan. Left out are die-hard efforts to catch up led to the anything that happened in between, notably successful and rapid industrialization, as laborers and their exploitation, larger and emphasized on those websites. These deeper contexts of Japanese industrialization, assertions are not entirely wrong but myopic. and Japan’s expansive empire. The story of Rasa Island gives us a different story. The absence of laborers and the celebratory connection between the Meiji industrialization First, the Rasa Island story reminds us that and present–day Japan is also apparent in the Japan’s industrialization could not be official representation of the “Tomioka Silk Mill understood without its colonial expansion. and Related Sites,” inscribed on the UNESCO Uninhibited and territorially undeclared, the World Heritage list in 2014. UNESCO describes Daitō Islands’ colonization cannot be compared

7 15 | 1 | 2 APJ | JF to that of Korea or Taiwan. However, the development of key industries, R&D islands, together with numerous other islands infrastructure, and science education that laid in the Pacific, were colonized, settled, and the foundation of science and technology in exploited by Japanese entrepreneurs for the twentieth-century Japan.35 The crucial role purpose of extracting resources for Japan’s wartime mobilization played in the industrialization. One should also remember development of technology and industry has the colonization of Okinawa and Hokkaido in been well established among historians of the Meiji period. Phosphate in Rasa Island science and technology since Hiroshige Tetsu’s could not have become fertilizer for Japanese influential works in the 1970s.36 farmers without thousands of Okinawan laborers working there, whose migratory labor Lastly, Rasa Island also reminds us that the was a sad consequence of the Meiji colonization chemical industry is often missing in the of Okinawa. Industrialization required access to conventional narrative of Japan’s inexpensive raw materials, energy resources, industrialization. Chemical industry is widely and the market that colonies and informal acknowledged as an essential industry in the colonies provided; development of industrial industrial revolution, and this was especially so capitalism went hand in hand with imperial for Japan, where the first and second industrial expansion, as eloquently narrated inrevolutions took place almost simultaneously. Hobsbawm’s Age of Capital.34 Japan’s Economic historians usually date the second industrialization was no exception. period of industrialization between 1870 and 1914. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Second, Rasa Island also reminds us that wars momentum of early modernizing branches such were central to industrialization. The Meiji as textiles, iron and steel, steam engines and wars, the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo- railway transport had slowed in the industrially Japanese War, are missing from the website advanced parts of the West. As David Landes information on the Meiji Industrial Revolution describes, it was “the rise of new industries for whatever reason, but economic historians based on spectacular advances in chemical and know well how much Japan’s heavyelectrical science and a new, mobile sources of industrialization depended on the indemnity power — the internal combustion engine. . . the from the Sino-Japanese War and Japan’s cluster of innovations that is often designated expansion as a result of the Russo-Japanese as the second industrial revolution.”37 The War, in addition to the sheer fact that military second industrial revolution involved the needs boosted the business of the mining, changing organization of production, with the shipbuilding, iron and steel industries.economies of scale powered by hydrogenated Needless to say, the role of the Great European electrical power and the emergence of large War and the Asia-Pacific War needs to be firmly concerns that invested in not just technology, acknowledged in the story of Japan’s industrial as was the case earlier, but in new development, as exemplified by the Rasa technological systems. Electrochemical Industry’s history. WWI played a pivotal role industry was a vital feature of the second because the absence of European products industrial revolution. In Japan, the artificial provided a strong impetus and protection for fertilizer industry propelled this development. Japanese industries. Rasa Industry’s sale went It was the cutting edge industry that drove drastically up during the Great European War, industrialization in Japan and elsewhere in the and so did demands and sales for other first half of the twentieth century, alongside of businesses in the industrial sector in Japan. It the steel and mining industries monopolized by was during WWI that the Japanese government large zaibatsu that Meiji Industrial Sites implemented various measures to promote the enshrines. We can ponder the assessment

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Barbara Molony gives in her study of the most representative of what Japan considers its chemical industry in prewar Japan. According Meiji as well as its industrial past would be to to her, it was “prewar technology-intensive deny the diversity and breath of voices and industries — many of which were not zaibatsu- interests that compose a list like the METI’s. related — who pioneered most of the well- known areas of Japan’s modern high-tech The making of this list was part of METI’s economy” and “the archetypical prewar high- program to promote local economy, and this is technology industry” was the chemical fertilizer made clear in the first sentence of the report: company.38 “To invigorate local economy, it is extremely important to learn the path of our predecessors WHAT HERITAGE? and turn it into stimulation for the future. Modernization process from the Bakumatsu to It is not fair to say that Japan considers the early Showa period is especially and highly Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites the only significant as the foundation of the present-day important sites in the country. In 2007, the ‘Japan the great creator’ [monozukuri taikoku Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry Nihon] and the roots of major local (METI) presented its own list of industrial industries.”39 As the report includes a heritage sites in a report titled “33 Heritage discussion of how many tourists can be Constellations of Industrial Modernization.” expected from earning the status of heritage The list is interesting, diverse, and historical. It sites, METI’s initiative clearly is intended to included, among other things, sites oflink the preservation of industrial ruins with Hokkaido’s coal mining, agriculturalthe promotion of tourism for the declining local development, food processing and pulpeconomy. industry; mineral and oil mining in the Tohoku region; hotel and recreation industry; brick and Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites seem to signify cement industries; the Ashio copper mine and this same desire at the national level, the desire its surrounding electric power andto turn the industrial past into the post- transportation system; the Yokohama and Kobe industrial future. Ito Yûichirō, the governor of ports; soy source factories along the Tone Kagoshima Prefecture who acted as the head of River; textile factories in Osaka; and Okinawa’s the promotion committee of the Meiji Industrial sugar cane and Ishigaki’s coal mining. Here, Revolution Sites for the UNESCO inscription, dams and hydropower stations along the Kiso states that “I headed the promotion committee and Kurobe Rivers are listed, along with key because Japan needs to have pride as an industries such as fertilizer production and industrialized country by making clear the pharmacy, demonstrating a full awareness of pioneering role played by the steel, iron, the importance of the system, rather than shipbuilding, and coal mining industries in individual sites, of the industrial revolution. history. I believe the inscription of [these sites] The significance of the 1930s and wartime is provides an opportunity to look back at the acknowledged; the Kansai industrial area, for origins of industrial Japan and to revive example, is explained in the context of the Japanese economy once again.“40 Japan is transition from the light to heavy industry hardly unique in this regard. The UK and the through WWI, the 1930s, and wartime. The US started registering their industrial sites electrochemical/fertilizer industry features decades ago. As Smith writes, “In Britain, prominently on the list too, through figures heritage became synonymous with right-wing such as Noguchi Shitagau, the founder of politics and entrepreneurialism, with some Nihon Chisso. Overemphasizing the Meiji commentators associating it with Thatcherite Industrial Revolution Sites as the only or even cultural and social control and free market

9 15 | 1 | 2 APJ | JF enterprise.”41 and Albert Dock in Liverpool in the UK, which easily made it into the inscription list as Ever since the first inscription was made in exhibiting the “universal value” of human 1978, the World Heritage Sites list has grown civilization, non-Western late industrializers exponentially. By 1990, the list contained 335 would have to justify why mines and docks in sites, prompting heritage scholar Davidtheir countries are not just more of the same, Lowenthal to call the landscape “saturated with mere duplicates of the West. One of the most ‘creeping heritage.’”42 As of 2016, there are important factors behind the rise of World 1052 properties on the list. Many scholars Heritage Sites is the attempt to overcome what characterize this ubiquity of heritage — not Laurajane Smith calls Authorizing Heritage only World Heritage Site but also museums and Discourse (AHD), specifically Euro-centrism local heritage destinations — as a distinctive inherent in UNESCO World Heritage phenomenon of late-modern globalization. Committee selection. Because the World Heritage enterprise is based on the “universal Rodney Harrison, scholar of critical heritage values” initially conceived by the West and studies, has aptly summarized this: “Heritage management requirements overseen by mostly had shifted from a process of the production of Western or Westernized experts, its operations a public sphere in the eighteenth century to continue to reinforce Euro-centric views of one of nation-building in the nineteenth and what should be marked as heritage of the twentieth, to become concerned largely with world. Criticisms, protests, and movements by the management of redundancy and waste in indigenous heritage activists, critical heritage the late twentieth and early twenty-firstscholars, and non-Western representatives in 43 centuries.” The rise of industrial heritage sites the 1980s led to adjustments of the criteria. As in the late twentieth century is certainly a the door widened, more non-Western countries reflection of how far our society has been sought the World Heritage Emblem, although removed from the industrial revolutions. still almost half of the World Heritage Sites Deindustrialization rendered various industrial remain located in Europe.45 Japan’s vigorous sites obsolete and more suitable for museum attempts to get Meiji industrial sites took place exhibits. What to do with this material excess of in this context. Ultimately, however, the ports, factories, shafts, and so on that have no inscription of the Meiji industrial sites use any longer? A more flexible form of capital reinforces AHD, through the repeated phrase of accumulation in late capitalism has made the “first successful transfer” of Western heritage tourism an attractive industry, leading industrialization to the non-Western world as to an expansion of heritage sites beyond its universal value justification. This in fact ancient buildings and national parks. Gaining might be perhaps the only way to get non- the recognition of “heritage sites” makes those Western excess ruins acknowledged under redundant and waste re-usable again, as an AHD. Additionally, the Meiji industrialization attractive tourist destination. In this context, as sites needed to add another layer of meanings Harrison maintains, World Heritage became in order to accentuate their universal yet the most marketable brand, rendering the unique significance, that is, how those sites led “World Heritage Emblem” a sought-after to Japan’s prosperity and contribution back to 44 marking logo. the world. Here, there is no space for acknowledging Japan’s exploitation of colonial For non-Western countries trying to get on the labor or wartime aggression. None of the World UNESCO list, giving meaning to those ruins has Heritage Industrial Sites in Europe in fact an additional task. Unlike Ironbridge Gorge, acknowledge those things. By joining AHD, the Cornwell and West Devon Mining Landscape, Meiji Restoration story can be told, and can

10 15 | 1 | 2 APJ | JF only be told, in an equally triumphant and inexpiable sacrifice of Okinawa, and defeat and unreflective way as AHD has done. subjugation to the US. In terms of the myopic line the World Heritage Sites attempt to Rasa Island exhibits a universal story of establish between the Meiji Restoration and modernization and industrialization from its today’s Japan, Rasa Island has exhausted its first sighting to exploitation. It shows that the industrial utility as well as recycable utility for rise of mercantilism and imperialismpost-industrial Japan. But historians’ job is to authorizing conquering of the sea and new keep telling stories so that these forgotten sites lands, the exploitation of nature and human could come out of abandonment and into the labor, modern colonialism that justified this light of history and tourism. Criticism and system of exploitation, and the central role of tensions do produce dialogue. Criticism against wars and militarism were not just a “dark side” Gunkanjima and the wartime underground of the history that should be added to the tunnels did get people involved in discussing mainstream history for a moral or political what is to be remembered and what is to be purpose but were rather integral to the history neglected. It is my hope that numerous of industrialization. The Meiji Industrialabandoned places such as Rasa Island will Revolution Sites emphasize that the first encourage questioning about what is being successful transfer of Western industrialization forgotten through abandonment. Lowenthal took place in Japan. Rasa Island also shows the once wrote that “Heritage in Britain is said to successful transfer of colonization, exploitation, reflect nostalgia for imperial self-esteem, in and industrialization took place in Japan as America to requite angst for lost community, in Japan was integrated into the modern system of France to redress wartime disgrace, in commerce, empire, and international politics. It Australia to supplant the curse of European is not a glorious history. In contrast to steel, regency with indigenous antiquity.”46 In Japan, coal, and shipbuilding that could easily be I would say, heritage is to confirm Japan’s place linked to “Japan as No. 1” of the postwar in the world by insisting on its membership in period, Rasa Island could only tell Japan’s story Euro-centered universality, at a time when its of seabird slaughtering for profit, fertilizer post-industrial condition weakens the nation’s exploitation for the condemned empire,standing in world geopolitics.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Remembering Japan’s Industrial Development, Preserving its Dark Heritage

Edited by Hiromi Mizuno with Tze M. Loo

Tze M. Loo, Japan’s Dark Industrial Heritage: An Introduction

Miyamoto Takashi, Convict Labor and Its Commemoration: the Mitsui Miike Coal Mine Experience

Jung-Sun Han, The Heritage of Resentment and Shame in Postwar Japan

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Hiromi Mizuno, Associate Professor, History, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Notes

1 Bernhard Welsch, “Was Marcus Island Discovered by Bernardo de La Torre in 1543?,” The Journal of Pacific History 39, no. 1 (2004): 109–22. 2 Takara Kurayoshi, “The Senkaku Islands Problem as Seen Through Okinawan History,” Challenges for Japan-China Relations and Okiawa (March 2013), 100-101. 3 Hiraoka Akitoshi, Ahodori to teikoku nihon no kakudai (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2012), 70-83. 4 Jimmy Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). According to Hiraoka Akitoshi, seabirds and their excrements also drove Japan’s colonial expansion to the South Pacific. See Hiraoka, Ahodori to teikoku nihon no kakudai. 5 Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Michael Monteón, Chiele in the Nitrate Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). 6 Sato Hiroyuki, “Tsunetō Noritaka to hiryō kōbutsu chōsasho,” Chishitsu Nyūsu, no. 278 (Feb 1986): 36, 39. 7 Tsunetō Noritaka, Yo to rinkō no tanken (Tokyo: Tokyodō, 1936), 26. 8 Tsunetō Noritaka, Rasatō shinkei (Rasa Rinkō, 1919), no page number. 9 Rasa kōgyō kabushikigaisha shashi henshūsha, Rasa kyōgyō hachijûnenshi (Rasa kōgyō, 1993), 18-23; and Hiraoka, 194-5. Tsunetō’s career pattern resembles that of Takamine Jōkichi, internationally renowned chemist-cum-entrepreneur. Takamine worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce before he established Tokyo Artificial Fertilizer Company in 1877, the first superphosphate works to produce chemical fertilizer in Japan. The company changed its name to Japan Artificial Fertilizer Company in 1910 and became one of the largest chemical companies in Japan, Nissan Chemical Industries. Takamine went on to become one of the most successful Japanese entrepreneurs in the U.S. with the successful isolation and production of adrenaline and amylase that he patented. 10 Tsunetō, Rasatō shinkei, 19-21; and Hiraoka, 196. 11 Tsunetō, Rasatō shinkei, 15. 12 Tsunetō, Rasatō shinkei, 33-39. 13 Yamada Gentarō, Rasa tō no ippan (no publisher information, 1911), 4. 14 Rasa kōgyō hachijûnenshi, 36; and Hiraoka, 196-8. 15 Ishikawa Ichirō, “Superphosphate Industry in Japan,” Journal of Chemical Industry 24, no. 281 (July 1921): 63. 16 Chōfûsō tsurikyaku, Kaubeki kabu nijuunana shu (Tokyo: Imai sennosuke, 1920). 17 Rasa kōgyō hachijûnenshi, 46-8. 18 Rasa kōgyō hachijûnenshi, 59, 84, 92, 95. 19 Rasatō shinkei, 18-9. 20 Rasatō shinkei, 46, 62. 21 Rasatō shinkei, 48.

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22 Rasatō shinkei, 52. 23 Rasatō shinkei, 73. 24 Morita Yoshio, Rasatō shubitai ki: gyokusai wo kakugoshita heishitacih no ningen dorama (Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 2011), 96, 133. 25 Morita, Rasatō shubitai ki. The original was published in 1995 by Kawade shobō. 26 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuiding and Coal Mining,” [last accessed September 28, 2016 27 Takazane Yasunori, “Should ‘Gunkanjima’ Be a World Heritage site? The Forgotten Scars of Korean Forced Labor,” Japan Focus Vol 13, issue 28 (July 13, 2015). 28 China and advocates for former American and British POWs also complained about the nomination of these sites to World Heritage without acknowledging this negative page in history. William Underwood, “History in a Box: UNESCO and the Framing of Japan’s Meiji Era,” Japan Focus Vol. 13, Issues 26, Number 1 (June 2015). 29 “Shokasonjuku Academy,” Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Kyushu-Yamaguchi and Related Areas. [last accessed March 20. 2016]. This webpage has been replaced by a new web page created by the Japanese government’s Department of Industrial Heritage under Cabinet Secretariat. 30 Department of Industrial Heritage, Cabinet Secretariat, “Shokasonjuku Academy,” Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution. Last accessed on Sept 11, 2016. http://www.japansmeijiindustrialrevolution.com/en/site/hagi/component05.html 31 Underwood, “History in a Box.” 32 Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (London and NY: Routledge, 2006), 3. 33 UNESCO, “Tomioka Silk Mill and Related Sites,” World Heritage Centre, last accessed Sept 28, 2016, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1449 34 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Capital: 1848-1875 (London: Little, Brown, and Company, 1975, 1995). 35 James Bartholomew, The Formation of Science in Japan: Building a Scientific Tradition (Yale University Press, 1993); and Hiromi Mizuno, Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan (Stanford University Press, 2009). 36 For example, Hiroshige Tetsu, Kagaku no shakaishi (Tokyo: Chûō kōronsha, 1973). 37 ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 4. See also Joel Mokyr, “The Second Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914,” in The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 38 Barbara Molony, Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990), 2-3. 39 Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, “33 Heritage Constellations of Industrial Modernization” (2007) and “Zoku 33 Heritage Constellations of Industrial Modernization” (2008). The quote is in the first page of both 2007 and 2008 reports. 40 Sangyō isan kokumin kaigi, “Sangyō kokka nihon no genten: ‘Meiji nihon no sangyō kakumei isan’ o jisedai he,” Nyûsu letaa 6: 4. 41 Smith, Uses of Heritage, 39. 42 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), xv. 43 Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches (NY: Routledge, 2013), 81.

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44 Harrison, Heritage, 89. 45 Forty-nine percent, to be precise. See UNESCO, “World Heritage List Statistics,” World Heritage Centre, last accessed December 12, 2016. 46 David Lowenthal, “The Heritage Crusade and Its Contradictions,” in Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States, eds. Max Page and Randall Mason (NY: Routledge, 2004), 14.