Volume 11 | Issue 8 | Number 2 | Article ID 3903 | Feb 25, 2013 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Focus

Rule in the Name of Protection: The Japanese State, the Ainu and the Vocabulary of Colonialism 「保護」という名の支配ー植民 地主義のボキャブラリー

Komori Yoichi, Helen J.S. Lee, Michele Mason

By any measure, Japan’s modern empire was formidable. The only major non-Western colonial power in the twentieth century, Japan at the height of its empire controlled a vast Translation by Michele M. Mason area of Asia and numerous archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean. Its reach extended from Introduction to and Selection from Island north of the Japanese Reading Colonial Japan: Text, Context, and archipelago to the Solomon Islands in the Critique South Pacific and expanded into Manchuria, areas of China, Korea, and much of Southeast Michele M. Mason and Helen J.S. Lee Asia and Micronesia. Over the more than seven decades of Japanese colonial rule (1869-1945), Japan successfully naturalized two colonies (Ainu Moshir/Hokkaido and the Ryukyu Kingdom/Okinawa) into its national territory. The massive extraction of resources and extensive cultural assimilation policies radically impacted the lives of millions of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The political, economic, and cultural ramifications of this era are still felt today.

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ideological beliefs. In addition to forming economic and political structures, colonial powers enlist the participation of various institutions, educational processes, and publication networks, which produce “knowledge” that rationalizes the colonial order. By making available and analyzing a wide range of sources that represent “media” during the Japanese colonial period, we engage in a dialogue with scholarship in cultural studies and highlight the powerful role that language and imagination play in producing the material realities of Japanese colonialism.

Serving as the mainstay of the theoretical framework of Reading Colonial Japan are the following two premises: that colonial discourse never marshals a totalizing persuasive power and that colonial powers do not exert their authority through a single, cohesive, and consistent ideology. As formidable as is the Reading Colonial Japan aims to further deepen ideological capacity to determine reality, knowledge of Japanese colonialism(s),especially when backed by overwhelming providing both an eclectic selection ofmilitary force and economic privileges, there translated Japanese primary sources and always exist inherent contradictions, competing analytical essays that illuminate theideologies, and intersecting subjectivities. As specificities of Japan’s many and varied colonial the resistance movements in Taiwan and Korea projects. The primary documents, which span a suggest, not everyone was convinced of the variety of genres, serve to highlight the “benevolence” of the Japanese imperial project. centrality of cultural production andThe experiences of a collaborating colonial elite dissemination to colonial endeavors and to in Korea, a Chinese “coolie” in Manchuria, an accentuate the myriad ways colonialismOkinawan police officer, or a Japanese female permeated every facet of life. In the essays, the settler differed greatly as any individual’s place contributors are primarily concerned with within a group, and the empire was determined representation and rhetoric and how these by a number of shifting, and not infrequently intersect with operations of power. They incompatible, factors. In fact, one of the most investigate the workings of imperialistlaborious tasks of colonial authorities was to discourse through close readings of cultural police various levels of slippage that potentially representations in colonial narratives and undermined the order of the empire. imagery, revealing how the Japanese imperial project was understood, imagined, and lived. That said, no colonial project succeeds without The contributing scholars take as a premise substantial support from its citizenry. In fact, that colonialism is not simply a military quest, cultural production by a broad spectrum of legal process, or government-led project. “ordinary” Japanese citizens—for instance, a Rather, it is a complex cultural system, both in housewife in Manchuria, settlers in Korea, the formulation of underpinning ideology and manga artists and fiction writers in mainland the execution of policies backed by those Japan—functioned effectively to reinforce the

2 11 | 8 | 2 APJ | JF official political, economic, and cultural policies Protection Law (Hokkaido kyudojin hogo ho, that controlled and violated the lives of the 1899). Komori is a prolific and dynamic scholar colonized throughout Japan’s empire. Whether of literature, who frequently ventures far individual Japanese actively promoted the beyond the normal confines of the field. He is imperial project or quietly acquiesced to its sometimes considered an institutional and demands, they were, to varying degrees, intellectual outsider, due to having received his complicit with imperial ideology. Although a Ph.D. from Hokkaido University, his sharp young man volunteering for the army might criticism of political, economic, and social have been a conspicuous expression of loyalty injustice, and his on-going activism against to the imperial state, the works featured in changing Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. Reading Colonial Japan show that no one was While Komori is famous for his trenchant precluded from participating in the promotion readings of canonical writers, such as Higuchi and maintenance of the colonial campaign. Ichiyo, Natsume Soseki, and Miyazawa Kenji, Women, for instance, published “memoirs” that he is also firmly grounded in a school of literary mobilized colonial rhetoric and their promotion studies that is committed to providing historical of state policies in locally published cookbooks contextualization and understanding the power served imperial causes in significant ways well of language to determine and shape history. beyond the restricted domestic sphere of the home. Likewise, children’s manga, such as the Komori’s essay, entitled “Rule in the Name of Adventures of Dankichi, reveal both unsettling ‘Protection’: The Vocabulary of Colonialism” manifestations of racialized colonial(“Hogo” toiu na no shihai: shokuminchishugi no justifications and the unapologetic recruitment bokyaburarii, 1997) illuminates the juridical of Japanese children’s imaginary world and implementation of the Japanese state’s minds. In fact, every mode of expression was expansionist aspirations in Hokkaido through a mobilized to further the colonial agenda. If laws close analysis of the vocabulary and tone in the such as the “Hokkaido Former NativesHokkaido Former Natives Protection Law. This Protection Law” dramatically impinged on and regulation was ostensibly drafted to stabilize restricted the lives of the colonized, a variety of the lives of Ainu, who had lost their means of fictional works justified unequal powerlivelihood because of incursions into their relations between Japan and its many colonial homelands by Japanese colonizers. The law entities. Be it depictions of the naturescape in endorsed individual land grants and the Hokkaido that erased the existence of the adoption of Japanese agricultural practices as island’s indigenous population, or thethe best means to rescue Ainu from poverty. “retelling” of a violent legend of Taiwanese For those Ainu who complied there were also “barbarians,” literary depictions of the Other provisions for medical treatment and education joined forces with official arguments to shore for children. It might be better understood, up a colonial world order. Many Japanese however, as a program of forced assimilation, citizens from all walks of life consumed, which worked in tandem with other laws to accepted, and reiterated the implicit and undermine the ability of Ainu communities to explicit messages of such texts, therebysupport themselves in traditional ways and to participating in the imperial project in the most suppress their language, history, and cultural mundane, yet indispensible, ways. practices.

Below we showcase a translated essay by This work by Komori is significant as an early, Komori Yoichi, professor of Japanese literature and still rare, example of scholarship that at the University of , which is paired with clearly recognizes Hokkaido as a modern a translation of the Hokkaido Former Natives Japanese colony. His liberal use of scare quotes

3 11 | 8 | 2 APJ | JF in the original chapter functions to disrupt Japanese and Koreans in the colonial context. conventional meanings, emphasize the power Her publications include “Voices of the of naming, and highlight how words determine “Colonists,” Voices of the “Immigrants”: and obfuscate reality and history. In order to “Korea” in Japan’s Early Colonial Travel improve readability, we have eliminated some Narratives and Guides, 1894-1914” (Japanese of the scare quotes in the translation after a Language and Literature, 2007), “Writing term has been sufficiently established as Colonial Relations of Everyday Life in Senryu” deserving critical analysis. (positions: east asia cultures critique, 2008), and “Dying as Daughter of the Empire” This introduction and text are adapted from: (positions: east asia cultures critique, forthcoming). READING COLONIAL JAPAN: TEXT, CONTEXT, AND CRITIQUE edited by Michele Mason and Helen Lee Rule in the Name of “Protection”: The Copyright (c)2012 by the Board of Trustees of Vocabulary of Colonialism1 the Leland Stanford Jr. University Reprinted by permission from the publisher, www.sup.org. Komori Yōichi Michele M. Mason is assistant professor of Translation by Michele M. Japanese literature at the University of Mason Maryland, College Park. Her research and teaching interests include modern Japanese Two “Protection Laws” literature and history, colonial and postcolonial studies, gender and feminist studies, Building on the Emigrant masculinity studies, and the history and Protection Regulation of April 12, literature of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She is 1894 (Ordinance No. 42), the the author of Dominant Narratives of Colonial Emigrant Protection Law (Law No. Hokkaido and Imperial Japan: Envisioning the 70) was enacted on April 7, 1896. Periphery and the Modern Nation-State. Mason Then, the Hokkaido Former is the co-producer and interpreter for the short Natives Protection Law (Law No. documentary film Witness to Hiroshima (2010). 27) was officially announced on Her publications include “Writing Hiroshima March 1, 1899. This law, which and Nagasaki in the 21st Century: A New had been presented as a Generation of Manga” (The Asia Pacific Journal, government-sponsored proposal in 2009), and “Empowering the Would-be the preceding year, was based on Warrior: Bushido and the Gendered Bodies of the Hokkaido Natives Protection the Japanese Nation” Recreating( Japanese Law Proposal submitted by Diet Men, 2011). members Chiba Tanehide and Suzuki Mitsuyoshi in 1895. This Helen J.S. Lee is assistant professor of article aims to interrogate why Japanese studies at the Underwood these “protection laws” were International College, Yonsei University, Seoul, enacted like bookends on the Sino- Korea. Her research focuses on Japanese Japanese War (1894-1895) and settlers in colonial Korea, and her projects what precise kind of act the word employ the popular media, such as satiric “protection” denotes. poetry (senryu), travel narratives, and cartoons to investigate the race relations between To begin, there is one place in the

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Emigrant Protection Law where Korea 8,000, starting at 4,521 and the word “protection” is clearly reaching 12,303 persons. Then, used. Article 4 of the law reads, during the five years between 1896 “To protect emigrants, maintain and 1900, the United States public order, or when deemed suddenly saw an increase of necessary for diplomatic purposes, 26,000 Japanese, in Hawai‘i an the government may prohibit increase of 34,000, in Korea 3,000, emigrant voyages or revoke and in China 3,000, which amounts permission to take such voyages” to a precipitous growth exceeding (italics added). Moreover, Article 1 the preceding ten years. After the of the Emigrant Protection Sino-Japanese War, Japan was Regulation states, “By this decree facing a true overseas “emigration the definition of emigrant is a era.” Consequently, the emigrant person who for the purposes of service industry came into being, labor travels abroad, and the term and numerous problems emerged emigrant agents designates those between emigrant agents and people whose occupation it is to emigrants and even more so run agencies that recruit between the nation called “Japan” emigrants and arrange for the and the countries to which the emigrants’ travel abroad emigrants traveled. regardless of what they are called.” In a similar fashion, the The crux of the trouble becomes Emigrant Protection Law sought to evident from matters prohibited by supervise the relationship between the law. The aims of the “emigrant agents” and “emigrants” regulations included preventing through the licensing of national people from traveling abroad “administrative” agencies. That is without government permission, to say that the principal objective attempting to gain permission by of this protection law was to lying about one’s destination, “protect” emigrants from emigrant conducting the business of agents whose aim was commercial emigrant services without gain. governmental permission, and “recruiting emigrants by means of “Emigrant services” emerged as a deception.” What we must remain particular industry, and the reason cautious about is the seventh the state could ill afford to ignore article of the Emigrant Protection it concerned the rapidly increasing Law wherein it is stipulated that numbers of “emigrants” at the “only imperial subjects and, time. For instance, comparing the alternatively, commercial numbers of Japanese residing in companies that conduct the main foreign countries in 1885 and in part of their business within the 1895 reveals a dramatic jump; in imperial nation and whose the United States the number of stockholders or employees are Japanese rose by almost 5,000, solely imperial subjects can be from 1,090 to 6,156 persons, in considered ‘emigrant agents or Hawai‘i by 21,000 Japanese, from agencies.’” First, we understand 1,949 to 23,102 persons, and in by that emigrant services were chiefly

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conducted by commercial immigration to Hawai‘i, the offer companies, and, thus, an era was accepted, and the first group arrived when humans as labor of government-contracted commodities, in the form of emigrants was sent in February of emigrants, became the objects of 1885. By 1894, when the 26th commerce in the same way things group arrived, close to 30,000 become goods. Japanese had crossed over to Hawai‘i. However, we also notice an excessive insistence on the issue of In 1885, when Minister of Finance the interior of the “imperial Matsukata Masayoshi’s deflation nation.” The important point is that policies reached their extreme, commercial companies permitted poverty and starvation in rural to undertake emigrant services farming communities reached an had to be managed by imperial all time high due to overpopulation subjects only. Companies that were in the post-Meiji-Restoration era. involved with foreigners or foreign Japanese farmers who could not capital were denied emigrant make a living within the borders of service status. Here, the memory the nation of Japan, and who until of one incident involving that point had been forbidden to go emigrants, which occurred at the abroad, left, favoring Hawai‘i and beginning of the Meiji era, must California. The Republic of Hawai‘i have had an impact. In 1868, 148 was established in 1894 because of Japanese were transported to what an intervention carried out by the was at that time the Kingdom of combined efforts of U.S. ministers Hawai‘i by an American consul and pro-American forces the general, Eugene Van Reed. In the preceding year. From this year on, Kingdom of Hawai‘i there were the Japanese system of vast fields of sugarcane, and government-contracted emigration toward the middle of the was abolished and replaced by nineteenth century the private companies, which technological innovations in sugar functioned as go-betweens for production suddenly made contract emigrants. Consequently, advances, necessitating a massive situations exactly like those feared labor force of obedient farm in the Emigrant Protection Law workers. These Japanese, really actually developed in the year that labor commodities, were taken to this law was enacted. Hawai‘i in a manner equal to the slave trade. The Japanese In November 1896 the arrival of government, angered by this, emigrants on the shipToyomaru called off all emigration to Hawai‘i, occasioned a lawsuit, and in a ban that would last for seventeen February of the following year, 534 years, until 1885. When Walter Japanese were not allowed to Murray Gibson, who had been disembark when they landed in appointed premier in Hawai‘i in Honolulu aboard the Shinshumaru. 1882, petitioned to the Meiji Again, on March 20 the 163 emperor to reopen Japanese immigrants transported on the

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Sakuramaru were denied entrance Irwin — over 30,000 Japanese so- into Hawai‘i. The basis for these called emigrants were transported denials on the Hawaiian side was to Hawai‘i. In Hawai‘i, the the fact that the Japanese populations of Americans, emigrants lacked the fifty dollars Hawaiians, Chinese, and Japanese needed for status verification, as became roughly even. The stipulated in Hawaiian immigration politically cozy relationship regulations. What the private between King Kalakaua and emigration companies had been Chinese merchants provoked in the doing upon docking was to lend United States a sense of impending fifty dollars cash to those danger that Hawai‘i would be emigrants who lacked such funds taken over by Chinese immigrants. and then collect the fifty dollars In 1890 a tax law that was to once the emigrant arrived ashore. protect domestic American In other words, it was camouflaged sugarcane business interests was “show money.” In this way, enacted, and agitation by American according to the Hawaiian officials, owners of Hawaiian sugarcane the number of delinquent fields for the annexation of Hawai‘i emigrants continued to grow. At became stronger. In 1898, Hawai‘i the time the Japanese Emigrant became incorporated as a territory Protection Law was issued, one into the United States. could count nineteen such specialized emigrant companies in At this time, Japan’s central the nation. colonization policy was based in Taiwan’s colonial economy. On On the one hand, protecting April 17, 1895, the peace treaty for Japanese who emigrated abroad the Sino-Japanese War was signed meant, first of all, protecting in Shimonoseki, and it was decided imperial subjects from the profit- that China should pay the sum of driven emigrant enterprises that 300 million yen in reparations and committed illegal activities in both cede the Liaodong peninsula, Japan and the destination country. Taiwan, and the Pescadores On the other hand, the emigration Islands. Then on April 23, as is problem was also a phenomenon common knowledge, there was the that arose out of a rivalry between so-called “Triple Intervention” by the United States, which was Russia, Germany, and France over modifying its colonial policies the Liaodong peninsula. On May 5 toward Hawai‘i and developing its Japan accepted the naval military power in the Pacific recommendation to “return” the Ocean, and Japan, which formed Liaodong peninsula. Five days colonial strategies in opposition to later, on May 10, Admiral these moves. In the ten years Kabayama Sukenori was appointed following 1886 – the year an Taiwan’s first governor-general, emigration/immigration agreement and Imperial Guards, under the was signed by the Japanese foreign division commander Prince minister, Inoue Karoru, and Kitashirakawa, landed in Taiwan. Hawai‘i’s foreign minister, R. W. On June 2 China handed over

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Taiwan to Japan, but a resistance island Ainu Moshir, homeland of movement that opposed the ceding the indigenous Ainu, which was of Taiwan fought until October, unilaterally named “Hokkaido” by extending into the central and Japan in 1869. As we will see, the southern areas. Prince word “protection” in the Hokkaido Kitashirakawa died from an illness Former Natives Protection Law contracted in battle. Subsequently, fulfilled rather remarkably the role Japan reformed the governor- of concealing traces of that general mandate and a civilian invasion from the Japanese system replaced it on March 31, populace on the mainland. 1896. Invasion in the Name of Given that failed domestic “Development” governance forced Japanese unable to make a living within Ainu Moshir was designated a Japan to other countries, strategic bulwark against Russia’s southern expansion policies by the threatening the livelihoods of the new Meiji government. An 1869 inhabitants of those countries, it imperial inquiry reads: could be said that wars of colonial invasion and “emigration” fall Ezo is the northern gate of the under the same logic, namely as imperial nation. It is close to policies that attempt to solve Santan and Manchuria, and problems through incursion. At the although its boundaries are same time, the Emigration roughly settled, in the northern Protection Law was a necessary area there is a place where locals strategic move by Japan to address and people from abroad live international discord caused by together. The Japanese both of these varieties of Japanese administrators there, who have invasions. It was the case that enslaved the natives until now, efforts to exclude Japanese have been cruel in the extreme. immigrants, which had begun at The foreigners have been the end of the nineteenth century, exceedingly amiable; therefore, the grew even stronger in the natives are sometimes hostile to twentieth century. Under the our countrymen and instead have pretext of “emigrant protection,” reverence for the foreigners.2 the nation-state called Japan actually sought to “protect” its At this point in history, the interests vis-à-vis major Western Japanese appellation for Ainu powers, and it is within this Moshir was “Ezo,” or the Land of context that the term “protection” Barbarians, and the Japanese gains meaning. understood the geographical scope to include Sakhalin. The vague This history notwithstanding, in phrase “a place where locals and actuality, from the beginning of the people from abroad live together” Meiji era in 1868 until the indicates the presence of Russians. twentieth century the majority of Japanese are referred to as “our Japanese “emigrants” settled in the countrymen," while the term

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“natives” is chosen for the Ainu. through government agencies, using all of the nation’s However, in September of that resources appropriately, same year, in a letter by Sanjo enduring trifling matters Sanetomi addressed to the peaceably, and endeavoring Hokkaido Development Agency we not to subvert our larger can see several significant mission. changes. 4. Especially when building a September 1869 new country in a distant place, if one does not work in Development Agency: solidarity with government officials, far-reaching projects 1. Hokkaido is the imperial will never succeed. One nation’s northern gate and is an extremely valuable area. In should not debate who is accordance with the recent noble and who is not, but command to develop should approach everything Hokkaido, we must carry out with consideration and the deepest wishes of the sincerity and obey orders and imperial will. To that end, one not just pretend to do so. must follow the path of Minister of the Left3 caretakers, spreading civilization and deepening In August of 1869 Ezo was moral customs. renamed “Hokkaido,” and what the Japanese called “Karafuto” 2. As mainlanders gradually emigrate, they must cooperate (Sakhalin) was deemed to be a with natives, be productive in separate entity. Since this decision their occupations, and devote was predicated on Russia’s themselves to the civilizing encroachment upon Sakhalin mission. Island, this area was referred to as a “Russian mixed-residential 3. As for Sakhalin, where quarter,” and a logical framework mainlanders live among different from the one applied to Russians, one must be wholly Hokkaido was followed. Given that decorous, devote oneself to Sakhalin was a space where two reason, and not behave in a nations, Russia and Japan, thoughtless manner or take up confronted each other, “individual vices. Even in the case that personal conduct” was Russians are arrogant or do impermissible, and in the case that unjust things, one cannot trouble should arise, “one must go respond as an individual. In all through government agencies” and decisions, one must choose “consult with the consul” of Russia. rightly and consult with the In those situations when matters consul. Moreover, in those still could not be resolved, then “all cases where one experiences of the nation’s resources” would be difficulties, one must go brought to bear. In contrast, the

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area named Hokkaido was viewed into the category of “commoners,” as a territory without any such and at this time it became practice preconditions. There, Japanese to enter them into the record as officials employed the legal “former natives.” The Hokkaido terminology “ownerless land” by Development Agency carried out which European and American blatant assimilation policies, powers had earlier established the issuing most notably an order that “sovereignty” of their modern strictly abolished “customs” that nation-states by pushing through were deeply rooted in Ainu colonial strategies that ignored livelihood. indigenous peoples.4 Announcement to Natives: The “development” of Hokkaido was at the heart of an employment 1. Those people who engage scheme for former samurai whose in opening land will be previous special privileges were provided with a house, rescinded through the process of farming implements, and abolishing feudal domains and other things, and it is establishing prefectures in 1871. forbidden to burn the house of After the creation of the Hokkaido a deceased person and change Development Agency in 1869, residences, as has been “regulations for emigrant hitherto the custom. assistance” in the area 2. It is strictly forbidden for were put into place. These girls born hereafter to be stipulated: tattooed. Farmers will be provided housing, 3. Hereafter, the custom of a small stipend, farming wearing earrings is strictly implements, household items, a forbidden for men, but for the three-year food supply, and even time being, women may do as expenses for opening land, in they wish. addition to travel expenses. For merchants and artisans, capital for 4. One must make every effort building a house and a pecuniary to learn spoken Japanese, of allowance will be granted or lent. course, but also the rules of Some of these privileges will be written Japanese. available not just to individuals recruited by the Development Development Agency6 Agency but also to those who voluntarily resettle. Moreover, we In the first place, in the phrasing will establish facilities for those “people who engage in opening who are approved and relocate to land” there lies a their designated posts.5 notion that denies the With the promulgation of the fundamentals of Ainu life. Only Family Register Law Kosekiho,( people who open land and 1871), the Ainu were incorporated undertake farming are recognized.

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However, Ainu livelihood relied idea of the Hokkaido Development primarily on hunting and fishing, Agency’s director Kuroda Kiyotaka. not to mention the fact that they Kuroda, who had traveled to the did not have the concept of owning United States, invited Horace land or private ownership. Capron, commissioner of the According to the Ainu, Ainu Department of Agriculture under Moshir, or the Quiet Land of the authority of the victorious Civil Humans, was a collectively shared War general President Grant, as a natural world. Still, the Hokkaido foreign consultant to assist in Development Agency passed the “developing Hokkaido.” The offer Land Holdings Regulation in to Capron set his yearly salary at September of 1872, and land that 10,000 dollars and included had already been “opened and housing. Capron, after arriving in planted” was converted into Japan in 1871, ordered a survey by privately owned land, while, with forestry agents and chemists who the exception of areas that had had accompanied him from the previously been designated for United States, instructing them to government use or private “lease search for appropriate farming, land,” all of Hokkaido, as a logging, and mining locations. government-owned entity, was put America’s putative development up for sale to interested private path after the opening of the parties. This regulation was for the transcontinental railroad was put sake of none other than into practice in Hokkaido. That is “mainlanders.” Vast areas where to say, the strategic aggression Ainu were once able to hunt and against, and encroachment upon, fish were expropriated as land for American indigenous peoples by Japanese settlers. Anglo-Saxon “immigrants” were replicated by Japanese immigrants In a similar fashion, the rituals in Hokkaido, the homeland of the related to Ainu traditional views on Ainu. Capron, who advocated free life and death were denied, and migration and foreign capital, but Ainu were even forced to adopt the opposed to the bitter end the Meiji gendered customs of the so-called administration’s commitment to mainlanders. It goes without “development” through saying that the language of the government channels, returned Hokkaido Development Agency’s home in 1875. announcement is Japanese. The Ainu language, which did not have Then, in that same year there was a writing system, was not a turning point in Hokkaido’s acknowledged as a language. Thus, development due to the signing of Hokkaido became a place where the Russo-Japanese cooperation only mainlanders could live and agreement called the Sakhalin- prosper, and “cooperating with Kurile Exchange Treaty. The states natives” there was fundamentally known as Russia and Japan impossible. unilaterally divided up the territory of Ainu Moshir and drew the This was not, however, solely the countries’ borders in such a

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fashion that people of the same Development Agency, the central ethnic group were made to hold government decreed that every differing citizenship. Once the year 150,000 yen could be lent to national borders were fixed, 854 former samurai who applied to Ainu living in Sakhalin were migrate and settle in Hokkaido, forcibly moved to Hokkaido, and and the Regulation for the there were even cases in which Settlement of Former Samurai Ainu were coerced into relocating (1885) in Hokkaido was issued. to interior areas because This regulation gave extremely authorities feared they would privileged and favorable treatment escape back to their homeland. to former samurai from all prefectures who could not shoulder In 1876, William Smith Clark came the resettlement expenses, loaning to Japan on a contract to establish them interest-free capital for the Sapporo Agricultural College.7 opening land and even offering In the short period of one year, he payment plans that allowed a taught agricultural practices suited deferment for seven years and to Hokkaido’s climate and lifestyle, thereafter twenty annual converted students to Christianity, installments. Each household was and attempted to shape Hokkaido’s provided with approximately 8 landscape into the likes of a rural acres of land, and after this had farming community in New been opened it could be purchased England. at a low price. Under this Regulation for the Settlement of Thus, the origins of the Former Samurai, 300 samurai development of Hokkaido, to put it households “emigrated” to simply, lie in a system of invasive Hokkaido. Not only that, there immigration as relief for the were numerous legal devices put former samurai who had lost into place to “protect” the privileges that they had had as “emigrants,” who were mostly military personnel and government samurai. Of course, in the officials under the shogunal system background, the livelihoods of during the Tokugawa period Ainu, which were fundamentally (1600-1868). For example, in 1873, rooted in nature, were destroyed the Hokkaido tondenhei farming- by this process. militia system was created, which until 1890 mainly recruited former Thus, the term “protection” in the samurai as a crucial means to Hokkaido Former Natives provide them aid. By 1899, when Protection Law not only suppresses the Hokkaido Former Natives the over thirty years of history of Protection Law was issued, 7,337 the Japanese invasion and looting households totaling 39,911 people of Ainu Moshir, but also, in the were sent as “emigrants” to end, contains the intention to Hokkaido under this program. invert the situation so as to make it appear that it was the Ainu’s fault. In 1883, the year after the We should not forget, moreover, abolishment of the Hokkaido that the Hokkaidotondenhei

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farming-militia fell under the provided with medical treatment or Ministry of the Army’s expenses for medicine” and Article administration and participated in 7, “Children of destitute Hokkaido both the Sino-Japanese War and Former Natives who are attending Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) school will be provided with tuition as part of Japan’s imperial regular fees.” Article 9 states, “An army. These ostensible emigrants elementary school will be were therefore also an invading constructed with funds from the army. National Treasury in areas where there is a Former Native village.” The Discourse of “Ruin” For the Ainu this law meant ultimately to be controlled by the Article 1 of the Hokkaido Former science of hygiene and made into Natives Protection Law reads, Japanese citizens through a “Those Former Natives of “civilizing” mission executed Hokkaido who are engaged, or through the educational system. In wish to engage, in agriculture shall other words, to be subjugated in be granted free of charge no more the name of “protection.” than 12 acres of land per household.” As mentioned above, This colonial law claims its purpose this law applied only to those who is to make “former natives” “engage in farming” or those who independent by converting them to “wish to engage in farming.” farming according to “the Thoroughly permeating this law is Emperor’s wish for universal the idea that without converting to benevolence” and to “bestow the the practice of farming, one cannot honor of becoming imperial be recognized as a Japanese subjects” on Ainu through “citizen,” which completely assimilation and advancement via disregards the habitus of the Ainu, the educational system. However, who for many centuries had lived this assertion is made possible only by hunting and fishing. To force because the law presents “national the practice of farming on a people duty” within an assumed “logic” of who live by hunting and fishing is “survival of the fittest.”8 It goes none other than an act of violence without saying that it was the against their very right to a Japanese putative development of livelihood. Thus, this law Hokkaido that precipitated the constituted an attack on the Ainu’s crisis of Ainu society and that it entire arena of life, ranging from was not caused by the Ainu issues of physical health and themselves. Moreover, we must nutritional balance based on daily pay attention to the fact that the foodstuffs to worldviews, policies of “protection” and cosmology, and religious beliefs. “assimilation” themselves, essentially policies of Article 5 of the law reads, “imperialization” (making Ainu into “Hokkaido Former Natives who are imperial subjects), deployed in injured or ill but cannot afford colonial law hastened their “ruin” medical treatment shall be and not the other way around.

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Still, at this time when the Meiji opportunity to establish the government was creating modern ideology of assimilation centered “citizens” (by abolishing the on compulsory schooling, but former four hierarchal statuses – rapidly growing new academic samurai, farmers, artisans, discourses at the time also played merchants – and making all a significant role in the Japanese equal), the process of establishment of this ideology. The turning Ainu into “citizens” emerging scholarly disciplines through the phrase “former were anthropology, archeology, natives” paralleled the new and linguistics. The symbol of the designation of the outcaste class “ruin” of the was (hisabetsu burakumin) as “new comprehensively formulated by commoners,” positioning both these three academic fields, which groups on the periphery of the mutually drove each other on. concept of citizenship by fixing Those who created the their difference. Afterward, Japan’s fundamental premises of this new imperial rule over foreign peoples scholarship, as it turns out, were proceeded apace and Japanese foreign diplomats and foreigners leaders applied their experiences hired to work in Japan. subjugating the Ainu and took as their reference the Hokkaido There was, for example, English Former Natives Protection Law in consul Walter Dening’s research these new contexts. For example, on Ainu vocabulary, the study of consider the Korean Civil Name Ainu poison arrows by Dr. Stuart Change Order (1939), which forced Eldridge, who was Horace Koreans to take Japanese names, Capron’s underling in the or the suppression of “Takasago Hokkaido Development Agency, aborigines” in Taiwan. Also, the geological surveyor Benjamin “aboriginal school houses” built in Smith Lyman’s measurements of the mountainous regions of Taiwan Ainu bodies, the Ministry of were modeled on the “former Industry’s geologist John Milne’s natives’ schools” set up by the survey of the customs and Protection Law.9 language of the Sarudani Ainu, Austria’s legation’s official In practice, the enforcement of the translator Heinrich von Siebold’s Hokkaido Former Natives research on folk customs, zoologist Protection Law, which lacked any Edward Morse’s scientific surveys, budgetary support, did not proceed and Isabella Bird’s reports on Ainu as planned. However, as Murai life. Even Basil Hall Chamberlain, Osamu rightly points out, the professor at Tokyo Imperial emerging ideology found in it can University, visited the Ainu village be said to have formed the Biratori in 1887. Chamberlain foundation of the colonial policies developed the new academic fields of the Greater Japanese Empire. of “Japanese national language Not only did the promulgation of studies” and “Oriental comparative the Imperial Rescript on Education linguistics,” and he undertook (1890) represent a critical comparisons of Ainu and Japanese

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languages, myths, and place names points to the nationalistic backlash and even extended his efforts to against the activities of foreigners. the Ryukyuan language, A report by the 1893 investigative hypothesizing a theory of the committee on the Former Natives genealogy of the Japanese Education Law claims, “Ainu language based on the theory of schools have not yet been set up, evolution. so students begin their education in vain with foreigners. There is a Of course, it goes without saying school in Horobetsu that is that at the center of Ainu research managed by Batchelor. More than was the missionary John Batchelor. twenty Ainu accept his absolute After Batchelor came to control. The schoolhouse in in 1877 on a mission for the Harutori was built by Payne. Over Anglican Church, he began the forty children are being raised study of the Ainu language and there. It will be a national disgrace continued proselytization for the if we continue to look on as “salvation of the Ainu.” As the spectators.”10 numbers of converts increased, Batchelor established the Airen To somehow extract the Ainu from Charity School in Horobetsu the care of foreigners was an idea village in 1890 and endeavored to passed on since the days of the teach Ainu youths, but this became Matsumae domain’s domination in untenable since such activities Ezo during the Tokugawa era. This were illegal according to treaty thinking was not in the least bit stipulations. In 1892 he set up a different from when the 854 Ainu school in the Yachigashira area of were forcibly removed once Hakodate and educated Ainu Sakhalin became Russian territory. children who boarded there, and Without a doubt, one of the goals again in 1895, he taught twenty of the Hokkaido Former Natives Ainu girls, who were living with Protection Law was to extricate him in his home in Sapporo. In Ainu from the educational and 1892 he built an Ainu hospital in medical activism of foreigners and Sapporo, and, cooperating with the to place them under the auspices head of the Sapporo hospital of the state then called the Greater Sekiba Fujihiko, provided medical Japanese Empire. At the same time treatment to close to four hundred that the word “protection” Ainu over the course of four years. functioned to simultaneously In addition to Batchelor, separate the indigenous people of Englishwoman Miss Lucy Payne this internal colony from the set up a charity school in 1891 in “foreigners” and segregate and Harutori village in Kushiro and distinguish them from Japanese built “native schools” adjacent to a under the control of the Greater number of churches. Japanese Empire, this term also concealed the fact that the The state of education in Hokkaido successful Japanese colonial after the promulgation of the invasion known by the monikers Imperial Rescript on Education “immigration” and “settlement”

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thoroughly destroyed the roots of contact with civilization gradually indigenous culture and society. become extinct, which is a claim that can likewise be made Then, according evolutionary regarding the Ainu. When we think theories, the Japanese were carefully, however, it still retains positioned as early adopters of some vagueness. We must try to “civilization” and superior to the think of what could bring about a Ainu, and the discourse of cultural successful meeting of Ainu and anthropology, which reasoned with civilization. the oft-repeated idea that Japanese needed to protect the racially So, if someone should say the Ainu inferior and distinct Ainu race are steadily becoming extinct since it was suffering a crisis of because the Japanese have “ruin,” gained footing through the imparted civilization to them, well, work of Japanese anthropologists. that is an explanation hard to swallow. To be sure, since the In 1893, the first courses in , the development anthropology at Tokyo Imperial of Hokkaido has progressed yearly, University were launched. The and the more Hokkaido improves, “Koropokkuru Debate” that the more worsening hardships are developed between Tsuboi created for the Ainu. This may be Shogoro (1863-1913), who adhered obvious. As the land is further to the Edward Morse school of reclaimed, the animals they hunt thought, and Koganei Yoshikiyo [bear] and the fish they catch (1859-1944) of the Erwin von Bälz [salmon], among other things, school, was quite famous, and in decline. This is perhaps 1894 the Hokkaido Anthropological undeniable. Compared with Society came into being and the civilized people, barbarians colonization of knowledge generally need a great expanse of continued.11 The following is a land. That is to say, since the portion of a speech given by barbarians do not know how to Koganei in the year before the adopt farming of their own accord, Hokkaido Former Natives taking and eating that which is Protection Law was proposed in produced by nature, they require the National Assembly: quite a large area of land. As more Japanese come to settle and open So then, as scholars from Japan land, from a perspective of people- and abroad have said, the people to-land ratio, the land area called Ainu are not capable of decreases, and, owing to this, the acquiring civilization, the same as Ainu’s struggle to survive becomes the world’s ordinary barbarian increasingly difficult. This is for races. As for the reason for this — the Ainu a considerable hindering that these barbarian races are obstacle. Whether Ainu can unable to acquire civilization — overcome this obstacle or not — there is the argument that this is a matter of life or death. In civilization is like a poison to them, other words, because survival will and barbarian races that come in become more challenging, I believe

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that if Ainu cannot manage to operates an unfounded assertion survive through work, they will that the Japanese are civilized. inevitably gradually decline.12 Based on this definition, Koganei produces a logic that assumes that Koganei’s speech is replete with the so-called civilized Japanese contradictions. He starts by stating race has been charged with the that “As Hokkaido progresses” via mission to protect the barbarian “development,” “worsening Ainu race that is becoming extinct. hardships are created for the Ainu.” It is none other than the Once colonial invasion is justified Japanese, who, under the name of under the rhetorical devices of development, usurp Ainu hunting “civilization” and “race,” the and fishing grounds, privatize their schema wherein the Japanese did territory, and convert it into the protecting and the Ainu were farmland by “reclaiming” the the ones protected towers as if a forests. Up to this point, his scientific truth. This logic was not argument is founded upon the applied just to the Ainu race. It historical realities of Hokkaido and was shared by the linguist its colonization. However, the Kindaichi Kyosuke, who tried to argument that the responsibility of “protect” the literary heritage of “imparting civilization” to the Ainu the Ainu traditional oral epics falls to the “Japanese” affirms the (yukar) from “ruin.” In this way, colonization of Hokkaido and the hidden behind the language of Japanese settlement there. Not protection, the colonial crimes of only are the Ainu a “barbarian the Greater Japanese Empire and race,” it is asserted, they are also the truth of the circumstances “incapable of acquiring forced on the Ainu, wherein the civilization,” the latter being a Japanese were obliged to protect common characteristic of the the Ainu who were destined to “world’s ordinary barbarians.” extinction, were concealed and Therefore, it is suggested, the Ainu erased from historical memory. barbarian race is fated to “extinction.” Recommended citation: Komori Yoichi, Michele M. Mason and Helen J.S. Lee, “Rule in the This is Koganei’s irrational logic. Name of Protection: The Japanese State, the The impoverishment of Ainu Ainu and the Vocabulary of Colonialism,” The livelihood caused by Japanese Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 11, Issue 8, No. 2, colonization and emigration is February 25, 2013. attributed to problems with the Ainu “race.” On the one hand, we Articles on related subjects have the “Japanese race,” which was able to adopt civilization, and, • Simon Cotterill, Ainu Success: the political on the other hand, the “barbarian and Cultural Achievements of Japan’s race” of Ainu, who naturally go Indigenous Minority “extinct” when they come into contact with “civilization.” As a • Mark Winchester, On the Dawn of a New result, within this discourse there National Ainu Policy: The "‘Ainu' as a Situation"

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Today. silk and colored beads.

• Yukie Chiri and Kyoko Selden, The Song the 3 Kaitakushi nisshi 4 (Journal of the Owl God Himself Sang. "Silver Droplets Fall Development Agency 4) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku Fall All Around," an Ainu Tale shuppankai, 1987).

• Katsuya HIRANO, The Politics of Colonial 4 Hanasaki Kohei, “Ainumoshiri no kaifuku: Translation: On the Narrative of the Ainu as a Nihon no senjyuminzoku Ainu to Nihon kokka "Vanishing Ethnicity" no taiainu seisaku” (The Restoration of Ainu Moshir: Japan’s Indigenous Ainu and the • ann-elise lewallen, Indigenous at last! Ainu Japanese State’s Policies toward the Ainu), in Grassroots Organizing and the Indigenous Iwanami koza gendai shakaigaku 15: sabetsu to Peoples Summit in Ainu Mosir kyosei no shakaigaku (Contemporary Sociology Vol. 15: Sociology of Discrimination and • Chisato "Kitty" O. Dubreuil, The Ainu and Coexistence), ed. Inoue Shun et al. (Tokyo: Their Culture: A Critical Twenty-First Century Iwanami shoten, 1996), 93-108. Assessment 5 Takakura Shinichiro, Ainu seisaku shi (The • David McNeill, Oda Makoto, Pak Kyongnam, History of Ainu Policy) (Tokyo: Nippon Tanaka Hiroshi, William Wetherall & Honda hyoronsha, 1942), 401. Katsuichi, The Diene Report on Discrimination and Racism in Japan 6 Kaitakushi nisshi 2 (Journal of the Development Agency 2) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku • Joshua Hotaka Roth, Political and Cultural shuppankai, 1987). Perspectives on Japan's Insider Minorities 7 [Translator’s Note] Smith was a professor of Notes chemistry and president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College from 1867 to 1879. He is 1 [Translator’s Note] Komori’s essay first most famous in Japan for his parting words, appeared in the book Media, hyosho, ideorogii: which were, according to legend, “Boys, be Meiji sanjyunendai no bunka kenkyu (Media, ambitious!” Representation, Ideology: A Study of the Culture of the Third Decade of Meiji), eds. 8 Utari mondai konwakai (Ainu Issues Komori Yoichi, Kono Kensuke, and Takahashi Discussion Group), 1988. Osamu (Tokyo: Ozawa shoten, 1997), 319-34. I would like to thank Kim Tongfi, Inoue Makiko, 9 Murai Osamu, “Kindai Nihon ni okeru nation Masayuki Shinohara, and Leslie Winston for no soshutsu” (The Construction of the Nation in their invaluable help with this translation. A Modern Japan), inIwanami koza, special thank you to Komori Yoichi for allowing gendaishakaigaku 24: minzoku, kokka, us to include this essay in our volume. esunishitei (Contemporary Sociology Vol. 24: Race, the Nation-State, and Ethnicity), ed. 2 [Translator’s Note] In previous centuries Inoue Shun et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, Japanese were under the mistaken notion that 1996), 117-38. Hokkaido was geographically close to Manchuria and Santan, an area in China. It is 10 Takakura, Ainu seisaku shi, 571. true that historically Ainu conducted what Japanese called “Santan trade” with various 11 [Translator’s Note] This debate emerged out groups on Sakhalin for Chinese goods, such as of a larger discussion of the “racial” origins of

18 11 | 8 | 2 APJ | JF the Japanese. Tsuboi argued for the existence Richard Siddle’s discussion in Race, Resistance of a non-Ainu Neolithic people, based on his and the Ainu of Japan (London: Routledge, discovery of an Ainu legend that spoke of a 1996), 81-84. “dwarf-like people” (kor-pok-un-kur in Ainu, 12 koropokkuru in Japanese) who had preceded “Ainu no hanashi” (Stories of the Ainu), Ainu settlement, while Koganei suggested that Kokumin shinbun (Kokumin Newspaper), Mar. the Jomon people, known through27, 1894 (emphasis added). [Translator’s note: archaeological evidence, were in fact Ainu. See The interpolations “bear” and “salmon” appear in the newspaper article.

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