Imperial Japan at Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire's 2,600th Anniversary 9780801471827

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The National History Boom
2. Mass Participation and Mass Consumption
3. Imperial Heritage Tourism
4. Touring Korea
5. Touring Manchuria’s Sacred Sites
6. Overseas Japanese and the Fatherland
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University The Weatherhead East Asian Institute is Columbia University’s center for research, publication, and teaching on modern and con­ temporary East Asia regions. The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contempo­ rary East Asia.

imperial

japan at its zenith

The Wartime Celebration of the Empire’s 2,600th Anniversary

kenneth j. ruoff

cornell university press

Ithaca & London

Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges support for the publication of this book. Support came from the History Department of Portland State University, the Center for Japanese Studies of Portland State University, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Copyright © 2010 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2010 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2014 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ruoff, Kenneth James. Imperial Japan at its zenith : the wartime celebration of the empire’s 2,600th anniversary / Kenneth J. Ruoff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4866-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8014-7978-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Japan—Centennial celebrations, etc. 3. Japan—Historiography.

2. Japan—History—1926–1945.

4. Nationalism—Japan—History—20th century.

I. Title. DS888.5.R86 2010 952.03'3—dc22

2010011453

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Paperback printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Jean, and Patrick, Megan, and Carolyn

cont e nts

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

1

1. The National History Boom

27

2. Mass Participation and Mass Consumption

56

3. Imperial Heritage Tourism

82

4. Touring Korea

106

5. Touring Manchuria’s Sacred Sites

129

6. Overseas Japanese and the Fatherland

148

Conclusion

180

Notes

189

Index

223

il lu st r at ion s

Black and White Images

1. Serving the throne    36 2. The Imperial Army on the march    44 3. Stone monument commemorating National Foundation Labor Service Brigades    64 4. Sho ˉgetsuan pastry shop advertisement plugging its imperial pastries    89 5. Postcards showing the “Fatherland” Hyuˉga and the “Rapidly Progressing” Hyuˉga    91 6. Map showing Emperor Jimmu’s ocean voyage    92 7. Peasant girl in Takachiho    94 8. Postcard of National Foundation Labor Service Brigades    100 9. Advertisement for mementos of visits to sacred imperial sites    103 10. The 2,600th anniversary commemorative imperial tomb chart    104 11. Government-General Building, Keijo ˉ (Seoul), Korea    110 12. The Gyeonghoeru (in Japanese, Keikairo ˉ) Palace Hall    110 13. Korean residential area in colonial-era Keijo ˉ (Seoul)    111 14. Chart of Imperial Japan’s commercial air routes, 1940    114 15. Chart for “Sightseeing Korea from the Train Window”    116 16. Glass greenhouse in Keijo ˉ (Seoul)    120 17. Racist cartoon from time of Russo-Japanese War    133 18. Postcard commemorating “Pilgrimage to Port Arthur’s Sacred Battle Sites”    134 19. The Dairen (Dalian) airport, circa 1940    136 20. “Coolies” at work at the port of Dairen (Dalian)    137 21. Shinkyo ˉ shrine    139 22. The Kanjo ˉshi battle site memorial    140 23. Palace of Emperor Pu Yi    141

ix

24. 25. 26. 27.

The Seishin Mosque in Shinkyo ˉ 142 The Nanryo ˉ battle site memorial 143 Kenkoku chu ˉreibyo ˉ, Shinkyo ˉ 144 Cartoon from Sakamoto Gajo ˉ’s “The Three Periods of Pioneering”: Asia 155 for Asians 28. Cartoon from Sakamoto Gajo ˉ’s “The Three Periods of Pioneering”: 155 Celebrating the end of Western imperialism 29. Congress of Overseas Brethren flag 158 Color Images   

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Map of Empire of Japan, 1940 The golden kite The yatagarasu guiding the direction of Japan’s modern imperium The amalgamation of Japan and Korea Seminal moments in Emperor Jimmu’s life Japan’s alliance with the Reformed Government of China and with Manchukuo The National Foundation Labor Service Brigades flag Record jacket and recording of the “People’s 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Song” Advertisement for National Foundation scroll Jacket cover of postcard set about the “Our Ancestors” exhibition Brochure advertising “Kagoshima Prefecture, Sacred Place in the Origin of the Fatherland” The Ametsuchi Tower Postcard set commemorating visit to Kashihara Shrine and Mt. Unebi Advertisement by Daitetsu Railways touting its service to sacred imperial sites Commemorative stamp from the Bukkokuji (Pulguksa) Temple Station Commemorative postcard set of Port Arthur battle sites Imperial-era tourist map of Ho ˉten (Mukden or Shenyang) Postcard showing an “Authentic Native Street” in Dairen (Dalian) Shinkyo ˉ Memorial Tower Postcard sent by father visiting Manchuria to his family in Tokyo Guide to the Congress of Overseas Brethren in Celebration of the 2,600th Anniversary of the Empire of Japan Congress of Overseas Brethren publicity poster

x   Illustrations

ack now l e dgmen ts

This book originated with a research trip to Japan made in the summer of 2000 in order to finish my study of the monarchy in postwar Japan, which was subse­ quently published in late 2001. As I thumbed through some of the countless docu­ ments that survive about the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, its scope intrigued me. In the process of researching and writing this book, many of the same people on both sides of the Pacific who had helped me with my first book again gave generously of their time and ideas. I also encountered new friends and colleagues whose assistance was critical. At an impromptu breakfast at the International House of Japan in November 2001, Carol Gluck suggested that among the possibilities that I outlined for the next book project, the 2,600th anniversary celebrations option seemed the most promising. She supported the project from the beginning, and arranged for it to be published in Columbia University’s Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute monograph series. Madge Huntington and Daniel Rivero of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, working with Carol Gluck, arranged for an especially thorough initial review of the manuscript. I am grateful to that anony­ mous reviewer, who offered many suggestions for improvement that were incor­ porated into the final version. A Fulbright grant supported fieldwork in Japan in 2004, and additional field­ work in Japan as well as research trips to South Korea and China in the summer of 2005. For this generous support, I am grateful. Takagi Hiroshi kindly spon­ sored me as a visiting research scholar at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyo ˉto University during my term as a Fulbright scholar. Not only did he navi­ gate the bureaucratic side of arranging for and facilitating my research stay, but he also was a source of advice in every imaginable area throughout my fieldwork. Mizuno Naoki, a specialist in modern Korean history, also offered important ad­ vice when I began researching Japanese tourism to Korea. The library staff at Kyo ˉto University, especially at the Interlibrary Loan Department, enabled my research and located obscure documents held by libraries throughout the archi­ pelago. Ogawa Yoshihisa, his family, and his staff at the Nana Pacific Corporation

xi

were instrumental in arranging various aspects of my family’s stay in Kyoto, in­ cluding lodging, and for their assistance we are grateful. Takami Katsutoshi took time off from his busy schedule to assist me in locat­ ing obscure documents and, in a broader sense, supported the project from the moment he learned of it. During the course of the project, Hara Takeshi emerged as a friend and source of advice for understanding and researching the history of modern Japan. He read an unpolished version of the manuscript in English, offering not only advice on how to improve it but also suggesting to publishing companies the value of a Japanese version. The Asahi Newspaper Publishing Company will publish the Japanese version at approximately the same time as the English version appears from Cornell University Press (and in the Weatherhead East Asian Institute monograph series). It is a pleasure to work with such skillful editors at the Asahi as Shimamoto Shu ˉji and Oka Eri. Kimura Takahisa, retired from Kyo ˉdo ˉ News, will render my English prose into elegant Japanese, as he has done so skillfully over and over these past years. Takahashi Hiroshi, retired from Kyo ˉdo ˉ News, used his unparalleled network and his extensive knowledge of imperial history to facilitate my research, as he did many times when I was researching the earlier book on the postwar monar­ chy. Among many examples of his assistance, he put me in touch with Tsunoda Mitsuo, chief of Kyo ˉdo ˉ News’ Sendai office in 2004. Tsunoda graciously located documents that helped me better understand the background to and also to con­ firm the survival of the “2,600th Anniversary Culture Dome.” Richard Samuels read an early version of the manuscript and offered perti­ nent suggestions, and then later read the nearly final version of the introduction, again offering valuable advice. He also introduced me to Roger Haydon, his long­ time editor at Cornell University Press, whose guidance I have now enjoyed in the later stages of completing this project. Roger Haydon commissioned the second anonymous review, which became a guide for better developing the thematic side of the book. I hope my expression of thanks to both of the anonymous review­ ers is clear in the form of the adoption, in the final version, of their thoughtful suggestions. Todd Henry read the manuscript in its entirety and made valuable sugges­ tions. He also generously shared documents and directed me to relevant secondary materials. Andrew Bernstein offered advice about the section on tourism when it constituted only one chapter (he promptly advised me to divide it). Eiichiro Azuma read chapter 6 on “Overseas Japanese and the Fatherland” and made several suggestions that were incorporated into the final version. Carter Eckert di­ rected me to sources that allowed for incorporation of aspects of the Korean side of the story of tourism during the colonial era, and Yongsuk Song translated from Korean into Japanese a pertinent essay on Korean heritage tourism during the 1920s and 1930s. Enid Ruoff tirelessly read successive versions of the manuscript to weed out typos and stylistic inelegancies. Walter Edwards arranged for me to be hosted, during a research trip to Miyazaki Prefecture, by a group of mostly elderly but all courageous members of

xii   Acknowledgments

the Association to Examine the Facts of the “Peace Tower.” This citizens group is committed to exposing the underside of Japan’s wartime history. Sugio Norichika, Kodama Takeo, Saita Keiichiro ˉ, and other members of this association helped me to complete within days research on wartime tourism to Miyazaki that other­ wise might have taken weeks. Hwang Sun-Ik, then a graduate student in modern Korean history at Kookmin University, helped guide me to locations in Seoul that corresponded to sites featured on the bus tour of that city popular among Japanese tourists during the colonial era. Later, he periodically offered advice about other aspects of the project. Richard Smethurst directed my attention to scholarship about the state of Japan’s economy, within the global context, in 1940. Laurence Kominz, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University (PSU) during the time the book was written, was a supporter of the project from beginning to end. Linda Walton, chair of the History Department at PSU during the same period, was equally unfailing in her support. Victoria Belco identified readings about Fascist Italy that provided me with a comparative framework. Friedrich Schuler read sections of the manuscript and shared his own research with me. Chia Yin Hsu also read portions of the manuscript and helped me better understand how the Soviet Union did and did not fit into the midtwentieth-century Euro-American world order. Student members of seminars on “Japan in 1940” and “Japan in World History” read the manuscript as part of their assigned readings and, collectively, offered suggestions that improved the final version. Marvin Kaiser, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at PSU, has been a supporter of Japanese studies and of my own research. A special thanks is due to the many generous donors to our Center for Japanese Studies who make it a vibrant intellectual entity on campus and in the Portland metropolitan area at a time of declining state support for higher education. Their donations have helped support many valuable programs and research projects. Bruce and Cindy Brenn, Sho and Loen Dozono, Adolf and Gabriele Hertrich, Yoshio and Nikki Kurosaki, Bob and Sharon Lewis, Tim and Martha McGinnis, and Sam Naito represent the wide circle of community supporters of the Center for Japanese Studies. Suwako Watanabe politely responded to what must have become a tedious series of requests for help in identifying the most likely reading for Japanese names. The Interlibrary Loan Office at PSU, over a period of nearly ten years, pro­ cured for me a surprising range of sources, mostly otherwise forgotten items that I identified in electronic databases while sitting at my office computer. Toward the end of the project, Uchida Shin’ya and Takako Wolf provided crucial research assistance. In addition to the comprehensive research support provided by the Fulbright Program, this project was financially underwritten at crucial junctures by other organizations. These include the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies as well as PSU’s Center for Japanese Studies, Friends of History, Faculty Development Committee, and the Department of History.

Acknowledgments   xiii

Thanks are due to family on both sides of the Pacific. Hidenori Suzuki, Yoko Suzuki, and Akiko Suzuki have been family ever since they hosted me as a for­ eign exchange student in 1987. During the subsequent two decades they have remained a source of friendship and support even as I have watched them move through different stages of their lives, providing important insights about everevolving Japan. In Portland, Oregon, Jean and our children Carolyn, Megan, and Patrick are no doubt glad that the book is finished. Its impact on their lives has been significant. Our stay in Kyoto for my research, while broadening, was nonetheless disruptive of Jean’s career and also of the children’s schooling and friendships. For their personal sacrifices made then and since in the name of the book, I have transported home many packages of Yokumoku cookies and of authentic Hi Chew candies during subsequent trips to Japan, and the flow of these prized items shall continue. Below are explanations of stylistic issues. Asian personal names appear with the surname (family name) first except in the cases of Asian Americans or Asian scholars based in the United States who publish in English with their family name appearing after the given name. The place of publication of all Japanese books and other sources is Tokyo unless otherwise indicated. Japanese terms commonly spelled without the designations of long vowels have been included in the com­ mon, recognizable way (e.g., Tokyo instead of Toˉkyoˉ) except when such terms appear in the names of companies and organizations as well as in titles of books. Designations of long vowels are also omitted from citations when the original source did not include them. This represents a stylistic mix, but it seems utilitar­ ian, especially for readers who are not specialists. Along the same lines, there are a few exceptions to the form of romanization otherwise used in the book. For example, the name of the first (mythical) emperor appears as Jimmu, which is more commonly recognized than Jinmu, which would have been in line with the manner in which almost all other Japanese terms have been rendered into romaji. For English translations of the titles of Japanese publications, I included quotation marks in cases where no standard translation exists, and omitted quotation marks in instances when an acceptable, standard translation exists. A word about place-names is also required. Although it may expose me to erroneous charges of seeking to reinforce the imperialistic order, I have chosen to employ Japanese names for various places in Korea and Northeast China. The reasons for this are twofold. First, during the period that this study covers, Japanese tourists thought of, for example, Seoul by the name that the colonial authorities had given it: Keijo ˉ. Use of this contemporary term gives a better sense of how Japanese experienced the city as tourists. Second, I would argue that far from legitimizing the imperialistic order, drawing attention to the fact that colo­ nial authorities appropriated to themselves the right to rename places provides the reader with a better sense of the gap in power between the imperialists and their subjects.

xiv   Acknowledgments

Finally, permit me an explanation of the decision to omit a bibliography. For anyone interested in examining the sources cited in this book, full references are provided in the notes. Listing the many additional books and essays that contrib­ uted to my thought processes during these past years would have required extra pages at a cost that did not seem to justify the return.

Acknowledgments   xv

Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

int r od u ct ion

In 1940, individuals inside and outside of government in Japan staged one of the most comprehensive and grandiose national commemorations ever, the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of the Empire of Japan. The Japanese defined themselves, their country, and their empire through these anniversary celebrations of Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement in 660 BC. The celebrations represented the climactic moment for the “unbroken imperial line” (bansei ikkei ) ideology that was central to modern Japan’s identity until the imperial cult’s legitimacy was bruised by defeat in 1945. These celebrations provide a window through which to examine Imperial Japan (1890–1945) at its zenith.1 It is not uncommon for the contrivance of a founding moment to be part of the process of creating and maintaining a sense of nation, as was the case with Japan (Emperor Jimmu never existed). For example, according to the historian Christopher Hughes, the propagation of a Swiss sense of nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also involved something of a contrivance of a founding moment even if the event chosen in Switzerland’s case was, unlike Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement, an actual historical event: “The year 1891 was the year of the great jubilee of the foundation of the Confederacy in 1291, that is to say in this year that date was finally and irrevocably declared to have been the instant of time when Switzerland was founded. The sense of nationality and the pathos of history were given their modern form, although the full fruition of the new patriotism came later.”2 Japan’s twenty-sixth centennial could be compared to many national commemorations, but one that resembles it both in terms of the outrageous extent of historical continuity attributed to what was a modern nation-state and also in the crediting of the monarchy for this lengthy continuity and unity was the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire staged by Iran in 1971. It was presided over by their imperial majesties the Shahanshah Aryamehr and Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi. The book Land of Kings was one of several English-language publications issued on the occasion of Iran’s 2,500th anniversary that transmitted the official storyline of these gala celebrations, a narrative broadly similar to the official

1

message of Japan’s earlier 2,600th anniversary celebrations: “The title ‘Land of Kings’ reflects that monarchy was—and still is—the main factor in the survival of Iranian nationhood. The secret of Iran’s unique ability to withstand the devastating forces of 2,500 years of history lies in the guidance from the throne.”3 Contrived or otherwise, foundational moments tend to loom large in many national histories. The anniversaries of such events provide useful opportunities for commemorations. Memory is central to identity, and national memories shape national identities. National commemorations, which reinforce the collective memory that is so important to maintaining a sense of national community, inform us about definitions of national identity. Organizers of Japan’s 2,600th anniversary celebrations did not contend with the sort of festering wounds and societal divisions directly linked to the foundational moment that have plagued, for example, commemorations of the 1789 Revolution in France.4 If anything, the ancient, not to mention mythical, nature of Japan’s foundational moment celebrated in 1940 conveniently rendered it almost entirely free of baggage. Although some scholarly tracts of the time questioned the veracity of the first thousand years of imperial history, on the positive side the mythical nature of the foundational moment meant that no faction of Japanese could still feel aggrieved by, say, Emperor Jimmu’s conquests.5 The reasons for the lack of contention derived not simply from the fantastic nature of the narrative of national foundation, according to which Emperor Jimmu, the great grandson of Ninigi, the first imperial ancestor to descend from heaven to the land below, carried out the directive of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu to extend the blessings of imperial rule to the remote regions by founding, at the conclusion of his six-year Eastward Expedition (goto ˉsei  ), the imperial dynasty in 660 BC. The widespread celebrations of the 2,600th anniversary of the establishment of the imperial dynasty did not take place in the context of a democratic society. Dissent against the imperial dynasty, the defining feature of Imperial Japan’s polity, was no more tolerated in 1940 than was dissent against the Nazi Party in Germany or criticism of the Fascist regime in Italy at that time. Although by 1940 Japan shared much in common with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, there were also differences that were evidenced in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Japan never experienced a clear fascist break along the lines of Italy in 1922 or Germany in 1933, and this shaped the way that the past was commemorated. In 1932, with great fanfare, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) opened the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, which, according to the art historian Marla Stone, “recreated, through a mélange of art, documentation, relics and historical simulations, the years 1914 to 1922, as interpreted by fascism after ten years in power.”6 Although this exhibition, which proved tremendously popular, was similar to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations in the sense that it was designed to create a unifying sense of national identity, it was different from the 2,600th anniversary celebrations because it was also crafted to legitimize the new regime’s recent break with what preceded it.

2   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Along the same lines, the Nazi Party rallies at Nuremberg over which Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) presided were clearly designed to create a supercharged sense of national identity, but the recent rupture with the past was not only unavoidable but celebrated. These Nazi Party rallies trumpeted the party’s contemporary policies and also commemorated the Nazi Party’s lonely and thus all the more “heroic” activities in the decade preceding the party’s victory in 1933. Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany might portray 1922 and 1933, respectively, as moments of national rebirth that constituted the beginning of a stage of national history that would end in utopia. But their repeated vilifications of the previous political system suggested that, as far as Nazi and Fascist officials were concerned, memories of the pre-Nazi and pre-Fascist years remained annoyingly fresh among Germans and Italians. In contrast, Emperor Hirohito (1901–89) presided over commemorations of the twenty-sixth centennial of the Empire of Japan. The ancient nature and fundamental continuity of Japan’s polity, however imagined this narrative of the nation might have been, was the dominant theme in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. The notion of “Japan’s unparalleled national polity” (banpo ˉ muhi no kokutai ) referenced not only the unbroken imperial bloodline, the structural center of Japan’s polity, but also a whole range of values said to be uniquely Japanese, virtuous, and primordial. Rarely defined with precision, the pervasive term kokutai implicitly referenced all that was good and unique about Imperial Japan. The twenty-sixth centennial celebrations commemorated the organic inseparability of the imperial dynasty and the nation established simultaneously on 11 February 660 BC. This was said to be the precise date of Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement. Thus, Japan’s putative origin not only predated the country’s borrowing of (or corruption by) Chinese civilization by a millennium, but also trumped, in its ancientness, the Christian era by six centuries. Empirical evidence indicates that Japan’s imperial dynasty originated around the fifth century AD, making it an ancient, although not unbroken, imperial line even without the addition of one thousand–plus years of fictionalized history. However, a national origin that postdates the origin of Christian civilization and is chronologically parallel with Japan’s adoption of civilization from China undermines claims of superiority by virtue of ancientness and independent development, the storyline featured in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. This is not to claim that Japan’s celebration of an ancient national origin necessarily proved more powerful than similar celebrations of the nation in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but rather that Japan’s narrative differed in one important sense. Nonetheless, in Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy alike, purveyors of the past manipulated and in some cases even hallucinated history, especially ancient history, in order to legitimize the present. Some studies of Japan’s emperor system portray it as unique (for good or for bad), as though it existed outside of global trends, but as a form of nationalism it shares numerous commonalities with the experiences of many modern nation-states.

Introduction   3

An Overview of the Book This is a study of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations and, more broadly, of Japan in 1940. The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 examines how the 2,600th anniversary celebrations accelerated a boom in national history. National history at the time was largely “imperial history” (ko ˉkokushi  ), that is, the history of the nation through the lens of the 2,600-year-old imperial dynasty. At the time of the anniversary celebrations, various vectors of memory, from children’s books to reenactments to museum exhibitions, were employed to transmit the basic narrative of national history, with particular stress on the moment of origin. The 2,600th anniversary celebrations were designed not simply to shape memories of national history that are important to maintaining a collective sense of nationhood but also to codify various aspects of this history, especially details relating to the foundational moment. Chapter 1 also introduces what proved to be a messy spectacle of various parties (e.g., localities) making competing claims to chapters in the narrative of national foundation, and analyzes the corresponding official effort to provide clarity to events that supposedly had transpired twentysix centuries previously. Distinguished academicians, as members of governmental committees, helped render judgments about competing claims to the locations of what were eventually designated Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites. University professors of history as well as of other disciplines employed the trappings of empirical social science to authenticate a national history now widely held to be fictional. At the time, there was precious if any room for imperial history that did not serve the interests of the state, but the active cooperation of so many prominent academicians in legitimizing specious national myths is notable. Many of these same scholars, in addition to serving the state by providing their academic stamp of authenticity to government reports, also capitalized on the national history boom by publishing national histories with commercial presses. Both the publishing houses and the academicians profited from this symbiotic relationship.7 Wartime nationalism intensified consumerism, which in turn hyped nationalism. Three works of national history popular at the time of the 2,600th anniversary merit detailed analysis for their employment of historical paradigms imporˉ kawa Shuˉmei’s (1886–1957) “History tant to understanding Japan in 1940. O of Japan through 2,600 Years” and Fujitani Misao’s (1901–84) 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire each sold hundreds of thousands of copies. What makes these two bestsellers interesting is not simply their patriotic fervor but rather that they popularized interpretations of national history that were in vogue in Japan in 1940 but which have been largely displaced subsequently. These include the cult of the pioneer, which supported contemporary emigration policies, and the mixed-race (mixed-nation) theory of the Japanese nation, which provided a model for incorporating the many different races and ethnic groups comprising the Empire of Japan.

4   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

The third popular work of national history examined, Takamure Itsue’s “History of Women through 2,600 Years,” is also interesting for its embrace of the mixed-race theory, but more significantly it represents a rare example of the use of imperial history at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations to challenge aspects of the status quo rather than to glorify it. Takamure (1894–1964) did not dispute the centrality of the imperial house in Japan’s history, but she did highlight the role of women in the national history in order to challenge the patriarchy of the time. This female scholar cleverly employed imperial myths to call for returning the status of women to a level equal to men, as had been the case, according to Takamure, in Japan’s past. Chapter 1 concludes by comparing the manipulation of history in Imperial Japan with similar uses of history in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Chapter 2 examines phenomena that overlapped and frequently spurred on each other, participation in and consumption of the anniversary celebrations. Between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese government regularly called upon all imperial subjects to observe, en masse, precisely timed rituals celebrating the nation. These rituals required the 105 million imperial subjects dispersed throughout the wide expanses of the empire, including colonial subjects in places such as Korea, to participate, for a minute or so, in a mass commemoration of some aspect of the nation. In one newspaper ad, the Matsushita Wireless Company reminded readers that only owners of radios such as Matsushita’s own Nashonaru (National) R-4 M could be assured of performing such rituals at precisely the correct moment. During the 2,600th anniversary year, such precisely timed rituals were performed twelve times, an average of one ritual per month. The regularity with which these rituals, which employed simultaneous mass participation to reinforce the sense of nation, were carried out in wartime Japan may have no parallel in the experience of other nation-states. Volunteer labor service brigades were another means by which Japanese participated, in this case literally with their hands, in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. For example, in the two years leading up to the anniversary year, more than 1.2 million volunteers came to Nara Prefecture to expand and to beautify the topography of imperial sites in this prefecture that was home to many imperial tombs and important shrines. Although there was an economic side to this movement that provided millions of hours of volunteer if unskilled labor, the labor service movement was primarily a form of hands-on citizenship training. What better way for Japanese to grasp the awesome significance attributed to the foundational moment than to improve the roads and paths leading to Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum? The fact that such voluntary labor served primarily spiritual rather than economic goals is evidenced by the fact that many of the volunteers took time off from their regular jobs to perform it. Many volunteers also combined their labor service at sacred heritage sites with visits to additional nearby national heritage sites popular on the tourist circuit at the time. Although this labor service was never institutionalized to anywhere near the same degree as was labor service in Nazi Germany through the Reich Labor Service and in the

Introduction   5

United States through the Civilian Conservation Corps, it was comparable to the Reich Labor Service in its pedagogical function. Newspaper companies and department stores played leading roles in encouraging mass participation in and consumption of the 2,600th anniversary. By 1940, newspaper companies (and, in a more general sense, the print media) and department stores were two of the three most significant civil-society sponsors of the cultural events that were a feature of Japanese middle-class life at the time. The third sponsor of such events, private railway companies, played a role at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations in fostering what I term imperial tourism—tourism to heritage sites in Japan proper that magnified the history of the imperial line, as well as the practice of Japanese from throughout the empire taking tours of colonies recently brought under the modernizing hand of imperial rule.8 Newspaper companies and department stores, although they remained private enterprises in 1940, operated under the watchful eye of the Japanese state by that year. Nonetheless, profit more than civic duty motivated them to function as promoters of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Newspapers and magazines had long employed contests to attract readers, and in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary they sponsored many contests on themes relating to national history. Fujitani Misao’s bestseller 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire originated as the winning entry in a contest sponsored by a newspaper company, one of many examples of how contests encouraged both participation in and consumption of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Besides contests, newspapers employed many other means designed both to encourage mass commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary and to boost profits. Department stores, which functioned as leisure sites as well as retail shops, served as important hosts for exhibitions designed to raise public consciousness about the foundational moment and the 2,600-year national history. The department stores’ staging of such exhibitions continued long-standing practices. Historians including Louise Young, Jordan Sand, and Kim Brandt have stressed the central role played by department stores in the 1920s and 1930s in defining modern consumer tastes through floor displays and lavish exhibitions.9 The historian Hatsuda To ˉru has demonstrated that in comparison with their counterparts in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Milan, Japanese department stores featured exhibitions only indirectly related to the selling of products with unusual regularity.10 One point that has not been stressed enough, however, is that through these exhibitions department stores were cultural arbiters of all aspects of modernity, including its underside. In 1940, a year of growing sales, department stores hosted, in addition to the regular assortment of art shows, exhibitions on topics such as racial eugenics and numerous exhibitions glorifying the unbroken imperial line ideology employed at the time to justify Japan’s expansion by military means.11 For department stores and newspaper companies alike, the focus was on how to capitalize on the anniversary celebrations by encouraging “2,600th anniversary consumption.”

6   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine another form of wartime mass consumption, imperial tourism. Wartime tourism, including national heritage tourism, is a topic that has been largely neglected by scholars of Japan. Historians of the interwar period understand that tourism, which has a long history in Japan, was an important aspect of the consumer culture that assumed a critical mass by the 1920s.12 However, the fact that tourism (kanko ˉ)13 remained vibrant in the late 1930s, peaked in 1940 even though by that year Japan was in its third year of war in China, and continued to be popular into 1942 (the year after Japan commenced hostilities with the United States and Britain) may come as a surprise to individuals who insist on portraying this period as a “dark valley” characterized by widespread suffering by the Japanese people.14 Consider that in 1939 the Hoˉten (Mukden or, in contemporary Chinese, Shenyang) branch office of the Japan Tourism Bureau ( JTB) published a short, inexpensive (10 sen, or about 2.5 cents; the exchange rate in 1940 was approximately ¥4 to the dollar) travel guide to Nankin (Nanjing), a city then under Japanese military control.15 Nanjing was touted as a city where beautiful examples of traditional Chinese architecture could be seen. At the time, Nanjing represented an exciting potential travel destination for middle-class Japanese more so than the site of what later would be recognized as an infamous massacre that had occurred only the previous year. The historian Nakamura Koˉya (1885–1970), who authored the History of Japan (1939) for the Japanese Government Railways Board of Tourist Industry’s English-language tourist library, was among the Japanese who visited Nanjing and other cities in China at this time, paying particular attention to sites of recent battles between Japanese and Chinese forces.16 Tourism and authoritarianism/militarism/fascism may seem incongruous, but the construction and reinforcement of religious and political ideologies often involves moving bodies around to scripted sites.17 Until the war situation deteriorated precipitously in mid-1942, tourism thrived under Japan’s authoritarian government precisely because it often served, or at least could be justified as serving, official goals. That will not be surprising to those familiar with the “national tourism” movement in Latvia between 1934 and 1942 under the authoritarian rule of Kârlis Ulmanis (1877–1942), the Francisco Franco (1892–1975) regime’s establishment in the late 1930s of a circuit of tourist sites designed to portray their foe, the Republicans, in the ongoing Spanish Civil War as utterly depraved, the role played by the “Afterwork” (Dopolavoro) organization in Fascist Italy, and especially the role played by the “Strength through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude, or KdF) leisure-time organization in Nazi Germany.18 The Japanese government never instituted a leisure-time organization comparable to the KdF even though it had been one of the first governments to take an active role in fostering tourism, especially tourism from abroad. Nonetheless, state agencies played instrumental roles in encouraging and steering travel in wartime Japan. Although governments can force their citizenry to do many things, such as serve in the armed forces, regimes as a rule do not employ coercive measures to make their citizens engage in leisure travel although they can and certainly do

Introduction

7

endeavor to direct travel. The Japanese government in 1940 encouraged patriotic Japanese to visit certain scripted sites, but it did not force individuals to undertake personal trips by train, bus, car, steamship, or airplane, as so many Japanese did that year. Tourism is generally thought of as a voluntary activity, making its ideological role all the more interesting. Chapter 3 stresses that the phenomenon of millions of tourists flocking to imperial heritage sites in Japan proper such as Kashihara Shrine, located on the spot where Emperor Jimmu was putatively enthroned, at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations evidences the people’s agency in embracing the unbroken imperial line ideology. Such heritage tourism was a form of “self-administered citizenship training,” regime affirming though it was. The emperor system is often portrayed in terms of powerful state agents indoctrinating passive imperial subjects, symbolized by the specter of schoolchildren, under the supervision of their teacher, reciting the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) that formally defined citizenship in terms of loyalty to the imperial house. Such a dichotomy does not capture the complexity of state-society relations in wartime Japan, however. Chapters 4 and 5 analyze Japanese wartime tourism to Korea and to Manchukuo, that is, to the inner zone of Japan’s empire, a cohesive bloc defined substantially by the railway network that connected it.19 Chapter 4 analyzes tourism to Keijo ˉ, as the Japanese termed Seoul, as well as tourism to Korea overall. Chapter 5 investigates tourism to Ryo ˉjun (Port Arthur) in Manchuria, the site of a landmark victory by Japan’s military during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), and to Shinkyo ˉ, as the Japanese termed present-day Changchun when it was the capital of Manchukuo. Studying tourism to the administrative capital of Korea ( Japan’s most important formal colony), Port Arthur (a sacred battle site exemplifying the theme of Japanese sacrifices on the continent), and the capital city of Manchukuo (the crown jewel in Japan’s empire in 1940) informs us about the power of tourism to shape edifying impressions of empire. For many reasons, including first and foremost economic factors, few Japanese from Japan proper visited the colonies compared to the millions who toured the archipelago, but the story of intraempire tourism is significant nonetheless. The historian Soyama Takeshi has documented how under Japanese rule Taiwan’s development, from the placement of railway lines to the opening of hot springs and seaside resorts to the pacification of mountainous areas, which allowed for safe viewing of the aborigines as well as for mountain climbing (Mt. Niitaka was the highest point in the Empire of Japan), was shaped by the colonial authorities’ desire to promote tourism.20 The Taiwan Government Railways stressed in an advertisement directed at Americans and Europeans that “Civilized life of modern style, Exotic life of South China, Primitive life of the aborigines, CAN BE SEEN IN THE ISLAND.”21 Taiwan and the other colonies were marketed in a similar manner to Japanese leisure travelers. In the same way that travel to imperial heritage sites in Japan proper was marketed as a ritual of citizenship, travel to the colonies was marketed as a means for patriotic Japanese to understand better the importance of the colonial project.

8   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

This included grasping the appropriateness of Japan’s “continental policy,” in other words its policies in Manchuria and China. Even after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which sparked the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), travel was officially endorsed as contributing to the national mission in spite of general campaigns to encourage frugality. The Cabinet Information Bureau (CIB; established in 1937 as a department) was the government’s propaganda arm. By 1940 almost every issue of the CIB’s Shashin shu ˉho ˉ (Photographic Weekly Report ) included an example of frugality so heroic that it suggested that Japanese who consumed anything more than the bare essentials were unpatriotic.22 And yet throughout 1940 this weekly magazine also regularly featured advertisements encouraging Japanese to travel to nearby patriotic sites and overseas to the colonies. In the 21 February issue, the South Manchurian Railway Company urged readers to visit Manchuria to see their country’s continental policies firsthand.23 Efforts by government agencies and the civil sector to promote tourism to the colonies were in tension with more noted (or infamous) official policies, however. This was the case most notably in reference to assimilation. Consider Korea, where the forced Japanization of the local population was intense. For Korea’s tourism world—for individuals who made their living at least in part through tourism and government officials interested in promoting tourism—it was imperative that Korea continued to feel Korean to visitors. Too much assimilation was seen as an impediment to developing the tourism sector, which helped underwrite the costs of the colony. Japan’s colonial policies were often contradictory as interests outside and within the colonial bureaucracy pursued goals in tension with each other. The focus on imperial tourism conveys the interrelatedness of the various areas of the empire (for a map of the Empire of Japan, see the color insert, figure 1). Studies of Imperial Japan that either ignore the empire or separate the empire from the story of Japan proper are problematic because they do not acknowledge how mutually influential these areas were.24 Willard Price begins his 1936 travelogue Pacific Adventure with a description of Japan’s imperium that is worth quoting at length because it forces us, his quaint terminology aside, to think beyond the archipelago: In the latitude of Alaska’s Aleutians, stand on the Manchu-Siberian border among heavy-booted horse-odorous Mongols and bearded Russian lumberjacks and look down a well where the July heat has not yet dissolved the ice of last winter when the temperature was forty degrees below zero. Then move southward, ever southward, through White Russian Harbin, through construction-crazy Hsingking [Shinkyoˉ], through Manchu and Chinese Mukden [Hoˉten], through Korea, land of galvanized hermits, then through the feverishly overflowing ant hills of Japan proper, on south through the brawny Bonins, through Formosa where Chinese have forgotten China but savages have not quite forgotten head-hunting, through the Marianas where half-Spanish Chamorros go to early mass, wear mantillas, and play guitars,

Introduction   9

through Polynesian-Melanesian Yap of the crimson loin cloth and grass skirt. Tie up at last to the equator and watch canoes of bronze gods coming across the blue blaze of the lagoon in search of a bit of ice from the ship’s refrigerator to temper the heat of eternal summer. And try to realize that you have been in Japanese domains all the time!25

The history of Imperial Japan cannot be reliably interpreted from the perspective of today’s Japan, that is, with a focus on Japan proper (naichi) to the exclusion of the empire. Studies of the colonies (gaichi) in isolation from the so-called mother country are hardly any better, for the colonies were linked to Japan proper, and the metropole linked to the colonies, in ways that studies of the colonies apart from Japan proper fail to explain. Accounts of Imperial Japan that focus only on the archipelago are incomplete not only because they ignore the effect of Japan’s imperialism on colonized peoples but also because they fail to account for the experiences of Japanese residing outside of Japan proper, both in areas under and outside of Japanese political control. At the time of the 2,600th anniversary cele­ brations, Japanese emigrants residing in areas outside of the formal and informal empire—outside of Japan’s sphere of political authority—and colonized imperial subjects alike raised questions about the definition of the Japanese nation. Chapter 6 analyzes the Congress of Overseas Brethren in Celebration of the 2,600th Anniversary of the Empire of Japan held in Tokyo in November 1940. One of the many commemorative events staged in 1940, the Congress of Overseas Brethren provides a window into the Japanese “diaspora,” by which I simply mean the dispersion of Japanese from Japan proper. The Japanese were never stateless, unlike the Jews, for example. The extent of the dispersion from Japan proper in the years before the collapse of the empire is sometimes masked by the repatriation of more than six million Japanese, a figure that includes military personnel, after Japan’s defeat in 1945.26 Writing the history of Imperial Japan, already complicated by the question of how to account for the colonies, is made all the more difficult by the issue of where to situate the communities of overseas Japanese located in areas outside of Japanese political control (e.g., Brazil). These communities are nonetheless part of the story of Imperial Japan. The Congress of Overseas Brethren has attracted the attention of a few historians based in the United States who have focused mainly on the experiences of delegates from Hawai’i and the United States; my focus in chapter 6 is on employing the Congress as a mechanism to examine the dispersion from Japan proper in broader terms.27 As has been true of other diasporas, Japanese migration patterns both inside and outside of the empire were often lateral rather than simply representing a direct line from Japan proper, a factor that complicates telling the story in a convenient national or even binational manner. For example, in the 1930s many college-educated individuals of Japanese descent residing in Hawai’i and the continental United States reemigrated to Manchuria where, in an environment free of racial discrimination against the Japanese, they found professional positions befitting their background.28

10   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Where exactly the histories of overseas Japanese communities, including those communities that have subsequently disintegrated, are best “placed” is no simple matter. For example, in which national history does the story of Japanese communities in colonial Korea belong, to that of Korea or of Japan? Perhaps the transnational confusion combined with their subsequent disintegration explains the relative sparseness of social history on Japanese communities in the colonies.29 Although many repatriated survivors of the cataclysmic collapse of the empire have published personal accounts, they tend to focus disproportionately on the suffering brought on by the disintegration of the empire rather than on the communities themselves.30 In the same way that national borders influenced the experiences of the overseas Japanese themselves, such borders have shaped the way that the histories of these diasporic communities have been written and situated.31 The fact that the complex and diverse experiences of these overseas Japanese communities intersect with many national histories other than that of Japan does not, however, negate the fact that they also belong in a history of Imperial Japan. To include the story of these overseas Japanese in a history of Imperial Japan is not to legitimize, however, the facile manner in which Japanese officials at the time laid claim to all individuals of Japanese descent, wherever they resided and whatever their citizenship. Before, during, and after the Congress of Overseas Brethren, government officials invoked blood ties in designating overseas Japanese as members of the nation and in exhorting these overseas Japanese to support Japan’s official policies. Although the modern centralized state was in place before Japanese began to emigrate in large numbers, the early stage of emigration nonetheless overlapped with official campaigns to propagate a standardized sense of Japanese nationality throughout the archipelago, including in the newly incorporated areas of Hokkaido and Okinawa. These two prefectures came to be thoroughly accepted as part of Japan proper only in the early decades of the twentieth century. Lumping together under the category of “Japanese emigrants” all the individuals who departed the area now known as the archipelago of Japan suggests the presence of a sense of national affiliation that might have been inchoate among some of the early emigrants. The case of Okinawa highlights some of the ambiguities that are often lost in national narratives of emigration. Okinawa was formally incorporated into the Japanese nation-state in 1879. Subsequently, Okinawans emigrated in large numbers, to mainland Japan, to areas within the empire, and to areas outside of Japanese political control, where in some cases they constituted a majority of the local “Japanese community.” Both inside and outside of the empire, however, Okinawans faced discrimination from the Japanese. The historian Tomiyama Ichiro ˉ has documented campaigns undertaken by Okinawa immigrant associations within the empire to eradicate “Okinawaness” in order to gain equal footing with the dominant Japanese.32 The scholar Robert Arakaki has argued that Okinawan immigrants in places outside of the empire suffered the status of

Introduction   11

“double minority” because they were lumped by the local, dominant white community into the category of Japanese (a minority community subject to racial discrimination) even as they typically suffered discrimination from within that Japanese community.33 Emigrants’ ties to the regions from where they had departed, not simply among emigrants from Okinawa but among those from various other regions as well, were often crucial features of overseas communities that are described simply as “Japanese.” At the time of the Congress of Overseas Brethren, however, the Japanese government overlooked the recent nature of the nation itself in laying claim to all individuals who had emigrated from the archipelago. The Nazi Party and the Italian Fascists similarly finessed history in nationalizing overseas “German” and “Italian” communities. In the same way that attempts by Nazi Party and Fascist Party officials to enlist overseas Germans and Italians in support of official policies were the products of ideologues in Berlin and Rome, attempts by Japanese ideologues to situate overseas Japanese within the Japanese nation often gave little attention to the all-important factor of place of residence, or to other factors such as ethnic assimilation.34 The Congress of Overseas Brethren was primarily directed at overseas Japanese residing in areas outside Japan’s political authority, the ones most in danger of losing their Japanese identity. Japanese officialdom’s simplistic basing of membership in the national community on blood ties often showed little concern for the diverse local environments in which overseas Japanese, especially those in the Americas, found themselves, nor did it take into account individual aspirations. A central irony of the Congress was that even as organizers and participants alike bandied about the claim that blood alone united the Yamato race,35 much of the Congress focused on the question of how to maintain, through cultural means, a sense of Japanese-ness among overseas Japanese, especially among the second generation born and raised outside of Japan. Overseas Japanese, especially members of the second generation, and colonial subjects within Japan’s imperium faced similar issues regarding whether to assimilate to the dominant culture, but lineage dictated the extent to which these two groups were extended citizenship in the Japanese nation. A study of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations lends itself to an analysis of numerous issues central to Japan’s modernity. These include the invention of national history; the convergence of “fascist modernity” with empire and militarism; the active involvement not only of state actors but also of the masses of Japanese people in endorsing and promoting imperial ideology and expansion, often through forms of self-administered citizenship training; the significance of the positive feedback loop in wartime whereby patriotism spurred mass consumerism and consumerism spurred patriotism; the need to look at wartime Japan as a symbiosis of “light” and “dark” rather than reinforcing the misleading notion of the period as one blanket “dark valley” for imperial subjects; the necessity of studying Imperial Japan as the empire that it was rather than examining Japan proper in isolation from the colonies and vice versa; the difficulty of defining

12   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

with precision the boundaries of the Japanese nation during the imperial era; the significance of Imperial Japan’s challenge to Euro-American claims of racial and cultural superiority; and the benefits and pitfalls of comparing wartime Japan with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as well as of comparing Japan with nonAxis yet similarly modern nation-states of the time. The Documentary Record The primary organizers of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, the Cabinetlevel 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau (est. 1935) and the semigovernmental, semicivil Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary (est. 1937), intended for this national commemoration to be remembered for eternity. A central component of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations was the compiling of a vast official documentary record of the commemorative activities. The official records facilitate the study of many but by no means all aspects of the anniversary celebrations. The official textual and photographic records of the celebrations were compiled into sixteen lengthy volumes published in 1943.36 One indication of the extent of detail provided in these volumes, the most prominent of the many official records, is that volume 5 provides a complete list of the more than fifty thousand individuals honored to be in attendance at the most prestigious event of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, the ceremony (shikiten) held in Tokyo on 10 November 1940 over which Emperor Hirohito presided. Individuals in attendance at this meticulously planned event included the empire’s elite as well as foreign representatives. The 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau and the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary also commissioned the Japan Film Company (Nihon eigasha) to record the yearlong, diverse celebrations using the most modern medium available. The hour-long documentary produced by the Japan Film Company, “Revering the Founder’s Work” (Tengyo ˉ ho ˉsho ˉ; 1941) brings to mind the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens; 1935) directed by Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003), the best visual record of one of the Nazi Party’s Nuremberg rallies. Drawing a strict division between the “official” and “civil” spheres in the Japan of 1940 is perilous, especially when one takes into account the existence of numerous hybrid semiofficial, semicivil organizations as well as the considerable influence that the government could exert over private enterprises (e.g., over newspaper companies). The official records of the twenty-sixth centennial include a list of what the organizers of the celebrations interpreted as the 126 most important public-minded organizations at the time, only a fraction of the total number of civil or hybrid civil/official organizations then in existence. They range from well-known ones such as the Imperial Military Reservists Association to ones rarely mentioned in history books, such as the Japan Student Swimming Federation, but all were called upon to mobilize their members for the 2,600th

Introduction

13

anniversary celebrations.37 The Japanese state already had numerous intermediary associations at its disposal to assist in the mobilization of the masses before the Konoe Cabinet established the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in October 1940. Classifying sources from the time of the celebrations presents a definitional challenge. Throughout the book, I employ a wide variety of sources that range from government records located on the official end of the continuum to travelogues by private individuals located on the unofficial end. However, the example of reports published by local governments that contested the central government’s findings on the locations of Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites, on which local prestige and tourist revenue depended, reminds us that it is helpful to use not only a variety of unofficial sources, but a range of official sources as well. For some topics, such as the question of how the commemorative activities were received by the people, even the combination of official and unofficial sources proved insufficient. My confrontation with the ogre of researching cultural history, the issue of reception, did not result as much as I would have liked in a treasure trove of sources allowing me to outline with certainty the diverse ways in which Japanese experienced the 2,600th anniversary. It will come as no surprise to cultural historians to learn that documents allowing one to trace, for example, the production of tourism culture proved far easier to locate than sources, such as personal diaries with entries outlining in detail how the typical tourist interpreted the sites they visited, shedding light on the reception side of the equation. The Cult of the Emperor in Modern Japan The cult of the emperor that has been so important to modern Japan (1868–), and which was celebrated in spectacular fashion in 1940, is a recent construction. In the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which marked the beginning of Japan’s drive toward modernity in order to avoid colonization by the Western powers, the young leaders who had seized political power codified and then popularized the notion of an unbroken imperial line dating back to 660 BC as the feature that set Japan apart from all other nation-states. Scholars including Carol Gluck, Takashi Fujitani, Mizoguchi Ko ˉji, and Takagi Hiroshi have traced how the myth-history that Japan always had been and always would be ruled by an unbroken line of emperors was installed as the axis of the new Japanese nationstate that took shape in the late nineteenth century.38 By 1890 the structures that defined citizenship as loyalty to the emperor were in place. Nonetheless, the 2,550th anniversary of the imperial dynasty that same year passed without public fanfare, quite a contrast to the extravagant 2,600th anniversary celebrations held fifty years later. According to the history of the foundational moment glorified in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement concluded his six-year Eastward Expedition, which began on the island of Kyushu in 666 BC and ended six years later in the Yamato area on the island of Honshu, to extend imperial rule by military means.

14   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

In the context of 1940, the celebration of such a foundational moment, imagined though it was, was particularly salient to Japanese. By that year Japan was in its third year of war in China, and Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition provided a model and justification for contemporary efforts to extend Japan’s modern imperium. Throughout the empire in 1940 many of the 105 million imperial subjects (shinmin), of whom 73 million resided in Japan proper, participated in more than twelve thousand thoroughly nationalistic events staged to commemorate Japan’s 2,600th anniversary. Overseas Japanese took part in various celebrations as well. The fifteen thousand public works projects completed for the 2,600th anniversary literally reshaped areas of Japan. Today the elaborate imperial myth-history that lay at the center of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations is foreign even to most Japanese, not to mention to outside observers of contemporary Japan. The official film produced to document the celebrations, “Revering the Founder’s Work,” provides a well-packaged account of the unbroken imperial line ideology celebrated in 1940. In order to introduce the basic contours of the imperial myth-history, below I present the section of “Revering the Founder’s Work” that documented the crowning event in what was a nonstop series of spectacles in 1940 to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary, the solemn ceremony staged in Tokyo on 10 November with more than fifty thousand people in attendance. The ceremony was broadcast throughout the empire by radio. As images of individuals entering the grounds for the 10 November ceremony appear in the latter part of “Revering the Founder’s Work,” the announcer explains that attendees assigned to sit together in specific sections first began entering the grounds at 8:00 a.m. Images appear of civilians in their most formal clothes and military men, in uniforms emblazoned with medals presented to them in the name of the emperor, filing in. Everyone, including foreign diplomats, wears the special 2,600th anniversary badge. Footage shows Cabinet members having their badges pinned on their chests. The narrator notes that everyone was in his or her place by 10:30. Images appear of the car transporting “Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress” arriving. The announcer informs viewers with gravity that it was at precisely 10:48 that “Their Majesties” departed the imperial palace for the ceremony that began on the hour. Next the emperor and empress are shown at their places on a dais festooned with banners showing the symbol of the imperial house, the chrysanthemum. Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro (1891–1945) bows to the emperor and empress, leans forward to a microphone and declares the ceremony open, and then bows especially low to the emperor and empress. In the next shot, Empress Nagako (1903–2000) seems to acknowledge the prime minister’s greeting with a slight nod of her head, but Emperor Hirohito remains motionless and makes no acknowledgment of the greeting of his subject, the prime minister. The subsequent shot shows those in attendance replicating the prime minister’s low bow in almost perfect unison. Prime Minister Konoe then climbs the steps to the dais, and stands facing the emperor and empress. Holding an unrolled

Introduction   15

scroll with both hands, the prime minister reads his address into a microphone positioned on the dais just in front of “Their Majesties.” Konoe enunciates every word carefully and pauses every three or four words. Located on a slightly higher level of the dais, the emperor and empress remain standing throughout the address. Toward the middle of Konoe’s address, which is included in its entirety in the documentary, the footage shifts to shots showing the mass of people in attendance listening to the prime minister’s words with heads bowed: When our Imperial founder [the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, progenitor of the imperial line] established the country, began Her rule and made Her grandchild reign over the Eight Provinces, She gave him a divine rescript and the Three Sacred Treasures [also known as the sacred regalia, the three treasures consist of a sword, a necklace of jewels, and a mirror]. The Imperial reign thus established was handed down to the Emperor Jimmu, who greatly developed the founder’s work, established the capital at Kashihara, came to the Throne and ruled over the entire realm with virtue. Since then, all succeeding emperors have inherited the divine rule, consolidated its foundation and added to the great Imperial plan straight down to the present—the 2,600th year. Therefore, the sacredness of our national structure is naturally unparalleled in all the world. This humble subject most respectfully considers that our present Emperor is wise, virtuous and brave and His Majesty has so excellently administered State affairs, developed education and adjusted military preparations that everyone in the nation now shares the benefit of His Majesty’s virtue. Under the present world situation, His Highness has dispatched forces to a foreign land, concluded an alliance with friendly Powers [referring to the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy] in an effort to establish the stability of East Asia and thereby promote the peace of the world. This is indeed a task of unprecedented magnitude carried out by His Majesty’s infinite virtue and entirely coincides with the initial ideas of the Emperor Jimmu at the outset of his task. We subjects, who have been born in this glorious era and watch the great advance of the Imperial task, cannot help feeling great emotion and delight. On this glorious occasion of the foundation anniversary, it is a source of our utmost emotion to receive a gracious rescript from His Majesty, and we hereby respectfully swear that we will, in perfect co-operation, observe the Imperial instruction, further bring the essence of our national structure into play and thereby overcome the present emergency and assist the Imperial plan of Universal Brotherhood, “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth,” so that we may be able to respond to His Majesty’s boundless virtues. Today we have been given an exceptional honor in the form of the presence of Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress, which makes us further recall the founding of the country in the remote past and the grand plans of our Imperial ancestors with increasing emotion. This humble subject, Konoe Fumimaro, being at the head of the Cabinet, despite his poor ability, most reverently takes the liberty of proceeding to the presence of the Emperor and

16   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Empress to extend congratulations on the long life of Their Majesties and the infiniteness of the Imperial reign.39

Upon completing his address, Prime Minister Konoe bows to the emperor and empress, and then all present bow. Viewers of the documentary hear the playing of the “2,600th Anniversary Song” (Kigen nisen roppyakunen sho ˉka) as various images documenting those present, including a German contingent identified by a swastika, appear. The announcer explains that at 11:25 Prime Minister Konoe led all present in shouting “Long Live His Majesty the Emperor!” three times. The next images are of the prime minister tossing his arms skyward as he shouts “Tenno ˉ heika banzai!” and of audience members thrusting their arms skywards as they reply “Banzai!” Throughout the empire at this moment, the 105 million imperial subjects not lucky enough to have been invited to the ceremony were themselves to shout this celebratory phrase in unison. Subsequent images suggest the precision of the timing by which this ritual was observed en masse. Images show a crowd of people in front of a five-story building from which hangs a huge banner that proclaims the omnipresent principle “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth” (hakko ˉ ichiu). This was a saying attributed to Emperor Jimmu that by 1940 was pervasively invoked in support of Japan’s expansionism.40 Suddenly everyone thrusts his hands skyward in unison and shouts “Long Live His Majesty the Emperor!” The announcer notes that on this day shrines throughout the land held special ceremonies featuring performances of the “Urayasu Dance” (Urayasu no mai ) that had been choreographed to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary. Images appear of four women, dressed in elaborate kimono, performing the slow, ritualistic movements of the dance that symbolized the luring of Amaterasu from the cave wherein she had shut herself and thus cast the world into darkness. The 10 November ceremony differed from Britain’s grandest celebration of its empire, the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, by eschewing a parade through the capital city and because signs of Japan’s imperium were nowhere near as evident. No procession or even assembly of racially diverse and exotically attired colonial soldiers of the sort that paraded through London in 1897 was on display in Tokyo.41 The celebrations were designed in part to reinvigorate popular support for what by 1940 had become a quagmire on the continent. By February of that year, more than one hundred thousand Japanese soldiers had been killed in the war in China, with many more having been wounded. Yet the Imperial Military controlled only one-fifth of the vast territory of China. However, it is also true that combat casualties on the continent had decreased by 50 percent in 1939 compared to the previous year, and then again by 50 percent in 1940 compared to 1939. The year 1940 was something of an interlude in terms of mass Japanese combat deaths. It came after the high casualties of the early years after the so-called China Incident, the euphemistic term for full-scale war between the two countries that had begun in July 1937, but before the wholesale casualties that Japan

Introduction   17

suffered in the later years of the war, which by then had been expanded to include the Allied Powers as enemies. Some historians now employ the term “Asia-Pacific War” to describe the fifteen years of war that Japan fought, first with its Asian neighbors beginning with the Manchurian Incident in 1931, and then also in the Pacific from 1941 on with the United States and other Allied Powers. Although the year 1940 was one of relative calm during the long Asia-Pacific War, the war with China negatively impacted the celebrations in one way. The City of Tokyo had successfully lobbied to host the 1940 Summer Olympics with the 2,600th anniversary in mind. Japan was the first non-Western country to be awarded the Olympics. After the outbreak of war with China, however, Japan forfeited the Olympics. Interpreting Japan in 1940 In 1940 few if any Japanese imagined the cataclysmic defeat that their country would suffer in August 1945. On the contrary, the year 1940 was quite a heady time. Throughout this book I avoid a teleology that analyzes Japan in 1940 through the lens of that country’s military defeat five years later, although the sort of hubris that often ends in disaster was evident during the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. The dark valley concept is so misleading as to be largely useless for understanding the diverse experiences of the Japanese in 1940.42 What characterized the war for imperial subjects, especially before the tide of the war turned decisively against Japan, was the coexistence of dark and of light, of suffering and of joy. Defining the nature of Japan’s polity in 1940 is no easy matter. According to the historian Tony Smith, communism, liberal democracy, and fascism each sought in the first part of the twentieth century “to overcome the crisis of modernity with a new form of government linking the state to the people in ways radically different from what had ever existed before.”43 Each of these forms of polity was represented by at least one of the major participants in World War II, but wartime Japan does not fit easily into any of these three categories (nor is it required to do so). Nonetheless, I am unwilling to join the camp of scholars, mostly located outside of Japan, who reject outright the validity of fascism as a concept for understanding wartime Japan. Alternative concepts, ranging from corporatism, which in spite of its focus on the interplay of state and society often has downplayed, at least when applied to the case of Japan, the agency of the people, to militarism, which has rarely been defined with any sort of precision, are no less flawed or incomplete in describing the nature of Japan’s polity. For example, I am unaware of scholarship that convincingly demonstrates that Japan was fundamentally more militaristic than Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy by the mid-1930s, or militaristic in a form different from Germany and Italy that makes the concept of militarism especially relevant to Japan’s case. Why, then, should we conclude that militarism is superior to other conceptual alternatives in describing Japan’s experience from 1931 on?

18   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Social scientists admittedly disagree, often vehemently, about the definition of fascism. Mark Neocleous’s framework provides a useful starting point, although it will undoubtedly prove unsatisfactory to some scholars: “Fascism is a politics implicit in modern capitalism, involving mass mobilization for nationalist and counter-revolutionary aims, militarized activism and a drive for an elitist, authoritarian and repressive state apparatus, articulated through a nebulous vitalist philosophy of nature and the will.”44 It is true, as critics of the applicability of fascism to wartime Japan such as Peter Duus and Daniel Okimoto have stressed, that Japan did not ever have a mass fascist-style party of the sort that gained power in Italy and in Germany.45 It also lacked a charismatic leader in the flesh, although below I suggest that Emperor Jimmu served as something of a surrogate in this area. It is undeniable that the Meiji constitutional system, which was characterized by strong bureaucratic control but also provided for parliamentarianism, was never overthrown. Japan continued to hold elections even in wartime. Although the Diet (parliament) was pushed aside in the decision-making process, it continued to influence the political process. For example, the Diet along with business interests successfully undermined Prime Minister Konoe’s 1940 proposal for a statist “New Order” that would have thoroughly concentrated political and economic power, thereby preserving a greater degree of pluralism than otherwise would have been the case.46 Although such stress on continuity is valid, other claims that have been employed to deny the validity of fascism or to qualify wartime Japan as a peculiar example of fascism have increasingly come under challenge in recent years. Historians of Japan would do well, when going down the checklist of what qualifies a country for the fascist threshold, to consider the charismatic significance of the cult of the unbroken imperial line at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, especially since some theorists of fascism stress the importance of the “charismatic form of politics” rather than the “leader cult.”47 Emperor Hirohito did not give rousing speeches from balconies or behave in a manner that was similar to the charismatic styles of Hitler and Mussolini, and Japan at the time certainly did not produce another leader whose charisma remotely approached that of Germany’s Führer or Italy’s Il Duce. There was, however, an undeniably charismatic nature to the manner in which the unbroken imperial line and thus the nation was commemorated in 1940. In political terms, Japan in 1940 shared far more in common with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy than it did with the United States and Britain, the two countries most representative of the liberal democratic camp. (It would be preposterous to situate Imperial Japan, with its virulently anticommunist leadership, in the communist camp, even though elements of the Japanese elite were inspired by Soviet-style economic planning.) In spite of the fact that the Diet continued to be a player in the political process, by 1940 most of Japan’s elite expressly rejected the liberal democratic form of polity as suitable for Japan. The means by which Japanese both inside and outside of government sought to achieve national strength through what, in its utopian form, was to be a seamless link between the

Introduction   19

state and the mobilized people (the nation), were far closer to the experiences of Nazi Germany and of Fascist Italy than to the liberal democratic model. In the 1930s, many influential Germans and Italians looked enviously upon Japan’s cult of the fatherland centered on the imperial house that seemed to unite the Japanese perfectly into an organic whole.48 It is no longer possible to dismiss the extent to which the masses in Japan mobilized and were mobilized in support of a regime that by September 1940 had formally allied itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a regime whose policies and supporting ideology overlapped in many areas with those of Germany and Italy. This new understanding of popular agency justifies a reconsideration of the applicability of fascism to wartime Japan. The eminent political scientist Maruyama Masao (1914–96) claimed in essays written in the aftermath of the war that there was no mass base for fascism in Japan, but Maruyama and subsequently many other scholars discounted the extent of popular activism in wartime Japan.49 The value of this book does not rest on proving that fascism trumps all other concepts for understanding wartime Japan, but fascism, with its stress on the mobilization of the masses, nonetheless deserves inclusion when historians discuss the trajectory of modern Japan. Debates over the nature of wartime Japan’s polity, while important, often divert attention from the racial and cultural challenge that Japan continued to present to the white, Euro-American-dominated world order at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. For many, perhaps a majority, of the world’s people in 1940, the crucial divide was not between communism, liberal democracy, and fascism, but between whites and exploited nonwhites. This history of racism, and Japan’s challenge to it, cannot be overlooked simply because liberal democratic internationalism has by now substantially shed its racist and sanctimonious sides, and because Japan was brought into the liberal democratic camp in the postwar period. Japan was the first nonwhite and non-Christian nation to modernize and to go on to become a world power, and its success undermined notions of EuroAmerican racial and cultural superiority. Japan’s military victory over Russia in 1905 in particular called into question the notion that modernity itself was based on race, civilization (Christianity), and geography.50 To be sure, the world had never divided simplistically in the manner in which Euro-American imperialists sliced it. For example, communities of dark-skinned Christians in the Middle East whose Christian lineage predated that of European Christians undermined claims about the supposed link between race, geography, and level of civilization. But it took the military challenge presented by Japan with its victory over Russia to rattle, in a global sense, the imperialist world order. At the time, the nature of Japan’s challenge to the white, Christian imperialist order was perceived equally well among nonwhites and non-Christians as it was among whites and Christians, although their responses differed. Nonwhites and non-Christians embraced Japan’s overturning of the notion that modernity was limited to Euro-Americans, whereas certain whites responded hysterically and raised the specter of a “yellow peril.”

20   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Three decades later, at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, Japan’s challenge to Euro-American world dominance was not as stark as it had been in 1905. As a result of its imperialism in Korea and China, Japan had lost the heroic status that some observers had earlier attributed to it. Additionally, the West, which had never been monolithic in the first place, was at war with itself for the second time that century, a conflict that soon was to encompass most of the world and would shake the imperialist world order to its foundations. The changed global context suggested that the conceptual divisions between East and West that were bandied about by Okakura Kakuzo (1863–1913) and others in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War no longer held validity if, in fact, they ever had. The United States, Britain, Germany, and Italy nonetheless shared more in common than their antagonism suggested. The heritage of each was European and thoroughly Christian. This was also true of Russia, the center of the Soviet Empire, however negative a stance the Soviet Communist regime adopted toward religion in general. The United States, Britain, Germany, and Italy each claimed to represent the best hope for the future of, or for saving, European (Western) Christian civilization. These four countries were also characterized by systemic racism directed against nonwhites, or against anyone who did not fulfill the definition of belonging to the core superior race. The fact that Nazi racism was carried to extraordinarily murderous ends should not divert attention from the systemically racist nature of the United States, Britain, and Italy (especially toward colonized Africans). The only world power in 1940 distinctly outside the Euro-American Christian sphere and unambiguously led by nonwhites was Japan.51 Imperial Japan’s challenge to the world order at the time was simultaneously audacious yet limited. The storyline of the 2,600th celebrations, rather than portraying modern Japan as an imitation of Western modernity, situated the rise of Japan as a world power within a lengthy and continuous national history that predated Japan’s extensive cultural borrowing from the Asian continent and even the Christian era. In her best-selling 2,600 Years of the Nippon Empire published in 1940, Fujitani Misao dismissively asserted that in 660 BC, when Japan was founded, “not a single one of the Western powers which are now struggling to gain the hegemony of the world had reached even the ‘quickening’ stage.”52 In the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s leaders bowed to outside pressure and legalized Christianity, including missionary activity, but subsequently they also pointedly employed the imperial house as the axis of national identity in opposition to Christianity. In 1872 Japan’s leaders adopted the Gregorian calendar, but not the system of counting years according to the Christian era, using instead the reigns of emperors as a means to count years. Far from adopting Christianity as it modernized, Japanese leaders manipulated the indigenous folk religion of Shinto ˉ into the official religion, with the emperor as high priest, of the new nation-state. Since Christianity was widely recognized, and indeed frequently championed, as the core of Western civilization, the fact that Japan

Introduction   21

modernized without adopting Christianity stuck needles in the inflated notion that one of the secrets of modernity was Christianity. In the area of race, Japan’s leaders, as a result of their military victory over Russia, had reason to believe that they had achieved the status of “honorary whites” early in the twentieth century. This did not necessarily prove to be the case in the subsequent decades. The Japanese continued to suffer racial injustices well into the twentieth century. The rejection, at the Versailles Peace Treaty negotiations in 1919, of a clause on racial equality proposed by Japan’s representatives symbolized that country’s less than equal status. Other examples of racist indignities included the discriminatory treatment of immigrants from Japan as well as policies designed to block Japanese immigration in the first place. Most of the countries that excluded Japanese immigrants kept their doors open to northern European immigrants. Japanese travelers, however high their class or extensive their fortune, continued to risk segregationist treatment if they stepped outside of their empire. The timing of these racial slights—after Japan’s victory over Russia—made them all the more galling to the Japanese. At the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, few national moments other than those relating to the foundational moment itself were as trumpeted as Japan’s victory over Russia. By 1940, however, Japanese remembering the Russo-Japanese War and its aftermath had good reason to conclude that the lesson of this history was that no matter what Japan might do to try to prove itself modern, it would be denied equal status in the world by the Western powers on the basis of race. At the time that the Japanese celebrated the twenty-sixth centennial of their empire, there remained a stark difference in how Japanese were treated inside and outside of their imperium, a difference explained by the intersection of race and power. This is one of many reasons why it is critical to analyze Japan in 1940 as the empire it was. In the multiracial and multiethnic empire that Japan gradually established from 1895 on (or from 1868 on if one takes into account Hokkaido and Okinawa, as one should), the people of Japan proper occupied the top of the hierarchy. Japan established within its imperium a localized version of the racial and cultural hierarchy that Western powers established over most of the rest of the world. The fact that Japan’s imperialism proved to be every bit as exploitative toward Asians as did Western imperialism negates claims by apologists who argue that Japan’s wars of aggression against its Asian neighbors were nothing less than heroic efforts to free Asia from Western imperialism. If Japan had not itself instituted racist, imperialist policies in Asia even as its modernity questioned the world order dominated by white, Christian imperialist powers, it might deserve to some extent the moral high ground that conservative Japanese commentators myopically appropriate for their country. It is nonetheless a measure of Japan’s challenge to the world order in the first half of the twentieth century that it was the only nonwhite and non-Christian nation during the heyday of modern imperialism with the power to foist its own version of modernity upon colonized subjects. Outside of their imperium, however,

22   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

the Japanese repeatedly bumped into a racial ceiling. Perhaps the greatest indication of the short-term impotence of Japan’s racial challenge to white superiority is the broad similarities to be drawn between Japanese immigrants residing in areas outside of Japanese political control and Japan’s own colonial subjects. Although Japanese emigrants made a voluntary choice to relocate to places such as the United States, whereas Koreans were involuntarily colonized in their country, both groups found themselves boxed in by hierarchies that no degree of merit or assimilation to the dominant culture could overcome. Even conversion to Christianity by Japanese did not prove useful in overcoming racial discrimination. In the same way that within Japan’s empire the family register (koseki ) system drew a sharp line between Japanese who could trace their lineage to Japan proper and all other imperial subjects, in most places outside of Japan’s empire, race positioned Japanese and indeed all nonwhites below hegemonic whites. Claims about the superiority of the Yamato race might provide solace to Japanese residing outside of Japan’s imperium, but such concepts only compensated for, rather than overcoming, the systemic racism that they encountered. In contrast, within the empire notions of Japanese superiority were employed to justify unequal power relations in a manner that favored individuals from Japan proper. Teleological accounts of Imperial Japan that stress its defeat in 1945 as though unconditional surrender and all the history leading up to it were preordained conveniently mask the extent and nature of Japan’s challenge to the world order during the first half of the twentieth century. The complexity and significance of Japan’s modern experience is oversimplified even further if the teleology of Imperial Japan ending in disaster is combined with another teleology for the cold war era that not only suggests a certain inevitability to the United States–Japan alliance after 1945 but also assigns to this alliance a moral propriety equivalent to the impropriety attached to Imperial Japan. It is common for historians to portray Imperial Japan during the period from 1931 on—the period when Japan’s autonomous imperialism challenged the interests of the United States, Britain, France, and the Netherlands in Asia—in particularly negative terms, as though Japan’s imperialism was bad only to the extent it rocked the imperialist boat shared by these Western powers. In the postwar period defined by the contest between communism and liberal democracy, Japan was transformed, under U.S. supervision, into a showcase for the claim that American-style liberal democratic capitalism was universally applicable. The historian Naoko Shibusawa has stressed that “having Japan properly ‘grow up,’ as U.S. policymakers desired, into a democratic, capitalist society would help invalidate Marxist critiques of racist, imperialist capitalism.”53 The emergence of Japan as a symbol of the liberal democratic camp’s universality coincided with this camp’s repudiation and dismantling of systemic racism, both domestically and internationally. This repudiation of racism resulted from domestic pressures but it also was in response to the communist challenge. Nonetheless, Japan’s earlier disruption of

Introduction   23

racial categories should not be forgotten. This disruption was dramatically on display early in the war in the Pacific when well-trained Japanese forces decimated their white opponents in colonial territories throughout Asia where strict hierarchies separating whites and nonwhites had long been maintained. Additionally, as World War II progressed, such racist categories seemed increasingly incongruous with the lofty ideals that the Allied Powers employed to differentiate themselves from the barbarous foe. Although I think it is important to stress the challenge presented by Imperial Japan to Euro-American racism and ethnocentrism, and I think that fascism is better than militarism and other conceptual frameworks for describing Japan’s wartime polity, it is modernity that best describes Japan at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. However frequently Japan’s leaders at the time eloquently referenced timeless Japanese traditions, wartime Japan was a variant of modernity rather than a return to anachronistic traditionalism (fascism is itself a product of modernity). Historians do not agree on a precise definition of modernity, but for this book it includes the nation-state, industrialization, expanded global integration, the expansion of forms of middle class and mass society, the expansion of forms of political participation, and, in the mid-twentieth-century context, imperialism. In terms of its degree of modernity, Japan shared much in common not only with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy but also with the United States and Britain, as well as with the Soviet Union. Many aspects of Japan’s mid-twentieth-century modernity have already been introduced, but below are examples in additional areas. At the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, the middle class was arguably the most modern segment of Japanese society. This middle class enthusiastically endorsed, through its consumer habits, the cult of the unbroken imperial line and, in a broader sense, a glorified national history. Historians of twentieth-century Japan have not stressed enough the continuities between Japan’s wartime and postwar mass consumer society. Japan’s industrial rise from the ashes of World War II seemed so spectacular to some commentators that they termed it miraculous. In contrast, historians familiar with the extent of Japan’s heavy industrialization by the 1930s argue that Japan’s rise to the second largest economy in the world after World War II can be explained, in rational terms, by adopting a transwar perspective. Along the same lines, Japan’s path from widespread deprivation at the time of the defeat to a vibrant and massified consumer society by the mid-1960s might seem every bit as miraculous as its overall industrial performance, but in this area, too, the transwar continuities provide a more nuanced understanding. Historians of the interwar period have stressed the coalescence of a mass consumer society by the 1920s, and the lines of continuity are often drawn between this decade and the postwar consumer society, as though consumerism disappeared during the wartime period. The patriotic environment of the 1930s intensified many forms of consumerism, and even the outbreak of full-scale war with China in July 1937 was only a minor setback for important consumer sectors.54

24   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

The boom in tourism, publishing, and retail sales (e.g., department stores) peaked at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, which coincided with the third year of war with China. It was the deterioration of the war situation from mid-1942 on, rather than the war in some general sense, that led to a collapse of forms of consumerism beyond what was needed for basic survival. This is a critical distinction. Far from being displaced by nationalism and its mystical rhetoric, Japan’s modern mass consumer sector was enveloped and also spurred on by the patriotic atmosphere. Millions and millions of Japanese were not only consumers in wartime but they also were politically active, not necessarily through liberal democratic means, although it should be stressed that forms of representative parliamentarianism, including elections, continued to be a feature of wartime Japan. However, to understand the extent of mass political participation in wartime Japan, other forms of political involvement, including examples of civic participation often not thought of in political terms, must be taken into account. The continuing modernization of Japan at the time allowed for a more comprehensive and sophisticated mobilization of the people. The extent of popular participation achieved throughout the empire in the precisely timed mass rituals exemplifies the power of Japan’s modern centralized state to stage, repeatedly, political theater that incorporated the entire nation. The National Foundation Labor Service Brigades and other forms of labor service on behalf of the nation in which millions of Japanese participated were also political in nature. Tourism is often omitted from discussions of forms of political participation, but the political overtones of imperial heritage tourism in wartime Japan (and indeed of all forms of national heritage tourism) cannot be overlooked. One Japanese commentator termed visiting sites related to Emperor Jimmu as “an act of citizenship.” Unlike the precisely timed mass rituals, in which the hand of the state was heavy, imperial tourism represented a form of citizenship training that was largely self-administered. No historian would deny the considerable and often destructive power of the Japanese wartime state, but the nation (society) also played a critical role in shaping wartime Japan. Japan was a member of an exclusive club of modern imperialistic nationstates. However distasteful the means were at times, imperialism integrated the world in dramatic new ways, and Japan’s imperialism was no exception to this. Yet in one critical area of modernity, level of industrialization and overall economic might, divisions between Japan and the other world powers remained. The Great Depression of 1929 had not spared Japan, but Japan recovered more quickly than most other countries. During the 1930s, Japan’s annual growth rate averaged 5 percent of Gross National Product (GNP). This led to an air of prosperity but did not remedy Japan’s relative economic weakness vis-à-vis the most industrialized nation-states, however advanced Japan seemed in comparison to its Asian neighbors.55 In terms of economic size in 1940, Japan and Italy belong in the lowest of three tiers into which one can group the six major countries involved in World

Introduction   25

War II. Among the second-tier countries, the economy of the Soviet Union was slightly larger than that of Germany, which itself was slightly larger than that of Britain. The sole member of the first tier was the United States, with an economy in 1940 that was six times the size of that of Italy, nearly five times the size of that of Japan, about two and one-half times the size of the respective economies of Germany and the Soviet Union, and three times the size of that of Britain.56 If the gap, in terms of the relative size of their economies, between Japan and the United States in 1940 were not striking enough, Japan began that year highly dependent on the United States as an export market through which to generate much needed foreign exchange and also as a supplier of materials critical to the war on the Asian continent.57 This was the situation in spite of efforts by Japan’s leaders to create an autarkic economic sphere in Asia that Japan could dominate. As relations between Japan and the United States deteriorated in 1940, a tumultuous year during which the Nazi war machine emerged dominant in continental Europe, the United States began to squeeze Japan economically through sanctions in order to undermine its military power. Japan’s subsequent attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor represented a desperate attempt to knock the United States out of Asia so that Japan would have unrestricted access to resources there that it needed to prosecute a war now expanded severalfold beyond China, where the Imperial Military was already bogged down. This proved to be a terrible miscalculation. Japan may have been a great industrial power relative to most of the rest of the world in 1940, but it was not a great industrial power relative to the United States. Imperial Japan went from its apex in 1940 to complete collapse and disintegration five years later because its leaders fatally ignored the principle of “rich nation, strong military” ( fukoku kyo ˉhei) and took the country to war against the sole industrial and military superpower of the time.58

26   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

1 t he nat ional history  boom

In 1939, Shiki Seiji (1894–1964), president of the Newspaper’s Newspaper Company (Shinbun no shinbunsha), decided to build in his home prefecture of Nagano a “2,600th Anniversary Culture Dome” to mark this august anniversary. The 2,600th Anniversary Culture Dome was one of thousands upon thousands of mnemonic sites constructed, in the period centered on 1940, to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary of the imperial dynasty and to celebrate historical examples both of virtuous rule by the unbroken line of emperors and of the people’s loyalty to the throne. Many of these mnemonic sites survive today, and the 2,600th Anniversary Culture Dome would not merit attention except for one detail. Shiki decided to bury under the dome a time capsule containing items informing future generations about that special year in Japan’s history. Along the same lines as the documentary film “Revering the Founder’s Work,” the time capsule was intended to commemorate for eternity the 2,600th anniversary year. Unlike the film record of the anniversary celebrations that was commissioned by the government, however, the time capsule was a private undertaking. Shiki specified that the time capsule should be opened in 100 years. The dome survives today, as does the unopened time capsule. Shiki’s descendants are honoring his wish, and it will not be opened until 2040.1 Once he had decided on his plan, Shiki advertised widely throughout the empire to solicit donations of representative newspapers, magazines, books, posters, catalogs, photographs, drawings, recordings, samples of calligraphy by elite figures, and other items that documented his country at the time of the celebrations. In order to recognize the thousands of donors who displayed generosity beyond the parameters set by Shiki, the Newspaper’s Newspaper Company published a catalog of all items received. The catalog indicates that Shiki succeeded admirably in preserving a record of Japan at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations.2 So voluminous and rich are the sources in the time capsule that this historian, if it were not a violation of private property, gladly would have unearthed it with his bare hands to avoid the years of work and considerable expense involved in

27

tracking down at used bookstores throughout Japan and libraries throughout the world many of the same sources listed as being enclosed in the capsule. In addition, the time capsule includes some particularly desirable items that seem to survive nowhere else, notably ephemera such as record jackets, exposition catalogs, posters, and travel brochures. In scanning titles from the lists of books, brochures, posters, and records as well as the advertisements that appear in the catalog of items stored in the time capsule, one is informed about the extent of the imperial history craze sparked by the 2,600th anniversary. A small sample of titles, translated into English, includes “Emperor Jimmu,” “Divine Japan,” “The Spirit of the Founding of the Nation and Contemporary Ideological Problems,” “Newly Annotated Version of the Kojiki,”3 “2,600-Year History of Japan,” “Mt. Takachiho,”4 “A General National History,” “Research on Kusunoki [Masashige],”5 “Catalog of the Exhibition on 2,600 Years of History [sponsored by the Asahi Newspaper Company],” “Pilgrimage to Sacred Imperial Sites,” and “Dictionary of National History.” Even as the catalog provides a sense of the national history boom, it does not convey its full extent because Shiki did not solicit donations of the most recent forms of media, such as films and radio programs. Film was an immensely popular medium at the time and productions such as “Fatherland” (Sokoku) sought to capitalize on the popular interest in history. Radio was also at the center of the national history boom.6 The national radio company’s (NHK) offerings in 1940 included the once-per-week, yearlong programs “Touring Shrines” and “Touring Historical Sites,” three-times-per-week, year-long programs on “National History” and “National Literature,” periodic broadcasts of lectures on “Japanese Culture,” monthly broadcasts of “National History Dramas” for children with titles such as “The Descent from Heaven,” and monthly broadcasts of “National History Dramas” geared to adults (the one for January was titled “The Fatherland”), not to mention special broadcasts of 2,600th anniversary ceremonies and celebrations.7 In the years leading up to the anniversary and throughout 1940, almost every imaginable means of shaping memories of the past was employed to transmit the historical significance of the 2,600th anniversary. Even as Shiki was at work gathering materials for his time capsule, individuals throughout the empire were unearthing archaeological evidence to prove, building monuments to commemorate, staging exhibitions to inform their countrymen about, publishing travel guidebooks to help tourists locate holy places (seichi) relating to, visiting sacred sites relating to, celebrating in song, lecturing about, representing visually, and chronicling in everything from authoritative academic treatises to commercial picture books written for young children, the 2,600-year history of the imperial line. No aspect of imperial history was more competed over, investigated, commemorated, exhibited, and chronicled than the exploits of Emperor Jimmu. Looking back, the widespread belief in and obsession over a fictitious emperor in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations seems to represent a moment of national insanity. Whatever one terms the Emperor Jimmu rage, there is little question that the first emperor was at center stage in 1940. The absence of

28   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

a charismatic leader in the flesh along the lines of Hitler or Mussolini is a point often stressed by scholars who dismiss fascism as a useful concept for understanding Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, but did the incomparably charismatic first emperor serve as a surrogate during the height of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations? Japan in 1940 clearly shared much in common with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, including the manufacture of a fanciful history, celebrated by charismatic means, which justified military expansionism. More recently, North Korea’s use of the myth of Tan’gun has rivaled Imperial Japan’s use of the unbroken imperial line ideology.8 As fantastic as the myth of Emperor Jimmu, Korea’s foundational narrative is based on Tan’gun (b. 2333 BC), said to be the progenitor of the Korean race. The cult of the leader in present-day North Korea reminds some older Japanese of the wartime cult of the emperor. In a 2003 letter published in the Nagoya edition of the Asahi shinbun newspaper, Ishikura Ayako (seventy-three years old) pointed out that a series of articles in the Asahi about life in present-day North Korea, characterized by widespread suffering but also regular displays of allegiance to the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il (1941?–), reminded her of being hungry as a child during the latter part of the war even as she and her peers performed various displays of loyalty, with utmost sincerity, to the emperor.9 Children into Imperial Subjects The extent to which Japan’s formal educational system by the late 1930s had come to emphasize, through texts and rituals, a national history and civil religion based on reverence for the unbroken imperial line has been well documented. Its role in performing this function in Japan proper during the 2,600th anniversary year needs introduction only in condensed form here. The year 1940 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Imperial Rescript on Education that defined citizenship in terms of loyalty to the emperor, the embodiment of the nation-state. By 1940, three generations of school children had been made to memorize the Imperial Rescript on Education, which appears in abridged translation below: Know ye, Our subjects: Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjects ever united in loyalty and filial piety have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of the fundamental character of Our Empire, and herein also lies the source of Our education. . . . Should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth. So shall ye not only be Our good and faithful subjects, but render illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers.10

Japan’s formal educational system, including lessons in the civil religion, extended to its colonies. Japanese authorities foisted upon their colonial subjects a

The National History Boom   29

fanciful version of the past that sanctified Japan’s role in world history. But this version of the past also represented a rare exception to the Europe-centered history (which was itself often specious) dominant most everywhere else in the world that at the time was largely under the control of Euro-American imperialist powers. Early in 1940 (the thirtieth anniversary of Japanese rule over Korea), the Government-General of Cho ˉsen (Korea) published two collections of children’s essays on the topic of “Our Readiness to Salute the 2,600th Anniversary.” One featured examples from elementary school students and the other from middle school students.11 The contributors were not only the children of Japanese residents of Korea but also Korean students who at their Japanese-administered schools were expected to master the same material as their Japanese counterparts. The essays provide a window into how colonial subjects were inducted into the civil religion of Japan. In 1940, Japanese colonial authorities tightened policies designed to Japanize Koreans in the areas of religion, language, and also, most infamously, in the area of names.12 The essays cited below, from the collection published by the GovernmentGeneral, present a dramatically different account of Korean schoolchildren’s reactions to Japanese imperial education than does, for example, Richard Kim’s (1932–2009) novelistic account of growing up in colonial-era Korea. In Kim’s Lost Names, the proud Korean family at the center of the story, among other careful, measured displays of resistance, devises a ploy to foil the sixth-grade play that was to be staged, flawlessly of course, in honor of the birthday of Crown Prince Akihito (b. 1933).13 However, memoirs by other Koreans who came of age during the colonial era suggest that the devotion to Imperial Japan on display in the children’s essays below was in many cases authentic. In his 2004 memoir, the poet Kim Shi-Jong (b. 1929) remembered having been an “imperial youth” (ko ˉkoku shonen) rather than a Korean.14 Kim remembered his desire to make himself into a worthy “child of the emperor” (tenno ˉ heika no sekishi),15 and even recalls witnessing as a junior high school student what he now understands was the kidnapping of Koreans to serve as forced laborers. At the time, he thought it natural that such Koreans be asked to exert themselves on behalf of their country, Imperial Japan.16 Finally, Kim stressed that although today he is well aware of the cruelty of Japan’s colonial policies, he nonetheless remembers a childhood punctuated by small joys such as field trips.17 Kim Chang Kook (b. 1933) also stressed in his memoir that however much he is now aware of the distasteful nature of Japan’s colonial policies, he, too, remembers his childhood in Seoul as having included many quotidian joys.18 Kim Chang Kook entered the Second National Elementary School in Seoul in the year of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. The memoirs of Kim Shi-Jong, Kim Chang Kook, the essays below, as well as Kim’s Lost Names, indicate the diverse ways that Koreans reacted to Japanese colonial rule. But the experiences of children, the most malleable of imperial subjects, are not representative of the overall population in Korea. Many Koreans fiercely resisted the Japanese occupation of their country, and tens of thousands paid for their opposition with their lives.

30   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Certain catchphrases and themes appear over and over in the essays the children composed to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary. The essays by middle school students were longer, but the compositions by the fourth and fifth graders touched upon the requisite themes more concisely. The analysis here relies mostly on essays by Korean children in those two age groups. All the students, in one manner or another, successfully recounted the basic official storyline about the founding of Japan: Emperor Jimmu, descendant of Amaterasu, undertook from Hyuˉga (the ancient name for the area that broadly corresponds to modern-day Miyazaki Prefecture) a perilous eastward military expedition that culminated, after the Imperial Army covered great distance and overcame many obstacles, with his enthronement in Kashihara 2,600 years ago; this marked the inauguration of the imperial dynasty, which subsequently remained unbroken up to the present emperor (in 1940, Hirohito), the 124th divine sovereign of Japan. Kang Jong-Won, a fourth-grade boy from Jinnampo, began his essay as follows: “It has been 2,600 years since Emperor Jimmu subdued his enemies and was enthroned at the Kashihara Palace in Yamato.”19 The area of Yamato broadly corresponds to modern-day Nara Prefecture. Several students recounted what a strong impression, in listening to a radio broadcast of a ceremony at Kashihara Shrine to mark the 2,600th anniversary, the rhythmic sound of beating drums had made on them. The fifth-grader Tsuji Yoshiaki (a child of Japanese residents of Korea) stressed that throughout the world Japanese who listened to this broadcast were moved to hear the shouting of “Banzai  !” that announced the beginning of the 2600th anniversary year.20 The children cited the typical litany of exemplary emperors, Nintoku, GoDaigo (r. 1318–39) and Meiji (r. 1868–1912), as well as of loyal retainers, Wake no Kiyomaro (733–99), Kusunoki (1294–1336), and General Nogi Maresuke (1849–1912).21 Kim Kyung-Hak, a fourth-grade boy from Pukchong, cited as his two models of loyalty Kusunoki and the so-called Three Human Bombs.22 The “Human Bombs” were Japanese soldiers elevated to the national pantheon of heroes in the aftermath of being credited with strapping dynamite to themselves and charging into the Chinese defenses at Shanghai in 1932. Li Jung-Soon of Taegu referenced the oft-used phrase “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth” in writing about the 2,600th anniversary. Li interpreted the concept as a prescription for “all the world living harmoniously in the same way as does a family sharing a roof.”23 Almost all of the essays included a sentence that began along the lines of, “There are many countries in the world, but. . . .” Subsequently the essayists provided one or more reasons, ranging from the length of its history to the unbroken imperial line to the fact that it had never suffered the humiliation of defeat by a foreign country, to buttress the claim that Japan was a nation-state without peers. Many children quoted from one of the numerous patriotic songs that celebrated the founding of Japan, suggesting their significance in forming popular historical consciousness. Even more than six decades later, a majority of Japanese

The National History Boom   31

who were old enough at least to be in elementary school at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations have responded, when the subject of my research was broached, by belting out the beginning lines from the “2,600th Anniversary Song.”24 This was also the response of an elderly Korean gentleman in Pagoda Park in Seoul to whom my Korean guide explained my research project, an educational if mildly awkward moment in my fieldwork there in 2005. In their essays, several children quoted from the speeches that their school principals had delivered about the significance of the 2,600th anniversary. The formality that surely surrounded the principals’ addresses likely made their remarks resonate strongly with the children, who no doubt also understood the value of demonstrating to their teachers how closely they had listened to their principal’s speech. In addition to pledging to speak only Japanese at home, Chae Mu-Ryong promised to endeavor to teach his parents the “national language” (kokugo), that is, Japanese.25 The fifth-grader Kim Hwang-Yong recounted how he had asked his father how he planned to Japanize the family name. On 11 February 1940, the 2,600th anniversary of Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement, the colonial authorities ordered Koreans to register Japanized family names within six months. According to this fifth-grader, his father replied that since the family’s Korean surname was Kim (金) he would add the character 沢 to create the compound 金沢, a suitable Japanese family name pronounced either “Kanezawa” or “Kanazawa.”26 All the students whose essays were included in the collection were aware that their “fatherland” was engaged in a “sacred war” in China, and many pledged to become “excellent imperial subjects” by contributing in one way or another to the war from the home front. The fourth-grader Li Young-Hi was one of several students who pledged to increase her deposits in a savings account in support of the war.27 Many of these young imperial subjects recounted in their compositions visits to worship at the local Shinto ˉ shrine, no doubt the sort of patriotic demonstrations, mandatory though visits to shrines were, that would have earned them affirmation from their Japanese teachers. The schoolgirl Kim Sun-Dan’s pledge to recite the Imperial Subject Oath every morning was echoed by many of her peers.28 The Imperial Subject Oath was the pledge of loyalty to the Empire of Japan and its sovereign the emperor that Koreans were expected to memorize. Many Koreans, especially adults with no background in Japanese, found it impossible to memorize the lengthy Imperial Rescript on Education, so in 1937 the Government-General of Korea instituted the shorter Imperial Subject Oath. In 1939, an Imperial Subject Oath Tower on which the pledge was engraved was constructed in Nanzan Park overlooking Keijo ˉ (Seoul), the administrative capital. Commercial Educational Publications The civil religion codified in the Imperial Rescript on Education and the abbreviated Imperial Subject Oath was elaborated in the Kokutai no hongi (Cardinal

32   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Principles of the National Polity of Japan), the dominant official text of national history and morality after its issuance in 1937. The Kokutai no hongi portrayed the Empire of Japan as a family-nation headed by the emperor (the patriarch): “The unbroken line of Emperors, receiving the Oracle of the Founder of the Nation, reign eternally over the Japanese Empire.”29 The fact that the Kokutai no hongi was written in such an arcane manner that it was impenetrable to average individuals not only required the Ministry of Education to issue commentaries but also served to spawn a cottage industry of commentaries brought out by commercial publishers. For example, Miura To ˉsaku’s commentary on the Kokutai no hongi, first published in July 1937, was into its 101st printing by February 1940.30 Japan’s publishing industry flourished after the China Incident. In his May 1940 analysis of this sector, Dan Yazaki (1906–46) stressed the overall prosperity it was enjoying in spite of the authoritarian atmosphere: “The publishing industry continued . . . to prosper, and during the latter half of 1938 and the first half of 1939 passed through what was probably its best period in years, thanks to the wartime prosperity of a large section of the population.”31 Yazaki noted that the 2,600th anniversary sparked a history boom: “The present year is the 2,600th since the founding of Japan; hence it was not surprising that in the latter half of 1939 the public showed great interest in books and articles on history.”32 In ways that were similar to the publishing booms sparked by the SinoJapanese War (1894–95), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), the Manchurian Incident (1931) that by 1933 resulted in Japan’s control over Northeast China, and the China Incident (1937 onwards), the 2,600th anniversary proved to be a catalyst for another spike in nationalist consumption of all forms of media. In the words of Louise Young, the mass media promoted the Manchurian Incident “on its volition and in its own interests,”33 but this description applies equally well to its role during the twenty-sixth centennial celebrations. The mass media embraced the 2,600th anniversary celebrations for its own purposes rather than grudgingly following the lead of the government. The 1941 “Publisher’s Yearbook” detailed how the previous year the government had forced a consolidation in the number of magazines, but also stressed that 1940 had been the best year ever for the industry: “From a business point of view . . . the combined sales turnover of 78 leading magazines last year advanced by 13.5 percent, aggregating 93,393,000 copies—the highest all-time record. It is said that not a single copy of leading journals was returned unsold from bookstores. Such brisk business was attributed not only to the elevation of the nation’s cultural standard, but also to the wartime business boom and the consequent expansion of public purchasing power.”34 The expansion of Japan’s publishing industry in the late 1930s and into 1940 is a testament both to the wartime prosperity and to the further massification of what by the 1920s was already, in terms of media penetration, one of most massified societies in the world. Evidence of the prosperity experienced by many Japanese in the 1930s clashes with the dark valley view of this period. Recent studies have suggested that far from repressing consumerism in the 1930s, the war often accelerated it. The

The National History Boom   33

historian Andrew Gordon has argued that one result of Japan’s positive economic performance from 1931 onward was the “spread of modern consumer life from a world of dreams to one of ordinary practice.”35 This was true in Japan proper, for Japanese residing in the colonies, and for some colonized subjects. Healthy economic growth in the 1930s led to an increase in disposable income even as the government, especially in the aftermath of the China Incident, channeled capital and resources to sectors that supported the war effort. In 1940, Japan’s government moved to tap into the prosperous, modern sector of the economy as a revenue source by instituting taxes on corporate income and wage income. This was one of the many economic reforms around 1940 that resulted in what the economic historian Noguchi Yukio has termed the “1940 [economic] system” whose salient features survived long into the postwar era.36 As part of the 2,600th anniversary national history boom, commercial publishers courted young readers and their nurturing parents with a wide range of colorful, understandable, and entertaining narratives of the national history. With their many visuals, these national history products provide convenient introductions to the imagery that was central to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations.37 One of the most prevalent symbols in Japan in 1940 was that of a raptor, the golden kite. It was featured in the first scene of the “national history pictorial” that the popular women’s magazine Shufu no tomo (“The Housewife’s Friend”), in order to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary, included as an insert to its January 1940 edition (see color insert, figure 2). This magazine, which catered largely to the middle class, had an estimated one million readers. Images of the golden kite appeared on virtually every consumer item imaginable, from cigarette boxes to railways ads. The golden kite was matched in its prominence only by images of the yatagarasu. This was a crow with three claws that was sent by Amaterasu to guide Emperor Jimmu through a particularly difficult segment of his Eastward Expedition. The cover of a package of Hikari cigarettes that were popular in Japan at the time shows the yatagarasu, this time providing guidance about the extension of Japan’s modern imperium (see color insert, figure 3).38 Shufu no tomo’s pictorial insert recounted the national history in thirty-eight scenes. It was designed for mothers to share with their children. This picture scroll’s historical narrative was not as centered on the imperial house or as militaristic as many illustrated histories of the time, however. Although it included vignettes central to imperial history, such as the completion of the Kojiki, the loyal retainer Wake no Kiyomaro’s protection of the imperial throne from a Buddhist monk intent on usurping it in the eighth century, the loyal retainer Kusunoki’s service to Emperor Go-Daigo who in the fourteenth century sought a restoration of direct rule by the emperor, and several vignettes on Japan’s modern wars including one of the critically important Russo-Japanese conflict, it also included vignettes on topics such as a ninth-century mission to China by Japanese “exchange students” eager to learn continental civilization and the glory of Heian literature as represented by the Tale of Genji (vignette 13 shows this novel’s authoress, Murasaki Shikibu (973?–1025?).

34   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Nonetheless, this pictorial did not leave the legitimacy of more contemporary history to doubt, as evidenced by Scene 33, showing Koreans celebrating the amalgamation of their country into Imperial Japan (see color insert, figure 4). The accompanying text stressed the close connection between Japan and Korea that existed from ancient times, a line of interpretation that became common in Japanese historical narratives at the time of Japan’s annexation of Korea.39 This view of the past justified Korea’s amalgamation into Japan by portraying it as a restoration of the historic status quo. Shufu no tomo’s “national history pictorial,” like all of the national histories for juveniles, was a blatant teleology that invoked an edifying past to justify contemporary national policies, a tendency that is certainly not limited to histories written for children. All of the narratives examined here also highlighted the national pantheon of heroes, an effective means to give face to the fatherland. The Japan Patriotic Picture Book Association published an illustrated account of the national history for young imperial subjects composed of a series of vignettes that also began with Emperor Jimmu’s heroics (see color insert, figure 5).40 This picture book was thoroughly centered on imperial history, with a strong emphasis on military glory. The first vignettes focused on the pre-foundation era (also known as the era of the gods) and the last page showed Japanese soldiers celebrating the fall of Nanjing in December 1937. One of the last vignettes showed volunteers working in service to the throne (figure 1). The publishing giant Ko ˉdansha regularly issued children’s picture books as part of a series, and by 1940 patriotic themes were dominant. On 1 February 1940—just in advance of National Foundation Day (Kigensetsu), the holiday commemorating the precise date of Emperor Jimmu’s accession to the throne, 11 February 660 BC—Ko ˉdansha issued “A Picture Scroll National History in Celebration of the 2,600th Year of the Imperial Line” that featured the golden kite on the cover.41 This picture book covered national history beginning with Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement in twenty-six scenes, one for every hundred years. The problem of “coverage” is nothing new to historians. This picture book included vignettes about the virtuous Emperor Nintoku (the personification of the benevolent ruler, Nintoku is portrayed as having been profoundly sensitive to the welfare of the people); Prince Shoˉtoku (574–622) who is credited with authoring the Constitution of the Seventeen Articles (604); Nitta Yoshisada (1301–38) who for his service to Emperor Go-Daigo was considered to be one of the “three great loyal retainers”; and Kitabatake Chikafusa (1293–1354) who composed the Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki (A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns). This was a treatise in support of direct imperial rule that argued that Japan’s superiority lay in its unbroken succession of divine rulers (emperors).42 One measure of the prominence of the fourteenth-century Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki at the time of the twenty-sixth centennial celebrations is that Kingu, the first magazine in Japan to achieve a circulation over a million, included a greatly abbreviated, pullout version of this treatise in its January 1940 issue. Ko ˉdansha’s picture book also included vignettes of Emperor Meiji’s bestowing the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (1889) upon his subjects; Japan’s

The National History Boom   35

1. This scene from a children’s book published by the Japan Patriotic Picture Book Association in 1940 shows young volunteers working in service to the throne by planting trees donated to Meiji Shrine, where the emperor in whose name Japan was modernized is enshrined. It was an exhortatory example for young readers about how to serve the fatherland. Enomoto Shin’ichiroˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen kinen (Osaka: DaiNihon aikoku ehonkai, 1940).

naval victory over China in the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1894; General Nogi Maresuke’s overseeing the siege against Russian forces at Port Arthur in 1904 (later, on the day of Emperor Meiji’s funeral in 1912, Nogi followed his lord in death ˉ yama Iwao’s by committing suicide with his wife in a ritual manner); General O (1842–1916) triumphant entry into Ho ˉten (Mukden) in March 1905; Admiral To ˉgo ˉ Heihachiro ˉ’s (1838–1934) directing the annihilation of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Tsushima Straights in May 1905; and dark natives in Micronesia welcoming ashore light-skinned, smartly dressed Japanese marines in the aftermath of World War I, when the League of Nations put that archipelago under Japanese supervision. The final vignette displayed Japan’s new alliance with Wang Jingwei’s (1883–1944) Reformed Government of China that was established in March 1940 (see color insert, figure 6). Based in Nanjing, this regime, like Manchukuo, operated under Japanese supervision. The national histories for children examined here were all published by commercial publishers, but they served as supplements to school texts in molding children into imperial subjects. There were many other forms of media, including radio broadcasts, directed toward children as well. The examples introduced

36   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

here, while representative of the typical narrative of national history presented to children at the time, constitute only a small cross section of the national history products directed toward juveniles around the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Codifying National History The seamless accounts of Japanese history written for children to mark the 2,600th anniversary might suggest that the details of the national history, then centered on the imperial house, had been settled long before 1940. This was not the case. In the years leading up to 1940, the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau designated six national projects to mark the anniversary: (1) The expansion and beautification of Kashihara Shrine, where the spirit of Emperor Jimmu is enshrined, and the improvement of roads leading to Mt. Unebi, location of the tombs of Emperor Jimmu and of other early emperors; (2) The expansion and beautification of Miyazaki Shrine, where the spirit of Emperor Jimmu is also enshrined; (3) The investigation, identification, and preservation of sacred vestiges (or relics) of Emperor Jimmu; (4) The improvement of roads leading to other imperial tombs (goryo ˉ); (5) The construction of a Museum of National History (Kokushikan); and (6) The compilation of a definitive study of Japanese culture (Nihon bunka taikan). All of the major projects commissioned by the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau glorified national history, and three were designed to codify this history in a more definitive manner. These were the investigation and preservation of sacred vestiges of Emperor Jimmu, the establishment of the Museum of National History, and the compilation of a series of books titled “Survey of Japanese Culture.” In 1937, the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary assigned these three projects to the Ministry of Education. The first step taken by Ministry of Education officials to investigate vestiges of Emperor Jimmu was to ask the governors of ten prefectures where sites relating to the first emperor were thought to exist to submit reports detailing candidate sites that had been recognized at the local level. This set off a frenzied competition. Prefectures, cities, and villages outdid one another to win official recognition that sites within their jurisdiction were linked to the first emperor.43 What was at stake was more than prestige. Branding itself as a must-visit destination on the national heritage tourism circuit could bring a locality significant economic benefits. Particularly intense was the competition between authorities in Miyazaki Prefecture and neighboring Kagoshima Prefecture to appropriate the prize sites of Mt. Takachiho and Takachiho Palace. Mt. Takachiho was viewed as the most likely location of Ninigi no Mikoto’s descent from heaven. Amaterasu sent her grandson Ninigi to rule over the earthly land below. Takachiho Palace was interpreted as the departure point for Emperor Jimmu on his Eastward Expedition. It was possible to brand Takachiho as the very place where Japan originated and thus as a national heritage site of monumental importance. As the 2,600th

The National History Boom   37

anniversary of Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement approached any site that could be linked to the first emperor had the potential to attract tourists. There were competing theories about whether or not Takachiho, place of the imperial descent, and Takachiho Palace were at the same site or at two separate sites, but what mattered to individuals in Miyazaki and Kagoshima was that the site or sites be officially recognized as lying within their prefecture. The historian Senda Minoru has traced how both prefectures spared no effort in laying claim to Takachiho and to the Takachiho Palace. The Ministry of Education upset individuals in both prefectures with its announcement in August 1940 that there was insufficient evidence to determine the precise locations of where the imperial descent had taken place and where Takachiho Palace had been located.44 Competition among localities in Nara Prefecture over various sites associated with Emperor Jimmu’s entry into the Yamato area also was intense. The historian Suzuki Ryo ˉ wryly noted in a history of Nara Prefecture that in the years leading up the 2,600th anniversary, no fewer than ten localities within the prefecture competed to be recognized as the site that Emperor Jimmu, after his enthronement, had designated sacred ground for the worship of Amaterasu and other imperial ancestors.45 Other localities within the prefecture competed over different chapters in Emperor Jimmu’s life. A common way that localities made their case was by publishing a pamphlet or book “proving” that a particular chapter or chapters in, for example, the Eastward Expedition could have occurred nowhere else. The compilers of these studies, whether local individuals or outside experts commissioned by the locality, first accepted as factual details mentioned in the myth-histories Kojiki and Nihon shoki, and then proceeded to build a case that only their locality could correspond to the place-name linked to a particular event involving Emperor Jimmu mentioned in these two canonical texts. Portraying their endeavors as patriotic contributions to the understanding of national history, local investigators of vestiges of the first emperor inevitably found what they were looking for, namely evidence, often in overwhelming detail, proving a link between the first emperor and their locality. Consider the 127-page “Reference to Sacred Sites in Uchinomaki Relating to Emperor Jimmu’s Foundation of the Nation” that the Uda Takaki Imperial Ancestors Sacred Sites Recognition Society issued in 1939 to make its claim to being the site of Mt. Takakura in Uda.46 According to the Nihon shoki, it was on Mt. Takakura that Emperor Jimmu, in a dream, received instructions from the heavenly deity on how, by making a sacrifice to the gods of heaven and earth, to subdue without the use of force the enemy forces blocking his entry into the Yamato plain, which was visible from the mountaintop.47 The Village of Uchinomaki boldly touted the presence within the village of eight sacred sites relating to Emperor Jimmu, but it was on pages 122 through 125 that the reference book made the village’s case that a local mountain going by the name of Katakura corresponded to the celebrated Mt. Takakura in Uda. Note the dry, scholarly tone of the case presented here in paraphrased form.

38   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

1. Historical facts a. The Nihon shoki mentions Mt. Takakura in Uda. b. Local oral folk legends about Mt. Takakura in Uda do not exist. 2. The Link between Historical Events and Their Whereabouts a. Literature: A land register of Yamato from Genroku 16 (1704) supports our contention. b. Written accounts of legends: None. c. Relics: There is evidence that the peak of Mt. Katakura was leveled to make an altar. In addition, flint arrowheads, stone knives, and other items made from sanukite48 as well as pottery have been unearthed from the mountain peak. 3. Reasoning: As detailed in Section Four of Chapter Four, there is no other mountain besides Katakura that fits the description of Mt. Takakura in the Nihon shoki. Not only does Katakura fit the description, but it also has been proven that stoneware and pottery excavated from there were connected to ancient religious rituals and culture. Additionally, enshrined at the shrine located on the mountain is Takakuraji no Mikoto [who in a dream was directed by the heavenly gods to present Emperor Jimmu with a sword to encourage him to lead the Imperial Army onward to Yamato]. Is it not likely that the name of Mt. Takakura corresponds to the place where Takakuraji no Mikoto was enshrined? It can be deduced that at some time the name of Mt. Takakura was corrupted to Katakura. The written argument was supplemented by visual evidence including images of Mt. Katakura, photographs of local shrines, and photographs of fragments of ancient pottery and stone tools with particular potential to provide backing, at least to uncritical observers, to whatever interpretation of the past that might be imagined. In order to understand the mood of the times, one must put aside the now widely accepted conclusion that Emperor Jimmu never existed and remember that however preposterous it may seem from today’s perspective, individuals at the time were keen on authenticating details to a legendary narrative then generally accepted as factual. If the authors of the main bodies of these evidentiary pamphlets generally presented a strategically objective tone, such was not always the case with those asked to make introductory remarks. In his preface to an evidentiary pamphlet that another village in Nara Prefecture, Totsukawa, issued to stake its claim to being situated on the path of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition, Ichimura ˉ saka Higher School, unabashedly claimed Kisaburo ˉ (b. 1902), professor at the O that the most important event in human history was the emergence of Japan.49 He went on to stress that the Yamato area held a special significance because it was there that Emperor Jimmu had founded Japan, an accomplishment he termed an “unparalleled historical fact.” Ichimura’s giddy tone may have been explained by the fact that he completed his preface on the day that the modern Imperial Army

The National History Boom   39

captured Nanjing. He mentioned this military victory, with obvious pride, at the end of his short remarks.50 Neither Uchinomaki or Totsukawa were among the twenty-one places designated by the Ministry of Education to be the locations of Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites, a disappointment to the locals in these two villages who had mobilized to win official recognition from the central government. The report the Ministry of Education issued in 1942 detailed the methodologies employed by and the conclusions of the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu. Replete with authoritative citations from various historical documents, maps, and photographs, the report evidences that members of the committee, which included some of Japan’s most respected academicians, employed the trappings of modern social science to buttress the myth of Emperor Jimmu in service of the state.51 The professors who served on the committee included Nishida Naojiroˉ (  Japanese history, Kyo ˉto Imperial University; 1886–1964); Miyachi Naokazu (Shinto ˉ studies, To ˉkyo ˉ Imperial University, 1886–1949; Miyachi had been a member of the committee that wrote the Kokutai no hongi); Hiraizumi Kiyoshi (  Japanese history, To ˉkyo ˉ Imperial University; 1895–1984); Yamada Yoshio (  Japanese literature, president, Jinguˉ Ko ˉgakkan University; 1873–1958; Yamada also had been a member of the committee that wrote the Kokutai no hongi); Tsuji Zennosuke (  Japanese history, emeritus, To ˉkyo ˉ Imperial University; 1877–1955); Nakamura Naokatsu (  Japanese history, Kyo ˉto Imperial University; 1890–1976); and Sakamoto Taro ˉ (  Japanese history, To ˉkyo ˉ Imperial University; 1901–87).52 The committee’s task was to investigate whether or not the precise location of thirty-six place names related to Emperor Jimmu mentioned in the Kojiki or Nihon shoki could be determined with a degree of surety that would justify the construction of stone monuments designating the sites as sacred national landmarks. The committee was provided with substantial authority to rule on which sites merited official recognition. In designating Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites, however, the committee indicated its level of conviction. If the committee based its conclusions primarily on legends extant since the Edo era, then the site was designated a “site according to legend.” If in addition to legends there were documents and scholarship indicating the authenticity of a site, then it received a higher vote of confidence through the designation “inferred site.” If the committee deemed the authenticity of a site to be beyond question, no qualifying label was attached. Most professors who were members of the committee participated in various field visits in 1939 and early 1940. Rather than completing research on all the candidate locations and then rendering a decision, the committee issued its conclusions on various locations with a series of announcements over eighteen months. Whether intended or not, this method added considerable drama to the work of the committee because each announcement, on which hung the hopes of various localities, was a major media event. After a two-day general meeting on 10–11 February 1939, the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu made its first announcement of locations

40   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

officially recognized as sacred sites relating to the first emperor. The committee designated, in an unqualified manner, Kashihara Shrine and Mt. Kama ( Wakayama Prefecture), as sacred national heritage sites. According to the Nihon shoki, Mt. Kama was where Emperor Jimmu’s brother Itsuse no Mikoto had died and been buried, and Kashihara Shrine marked the spot where the first emperor was enthroned.53 The committee also gave a qualified, according-to-legend designation to three additional sites. Although the grading of sites could have served to undermine the committee’s credibility in some people’s minds, others could have interpreted it as indicative of the painstaking process by which scholars and government officials investigated the authenticity of sites before making determinations. Nara Prefecture was unquestionably the biggest winner with eight (and four that were unqualified) of the twenty-one designated Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites, whereas no sites in either Miyazaki or Kagoshima prefectures were recognized. On 29 November 1941, a ceremony was held at each of the officially designated sites to mark the construction of a stone monument designating it as an Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Site.54 The monuments survive today. Outraged authorities in Miyazaki Prefecture rejected the conclusions of the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu, the sort of protest that reminds us that even in wartime the Japanese state was far from monolithic. Notables in this prefecture insisted that Miyazaki was the birthplace of Japan. They proceeded to erect a monument, similar in style to those underwritten by the Ministry of Education to mark the twenty-one officially designated Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites, near Miyazaki Shrine that suggested that Takachiho Palace had been located in the vicinity.55 Although various localities considered the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu to have been stingy in doling out official recognition to sites said to relate to Emperor Jimmu, the national government never waged a campaign to define as heretical the many thousands of other sites that continued to be touted, by various localities, as being connected to the first emperor. Some of these unofficial sites continued to attract substantial numbers of visitors. Whereas the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu issued its determinations before the end of the anniversary year, the Museum of National History and the “Survey of Japanese Culture” were never completed. These projects involved many of the same academicians who had served on the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu. The historians Nishida, Tsuji, and Hiraizumi were members of both the Museum of National History Design Committee and the supervisory committee for the “Survey of Japanese Culture,” Miyachi was a member of the Museum of National History Design Committee, and Sakamoto was a member of the committee charged with compiling the “Survey of Japanese Culture.” The Museum of National History Design Committee defined the museum’s mandate as storing and exhibiting materials related to national history in general, to the Shinto ˉ deities of heaven and earth, and in particular “anything that

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encourages worship of the august imperial house.”56 Bureaucratic infighting prolonged the planning for this museum centered on imperial history late into the war, with the result that the promised funding was transferred to meet more immediate wartime needs.57 In Nara Prefecture, however, private donations facilitated the construction of a Museum of Yamato National History ( Yamato kokushikan) in Kashihara, another example of local efforts to claim, define, and publicize sacred chapters in the national history. The Museum of Yamato National History was one of several facilities that comprised the Kashihara Arena. Located in the outer gardens of Kashihara Shrine, the Kashihara Arena functioned as what might best be characterized as a national spiritual training complex.58 It was constructed in commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary largely by citizen labor service brigades. In addition to the museum, the Kashihara Arena included the National Foundation Meeting Hall, dormitories that symbolized the principle of “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth,” a library, various athletic facilities, and an outdoor stage used for performances such as the 1940 staging of a play titled “The Loyal Retainer Kusunoki Mashashige.”59 The 1943 book “An Outline of the Museum of Yamato National History” details the museum, which opened in November 1940, in its original, wartime form.60 In the National History Room, which had been arranged under the direction of Professor Nishida Naojiro ˉ of Kyo ˉto Imperial University, the “Spirit of the Fatherland Promotion Diorama” outlined Japan’s development by means of fifty three-dimensional pictures of key historical episodes. The first five focused on Emperor Jimmu’s feats, and the last two portrayed the China Incident. There was considerable overlap with the vignettes commonly found in children’s picture books of the time but with additional focus on events relating to the Yamato area. The Sacred Historical Sites Room featured photographs of the eight Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites located in Nara Prefecture, photographs of eleven relics of Emperor Jimmu preserved in the prefecture, and photographs of forty imperial tombs located within the prefecture. It also included a map of historical sites located on the Yamato plain. Visitors could press buttons on this map to illuminate the location of a historical site. The Archaeology Room featured a chart, based on the scholarship of the historian Kita Sadakichi (1871–1939), of where in Yamato the palaces of each of the first forty-nine emperors—of whom the first ten or so are now viewed as having been fictional—had been located.61 Not only did the museum exhibit the national history, which was portrayed as inseparable from local history, in what appears to have been an entertaining manner, but the exhibitions also enjoyed the requisite scholarly stamp of authenticity. It was a localized version of what could have been expected of the Museum of National History. The “Survey of Japanese Culture” came closer to fruition than the Museum of National History. One of the six planned volumes, on the history of Japan, was published in elegant form in 1942.62 Simply as a result of its literal size and weight it appears authoritative. Manuscripts for the other volumes were in progress when

42   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

the project was abandoned. The guidelines according to which the “Survey on Japanese Culture” was to be written evidence that the central theme of the series was to be the preeminence of the imperial house in Japan’s history.63 The historian Miyachi Masato (1944–) published an analysis of the “Survey of Japanese Culture” in 1991, a time when simplistic theories of Japanese-ness (Nihonjinron) remained rampant inside and outside of Japan before the subsequent economic depression dampened enthusiasm for cultural theories of Japan’s success. Miyachi noted that although the exaggerated focus on imperial history in its most virtuous form seemed thoroughly out of date, many of the sweeping theories of Japanese culture and history highlighted in the “Survey of Japanese Culture” remained popular, sometimes under slightly different guises, decades after Japan’s defeat. Two examples he cited were assertions that the Japanese racial (or ethnic) community shares a special destiny, and claims that the fundamental features that define Japanese society, politics, and religion, that is, Japan’s national polity, have been present since the emergence of primitive culture on the archipelago, before the waves of cultural borrowing from China and the West.64 In his analysis, Miyachi singled out one of his predecessors at Toˉkyoˉ University, Sakamoto Taro ˉ, for particular wrath for his role in writing the sections about Japan’s origin, including on the so-called age of the gods, for the one volume that was published. Perhaps Miyachi’s identification of Sakamoto as one of the chief offenders resulted in part from the fact that Sakamoto, until his death in 1987, continued to interpret as potentially authentic imperial myths by then viewed by most scholars as spurious mumbo jumbo. Miyachi termed the entire “Survey of Japanese Culture” project an exercise in “emperor system fascism.” He is only one of several scholars who in recent decades have pointed an accusing finger at those historians and other scholars who embraced the imperial myths in wartime Japan.65 Academicians and the National History Publishing Boom However enthusiastically the young historian Sakamoto may have endorsed the imperial myths in the section of the “Survey of Japanese Culture” that he wrote around the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, he was not as well positioned to capitalize on the imperial history publishing boom as were some of the more prominent scholars who served with him on government committees charged with codifying national history. Consider the book publication records of six of Sakamoto’s fellow but more senior academicians who were active on government committees at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations: Nishida Naojiro ˉ, Miyachi Naokazu, Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, Yamada Yoshio, Tsuji Zennosuke, and Nakamura Naokatsu. These scholars also wrote extensively for newspapers and magazines, and were in demand to give lectures as well. Nishida, a professor at Kyo ˉto Imperial University, was a prolific writer. His “General Account of National History” written for laypeople was in its fourth printing by 1940 (the title page, with its nationalistic imagery, is reproduced

The National History Boom   43

in figure 2).66 Nishida was also commissioned by the Nara Prefecture 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Association to edit a 2,600-year history of that prefecture. In his autumn 1940 preface to the “2,600-Year History of Yamato,” Nishida referred to Nara as the “hometown of the Japanese race.” He opined that “the history of Yamato that is integral to the history of the founding of the nation should be read and reread” by Japanese. The “2,600-Year History of Yamato” included many visuals, such as photographs of the eight Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites in the prefecture that the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu on which Nishida served had only recently designated.67 Miyachi Naokazu, a professor at To ˉkyo ˉ Imperial University and an especially energetic writer, brought out in the 2,600th anniversary year both a revised version of his annotated pocketbook edition of the Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki (A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns) and a biography of Emperor Jimmu.68 Hiraizumi, who along the same lines of Sakamoto remained a stalwart defender of imperial history until his death in 1984, frequently lectured to patriotic organizations such as the Imperial Military Reservists Association and Kenmu Loyalty Society, which then published his talks as pamphlets with titles such as “The Point of National History.”

2. The title page of Nishida Naojiroˉ’s “General Account of National History” includes an image of the Imperial Army on the march. Nishida was a professor of Japanese history at Kyoˉto Imperial University. Nishida Naojiroˉ, Kokushi tsuˉki (Sekizenkan, 1940 [fourth printing]).

44   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

He also worked with commercial publishing companies to bring out an edited, pocketbook edition of the Nihon shoki as well as a volume on national history, also in pocketbook version.69 The most productive writer of these six seems to have been Yamada, the president of Jinguˉ Koˉgakkan University. In 1940, he published three new books, “Outline of the Kojiki,” “The Sacred Accomplishments of the Founding of the Nation and Kenmu’s Restoration,” and a biography of the nativist scholar Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843), who had advocated world rule by the emperor. Additionally, his annotated version of the Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki in the Iwanami pocketbook series went into its eighth printing that year. In 1941, the Asahi Newspaper Company released his “The Japanese Spirit as Seen through National History.”70 Yamada’s popularity with commercial publishers suggests that his books sold well. Yamada also delivered a lecture on “The Evolution and Distinctive Characteristics of the National Language” as part of NHK’s program about national literature.71 Tsuji, emeritus professor at To ˉkyo ˉ Imperial University, was the chief editorial consultant for the four-volume “Dictionary of National History in Commemoration of the 2,600th Anniversary” published between 1940 and 1943,72 but his contributions to the official 2,600th anniversary projects and ceremonies also stand out. He was a member of the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu, the Museum of National History Design Committee, and the supervisory committee for the “Survey of Japanese Culture.” He also was commissioned by the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Association to edit the volume about the virtues of the successive emperors that was presented to each of the more than fifty thousand individuals who attended the 10 and 11 November 2,600th anniversary ceremony and celebration presided over by Emperor Hirohito. The title of this commemorative volume, Seitoku yoko ˉ, could be translated as “The Afterglow of Imperial Virtue.” Featured prominently in the preface was a famous example of Emperor Kameyama’s calligraphy: “Vanquish One’s Enemies!”73 A retired emperor at the time of the Mongol invasions, Kameyama (r. 1259–74) prayed personally at Ise Shrine during this time of crisis. Nakamura, associate professor at Kyo ˉto Imperial University, was a regular lecturer to patriotic societies on topics such as “The Great Spirit of the Founding of Japan” (published in pamphlet form). He also authored books intended for broader audiences. In 1941, the NHK Publishing Company issued his “General History of the Yoshino Court Period.” This book on the Yoshino Court established by Emperor Go-Daigo originated as two lectures broadcast in March 1940 by NHK as part of its program on national history. He also penned a pocketbook biography of Kitabatake Chikafusa and a general account of national history for commercial publishers.74 Far from being the products of romantic nationalistic hacks, many of the national histories popular at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations were authored by professors whose authority was buttressed by the prestige of their academic positions. There are similarities to be drawn between the cult of the

The National History Boom   45

emperor in wartime Japan and the cult of the leader, reinforced by the myth of Tan’gun, in contemporary North Korea, but there is also one obvious difference between these two cases. Japan in 1940 remained a vibrant capitalist, mass consumer society, quite a difference from North Korea. Rather than inhibiting the popularization of a glorious if spurious national history, the pursuit of profit facilitated it. It was not only publishers and bookstores that availed themselves of the profits, but also academicians. As was the case with historians who supported the Nazi regime in Germany and the Fascist regime in Italy, the postwar fate of Japanese academicians who did so much to legitimize and popularize imperial myths varied considerably. At one end of the continuum were Hiraizumi, who promptly resigned his post at Toˉkyoˉ Imperial University after his country’s surrender (although he remained a prolific writer), and Nishida, Yamada, and Nakamura, who were purged during the Occupation (1945–52). If one had to designate a chief offender, Hiraizumi would be a leading candidate, but there was plenty of guilt to go around, and it was not always distributed evenly.75 Many of the scholars tainted with association with the wartime regimes of Japan, Italy, and Germany maintained their respected academic positions after the war. In the case of our representative sample of Japanese academicians, Tsuji and Sakamoto not only escaped official censure but enjoyed illustrious postwar careers. Tsuji, who had become a member of the prestigious Japan Academy in 1932, was awarded the Order of Culture in 1952, one of several distinguished honors he received in the postwar era. Sakamoto became a full professor at Toˉkyoˉ Imperial University in 1945 and continued in that position until 1962, serving concurrently from 1951 on as the director of the Historiographical Institute there. In 1958, he became a member of the Japan Academy. The historical profession itself represents one of many points of transwar continuity. Three Popular National Histories One scholar used the 2,600th anniversary to put forth an interpretation of the national history that called into question aspects of the status quo. With her “History of Women Through 2,600 Years” ( Josei nisen roppyakunenshi  ), Takamure Itsue blamed the low status of women in Japan on customs imported from China that had corrupted the authentic native tradition of equality between the sexes. She expressed hope that the wartime crisis provided women with the opportunity to reclaim their societal prominence.76 She never questioned the basic validity of imperial history, however. Takamure began her book with a description of the golden age of matriarchy during ancient times, the first of four periods into which she divided her narrative. Emphasizing that the progenitor of the imperial line was the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, Takamure went on to trace the important role played by women at the time of the founding of the nation. According to Takamure, in the next period, the “Middle Ages,” women continued to play a leading role in culture. This was

46   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

evidenced by the woman Hieda no Are’s authorship of the Kojiki and women’s contributions to Heian-era literature as exemplified by Murasaki’s authoring of the Tale of Genji. Yet, women ceased to be as prominent as they had been in the Ancient Ages, a trend that according to Takamure only accelerated subsequently. For Takamure, it was during the “Modern Ages,” which she dated from the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate in 1185 through to the Meiji Restoration, that the thorough adoption in practice of Chinese views of women brought their status to its most pitiful point. She dated the reawakening of women’s consciousness, after almost seven hundred years of slumber, to Doi Koˉka’s (1847–1918) publication in 1876 of Bunmeiron onna daigaku (“Greater Learning for Women on Civilization”) that introduced to Japan John Stuart Mill’s (1806–73) argument in favor of equal rights between men and women. Takamure notes that within years after the publication of Doi’s tract, Fukuda Hideko (1865–1927) and Kishida Toshiko (1863–1901), as part of the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement of the late 1870s and early 1880s, were demanding equal rights for women to participate in the political process. The consolidated Meiji legal system granted limited political rights to men but continued to restrict those of women. Takamure was a member of the second generation of women who, in the early decades of the twentieth century, continued to lobby for equal rights.77 In 1931, this anarchist poetess retreated into her home to devote herself to scholarship. By the late 1930s, the respect accorded to and popularity of her studies of the role of women in Japanese history had made her an oft-sought commentator on contemporary women’s issues. A shorter version of “History of Women through 2,600 Years,” which was largely based on scholarship Takamure had published before 1940, was first published in the January 1940 issue of the popular women’s magazine Fujin asahi (“Asahi Woman”). Takamure concluded her historical narrative with the prediction that the national crisis brought on by the China Incident would mark a positive turning point in the history of women in Japan. This was a view shared by many women’s rights leaders who were seduced by the new public roles afforded to them by the wartime mobilization, albeit without any change in the legal code. Takamure’s scholarship on matriarchy and women’s history in general remains respected today despite a tarnished reputation as a result of her close collaboration with the wartime state. In the context of 1940 Japan, her emphasis on the predominant role played by women during the period of the founding of the nation, the spirit of which was touted over and over during the 2,600th anniversary year, was an especially clever means to provide a historical model for more prominent and pluralistic societal roles for women than the one that was scripted for them at the time, that of motherhood. The fact that Takamure’s scholarship was based on careful analysis of the canonical texts Nihon shoki and Kojiki made it all the more difficult to dismiss. Although widely read, Takamure’s narrative did not match in popularity the best-selling works of national history published in commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary. The two smash commercial successes of the 2,600th anniversary

The National History Boom   47

ˉ kawa Shuˉmei and by year were authored by the eminent Pan-Asianist scholar O an amateur woman historian, Fujitani Misao. Each sold hundreds of thousands of copies. In his May 1940 analysis of Japan’s publishing industry, Yazaki noted ˉ kawa’s “History of Japan through 2,600 Years” was “particularly popular.” that O ˉ kawa had This was a revised version of a history of Japan for laypeople that O first published in 1926. It included syllabary readings of all Chinese characters in order to reach out to as broad an audience as possible and, at 78 sen (20 cents), it was affordable. ˉ kawa’s “History of Japan through 2,600 Years” was, even In simple terms, O for Japan in 1940, a particularly unabashed glorification of the unbroken imperial ˉ kawa, this historical continuline’s role in unifying the Japanese. According to O ity resulted in an unusual degree of national solidarity that had made Japan both ˉ kawa’s prosperous and strong, especially in contrast to a country such as China, O ˉ whipping boy, whose history and present situation O kawa described as rife with ˉ kawa, at the time Japan’s political instability.78 In his voluminous writings, O foremost scholar of Islam, returned repeatedly to the significance, especially for all who suffered under the yoke of Western imperialism, of Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905. ˉ kawa After Japan’s surrender, the American occupation authorities charged O ˉ as a Class A war criminal. O kawa had been imprisoned by his own government in 1936 after having been found guilty of complicity in the 1932 assassination of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi (b. 1855) by radical young officers. However, after his release in 1937 he was quickly embraced by members of officialdom who had adopted pan-Asianism as a useful framework to justify Japan’s policies in Asia. ˉ kawa’s career trajectory suggests the volatile and comIn the same way that O ˉ kawa’s plex nature of Japanese politics during the 1930s, there were aspects of O scholarship that remind one of the trickiness of applying a Left-Right schemata ˉ kawa favored the mixed-nation or mixed-race theory of the to Imperial Japan. O development of the contemporary Japanese nation. The notion that the Japanese nation had resulted from the blending of various races was anathema to nativist scholars who insisted that the Japanese were a pure race descended from the gods ˉ kawa’s contrary interpretation. and protested O ˉ O kawa rejected the pure-race interpretation, and stressed that the Yamato race headed by the imperial family had assimilated both the indigenous Ainu and later immigrants to form the contemporary Japanese nation, a flexible and inclusive definition of nationality in the sense that it privileged culture over race. According to the historian Oguma Eiji’s revisionist interpretation of prewar writings about the Japanese nation, it was the “mixed-nation” theory, rather than the pure-race interpretation, that was predominant in discourse in Japan by the 1930s.79 The mixed-nation account provided a useful model for the future assimilation of the various peoples residing within the multiracial and multiethnic empire controlled by Japan in 1940.

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ˉ kawa’s “History of Japan through 2,600 Years” was rivaled in popularO ity only by the winning entry of a “prize contest for a history of the long and glorious 2,600 years of the Nippon Empire” sponsored by sister newspapers, the ˉsaka Mainichi (circulation 1.3 million) and the To O ˉkyo ˉ Nichi Nichi (circulation 1.1 ˉ saka Mainichi Newspaper Company. The award million), both owned by the O was a princely ¥5,000 ($1,250), a sum greater than the annual income of the vast majority of households in Japan. The selection committee included four members of the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu as well as the eminent journalist Tokutomi So ˉho ˉ (1863–1957) and the writer Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948), editor of the Bungei shunju ˉ magazine. Kikuchi’s novel about Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition had recently been serialized in the first four issues of Kigen nisen roppyakunen (“2,600th Anniversary of Foundation”). This monthly magazine about the 2,600th anniversary celebrations was jointly published, beginning in January 1938, by the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau and the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary. The selection committee examined 274 entries before designating as the winner what they characterized as a “people’s history” by the nonspecialist Fujitani. ˉ saka Mainichi Newspaper Company issued Fujitani’s winning entry in book The O form. One of the committee members, Nakamura Naokatsu, checked the manuscript for historical accuracy before its publication in February 1940. Although it did not necessarily enjoy the same aura of scholarship as other history books written for adults introduced here, Fujitani’s book skillfully synthesized many of the predominant interpretations of Japanese history then employed to justify the present and to chart the future. Priced at an affordable 65 sen (16 cents), the book was an easy read as a result of its supplementary syllabary readings, its colloquial, flowing prose, and perhaps most of all because of the author’s uncompromising categorization of historical actors into either good (the imperial dynasty) or evil (the shogunate) with little room for confusing shades of gray. Fujitani’s paean to imperial loyalism quickly sold more than five hundred thousand copies. The publishers issued an Englishlanguage translation in November 1940, making it one of the few examples of the imperial history boom that is available in full English translation.80 Fujitani’s book began with an assertion of Japan’s uniqueness that one would expect from the winning entry in this patriotic contest: Where on earth can we find a country other than Nippon which enjoys both such a long history and such development? At the period when our Yamato race, under the benevolent reign of the Imperial Family, which has stood at the head of the nation from the beginning, was enjoying a happy existence and making great progress 2,600 years ago when the nation was founded, not a single one of the Western powers which now are struggling to gain the hegemony of the world had reached even the “quickening” stage.

The National History Boom   49

Our nation furthermore is even prouder of the fact that the history of Japan has trodden a straight path of ascent, going ever upward step by step over the long period. Thus, as far as Nippon was concerned, history has not been a record of rise and fall but truly a record only of advance—not a tracing of prosperity and decay but a tracing of continual growth. It is also worthy of note that this growth was not the result of either the maltreatment of other races in quest of territorial expansion or their oppression arising from the selfish desire of the strong.81

Fujitani’s narrative of national history did not portray contemporary Japan as having been reborn in its past glory after a period of degradation, a view of the past commonly invoked by Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy. When Mussolini made 21 April, the day of Rome’s founding, into a national holiday, it was to symbolize the “reawakening,” indeed rebirth, of the nation.82 In contrast, Fujitani’s emphasis on the gradual advance of Japanese civilization was representative of a tendency to invoke the unbroken imperial line in order to stress fundamental continuity rather than collapse and rebirth.83 Although Japanese nativists might call for the purging of invasive foreign influences, whether those that resulted from borrowing from China or those that came in from the West, in order that true domestic traditions could be identified and sanctified, palingenetic narratives of a nation-state fundamentally reborn after a long period of decline were not the norm in the narratives of national history presented as part of the 2,600th anniversary celebration. Such a palingenetic narrative could not be easily reconciled with the overwhelming emphasis on the continuity of the imperial line. Any messy historical details that undermined the notion of the imperial line’s uninterrupted centrality to the Japanese nationstate at a fundamental level were either elided or spun in a fashion that served the theme of continuity. But there need not have been a born-again component to the national narrative for the message to come through that the people needed to redouble their efforts to live up to the example set in ancient times by Emperor Jimmu, whose charisma and accomplishments were augmented by his imaginary status. Unlike Takamure, Fujitani displayed no particular interest in women’s history. In this sense, too, she probably was far more representative of the norm than was Takamure. Fujitani’s national pantheon of heroes, to which she paid extensive homage, was conspicuously male. She placed the fourteenth-century Kusunoki at the apex: “The brilliant activities of Kusunoki Masashige, who stands out among the [imperial] loyalists as Mt. Fuji does among the mountains of Japan, pointed the way for the nation’s progress in his battles at Akasaka and Chihaya. Stimulated by Masashige’s activities, loyalist troops took up arms in various parts of the country.”84 ˉ kawa and, for that matter, Takamure, Fujitani emAlong the same lines as O braced the mixed-nation account of Japanese history: “The true value of Nippon lies in the pains of our ancestors in accomplishing the blending of Oriental races

50   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

as in a great melting pot, while absorbing the Chinese and Chosenese [Korean] immigrants and showing great development as the Yamato race.”85 Fujitani even asserted, “Once taken into the large mother country of Nippon, it seems, any naturalized foreigner, whatever his former nationality, has always become assimilated through the great absorbing power of Japan and has been reborn without a particle of difference from the members of the original Yamato race.”86 Fujitani seemed to suggest that through the act of becoming loyal to the throne individuals could even be transformed physiologically, but the point is that at the time predominant views of Japanese history recognized and accepted that many Japanese were descended from foreign émigrés to Japan. It was an ethnic rather than a racial interpretation of Japanese nationality. In practice, a clear distinction was still drawn in Imperial Japan between imperial subjects, including some individuals descended from foreign immigrants to Japan, who could trace their ancestry through family registers to Japan proper, and the colonial subjects who could not. Strictly speaking, Imperial Japan practiced not so much racial discrimination as it did family-register discrimination, but the result was generally just as noxious. It is nonetheless significant that Japan proper did not experience the sort of genealogical witch hunt that characterized Nazi Germany, where many histories embraced by Nazi leaders posited that the once pure German or Aryan race had been contaminated.87 In contrast, Japanese proponents of the mixed-race theory of their nation, at least in reference to Japan proper, did not interpret their nation to be in need of racial decontamination. There was no equivalent in Japan proper to the Aryan Affidavit. This document served as proof in Nazi Germany that an individual’s lineage had been free of Jewish blood for a certain length of time. Once adopted, the Aryan Affidavit became a critical document without which no ambitious Nazi could hope to succeed.88 Although Fujitani portrayed the Japanese nation as inclusive and welcoming to immigrants, an assertion of Japanese identity incongruous with postwar definitions, she also categorized the Japanese as having been bold overseas adventurers historically. Writing of the period before the seclusion laws banning Japanese from traveling overseas came into force early in the seventeenth century, Fujitani stressed: The Japanese sailed to Annam, Tongking, Luzon, Siam, and other South Sea regions, establishing Japanese settlements in those places. Japanese merchant ships started plying between them and Nippon. . . . In the Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto there remains today a painting of one of the trading ships, which was called the Sueyoshi-bune. In the picture, some of the traders can be seen playing Sugoroku and card games, while others are smoking “kiseru” (long, slender Japanese pipes). There are even some who are seen playing “Taiko” (   Japanese drums). All look very happy, assuming poses showing they feel at home and have forgotten they are sailing on the ocean. They do not look like persons who are going abroad, plowing their way through thousands of miles of high waves and entrusting their fate to a tiny

The National History Boom   51

ship. They indeed give vivid examples of the enterprising spirit of the Japanese people, who have no fear of going far out into the world.89

A reader of Fujitani’s narrative in 1940 could reasonably have interpreted the ongoing expansion of Japan’s overseas empire at the time as simply the newest stage in a long-standing historical pattern. Fujitani’s account also suggested that one admirable characteristic of the Japanese was their willingness to venture overseas as pioneers, a tendency interrupted only by what she judged to be the unfortunate era of national seclusion that proceeded the modern era. By 1940, the Japanese government was actively promoting and underwriting mass-scale emigration from Japan’s rural areas to the colonies; it also was reaching out to overseas Japanese who had emigrated earlier to places outside of Japan’s political control. Fujitani located threads of tradition to justify empire and overseas settlement, if perhaps in a manner less brazen than the way Nazis laid claim to territory based on the onetime existence, contrived or otherwise, of German settlements or the way the Fascists justified imperialism in North Africa by invoking the onetime extent of the Roman Empire. Anyone who reads Fujitani’s narrative today will no doubt be tempted to roar with laughter at various passages, but this book’s value lies not in its account of Japan’s long history but rather as a window into Japan at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. She won the contest in part, I suspect, because she was so skilled at employing the past to affirm the present. Fujitani likely honed this skill, before writing her winning entry, in her career as a teacher charged with transforming children into imperial subjects. The Manipulation of National History Almost all of the historical narratives presented in conjunction with the 2,600th celebrations selectively appropriated the past to justify the present. Drawing parallels between the use of history in Imperial Japan and in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is not the only framework that one could use. One could compare Imperial Japan’s manipulation of history with the experiences of various modern nationstates, including liberal democratic ones, but the trilateral comparison is useful nonetheless. For example, the Augustus craze that was manufactured in Italy in 1937 and 1938 as a result of state-sponsored celebrations of the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Rome’s first emperor shares many similarities with the Emperor Jimmu rage. To coincide with the 2,000th anniversary celebrations, the Fascist regime created a huge public space around the tomb of Augustus (63 BC–14 AD) by removing buildings, including residences, that blocked the view of this newly sanctified national heritage site. This project brings to mind efforts in Japan to codify and beautify imperial heritage sites, especially those relating to Emperor Jimmu. The historian Friedemann Scriba described the Augustan celebrations: On September 23, 1938, the year of celebrations in honor of the first Roman emperor Augustus was officially terminated in Rome: Italy’s Fascist dictator,

52   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Benito Mussolini, inaugurated the restored famous Ara Pacis Augustae, a huge altar devoted to the goddess of Augustan Peace. Various activities such as the restoration of important Augustan monuments, the publication of scientific and semi-scientific books and leaflets, lectures in various places in Italy and ceremonies had been organized in order to commemorate Augustus, who was born 2,000 years before. Besides the restoration of the Ara Pacis, the main initiative of this bimillenary was a big archaeological exhibition, the “Mostra Augustea della Romanità” (“Augustan Exhibition of Romanity”).90

The Augustan Exhibition of Romanity included a room entirely devoted to Augustus, after whom Mussolini, leader of the newly declared Italian Empire (1936), modeled himself. The exhibition’s historical narrative linked the glory of Roman civilization to the present Fascist regime. The Fascist regime planned to convert the Augustan Exhibition of Romanity into a Museum of Romanity, but this plan remained unrealized at the time of the regime’s collapse.91 Nonetheless, the exhibition itself drew more than 3.8 million admissions, many of them by Italians who made special trips to the capital for the exhibition, the sort of mass touristic embrace of national heritage that also characterized Japan and Germany at this time.92 The repertoire of symbolic imagery based on imperial myths, ranging from the golden kite to the three-legged crow, employed during the 2,600th anniversary celebrations also has its parallels in Fascist Italy. The art historian Marla Stone wrote: “Fascist symbolism, as it developed in the 1920s, located the Roman legacy at its core and depended heavily upon romanità for its coherence. The Fascist imaginary which dominated Italian visual culture between 1922 and 1943 mobilized an endless array of fasci, eagles, Romulus and Remus she-wolves, Roman battle standards, soldiers, triumphal arches and columns. Fascism’s primary symbol and its namesake, the fascio, the double-edged axe bound by rods, was taken from the lectors who carried fasci behind the Roman magistrates as symbols of authority.”93 Stone stressed that the Fascists adopted a particularly virulent form of romanità after the new Italian Empire was declared following the capture of Addis Adaba, Ethiopia, in 1936. This appropriation of Roman history as national history was on display at an exhibition about Italy sponsored by the Italian government held in Tokyo in 1939.94 Whereas the symbols employed by the Italian Fascists were selected from Roman history, much of the symbolic imagery employed in Nazi Germany was, similarly to the case of Japan at this time, derived from outright myths. The Nazi elite crafted a Germanic or Aryan past to justify racist and expansionist policies. Whereas Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) and Heinrich Himmler (1900–45) sought to chronicle the Germanic race’s glorious history, what mattered to Hitler was the unparalleled history and contributions of the Aryan race rather than Germanicness (Germanentum). Regardless, the Nazi regime employed an imagined past, according to the historian Henning Habmann: “It is impossible to mention all the areas in which

The National History Boom

53

supposedly pre- and protohistoric finds, symbols, names, customs, patterns of behavior, virtues, etc. were used. The following are a few examples: the swastika, the symbol of National Socialist tyranny, was borrowed from prehistory; the ‘Heil’ salute was likewise ‘demonstrated’ to be of prehistoric origin; the names given to units belonging to the Wehrmacht, the SS, Hitler Youth, the ‘Bund deutscher Mädel’ (League of German Girls), and the name of the “Wiking” youth association itself.”95 During the Nazi era, the same modern social science stamp of authenticity was brought to bear on these contrivances of national history as was employed in Imperial Japan with regard to the imperial mythhistory. The codification of edifying national histories, which often involves outright invention and almost always the manipulation of the past, is a defining feature of modern nation-states. The state plays a substantial role in the construction, maintenance, and popularization of national history everywhere. But only a select group of imperialist nation-states were powerful enough during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as a result of their advanced modernity, to impose upon colonial subjects the national civil religion of the mother country. However divorced from Korean history the myth of Emperor Jimmu was, it was no more ludicrous in that context than Vietnamese schoolchildren being made to memorize in French the assertion, “Our ancestors were the Gauls.” Hoang Anh Tuan, a general who helped steer Vietnam to independence, decades later remembered with resentment this aspect of his childhood education under French colonial rule.96 The role of the state in making and nurturing the national history is undeniable, but the case of Japan at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations reminds us that many actors, state and nonstate alike, contribute to this enterprise. First, there is the question of how one defines the state. Localities seek to define or at least to co-opt the national history for their own ends. Such efforts, in terms of a continuum, can either be at odds with, or proactively accentuate, the manner in which the central government wants to employ national history. It is often said that all politics is local. This is an exaggeration, but just as local issues substantially define politics, the local often looms large in the crafting of national history. Academicians provide no firewall protecting those without titles from spurious accounts of the past. Academicians in Imperial Japan, especially those at the imperial universities, are best classified as agents of the state, especially in reference to imperial history. Their support of the imperial myth-history went beyond offering bureaucratic stamps of approval expected of individuals in their positions, however. Many academicians eagerly lent their prestige, both in official reports and in commercial books from which they generated profits, to glorified accounts of the national history that provided racist and ethnocentric interpretations in support of imperialism. It is not as though one needs to be an agent of the state to contribute to a fanciful national history. Nonstate actors play roles as well, especially when driven by profit. One need only think of Japan’s publishing industry at the time of the

54

Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

twenty-sixth centennial celebrations. Another strand in the web of complicity is the people themselves. Schoolchildren under the supervision of their teacher had little choice but to bow ritualistically to the official portrait of the emperor on ceremonial days, but no one forced adults to purchase the millions upon millions of magazines and books that glorified the 2,600-year national history.

The National History Boom   55

2 m a ss participation and m a ss consum p tion

Organizers of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations intended for them to be participatory. Communal celebrations of the momentous anniversary suggested the extent of national unity more tangibly than did, for example, atomized individuals and families reading accounts of the national history, important though the national history publishing boom was. Public celebrations also provided imperial subjects with a sense of participating in the affairs of the nation. Organizers of the anniversary celebrations, employing the cultural capital at hand, devised many ways to ensure mass participation. Leaders of national and local government agencies, as well as of civil organizations, invited, in some cases commanded, their countrymen and women to celebrate the fatherland’s 2,600th anniversary by joining in precisely timed mass rituals, worshipping at shrines, offering labor service in support of projects commissioned in conjunction with the anniversary, donating trees to be planted at shrines, submitting entries to patriotic contests, performing patriotic songs and dances, participating in athletic events symbolically linked to national history (relays with stops at sacred sites were especially popular), and by hosting or attending patriotic exhibitions. On especially sacred national holidays in the 2,600th anniversary year, imperial subjects were expected to devote most of the day to rites of citizenship. Consider National Foundation Day (11 February) in 1940. In advance of this imperial holiday, the National Foundation Festival Office, headed by Nagata Hidejiro ˉ (1876–1943), issued a detailed list of recommended activities to cities, wards, towns, villages, schools, shrines, temples, commercial establishments, business organizations, factories, mines, civil organizations, households, overseas Japanese associations, and steamship companies. In the morning, individuals were encouraged to attend a National Foundation Day festival at a shrine, where they were also to pray for the extension of imperial rule, and later in the day a lecture designed to promote the spirit of the founding of the nation. Households with children were directed to engage in age-appropriate activities ranging from

56

the display of “National Foundation Dolls” to the playing of card games about the founding of the nation and national history.1 Overseas Japanese communities were encouraged to commemorate the anniversary with various special events as well. The official record of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations includes forty-one pages, in catalog form and in small print, detailing overseas celebrations in the Americas and other faraway places. A typical entry describing one of the overseas 2,600th anniversary celebrations reads as follows: Location: Lima, Peru; Sponsor: Japanese Athletics Association; Event: Track and Field Competition; Cost:  ¥1,000 ($250); Participants: 1,800.2 Precisely Timed Mass Rituals No mechanism came as close to achieving, at least for a minute or so, nearly total simultaneous and uniform national participation as did the precisely timed mass rituals. This makes them a logical point of departure for this analysis of mass celebration of the fatherland. Throughout the Empire of Japan in 1940, schoolchildren and adults were instructed to perform various patriotic mass rituals on a regular basis. For example, on 1 January, the New Year’s holiday, all imperial subjects were directed first to awake early in order to worship at a shrine, and then precisely at 9 a.m. to bow in the direction (  yˉhai   o ) of the imperial palace and to shout “Long Live His Majesty the Emperor.” These directives were not only transmitted to the citizenry by means of newspapers, radio, and other forms of mass media that might provide unenthusiastic parties with a plausible claim of ignorance, saturated though Japan was with media. Local neighborhood associations (tonarigumi  ) distributed newsletters officially notifying almost all households of such mass rituals. One surviving copy of the 28 December 1939 newsletter issued by the City of Tokyo for distribution, by means of individual neighborhood associations, to all households in the metropolis not only includes the directives about visiting a shrine and bowing in the direction of the imperial palace on 1 January but also shows the stamps of the households to which it was circulated.3 Each individual stamp indicated that the head of a household had apprised himself of the contents of the newsletter before passing it on to the next neighbor. The historian Hara Takeshi has identified twelve instances in 1940 when imperial subjects throughout the empire were expected, at a precise time, to bow in the direction of the imperial palace, to observe a moment of silence, or to shout “Banzai !” The participation of every imperial subject in a simultaneous action demonstrated the extent to which the national community was unified. Such national theater would not have been possible without modern communications technology. According to Hara, there were three different categories of rituals that constituted what he has termed “rule by time” (  jikan shihai  ), a practice that predated the anniversary celebrations but was used especially extensively in 1940. The first

Mass Participation and Mass Consumption   57

category was mass bowings in the direction of the imperial palace on special days when the emperor performed rituals inside the palace. One example was the national holiday to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Emperor Meiji. On 3 November 1937, in the first instance of wartime “rule by time” identified by Hara, imperial subjects were directed to bow in the direction of the imperial palace at precisely 9:00 a.m. From 1938 on, imperial subjects also were expected to bow in the direction of the imperial palace in the morning of the New Year’s Holiday, at 9:00 a.m. on National Foundation Day, and at 8:00 a.m. on the Emperor’s Birthday (29 April).4 The second category of precisely timed mass rituals was moments of silence required on days relating to the military and to the war. Beginning in 1938, citizens were expected to observe a moment of silence at noon on Army Day (10 March), at noon on Navy Day (27 May), and at noon on 7 July, the anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident that initiated the Second Sino-Japanese War. Imperial subjects also were expected, only in 1940, to observe a moment of silence at noon on 7 October to commence the “Movement to Express Gratitude to Soldiers.” Additionally, from 1942 on, imperial subjects were directed to observe a moment of silence at 11:59 a.m. on 8 December, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that had initiated war with the United States and the Allied Powers. The third category of mass, precisely timed rituals expected of citizens took place in conjunction either with visits by Emperor Hirohito to Yasukuni Shrine or to Ise Shrine or with special national celebrations. From 1938 on, imperial subjects were expected to observe a moment of silence at 10:30 a.m. on the two days each year, once in April and again in October, when extraordinary ceremonies for the war dead were carried out at Yasukuni Shrine in the presence of the emperor. On these days, the emperor and his subjects simultaneously bowed their heads in honor of the war heroes (eirei  ). On 10 June 1940, Emperor Hirohito visited Ise Shrine to report, to the imperial ancestors, the 2,600th anniversary of the establishment of the imperial dynasty. Twice that day, at 11:12 a.m., the precise moment that His Majesty the Emperor worshipped Toyouke Omikami, goddess of agriculture and industry, at the outer shrine and then again at 1:54, the precise moment that His Majesty the Emperor worshipped Amaterasu at the inner shrine, all Japanese observed a moment of silence and bowed in the direction of Ise Shrine. This twice-in-one-day observance of a precisely timed mass ritual to coincide with the emperor’s visit to the most holy of imperial shrines occurred only in 1940.5 Certainly folk Shinto ˉ, and even state Shinto ˉ, was far more defined by ritual than by sacred texts. Part of the process of defining Japan’s modern national identity around the imperial house involved the codification of Shintoˉ rituals to be observed only by imperial family members, as well as of other rituals in which citizens could and were expected to partake. In this case, the entire nation was expected to mark in ritualistic fashion, twice on the same day, the emperor’s performing of sacred rituals on behalf of the nation.

58   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

The final example in 1940 of “rule by time” occurred at 11:25 a.m. on 10 Nov­ ember, the exact moment during the epic ceremony to mark the 2,600th anniversary presided over by the emperor and empress when Prime Minister Konoe concluded his address by shouting “Long Live His Majesty the Emperor.” In an ˉ saka Asahi newspaper on 9 November, the advertisement that appeared in the O Matsushita Wireless Company reminded readers that owners of radios such as Matsushita’s Nashonaru (National) R-4 M would be able to shout in perfect unison with their countrymen and women at 11:25 a.m. the following day.6 The unwritten message was that families without radios risked failing to perform this ritual of citizenship in an appropriate synchronous manner. Radio broadcasts throughout the empire also typically featured daily (sometimes more than once per day) bow-in-the-direction-of-the-imperial-palace moments, but this practice did not match the scale of the precisely timed mass rituals in which all imperial subjects were expected to participate.7 In Manchukuo, the use of “rule by time” was even more pervasive. The government there, beginning with Army Day in 1938, required residents to join Japanese subjects throughout the empire in performing various precisely timed rituals, and soon thereafter also directed residents to observe precisely timed rituals designed to cultivate loyalty to the state of Manchukuo. From 1939 on, the government of Manchukuo called upon its subjects to celebrate the anniversary of the establishment of Manchukuo on 1 March by bowing in the direction of the imperial palace (Emperor Pu Yi’s residence) in Shinkyoˉ (Changchun). Particularly notable was the instance in 1940 when residents of Manchukuo were required to observe the festival to honor Emperor Jimmu on 3 April by bowing in the direction of Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum at 9:00 a.m. This tribute to the first emperor went beyond what was required of Japanese subjects since it was not observed in Japan proper or anywhere else in the empire, a reminder that it was not so much Tokyo as the Kwantung Army that exercised control in Manchukuo. Emperor Pu Yi’s trip to Japan during the 2,600th anniversary year also provided two additional occasions for precisely timed mass rituals in Manchukuo. At 2:00 p.m. on 26 June, the moment that Emperor Pu Yi (1906–67) began his visit with Emperor Hirohito, people in Manchukuo were directed to bow in the direction of the imperial palace in Tokyo. A photo in the 27 June edition of the Manshuˉ nichinichi newspaper, Manchuria’s most widely read Japanese language newspaper, showed five women dutifully bowing in front of a public building. The clock on the building, prominently shown in the photo, reads 2:00 p.m. The photo suggested the all-important uniformity and simultaneity with which this ritual was carried out throughout Manchukuo. Emperor Hirohito extended to Emperor Pu Yi a welcome befitting the sovereign of an independent nation-state. In what was portrayed as an extraordinary gesture of goodwill, Emperor Hirohito came all the way into Tokyo Station to wait in front of the train car from which Emperor Pu Yi would exit in order to greet him on the day of his arrival in Japan. Film footage of that meeting included in the documentary film “Revering the Founder’s Work” shows Emperor Pu Yi saluting

Mass Participation and Mass Consumption   59

smartly as he exits the train but then struggling to remove a white glove from his right hand, a gesture suggesting his intention to extend his hand to Japan’s emperor for a friendly handshake. This is precisely what Emperor Pu Yi did, and Emperor Hirohito responded by extending his hand for an enthusiastic and lengthy handshake, a foreign ritual that likely few Japanese viewers had ever seen their sovereign perform. Perhaps the handshake was conducted precisely with foreigners in mind, since this Euro-American custom suggests equality. At the time, many foreign governments, most significantly those of Britain and the United States, scoffed at the notion that Manchukuo was anything but a puppet of Japan, but Japanese authorities were still endeavoring to convince skeptics otherwise. Emperor Pu Yi came to Japan largely to ask permission from Emperor Hirohito to worship Amaterasu. Emperor Hirohito granted permission for Manchukuo’s emperor to worship the progenitor of the Japan’s imperial line, and upon Pu Yi’s return a shrine to Amaterasu was constructed inside his palace.8 It is thus unsurprising that during the course of his visit to Japan, Emperor Pu Yi worshipped at Ise Shrine, on 3 July at 1:24 p.m. At this precise moment, individuals in Manchukuo again bowed to the east, in the direction of this shrine dedicated to Amaterasu.9 On the following day, Emperor Pu Yi also worshipped at Kashihara Shrine and at Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum and other imperial tombs at Mt. Unebi. These rituals were designed to lay the groundwork for the announcement made on 15 July by the government of Manchukuo of its decision that Amaterasu would be worshipped in Manchukuo overall from that time on.10 The effectiveness of these precisely timed rituals lay in their uniformity and simultaneity, as well as in their short duration. Virtually everyone throughout the empire, regardless of class, ethnicity, and myriad other differences, could take one minute to perform the ritual. With governmental and civil organizations enlisted to educate the citizenry about the required ritual and also to facilitate its performance, nearly total participation could be achieved. Of course, it could only be achieved for a fleeting moment, one clear drawback, but the ritual could be and was repeated, no less than twelve times in 1940 in Japan proper and most of the empire, and even more frequently that year in the case of Manchukuo. Precisely timed rituals such as moments of silence designed to exhibit national unity are not unique to Japan. Many Allied countries celebrated Armistice Day commemorating the end of World War I in 1918 with a moment of silence each year at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The extent to which such rituals were used in Japan between 1937 and 1945, with 1940 being the peak year, seems to have no parallel, however. In Nazi Germany, military, paramilitary, and Reich Labor Service brigades spent months drilling in order to be able to parade with precise synchronicity at the Nazi Party rallies held in Nuremberg. However, a review of the literature suggests that the Nazi regime did not make use of precisely timed mass rituals in which all German nationals were expected to participate in a manner similar to what was done in Japan. In Fascist Italy, too, although considerable emphasis was placed on the precision by which celebrations of the Fascist regime such as parades were carried out,

60   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

Mussolini’s regime did not employ anything along the lines of the “rule by time” that was used in wartime Japan. Japan’s precisely timed rituals bring to mind the Islamic practice of praying in the direction of Mecca five times daily, but this is a transnational practice. Although Islamic nation-states typically facilitate this practice, the ritual is not directed toward the nation-state. Labor Service Another notable means by which Japanese participated in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations was by performing labor service to expand the scope of and to beautify imperial sites such as shrines. When the simmering conflict between Japan and China escalated into full-scale war in July 1937, the military drafted more and more men into service. This depleted the rural areas, in particular, of manpower. In order to remedy the resulting labor shortage, the Japanese government intensified efforts to encourage the practice of citizens, especially students, performing labor service in order to maintain the production of vital foodstuffs during a time of national crisis. Within months, however, the governor of Miyazaki Prefecture, Aikawa Katsuroku (1891–1973), prominently linked the concept of patriotic labor service to various projects under way in the prefecture in preparation for the 2,600th anniversary. Officials in Miyazaki Prefecture announced the formation of the Fatherland Promotion Labor Service Brigades (Sokoku shinkoˉtai). Their assignment was to expand the Miyazaki Shrine compound and to improve access to it as well as to beautify imperial heritage sites in the prefecture. Governor Aikawa conceptualized the Fatherland Promotion Labor Service Brigades as being composed of residents of Miyazaki Prefecture. Only a few of the 17,182 individuals who provided uncompensated labor service as brigade members came from outside that prefecture. Following Miyazaki Prefecture’s lead, Nara Prefecture governor Mishima Seiya, who only recently had been transferred to Nara from the governorship in Miyazaki that Aikawa then assumed, announced the formation of the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades (Kenkoku hoˉshitai). Their assignment included the beautification and expansion, by ten times in area, of the Kashihara Shrine compound (in part through the construction of the Kashihara Arena) and the improvement of road access to Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum and to the many other imperial tombs in the prefecture. Officials in Nara announced that the joyous opportunity to offer one’s labor service to improve the Yamato area’s sacred heritage sites, which were so central to the establishment of the imperial dynasty and thus of the fatherland, would be made available to the entire nation rather than being restricted to only residents of the prefecture.11 According to the official history of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, the number of visitors to imperial tombs and other imperial sites had increased dramatically in the years leading up to the anniversary, and yet the roads to them were often not suited to modern forms of transportation.12 In 1939, the central

Mass Participation and Mass Consumption   61

government formally granted Nara Prefecture, Kyoto Prefecture, the City of Kyoto, and Kagoshima Prefecture permission and the funds necessary to improve the roads leading to forty-three imperial tombs. Approximately ten of these tombs were for emperors who were fictional, but even the designated locations of the tombs for emperors who had once lived tended to be contrived.13 Specialists engineered the roads, but labor service brigades did the construction work. Nara Prefecture’s National Foundation Labor Service Brigades make for a good case study of one prefecture’s version of the various labor service brigades that were established in the late 1930s in the name of serving the nation, whether by helping in the agricultural sector, beautifying imperial heritage sites, or assisting in the development of Manchuria. Nara prefectural officials administered the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades, but the brigades themselves had no permanent members. As the result of a campaign initiated by the prefecture in ˉ saka Asahi newspaper (both the the spring of 1938 that received support from the O ˉ Osaka Asahi and the To ˉkyo ˉ Asahi had a daily circulation greater than one million at the time), brigades began coming to Kashihara beginning on 8 June 1938 for one or more days to perform labor service. Slightly more than ten thousand individuals provided labor service in the three weeks following the 8 June inaugural ceremony. Early National Foundation Labor Service Brigades included some newsworthy participants. For example, on 26 June the governor of Osaka Prefecture led a brigade of 350 civil servants in labor service at the Kashihara Shrine compound for a day. On 7 July, the first anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident that led to war between Japan and China, two hundred disabled veterans from the Nara Military Hospital arrived to perform a day of labor service. This demonstraˉ saka Asahi, tion of patriotism attracted widespread accolades. In addition to the O other print media as well as radio favorably reported on the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades, and this served to fan the movement. ˉ saka Asahi featured numerous articles about the brigades and sponThe O sored a contest, with a deadline of 20 July, to select the words for a “National Foundation Labor Service Brigades Song.”14 With breakneck speed, the newspaper’s selection committee examined no fewer than 8,614 entries in two weeks before awarding first prize, which came with an award of ¥1,000 ($250; several months’ pay for a middle-class salaryman), to Imai Hiroshi, an elementary school teacher from Hyogo Prefecture. The award announcement in the 3 August edition noted that the renowned composer Yamada Koˉsaku (1886–1965) had been commissioned to compose the musical score. Yamada was reported to have visited Kashihara to have a firsthand look at the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades and to experience the atmosphere of this holy place before beginning his composition, which was released to the public in the next day’s ediˉ saka Asahi. Two months later, in October 1938, the peak tion (4 August) of the O month for the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades movement, Columbia Records issued the record version of the “National Foundation Labor Service Brigades Song.”

62

Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

That same October more than 150,000 individuals arrived in brigades to Kashihara to perform labor service. One of the brigades was led by Ueno Sei’ichi ˉ saka Asahi Newspaper Company, who oversaw (1882–1970), president of the O 390 of the newspaper’s employees in a day of labor service on the 23rd.15 By the time the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades completed their work at the end of 1939, 1,214,089 individuals in 7,197 groups had come from throughout the empire to serve for a day or more.16 Historians who dismiss fascism as a useful concept for understanding Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s invariably stress that Japan lacked a mass political party along the lines of the Fascist Party that gained control of Italy in 1922 or the Nazi Party that gained control of Germany in 1933. The fact that Japan lacked a mass fascist party should not divert attention from what was going on at the popular level during this period, however. There certainly was a mass participatory component to the 2,600th celebrations of the unbroken imperial line ideology whose jingoism, at least in its 1940 form, matched that of Nazism or Italian Fascism. In 1940 a stone monument was placed near the Kashihara Arena to commemorate the 1.2 million individuals who performed labor service (figure 3). On the back of this monument there is a chart that shows how many individuals came from each of the empire’s administrative areas, those of Japan proper as well as of the empire. Individuals from Korea constituted the ninth largest contingent from the various administrative areas, demonstrating the extent of mobility to and from the colonies.17 Students and members of youth groups (seinendan), which included individuals in their twenties, made up a significant percentage, but not a majority, of those who performed labor service. Statistics compiled by Nara Prefecture as well as visual records indicate that the brigades represented a wide range of age groups and occupations within Japanese society. Brigades ˉ saka Imperial ranged from the one comprised of more than 100 nurses from the O University Hospital to the unusually large one that mobilized more than four thousand employees of Matsushita Electric Industrial Company who came en masse in October 1938.18 Each brigade followed a standardized set of rituals during its stint in Kashihara. The case of the 106-member youth brigade (seinen ho ˉshitai  ) representing the Manchukuo Concordia Association (Kyo ˉwakai), which came to Kashihara in October 1939, is especially interesting for its transnational composition. As the result of an agreement negotiated with officials in Nara Prefecture, brigade members were permitted to perform rituals reflecting their representation of the state of Manchukuo in addition to the rituals expected of all brigades. Slightly smaller than the average brigade that came to Kashihara Shrine, the Manchukuo Concordia Association youth brigade was thoroughly atypical in its racial diversity. Members were selected to represent the five races of Manchukuo, defined in the brigade’s “diary” as Japanese, Manchu, Korean, Mongol, and Russian (other definitions of the five races in Manchuria included the far more numerous Chinese in place of Russians). As an official delegation from Manchukuo,

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3. This stone marker was placed in the Kashihara Arena in 1940 in order to commemorate the 1.2 million individuals who came to perform labor service to expand and to beautify imperial sites in the area.

the brigade also enjoyed official welcomes everywhere it went. Its length of stay in Kashihara, thirteen days, was also longer than that of most brigades.19 Before this youth brigade’s trip to Japan, the Concordia Association would have submitted an application to the officials in Nara Prefecture charged with organizing visits by brigades. A brigade needed to have its application approved before traveling, for example, to Kashihara. The diary indicates that the brigade left Shinkyo ˉ on 12 October, reached Japan proper on 14 October by steam ferry from Fusan (Pusan) after traversing Korea by train, and arrived in the “holy place” of Kashihara in the afternoon of 15 October 1939. After a welcoming ceremony far more elaborate than most brigades received, brigade members took up residence in three of the “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth” dormitories located in the Kashihara Arena, many of whose facilities were still under construction. Completion of the dormitories had been prioritized and they opened for use on 7 August 1938. There was no charge for staying in the dorms, railway companies provided specially discounted fares, but brigades were responsible for bringing provisions in order to feed themselves. The expenses incurred by a brigade, depending on the distance traveled and the length of stay, could be significant. These costs were often financed by the organization that the brigade represented rather than by the individual brigade members.

64   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

On 16 October, members of the Concordia Association youth brigade, along with all others lodged in the dorms, awoke at 5:30 a.m. By 6:00 the brigade assumed formation for the raising of the national flags of both Manchukuo and Japan and the singing of both state’s national anthems. This was followed by the ritual of bowing from afar in the direction of Japan’s imperial palace, as was expected of all brigades, as well as in the direction of Manchukuo’s imperial palace. Subsequently the brigade members performed group exercises. Following breakfast, the brigade worshipped at Kashihara Shrine at 8:25. Since it was to be the brigade’s first day of labor service, instead of beginning work at 9:30 the brigade first attended an inaugural ceremony. At the conclusion of this fifteen-minute ceremony, the brigade was presented not only with tools but also with the official National Foundation Labor Service Brigade flag, which was to be treated with gravity (see color insert, figure 7). The brigade performed labor service from 9:45 until 4:45 in the afternoon. The labor service itself, which included regular breaks, does not seem to have been particularly physically demanding. Rain made work conditions unpleasant on certain days, but on very wet days work was cancelled. Rituals did not dictate evenings as much as they did mornings, although the evening schedule of the Concordia Association youth brigade included more educational activities, such as lectures and meetings with Japanese youth groups, than was the case for most brigades. Everyone lodging in the dorms had a 9:00 p.m. bedtime. Beginning at 5:30 the next morning, the daily routine was repeated. During its stay in Kashihara, the Concordia Association youth brigade took off the afternoon of 23 October to go sightseeing at Mt. Yoshino, site of Emperor Go-Daigo’s Mausoleum, and the day of 27 October to explore Nara. Excursions to national heritage sites in the proximity of Kashihara were probably a part of the overall experience for many individuals who served in National Foundation Labor Service Brigades, but the Concordia Association youth brigade also took advantage of its visit to Japan to sightsee for more than a week. After officially ending its labor service in Kashihara on 29 October, the brigade proceeded the next morning to Osaka for two days of sightseeing. Brigade members made a stop at Uji, a site famous both for its imperial history and for the green tea cultivated there, and then continued on to Ise Shrine to worship at this most sacred shrine. The brigade then spent six days in Tokyo, making visits to Meiji Shrine, Yasukuni Shrine to the war dead, the Embassy of Manchukuo, various government ministries, and the Diet. Several hosts feted the brigade during its sojourn in the capital. Before returning by steamship to Dairen (Dalian), the brigade spent one day sightseeing in Kyoto, where they paid their respects at the imperial tombs at Momoyama, visited the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and enjoyed some casual time in the scenic environs of Arashiyama.20 In 1940, the Hankyu ˉ Railway Company, which transported some of the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades to Kashihara, published Fujita Munemitsu’s analysis of this movement. Fujita helped supervise the construction

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projects to expand Kashihara Shrine. A participant in the Home Ministry’s Urban Research Association (Toshi kenkyuˉkai), Fujita had a particular interest in devising means to harmonize relations between urban and rural areas. In his introduction, Fujita provided a short account of the origin and history of the imperial dynasty. Employing the terminology of ancestor worship, Fujita stressed that the most important ritual for imperial subjects, whom he termed children of the emperor, to observe was that of worshipping the founder of the imperial dynasty. According to Fujita, this rite was best accomplished through a personal visit to Kashihara Shrine and to Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum.21 Fujita also took pains to claim that Japan enjoyed a long tradition of service to the nation to reject the notion that his country needed to emulate the mass movements of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. With the exception of the Manchurian Youth Corps, an organization that trained approximately eighty-six thousand future colonizers of Manchuria between 1934 and 1945, labor service involving individuals from Japan proper never evolved into a fully supported state-run organization as it did in Nazi Germany and in the United States in the 1930s.22 Therefore one must be cautious in making comparisons between the case of Japan and that of Germany or of the United States. By 1935, there existed in Germany a well-funded, bureaucratic organization to manage the Reich Labor Service (RAD), whose rank and file was made up of hundreds of thousands of young men conscripted into service for six months or longer.23 This was different from regionally based labor service organizations in Japan such as the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades. Since Manchukuo was often characterized by statist policies that radical members of the Japanese military and bureaucracy would have instituted in Japan proper but for the resistance of vested interests there, it is noteworthy that the fiercely anticommunist Concordia Association more closely resembled the mass membership organizations of Nazi Germany than did anything in Japan proper. The youth wing of the Concordia Association resembled Nazi Germany’s RAD in one especially important sense. Membership was compulsory from 1940 on.24 In his sweeping study of the RAD, the historian Kiran Patel concluded that the pedagogical side of the Nazi Germany’s labor service was more important than its economic side, a fundamental difference from the Civilian Conservation Corps in the United States but similar to the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades and other such brigades that performed service to the throne in Japan. Patel cited the wording of the law that established the RAD: “The Reich Labor Service is to educate the German youth in the spirit of National Socialism into a Volksgemeinschaft [the Nazi term for a racially homogenous focused national community] and to a true idea of work, especially an appropriate respect for manual labor.’ ”25 The key goals of the RAD were political indoctrination and promoting physical fitness. In citizenship training, promoting respect for manual labor, and improving physical fitness, the goals of National Foundation Labor Service Brigades movement as described by Fujita was similar to the RAD. Fujita championed labor service, which he assumed would teach participants the value of physical labor,

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as a means to overcome the divide separating city and countryside and the class divisions between intellectuals, urban workers, and farmers.26 According to Fujita, participants in the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades would become conscious of Kashihara Shrine and better understand the purpose of the people’s 2,600th anniversary commemorative projects, become more reverent toward the founder of the imperial dynasty, and gain, through hands-on experience, a respect for labor.27 Fujita also expressed concern that as Japan had industrialized and urbanized, the physical strength of the people had declined. Perhaps intoxicated with agrarian romanticism, Fujita did not take into account the toll on physical fitness taken by the continuing existence of terrible poverty, including periodic famines, in many of Japan’s rural regions such as the Northeast in the 1930s even as other parts of the country underwent the heavy industry stage of economic development. Many of Japan’s least physically fit youth lived in the countryside, not in urban areas. The deplorable physical state of conscripts from rural areas was one of the main motivations for the Army Ministry’s insistence on the creation in 1938 of a Welfare Ministry, which included a physical fitness bureau.28 The hope expressed by Fujita that nationalism could overcome class differences or, even better, obliterate class altogether was shared by ideologues in other countries that mobilized for total war, including thinkers in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as well as commentators in countries outside of the Axis. Whether or not the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades proved at all successful in overcoming various societal divisions is difficult to gauge. What is clear is that the practice resulted in hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom were spared from eking out a living through the daily grind of physical labor, performing a short stint of manual labor on behalf of the fatherland. To some extent, the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades reflected class divisions. Unlike the precisely timed mass bowing or shouting of banzai, labor service at a patriotic site such as Kashihara was not something everyone could do. The majority of peasants and others who actually made their living through physical labor were not in an economic position to finance a trip to Kashihara, assuming that they could have spared the time off from their daily labors. A chance to serve the nation by beautifying the imperial topography was not limited to members of the most privileged classes, but at the same time it was not a welfare program geared toward the unemployed and underemployed. Labor service became one of many mechanisms designed to reinforce the civil religion centered on the cult of the emperor, and it had the secondary virtue of conveniently exempting the government from some of the costs of beautifying and expanding the national topography of imperial sites. Donations The government sought to transfer to the private sector as much of the costs of the celebrations as possible by soliciting patriotic labor service and by asking for

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monetary and in kind donations in the name of the nation. The semigovernmental, semicivil Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary was established to encourage widespread participation in, and financial support for, the anniversary celebration. The official records of the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary show that when the association was established, the founders designated five categories of membership that ranged from ¥10,000 ($2,500) or above down to the lowest category for donors who gave between 10 and 100 yen. Donations of less than ¥10 were welcome, but only bought the status of “supporter” rather than member.29 The upper-echelon membership of this association represented a veritable Who’s Who of Japan’s elite, both inside and outside of officialdom. From 1938 on, the magazine Kigen nisen roppyakunen, the publicity organ of the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary as well as of the government’s 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau, included numerous solicitations for donations as well as lists of individuals who made notable contributions. One campaign solicited donations of trees to be planted at either Kashihara Shrine or Miyazaki Shrine.30 An accounting of donated trees published in the April 1940 issue of Kigen nisen roppyakunen reported that Kashihara Shrine had received 5,302 trees and geographically remote Miyazaki Shrine the far less impressive figure of 235 trees.31 The financial value of the trees contributed to these two shrines was inconsequential in comparison to the monetary donations made to the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary. A bar chart in the June 1940 issue of Kigen nisen roppyakunen showed the aggregate donations originating from each prefecture, a method often employed at the time to foster regional competition. Donations totaled ¥ 6,374,193, or more than $1.5 million according to the exchange rate in 1940. Slightly more than two-thirds of the ¥ 6.3 million came from the two prefectures of Tokyo and Osaka, the epicenters both of population and modernity. In sixth place was Korea with ¥178,084 contributed, ahead of all but five of the administrative areas in Japan proper. Manchukuo was in tenth place with a total of ¥ 71,029 contributed, and “overseas Japanese” were eleventh with ¥ 58,724 donated. The relative positions of Korea, Manchukuo, and overseas Japanese remind us of the complexity of defining the boundaries of the Japanese “nation” in 1940. In forty-seventh and last place among those administrative areas from which donations had been received was Tochigi Prefecture, with a paltry sum of ¥ 25 that barely registered on the chart.32 Such comparisons, although perhaps useful in fostering donations by spurring regions to compete against each other, also displayed the economic divide between different areas in Japan, most prominently between urban and rural areas even when population differentials are taken into account. Contests Another way for Japanese to participate in, indeed to put their personal stamp on, the celebrations of the fatherland was by entering contests centered on patriotic

68   Imperial Japan at Its Zenith

themes. Contests were one of the many forms of participation in the anniversary celebrations that intersected with patterns of mass consumption. Such contests were pervasive in Japan in 1940, and had been for several years leading up to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. The cash awards offered for some contests were greater than the average household’s annual income, one factor that explains their popularity in spite of the long odds faced by entrants. The most popular contests, in terms of the numbers of individuals who submitted entries and the extent to which the product(s) that resulted from the contests were consumed, were those to select songs on a particular theme. The contest sponsored by the Cabinet Information Department in the fall of 1937 to select a “patriotic march” song displaced all previous benchmarks for the benefits, both patriotic and monetary, that could be derived from such undertakings. The Cabinet Information Department received 57,578 submissions from throughout the empire for words to the song. A subsequent contest produced 9,555 entries for the accompanying music.33 The number of entries was high but not spectacular in comparison to some other patriotic song contests staged at the time, but the popularity and commercial success of the “Patriotic March Song,” devised by combining the winning entry for words with that of the winning entry for music, was unprecedented. Rather than awarding exclusive rights to the “Patriotic March Song” to one record company, the sponsor allowed all the major record companies to issue recordings. In the two years following its release by the six major record companies on 1 January 1938, this rousing song sold 1.5 million recordings.34 The magazine Kigen nisen roppyakunen included in its April 1938 edition a thirty-two-step chart detailing the precise movements required to perform the dance accompanying the “Patriotic March Song.”35 Subsequent editions of this magazine included similar charts detailing the dance movements for other popular winners of patriotic song contests such as the “People’s 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Song”36 (see color insert, figure 8). The historian Taylor Atkins, in his transwar study of jazz in Japan, has drawn attention to the flourishing music industry in Imperial Japan.37 Barak Kushner, also a historian, has demonstrated that recordings of comedy routines also remained popular throughout the war.38 If the dark valley view of Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s were not so tenacious, it would be less necessary to elaborate on just how significant a consumer market there was for recordings. In 1937, the last year before the government instituted regulations that would within a few years extinguish the production of gramophones for the consumer sector, around 290,000 units were sold in Japan. Unlike gramophones, significant numbers of records were produced and sold well into 1942. Although the peak year for record sales in Imperial Japan was in 1936, when consumers purchased nearly thirty million recordings, Japanese consumers still purchased twenty-one million records in 1940.39 On occasion, companies issued new records with impressive rapidity in reaction to political developments, one suggestion of the competitiveness of the

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industry. On 27 September 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact allying itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. By September in that tumultuous year, France had already signed an ignominious armistice with Nazi Germany that, in the context of Asia, made French Indochina an easy target for Japan, and Britain seemed to have its back against the wall in fending off the Nazi threat. Such an alliance seemed, at least to some Japanese, to be in tune with the trends of the time. In early November, just five weeks after the alliance was formalized, Columbia Records released its “Tripartite Alliance Song.”40 This song neither resulted from a contest nor achieved particular popularity. This was perhaps an appropriate fate for a song celebrating an alliance that provided few concrete benefits for Japan but served to firmly place Japan in the enemy camp in the minds of many Americans, making it easier for the Roosevelt administration to justify sanctions that squeezed Japan’s wartime economy severely. Since the record companies obviously made considerable profits from selling recordings of patriotic songs, it is perhaps surprising that it was not the record companies that sponsored the many song contests from which so many of the patriotic tunes originated. It was first and foremost the commercial print media that sponsored the contests that played such a significant role in sparking consumer demand for patriotic tunes, although government agencies and other media organizations, state owned (e.g., NHK) or otherwise, also played a role. In his cultural history of Japan’s record industry, Kurata Yoshihiro listed contests to select songs on patriotic themes that drew large numbers of entries in the years from 1938 to 1943. All but two were sponsored by the commercial print media.41 This tendency reflected not only the effectiveness of the contests in promoting circulation but the print media’s symbiotic relationship with record companies. Anyone who examines the major Japanese newspapers and magazines in 1940 cannot help but notice the many advertisements by record companies plugging their hit songs. Ads placed by record companies were an important revenue source for the print media. The print media and record companies alike profited from patriotic consumerism. An advertisement placed by the Japan Victor Corporation in the 10 February 1940 edition of the Manshuˉ nichinichi newspaper not only touted Victor’s recordings of the “2,600th Anniversary Song” and the “Song for the Development of Manchuria” but also, in a more general sense, stressed, “For patriotic songs, Victor.” Most of the patriotic songs composed for the 2,600th anniversary celebrations never became nationally known. This was especially true of the many songs commissioned at the regional level to mark the anniversary. On 2 April 1940, officials of the Kagoshima Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary introduced the song “Sacred Territory of the Fatherland,” which stressed the prefecture’s special role in the origin of Japan.42 Never issued in record form, “Sacred Territory of the Fatherland” remained largely unknown outside of Kagoshima, where it was sung on certain ceremonial occasions. Although song contests were particularly popular, they were only one genre of a broader, empire-wide phenomenon of patriotic contests. Essay contests were

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also common. On 19 May 1940, the Manshu ˉ nichinichi newspaper announced its sponsorship of an essay contest on the theme “Yearning for Japan” that was open only to elementary school students in Manchuria who had never been to Japan. The ten winners, two representatives from each of the five races of Manchukuo, were sent on a pilgrimage to sacred sites in Japan proper that was underwritten by the newspaper.43 Along the same lines, Sho ˉjo kurabu, a magazine for girls, sponsored a short essay contest with the theme of “Celebrating the 2,600th Anniversary of the Imperial Line.” The panel of judges included Fujitani Misao, who had been catapulted into prominence as a result of her own winning entry in a contest that, after it was published in book form under the title 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire, enjoyed widespread popularity. The young winner of the contest sponsored by Sho ˉjo kurabu, Matsuyama Fusako of Kagoshima Prefecture, recounted her experience of having prayed on the peak of the sacred Mt. Takachiho in the morning of 1 January 1940. Matsuyama, a recent graduate of elementary school, explained how this had left her with a profound appreciation of the “eternal national history,” virtuous chapters of which she referenced.44 One of the most lavishly underwritten contests was sponsored by the Society for International Cultural Relations (Kokusai Bunka Shinkoˉkai; established in 1934  in order to introduce Japanese culture to areas outside of Japan) and open to citizens of countries other than Japan. Through its Western-language magazine Nippon and advertisements in other foreign mass media, the Society for International Cultural Relations solicited entries in the fall of 1939 to an essay contest to commemorate the founding of the Empire of Japan. According to the terms of the contest, first-prize winners from each of the five regions into which the world was divided were to receive a first-class round-trip ticket to Japan and a ¥ 3,000 ($750) scholarship intended to underwrite a three-month stay. Contestants were permitted to submit one essay by the 30 November 1940 deadline about one of three subjects: characteristics of Japanese culture; cultural exchange between Japan and foreign countries; and the position of Japanese culture in the world. Contestants were advised to “endeavor to be interpretive and discuss the possible future development, significance, or contribution of Japanese culture.”45 From the moment that Japan entered the international system of nation-states during the heyday of imperialism, a central concern of that country’s leaders had been to prove that Japan was a civilized country worthy of equal treatment by the Euro-American powers. Planners of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations viewed them not simply as a domestic affair but as an opportunity to showcase Japan’s achievements to the world. By 1940 more and more Japanese viewed their country’s achievements as not merely equal but rather superior to those of other civilizations. The opportunity to advertise Japan’s civilization internationally also had been a key factor motivating those Japanese who supported Tokyo’s bid to host the Olympics in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary.46 In simple terms, the goal of the essay contest was to solicit foreign testimonies to the uniqueness and greatness of Japanese civilization—a basic theme of

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the 2,600th anniversary celebrations—that could be used both domestically and abroad to promote this notion. Unlike the other contests introduced here, this contest was far less driven by consumerism. This contest did not serve to sell more newspapers or magazines, although a book did result from the entries. The 502 entries were judged by a distinguished group of scholars and the winners were announced on the national holiday celebrating the emperor’s birthday (29 April) in 1941. That same year, the Society for International Cultural Relations published a collection of sixteen first- and second-place essays under the title “The Characteristics of Japanese Culture,” the topic that had proven to be the most popular among contestants.47 The analysis of the essays published at the end of this collection noted considerable overlap in the entries, with many contestants stressing the specificity of Japan’s “national polity” (kokutai  ) defined by the unbroken imperial line. Contestants were competing to win a contest staged to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary of the origin of the imperial dynasty, after all.48 Newspapers Newspaper companies throughout the empire went to great lengths to sponsor events and projects to commemorate the 2,600th year of the imperial dynasty in a manner befitting such a significant anniversary. Contests were only part of the ˉ saka Asahi Newspaper Company, one of the largest story. Consider how the O newspaper companies in Japan proper, the Keijoˉ Daily Newspaper Company, publisher of the Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ, the main Japanese language newspaper in Korea, and the Manchuria Daily News Company, publisher of the Manshuˉ nichinichi, the most important Japanese language newspaper in Manchuria, exerted themselves to organize events to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary. ˉ saka Asahi newspaper stressed in its 1 January 1940 issue that it had The O been a sponsor of the construction of the Kashihara Arena, the national spiritual training complex located in the outer gardens of Kashihara Shrine completed in advance of the 2,600th anniversary year. The next day’s edition announced support for four additional projects including the Asahi’s plan to donate sacred altar ˉ masakaki; the sakaki evergreen tree is particularly revered in Shintoˉ) to displays (O 211 shrines throughout the empire.49 The Asahi separately sponsored additional commemorative events during the year, including a series of airplane flights that formed a 2,600-kilometer circuit around the archipelago. The initial flight took off from the airport in Kyushu nearest to the purported site of the imperial descent.50 The Asahi employed a fleet of airplanes in order to provide its readers with the most updated news about the war front, so it is not surprising that it would commission airplanes to manufacture outright a story in conjunction with the anniversary celebrations. The Asahi also teamed up with the Naval Association (Kaigun kyoˉkai) in 1940 to offer “Maritime Training Cruises to Sacred Sites” for elementary school teachers in order that they might have the chance to see firsthand imperial heritage

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sites integral to the national history they were charged with introducing to their students. The trips afforded teachers from various areas of Japan proper the opportunity to visit recently renovated sacred sites in Nara such as Kashihara Shrine and Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum as well as holy places in Kyushu from where Emperor Jimmu began his Eastward Expedition.51 More than four hundred teachers took advantage of the first and second voyages in March and April, details of ˉ saka Asahi newspaper. which were reported in the O The Keijoˉ Daily Newspaper Company sponsored five commemorative projects, ranging from a Grand Exposition of Korea (Choˉsen daihakurankai) to a relay to carry a sacred flame from Ise Shrine to the Choˉsen Shrine (the main shrine in Korea) to the sending of representative schoolchildren to worship at Kashihara Shrine.52 The Manchuria Daily News Company, for its part, sponsored six main commemorative events, including the bringing over to Manchuria of nine professional baseball teams from Japan proper for a series of major league games, and a “2,600th Year Lecture Series” by leading men of knowledge from Manchuria and Japan. This newspaper company also sponsored several additional events, such as the essay contest “Yearning for Japan” geared to elementary school students. These commercial newspaper companies did not sponsor these events simply out of civic duty. All of the sponsored events and projects, whatever degree of public participation they encouraged, were designed with financial profit in mind. These sponsored events and contests provided manufactured news, a major strategy of Japan’s print media at the time, and many of them (e.g., exhibitions) generated revenue through admissions. Relays required the participation of young men selected for the honor of transporting the sacred flame from point to point. More important to the newspaper companies, however, was that the relays merited, at least according to their sponsors, the newspapers themselves, daily updates throughout their duration. The Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ newspaper devoted considerable coverage to the relay that it sponsored. In a series of articles it traced the arrival of the sacred flame at precisely 6:00 a.m. at Fusan on 3 February, its subsequent route throughout Korea over the next six days, and its arrival at the Cho ˉsen Shrine in Keijoˉ (Seoul) at precisely 3:00 p.m. on 9 February. Contests were the subject of extensive coverage as well. It was important in a business sense that the initial announcement, updates on the number of entries received, the selection of winners, and the winning entry or the prize (preferably both) generate newsworthy material. The most exciting part of song contests was the announcement of the winning entry, the words of which were featured in the announcement. In the case of the “Yearning for Japan” essay contest, however, the Manshuˉ nichinichi did not focus so much on the winning essays by the schoolchildren as on the prize, the trip to sacred sites in Japan undertaken by the ten winners. The fact that the pilgrimage included stops at imperial heritage sites that Emperor Pu Yi had visited only days earlier perhaps made it all the more newsworthy, but all of

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the pilgrimages sponsored by various newspaper companies were deemed newsworthy. The Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ reported in its 27 April 1940 edition that the twenty-nine schoolchildren it sent on pilgrimage to Japan, the subject of two weeks of coverage in this newspaper, had recited the Imperial Subject Oath in unison the previous day while visiting Kashihara Shrine. By shamelessly drawing attention to events of which they were the main sponsors, newspaper companies in some cases generated revenue from multiple sources. Events such as the baseball game series in Manchuria and the Grand Exposition of Korea generated revenue from admissions as well as news to sell newspapers. Extensive advance publicity for exhibitions and other admission events resulted in what the newspapers then trumpeted in front-page stories as blockbuster attendance figures in the opening days. Such dramatic coverage then encouraged additional individuals not to miss events that, according to the newspapers, most everyone else seemed to be attending. The newspapers stressed that these events commemorating the twenty-sixth centennial were in service to the nation, which conveniently provided not only the newspapers supplying these consumer products but also the consumers with the convenient excuse that whatever profit or pleasure they derived from such consumption was dutiful in nature. The 2,600th anniversary celebrations were good business for the print media, whose role in fostering fascism and jingoism looms large. Department Store Exhibitions Department stores were another nexus of dutiful consumption. Almost all department store branches played host to at least one exhibition celebrating the 2,600th anniversary. A report in the December 1940 edition of the Oriental Economist about the performance of department stores in the first eight months of that year informs us about the healthy state of consumerism up to and through most of the 2,600th anniversary year: The general level of business activity is sensitively reflected in the profit conditions of department stores. . . . The estimated combined sales turnover of three representative department stores in Tokyo, i.e., Mitsukoshi, Matsuya and Shirokiya, has been steadily increasing even after the outbreak of the China Incident. This sales expansion is not confined to the main stores in Tokyo but is also the case with their chain of branches in all the leading cities of the country. The high rate of turnover is due to increased purchasing power both in urban and suburban districts, which are benefiting from the industrial activity of recent years.53

As a result of the antiluxury edicts instituted in the summer of 1940 and additional governmental regulation of the consumer sector, the Oriental Economist’s forecast of what the future would hold for department stores was pessimistic. However, the increased purchasing power that consumers experienced in the late

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1930s and into 1940 helps explain not only the department stores’ growing sales but also the stellar performance during this period of other consumer sectors including tourism. Before the wartime consumer sector was strangled as a result of a desperate attempt by the authorities, from mid-1942 on, to harness all resources to turn back the tide of the war in Japan’s favor, it passed through a stage when consumption in many areas continued to boom but when it was necessary to put a patriotic spin on the function served by such consumption. From the 1920s on there is abundant evidence in the form of consumerism attesting to the purchasing power of the growing white-collar class made up of professionals and bureaucrats. From that decade on (if not earlier), the means to enjoy leisure activities, ranging from regular visits to department stores to an annual family trip, came to be one of the defining features of the middle class. Although there was no consensus in Imperial Japan on the definition of middle class, the concept was commonly discussed. The Asahi Newspaper Company’s bilingual 1940 Manchoukuo: A Comprehensive Pictorial Presentation included a profile of “the average government and public official family of four living in Hsinking (also termed Shinkyo ˉ by the Japanese).” The family lived on a monthly income of ¥ 70 ($17.50), of which ¥ 62.21 went to fixed expenses.54 An article in Nippon estimated that, in 1940, a middle-class family of six residing in Tokyo with a monthly income of ¥ 350 ($87.50) would have ¥ 30 left for luxuries each month after putting ¥ 20 in savings and paying for such necessities as food, rent, fuel, electricity, water, education, transportation, and clothing.55 The article did not indicate which professions yielded a monthly income of ¥ 350, a considerable salary slightly greater than the per capita annual income for Japan proper.56 A family with this level of income clearly enjoyed considerable disposable income, whether for leisure trips or for shopping at department stores. The flow of people through department stores, which must be understood as functioning as leisure sites in addition to their role as large-scale retail shops, was extraordinary in 1940. It is estimated that on average approximately four hundred thousand people per business day (Monday was a holiday) visited department stores in Tokyo.57 Almost all department stores were usually hosting at least one major exhibition. Shoppers were acculturated to availing themselves of the free exhibition as part of their visit. These factors made department stores attractive venues for staging exhibitions designed to raise public awareness of the foundational moment and of the national history. The first exhibition celebrating the 2,600th anniversary to make the rounds of the department stores opened at Takashimaya in Tokyo on 12 April 1939, drawing more than forty thousand visitors that first day.58 The sponsor of “Promoting the Spirit of the Founding of the Nation: An Exhibition in Celebration of the 2,600th Anniversary” was the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary. This example of cooperation between Takashimaya and the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary reminds us of the difficulty of drawing strict boundaries between the state and civil society in Imperial Japan. The Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary, itself a hybrid semigovernmental, semicivil

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organization, in this case linked up with a private business organization to stage a patriotic exhibition, but an exhibition that likely made good business sense for Takashimaya. The free exhibition produced no direct revenue, but it brought potential consumers into the store. The publicity poster for “Promoting the Spirit of the Founding of the Nation” featured cavalry—the Imperial Army led by Emperor Jimmu—being guided by the three-legged crow (  yatagarasu). A surviving copy of the brochure that accompanied the exhibition at Takashimaya’s Osaka store as well as other accounts indicate that the exhibition had two main features.59 The first was a scroll drawn by nine leading artists that featured eleven scenes of the age of the gods. The eleventh and final of these large scenes portrayed Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement. Takashimaya sold duplicates of the scroll for ¥200 ($50), making this patriotic representation of national history, ironically enough, a luxury purchase (see color insert, figure 9). The second attraction was a diorama narrative of national history made up of thirtyseven scenes focusing on the postfoundation period. The exhibition also featured photos of imperial tombs, historical artifacts, displays on the six major projects planned to mark the anniversary, and exhibits about the Fatherland Promotion Labor Service Brigades and the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades.60 Together, the scroll and the diorama guided viewers from the depiction of Amaterasu and the moment of creation up through more recent developments such as “The Construction of a New China” (#37). One scene of interest since it typically was not highlighted in similar snapshot imperial histories so common at the time was the twenty-third scene in the diorama, which displayed the shogunate’s 1863 decision to “repair” the tomb of Emperor Jimmu and subsequently the gravesites of other early emperors whose final resting places had long been neglected. Overall, the narrative overlapped closely with, for example, the “Spirit of the Fatherland Promotion Diorama,” the fifty-scene narrative on exhibit in the Museum of Yamato National History. After ending its run at the Tokyo store on 27 April, the exhibit moved to Takashimaya’s Osaka and Kyoto stores for May and June, and was then hosted by department stores in Kyoto, Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Nagoya, Sapporo, Hiroshima, Korea’s capital city Keijo ˉ, and in four cities in Manchuria: Shinkyoˉ, Harubin (Harbin), Ho ˉten (Mukden), and Dairen.61 The official attendance for this touring exhibition, which continued into 1940, was 4.4 million.62 In metropolitan areas throughout the empire, not only were most of the same goods available at local full-scale department stores by this time but many of the same exhibitions also could be accessed, albeit after they had opened in either Tokyo or Osaka. According to the economic historian Hirano Takashi, by 1939 eleven Japanese department store companies operated seventy outlets within Japan’s formal and informal empire in addition to those in Japan proper, one of the many ways that the metropole and the colonies were closely linked.63 Encouraged by the success of this initial touring exhibition, the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary and six department store companies in Tokyo teamed up in January 1940 to stage, in blockbuster fashion, seven

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simultaneous exhibitions celebrating the nation: (1) “Our Lives: Historical Section” (Matsuzakaya’s Ueno store); (2) “Our Lives: New Life Section” (Matsuzakaya’s Ginza store); (3) “Our Spirit” (Matsuya); (4) “Our Country”64 (Shirokiya); (5) “Our Ancestors” (Mitsukoshi); (6) “Our Imperial Military” (Takashimaya); and (7) “Our New World” (Isetan).65 Railway companies offered special tickets allowing consumers to travel at a reduced rate to each of these seven exhibitions, which were staged between 9 and 28 January. The goal of the two “Our Lives” exhibitions, which like all of the exhibitions featured dioramas, panoramas, and other visuals, was first to display in the Historical Section how the Japanese nation, through a spirit of both borrowing and creation, fused the cultures of East and West to create a unique, superior culture, and second to suggest in the New Life Section future lifestyle trends.66 The twopart exhibition generally focused on “people’s history,” but references to imperial history were integrated into the narrative nonetheless. For example, the first panorama visitors encountered in the Historical Section traced the lives of artisans who were employed twenty-six centuries earlier in the construction of Emperor Jimmu’s palace in Kashihara, a convenient integration of social and imperial history. As suggested by its title, the “Our Spirit” exhibition had particularly strong patriotic overtones. As the official record stresses, since the basis of the unparalleled Japanese spirit was the national polity, it was only natural that the entrance to this exhibition at the Matsuya Department Store featured a scene of Amaterasu’s proclaiming that the imperial progeny should rule over the land below and scenes both of Emperor Jimmu departing from Hyuˉga on his Eastward Expedition and of the first emperor’s enthronement in Kashihara. The first room of this exhibition presented a narrative of imperial history similar to that provided by the scroll and diorama featured in the “Promoting the Spirit of the Founding of the Nation” exhibition. The second room was less predictably imperial, however. It included a montage displaying the history of scientific discovery in Japan from premodern to contemporary times that concluded with the assessment that in many scientific areas Japan’s level of achievement “exceeded world standards.” The message of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations alternated between trumpeting Japan’s primordial origin and its advanced modernity. All of the exhibitions stressed imperial history in one way or another. The Shirokiya Department Store devoted two floors to the exhibition “Our Country,” whose title suggested an emphasis on geography. But what defined Japan’s topography most of all according to this exhibition was imperial sites. Upon entering the exhibition, visitors encountered a huge panorama of southern Kyushu on which was marked the locations of Mt. Takachiho, imperial tombs from the age of the gods, Kirishima Shrine, Kagoshima Shrine (said to date from the time of Emperor Jimmu), Udo Shrine (where the spirit of Emperor Jimmu’s father is enshrined), and Miyazaki Shrine. The “Our Ancestors” exhibition was highlighted by a display on the imperial family’s lineage, the unbroken imperial line, in other words. Another attraction

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was the display that used historical personages, from Wake no Kiyomaro to Murasaki Shikibu to Nogi Maresuke, to exemplify overlapping virtues (at least one hero exemplified each virtue) ranging from unselfish loyalty to benevolence. The way in which these legendary individuals exemplified a particular virtue was displayed by means of panoramas, dioramas, photographs, and mannequins (for the jacket cover of a commemorative set of postcards showing the “Our Ancestors” exhibition, see color insert, figure 10). The “Our Imperial Military” exhibition was largely predictable, with one exception, the decision to include a panorama about the Battle of Nomonhan. In this August 1939 showdown between Japanese and Soviet forces on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria, the Soviet forces soundly defeated the Japanese, wiping out an entire division. The Japanese government tried to keep the details of the cataclysm secret. Whatever the official line, news of the extent of the casualties suffered by Japanese troops could not help but trickle home in the form of notices sent to relatives of the deceased soldiers as well as through reports of survivors of the disaster. How exactly the Battle of Nomonhan was presented in the panorama is not clear from the surviving sources, however. More in line with the typical narrative presented during the 2,600th anniversary year was a two-part diorama that portrayed the history of the Imperial Army. Part one dated the origin of the Imperial Army to Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition and traced its history up to the formation of the modern conscript army in 1873. The second installment traced the subsequent history. Also on display were military memorabilia and testimonies to the accomplishments of Japanese pilots in battle since the beginning of the China Incident. Airplanes, still a new technology at the time, fascinated many children and adults alike. In his study of the intersection of technology and culture in Weimar and Nazi Germany, the historian Jeffrey Herf employed the term “reactionary modernism” to describe the “reconciliation between the antimodernist, romantic, and irrationalist ideas present in German nationalism and the most obvious manifestation of means-end rationality, that is, modern technology.”67 The political scientist Mark Neocleous argued that Herf ’s concept of reactionary modernism aptly described not just Nazism but the basic character of fascism.68 The romantic and irrational nature of the unbroken imperial line ideology that lay at the center of Japanese nationalism did not prevent Japanese engineers and scientists from pursuing leading edge technology, frequently with the urging and support of the military. The Zero airplane, named after the last two digits of the year it was introduced, 2,600 according to the imperial calendar, symbolized Japan’s technological prowess in certain areas. It was arguably the most advanced fighter in the world at the time of its introduction in 1940, the same year that the Japanese celebrated the 2,600th anniversary of a mythic national origin. The theme of the “Our New World” exhibition, the pioneering spirit of Japanese who had gone overseas to develop a “new world,” evidenced the government’s policy at the time of actively supporting emigration from Japan’s rural areas to the Asian continent. The exhortatory emphasis here was on more

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Japanese adopting the pioneering spirit. This exhibition was divided between five floors of Isetan’s store: China Pavilion (first floor); Manchuria Pavilion (second floor); Korea Pavilion (third floor); Taiwan and Micronesia Pavilion (fourth floor); and Main Exhibition (seventh floor). Featured prominently in the main exhibition were such heroic pioneers as Yamada Nagamasa (1590–1630), an influential member of the overseas Japanese community in Thailand in the early seventeenth century, and Mamiya Rinzoˉ (1755–1844), the first Japanese to explore and to map Karafuto (the Japanese name, during the imperial era, for its territory on the island of Sakhalin north of Japan proper). At the time, such pioneers and explorers formed a subset of a broader national cult of heroes. The exhibition took pains to debunk the notion that Japan, even during the Tokugawa period, had been closed off from the world, and stressed premodern examples of Japanese venturing overseas. The section of the main exhibition devoted to the modern era stressed the economic and cultural contributions made by overseas Japanese who had helped develop the Americas, Taiwan, Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, and the South Seas. The total attendance for the Tokyo exhibitions was 4,972,930.69 This figure counted one person going to each of the seven exhibitions as seven admissions. One individual who attended all seven exhibitions was Prince Chichibu (1902–53), younger brother of the emperor and honorary director of the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary. These seven exhibitions subsequently went on tour, reaching many additional individuals. Although all seven were never again staged in one city at once, in Osaka the department stores Sogoˉ, Mitsukoshi, Matsuzakaya, and Takashimaya joined to host four of the exhibitions simultaneously in April 1940. Department stores throughout the empire featured many other patriotic exhibitions in 1940. In November, Takashimaya hosted an exhibition at its Tokyo store about overseas brethren (kaigai doˉhoˉ) in conjunction with the Congress of Overseas Brethren that took place that month. On display as part of the exhibit were forty thousand care packages (imonbukuro) for soldiers at the front donated by overseas Japanese. This example of patriotism by overseas brethren received considerable mass media attention.70 The practice of department stores hosting patriotic exhibitions was by no means a development new to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. However, the number of patriotic exhibitions hosted by department stores in 1940, a year of increasing sales, provides further evidence of how initially in wartime Japan many consumer sectors were enveloped by nationalism rather than displaced by it. In Imperial Japan, department stores played a role not only in defining, for example, aesthetics, but also in fanning jingoism. Dutiful Consumption and Reactionary Modernism The two thematic concepts that lay at the center of this chapter, dutiful consumption and reactionary modernism, would seem to be oxymorons. Consumption

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is not typically thought of as dutiful. And how can modernity be employed for reactionary purposes? In its most extreme versions, official rhetoric at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations called upon imperial subjects to “extinguish one’s self through service to the throne” (messhi ho ˉko) during the national crisis. An essay in the September 1940 issue of the widely read women’s journal Shufu no tomo informed its readers, “We can’t think anymore about marriage being for our personal happiness. A good marriage is one that will help strengthen the state.”71 In the case of women, service to the state meant first and foremost motherhood, the production and nurturance of future soldiers. However, the culture of consumption was integral to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, which were good business for department stores, the print media, the recording industry, and, as we shall see in the subsequent three chapters, for the tourism industry as well. Consumerism substantially defined popular participation in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Consumer culture encouraged widespread participation in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, widespread participation spurred on consumerism, and both participation and consumerism fueled nationalism in what constituted a positive feedback loop. The dramatic slogans (e.g., “Luxury Is the Enemy”) bandied about in 1940 that called for unrelenting sacrifice are misleading, at least partially. At the time, consumption per se was not problematic so long as it could be cast as dutiful. In the case of Japan in 1940, unlike in the United States in the early twenty-first century, dutiful consumption referred not to making purchases to prop up an ailing national and world economy substantially predicated on the voracious American consumer, but rather to consuming in a manner that had the welcome side effect of strengthening one’s sense of nation and national mission. In the same way that consumption can be spun as dutiful, modernity can serve reactionary ends. If the specter of Emperor Hirohito performing a mystical ritual in worship of Amaterasu, the mythical Sun Goddess central to Imperial Japan’s contrived national history, seems incongruous with Enlightenment notions that humans should base their beliefs and actions on reason, the technological means employed to mobilize 105 million imperial subjects to bow in the direction of Ise Shrine at the precise moment the living god emperor paid his respects to this heavenly ancestor were distinctly modern, as was the contrived national history part of this equation. So, too, were the means by which 1.2 million imperial subjects were first mobilized and then transported to and from Kashihara, where they worked to beautify the mausoleum of and shrine dedicated to an imagined emperor said to embody similarly imagined primordial Japanese virtues. Dutiful citizens who attended all seven of the January 1940 exhibitions at Tokyo department stores commemorating the 2,600th anniversary, or even less devout or consumer-oriented individuals who made it to only one of these exhibitions, encountered a message that alternated between informing them of their country’s (1) unparalleled ancient and virtuous origin and history shrouded in

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divine mysticism, and its (2) astonishing modernity, whether in the area of scientific research or in technology as evidenced by the Zero fighter plane. Although there were Japanese leaders at the time who became so intoxicated with the power of the Yamato spirit (Yamato damashi  ) to propel Japan to military victory that they became blind to the technological and logistical side of modern war, Japan’s advanced modernity, far from being eclipsed during the celebrations by lessons on the superiority of the Yamato race, was a primary theme in the discourse of the twenty-sixth centennial.

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3 im pe r ial he r itage tourism

Tourism is significant both as another form of dutiful consumerism that was popular in wartime Japan and for exemplifying the concept of self-administered citizenship training. Much of the citizenship training that takes place in nationstates throughout the world, whether liberal or authoritarian polities, results not from the heavy hand of the state but from individuals autonomously endeavoring to make themselves and their children into more informed citizens. National heritage tourism is something that states as a rule simply do not force their citizens to do. It is almost always a voluntary activity, far to the opposite side of the continuum from, for example, military service. In Japan’s case, a multifaceted travel infrastructure that facilitated mass heritage tourism and other forms of leisure travel came of age in the 1920s and 1930s. By the 1920s, trains, ferries, and steamships integrated both Japan proper and the empire into a national transportation network rivaling those of the world’s most advanced countries. Organizations devoted to promoting travel and to assisting tourists comprised another important component of the tourism infrastructure. As the historian Takagi Hiroshi has shown, after the Japanese Ministry of Railways established an International Tourism Bureau in 1930 to court Western tourists who were a source of hard currency to Japan, localities throughout Japan established tourism sections within municipal or prefectural governments or formed hybrid semigovernmental, semicivil associations to promote tourism.1 Many localities took both of these steps. In 1930, Kyoto, a city flush with heritage sites, became the first city to establish a tourism section within its municipal government. Within ten years, tourism sections in local governments as well as local tourism associations were common throughout the empire. Contemporary commercial magazines, which were profoundly attuned to the interests of their readers, also offered advice on leisure travel. Their forays into this area attest to the popularity of tourism. In the competition for readership, magazines periodically included amenities such as pullout sightseeing maps of the empire. One such map from the 15 August 1936 issue of Kingu, one of the most

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widely read magazines in Japan at the time, is impressively comprehensive. The map shows railways and roads, ski areas, ice-skating areas, places for swimming in the ocean, hot springs, and historical sites throughout the empire.2 Department stores, which lay at the center of the culture of consumption and were themselves tourist sites, were linked integrally to the culture of travel. Although this was also true of department stores in Nazi Germany such as the Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin, which had its own travel agency, the role of Japanese department stores in promoting tourism was particularly prominent.3 By 1940, almost all major department stores either housed Japan Tourism Bureau (  JTB) service centers or featured their own travel service center. They also frequently sponsored exhibits designed, at least in part, to encourage travel. Department stores also occasionally published travel guides. For example, in 1940 the Department Store Division of the Osaka Electric Railway Company issued “Touring the Sacred Sites of the Fatherland,” a guidebook that broadly focused on heritage sites related to Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition, some of which could be accessed on the company’s rail lines.4 Several railway companies owned department stores strategically located near their busiest terminals. The department stores had much to gain from the promotion of travel since trips tended to encourage other forms of consumption. Travelers typically require accessories to enhance their trips. By 1940 many middle-class Japanese used cameras to record visual images, including moving images, of their trips, especially if their destination was one of the exotic colonies. Department stores sold cameras and film as well as more basic items required by travelers, such as suitcases. The JTB, in addition to managing hundreds of service centers that spanned the empire, published numerous and diverse guides to assist the leisure traveler. One of the more practical guides was the 1,000-page illustrated “Itineraries and Estimated Expenses” (Ryotei to hiyo ˉ gaisan). Available for purchase in 1940 at ¥ 2.5 (63 cents) and also easily referenced at JTB service centers, this guide informed travelers of sites of potential interest and provided comprehensive information on every imaginable cost involved in undertaking a trip from and to virtually anywhere within the empire (including Manchuria and China). It also advertised set tours for various prices, such as a comprehensive twenty-two-day tour of Taiwan, leaving from and returning to Tokyo, available in second class for ¥ 291 ($73) and third class for ¥ 187 ($47).5 In the years leading up to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, especially after Japan adopted a wartime footing from July 1937 on, discourse on tourism shifted from focusing largely on its economic benefits to defining its role in promoting patriotism. Writers on tourism defended, indeed extolled, tourism’s potential for fostering an appropriate sense of national identity. It was an acceptable form of consumption because it was pedagogical. Contributors to Kanko ˉ (“Tourism”), the premier journal of Japan’s tourism world, invoked Italian and Nazi policies as models for employing tourism to foster national spirit that Japan would do well to emulate. In his August 1940

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essay “Learning from Nazi Tourism Policies,” Hashizume Katsumi argued for changing the basic goal of Japan’s tourism policies: Our tourism enterprise that has been focused on the narrow, capitalistic goal of acquiring foreign exchange should study the spirit, organization, and activities of the Nazi tourism project outlined above; this will result in an entirely new consciousness about our duty. The new tendency of Japan’s tourism scheme should be to link itself with the most critical state goals . . . and by reforming its organization and basic principles it should contribute to the development of the Japanese race.6

It was no coincidence that Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) saw to it in 1934 that the Reich Committee for Tourism was placed under his control within the Propaganda Ministry, so significantly did Goebbels and other Nazi officials value tourism for its propagandistic purposes.7 By the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, travel was endorsed as an effective means for patriotic Japanese to improve their understanding of their national heritage and the colonial project. Otherwise it might have been difficult to justify the use of precious resources, most notably fuel, to transport so many tourists. Of course, the economic benefits of tourism had not disappeared. It helped support the transportation infrastructure whose significance was not just commercial but strategic. Revenue from tourism also may have been one of the few bright spots for elements of the old middle class (e.g., innkeepers) suffering under the wartime economic regime. In order to further develop the military industrial sector, Japan’s government had adopted statist economic policies in the 1930s that redirected capital to heavy industry and also limited certain forms of consumption.8 Accounts by foreign visitors to Japan attest to the vibrancy of its travel sector on the eve of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Carveth Wells (1887–1962), a British visitor to Japan in 1939, stressed the boom in the leisure sector overall in the travelogue he later published: “Japan in the summer of 1939 appeared to be sailing along on the crest of a wave of prosperity and patriotism. Hotel accommodations and sleeping-car and steamer reservations had to be made weeks in advance, especially if the traveler intended to visit Manchukuo or North China. Theatres were jammed to capacity, pleasure resorts that would correspond in America to Coney Island, Easthampton, Long Island, or Stockbridge, Mass., were crowded with the corresponding classes of people.”9 Tourism and the 2,600th Anniversary Celebrations The role of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations in spurring travel to national heritage sites by people from within Japan proper, by settlers and “locals” from Japan’s external colonies, and by residents of foreign countries (some of whom were of Japanese ancestry) resulted in 1940 being the peak year for travel in Imperial Japan.10 In late 1939, the Ministry of Railways sponsored a contest

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to solicit catchphrases to be used to encourage travel to mark the 2,600th anniversary. The wording of the third-place winner suggested leisure travel’s role in the ministry’s ambitious plans: “Doubling travel strengthens the development of Asia.”11 The demand for travel was so great that in December 1939 the JTB established a special “2,600th Anniversary Office.” During the subsequent thirteen months this office organized, at discount rates, 16,600 group tours of holy places in conjunction with the anniversary.12 The JTB depended on the Ministry of Railways for as much as half its budget; it was another example of a hybrid semiofficial, semicivil organization that was common in Japan.13 Prefectures such as Nara and Miyazaki with many sites linked to Emperor Jimmu and the unbroken imperial line enjoyed a comparative advantage that year in attracting tourists over, for example, Hokkaido with its ski slopes, hot springs, and indigenous Ainu. Many Japanese continued to make their way to the ski slopes even in wartime, however. Skiing as well as hiking and mountain climbing, or even swimming in the ocean, recreational activities that had become popular among the middle class in the 1920s, could be justified as promoting physical fitness. The people’s health was a concern for a government in need of able-bodied soldiers for the front and a productive workforce on the home front. Visits to hot springs, whose curative effects were widely touted, were defensible as well. In the context of Japan in 1940, pleasure for the sake of pleasure might have been difficult to defend, but many recreational activities were easily justified as serving the national interest. Physical activities sometimes could be integrated with visits to sacred sites, as was the case with the “Downtown Tokyo Reverent Hiking Route” recommended in the January 1940 issue of the travel magazine Tabi (“Travel”). This route began at the imperial palace, proceeded to Meiji Shrine, and then finished at Yasukuni Shrine. It was the sort of itinerary that offered not only physical but also spiritual improvement as one paid one’s respect to the present emperor, to the great Emperor Meiji in whose name Japan was modernized, and to those who had died in battle on behalf of the nation-state. One new attraction on this route by late 1940 was the statue of the loyal retainer Wake no Kiyomaro that had been constructed, through a private donation, in the park outside the moat that surrounds the imperial palace. It complemented the statue of another of the three great imperial loyalists, Kusunoki, that had stood outside the imperial palace since 1900. National heritage tourism presents a question similar to the chicken or egg dilemma. Are heritage sites preserved because people have an inherent interest in heritage? Or is interest in heritage sites largely manufactured as part of the process of codifying and sanctifying these sites? Clearly “national heritage” can only be as recent as the nation-state itself. This is true even if nation-states typically claim as national heritage the entire past, dating back to time immemorial, which transpired in the geographic area within their modern borders. Modern states have typically played a predominant role in defining national heritage, but the state has not been the only agent at work in this process.

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National heritage tourism, which involves the commodification of historical sites, is a consumer activity that is typically shaped by state and civil actors alike who preserve (or invent) and market “something worthy to see,” a term borrowed from Kristin Semmen’s study of tourism in Nazi Germany.14 This was evident in the case of Miyazaki, a prefecture located on the island of Kyushu. In the twentieth century, individuals both inside and outside of government in Miyazaki Prefecture worked diligently to promote their sparsely populated prefecture, which is located on the periphery of the Japanese nation-state, as the “birthplace of Japan” in order to develop a tourism industry. Miyazaki: Birthplace of Japan A set of postcards issued in 1940 by the Takachiho Celebration Association, one of several associations in Miyazaki Prefecture devoted to promoting tourism to the prefecture, stressed that Takachiho was the “hometown (  furusato) of the Japanese race,” and the “cradle (hassho ˉchi  ) of the Japanese spirit.” This set of postcards further asserted, “If you are Japanese, you must visit here at least once in your lifetime to master the spirit of the fatherland.”15 For decades individuals in Miyazaki Prefecture had vociferously claimed that the descent from heaven of the imperial ancestors had taken place within their prefecture. This set of postcards is but one example of a comprehensive campaign by individuals with an interest in Miyazaki Prefecture’s tourism sector to capitalize on the imperial heritage boom sparked by the 2,600th anniversary celebrations.16 The adoption of the unbroken imperial line ideology as the national creed resulted in the codification, and often invention, of a national topography of imperial heritage sites, many as a result of local initiative. Miyazaki Prefecture came to be dotted with such sites. The popularity of imperial heritage sites peaked in 1940, but the boom was not created overnight. By that year, individuals in Miyazaki Prefecture already had developed considerable cultural capital revolving around the claim that their prefecture was the birthplace of Japan that could be employed to exploit the 2,600th anniversary in order to attract tourists. In local histories of Miyazaki, the year 1934 stands out in the development of the prefecture’s tourism industry. That year two events brought national attention to the prefecture’s attractiveness as a travel destination. First, extensive lobbying by agents in both Miyazaki and neighboring Kagoshima succeeded when, in March 1934, Kirishima, a mountainous area shared by the two prefectures, was designated as one of Japan’s first national parks. Second, this welcome announcement came in the middle of preparations for festivities to be held in Miyazaki that October to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary of Emperor Jimmu’s departure from Miyazaki in 666 BC on his six-year Eastward Expedition. The new Kirishima National Park encompassed Mount Takachiho, the site that, among several competing candidates, enjoyed perhaps the widest recognition as the august location of the imperial descent. By 1936, Japan’s government had designated twelve national parks. The history of Japan’s national park system,

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which was inaugurated and largely shaped in the 1930s, a decade often portrayed in dark terms, is a topic deserving of additional research.17 The anniversary celebrations of Emperor Jimmu’s departure in 666 BC on his Eastward Expedition were largely limited to Miyazaki Prefecture, in contrast to the 2,600th anniversary of his establishment of the imperial dynasty in 660 BC that was celebrated along national and spectacular lines in 1940. The 1934 celebrations of Jimmu’s departure 2,600 years previously were instrumental, however, in solidifying the reputation of Miyazaki Prefecture as the sacred place where the imperial family was said to have originated. In many ways they also provided a model for the far grander celebrations six years later.18 In 1934, the leadership of Miyazaki Prefecture’s tourism sector faced two basic issues: how to attract visitors from outside the prefecture, a considerable challenge considering Miyazaki’s geographical remoteness, and how to ensure that their guests’ visits were memorable for the right reasons. Miyazaki Prefecture was distant from Japan’s main metropolitan areas, but by the 1920s it was already linked by railway to the rest of the island of Kyushu and, with ferry and steamship connections, to the entire empire. Individuals traveling to Miyazaki from the main island of Honshu typically took a short ferry ride from Shimonoseki to Moji, followed by a twelve-hour train ride to Miyazaki City.19 With only two medium-sized cities in 1934, Nobeoka (76,000) and Miyazaki City (64,000), the Miyazaki Prefecture tourism world could not tempt prospective travelers with urban attractions. The prefecture’s leading tourism resources were heritage sites developed on the basis of imperial legends, a subtropical climate perhaps best enjoyed at Aoshima, and a diverse landscape that ranged from sandy beaches to mountainous areas that included the Kirishima National Park. Various associations within the prefecture undertook advertising campaigns in order to attract visitors in the 2,600th anniversary year of Emperor Jimmu’s departure. The Miyazaki City Tourism Association sponsored a poster campaign with the simple theme “To Hyuˉga” and also opened a special branch office at the International Tourism Industry Exhibition held that year in Nagasaki to tout the prefecture’s and in particular Miyazaki City’s tourism resources, with an emphasis on heritage sites.20 The Kyuˉshuˉ Landscape Association teamed up with the writers Kokubu Tanenori (1873–1950), Osaragi Jiroˉ (1897–1973), and Tanaka Jun (1890–1966) to publish “Hyuˉga, Land of the Gods,” a literary account of the prefecture’s notable destinations.21 By far the cleverest, lowest-cost technique for marketing Miyazaki Prefecture originated with Kimishima Seikichi (b. 1889), the prefecture’s governor. In 1933, Kimishima formed a national committee (on which he served as a key participant) to plan and to underwrite the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of Emperor Jimmu’s departure on his Eastward Expedition. The National Association to Sponsor the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition, chaired by Count Matsudaira Yorinaga (1874–1954), a member of the House of Peers, gathered ¥179,410.91 ($44,852) in donations from throughout the empire.22 Only a tiny percentage of this sum originated from within Miyazaki

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Prefecture.23 Thus, most of the cost of these patriotic celebrations was shifted out of Miyazaki even as the prefecture reaped the benefits. The National Association to Sponsor the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition underwrote the main 5 October commemorative ceremony at Miyazaki Shrine presided over by Emperor Hirohito’s brother, Prince Chichibu. It sponsored exhibitions at department stores in Tokyo and Osaka that featured a panorama of Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition. It financed the construction of a retreat in Miyazaki City where youth visiting sacred sites of the fatherland could find lodging. Working closely with the Miyazaki Prefecture Government, this association also designated thirteen places within the prefecture as “Emperor Jimmu sacred historical sites” in 1934,24 and subsequently distributed thirty thousand photographs of these sites to elementary schools throughout the empire.25 Later, the Ministry of Education Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu declined to recognize as official any of the sites so trumpeted by the locals in Miyazaki. At the time, however, Miyazaki Prefecture’s designation of these sites helped to anchor the prefecture’s reputation as the birthplace of Japan. It provided tourists interested in their nation’s history with an itinerary of sites worth seeing. The Miyazaki Prefecture Government added a six-page appendix describing the thirteen Emperor Jimmu sites that had just received prefectural designation when it reprinted its guidebook “Legends and Historical Sites in Sacred Hyuˉga” in 1934.26 At the top of the list of newly designated sites was the Koguya, the palace where Jimmu is said to have lived until departing on his Eastward Expedition. The site designated as the onetime location of the Koguya was located conveniently within walking distance of Miyazaki Shrine, already the first stop on contemporary guided bus tours offered by the Miyazaki City Bus Company (est. 1924). The basic bus tour of Miyazaki City and its environs included stops at Miyazaki Shrine and Udo Shrine, where the spirits of Emperor Jimmu and of his father, respectively, are enshrined.27 At a time when few individuals owned cars and taxis were a luxury, tour buses were the most popular motorized means by which tourists could take in several sites in, say, just a half day’s tour. An October article in the Miyazaki shinbun newspaper emphasized the popularity of these bus tours and lauded the company’s female guides, who were reported to be “as beautiful as flowers,” for providing memorable commentary about imperial heritage sites.28 In terms of its importance to national heritage, the seaside village of Mimitsu was second within the prefecture only to the area around Miyazaki City. Tourists trekked to Mimitsu in order to gaze out into the bay from where Emperor Jimmu was said to have launched the seaward part of his Eastward Expedition. Another highlight in the visit to Mimitsu was the chance to inspect, within the grounds of the Tateiwa Shrine, which was located at the water’s edge, the sacred rock on which Emperor Jimmu was said to have once sat (gokoshikake iwa) while taking a break from overseeing preparations for the impending expedition. In a 1939 brochure, the Mimitsu Regional Association to Recognize Sacred Historical Sites Related to Emperor Jimmu made its case for this rock’s significance to national

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history, but the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu withheld its stamp of approval.29 It was a priest at Tateiwa Shrine who devised the idea of staging a 2,600th anniversary commemoration of Emperor Jimmu’s departure. Governor Kimishima seized upon Hashiguchi Ken’s brainstorm and expanded the idea into a prefecturewide event.30 But Mimitsu, a harbor town that had been prosperous during the Edo period (1603–1868) but had fallen on hard times as railways and steamships eclipsed small-scale boats in the transport of goods to Osaka and other metropolitan areas, profited from the celebrations perhaps as much as any place in Miyazaki Prefecture. This small seaside village became renowned as the sacred place from which Emperor Jimmu had launched his ships, and development of a local tourism industry reversed to some extent an economic decline brought on by the diffusion of modern technology. Local merchants embraced the imperial myths all the way to the bank. For example, from about 1934 on visitors to Mimitsu could purchase at a local shop the very same type of rice and bean pastry (dango) that the locals were said to have hurriedly made for Emperor Jimmu and his army in 666 BC when the future emperor had decided upon a sudden departure (figure 4). The marketing of local specialties (meibutsu) was an omnipresent feature of Japanese tourism. Travel guides provided detailed information about which local specialties ought to be

4. The Shoˉgetsuan pastry shop in Mimitsu inserted this advertisement in the tourism promotion magazine Kirishima (December 1939) to tout its pastries, the formula for which was said to date from the time of the first emperor.

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sampled or brought home as souvenirs. The boom in travel guides that accompanied and facilitated the boom in tourism was one of the many features of the mass culture prominent in Japan by the 1920s. The Miyazaki shinbun newspaper reported on the local tourism sector’s success in attracting tour groups to Miyazaki in 1934.31 The Miyazaki shinbun noted that as a result of the “remarkable” recent increase in the number of tourists visiting Miyazaki, the number of Japanese-style inns in this city of 64,000 had grown to a total of 93 with the capacity to lodge as many as 2,637 individuals on any given night.32 According to municipal records, 14,540 tourists visited Miyazaki City in group tours that year.33 Statistics for the prefecture overall in that year are elusive, but newspaper accounts suggest other areas of Miyazaki also experienced an increase in visitors. Although the story of Miyazaki labeling itself as the birthplace of the fatherland is one that featured the commodification of sites dispersed throughout the prefecture, it nonetheless bears similarity to efforts by the leaders of Rothenburg during the Nazi era to brand their town as “the most German” of Germany’s many towns.34 There are also parallels between Hitler tourism and Emperor Jimmu tourism. After Hitler gained power in 1933, leaders of Landsberg am Lech marketed their locale as the “City of the Führer.”35 Landsberg am Lech was where Hitler had been imprisoned after his 1923 putsch attempt. There was no Emperor Hirohito tourism comparable to the popularity in Nazi Germany of sites related to Hitler, but localities in Japan outdid themselves to lay claim to sites related to the first emperor. Tourists proceeded to flock to sites associated with the incomparably charismatic Emperor Jimmu, whose aura could not be punctured by human imperfections that might be evident in a living person. Between 1936 and 1938, the Cabinet-level 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau made a series of decisions regarding the funding of commemorative projects that codified Miyazaki and Nara as the “two main sacred areas” in the origin of the imperial line and thus of the fatherland, a tourism bonanza for both prefectures. Miyazaki’s tourism world carried out various campaigns to attract visitors in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of 1940, and this time they were aided by a flood of attention devoted to the prefecture by outside promoters as well. The Miyazaki Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary, a semigovernmental and semicivil organization headquartered in Miyazaki City Hall, and other local organizations published numerous promotional materials for which the dominant slogan was “the Sacred Fatherland Hyuˉga.”36 A set of postcards issued by the Hyuˉga Tourism Association, two of which are reproduced here (figure 5), stressed the prefecture’s connection to the imperial myths as well as its modern factories. This mixed message that combined the mystical with the modern was typical of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Neighboring Kagoshima Prefecture challenged Miyazaki Prefecture’s claim to be the location of the nation’s origin. The Kagoshima Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary issued a tourism promotion brochure, the cover of which

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5. These two postcards are from a set of four issued by the Hyuˉga Tourism Association circa 1940. The one on the left, like the two not shown here, promotes Miyazaki’s imperial heritage by stressing that the “Fatherland Hyuˉga” was the location of the imperial descent. In contrast, the one on the right stresses the “booming, rapidly progressing Fatherland Hyuˉga,” and shows images of modernity such as airplanes and a factory.

is reproduced in figure 11 of the color insert, that appropriated to Kagoshima the honor of having been host to the birth of the nation. Such competition from a neighboring prefecture spurred on individuals in Miyazaki to redouble their efforts to appropriate for their prefecture a special role in the national history. From 1938 on, a series of articles in Kirishima, a prefectural tourism promotion magazine published a few times annually beginning in 1934, provided numerous permutations, aimed at different target audiences (e.g., youth groups), of pilgrimage routes that retraced all or parts of the Miyazaki section of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition. By the late 1930s the travel industry throughout the empire commonly invoked the term “pilgrimage” (  junrei, seichi meguri, or seichi junpai  ) to encourage Japanese to visit sacred heritage sites ranging from imperial sites in Miyazaki to the Port Arthur battle site in Manchuria. Pilgrimage and tourism are practices that often overlap. Separating the two delineates a boundary that frequently did not exist for the traveler. The term pilgrimage was often employed at the time simply to justify, in the name of spiritual education about the fatherland, what under wartime conditions could easily have been dismissed as frivolous and unnecessary travel.

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In 1938, the Ministry of Railways, which since 1934 had been working closely with the JTB to increase domestic leisure travel, demonstrated its commitment to the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement launched in October 1937 by beginning publication of the “Fatherland Awareness Travel Series.” Although the outbreak of war between Japan and China in July 1937 temporarily disrupted leisure travel, by 1938 this sector had not only recovered but had also resumed its upward trend.37 The “Fatherland Awareness Travel Series” came to include ten guidebooks. They were designed first to educate travelers about sites related to such historical themes as “Bakumatsu Patriots” (patriots who sought to restore imperial rule in the period leading up to the Meiji Restoration) and “The Loyal Yoshino Court” of Emperor Go-Daigo who attempted to reestablish direct imperial rule in the fourteenth century, and second to provide them with the practical information needed to visit sites of interest.38 The volume that focused on the origin of the imperial line was titled “Sacred Sites of the Fatherland.”39 It included several authoritative maps detailing Emperor Jimmu’s feats, one of which charted the route of his seaward voyage (figure 6). Beginning in 1938, JTB’s popular magazine Tabi featured numerous articles publicizing Miyazaki’s imperial heritage sites, many of which were penned by individuals recently returned from the prefecture. The November 1939 issue included

6. By 1940, there was a consensus about the route taken by Emperor Jimmu during the oceangoing part of his Eastward Expedition, and “authoritative” maps detailing this route appeared in various publications.

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a roundtable discussion titled “Speaking of Hyuˉga” that showcased the writers and artists Nakamura Chihei (1908–63), Nakagawa Kazumasa (1893–1991), Ozaki Shiro ˉ (1898–1964), Ibuse Masuji (1898–1993), and Kamiizumi Hidenobu (1897–1951) recounting their impressions of a ten-day visit to Miyazaki.40 By the late 1930s, it was common practice for the JTB, the twelve JTB branch offices, and local tourism associations to enlist members of the literati first to travel to a particular location, often with all expenses paid, and then to publish textual and pictorial accounts of their travels. Throughout the modern era, newspapers in Japan had contracted with literary figures to provide serial travelogues. The South Manchurian Railway Company, for its part, also had long sponsored visits to Manchuria and Korea by celebrated writers, beginning with Natsume Soseki (1867–1916) in 1909.41 In the late 1930s, travel companies and tourism organizations turned to the literati with increasing frequency to promote destinations. At one point in the five writers’ discussion of their visit to Miyazaki, Nakamura emphasized that “in Hyuˉga one feels that the gods are close,” citing as examples Miyazaki Shrine and Udo Shrine. However, neither Nakamura nor his fellow travelers dwelled on the imperial heritage sites at any great length although they emphasized that they had visited almost every one of them. Their willingness to stop at such sites nonetheless suggests that they accepted the imperial myths to some extent. However, the writers also drew attention to efforts by the locals to exaggerate Miyazaki Prefecture’s role in national history. At one point Kamiizumi expressed bemusement at local efforts to associate the term “fatherland” (sokoku) exclusively with Miyazaki Prefecture.42 Nor did these articulate men reference the sort of spiritual transformation that travel guides and travel advertisements claimed would result from a visit to national heritage sites in Miyazaki. They seemed rather more interested in other aspects of the prefecture, including the issue of how to develop tourist facilities there. During the visit, Kamiizumi saw the potential for a hot springs resort near the Shiratori Shrine if appropriate facilities, such as an inn, were constructed to complement the natural spring there. In addition to evaluating the local women for their beauty, a theme common in roundtable discussions among male commentators featured in travel magazines at the time, the five writers seemed to have enjoyed most of all sampling local foods and observing folk customs, especially dances including local examples of kagura, a form of Shinto ˉ theatrical dance. It was with their affirmation of the prefecture’s countryside as a worthwhile tourist destination that the writers most fulfilled their roles as promoters of Miyazaki. Folk customs portrayed as dating from time immemorial were an attraction for urbanites in search of an idealized rural past. Tourism promotional literature about Miyazaki and almost every other rural area of Japan that was a tourist destination touted the notion of an unchanging countryside.43 Ethnographers of Japan also directed individuals in search of authenticity to the countryside. In an essay titled “Where to Find Real Japan,” Yanagi Soˉetsu (Muneyoshi; 1889–1961), a leader of the folk arts movement, wrote, “I say with

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conviction that whoever wishes to see the true Japan must and should go to the country.” He continued, “Should Japan lose its rural culture, Japan would lose all that now may be faithfully described as typically Japanese.”44 The photograph of a peasant girl in her rustic setting (figure 7) exemplifies the attraction that rural areas supposedly untainted by modernity held at the time. Photography was a hobby closely linked to tourism, and contests to select the ideal images of famous spots were common by the late 1930s. The pharmaceutical company Jintan announced on 12 February 1940 a contest for the best photo of an “Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Site.”45 The lavish first prize of ¥1000 ($250) provided incentive for photographers to capture memorable images of sites graced by the first emperor in time to meet the tight submission deadline of 29 February. In its December 1939 edition, the Hyuˉga Tourism Association’s publicity organ Kirishima published a roundtable discussion featuring Nakamura and three of the other four writers discussing their visit to Miyazaki Prefecture that was similar to the one that appeared in Tabi, although it provided far greater detail.

7. This photograph of a peasant girl was one of twelve winners in a national contest staged in late 1939 and early 1940 to select the best images of Takachiho, a place visited by the five writˉ saka ers. Employees of the O Asahi Newspaper Company judged the entries. In 1940, the Takachiho Celebration Association issued it in the postcard form seen here.

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Included at the end of this discussion was a list of various articles that these writers had published about their experiences in Miyazaki. By the time the December issue went to print, the five writers, in addition to the two roundtable discussions, had leveraged their visit to Miyazaki into a total of twenty-four articles with titles such as “Takachiho Diary,” “Mimitsu,” and “Women of Hyuˉga” that were published in nineteen magazines and newspapers with wide circulations. These publications included the Asahi shinbun newspaper, the Yomiuri shinbun newspaper, and Fujin ko ˉron, a women’s magazine geared to an educated audience. Four of the writers also published short accounts in Kirishima. Additionally, Nakagawa chronicled his experiences in a radio broadcast transmitted throughout the archipelago in July 1939.46 It is likely that the Hyuˉga Tourism Association subsidized the writers’ visit, which generated considerable publicity for the prefecture. The Hyuˉga Tourism Association’s leadership transmitted to its rank and file the extent of the publicity by listing all the publications that had resulted from the writers’ visit. Nakamura, Nakagawa, Ozaki, Ibuse, and Kamiizumi were in considerable demand for their accounts of travel to Miyazaki Prefecture from a wide range of commercial publications whose editors presumably were seeking to maximize readership. In late 1939, the widely read women’s magazine Fujin kurabu commissioned the popular poet and lyricist Saijo ˉ Yaso (1892–1970) to write a travelogue, “Pilgrimage to Sacred Sites of the Fatherland,” that reads far more like a patriotic script than the roundtable discussions involving the five literati.47 Published as a series of three articles in the January, February, and March 1940 issues of this magazine, which had an estimated one million readers, many of whom were middle class, Saijo ˉ’s account included precise descriptions of the historical significance of each of the imperial heritage sites he visited on his “pilgrimage” that began in Miyazaki and concluded in Nara. Photos showing the author in the foreground of hallowed imperial sites punctuated the travelogue. One of the five photos in the second installment showed Saijo ˉ at the Tateiwa Shrine in Mimitsu, “worshipping” the sacred rock on which Emperor Jimmu was reputed to have once sat. The popularity of travelogues about Miyazaki was matched by the publication of various guidebooks focusing on the prefecture’s sacred imperial sites. In 1940, the JTB published a short travel guide titled “Sacred Emperor Jimmu Sites: From Hyuˉga to Yamato.” With this guidebook, the Emperor Jimmu buff could begin his heritage tour with visits to the three sites in Miyazaki Prefecture deemed to be plausible locations for the imperial descent, then travel to one (if one location had been given an official stamp of legitimacy) or more (if the precise location had not been determined) sites corresponding to thirty-five significant chapters in Emperor Jimmu’s 126-year life. There was no ambiguity about where one was to conclude the Emperor Jimmu tour, namely by paying one’s respects at Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum at Mt. Unebi in Nara Prefecture.48 The Ministry of Railways published its own guide to “Sacred Ancient Hyuˉga” in 1940 that provided detailed coverage of everything the traveler needed to know

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about the birthplace of Japan, including the words to the “Song of Hyuˉga.” This guidebook included a handy and seemingly authentic “Map of ‘Age of the Gods’ and Emperor Jimmu Sacred Sites in Miyazaki Prefecture” to help travelers pinpoint imperial tombs, shrines, and other relevant sites.49 The Landscape Association of Japan published a special 2,600th anniversary issue of its magazine Fuˉkei (Landscape) devoted to “Landscapes of Sacred Areas.”50 Essays punctuated with elegant photographs informed readers about aesthetic spots linked to imperial heritage sites, a sanctification of both nature and the nation. Like modern tourists everywhere, Japanese tourists sought to experience and to codify nature’s sublimity. In his essay “The Sacred Peak of Mt. Takachiho and Nearby Sacred Historical Sites,” the art critic Kuroda Hoˉshin (1885–1967) wrote of the “inexpressible feeling” (ienai kibun) he experienced while scanning for an hour the view from the summit of Mt. Takachiho.51 Kuroda’s rapturous description undoubtedly sparked the curiosity of those hoping to combine the sublime with the sacred when undertaking what another contributor to Landscape’s 2,600th anniversary issue aptly termed “an act of citizenship,” a pilgrimage to sacred sites linked with Emperor Jimmu. Film was also used to promote Miyazaki Prefecture’s tourist attractions. The Ministry of Railways released a narrated film titled “Sacred Takachiho” in the mid-1930s, and in 1940 the Ashiya Film Production Company released a silent film titled “Sacred Hyuˉga.”52 These tourism promotion films were part of a larger trend in the 1930s when the medium of film was widely adopted as a means to promote leisure travel throughout the empire. The comprehensive Nihon kanko ˉ nenkan (“Japan Tourism Yearbook”) published in 1941 by the newly established Japan Tourism Industry Research Institute listed more than 150 tourism promotion films that had been produced in the previous decade. The yearbook noted that most of these films could be borrowed for free. They were likely shown as shorts before main features at theaters as well as in other settings. The focus of considerable publicity from the travel industry and from various organs of the mass media, Miyazaki Prefecture’s tourism sector also profited ˉ saka Mainichi newspaper’s sponsorship of a reenactment of Emperor from the O Jimmu’s seaward voyage and from the newspaper company’s support for the prefecture’s construction of a monumental tower in Miyazaki City to propagate the ˉ saka ideology of “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth.” In 1939, the O Mainichi Newspaper Company, whose newspapers’ circulation totaled 3.2 million by 1940,53 provided a team based in Mimitsu with ¥ 5000 ($1,250) to reenact Emperor Jimmu’s sea voyage the following year. This grant underwrote the construction of the ship that carried the eighty youths carefully selected for the honor of sailing the route attributed to the expeditionary force commanded by Emperor Jimmu. As with most reenactments, the planners paid obsessive attention to authenticity, an effort that seems comical from today’s perspective when Emperor Jimmu’s fictitious nature is acknowledged. The design of the Okiyo was based on an ancient (although a thousand years less ancient than the dates given for Jimmu) model-sized ship that had been

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excavated from a kofun (keyhole-shaped tomb) in Saitobara, Miyazaki Prefecture. The condensed twelve-day voyage commenced from Mimitsu on 18 April 1940, featured stops at fourteen harbors in six prefectures along the way, and concluded with a triumphant entry into Osaka Harbor on 29 April that was accorded a welcome befitting an imperial expeditionary force. The Okiyo’s arrival was the subject of a fifty-minute radio broadcast by NHK that day.54 From Osaka, crewmembers proceeded by land to worship at Kashihara Shrine and at Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum. The Mainichi newspapers devoted considerable space to this reenactment of the first emperor’s exploits, a news story that this newspaper company had manufactured in the first place.55 Reenactments are a common way that national heritage, which is closely linked to tourism, is codified and transmitted. The same is true for monuments. The massive Ametsuchi Tower constructed in Miyazaki City in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations became a popular destination for visitors. The historian Furukawa Takahisa has argued that Governor Aikawa Katsuroku’s primary motivation in spearheading the construction of the Ametsuchi Tower was not expanding tourism to Miyazaki.56 However, the editors of Kirishima clearly saw the monument’s potential to attract tourists and featured the artist’s rendition of the tower, then under construction, on the cover of the December 1939 edition (see color insert, figure 12). The Ametsuchi Tower, financed in part by an empire-wide fund-raising campaign, attracted tourists from the time that construction began in 1939. Renamed the “Peace Tower” after the war, it continues to be, not without controversy, a tourist attraction. The sculptures and reliefs inside the base of the tower, which can be entered only with special permission from the local authorities, provide a visually spectacular testament to the manner in which the unbroken imperial line ideology was employed in wartime Japan to justify expansion by military means.57 The available statistics indicate that Miyazaki’s tourism industry benefited considerably from the imperial heritage boom. In 1940, 52,599 tourists visited Miyazaki City in group tours, almost a fourfold increase over 1934. More tellingly, this represented a 250 percent increase over 1939, the city’s second-best showing in the imperial era.58 The city’s official history cautions that the surge in visitors in 1940 partially resulted from an increase in visits by school groups diverted from more exotic destinations within the empire by the ongoing war on the continent, but students alone do not account for the increase. More than one hundred national organizations held their annual meeting in Miyazaki City that year, thus allowing their members to take in the local sites, while many other individuals came solely as tourists.59 Other areas of Miyazaki enjoyed similar if not quite so impressive gains in visitors. Nara: The Hometown of National History The case of Nara Prefecture bears many similarities to that of Miyazaki, but there were some differences that made it far easier for Nara to attract tourists. In 1940,

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it was possible for individuals in four of Japan’s five most populated metropolitan areas, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Kobe, to make a day visit to Nara. Far less remote than Miyazaki from Tokyo, Nara additionally could be reached by overnight train from the capital. Unlike Miyazaki, Nara had been a popular tourist destination for centuries before the modern era. Imperial heritage sites constituted only one aspect of Nara’s many tourist attractions. Nara benefited from its proximity to Kyoto, whose tourism resources were unparalleled. With the establishment in 1936 of the Yoshino Kumano National Park (which included sites related to the “Loyal Yoshino Court”), the prefecture’s tourism resources were further augmented.60 As if it already did not enjoy enough advantages, Nara also was located close enough to Ise Shrine, the holiest imperial site of all and a popular place of pilgrimage for Japanese long before the modern era, so that itineraries including stops at Ise, Kyoto, and Nara were common.61 This was especially true for people coming from a distance. Ise Shrine alone drew more than four million visits in 1940, the peak for the imperial era.62 Lastly, by mid-1940 the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu had designated eight locations in Nara as official Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites, providing the prefecture with yet another comparative advantage during the 2,600th anniversary year. For the above reasons, the number of visitors to Nara Prefecture in 1940 dwarfed the number who visited Miyazaki that year. The fact that thirtyeight million visits (this figure includes multiple visits by individuals) to Nara Prefecture were recorded in the 2,600th anniversary year gives a sense of the extent of the travel boom in Japan at the time.63 Some of the overnight visitors came from quite a distance: eighteen thousand from Korea; seven thousand from Manchukuo; five thousand from Karafuto; and one thousand from Taiwan.64 If one assumes that the eighteen thousand visitors from Korea and the five thousand visitors from Karafuto comprised mostly Japanese settlers (naichijin), then approximately one in forty Japanese living in Korea and one in eighty of those living in Karafuto traveled to Nara in 1940. The expense for individuals coming to Japan proper from the colonies could be considerable. Participants in tour groups traveled more economically than did individuals. In early 1940, the Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ newspaper organized an eleven-day pilgrimage that featured visits to Kashihara Shrine, Ise Shrine, Atsuta Shrine (repository of the sword that constitutes one of the three parts of the sacred regalia), Meiji Shrine, Yasukuni Shrine, and the imperial palace. The cost of this allinclusive tour that began and ended in Keijo ˉ (Seoul) and traveled second class was ¥135 ($33.75).65 This was a significant sum for someone living on a middle-class salary. White-collar employees who enjoyed bonuses in addition to their regular monthly salaries were better positioned to take such a trip than individuals who did not receive annual or biannual lump sum payments. The case of field trips to Japan proper (naichi shuˉgaku ryoko ˉ) by Japanese children from the colonies reminds us that, by 1940, there were many Japanese who had been born and raised in the colonies. Many children of Japanese settlers in

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the colonies made their first trip to Japan proper through school excursions to holy sites. Even decades later, Osada Kanako, who grew up in Keijoˉ, remembered her field trip to Japan proper in the summer of 1939. Osada and her teenage classmates visited Kashihara Shrine, Ise Shrine, Yasukuni Shrine, and the imperial palace, where in tears she pledged loyalty to the emperor.66 In 1940, Kashihara Shrine, built on the spot where the first emperor was said to have ascended to the throne, and the nearby mausoleum of Jimmu, seem to have eclipsed even the famous Buddhist temple Toˉdaiji as Nara’s most popular destination.67 In the first three days of 1940, the New Year’s holiday, 1.25 million individuals visited Kashihara Shrine, a twenty-fold increase over 1939. On 11 February, the National Foundation Day holiday, another 700,000 visited. From January through November 1940, nine million passengers exited at the Daitetsu Railways two stations closest to Kashihara Shrine and to Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum.68 Statistics on visitors to Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum do not exist, but at that time visitors to Kashihara Shrine typically visited the first emperor’s tomb as well. It is common for Japanese, when visiting a shrine, to make a donation or to purchase amulets and souvenirs. The explosion in the number of visitors represented a financial windfall for the shrine. Reproduced in the color insert (figure 13) is the cover jacket of a postcard set available in 1940 to those wishing to commemorate their visit to Kashihara Shrine and the imperial tombs at Unebi. One of the seven postcards enclosed in this particular set shows National Foundation Volunteer Brigades at work; Mt. Unebi appears in the background (figure 8). The caption to the postcard, which includes one version of the many commemorative stamps available to visitors to Kashihara Shrine in 1940, stressed that National Foundation Labor Service Brigades came not only from throughout the country but also from the Asian continent. It also claimed that the more than one million labor service volunteers who came to Nara Prefecture in 1938 and 1939 to beautify and expand imperial heritage sites worked together at the “sacred territory of national foundation” without concern for class. Some of the visitors to Kashihara in 1940 no doubt were onetime members of National Foundation Labor Service Brigades as well as their relatives and friends who were eager to see the finished product. As was the case with imperial heritage sites in Miyazaki, the popularity of Nara’s imperial heritage sites was of recent vintage. The prefecture’s two most popular imperial landmarks were themselves recent constructs for sites that were deemed so critical to the origin of the fatherland. The historian Mae Kei’ichi has described the process by which the shogunate, in order to link itself with the imperial house at a time when the throne’s authority was being resurrected by the “revere the throne, expel the barbarian” faction, “identified” the tomb of Emperor Jimmu in 1863 as a measure to try to maintain its hold on political power.69 During the subsequent eight decades, especially after the replacement of the Tokugawa shogunate with the Meiji state in 1868, the supposed resting site of the first emperor was sanctified into one of the holiest spots on the archipelago.

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8. This postcard shows one of the National Foundation Labor Service Brigades beautifying the area around Mt. Unebi. Note the yatagarasu featured in the commemorative stamp, which appears in bright orange in the original color version.

Along the same lines, Kashihara Shrine, which the historian Takagi Hiroshi has described as the “device that allowed the people to participate in the myth of Jimmu,” was completed only in 1889.70 Neither Emperor Jimmu’s burial site nor Kashihara Shrine were tourist sites of any significance by 1890, the year that the 2,550th anniversary of Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement passed without any particular popular interest. In the late 1930s, the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau allocated public funds for Kashihara Shrine to be beautified and enlarged by approximately a factor of ten in conjunction with the anniversary. According to Takagi, it was the 2,600th anniversary celebrations that completed the consecration of the triad of Mt. Unebi, Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum, and Kashihara Shrine as sacred Emperor Jimmu sites.71 These three sites, which lie in close proximity, were deluged with visitors in 1940. Historians of architecture who believe that in comparison to, say, Nazi Germany, Japan provides few if any examples of architectural monuments built to celebrate the fascist imperial ideology of the 1930s should consider the meaning of the renovation and enlargement of key shrines such as Kashihara and Miyazaki, as well as the project to beautify imperial tombs. Although neither the individual buildings of shrine complexes nor imperial tombs were constructed on a grand scale according to European definitions (e.g., upwards), the key issue is that they served as monuments to the unbroken imperial line ideology that were likely as symbolically significant in the context of Imperial Japan as were the monuments to Nazism designed by Albert Speer. One could argue that construction

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of the Nazi monuments lacked the fascist participatory element that was such an important characteristic of the large-scale projects carried out in Japan to mark the 2,600th anniversary. Along the same lines, the historian Akiko Takenaka has stressed the significance of the participatory element in the planning and sponsorship of war memorials constructed in Imperial Japan from 1939 to 1945, rather than the imposing nature of the war memorials themselves.72 As was the case with so many localities in Japan, it was only in the 1930s that the City of Nara, with its population of 55,000, and Nara Prefecture, which at the time was no more densely populated than Miyazaki Prefecture, began to promote tourism actively. The historian Furukawa has demonstrated that by the early 1930s various factions in Nara Prefecture were already lobbying the central government to stage a grand celebration of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations that the prefecture could leverage to improve its infrastructure and also to further develop its tourism industry.73 By 1936 someone in the City of Nara’s tourism section had coined the slogan “Rediscover Sacred Historic Yamato, Hometown of National History.”74 In 1938, the Nara Prefecture Tourism Association commenced publication of the tourism magazine Kanko ˉ no Yamato (“Yamato Tourism”) with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations in mind, as demonstrated by the inaugural issue’s preface: “In reference to the upcoming 2,600th anniversary of the imperial dynasty, for the people of Yamato would it not be an unbearable disappointment if sacred Yamato, site of Emperor Jimmu’s accession to the throne, if Yamato, the place where we the Yamato race originated, was overlooked as merely a place of interest (meishochi  ) and thus passed by? Therefore, we keenly recognize the weighty responsibility of this magazine.”75 This first issue publicized eight “Yamato Hiking Courses Centered on Imperial Tombs and Grand Shrines.” The Unebi Course, the first recommended, allowed the hiker to visit “sacred historical sites relating to the foundation of the fatherland that were second only to the Grand Shrine of Ise in the reverence they were accorded by the people.”76 In addition to Kashihara Shrine and Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum, this course brought hikers past the “tombs” of the second, third, fourth, eighth, and twenty-eighth emperors. Unlike the first five imperial tombs featured on the Unebi course that were for fictitious emperors, the one for the twentieth-eighth emperor, Senka, was for someone who did occupy the throne in the sixth century. In 1889, the government officially codified the location of the tombs of all past emperors.77 However, the authenticity of Senka’s designated tomb site is dubious nonetheless, as is the case with many of the tombs even of ancient emperors who did exist (not to mention the fictitious ones), official recognition notwithstanding. Nara’s imperial sites were the subject of numerous articles and roundtable discussions in Tabi during the years leading up to and including 1940.78 The JTB, Ministry of Railways, and individual authors published what amounted to a flood of travel guidebooks about Yamato’s heritage sites with titles such as “Kansai Pilgrimages,” “Sacred Yamato,” and “Sacred Historical Sites in Yamato.”79 The

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2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau published two special issues of its magazine Kigen nisen roppyakunen, one in 1938 on imperial tombs, and another the next year on shrines, which were designed to function in part as travel guides. These special issues featured the Yamato area prominently.80 Companies with a stake in transporting tourists to sacred sites advertised ˉ saka Sho widely. The O ˉsen Kaisha (O.S.K.) advertised its steamship lines to Nara and Kyushu with the simple theme “For the 2,600th anniversary, make your pilgrimage to sacred areas by ship.”81 Railway companies in Nara and neighboring prefectures found themselves in the enviable position of competing for millions of passengers, and they sought to capitalize on this opportunity through advertising. The Keihan Railway Company, which offered service between Osaka and Kyoto, advertised a pilgrimage itinerary on its lines that, if followed to its fullest on the “frequently departing express trains,” enabled one to worship at twelve grand shrines and sixty-nine imperial tombs.82 Not to be outdone, the Nara Railway Company published a “Map Guide to Imperial Tombs on the Nara Railway” that identified more than seventy imperial tombs that could be accessed on its lines, and fifteen more that could be reached through easy connections.83 No company, however, advertised more prolifically than Daitetsu Railways, which stood to gain the most from the popularity of Kashihara Shrine and Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum as a result of its stations conveniently located near these landmarks. Daitetsu placed advertisements, varying in style, in magazines and newspapers stressing its convenient service to sacred sites located near its lines (see color insert, figure 14).84 According to Daitetsu’s special 2,600th anniversary “Guide to Visiting Kashihara Shrine,” it was possible to reach the station in front of Kashihara Shrine from downtown Osaka in only forty minutes at a roundtrip cost of ¥1.2 (30 cents).85 This guide included a map showing how Daitetsu’s lines overlapped with segments of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition. The Daitetsu Department Store, part of the same conglomerate, staged a ten-day exhibition about sacred historic sites relating to the origin of the fatherland at its Osaka store that concluded on 11 February (National Foundation Day). This exhibition served both to draw customers into the store and to spur travel on Daitetsu Railways.86 Railway companies, department store companies, and newspaper companies were the three most significant nongovernmental sponsors of the seemingly countless cultural events that defined middle-class leisure at the time. With so many individuals visiting imperial heritage sites in 1940, it is little wonder that the market for memorabilia boomed as well. If their easy availability at flea markets in the Kyoto area in 2004 is any measure, staggering numbers of 2,600th anniversary postcards showing the sacred imperial sites of Yamato were produced. The postcards ranged from drab black and white photos of imperial tombs to unattributed drawings of Emperor Jimmu to a set of elegant color postcards, drawn by Yoshida Hatsusaburo ˉ (1884–1955), a prolific artist renowned for his depictions of famous sites, portraying the “Three Sacred Sites” of Yamato, Ise Shrine, and Atsuta Shrine. Postcards were often purchased for collecting rather than for sending, and this likely would have been the case with the set drawn by

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9. With this advertisement, Shoˉrindoˉ plugged its line of mementos created in response to the imperial heritage boom. Shoˉrindoˉ advertised nine types of what might be best described as tables or charts that visitors to heritage sites could have stamped to record their visit. These charts grouped heritage sites thematically. One was for imperial tombs, another for monuments to Kusunoki, and another for major imperial shrines. (Choˉkoku no seishin, August 1941.)

Yoshida. Yoshida also issued colorful bird’s-eye maps of “Emperor Jimmu Historical Sites” in the Yamato area that served as elegant mementos.87 Sho ˉrindo ˉ touted its line of elegant mementos as “absolutely necessary for pilgrimages to sacred sites” with advertisements such as the ones reproduced here (see figures 9 and 10). The Meaning of Imperial Heritage Tourism With consumer items becoming scarcer as 1940 progressed, travel was an activity still open to middle-class Japanese, who since the 1920s had come to expect the diversion of leisure. It may also have served as a safety valve for releasing frustration with the fact that everyday life was gradually becoming more difficult. If travelers could be channeled to national heritage sites, leisure travel could be justified as an effective means to shore up patriotic support for state policies including the war in China. Tourism undeniably had significant political value to the regime. It represents an aspect of the story of mobilization for total war. It is nonetheless impossible to reconcile the booming tourism sector with the notion of wartime Japan having been a dark valley. However visits to imperial heritage sites might have

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10. At the apex of this table, offered by Shoˉrindoˉ to commemorate visits to imperial tombs, appears the place for a stamp marking a visit to Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum. This table appeared as part of a larger advertisement Shoˉrindoˉ placed in Kigen nisen roppyakunen (Koˉryoˉ-goˉ), October 1938.

been spun as dutiful, it was leisure travel all the same, with travelers partaking in pleasurable diversions. The travelogues I have examined have a playful side that contradicts the notion of millions of drones suffering through trips to patriotic sites, one way that proponents of the dark valley view might explain away the imperial heritage boom. It is easy to imagine that families with young children who visited Nara in 1940 would have spent far more time in that city’s park famous for its tame deer than at Kashihara Shrine or at Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum. One surviving tourism promotion poster issued by the City of Nara in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations featured the deer rather than solemn imperial sites.88 There was almost surely a continuum of experiences among tourists to national heritage sites.

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At one end of the continuum, a visit to imperial heritage sites may have been nothing more than a conveniently patriotic excuse for young lovers to arrange a tryst. At the other end of the continuum, such visits may well have been profoundly spiritual occasions for devout nationalists. Even in the case of tourists who during their stays in Nara, Miyazaki, and other sacred areas made only perfunctory visits to imperial heritage sites, the experience likely reinforced the unbroken imperial line ideology that was pervasively employed by Japanese at the time to justify claims that Japan and its civilization was so unique as to be superior to all other nation-states and civilizations. The discourse, symbolism, and mnemonic sites of which Japanese tourists availed themselves were designed to foster their support of the militaristic expansionist policies of the time. The state endeavored to direct leisure travel toward heritage sites, and the “keeping up with the Tanakas” factor that is present in all forms of consumption was combined with wartime societal pressures for Japanese to display their patriotism. Nonetheless, in the end the decision to visit these imperial heritage sites was a voluntary one made by the consumer. The stress here is on the self-administered nature of the imperial heritage tourism that millions of Japanese engaged in at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, not on the role of the state.

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4 to u r ing k orea

The empire meant many things to the Japanese. It was a source of national prestige, a provider of raw materials, and a place for settlers to relocate from the cramped archipelago. It was also a tourist destination, even in wartime. Leisure travel to the colonies was especially popular among middle-class Japanese during the 2,600th anniversary year. At the same time in 1940 that representatives of the Government Railways of Cho ˉsen (Korea), an integral part of the Government-General of Korea, were endeavoring to promote tourism, officials in the same colonial bureaucracy were strengthening assimilation policies designed to Japanize Koreans. This latter aspect of Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula is far better known, even infamous, in comparison to the efforts to increase tourism. The Government-General of Korea enjoyed sweeping executive, judicial, and legislative powers, and it employed this authority in the area of assimilation. But why would a Japanese tourist from the mother country want to visit Korea if it had been rendered into no more than a replica of Japan? One of the main themes in contemporary promotional literature designed to convince Japanese to make Korea a destination for leisure travel was the chance a visit offered to experience a new culture. As far as Korea’s tourism world, then dominated by Japanese (although certain Koreans also profited from tourism), was concerned, not only relics of Korea’s ancient civilization but also contemporary cultural differences needed to be maintained to ensure that Korea continued to be an interesting tourist destination. Tourism and assimilation are concepts that do not necessarily go together. The pace of assimilation in Korea was initially slow, and even when it was intensified, the colonial authorities remained ambivalent about just how far it should proceed. The historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki has stressed that “the colonial order needed to produce both similarity and difference in its subjects,” and that “assimilation and discrimination, Japanization and exoticization, were different sides of the same colonial coin.” Elaborating on imperialism in general, MorrisSuzuki wrote, “The ruling state’s urge to exalt and spread the values of its own

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‘civilization’ contended with its desire to maintain the differences that justified unequal access to power.”1 One of the examples that Morris-Suzuki cited of the “polar forces of assimilation and difference” was the “Karafuto: Guardian of the Northern Gate Exhibition” hosted by the Isetan Department Store in Tokyo in December 1939. Morris-Suzuki wrote: “The Tokyo exhibition included a life-sized panorama of the village of Otasu, where visitors could see waxwork models of the settlement’s Nivkh and Uilta people engaging in traditional fishing and herding activities, while listening to recordings of the village children singing Japanese patriotic songs.”2 Morris-Suzuki did not mention whether the exhibition had a tourism angle, but the January 1940 issue of the Karafuto jiho ˉ (“Karafuto Newsletter”) indicated that the exhibition included a room whose theme was “Visiting Karafuto.” One photo of the exhibition shows the “Tourism Information Desk” piled high with brochures and staffed by a young woman.3 Imperialism, with its conflicting tendency to demand both assimilation and yet the maintenance of differences, and tourism were well suited to each other. The colonial authorities, with their power to codify and to exploit the local tourism resources, could transform the colonies into destinations so convenient to visitors from the mother country that one is tempted to compare them to theme parks. The powerful police force that Japanese colonial authorities developed in Korea and in the other colonies stood ready to protect tourists from the slightest danger. The colonial authorities’ sweeping control rendered the exotic local culture and people almost entirely unthreatening. If it is accurate to portray tourists as typically wanting to “go local” in safe doses only to retreat into their comfort zones whenever necessary, then visiting a colony was close to ideal. This was the case both in Japan’s colonies and elsewhere in areas colonized by other countries, at least for visitors from the mother country. In her study of urban planning throughout the French Empire, Gwendolyn Wright identified tourism as one of the factors that motivated planners to preserve native enclaves even as they modernized colonial cities ranging from Rabat in Morocco to Saigon in Vietnam.4 In Morocco, French urban planners constructed picturesque districts that were designed, in a theme park sense, to match visitors’ expectations of the Orient. In a way that was different in degrees from Japan’s colonial policies by 1940, French colonial policies, although not uniform throughout the empire, nonetheless tended to privilege association with the locals over comprehensive efforts to assimilate them. Thus efforts to preserve, for voyeuristic purposes, elements of the native culture did not clash as significantly with policies of assimilation, a contradiction that was more evident in the case of Korea under Japanese control. Italian colonial policies also tended to stress association over assimilation, reducing the tension between modernization programs and the marketing of indigenous culture to attract tourists. Brian McLaren, a historian of architecture, has shown that Italian colonial officials in Libya undertook a modernization program in the 1920s and 1930s in order to develop tourism there.5 Throughout Italy’s

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empire in North Africa, colonial officials took special care to document and to preserve Roman ruins because Mussolini’s regime employed the onetime extent of the ancient Roman Empire to justify Italy’s modern imperium. Roman ruins were only one of the attractions in North Africa, however. McLaren stressed that in Libya, Italian authorities “offered a staging of cultural difference” that went beyond simply preserving elements of the native culture.6 Colonial officials constructed, in the old city of Tripoli, an “Arab Café” expressly for tourists. According to McLaren, at the Arab Café, “The interest in creating an authentic experience for the tourists extended to the indigenous performances, which included the eroticism of ‘traditional’ oriental dance—where Arab women were clad in thin layers of revealing clothing.”7 Like Italian, French, British, Belgian, and American citizens traveling within their colonies at the time, Japanese tourists were members of a privileged class while visiting their empire. Their interactions with Koreans need not have been and often were not ones between equals. If a Japanese tourist visiting Korea in 1940 encountered one of the six out of seven Koreans who did not understand Japanese, the Korean was considered at fault for his linguistic deficiency.8 Japanese tourists, after especially safe explorations of native culture, could retreat back into an infrastructure of Japanese-style inns, restaurants, department stores, movie theaters, and other forms of comfort and entertainment that, in totality, made for a cultural milieu hardly different from that of the mother country. Nonetheless, it was critical to the tourism sector that Korea continued to feel, as much as possible, Korean to visitors. It was for this reason that the Government Railways of Cho ˉsen, beginning in the 1920s and continuing into the 1930s, constructed, at considerable expense, numerous railway stations featuring traditional Korean architectural styles.9 Elsewhere in the empire, Japanese colonial authorities took steps to ensure that the local terrain lived up to tourists’ expectations. Urban planners in Taiwan planted palm trees to provide an appropriate “South Seas” ambience.10 One could argue that tourists desiring, for example, sex could care less about whether or not they experience a new culture. This was perhaps true in the case of some Japanese tourists to colonial Korea. There is little question that Korean prostitutes were readily and legally available to Japanese visitors. Sex was easily and legally available for purchase in Japan proper in the imperial era, however, and it was a casual matter with little if any social stigma for a man to visit a brothel at that time. A trip to Korea in pursuit of sex would seem to have required considerable expenditure for something easily available at home. Perhaps the thought of sex with a Korean woman offered to Japanese men something new and exotic, part of the package of experiencing a new culture. By 1940 there were many Korean women working as prostitutes in Japan proper, but maybe the lack of an authentic Korean setting dampened the attraction of this less expensive option close to home. Clearly part of the story of colonial exploitation involves the sex trade that was prevalent throughout Japan’s empire.

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However, sex does not seem to have been the primary motivation for most Japanese who visited the colonies, making the term “sex tourism” inappropriate. Although it may seem odd or unacceptable from today’s perspective, visits to prostitutes for many Japanese men at the time, whether in Japan proper or in the empire, were simply seen as part of the regular fabric of life. This was also true of many Korean men at the time, regardless of their country’s status as a colony. Prostitution in Asia predated Japanese imperialism, a reminder that sexual exploitation has been as much a problem of unequal gender relations as of imperialism. Postcards are simple yet telling records of tourist attractions at a particular time. Unsurprisingly, one of the themes of postcards about the colonies was precisely the possibility of sex with the locals. One image commonly featured in postcards from all of Japan’s colonies was that of the local beauties, often exoticized. Almost all postcard representations of colonies and colonial subjects also contrasted their exotic customs and backwardness with the modernity of the mother country and the colonialists.11 In Japan’s case, postcard images of the natives in Micronesia, the aborigines in Taiwan, and the Ainu in Hokkaido and other northern territories advertised the opportunity for Japanese to encounter a primitive culture.12 Other themes were more ordinary. Postcard sets touting the attractions of the northern colony of Karafuto often included an image of a happy sportsman holding a string of trophy fish. “The Views of Keijo,” a set of thirty-two black and white bilingual postcards, provides an interesting window into the sites of that city that were of interest to tourists in 1940. Of the twenty-nine postcards that survive, fourteen are images of modernity engineered by the Japanese. Nine show precolonial Korean structures transformed by the colonial authorities into historical relics. Of the remaining six, one is a panoramic view of the city, one shows gentlemen and ladies in kimono strolling in the flourishing commercial area of Honmachi, another shows Korean laborers carting goods into the city by oxen, and the final three show Korean neighborhoods, providing a glimpse into how the so-called natives lived. Residential areas for Japanese and for Koreans were clearly divided at the time. Below are reproductions of three of the postcards. The first shows the modern Government-General Building, completed in 1925 (figure 11). Situated in front of the main hall of Gyeongbokgung (termed Keifukukyuˉ by the Japanese), the primary palace of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910), this modern five-story building blocked this royal palace from view. The Japanese colonial authorities tore down most of the more than one hundred structures that once comprised the Gyeongbokgung compound. Many were removed to make room for the Korean Products Exposition held in 1915. The colonial authorities subsequently transformed the remaining structures, including the Gyeonghoeru (in Japanese, Keikairo ˉ) shown below in the second postcard, into tourist attractions (figure 12).13 The creation of iconographic sites for Japanese tourists visiting Korea involved both the construction of new sites and the obliteration and selective preservation of preexisting sites.

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11. The Government-General Building, locus of Japan’s colonial-era government in Korea.

12. The Gyeonghoeru (in Japanese, Keikairoˉ) Palace Hall.

The last of the three postcards shows a Korean neighborhood, in this case a residential area located outside the city’s East Gate (figure 13). It was meant to be representative of the typical environment in which Koreans lived, and there is little question that the natives themselves were objects of voyeurism. The thatched

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13. Korean residential area in colonial-era Keijoˉ (Seoul).

huts and porters bearing heavy burdens contrasted with the modern amenities enjoyed by Japanese residents of Keijo ˉ, although they hardly would have seemed out of place in rural Japan. This set of postcards nicely represents three themes typically encountered by Japanese visitors to Korea around 1940, namely examples of modernity introduced by the Japanese, evidence of Japanese efforts to preserve examples of Korea’s “once advanced civilization,” and evidence of the still primitive contemporary native culture. Examples of pockets of contemporary primitiveness served to highlight the modernity introduced by the Japanese and the extent to which the once advanced Korean civilization had fallen behind the trends of the time before Japan’s intervention on the peninsula.14 The contrast between the modernity of the mother country and the exotic premodern native culture was a recurring theme in the promotion of what could be termed “colonial tourism” during the heyday of imperialism, and today it continues in many ways to define the attraction of less developed countries to tourists from more developed areas.15 Tourism Promotion and Infrastructure It was not long after Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 that the Government Railways of Cho ˉsen, in collaboration with the branch of the Japan Tourism Bureau (  JTB) that was established in Korea in 1912, began marketing Korea as a tourist destination, both to Japanese and to Westerners. Tourism posters distributed by the Government Railways promoted the peninsula’s must-see destination,

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the Diamond Mountains (in Korean, Geumgangsan; in Japanese, Kongoˉsan), which had been a pilgrimage site for Korean scholar officials long before Japan’s intervention.16 During the colonial era, the Diamond Mountains lay at the center of the trunk rail line connecting Keijo ˉ to the commercially important city of Gensan (Wonsan) on the eastern coast. A 1937 Government Railways of Cho ˉsen English-language promotional brochure about Kongo ˉsan touted the rocky peaks, canyons, pristine streams, towering waterfalls, and the thirty-four surviving monasteries of this traditional center of Buddhism that today is located in North Korea.17 The Kongoˉsan Railway Company’s twenty-year history highlighted the steady increase in sightseers coming to Kongo ˉsan up through 1938, the last year for which it provided statistics.18 The 1939 edition of JTB’s “Itineraries and Estimated Expenses” advertised a tenday trip to the Diamond Mountains (departing from Tokyo) for  ¥139.82 ($35) in second class and ¥ 81.41 ($20.35) in third class.19 By 1940, many Japanese in Korea with a stake in tourism were actively lobbying for Kongo ˉsan to be designated as one of Japan’s national parks.20 In the late 1930s, the Government Railways of Choˉsen and the Korea branch of the JTB stepped up their efforts to promote Korea as a tourist destination. Between 1936 and 1940, the Government Railways released five tourism promotion films with titles such as “Keijo ˉ,” “Korea’s Kongoˉsan,” “A Trip to Korea,” and “Korea’s Four Seasons: Winter Travel.” Nikkatsu Studios, the Geijutsu Movie Company, and the Korea Manchuria Documentary Film Production Company also released one travel promotion film each about Korea under the titles “An Album of the Great Kongo ˉsan,” “Impressions of Korea,” and “Touring Korea’s Hot Springs.”21 Japanese colonists developed hot springs resorts throughout the empire. More traditional media were also employed to promote Korea as a tourist destination. In 1940, the Government Railways and JTB jointly published “Features of Korea,” an elegant book of photographs of the “many places in Korea that one should see.”22 Department stores in Japan proper often featured exhibits about the colonies, and branch stores in the colonies often hosted exhibitions about other areas of the empire. The Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ newspaper reported that the Korea Pavilion featured in Isetan’s “Our New World” exhibition to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary provided “A Complete Picture of Booming Korea.”23 In May, the Ho ˉten (Mukden or Shenyang) branch of the Minakai Department Store hosted an exhibition on Korea. One of the exhibition’s attractions, according to the advertisement Minakai placed in the Manshuˉ nichinichi newspaper, was a display of photos of tourist attractions in Korea.24 A wide range of information about visiting Korea was made available in Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen (“Tourism in Korea”), a bimonthly tourism promotion magazine similar to Miyazaki Prefecture’s Kirishima and Nara Prefecture’s Kanko ˉ no Yamato that the Korea branch of the JTB began publishing in 1939. Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen informed readers about Korea’s hot spring resorts and ocean resorts. It directed sportsmen to the best places for golfing (there was an eighteen-hole course in the suburbs of Keijoˉ),

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skating, skiing, and hunting. The April 1940 issue included a sustained roundtable discussion about fishing in which the participants provided tips about the best angling spots in Korea and gushed about the spiritual benefits of this hobby. The magazine provided information on historical sites as well as sites attesting to the rapid economic development of the peninsula, one example of the colony’s value to the mother country since the fruits of this development disproportionately benefited Japanese. The JTB’s Korea branch office also used early issues of Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen to advertise contests for essays and photos that could be used to promote tourism to Korea. For example, in commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary, the Korea branch of the JTB offered first prizes of ¥50 ($12.50) for the best essay on the “new touristic essence” of Korea and ¥35 ($8.75) for the best “tourism photo” of Korea’s scenery, customs, industry, ceremonial events, education system, social activities, and so forth.25 As with tourism in Japan proper, the development of intraempire tourism grew in conjunction with the expansion of a modern transportation infrastructure. In Korea’s case, not only the commercial but also the military implications of the transportation infrastructure were especially apparent. Korea was an important rear base for military operations on the Asian continent. One of many reminders of the symbiosis of light and dark that characterized wartime Japan was that the same railways and steamships that Japanese tourists employed on leisure trips to Korea were used to transport Korean forced laborers to Japan proper and to other parts of the empire.26 This was also true for the so-called comfort women, the euphemism used to describe the young women who were taken from Korea and elsewhere to serve as sexual slaves for the Imperial Military. Travel by plane, the most recent form of moving people around to have become commercialized, was the one exception to this multifaceted use of the transportation system. It remained too much of a luxury to employ airplanes to transport laborers, although they may have been used to transport comfort women to far-flung outposts in the empire in order to serve the officer class. For individuals who could afford to travel to Korea by plane, by 1940 daily service was available between Tokyo and Keijo ˉ, via Fukuoka, with a flying time of less than six hours. The chart below shows the extent of Japan’s commercial air routes by December 1940 (figure 14). At the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, the airplane symbolized the intersection of capitalist modernity and empire and militarism in Japan, and elsewhere, in technologically advanced form, a role played by the steamship and railroad in the nineteenth century. A product resulting from leading edge technology and intensive capital investment, the airplane gave the Imperial Military mastery of the skies throughout the empire and near mastery of the skies in the war in China, especially when outside contributions to the Chinese cause are discounted. As means of civilian transport, the airplane provided Japanese entrepreneurs who could finance the infrastructure necessary to provide regular service to the empire with a new business opportunity. The existence of a sufficient base of passengers, mostly Japanese, who were wealthy enough to travel

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14. This December 1940 chart shows how Japan’s commercial air routes integrated the empire. (Toˉyoˉ nenkan [Far East Yearbook], 1941.)

around the empire by such an expensive if rapid means resulted from the vibrant capitalist modernity that Japan experienced earlier than most of the rest of Asia. For individuals who, for economic or other reasons, declined to travel by air, the next fastest means of traveling to Korea was by express train and steam ferry that made it possible to reach Keijoˉ from Tokyo in thirty-six hours. This method required one to travel by train from Tokyo to Shimonoseki. Ferry steamers with the capacity to carry two thousand passengers departed twice daily

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from Shimonoseki to Fusan (Pusan). From Fusan one traveled to Keijoˉ aboard the Akatsuki super-express train, perhaps taking a slight detour en route to visit Keishuˉ (Kyongju), the ancient capital of the Silla Kingdom that was dotted with historical castles, palaces, temples, and mausoleums.27 One surviving copy of the trilingual ( Japanese, Chinese, and English) “Album of the Ancient Sites of Keishuˉ” published in 1939, with tourists in mind, by the Society for Preservation of Antiquities in Keishuˉ included the tourist stamp from the Bukkokuji (Pulguksa) Temple Station (see color insert, figure 15).28 This temple was Keishuˉ’s main tourist attraction. By 1940, the railway system within Korea was closer to Japanese standards in terms of its advanced stage of development than it was to French Indochina or to China (with the exception of Northeast China, then under Japanese control), allowing tourists to travel conveniently around the peninsula as well as to reach Northeast China quickly if that was their primary destination. Enough Japanese went to Northeast China via Fusan without stopping over in Korea that in 1940 Japan’s premier tourist magazine Kanko ˉ published an article titled “Sightseeing Korea from the Train Window” to help devout sightseers make the best use of their trip through Korea. Included in the article were two handy charts, one of which is reprinted here (see figure 15), that window tourists could use to record their sightings and impressions of geological features, plants, animals, fields and rice paddies, housing, shrines and temples, customs, traditions, souvenirs, things for sale at stations, and dialects.29 One cannot help but wonder how the typical Japanese tourist who did not speak or understand Korean would have been able to discern different Korean dialects, presumably during layovers at stations or by listening in on conversations involving middle-class Korean passengers sharing the trains, but the chart provides additional evidence that the attraction of the colonies was the opportunity to experience something new and different. The chart provided a means for the traveler to try to transcend the rapidity of train travel, which made it difficult to experience the local landscape.30 The Government Railways 1938 “Travel Guide to Korea” provided several possible itineraries for travelers interested in visiting Korea. Each tour either featured Keijo ˉ or began with this administrative capital and thriving metropolis of more than 900,000 residents, of whom 167,000 were Japanese.31 The comprehensive 500-page guidebook Cho ˉsen no kanko ˉ (“Sightseeing in Korea”) that was published in 1939 indicated that at a cost of ¥169.99 ($42.50) if one went by second class and for ¥ 90.57 ($22.65) by third class, it was possible to spend seven days in Korea (including two set aside for sightseeing in Keijoˉ) as part of an all-inclusive ten-day trip that began and ended in Tokyo.32 Keijo ˉ attracted travelers not only from Japan proper, but also from among the approximately half a million Japanese in Korea who resided outside of the administrative capital. By 1940, there were also more than one million Japanese troops on the continent. The topic of tourism by these troops demands further investigation. Most of the more than one million Japanese residents of Manchuria, many

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15. Japan’s premier tourist magazine Kankoˉ suggested that tourists passing through Korea by train make use of this chart to record their impressions.

of whom were middle class, were within a one-day train ride (e.g., nineteen hours from Shinkyo ˉ) from Keijo ˉ. The train lines that connected Korea to Manchukuo and to China, where an additional three hundred thousand Japanese resided, were well traveled. In 1938, the nine branch offices of the South Manchurian Railway Company located in Japan proper that specialized in advising individuals considering a trip to Korea, Manchuria, and China published a comprehensive travel guide to these destinations that were attracting the attention of more and more Japanese with travel lust.33 Statistics on prewar Japanese tourism to Korea are spotty but confirm that thousands, and more likely tens of thousands, of visitors from Japan proper made the trip annually by the late 1930s. In 1940, JTB’s Korea Manchuria Travel Service Center arranged for investigation tours of both Korea and Manchuria by 125 groups comprising 7,473 individuals.34 Tours exclusively of Korea organized by the JTB as well as trips by individual tourists augmented the number of visitors considerably, but regrettably statistics on these travelers for 1940 and other years are not available.35 The Bus Tour of Keijo ˉ Another indicator of a steady flow of visitors who wanted to take in the sites is the fact that by the late 1930s there was enough demand for sightseeing bus tours of Keijo ˉ for the Keijo ˉ Taxi Company to offer the tour twice daily for eight months of the year and once daily during the winter months. The sightseeing bus tour of Keijo ˉ designed for Japanese tourists provides another revealing window into how Japanese visitors experienced the city.

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The three-and-one-half-hour tour that featured a female guide offering commentary about sites of interest was available at a cost to adults of ¥ 2.20 (50 cents), with discounts for children, senior citizens, and groups.36 The guide’s commentary was of critical importance in shaping the visitors’ understanding of the sites, but the only source that provides a sense of the commentary is a diary kept by a student from the Nara Women’s Higher Normal School who took the bus tour in 1939 (and a week earlier the bus tour of Shinkyoˉ). She was one of the many student visitors to the colonies who percentage-wise comprised the largest group of continental travelers. The diary reveals that the guide that day was a Korean woman who spoke excellent Japanese but with enough of an accent for the passengers to recognize her as Korean.37 According to Toyoda Saburo ˉ’s (1907–59) account of taking the Keijoˉ bus tour in 1941, the female Korean guide wore Korean-style clothes, presumably to provide an aura of authenticity.38 In their account of their travels through Korea and Manchuria sponsored by the Ministry of Colonial Affairs, the writers Toyoda, Nitta Jun (1904–), and Inoue Tomoichiro ˉ (1909–) described Keijoˉ in October 1941 as crawling with mainlanders (naichijin, or Japanese from Japan proper). The city’s Japanese-style inns were all booked so these three writers ended up staying in the ultramodern Cho ˉsen Hotel. Historians need to get beyond the notion that the colonies remained distant locations that existed only in the imagination of all but a few Japanese. This was not the case by 1940. There was substantial integration by then between the metropole and the colonies, and indeed between different parts of the empire in ways that sometimes bypassed Japan proper. A considerable number of Japanese experienced the colonies, especially nearby Korea, as settlers, military personnel, or leisure travelers. Legacies of this interaction were likely significant even after Japan’s imperium collapsed overnight. The cultural imprint that the colonies left on postwar Japan, that is, on Japan even after it was reduced to the archipelago, is a topic that has received little attention from scholars. The Keijo ˉ bus tour departed from the city’s busy train station, a modern ferroconcrete structure completed in 1925. The bus soon passed the city’s fivehundred-year old South Gate, one of eight gates to the city when it had been walled before Japanese authorities modernized the metropolis according to their own design. According to the writer Nitta, at the South Gate passengers exited in order to have a commemorative group photograph taken, copies of which were available for purchase for 30 sen (8 cents) by the time of the last stop of the tour. Nitta’s comparison of the tour guide’s hurrying along of participants who were strolling around some of the stops in too leisurely a fashion to a preschool teacher’s shepherding of her young charges informs us of the extent to which the tour was already a carefully packaged commodity.39 From the South Gate the bus turned onto a broad asphalt road in the direction of its first stop, the Cho ˉsen Shrine located in Nanzan Park (in Korean, Namsan), which overlooked all of Keijo ˉ. Enshrined at the Choˉsen Shrine, the focal point of Nanzan Park during the colonial era, were Amaterasu, progenitor

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of the imperial line, and Emperor Meiji, in whose name Japan’s empire was established. The shrine, completed in 1925, could not have more clearly symbolized the extension of imperial rule over Korea, the modern-day equivalent of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition. Also located in the Nanzan Park were the Keijoˉ Shrine, which served to protect the city, and the Nogi Shrine. The latter was in memory of General Nogi Maresuke, who during the Russo-Japanese War had commanded the Japanese forces who captured Port Arthur. This victory, which came at a high cost in Japanese lives, was crucial to Japan’s eventual victory over Russia in 1905 that ensured Japan’s control over Korea. A new attraction in Nanzan Park was the Imperial Subject Oath Tower completed in November 1939. Enclosed in the Imperial Subject Oath Tower were 1.4 million copies of the oath of loyalty to the Empire of Japan handwritten by students from schools throughout Korea.40 Today Namsan Park continues to be one of Seoul’s most attractive public spaces. Almost all vestiges of the colonial era have been eradicated, replaced in one case by the Patriot Ahn Choong Kun Memorial Hall that chronicles Japanese aggression. After the Ulsa Treaty of 1905 rendered Korea into a protectorate of Japan, Ahn (1879–1910) raised arms against the Japanese encroachment. In 1909, he assassinated Ito ˉ Hirobumi (b. 1841), the first Japanese resident general of Korea, to protest Japan’s infringing upon Korea’s independence. After a show trial, the Japanese authorities hanged Ahn, but not before he outlined in his testimony to the court “The 15 Crimes of Ito ˉ Hirobumi,” a sweeping indictment of Japan’s imperialism in Korea. In post-liberation Korea, Ahn was elevated to the national pantheon of heroes. Today all of the monuments and sites of interest to Japanese tourists during the colonial era have either been razed or redesigned to highlight abuses perpetrated by the Japanese as well as to draw attention to Korean heritage. Before the tour left Nanzan Park, the guide provided participants with information on the history of Keijo ˉ as they gazed upon the city from this ideal vantage point.41 From Nanzan Park the bus then traveled to Shoˉchuˉdan Park (in Korean, Jangchungdan). Although Sho ˉchu ˉdan Park was the site of an altar dedicated to Korean martyrs who died while trying to defend Queen Min (b. 1851) from her Japanese murderers in 1895, the main purpose of the stop at this park was to allow Japanese sightseers the opportunity to visit the Prince Itoˉ Memorial Temple located in the hills just to the east of the park. This temple was completed in 1932 and is described as having been a two-story building in the “Kamakura style” but constructed of reinforced ferroconcrete.42 A magnificent gate was transported from the Gyeonghuigung Royal Palace to serve as the entrance to this temple at which the spirit of the first resident general of Korea was worshipped. It is not clear if or how this act of desecration was explained to participants in the tour. Contemporary Japanese guidebooks to Keijo ˉ make no mention of this detail. After reboarding the bus, tour participants were transported past the East Gate en route to what during the Joseon Dynasty had been the royal Confucian Academy and the National Confucian Shrine. The architecture of the complex

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exhibited distinctive Korean elements; the writer Toyoda wrote favorably of it as impressing him as authentically Korean in style.43 This site was also representative of a shared East Asian heritage of Confucianism that Japan, as the self-proclaimed leader of Asia, sought to preserve and to co-opt. What the historian Joshua Fogel has termed the “Confucian pilgrim” was one subset of the many Japanese who traveled to the Asian continent during the imperial era. To mark the 2,600th anniversary, the Japan-based Confucius and Mencius Sacred Sites Publication Association issued an elegant, illustrated guide to sacred sites relating to Confucius and Mencius (and other disciples) that extolled Confucianism’s centrality in Japan’s polity and also held up Japan as the leader of the Confucian tradition.44 Many Japanese travelers were interested in the same continental Confucian heritage sites that had been visited by the East Asian literati for centuries before the modern period. The Japanese authorities employed Confucianism both to define the family-state headed by the emperor and to place the colonies and the colonized in their proper place in the imperial hierarchy. Confucian tourism was conveniently regime affirming. Many Confucian pilgrims returned home from the continent convinced, in the words of Fogel, that “only the Japanese were still loyal to the original Confucius.”45 The subsequent stop on the bus tour of Keijoˉ, at the Shoˉkeien, a onetime royal palace transformed into a garden, was likely either the longest or second longest of the tour because getting to the various attractions required some walking. Sho ˉkeien was the Japanese name for what today has been restored as the Changgyeonggung Palace. Early in the colonial period, Japanese authorities removed numerous buildings from within the palace grounds to make way for a zoo and a botanical garden and downgraded the site to a garden. This unsavory history likely escaped Japanese visitors. Both the very portable, inexpensive 1938 guidebook Keijo ˉ no kanko ˉ (“Sightseeing in Keijo ˉ”) published jointly by the Keijoˉ Tourism Association (est. 1933) and the JTB, and the weighty guidebook Cho ˉsen no kanko ˉ described the park as having been opened to the people of Keijoˉ by the Yi royal family and made no mention of the coercive manner by which Japanese authorities transformed this royal palace into a garden.46 If they had timed their visit to coincide with flower season, Japanese tourists no doubt felt at home—perhaps too much at home—walking among the many decorative cherry trees that had been planted in 1922 to provide the park with a Japanese feeling.47 Otherwise, the focus of Japanese visitors was likely on the surviving examples of Korean architecture, the exotic animals housed in the zoo, and the famous glass greenhouse. Said to be the finest in the Orient (To ˉyo ˉ), the greenhouse (figure 16) was often invoked as emblematic of the modernity that Japan had brought to Korea. From the Sho ˉkeien, tour participants were transported to Pagoda Park. The park itself was a modern construct modeled on European parks, but the site’s central attraction was a ten-story stone pagoda, dating from 1464, that included elegant sculptures of Buddhist images in relief. Contemporary Japanese travel guides failed to draw attention to the fact that Pagoda Park also had been the nexus of

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16. This glass greenhouse was often held up as a symbol of the modernity that Japan had brought to Korea.

the initial stage of the March First Movement in Korea for independence, a widespread nationalistic movement in 1919 that was violently quelled by the Japanese colonial authorities. Nor do the few travel diaries written by Japanese that I have located suggest that tour guides drew attention to Pagoda Park’s symbolic significance to Koreans. From Pagoda Park the tour bus headed in the direction of the GovernmentGeneral Building. The bus followed the city’s broadest boulevard, which was lined with trees, into the public square in front of the center of the colonial government. Inside the Government-General Building, tour participants heard details about the lengthy time taken to construct the building (nine years), its cost (  ¥ 7 million, or $1.75 million), and the height of the central dome (180 feet). They also had a chance to view Wada Sanzo ˉ’s (1883–1968) pictorial representations of the “harmonious integration of Korea and Japan,” which were featured on the building’s walls. When James Halsema (1919–2005) visited the GovernmentGeneral Building in 1940 with his fellow American participants in that year’s Japan America Student Conference, they were shown “an English-language documentary film on 30 years of Japanese achievement in bringing Korea into the modern world.”48 It is unclear, however, whether or not there was also a Japanese version of the film that was shown to Japanese visitors who needed less convincing about the propriety of their country’s rule over Korea. The subsequent stop at the Government-General Museum, itself an elegant modern building fronted by carefully tended gardens, likely competed with the Sho ˉkeien in the length of time it took to tour. The museum displayed the history

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of Korean civilization—as presented by Japanese colonial authorities. It housed Korean treasures from antiquity through to the present, some of which had been excavated by Japanese since the annexation. One of the privileges exercised by imperialists everywhere is interpreting the history of the local civilization, whether in museum exhibitions or in historical narratives, in a manner that justifies the colonial present. There is little question that colonial authorities hoped that visitors would depart with positive impressions of the lengths to which the Japanese were going to preserve Korea’s heritage. Since the turn of the century, Japanese pan-Asian nationalists, perhaps best represented by Okakura Kakuzoˉ, had appropriated for Japan, as part of its role as a the leader of Asia, the duty to serve as the caretaker of Asian civilization.49 In his Ideals of the East (1902) Okakura, who argued that his country had achieved a higher form of civilization by synthesizing the best from East and West, referred to Japan as a “museum of Asiatic civilization.”50 Relics in the Government-General Museum suggesting the “once advanced” level of traditional Korean civilization were not allowed to undermine a teleology that justified Korea’s amalgamation into Japan, however. Here it is worth quoting from one of the Government-General of Cho ˉsen’s English-language reports published to convince the world of the appropriateness of Japan’s rule over Korea: Tyosen [Korea], one of the oldest countries of the Orient, was once a highly advanced nation from which Japan learned many arts and crafts. She never enjoyed political independence to any considerable extent. . . . Though Japan was always ready to lend a helping hand to Tyosen in the maintenance of her independence and in the promotion of her welfare, Tyosen was utterly unable to stand on her own feet owing to long years of misgovernment, official corruption, and popular degeneration. . . . So it appeared more than likely that she would become the hotbed of incessant trouble in the Far East, and in view of the situation Japan came to the conclusion that the best way to save Tyosen was by making her a Japanese protectorate.51

This account of Korea’s once advanced civilization, its subsequent decline, followed by Japan’s benevolent intervention is similar to the history of French Indochina provided by French travel guidebooks in the 1930s. The historian Ellen Furlough wrote: “Guidebooks conceded that Indochina had been the site of a civilization with a ‘glorious past,’ as witnessed by Angkor Wat. This ‘ruined’ civilization, however, was followed by a long period of decline and violence, until the French, through wise administration, provided the conditions for peace, unity, and progress.”52 Angkor Wat offered French tourists the opportunity to experience an exotic and once magnificent culture even as they stayed safely within their empire. By the late 1920s, this site was firmly on the intraempire leisure travel circuit for French individuals of means. The final stop on the Keijo ˉ bus tour was the Tokujukyuˉ (in Korean, Deoksu­ gung), a royal palace that included traditional Korean-style buildings and the Seokjojeon, the first major Western-style building that Emperor Gojong

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(1852–1919) had had constructed as a venue to receive foreign envoys. Only one year after this indigenous example of modernization was completed in 1909, Japan annexed Korea. Located at the Tokujukyuˉ was the Yi Royal Family Museum that housed some of Korea’s greatest artistic treasures, and tour participants apparently were provided with enough time for a quick inspection of the museum. The guidebook “Sightseeing in Keijo ˉ” stressed the significance of the Tokujukyuˉ for another reason, a detail that it is easy to imagine the guide’s bringing to the attention of visitors from Japan. In its section on “Hideyoshi’s Armies in Keijo ˉ,” this guidebook noted that the command center of Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s (1536–98) army that captured and occupied the city in 1592 had likely been located on the site of the Tokujukyu ˉ (for a short period of time before Hideyoshi’s army retreated, in defeat, to Japan). In a similar manner, a popular guidebook for the more than one million German soldiers who visited occupied Paris in 1940 and 1941 drew attention to sites, such as the place where the composer Richard Wagner (1813–83) had lived during his stay in Paris, which served to contextualize Paris within German history.53 Additional Activities for Tourists Contemporary guidebooks and travelogues provide glimpses into some of the other activities Japanese tourists could pursue during their stay in Keijoˉ. The guidebook “Sightseeing in Keijo ˉ” provided detailed information on thirty hotels and Japanese-style inns, and recommended twelve Japanese restaurants. There was also a theater that specialized in Japanese drama. Most tourists from Japan likely found it reassuring to navigate Korea without having to interact, except by choice instead of out of necessity, with Koreans or Korean culture in any significant way. However, if Korea were to become too much like Japan, it would lose the very cultural differences that many tourists liked to observe and perhaps experience in safe doses. For example, the writer Toyoda took in a Korean drama during his stay, and described how the theater was sold out for that night’s performance.54 The Cho ˉsenkan (Korea House) advertised in travel guides that it was the place to shop for souvenirs and Korean specialties. Mitsukoshi and the four other department stores in Keijo ˉ also offered a wide range of local products of interest to tourists. One photo studio near the Keijo ˉ Station stressed, in an advertisement in “Sightseeing in Keijo ˉ” directed at Japanese tourists interested in having com­ memorative photos of their trip taken, that it had many styles and sizes of Korean and Manchu clothes on hand. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this ad: some Japanese tourists liked to dress in Manchu or Korean costume for their commemorative photos. The specter of Japanese tourists playfully dressing up as Koreans for an amusing commemorative photo of their travels symbolizes the disparity in power between the colonizers and the colonized. The most notorious feature of the

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strengthened assimilation policies in 1940 was the order issued on 11 February, the holiday National Foundation Day that celebrated Emperor Jimmu’s establishment of the imperial dynasty, that all Koreans Japanize their names within six months. While Koreans were suffering this indignity, which struck at the heart of their identity, Japanese tourists were free to play dress up in the native costume. Dark and light often coexisted in close proximity for the 105 million imperial subjects. Policies of assimilation in the name of national unity produced diverse responses, not always negative, throughout the empire. The tension between assimilation and tourism was evident in a 1940 debate about language in Okinawa. Okinawa was one of Japan’s internal colonies, that is, territories colonized by Japan after the Meiji Restoration that remain part of the Japanese nation-state today. During a 7 January 1940 symposium cosponsored by the Okinawa Tourism Association in Naha, the administrative center of Okinawa Prefecture, a mainlander with an interest in promoting tourism to Okinawa criticized the intensity with which local authorities were promoting the use of standardized Japanese in place of the distinctive Okinawan dialect. Some Okinawans viewed assimilation as the only means to escape their marginalization at the hands of mainstream Japanese society, and representative Okinawans present at the symposium retorted, “Your telling us to preserve our unique culture is merely because as travelers you enjoy having your curiosity satisfied and your senses indulged.”55 For the 929 representatives of the former estate of outcasts who gathered at the National Foundation Meeting Hall in Kashihara in December 1940, the prevailing rhetoric about the need for 105 million imperial subjects to join together (kokumin ga ittai to natte) according to the spirit of the founding of the nation in order to prosecute the war on the continent seemed to hold promise for a more thorough integration into mainstream Japanese society. These representatives of individuals in Japan proper who were racially indistinguishable from Japanese but still stigmatized, according to their lineage, suggested myriad ways to promote “conciliation” (   yˉuwa). These included a proposal from the Yamaguchi Prefecture delegation to change National Foundation Day, that most imperial of holidays, to “Countrymen Conciliation Day” (Kokumin yu ˉwa no hi  ).56 Just as the areas in which Japanese authorities demanded that Koreans Japanize themselves went beyond names, the pleasures available to tourists in Korea were not limited to dressing up in the native costume. Another theme played up in tourist literature about Korea, including postcards, was kisaeng.57 This Korean term is tricky to translate because some kisaeng were prostitutes, but others were talented performers with whom tourists would have stood little chance of fostering a relationship that would have resulted in intimacy. The pocket guide “Sightseeing in Keijo ˉ,” which featured two pictures of high-class kisaeng and another of kisaeng assembling care packages for soldiers at the front, explained that officially authorized prostitution districts could be found in both the Shinmachi and Yayoimachi quarters, but emphasized that the Shinmachi red-light district was more famous and trustworthy. Most of the brothels in the Shinmachi quarter

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were owned by Japanese, which perhaps explains why this guidebook steered tourists there.58 Tourism was economically important to elements of the old middle class, such as brothel owners, in the colonies as well as in Japan proper. The pocket guide “Sightseeing in Keijo ˉ” also recommended four Korean restaurants where Japanese guests would feel comfortable. In their travelogue, the writers Toyoda and Nitta provided a detailed description of their visit to a refined Korean restaurant in Keijo ˉ for dinner and entertainment by kisaeng, who sang for them the Korean folk song “Arirang” then popular not only in Korea but in Japan as well.59 Experiencing the local cuisine and entertainment was important to many Japanese tourists to Korea, and establishments catered to their desire for an “authentically” Korean experience.60 Later in their travelogue, Toyoda and Nitta also wrote of eating at the best Korean yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurant in Heijo ˉ (Pyongyang).61 This is one example of how visits to the colonies introduced Japanese to foods that later would be incorporated into the Japanese culinary mainstream, a process that has been described by the historian Katarzyna Cwiertka.62 Today most Japanese do not identify yakiniku as an exotic, foreign food. An article in the August 1940 issue of the tourism promotion magazine Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen stressed that 1940 was not only the 2,600th anniversary of the imperial line but it was also the thirtieth anniversary of Japanese administration of Korea. In order to celebrate these milestones as well as to promote the seamless unification of Korea and Japan (naisen ittai  ), the Keijo ˉ Nippo ˉ Newspaper Company sponsored a Grand Exposition of Korea (Cho ˉsen daihakurankai) in Keijoˉ that ran from 1 September until 20 October. The cost of admission was ¥ 5 ($1.25) for adults, more than twice the cost of the bus tour of Keijo ˉ, but only 25 sen (approximately a nickel) for children. The exposition’s centerpiece was the Pavilion of 2,600 Years of National History (Ko ˉkoku rekishikan) that featured approximately fifty scenes portraying seminal events from the origin of the imperial line through to more contemporary turning points such as the amalgamation of Korea and Japan.63 Virtually the entire empire was also on display through the many pavilions that focused on geographical areas such as Taiwan, Manchuria, and “booming” Korea, probably a reference to the rapid heavy industrialization that was taking place thanks to the development of plentiful sources of hydroelectricity in the north of the peninsula. The exposition also featured a small zoo and a children’s pavilion that included rides on mini trains and cars.64 It recorded 1.5 million visits, including individuals going more than once. Although statistics were not kept about where visitors originated, it is reasonable to assume that the exposition drew visitors from beyond Keijo ˉ.65 The late 1939 issue of Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen included an illustrated roundtable discussion featuring Ikegami Shu ˉho (1874–1944), Nagata Shunsui (1889–1940), Yamakawa Shu ˉho ˉ (1898–1944), Yazawa Gengetsu (1886–1952), and Kawase Hasui (1883– 1957), artists who had been invited by the Government Railways of Cho ˉsen to visit Korea to produce pictorial representations of its tourist attractions for widespread distribution.66 In many ways, their discussion spoke to the challenge that the rapid modernization and Japanization of Korea presented to the tourism sector. On more

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than one occasion during the roundtable discussion, the moderators, employees of the Government Railways of Cho ˉsen, prodded the artists to give examples that would help readers understand what made Korea attractively different from the mother country. Although Yazawa, who was making his second visit to Korea, praised the improved road system, he seemed far more interested in distinctive aspects of Korea such as the architecture and the pervasive white clothing worn by commoners. Yamakawa drew not only laughter but also agreement when he pronounced kisaeng to be Korea’s most charming feature. After having been so fearful of the reputed dirtiness of Korea that he took all sorts of preventative medicines, Yamakawa expressed his relief at the level of cleanliness, which, in his opinion, exceeded that of Japan proper. Ikegami noted that the focus of many of his sketches had been Korea’s many beautiful temples. Yazawa also expressed delight at having seen temples everywhere he visited that evidenced what he concluded, apparently without the slightest scholarly investigation, was a style of architecture that, unlike that of Japan, had gone unchanged for centuries and centuries. The artists took delight in the landscape of the countryside, which, in contrast to the cities, seemed so untouched by modernity. When one of the moderators asked for comments about souvenirs, Yazawa seemed to speak for everyone with his ringing endorsement of traditional crafts including pottery, lacquerware, fans, and paper. The artists clearly relished traditional Korea. There was a similar pattern involving Western visitors to Japan. Throughout the modern period many a Western tourist devoted considerable efforts to finding the “true Japan” while deploring modernity’s corrosive effects on the country’s “authentic” traditions. Although Ikegami, Nagata, Yamakawa, Yazawa, and Kawase were enthralled with traditional Korea, their opinions about Korean food were not so uniformly positive. Yamakawa commented that he had thought that he could eat anything only to be proven wrong by Korean food, a sentiment Ikegami immediately seconded. It seemed at one point that all of the artists had been overwhelmed by the degree of spice. At that point the moderators, who resided in Korea, chimed in with positive appraisals of Korean specialties such as karubi (barbecued beef ribs; in Korean, kalbi  ). Then Nagata frankly contrasted the authentic taste of the food he had just enjoyed at a Korean restaurant with the Japanized and thus disappointing “Korean” food he had eaten at the restaurant to which representatives of the Government Railways had escorted him earlier. Although these articulate artists cannot be said to represent average Japanese tourists, clearly for them what made Korea an interesting destination was what they interpreted as authentically Korean. The point of publishing the text of the roundtable discussion was to advertise the specificity of Korea, what made it different from Japan and thus of interest to prospective travelers. At the same time, the modern comfort and safety with which it was possible for Japanese tourists to experience authentic Korea was a theme ever present in the promotional literature.

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Interpreting Colonial-Era Tourism to Korea What functions did tourism to Korea serve? There were macro economic and strategic aspects to this tourism. It helped to consolidate and to reinforce Japanese control over Korea by economically supporting the infrastructure (e.g., railways) on which Japan’s authority over the peninsula as well as over Manchuria and China (at least the part of China that Japan did occupy) depended. The supply lines to these two areas often ran through Korea. On the other end of the continuum, a visit to Korea was simply a pleasurable diversion for many Japanese. The notion that the war represented a dark valley for the Japanese is a postdefeat social construct based on memories of suffering during the latter stage of the conflict, when the war was brought to Japan proper. The many Japanese touring the empire (including Manchuria), the large numbers of Japanese living privileged lives in the colonies, as well as most of the Japanese in Japan proper, where tourism was positively booming, were not experiencing a dark valley in 1940. It is only in reference to colonial subjects that the dark valley concept may be useful, although there too the story is too pluralistic to be categorized in such a monolithic manner. Tourism from the mother country to Japan’s principal formal colony was designed to reinforce for visitors the appropriateness of the imperial project there. The extensive railway system and the modern buildings in Keijoˉ attested to the accomplishments of the Japanese, to their level of civilization. If visitors to Korea, whether they came on business, or as part of an inspection (shisatsu) tour, or purely for leisure, departed with a better understanding of Japan’s efforts to introduce modernity to a country said to be unable to pull itself out of backwardness, they had correctly interpreted the predominant official message that the colonial authorities wanted them to receive. Japanese tourists to Korea were predisposed, before ever setting foot there, to accept the official message about their country’s benevolent treatment of a neighboring country left behind by history until Japan introduced modernity. At that time definitions of civilization did not lend themselves to relativity. Countries were labeled either civilized or uncivilized according to standards defined by Japan and other imperial powers. In this context, how many Japanese tourists could resist the conclusion that Korea, while curious, did not meet the standard of civilization required to justify independent statehood? Tourists could also rest assured that the Japanese were fulfilling their role as the caretakers of Asian civilization by preserving examples of the “once advanced” Korean civilization, a civilization that, according to Japanese accounts, had declined to such depths by the early twentieth century that the Japanese authorities had done Koreans a favor by amalgamating their country into the Empire of Japan. The 1935 edition of the Government-General of Korea’s English-language publication Thriving Chosen trumpeted Japan’s modernization of Korea to anyone who would listen: “There can be none of those who knew Chosen at the time

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of the amalgamation of Japan and Korea who are not struck by the tremendous transformation that has created the Chosen of today. . . . Chosen has advanced further out of its backward state than any similar country during the same space of time.”67 What made the examples of modernity all the more impressive was the contrast with the conditions of the Koreans. By 1940 every one of the 180,000 Japanese households in Korea used electricity. In contrast, only one in ten of the 4.2 million Korean households were electrified, one telling example of the differences the colonizers maintained between themselves and the colonized.68 Colonial policies were designed to maintain enough differences to justify the unequal power and economic relationships, but it so happened that the different lifestyle of the natives made them a tourist attraction. The desire to maintain, at some level, these differences in order to promote leisure travel put the tourism world in Korea, which included part of the government bureaucracy, at odds with policies designed to achieve rapid Japanization of Koreans. The point here is not to minimize the extent to which the assimilation policies were obnoxious to many Koreans. Rather it is to stress that there was something of an undercurrent on the Japanese side, including within the colonial bureaucracy, working against wholesale assimilation. What motivated those opposed to the negation of precisely what made Korea distinctive was not necessarily the goodness of their hearts, but rather that wholesale Japanization of the Korean Peninsula did not serve their selfish interests. There is at least one additional aspect to the story of tourism in Korea during the colonial era that needs to be introduced, that of tourism as a means of resistance. There were Koreans who practiced a form of national heritage tourism that was designed to reinforce Korean ethnic solidarity in opposition to Japanese rule over their country. The Korean scholar Woo Mi-Young has traced how in the early 1930s the writers Yi Eun-Sang (1903–82) and Hyeon Jin-Geon (1900–43) touted Mt. Myohyang as a sacred site associated with Tan’gun, founder of the first Korean kingdom and progenitor of the Korean race.69 At the time, many Korean nationalists employed Tan’gun, whose founding of the first Korean kingdom was said to have predated and thus trumped Emperor Jimmu’s establishment of Japan’s imperial dynasty by 1,673 years, as a mechanism to cultivate Korean ethnic pride. According to Woo, vernacular Korean newspapers, before they were outlawed, played the primary role in promoting this form of Korean tourism. In separate travelogues published in the newspaper Dong-a-Ilbo, Yi and Hyeon urged their countrymen to visit Mt. Myohyang in order to elevate their sense of Koreanness. Such recommendations bring to mind tourism promotional literature from the late 1930s that urged Japanese to visit sites associated with Emperor Jimmu in order to “master the spirit of the fatherland.” Although Woo cautions that Mt. Myohyang constituted a scenic destination more so than a sacred patriotic site for most Korean visitors in the 1930s, the

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decade during the colonial period when sightseeing by Koreans was at its peak, for others it was a symbol of resistance to Japanese rule. One of the many angles of imperial tourism that merits additional study, not only in the case of Korea but wherever colonial structures of rule existed (or exist), is precisely such forms of heritage tourism that served (or serve) to resist rather than to reinforce the existing polity.

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5 to u ring m anch u r ia’s sac red sites

Manchuria’s tourism world, dominated by Japanese similarly to that of Korea, had high hopes for more visitors in 1940. On 18–19 January, representatives of the South Manchurian Railway Company, the JTB, and others with an interest in promoting tourism came together for a two-day conference in Harubin (Harbin) to discuss how to lure to Manchuria some of the many foreigners who were expected to visit Japan that year in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations.1 Once the foreign visitors were on the continent, representatives of Manchuria’s tourism sector reasoned, it would be possible to provide them with “correct knowledge about Manchuria” (tadashiki Manshuˉ no ninshiki ) at a time when Japan’s policies there continued to be condemned by the governments of the United States and Britain.2 One example of this pedagogical approach to tourism involved the twentynine delegates to the Congress of Overseas Brethren held in Tokyo in November 1940 who accepted invitations to extend their visit to their ancestral country to include a “comfort tour” of Manchuria. The term “comfort” referred to the fact that one purpose of the thirteen-day tour was to give participants, who were hosted at the highest official levels during their visit to Manchuria, the opportunity to thank frontline soldiers for their service.3 Japanese authorities hoped that these overseas Japanese would provide favorable reports about the continental policy of their ancestral country to people in their countries of residence. As was the case with tourism in Japan proper, however, the number of Japanese tourists who made the trip to Manchuria dwarfed the number of foreign-currency-carrying Western visitors who did so. Justifying Japan’s Special Interests on the Continent Although Manchuria, like Korea, was an overseas destination for Japanese from Japan proper, in one thematic sense Japanese tourism to Manchuria in 1940 more closely resembled tourism to “sacred” Nara and Miyazaki than to Korea. Analysis of tourist itineraries to Manchuria indicate that emphasis was placed

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on sites where Japanese blood had been spilled during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, especially during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, and during and after the Manchurian Incident of 1931. There were battle sites that were on tourist itineraries in Korea, such as in Heijo ˉ (Pyongyang) where the Imperial Army had defeated its Chinese counterpart in September 1894 during the Sino-Japanese War.4 However, their significance in the overall tourism landscape in Korea did not match the prominence that battle sites were given in Manchuria, where there was a veritable “cult of the soldier.” Korea’s must-visit destination was the Diamond Mountains. Manchuria’s mustvisit destination was Port Arthur (in Japanese, Ryoˉjun; in Chinese, Lushun), site of the climactic battles in both the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. The Kwantung Army’s authority in Manchuria at least partially explains this difference in the respective tourism landscapes. Manchuria was dotted with battle sites that came to be codified as hallowed spots in the same way that sites said to be related to Emperor Jimmu’s exploits were sanctified. Just as sacred Emperor Jimmu sites were marketed as tourist attractions so, too, were Manchuria’s battle sites widely publicized. In 1940, the magazine Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen (“Tourism in Korea”) carried an advertisement from the Manchurian Tourism Association announcing the winners of a contest for which photos of battle sites in Manchuria were judged, one example of how Manchuria’s tourism world marketed the battle sites.5 Manchuria’s tourist topography was designed to impart four themes. First, the dominant one was the notion that Japanese sacrifices made in battle on the continent justified Japan’s special interests there.6 Second, there was also stress on the Japanese role in bringing modernity to a backward area, a theme also central to tourist itineraries in Korea and other colonies. Examples of modernity engineered by the Japanese that were included on tourist itineraries in Manchuria in 1940 ranged from the gleaming new buildings in the capital city of Shinkyoˉ (Changchun) to the steel mills of Anshan to the collieries of Fushun to the massive dam under construction in 1940 on the Sungari (Songhua) River twenty miles upriver from Kirin (Keelung). Third, a theme prominently brought to the attention of Japanese tourists was the primitive state of certain groups of non-Japanese residents of Manchuria, examples of which only served to highlight the modernity introduced by the Japanese. The presence of multiple races that maintained distinctive customs was a selling point to tourists.7 The assimilation policies undertaken in Manchuria were nowhere near as draconian as those pursued in Korea, but in Manchuria too there was tension between the tourism world’s desire to capitalize on what made Manchuria different from Japan and efforts to Japanize the region. The fourth and final theme that was evident, but in more muted form than in the case of Korea, was Japanese efforts to preserve the native heritage, to be the caretaker of Asian civilization. Too much stress on the presence of a native population and civilization contradicted the common portrayal of Manchuria as a virgin territory begging for settlement by imperial subjects.8 Indeed, Japanese

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farming settlements in Manchuria were themselves significant tourist destinations by 1940.9 As a result of the popularity of accounts glorifying the establishment of Iyasaka and Chiburi, both of these settlements experienced a boom in tourism by the late 1930s.10 In Manchuria no site was more popular or holy, however, than Port Arthur, described in the Manchuria Daily News Company’s 1941 Travel in Manchoukuo as the location of “numerous ruins of memorable forts and battlefields, all relating to the sieges of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894 and the world-famous Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the latter of which far surpassed all others in the history of warfare in its heroic attack and desperate defence.”11 The Sino-Japanese War and the RussoJapanese War had been fought primarily over which of these three countries was to control Korea, but by 1940 the blood sacrifices made in these earlier wars, celebrated most prominently at Port Arthur, were folded into a broader narrative that justified Japan’s special interests in the overall Asian continent. By 1939 there were twenty-five tour buses that could each hold twenty-five to thirty passengers providing two tours of Port Arthur per day.12 The city with the second most buses operating, the nearby city of Dairen (Dalian; pop. 510,000 in 1940), had ten.13 Although the battle sites were the primary tourist attraction, Port Arthur was also the location of the popular Golden Beach Resort whose charm JTB’s Dairen Office touted in a brochure titled “Summer Is Beachtime.”14 In 1942, the novelist Hamamoto Hiroshi (1891–1959) published an account of his time living in Manchuria in 1939 and 1940 titled Ryo ˉjun (Port Arthur). Hamamoto gave precise descriptions of the commentary to battle sites in Port Arthur provided by tour bus guides, whose role in shaping visitors’ impressions he regarded as critical.15 The guide’s commentary commands such authority among listeners that it is sometimes referred to as the “voice of God.” The Kwantung Army understood the importance of such commentary and provided information about battle sites in Manchuria to tour bus companies.16 Hamamoto first visited Port Arthur’s battle sites during winter vacation. He noted that participants on the bus tour that day included many students and young salarymen, some chummy Japanese soldiers, and a few Manchukuoan civil servants. Hamamoto recounted how female guides, following what he recognized as scripts, provided commentary about various landmarks in Port Arthur. One female guide offered the following background information about the city’s memorial tower: “In order to transmit for eternity the distinguished deeds of our war heroes and to comfort their spirits, General Nogi and Admiral Toˉgoˉ initiated the construction of this tower. Work began in July 1908, and was completed two years later at a cost of ¥ 250,000, equivalent to ¥1,000,000 today.”17 Hamamoto observed that in reference to battle sites where much Japanese blood had been shed it was the male bus drivers, not the female guides, who provided commentary. Hamamoto stayed at one such battle site to hear three bus drivers give their spiels. He noticed that there were subtle differences in the storytelling and in the strengths and weaknesses of the storytellers. One of the bus drivers later visited Hamamoto at his hotel to elaborate on aspects of the performance

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including mental attitude, technique of delivery, and content. Hamamoto recounted how one male guide, after describing in dramatic terms the sacrifices made by Japanese soldiers in trying to breach the Russian defenses, would stop his commentary in midstream as the result of what appeared to be an unsuccessful struggle to contain his emotions. This was quite a performance for someone who repeated the act several times a week for a living, each time appearing to be too choked up to finish the story of the unparalleled bravery displayed by the Imperial Army.18 Many Japanese who wrote accounts of their visits to Monument Hill, the War Museum, East Cock’s Comb Hill, and the other sites at Port Arthur included stock descriptions of their often unsuccessful struggle to control their emotions when they heard their guide’s accounts of the Imperial Army’s efforts to breach the Russian defenses. Takeuchi Masami, an employee of the Keijoˉ Electric Company and a typical representative of the Japanese middle class in the colonies, took a tour of Northeast China in 1938. Takeuchi visited Port Arthur, and in the travelogue he published in his company’s magazine he wrote of how the underequipped Japanese army had overcome the stiff resistance of the Russians by “pure spiritual will.” He noted that even thirty years later incense continued to be burnt in offering to the “souls of the tens of thousands of fallen heroes.” Then he recounted the emotions that he and other members of his tour group experienced that day: “The reason why there was no one who did not break into tears upon hearing the tour guide’s elaborate explanation of how the Imperial Army took control of the fort at Port Arthur was because people were so deeply moved by the Imperial Army’s tremendously strong sense of determination to accomplish such a glorious deed.”19 Hayashi Fukiko’s 1938 memoir of her experiences in South Manchuria included a lengthy description of her visit to the battle sites at Port Arthur. She detailed how the souvenir market there extended beyond the usual assortment of postcards and photo albums. According to Hayashi, there were numerous stores that sold guns, cannon shells, bullets, and other detritus recovered from the battlefield to visitors eager for more authentic souvenirs of the bloody struggle between the Japanese and Russian forces.20 The official Japanese account of the war with Russia offered to visitors to Port Arthur praised the Russians as an honorable and tenacious foe, a narrative strategy that augmented the significance of Japan’s victory. The fact that Japan had defeated a so-called white country no doubt structured the narrative. The cartoon reproduced here (figure 17), said to have been popular in Russia during the war in 1904 and 1905, suggests not only that racial hubris may have contributed to Russia’s defeat but also informs us in a broader sense how the war was viewed in racial terms.21 Japan’s victory over Russia and its emergence as a world power shook the foundations of Euro-American imperialist world domination. The historian Cemil Aydin has stressed, “The Japanese success in modernization proved that the promises of Western modernity were universal and applicable everywhere, irrespective of race, religion, and geography.”22

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17. This cartoon originated in Russia, and then appeared with the English caption here in a contemporary account of the Russo-Japanese War published in Britain.

In a lecture delivered from Port Arthur and broadcast throughout the empire by radio in 1935, the charismatic nationalist speaker Tanaka Chigaku (1861– 1939) drew comparisons between the modern Imperial Army’s heroic victory over its Russian foe at Port Arthur and Emperor Jimmu’s earlier achievements.23 His lecture took place in conjunction with ceremonies marking the thirtieth anniversary of the battle for Port Arthur. Tanaka’s What Is Nippon Kokutai: Introduction to the Nipponese National Principles (1937) represents a rare contemporary Englishlanguage explanation of emperor worship in its fervent 1930s form.24 By 1940, Japanese leaders were openly calling for an overthrow of the Western imperialist grip on Asia. In this context it is unsurprising that the narrative of Japan’s first military victory over a Western power took on greater salience. It was one of the few historical episodes referred to at the time of the 2,600th

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anniversary celebrations with the same reverence accorded to Emperor Jimmu’s exploits. From the guidebooks tourists purchased before visiting, to the commentary offered by the guides there, to the postcards available on site for purchase, the attention of visitors to Port Arthur, where the Imperial Army also had battled Chinese forces, was directed toward Japan’s heroic victory over Russia.25 Reproduced in the color insert (figure 16) is the jacket of a fifteen-postcard set, issued in 1941, titled “Aftermath of Hand-to-Hand Combat: Battle Sites of Port Arthur” that focuses on the battle between Japanese and Russian forces. One of the fifteen postcards included in the set also appears here (figure 18). Written from left to right at the bottom of the postcard is “Pilgrimage to Port Arthur’s Sacred Battle Sites.” Absent from the narrative presented to visitors to Port Arthur were details of the unedifying aftermath of the Japanese seizure of this strategic fort from its Chinese defenders on 21 November 1894 during the earlier Sino-Japanese War. Neutral observers described how Japanese troops massacred the local civilian population. Japanese authorities insisted that the only so-called civilians killed were Chinese soldiers who continued to fight, in a most dishonorable fashion, in civilian clothes after having discarded their uniforms.26 Four decades later, Japanese authorities employed the same line to defend the actions of the Imperial Military after the fall of Nanjing. Third-party observers challenged such degrading accounts of the Chinese military put forth by Japanese authorities at the time

18. This postcard shows a fortification captured by Japanese troops at a particularly great cost of life in the fiercest battle of the siege of Port Arthur during the RussoJapanese War.

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of the Sino-Japanese War and also later in reference to Nanjing, however, and instead described wanton acts of slaughter by Japanese military personnel.27 The historian Sandie Holguin has documented how, at the same time in the late 1930s that Japanese tourists were flocking to Port Arthur, the Spanish Nationalists designed tours of recent battle sites that portrayed the enemy Republicans as depraved: “The Nationalists demonized their Republican enemies as cowardly, stupid, and bloodthirsty, and presented the Nationalists as God-loving patriots who had been terrorized by their enemies but had managed to overcome all odds and reconquer Spain from the ‘Red Separatists.’ ”28 This narrative bears similarity to the scorn the Japanese heaped upon the Chinese in the immediate aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War, but as Port Arthur was transformed into a pilgrimage site the account of victory over a depraved Chinese enemy was displaced by one that stressed Japan’s feat in overcoming as worthwhile a foe as Mother Russia. The manner in which Japanese heroism and sacrifice at Port Arthur was invoked to justify Japan’s continental advance bears comparison to the way in which Marienburg Castle (known as Marbork Castle today), the onetime headquarters of the Teutonic Knights who were said to represent the German spirit, was elevated, especially during the Nazi era, into a mnemonic site symbolizing Germany’s mission to spread civilization eastward.29 Far from portraying the enemy at Marienburg as an honorable foe, however, Nazi discourse interpreted the Prussian-Polish border as a divide that separated the civilized Germans from barbarians, indeed from lower forms of life, to the east such as Poles and Russians. Such racism made the subsequent war on the eastern front in Europe particularly vicious. This Nazi portrayal of the enemy to the east was equally, if not more, degrading than Japanese accounts of the Chinese enemy, and of the disdain the Spanish Nationalists displayed for the Republicans. A trip by German tourists to Marienburg Castle during the Nazi era served the same function as a trip by Japanese tourists to Port Arthur, solidifying patriotic support for their country’s expansionism. Whether of fascist, communist, liberal democratic, or another ilk, regimes throughout the world had become skilled by the 1930s in employing tourism to promote the national ideology. The most popular destinations in Manchuria for Japanese tourists other than Port Arthur were Dairen, Ho ˉten (Mukden or Shenyang), and Shinkyoˉ. By 1940 there were various routes by which Japanese tourists could travel to Manchuria. The advanced and strategically important transportation infrastructure, which the booming tourism sector in Manchuria helped underwrite even more significantly than it did in Korea, included airplanes and superfast trains. Daily air service to Shinkyo ˉ was available from Tokyo, via Fukuoka and Keijoˉ, with a flying time of approximately nine hours. There were connecting flights to major cities in China as well. In his account of his two-week trip to Manchuria and China in June 1939, Sekiuchi Sho ˉichi (1897–1962) wrote about his excitement at flying in a plane for the first time in order to get from Dairen (see figure 19) to Beijing.30 Sekiuchi

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19. The Dairen (Dalian) Airport, circa 1940.

was a reverent visitor to sacred patriotic sites (e.g., battle sites) during his trip, which was undertaken as a member of the Fukushima Prefecture Assembly. The purpose of his trip was to investigate Manchuria’s industry and the condition of agricultural immigrants from Fukushima, as well as to provide comfort to soldiers from the home prefecture stationed there. The most common seaport for people coming to Northeast China from Japan proper by steamship was Dairen, located in close proximity to Port Arthur. Visitors coming from or via Korea, a faster route to Manchuria for many people traveling from the Japanese archipelago, also could conveniently reach Dairen, headquarters of the South Manchurian Railway Company, by rail, as could visitors coming from China. Dairen was one of the busiest ports in Asia (see figure 20). In his 1939 travel guide to Korea, Manchuria, and China, Azuma Fumio recommended to Japanese tourists considering travel by train around Manchuria that, if their financial situation made it at all possible, to ride first or at the very least second class because third class was “full of Manchus and Chinese.”31 Azuma’s desire for only limited, carefully regulated contact with the natives, except perhaps as objects of curiosity, was probably representative of how many Japanese tourists sought to experience the empire. From Dairen, Shinkyo ˉ could be reached by rail in approximately eight hours on the ultrafast Asia Express. This route offered tourists the opportunity to break up the trip with a stop at the ancient Manchu city of Hoˉten (Mukden or Shenyang), where the mausoleums of Manchu emperors were a popular tourist destination (for a contemporary tourist map of Ho ˉten, see color insert, figure 17).

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20. This postcard shows workers, who at the time were casually referred to as “coolies,” carrying cakes of soybeans, one of Manchuria’s most valuable products during the imperial era, at the port of Dairen (Dalian).

In 1940, the Manchuria Land and Real Estate Company was in the process of building an opulent fifty-room hotel to accommodate tourists interested in seeing the mausoleums.32 Efforts by Japanese authorities to preserve historical vestiges such as the Manchu mausoleums attested to Japan’s self-appointed role as the caretaker of Asian civilization, but Manchuria was never portrayed in the tourist literature or itineraries as having possessed a civilization along the lines of the “once advanced” ones of China and Korea. The Bus Tour of Shinkyo ˉ The sightseeing itinerary for Shinkyo ˉ gives a sense of how Japanese tourists experienced the administrative center of the supposedly independent state of Manchukuo. As was true of most cities in the empire by 1940, Shinkyoˉ had its own tourism promotion association (est. 1936).33 By the 2,600th anniversary year, the city’s population reached 447,300, of which 102,859 were Japanese residents.

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The remaining 344,441 represented the other four races, in this case defined as Manchus, Koreans, Mongols, and Chinese, typically highlighted in contemporary literature that stressed the supposedly harmonious relations between the five races residing in Manchukuo. There were also Russian residents, who were sometimes substituted for Chinese in certain categorizations of the five races of Manchuria. Once in Shinkyo ˉ, visitors could find lodging at ultramodern hotels, Japanesestyle inns, and local-style inns. They could eat at Japanese, Western, and Chinese restaurants and presumably (guidebooks make little mention of this) sample local specialties or have a Korean meal. There were Russian pastry shops as well. For ¥ 2 (50 cents) on weekdays and  ¥ 4 on weekends and holidays it was possible to play a round of golf at the city’s eighteen-hole course. One could also spend an afternoon at the horse track. There were two movie houses showing Japanese films, and it was also possible to see Manchurian-style silhouette puppet shows at one of the local theaters. It was a simple matter to visit a brothel. Shopping opportunities ranged from Japanese department stores to the small shops run by Chinese and Manchus located in Shinkyoˉ’s “Chinese Street,” the city’s smaller version of Dairen’s famous Open Market. When tour buses stopped at Dairen’s Open Market, the guide drew the attention of Japanese tourists to the differences between the modern, cultural part of the city that had been constructed by the Japanese and the disheveled, dirty, but exotic environs of the Open Market area that were inhabited by natives (see color insert, figure 18). The guide stressed that the natives’ standard of living was much lower than that of the nearly two hundred thousand Japanese who made their home in Dairen by 1940.34 It is not clear whether the bus tour of Shinkyo ˉ was also designed to draw such a contrast. However, one postcard of Shinkyo ˉ’s “Chinese Street” in the possession of the historian Gregory Guelcher shows “low-slung buildings with false facades, disorder, dirt,” and men and animals, rather than inanimate machines, bearing the burden of transporting goods and people.35 It drew a stark contrast with the modern sections of the city constructed and inhabited by Japanese, and is similar to the three images of Korean neighborhoods included in the postcard set “Views of Keijo.” As was the case in most metropolitan areas within the empire, the best way to get a sense of a place in just a half day was to take the sightseeing bus. According to the Manchuria China Travel Yearbook, 44,788 individuals, the vast majority Japanese, took the sightseeing bus tour of Shinkyoˉ in 1940. By April of that year, the Shinkyo ˉ Transportation Company was operating six sightseeing buses daily.36 What did tourists see for the ¥1.5 (38 cents) price of the tour? The three-hour, forty-four kilometer tour began at the Shinkyo ˉ train station and took the sightseer to eighteen landmarks in the rapidly developing city that was full of modern buildings, spacious parks, and broad tree-lined boulevards. The main roads featured separate thoroughfares for motor vehicles and for animal- or human-powered vehicles. A female guide provided commentary about the sites that included

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various government buildings of the new state and also the imposing headquarters of the Kwantung Army, the locus of power that often acted independently from the Japanese government in Tokyo.37 The American James Halsema, who took the bus tour after visiting Korea, recorded in his diary that Shinkyoˉ was “a Japanese-dominated city full of Kwantung Army soldiers in dark khaki uniforms, generals riding in Buicks flying Rising Suns and flags with stars.”38 The bus stopped at six sites for tour participants to exit to have a closer look. After beginning down the central thoroughfare from the train station, the bus soon made a stop at the Shinkyo ˉ Shrine, where the spirits of Amaterasu and Emperor Meiji were enshrined. Most overseas shrines were dedicated to Amaterasu, with many also dedicated to Emperor Meiji. Such shrines were almost always the first stop on bus tours. From the Shinkyo ˉ Shrine (figure 21) the bus proceeded directly to the city’s Memorial Tower. Completed in 1934 at a hefty cost of ¥2.5 million ($625,000) that suggested its paramount importance, Shinkyo ˉ’s Memorial Tower was the fourth oldest of the many memorial towers in Manchuria. Enshrined at the Shinkyoˉ Memorial Tower by the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations were the spirits of General Muto ˉ Nobuyoshi (1868–1933), who as commander of the Kwantung Army from 1932 to 1933 was credited with laying the foundation of Manchukuo, and the twenty-nine hundred souls of heroes killed in recent battles in Manchuria. Shinkyo ˉ’s Memorial Tower was featured on the jacket of a set of eight postcards titled “Shinkyo ˉ’s Sacred Sites” (see color insert, figure 19). Some photos of Shinkyoˉ’s Memorial Tower show tour groups bowing en masse in the direction of the memorial. To commemorate the twenty-sixth centennial, the South Manchurian

21. Shinkyoˉ Shrine.

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Railway Company issued a special nine-postcard set, “The Memorial Towers of Manchuria.”39 The next stop was the Kanjo ˉshi Memorial, one of two battle sites dating from the immediate aftermath of the Manchurian Incident featured on the tour. Subsequent to the Manchurian Incident, which led to the establishment of Manchukuo, not only were the Japanese sacrifices at what came to be termed “Sacred Port Arthur” further sanctified to justify contemporary Japanese claims on Northeast China but even sites where Japanese troops, after combat against Chinese forces was initiated in Mukden on 18 September 1931, had engaged the enemy on a relatively minor scale also were rendered sacred soon after the skirmishes had concluded.40 The postcard (figure 22) from the “Shinkyoˉ’s Sacred Sites” set shows the weighty monument that was built at the Kanjoˉshi battle site. The monument’s size might suggest that it marked the site of a major engagement, but according to the two-paragraph description in the detailed guidebook “Pilgrimage to Battle Sites in Manchuria” (Manshu ˉ senseki junrei  ), twenty-four Japanese soldiers died overcoming the local Chinese garrison there on 19 September

22. This hefty monument commemorated the Kanjoˉshi battle site where twenty-four Japanese soldiers were killed in fighting with Chinese forces during the Manchurian Incident.

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1931.41 In introducing two comparatively minor battle sites in Shinkyo ˉ, this guidebook urged readers not to forget that although the capital was Manchukuo’s political, economic, and cultural center, it was also a place where many individuals who had spilled blood making the ultimate sacrifice had been transformed into “bones and spirits.” The rapidity with which battle sites related to the Manchurian Incident were transformed into tourist sites bears comparison to the efforts of the Spanish Nationalists led by Franco to transform sites of victories by the Nationalists into tourist destinations even as the war with the Republicans continued. The Nationalists transformed Alcazar, site of their successful resistance of a siege by the Republicans in 1936, virtually overnight into a commemorative site whose symbolic significance was comparable to Port Arthur.42 The stop at the Kanjo ˉshi Memorial was followed by a visit to the residence of Emperor Pu Yi, de jure ruler of Manchukuo. At this site tour participants exited the bus mainly to participate in a group bow in the direction of the Emperor Pu Yi’s temporary palace (see figure 23) in a show of respect for Manchukuo’s emperor.43 This ritual was designed to maintain the fiction that the new state operated independently. As is the case with today’s Seoul, the monuments, buildings, and sites in Changchun that once comprised the itinerary of the bus tour designed for Japanese tourists have by now either been razed or redesigned to chronicle the crimes of Japanese imperialism and to stress Chinese heritage. The Chinese government transformed Pu Yi’s palace into a museum chronicling the puppet emperor’s manipulation by Japanese authorities, Japanese crimes in Northeast

23. Palace of Emperor Pu Yi.

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24. The Seishin Mosque in Shinkyoˉ.

Asia, and the successful “reeducation” of Pu Yi into an average citizen in the People’s Republic of China. The next stop on the 1940 bus tour was at the early nineteenth-century Seishin Mosque (figure 24) located, coincidentally, near Pu Yi’s temporary palace. The chance to visit a mosque was an unusual and interesting opportunity for most Japanese tourists.44 Unlike the bus tour of Seoul, which featured several stops during which tourists could view examples of traditional Korean architecture and art, the bus tour of Shinkyo ˉ, a city that lacked Seoul’s history but nonetheless featured some examples of traditional native architecture, overwhelmingly focused on new buildings and patriotic monuments. The final stop was at the Nanryo ˉ battle site, where the memorial shown in figure 25 stood. The pamphlet that the Shinkyo ˉ Transportation Company distributed to individuals who took the bus tour personalized the Japanese sacrifice by listing the name and rank of each of the heroes who fell at the Nanryoˉ and Kanjo ˉshi battle sites.45 The historian Gao Yuan located the text of the commentary that the Shinkyo ˉ Transportation Company’s guides recited at Nanryoˉ: “Everyone

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25. The Nanryoˉ battle site memorial.

please have a look. The grave markers that you see here and there are the final resting places of the forty-three heroes who died on this foreign soil. . . . The precious flesh of these individuals who died for their sovereign and for their fatherland has been changed, as you can see, into white tomb markers, and their loyalty has transformed them into kami (spirits) who defend the fatherland; by forever pacifying their departed spirits at this location, we protect our lifeline.”46 At the time, Manchuria was touted as Japan’s economic “lifeline.” The Nara Women’s Higher Normal School student who took the bus tour in 1939 recorded in her diary that she and her classmates “prayed three times” at the “hallowed ground” of Nanryo ˉ where “heroes” had given their blood. She further recorded that upon hearing a poem recited by the guide she and her classmates were overcome with emotion and shed tears.47 During a visit to a used bookstore in Tokyo in 2009, I came across a postcard that a father visiting Manchuria in September 1939 had sent to his family in Tokyo. The image on the front of the card shows the city’s memorial tower and includes the message “In Memory of Taking the Shinkyoˉ Bus Tour.” The father’s note to his family written on the back of the card, reproduced in the color insert (figure 20), provides a glimpse of the diversions available to Japanese leisure travelers at the time. Although the father did not have much space to write as a result of the prominent purple stamp that “commemorated ‘worship’ (sanpai  ) on 17 September 1939 at the Nanryo ˉ battle site of forty-three departed heroes,” he confirmed that he had taken the Shinkyo ˉ bus tour and then explained that he was playing golf that morning, and would depart for Harubin (Harbin) in the early evening.

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After departing Nanryo ˉ, where the Japanese father had had his postcard stamped before posting it to his family, the tour bus drove past several landmarks en route to the train station. The first landmark was the Kenkoku chuˉreibyoˉ, Manchukuo’s shrine to the war dead that was equivalent to Yasukuni Shrine in Japan proper (see figure 26). The lengthy English-language guidebook Travel in Manchoukuo that the Manchuria Daily News published in 1941, with an intended audience of American and British tourists in mind, offers this description: The magnificent cathedral-like structure which is nearing completion at the Kenkoku Hiroba . . . is the principal repository of the metropolis. Here are enshrined the spirits of patriotic pioneers who laid the foundation of the new state of Manchukuo. The solemn beauty and charm of oriental architecture are uniquely embodied in the construction of this sanctuary, and when it is completed, it will serve a precinct of 40 million square miles. As one enters the towering main gate, he is impressed with the massive halls each designed and built differently to represent the specific functions of the sanctuary.48

Visitors to the city did not necessarily share such lofty views of  Shinkyo ˉ’s “oriental architecture.” In his 1938 guidebook to China geared toward a mass audi­ ence, Goto ˉ Asataro ˉ (1881–1945), a professional travel writer who had been publishing prolifically about China since the 1920s, contrasted “Shinkyoˉ’s American-style architecture that reeks of butter” with Nanjing’s authentic examples of oriental architecture.49 Smelling of butter is a derogatory phrase Japanese employ to characterize things Western. The same Azuma Fumio who

26. The Kenkoku chuˉreibyoˉ, Manchukuo’s shrine to the war dead.

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recommended that Japanese tourists avoid riding third class because of the crowds of natives warned travelers that Shinkyo ˉ was “more Japanese than continental, and lacking the flavor of a foreign country.”50 Azuma wanted to experience a foreign culture, but at a safe distance from the natives, an approach different from that of Goto ˉ, who immersed himself in study of the Chinese people.51 Shinkyo ˉ’s tourist itinerary was particularly weak on ancient heritage sites, in part because much of the city was new. It was typical for Manchuria, however, in its stress on Japanese sacrifices in battle and on Japan’s role as an agent of modernity. The bus tour was specifically designed to reinforce popular acceptance of Japan’s civilizing mission in the colonies and the correctness, indeed heroic nature, of Japan’s continental policies. Intraempire tourism was not simply a matter of individuals traveling to the colonies from Japan proper. Travel by Japanese settlers within colonies or between colonies was itself considerable by 1940, and continued later into the war than did leisure travel in Japan proper or from Japan proper to the colonies. In 1942, the tourism promotion magazine Bunka cho ˉsen (“Korean Culture”) published a three-part series on the travel industry that interviewed the managers of different service centers in Keijo ˉ of the East Asia Travel Corporation ( Toˉa ryoko ˉsha, the wartime successor of the JTB).52 The managers described their staffs as being overrun by legions of prospective travelers interested in distant destinations such as Hong Kong, Karafuto, the Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan.53 Imperial Tourism and Modern Japan Viewing the 1930s in negative terms can lead one to overlook developments that took place in Japan during that decade in areas of society not typically associated with fascism, militarism, and authoritarianism. For all the nationalistic rhetoric about Japan’s primordial origin and timeless values, what characterized Japan in the 1930s was not a return to the past, but rather the strengthening of modernity’s grip. The modern tourism sector became all the more prominent during this decade that is sometimes portrayed in terms of Japan’s gloomily devolving in the direction of feudalism. Tourism should be of interest to historians because it encompasses so many aspects of modernity. These include nationalism, mass consumerism, the expansion of political participation, industrialization in the form of a transportation infrastructure, global integration, and, in the case of tours of the colonies, imperialism. The aggressive codification of a national history in modern Japan extended to the construction and manipulation of heritage sites not simply in Japan proper but throughout the empire. Heritage tourism is a political activity, and the political overtones of tourism to sacred sites in Manchuria such as Port Arthur are abundantly apparent. Through tourism to sacred battle sites in Manchuria, the Japanese people, again through what I term self-administered citizenship training, endorsed the prevailing imperial ideology and also their country’s expansion

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through military means. The boom in tourism to Manchuria around the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations was another part of the empire-wide loop whereby patriotism spurred mass consumerism and consumerism spurred patriotism, and so on. When I visited Changchun in 2005 to conduct field research on Japanese tourism during the era of the “illegitimate Manchukuo regime,” several local Chinese government officials, during the course of multiple “banquets” arranged ostensibly in my honor but whose true purpose seemed to be none other than allowing these civil servants to dine lavishly at the public’s expense, bluntly informed me that my time there could be better spent researching and writing about Japanese war crimes in Northeast China. Putting aside for a moment the importance of understanding tourism’s value as propaganda, documenting how regular life, including diversions such as leisure travel, continued well into the war for many Japanese suggests the banality of Imperial Japan’s evil side. The notion of the “banality of evil” is borrowed from the characterization that Hannah Arendt (1906–75) made about the men and women responsible for the crimes of Nazi Germany after she reported on Israel’s trial of Adolf Eichmann (1906–62). In the 2,600th anniversary year, representatives of Manchuria’s tourism world gathered in Harubin (Harbin), a city marketed to tourists for its distinctive Russian influences, to plan how to lure visitors to Manchuria in 1940. Meanwhile, ten miles to the south in Pingfang, personnel attached to the now infamous Unit 731 chemical and biological warfare research and development unit casually conducted gruesome, lethal experiments on captured Chinese “bandits” and other detainees. Poison gas tested there was widely used by the Imperial Military in parts of China as part of scorched earth campaigns. But if one reads, for example, the interview of Unit 731 low-ranking member Tamura Yoshio, it is not difficult to imagine that with slightly different twists of fate Tamura and many of Unit 731’s other members could have ended up in far more quotidian lines of work, perhaps endeavoring to attract leisure travelers to Manchuria rather than guarding POWs scheduled for vivisections.54 The goal here, far from minimizing Imperial Japan’s rapacious side, is to inform us that even as individuals in areas under Japanese control suffered the full brunt of the violent, repressive force that the modern Japanese state could bring to bear, life went on surprisingly normally for many Japanese. Critics of the applicability of fascism to wartime Japan often stress that the Japanese, for the most part, were not subjected to anywhere near the same levels of repression and brutality that Nazi Germany directed at certain domestic elements. The Japanese wartime state’s repression of new religions in Japan proper reminds us that even at home the government had little tolerance for certain types of dissidence. But accounts that minimize the level of repression in Japan proper conveniently elide Imperial Japan’s frequently predatory treatment of subject populations on the continent and elsewhere in its empire. Perhaps historians in countries such as the United States and Britain that were also imperialistic

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have shied away from this line of inquiry because to do so would raise troubling questions about their own national histories. The characterization as “liberal democratic” of certain polities that, by the 1930s, were in tension with Imperial Japan seems, if one takes into account their treatment of colonized subjects and non-whites in general, overly simplistic and in need of qualification.

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6 ov e rse a s japane se and the fatherl and

Defining the Japanese nation at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, which is already complicated by the ambiguous status of many millions of colonial subjects, is made all the more difficult when one considers where to place, in terms of nation, Japanese emigrant communities located in areas outside of Japan’s political control. There was a global community of Japanese bound together by race, ethnicity, and a shared history. The boundaries of the Japanese nation were fuzzy, however, with some members enjoying or, depending on the circumstances, suffering from transnational identities. According to statistics provided by the Japanese government in a pamphlet prepared for the November 1940 Congress of Overseas Brethren, there were 2,501,546 Japanese residing outside of Japan by that year: 1,578,497  in Manchukuo, 345,733 in China, 197,733 in Brazil, 158,451 in Hawai’i (then a U.S. territory), 114,956 in the United States, more than 60,000 in Micronesia, 24,058 in the Philippines (then a U.S. colony), 22,150 in Peru, and 21,127 in Canada.1 The figure of 2.5 million overseas Japanese provided in the Congress pamphlet included approximately one million colonial subjects who had emigrated from, for example, Korea to Manchuria and thus were not part of the dispersion from Japan proper.2 However, the definition of “overseas” employed at the Congress excluded the nearly 1.2 million Japanese residents of Korea, Taiwan, and Karafuto, formal colonies that were considered, quite simply, to be part of Japan in 1940.3 By that year, approximately one in twenty-five Japanese out of a population of seventy-three million resided outside of Japan proper. Modernity in Japan resulted, as it did throughout much of the world, in unprecedented mobility. The movement of people outside their place of origin, both within Japan proper and from Japan proper to elsewhere, increased dramatically. This trend was accelerated by imperialism. The definition of “overseas” employed at the Congress failed to represent properly the most important divide running through the dispersion from Japan proper, namely the gulf between those who settled within the formal and informal

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empire and those who had settled outside of the empire. During the height of modern imperialism, Japan was the only nonwhite nation-state to become an imperialist power able to impose its own hierarchy over colonized subjects. Japanese who moved to the colonies comprised a hegemonic diaspora in the sense that they were part of a structure of dominant rule over the locals. In contrast, Japanese emigrants residing outside the empire frequently encountered racial discrimination directed at nonwhites in general. The Congress designation of Japanese residing in Micronesia, Manchukuo, and China as “overseas” is problematic because it suggests that the experience of Japanese in these areas was closer to those of overseas Japanese communities in, say, the Americas than it was to Japanese communities in the formal colonies. By 1940, most Japanese residing in China lived in areas under the control of the Japanese military. Even before the China Incident of 1937 that led to Japanese military control over China’s coastal region, most Japanese residents of China, both inside and outside of the formal concession areas, enjoyed privileged lives largely segregated from the Chinese world around them. For example, scholars who have analyzed the elite Japanese community (with a population of 65,621 in 1940) residing in Shanghai have concluded that the Japanese there were so able to reproduce the comforts of home that they lived virtually oblivious to the fact that they were in a foreign country.4 Japanese residing in Manchukuo lived under the protection of the Kwantung Army, which exerted political authority over the government there headed by Emperor Pu Yi. The South Manchurian Railway Company (Mantetsu) provided various services to urban colonists, whereas the Manchurian Development Company (Mantaku) provided services to rural colonists. In her memoir of childhood in Manchuria, Kazuko Kuramoto (1927–) recounted the comfortable life her family enjoyed in a substantially Japanese environment.5 Kuramoto’s father was a civil servant. Although Kuramoto’s account of middle-class life in the colonies does not reflect the experiences of Japanese agriculturalist emigrants to Manchuria, it is broadly representative of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who enjoyed a secure lifestyle in the colonies thanks to salaried positions in the colonial bureaucracy and in private enterprises. Kuramoto’s account of her local Japantown’s disintegration in the aftermath of the Empire of Japan’s collapse in August 1945 also speaks to an empire-wide phenomenon. The inclusion of Micronesia in the official definition of “overseas” was also nothing more than a legal nicety to acknowledge that Japan exercised only a League of Nations mandate over this area. In practice, Japan treated the Micronesian archipelago hardly differently from its formal colonies. The historian Tomiyama Ichiro ˉ has documented that the hierarchy in Micronesia featured Japanese at the top, followed by Okinawans, then Koreans, with the native islanders at the lowest level.6 Similar hierarchies, always with the Japanese at the top, were to be found in other areas of the empire. Within the empire, migration by Japanese often resulted in the displacement of local peoples, one indicator of the unequal power

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relations between the colonizer and the colonized.7 Japanese imperialism and the dispersion from Japan proper were linked to diasporas more befitting the original sense of this term, most notably that of Koreans.8 During the 1920s, the influx of migrants, especially from Korea, into Japan proper may have outnumbered Japanese emigrating from the archipelago. By 1940, more than one million Koreans resided in Japan proper, and another million resided in Manchuria. Although the experiences of Japanese settlers and their progeny residing in the colonies were transcultural in the sense that they came into some contact with the foreign society over which they ruled, their membership in the Japanese nation was never in question. Japanese who had left Japan proper for areas within the empire benefited from their status as the ruling elite, a situation different from that faced by Japanese who tried to make their way in hegemonic white societies in the Americas. Various transnational ambiguities characterized the Japanese, and especially their progeny, who relocated to areas outside of Japanese political control. The vast majority of Japanese emigrants who resided in areas outside of Japanese control were in the Americas. The experiences of Japanese emigrants not only in the United States but in other countries of the Americas are central to this chapter, which focuses on what the historian Eiichiro Azuma, in his study of the links between Japanese emigrants in the United States and compatriots in Japan at the time of the Congress of Overseas Brethren, aptly termed the “muddling of emigration (imin) and colonialism (shokumin) in a public ‘discourse on overseas development’ (kaigai hattenron).”9 Background to Japanese Emigration For decades before the Congress of Overseas Brethren was held in 1940, Japanese social commentators had championed emigration as a means to relieve what was widely perceived as a crisis of overpopulation in Japan proper, specifically in the rural areas. Poverty “pushed” many rural Japanese, including the first groups to depart, to emigrate. Social commentators continued to stress Japan’s population pressures at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. In a 1940 Englishlanguage essay, Tsurumi Yusuke (1885–1973), a social commentator and representative to the Japanese parliament, stressed the population problem faced by his country: “This lack of farm land and the ever-increasing pressure of population are, it must be emphasized at the very outset, at the root of all problems of the Japanese Empire.”10 In the years after the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government’s interest in emigration intersected most closely with its concern for Japan’s standing in the world. For two decades after the Meiji Restoration, government leaders, unwilling to risk Japanese emigrants being treated in a way unbefitting the international stature that they sought for Japan, forbade mass emigration. When the government began to permit emigration in 1885, to Hawai’i, it kept a close watch on the treatment of its nationals. This was not so much out of humanitarian concern for

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the laboring class but because international prestige was at stake.11 But there was only so much that Japan’s leaders, who saw themselves as having earned first-class international status with their country’s victory over Russia in 1905, could do to counteract widespread racist views that divided people throughout the world into whites and nonwhites, Christians and non-Christians, civilized and uncivilized. Race, culture, and power shaped Japanese emigration. As Japan acquired an empire, new territory beyond the nation-state recently defined to include Hokkaido and Okinawa opened for emigration: Taiwan at the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895; Korea, the Kwantung leased territory, Karafuto (the southern half of Sakhalin), and settlement zones along the railway in Manchuria as a result of Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905; Micronesia at the end of World War I; and all of Manchuria in the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident of 1931. In 1936, the Japanese government, which previously had taken steps to encourage and to facilitate emigration, notably to Brazil, adopted as national policy a plan to send a total of one million families (five million individuals) to Manchuria over a period of twenty years.12 Commentators portrayed Manchuria as a virtually limitless virgin territory that begged for settlement by the Japanese. Although the plan to export one-sixth of Japan’s rural underclass to Manchuria faced many hurdles, absent was one indignity that Japanese emigrants to areas outside the empire had repeatedly encountered, namely racial discrimination. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Japanese might have emigrated to Australia and New Zealand in large numbers if policies restricting nonwhite immigrants to these areas had not already been in place. Writing in 1894, Watanabe Kanju ˉro ˉ (1864–1926), who had been commissioned by the Japanese government to undertake an exhaustive study of Australia that would prove useful in future bilateral talks regarding emigration to Australia, observed: “The Japanese actually feel more rejected in Australia than they do in America.”13 The vast continent of Australia, which continued to accept many European settlers, was essentially closed to Japanese emigrants. The Commonwealth of Australia that was established in 1901 embraced the concept of “White Australia” as central to the national identity, and New Zealand followed in 1903 with a policy of “White New Zealand.” The United States and Canada were initially open to Japanese immigrants, but by the first decade of the twentieth century these neighbors had already moved to restrict immigration from Japan through gentlemen’s agreements. Far from viewing Japan as having earned a place in the coterie of civilized nations as a result of its victory over Russia, many commentators in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere spoke in racial terms of the “yellow peril” that Japan’s rise to a world power seemed to present. Authorities in South Africa, for their part, enacted various immigration restriction measures from 1907 onward that effectively barred Japanese, thus completing what the Japanese interpreted as an Anglo-Saxon global blockade of Japanese immigration. The blockade was tightened when the United States, with the 1924 Exclusion Act, curtailed further immigration from

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Japan and made its policy of racial segregation in immigration policy bluntly clear to the Japanese, who interpreted it for the insult that it was. Although countries ranging from the United States to Australia frequently took refuge from charges of racism by employing literacy tests (typically in European languages) to screen immigrants, tests that sometimes permitted entry for middle-class nonwhites from countries such as Japan, the Japanese apprised the situation correctly when they concluded that the so-called white countries had consciously joined together to employ immigration restrictions as a form of racial segregation. As the historians Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds have documented, by around the year 1900 leaders in the white countries had formed an international community of whites aligned to keep nonwhites, especially masses of Asiatics, at bay.14 The fact that many of these restrictions were put in place after Japanese concluded that their country had passed the test of civilization with their modernization, symbolized by their victory over Russia, made them all the more infuriating to the Japanese. As a result of this racial blockade, Japanese emigration to areas outside of Japan’s political control was mostly redirected to Ibero-American countries, particularly to Brazil. Between the early 1900s and the 1920s, the Japanese government gradually adopted a more active role in encouraging emigration to Brazil. In 1924 it began providing financial assistance to the Overseas Development Company (est. 1917) in order to facilitate emigration as well as to increase the likelihood that Japanese emigrants, after arriving in Brazil, would succeed. Already by the 1920s something of a “migration machine,” including schools to train emigrants for their new life in Brazil, existed in Japan, although it was not as developed as the one that took shape by the late 1930s to encourage emigration to Manchuria. The Japanese government’s role in facilitating emigration to Brazil largely explains why more Japanese immigrants relocated there than to any other area outside of the empire. By the end of the 1930s, however, the three Ibero-American countries with the most Japanese immigrants, Brazil (1934), Peru (1936), and Argentina (1938), also had enacted measures to restrict further Japanese immigration. The Philippines, an American colony, was one of the few places outside of Japan’s empire that continued to permit unrestricted immigration from Japan during the late 1930s. However, in April 1940, the National Assembly of the Philippine Commonwealth passed a law to curb Japanese immigration. Thus, by the time the Congress of Overseas Brethren opened in Tokyo in November of that year, there were almost no places outside of the empire without restrictions on further Japanese immigration. In spite of their possession of a vast empire, the Japanese were still segregated internationally. Although by 1940 the Japanese government saw in the vast expanses of Manchuria the solution to overpopulation and rural poverty in the home islands, the litany of racist restrictions placed on Japanese emigration by “white” countries through the previous decades was not forgotten. A further reminder of this racism was provided that year when the government of Panama, the location of the strategic canal, drew up a new constitution that included an article that expressly

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forbade emigration by the “yellow race.”15 Although Japanese immigration was largely directed toward the Asian continent by 1940, the fact remained that several hundred thousand Japanese emigrants already resided in the Americas, and their treatment in local societies continued to reflect on Japan’s stature in the world. Japanese emigrants residing outside of Japanese political authority had no choice but to balance loyalty to their ancestral country and to their country of residence using various equations depending on a complex web of factors. This was true even though many first-generation (Issei  ) overseas Japanese remained citizens of  Japan. In the case of those residing in the United States, Issei were barred from becoming naturalized citizens even though their children were citizens by birth. This legal status kept first-generation Japanese immigrants in the United States tied to their ancestral country in a way that was unnecessary for many firstgeneration immigrants from Germany and Italy. Italian and German immigrants in the United States had the option of taking refuge from the overbearing demands of the Fascist and Nazi regimes by becoming naturalized citizens, whereas first-generation Japanese emigrants had no choice but to remain legally tied to their ancestral country. Issei participants in the Congress of Overseas Brethren from the United States were not only returning to their country of birth but to their country of citizenship. Delegates to the Congress of Overseas Brethren were far from being representative of the full extent of the diaspora from Japan proper because Japanese communities in the formal colonies were not represented. The Congress could be considered unrepresentative in other ways as well. In his memoir of the Japanese community in Sao Jose, Brazil, Ko ˉyama Rokuroˉ (1886–1976) remembered that the Japanese government had sent a special delegation in 1939 to enlist participation by the Brazilian government as well as by the local Japanese community in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations to take place the following year. According to Ko ˉyama, the presidents of the two main emigration companies (the Overseas Development Company and the Brazil Development Company), not the community’s rank and file, selected the local community’s delegate to the Congress of Overseas Brethren.16 No doubt the emigration companies desired a delegate who would not only be acceptable to the Japanese government but someone who would also put the best spin on opportunities still available in Brazil for Japanese considering emigration there. It can reasonably be assumed that few attendees at the Congress were out of favor with the Japanese government as was the case with some overseas Japanese. Although the documents do not suggest that the Congress explicitly excluded overseas Japanese who were colonial subjects (e.g., Koreans who, in international terms, were Japanese nationals), the attendees who were highlighted in the literature traced their lineage to Japan proper. Finally, in economic terms the attendees did not represent the full range of the Japanese emigrant experience. Attendees, though they received some subsidies for their visit once in Tokyo, were responsible for the costs of travel to and from Japan, a sum out of the reach of many emigrants. This resulted in a Congress comprised of delegates substantially

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representing the overseas socioeconomic elite. One illustration of the delegates, from the cover to a guide to the Congress (see color insert, figure 21), suggests a gathering of successful businessmen (with one woman in the background). Not only are they shown dressed in suits and ties but also, especially in the case of the man featured most prominently, with Caucasian features.17 Japan’s First Pioneer Extraordinaire: Emperor Jimmu The Congress of Overseas Brethren’s publicity poster, which was issued to recruit delegates (see color insert, figure 22), evidences a prominent feature of emigration ideology in 1940 Japan, the use of imperial myths to glorify emigration as being a component of national identity that dates from the nation’s origin. The poster positions a Japanese pioneer in front of the world, which is itself shown to be under the radiating light of the golden kite, a symbol of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition.18 The pioneer image, which symbolizes the cult of the pioneer employed at the time to encourage emigration by agriculturalists to Manchuria, contrasts with the image of the businessmen featured in one guide to the Congress. As Japan’s imperialistic ambitions grew as the 1930s progressed, the story of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition that culminated, after many hardships, with his founding of the imperial dynasty was repeatedly referenced as symbolizing the pioneering spirit of the Japanese. The historian Mori Takemoro cited the case of one farmer, a champion of emigration to Manchuria, who wrote in 1938: “Japanese history is actually the history of emigration. Both the Eastern Expedition by Emperor Jimmu and the conquest of the Kumaso tribe by Prince Yamato-takeru were products of a genuine, unceasing effort.”19 Sakamoto Gajo ˉ’s (1895–1973) cartoon history of “The Three Periods of Pioneering,” published in book form in 1940, divided the history of Japanese emigration into ancient, contemporary, and future periods.20 Sakamoto portrayed Emperor Jimmu as Japan’s first pioneer extraordinaire in his teleology of Japanese expansion expressed through multiple images that concluded with the two cartoons reproduced here that imagined the future (figures 27 and 28). Sakamoto was himself a pioneer, of the more genuine sort, in developing the genre known as illustrated comics or novels (manga) that enjoy immense popularity in Japan today. Along the same lines, the first volume in the “Spirit of Continental Pioneering Book Series” that the Manshu ˉ nichinichi newspaper began publishing in 1940 is titled “Emperor Jimmu and the Development of the Country.”21 The book sought to inspire continental settlers with the story of Japan’s original pioneer. The publishers included a map that showed Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition. By 1940 there was a consensus on the meandering route taken by the first emperor and this map resembles the one that appeared in the Ministry of Railways travel guide “Sacred Sites of the Fatherland.” Continental pioneers could take solace that no matter how difficult their experiences, they could not have been as trying as Emperor Jimmu’s expedition, which began on the island of Kyushu in 666 BC and ended six years later in the Yamato area on the island of Honshu.

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27. The first of these two cartoons by Sakamoto Gajoˉ, from his history of the “Three Periods of Pioneering,” portrays the Japanese freeing Asia from domination by the white race.

28. The second, the concluding cartoon of the book, shows the races of Asia celebrating under the “newly blossomed flower” of “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth” bestowed on them by Japan.

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By 1941, Noda Ryo ˉji (1875–1968) was simply repeating a standard trope with his claim in an essay in Kaigai iju ˉ (“Overseas Settlement”) that “one of the aspects of the great ideal of ‘imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth’ is the overseas expansion of the Japanese race.” Noda had long been involved in issues of emigration. As a diplomat posted to the Japanese consulates in Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil in the 1910s, he had written reports encouraging Japanese emigration to those countries. Later, he published an account of visiting Japanese brethren in South America.22 Noda went on to explain in his 1941 essay that since the origin of the fatherland, one characteristic of the Japanese had been the desire for overseas expansion.23 The ongoing expansion of the Japanese race that commentators trumpeted in the year of the 2,600th anniversary (and in the years before and after this landmark year), like so many aspects of Japan during this period, was often portrayed as a teleology that had begun with the first emperor whose extraordinary accomplishments seemed to provide models for every area of Japanese life and public policy. Congress of Overseas Brethren attendees found themselves at a function designed to appropriate their personal histories into a national narrative of the inevitable expansion of the Japanese race that had commenced with Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition. Chino Tsuneshi, a delegate from the United States, obliged his hosts by articulating the official line in a country report delivered during the Congress. Chino credited Emperor Jimmu for the “majestic overseas development of the Yamato race,” but failed to provide details about exactly what role Japan’s first emperor had played in helping Japanese immigrants establish themselves in the United States, among other places.24 Rites of Citizenship Beginning at 7:00 am on 4 November 1940, the first of the more than fourteen hundred delegates representing the 2.5 million Japanese recognized by the Japanese government as residing overseas began registering at the Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo for the five-day Congress of Overseas Brethren in Celebration of the 2,600th Anniversary of the Empire of Japan. Many of the delegates knew each other from Japanese associations in their adopted countries, and groups of delegates had traveled to Japan together. N.Y.K. Lines as well as other Japanese steamship companies provided regular service between Japan and wherever significant overseas Japanese communities were located.25 The leading sponsors of the Congress of Overseas Brethren were the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Colonial Affairs. The Ministry of Colonial Affairs was established in 1929 to oversee not only colonial development but also overseas Japanese, including those residing in areas outside of Japanese political authority (but, significantly, not those residing in the United States or Canada, where immigrants continued to be assisted and overseen by the Foreign Ministry). The officially stated goals of the Congress included establishing links between overseas Japanese organizations and domestic ones, researching issues concerning the

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progeny of overseas Japanese, and introducing overseas brethren to conditions in the motherland.26 At registration, delegates received commemorative badges and coupons for lodging and public transportation donated by the City of Tokyo. With the registration process completed by 9:00 a.m., organizers of the Congress and delegates, arranged according to their geographic area of residence in an order that reflected the chronological history of Japanese emigration, began to parade through central Tokyo. Bringing up the rear of the parade were three thousand high school and college students who saw themselves as future pioneers. Also present were one hundred specially invited correspondents from overseas Japanese-language newspapers, a crucial medium by which the Congress of Overseas Brethren was first publicized and later reported to overseas Japanese. Overseas Japanese-language newspapers played a central role in keeping Japanese residing abroad tied to local communities of Japanese and to their ancestral country.27 The parade began at Hibiya Park and proceeded through downtown Tokyo en route to the Niju ˉ Bridge that spans the moat to the imperial palace. There, participants in the parade removed their hats, bowed in reverence, and shouted “Long Live His Majesty the Emperor!” three times. Thereafter they took a different route that brought them back to the Hibiya Public Hall by 10:00. The procession was identifiable by the Congress flag (figure 29).28 By 10:39 a.m. the delegates were seated in the Hibiya Public Hall, waiting for the opening ceremony to begin. At precisely 10:40—not one second later according to the official report of the Congress—Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro, Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yo ˉsuke (1880–1946), War Minister Toˉjoˉ Hideki (1884–1948), and several other ministers and dignitaries began entering the room. At 10:45, everyone present stood and offered a most respectful bow (saikeirei  ) when Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko (1887–1990) of the imperial family entered the hall and took his seat at an imperial dais positioned at the center of the stage. Subsequently everyone stood and bowed in reverence in the direction of the imperial palace for precisely thirty seconds. Remaining standing, all present joined in the singing of the national anthem: “May the reign of the emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations. . . .” Everyone then bowed for thirty seconds in the direction of Kashihara Shrine, where the spirit of Japan’s first pioneer is enshrined. This show of reverence was followed by another group bow, also lasting thirty seconds, in the direction of the Meiji Shrine, where the emperor in whose name Japan’s modern empire was established is enshrined. All present then offered a silent one-minute tribute to the spirits of those who had made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for the Imperial Military as well as to soldiers wounded in combat and to those presently serving in the military. This was followed by a silent tribute to the earliest Japanese to have ventured overseas. Subsequently, those present joined in singing the “2,600th Anniversary Song,” one of the many patriotic songs popular at the time. The words and score of the official “Celebration of Overseas Brethren Song” also survive in

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29. This served as the Congress of Overseas Brethren flag. Rife with imperial symbolism, the flag, reproduced here in black and white, shows the golden kite superimposed over a physical representation of the concept of “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth.”

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the official report of the Congress, but apparently this song was not featured in the opening ceremony.29 Like so many patriotic tunes of the time that originated from contests staged to solicit the most fitting and rousing song about a particular theme, the “Celebration of Overseas Brethren Song” was the winning entry of a contest, in this case sponsored by NHK, to select the best song about overseas kin. After singing the “2,600th Anniversary Song,” delegates bowed low as Yamaoka Mannosuke (1876–1968), the chair of the Congress, read an imperial rescript welcoming the overseas brethren. Yamaoka, a legal scholar, was a member of the House of Peers and president of Nihon University. Speeches followed. Prime Minister Konoe called upon overseas Japanese to support the Japanese government’s policies: “The time has come for the 100 million subjects of the Empire of Japan to unite in mind and to pursue the course of subjects who must sacrifice themselves in support of the Imperial policy. . . . I believe that we should pledge ourselves to unite in mind and to cooperate as subjects of Japan to complete the mighty task set out for us.”30 The next to speak, Foreign Minister Matsuoka, a graduate of the University of Oregon Law School, maintained a special interest in overseas Japanese. He drew attention to the barriers that Japanese had had to overcome to extend the Japanese race overseas: The overseas expansion of the Japanese race (warera Nihon minzoku no kaigai hatten) was held in check by isolationist policy (sakokusei  ) for many, many years and although a start in this direction was finally made in 1868, already much of the world was under the control of whites and it was difficult to unfold our wings suddenly. Wherever we went, there was nothing else for us to do but suffer disadvantageous and unjust conditions and persistently go forward with stubborn resistance. I wish to express here my sincerest gratitude for your and your predecessors’ efforts and also for your and your predecessors’ sacrifices made toward the expansion of our race. Methinks that a strong diplomacy is the result of the strength of the nation and that racial expansion is also possible if a nation is strong. Today, as a highdegree national defense state (ko ˉdo kokubo ˉ kokka), our empire is concentrating on the establishment of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and is entering upon a new era of embarking upon great ventures abroad.31 This is something that was unthinkable in 1868 and we are struck with the change of times when we think back to those years.32

Matsuoka additionally called upon his brethren to sacrifice in service to their homeland in a part of his speech omitted here. Matsuoka’s remarks were followed by comments by Minister of War To ˉjo ˉ. General Toˉjoˉ thanked overseas brethren for their donations in support of Japan’s war effort against China and, implicitly, for serving as proponents of Japan’s policies in their countries of residence: “Recently, since the outbreak of the China Incident, you have made people overseas understand and have driven home to them the real meaning of the sacred

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war. Furthermore, the whole nation is deeply moved by your sincerity in donating to the war relief fund and national defense fund from distant lands.”33 To ˉjo ˉ, Matsuoka, and Konoe unambiguously included overseas Japanese as part of the Japanese nation. However, the expectation repeatedly voiced by Japanese officials that overseas brethren speak in support of Japan’s policies was one that many Japanese emigrants residing in areas outside of Japanese political authority found particularly problematic. It was even more delicate than responding to requests, especially discrete ones, for donations to support the war effort. Following additional speeches by other dignitaries that were similarly exhortatory, North American representative Abe Toyoji, a newspaper editor from San Francisco who was an elderly and honored representative of the overseas Japanese community, read a pledge (senseibun) on behalf of delegates who stood listening respectfully. Facing Prince Higashikuni, Abe first referenced the august presence of this member of the imperial family and offered thanks for the invitation to the Congress. He continued: The “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth” spirit of our fatherland is truly noble, and indicates the road that the peoples of the world should follow. If we overseas Japanese who are on the frontlines of the development of the Japanese race keep this in mind, if we make exalting this spirit our mission, whatever adversity we may encounter, our hearts will be indomitable and we shall overcome countless difficulties and push onwards. On this occasion we renew ourselves. With the honor of being Japanese citizens impressed upon ourselves, and with the cooperation of 100 million brethren in Japan proper and overseas, we shall perform selfless patriotic service.34

South America representative Wakiyama Jinsaku (1879–1946), a retired colonel in the Japanese Army who had emigrated to Brazil in 1930, had the honor of leading all present in paying their respects to the emperor.35 After offering a most respectful bow to Prince Higashikuni, Wakiyama ritualistically shouted “Long Live His Majesty the Emperor!” and those present echoed this cheer three times. The opening ceremony concluded at 11:30 with everyone offering a most respectful bow as Prince Higashikuni exited the hall.36 Many of the delegates to the Congress had been born and raised in Japan, and for them the patriotic expressions of loyalty to the throne would have been familiar from their school days. But whereas such rituals were woven into the daily lives of Japanese dispersed throughout the empire, their prominence in the lives of emigrants and especially of their children living in areas outside of Japanese political authority would have varied considerably. Factors such as the presence or absence of a Japanese school and the frequency that individual emigrants attended, for example, functions sponsored by the nearest Japanese embassy or consulate or events at least presided over by a consul would impact the emigrants’ relative connection to state rituals. Not all overseas Japanese welcomed contact with the local representative of the Japanese government, however. In his memoir of life in Peru and of

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his eventual internment in the United States following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Seiichi Higashide (1909–97) described the local consul as someone often feared and, when possible, avoided by the local Japanese immigrant community. This resulted in part from the consul’s authority to conscript individuals into the Japanese military.37 Blood or Culture? The opening ceremony over, the Congress proceedings began.38 In his greetings to delegates, Chairman Yamaoka noted that it was extremely regrettable that there was no centralized mechanism for maintaining contact with overseas Japanese and called for the establishment of an institution to serve that role. Such a step represented the institutionalization of heightened efforts by the Japanese government, in the years leading up to the Congress, to reach out to overseas Japanese. In the late 1930s, the Japanese government dispatched men of distinction on overseas tours designed in part to cultivate closer contact with overseas Japanese. Tanaka Ko ˉtaro ˉ (1890–1974), a professor of law at Toˉkyoˉ Imperial University, toured South America in 1939 with Foreign Ministry affiliation. One of the purposes of his tour was to reach out to the local communities of overseas Japanese, and Tanaka’s travelogue includes entries describing the banquets offered in his welcome by the local associations of Japanese in places such as Rio de Janeiro.39 Following Yamaoka’s remarks at the Congress, representatives from among the broader group of delegates were formally named to five regional committees representing the geographic areas of Hawai’i, North America, Central and South America, the Asian continent, and Nanyo ˉ (the South Seas, including but not limited to Micronesia).40 In addition to various other documents, word-by-word transcripts of the last day’s meetings of three of the regional committees survive.41 They represent a source for understanding the themes of the Congress. After the naming of the regional committees, Lieutenant-General Suzuki Yoshiyuki (1882–1956), one of the vice chairs, gave a chronological report about preparations for the Congress. Delegates proceeded to pass a resolution thanking “the brave soldiers of the Imperial Military” who were “participating in the sacred war to create a new order in Asia, a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Thereafter Foreign Minister Matsuoka honored the regional committee chairs, each of whom were venerable elders. After a few more formalities, the Congress recessed for the day. In the afternoon of the first day of the Congress, delegates representing each of the regions paid visits to Meiji Shrine and to Yasukuni Shrine, and a few delegates were provided the special privilege of a tour of the imperial palace grounds. That evening the mayor of Tokyo hosted a banquet for the delegates. On the second day of the Congress, delegates from each of the five regions began meeting at 9:30 a.m. according to their geographic affiliation to discuss three primary issues: the establishment of additional Shinto ˉ shrines overseas; the

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nationality, education, and marriage of second-generation overseas Japanese; and the establishment of a central overseas Japanese society to link all overseas Japanese, through the many local overseas Japanese organizations, to each other and to their ancestral land. There was widespread consensus, among delegates, in favor of a central overseas Japanese society, no consensus on the need to build additional overseas Shinto ˉ shrines, and a general consensus that more measures needed to be implemented to maintain the Japanese-ness of the second generation. The one concrete accomplishment of the Congress was the formation of the Central Overseas Japanese Society (Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai), a step that delegates unanimously agreed to by noon of the first day of meetings. The Central Overseas Japanese Society’s mandate included the facilitation of contact between overseas Japanese and the mother country by means that included the regular staging of congresses as well as supporting the “promotion of national prestige and the expansion of the Japanese race.”42 The goal of staging regular congresses was ambitious considering that even with delegates shouldering such costs as transportation to and from Japan, the inaugural congress cost ¥ 370,000 ($92,500). By 1940, the Japanese state was thoroughly involving itself in issues of emigration, and the establishment of a Central Overseas Japanese Society represented an attempt by a confident but also embattled Japanese government to shore up feelings of national allegiance among Japanese, defined substantially in terms of blood, wherever they might reside. At a time when the world was largely divided on racial and cultural terms and whites had been emphasizing the existence of a transnational community of (superior) whites for decades, such an initiative by the Japanese state to fortify a transnational Japanese community was not surprising. Previous efforts by Japanese to win recognition as at least “honorary” whites had been rebuffed. Europe was engaged in a fratricidal struggle at the time, with each side claiming to represent the future of Western civilization. In spite of this conflict between the European powers themselves, it was still the Japanese, as the first nonwhite and non-Christian nation to modernize and become a world power, who continued to present the most significant challenge to the Euro-American sense of racial and cultural superiority. The Congress of Overseas Brethren should be understood in this context. In contrast to the favorable reception the proposal to create a Central Overseas Japanese Society received, the question of additional overseas Shintoˉ shrines was downright contentious. Throughout the empire, Shintoˉ shrines were the most significant physical representation of the local Japanese community, the colonial elite, and of the extension of imperial rule. At the time of Japan’s defeat, there were approximately seven hundred officially recognized shrines located outside of Japan proper. Included in this figure were a few located in Hawai’i and North America that were attended to, at least until the attack on Pearl Harbor, by Shinto ˉ priests. The majority of shrines outside of Japan proper were still to be found within the empire, however.43 In areas outside the empire the presence of a Shinto ˉ shrine could be a delicate matter.

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It was one matter for delegates from Manchuria, where at least one Shintoˉ shrine was already found in every Japanese settlement of any significance, to make plans to build additional shrines. However, it was quite another matter for Japanese residents of Lima, Peru, who remained traumatized by the anti-Japanese riots that had occurred there just five months earlier and that had resulted in the plundering of hundreds of properties belonging to Japanese, to contemplate lending their support to the construction in their country of residence of a shrine representing the state religion of Japan. In the late 1930s, Peru under President Oscar Benavides (1876–1945) had adopted numerous discriminatory measures directed at Japanese, highlighted by a 1937 law that stripped Japanese Peruvians born in Peru of citizenship. The 1940 riots were symbolic of a particularly inhospitable local environment. Even though Japanese Peruvians might look to the Japanese government for help in gaining redress for damages suffered during the riot, drawing attention by answering the call to build a Shinto ˉ shrine was another matter. It was not only hostile local environments that made the issue of building Shinto ˉ shrines problematic for many overseas Japanese. Significant numbers of the emigrants residing in areas outside of Japanese political authority had converted to Christianity, creating a situation where personal religious beliefs clashed with calls to support financially or otherwise the construction of Shintoˉ shrines. For example, most of the second-generation Japanese in Argentina, citizens of Argentina by birth, eventually converted to Catholicism, the predominant local religion. When the question of building overseas shrines stalled at the regional committee level, regional representatives agreed to transfer authority on this topic to the central committee of the Congress. This central committee later passed what amounted to little more than a hortatory resolution calling for the construction of more shrines overseas.44 Disparate opinions on this and other resolutions adopted at the Congress clearly lingered under the surface, however. No topic inspired more animated discussion at the Congress than the socalled second generation problem, or issues relating to the progeny of overseas Japanese. One of the three programs featured in the second evening of the Congress was a social gathering of approximately six hundred second-generation overseas Japanese (Nisei  ) that was expressly designed to address Nisei’s degree of spiritual affiliation with the ancestral country. None of the young attendees at the social gathering were official delegates to the Congress, but such a large gathering was possible because most of those whom it brought together already were temporarily residing in Japan as students. For many Nisei, study in Japan represented an alternative to pursuing admission to racially restrictive institutions of higher education in their countries of citizenship. It also prepared Nisei for professional careers in Japan proper as well as in the empire that were often closed to individuals of Japanese ancestry in countries such as the United States and Canada. Nisei who had a chance to study in Japan tended to feel a deeper connection with their ancestral country than was the case with second-generation overseas

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Japanese who did not return to Japan for an extended period. However, many Nisei also typically enjoyed citizenship in a country other than Japan. Their attachment to their ancestral country typically did not necessarily translate into, for example, a willingness to serve in the Japanese military or even to champion Japan’s policies. As the historian Yuji Ichioka has shown, in the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident, about which American public opinion tended to side with China (or line up against Japan in any case), the Japanese government took a greater interest in enlisting American Nisei to serve as spokesmen for Japan’s continental policies. However, Japanese government representatives repeatedly expressed dismay at the unwillingness of many second-generation Japanese Americans to play the bridging role that had been scripted for them.45 Yamazaki Jiro ˉ, another vice chair of the Congress, informed members of the second generation in attendance at the social gathering that whatever their nationality, they were members of the Yamato race according to blood.46 It was a standard phrase invoked worldwide whenever Japanese officials spoke to their brethren. Yamazaki was a retired diplomat who had completed numerous overseas assignments, including in South America. He was more sympathetic to issues concerning assimilation and nationality faced by the second generation than his mouthing of the standard trope suggested. Following Yamazaki’s speech, Nagata Hidejiroˉ presented a lecture titled “The National Character of Japan.” After beginning his talk by providing valid examples that attested to cultural differences between Japan and other countries, Nagata’s presentation devolved into a glorification of Japan’s unparalleled history defined, in particularly fanciful terms by this member of the House of Peers known for his fervent patriotism, by 2,600 years of imperial rule.47 It was Nagata who, while mayor of Tokyo in 1930, had formulated the plan for Tokyo to host the 1940 Olympics in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Nagata expected that such an extravaganza would attract international tourists to Japan’s capital.48 The fact that the gathering of second-generation overseas Japanese was billed as a social event—where young men and women might meet prospective spouses—is hardly surprising since one fear that tormented many self-appointed protectors of Nisei was that they would marry outside of their race. In a regional committee meeting, Okuda Heiji (Henry) (1867–1955), a successful businessman from Seattle, Washington, seemed apoplectic about the “second generation marriage problem.” He worriedly explained that as the number of girls born in the United States increased it became impossible to have a Japanese husband selected for each of them because suitable matches could not be found, with the consequence that many girls were simply leaving their marriages to fate.49 It is not known to what extent the gathering in the evening of 5 November prevented instances of miscegenation, which was seen as an especially dangerous temptation to Nisei. Not all Japanese commentators condemned interracial marriages and some even championed intermarriage with Japan’s colonial subjects.50 The reality was that interracial marriages were not unknown even

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among first-generation emigrants or, for that matter, among Japanese in Japan proper. One of the guides to the Congress included a photo of Ota Chozoˉ (b. 1885), a delegate from Chile, where marriage between Japanese men and local women was common, posing with his Caucasian wife shortly after their arrival in Yokohama.51 But the threat interracial marriages presented both to racial purity and to the maintenance of a proper Japanese spirit was a theme always lurking behind discussions of the second generation. In the same evening that the social gathering for Nisei took place, more than one thousand delegates to the Congress attended presentations on conditions in Japan that were sponsored by the Cabinet Information Bureau (CIB), the main propaganda organ of the government. CIB officials endeavored to instill the official line in the minds of those overseas brethren visiting Japan and portrayed the Congress as a touching example of the feelings of patriotism shared by members of the Japanese race wherever they resided. The 13 November edition of the CIB’s weekly magazine Shashin shuˉho ˉ included statements by a delegate from Argentina and by a delegate from the Philippines. These statements were prefaced by a short introduction that informed readers that overseas brethren who had “crossed the ocean to set foot again in the land of their good old mother country” were not only “profoundly stirred” by the prosperous condition of their “fatherland” but also “became conscious” of “the truth” about the war with China. In the same way that prosperity was a central theme of the Nazi Party rallies staged in Nuremberg in the 1930s, it was a central theme of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. It is appropriate to interpret the 2,600th Anniversary Celebrations as a mechanism designed to stress that the unique Japanese spirit would overcome all obstacles, and yet also to celebrate Japan’s level of modernity in a manner that drew attention away from disturbing relative comparisons with even more economically powerful nations. The economist Inaba Hidezoˉ (1907–96) was a member of a team of social scientists on the Cabinet Planning Board who concluded that, in economic terms, plans for war with the United States were folly. Their findings were dismissed by the faction in the military that drew its confidence not from reason but from the Yamato spirit (from will, in other words). Inaba later remembered wondering at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations whether there was really cause for celebration in light of his country’s deteriorating economic position in strategic areas.52 One effective way to convince the domestic audience of Japan’s advanced and prosperous state was to provide foreign testimonials attesting to this fact. Although many of the delegates to the Congress obliged by expressing wonder at Japan’s advanced level of industrialization, they were more blunt about other issues. Arimizu Fujitaro ˉ from Argentina rejected the notion that race alone guaranteed a sense of nation in his statement printed in Shashin shuˉho ˉ. Arimizu, who was seventeen when he left Kagoshima for South America soon after the RussoJapanese War, stressed that desperate and immediate measures were needed to correct the fact that there were many second- and third-generation overseas

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Japanese who spoke only rudimentary Japanese and knew little of Japan and thus felt little connection to their ancestral land.53 Arimizu’s testimony contradicted the notion that blood alone was sufficient to guarantee feelings of loyalty to Japan by individuals of Japanese descent. Many other delegates voiced similar concerns. In a regional committee meeting, Kumamoto Shunten (b. 1898), president of the Japanese Association of Los Angeles, spoke of the trials endured by parents who tried to provide a foundation of Japanese-ness to children born in a free country, raised in material prosperity, and subjected to various temptations such as the lure of leaving the land for life in the big city.54 Kumamoto, who had come to the United States in 1929 from Yamaguchi Prefecture, was an influential wholesale produce merchant who apparently identified with rural mores. Time and time again at the Congress, simplistic and emotional claims that Yamato blood unified Japanese wherever they resided were undermined by testimony from overseas Japanese attesting to the importance of culture in shaping the allegiance of the second generation. This was true even though the delegates themselves frequently mouthed standard catchphrases of the time that suggested the definitive importance of blood, only then to transition into a discussion of the need for cultural measures. The question of the second generation was prominent in a roundtable discussion featuring particularly successful delegates to the Congress that was moderated by Atsumi Ikuro ˉ (1881–1963), president of the Overseas Development Company, the quasi-official emigration agency established in 1917 to direct overseas migration.55 In his opening remarks, Atsumi repeatedly spoke of the successes of Japanese emigrants, wherever they resided, as national accomplishments. Whether the five participants also viewed their lifework as having been on behalf of the Japanese nation-state is ambiguous from the text, but they never objected to such a characterization and often adopted the contemporary rhetoric. For example, Anze Moriji (b. 1889), owner of a large coffee plantation and cattle and pig ranch in Brazil, urged young Japanese, especially second and third sons, to follow in his footsteps and emigrate to vast and thinly populated Brazil in order to “expand our race overseas.”56 Atsumi asked each of the participants to begin by telling his life story before commenting on various issues. Reading these accounts today brings to mind the Monty Python comedy skit “Four Yorkshiremen” in which elderly men of means outdo each other in recounting the seemingly incomparable humbleness of their early station in life from which they pulled themselves up to great success, only to be outdone in fantastic terms by the subsequent raconteur. If the level of success these participating emigrants had enjoyed in the United States, Brazil, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and Argentina was unusual, obstacles ranging from living in a country where Japanese was not the official language to racial prejudice that they overcame to succeed were broadly representative of the experiences of those emigrants who ventured outside of Japanese political authority.

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These five men opined on various issues related to the emigrant experience. Gashu ˉ Kuhei (b. 1896 in Hokkaido), who after many hardships had succeeded in developing a vast orchard near Buenos Aires, informed would-be pioneers that there was zero anti-Japanese sentiment in Argentina, a country then with proAxis sympathies.57 According to a 1971 history of Argentina’s Japanese community, Gashu ˉ, as the representative of the Buenos Aires Japanese community at the Congress, brought with him fifteen thousand pesos from that community to donate to the war cause. This donation came in addition to the 1938 contribution by Japanese residents of Argentina of funds for the purchase of a warplane nicknamed “Argentina Brethren.”58 These are two of the many examples of Japanese emigrants throughout the Americas and elsewhere supporting their ancestral country’s war against China. Gashu ˉ, who before emigrating to Argentina in 1918 had received extensive schooling and training at agricultural schools in Japan, stressed that it was a simple matter to acquire land and to operate a business in Argentina, as well as to provide a Japanese-language education to Nisei. First-generation Japanese immigrants in Argentina could become naturalized citizens, and their children were citizens by birth. Although Argentina had moved in 1938 to restrict immigration from Japan, it had not closed the door entirely. Gashu ˉ later described how at an officially recognized special elementary school for Japanese the Japanese language was taught in the morning, and students pursued their studies in Spanish in the afternoon. He went on to describe how in addition to this special elementary school there were six Japanese schools where on Sundays and on holidays lessons in the Japanese language were provided. Gashu ˉ explained, during a separate regional committee meeting, that he and his wife permitted only Japanese to be spoken at home.59 The case of an officially recognized elementary school for Japanese was somewhat rare in countries outside of Japanese political authority. This suggested Argentina’s particularly welcoming environment. However, virtually all Japanese residing overseas, once their community reached a critical mass, established supplemental Japanese language schools to pass on their mother tongue to their children provided that the local authorities permitted such schools. After all, most overseas Japanese schools were hardly only for language instruction. They typically also served as a mechanism through which the civil religion of Japan was transmitted to succeeding generations. In a regional committee meeting during which the “second generation problem” was discussed at length, Kagetsu Eikichi (1883–1967),60 proprietor of a successful logging operation in Vancouver, Canada, assured his fellow delegates and hosts that all fortynine Japanese language schools in the vast, sparsely populated country of Canada employed Ministry of Education-approved textbooks imported from Japan.61 A yearbook published by the Los Angeles-based, Japanese-language newspaper Rafu to celebrate the 2,600th anniversary also suggests the role of overseas schools in transmitting Japan’s civil religion. The yearbook includes numerous essays, written in Japanese by second-generation and perhaps even third-generation

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children ranging from first grade to high school and representing numerous Japanese language schools in California, trumpeting the glory of the 2,600-yearold imperial line. These short essays compare favorably in their understanding of national history to patriotic writings on the same theme penned by children at schools within the empire. They certainly contain the requisite storyline and catchphrases that demonstrated their young writers’ induction into the civil religion of Japan.62 In his description of life in Argentina, Gashuˉ further emphasized that Japanese-language reading materials such as newspapers and magazines were easily obtained in Buenos Aires, where the Japanese community numbered approximately thirty-five hundred people. The Japanese community in Argentina was thoroughly urban in nature. Gashu ˉ also explained that, as a result of the advanced communications infrastructure, the local Japanese community always knew of happenings in Japan by the next day. By 1940, radio broadcasts from Japan reached most of the areas throughout the world where Japanese emigrants resided. Radio was another crucial medium through which the Congress had been first publicized and later reported to overseas Japanese, and in a broader sense it played an essential role in keeping overseas Japanese abreast of developments in their ancestral country.63 Accounts of the proceedings of the Congress tailored to overseas Japanese in particular geographic areas were broadcast daily. Gashu ˉ stressed that even the recent signing of the Tripartite Pact that linked Japan to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had not posed a problem for the nearly seven thousand Japanese in Argentina since the local elite was composed mainly of individuals of Spanish and Italian descent. Gashuˉ’s description reflected the differences in local conditions for Japanese emigrants in the Americas in spite of the broad influence the United States exerted over this hemisphere. The roundtable’s representative from Brazil, Anze, had emigrated in 1914 after witnessing the effect of consecutive poor harvests on villages in Fukushima Prefecture. He left a job as an elementary school teacher there to start over in Brazil. Anze heartily recommended his adopted country as a desirable destination for Japanese seeking to escape their overcrowded homeland. Anze made this recommendation even though he recounted how during the previous year the Brazilian government had passed a law requiring the closure of all Japanese and other foreign-language schools; from that point on, all classes and textbooks at the primary school level were to be conducted in Portuguese.64 Under the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas (1882–1954), from 1937 on Japanese immigrants, along with immigrants from Germany, Italy, and elsewhere, had come under increased pressure to prove their loyalty to their country of residence by meeting stringent definitions of assimilation. In a regional committee meeting, one of Anze’s fellow delegates from Brazil took pains to explain that these new measures were not directed specifically at Japanese, but rather were designed to encourage all new immigrants to Brazil to assimilate.65 Enforcement of the law regarding schools was spotty in Brazil, and some of the approximately three hundred Japanese schools in existence before passage of

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the law continued to function, albeit in something of an underground fashion. Moreover, Brazil never persecuted Japanese immigrants, who enjoyed the option of becoming naturalized citizens (and their children enjoyed citizenship by birth), in areas such as land ownership in a manner comparable to the mistreatment they endured in the United States and Canada. The third participant in the roundtable discussion was the Los Angeles delegate Kumamoto.66 After speaking of the many hardships that he and other Japanese emigrants to the United States faced, Kumamoto thanked his compatriots in Japan for their expressions of sympathy about the racist conditions in the United States. He took pains to stress, however, that he personally had never been ostracized. Kumamoto expounded on one of the great issues of the day, how to keep overseas Japanese progeny Japanese in spirit, referring to the muchdiscussed second generation that by his count made up 60 percent of the more than 310,000 overseas Japanese residents of the United States and Hawai’i. After informing fellow participants that children born in the United States were American citizens in legal terms, Kumamoto commented, “It is often said that Japanese who go abroad come to stink of butter. To make sure that this does not occur and that [members of the second generation] will be able, as true Japanese, to succeed us, it is absolutely necessary that Japanese be taught at special Japanese schools, and that they be enveloped in the Japanese spirit though activities such as ju ˉdo ˉ, sumo ˉ, and kendo ˉ.” He described how first-generation Japanese encouraged their children to pursue such traditions as flower arrangement and the koto (  Japanese string instrument) in order to become proper Japanese. Separately, in one of the regional committee meetings, Kumamoto emphasized that he had sent both his son and daughter to Japanese universities.67 Later in the roundtable discussion, Kumamoto offered the sweeping and astonishing assessment that the Nisei were dutifully following parental directions by simply going through the motions of embracing American citizenship while they resolutely maintained the Japanese spirit! His interpretation is problematic for multiple reasons. Not only does it ignore the pluralistic nature of the second generation (and of the first generation, for that matter), but it also denies members of this second generation the agency to embrace, for example, their American citizenship. The next participant in the roundtable discussion to speak was Nakagawa Yasujiro ˉ, resident of Surabaya ( Java) in the Dutch East Indies and the owner of a small department store there since 1917.68 Nakagawa described the rapid increase in Japanese-owned businesses in Java. His attention to business issues seemed to far outweigh his interest in patriotic themes, although he did take pride in the fact that the Japanese business presence on the island was eclipsing that from China. He noted that the local government continued to treat Japanese residents with courtesy, but warned that any sort of development suggesting Japan’s intention to expand southward threatened the status quo. The last participant to talk, Morokuma Yasaku (b. 1883), offered his opinions ˉ ta Development on a wider range of topics.69 As the managing director of the O

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Company, Morokuma was one of the most successful of the more than twenty ˉ ta Development Company thousand Japanese residents of the Philippines. The O owned considerable farmland in Davao, an area of heavy Japanese settlement, ˉ ta the development of which was largely credited to the company’s founder, O Kyo ˉsaburo ˉ (1876–1917). ˉ ta recognized the profits to be made from Early in the twentieth century, O the production of hemp in Davao. Aside from settlements within the empire, only certain rural communities of Japanese in Brazil likely matched Davao’s hermetical nature. Japanese emigrants there could go for weeks mixing almost exclusively with fellow Japanese residents, and by the 1930s they enjoyed many of the amenities of home. In 1938, the Japanese community of Davao expressed its support for the war in China, as did almost all overseas Japanese settlements, with donations, in this case to finance the construction of a naval plane.70 ˉ ta Development Although Morokuma was managing director of the O Company, he resided in cosmopolitan Manila (but no doubt traveled to and from Davao frequently). Morokuma recounted how he arrived in the Philippines early in 1904, just before the outbreak of war between his country and Russia. He remembered the extent to which local Americans, Filipinos, Spaniards, and Chinese were surprised at Japan’s victory over Russia, and went on to explain how their attitudes toward Japanese overseas changed as a result of Japan’s military success: “They came to respect Japanese overseas, and we were delighted. This expression of national strength was something for which overseas Japanese are grateful.” Morokuma understood that there was a link between Japan’s ranking in the international system of nation-states and the status and treatment of overseas Japanese. Kumamoto later seconded this observation and additionally noted that it was imperative that Japan, a country that had attained first-class status in the international system of nation-states, emerged victorious over China. Morokuma, who was prominent in various Japanese associations in the Philippines, later expressed his opinion that education at the primary school level was not sufficient to instill the Japanese spirit in the Nisei. He called upon the Japanese government to cooperate with overseas Japanese to establish institutions of education beyond the primary level to ensure the proper training of the overseas second generation. However, Morokuma was also the only participant to address in an explicit manner the reality that even though, in his words, it was necessary for overseas Japanese never to forget that they were “subjects of the Empire of Japan,” it was also imperative that they make sure that their activities profited their country of residence, and that they remained sensitive to prevalent attitudes in their adopted country. Absent from this roundtable discussion, which contextualized these five emigrants’ experiences largely in terms of service to their ancestral country, were less lofty topics, such as whether or not the primary motivation for these five men to return to Japan was to visit relatives, with the Congress simply serving as a convenient impetus.

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2,600th Anniversary Commemorative Histories of Overseas Japanese Certain delegates to the Congress were overwhelmed at the reception they received. In one of the two roundtable discussions during the Congress that were moderated by the journalist Yamashita So ˉen and broadcast overseas by radio, Ikeda Chie, a female delegate from Hawai’i, remarked, “Until now I felt that there was a humiliating nuance attached to the term ‘emigrant’ . . . But now my sense of the term ‘emigrant’ has changed. Now I truly think that I am adorned with honor.”71 The Japanese government’s heightened attention to overseas Japanese, which culminated in their elevation to national heroes during the Congress, occurred in part because their examples were useful in promoting further overseas emigration to Manchuria. The contemporary examples of overseas Japanese were more tangible models to employ in support of further emigration than the ancient and incomparable example of that first Japanese pioneer, the peerless Emperor Jimmu. Flattered by their reception and solicited for their opinions on various issues relating to the Japanese emigrant experience, delegates did not take long to conclude that the history of overseas Japanese so celebrated at the Congress demanded comprehensive documentation. In the other roundtable discussion moderated by Yamashita So ˉen, Mo ˉri Iga (1864–1951), a prominent delegate from Hawai’i who as a young medical doctor had served in the Imperial Army during the First Sino-Japanese War, bemoaned the fact that there was no such comprehensive history of overseas Japanese, a history that he suggested should be made known to people in the native land.72 Curiously, the comprehensive history of overseas Japanese that the delegate Mori called for in the roundtable discussion at the Congress of Overseas Brethren was already available before the 2,600th anniversary celebrations sparked a flurry of history writing by overseas communities. In 1938, the Immigrant Problem Research Association affiliated with the Foreign Ministry published Irie (Iriye) Toraji’s sweeping two-volume “History of Overseas Japanese.”73 Unlike some of the Immigrant Problem Research Association’s publications that come across as hopelessly propagandistic from today’s perspective, Irie’s text, although obviously a product of its time, reflected careful empirical research and thoughtful analysis. It nonetheless buttressed the official policy of the time by conveniently appropriating the histories of all overseas Japanese to encourage emigration to Manchuria.74 During the roundtable discussion at the Congress, the moderator Yamashita affirmed Mori’s plea for more documentation of the history of overseas Japanese but also drew attention to the case of overseas brethren in the United States who had quickly organized themselves to write “The History of Japanese in the United States,” a thirteen-hundred-page tome published in Japan in 1940 to mark the 2,600th anniversary.75 It was compiled by members of the Japanese community

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in the United States with a vested interest in the manner by which their history was portrayed. The cover of this lengthy account of Japanese in the United States leaves little doubt as to the book’s link to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. It features a striking golden image of Emperor Jimmu holding a bow, on top of which is perched the golden kite. According to the historian Azuma, this text codified what had become a popular interpretation of their immigrant experience among Japanese residents of the United States: “The result was a systematic discourse that asserted Issei compatibility with, and placement within, Anglo-American society while affirming the ties they maintained to their homeland despite, or maybe because of, the legacies of racial exclusion and national divergence.”76 Azuma has traced the efforts by Japanese residing in the United States in the interwar period to navigate, in a way that best served their interests, their relationships with their country of ancestry and their country of residence. This terrain was often uncompromising. Laws in the United States forbade first-generation Japanese, on racial grounds, from gaining citizenship and thus legal rights equal to white Americans. In spite of this discrimination from their country of residence, few Japanese residents of the United States were comfortable with the role that Japanese authorities had in mind for them, namely that they not only support Japan’s expansionist policies but also serve as active propagandists abroad for their country of birth. Individuals of Japanese descent might take pride in the 2,600th anniversary celebration of the country of their ancestry, and even cooperate (perhaps naively in some cases) in the Japanese state’s appropriation of the history of overseas Japanese. This did not mean in most cases that their loyalty to Japan outweighed their loyalty to their country of residence, especially since their progeny were American citizens by birthright. Japanese immigrants in Brazil compiled a two-volume “History of the Development of Japanese in Brazil” in commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary that is conspicuously similar, both in format and in themes, to the historical narrative compiled by Japanese immigrants in the United States.77 Koˉyama Rokuro ˉ remembered that the impetus for writing the history of the Japanese immigrant experience in Brazil came from Tokyo, and that local community members undertook the task only because it was defined and sponsored as one of the many projects of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, something that was true of the American version as well.78 The committee charged with the task of writing the history of the Japanese community in Brazil was formed in Tokyo, probably when representatives of the Japanese Brazilian community were in Japan for the Congress of Overseas Brethren. It was comprised equally of individuals based in Tokyo and individuals based in Brazil. The preface to the first volume explained that by the 2,600th anniversary year, the “overseas development of the Japanese race” had extended even to “Brazil in far away South America,” where the Japanese community had “contributed to the development of Brazil’s industry,” even as it “contributed to the extension of the Japanese race.” In this “History of the Development of

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Japanese in Brazil,” Japanese Brazilians, especially the second generation, were portrayed as model citizens of Brazil. However, the authors nonetheless stressed not only the cohesion of the Japanese community in Brazil, for example listing the 260 associations of Japanese that existed there in 1939, but also emphasized the strong ties this community felt to its ancestral homeland.79 The historian Stewart Lone has argued that by the mid-1930s, there were already Nisei in Brazil who had thoroughly assimilated, and who called into question the notion that their identity should be based in any other country but Brazil.80 Lone notes that Japanese Brazilians had contributed several hundred thousand of the ¥ 3.9 million ($1 million) that overseas Japanese had donated in support of the war against China by 1939. Yet, his reading of vernacular sources led him to conclude that many members of the community did not donate to the war cause, and even more importantly that there were few men who volunteered to return to Japan to serve in the military in support of the war effort.81 In one of the regional committee meetings at the Congress of Overseas Brethren, Hatanaka Senjiroˉ (b. 1888) stressed that members of the Japanese community in San Paulo discussed from time to time the hypothetical question of which side they would fight for should war break out between Brazil and Japan.82 Hatanaka intimated that the loyalty of many second-generation Japanese Brazilians lay with Brazil.83 The Japanese Association of Canada also published a report titled “Canada and the Japanese” in commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary, but it was nowhere near as extensive a narrative history as those compiled by the Japanese emigrant communities in the United States and Brazil. Nonetheless, many of the themes characterizing those two narratives are echoed in this report. “Canada and the Japanese” stressed the discrimination that the Japanese community had faced: When we think of the main cause of an anti-Japanese or an anti-Oriental movement, we see it was based upon the facts that Oriental immigrant workers had increased due to the gradual development of Canada and had made inroads into Caucasian labour markets. . . . The Japanese were incomparable with the Caucasian counterparts, because they endured hard work, overcame difficulties, and their work ethic far exceeded most of Caucasian colleagues in forestry, sawmilling, and fishery fields. . . . It was a natural consequence that Caucasian laborers hated the Japanese workers.84

The report took pains to emphasize how well Japanese emigrants and their progeny, in spite of the discriminatory environment, had lived up to local standards of (Anglo-Saxon) behavior. The report included social scientists testifying in glowing terms about the IQ test results of second-generation Japanese who they described as “hard-working, well-mannered, careful, methodical, respectful to elders, obedient, and clean.”85 However, the report also drew attention to the many associations of Japanese immigrants in Canada that not only held the local Japanese community together but also kept it closely linked to the ancestral homeland.

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The report scripted roles for second-generation Canadian Japanese as cultural bridges between Canada and Japan, employing terminology that indicated confusion about the relative importance of blood and culture: “Because they have a strain of Japanese blood in their veins, it is easier for [the Nisei] to understand the conditions, ideals, traditions, customs, and sentiments of Japan. They also know well the Canadian ideals, traditions, manners and customs, since they were born and have grown up and been publicly educated in Canada.”86 During the 1930s such a bridging role was scripted for second-generation Japanese throughout the Americas. The report’s final passage stressed the loyalty of Canadian Japanese, 80 percent of whom were Canadian citizens, to their adopted country, but also addressed the difficult position that individuals of Japanese descent found themselves in as relations worsened between Canada and Japan: “In view of the current situation of the European war, they have pledged allegiance to Canada as JapaneseCanadians. Ominous clouds have recently begun to gather over the Pacific, as well. While the Japanese-Canadians sincerely hope that these dark clouds will be cleared up in the near future, they are in a difficult situation sandwiched between their fatherland and their adopted motherland on both sides of the Pacific.”87 This was a prescient analysis of the precarious situation in which not only Japanese Canadians but also Japanese immigrants elsewhere in the Americas would soon find themselves. Lineage (Race) and Transnational Ambiguities The official activities of the Congress of Overseas Brethren in Tokyo came to an end on 8 November with a closing ceremony and a free kabuki performance, compliments of the Sho ˉchiku Corporation. The first play performed that evening on behalf of the delegates was titled “Vanquish One’s Enemies.”88 The inclusion in the Congress program of a performance with such a theme indicates that organizers of the Congress viewed the delegates as unambiguously part of the Japanese nation and therefore supportive of the Japanese government’s policies, in this case the war with China. The Congress of Overseas Brethren was an exercise in harnessing the resources of and directing the allegiances of overseas Japanese that largely ignored the transnational ambiguities that defined their lives. One year later, Japan initiated war against the United States, Britain, and other Allied Powers. By disrupting regular communications between Japan and the Americas, the war rendered the Central Overseas Japanese Society, the main legacy of the first Congress of Overseas Brethren, largely functionless only one year after its establishment. The war represented a cataclysmic turning point for many individuals of Japanese descent in the Americas, whereas for others the effect was less pronounced. The attack on Pearl Harbor augmented longstanding racial hostilities directed toward individuals of Japanese descent in the United States, Canada, and Peru. American government officials adopted the interpretation, so often

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put forth by Japanese officials themselves, that blood was more important than place of residence or even citizenship in determining loyalty. This was the justification for a mass internment of individuals of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens by birth, on the West Coast (the large population of individuals of Japanese descent in Hawai’i was spared internment en masse, however). The Canadian and Peruvian governments responded in a similar fashion based on the same sweeping misinterpretation of where the loyalties of all individuals of Japanese descent lay. In Canada almost all Japanese Canadians were interned, whereas the Peruvian government collaborated with its American counterpart to send eighteen hundred Peruvian civilians of Japanese descent for confinement in the United States. The Mexican government, under pressure from the United States, also relocated within Mexico large numbers of individuals of Japanese descent. In contrast, Japanese immigrants in Argentina, Bolivia (with the exception of twenty-nine individuals who were sent to the United States for internment), Chile (with some notable exceptions), and especially Paraguay fared far better on balance than their counterparts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Peru. The case of Brazil is especially interesting. The Vargas government, sometimes criticized for the assimilation policies it instituted in the 1930s to transform its large immigrant population into ethnic Brazilians, resolutely rejected the notion that blood was more significant than citizenship with regards to its population of individuals of Japanese descent. Throughout the war, the Vargas regime distinguished between Japanese nationals, who suffered many restrictions and, in some cases, relocation, and Brazilian nationals of Japanese descent, who suffered no legal restrictions.89 Naturalized citizenship had long been available to Japanese immigrants, so Brazilian nationals of Japanese descent were not limited to those born in Brazil. Brazil has a tortured history of racism that should not be ignored. But in this instance, at least with respect to individuals of Japanese descent, the government of Brazil distinguished itself by insisting that citizenship was more important than blood (race). Japanese officials and commentators had long recommended that Japanese in the Americas and in other areas outside the empire assimilate into their local environments, but also to bear in mind that, on the basis of blood, they were members of the Yamato race for all eternity, with certain duties therein. Prescriptions for how members of the second generation were to maintain the Yamato spirit even while assimilating into the local environment were often convoluted, however, because these two goals were often in tension in ways that defied reconciliation. For example, in the same year as the Congress, the Immigrant Problem Research Association published “The Problem of Second Generation Overseas Japanese,” a book of collected essays. The contributors agreed on the necessity of maintaining, at a fundamental level, the Japanese spirit in second-generation overseas Japanese. But the following prescription for Nisei in South America is indicative of the general inability of commentators to provide anything more than

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platitudes when called upon to define this proper balance: “The goal in educating second generation Japanese in South America must be to maintain at a basic level the Japanese racial/ethnic (minzoku) spirit while fostering harmonious connections with the South American racial/ethnic (minzoku) spirit.”90 A comparison between the Japanese state’s efforts to maintain the loyalty (and citizenship) of overseas second-generation Japanese and its granting of secondclass status to colonial subjects suggests that blood, specifically being able to trace one’s lineage to a family register in Japan proper (naichi koseki  ), served as a trump card in determining the degree of membership in the Japanese national community. The family registration system established during the Meiji period, which assumed its mature form with what is sometimes referred to as the “1899 system,” incorporated into the Japanese nation various ethnic and racial minorities present, in small numbers, in Japan at that time. From 1899 on, however, full citizenship was essentially limited to male descendants of families with registers in Japan proper through a system of jus sanguinis (by parentage). Today citizenship and, in a broader sense, membership in the Japanese national community remains fundamentally based on one’s lineage. The government’s adoption in 1990 of a program of issuing special visas to individuals of Japanese descent from South America in order to alleviate a labor shortage evidenced the stress on lineage, which in Japan’s case is hardly different from privileging race. At the time these special visas were instituted in 1990, individuals of Japanese descent from South America were seen as more desirable than, say, immigrants from the Middle East.91 Regardless of the popularity, in discourse, of the mixed-race (mixed-nation) theory of the Japanese nation during the last decades of Imperial Japan, the family register system remained fundamental. In terms of the importance of lineage, there is a clear line of continuity from 1899 through to the present that runs through the imperial era. The historian Tessa Morris-Suzuki wrote of how individuals from Japan proper were distinguished from colonial subjects: In the case of Japan, a single coherent framework was used to separate formal nationality from substantive citizenship; that is, to divide the rights and duties of subjects of the colonies [gaichi] from those of “Japanese proper” [naichi], and so to deal simultaneously with the questions of unequal civic rights and conscription, and with the problem of the potential intermingling of people from different parts of the empire. This framework was the koseki or family register system, which has been described as creating “states within a state.” In other words, while all colonial peoples possessed “Japanese nationality”—Nihon kokuseki—in terms of international law, they also had what might be termed a ‘regional citizenship’ in terms of their family registration [koseki]. Each colony had its own family registration law, and people were not free to move their registration between one colony and another, or between the colonized “external territories” [gaichi] and “Japan proper” [naichi]. This system did not in itself prevent the movement of people between different parts of the empire, but it did ensure that (for example) colonial migrants

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to Japan were always distinguishable from the metropolitan population in terms of legal status.92

The status of women, even those with a family register in Japan proper, resembled that of colonial subjects in the sense that while they were Japanese nationals, they did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. But wherever Japanese from Japan proper went, they maintained the all-important naichi registration. They could exercise their core membership in the Japanese nation even after extended absences. It is generally accepted that, based on a continuum ranging from “association” with colonial subjects on one end to “assimilation” of colonial subjects on the other end, Japanese policies tended toward the latter side of the continuum. Such comparisons between the policies of the imperial powers are fraught with difficulties, but it is clear in any case that by 1940 Japan’s policies of assimilation toward colonial subjects were approaching their peak of intensity. Theoretically, if Japanese colonial subjects assimilated by adopting the Japanese language and culture, they could enjoy the same benefits of membership in the national community as did the Japanese themselves. In practice, however, colonial subjects who thoroughly assimilated nonetheless were excluded from equal social, economic, and political participation because they were still seen as not truly Japanese, that is, as not equal to Japanese whose ancestry was based in the archipelago. Although there were some differences in the legal status of, for example, Korean residents of Japan proper and Korean residents of Korea (as well as between Japanese residents of Japan proper and Japanese residents of the colonies), the bottom line was that Japan granted colonial subjects, wherever they resided in the empire, nationality but not citizenship. At the time, various minorities in the United States and within the jurisdiction of other imperial powers experienced similar treatment whereby they were denied the full rights of citizenship on the basis of race and other factors. In Japan’s case, both ethnicity and the family registration system were invoked to award or to deny privileges, but however much commentators might stress the mixed-race theory of the Japanese nation, in practice one’s place of family registration still trumped ethnicity. A Korean who did not speak Japanese and thus was obviously not assimilated into Japanese culture could be denied, on the basis of ethnicity, the fruits of equal membership in the imperial community. However, a Korean who spoke flawless Japanese and who was culturally Japanese might win admission to one of the prestigious imperial universities but still later be denied career advancement and, in a more general sense, equal membership in the national community on the basis of race because he was a Japanese subject of Korean race. The family registration system was the ace card employed to protect the privileges of those originating from Japan proper, the trunk race. As the historian John Dower has described, Japanese officials viewed assimilation as a means for colonial subjects to assume their “proper place” in a hierarchical system of

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nationality in which the Japanese would forever occupy the highest echelon.93 But where did Japanese emigrants to areas outside of Japanese political authority fit into this view of the nation—what was their “proper place”? What seems like a disproportionate effort by Japanese officialdom to channel the spiritual affiliation of the progeny of Japanese emigrants living beyond the political authority of the Japanese state evidences the privileged position of imperial subjects who originated from Japan proper. By the time of the Congress of Overseas Brethren in 1940, there were relatively few Japanese emigrants residing outside of the formal and informal empire, approximately half a million. Thus, the number of Japanese, including their progeny, living in areas outside of Japanese political authority was alone dwarfed, by a factor of almost fifty to one, by the number of Koreans over which the Japanese government ruled and held considerable authority to direct, through policies of assimilation, their sense of nation. Why expend resources fighting against the process of assimilation that the so-called second generation in, for example, the distant Americas was likely to undergo when there were so many colonized peoples in need of assimilation, a process that required infrastructure such as schools? The fact that overseas Japanese and their progeny traced their lineage to family registers in Japan proper underlay to a considerable extent the obsession with their sense of nationhood. Japanese citizenship was almost always available to overseas second-generation Japanese who chose to embrace it (many did not), however estranged they might have become from Japanese ethnicity. This situation was very different from that of colonial subjects who were often saddled with the duties of nationality (although they were largely, until the later years of the war, exempt from military conscription) without enjoying any of the rights of citizenship, however seamlessly they may have become ethnically Japanese. Nazi and Fascist ideologues also stressed blood ties in laying claim to overseas “Germans” and “Italians.” Although Nazi Party officials invoked race in laying claim to overseas “Germans” (or, more specifically, overseas “Aryans”), they were in many instances faced with reaching out to individuals whose ancestors had left Europe even before the modern German state, not to mention the nation, was formed and who therefore had little reason to feel allegiance to any German regime.94 In terms of the timing of emigration, the case of Italy appears to fall between that of Japan and Germany, but probably closer to Japan. Some emigration predated the formation of the modern Italian state, but most was subsequent to it.95 Large-scale emigration from Japan began only after the modern centralized state was in place, and the fact that in many cases the Japanese government had maintained connections with overseas Japanese communities from their origin facilitated efforts to reach out to them in 1940. The Japanese state’s more continuous connections with overseas Japanese communities resulted not only from the timing of the emigration, however, but also from the Japanese government’s

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particular sensitivity to the treatment of its emigrants in a world divided between whites and nonwhites. There is also a more sinister interpretation to be drawn from the Japanese government’s efforts to “nationalize,” in other words to claim overseas Japanese in the Americas for the Japanese nation. It was perhaps in order to manufacture the sort of distraction that great powers seek to create for their rivals that the Japanese government sought to claim all overseas Japanese as imperial subjects loyal to Japan. If the local authorities believed such sweeping claims, the presence of communities, especially large communities, of Japanese immigrants could prove to be a security concern. As my colleague Friedrich Schuler has documented, the imperial Japanese state developed subversive overseas networks in the Americas that employed in percentage terms only a tiny fraction of the members of overseas Japanese communities.96 One result of these subversive networks, however, was to cast suspicion on entire communities, making them a security headache for the host countries because of perceived threat. The fact that certain overseas Japanese, including many attendees at the Congress, often espoused the official line with their own comments about the Yamato race hardly negates the existence of a tremendous plurality of views among Japanese immigrants in the Americas, especially among the second generation, who were barely heard from during the Congress. Those Japanese residing outside of the empire faced, through choice, a situation similar to that thrust upon Japan’s colonial subjects: whether or not to assimilate to the dominant culture and, if so, to what extent. In many places those who did thoroughly assimilate nonetheless continued to face racial discrimination, an experience similar to the “koseki discrimination” colonial subjects within Japan’s empire experienced. First-generation Japanese immigrants in the Americas had good reason to wonder whether their progeny, however much they might try to assimilate into the local culture, would ever be accepted as true equals by hegemonic whites, a fear that no doubt underlay the concern with maintaining the second-generation’s ties with Japan. Nonetheless, claims by Japanese officials that by definition blood rendered all overseas Japanese thoroughly loyal to their country of ancestry were gross distortions. However much the Japanese government might trumpet the importance of blood, many overseas Japanese saw their futures tied to their country of residence, not to their country of ancestry. Most overseas Japanese lived transnational lives, to be sure, but it was trans-nationality typically defined by self-interest. It is no secret, however, that trans-nationality tends not to fare well when the “trans” part of the equation features countries at war with each other.

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conc lu sion

By the time that Imperial Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, the Asia-Pacific War had resulted in the deaths of twenty to thirty million people, mostly Asians. For the Japanese, too, not only in Japan proper but also in the colonies, the last year of the war, the defeat, and its aftermath were catastrophic, a genuine dark valley of death, deprivation, and forced repatriation. In contrast, the overnight collapse of the Empire of Japan represented liberation for long-suffering colonized imperial subjects. For Japanese immigrants who had endured internment in the Americas, Japan’s defeat presented the chance, in local environments that remained hostile, to try to piece together shattered lives. In the United States, it became politically problematic in some quarters, until internment was redressed, to broach in a nuanced scholarly manner the binational status that had characterized Japanese immigrants in the period leading up to Pearl Harbor. This transnational status characterized attendees at the Congress of Overseas Brethren in Celebration of the 2,600th Anniversary of the Empire of Japan, the subject of chapter 6. In academe, scholars of American studies jealously guarded the narrative of Japanese Americans as solely belonging to American history. Transnational intrusions risked undermining the story of a wartime injustice inflicted upon American citizens who happened to be of Japanese ancestry before this wrong was officially recognized. Scholars in Japanese studies drew similarly strict boundaries. Few centers for Japanese studies in the United States include the Japanese American experience within their intellectual domain. However, the fact that many Japanese immigrants had loyalties divided between the United States and their ancestral country is hardly out of line with the experiences of other immigrant groups. It is not good history to pigeonhole their experiences as either American or Japanese as though they must fit neatly into only one national history. After internment was officially redressed in 1988 it became less treacherous to discuss, without appearing to support President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (1882–1945) issuance of Executive Order 9066 (19 February 1942),

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the complex transnational status of Japanese Americans in the period before, and even after, 7 December 1941. Scholars of Japanese history can contribute to a better understanding of overseas Japanese communities in many areas. Promising lines of inquiry include a comprehensive study documenting the interconnectedness of overseas Japanese communities throughout the Americas and elsewhere and the Empire of Japan. Overseas Japanese and their progeny did not visit only Japan proper to see relatives, attend college, or to work. They also traveled to the colonies. Opportunities for study and work were available throughout the empire. Overseas Japanese reemigrated not only to Manchuria, but also to other areas of the empire where, in contrast to white-dominated societies, they would occupy the top of the racial hierarchy. By 1940 overseas communities were linked with all parts of the empire, a relationship characterized by a high degree of mobility considering the distances involved. Although the cult of the pioneer that encouraged emigration disappeared from most postwar definitions of the Japanese national identity, overseas Japanese communities in the Americas, unlike those in the colonies, did not disintegrate after Japan’s surrender. A study of these communities’ connections to Imperial Japan could be extended through to the postwar era. This would provide an understanding of discontinuities but also of continuities in the relationship between these overseas communities and the ancestral country. The field would also benefit from more social histories of the now vanished Japanese communities in the colonies, as well as from more social histories of colonized subjects, particularly those that draw a more nuanced picture of who benefited from and who suffered under Japanese occupation, instead of portraying the colonized as victims across the board. Imperial Japan’s territory was reduced, in defeat, to Japan proper, which has resulted in many studies of Imperial Japan that have focused almost exclusively on the area that today constitutes Japan. It would be a mistake for future studies of Imperial Japan to assume that same limited geographical framework. However difficult it is to expand one’s focus to what by its zenith was a vast, diverse, and multilingual empire, this approach is necessary to understand Imperial Japan as the empire that it was rather than contributing to the misleading “island history” approach. The collapse of the empire clarified, to a considerable extent, the boundaries of the Japanese nation from 1945 on. This lucidity was provided by Japan’s postwar policy of disowning former colonial subjects, including even those who had served in the Imperial Military. Former colonial subjects who had been provided Japanese nationality (if not the full benefits of citizenship) during the imperial era were denied even nationality in the postwar period.1 The empire’s collapse quickly displaced the imperial-era discourse portraying Japan as a great melting pot of races. But even during the imperial era, had the lofty rhetoric about the mixed-race nation ever challenged in any fundamental way the primacy of

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lineage—being able to trace one’s lineage to Japan proper according to the 1899 system, as the basis for doling out the social, economic, and political fruits of membership in the national community? One transwar continuity that has proven tenacious through to the present is the dominant role that lineage has played in defining citizenship in Japan. Although Imperial Japan’s attempt to dominate Asia militarily ended in disaster, it nonetheless helped overturn the Euro-American imperialist order in Asia, an order that earlier in the century Japan had sought to join, rather than to disrupt. The historical debate about Japan’s role in toppling imperialism in Asia is as contentious as it is transnational. Outside of Japan, few commentators are willing to offer Japan the sort of undiluted credit for the subversion of the EuroAmerican imperialist order that conservative Japanese commentators appropriate for their country even as they typically fail to recognize the predatory nature of Japan’s own imperialism. However, it is also true that commentators in Europe and the United States have often failed to grasp fully what the history of racism and imperialism meant to nonwhites throughout the world, including in Asia. The Burmese political leader Ba Maw (1893–1977), in his memoir of the World War II era, when Japanese occupation was followed by independence from the British, provided a nuanced interpretation of Japan’s role in undermining Euro-American dominance that called to task imperialists and racists of all varieties: “The case of Japan is indeed tragic. Looking at it historically, no nation has done so much to liberate Asia from white domination, yet no nation has been so misunderstood by the very peoples whom it has helped either to liberate or to set an example to in many things. Japan was betrayed by her militarists and their racial fantasies. Had her Asian instincts been true, had she only been faithful to the concept of Asia for the Asians that she herself had proclaimed at the beginning of the war, Japan’s fate would have been very different. No military defeat could then have robbed her of the trust and gratitude of half of Asia or even more, and that would have mattered a great deal in finding for her a new, great, and abiding place in a postwar world in which Asia was coming into her own. Even now, even as things actually are, nothing can ever obliterate the role Japan has played in bringing liberation to countless colonial peoples.”2 Ba Maw does not represent an “Asian viewpoint,” for no such monolithic interpretation in this area exists, but his assessment is useful for drawing attention to the ambiguities that characterized Imperial Japan’s role within Asia. Japan did not immediately grant independence to the colonies formerly controlled by Euro-American powers over which it gained control during the war (nor did it have any intention of freeing, for example, Korea). Japanese authorities were typically as exploitative of the natives as had been the former colonial overlords. The Japanese did not prove to be liberators, at least not in a direct sense. Nonetheless, Japan’s attack on Western imperialism in Asia weakened the other imperialist powers’ grip on their colonies and also inspired liberation movements. More than anything, Japan’s modernity proved the fallacy of Euro-American

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racial and cultural superiority, and its example served as an inspiration to nonwhites and non-Christians to overthrow the imperialist order. The subject of chapters 3, 4, and 5 is wartime tourism. If I had not already been halfway through my field research in Japan when I decided that I could no longer ignore the topic of tourism, I might have committed this entire book to this theme. The original research and grant proposal barely touched upon tourism, but I encountered examples of tourism’s vibrancy in 1940 so often during my early months of archival work that my attention turned toward this engrossing subject. Had I devoted the entire book to wartime tourism, there still would have been room for additional studies about leisure travel in modern Japan. The field would be well served by a comprehensive study of intraempire tourism, from Karafuto to the South Seas, throughout the imperial era. Separately, an analysis of heritage tourism across the twentieth century would inform us about how the telling of the national history through heritage sites evolved in Japan during that century ruptured by cataclysmic defeat. It would also sharpen our understanding of the links between imperial-era and postwar mass consumerism. Historians should pay more attention to self-administered forms of citizenship training in general. We surely cannot credit or blame, to cite a contemporary example, the American government for the fact that every summer many parents buckle the kids into the minivan for a “vacation” to national heritage sites even if the state plays a role in shaping the sites themselves. The kids, for their part, likely would prefer Disneyland or the nearest amusement park to heritage sites (of course, Disney now also represents American heritage, albeit not in a form defined by the state). So why do people visit national heritage sites?3 This is a simple question, but do we fully understand the motivations that underlie this widespread, global phenomenon, not to mention more complex topics such as reception? Presumably such visits are genuinely fun for some people. Could they result from a strong feeling of patriotic duty in others? For some do they justify as educational a vacation that otherwise might seem frivolous? When children are involved in visits to heritage sites, is it a question of trying to provide them with as many advantages as possible in order that they excel in educational systems substantially based on civics and national history? Is there a prestige factor at work, a form of keeping up with the Joneses, the Bernards, or the Tanakas? It is likely that a combination of these and other factors explains the practice, individual examples of which would nonetheless need to be contextualized in order to understand the specificities as well as the generalities. The role of heritage tourism in shaping popular memories of the past may well be as influential as the roles played by K-12 schooling and the mass media in this area (and it is often linked with these), and should be considered prominently when historians discuss vectors of popular historical memory. What is clear from the growing literature on tourism is that by the 1930s regimes of diverse political stripes throughout the world understood the value of

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employing leisure travel to promote the national ideology. It may seem astonishing that large numbers of Germans continued to tour the fatherland during the Nazi era even as their government committed heinous crimes, genocide carried out by the most modern means imaginable. However, the issue here is not the checkered nature of modernity. Rather, the point is that one finds national heritage tourism alive and well even under the most repugnant of governments because it is typically regime affirming. The transnational literature about the mass mobilization of modern societies for total war would benefit by better integrating the role played by heritage tourism in this area. In a broader sense, in peacetime and in wartime, national heritage tourism is a means by which people in modern societies are mobilized and mobilize themselves behind the prevailing national ideology (and, in some cases, in opposition to the predominant ideology), making it an important field of inquiry for social scientists. Chapter 2 analyzes the intersection of mass participation, dutiful consumption, and reactionary modernism. I am often struck by the absence or near absence of the nation from accounts of wartime Japan. In his autobiography written late in life, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), who did so much to introduce modernity into Japan, remembered a time soon after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 when he was concerned that although his country had developed a modern, centralized state, it still had no nation. Fukuzawa compared the people in early Meiji to a “rubber doll,” so lacking did he find their concern for and interest in the affairs of the nation. Scholarship by Irokawa Daikichi and others has called into question the notion that, even early in the Meiji era, the Japanese people were passive about the affairs of the nation. In any case, Fukuzawa’s appraisal of the popular sense of nation by the end of the nineteenth century was glowing: “At present the onetime ‘rubber dolls’ have developed into fine enterprising citizens.”4 Yet one gets the impression, from many accounts of wartime Japan, that by the late 1930s the Japanese people had either reverted to rubber dolls that were tossed around by the all-powerful state or had assumed the slightly more honorable role of passive resisters who disapprovingly watched even as they could not actively oppose the “militarists” who pushed Japan into a dark valley of reckless war. The telling of history in this manner conveniently lays blame on the state while exculpating the people from responsibility for the war. There are of course degrees of blame. It is wrong to assign the same responsibility to a peasant that one would assign to a government minister. Nonetheless, how is fifteen years of war and mobilization possible without popular agency? Accounts of wartime Japan that minimize popular agency also have played into the hands of scholars who adamantly deny the applicability of fascism to wartime Japan, for fascism requires popular involvement. How can one ignore the dynamic mass participatory and consumerist element to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations? Far from being rubber dolls or passive resisters, tens of millions of Japanese thoroughly embraced this nationalistic,

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downright jingoistic, celebration of the fatherland. They immersed themselves in accounts of the edifying national history, observed precisely timed rituals en masse, penned patriotic songs and essays, attended patriotic exhibitions, and visited heritage sites, activities facilitated not simply by the state but also by nonstate actors including the print media, department stores, and private railway companies. It might be comforting to dismiss the 2,600th anniversary celebrations and indeed everything about the 1930s and early 1940s as a bizarre, spasmodic departure by Japan from the correct path to modernity before it resumed, in the aftermath of defeat and with the help of American overseers, its normal path of development toward the liberal democracy that it is today. But the 2,600th anniversary celebrations epitomized modernity, albeit modernity combined with romantic nationalism, a combination that the historian Jeffrey Herf has termed reactionary modernism. The labor service to expand and beautify the imperial topography in which mass numbers of Japanese partook was one of many examples of this combination of the modern and mystical. The transporting of more than a million imperial subjects from throughout the empire (e.g., the Concordia Association youth brigade traveled by steamship and train) to and from Nara Prefecture in order that they could perform short stints of labor enlarging and beautifying contrived imperial heritage sites was an exercise in modernity. The myth-history characterized by the notion of the unbroken imperial line, about which labor service volunteers received a heavy dose of indoctrination, was decorated with a heavy coat of mystical mumbo jumbo. This romantic nationalism was the reactionary part of the reactionary modernism equation. A similar example of this curious combination was the modern social science stamp of authenticity provided to the Emperor Jimmu narrative by the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu. Whereas in the area of the economy many aspects of the “1940 system” continued to define Japan well into the postwar period, the unbroken imperial line ideology so celebrated in 1940 and analyzed in chapter 1 was bruised by defeat in 1945. In an address delivered on 11 February 1946, the first celebration of National Foundation Day after Japan’s surrender, Nanbara Shigeru (1889–1974), president of To ˉkyo ˉ Imperial University, called for critical analysis of imperial history, territory that largely had been off limits previously: “Until quite recently we have held to the beliefs of our forefathers that the Japanese people had lived, from time immemorial, with immutable reverence toward the Imperial House as the founders of our nation, their unbroken line with an everlasting destiny. Today, however, may not be the year of twenty-six hundred and something as has been believed. How much of this is real historical fact? How much is myth and legend? Such questions must be solved by positive and comparative historical study. A thoroughgoing investigation must be carried out in the field of Japanese history in a truly critical and objective manner.”5 Even before Nanbara’s address, which was delivered six months after Japan’s surrender, some scholars had already taken up, with zest, the task of empirically

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debunking various myths surrounding the supposed 2,600-year history of the imperial house. Many additional scholars have contributed to this task in the subsequent decades. The institution of the emperor was reformed after 1945 to make it compatible with Japan’s postwar liberal democratic polity and mass consumer society, a history that I have analyzed in a previous monograph.6 But above I carefully selected the term “bruised” in lieu of stronger terms such as “battered” or “obliterated” to describe what became of the unbroken imperial ideology after 1945. This is because the various imperial myths have never been unambiguously repudiated at the official level. The lack of official refutation is abundantly evident in Japan’s mnemonic landscape. The Japanese government, through the Imperial Household Agency, continues to maintain and to treat as sacred Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum, as well as the contrived burial sites of other emperors (of whom several, like Emperor Jimmu, never existed). The stone monuments marking “Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites” that were raised at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations remain standing as well, with no appended disclaimers. These are only two of many possible examples, and mnemonic sites are only one area of Japanese society where the lack of negation is apparent. Perhaps such relics of the unbroken imperial line ideology at its zenith should be preserved, but explicitly as negative heritage sites employed to educate people about the ways in which modern nation-states invent and manipulate history, and of the willingness of people to accept such contrivances. In 1964, Tokyo hosted the Summer Olympics, which Japan previously had been awarded to stage in 1940 in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations only to forfeit them in the aftermath of the China Incident. A comprehensive, scholarly monograph about the meaning(s) of the 1964 Summer Olympics, which marked the reentry of a rehabilitated Japan into the international community, is available neither in English nor in Japanese, and thus represents a necessary future line of inquiry for historians. Whatever face the “New Japan” displayed to the world through the Olympics, at home the sorting out of what to preserve and what to discard from Imperial Japan was still in process, including in the area of the unbroken imperial line ideology. Approximately two years after the Tokyo Olympics, in June 1966, the Diet, then controlled by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), voted to reestablish National Foundation Day as a holiday. But the LDP remained hesitant about what day to designate for celebrating the national foundation. Over of period of five months beginning in July 1966, the ten-member Foundation Day Advisory Council (Kenkoku kinenbi shingikai) summoned expert witnesses to provide testimony and solicited citizen input, through public hearings, about which day was most appropriate to celebrate the foundation of Japan. The question of which day National Foundation Day would be celebrated was central to the issue of precisely what “national foundation” the holiday would commemorate. Far rightist groups such as the Association of Shintoˉ Shrines, which had skillfully orchestrated a decade-long grassroots campaign to have National

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Foundation Day reestablished, were adamant that it again be celebrated, along imperial lines, on 11 February. Left-wing historians and other concerned citizens reacted fiercely against the proposal to reestablish in any form the prewarstyle National Foundation Day that commemorated the contrived notion that Emperor Jimmu inaugurated the imperial line on that day more than 2,600 years previously, precisely the sort of retrograde mysticism they viewed as incompatible with the “renovated” Japan. At the public hearings, approximately fifty “average” citizens from throughout the archipelago voiced their opinion about which day to celebrate the national foundation. The transcription of their testimony includes eloquent denunciations, by those opposed to 11 February, of the spurious nature of the unbroken imperial line ideology and condemnations of its wartime role in convincing Japanese that, as superior beings, they were destined to rule over Asia. However, a majority of those who testified invoked in a positive sense at least snippets of, and often in wholesale form, the imperial history so celebrated at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations to argue in favor of 11 February, even as they nonetheless affirmed the postwar polity.7 It was a strange mix, to be sure, but one that evidenced the tenacity of the imperial myth-history at the popular level more than two decades after the war, and also one that suggested the applicability of the concept of reactionary modernism to liberal democracies, too. In my previous monograph, I analyzed both the grassroots movement to reestablish Foundation Day and the official response, which was to designate 11 February as a day off from work but then to refrain from offering clear guidance on exactly what the holiday, in the postwar context, commemorated.8 It is largely for this reason that seven decades after the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of the foundation of the imperial dynasty, many Japanese, especially the younger generations, tend to be at a loss, if queried, to explain the meaning of National Foundation Day. Its reestablishment has proved a failure in promoting patriotism and encouraging unity because the wartime baggage severely limited how it could be commemorated. Although imperial history continues to be featured in accounts of the national history, to greater or lesser degrees and with what sort of slant depending on who is doing the telling, it no longer defines national history as it did at the time of the twenty-sixth centennial. Most Japanese have heard of Emperor Jimmu, but here, too, there is much confusion. Did he in fact exist? This question tends to unnerve many Japanese, as though they are afraid of giving an answer that might displease. As for Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum, many Japanese only have a vague, if any, sense that such a place exists, and few have visited it. Nearby Kashihara Shrine, where the compound, thanks to the expansion that took place in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, is so vast and green as to constitute something of a nature preserve (as is true of many shrines in Japan), still attracts visitors, albeit in nowhere near the numbers that came in 1940. In some ways, societal change has left behind the unbroken imperial line ideology, so much so that many Japanese are astonished to hear comparisons

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made between the distasteful cult of the leader in contemporary North Korea, which serves as Japan’s present-day bogeyman (even though the real worry is the rise of China), and the wartime cult of the emperor in their own country. But in other ways, the unbroken imperial line ideology maintains a measure of influence surprising for an interpretation of the national identity with such pernicious residue. When Japanese were debating, in the late 1990s and early years of the twenty-first century, the propriety of changing the Imperial House Law to allow a female to ascend to the throne, popular sentiment was volatile and difficult to decipher. At times, polls showed overwhelming popular support for changing the law to allow for female tenno ˉ, and yet a closer reading of the situation revealed that many Japanese felt unease about breaking with “tradition.” Far rightists bluntly emphasized that, if the male bloodline were polluted by letting the lineage pass through a female tenno ˉ, then Japan would cease to exist. For these self-appointed defenders of Japan, the horror from this apocalyptic scenario was not that a female tenno ˉ might occupy the throne in a caretaker fashion, as eight empresses have done previously, but rather that her successor be one of her children, instead of the imperial line reverting back to a prince of the male bloodline. When Prince Hisahito was born in 2006, Japan’s politicians immediately declared the heir problem solved in order to avoid having to address a dilemma that, much to the surprise of some commentators who thought that only faint shadows of the unbroken imperial line ideology survived, had become entangled in the national myth-history. What it meant for gender equality in Japan, and for Japan’s standing in the twenty-first century world, to maintain a law that forbids females from serving as the national symbol, proved to be secondary to claims of tradition. It seems unlikely that an official reckoning that might invalidate some of the more egregious imperial myths will occur anytime soon in Japan (but who knows?), and there is reason to question whether any sort of official investigation in this area might go nationalistically awry. Here one could introduce comparisons with other countries to claim that Japan overall has done worse or better than its peers in the international system of nation-states in taking or avoiding responsibility for dark chapters in its past. What is clear, however, is that there has been no explicit, official attempt to repudiate the imperial myths, contrivances that were employed during the past century and a half toward racist, imperialist, and sexist ends.

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Not e s

Introduction 1.  Considering the extent of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations and the richness of the historical themes with which they intersect, it is all the more surprising that this topic is largely absent from English-language literature. The Japanese-language historiography on this seminal national celebration is also curiously limited, perhaps in part because at the time so many of Japan’s leading historians were complicit in the commemoration of a fictitious national founding moment. The one book-length study in Japanese by Furukawa Takahisa documents the planning process leading up to the celebrations, a topic outside the scope of this book. Rather than upholding the pervasive myth that the wartime Japanese state was omnipotent, Furukawa also draws attention to the societal side of these celebrations, a topic upon which I expand. I am puzzled, however, by Furukawa’s downplaying of the ideological aspects of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations that glorified a jingoistic, expansionist agenda, as well as by the absence of or only passing reference to many of the themes addressed in this book. See Furukawa Takahisa, Ko ˉki, banpaku, orinpikku (Chuˉoˉ koˉronsha, 1998). (Note: the place of publication of all Japanese books and other sources is Tokyo unless otherwise indicated.) There are various Japanese-language essay-length studies of aspects of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, many of which I shall introduce below. Sandra Collins’s book on the 1940 Tokyo Olympics that were to be staged in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations represents something of an exception to the dearth of material in English on the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Collins’s book was issued in the form of a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport (vol. 24, no. 8; 2007) titled The 1940 Tokyo Games: The Missing Olympics, Japan, the Asian Olympics, and the Olympic Movement. For additional information on the cancelled 1940 Tokyo Olympics, see Hashimoto Kazuo, Maboroshi no To ˉkyo ˉ Orinpikku (Nihon hoˉsoˉ shuppan kyoˉkai, 1994). 2.  Christopher Hughes, Switzerland (London: Ernest Benn, 1975), 107. I first encountered Hughes’s scholarship on Switzerland in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1991). 3.  R. Tarverdi and Alik Massoudi, eds., Land of Kings (On the Occasion of the Celebration of the 2500th Anniversary of the Founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great, 1971) (Tehran: Regional Cooperation for Development, Social Affairs Committee, 1971), I. In her book comparing the centennial and bicentennial celebrations staged in the United States (1876 and 1976) and in Australia (1888 and 1988), Lyn Spillman concluded that heroic accounts of the foundational moment were central to the centennial and especially the bicentennial celebrations of the

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United States. See Lyn Spillman, Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).   4.  In 1989, a time when few French questioned the legitimacy of their liberal democratic polity, President François Mitterrand (1916–96) presided over a grand bicentennial celebration of the Revolution. The question of how to interpret modern France’s foundational moment two hundred years earlier nonetheless remained quite divisive among the French. For information about the staging of the bicentennial celebration in France in 1989 as well as the controversy surrounding how to remember the Revolution, see Steven L. Kaplan, Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); Steven L. Kaplan, Farewell, Revolution: The Historians’ Feud, France, 1789/1989 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); Michel Vovelle, 1789: L’héritage et la mémoire (Paris: Editions Privat, 2007); Maurice Agulhon, ed., 1789: La Commémoration (Paris: Gallimard, 1999); Pascal Ory, Une Nation pour mémoire (Paris: Presses de la Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1992); and Patrick Garcia, Le Bicentenaire de la Révolution française (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1989).   5.  The most cited case involved works that the historian Tsuda Soˉkichi published in the 1910s and 1920s. In his scholarship, Tsuda suggested that details of the imperial dynasty’s history up through about 200 AD provided in the canonical texts Kojiki and Nihon shoki were mythical in nature. Tsuda came under sustained attack by nationalists in 1939. Forced to resign from his post at Waseda University, he was brought to trial and, in 1942, found guilty of the crime of lèse majesté. Five of his publications were banned. The court’s failure to meet a procedural deadline rendered the verdict invalid, but Tsuda’s ordeal suggests the environment faced by anyone who dared challenge the official line regarding the 2,600-year history of the imperial dynasty. For more information on the case of Tsuda, see Yun-tai Tam, “Rationalism versus Nationalism: Tsuda Soˉkichi (1873–1961),” in History in the Service of the Japanese Nation, ed. John S. Brownlee (Toronto: University of Toronto–York University Joint Centre on Modern East Asia, 1983), 165–88.   6.  Marla Stone, “Staging Fascism: The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution,” Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 2 (1993): 215.   7.  Although I do not employ the term “consumer-subjects,” I agree with Miriam Silverberg’s application of this term to describe Japanese during the 1920s and 1930s. See Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 4.   8.  Until recently, scholars have largely neglected the connection between imperialism and tourism. Louise Young included a section on “The Manchurian Travel Boom” in her Japan’s Total Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 259–68. Gao Yuan, a Japan-based scholar of Chinese origin, has been a pioneer in the study of Japanese tourism to Manchuria. Some of her essays are cited below. See also the special issue of the journal Hosho Gekkan devoted to this topic: Hosho Gekkan: Manshuˉ no tsuˉrizumu 8 (2003). Curiously, the topic of tourism to Korea, Japan’s most important formal colony, has not been addressed in any comprehensive manner, although there are certainly examples of valuable scholarship that predate my focus on the topic. See, for example, Sonia Ryang, “Japanese Travellers’ Accounts of Korea,” East Asian History 13–14 (1997): 133–51; and also Peter Duus’s chapter on pre-1910 travelogues about Korea by Japanese in his The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895– 1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).   9.  Louise Young, “Marketing the Modern: Department Stores, Consumer Culture, and the New Middle Class in Interwar Japan,” International Labor and Working-Class History 55 (1999): 52–70; Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan (Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2003); and Kim Brandt, Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). 10.  See Hatsuda Toˉru, Hyakkaten no tanjo ˉ (Sanseidoˉ, 1993).

190   Notes to Pages 2–6

11.  The Daimaru Department Store in Osaka placed an ad in the 23 November 1940 issue ˉ saka Asahi newspaper stressing that shoppers had only two more days to catch the exof the O hibition on “Racial Eugenics” it was hosting on its sixth floor. The advertisement emphasized that during the course of the exhibition, which was sponsored by the Japan Spiritual Hygiene Association, a booth was available to those seeking advice on “eugenic marriage.” 12.  The Japan Tourist Bureau ( JTB) began publication of its popular travel magazine Tabi in 1924. 13.  In a 1962 essay, Kuwabara Takeo argued that the term “kanko ˉ ” did not exist during the Taishoˉ era. See Kuwabara Takeo, “Taishoˉ gojuˉnen,” Bungei shunjuˉ 40, no. 2 (1962): 76. A keyword search of the National Diet Library’s holdings shows that this term indeed only took hold in the early Shoˉwa era. For the years 1912–26, a search yielded only six items with that term in the title, of which four were the original and the revised editions of the same book. In contrast, a search of the years 1926–45 yielded 141 items. 14.  In a 1986 essay the historian Takaoka Hiroyuki pointed out the seeming contradiction that tourism increased even as authoritarianism grew stronger as the 1930s progressed. See Takaoka Hiroyuki, “Kankoˉ, koˉsei, ryokoˉ: Fashizumuki no tsurizumu,” in Bunka to fashizumu, ed. Akazawa Shiroˉ and Kitagawa Kenzoˉ (ShinNihon shuppansha, 1986), 9–10. 15.  Japan Tsuˉrisuto Byuˉroˉ, Nankin (Hoˉten, 1939). 16.  See Joshua A. Fogel, The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China, 1862–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 285–86. For Nakamura’s travelogue, see Nakamura Koˉya, Shina o iku (Koˉdansha, 1942). 17.  One recent example of tourism’s political significance comes from France. The “Guide to Paris for the Man of the Right” is a handbook about sites in Paris associated with the history of the political Right. The introduction begins, “Paris by right. A dream! A dream realized. It is now possible to traverse Paris from north to south, to experience (de vivre) Paris from dawn until dusk, to live (d’habiter) in Paris from January until December, without ever leaving the ambience, the themes, and the rites of the political Right.” On page 46, for example, the reader is directed to the grave site of the anti-Semite Edouard Drumont (1844–1917), the most fanatical accuser of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935). The Dreyfus affair starkly evidenced the divide between the political Left and Right in France in the 1890s and early 1900s. See Francis Bergeron and Philippe Vilgier, Guide de L’homme de droite a Paris (Paris: La Librairie Francaise, 1995). 18.  For the case of Latvia, see Aldis Purs, “ ‘One Breath for Every Two Strides’: The State’s Attempt to Construct Tourism and Identity in Interwar Latvia,” in Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, ed. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenkere (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 97–115. For the case of Spain, see Sandie Holguin, “ ‘National Spain Invites You’: Battlefield Tourism during the Spanish Civil War,” American Historical Review 110, no. 5 (2005): 1399–1426. For the case of Italy, see Victoria De Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), esp. 180–84. For the case of Nazi Germany, see Kristin Semmens, Seeing Hitler’s Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Shelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. chaps. 4 and 5; and Richard Vahrenkamp, “Automobile Tourism and Nazi Propaganda: Constructing the Munich-Salzburg Autobahn, 1933–1939,” Journal of Transport History 27, no. 2 (2006): 21–38. 19.  By 1940 North China also constituted an important part of this transportation and economic bloc, but tourism to North China, as well as to the rest of the empire, is beyond the scope of this project. 20.  Soyama Takeshi, Shokuminchi Taiwan to kindai tsu ˉrizumu (Seikyusha, 2003). For a travelogue that gives a representative sense of the sites and activities enjoyed by Japanese tourists in Taiwan around 1940, see Akimori Tsunetaro ˉ, Taiwan ryoko ˉ (Osaka, 1941). Akimori was a travel writer.

Notes to Pages 6–8   191

21.  Nippon yuˉsen kaisha, Glimpses of the East (1940), no page number. 22.  In his analysis of Shashin shuˉho ˉ (PWR), David Earhart wrote, “In examining the pages of PWR, four distinct (but overlapping) areas of wartime domestic policy can be identified: first, maintaining physical fitness and health, the building block of a strong workforce and civilian air defense; second, preparing the home and the family for air raids and training for civilian air defense; third, filling the military’s war chest by increasing the level of national savings through purchases of insurance and government bonds, and by making sacrifices—forgoing luxuries, being thrifty, using ersatz or replacement materials, organizing the family and community efficiently, donating goods to precious metals and scrap drives, performing volunteer war work; and fourth, obeying authority, fostering the correct mental attitude toward the war effort, and being a model member of the Yamato race in all situations and at all times.” See David J. Earhart, Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2008), 111. 23.  “Tairiku kokusaku o genchi ni miyo,” Shashin shuˉho ˉ 104 (21 February 1940). The advertisement featured an image of Shinkyoˉ’s Memorial Tower (chuˉreito ˉ). Typically, 1.5 million copies of Shashin shuˉho ˉ were issued, and one study suggested that each issue reached ten people. For readership figures, see Nanba Koˉji, Uchiteshi yamamu: Taiheiyo ˉ senso ˉ to ko ˉkoku no gijutsushatachi (Koˉdansha, 1998), 54–55. 24.  Andre Schmid has already suggested examples of English-language studies, many of them highly respected for their scholarly contributions in various areas, which nonetheless addressed Imperial Japan in terms of “island history.” Andre Schmid, “Colonialism and the ‘Korea Problem’ in the Historiography of Modern Japan: A Review Article,” Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 4 (2000): 951–76. Schmid also offered a few examples of more recent studies that have done a better job of integrating the history of the metropole and the colonies (his primary concern was the absence of Korea), a list I have expanded on below. English-language studies that have succeeded at some level in drawing attention to the complex relationship and interplay between the metropole and one or more of the colonies include but are not limited to E. Taylor Atkins, “The Dual Career of ‘Arirang’: The Korean Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit,” Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 3 (August 2007): 645–87; Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), most notably in the conclusion; Brandt, Kingdom of Beauty; Alexis Dudden, Japan’s Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006); Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003); and Shin’ichi Yamamuro, Manchuria under Japanese Dominion, trans. Joshua A. Fogel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 25.  Willard Price, Pacific Adventure (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1936), 11–12. 26.  For statistics on the numbers of Japanese repatriated after Japan’s surrender, see Lori Watt, “Imperial Remnants: The Repatriates in Postwar Japan,” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (New York: Routledge: 2005), 243–55. 27.  Planners of the Congress clearly had the pocketbooks of overseas Japanese, who had been sending remittances to relatives in Japan for decades, in mind. Yuji Ichioka, John Stephan, and Eiichiro Azuma, who have documented that many Japanese residents of Hawai’i and the continental United States financially supported Japan’s war against China in the years before Pearl Harbor, identified the Congress as a prominent example of putting this support on display. Overseas Japanese communities throughout the world, not just in the United States and Hawai’i, made donations to support their country’s war with China. Such donations are not out of line with other immigrant groups’ support of causes related to their homelands, however, and should not be misinterpreted as exceptional or as evidence in itself of disloyalty toward their country of residence on the part of overseas Japanese. See Yuji Ichioka, “Japanese Immigrant Nationalism: The Issei and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941,”

192   Notes to Pages 8–10

California History 69, no. 3 (1990): 260–75; John J. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest after Pearl Harbor (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1984), esp. 47–54; and Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 28.  John J. Stephan, “Hijacked by Utopia: American Nikkei in Manchuria,” Amerasia Journal 23, no. 3 (1997): 1–42. Most of those who reemigrated were American citizens by birth. 29.  One volume of collected essays that examines various settler communities in the empire is So ˉji Takasaki, ed., Bo ˉcho ˉ suru teikoku no jinryuˉ, vol. 5 of Iwanami ko ˉza: Kindai Nihon to shokuminchi (Iwanami shoten, 1993). 30.  The animated film “Rail of the Star” (Ohoshisama no Rail; dir. Hirata Toshio, 1996), which is based on Kobayashi Chitose’s memoir of her childhood in Korea, largely fits into this genre, although it does provide a sense of the Japanese residents’ comfortable lifestyle before the collapse. For a study of memory patterns among Japanese settlers to Manchuria who were repatriated after the war, see Mariko Tamanoi, Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), esp. chap. 3. 31.  In American universities, for example, Asian American studies has slowly gained a foothold in ethnic studies, and scholars in this field deserve credit for working to integrate the history of minorities, including the contributions of Japanese Americans, into metanarratives of American history. In contrast, most American scholars of Japan with academic homes in Asian studies (as opposed to Asian American studies) or in their disciplines (e.g., history) have paid far less attention to overseas communities until recently. The story of Japanese residing in the Americas at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations is transnational in a way that contradicts lingering territorial lines within academe that suggest that overseas communities are not an appropriate topic to be studied by a historian of Japan, as opposed to a historian of the U.S. or Brazilian experiences. The scholarship of Eiichiro Azuma on the links between Japanese communities in the United States and compatriots in Japan is an important cross-disciplinary and transnational exception. See Eiichiro Azuma, “Pioneers of Overseas Japanese Development: Japanese American History and the Making of Expansionist Orthodoxy in Imperial Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 67, no. 4 (2008): 1–40; and Azuma, Between Two Empires. 32.  Tomiyama Ichiroˉ, “The ‘Japanese’ of Micronesia: Okinawans in the Nan’yoˉ Islands,” in The Japanese Diaspora, ed. Ronald Nakasone (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 57–70. 33.  Robert K. Arakaki, “Theorizing on the Okinawan Diaspora,” in Okinawan Diaspora, ed. Ronald Nakasone (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 37. 34.  See Donald M. McKale, The Swastika outside Germany (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1977); John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), esp. 77–143; and Luc de Caprariis, “ ‘Fascism for Export’? The Rise and Eclipse of the Fasci Italiani all’Estero,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 2 (2000): 151–83. My colleague Victoria Belco kindly brought works on Italian emigration to my attention. 35.  As if a Japanese baby orphaned on a desert island that somehow survived into adulthood would still feel emotional attachment to Japan simply on the basis of blood. 36.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943). This fifteen-volume series has been reprinted in its entirety by Yumani shoboˉ. 37.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku, vol. 3, 214–25. This corresponds to pages 294–305 of vol. 5 of the Yumani reprint of the original fifteen-volume series. 38.  Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Takagi Hiroshi, Kindai tenno ˉsei no bunkashiteki kenkyuˉ (Azekura shoboˉ,

Notes to Pages 10–14   193

1997); Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and Koji Mizoguchi, Archaeology, Society and Identity in Modern Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Mizoguchi wrote (64): A range of media were mobilized for the purpose [of transforming the emperor into the embodiment of the nation], and the imperial mythology featured in such imperial chronicles as the Kojiki and Nihon-shoki, compiled in the late seventh and early eighth centuries to legitimize the then newly established ancient state of Japan and the imperial household, was utilized in a particularly intense manner. The mythology described how the ancestors of the imperial family descended from heaven, created the land and, somewhat contradictorily, conquered and assimilated aboriginal populations. The story implied that traces of the migration of the ancestors of the imperial family and, effectively, the Japanese were identifiable in archaeological evidence. . . . This also meant that the study of the true history of the imperial family and the Japanese . . . had to be strictly regulated. 39.  This contemporary translation from the Doˉmei News Agency, which I have slightly altered in a few places, appeared in Contemporary Japan 9, no. 12 (December 1940), 1606–07. Contemporary Japan was a semigovernmental, English-language publication. 40.  For a thoughtful account of the construction of this tower as well as the evolving use of the term hakko ˉ ichiu, see Walter Edwards, “Forging Tradition for a Holy War: The Hakko ˉ Ichiu Tower in Miyazaki and Japanese Wartime Ideology,” Journal of Japanese Studies 29, no. 2 (2003): 289–324. In his analysis of the changing meaning of the slogan “imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth” (hakko ˉ ichiu), Edwards wrote (319): “The rapid diffusion, at the end of the 1930s, of the hakko ichiu slogan and its expansionist outlook thus brought closure to wartime ideology. Propelled by the worsening war situation, and aided by the coincidental timing of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, it effected a general reinterpretation of Jimmu’s ascension as the start of a continual process of expansion, a process mandated to continue until the Imperial Virtue covered all the world with one roof.” 41.  On the Diamond Jubilee, see David Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820–1977,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 101–64; Walter L. Arnstein, “Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee,” American Scholar 66 (Fall 1997): 591–97; and Edward W. Ellsworth, “Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and the British Press: The Triumph of Popular Imperialism,” Social Studies 56, no. 5 (October 1965): 173–79. 42.  It is easy to single out Thomas Havens for his study titled Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two (New York: Norton, 1978), but his naively titled book appeared more than three decades ago. What is more surprising is that the “dark valley” view of wartime Japan persists, sometimes by name but more commonly in terms of tone, in more recent studies. Even a thoughtful historian such as Elise Tipton employed the term “dark valley” for the title of the chapter about wartime Japan in her recent textbook account of modern Japan. See Elise Tipton, Modern Japan: A Social and Political History (New York: Routledge, 2002). 43.  Tony Smith, “Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century,” Diplomatic History 23, no. 2 (1999): 180. 44.  Mark Neocleous, Concepts in Social Thought: Fascism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), xi. 45.  Peter Duus and Daniel I. Okimoto, “Fascism and the History of Pre-War Japan: The Failure of a Concept,” Journal of Asian Studies 39, no. 1 (November 1979): 65–76. In contrast, Gavan McCormack has criticized the tendency of Western scholars to reject fascism as useful for understanding wartime Japan. See Gavan McCormack, “Nineteen-Thirties Japan: Fascism?” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 14, no. 2 (1982): 20–32. McCormack wrote (29):

194   Notes to Pages 17–19

“In short, Western scholars on Japan argue that the absence of a charismatic leader, or a mass fascist-style party, or a sharply delineated point of transition, or of repression on the scale of Nazi Germany (death camps), or the presence of apparently unbroken continuity between the institutions and elites of Meiji and 1930s Japan, are of sufficient moment to make inappropriate the application of the label ‘fascist’ to Japan.” 46.  Gordon M. Berger, Parties out of Power in Japan, 1931–1941 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 237. 47.  Roger Griffin, ed., Fascism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5. 48.  Walter A. Skya, “Fascist Encounters: German Nazis and Japanese Shinto ˉ Ultranationalists,” in Japan in the Fascist Era, ed. E. Bruce Reynolds (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 133–53. 49.  Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1963). 50.  Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 51.  The case of the Soviet Union in the area of race is more complex. The Communist Party denounced racism in rhetoric. Moreover, at the local level in various regions within the vast Soviet empire the elites were racially or ethnically diverse. Nonetheless, Joseph Stalin and most of the rest of the individuals comprising the dominant class at the center of the Soviet empire were racially white, and the Moscow elite typically looked to the West for models of civilization and viewed the East as backward. My colleague Chia Yin Hsu provided erudite briefings on the case of the Soviet Union from which I profited greatly. 52.  Fujitani Misao, 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire, trans. Shusaburo Hironaga and Eimei Kato (Osaka: Osaka Mainichi and Tokyo Nichi Nichi, 1940), 1–2. 53.  Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 89. 54.  Andrew Gordon has also stressed the transwar nature of Japan’s consumer society. See Andrew Gordon, “Consumption, Leisure, and the Middle Class in Transwar Japan,” Social Science Japan Journal 10, no. 1 (2007): 1–21. 55.  John Dower, “The Useful War,” Daedalus 119, no. 3 (1990): 53. 56.  See Mark Harrison, “The Economics of World War II: An Overview,” in Economics of World War II, ed. Mark Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1–42. 57.  T. A. Bisson, in an essay critical of American trade policy, which he interpreted as supporting Japan’s aggression against China, indignantly brought attention to this in a May 1940 essay. See T. A. Bisson, “American Trade and Japanese Aggression,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 211 (September 1940): 123–29. 58.  For the significance of the concept of “Rich Nation, Strong Army” in Japan’s modern history, see Richard J. Samuels, “Rich Nation, Strong Army”: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). 1. The National History Boom   1.  I would like to thank Tsunoda Mitsuo, bureau chief of Kyo ˉdo ˉ News’ Sendai Office in 2004, for helping me confirm that the 2,600th Anniversary Culture Dome still exists, and that it will remain unopened until 2040.   2.  Shinbun no shinbunsha henshuˉbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen bunkachuˉ so ˉmokuroku (December 1940). The Newspaper’s Newspaper Company also published a supplementary catalogue listing items it had received after the deadline for submission. See Shinbun no shinbunsha henshuˉbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen bunkachuˉ so ˉmokuroku dainihen (August 1941).   3.  The Kojiki (“Records of Ancient Matters”; 712) and the Nihon shoki (“Chronicles of Japan form the Earliest Times to A.D. 697”; 720) are canonical myth-histories of Japan’s origin and early history.

Notes to Pages 19–28   195

  4.  Mt. Takachiho was viewed as the most likely location of Ninigi no Mikoto’s descent from heaven. The grandson of Amaterasu, progenitor of the imperial line, Ninigi was the first imperial ancestor to descend to the land below.   5.  Kusunoki was held up as the model of a loyal retainer for his service to Emperor Go-Daigo who in the fourteenth century sought a restoration of direct rule by the emperor.   6.  For information on the works of music, dance, drama, and film featured in the 26th Centenary Dramatic and Philharmonic Celebrations of the Founding of the Japanese Empire sponsored by the Japan Culture Central League and staged throughout 1940, see Kokusai hoˉdoˉ koˉgei kabushiki kaisha, ed., Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku geino ˉsai (1942).   7.  Rajio nenkan (1941), 6–16. For the list of all NHK broadcasts relating to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, see Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 12, 43–99. This corresponds to pp. 55–111 of vol. 22 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series.   8.  Bruce Cumings wrote of North Korea’s use of the myth of Tan’gun: “In September 1993 North Korea interrupted the ongoing nuclear crisis involving the United States to announce with great fanfare the discovery of Tan’gun’s tomb and a few remains of his skeleton, at a site close to Pyongyang.” See Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 24.   9.  Ishikura Ayako, “Senzen omowaseru, Kita Choˉsen no seikatsu,” in the section “Koe,” Asahi shinbun (Nagoya), 23 January 2003. I learned of this letter through Gavan McCormack’s Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Nation Books, 2004), 183. I am grateful to Kawabata Daishi and Ishida Yuˉki, journalists at the Asahi Newspaper, for providing me with a copy of the letter in the original Japanese. 10.  The official translation appears in David J. Lu, Japan: A Documentary History, vol. 2 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 343–44. 11.  Choˉsen soˉtokufu bunshoka, ed., Kigen nisen roppyakunen o mukaete no warera no kakugo (shoto ˉ) (Keijoˉ, March 1940); and Choˉsen soˉtokufu bunshoka, ed., Kigen nisen roppyakunen o mukaete no warera no kakugo (chuˉto ˉ) (Keijoˉ, March 1940). Largely by luck, I located what may be the only extant copies of these collections of essays in the Miyakonojoˉ Public Library (Miyazaki Prefecture). 12.  Wan-yao Chou, “The Koˉminka Movement in Taiwan and Korea: Comparisons and Interpretations,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon Myers, and Mark Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 40–68. 13.  Richard E. Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 14.  Kim Shi-Jong, Waga sei to shi (Iwanami shoten, 2004), 4. 15.  Ibid., 36. 16.  Ibid., 89. 17.  Ibid., 11. 18.  Kim Chang Kook, Bokura no Keijo ˉ shihan fuzoku daini kokumin gakko ˉ: Aru chinichika no kaiso ˉ (Asahi shinbun shuppan, 2008). 19.  Choˉsen soˉtokufu bunshoka, ed., Kigen nisen roppyakunen o mukaete no warera no kakugo (shoto ˉ), 12. 20.  Ibid., 89–90. 21.  Nintoku, the sixteenth emperor in the traditional order of succession, is thought to have ruled sometime in the fifth century AD. In the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Emperor Go-Daigo’s unsuccessful attempt to restore direct imperial rule (the Kenmu Restoration, 1336–39) against rule by shoguns was canonized as a seminal moment in the national history. Kiyomaro was held up as a model retainer for his protection of the imperial throne from a Buddhist monk intent on usurping it in the eighth century. General Nogi oversaw the siege against the Russian forces at Port Arthur in 1904 and later, on the day of

196   Notes to Pages 28–31

Emperor Meiji’s funeral in 1912, “followed his lord in death” by committing suicide with his wife in a ritual manner. 22.  Cho ˉsen so ˉtokufu bunshoka, ed., Kigen nisen roppyakunen o mukaete no warera no kakugo (shoto ˉ), 43. 23.  Ibid, 9. 24.  For written references to the “2,600th Anniversary Song” in memoirs of Japanese who were in elementary school in 1940, see Seto Tamaki and Kojima Yukoˉ, eds., Mukashi, minna gunkoku sho ˉnen datta (G.B.: 2004), 63, 98, and 198. 25.  Choˉsen soˉtokufu bunshoka, ed, Kigen nisen roppyakunen o mukaete no warera no kakugo (shoto ˉ), 22. 26.  Ibid., 84 27.  Ibid., 4. 28.  Ibid., 37. 29.  Kokutai no hongi: Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan, trans. John O. Gauntlett, edited with an introduction by Robert K. Hall (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 59. 30.  Miura Toˉsaku, Kokutai no hongi seikai (Toˉyoˉ tosho kabushiki goˉshi kaisha, February 1940). 31.  Dan Yazaki, “The Wartime Publishing Industry,” Contemporary Japan 9, no. 5 (May 1940): 596. 32.  Ibid., 599. 33.  Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 88. 34.  “Magazine Business under Emergency Control,” Contemporary Japan 10, no. 11 (November 1941): 1477. This was a translation of the annual summary published in the Shuppan nenkan that year. 35.  This quote is from an unpublished manuscript, which was the basis for the following article published in Japanese translation, that Professor Gordon kindly shared with me: Andrew Gordon, “Shoˉhi, seikatsu, goraku no ‘kansenshi’,” Nichijo ˉ seikatsu no naka no so ˉryokusen, vol. 6 of Iwanami ko ˉza: Ajia, taiheiyo ˉ senso ˉ (Iwanami, 2006), 123–52. A revised version of this essay later appeared in English. See Andrew Gordon, “Consumption, Leisure, and the Middle Class in Transwar Japan,” Social Science Japan Journal 10, no. 1 (2007): 1–21. 36.  Yukio Noguchi, “The 1940 System: Japan under the Wartime Economy,” American Economic Review (1998): 404–7. 37.  There was much talk among educators at the time of the role played by visual culture in shaping children’s ideological allegiances. The elementary and secondary art teachers who gathered at the Kashihara National Foundation Meeting Hall (Kashihara kenkoku kaikan) in August 1940 for the All Japan Art Education Conference heard Kimura Motomori (1895– 1946), a professor at Kyoˉto Imperial University, emphasize the important role played by the visual arts in shaping ideological consciousness. Records of the conference suggest that this was the central theme that year—other speakers explicitly outlined the role of art education in cultivating loyalty to the throne. Kimura’s observation about the role of visual cues in formulating historical and ideological consciousness could be extended to mnemonic sites in general. See Kimura Motomori, “Hyoˉgen to jikaku,” in Zen Nihon zuga kyo ˉiku taikai kiroku, ed. Kyoˉiku bijutsu shinkoˉkai (1940), 103–28. 38.  This is from the collection of the Tobacco & Salt Museum in Tokyo. I am grateful to Yagi Choˉsaburoˉ, who as director of the Tobacco & Salt Museum in 2004 gave me permission first to photograph cigarette boxes and matchboxes in their collection, and to reprint the photos that I took. 39.  Among other historians, Andre Schmid has drawn attention to this line of historical interpretation. See Andre Schmid, “Colonialism and the ‘Korea Problem’ in the Historiography of Modern Japan: A Review Article,” Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 4 (2000): esp. 962–64.

Notes to Pages 31–35   197

40.  Enomoto Shin’ichiro ˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen kinen (Osaka: DaiNihon aikoku ehonkai, 1940). 41.  Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kinen kokushi emaki, Ko ˉdansha no ehon 135 (1 February 1940). 42.  Kitabatake Chikafusa, A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns: Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki of Kitabatake Chikafusa, trans. H. Paul Varley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). 43.  For just one of several possible examples of a study by which a prefecture made its case in the competition for Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites, see Nara-ken, Yamato shiseki rinchi kengaku yo ˉko ˉ (Nara-ken, 1938). 44.  Senda Minoru, Takachiho genso ˉ (PHP books, 1999). 45.  Suzuki Ryoˉ et al., Nara-ken no hyakunen (Yamakawa shuppansha, 1985), 203–5; Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, trans. W. G. Aston (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1972), 134. 46.  Koˉso seiseki Uda Takaki kenshoˉ kai and Takeno Jiroˉ, ed., Jimmu tenno ˉ kenkoku seichi Uchinomakiko ˉ (Koˉso seiseki Udatakaki kenshoˉkai, 1939). Uda Takaki was located in Nara Prefecture. 47.  For references to Mt. Takakura, see Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, trans. W.G. Aston (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1972), 115 and 119–20. 48.  A type of volcanic rock. 49.  Nara Prefecture. 50.  See Ichimura’s preface to Oka Saiun and Totsukawa-mura shiseki kenshoˉkai, eds., Jinmu tenno ˉ to Yamato Totsukawa (Totsukawa-mura shiseki kenshoˉkai, 1937). 51.  Monbushoˉ, Jinmu tenno ˉ seiseki cho ˉsa ho ˉkoku (Monbushoˉ, 1942). 52.  Ibid., 7–21. The other professors on the committee were Mikami Sanji (  Japanese history, emeritus, To ˉkyo ˉ University; 1865–1939); Naganuma Kenkai (  Japanese history, Kyu ˉshu ˉ University; 1883–1980); Kurita Mototsugu (  Japanese history, Hiroshima University of Literature and Science; 1890–1955); Shiba Kazumori (  Japanese history, Gakushu ˉin Women’s College; 1880–1955); Wakimizu Tetsugoro ˉ (Geology, emeritus, To ˉkyo ˉ University; 1867–1942); Sato ˉ Sho ˉkichi (  Japanese history, Nara Women’s Teachers College); Tsujimura Taro ˉ (Geography, To ˉkyo ˉ University, b. 1890); Fujita Motoharu (  Japanese history, Third Higher School; b. 1879); and Nishimura Shinji (Anthropology and folklore, Waseda University; 1879–1943). 53.  Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, 114. 54.  The expenditures for the investigation and marking of Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites came to ¥ 344,827 ($86,206). See Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 8, 5. This corresponds to p. 25 of vol. 15 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series. 55.  Senda, Takachiho genso ˉ, 112–17. The monument still stands today. 56.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 8, 516. This corresponds to p. 48 of vol. 16 of the reprinted Yumani edition. 57.  Kaneko Atsushi has analyzed the fate of the Museum of National History in his Hakubutsukan no seijigaku (Seikyuˉsha, 2001). 58.  A contemporary booklet titled “Outline of the Facilities of the Kashihara Arena” described the purpose of the compound as “fostering national spirit.” See Kisa Tomosada, ed., Kashihara do ˉjo shisetsu gaiyo ˉ (Kashihara dojoˉ, 1941), 1. 59.  Hirai Yoshitomo, ed., Me de miru Kashihara, Takaichi no hyakunen (Nagoya: Kyoˉdo shuppansha, 1993), 92. 60.  Yamato Kokushikan, ed., Yamato kokushikan gaisetsu (Kashihara dojoˉ, 1943). See also Kisa, ed., Kashihara dojo ˉ shisetsu gaiyo ˉ, 35–55. 61.  Kita Sadakichi, Teito (Nihon gakujutsu fukyuˉkai, 1939). 62.  Nihon bunka taikan henshuˉkai, Nihon bunka taikan daiikkan rekishihen jo ˉkan (Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshukukai, 1942).

198   Notes to Pages 35–42

63.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 8, 568–69. This corresponds to pp. 102–3 of vol. 16 of the reprinted Yumani edition. 64.  Miyachi Masato, “ ‘Nihon bunka taikan’ henshuˉ shimatsuki: Tennoˉsei fashizumu ni okeru bunkaron,” in Nihon bunkaron hihan, ed. Nihon kagakusha kaigi (Suiyoˉsha, 1991), 186–223. 65.  Two texts that serve as introductions to the growing literature on scholars’ complicity with the wartime Japanese state are Abe Takeshi, Taiheiyo ˉ senso ˉ to rekishigaku (Yoshikawa koˉbunkan, 1999); and Sakazume Hideichi, Taiheiyo ˉ senso ˉ to kokogaku (Yoshikawa koˉbunkan, 1997). 66.  Nishida Naojiroˉ, Kokushi tsuˉki (Sekizenkan, 1940; fourth printing). 67.  Nishida Naojiroˉ, ed., Yamato nisen roppyakunenshi (Nara: Kigen nisen roppyakunen Nara-ken hoˉshukukai, 1940). 68.  Kitabatake Chikafusa, Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki (Kaizoˉsha, 1940), edited with commentary by Miyachi Naokazu; and Miyachi Naokazu, Jimmu tenno ˉ (Heibonsha, 1940). 69.  Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, Kokushi no ganmoku sono ichi (Teikoku zaigoˉ gunjinkai honbu, 1938); Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, ed., Shoku Nihongi jo ˉkan (DaiNihon bunko, 1938); and Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, DaiNihonshi, vol. 1 (Shunyoˉdoˉ, 1937). 70.  Yamada Yoshio, Kojiki gaisetsu (Chuˉoˉ Koˉronsha, 1940); Yamada Yoshio, Cho ˉkoku to Kenmu chuˉko ˉ to no seigyo ˉ (Hakusuisha, 1940); Yamada Yoshio, Hirata Atsutane (Hoˉbunkan, 1940); Kitabatake Chikafusa, Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki (Iwanami bunko, 1940; eighth printing), edited with commentary by Yamada Yoshio; and Yamada Yoshio, Kokushi ni arawareta Nihon seishin (Asahi shinbunsha, 1941). 71.  Rajio nenkan (1941), 12. 72.  Fuˉzanboˉ kokushi jiten hensanbu, Kokushi jiten, vols. 1–4 (Fuˉzanboˉ, 1940–43). 73.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshukukai, Seitoku yoko ˉ (1940). Seitoku yoko ˉ was volume 2 of a two-volume set presented to attendees. The other volume, a collection of poetry by emperors, is titled Ressei shuso. 74.  Nakamura Naokatsu, Nihon cho ˉkoku no daiseishin (Kaijoˉ kokumin seishin soˉdoˉin renmei, 1938); Nakamura Naokatsu, Yoshinocho ˉ jidaishi tsuˉron (Nihon hoˉsoˉ shuppan kyoˉkai, 1941); Nakamura Naokatsu, Kitabatake Chikafusa (Hokkai shuppansha, 1937); and Nakamura Naokatsu, Kokushi tsuˉron (Hoshino shoten, 1937). 75.  Hiraizumi is perhaps comparable to Fascist Italy’s Pietro de Francisi, termed the “high priest of the cult of the romanità in its most outspoken ideological form” by the historian Romke Visser, and to Germany’s Gustaf Kossinna (b. 1858) who died in 1931 but whose writings were central to Nazi views of the national past. For the case of Italy, see Romke Visser, “Fascist Doctrine and the Cult of the Romanità,” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 1 (1992): 5–22. For an account of Kossinna’s centrality in Nazi accounts of the national past, as well as an analysis of the many scholars whose careers were helped by their willingness to work for Nazi patrons such as Himmler and Rosenberg, see Henning Habmann, “Archaeology in the Third Reich,” in Archaeology, Ideology, and Society: The German Experience, ed. Heinrich Harke (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 65–139. See also Karen Schonwalder, “The Fascination of Power: Historical Scholarship in Nazi Germany,” History Workshop Journal 43 (1997): 133–53. 76.  Takamure Itsue, Josei nisen roppyakunenshi (Koseikaku, 1940). 77.  For more background and analysis of Takamure’s career, see E. Patricia Tsurumi, “Feminism and Anarchism in Japan: Takamure Itsue, 1894–1964,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 17, no. 2 (1985): 2–19. ˉ kawa Shuˉmei, Nihon nisen roppyakunenshi (Dai’ichi shoboˉ, 1939). 78.  O 79.  Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002), 286 and 295. 80.  Nakamura Naokatsu, consultant, and Fujitani Misao, author, Ko ˉkoku nisen roppyakunenshi ˉ saka Mainichi shinbunsha and Toˉkyoˉ Nichi Nichi Shinbunsha, 1940); and Fujitani (Osaka: O

Notes to Pages 43– 49   199

Misao, 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire, trans. Shusaburo Hironaga and Eimei Kato (Osaka: Osaka Mainichi and Tokyo Nichi Nichi, 1940). 81.  Fujitani, 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire, 1–2. 82.  Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 28. 83.  Takamure’s narrative of Japanese women’s history represented something of an exception to this rule. 84.  Fujitani, 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire, 77–78. 85.  Ibid., 3–4. 86.  Ibid., 32. 87.  Bernard Mees, “Hitler and Germanentum,” Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 3 (2004): 255–70. 88.  For information on the Aryan Affidavit and the Nazi “genealogy bureaucracy,” see Deborah Hertz, “The Genealogy Bureaucracy in the Third Reich,” Jewish History 11, no. 2 (1997): 53–78. 89.  Fujitani, 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire, 110–11. 90.  Friedemann Scriba, “The Sacralization of the Roman Past in Mussolini’s Italy: Erudition, Aesthetics, and Religion in the Exhibition of Augustus’ Bimillenary in 1937–1938,” Storia della Storiografia 30 (1996), 19. A simple definition of Romanità is the “quality of Romanness.” 91.  Ibid., 21. 92.  Gentile, Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, 117. 93.  Marla Stone, “A Flexible Rome: Fascism and the Cult of Romanità,” in Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789–1945, ed. Catherine Edwards (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 207. 94.  Nichi-i gakkai kaiho ˉ 4 (April 1939–July 1940), 33. The exhibition was divided into eight sections, of which ancient Rome was the focus of one. Two sections were devoted to tourism. 95.  Habmann, “Archaeology in the Third Reich,” 114. 96.  Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin, 1997), 127. 2. Mass Participation and Mass Consumption   1.  Kenkokusai honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen kenkokusai kiroku (1940), 11–12.   2.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 13, 362. This corresponds to p. 388 of vol. 23 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series.   3.  It is stored in the special collections of the Edo-Toˉkyoˉ Museum.   4.  It is somewhat unclear whether the Emperor’s Birthday was celebrated in 1940 with a precisely timed ritual, but it was in the years before and after 1940.   5.  From 1943 on, however, imperial subjects were required to observe a moment of silence at 1:22 p.m. on 12 December to commemorate the anniversary of the emperor having worshipped at Ise Shrine at that time on that day in 1942.   6.  The key line in the ad was “Banzai hoˉshoˉ wa rajio de issei ni.”   7.  For example, the 1940 edition of the “Manchuria Broadcasting Yearbook” includes a typical morning broadcast schedule for the main cities of Korea. According to this schedule, at 7:00 and again at 7:50 listeners were instructed to bow in the direction of the imperial palace. See Manshuˉ ho ˉso ˉ nenkan (1940), 251.   8.  For the background leading up to the decision by Emperor Pu Yi, made in consultations with his Japanese advisers, that Amaterasu should be worshipped in Manchukuo, see Kojima Noboru, Manshuˉ teikoku, vol. 2 (Bungei shunjuˉ, 1975), esp. 262–87.   9.  See Hara Takeshi, “Senchuˉki no ‘jikan shihai’,” Misuzu 521 (2004): 28–44.

200   Notes to Pages 50– 60

10.  The decree detailing how the government of Manchukuo would undertake the construction of a National Foundation Shintoˉ Shrine (Kenkoku shinbyoˉ), Manchukuo’s equivalent of Ise Shrine, and a National Foundation Shrine to the War Dead (Kenkoku chuˉreibyoˉ), Manchukuo’s equivalent of Yasukuni Shrine, appeared in the 16 July issue of the Manshuˉ nichinichi newspaper. This decree specified that Emperor Pu Yi would carry out rituals at these two shrines on important national holidays, of which many, such as 11 February, National Foundation Day, were based on Japanese holidays. 11.  Fujita Munemitsu, Kashihara Jinguˉ to kenkoku ho ˉshitai (Hanshin Kyuˉko ˉ Dentetsu Hyakattenbu, 1940), 22. 12.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 8, 289. This corresponds to p. 395 of vol. 15 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series. 13.  For information on the invention of imperial tombs, see Mogi Masahiro, Tenno ˉryo ˉ no kenkyuˉ (Doˉseisha, 1990). ˉ saka Asahi Newspaper and the Toˉkyoˉ Asahi Newspaper 14.  On 1 September 1940, the O were unified under one name, the Asahi Newspaper. 15.  Fujita, Kashihara Jinguˉ to kenkoku ho ˉshitai, 29–30. 16.  Unekoˉ nanajuˉnenshi hensan iinkai, Uneko ˉ nanajuˉnenshi (Kashihara: Nara-kenritsu unebi koˉtoˉ gakkoˉ, 1967), 128. See also Kigen nisen roppyakunen Nara-ken hoˉshukukai, Kagayaku kigen nisen roppyakunen (1940), 206. 17.  According to the official statistics, 4,676 volunteers came from Korea, far fewer than from any of the big three of Osaka Prefecture (498,907), Nara Prefecture (410,671), and Kyoto Prefecture (126,039), but more than from three-quarters of the prefectures in Japan proper including Tokyo Prefecture (4,657) and Kanagawa Prefecture (2,903). 18.  For statistics on which professions were represented by the brigades, see Fujita, Kashihara Jinguˉ to kenkoku ho ˉshitai, 31. For photographs that give a sense of the diversity of the volunteers, see Unekoˉ nanajuˉnenshi hensan iinkai, Uneko ˉ nanajuˉnenshi, 80–86. 19.  Dai Nippon kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉsan kashihara jinguˉ gozo ˉen ho ˉshi Manshuˉ teikoku kyo ˉwa seinen ho ˉshitaiki (Shinkyoˉ: Manshuˉ teikoku kyoˉwakai, 1940). The only extant copy of this I know of is stored in the Kashihara Shrine archives. 20.  Ibid. See p. 12 for a description of the additional rituals the Concordia Association youth brigade members were expected to perform, pp. 15–19 for the brigade’s basic itinerary, and pp. 21–73 for descriptive diary entries. 21.  Fujita, Kashihara Jinguˉ to kenkoku ho ˉshitai, 1. 22.  Ronald Suleski, “Northeast China under Japanese Control: The Role of the Manchurian Youth Corps, 1934–1945,” Modern China 7, no. 3 (1981): 351–77; and Ronald Suleski, “Reconstructing Life in the Youth Corps Camps of Manchuria, 1938–45: Resistance to Conformity,” East Asian History 30 (December 2005): 1–24. 23.  The Reich Labor Service features prominently in Triumph of the Will, the propaganda film about the Nuremberg Rally of 1934. 24.  Gavan McCormick, “Manchukuo: Constructing the Past,” East Asian History 2 (1991): 115–16. For an especially close examination of the Concordia Association, see Hirano Kenichiroˉ, “Manshuˉkoku kyoˉwakai no seijiteki tenkai: Fukusuˉ minzoku kokka ni okeru seijiteki antei to kokka doˉin,” Nenpo ˉ seijigaku (Nihon seiji gakkai, 1972): 231–83. 25.  Kiran K. Patel, Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America, 1933– 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 98. 26.  Fujita, Kashihara Jinguˉ to kenkoku ho ˉshitai, 22. 27.  Ibid., 32. 28.  See Gregory Kasza, “War and Welfare Policy in Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 2 (May 2002): 417–35.

Notes to Pages 60–67   201

29.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 1, 92–93. This corresponds to pp. 118–19 of vol. 1 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series. 30.  For the solicitation, see Kigen nisen roppyakunen 1, no. 9 (September 1938): 22–23. For a list of donors, see Kigen nisen roppyakunen 2, no. 1 (  January 1939): 30–31. 31.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen 3, no. 4 (April 1940): 12. 32.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen 3, no. 6 (  June 1940): 23. The Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary was not the only organization invoking the fatherland and the anniversary to solicit donations at the time. The National Foundation Festival Head Office’s report of the 1940 festivities listed four pages of donors whose monetary contributions had helped underwrite the especially widespread celebrations of this national holiday that year. See Kenkokusai honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen kenkokusai kiroku (1940), 136–40. No figures for individual or aggregate donations were provided, however. The Imperial Reservists Association organized a campaign to solicit donations of rice to Kashihara Shrine, surely one of if not the greatest beneficiary of the 2,600th anniversary craze. For details of this campaign, see Shashin shuˉho ˉ 97 (3 January 1940). 33.  Kurata Yoshihiro, Nihon reko ˉdo bunkashi (Toˉkyoˉ shoseki, 1992), 202–3. 34.  Mikitaro Miho, “Gramophones and Record Music in Japan,” Contemporary Japan 9, no. 1 (  January 1940): 68. 35.  A chart detailing the version of the Patriotic March Dance specially modified for elementary school children appeared on p. 29 of Kigen nisen roppyakunen 1, no. 6 (  July 1938). 36.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen 3, no. 4 (April 1940): 16–17. 37.  E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). 38.  Barak Kushner, The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 87. 39.  See Kurata, Nihon reko ˉdo bunkashi, 196–208, and Miho, “Gramophones and Record Music in Japan,” 61–71. 40.  See, for example, the advertisement that Columbia placed for this new song in the ˉ saka Asahi shinbun. 3 November edition of the O 41.  Kurata, Nihon reko ˉdo bunkashi, 204. 42.  See the following photo album, which lacks page numbers: Kigen nisen roppyakunen Kagoshima-ken hoˉshukukai, Kinen shashincho ˉ (1940). 43.  Defined in the 19 May article announcing the contest as Japanese, Korean, Manchu, Russian, and Mongol. 44.  For the first-, second-, and third-place winners, see “Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kaichoˉ Konoe Fumimaro kakka shutsudai nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku tsuzurikata nyuˉsen happyoˉ,” Sho ˉjo kurabu (May 1940): 92–98. 45.  From the ad that appeared in Nippon 21 (1940). 46.  See Sandra Collins, “The 1940 Olympics: Imperial Commemoration and Diplomacy,” International Journal of the History of Sport 24, no. 8 (2007): 977–1002. This special issue is also titled The 1940 Tokyo Games: The Missing Olympics, Japan, the Asian Olympics, and the Olympic Movement. 47.  Kokusai bunka shinkoˉkai, Nihon bunka no tokushitsu: Kigen nisen roppyakunen kinen kokusai kensho ˉ ronbunshu (Nihon hyoˉronsha, 1941). 48.  Ibid., 416. ˉ saka Asahi shinbun, 2 January 1940. 49.  O ˉ saka Asahi shinbun, 17 April 1940. 50.  O ˉ saka Asahi shinbun, 27 and 28 March 1940. 51.  O 52.  Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ, 1 January 1940. 53.  “Department Stores and Business,” Oriental Economist 7, no. 12 (December 1940): 706.

202   Notes to Pages 68–74

54.  Asahi shinbunsha, Manshuˉkoku (1940). This book does not have page numbers, but the profile appears twenty-three pages back from the colophon at the end of the book. 55.  “Today’s Tokyo in Pictures,” Nippon 23 (1940), 16. 56.  “Recent National Income Figures,” Oriental Economist 7, no. 3 (March 1940): 138. According to this short article, Japan proper’s national income was less than ¥ 350 per capita in 1939. In a more recent essay, Akira Hara calculated Japan proper’s per capita income in 1940 to be ¥ 312. See Akira Hara, “Japan: Guns before Rice,” in The Economics of World War II, ed. Mark Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 227. 57.  “Today’s Tokyo in Pictures,” 16. 58.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen 2, no. 5 (May 1939): 18. 59.  Cho ˉkoku seishin no hatsuyo ˉ: Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉsan tenrankai mokuroku, Osaka (Nanba) Takashimaya, 14–25 May 1939. 60.  For a diagram of the exhibition, see Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 11, in between pages 348 and 349. This corresponds to pp. 364–65 of vol. 20 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series. In planning the exhibition, the Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary commissioned a group of scholars led by Tsuji Zennosuke to choose the scenes for the “National Foundation Scroll” and to provide commentary to supplement the visual images. Nine eminent artists, highlighted by Yokoyama Taikan (1868–1958), were commissioned to draw the eleven scenes showing seminal moments, such as Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition, in the period leading up to the founding of the imperial dynasty. The Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary also commissioned a separate group of scholars to supervise the composition of the diorama. A member of this commission, too, Tsuji seems to have played a predominant role in shaping the diorama, although the formal chair was Masaki Naohiko (1862–1940), onetime president of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. 61.  In Keijoˉ the exhibition’s host, the Choˉjiya Department Store, stressed in advertising the exhibition that all record companies’ recordings of the “2,600th Anniversary Song” would be conveniently available for purchase at the exhibition. See the Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ, 7 February 1940. 62.  Nagashima Keiya, “ ‘Choˉkoku soˉgyoˉ emaki’ no kenkyuˉ,” Geiso ˉ 17 (2000), 79. 63.  Takashi Hirano, “Retailing in Urban Japan, 1868–1945,” Urban History 26, no. 3 (1999): 387–88. 64.  The term kokudo refers to the land of the country. 65.  The descriptions of the individual exhibitions below is based on Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 11, 446–53. This corresponds to pp. 30–37 of vol. 21 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series. The New Life Section of “Our Lives” Exhibition focused on contemporary Japanese lifestyles, and was designed to raise consciousness about the issues of clothing, food, and housing as part of a campaign focused on improving daily life. The New Life Section hoped to provide insights on how to harmonize traditional aesthetics with the new lifestyles emerging in a Japan described as progressing by leaps and bounds. The New Life exhibition was divided into three sections, urban, rural, and continental. The urban section featured a model of a renovated (new life) house and imagined scenes of an urban family enjoying a scientifically rationalized new lifestyle. The rural section featured a diorama with designs of renovated (new life) village housing and information on how to rationalize the village economy and lifestyles. On display in the continental section were scenes of Japanese pioneers in Manchuria who were touted as crucial to the development of a New East Asia. 66.  In their essay “Japanese Revolt against the West,” H. D. Harootunian and Tetsuo Najita stressed: The emphasis on Japan’s special contribution to world civilization narrowed easily in the political environment of the late 1920s and early 1930s to a preoccupation with the

Notes to Pages 75–77   203

status of Japan’s uniqueness. Many believed that by realizing the best of East and West, Japan had achieved a new cosmopolitan culture. The recognition of having achieved this unprecedented synthesis validated the subsequent belief that Japan was uniquely qualified to assume leadership in Asia, although much of the rhetoric that the writers used referred to the world at large. Whereas an earlier cosmopolitanism promoted the ideal of cultural diversity and equivalence based on the principle of a common humanity, which served to restrain excessive claims to exceptionalism, the new culturalism of the 1930s proposed that Japan was appointed to lead the world to a higher level of cultural synthesis that surpassed Western modernism itself. See H. D. Harootunian and Tetsuo Najita, “Japanese Revolt against the West,” in The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 6, ed. Peter Duus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 712. 67.  Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 68.  Mark Neocleous, Fascism (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1997), esp. chap 4. 69.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), vol. 11, 458. This corresponds to p. 42 of vol. 21 of the Yumani reprint of the original sixteen-volume series. 70.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho (Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai, 1941), 54–56. 71.  Quoted in Barbara Sato, The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 159. 3. Imperial Heritage Tourism   1.  Takagi Hiroshi, “Kokusai kankoˉ to Sapporo kankoˉ kyoˉkai no seiritsu,” in Kindai Nihon no uchi to soto, ed. Tanaka Akira (Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1999), 321. David Leheny has examined the Japanese tourism industry’s efforts to attract foreign tourists, who provided much-needed foreign exchange, but he did not examine the vibrant domestic and intraempire tourist sector that is my main concern here. See David Leheny, “ ‘By Other Means’: Tourism and Leisure as Politics in Pre-War Japan,” Social Science Japan Journal 3, no. 2 (2000): 171–86.   2.  Nihon yuˉran ryoko ˉ chizu. Insert included in special edition of Kingu published on 15 August 1936.   3.  On the Kaufhaus des Westens, see Kristin Semmens, Seeing Hitler’s Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 159. ˉ saka, 1940).   4.  Adachi Chuˉichiro ˉ, ed., Cho ˉkoku no seiseki o meguru (O   5.  Nihon ryokoˉ kyoˉkai, Ryotei to hiyo ˉ gaisan (Hakubunkan, 1939), 881–85.   6.  See Hashizume Katsumi, “Nachi kankoˉ seisaku ni manabu mono,” Kanko ˉ 8, no. 4 (November 1940): 34. Contributors to Kanko ˉ in 1940 also analyzed various aspects of the tourism industry in the Soviet Union, the United States, and Canada, among other countries.   7.  Semmens, Seeing Hitler’s Germany, 18.   8.  Earl Kinmonth, “The Impact of Military Procurements on the Old Middle Classes in Japan, 1931–1941,” Japan Forum 4, no. 2 (1992): 247–65.   9.  Carveth Wells, North of Singapore (New York: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1940), 41. This passage is at the beginning of a chapter titled “Among the Hairy Ainus.” Included in this chapter is Wells’s account of a visit to the Ainu village of Shiraoi. Wells’s use of the term “hairy Ainus” would have been offensive to Ainu at the time and is inappropriate today. However, it is likely that Wells was parroting a slogan frequently employed at the time in a callous manner by Japanese tourism associations and travel companies in order to attract tourists to places where Ainu could be observed.

204   Notes to Pages 78– 84

10.  To provide one of many possible examples, the Japanese community in Sao Paulo assembled a tourist delegation, comprised mainly of individuals who made their living in Brazil from tourism, to visit the ancestral homeland on the occasion of the 2,600th anniversary. See Koˉyama Rokuroˉ, Ko ˉyama Rokuro ˉ kaiso ˉroku (Sao Paulo, Brazil: Koˉyama Rokuroˉ kaisoˉroku kankoˉ iinkai, 1976), 407–8. 11.  Kanko ˉ nyuˉsu 73 (  January 1940), second to last page. This newsletter was published by the ˉ saka Tetsudoˉkyoku. This contest was first announced on the last page of Kanko O ˉ nyuˉsu 71 (November 1939). 12.  Nihon koˉtsuˉ koˉsha shashi hensanshitsu, Nihon ko ˉtsuˉ ko ˉsha nanajuˉnenshi (1982), 78. According to an article in the newsletter of the Osaka branch of the Ministry of Railways, the following discounts were available for group pilgrimages to sacred sites: more than twenty-five people, 10 percent; more than fifty people, 15 percent; more than one hundred people, 20 percent; more than two hundred people, 25 percent; more than four hundred people, 30 percent. This article cited Kashihara Shrine, Ise Shrine, and the imperial mausoleums at Momoyama as examples of sacred sites. See “Kigen nisen roppyakunen seichi sanpai dantai tokubetsu yusoˉ,” Kanko ˉ nyuˉsu 71 (November 1939), no page number. 13.  Volume 8, number 1 (  January 1940) of Kanko ˉ included an organizational chart of Japan’s tourism organizations that showed, in descending order, the Minister of Railways, the International Tourism Bureau, and then the JTB. 14.  Semmens, Seeing Hitler’s Germany, 48. 15.  Takachiho hoˉshukukai, Seichi Takachiho: Hyuˉga Takachiho o shudai to seru zen-Nihon shashin kyo ˉgi taikai nyuˉsen sakuhin, 1940. Set of twelve postcards enclosed in a jacket. The precise location of the imperial descent remained contested in 1940, however. The Takachiho Celebration Association was based in the northern town of Takachiho (高千穂町), one of three places in Miyazaki Prefecture that advertised itself as the location of the imperial descent. The lack of one officially authenticated site corresponding to this seminal moment in imperial history did not deter tourists from visiting the various candidates, however. The process by which Takachiho, wherever its precise location, came to be sanctified as the Japanese nation’s birthplace has roots that predate the Meiji Restoration of 1868. But it was during the Meiji era that Takachiho was officially identified, for example, in standardized school curricular materials as a national heritage site of paramount importance. Senda Minoru has traced how “Kigensetsu,” a song that primary school students were required to sing on festival days from 1893 on, made reference to Takachiho’s lofty significance in imperial history. See Senda Minoru, Takachiho genso ˉ (PHP Books, 1999), 20–21. 16.  This mass tourism to sites viewed at the time as central to Japan’s origin, spurred on by advertising campaigns by the Ministry of Railways and the Japan Tourist Bureau, raises the question of whether or not Marilyn Ivy is correct in claiming, in her thoughtful analysis of the Japan National Railway’s “Discover Japan” campaign of the 1970s, that “Discover Japan was the first highly visible, mass campaign urging Japanese to discover what remained of the premodern past in the midst of its loss.” See Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 34. 17.  For works in Japanese on this topic, begin with Maruyama Hiroshi, Kindai Nihon ko ˉenshi no kenkyuˉ (Kyoto: Shinbunkaku, 1994). There is essentially no English-language literature on the topic, however. 18.  Miyazaki shishi hensan iinkai, Miyazaki shishi (Miyazaki: Miyazaki shiyakusho, 1959), 816. 19.  For the reproduced December 1934 timetable, see JTB, Jikokuhyo ˉ fukkokuhan senzen, senchuˉhen (1999), 124. 20.  Miyazaki shinbun, 30 January 1934. The Miyazaki City Tourism Association distributed two types of poster, one featuring Miyazaki Shrine (where Emperor Jimmu’s spirit is enshrined) and another featuring Udo Shrine (where the spirit of Emperor Jimmu’s father is

Notes to Pages 84– 87   205

enshrined). For information on the Miyazaki City Tourism Association’s decision to set up a special booth at the International Tourism Industry Exhibition in Hiroshima, see the Miyazaki shinbun, 8 March 1934. 21.  Kokubu Takenori, Osaragi Jiro ˉ, and Tanaka Jun, Shinkoku Hyu ˉga (Kyuˉshuˉ Fuˉkei Kyo ˉkai, 1934). 22.  Matsudaira was also the primary male descendent of the family that had once ruled over the Takamatsu domain. 23.  For a complete list of donors (including the amount of the donation), see the Miyazaki-ken Jimmu tennoˉ toˉsei kinen nisen roppyakunensai zenkoku kyoˉsankai, Jimmu tenno ˉ to ˉsei kinen nisen roppyakunensai kifusha meibo (Miyazaki, 1934). 24.  None of these sites, however, later received the stamp of authenticity from the Committee to Investigate Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu. 25.  For information on activities underwritten by the National Association to Sponsor the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition, see Miyazakiken Jimmu tennoˉ toˉsei kinen nisen roppyakunensai zenkoku kyoˉsankai, Jimmu tenno ˉ goto ˉsen kinen nisen roppyakunensai jigyo ˉ taiyo ˉ. 26.  Miyazaki-ken, Hyuˉga no seichi densetsu to shiseki (Miyazaki, 1934). 27.  Unsurprisingly, the first regularized bus tour developed in Japan was of Tokyo, first offered in 1918. See Edo Toˉkyoˉ Hakubutsukan, ed., Utsukushiki Nihon: Taisho ˉ, Sho ˉwa no tabi ten (Edo Toˉkyoˉ Hakubutsukan, 2005), 12. 28.  Miyazaki shinbun, 1 October 1934. Iwakiri Shoˉtaroˉ, founder of the Miyazaki Bus Company, is remembered as a key figure in the development of Miyazaki’s tourism industry. For more information on the development of Miyazaki’s tourism industry, see Miyazakishi kankoˉ kyoˉkai, Miyazaki no kanko ˉ monogatari, 23. 29.  See Jimmu tennoˉ goseiseki Mimitsu chihoˉ kenshoˉkai, Seikyo Mimitsu (1939), 1–4. 30.  Kuroki Banseki, Mimitsu kyo ˉdoshi (Koˉdansha, 1980), 122. 31.  Miyazaki shinbun, 19 June 1934. This article, “Hyuˉgaji meguri: Kankoˉdan no sattoˉ,” stated that groups composed of 247 individuals from Tokyo, 500 from Nagoya, and 40 from Tokushima were to arrive in Miyazaki the next day, and stressed that these were examples of a broader trend. The articles “Shichigatsu made ni Miyazaki tsuˉka” in the 17 August issue and “Kankoˉ no aki” in the 24 September 1934 issue also emphasized the boom in tour groups coming to Miyazaki. 32.  Miyazaki shinbun, 13 July 1934. 33.  Miyazaki shishi hensan iinkai, Miyazaki shishi, 834. 34.  Joshua Hagen, “The Most German of Towns: Creating an Ideal Nazi Community in Rothenburg ob de Tauber,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, no. 1 (2004): 207–27. 35.  Semmens, Seeing Hitler’s Germany, 68. 36.  Miyazaki shishi hensan iinkai, Miyazaki shishi, 833. 37.  For various statistics that evidence the quick recovery, see Takaoka Hiroyuki, “Kankoˉ, koˉsei, ryokoˉ: Fashizumuki no tsurizumu.” in Bunka to fashizumu, ed. Akazawa Shiroˉ and Kitagawa Kenzoˉ (Nihon keizai hyoˉronsha, 1986), 9–52. 38.  The volume on “Bakumatsu Patriots” was the first published in the series Sokoku ninshiki ryoko ˉ so ˉsho, and its preface emphasized that the series was issued in conjunction with the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement. See Tetsudoˉshoˉ, Bakumatsu resshi no iseki (Haku­bunkan, 1938). 39.  Tetsudoˉshoˉ, Cho ˉkoku no seiseki (Hakubunkan, 1939). This is vol. 9 of the series Sokoku ninshiki ryoko ˉ so ˉsho. 40.  “Hyuˉga o kataru,” Tabi 16, no. 11 (November 1939): 80–87. 41.  Joshua Fogel, “Yosano Akiko and Her China Travelogue of 1928,” in Travels in Manchuria and Mongolia, trans. Joshua Fogel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 4.

206   Notes to Pages 87–93

42.  “Hyuˉga o kataru,” Tabi 16, no. 11 (November 1939): 87. 43.  In the 1930s, the JTB advertised the attractiveness of folk tours to the Toˉhoku region, one of the poorest and most backward areas in Japan, conditions that ironically made it a particularly attractive destination for urbanites seeking “authentic” rural customs. 44.  Yanagi Soˉetsu, “Where to Find Real Japan,” Contemporary Japan 9, no. 7 (  July 1940), 888. Yanagi’s essay was first published in the June 1940 issue of Bungei shunjuˉ. ˉ saka Asahi shinbun. 45.  See the ad for the contest in the 12 February special evening edition of the O 46.  See “Hyuˉga o kataru,” Kirishima 6, no. 2 (December 1939): 2–30. The list of publications appears on p. 30. 47.  Saijoˉ Yaso,” Choˉkoku no seichi junrei,” Fujin kurabu 21, nos. 1–3 (  January–March, 1940): part 1: 52–79; part 2: 68–75; and part 3: 70–79. 48.  Nihon ryokoˉ kyoˉkai, Jimmu tenno ˉ no goseiseki: Hyuˉga kara Yamato e (Nihon ryokoˉ kyoˉkai, 1940). 49.  Tetsudoˉshoˉ, Seichi Kohyuˉga (Hakubunkan, 1940). 50.  Fuˉkei 7, no. 11 (November 1940). 51.  Kuroda Ho ˉshin, “Reiho ˉ Takachiho to fukin no Shinseki,” Fuˉkei 7, no. 11 (November 1940): 6. 52.  Nihon kankoˉ jigyoˉ kenkyuˉsho, Nihon kanko ˉ nenkan (Nihon kankoˉ jigyoˉ kenkyuˉsho, 1941), 289–96. The Japan Tourism Industry Research Institute seems to have been short-lived, and the 1941 yearbook appears to have been the only volume issued. It is a crucial resource for understanding tourism in Japan in 1940. 53.  This represents total circulation for the Osaka, Tokyo, and other regional editions. See Shashi hensan iinkai, Mainichi shinbun nanajuˉnen (Mainichi shinbunsha, 1952), 613. 54.  Rajio nenkan (1941), 7. 55.  My account of the reenactment is based on Kuroki, Mimitsu kyo ˉdoshi, esp. 126–40; and Hyuˉga-shi, Hyuˉga shashincho ˉ: Kazoku no kazu dake rekishi ga aru (Hyuˉga City: Hyuˉga-shi, 2002), esp. 166–228. 56.  Furukawa Takahisa, Ko ˉki, banpaku, orinpikku (Chuˉoˉ koˉronsha, 1998), 157–64. In 1968, Aikawa published a memoir about the planning for and construction of the “Peace Tower.” See Aikawa Katsuroku, “Ametsuchi no motohashira: Heiwa no toˉ no yuˉrai,” Shirakaba Poritikusu no. 9 (1968): 1–33. Professor Walter Edwards of Tenri University kindly brought Aikawa’s memoir to my attention, and also helped arrange for me to undertake a highly productive research visit to Miyazaki. 57.  I am grateful to Sugio Norichika, Kodama Takeo, Saita Keiichiroˉ, and other members of the citizens’ group “Heiwa no toˉ” no shijitsu o kangaeru kai (Association to Examine the Facts of the “Peace Tower”) who arranged for me to see the inside of the tower and briefed me extensively on how many of the stones used to build the tower were stolen from landmarks (e.g., the Great Wall of China) on the Asian continent. For more information on the tower, see “Heiwa no toˉ” no shijitsu o kangaeru kai, ed., Ishi no sho ˉgen: “Heiwa no to ˉ” o saguru (Honda Kikaku, 1995). 58.  Miyazaki shishi hensan iinkai, Miyazaki shishi, 834. The figures cited here for 1934, 1939, and 1940 include children who came to Miyazaki on school field trips. 59.  Miyazaki-shi kankoˉ kyoˉkai, Miyazaki no kanko ˉ monogatari, 26. 60.  Nara is one of three prefectures that share the Yoshino Kumano National Park. 61.  Before the modern period, there were periodic bursts of mass pilgrimage to Ise Shrine. During the last such example before the Meiji Restoration, an estimated 4.5 million pilgrims visited the shrine between March and August in 1830. See Marius Jansen, “Japan in the Early Nineteenth Century,” The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 5, ed. Marius Jansen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 64–65. 62.  Ise-shi sangyoˉbu kankoˉka, Heisei 4-nen Ise-shi kanko ˉ to ˉkei (Ise, 1993), 9. Professor Hara Takeshi kindly brought this source to my attention.

Notes to Pages 93–98   207

63.  Takaoka, “Kankoˉ, koˉsei, ryokoˉ: Fashizumuki no tsurizumu,” 32. 64.  In a 1942 essay analyzing Nara as a tourist city, Horii Jin’ichiroˉ (b. 1902), employing statistics provided by the Nara Prefecture Tourism Association, grouped the 1940 visits between day visitors (36.9 million) and overnight visitors (1.4 million). Of those who came just for the day, 7.7 million came with a group, while 29.2 million came individually. Of those who stayed overnight, 904,000 came as part of a group, while 514,000 came individually. See Horii Jin’ichiroˉ, “Kankoˉ toshi toshite no Nara,” in Nara so ˉki, ed. Nakagawa Akira and Morikawa Tatsuzoˉ (Osaka: Shinshindoˉ, 1942), 324–29. 65.  Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ, 13 January 1940. That same year the Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ also sent twenty-nine schoolchildren from Korea on an all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to sacred sites as part of the newspaper’s commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary. See the 19 April issue of Keijo ˉ Nippo ˉ. 66.  See Osada Kanako, “Keijoˉ no jogakusei,” in Kigen nisen roppyakunen no onna-tachi, ed. Onnatachi no ima o tou kai (this was a special issue of Juˉgoshi noto [April 1982]), 34. The role of field trips, a practice closely related to tourism, in shaping popular consciousness among Japanese about their nation’s history is an intriguing topic that has not been researched in depth. One place to begin a study of the role of field trips in shaping Japanese national identity would be with a source that Professor Takagi Hiroshi of Kyoˉto University brought to my attention: Nihon shuˉgaku ryokoˉ kyoˉkai, ed., Shuˉgaku ryoko ˉ no subete: (Zenhen) Meiji kara shuˉsen made (1987). This timeline indicates that school trips were codified and popularized in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Detailed guidebooks for teachers and administrators planning field trips existed by 1940, and probably originated in the 1910s or 1920s. For examples of what existed by 1940, see the series published by Sanseidoˉ that was divided according to geographic region. The bibliographical entry for Sanseidoˉ’s 1940 guidebook for field trips to the Kinki and Kansai areas of Japan is as follows: Sanseidoˉ ryokoˉ annaibu, ed., Kinki, Kansai shuˉgaku ryoko ˉ no shiori (Sanseidoˉ, 1940). 67.  Neither of these destinations held much attraction to foreign visitors to Japan, and they received scant attention in English-language guidebooks of the day. For example, Aisaburo Aizawa’s 1937 guidebook to Nara did not designate them as sites of interest. See Aisaburo Aizawa, A Complete Guide to Nara (Nihon ryokoˉ kyoˉkai, 1937). 68.  Suzuki Ryoˉ et al, Nara-ken no hyakunen (Yamakawa shuppansha, 1985), 209–10. 69.  Mae Kei’ichi, Nara: Tenno ˉ no daigawari gishiki to “kenkoku no seichi” (Azumi no shoboˉ, 1990), esp. 7–19. 70.  Takagi Hiroshi, “Bunkazai no kindai,” Nihon no kokuho ˉ 110 (11 April 1999): 308–12. 71.  Takagi Hiroshi, Kindai tenno ˉsei to koto (Iwanami shoten, 2006), 55. 72.  Akiko Takenaka, “Architecture for Mass Mobilization: The Chuˉreitoˉ Memorial Construction Movement, 1939–1945,” in The Culture of Japanese Fascism, ed. Alan Tansman (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 235–53. Alan Tansman kindly sent me this book of collected essays in manuscript form so I could read it in advance of submitting my manuscript. 73.  Furukawa, Ko ˉki, banpaku, orinpikku, 85–94. 74.  Takaoka, “Kankoˉ, koˉsei, ryokoˉ: Fashizumuki no tsurizumu,” 16. 75.  Kanko ˉ no yamato 1, no. 1 (  January 1938): 1. 76.  Ibid., 62. 77.  Takagi Hiroshi, “The Meiji Restoration and the Revival of Ancient Culture,” in Perspectives on Social Memory in Japan, ed. Tsu Yun Hui et al (Folkestone, U.K.: Global Oriental, 2005), 139. 78.  For example, see the two-part roundtable discussion “Yamato chihoˉ no seiseki o shinobu zadankai,” Tabi 17, no. 1 (December 1940): 14–23; and part 2, Tabi 17, no. 2 (February 1941): 38–45. This roundtable discussion featured seven academicians including Nishida Naojiroˉ, professor of Japanese history at Kyoˉto Imperial University and one of the most energetic propagandists of imperial myths in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary celebrations.

208   Notes to Pages 98–101

79.  Nihon ryokoˉ kyoˉkai, Kansai seichi junpai (1940); Tetsudoˉshoˉ, Seichi Yamato (Hakubunkan, ˉ saka: Soˉgensha, 1940). 1940); and Kitao Ryoˉnosuke, Seiseki Yamato (O 80.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen (Ko ˉryo ˉ-go ˉ) 1, no. 10 (October 1938); and Kigen nisen roppyakunen (  Jinja-go ˉ) 2, no. 13 (December 1939). 81.  See, for example, the ad that appeared in Kigen nisen roppyakunen 3, no. 5 (May 1940). 82.  Ad published in the monthly magazine Kigen nisen roppyakunen 2, no. 13 (December 1939). Keihan also regularly ran ads touting its service to sacred historical sites in Tabi and other magazines. 83.  Nara Densha, Nara densha o chuˉshin to shitaru koryo ˉ junpai annaizu (1940). 84.  The ad appeared in Kigen nisen roppyakunen 3, no. 2 (February 1940). Ads plugging Daitetsu’s service to Kashihara also appeared regularly in Tabi and other magazines and newspapers. 85.  Daitetsu Densha, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten Kashihara jinguˉ sanpai annai (1940). ˉ saka Asahi shinbun. 86.  See the ad for this exhibition in the 2 January O 87.  For two examples, see Sakai-shi hakubutsukan, Panorama chizu o tabi suru: “Taisho ˉ no Hiroshige” Yoshida Hatsusaburo ˉ no sekai (Sakai, 1999), 13. 88.  Kyoˉto koˉgei sen’i daigaku bijutsu koˉgei shiryoˉkan, ed., Posuta korekushon katarogu rezone, vol. 1 (1992), 147. 4. Touring Korea   1.  Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Becoming Japanese: Imperial Expansion and Identity Crises in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities, ed. Sharon A. Minichiello (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 159–61.   2.  Ibid., 168.   3.  For the photo, see Karafuto Jiho ˉ (  January 1940), 73.   4.  Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).   5.  Brian McLaren, Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), esp. 42–77.   6.  Brian McLaren, “From Tripoli to Ghadames: Architecture and the Tourist Experience of Local Culture in Italian Colonial Libya,” in Architecture and Tourism: Perception, Performance and Place, ed. D. Medina Lasansky and Brian McLaren (New York: Berg, 2004), 75–92. The quote is from p. 76.   7.  Ibid., 81.   8.  According to the 1942 edition of the Cho ˉsen nenkan (558), 15.8 percent of Koreans— 3,573,338 out of total population of 22,945,563—could understand Japanese.   9.  Ahn Changmo, “Colonial Tourism in 1930s’ Korean Architecture,” Journal of Southeast Asian Architecture, vol. 7 (2004): 13–25. Todd Henry kindly brought this essay to my attention. 10.  See Jeremy Taylor, “Colonial Takao: The Making of a Southern Metropolis,” Urban History 31, no. 1 (2004): 48–71, esp. 55–56. 11.  For analyses of colonial postcards outside of Japan’s empire, see David Prochaska, “The Archive of Algérie Imaginaire,” History and Anthropology 4 (1990): 373–420; and Steven Patterson, “Postcards from the Raj,” Patterns of Prejudice 40, no. 2 (2006): 142–58. ˉ saka jinken 12.  For examples of postcards of local beauties and primitive natives, see O hakubutsukan, Tsukurareru Nihon kokumin: Kokuseki, senso ˉ, sabetsu (Osaka, 2004). 13.  The Korean government has been restoring the Gyeongbokgung since 1990, and as part of this process the Government-General Building was demolished in 1996. 14.  For background information and additional analysis of postcards in colonial Korea, see Hyung Gu Lynn, “Moving Pictures: Postcards of Colonial Korea,” IIAS Newsletter 44 (Summer 2007): 8–9. For additional examples of postcards of the Korean people and popular customs,

Notes to Pages 101–111   209

see Mainichi shinbunsha, Nihon shokuminchishi bessatsu ichiokunin no Sho ˉwashi: Cho ˉsen (1978), 147–52. 15.  For the case of Morocco under French colonial rule, see Robert Hunter, “Promoting Empire: The Hachette Empire in French Morocco, 1919–1936,” Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 4 (2007): 579–91. 16.  For examples of promotional posters published by the Government Railways of Korea that feature the Diamond Mountains, see Kyoˉto koˉgei sen’i daigaku bijutsu koˉgei shiryoˉkan, ed., Posuta korekushon katarogu rezone, vol. 1 (1992), 151. Only about six hours by train from Keijoˉ thanks to tight connections designed with tourists in mind, the Diamond Mountains also were a popular retreat among Keijoˉ’s Japanese population. 17.  Government Railways of Chosen, Kongosan (Keijoˉ, 1937). 18.  Noda Masaho, Harada Katsumasa, and Aoki Eiichi, eds., Taisho ˉki tetsudo ˉshi shiryo ˉ, vol. 19: Kongo ˉsan denki tetsudo ˉ kabushiki nijuˉnenshi (Nihon keizai hyoˉronsha, 1983), 70. This is a reprint of the 1939 edition of Kongo ˉsan denki tetsudo ˉ kabushiki nijuˉnenshi. 19.  Nihon ryokoˉ kyoˉkai, Ryotei to hiyo ˉ gaisan (Hakubunkan, 1939), 942–43. 20.  See the article “Kongoˉsan o kokuritsu koˉen ni” in the 17 February 1940 edition of the Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ. 21.  Nihon kankoˉ jigyoˉ kenkyuˉsho, Nihon kanko ˉ nenkan (1941), 291–94. 22.  Choˉsen soˉtokufu tetsudoˉkyoku unyuka, Cho ˉsen no fuˉbo (Keijoˉ: Nihon ryokoˉ kyoˉkai choˉsen shibu, 1940). 23.  Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ, 6 January 1940. Reporters must have been treated to a preview of this exhibition, which did not open to the public until 9 January. Virtually every colony was the subject of an exhibition hosted by department stores, whether in Japan proper or somewhere in the colonies, in 1940. For example, in August, the Osaka branch of the Takashimaya Department Store hosted an exhibition about Taiwan sponsored by the Government-General of Taiwan (see the ad that appeared in the 1 August Asahi ). 24.  Manshuˉ nichinichi shinbun, 10 May 1940. 25.  Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen 2, no. 2 (February 1940). 26.  In response to my query, Hwang Sun-Il, whose research focuses on Korean forced laborers, confirmed in an e-mail message on 17 April 2009 that more or less the same railway and steamships that brought tourists to and around Korea were used to transport Korean forced laborers to their destinations. 27.  For a contemporary tour guide of the southern region of the Korean Peninsula including Pusan and Kyongju, see Choˉsen soˉtokufu tetsudoˉkyoku, Nansen chiho ˉ (1940). 28.  Keishuˉ koseki hozonkai, Shiragi kyuˉto keishuˉ koseki zui (Keishuˉ, 1939). 29.  Inoue Masuzoˉ, “Choˉsen shasoˉkan,” Kanko ˉ 8, no. 3 (1940): 37–40. 30.  Wolfgang Schivelbusch has analyzed how train travel made it difficult for travelers to experience the changing landscape. See his chapter “Panoramic Travel” in Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the 19th Century (New York: Urizen Books, 1977), 57–72. Miriam Khan of the University of Washington introduced Schivelbusch’s book to me. 31.  Choˉsen soˉtokufu tetsudoˉkyoku, Cho ˉsen ryoko ˉ annai (Keijoˉ, 1938). 32.  Choˉsen no kankoˉsha, Cho ˉsen no kanko ˉ (Keijo ˉ, 1939), 26–27. 33.  Mantetsu Choˉmanshi annaijo, Cho ˉmanshi tabi no shiori (1938). 34.  Manshi ryoko ˉ nenkan (1942), 338–39. 35.  The official forty-year history of the Government Railways of Choˉsen included annual statistics through 1938 on the number of individuals who stayed in hotels owned by the Government Railways. The trend is upward in the late 1930s, going from 32,934 in 1936 to 33,854 in 1937 to 38,705 in 1938. The sluggish growth experienced in 1937 was probably a result of the outbreak of full-scale war with China. However, if the case of Korea is similar to the rest of the empire, the recovery by 1938 (a 14 percent jump from 1937 in individuals staying in

210   Notes to Pages 111–116

Government Railways hotels) would have been followed by even more dramatic increases in the number of people traveling in 1939 and 1940. See Choˉsen soˉtokufu tetsudoˉkyoku, Cho ˉsen tetsudo ˉ yonjuˉnen ryakushi (Keijoˉ, 1940), 577. 36.  Thirteen were advertised, but the route went past many additional landmarks. 37.  Nara Women’s University has posted this diary online. See http://www.nara-wu.ac.jp/ nensi/96.htm. 38.  Inoue Tomoichiroˉ, Toyoda Saburoˉ, Nitta Jun, and Takematsu Yoshiaki, Manshuˉ tabi nikki (Akashi shoboˉ, 1941), 33. 39.  Ibid., 39–42. 40.  For photos of the Imperial Subject Oath Tower, see the City History Compilation Committee of Seoul, Seoul through Pictures 2: Seoul under Japanese Aggression (1910–1945) (Seoul: Mayor of Seoul, 2002), 77; Choˉsen soˉtokufu, Shisei sanjuˉnenshi (Keijoˉ, 1940), preface; and Kigen nisen roppyakunen shisei sanjuˉnen yakushin Cho ˉsen no zenbo ˉ, a brochure (that was probably an insert to either the 10 or 11 April 1940 edition of the Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ) published by the Keijoˉ Nippoˉ Newspaper Company, 1. The caption to the photo that appears in this brochure notes that 1.4 million handwritten examples of the oath were enclosed in the tower. 41.  See the 1939 diary of the Nara Women’s Higher Normal School student cited above. 42.  The Prince Itoˉ Memorial Temple no longer exists. It was located where what now is the inside grounds of the luxurious Shilla Hotel. The only picture of it that I have been able to locate is in Government-General of Chosen, Thriving Chosen: A Survey of Twenty-Five Years’ Administration (Keijoˉ, 1935), between p. 34 and p. 35. 43.  Inoue, Toyoda, Nitta, and Takematsu, Manshuˉ tabi nikki, 34–35. 44.  Baba Haruyoshi, ed., Ko ˉmo ˉ seiseki zukan (Koˉmoˉ seiseki zukan kankoˉkai, 1940). 45.  Joshua A. Fogel, The Cultural Dimension of Sino-Japanese Relations (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 116. 46.  Keijo ˉ no kanko ˉ was available for 20 sen. 47.  The Japanese also planted decorative cherry trees in the Shoˉchuˉdan Park. 48.  This diary is available online at http://halsema.org/people/JamesJuliusHalsema/ JapanDiary.html. ˉ kawa Shuˉmei who, before the 1930s, popularized 49.  According to Cemil Aydin, it was O Okakura’s ideas about Pan-Asianism in Japan. See his The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 113. 50.  Kakuzo Okakura, The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1971; originally published in 1904), 7. 51.  Government-General of Tyosen, Annual Report on Administration of Tyosen 1937–38 (Keizyo, 1938), 1–3. 52.  Ellen Furlough, “Une leçon des choses: Tourism, Empire, and the Nation in Interwar France,” French Historical Studies 25, no. 3 (2002): 455. 53.  Bertram M. Gordon, “Warfare and Tourism: Paris in World War II,” Annals of Tourism Research 25, no. 3 (  July 1998): 624–25. 54.  Inoue, Toyoda, Nitta, and Takematsu, Manshuˉ tabi nikki, 49. 55.  Quoted in Hugh Clarke, “The Great Dialect Debate: The State and Language Policy in Okinawa,” in Society and the State in Interwar Japan, ed. Elise K. Tipton (New York: Routledge, 1997), 195. Clarke analyzes in depth the debate over language that resulted from this comment made by a member of a group led by Yanagi Soˉetsu that visited Okinawa in January 1940. For anecdotal information about the dialect controversy in Okinawa in 1940, see Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Kusa no ne no fashizumu (Toˉkyoˉ daigaku shuppankai, 1987), 114–16. 56.  Zenkoku yuˉwa dantai rengoˉ taikai, Zenkoku yuˉwa dantai rengo ˉ taikai yo ˉko ˉ (Kashihara-shi, 1940), 10.

Notes to Pages 117–123   211

ˉ saka jinken hakubutsukan, Tsukurareru Nihon 57.  For examples of postcards of kisaeng, see O kokumin: Kokuseki, senso ˉ, sabetsu (2004), 37. This particular set of postcards included a stamp that reads, “In commemoration of sightseeing in Keijoˉ, Kai City Chamber of Commerce.” 58.  Song Youn-ok, “Japanese Colonial Rule and State-Managed Prostitution: Korea’s Licensed Prostitutes,” positions 5, no. 1 (1997): 187. Melissa Wender, translator of this essay, kindly brought it to my attention. 59.  On the popularity and complex meanings associated with various versions of the song “Arirang,” see E. Taylor Atkins, “The Dual Career of ‘Arirang’: The Korean Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit,” Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 3 (August 2007): 645–87. For examples of postcards featuring the words to Arirang together with images of daily life in Korea, see Mainichi shinbunsha, Nihon shokuminchishi bessatsu ichiokunin no Sho ˉwashi: Cho ˉsen, 153–54. 60.  Inoue, Toyoda, Nitta, and Takematsu, Manshuˉ tabi nikki, 35–38, 43–46. 61.  Ibid., 60, 66. 62.  Katarzyna Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity (London: Reaktion Books, 2006). Particularly relevant is her chapter “The Culinary Consequences of Japanese Imperialism.” 63.  For a description of the Koˉkoku rekishikan, see the 20 August edition of the Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ. 64.  For a diagram of the exposition, see the 1 September 1940 issue of Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ. 65.  Keijo ˉ nippo ˉ, 24 October 1940. 66.  “Gogahaku ni hanto ˉ no insho ˉ o kiku zadankai,” Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen 1, no. 2 (August 1939): 46–53. 67.  Government-General of Chosen, Thriving Chosen: A Survey of Twenty-Five Years’ Administration (Keijoˉ, 1935), 1–2. 68.  City History Compilation Committee of Seoul, Seoul through Pictures 2: Seoul under Japanese Aggression (1910–1945), 238. 69.  Woo Mi-Young, “Geundae yeohaengui uimi byeoniwa singminji/jegukui jagi guseong nolri—Myohyangsan gihaengmuneul jungsimeuro,” Dongbanghakji 133 (2006): 311–43. Yi EunSang is also written as Yi Un-sang, and Hyeon Jin-Geon as Hyon Chin-gon. Song Yongsuk kindly translated this essay into Japanese for me so that I could introduce it here. 5. Touring Manchuria’s Sacred Sites   1.  At the time, Harbin was known among Japanese travelers for its Russian community and sites such as the Orthodox churches and the Russian Cemetery. For a contemporary guide to Harbin’s sightseeing attractions, see Fujii Kinjuˉroˉ, ed., Harubin no kanko ˉ (Nisshin yoˉkoˉ, 1939).   2.  Manshuˉ nichinichi shinbun, 7 January 1940.   3.  Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho (1941), 48–53.   4.  A visitors guide to Heijoˉ in pamphlet form published circa 1940 by the Heijoˉ Tourism Association informed tourists that Heijoˉ had a wealth of battle sites from the time of the SinoJapanese War, when, as the guide stressed, “our Fifth Provincial Division under the command of Lieutenant General Nozu Michitsura was charged with the weighty duty of destroying the local Chinese continent of 15,000 troops.” See Heijoˉ kankoˉ kyoˉkai, Kanko ˉ no Heijo ˉ (Heijoˉ, circa 1940), 4.   5.  Kanko ˉ chosen 2, no. 6 (November 1940).   6.  A superb visual introduction to Manchuria’s tourist topography, based on contemporary travel guides, postcards, and photographs, can be found in the two volumes of the Mainichi Newspaper Company’s series Nihon shokuminchishi: Bessatsu ichiokunin no Sho ˉwashi (Mainichi shinbunsha, 1978–80) devoted to Manchuria. See vol. 2, 163–233, and the sections titled “Nanman meisho” and “Saiman meisho” in vol. 4, 62–83, 210–19.

212   Notes to Pages 123–130

  7.  One collection of photographs that shows the diversity of Manchuria in 1940 is Kuwahara Kineo, Manshuˉ Sho ˉwa juˉgonen (Shoˉbunsha, 1974).   8.  The theme of “emptiness” was commonly applied to colonial territories when the socalled mother country was encouraging settlement there. For example, Charles Burdett has written of official Italian writings about Ethiopia after 1936: “The metaphor that occurred time and time again in the officially sanctioned accounts of the period was that of the occupation of an empty space.” See Charles Burdett, “Journeys to Italian East Africa, 1936–1941: Narratives of Settlement,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 5, no. 2 (2000): 211.   9.  For one travelogue of the main Japanese settlements in northern Manchuria, see Tokunaga Sunao, Senkentai (Kaizoˉsha, 1938). 10.  Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 383–85. 11.  Manchuria Daily News, Travel in Manchoukuo (Dairen, 1941), 25. 12.  For information on the sites visited on the “Ryoˉjun battle site bus tour,” see Dairen toshi koˉtsu kabushiki kaisha, Hoˉten koˉtsu kabushiki kaisha, Shinkyoˉ koˉtsu kabushiki kaisha, and Harubin koˉtsu kabushiki kaisha, eds., Manshuˉ no kanko ˉ basu annai (Dairen toshi koˉtsu kabushiki kaisha, 1939). This pamphlet also provides the routes followed by the tour buses in Dairen, Shinkyoˉ, Harbin, Mukden, and Fushun. 13.  Gao Yuan (高媛), “ ‘Rakudo’ o hashiru kankoˉ basu: 1930-nendai no ‘Manshuˉ’ toshi to teikoku no doramatorugi,” in Kakudai suru modaniti: Iwanami ko ˉza Kindai Nihon no bunkashi, ed. Yoshimi Shun’ya (Iwanami, 2002), 225. 14.  Japan Tsuˉrisuto Byuˉroˉ Dairen shibu, “Natsu wa umi e,” exact date unknown but definitely pre-1945. 15.  For a more contemporary analysis of the role of the tour guide in shaping tourists’ impressions of a site, see Elizabeth C. Fine and Jean Haskell Speer, “Tour Guide Performances as Sight Sacralization,” Annals of Tourism Research 12 (1985): 73–95. 16.  For information on the Kwantung Army’s role, see Gao, “ ‘Rakudo’ o hashiru kankoˉ basu: 1930-nendai no ‘Manshuˉ’ toshi to teikoku no doramatorugi,” 216–53. 17.  Hamamoto Hiroshi, Ryo ˉjun (Rokkoˉ shoˉkai shuppanbu, 1942), 11. 18.  Ibid., 23. 19.  Takeuchi Masami, “Hokushi shisatsuki,” Keiden 2, no. 3 (August 1938), 33. 20.  Hayashi Fukiko, Nanman no omoide: Eiheki (Shunjuˉsha, 1938), 316–17. Hayashi’s husband worked for the South Manchurian Railway Company. 21.  H. W. Wilson, Japan’s Fight for Freedom: The Story of War between Russia and Japan, vol. 1 (London: Amalgamated Press, 1904), 274. 22.  Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 194. 23.  The text of his radio address appears in the travelogue he published about his lecture tour to Manchuria and Korea, the catalyst for which was the opportunity to attend the ceremony marking the thirtieth anniversary of the battle for Port Arthur. See Tanaka Chigaku, Toman kiko ˉ (Shishio bunko, 1937), 59–66. The travelogue includes accounts of his visit to Port Arthur and to more recently sanctified battle sites dating from the days immediately following the Manchurian Incident in cities such as Shinkyoˉ. 24.  Chigaku Tanaka, What Is Nippon Kokutai: Introduction to Nipponese National Principles (Shishio bunko, 1937). 25.  All contemporary Japanese guidebooks and pamphlets that I have examined emphasize Port Arthur as the site of the decisive battle in the Russo-Japanese War. If they even mention it as a battle site of the Sino-Japanese War, this historical chapter is downplayed. To provide one concrete example among many possibilities, the pocket-sized 1940 pamphlet published by the Dairen Steamship Company to inform visitors about shipping timetables and fares and about

Notes to Pages 130–134   213

the local sites of interest highlights Port Arthur’s significance in the Russo-Japanese War and ˉ saka shoˉsen kabushiki kaisha, makes no mention of its role in the Sino-Japanese War. See O Dairen ko ˉro annai (1940). 26.  For the official Japanese denial, see “Japan on Its Behavior: Massacre of the Chinese at Port Arthur Officially Denied,” New York Times, 18 December 1894. 27.  Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 492–96. 28.  Sandie Holguin, “ ‘National Spain Invites You’: Battlefield Tourism during the Spanish Civil War,” American Historical Review 110, no. 5 (2005): 1417. 29.  Robert Jan van Pelt, “Bearers of Culture, Harbingers of Destruction: The Mythos of the Germans in the East,” in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 98–135. 30.  Sekiuchi Shoˉichi, Manshi shisatsu no tabi (Fukushima: Iwakai bunka kyoˉkai, 1940), 43–45. Sekiuchi represented Fukushima Prefecture in the Lower House of the Diet in the postwar period. 31.  Azuma Fumio, Cho ˉsen, manshuˉ, shina tairiku shisatsu ryoko ˉ annai (Toˉgakusha, 1939), 32. 32.  Manshuˉ nichinichi shinbun, 5 March 1940. 33.  Manshi ryoko ˉ nenkan (1941), 368–69. 34.  Gao Yuan, “ ‘Rakudo’ o hashiru kankoˉ basu: 1930-nendai no ‘Manshuˉ’ toshi to teikoku no doramatorugi,” 239. 35.  Gregory P. Guelcher, “Dreams of Empire: The Japanese Agricultural Colonization of Manchuria (1931–1945) in History and Memory,” PhD diss., University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 1990, 91. The postcard is reproduced on p. 124. 36.  Manshi ryoko ˉ nenkan (1944), 415. 37.  Perhaps the best visual window into Shinkyoˉ’s landmark sites in the 1930s is Li Jong, Wei“Manzhouguo” Mingxinpian Yanjiu: Wei Manguodu “Xinjing” ( jin Changchun) Sheying mingxinpian xilie (Changchun, 2005). This is a collection of postcards of Shinkyoˉ during the years that Manchukuo existed. Professor Linda Walton of Portland State University kindly helped me provide the correct citation for this Chinese-language book. 38.  See the online version of the diary at http://halsema.org/people/JamesJuliusHalsema/ JapanDiary.html. 39.  Mantetsu tetsudoˉ soˉkyoku, Manshuˉ chuˉreito ˉ (1940). 40.  For further information on how quickly after the Manchurian Incident (1931) battle sites throughout Manchuria where Japanese blood had been spilled were transformed into tourist destinations, see Gao Yuan’s analysis of a Waseda University student’s 1932 account of traveling in Manchuria: Gao Yuan, “Rakudo ni hibiku ‘Miyako no seihoku’: Aru soˉdaisei no manshuˉ ryokoˉ nikki,” in Manshuˉkoku no bunka, ed. Nishihara Kazumi and Kawamata Masaru (Seribi Press, 2005), 210–25. 41.  Manshuˉ jijoˉ annaisho, Manshuˉ senseki junrei (Sanseidoˉ, 1939), 67–69. 42.  Miriam Basilio, “A Pilgrimage to the Alcazar of Toledo: Ritual, Tourism and Propaganda in Franco’s Spain,” in Architecture and Tourism: Perception, Performance and Place, ed. D. Medina Lasansky and Brian McLaren (New York: Berg, 2004), 93–107. 43.  The luxurious palace to which he was scheduled to move remained unfinished when Manchukuo collapsed in August 1945. 44.  A mosque opened in Tokyo in 1938, and from that point on Japanese could see a mosque even in Japan proper. The mosque in Tokyo lacked history, however. For information on the Tokyo mosque and, more broadly, Japan’s attempt to reach out to the Muslim world, see Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam,” American Historical Review 109, no. 4 (2004): 1140–70. 45.  Shinkyoˉ koˉtsuˉ kabushiki kaisha, Kokuto kanko ˉ basu annai (Shinkyoˉ, 1939).

214   Notes to Pages 134–142

46.  Gao Yuan, “ ‘Rakudo’ o hashiru kankoˉ basu,” 232. 47.  See http://www.nara-wu.ac.jp/nensi/96.htm. 48.  Manchuria Daily News, Travel in Manchoukuo, 60–61. 49.  Gotoˉ Asataroˉ, Saishin Shina ryokoˉ annai (Koˉgashoin, 1938), 192–93. For additional information about Gotoˉ, see Joshua Fogel, The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China, 1862–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), esp. 200–208. 50.  Azuma Fumio, Cho ˉsen, manshuˉ, shina tairiku shisatsu ryoko ˉ annai (Toˉgakusha, 1939), 38. 51.  This is not to say that Gotoˉ’s writings were therefore more accurate. Louise Young has drawn attention to Gotoˉ’s stress on the absence of nationalistic feeling among the Chinese masses, a common misreading of the situation that was fundamental to Japan’s becoming bogged down in a military quagmire on the continent. See Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 98–99. 52.  Bunka cho ˉsen was a continuation of the magazine Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen previously introduced. 53.  See the series by Okada Tatsuo that begins with the article “Toˉa ryokoˉsha Mitsukoshinai annaisho hoˉmonki,” Bunka chosen 4, no. 1 (  January 1942), and continues in the 4, no. 3 (May 1942) and 4, no. 5 (December 1942) issues. 54.  Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History (New York: New Press, 1992), 158–67. 6. Overseas Japanese and the Fatherland   1.  The figure of 2,501,546 is from Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kaigai doˉhoˉ Toˉkyoˉ taikai honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai no shiori (1940), 37–38. The 1942 edition of the Asahi nenkan confirms that around one million individuals from the figure of 2.5 million were not from Japan proper (naichi ).   2.  For Korean emigration to Manchuria, see Hyun Ok Park, Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); and Barbara J. Brooks, “Peopling the Japanese Empire: The Koreans in Manchuria and the Rhetoric of Inclusion,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities, ed. Sharon A. Minichiello (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 25–44.   3.  For information on Japanese settlement communities in colonial Korea, see Hyung Gu Lynn, “Malthusian Dreams: The Oriental Development Company and Japanese Emigration to Korea,” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (New York: Routledge: 2005), 25–42; Jun Uchida, “Brokers of Empire: Japanese and Korean Business Elites in Colonial Korea,” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (New York: Routledge: 2005), 153–70; Takasaka So ˉji, Shokuminchi cho ˉsen no nihonjin (Iwanami shoten, 2002); Kenji Kimura, Jun Uchida, and Jae-won Sun (with comment by Louise Young), Japanese Settler Colonialism and Capitalism in Japan: Advancing into Korea, Settling Down, and Returning to Japan, 1905–1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Occasional Papers in Japanese Studies, 2002); Alain Delissen, “Denied and Besieged: The Japanese Community of Korea, 1876– 1945,” in New Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953, ed. Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot (New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 125–45; Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Kimura Kenji, Zaicho ˉ Nihonjin no shakaishi (Miraisha, 1989); Andrew J. Grajdanzev, Modern Korea: Her Economic and Social Development under the Japanese (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944); and Herman Lautensach, Korea: A Geography Based on the Author’s Travels and Literature, trans. Katherine and Eckart Dege (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988; originally published in German in 1938). For information on Japanese settlement communities in Taiwan, see Joseph Allen, “Taipei Park: Signs of Occupation,” Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 1 (2007): 159–99; Jeremy Taylor, “Colonial Takao: The Making of a Southern Metropolis,” Urban History 31, no. 1 (2004): 48–71;

Notes to Pages 143–148   215

Gotoˉ Ken’ichi, “Japan’s Southward Advance and Colonial Taiwan,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 3, no. 1 (2004): 15–44; and Andrew J. Grajdanzev, Formosa Today (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1942). For an introduction to Japanese settlement communities in Karafuto (an especially understudied topic), see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Becoming Japanese: Imperial Expansion and Identity Crises in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities, ed. Sharon Minichiello (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 157–80; and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Northern Lights: The Making and Unmaking of Karafuto Identity,” Journal of Asian Studies 60, no. 3 (2001): 645–71.   4.  See Joshua A. Fogel, “Integrating into Chinese Society: A Comparison of the Japanese Communities of Shanghai and Harbin,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities, ed. Sharon A. Minichiello (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 45–69; Takatsuna Hirohumi, “Seiyoˉjin no Shanhai, Nihonjin no Shanhai,” in Shanhaishi, kyodai toshi no keisei to hitobito no itonami, ed. Takahashi Koˉsuke and Furumaya Tadao (Toˉhoˉ shoten, 1995), 97–132; and Christian Henriot, “ ‘Little Japan’ in Shanghai: An Insulated Community, 1875–1945,” in New Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953, ed. Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot (New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 146–169. See also Mark R. Peattie, “Japanese Treaty Port Settlements in China, 1895–1937,” in The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895–1937, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 166–209. For colonial Japanese subjects in China, see Brooks, “Japanese Colonial Citizenship in Treaty Port China: The Location of Koreans and Taiwanese in the Imperial Order,” 109–124.   5.  Kazuko Kuramoto, Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999). The literature on Japanese settlement in Manchuria is expanding rapidly. In addition to works cited elsewhere in this chapter, see Gregory P. Guelcher, “Paradise Lost: Japan’s Agricultural Colonists in Manchukuo,” in Japanese Diasporas, ed. Nobuko Adachi (London: Routledge, 2006), 71–84.   6.  Tomiyama Ichiroˉ, “The ‘Japanese’ of Micronesia: Okinawans in the Nan’yoˉ Islands,” in The Japanese Diaspora, ed. Ronald Nakasone (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 57–70. See also Mark R. Peattie, Nanyo ˉ: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1988); David C. Purcell, Jr., “Japanese Entrepreneurs in the Mariana, Marshall, and Caroline Islands,” in East across the Pacific, ed. Hilary Conroy and T. Scott Miyakawa (Santa Barbara: American Bibliographical Center Clio Press, 1972), 56–70; and Willard Price, The South Sea Adventure (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1936).   7.  For example, it has been well documented that Japanese immigrants to Manchuria often settled on land that was appropriated through force from Chinese and Korean farmers. See Yamamuro Shin’ichi, Manchuria under Japanese Domination, trans. Joshua Fogel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); and Ronald Suleski, “Northeast China under Japanese Control: The Role of the Manchurian Youth Corps, 1934–1945,” Modern China 7, no. 3 (1981): 351–77.   8.  For an overview of the Korean diaspora, see Charles Armstrong, The Koreas (New York: Routledge, 2007), 89–129.   9.  Eiichiro Azuma, “Pioneers of Overseas Japanese Development: Japanese American History and the Making of Expansionist Orthodoxy in Imperial Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 67, no. 4 (2008), 6. 10.  Yusuke Tsurumi, “Present-Day Japan,” in Japan Photo Library, Japan Celebrates Twenty-Six Centuries of Imperial Rule (1940), no page number. 11.  Eiichiro Azuma, “Historical Overview of Japanese Emigration, 1868–2000,” in Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas, ed. Akemi Kikumura-Yano (New York: Altamira Press, 2002), 32–48.

216   Notes to Pages 149–151

12.  For a contemporary description of the million-family plan, see Immigration of  Japanese Farmers into Manchuria (South Manchurian Railway Company, 1938). For a lucid analysis of the “migration machine” that developed in Japan to encourage emigration to Manchuria, see Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), esp. 353–98. 13.  Quoted in Henry Frei, “Japan Discovers Australia: The Emergence of Australia in the Japanese World-View, 1540s–1900,” Monumenta Nipponica 39, no. 1 (1984): 78. 14.  Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 15.  Daniel M. Masterson with Sayaka Funada-Classen, The Japanese in Latin America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 118. 16.  Koˉyama Rokuroˉ, Ko ˉyama Rokuro ˉ kaiso ˉroku (Sao Paulo, Brazil: Koˉyama Rokuroˉ kaisoˉroku kankoˉ iinkai, 1976), 407. 17.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kaigai doˉhoˉ Toˉkyoˉ taikai honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai no shiori. 18.  This reproduction is of the last page of the guide to the Congress cited in the previous note. 19.  Quoted in Mori Takemaro, “Colonies and Countryside in Wartime Japan,” in Farmers and Village Life in Twentieth Century Japan, ed. Ann Waswo and Nishida Yoshiaki (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 188. 20.  Sakamoto Gajoˉ, Kaitaku sandaiki (Manshuˉ jijoˉ annaisho, 1940), 59–60. 21.  Manshuˉ nichinichi shinbunsha, Tairiku kaitaku seishin so ˉsho daiichigo ˉ: Jimmu tenno ˉ to kokudo kaitaku (Dairen, 1940). 22.  Noda Ryoˉji, Nanbei no kakushin ni funto ˉ seru do ˉho ˉ o tazunete (Hakubunkan, 1931). 23.  Noda Ryoˉji, “Hakkoˉ ichiu to jinrui byoˉdoˉ,” Kaigai ijuˉ (  January 1941): 6. 24.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho (Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai, 1941), 31. 25.  For information on N.Y.K. in 1940, including lines and fares, see its monthly Englishlanguage magazine The Travel Bulletin. In 1940, N.Y.K. introduced two of its so-called Ocean Triplets,” or ultra-modern luxury liners, the Nitta Maru and the Yawata Maru, for transpacific service. For more on the link between emigration and the development of Japanese steamship lines, see Yamada Michio, Fune ni miru Nihonjin iminshi (Chuˉoˉ koˉronsha, 1988). 26.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kaigai doˉhoˉ honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai yo ˉko ˉ (May 1940), 5. 27.  For information on overseas Japanese newspapers, see Ebihara Hachiroˉ, Kaigai ho ˉji shinbun zasshishi (Meichoˉ fukyuˉkai, 1936; reprinted in 1980). 28.  The reproduction showing the flag is of the back cover of the following guide to the Congress: Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kaigai doˉhoˉ Toˉkyoˉ taikai honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai no shiori. 29.  Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho, preface. 30.  In 1942, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which by then had already rounded up, in advance of the general internment, most of the leading Japanese residents of the continental United States who in any way had participated in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, whether by going to Japan for the Congress or by attending local banquets, commissioned a translation of the key addresses given at the Congress to evidence the disloyalty of those in custody. I am grateful to Homer Yasui, who provided me with the FBI case file on his father, Masao, a prominent Japanese resident of Hood River, Oregon, who was arrested days after Pearl Harbor and incarcerated until after the war ended. Masao Yasui did not attend the Congress in Tokyo, but he was among approximately one hundred Japanese residing in the United States who accepted a “Certificate of Merit” and “Wooden Cup” awarded by

Notes to Pages 151–159   217

the Minister of Foreign Affairs to commemorate the 2,600th anniversary. Included in Masao Yasui’s FBI file was Honolulu file No. 65–564 (dated 8 July 1942) on the “Overseas Japanese Central Society” (Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai) that has translations of key sections of addresses made at the Congress on 4 November. See page 11 for the remarks by Prime Minister Konoe quoted above, the original of which I have not been able to locate. 31.  It was Matsuoka who had first publicly used the term “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” only three months earlier, on 1 August. 32.  Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho, 5–6. 33.  Ibid., 6. 34.  Yamashita Soˉen, Ho ˉshuku kigen nisen roppyakunen to kaigai do ˉho ˉ (Hoˉshuku kigen nisen roppyakunen to kaigai doˉhoˉ kankoˉkai, 1941), 52. 35.  For a profile of Wakiyama, see Nihon takushoku kyoˉkai, Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete (1941), 113–114. 36.  For accounts of the opening ceremony, see Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho, 4–8; and Yamashita Soˉen, Ho ˉshuku kigen nisen roppyakunen to kaigai do ˉho ˉ, 49–52. 37.  Seiichi Higashide, Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 62–65. In Higashide’s case, however, a particular consul-general in Lima helped him escape punishment for having failed to fulfill his duty, as a Japanese national, to serve in the military. 38.  As Michael Weiner has shown, two of the key Japanese terms employed in discourse about race and culture, jinshu and minzoku, did not have fixed meanings. There were individuals in Imperial Japan who used the terms jinshu and minzoku in reference to immutable biological characteristics, in other words, blood or race. There were also individuals who used them to mean biological characteristics and cultural attributes, as well as cases of individuals who employed the term minzoku to mean exclusively cultural attributes (ethnicity) and individuals who employed the term jinshu to mean exclusively racial attributes. My interpretations below are based on the overall context in which an individual used one or both of these terms, which typically indicated in what sense they were using them. See Michael Weiner, “Discourses of Race, Nation, and Empire in Pre-1945 Japan,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 18, no. 3 (1995): 433–56. 39.  Tanaka Koˉtaroˉ, Raten Amerika kiko ˉ (Iwanami shoten, 1940). 40.  Nanyoˉ was the imprecise Japanese term used to define, with amorphous boundaries, the area to the south of Japan that included Micronesia but was not necessarily limited to that huge ocean area dotted with islands. For the purpose of the Congress, delegates residing in the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Thailand, and other areas outside of Japanese political authority were also grouped in the Nanyoˉ region. 41.  Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉsha kaigi gijiroku (November 1940). This is a word-by-word transcript of the meetings of the following regional committees: North America (combined with Hawai’i on this day), Central and South America, and Nanyoˉ. 42.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten jimukyoku, Kigen nisen roppyakunen shukuten kiroku, vol. 12 (Naikaku insatsukyoku, 1943), 207. This citation corresponds to p. 219 of vol. 22 of the Yumani reprint edition. 43.  For information on overseas shrines, see Ogasawara Shoˉzoˉ, ed., Kaigai jinjashi, vol. 1 (Kaigai jinjashi hensankai, 1953). The planned second volume was never published. 44.  Kaigai doˉhoˉ chuˉoˉkai, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho, 12. 45.  Yuji Ichioka, “Dai Nisei Mondai: Changing Japanese Immigrant Conceptions of the Second-Generation Problem, 1902–1941,” in Before Internment: Essays in Prewar Japanese American History, ed. Gordon H. Chang and Eiichiro Azuma (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 10–52.

218   Notes to Pages 159–164

46. Yamashita Soˉen, Ho ˉshuku kigen nisen roppyakunen to kaigai doˉho ˉ, 65. 47. Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho, 42–44. 48. Sandra Collins, “The 1940 Olympics: Imperial Commemoration and Diplomacy,” International Journal of the History of Sport 24, no. 8 (2007): 978. This special issue is also titled The 1940 Tokyo Games: The Missing Olympics, Japan, the Asian Olympics, and the Olympic Movement. 49. Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉsha kaigi gijiroku, 84. 50. See Oguma Eiji, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-images, trans. David Askew (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002), esp. 204–16. 51. Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kaigai doˉhoˉ Tokyo taikai honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ Tokyo taikai no shiori, preface. For a profile of Ota, see Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 168–69. 52. Cited in Scott O’Bryan, The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 44. For the original, see Inaba Hidezoˉ, Gekido ˉ 30-nen no Nihon keizai: Watakushi no keizai taikenki ( Jitsugyoˉ no Nihonsha, 1965), 72. 53. “Kaigai doˉhoˉ ni kiku,” Shashin shuˉho ˉ 142 (13 November 1940), 10. 54. Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉsha kaigi ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo gijiroku, 40–41. 55. Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai doˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 71–89. 56. For a profile of Anze (including documentation that this was the way he wrote his name in romaji), see Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai doˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 173–78. 57. For a profile of Gashuˉ, see Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai doˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 94–97. 58. Nihonjin Aruzentin ijuˉshi hensan iinkai, Nihonjin Aruzentin ijuˉshi (Nihonjin Aruzentin ijuˉshi hensan iinkai, 1971), 118. Gashuˉ also authored a history of the Japanese immigrant community in Argentina, but it sheds little light on his attendance at the Congress. See Gashuˉ Kuhei, Aruzentin do ˉho ˉ gojuˉnenshi (Seibundoˉ shinko ˉsha, 1956). 59. Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉsha kaigi gijiroku, 118. 60. For a profile of Kagetsu, see Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai doˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 164–65. 61. Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉsha kaigi gijiroku, 56. 62. Rafu Shinpoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kinen taikan (Los Angeles, 1940), 29–54. 63. For the schedule of overseas broadcasts focusing on the Congress, see Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho, 76. 64. All Japanese, Italian, and German schools were officially closed in 1938. 65. Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉsha kaigi gijiroku, 106. 66. For a profile of Kumamoto, see Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai doˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 158–63. 67. Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉsha kaigi gijiroku, 88. 68. For a profile of Nakagawa, see Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai doˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 155–57. 69. For a profile of Morokuma, see ibid., 126–43. 70. Serafin D. Quiason, “The Japanese Colony in Davao, 1904–1941,” in Japan and Southeast Asia, vol. 1: From the Meiji Restoration to 1945, ed. Wolf Mendl (London: Routledge, 2001), 96. 71. Yamashita Soˉen, Ho ˉshuku kigen nisen roppyakunen to kaigai doˉho ˉ, 189. As Louise Young has shown, as a result of the government’s plan, initiated in 1936, to move one million rural households to Manchuria within twenty years, by 1940 not just men but also women were featured centrally in the prevalent discourse that, in totality, constituted a cult of the pioneer. Particularly celebrated at the time were Manchuria brides—Japanese women who, often after receiving some specialized training for their new lives in Manchuria, went to the continent as

Notes to Pages 164–171

219

picture brides to Japanese pioneers there. But the Japanese state also sought to appropriate and employ the histories of earlier Japanese female immigrants who attended the conference to support the contemporary emigration plan. 72.  Yamashita Soˉen, Ho ˉshuku kigen nisen roppyakunen to kaigai do ˉho ˉ, 186. 73.  Irie Toraji, Ho ˉjin kaigai hattenshi (Imin mondai kenkyuˉkai, 1938); volume 1 was first published in 1936, and volumes 1 and 2 were published at the same time, but as individual volumes, in 1938. Then, in 1942, Irie’s study was republished in a form that combined the two volumes into one large volume. 74.  Eiichiro Azuma, “Pioneers of Overseas Japanese Development: Japanese American History and the Making of Expansionist Orthodoxy in Imperial Japan,” 12–13. Azuma wrote: “Iriye explained how Japan had reached the point at which the Japanese government, after many years of neglect and failure, had finally come to its senses to embrace Manchurian colonization as a national project. Filled with stories of ‘tribulation,’ including the Issei’s struggles in the United States, Iriye’s narrative suggested by contrast a better future for emigrants in Manchuria in the post-1936 era.” 75.  Zaibei Nihonjinkai, Zaibei Nihonjinshi (San Francisco, 1940). 76.  Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 90. 77.  Aoyagi Ikutaroˉ, ed., Burajiru ni okeru nihonjin hattenshi (Burajiru ni okeru nihonjin hattenshi kankoˉ iinkai, 1941). 78.  Ko ˉyama Rokuro ˉ kaiso ˉroku, 408. 79.  Aoyagi Ikutaroˉ, ed., Burajiru ni okeru nihonjin hattenshi gekan (Burajiru ni okeru nihonjin hattenshi kankoˉ iinkai, 1941), 591–605. 80.  Stewart Lone, The Japanese Community in Brazil, 1908–1940 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 142. 81.  Ibid., 149–54. 82.  For a profile of Hatanaka, see Ko ˉki nisen roppyakunen zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉ o mukaete, 183–93. 83.  Takumushoˉ, Gaimushoˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku daikkai zaigai do ˉho ˉ daihyo ˉsha kaigi gijiroku, 123–25. 84.  An English translation of Jinshiroˉ Nakayama, Kanada to Nihonjin (Kanada Nihonjinkai, 1940), is included in Kanada iminshi shiryo ˉ bessatsu (Fuji shuppan, 2001), 189–285. This passage is from p. 281. 85.  Ibid., 256. 86.  Ibid., 253. 87.  Ibid., 285. 88.  Kigen nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kaigai doˉhoˉ Toˉkyoˉ taikai honbu, Kigen nisen roppyakunen ho ˉshuku kaigai do ˉho ˉ To ˉkyo ˉ taikai ho ˉkokusho, 27. 89.  For information on how Japanese immigrants throughout the Americas fared during World War II, see Akemi Kikumura-Yano, ed., Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas (New York: Altamira Press, 2002). ˉ hashi Yoˉichi, “Nanbei iminsha dainisei kyoˉiku no konpon mondai,” in Zaigai ho 90.  O ˉjin dainisei mondai, ed. Imin mondai kenkyuˉkai (1940), 31. 91.  Takeyuki Tsuda, Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), esp. 91–97. 92.  Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Migrants, Subjects, Citizens: Comparative Perspectives on Nationality in the Prewar Japanese Empire,” Japan Focus (online journal; article posted 28 August 2008), http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tessa_Morris_Suzuki/2862, 6. The standard Japanese work on issues of nationality and citizenship in modern Japan is Tashiro Aritsugu, Kokusekiho ˉ chikujo ˉ kaisetsu (Yuzankaku, 1974). 93.  John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), esp. 262–90.

220   Notes to Pages 171–178

94.  Dirk Hoerder has stressed that the German-language diasporas began long before the formation of the modern German nation-state. See Dirk Hoerder, “The German-Language Diasporas: A Survey, Critique, and Interpretation,” Diaspora 11, no. 1 (2002): 7–44. 95.  For a comprehensive study of Italy’s “emigrant nation,” see Mark I. Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). Eiichiro Azuma kindly brought this recent book to my attention. 96.  Friedrich E. Schuler, “Nachwirkende Vorkommnisse: Argentinien als Taetigkeitsfeld fuer Geheimdienst und verdeckte Kriegsaktivitaeten 1915 bis 1922,” in Argentinien und das Dritte Reich, ed. Holger M. Meding and Georg Ismar (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2008), 75–100. See also Friedrich E. Schuler, Secret Wars and Secret Policies in the Americas, 1842–1929 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010). Conclusion   1.  For more information on this topic, see Lee Soo-im and Tanaka Hiroshi, Guro ˉbaru jidai no Nihon shakai to kokuseki (Akashi shoten, 2007).   2.  Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939–1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 185.   3.  Susan Rugh addressed this question in reference to the United States in the period from 1945 to the 1970s, arguing that (p. 6) “Americans justified taking a family vacation out of their commitment to the idea that travel together would strengthen family bonds, and that travel provided a way to educate children as citizens.” According to her, the specificity of the postwar context was as follows (p. 42): “The linkage of education, democratic values, and travel reassured Americans of their superiority as they dealt with the insecurity of cold war politics.” See Susan S. Rugh, Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).   4.  Yukichi Fukuzawa, The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, trans. Eiichi Kiyooka (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 246. Irokawa Daikichi, The Culture of the Meiji Period, translation edited by Marius Jansen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).   5.  Nanbara Shigeru, president of Tokyo Imperial University, “Creation of New Japanese Civilization: An Address Delivered on the Kigensetsu (Anniversary of the Founding of Japan),” 11 February 1946, 1–2.   6.  Kenneth J. Ruoff, The People’s Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945–1995 (Cambridge: Harvard East Asia Monographs 211; published by the Harvard University Asia Center and distributed by Harvard University Press, 2001).   7.  Naikaku so ˉridaijin kanbo ˉ shingishitsu, Kenkoku kinen no hi ni kansuru ko ˉcho ˉkai sokkiroku (1966).   8.  See Ruoff, People’s Emperor, esp. chap. 5.

Notes to Pages 178–187   221

inde x

Italic page numbers refer to illustrations. Color figures and captions are not referenced in this index. Abe Toyoji, 160 Ahn Choong Kun, 118 Aikawa Katsuroku, 61, 97, 207 n56 Ainu people, 48, 85, 109, 204 n9 air travel, 78, 81, 113–14, 114, 135–36 Aizawa Aisaburo, 208 n67 Akihito, Crown Prince, 30 Ametsuchi Tower, 97 Angkor Wat, 121 antiluxury edicts, 74 Anze Moriji, 166, 168 Arakaki, Robert, 11–12 Arendt, Hannah, 146 Argentina, 152, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 175 Arimizu Fujitaro ˉ, 165–66 Armistice Day, 60 Army Day, 58, 59 Aryan Affidavit, 51 Asahi Newspaper Company, 29, 45, 62, 63, 72, 75 Ashiya Film Production Company, 96 Asia: Euro-American imperialism in, 20–24, 182–83; liberation movements in, 182–83 Asia Express, 136 Asia-Pacific War, 18, 180 assimilation: of colonial subjects, 177–78, 179; and cultural difference, 106, 107–8, 122–23, 125, 127, 130; and forced Japanization of Korea, 9, 106–7, 123, 127; and forced Japanization of Okinawa, 123; and overseas Japanese, 12, 168, 175; and second generation, 164, 173 Association of Shinto ˉ Shrines, 186–87 Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anni­ ver­­­sary: and department store exhibitions,

75–77, 79, 203 n60; donations made to, 68; film documentaries commissioned by, 13; magazine published by, 49, 68; and Miyazaki Prefecture, 90; and patriotic songs, 70; projects commissioned by, 37 Atkins, Taylor, 69 Atsumi Ikuro ˉ, 166 Atsuta Shrine, 98, 102 Augustus (Roman emperor), 52–53 Australia, 151, 152, 189–90 n3 authoritarianism, and tourism, 7, 191 n14 Aydin, Cemil, 132, 211 n49 Azuma, Eiichiro, 150, 172, 192 n27, 193 n31, 220 n74 Azuma Fumio, 136, 144 –45 “Bakumatsu Patriots,” 92, 206 n38 Ba Maw, 182 Belgium, 108 Benavides, Oscar, 163 Bolivia, 156, 175 Brandt, Kim, 6 Brazil: Japanese emigrants in, 10, 148, 151, 152, 153, 156, 166, 168–69, 170, 172–73, 205 n10; Japanese nationals distinguished from Brazilian nationals of Japanese descent, 175 Brazil Development Company, 153 Britain: and Christian civilization, 21; colonies of, 108; economy of, 26; Japan compared to, 24; Japan initiating war against, 7, 174; and liberal democracy, 19; national history of, 146–47; and Nazi Germany, 70 Bukkokuji (Pulguksa) Temple Station, 115 Burdett, Charles, 213 n8

223

Cabinet Information Bureau (CIB), 9, 69, 165 Canada, 148, 151, 163, 169, 173–74, 175 Central Overseas Japanese Society, 162, 174 Chae Mu-Ryong, 32 Changchun, China. See Shinkyo ˉ (Changchun), Manchuria Chichibu, Prince, 79, 88 children: and contests, 73; and ideological allegiances, 197 n37; and imperial heritage tourism, 98–99, 183, 207 n58, 208nn65, 66; as imperial subjects, 30–32, 52, 167–68; and National Foundation Day, 56–57; and national history, 34 –37, 42, 55 Chile, 165, 175 China: customs imported from, 46, 47, 50; Japanese residents of, 116, 148, 149; Japan’s continental policy, 9. See also Manchuria; North China; Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45); Sino-Japanese War (1894 –95) China Incident (1937): and casualties, 17–18; and Congress of Overseas Brethren, 159–60; and economic growth, 34; and Japanese residents of China, 149; and national history, 33, 42; and Tokyo Olympics of 1940, 186; and women’s role, 47. See also Second SinoJapanese War (1937–45) Chino Tsuneshi, 156 Cho ˉsen Shrine, 73, 117–18 Christianity and Christian civilization:  Japanese emigrants converting to Christianity, 163; Japan’s national origin predating, 3; modernity based on, 20–22, 23 citizenship: defined by lineage, 12, 176–78, 181–82; defined by loyalty to emperor, 14, 29; and overseas Japanese, 12, 169, 178; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 56; and whites, 172 citizenship training: and imperial heritage tourism, 8, 25, 82, 145, 183; and patriotism, 12; and volunteer labor service, 5, 66–67 civil religion: and Japanese schools overseas, 167–68; and national history, 29–30, 54; and volunteer labor service, 67 Clarke, Hugh, 211 n55 class differences: and colonial tourism, 108; and Japanese emigration, 151, 152, 153–54; and nationalism, 67. See also middle class Collins, Sandra, 189 n1 colonial tourism: and air travel, 113–14, 114; and assimilation and difference, 107–8, 122, 125, 127, 130; and modernity of mother country, 111, 130; prevalence of, 117; transportation infrastructure for, 8, 93,

224   Index

113–15, 126, 135. See also Korean tourism; Manchurian tourism colonies: assimilation and cultural difference in, 106, 107–8, 122–23, 127; and citizenship laws, 176–77, 181; and Confucianism, 119; and consumerism, 34; and defeat in AsiaPacific War, 180; department store exhibitions on, 107, 112, 210 n23; and “emptiness” theme, 213 n8; Japanese settlers of, 10, 52, 84, 98–99, 106, 117, 145, 148, 149, 150, 181; Japan’s contradictory policies toward, 9; and Japan’s educational system, 29–30; Japan’s hierarchy over, 22, 23, 149–50, 177–78, 181; and mass participation in rituals, 59–60; modernity contrasted with, 109, 111, 120, 126–27, 130, 138, 145; relationship with metropole, 10, 12, 51, 76, 117; scholarship on, 9, 192 n24; tours of, 6, 7, 8–9, 106; and unequal power relations, 149–50; and volunteer labor service, 63. See also Karafuto; Korea; Manchuria; Micronesia; Taiwan Columbia Records, 62, 70 Committee to Investigate the Vestiges of Emperor Jimmu, 40–41, 44 –45, 49, 88–89, 98, 185, 198 n54, 206 n24 communism, 18, 20, 23 Communist Party, 195 n51 Confucianism, 119 Confucius and Mencius Sacred Sites Publication Association, 119 Congress of Overseas Brethren: closing ceremonies of, 174; commemorative histories of, 171–74; cost of, 153–54, 162; and definition of “overseas,” 148–49; and department store exhibitions, 79; establishment of shrines overseas, 161–63; flag of, 158; goals of, 156–57; and immigration restrictions, 152; and industrialization, 165–66; and Japanese identity, 12; and Japan’s challenge to EuroAmerican claims of racial and cultural superiority, 162; and migration patterns, 10; pamphlet on dispersion of overseas Japanese, 148, 215 n1; and patriotism, 160, 165, 168; and pedagogical approach to tourism, 129; publicity poster of, 154; and radio, 168; reception of, 171; regional committee meetings of, 173; roundtable on experiences of successful delegates, 166–70; and support for Japan’s policies, 192 n27; themes of, 161–62; and transnational ambiguities, 150, 174 –79; and Yamato race, 12, 156, 164, 166, 179. See also overseas Japanese Constitution of the Empire of Japan, 35

Constitution of the Seventeen Articles, 35 consumerism: and CIB’s promotion of frugality, 9, 192 n22; continuity between wartime and postwar Japan, 24; and department store exhibitions, 74 –81; dutiful nature of, 79–81, 82, 184; and imperial heritage tourism, 83, 86; and interwar period, 24 –25; links between imperial-era and postwar consumerism, 183; and music industry, 69; and nationalism, 4, 80; and newspapers, 73–74; and patriotism, 12, 24 –25, 70, 75, 146; and tourism industry, 7, 25, 75, 80, 105, 145, 146; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 25, 68–72; and wartime Japan, 25, 33–34 corporatism, 18 Cumings, Bruce, 196 n8 Cwiertka, Katarzyna, 124 Daimaru Department Store, Osaka, 191 n11 Dairen (Dalian), Manchuria, 131, 135–36, 136, 137, 138 Daitetsu Department Store, 102 Daitetsu Railways, 99, 102, 209 n84 dark valley concept, and wartime Japan, 12, 18, 33–34, 69, 87, 103–4, 126, 184, 194 n42 department stores: exhibitions hosted by, 6, 74 –81, 88, 102, 185, 203nn60, 61, 65; exhibitions on Korea, 107, 112, 210 n23; and tourism industry, 83 Diamond Jubilee of 1897, 17 Diamond Mountains, Korea, 112, 130, 210 n16 Doi Ko ˉka, 47 Dower, John, 177–78 Dutch East Indies, 166, 169, 218 n40 Duus, Peter, 19 Earhart, David, 192 n22 East Asia Travel Corporation, 145 Eastward Expedition (goto ˉsei  ): and department store exhibitions, 88; departure point for, 37; and imperial heritage tourism, 83, 86–89, 91; and Japanese emigration, 154, 156; as justification for modern empire, 15; maps of, 92, 92, 102, 154; narrative of, 2, 14, 31, 49, 78; reenactment of, 96–97; sites associated with, 38, 73 educational system: commercial publications, 32–37; and national history, 29–32; and teachers, 72–73 Edwards, Walter, 194 n39, 207 n56 Eichmann, Adolf, 146 emperor, cult of: in modern Japan, 14 –18, 24, 188, 194 n38; and volunteer labor service, 67

Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites: and citizenship, 25; competing claims to locations of, 4, 37–40, 90–91, 198 n43, 205 n15; consecration of, 100; designation of, 37, 40–41, 44, 98; local governments’ reports on, 14, 39, 88; Manchurian battle sites compared to, 130; memorabilia for, 102–3; and photography contests, 94; as relics of unbroken imperial line ideology, 186; and unofficial sites, 41. See also imperial heritage tourism Emperor’s Birthday, 58, 72, 200 n4 Ethiopia, 213 n8 Executive Order 9066, 180–81 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, 2 family register (koseki) system, 23, 51, 176–78, 181–82 fascism: definition of, 19; and mass participation in twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 63; and monuments, 100–101; print media fostering, 74; and reactionary modernism, 78; and repression, 146–47; and wartime Japan, 18, 19–20, 24, 29, 184, 194 –95 n45 Fascist Italy: academicians of, 46, 199 n75; “Afterwork” organization, 7; Augustus craze of, 52–53; blood ties of overseas Italians, 178; and Christian civilization, 21; colonies of, 107–8, 213 n8; economy of, 25, 26; emigration from, 178; history used by, 5, 29, 50, 52–53; imperialism in North Africa, 52, 107–8; Japan compared to, 2, 3, 13, 18, 19–20, 24, 29, 66, 83; mass rituals in, 60–61; and nationalism overcoming class differences, 67; and Roman Empire, 52–53, 108; and Tripartite Pact, 16, 70, 168 Fascist Party, 12, 63 “Fatherland Awareness Travel Series,” 92 Fatherland Promotion Labor Service Brigades, 61, 76 “Fatherland” (Sokoku), 28 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 217–18 n30 Fogel, Joshua, 119 Foreign Ministry, 156, 161, 171, 217–18 n30 Foundation Day Advisory Council, 186 France: armistice with Nazi Germany, 70; colonies of, 54, 107, 115, 121; as liberal democracy, 190 n4; political significance of tourism in, 191 n17 Francisi, Pietro de, 99 n75 Franco, Francisco, 7, 141 Freedom and Popular Rights Movement, 47 French Indochina, 70, 115, 121

Index   225

French Revolution, 2, 190 n4 Fujita Munemitsu, 65–67 Fujitani Misao, 4, 6, 21, 48, 49–52, 71 Fujitani, Takashi, 14 Fukuda Hideko, 47 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 184 Furlough, Ellen, 121 Furukawa Takahisa, 97, 101, 189 n1 Gao Yuan, 142–43, 190 n8 Gashu ˉ Kuhei, 167–68, 219 n58 Geijutsu Movie Company, 112 Gluck, Carol, 14 Go-Daigo (emperor of  Japan), 31, 34, 35, 45, 65, 92, 196 n21 Goebbels, Joseph, 84 Gojong (emperor of Korea), 121–22 golden kite, 34, 35, 53, 154 Gordon, Andrew, 34 Goto ˉ Asataro ˉ, 144, 215 n51 Government-General Building, Korea, 109, 110, 120 Government-General Museum, 120–21 Government Railways of Choˉsen (Korea), 106, 108, 111–12, 115, 124 –25, 210 n16, 210–11 n35 Grand Exposition of Korea, 73, 74, 124 Great Depression of 1929, 25 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 159, 161, 218 n31 Guelcher, Gregory, 138 Gyeongbokgung compound, 109, 209 n13 Gyeonghoeru (Keikairo ˉ) Palace Hall, 109, 110 Gyeonghuigung Royal Palace, 118 Habmann, Henning, 53–54 hakkoˉ ichiu (imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth), 17, 31, 96, 155, 156, 160, 194 n40 Halsema, James, 120, 139 Hamamoto Hiroshi, 131–32 Hankyˉ u Railway Company, 65–66 Hara Takeshi, 57–58 Harbin, China. See Harubin (Harbin), Manchuria Harootunian, H. D., 203–4 n66 Harubin (Harbin), Manchuria, 129, 143, 146, 212 n1 Hashiguchi Ken, 89 Hashizume Katsumi, 84 Hatanaka Senjiro ˉ, 173 Hatsuda To ˉru, 6

226   Index

Havens, Thomas, 194 n42 Hawai’i: Japanese Shinto ˉ shrines in, 162; overseas Japanese in, 10, 148, 150–51, 161, 169, 175, 192 n27 Hayashi Fukiko, 132 Heijo ˉ (Pyongyang), North Korea, 130, 212 n4 Herf, Jeffrey, 78, 185 heritage tourism. See imperial heritage tourism; national heritage tourism Hideyoshi Toyotomi, 122 Hieda no Are, 47 Higashide, Seiichi, 161, 218 n37 Higashikuni Naruhiko, Prince, 157, 160 Himmler, Henrich, 53 Hiraizumi Kiyoshi, 40, 41, 43, 44 –45, 46, 199 n75 Hirano Takashi, 76 Hirata Atsutane, 45 Hirohito (emperor of Japan): lack of charismatic style, 19; Pu Yi’s visit with, 59–60; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations ceremony, 13, 15–17, 45; and unbroken imperial line, 3, 31; Yasukuni Shrine visits, 58 Hisahito, Prince, 188 Hitler, Adolf, 3, 19, 29, 53, 90 Hoang Anh Tuan, 54 Hoerder, Dirk, 221 n94 Hokkaido, 11, 22, 85, 109, 151 Holguin, Sandie, 135 Horii Jin’ichiro ˉ, 208 n64 Ho ˉten (Mukden or Shenyang), Manchuria, 7, 36, 135, 136–37 Hughes, Christopher, 1 Hwang Sun-Il, 210 n26 Hyeon Jin-Geon, 127 Hyˉ uga Tourism Association, 90, 91, 94 –95 Ibuse Masuji, 93, 95 Ichimura Kisaburo ˉ, 39–40 Ichioka, Yuji, 164, 192 n27 Ikeda Chie, 171 Ikegami Shˉ uho, 124, 125 Imai Hiroshi, 62 Immigrant Problem Research Association, 171, 175–76 imperial heritage tourism: and children, 98–99, 183, 207 n58, 208nn65, 66; and citizenship training, 8, 25, 82, 145, 183; and consumerism, 83, 86; and contests, 73–74, 94; documentation of, 14; economic benefits of, 37; and interrelatedness of areas of empire, 9–10; and Korea, 98, 190 n8; meaning of, 103–5; and Miyazaki Prefecture, 86–97; and

Nara Prefecture, 97–103; and national heritages sites, 5–8; and national history, 183; and national ideology, 184; and newspapers, 72–74; and patriotism, 8, 83–84; as political activity, 25, 145; popularity of, 53, 85, 86; and relays, 73; transportation network for, 61–62, 82; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 84 –86; and unbroken imperial line ideology, 8; and unofficial sites, 41; and volunteer labor service, 65 Imperial Household Agency, 186 Imperial House Law, 188 Imperial Japan: and banality of evil, 146; challenge to Euro-American claims of racial and cultural superiority, 13, 20–24, 71, 151–52, 162, 182–83; disintegration of, 11, 117, 149, 180, 185; dissent not tolerated in, 2; Eastward Expedition as model for, 15; extent of, 9–10; and kokutai, 3, 72; and modernity, 22–23, 25, 132, 145–47, 152, 182–83; as multiracial and multiethnic, 22; and national boundaries, 12–13, 68, 148, 181; negative portrayals of, 23; and overseas Japanese, 11; racial and cultural hierarchy of, 22, 23, 177–78; rich nation, strong military principle, 26; surrender of, 180; territory of, 181; war memorials of, 101. See also colonies; imperial heritage tourism; national history; twenty-sixth centennial celebrations; wartime  Japan Imperial Military, 78, 113, 134, 146, 157, 181 Imperial Rescript on Education, 8, 29–32 Imperial Rule Assistance Association, 14 Imperial Subject Oath, 32 Imperial Subject Oath Tower, 32, 118, 211 n40 Inaba Hidezo ˉ, 165 industrialization, 24 –26, 67, 124, 136, 145, 165–66 Inoue Tomoichiro ˉ, 117 International Tourism Bureau, 82 interracial marriages, 164 –65 interwar period, and consumerism, 24 –25 Inukai Tsuyoshi, 48 Iran, founding of Persian Empire, 1–2 Irie (Iriye) Toraji, 171, 220 n74 Irokawa Daikichi, 184 Ise Shrine: depictions of, 102; Manchuria’s equivalent shrine, 201 n10; and mass participation, 58, 200 n5; pilgrimages to, 45, 60, 98, 207 n61; and relay sponsored by newspaper, 73; and volunteer labor service, 65 Isetan Department Store, 107, 112

Ishikura Ayako, 29 Islam, 61 Ito ˉ Hirobumi, 118 Itsuse no Mikoto, 41 Ivy, Marilyn, 205 n16 Japanese Americans, narrative of, 180–81 Japanese Association of Canada, 173–74 Japanese diaspora. See overseas Japanese Japanese emigrants and emigration: and Christian conversion, 163; and class differences, 151, 152, 153–54; in colonies, 10, 52, 84, 98–99, 106, 117, 145, 148, 149, 150, 181; and consumerism, 34; and cult of pioneer, 181; government support of, 78–79, 178; imperial myths glorifying, 154, 156; international prestige attached to, 150–51, 179; and Japanese nationality, 11–12; and overpopulation in Japan, 150, 168; racism toward, 22, 23, 151–53; Sakamoto Gajo ˉ on, 154, 155. See also Congress of Overseas Brethren Japanese identity: and Congress of Overseas Brethren, 12; and emigration, 154, 181; and field trips, 208 n66; and Shinto ˉ rituals, 58; and tourism industry, 83; and unbroken imperial line ideology, 1, 188 Japanese nation: cultural contributions of, 77, 203–4 n66; definition of, 10, 11, 12, 148, 184; Japanese lineage as defining factor, 176–78, 181–82; mixed-raced theory of, 4, 5, 22, 48, 50–51, 176, 177, 181–82; and Yamato race, 48, 49–51, 81, 192 n22 Japan Film Company, 13 Japan Patriotic Picture Book Association, 35, 36 Japan Tourism Bureau (JTB): and department stores, 83; and folk customs, 207 n43; guides published by, 7, 83, 92–93, 95, 101, 112, 119; and Korea as tourist destination, 111–13, 116, 119; and Manchuria as tourist destination, 129, 131; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 85, 205 n16 Japan Tourism Industry Research Institute, 96, 207 n52 Japan Victor Corporation, 70 Jimmu (emperor of Japan): biography of, 44; Eastward Expedition, 2, 14, 15, 31, 34, 37, 38, 49, 73, 78, 83, 86–89, 91–92, 92, 96–97, 102, 154, 156; enthronement of, 3, 14, 31, 32, 35, 38, 41; and inauguration of imperial line, 187; investigation of sacred vestiges of, 37–41, 44 –45, 49, 88–89, 98, 185, 198 n54, 206 n24; and Japanese identity, 1; mass participation

Index   227

Jimmu (emperor of Japan) (cont.) in rituals honoring, 59; Mausoleum of, 59, 60, 61, 66, 73, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 186, 187; and national history, 16, 28–29, 34, 35, 37–38, 42, 52; as pioneer, 154, 156, 171; as surrogate charismatic leader, 19, 29, 50, 90. See also Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites Jinno ˉ sho ˉto ˉki (A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns), 35, 44, 45 jinshu, meaning of, 218 n38 Joseon Dynasty, 109, 118 Kagetsu Eikichi, 167 Kagoshima Prefecture, 37–38, 41, 62, 70, 90–91 Kama, Mt., 41 Kamakura Shogunate, 47 Kameyama (emperor of Japan), 45 Kamiizumi Hidenobu, 93, 95 Kanagawa Prefecture, 201 n17 Kang Jong-Won, 31 Kanjo ˉshi Memorial, 140–41, 140, 142 Kanko ˉ (“Tourism”), 83–84, 115 Kanko ˉ cho ˉsen (“Tourism in Korea”), 112–13, 124, 130 Kanko ˉ no Yamato (“Yamato Tourism”), 101, 112 Karafuto: department store exhibition on, 107; and imperial heritage tourism, 98; Japanese settlers in, 98, 148, 151; mapping of, 79; and tourism industry, 107, 109, 145, 183 Karafuto jiho ˉ (“Karafuto Newsletter”), 107 Kashihara Arena, 42, 61, 63, 64, 72 Kashihara Shrine: completion of, 100; donations for, 68, 99, 202 n32; guides to, 101, 102; as imperial heritage site, 8, 41, 42, 73, 97, 98; popularity of, 99, 102, 187–88; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 31, 37, 157; and volunteer labor service, 61, 62–66, 67, 99–100 Kawase Hasui, 124, 125 Keihan Railway Company, 102, 209 n82 Keijo ˉ Daily Newspaper Company, 72, 73–74, 112, 124 Keijo ˉ (Seoul), Korea: bus tours of, 116–22, 211 n36; department store exhibitions in, 203 n61; Imperial Subject Oath Tower in, 32; Korean residential neighborhoods of, 110–11, 111, 138; postcards of, 109; and tourism industry, 8, 112, 115–16, 123–24, 145, 210 n16 Keijo ˉ Shrine, 118 Keijo ˉ Taxi Company, 116 Keijo ˉ Tourism Association, 119

228   Index

Keishˉ u (Kyongju), Korea, 115 Kenkoku chˉ ureibyo ˉ, 144, 144 Kigen nisen roppyakunen, 49, 68, 69, 102 Kikuchi Kan, 49 Kim Chang Kook, 30 Kim Hwang-Yong, 32 Kim Jong-Il, 92 Kim Kyung-Hak, 31 Kim, Richard, 30 Kim Shi-Jong, 30 Kim Sun-Dan, 32 Kimishima Seikichi, 87, 89 Kimura Motomori, 197 n37 Kingu, 35, 82–83 Kirishima National Park, 86 kisaeng, 123–24, 125 Kishida Toshiko, 47 Kita Sadakichi, 42 Kitabatake Chikafusa, 35, 45 Kiyomaro. See Wake no Kiyomaro Kobayashi Chitose, 193 n30 Ko ˉdansha, 35–36 Koguya, 88 Kojiki: details from, 38, 40; mythic nature of, 190 n5, 194 n38, 195 n3; and national history, 34; scholarship on, 28, 45, 47 Kokubu Tanenori, 87 kokutai (“national polity”), 3, 72 Kokutai no hongi (Cardinal Principles of the National Polity of  Japan), 32–33, 40 Konoe Fumimaro, 14, 15–17, 19, 59, 157, 159, 160 Korea: colonial subjects in, 5, 23, 30, 32, 35, 51, 126, 127, 153, 177, 178; and donations to twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 68; and emigrants to Manchuria, 148; ethnic solidarity in, 127–28; forced Japanization of, 9, 30, 32, 106–7, 123, 124 –25, 127; forced labor in, 113, 210 n26; glass greenhouse, 119, 120; and imperial heritage tourism, 98, 190 n8; independence movement in, 120;  Japanese communities in, 11, 30, 31, 112, 115, 117, 127, 148, 151, 193 n30; and  Japanese educational system, 30–31; Japanese language as national language of, 32, 108, 117, 209 n8; Korean migrants to Japan, 150; and mass participation in rituals, 200 n7; pace of assimilation in, 106–7; and volunteer labor service, 63, 201 n17. See also Keijoˉ (Seoul), Korea Korea Manchuria Documentary Film Production Company, 112 Korean language, 115

Korean Products Exposition (1915), 109 Korean tourism: activities for tourists, 122–25; and battle sites, 130; function of, 126–28; guides to, 112, 115, 122; Japanese creation of iconographic sites for, 109; Keijo ˉ bus tours, 116–22, 211 n36; and Korean culture, 106, 107, 108, 111, 117, 120–25, 126, 127; postcards of, 109–11; and sex trade, 108–9, 113; statistics on, 116, 210–11 n35; train window sightseeing, 115, 116; wartime tourism, 8, 106 Korea Pavilion, 112 Kossinna, Gustaf, 199 n75 Ko ˉyama Rokuro ˉ, 153, 172 Kumamoto Shunten, 166, 169 Kuramoto, Kazuko, 149 Kurata Yoshihiro, 70 Kuroda Ho ˉshin, 96 Kushner, Barak, 69 Kusunoki Masashige, 28, 31, 34, 50, 85, 196 n5 Kwantung Army, 59, 130, 131, 139, 149 Kyoto, City of, 82, 98 Kyoto Prefecture, 62, 201 n17 Kyˉ ushˉ u Landscape Association, 87 Lake, Marilyn, 152 Landscape Association of  Japan, 96 Latvia, 7 Leheny, David, 204 n1 liberal democracy: characterizations of, 147; Imperial Japan’s rejection of, 19–20; and manipulation of history, 52; and modernity, 18, 185; and political agency, 25; and postwar Japan, 20, 23, 185, 186; and racism, 20, 23–24, 147; and reactionary modernism, 187; and tourism promoting national ideology, 135; U.S. and Britain as representative of, 19 Libya, 107, 108 Li Jung-Soon, 31 Li Young-Hi, 32 Lone, Stewart, 173 Lushin, China. See Ryo ˉjun (Port Arthur), Manchuria Mae Kei’ichi, 99 magazine industry, 33 Mamiya Rinzo ˉ, 79 Manchukuo. See Manchuria Manchukuo Concordia Association, 63–65, 66 Manchuria: and donations to twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 68; economy of, 143; establishment of, 140; five races of, 63, 138;

and Grand Exposition of Korea, 124; and imperial heritage tourism, 98; Japanese emi­ gration to, 151, 152–53, 154, 171, 219–20 n71, 220 n74; Japanese reemigration from United States to, 10, 181; Japanese residents of, 115–16, 130–31, 137, 138, 148, 149, 211 n30, 216 n7; and Japan’s continental policy, 9; Korean emigrants to, 148; and mass participation in rituals, 59–60; and modernity, 130, 145; Shinto ˉ shrines in, 163, 201 n10; as virgin territory, 130–31, 151; and volunteer labor service, 62, 63–65. See also Ryo ˉjun (Port Arthur), Manchuria; Shinkyo ˉ (Changchun), Manchuria; and other specific cities Manchuria Daily News Company, 72, 73, 131, 144 Manchurian Development Company, 149 Manchurian Incident (1931), 18, 33, 130, 140, 141, 151, 164 Manchurian tourism: and battle sites, 130, 131–36, 134, 140–41, 145, 212 n4, 213–14 n25; function of, 126; guides to, 134, 213–14 n25; itineraries of, 129–30; and Manchurian culture, 122, 130–31, 137, 145; promotion of, 129; Shinkyo ˉ bus tour, 137–45; transportation infrastructure for, 116, 135–37; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 146; wartime tourism, 8; and Western visitors, 129 Manchurian Tourism Association, 130 Manchurian Youth Corps, 66 manga, 154 March First Movement, 120 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 9, 58, 62 Maruyama Masao, 20 Marxism, 23 Masaki Naohiko, 203 n60 Matsudaira Yorinaga, 87, 206 n22 Matsuoka Yo ˉsuke, 157, 159, 160, 161, 218 n31 Matsushita Wireless Company, 59 Matsuya Department Store, 77 Matsuyama Fusako, 71 McCormack, Gavan, 194 –95 n45 McLaren, Brian, 107 Meiji (emperor of Japan), 31, 35–36, 58, 85, 118, 139, 197 n21 Meiji Restoration of 1868: Christianity legalized after, 21; constitutional system of, 19; and cult of the emperor, 14; family registration system of, 176; and Go-Daigo, 196 n21; and imperial heritage sites, 99, 205 n15; and Japanese emigration, 150; and Japanese nation, 184; and Okinawa, 123; and women’s role, 47

Index   229

Meiji Shrine, 65, 98, 157, 161 Mencius, 119 Mexico, 175 Micronesia, 36, 109, 148, 149, 151, 161, 218 n40 middle class: and consumerism, 75, 83; and Japanese emigration, 152; and Japanese settlers in colonies, 149; and Korean tourism, 106, 115, 116; leisure activities of, 102, 103; and Manchurian tourism, 132; and modernity, 24; and tourism industry, 84, 85, 95, 98, 103. See also class differences militarism: airplane as symbol of, 113; betrayal of, 182; and expansionist policies, 29, 105, 146; fascism compared to, 18, 24; and modernity, 12; and national history, 34; opposition to, 184 Mill, John Stuart, 47 Mimitsu: Sho ˉgetsuan pastry shop advertisement in, 89; tourism industry in, 88–89, 95, 96–97 Minakai Department Store, 112 Ministry of Colonial Affairs, 156 Ministry of Education, 37–38, 40, 41 Ministry of Railways, 84 –85, 92, 95–96, 101, 154, 205nn12, 16 Min (queen of Korea), 118 minzoku, 176, 218 n38 miscegenation, 164 –65 Mishima Seiya, 61 Mitterrand, François, 190 n4 Miura To ˉsaku, 33 mixed-race (mixed-nation) theory of Japanese nation, 4, 5, 22, 48, 50–51, 176, 177, 181–82 Miyachi Masato, 43 Miyachi Naokazu, 40, 41, 43, 44 Miyazaki City Tourism Association, 87, 205–6 n20 Miyazaki Prefecture: as birthplace of Japan, 86–97; films promoting, 96; folk customs of, 93; imperial heritage sites in, 37–38, 41, 85, 86, 87, 90, 93, 95–96, 99; and tourism industry, 90, 92–95, 97, 98, 206 n31, 207 n58; and volunteer labor service, 61 Miyazaki Shrine, 37, 41, 61, 68, 88, 93, 100 Mizoguchi Ko ˉji, 14, 194 n38 modernity: and air travel, 113, 114; and Christian civilization, 20–22, 23; colonies contrasted with, 109, 111, 120, 126–27, 130, 138, 145; definition of, 24; and department store exhibitions, 6, 78; and greenhouse, 119; and Imperial Japan, 22–23, 25, 132, 145–47, 152, 182–83; and Japan’s polity,

230   Index

18, 20; and liberal democracy, 18, 185; and Meiji Restoration, 14; and mobility, 148; and nation-states, 54; and popular activism, 25; reactionary modernism, 78, 79–80, 184, 185, 187; and tourism industry, 90, 125, 130, 145; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 12–13, 24, 77, 80–81, 90, 165, 185 Mori, Takemoro, 154 Mo ˉri Iga, 171 Morocco, 107 Morokuma Yasaku, 169–70 Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 106–7, 176–77 “Movement to Express Gratitude to Soldiers,” 58 Murasaki Shikibu, 34, 47 Museum of National History (Kokushikan), 37, 41–42, 45 Museum of Yamato National History (Yamato kokushikan), 42, 76 music industry, 69–70, 80 Mussolini, Benito, 2, 19, 29, 50, 53, 108 Muto ˉ Nobuyoshi, 139 Myohyang, Mt., 127–28 Nagako (empress of Japan), 15–17 Nagata Hidejiro ˉ, 56, 164 Nagata Shunsui, 124, 125 Najita, Tetsuo, 203–4 n66 Nakagawa Kazumasa, 93, 95 Nakagawa Yasujiro ˉ, 169 Nakamura Chihei, 93, 94, 95 Nakamura Ko ˉya, 7 Nakamura Naokatsu, 40, 43, 45, 46, 49 Nanbara Shigeru, 185 Nanking (Nanjing), China, 7, 39–40, 134 –35, 144 Nanryo ˉ Battle Site Memorial, 142–43, 143 Nanyo ˉ, 161, 218 n40 Nanzan (Namsan) Park, 117–18 Nara, City of, 101, 104 Nara Prefecture: history of, 44; imperial heritage sites in, 5, 38, 39, 41, 42, 85, 90, 95, 98–99; and national history, 42, 97–103; and road improvements, 62; and tourism industry, 97–99, 101, 208 n64; volunteer labor service in, 61, 62, 63–64, 99, 185, 201 n17 Nara Prefecture Tourism Association, 101 Nara Railway Company, 102 National Association to Sponsor the 2,600th Anniversary Celebration of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition, 87–88 National Confucian Shrine, 118–19

National Foundation Day, 35, 56, 58, 99, 102, 185, 186–87 National Foundation Festival Office, 56, 202 n32 National Foundation Labor Service Brigades, 25, 61, 62–63, 65–67, 76, 99, 100 National Foundation Meeting Hall, 42, 123 national heritage tourism, 25, 82, 85–86, 127, 183, 184, 221 n3. See also imperial heritage tourism national history: and academicians, 40, 41, 42, 43–46, 54, 185–86; codifying of, 37–43, 145; and commercial educational publications, 32–37; and department store exhibitions, 75, 76; and educational system, 29–32; and Emperor  Jimmu, 16, 28–29, 34, 35, 37–38, 42, 52; and foundational moment, 4; Fujitani’s book on, 48, 49–52; imperial history as part of, 187; invention of, 3, 12; manipulation of, 5, 52–55; middle class acceptance of, 24; and modernity, 21; ˉ kawa’s book on, 48–49, 50; and radio, O 28, 31, 36, 133, 213 n23; and status quo, 5; Takamure’s book on, 46–47, 50, 200 n83; and tourism industry, 101; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 4 –5, 28, 32, 33, 34, 52, 54 –55, 185; and unbroken imperial line ideology, 28, 29, 31, 33, 48, 50, 100, 185–88 national identities, and foundational moments, 1–3 nationalism: and class differences, 67; and consumerism, 4, 80; and department store exhibitions, 79; and Japan’s emperor system, 3; mass participation in rituals, 5, 56, 80; and tourism industry, 105, 145; and unbroken imperial line ideology, 78, 185 national myths, legitimization of, 4 national park system, 86–87 National Spiritual Mobilization Movement, 92 nation-states, and modernity, 54 Natsume Soseki, 93 Naval Association, 72 Navy Day, 58 Nazi Germany: academicians of, 46, 199 n75; architectural monuments of, 100–101; and Aryan Affidavit, 51; blood ties of overseas Germans, 178, 221 n94; and Christian civilization, 21; department stores of, 83; economy of, 26; history used by, 5, 29, 50, 52, 53–54; Japan compared to, 2–3, 13, 18, 19–20, 24, 29, 66, 83; and Marienburg Castle, 135; mass rituals in, 60; and nationalism overcoming class differences, 67;

propaganda films of, 13; racism of, 21, 51, 53, 135; Reich Labor Service in, 5–6, 60, 66; repression of, 146; “Strength through Joy” organization, 7; symbolic imagery used by, 53–54; territorial claims of, 52; tourism industry of, 83–84, 86, 90, 184; and Tripartite Pact, 16, 70, 168 Nazi Party, 3, 12, 63, 165 Neocleous, Mark, 19, 78 newspapers: and contests, 70, 71, 73; and cultural events, 102; government influence on, 13; and mass participation in rituals, 57, 59; and music industry, 70; role in twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 6, 27, 72–74; and tourism industry, 90, 93, 96, 208 n65; and volunteer labor service, 62 New Zealand, 151 NHK, 28, 45, 70, 97 NHK Publishing Company, 45 Nihon kanko ˉ nenkan (“Japan Tourism Yearbook”), 96 Nihon shoki: details from, 38, 39, 40, 41; mythic nature of, 190 n5, 194 n38, 195 n3; scholarship on, 45, 47 Nikkatsu Studios, 112 Ninigi no Mikoto, 2, 37, 196 n4 Nintoku (emperor of Japan), 31, 35, 196 n21 Nippon (magazine), 71, 75 Nishida Naojiro ˉ, 40–44, 44, 46, 208 n78 Nitta Jun, 117, 124 Nitta Yoshisada, 35 Noda Ryo ˉji, 156 Nogi Maresuke, 31, 36, 118, 131, 196–97 n21 Nogi Shrine, 118 Noguchi Yukio, 34 Nomonhan, Battle of, 78 North Africa, 107–8 North China, 33, 115, 146, 191 n19 North Korea, 29, 46, 188, 196 n8 Nozu Michitsura, 212 n4 Occupation (1945–52), 46, 48 Oguma Eiji, 48 Okakura Kakuzo ˉ, 21, 121, 211 n49 ˉ kawa Shˉ O umei, 4, 48–49, 50, 211 n49 Okimoto, Daniel, 19 Okinawa, 11–12, 22, 123, 151, 211 n55 Okinawa Tourism Association, 123 Okuda Heiji (Henry), 164 Oriental Economist, 74 Osada Kanako, 99 Osaka Electric Railway Company, 83

Index   231

ˉ saka Mainichi Newspaper Company, 49, 96 O Osaka Prefecture, 62, 68, 201 n17 ˉ saka Sho O ˉsen Kaisha (O.S.K.), 102 Osaragi Jiro ˉ, 87 Ota Chozo ˉ, 165 ˉ ta Development Company, 169–70 O ˉ ta Kyo O ˉsaburo ˉ, 170 Overseas Development Company, 152, 153, 166 overseas Japanese: and collapse of Imperial Japan, 149; government’s reaching out to, 52, 161, 162, 176; government’s support of, 78–79, 171; links with empire, 181; and national borders, 11, 193 n31; racial discrimination outside of empire, 12, 23, 149–51, 153, 159, 163, 166, 168–69, 172–73, 179; and radio news of Japan, 168; as security concern, 179; and settlement within and outside of empire, 148–49, 178; and Shinto ˉ shrines, 161, 162, 163; and supplemental Japanese language schools, 167, 168–69; support for Second Sino-Japanese War, 159, 160, 167, 170, 173, 174, 192 n27; support of Japan’s policies, 11, 160, 164, 172, 174; and tourism industry, 84, 205 n10; and transnational ambiguities, 150, 174 –79, 180; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 15, 57, 68. See also Congress of Overseas Brethren; Japanese emigrants and emigration; second generation (Nisei  ) ˉ yama Iwao, 36 O Ozaki Shiro ˉ, 93, 95 Pagoda Park, 119–20 Panama, 152–53 pan-Asian nationalism, 121, 211 n49 Paraguay, 175 Patel, Kiran, 66 patriarchy, 5, 33 Patriot Ahn Choong Kun Memorial Hall, 118 patriotism: and Congress of Overseas Brethren, 160, 165, 168; and consumerism, 12, 24 –25, 70, 75, 146; and contests, 68–71; and department store exhibitions, 75–76, 77, 79; and Manchurian tourism, 135, 136, 142, 146; and National Foundation Day, 187; and national history, 31–32, 35, 38, 44, 45, 49–50; and Shinto ˉ, 32; and songs, 17, 31–32, 62, 69, 70, 157, 159, 185, 203 n61; and tourism industry, 83, 84, 95, 103–5; and volunteer labor service, 62, 67

232   Index

“Peace Tower,” 97, 207nn56, 57 Pearl Harbor attack, 26, 58, 162, 174 –75 per capita income, 75, 203 n56 Persian Empire, 1–2 Peru, 148, 152, 156, 160–61, 163, 174, 175 Philippines, 148, 152, 165, 166, 170, 218 n40 photography, 94, 113, 130 Pingfang, Manchuria (China), 146 pioneer, cult of, 4, 154, 181, 219 n71 popular agency, in wartime Japan, 20, 25, 184 Port Arthur, Manchuria. See Ryo ˉjun (Port Arthur), Manchuria Price, Willard, 9–10 Prince Ito ˉ Memorial Temple, 118, 211 n42 print media: and contests, 70, 113; role in twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 6, 72–74, 80, 185; and tourism industry, 82–83. See also newspapers; publishing industry prostitution, 108–9, 123–24, 138 publishing industry: and commercial educational publications, 32–37; and national history, 43–46, 47, 54 –55. See also print media Pu Yi (emperor of Manchukuo): imperial heritage sites visited by, 73; and Kwantung Army, 149; palace of, 141–42, 141, 214 n43; rituals at shrines, 201 n10; visit with Hirohito, 59–60 Pyongyang, North Korea. See Heijo ˉ (Pyongyang), North Korea racial purity, 48, 164 –65 racism: of Brazil, 175; of Euro-American Christian civilization, 21; and higher education for overseas Japanese, 163; and imperial myths, 188; and Japanese emigrants, 22, 23, 151–53; Japan’s challenge to, 13, 20–24, 71, 132, 151–52, 162, 182–83; and liberal democracy, 20, 23–24, 147; of Nazi Germany, 21, 51, 53, 135; racial discrimination outside of empire, 12, 23, 149–51, 153, 159, 163, 166, 168–69, 172–73, 179. See also whites radio: and Congress of Overseas Brethren, 168, 171; and mass participation in rituals, 5, 15, 28, 31, 57, 59; and national history, 28, 31, 36, 133, 213 n23; and tourism industry, 95, 97; and volunteer labor service, 62 railway companies: and colonial tourism, 8, 93, 114 –15; guidebooks issued by, 83, 102; role in twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 6, 102, 185; and volunteer labor service, 65–66. See also Ministry of Railways; and specific railways

Reifenstahl, Leni, 13 “Revering the Founder’s Work” (Tengyo ˉ ho ˉsho ˉ), 13, 15–17, 27, 59–60 Reynolds, Henry, 152 rich nation, strong military principle (fukoku kyo ˉhei), 26 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 70, 180–81 Rosenberg, Alfred, 53 Rugh, Susan, 221 n3 “rule by time” (jikan shihai), 57–61 Russia, 21 Russo-Japanese War (1904 –05): cartoon depicting, 132, 133; and East/West divisions, 21; and Japan’s first-class international status, 22, 151, 152, 170; and Manchurian tourism, 130, 131, 132, 133–34, 135, 213–14 n25; and modernity, 20; and Nogi Maresuke, 118; ˉ kawa on, 48; and publishing industry, 33, O 34, 36; and tourism industry, 8 Ryo ˉjun (Port Arthur), Manchuria: and Nogi Maresuke, 36, 118, 196–97 n21; and tourism industry, 8, 91, 130, 131, 132, 133–34, 134, 135, 141, 145, 213–14 n25 “Sacred Territory of the Fatherland,” 70 Saijo ˉ Yaso, 95 Sakamoto Gajo ˉ, 154, 155 Sakamoto Taro ˉ, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46 Sand, Jordan, 6 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 210 n30 Schmid, Andre, 192 n24, 197 n39 Schuler, Friedrich, 179 scorched earth campaigns, 146 Scriba, Friedemann, 52–53 second generation (Nisei  ): and conversion to Christianity, 163; and histories of Japanese emigrants, 22, 23, 173; IQ test results of, 173; Japanese citizenship available to, 178; and Japanese language, 166, 167–68; and Japan’s policies, 164; maintaining Japanese-ness of, 12, 162, 166, 169, 170, 175–76; and marrying outside race, 164 –65; plurality of views among, 179; role as cultural bridge, 174; and study in Japan, 163–64, 169 Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45): and air transport, 113; casualties of, 17–18; and con­­­sumerism, 24 –25; expansion of, 26; and Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 9, 58, 62; and publishing industry, 33; support of overseas Japanese for, 159, 160, 167, 170, 173, 174, 192 n27; and tourism industry, 7, 92, 103, 210 n35; and twenty-sixth centennial

celebrations, 15, 25; and volunteer labor service, 61. See also China Incident (1937) Seishin Mosque, 142, 142 Sekiuchi Sho ˉichi, 135–36 Semmen, Kristin, 86 Senda Minoru, 38, 205 n15 Senka (emperor of Japan), 101 Seokjojeon, 121–22 Seoul, Korea. See Keijo ˉ (Seoul), Korea sex trade, 108–9, 113, 123–24, 138 Shanghai, China, 149 Shashin shu ˉho ˉ (Photographic Weekly Report), 9, 165, 192 n22, 192 n23 Shenyang, China. See Ho ˉten (Mukden or Shenyang), Manchuria Shibusawa, Naoko, 23 Shiki Seiji, 27–28 Shinkyo ˉ (Changchun), Manchuria: architecture of, 144; bus tour of, 137–45; Japanese residents of, 137; and Manchurian tourism, 8, 135, 136–37, 146, 214 n37; and modernity, 130 Shinkyo ˉ Memorial Tower, 139–40, 143 Shinkyo ˉ Shrine, 139, 139 Shinkyo ˉ Transportation Company, 138, 142–43 Shinto ˉ: establishment of shrines overseas, 161–63; and Museum of National History, 41; as official religion, 21; and patriotism, 32; rituals of, 58; theatrical dance of, 93 Shiratori Shrine, 93 Shirokiya Department Store, 77 Sho ˉchiku Corporation, 174 Sho ˉchˉ udan (Jangchungdan) Park, 118, 211 n47 Sho ˉjo kurabu, 71 Sho ˉkeien (Changgyeonggung) Palace, 119, 120 Sho ˉrindo ˉ, memorabilia available from, 103, 103, 104 Sho ˉtoku, Prince, 35 Shufu no tomo (“The Housewife’s Friend”), 34 –35, 80 Sino-Japanese War (1894 –95): and Manchurian tourism, 130, 131, 134 –35, 212 n4, 213–14 n25; and publishing industry, 33; and Taiwan, 151. See also Second SinoJapanese War (1937–45) Smith, Tony, 18 Society for International Cultural Relations, 71–72 South Africa, 151 South Manchurian Railway Company, 93, 116, 129, 136, 149

Index   233

Soviet Union, 24, 26, 195 n51 Soyama Takeshi, 8 Spanish Civil War, 7 Spanish Nationalists, 135, 141 Speer, Albert, 100 Spillman, Lyn, 189–90 n3 Stalin, Joseph, 195 n51 state-society relations: and citizenship, 8, 25; in wartime Japan, 19–20 steam ferries, 114 –15 Stephan, John, 192 n27 Stone, Marla, 2, 53 “Survey of Japanese Culture” (Nihon bunka taikan), 37, 41, 42–43, 45 Suzuki Ryo ˉ, 38 Suzuki Yoshiyuki, 161 Switzerland, 1 Tabi (“Travel”), 85, 92, 94, 101, 191 n12, 209nn82, 84 Taiwan, 8, 98, 108–9, 124, 148, 151, 210 n23 Taiwan Government Railways, 8 Takachiho, Mt., 28, 37–38, 86, 94, 96, 196 n4, 205 n15 Takachiho Celebration Association, 20 n15, 86 Takachiho Palace, 37–38, 41 Takagi Hiroshi, 14, 82, 100, 208 n66 Takakura, Mt., 38–39 Takamure Itsue, 5, 46–48, 50, 200 n83 Takaoka Hiroyuki, 191 n14 Takashimaya, department store exhibitions of, 75–76, 79 Takenaka, Akiko, 101 Takeuchi Masami, 132 Tamura Yoshio, 146 Tanaka Chigaku, 133, 213 n23 Tanaka Jun, 87 Tanaka Ko ˉtaro ˉ, 161 Tan’gun, myth of, 29, 46, 127, 196 n8 Tateiwa Shrine, 88–89, 95 Three Human Bombs, 31 three-legged crow (yatagarasu), 34, 53, 76, 100 Tipton, Elise, 194 n42 Tochigi Prefecture, 68 To ˉgo ˉ Heihachiro ˉ, 36, 131 To ˉjo ˉ Hideki, 157, 159–60 Tokugawa shogunate, 99 Tokujukyˉ u (Deoksugung), 121–22 Tokutomi So ˉho ˉ, 49 Tokyo, Japan, 13, 15–17, 214 n44 Tokyo Olympics of 1940, 18, 71, 164, 186, 189 n1 Tokyo Olympics of 1964, 186

234   Index

Tokyo Prefecture, 68, 201 n17 Tomiyama Ichiro ˉ, 11, 149 tourism industry: and authoritarianism, 7; and consumerism, 7, 25, 75, 80, 105, 145, 146; and field trips, 98–99, 207 n58, 208nn65, 66; films promoting, 96, 112; ideological role of, 8; intraempire tourism, 8, 113, 145, 183; and Ministry of Railways, 84 –85, 92, 95–96, 205 n12, 16; and modernism, 90, 125, 130, 145; and national ideology, 183–84; and natural areas, 96; and North China, 191 n19; and physical activities, 85; and pilgrimages, 91, 96, 98, 102, 103; political significance of, 25, 191 n17; political value of, 103–4; and propaganda, 146; and rural folk customs, 93–94, 94, 207 n43; and term kanko ˉ, 7, 191 n13; and tour buses, 88, 206nn27, 28; and travel guides, 83, 89–90, 92–93, 95–96, 101, 102; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 84 –86, 98, 101, 105, 106, 146; and unbroken imperial line ideology, 100, 105. See also colonial tourism; imperial heritage tourism; Korean tourism; Manchurian tourism; national heritage tourism Toyoda Saburo ˉ, 117, 119, 122, 124 transnational identities, 148, 150, 174 –79, 180 Tripartite Pact, 16, 70, 168 Tsuda So ˉkichi, 190 n5 Tsuji Yoshiaki, 31 Tsuji Zennosuke, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46, 203 n60 Tsurumi Yusuke, 150 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Bureau: books commissioned by, 45; film documentaries commissioned by, 13; guides published by, 102; magazine published by, 49, 68; projects commissioned and funded by, 37, 90, 100 2,600th Anniversary Culture Dome, time capsule of, 27–28 “2,600th Anniversary Song,” 17, 32, 70, 157, 159, 203 n61 twenty-sixth centennial celebrations: badge of, 15; and ceremony of November 10, 13, 15–17, 45, 59; challenge to Euro-American claims of racial and cultural superiority, 21; and Confucius and Mencius Sacred Sites Publication Association, 119; and consecration of imperial heritage sites, 100; and contests, 68–72, 73, 84 –85, 113; documentary record of, 13–14, 57; donations for, 67–68; and foundational moment, 1, 2, 6, 14 –15, 16, 47, 75, 190 n5; and histories of overseas

Japanese, 171–74; historiography of, 189 n1; imagery of, 34; and Japan’s population pressures, 150; mass consumption of, 5–6, 68–72, 80, 184 –85; mass participation in, 5–6, 56, 57–67, 80, 101, 184 –85; memorabilia for, 102–3; and modernity, 12–13, 24, 77, 80–81, 90, 165, 185; narrative of, 1–2, 3; and national history, 4 –5, 28, 32, 33, 34, 52, 54 –55, 185; newspapers’ role in, 6, 27, 72–74; precisely timed rituals of, 5, 56, 57–61, 67, 185; prosperity as theme of, 165–66; radio broadcasts of, 5, 15, 28, 31, 57, 59; and sacred national holidays, 56–57; and tourism industry, 84 –86, 98, 101, 105, 106, 146; and unbroken imperial line ideology, 1, 3, 6, 8, 12, 14 –15, 19, 24, 28, 29, 63, 124, 189 n1; and U.S. internment of Japanese residents, 217–18 n30; and volunteer labor service, 61–67. See also Congress of Overseas Brethren Udo Shrine, 88, 93 Ueno Sei’ichi, 63 Ulmanis, Kârlis, 7 Ulsa Treaty of 1905, 118 Unebi, Mt.: and imperial heritage tourism, 95, 100, 101; Pu Yi’s visit to, 60; and twenty-sixth centennial celebrations, 37; and volunteer labor service, 99, 100 Unit 731, 146 United States: centennial and bicentennial celebrations in, 189–90 n3; and Christian civilization, 21; citizenship of minorities in, 177; Civilian Conservation Corps in, 6, 66; colonies of, 108; economy of, 26; and Exclusion Act of 1924, 151–52; German immigrants of, 153; internment of Japanese residents, 175, 180–81, 217–18 n30; Issei barred from naturalization in, 153, 172; Italian immigrants of, 153; Japan compared to, 24; Japan initiating war against, 7, 174; as Japan’s export market, 26; and Manchurian Incident, 164; and national heritage tourism, 183, 221 n3; national history of, 146–47; occupation of Japan, 46, 48; overseas Japanese in, 10, 23, 148, 150, 151, 153, 156, 163, 164, 166, 167–68, 169, 171–72, 173, 192 n27, 193 n31, 217–18 n30; postwar alliance with  Japan, 23; racial hostilities toward individuals of Japanese descent, 174 –75 “Urayasu Dance” (Urayasu no mai), 17

Vargas, Getulio, 168, 175 Versailles Peace Treaty, 22 Vietnam, 54, 107 Visser, Romke, 199 n75 volunteer labor service brigades: and class differences, 67; depictions of, 35, 36, 99, 100; mass participation in, 61–67, 185; and modernity, 185; spiritual goals of, 5–6; stone marker in Kashihara Arena, 63, 64 Wada Sanzo ˉ, 120 Wagner, Richard, 122 Wake no Kiyomaro, 31, 34, 85, 196 n21 Wakiyama Jinsaku, 160 Wang Jingwei, 36 wartime Japan: and consumerism, 25, 33–34; and dark valley concept, 12, 18, 33–34, 69, 87, 103–4, 126, 184, 194 n42; and fascism, 18, 19–20, 24, 29, 184, 194 –95 n45; and modernity, 24; popular agency in, 20, 25, 184; U.S. sanctions against, 70 Watanabe Kanju ˉro ˉ, 151 Weiner, Michael, 218 n38 Wells, Carveth, 84, 204 n9 white-collar class, 75, 98 whites: and citizenship, 172; domination of Asia, 182; Japanese challenge to EuroAmerican claims of racial and cultural superiority, 13, 20–24, 71, 132, 151–52, 162, 182–83; Japanese desire for recognition as “honorary” whites, 22, 162, 179; restrictions on immigration of nonwhites, 151–53; and Soviet Union, 195 n51. See also racism women: citizenship status of, 177; and Imperial House Law, 188; as Japanese emigrants, 219–20 n71; role in national history, 5, 46–47; service to state through motherhood, 80; and sex trade, 108–9, 113; and tourism industry, 93 Woo Mi-Young, 127–28 World War I, 60 Wright, Gwendolyn, 107 Yamada Ko ˉsaku, 62 Yamada Nagamasa, 79 Yamada Yoshio, 40, 43, 45, 46 Yamakawa Shu ˉho ˉ, 124, 125 Yamaoka Mannosuke, 159, 161 Yamashita So ˉen, 171 Yamato race: and Congress of Overseas Brethren, 12, 156, 164, 166, 179; and Japanese nation, 48, 49–51, 81, 192 n22; and

Index   235

Yamato race (cont.) overseas Japanese, 23, 175, 179; and tourism industry, 101 Yamato spirit (Yamato damashi), 81, 165, 175 Yamato-takeru, Prince, 154 Yamazaki Jiro ˉ, 164 Yanagi So ˉetsu, 93–94, 211 n55 Yasui, Masao, 217–18 n30 Yasukuni Shrine, 58, 65, 98, 144, 161, 201 n10 yatagarasu (three-legged crow), 34, 53, 76, 100 Yazaki, Dan, 33, 48

236   Index

Yazawa Gengetsu, 124, 125 yellow peril, 20, 151 Yellow Sea, Battle of the, 36 Yi Eun-Sang, 127 Yi Royal Family Museum, 122 Yokoyama Taikan, 203 n60 Yoshida Hatsusaburo ˉ, 102–3 Yoshino, Mt., 65 Yoshino Kumano National Park, 98 Young, Louise, 6, 33, 215 n51, 219–20 n71 Zero airplane, 78, 81

1. In this pullout map from the popular magazine Kingu (vol. 16, no. 8; 15 June 1940), the Empire of Japan appears in reddish orange and the puppet-state of Manchukuo is shown in light orange.

2. According to imperial myth-history, at a difficult moment in battle for the Imperial Army, a golden kite landed on Emperor Jimmu’s bow, so terrifying the opposing forces that the Imperial Army was able to achieve a great victory. This first scene in Shufu no tomo’s January 1940 “national history pictorial” recounts Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement in year one of the calendar, then commonly employed in Japan, which dated years from the establishment of the imperial dynasty.

4. Scene 33 of Shufu no tomo’s “national history pictorial” portrays Koreans welcoming the amalgamation of their country into Japan in the year 2570 (1910).

3. Although this cigarette package survives in somewhat poor condition, the image of Emperor Jimmu staring out at the Asian continent, guided by the yatagarasu who flies ahead, this time toward the west, carries such symbolic resonance as to deserve reproduction. With permission from the Tobacco & Salt Museum, Tokyo.

7. The National Foundation Labor Service Brigade flag featured the three-legged crow (yatagarasu) that Amaterasu sent to guide Emperor Jimmu on his Eastward Expedition.

5. (Opposite, top) This scene from a children’s book shows the oceangoing portion of Emperor Jimmu’s Eastward Expedition, the golden kite landing on Emperor Jimmu’s bow, and Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement, all seminal chapters in the first emperor’s life and thus in national history. Enomoto Shin’ichiroˉ, Kigen nisen roppyakunen kinen (Osaka: DaiNihon aikoku ehonkai, 1940). 6. (Opposite, bottom) The concluding vignette of Koˉdansha’s February 1940 children’s book “A Picture Scroll National History” shows a boy from Japan and a girl from China shaking hands (the flag is that of Wang’s Reformed Government of China), and behind them looking on is a boy representing Manchukuo. Koˉki nisen roppyakunen hoˉshuku kinen kokushi emaki, Koˉdansha no ehon 135 (1 February 1940).

8. This photo shows the record jacket and record of a copy of Victor’s recording of the “People’s 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Song.” Reprinted with permission from the Edo-Toˉkyoˉ Museum.

9. The Takashimaya Department Store advertised for sale reproductions of a scroll about the national foundation featured in the April 1939 exhibition “Promoting the Spirit of the Founding of the Nation” hosted by Takashimaya (Kigen nisen roppyakunen, April 1940).

10. This is the jacket cover for a commemorative set of eight postcards, each of which shows two heroes, about the “Our Ancestors” exhibition hosted by the Mitsukoshi Department Store in January 1940. This was one of seven exhibitions celebrating the nation that were staged simultaneously by department stores in Tokyo.

12. The cover image of the December 1939 edition of Miyazaki Prefecture’s tourism promotion magazine Kirishima features the Ametsuchi Tower, then under construction.

11. The Kagoshima Association to Celebrate the 2,600th Anniversary published this brochure stressing the prefecture’s sacred role in the origin of the fatherland.

13. This is the jacket cover of one of the countless sets of postcards featuring sacred sites in Yamato that were printed at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. It shows Kashihara Shrine.

15. Commemorative stamp from the Bukkokuji (Pulguksa) Temple Station in colonial-era Keishu ˉ (Kyongju).

14. This is one example of the many advertisements that Daitetsu Railways placed in the print media to publicize its convenient service to sacred imperial sites. The top line reads, “Pledge Certain Victory.” Listed immediately below are five categories of heritage sites, ranging from imperial tombs to Yoshino Court historical sites, where one would make such a patriotic pledge, that were served by Daitetsu Railways. Pictured in the ad are a torii (symbolic gateway to the precincts of a Shintoˉ shrine) and the iconographic statue of Kusunoki (Choˉkoku seishin, March 1942).

16. Port Arthur was the most popular site outside of Japan proper among Japanese tourists, and its popularity rivaled that of many heritage sites within Japan proper. This is the cover jacket of a commemorative set of fifteen postcards showing Port Arthur’s battle sites.

18. (Below) This postcard, from a set of thirty-two showing the “Sights of Dairen,” shows what the accompanying text describes as an “authentic native street.”

17. This map of Hoˉten featured in a guide published by the Hoˉten Transportation Company, provider of bus tours in that city, was typical of tourism promotion literature of the time for its colorful, eye-catching design (Hoˉten koˉtsu ˉ kabushiki kaisha, Hoˉten kankoˉ annai, pre-1945).

19. This image of the Memorial Tower in Shinkyoˉ is from a set of eight postcards featuring Shinkyoˉ’s sacred sites.

20. A father visiting Manchuria in 1939 sent this postcard to his family in Tokyo. The prominent purple stamp “commemorated ‘worship’ (sanpai) on 17 September 1939 (Shoˉwa 14) at the Nanryoˉ battle site of forty-three departed heroes.”

21. This is the cover image of the guide to the Congress of Overseas Brethren in Celebration of the 2,600th Anniversary of the Empire of Japan staged in Tokyo in 1940. The piece of music displayed at the bottom is from the “2,600th Anniversary Song.”

22. This publicity poster for the Congress of Overseas Brethren evidences the cult of the pioneer that was in vogue in Japan at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations.