Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times by Miriam Silverberg

The content of Miriam Silverberg’s crowning scholarly achievement Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times has been covered by Japanese Studies pedagogues, philosophers, historians and casual readers ever since it appeared in print in 2006. The internet is full of glowing reviews. Here are a couple of remarks I managed to snap up from the JSTOR panoply:

With its wide-raging perspective, its elegant use of theory, and its rich bibliographic citations, Silverberg’s volume will no doubt become an essential resource for scholars and students interested in almost any aspect of Japanese society in the 1920s and 1930s. (Jeffrey Angles, Western Michigan University) 

Reading Miriam Silverberg’s book on “erotic, grotesque, nonsense,” a popular catchphrase for Japanese urban mass culture of the late 1920s and early 1930s, brings you into a seductive world of popular magazines, ethnographic commentary, social surveys, novels, and movies that depicted the popular culture of everyday life in the entertainment districts of Tokyo… What she gives us is a timely and provocative challenge to the master narratives of interwar and wartime Japan, highlighting the political and social possibilities opened up by popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s, a moment more typically identified as the gathering of fascism. (Louise Young, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

So what else is there to say about the book? Nothing I will write in the following paragraphs will appear new. Silverberg’s opus is the child of a grand vision, one that aims to convey a theoretical and thematic unity. It reveals a particular concern with the representation of Japanese mass culture during the 1920s and early 1930s and it details the political implications of this representation and, in particular, the public’s responses to it. Silverberg shows us that multiplicity of ideas and behaviors was the fundamental characteristic of this remarkable period in Japanese ‘modern’ history, even though at the time the establishment figures were caught in a struggle to consolidate their control over the population by re-affirming (and occasionally by brutally imposing) time and time again the unity of the people, the congruity of national spirit and the moral integrity of social order. This moralism imposed from above couldn’t stand a chance against the emancipatory cultural transmutations that took place under the aegis of rampant consumerism and rapid industrialization and reached their historical peak just before Japan committed itself fully and tragically to its imperialist ambitions. The haphazard ambience of social and cultural disorders or disequilibriums during the Taishō and early Shōwa periods and the ensuing urban reconfigurations were unified under the label of ero guro nansensu. But this is my own simplified definition of this cultural and historical Event (I’m using Badiou’s broad application of the term), one that requires deeper examination, something that Silverberg’s book successfully delivers over more than 350 pages. 

I first encountered the idiomatic expression in Ian Buruma’s Inventing Japan, 1853-1964 where he compared the atmosphere “marked by a skittish, sometimes nihilistic hedonism” of Taishō Japan to Weimar Berlin. In this setting, ero guro nansensu (or ‘erotic grotesque nonsense’) was characterized by a collective of contrasting images:

Longhaired young men in roido (from Harold Lloyd) glasses, bell-bottom trousers, colored shirts, and floppy ties would stroll down the willow-lined avenue with young women in bobbed hairdos. The more earnest ones, who gathered in “milk bars” to discuss German philosophy or Russian novels, were known as Marx boys and Marx girls. A few years later, the fashionable young would be renamed mobos (modern boys) and their flapper girlfriends mogas (modern girls). Aside from the milk bars, the Ginza abounded in German-style beer halls and Parisian-style cafés, with waitresses who were free with their favors — for a modest fee. Many patrons of these establishments, with such names as Tiger Café and Lion Beer Hall, were journalists, who, like the cafe waitresses, were a feature of this bright new age of mass media and entertainment. Up the street, near Hibiya Park, where the riots of 1905 took place, Frank Lloyd Wright was building the Imperial Hotel, where people would take their tea and eat ultrafashionable “Chaplin caramels.”

Cafés, waitresses, mogas, mobos and Chaplin also feature prominently in Silverberg's book. While Buruma utilizes a variety of English-based reputable works to render his account of an exciting, decadent Tokyo, Silverberg is far more rigorous in her research: the extensive biography which includes innumerable Japanese primary sources stands proof of her comprehension of the book’s intricate topic and her brilliancy as a Japanese Studies scholar. 

And not just as a Japanese Studies scholar. Like she did in her other articles, and because she believes the cultural to be inseparable from the political, Silverberg references extensively from Perry Anderson, Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, T. J. Clarke, David Harvey, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Raymond Williams and others in order to support her research. Japanese political theorists are not ignored either. She cites liberally from a list which includes hundreds of scholars, fiction writers and journalists. A capable theoretician and ethnographer, she blends the ideas of all these influential thinkers and more and, in the end, she gives a picture of the Japanese mass culture of 1920s and 1930s as complete as it will ever be.

In the following lines I want to take a closer look at the theoretical foundations and influences behind the larger narrative of the book. I will not go into details about the contents of each chapter; instead I want to investigate the “gateways” which lead to the fantastic, multidimensional universe of Taishō mass culture as it appears in the pages of Silverberg’s life’s work. All of the important theoretical constructs which she employs again and again (including in articles and essays not included in this book) can be encountered in the short introduction and in Chapter One. I will hence ignore an overview of Silverberg’s documentary-style collages (as entertaining and compelling as they are) a narrative device used in the development of each chapter and in the crafting of the book’s overall argument. 

But what is the argument? This is premised on the notion of the titular expression ero guro nansensu. Silverberg states that this expression was used typically to attack and vilify what was seen as Japan’s moral ruination brought about by an unwavering consumerism and a mass culture imported from “outside,” mainly from the West. Such culture was celebratory of its own degradation and its consumption was felt by the higher echelons of power to distract the population from taking part in the socio-political “uniformization” of the nation. On the other hand, militant activists for social change criticized this consumption as sidetracking the people from emancipatory action, even while they indulged in its seductive offerings or used it as a means to disseminate their message. In spite of its contrasting, contradictory nature, ero guro nansensu underlined the ubiquitous forms of modernity and social change from the Taishō to early Shōwa period. In Silverberg’s words, the culture of this timeframe “in no small part included fantasies, language, and gestures sold and created by ‘consumer objects,’ including those rendered down and out by the vicissitudes of capitalism.” The predominant delight in consumer culture and the individuals’ identification with it was the motor for social and cultural organization, even when the government came crushing down on these “acts of insurgency.” 

One tends to examine Japan from the 1920s to the 1940s with a critical eye to the diminishing democracy, various forms of political oppression, populist violence and the incursions into Korea and China as glaring precursors to the Pacific War. Silverberg however dissects this view “from the top” by reading into the mores and behaviors of regular Japanese people “a popular mobilization that offered an alternative to the state ideology of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, albeit one positioned from within capitalist structures of domination.” In what is probably a most radical judgment of the general Japanese urban population from that time, Silverberg announces that

The consumer was both a subject of the emperor and a subject with agency acting as autonomously as the imperial system would allow. Japanese women and men were both privy to a network of pleasures offered within mass culture and subject to an increasingly tight web of state controls on freedom of expression and consumption. And when considering them as imperial subjects, we must also recognize that not only was the imperial reign said to span countless generations, it also covered the contemporaneous geographic terrain of empire.

Hence even as the government strengthened its control, the people as consumers could still express and fulfill their desires under a constricted form of freedom. Far from being de-politicized, the masses, by partaking in the corporal (fleshly) consumerism of the capitalist order, found themselves inadvertently mobilized in a culture of play that ran counter to the government’s requirements. The re-imagining of identity and the sense of belonging captured by individuals spending the bulk of their existence in cafés, boulevards and parks — in the company of café waitresses, dancers and prostitutes, among mogas, mobos, foreigners, freaks, hawkers, juvenile delinquents, beggars and vagrants — could be viewed as emblematic acts of resistance against the authority of the school system, the military and the religious institutions. The Imperial Rescript on Education and its ideal notion of filial piety towards family and, by extension, towards emperor and empire, was being re-defined as often as it was being disregarded. It was in this setting that the emancipated woman, the Modern Girl (Silverberg refuses to use the term moga) outgrew from a commodified cultural construct essentially relegated to an objectified, inferior position by the ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) ideology into a working woman, a militant, an uninhibited consumer of and participant in mass media. 

There is a lot more to say about Silverberg’s methodology but right now I just want to make a few observations on the imperious figure of capitalism, a major protagonist in the book, the “hero” which facilitates the emancipation of the consumer subject. I think that the legitimacy which capitalism yields in her book is an accidental characterization. Silverberg’s sympathies are evidently towards leftist writers and rebels, people who challenged the oppressive, increasingly fascist system through concrete acts of resistance. But it is noteworthy to mention that even these iconoclasts or dissenters were big consumers of mass culture. In 1930s Japan, social and economic inequalities were glaring and undisguised. These were caused not in small part by the global breakdown and, at the height of the ‘Yellow Peril’ current, by Western isolationist policies. In the eyes of the West, Japan was being viewed as increasingly assertive and belligerent. This negative opinion was not represented in the Japanese consumerist economy of the time. In fact, through a process known as code-switching (covered in part here) Western artifacts were blended into the Japanese mass-marketed cultural output for increased popularity. It may have bothered the traditionalist dogmatists and the ultra-conservatives — to the point where they forcefully introduced legally punishable measures against their use — but Western-influenced merchandise and ideas were in vogue. Because they were seen as misdirecting people’s attention from state-imposed values and practices, consumption of these objects was branded as opposition, even hostility to the state. It may appear strange at first that Silverberg equates consumerism(s) with acts of political resistance. But as Aijaz Ahmad put it subtly, politics aren’t as much an object of opposition as they are acts of solidarity:

…it is always much less problematic to denounce dictators and to affirm, instead, a generality of values — ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ — but always much harder to affiliate oneself with specific kinds of praxis, conceived not in terms of values which serve as a judgment on history but as a solidarity with communities of individuals, simultaneously flawed and heroic, who act within that history, from determinate social and political positions.

In their embrace of ero guro nansensu culture, the people of Japan did come together and formed communities that, in the long run, were viewed by the authoritarian government as dangerous to its self-preservation. It’s no wonder that by the early 1940s ero guro nansensu completely disappeared from cultural output, being replaced by subservient expressions of patriotism and reverence towards the imperial nation and its head figure, the emperor. Despite this unfortunate development, as Silverberg wrote in the last lines of her book,

The history of modern Japanese culture was suffused by meanings and tensions, created, consumed, and then not forgotten by the women, the men, and the children who went out to play in the city streets, and who were then sent to war, before they were told not to remember.

Today the English-speaking world can remember because of Silverberg’s unparalleled research and exceptional insight. 

Works cited:

Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. Verso, 1994.

Angles, Jeffrey. "Erotic, Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Time. By Miriam Silverberg. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. Monumenta Nipponica 63.2 (2008): 434-436.

Buruma, Ian. Inventing Japan: 1853-1964. Random House LLC, 2004.

Silverberg, Miriam. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. Vol. 1. University of California Press, 2006.

Young, Louise. "Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Time. By Miriam Silverberg. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. The Journal of Asian Studies 67.02 (2008): 731-733.

Remembering Pearl Harbor, Forgetting Chaplin, and the Case of the Disappearing Western Woman: A Picture Story by Miriam Silverberg

     The only reason why I move so slow through Miriam Silverberg’s Erotic Grotesque Nonsense - The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times is the book’s singular flaw (solely in terms of affecting my reading speed, that is) which is also its greatest asset: the endnotes. Virtually every paragraph will turn you to the back of the book. And things are not any different with her articles or essays: in Remembering Pearl Harbor, Forgetting Chaplin, and the Case of the Disappearing Western Woman: A Picture Story more than 10 pages out of a 53-page commentary are endnotes. 53 is also the exact number of endnotes in Erotic Grotesque Nonsense. In hindsight, it doesn’t seem that big of a number. And content-wise, the book will indeed press you — no, actually engage you — to turn to the back for an exciting read of extracts, references and added insight concerning the plethora of ideas that Silverberg blends into her argument with sheer refinement and analytical prowess. Like the true intellectual that she was (she passed away in 2008) and still is through the enduring exceptionality of the work she left behind, Silverberg prods the reader to extend his or her knowledge beyond the confines of the main narrative. The endnotes encouraged or rather strengthened my already-obsessional impulse to investigate a surplus of primary and secondary material covering Silverberg’s main topic — and that was a good thing.

     This post is not about her book, but about the essay I introduced above. Remembering Pearl Harbor… is part of a series of debates on a subject that preoccupied much of Silverberg’s illustrious career: Japan and the modern or the “modan," which was the term used during the Taishō and early Showa period. This is a polymorphous concept of considerable historical and sociological weight and it is more carefully scrutinized in her masterpiece Erotic Grotesque Nonsense. In this book, Silverberg returns with added emphasis to demonstrate how the constantly-shifting modan permeated every aspect of all subjects of Imperial Japan. As such, the article that I’m about to examine functions as a good introduction to her oeuvre and I recommend everyone to read it before heading into her lengthier works. In the following paragraphs I want to summarize the main theoretical constructs employed by Silverberg in her investigation of modernity, consumer habits and, above all, the contradictory notion of identity at a time when Japan found itself at the height of its colonizing power.

  To start with, here, just like in her book, Silverberg uses a specific definition of the main concepts of modernity and identity. She uses the term "modan" in order to underscore the specificity of the associated Japanese history, and to distinguish this term from the wide-ranging philosophical, literary, and historical English-language literature on the variants “modern,” “modernist,” and “modernization…” She then alludes to a number of historical and literary anecdotes to reinforce her argument that modernity and identity are interrelated and in constant flux, despite or in spite of the presence of a coercive nation-state apparatus that sought to homogenize and change the mores of the population, both at home and in the new colonies. 

  The first anecdote involves the 1937 meeting between Yamaguchi Yoshiko (later known as the Hollywood starlet “Shirley Yamaguchi”  who married sculptor Isamu Noguchi, served for 18 years as a Diet member for LDP and, at the present time, she is still a popular TV personality in Japan) and Kawashima Yoshiko, “the Mata Hari of the Orient,” cousin of the puppet emperor Pu Yi and famous spy, eventually captured and executed by the Kuomintang. When these two meet, in a funny exchange that reveals the complex interplay between two shifting identities, Kawashima, who is the eldest and dressed like a boy, is surprised to find out that Yamaguchi, who is dressed in Chinese garb to fit with her idol persona of Ri Ko-ran, is actually Japanese:

“Oh, so you were really Japanese!” The Manchurian woman, doubly cross-dressing as a Japanese male, then turned to the younger Japanese woman, who was dressed as a Chinese female. Addressing herself in masculine, familiar terms as “Boku,” this woman, then over thirty, flirtatiously asked Yoshiko to “call me big brother!”

Yamaguchi Yoshiko and Kawashima Yoshiko

  In this fateful encounter, Silverberg discovers a new dimension, one reminiscent of a Platonic event. Gender identity, supposedly of a fixed nature in a traditionalist setting, is put into question or, in Silverberg’s words, is “up for grabs.” As a spy in the service of an empire which simultaneously boasts misguided pan-asiatic ambitions on the international stage and reactionary policies at home, Kawashima Yoshiko is assumed to follow conservative values among which a clear division between male and female genders is absolutely indisputable, if not inviolable. Instead, she clearly identities herself as a male, not only by dressing as a boy but also by using specific language signifiers that only boys use. Although she does not engage in the sort of conservative discourse mentioned above, Kawashima is still a national hero. The notion of identity is complicated even further by Yamaguchi Yoshiko’s nationality as a Japanese national who, “like the state of Manshu” (two years earlier), “was made by the hands of the Japanese.” Yamaguchi becomes the Chinese idol Ri Ko-ran (or Li Hsiang-lan) and is accepted as such to the degree that her actual Japanese nationality is cast into oblivion (as shown earlier by Kawashima’s confusion). This circumstance enforces Silverberg’s original position that Japanese identity is never static but constantly fluctuating and self-defining, notwithstanding the many racist declarations by various politicians (past and present) who try to paint it as one homogenous, unchanging totality.  

This notion of “identity-in-flux” cannot be separated from the consumption of images within a culture of modernity which was most prominent during the time of Japanese colonialism. In this setting, the consumers of images also built their own individual identities through the availability of choices that the interwar age of mass-consumerism offered in the form of “photographs and advertisements in the mass press, in posters, in movie programs, and in the movies during the 1920s and 1930s.” As Silverberg demonstrates by using Ozaki Midori’s short story from March 1929 issue of Nyonin geijutsu the protagonists’ fantasies about Valentino and Charlie Chaplin contain mechanisms for identity formation, independent of what the government prescribed or popular consumption demanded (even though they cannot escape the scope and background of these two entities/institutions). 

Because she’s dealing with a Japan in the midst of empire-expansion and colonization, Silverberg diverges from the main narrative to offer some painstaking references to objectifying attitudes towards Koreans, the most noteworthy ones involving the image of Korean people — especially that of cafe waitresses (jokyū) who can be considered “a chilling harbinger of the ianfu  [or comfort women] history” — in Moro Genzo’s 99-volume series Shin Chosen Fudoki published in 1930. In this chronicle, counterfeit reasons for the annexation of Korea into Japan abound, such as the claim that Korea lacks folk culture (minshu bunka). But most surprising are the frequent declarations of admiration for the simplicity and preservation of Korean traditions, in contrast to the aggressive modernism of mainland Japan, which has managed to supplant traditionalism in favor of an infatuation with European and American culture. These feeble attempts at national identity-formation by casting the colonizer as the colonized were furthermore complicated by the country’s entrance into WWII and by the modern citizens who, like all consumer-subjects of their time, were beset by a multiplicity of images that created confusion and contradictions.

Elsewhere I mentioned that Silverberg uses Charlie Chaplin’s 1932 visit to Japan as an effective hook to lead people into the bedazzling universe of Taishō mass-culture. In this article too, Silverberg mentions Charlie Chaplin’s visit but focuses on the effects of mass production and consumption that it elicited. We find out, for example, that Chaplin’s visit was an overwhelmingly marketable media event: anything from hard-boiled eggs and tempura to chocolate, straw hats, fountain pens, poems and even the spirit of the Japanese army — all of this was advertised in the mass media with the accompaniment of Chaplin’s famous “Little Tramp” persona. His glorious reception at all levels in the capitalist interchange between consumer and producer stood proof that “Chaplin’s appeal crossed class boundaries in modan Japan.” 

Charlie Chaplin in Japan

This is also where we encounter Silverberg’s concept of code-switching. Code-switching is a key notion which is used repeatedly to emphasize the appropriation of foreign elements in the representation of indigenous Japanese cultural artifacts as they appear in various forms of mass media. A better definition of code-switching is revealed in Erotic Grotesque Nonsense:

The cultural articulations of the Japanese consumer-subjects constantly juxtaposed distinct ideas and entities in such sites as magazine layouts, theater costumes, and language, because culture was seen as fragmented in time and space. [Code-switching is] the active and often sophisticated process of moving between pieces chosen from various cultures within and outside Japan…

In Silverberg’s essay, code-switching emerges in a montage of newspapers featuring photographs and articles moving between western to eastern topics. More than 30 interesting photographs are used to drive home Silverberg’s argument that “the fluidity of identity in modan Japan” and “the relationship of movies to Japanese fantasies” was at the heart of the Japanese Empire, even while it was being exhausted and decimated in the battles of the Pacific War. The photographs show the habitual use of Western objects alongside Japanese elements. Some of them will be revisited in Erotic Grotesque Nonsense along with the concept of code-switching.

During the WWII, this type of images largely disappeared from the mass media due to government censorship. However, as Silverberg points out in the last paragraph of the article, shades of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times still had an impact on some Japanese movies, like in the scene of a sushi-machine running out of control. And when she asked a film archivist how he felt once images of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin disappeared from public view, his response was: “It was lonely.” 

Works cited and images source:

Silverberg, Miriam. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense. Univ of California Press, 2006.

Silverberg, Miriam. "Remembering Pearl Harbor, forgetting Charlie Chaplin, and the case of the disappearing Western woman: a picture story." positions 1.1 (1993): 24-76.

Lost and Found - Recovering Regional Identity in Imperial Japan by Hiraku Shimoda

It is still a pretty widespread idea that Japan, during two centuries of Tokugawa-led seclusion, was a unified monolith, managed peacefully and efficiently by the central powers in Edo. Within this narrow focus, one tends to omit the fact that the mavericks leading the Meiji Restoration had the difficult task of uniting to their cause a people dispensed over 260 distinct domains. At the outbreak of the Meiji Restoration Japan was messy and full of troubling divisions and, as one would expect, parts of the population couldn’t shake off the past or old loyalties with ease. This dividing line between old and new was carried out at a regional level, with some domains clinging to bakufu allegiances while others embraced the Satsuma and Chōshū alliance (satchō). The regional split is why the road to ‘modernity’ was not an easy one: on numerous occasions it took a bloody turn, the worst example being the Boshin War (1868-1869) which culminated in the disestablishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate and saw the return of the imperial court to prominent position of power. Far from ending the regional split (even through various collective and individual punishments imposed by the victors) the peace and stability following the Meiji Restoration was every so often disturbed by calls for regional independence, preservation of regional identity and historical revision of the actors of the Boshin War. All of these features had been drastically reduced, transformed and amalgamated as requisites of a newfangled, modern nation-state. The obstinate cries supporting the original form of these features were most famously and vociferously expressed by the defeated bakufu supporters, the people of Aizu domain. The circumstances which set Aizu apart and gave it the rare courage to clash with the increasingly-autocratic Meiji government are the subject of Mr. Hiraku Shimoda’s book Lost and Found - Recovering Regional Identity in Imperial Japan.

Mr. Shimoda takes stock of a special topographical counterpoint to the notion of Japanese homogeneity and territorial uniformity by investigating a region where the strong local identity was often disconnected from the collective national ethos. In doing so, he confronts the massive reshaping of Aizu’s regional culture during the Meiji period and the resistance generated by such historical transfiguration. But if this local identity was so tenacious, so set against the forces building a nation-state (and, synchronously, an empire) then where is Aizu today? 

No political unit called Aizu has existed since 1868… One must squint at a map just to see the word Aizu appear as a mere vestigial prefix on the names of several towns and villages scattered across western Fukushima prefecture.

Situated in the heart of Tohoku region, Aizu comprised the western mountainous part of Fukushima Prefecture. During the Edo period, the area was a Tokugawa protectorate, responsible for keeping a look-out on northern daimyōs with dubious loyalties such as the Satake, Date and Nanbu. The region was generally stricken by poverty and only the city of Wakamatsu had a reputation for trade and prosperity. Against these adverse conditions and because it recognised the strategic importance of an ally in an area far from Edo’s reach, the Tokugawa continued to support Aizu financially and militarily until the tragic outcome of the Boshin War. While the foundations of adherence to the Tokugawa cause can be traced back almost two centuries before the Meiji Restoration, it is worth noting here that, even during the Edo period, Aizu had a reputation for unruliness, especially when it came to samurai standards of proper behaviour. In addition, what could be interpreted as a sense for regional loyalty or even strong regional identity was not exactly developed along strict lines but was more the object of self-serving, financial prosperity and survival:

The rulers and the ruled could diverge greatly on who and what ‘belonged’ in Aizu and how much they valued the domain as a rightful place of belonging that merited their allegiance. The domain did what it could, naturally enough, to keep human and material capital within its borders for the sake of domainal well-being.

This predilection for self-preservation rather than regional loyalty was evident after the Aizu resistance was crushed by the imperial forces in the Boshin War. Various witnesses recorded the failure on the part of the commoners to express pity or sympathy towards the daimyo and his generals who were captured and carried off to Edo as prisoners of war. This indifference especially shocked the commander in chief of the victorious Tosa army and compelled him to express his feelings as following:

“When I witnessed all the commoners fleeing with their belongings on their backs, I was deeply impressed… The people avoided conflict and scattered, with none feeling any debt to the many generations of lordly benevolence… Upon seeing the fall of their country, the people felt no more remorse than did some livestock — how could this be?”

How is it possible that after the demise of their mighty Tokugawa supporter, Aizu became synonymous with a hotbed of ‘rebels’ and ‘enemies of the court,’ a mix of rowdy people who vehemently resisted and constantly frustrated forced amalgamation into the budding Meiji nation-state? And why, from this resistance, did it emerge as a primary exemplar of steadfast loyalty to the imperial cause? The reasons are interestingly varied and Mr. Shimoda presents them with the skill of a masterly historian. 

After the Boshin War 70 percent of Aizu’s rice crops were destroyed and the land was plunged into poverty and famine. While the Meiji restorationists regarded these dire straits as a fit punishment for a region that acted against their goals, soon they had to revise their isolationist policy and to contribute to the socio-economic conditions of the area. This was highly necessary as between 1868 and 1876 Aizu was a hub for counterfeiters, bandits and antigovernment insurrections. Kido Takayoshi, one of the main protagonists in the Meiji Restoration, denounced Aizu as “the greatest villain of all” and sought to “instil fear by punishing the unruly rebels… and make it impossible for others to harbour any rebellious thoughts.” Another course of action which was seen as necessary for the creation of a strong, unified state was the relocation of Aizu samurai families so as to reduce the influence which they might have had upon local feelings of disloyalty and unruliness. As one statesman aptly put it, “there is no better way to imperialise the people and wash away old habits than samurai relocation.” 

All of these actions enraged the Aizu people and reinforced their antagonism toward the central government. This enmity was already rooted in the terrible devastation brought upon the land in the aftermath of the Boshin War. But with the displacement of the old families and the encroachment of modern industrialisation supplanting old forms of mercantilism and sustenance, they also felt that their culture was being forced out of the region. Aizu locals voiced their displeasure in various petitions, calling out for the return of the Matsudaira lords (who have ruled Aizu by Tokugawa decree for centuries):

“We are a people who have always lived in an isolated land enclosed on all four sides, and we are stubborn in our ways. We are accustomed to the several centuries of benevolent nurturing by Matsudaira lordship… The ways of our old lord have seeped into our skin over more than two hundred years, and they cannot be forgotten even for a moment…”

The anger increased in 1876 when Aizu was incorporated into Fukushima prefecture. Mr. Shimoda regards this move as the straw that broke the camel’s back because it gave the people of Aizu a platform to hold even more tightly unto to their views of regional exceptionality and resulted in pronounced demonstrations of local identity.

It was the climate of modern national consolidation that fostered this local self-discovery. Faced with external violations of unstated but long-understood borders — an insensitive gerrymandering where Tokyo’s designs seemed grossly incongruous with established practices — some residents of  former Aizu were driven to reaffirm local norms and discover their distinct locality. Both prefectural rule and administrative consolidation had aimed for nation-building efficiency, but those impositions gave rise, most unwittingly, to a sharper awareness of Aizu’s regional identity relative to its neighbours and the new nation.

From this strong notion of personal and collective identity prevalent in the ex-Aizu province, the concept of Aizuppo became established. A singular definition of this term (which is in use even at the present) is hard to pinpoint. To be sure, it harkens back to the notion of “the Aizu spirit” that was invoked regularly and obsessively during the late Meiji Period to signify strength of character, loyalty and, above all, stubbornness in the face of drastic change and modern reform. “The Aizu spirit” was (and is) thus a thoroughly conservative notion, one that adhered to the acute exceptionalism of a supposedly unchanging tradition. 

The famous stubbornness of “The Aizu spirit” gradually began to be equated with steadfast loyalty which, in the nationalistic and military environment of the Meiji period, was the most admirable and supreme virtue the Japanese people could have. And because absolute loyalty toward country and emperor was the criterion that all good citizens had to demonstrate, the Aizu locals could now claim that they were the paragon, the embodiment of this moral attribute. Owing to its committed and unfaltering support for the Tokugawa government throughout history, the Aizu province had proven to be reliably loyal and so the designation of “rebels” attached to them and to all bakufu supporters in history textbooks had to be revised. The Aizu people couldn’t be rebels when in fact they most ardently and loyally supported the original Japanese state, seeing it through to its tragic demise. The sacrifices made by being on the wrong side of history were enough to warrant special consideration in the case of Aizu as it not only endured disproportionate humiliation and punishment compared to other provinces, but it eventually disavowed its ties to the old regime by taking down Saigō Takamori’s troops in the Seinen War of 1877 (otherwise known as the Satsuma Rebellion). All of this energised a grand region-wide movement in support of the elimination of the appellation of ‘rebels’ when referring to Aizu people, which even drew the passionate assistance of Tokutomi Sohō, the famous journalist and historian. Mr. Shimoda details with intriguing zest the well-publicised fight over textbook terminology but I cannot focus on this matter here. Nevertheless the report on this subject is one of the most exhilarating episodes in the book, well worth exploring. 

Furthermore I decided not to go into the excellent account of the famous Byakkotai contained in the latter part of the book. Mr. Shimoda does an outstanding job of demystifying this historical episode. I will say this though: while the Japanese nation-state was being wrenched onto a new track of history, it needed new narratives to keep the people galvanised to its cause. Imperialism needed a new disguise, a rhetoric that could be easily consumed by the public. Into all of this came “the Aizu spirit” which proved to be the most popular promoter of loyalty to the nation-state on the strength of its weighty history and convincing symbolism. National identity — a strong sense of it, necessarily accepted by everyone —  was at the forefront of governmental work in the Meiji period. Devising and institutionalising collective appreciation for a sense of belonging to a greater, unifying whole proved to be tougher than it was expected: regional differences constantly undermined this project imposed from above and from outside. In the end, these regional differences allowed room for finding a distinct socio-cultural place in the emerging national landscape that was in much need of uniformity and conformity in order to stay strong. And even regions wanted to be part of a strong nation. In Aizu’s case, Mr. Shimoda best exemplifies this trajectory when he remarks the following:

Aizu’s sense of difference — articulated through decades of identity rhetoric and captured by the idea of a so-called Aizu spirit — emerged out of an ultimately synthetic project whereby those who had once been deemed different sought to, and largely did, overcome that difference. In doing so, they could discover a homeland that satisfied local claims to legitimacy while ultimately confirming the nation’s supremacy. Thus an Aizuppo could be undeniably and unapologetically Japanese; in fact, there could hardly be an Aizuppo without a Japanese.

Work cited:

Shimoda, Hiraku. Lost and Found. Recovering Regional Identity in Imperial Japan. Harvard University Press, 2014.

Beyond Sakoku: The Korean Envoy to Edo and the 1719 Diary of Shin Yu-han by James B. Lewis & Carnival of the Aliens - Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture by Ronald P. Toby

I picked up a few significant items from reading James B. Lewis’ article Beyond Sakoku: The Korean Envoy to Edo and the 1719 Diary of Shin Yu-han:

• Hatada Takashi  supports my initial observation (inspired by reading Bayliss’ book) about Japanese-Korean relationship when, according to James B. Lewis, he remarks that ‘the Japanese view of Korea throughout most of the Tokugawa period was the antithesis of the twentieth century Japanese view, shaped as it was by the imperatives of imperialism and colonization;’
• In the 16th and 17th century Korea was also a secluded country, cut off economically and diplomatically from the rest of the world, earning it the appellation of ‘Hermit Kingdom;’
• The poverty of Tsushima Island in the postwar years following Hideyoshi’s failed attempts to conquer China in 1592-1598 was an important factor in opening up trade relations with Korea;
• The other factor was the need for an external recognition and legitimization of the authority of the bakufu over a newly unified country — a factor supported by Toby in his article (see below);
• Between 1607 and 1811 Korean envoys visited Japan 12 times and these visits, followed by trade activity, spurned record revenues for Japan’s economy due to the widespread manufacturing and sale of cultural products based on these visits; 
• Protocol seemed to be equally imperative and impedimental in smoothing out relations while forgery of politically-sensitive documents was rampant;
• Korea’s cultural output was very popular among all classes of Japanese society and this sweeping cultural demand outweighed diplomatic achievements.

        The highlight of James B. Lewis’ article is the Appendix or A Translation of a Selection from Shin Yu-han’s Haeyurok: The Entry into Edo, and Comments on the Shōgun and his Retainers. This part is well worth reading as it offers rare first-hand insights into eighteenth century Japan. Shin Yu-han (or Sin Yuhan whom I’ve mentioned briefly when I talked about Jeong-Mi Lee’s article) took part in the 1719 diplomatic mission to Japan. He kept a diary entitled the Haeyurok in which he recorded in astute, critical and sometimes funny deftness all that he saw and experienced in his long travels throughout Japan. There is mundane stuff about official attire, banquets, and rigid schedule that had to be followed to an annoying precision. The most remarkable passages are his descriptions of meeting Yoshimune (the eight shogun, 1684-1751) and his interpretive take on Japanese hierarchical, hereditary system of leadership. I would like to render below some of the most informative and exciting excerpts from Shin Yu-han’s diary. The translation was done by James B. Lewis and I reproduce it as it appears in the original: 

Yoshimune’s character is dauntless, superior and wise, and this year, he is thirty-five years old. He is of strudy spirit and his (sic) a diginified bearing. He is a lover of the martial arts but finds no joy in literature. He respects economy and rejects extravagance. Ordinarily he says, “Japanese think highly of Korean letters. But the style is unique for each. Although we study it, since we cannot become skillful, for us, it is best to write in Japanese. When the Korean ambassador comes to Japan, there are ceremonies to display our military might and to provide music, but these have no meaning, either. The military is the way to defend ourselves, but if they see it and it scares them, we lose the meaning of our desire for contact, or if they despise it we have not achieved out (sic) scheme of displaying force. When it comes to musical skills, we have our mutual customs. Why should foreign music gladden the ear; what is the purpose of this ceremony? In the way of friendly relations, value lies in sincerity. They are men from a faraway land, do not delay them. We must see them home pleased. We shall pare away and remove all extreme rhetorical flourishes and details,” and so forth.  When practicing governance, he puts honesty and humility first. He aids the poor and reduces their taxes. Those who commit capital crimes have their noses severed instead of being executed. All sing his praises.

When one of his minsters entered his presence dressed in brocades, Yoshimune immediately asked him the cost of the gown, and said, “Even the cotton robe I have on is sufficient to cover the body.” Thereafter it is said that not one of his ministers wore brocades.

…the Hayashi house has presided over letters in Japan. Generally speaking, all those who practice literature with the state as their patron, come from this house. Those who have been recommended as students and draw a salary are several tens of people. However, when viewed, the (product) is clumsy and simple and does not succeed (in having) a style. Since all Japanese offices are hereditary, even if there is a scholar of high caliber and profound learning, without studying under Nobuatsu [Hayashi], he will not find a position. The situation is laughable. 

The rules which were brought at daybreak, were not only written in Japanese kana, but were also written in grass writing and not at all clear. According to the magistrate, Amenomori Akira was bed-ridden with illness and there was no one who could interpret the document, no one who could translate it into Chinese. The envoys said that with unclear rules of protocol, they could not present the communication. They dispatched a fast messenger to summon Matsuura Tadashi, but he said it would be difficult to write it on the spur of the moment and declined. Japanese literature is, in the main, written carelessly, is blurred, muddled, and unskillfully copied. Accordingly, everyone expressed disapproval. 

Before I move on to the next article, I would like to point out that James B. Lewis wrote a book entitled Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan which, from what I can tell, has a richness of complementary information regarding the same subject matter described above, complete with demographic statistics, pictures and other interesting details related to the Korean envoys to Japan in the early modern era. That book is in my possession and I hope to read it one day, if not in its entirety, then at least a couple of chapters that could add some new information to the topic of early Korean-Japanese contact. 

The second article that I want to talk about is Ronald P. Toby’s Carnival of the Aliens - Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture. Complementing the topic of Korean ambassadorial visits to Japan, this compelling essay contains, to a large extent, meticulous art criticism in reference to the many pictorial representations of Korean processions. Toby looks at the historical origins of these paintings but, mainly, he details the color composition and visual arrangement of elements contained in them, which are of interest not only to the art scholar but also function as clues to the assortment of commendatory attitudes toward Korean envoys prevalent among the Japanese people. Among the detailed exploration of such artistic products is Hanegawa Tōei’s Chōsenjin raichō zu which I have attached at the beginning of this review. This and other similar artistic depictions and representations of Edo-period Korean envoys (in the form of ema, byōbu-e, and emaki) were a successful source for financial investment and national trade. As Toby mentions,

The depiction of embassies, particularly Korean ones, by the turn of the eighteenth century had become a major thematic genre in every medium of Japanese art. Not only did courtiers, the bakufu, and daimyo commission paintings to record the embassies, but artists and print shops churned out dozens of versions of prints and pamphlets with Korean embassies as their subjects, suggesting an eager and ready market.

However, for me, the most interesting item in Toby’s essay is his exploration of Tōjin gyōretsu (foreign parades) in which participants put together Chōsen yama (Korean floats) and paraded in the streets masquerading as Korean envoys. The earliest recorded incidence of this kind of matsuri (festival) took place in 1647. For this historical occasion hundreds of participants adorned Korean attire and their floats sported 

Nishijin silks, already the finest in all Japan [and] were decorated lavishly with dragons and phoenixes, lions and unicorns, all embroidered and appliquéd in gold thread.

The most astounding aspect of these festivals was the ability of the common folk to gain the viewership of the shogun himself, something that not even samurai of higher social rank could obtain easily. As a result, members of the lower class were given the rare opportunity to escape the rigid strictures of Edo-period social division and to assert equality and even moral superiority over members of higher status. In the Meiji period, these festivals were discontinued because they were seen as remnants and reminders of the Tokugawa Shogunate and its link to a past where peasants could step outside their social class.

The historical importance of Korean culture on the effects and development of Japanese identity (with all the complexities this notion has to offer) cannot be underestimated or forgotten (as various Japanese revisionist scholars of extreme nationalistic persuasion have been attempting to do for some time). The last lines of Toby’s article resonate strongly with me:

Korean embassies had become part of the fabric of national consciousness, helping ordinary people articulate the very nature of their world, and their own place in it. Korean embassies, that is, had, by the Genroku period, become part of the universal vocabulary of contemporary Japanese art and popular culture, part of the landscape of the mind of artist, celebrant, and viewer alike.

Works cited in this article:

Lewis, James B. "„Beyond Sakoku: The Korean Envoy to Edo and the 1719 Diary of Shin Yu-han.”." Korea Journal 25 (1985): 22-41.

Toby, Ronald P. "Carnival of the Aliens. Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture." Monumenta Nipponica (1986): 415-456.

The pictures used here all come from Toby's article.

On the Margins of Empire - Buraku and Korean Identity in Prewar and Wartime Japan by Jeffrey Paul Bayliss

     

Norma Fields’s book In the Realm of a Dying Emperor made a strong impression when it came out in 1991. In the preface, Norma laid out an acute observation which, characteristic of her fearless disposition, explored the complexities of her book’s content and exposed the bleak, precarious nature of what it meant to live in one of the world’s ‘most orderly and prosperous societies.’ An intimate passage strips bare the historicity behind the prose (misguidedly implied by the author’s credentials as a foremost specialist in East Asian Studies) and recovers its purview, elevating the book into the realm of personal confession and social criticism:

When there are neither visible oppressors nor victims, and where memory of historical suffering has grown remote, freedom becomes subtle, banal, and finally, elusive. To call attention to its flight amidst pervasive prosperity is a thankless undertaking. Most who embark on such a venture have not chosen it. They have been driven to it, by vivid confrontation with the residues of historic oppression, by encounters with victims and oppressors, who are, after all, produced even in times of prosperity and peace as well as war, and finally, by recognition of the repressiveness of everyday life, a recognition they cannot dispel in spite of potency of common sense, most especially the belief in the existence and importance of social harmony.

The unnerving quality of these lines makes itself present in Jeffrey Paul Bayliss’ On the Margins of Empire - Buraku and Korean Identity in Prewar and Wartime Japan, the subject of this review. Unlike Norma’s book, which deals with a Japan in the midst of a psychologically-redefining, collective upheaval following the death of the Showa Emperor in 1989, Bayliss’ book approaches a Japan at the turn of the twentieth century, when the country found itself in the throes of an unrelenting and successful pursuit of Western industrial technologies, vital requisites for its own militaristic and imperialistic aims. The bulk of Bayliss’ monumental archival research deals with the periods of time mentioned in the title, specifically the late Meiji period (1868-1912), the Taishō period (1912-1926) and the prewar and interwar Shōwa period (1926-1945). The political, social and economic traumas of this interval and their importance in the historical formation of a modern Japan cannot be overstated but they have been tackled more extensively by other writers. In this book, Bayliss is concerned with the sophistications of the relationship between Korean and Buraku minorities under the auspices of violent modernization, failed attempts at a democratic process and the militarization of all aspects of life, to mention just a few of the major overhauls of the social order during the scramble to create Dai Nippon Teikoku (‘the Great Empire of Japan’).

The common plane where Bayliss’ and Norma’s intellectual concerns actually intersect is revealed by the first line of his Introduction:

For those with more than just a casual interest in modern Japan, the once widely held notion of it as a remarkably homogenous, socially harmonious nation has been exposed as a historically contracted and carefully maintained fiction - one that conceals a diversity of groups of various ethnic and social backgrounds in order to deny their claims to membership in the nation and facilitate discrimination and exploitation.

 Bayliss’ book, as the title aptly reveals, examines the history of the Burakumin and the Koreans and the formation of their identities from victims of a protracted discriminating social order that has its roots in Japanese antiquity to militant activists in a hostile modern environment afflicted by war and repression. For these social categories their oppressors are visible, intolerance is a constant living reality and freedom is not only a distant panacea but, in Japan of the Taishō and early Shōwa years, it is also a dangerous, even criminal, object of interest. There are many injustices portrayed in this book but Bayliss’ main aim is not to compile a catalogue of historical proofs for an acrimonious audience. His main purpose (at which he excels) is to draw on a voluminous assortment of primary and secondary resources to construct an almost complete overview of the development of Buraku and Korean identities. These two distinctive groups on the margins of Japanese society progressively converge, influence each other and eventually break apart in their mutual pursuit of recognition, tolerance and equality. 

The cultural, social and political realities behind the convergence and the split dominate the pages of the book. Bayliss’ choice to investigate these two minorities together, in a comparative manner, is nothing short of exciting, if not necessary, especially in light of the extensive research on single-minority focus which dominates the scholarly field. As the author points out, the Burakumin and the Koreans shared not only a long history of discrimination and exploitation, but they also lived together in the same communities and often worked in the same industries. As I read through, there was no doubt in my mind that, despite their many differences, contradictory allegiances and distinct identities, the Burakumin and the Koreans had their points of contact.  

The book is organized around seven chapters. To perform an individual analysis of each chapter is counterintuitive as the material covered by Bayliss is too compelling and sweeping; moreover, the author himself summarizes each chapter in his Introduction. I will instead focus on a few interesting historical points described in the book.

Chapter One takes a detailed look at the origins and evolution of discriminatory attitudes towards Koreans and Burakumin beginning with the Edo period (1603-1868) and continuing through the Meiji period (1868-1912). In order to exercise greater control over all the social strata of a newly-unified country, the Tokugawa government instituted policies that made outcaste status hereditary and legally bound. It is noteworthy to mention that a class of outcaste people (senmin or ‘unclean people’) existed even before the Edo period and it included such groups as the eta (‘much filth’) and the hinin (‘un-human’). Members of the senmin underclass undoubtedly lead a desolate existence ripe with exploitation and segregation but the Tokugawa government gave them defined roles and functions in the society (such as skinning animals, making leather, collecting and removing human waste and corpses) and these were protected and preserved by decree. Despite their prominent role, the senmin were almost virtually absent from accounts handed down by Edo period scholars — in sharp contrast to the Meiji intelligentsia who, in its attempts to build a nationalistic, all-inclusive notion of what it meant to be 'Japanese,' never ceased to hypothesize on the hereditary origins of the Burakumin, fostering more discrimination and exclusion throughout their findings and debates. 

        Another contrast to the Meiji period was the Tokugawa high regard of Korean culture, a consideration which began to wane with the appearance of kokugaku (national studies) scholars in late Edo period. From hereon and continuing beyond the Meiji period, the general view of Koreans as inferior was exemplified (and amplified) by Japanese Prime-Minister Itō Hirobumi’s assertion that a ‘subservient way of thinking’ (jidai shisō) was an inherent and causative factor to the general economic and cultural stagnation of the Korean peninsula (an evaluation that gave rise to the much-accepted teitairon or ‘stagnation theory’ among Japanese historians of that era). Bayliss does a comprehensive job of tracing the hardening of this view among Japanese nationals from mythological origins (in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki) to social Darwinian discussions characteristic of the post-industrialized capitalist ethos which flourished in Japan at the time. All of this was happening in the backdrop of a vitalized consolidation of the nation-state centering on the emperor as a symbol of national and racial unity (a process which coalesced in the notion of kokutai). Most revealing of this first chapter are the condescending and disparaging views towards the Korean and Buraku minorities by important literary figures, scholars and dignitaries such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Katō Hiroyuki, Nitobe Inazō, Kita Sadakichi and Shibukawa Genji, to mention a few famous ones. Later it became apparent that these views were part of a more elaborate strategy to build a national identity lacking any visible imperfections or impurities, and to stage the foundations of a modern Japanese empire.

The subsequent chapters take a look at Japan’s imperialistic foundations and the seismic changes of public opinion towards war at a large socio-cultural level. The aftermath of the Korean annexation in 1910 led to the further joint marginalization of Korean and Buraku minorities and also, more notably, to their distancing from each other. This distancing was caused in large part by their opposing views concerning Japan’s global exploits. We find out that Burakumin were loyal to the state as it proceeded to exercise political and economical control over Korea, whereas Koreans understandably denounced Japan’s imperialistic incursions into their land. The Burakumin felt that by pledging uncritical support to the emperor and to the imperialistic aims of the state, they would be recognized as patriotic citizens equally worthy to be included in the greater Japanese nation-family and their discriminated status would cease to exist or, at least, be alleviated. For their part, Koreans were supportive of a self-governing Korea and their open endorsement of ‘illegal’ independence movements (most notably the March 1st Movement of 1919) vexed the Japanese. Regardless of their conflicting positions confronting the much trumpeted developments of Japanese militarism (domestically) and imperialism (externally), the principal aim of both Burakumin and Koreans surpassed political loyalties.  According to Bayliss, 

The divergent paths taken by each group were not simply the result of choosing which nation one ‘naturally’ belonged to, but came about as each formed different answers to the same fundamental problem: how to restore and maintain a sense of pride and self-worth within a society that denied human dignity to those it imagined as irredeemably different from the majority.

From the late Meiji period all the way until the conclusion of WWII, the Koreans and the Burakumin were caught in the relentless effort by the Japanese state to convert them into true ‘imperial subjects’ (kōmin). This involved the total disregard of any sort of claim to personal privacy as the state inserted itself in the community and the private lives of the Burakumin by means of kyōfūkai (moral reform societies) which sought to ‘reform’ and ‘re-educate’ the outcastes in order to make them true Japanese. These ‘cosmetic’ strategies proved to be major failures chiefly because they did not improve in any way the material livelihoods of the outcastes or the economy of their community. As for Koreans, the push to turn them into loyal citizens proved to be more brutal especially in the case of those advocating Korean independence or tried to organize into leftist societies that were sympathetic to their cause. In the midst of a rigorous and committed implementation of anti-leftist suppression, propagators and supporters of leftist ideology were hunted down, arrested, tortured and sometimes killed, while leftist organizations were banned and disbanded. By the late 1930s, Japan had endured several economic downturns and was aggressively extending its colonizing reach beyond Korea and China. This development called for ‘total mobilization’ at home:

An important part of this effort was to convert everyone, including minorities, into loyal, cooperative subjects who would contribute to the war effort and not be a burden to the state in its time of unprecedented crisis. The human dimension of ‘total mobilizaiton’ was in essence a renewed emphasis on the old slogan of ikkun banmin [‘one ruler, many people’], the idea of one familial nation, with the emperor as father and the subjects as his children.

In exchange for being part of this ‘family’ Burakumin and Koreans had to endure cruel statist exploitation in the form of slave-labor. Thousands of members of these minorities were forced to work together long, destructive hours in mills and mines (in conditions that were largely unsafe and unhygienic) with no prospect for advancement and no end in sight. Bayliss’ book offers a range of forthright descriptions of these working environments. What stands out from his outline however is not the degree of brutality that befell the Koreans and the Burakumin but the evidence of an upsurge in interminority relations which lasted until Japan’s defeat in 1945. And although these contacts were largely motivated by self-interest or, every so often, resulted in violent clashes or, in many cases, ended up popularizing the racial and social differences stirring up acerbic dissociation among the minorities, there were certain areas of association that enjoyed the participation of both Burakumin and Koreans. As Bayliss mentions in his last chapter,

…whether it was buraku women and Korean men marrying in the wake of the Pacific War, Suiheisha organizers and Korean residents of Higashi Shichijō reaching out to one another in the wake of the flood… or even buraku landlords who were willing to stick up for their Korean tenants in the face of community opposition, these acts by individuals of both minorities revealed a peculiar kind of mutual understanding and trust, born of the shared experience of living at the ostracized margins of Japanese society.

There is more to say about Bayliss’ detailed exploration of Suiheisha (a political organization founded in 1920 to fight against discrimination and defend the interests of the Burakumin until it was forced to disband in 1940); the financial and political successes of a small number of memorable and exceptional individuals among the outcastes and Koreans; the displacement of minorities or ‘unwanted elements’ to the remote regions of Manchuria in order to facilitate the state’s imperialistic expansion; the influence of leftist thought and the dynamics of proletarian organization which gave minorities the necessary ideological apparatus and the courage to demand equality in the face of classist adversity. All of these items get their own interesting chapter: nothing that can be written here can match the grand scope and sharp narrative of the book.

The insertion of Norma Field’s quote in the opening part of this review may have seemed marginal at first glance and, indeed, forced. For the unaware, it is truly insensitive to imply that the social traumas experienced by the Burakumin and the Koreans living in prewar and wartime Japan are comparable to the ‘social traumas’ in the aftermath of Hirohito’s death. But while the death of the emperor ushered a new era (Heisei) the discrimination against visible and invisible minorities remained in place and, with minor variations, it stood the test of time. Even today, Buraku ghettos still exist.* In these ‘times of prosperity and peace,’ black vans belonging to the Zaitokukai (a nationalistic, far-right group) drive through Zainichi Korean neighbourhoods chanting violent, derogatory slogans, calling out for the deportation of non-Japanese foreigners. Following a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, permanent non-Japanese residents are refused the right to access the nation’s welfare system.* These ‘visible’ displays of intolerance (camouflaged in the deceiving mantle of economical restructuring and freedom of expression) carry a historical burden. So what can be done to prevent the harmful growth of intolerance and discrimination in these times of globalization, when the rights of minorities are unjustly propped against overriding measures in the servitude of financial capitalism (a different sort of empire), when national history is cultivated in a petri dish of collective amnesia? Bayliss concludes his book on a somber tone, one which could be the starting point for an answer:

This was the dilemma that had plagued these minorities since the late Meiji period: assimilation was no guarantee of acceptance. Only when the majority no longer had any recognition of difference, past or present, could these minorities be accepted as equals. This unforgiving logic was as true for minority individuals as it was for the groups with which they bore an association. For burakumin and Koreans in Japan during the age of empire, it meant a place on the margins, regardless of whether they conceived of liberation from discrimination in terms of complete acceptance by the majority or complete freedom from association with it. 

Works cited in this article:

Bayliss, Jeffrey Paul. On the Margins of Empire: Buraku and Korean Identity in Prewar and Wartime Japan. Harvard University Asia Center, 2013.

Field, Norma. In the Realm of a Dying Emperor. Random House LLC, 2011.