The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle by Kobayashi Takiji

I have been MIA for approximately four months. During this time I finished writing the first part of a research project (I’m a student at Tohoku University in Sendai) and I travelled inside and outside of Japan. And I read a lot of books. No less surprising, perhaps, the toll that the research project took on my daily life compounded by the exhaustion and mental depletion following its culmination were sufficient factors in my decision to temporarily abandon this blog — until today. 

Two weeks ago I had just returned from a trip to Hokkaido. I moved around the desolate and frozen landscape visiting Sapporo, Abashiri, Hiretokoshari and Otaru. It felt like traveling through a black-and-white Japanese film. Flashbacks of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country (which I haven’t read since my undergraduate days) were unavoidable even if that novel was set somewhere in Niigata Prefecture. In Sapporo and Otaru I went to the local museum of literature to see the displays of one of my favorite Japanese writers, Kobayashi Takiji. The following photos are from Hokkaido Museum of Literature (北海道立文学館) in Sapporo and Otaru Museum of Literature (小樽文学館) in, well, Otaru. Kobayashi Takiji was given prominent place in both of these establishments. That’s the main reason why I paid them a visit. 

Seeing all those old books written by him and reading all the voluminous information scattered on posters, banners, old newspapers and in photographs made me think of Kobayashi’s magnificent book I read with enthusiasm while vacationing in Singapore last December: The Crab Cannery Ship. But it also conjured the deep resentment I feel for the dissonant history of nationalistic nostalgia that has made such a strong comeback under Prime-Minister Abe’s administration. You only have to walk into a regular Japanese bookstore or pick up a newspaper or switch on any channel of the (predominantly) right-wing media to see what I’m talking about. Kobayashi’s undiluted presence in Hokkaido and the frozen sprawling spectacle peopled with charming inhabitants made me forget for an insular moment the vicissitudes of the Japanese “mainland.” But I want now to talk a little about the book.

Kobayashi Takiji’s The Crab Cannery Ship, in the fresh and exuberant translation by Zeljko Cipris, is more than an established example of the proletarian current that swooped on Japan during the 1930s: it is an explicit articulation of seething outrage as well as indictment of the domestic and international villainies carried out by Japan during the early Showa period. Moreover, it is a condemnation of the capitalist system which rises above insipid demagoguery due to its unique literary value, a fact illustrated by the notable currency and recognition the novel acquired in 2008 after being propelled to the status of national bestseller. This noteworthy media reclamation of a workers’ struggle aboard a cannery ship doing its rounds near Soviet shores is indicative of a general global revival of politically-loaded and humanistically-inclined notions of solidarity, struggle and class. Norma Field and Heather Bowen-Struyk do a far better job of explaining the social, cultural and economic issues underlying this unanticipated Takiji “boom.” Instead, in these few lines I would like to concentrate on the unprecedented intensity of criticism which Takiji leveled at imperialism, the army, capital, labor exploitation and, most outrageously, the Japanese Imperial family. The fact that this novel was published, even in censored form, is an amazing oversight on the part of authorities who began to crack down on leftist ideas following the promulgation of the Peace Preservation Law in 1925. 

I want to enumerate here my favorite passages from the book, all of which reveal Kobayashi’s heroic streak bordering on madness and, naturally, bringing the outrageous truth to light. There are also a few passages that offer a counter-history to the established knowledge about the development of Hokkaido which runs against the glorified selfless, patriotic acts captured in various national museums (one that jumps into my mind is the Abashiri Prison Museum, 網走監獄, which I recently visited). But I’ll let the text to do the rest of the talking. 

“Needless to say, as some of you may know, this crab cannery ship’s business is not just to make lots of money for the corporation but is actually a matter of the greatest international importance. This is a one-on-one fight between us, citizens of a great empire, and the Russkies, a battle to find out which one of us is greater — them or us…” (26)

“Another thing, our fishing industry off Kamchatka is not just about canning crabs and salmon and trout, but internationally speaking it’s also about keeping up the superior status of our nation, which no other country can match. And moreover, we’re accomplishing an important mission in regard to our domestic problem like overpopulation and shortage of food. You probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but anyhow I’ll have you know that we’ll be risking our lives cutting through those rough northern waves to carry out a great mission for the Japanese empire. And that’s why our imperial warship will accompany us and protect us all along the way… Anyone who acts up trying to ape this recent Russky craze, anyone who incites others to commit outrageous acts, is nothing but a traitor to the Japanese empire.” (26-27)

“International competition is never going to be won by acting nice, and you got no business sticking your nose into this!” The manager twisted his lips hard, and spat. (34)

“Japan no good now. Working people, this.” (He bent back and shrank into himself.) “Rich man boss, this.” (Swaggering, he imitated a bully knocking people down.) “That no good! Working people, this.” (With a fierce look, he stood up and lunged forward as if to knock down and trample an oppressor.) “Rich man boss, this.” (He mimed fleeing.) “Japan all working people, good country. Proletariat country…” (46)

Everybody was made to go to the work site before dawn. They were forced to work until their pickaxes glittered bluish-white in the dark and their hands could no longer be seen. Everyone envied the prisoners who worked in a nearby jail. Koreans were treated most cruelly of all, not only by the bosses and overseers but by their fellow Japanese laborers. (54)

It was the same at the mines. New tunnels were dug. To find out how best to deal with whatever gases leaked from the ground and whatever momentous changes the digging would cause, the capitalists — following the methods of General Nogi, sainted hero of the Russo-Japanese War — simply used up tens of thousands of workers whom they could buy more cheaply than guinea pigs, then throw away. It was easier than discarding used tissues! The tunnel walls kept on being reinforced with multiple layers of miners’ raw flesh. Horrors were perpetrated taking advantage of the mines’ distance from cities. In the loaded mine cars, slabs of coal sometimes turned up with severed thumbs and little fingers adhering to them. Women and children did not even raise an eyebrow at such sights. Accustomed to them all, expressionless, they merely pushed the cars to the next station. That coal propelled a gigantic engine churning out capitalists’ profits. (55)

In Hokkaido there were “immigrant farmers” and “new cultivators.” Through movies filled with enticing slogans like “Develop Hokkaido,” “Solve the food problem through promoting immigration,” and the childish “Strike it rich as immigrants,” the powers that be encouraged the mainland’s impoverished peasants who were about to be robbed of their fields to emigrate, only to abandon them on the land that — four or five inches below the surface — turned out to be nothing but clay… By the following spring entire families, buried in the snow and without even potatoes to eat, had starved to death. Such things happened over and over. (55-56)

Even in those rare cases where immigrants managed to cultivate their land for a decade without staving to death, when they finally had turned it into decent fields, they would find that the land now belonged to “outsiders.” The capitalists — usurers, banks, nobles, and the superrich — casually lent out lavish sums of money, so that once the wasteland was transformed into fields as fertile as plump cats they unfailingly fell into their own hands. Imitating such practices, other shrewd people came to Hokkaido determined to make easy money. The peasants found their possessions snatched at from every direction. In the end they were reduced to being just what they had been on the mainland: tenant farmers. (56)

“It’s only the Russkies who quit working the moment the time’s up, even if there are frigging shoals of fish right under their noses. With that kind of attitude, no wonder Russia got to be such a fucked up country. Japanese men must never act like that!”

Some of the men ignored his speech, thinking: “The asshole’s lying.” But the majority swallowed the manager’s suggestion that the Japanese were truly an outstanding people. And they felt somewhat consoled by the notion that their cruel daily sufferings seemed to have something heroic about it. (61)

“It bowled me over when I first heard it, but when you come right down to it the truth is that every single one of Japan’s wars to this day was fought at the orders of a few rich or super-rich men (I’m talking really rich men), with the excuses cooked up any which way. Anyhow, these crooks are itching like crazy to get their hands on every place they mell money. They’re looking for trouble.” (72)

“Nobody’s on our side except our own selves. For the first time, I get the picture.”

“All that bullshit about the navy being on the side of the people…On the side of the people, my ass! They’re nothing but flunkies of the filthy rich.” (94)

Every year as the fishing season drew to an end, it was customary to manufacture some cans of crabmeat to be offered to the Emperor. Yet not the slightest effort was ever made to precede their preparation with the traditional ritual purification. The fishermen had always thought this terrible of the manager. But this time they felt differently.

“We’re squeezing our very blood and flesh into these cans. Huh, I’m sure they’ll taste wonderful. Hope they give him a stomachache.”

Such were their feelings as they packed the cans for the Imperial table.

“Mix in some rocks! I don't give a fuck!” (94)

And lest anyone thinks that Kobayashi Takiji had only the interests of his fellow *men* on his mind, then check out these passages from the novella Yasuko. Kobayashi can quite realistically rival the astuteness for anthropological analysis of any social scientist of his era (Hosoi Wakizou and Yasoo Kusama come to mind) and his feminist sympathies and support for Japanese women's social, economic and political emancipation are unmistakable. 

“And yet most people consider this kind of life only natural, or they’re convinced that nothing can ever be done about it. The boss who makes you work like that and doesn’t do a lick of work himself grabs profits dozens of times bigger than what you get. All the same, there’s still a lot of folks in Japan who accept all this as a matter of course because he’s got money and they don’t. Many women tend to think like that…” (156)

“It’s especially women who’ve been trained to submit unquestioningly to everything. Even if she has a family, the woman must not raise her head because it’s the man who brings in the money. A man gets away with doing wrong, a woman gets blamed even when she’s right. That’s why women ought to work on their own, so as to become fully self-reliant…” (156)

“Women’s work has long been limited to sewing, cooking, and taking care of children, but now they’ll find themselves in the wider society, occupying the same workplace as men. As a result women’s way of thinking will also change, and anyway they’ll earn money, enabling them to gain economic independence. Therefore they’ll be able to break free from slavish ways of thought that have taught them till now to depend on men. Right?… First of all, since you’ve got a boss then you don't just cook and clean, you go out to work every single day, and with the money you get working for that boss you provide for your family and you handle various household matters all with your own strength. Without realizing it, you’ve become different from a woman who does needlework…” 

Okei had never before heard such talk. Although this was her first time, she felt she understood its meaning as accurately as if it had struck some measuring instrument within her heart. 

“In the old days, women’s only profession was prostitution. Look at you now: tens of thousands of factory workers, cafè and bar waitresses, office workers, typists, bus conductors. Not only are your numbers growing, but your sphere of work is rapidly expanding too. This sort of thing will have an extremely socializing and elevating effect on women’s way of thinking about things.” (157)

“…Working-class women are bound by double chains: on the one hand they must be liberated from men, and on the other hand they must be liberated from capital. To be liberated from men, women must first of all be economically independent, but to solve that basic economic problem it’s essential that women be liberated as workers. So, enabling women to exist truly as women is only conceivable through a liberation of the working class. It may sound like a self-serving argument, but to join our work on a mass scale is the best way to break both these chains at once.” (158)

And finally there’s the straightforward unveiling of Japan’s overseas intentions and the deluded utopian ambitions that saw a lot of left-leaning humanists abandon their homeland for the harsh, barren wastelands of Manchuria in order to build a better society with the support and/or in the name of his majesty, the Emperor. 

“Unlike earlier wars, they claimed, the present war was not being fought so that Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and other corporations could erect gigantic factories in the occupied territories; it was being fought to create a way out for the dispossessed. Once we took Manchuria, we would exclude the big capitalists and set up a monarchy of our own. The nation’s unemployed would rush off to Manchuria, and some day not a single unemployed person would remain in Japan. There was not a single unemployed person in Russia, and we too must become the same. Therefore, they said, the present war was a war for the good of the proletariat, and we too had to work as industriously as we possibly could at the jobs that we had been given.” (263)

Kobayashi Takiji's death mask

Further reading:

Takiji Kobayashi. The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle. University of Hawaii Press, 2013.

Bowen-Struyk, Heather. "Why a Boom in Proletarian Literature in Japan? The Kobayashi Takiji Memorial and The Factory Ship." The Asia-Pacific Journal 29 (2009).

Field, Norma. "Commercial Appetite and Human Need: The Accidental and Fated Revival of Kobayashi Takiji's Cannery Ship." The Asia-Pacific Journal 8 (2009).

East Meets East: The Soejima Mission to China, 1873 by Wayne C. McWilliams

Soejima Taneomi, 1872

Wayne C. McWilliams’ article East Meets East - The Soejima Mission to China, 1873 takes a close look at the personality of Japanese Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi (1828-1905) during the high point of his career, which was the 1873 trip to China where he managed to secure an audience with the emperor, an almost-impossible accomplishment at the time. The author also makes the strong argument that the real significant outcome of Soejima’s trip planted the seeds of Japanese expansionism. Under the disguise of necessitating a diplomatic interchange with the Chinese government on matters regarding Formosa (as Taiwan was known back then) and Korea, the new Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary ordained by the fledgling Meiji government sought to

…lay the diplomatic groundwork for an ambitious program of Japanese expansion in Asia. This program included the assertion of the Japanese claim to the Ryukyu Islands, the conquest of Korea, and the sending of a military expedition to Formosa with the design of annexing a part, if not the whole, of that island.

The official reason behind the mission to China as given by the Japanese government ostensibly included an incident in which a group of shipwrecked Ryukyu islanders were massacred by the aboriginal tribesmen of southern Formosa. In addition, the tensional relations with Korea who wouldn’t recognize the legitimacy of the newly-installed Meiji Emperor at the helm of the country’s leadership was taken as an affront by the Japanese statesmen, many of whom called for punitive armed conflict. 

As I showed in a previous post, the Koreans had enjoyed positive relations with the Tokugawa regime. Significant cultural and trading exchanges between Japan and Korea took place from the early 1600s until 1811 (in this interval, Korea sent twelve diplomatic missions to Japan but there were no missions in the reverse direction). When the bakufu government fell in the aftermath of the Meiji revolution, the Korean government refused to officially admit the legitimacy of the new Emperor as the head of state not only because they had lost their Tokugawa allies but also because, at the time, it was regarded that only the Chinese Emperor had the unique distinction of even being allowed to use the title of ‘Emperor’. This was a prevalent view coming from China across most Asian nations who, along with Korea, were paying tributaries to China in exchange for military defense, political recognition and a certain degree of autonomy. McWilliams argues that Soejima “made it his purpose to render preposterous China’s long-held posture of world supremacy and to undermine or eliminate the vestiges of Chinese condescension toward his own country.” It is noteworthy to mention here that the Tokugawa regime also rejected the Chinese-centered order and refused to pay tribute to China, a point that was specially emphasized during the Korean missions to Edo. Andrew Gordon reminds us that during their ambassadorial visits,

The Koreans were treated with a certain respect. They were not expected to prostrate themselves or to convey symbolic servitude, as they were in visits to the Chinese court. They interacted more or less as equals…

Despite their close historical bond, by the time the Meiji Restoration took off, relations between Japan and Korea soured. Meiji statesmen, encouraged by their advances in science and military which came with the opening of Japan to the West, became more hawkish and confident that the superiority of their forces would prevail in an open conflict against Korea — a conflict which was seen as inevitable due to Korea’s continued refusal to establish treaty relations and the affront brought against the Meiji Emperor. They sought to prove this by engaging in a course of action that strived to clarify Japan’s national boundaries and to counterbalance the regional influence of Western countries which imposed on Japan strict, disadvantageous treaties. This course of action was brought to a favorable conclusion by Soejima. His reception by the Chinese Emperor before all other world delegates in 1873, the falsely implied, unwritten consent by the Chinese that Japan can invade and occupy Formosa, the skillful political manipulation which saw the removal of Chinese involvement from Korean foreign policy — these were but a few successes that propelled Soejima to a position of historical eminence. In the author’s own words, Soejima’s political adroitness

…set the tone for future Japanese relations with China, and like the Iwakura mission that visited the major capitals in the West, his embassy effectively proclaimed to the rest of the world, both East and West, that Japan was ready and able to take its place as a proud and independent member of the community of nations. In joining — indeed, in leading — the representatives of the Western powers in the successful quest for an audience with the Chinese Emperor, Soejima was in effect declaring Japan’s new identity; no longer was Japan to be identified together with China as a tradition-bound, exclusive and isolationist Asian country beyond the pale of modern international intercourse. Instead, Japan would line up with the nations of the modern West and challenge its reluctant Asian neighbors to abandon the closed world of the past for brave new world.

Some significant points I learned from reading McWilliams’ article:

• Taking his cue from Commodore Perry’s arrival to Japan almost two decades earlier, Soejima’s diplomacy was correctly viewed as gunboat diplomacy as his envoy was deliberately escorted by Japan’s modern naval boats completely manned by Japanese military attaches and sailors. This colossal technology contrasted with the undeveloped Chinese navy and conveyed a striking, threatening message; 
• Thirty years before the Russo-Japanese War, Soejima was building good relations with Russian representatives, such as Grand Duke Alexis. He apparently liked to socialize and entertain the Russians more than the rest of the Western diplomats present in Peking. By cultivating his friendship with General Vlangaly, he confirmed Russian neutrality in the event of a Japanese invasion of Korea and he was able to settle the boundaries of the Sakhalin Island (also known as Karafuto). These ties of friendship were completely dispelled when Japan, at the height of its assertiveness, started the Russo-Japanese War under the motive of liberating Korea from Western colonialism;
• The Chinese held in contempt the adoption of Western customs by the Japanese. Soejima’s assertive proclamations that Japan had gained military supremacy and secured the consultation of Western generals like Charles William LeGendre were not regarded favorably by the Peking government who emphasized China’s stolid traditionalism as a superior vehicle for dealing with foreign powers;
• The Chinese persisted in their view that the Emperor is the Son of Heaven without peer on earth, despite the fact that they were forced to enter into treaty relations with the West. The Chinese rejection of global politics was encompassed by the sovereign’s refusal to meet and conduct political negotiations with delegates from other nations, even while these occupied and controlled large portions of China. Soejima took the Chinese at task for showing servitude to Western powers;  
• Soejima, an astute master of Confucianist texts, was able to quote at length from the classics and to offer interpretations that favored his position. For example, he drew from T’ang dynasty history “to illustrate his point that China, by its stubborn persistence in the Middle Kingdom myth and its arrogant and condescending attitude to foreign countries, was not following the way of the ancient sages”;
• Soejima refused to follow Chinese protocol in regard to the audience ceremony. This was probably  the biggest stumbling block that prevented him from securing an earlier audience. He, just like the Western delegates, “was not willing to accept the humiliating form of etiquette that was demanded by the Chinese” nor did he have “any intention of performing the kowtow, the traditional form of ritual obeisance consisting of three bows followed by nine kneelings before the Chinese Emperor.” When he was finally received by the emperor on 29 June 1873 Soejima, dressed in Western attire and carrying a sword (to the chagrin of the Chinese statesmen) performed three bows sans the kowtows;
• In the most controversial move of his visit — details which are highly debated to this day — Soejima acquired China’s assurance that it won’t intervene in the eventuality of a Japanese invasion of Korea, regardless of the latter’s status as a tributary. This agreement, which suspiciously does not appear in any written Chinese record, also included the provision that China won’t continue any claims of sovereignty over the Ryukyus and Formosa and that China would consent to a Japanese expeditionary force to suppress the unruly Formosa aborigines. 

       McWilliams takes a firm position on Soejima’s accomplishments over this last point. He addresses the ambassador’s success in the following way:

The failure of the Chinese government to make its position clear to the Japanese and to allow them to leave China without further questioning on these matters has generally been attributed to its ineptitude and lack of experience in diplomacy. But it may just as reasonably be argued that they were victimized by Soejima’s shrewd and deceptive diplomatic tactics. Soejima purposely obscured these important issues by placing pressure on the Chinese about the audience issue. The Korean and Formosan questions were dealt with in a covert manner so as to disguise their gravity.

Whatever the case may be, Soejima’s plan to see the Japanese Empire expand into Korea didn’t take fruition due to the seikanron dispute from October 1873, when members of the Meiji government voted against this course of action. The expedition into Formosa took place on April 1874 and this can be easily considered a victory for Soejima. The kokken gaikō policy, meaning the “defending, asserting and expanding the national sovereignty of Japan” took root and flourished under his leadership. His greatest accomplishment however was securing his position as the first representative of a foreign power to be received by the Chinese Emperor in almost eighty years, an event which had momentous implications for the future Empire of Japan and for Asia in general.

Works cited: 

Gordon, Andrew. A modern history of Japan: from Tokugawa times to the present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

McWilliams, Wayne C. "East Meets East. The Soejima Mission to China, 1873." Monumenta Nipponica (1975): 237-275.

Pictures were taken from McWilliams' article.

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.

Images of Black People in Late Mediaeval and Early Modern Japan, 1543-1900 by Gary P. Leupp & Beyond an Alliance of Color: The African American Impact on Modern Japan by Yukiko Koshiro

The Arrival of 'Southern Barbarians,' 17th Century

I interrupted my reading of Miriam Silverberg’s masterpiece in order to peruse two articles which call attention to Japan’s earliest exposures to African and African-American people(s) and culture(s) and the historical significance of these contacts. The corpus of identity issues in Japan, especially with reference to race, minority and discrimination, is not only of personal interest but, in my opinion, has carried political and cultural weight from medieval times up to the present day. My intention here is to expose the ways in which images of black people have been a matter of considerable importance to Japan’s history by making specific reference to Gary P. Leupp’s Images of Black People in Late Mediaeval and Early Modern Japan, 1543-1900 and Yukiko Koshiro’s Beyond an Alliance of Color: The African American Impact on Modern Japan. I also want to investigate historical similarities between black people and Koreans (the latter whom I covered in a previous post) in regard to racial acceptance and rejection in a country which constantly redefined its position towards other ethnic groups in order to benefit its shifting geopolitical agenda. Lastly, I want to show the impact of African Americans’ striving for social justice and how this inspired and mobilized Japanese leftist movements.

Interesting things I learned from reading Prof. Leupp’s article:

• The first appearance of black people in Japan occurred in the 16th century;
• Black people arrived on European ships, either as slaves, sailors or attendants to Christian missionaries or traders; 
• They were the subject of intense fascination among people of various social status (both upper-class and commoners);
• One famous African was a man from Mozambique to whom Oda Nobunaga gave the name ‘Yasuke.’ Nobunaga was so intrigued by this foreigner that he put him on his payroll. Yasuke fought for his new master until Nobunaga was forced to commit suicide. Akechi Matsuhide (Nobunaga’s vanquisher) spared Yasuke and eventually released him from service;
• Before the deterioration of tolerance towards foreign presence and the closing of the country in the early 17th century, black people were allowed to move freely, take Japanese wives, buy Japanese slaves and were even recruited in the service of various daimyō;
• The black people employed by the Dutch East India Company served as translators at the shogun’s court and sometimes engaged in smuggling European goods;
• African people were often confused with Indian people. This confusion contributed to radical revisions of Buddhist art as when Bodhidharma and Sakyamuni Buddha were depicted as having black skin. 

     With the advent of Dutch Studies (Rangaku), the overall positive, tolerant attitudes towards people with dark skin changed radically. Derogatory descriptions and terms started to appear in poetry and scholastic writings as early as 1764. In all instances, dark skin was associated with low status and a lack of civilization. However, some scholars adopted a more skeptical view. For example, Ōtsuki Gentaku, a Dutch Studies scholar, had this to say:

Among koronbō [a term heterogeneously spelled referring to black people, which only later started to carry derogatory connotations] there is certainly a distinction between the noble and the lowly and the wise and the foolish.

Following the weakening of bakufu closed-country policies and the arrival of the Black Ships in 1853, interactions with white Westerners became more widespread. Feelings of appreciation and awe for Western superior technology and weapons gave way to disparaging attitudes towards all non-white people, especially those colonized or conquered by the West. These included non-Japanese Asians such as Indonesian, Chinese Koreans, etc. White color skin became associated with superior intellect while the opposite judgement was accorded to dark color skin. Questionable Western perspectives of an absolute racial hierarchy (with white-skinned Europeans and Americans at the top and black Africans at the bottom) were readily accepted. Moreover, foreign racialist attitudes had a role to play in the dissemination and assimilation among the Japanese people of the idea that blacks belonged to an inferior civilization. The American envoy, for example, was no stranger to such circumstance:

In Yokohama on 23 March 1954, Perry announced a ‘minstrel show’ after dinner and drinks with his hosts. (One diary referred to the event as an ‘Ethiopian Concert’). Crewmen in Perry’s vessel, The Powhatan, put on black faces and sang ‘Mistah Tambo’ and ‘Mistah Bones’ to the apparent delight of the Japanese in attendance. The show was a huge success.

Assembled Paintings of Commodore Perry's Visit, 19th Century

This and other similar depictions of black people as innately inferior or as objects of ridicule became ingrained on the Japanese psyche. Soon, Japanese scholars and politicians started to promulgate this notion far and wide. For instance, various members of the ambassadorial missions to US were recorded as making the following distasteful remarks:

The blacks are inferior as human beings and extremely stupid.

The laws of the land separate the blacks. They are just like our eta caste… The whites are of course intelligent, and the blacks stupid. Thus the seeds of intelligence and unintelligence are not allowed to mix together.

It seems that the whites are beautiful and shrewd and intelligent; and the blacks are ugly and stupid. So the whites always despise the blacks.

Statements like these were proof of the enthusiasm and willingness by which Japanese people adopted and routinely parroted Western behavioral norms and morals. The deep-rooted racist structures of the colonial West appeared in the mind of the Japanese as perfectly acceptable social prerequisites for a strong national economy and state-of-the-art military. There were only a few resisters to this view but it’s important to mention that they existed. However, when the tenets of Social Darwinism began to make incursion in the Japanese academia, these dissenting voices were largely suppressed in favor of a theory that stimulated and endorsed feverish dreams of empire — a modern nation’s new grail — and Japan’s superiority over non-Japanese Asian nations. It also upheld the social divisions in the society as the discourse of nationalism became more ingrained and accentuated: discrimination against Koreans and burakumin was now not only admissible by centuries of tradition but it was also justified by modern science imported from the West. 

Strange as it may seem, the fate of the earliest contacts between Japan and black people suffered the same fate as the Koreans. While the initial exposure to blacks and Koreans before and during Tokugawa rule was graced with vibes of inquisitiveness and acceptance, after the Meiji Restoration these tendencies took a turn for the worst, mostly under the auspices of Western influence. For decades afterwards up to the end of WWII, Japanese scholars and statesmen became entangled in the push for world racialization both at home (where domestic legislature and tradition discriminated against burakumin and Koreans) and overseas (where the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was ideologically and materially built upon racialist views of Japanese superiority). And even though Japan tried to use the exploitation of blacks in the USA as a warning signal to other Asian nations and urged them to unify and stay strong against Western imperialism (under the aegis of the Japanese Emperor, it was implied), in the end, as Mr. Leupp wrote, “such exploitation itself served racist and fascistic goals.”

But there was another side to relations between Japan and black people. Prof. Yukiko Koshiro describes in her article the substantial role that African Americans played in Japanese culture and politics. She argues that African American history, literature and especially the struggle for recognition, acceptance and equality were extensively celebrated in Japanese arts and politics as early as the 1930s. In her detailed exploration of race relations beginning with the Meiji period, prof. Koshiro manages to put together a pastiche of positive causes and effects resulting from the interactions between Japanese and African Americans. In fact, she argues that,

Throughout the twentieth century, African American struggles for freedom and equality have inspired Japanese people far beyond the doomed rhetoric of alliance under the Japanese banner of Pan-Asianism. Those Japanese who attempted to build different kinds of trans-Pacific relations with African American people…dissented from the troublesome race ideology of the nation, challenged it, and envisioned a better Japan.

Before race relations took a sour turn, it is worthy to remember that the Iwakura Mission of 1871-1873 showed respect and admiration for African American advancements in society and politics. The encounter with African American culture had a constructive effect upon members of the mission who went on record stating the following:

It is obvious that skin color has no bearing on one’s intellect. Therefore, those ambitious blacks who saw the importance of education strove to learn and work harder and became great intellectuals, for who uneducated whites were no match.

The history and social condition that befell African Americans were a source of inspiration for Japanese people, especially for the nation’s newly-ensconced statesmen who tried to replicate the gains of a supposed inferior Asian race back at home. Just in the same way that black people managed to secure rights and freedoms in America (albeit limitedly), so Japan wanted recognition of its worth as an equal, strong Asian nation on the world stage. Even though it sought the validity of white supremacy in this matter (validity which, ironically, was incentivized by colonial prospects and, in time, came to be applied brutally against other non-Japanese Asian races) it can be said that Japan’s earliest understanding of African-American people was handled with natural, positive charm.

Another example of positive Meiji attitudes towards African Americans was the translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which came out in print in 1896. The publication of similarly-themed books continued in the Taishō period with the appearance of Booker T. Washington’s autobiography in 1919. In a show of admiration for black culture that continued to be evidenced in Japan around this time, many prominent African American leaders were invited to special events or held lectures at distinguished academic institutions. For example, James Weldon Johnson became the first  African American to be invited at the emperor’s garden party in 1929 and W.E.B. Du Bois visited Japan in December 1936. When relations between Japan and America became tarnished, even ultranationalists like Mitsukawa Kametarō and Kita Ikki turned in their writings to examples of African American struggles, such as Marcus Garvey’s call ‘return Africa to the Africans’, in order to spark a national reaction against Western influence.  

Unfortunately, this seeming appropriation and defense of African American culture was nothing but a facade. While Japan continued on an imperialist path and began occupying other Asian nations, it borrowed Western methods of discrimination and exploitation in their dealings with their colonies. Western racist hierarchies of social division  started to be enacted both at home and overseas with little concern for the hypocrisy behind political maneuvers like the racial equality motion put forward by Japan at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Here, Prof. Koshiro is in agreement with Prof. Leupp when she observes that “Pan-Africanism [was] merely one branch of Japan’s Pan-Asianism.”

Into this complicated fold of identity politics and race enter the Japanese Marxists who regarded African Americans as “a revolutionary resource” and “as the vanguard of the world’s proletarian movement.” Prof. Koshiro’s article deals at length with Japanese Marxists and the cultural and political impulses coming from African Americans which galvanized their movement. I found this part to be the most interesting.

Japanese leftists fighting against imperialism at home were largely and brutally crushed. Some of them, like Katayama Sen (1860-1933) and Ishigaki Eitarō (1893-1958), successfully fled to the United States where they continued their fight against social injustice while drawing inspiration from the emancipation of African Americans. Katayama built relations with African American radicals and even published their writings in his journal, The Liberator. Ishigaki portrayed the struggles of black people throughout his work. For a Japanese immigrant to make art which criticized the discriminatory culture of his adopted country and to imbue this art with proletarian flavor (at a time when socialist trends were frowned upon) is nothing short of remarkable. It’s no wonder that in 1938 his works were removed and destroyed after 

the New York City Concil found it offensive that a Japanese not only took it on himself to interpret American history, but also publicly gave African Americans a heroic appearance. Worse, the concil also condemned Ishigaki of panting Abraham Lincoln “with Negroid features.”

     Meanwhile, back in Japan, black writers continued to be translated and published. The most radical works by Jean Toomer, W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter White appeared between 1923 to 1928. In 1933 Langston Hughes visited the country and built close ties with Japanese leftists (I will talk more on this subject in a future post). Prominent leftist intellectuals like Akamatsu Katsumaro and Hayasaka Jirō built their own critiques of their country’s imperialist, racist exploits around the thesis that African American discrimination was an inevitable consequence of the capitalistic order. Japan’s brutal modes of racialization and exploitation were entangled with the newly technological, militaristic and capitalist codification of society, which mimicked Western advancements. Akamatsu argued that an alliance with African Americans was necessary in the anti-imperial, proletarian struggle, for this fight was also against Japan’s racist views of other Asian people. Hayasaka criticized Japan for its aggressive tactics in expanding its imperial reach and accused it of ignoring the voices of oppressed Asians in the national literature, “proving no match for African American literature.”

The close ties between Japanese leftist intellectuals and African American culture survived WWII. Unfortunately, the sources of WWII tragedy — embodied in the emperor system, militarism and oligarchic control of the economy — survived as well and they now thrived and enjoyed the protection of the American occupation. With the American occupation in force, the sufferings of the Japanese people were being compared to African American persecution. Marxist historians like Kikuchi Ken’ichi saw similarities between the exploitation of black people in the US and Japanese people in Japan. As the social emancipation of both ethnic groups was kept in line and regimented under the new imperialist order of capitalism, Nukina Yoshitaka published in October of 1956 the journal Kokujin Kenkyū (Journal of Black Studies), which further cemented the relations between leftist intelligentsia and African American culture. 

But the most notable social development in Japan during the postwar years was the emancipation of Japanese minorities who found new strength to voice their discontentment with decades of state-enforced discrimination and abuse. These minorities sought inspiration for their challenges in the historical experience of African Americans. As a result, burakumin, Ainu, Korean and Okinawan people 

“stood up to challenge the notion of Japan as the land of a homogenous population. Their postwar movement looked at the African American experience as a lesson and a model, and it hoped to eventually find a solution for a universal pattern of discrimination.”

The two articles I dealt with in this post made me acknowledge the depth to which black people and African American culture were able to permeate the historical and social edifices of Japan. Prof. Koshiro especially articulated the interlinkages between African American struggle for social justice and Japan’s battle for recognition on the international stage, but also at a domestic level with regard to minority issues. Resistance against Japan’s imperialist action in Asia (and the repulsive racism which it demonstrated in its expansion) existed with the impetus of African American influence. But this was only expected because, as we saw from prof. Leupp’s essay, the links between black people and Japanese people ran deeper than one might think.

K.K.K., 1936

Whipping, 1925

The Noose, 1931

Works cited:

Koshiro, Yukiko. "Beyond an alliance of color: The African American Impact on Modern Japan." positions: east asia cultures critique 11.1 (2003): 183-215

Leupp, Gary P. "Images of black people in late mediaeval and early modern Japan 1543-1900." Japan Forum. Vol. 7. No. 1. Taylor & Francis Group, 1995

Ishigaki Eitaro's images borrowed from here and here.

        Credit for the The Arrival of 'Southern Barbarians' and Minstrel Show paintings goes to Visualizing Cultures Website, developed by MIT.