In this article Walker argues that Japanese imperial processes began much earlier than other scholars often assume; the Tokugawa government was well aware of various geo-political threats that certain countries posed to Japan's national defense in the early 19th century. Specifically, both the Qing Empire and Russia were poised to claim sovereignty over Sakhalin, an island in the North Pacific, through their competing attempts to map the territory. Walker examines the journeys of several Japanese cartographers, especially Mamiya Rinzō, who were commissioned by the Tokugawa government to map Sakhalin first and determine the borders between Japan and Russia. Walker argues that, while European countries were often “centers of calculation” that sought to amass scientific knowledge for the benefit of imperial projects, the Japanese cartographic efforts were an attempt by a “periphery of calculation” to rival these claims. The Tokugawa government's mapmaking activities were not only a way to fend off European colonialism, but used the same technology as the Russians, which allowed Japan to claim that it was a scientifically advanced society and therefore had a right to control Sakhalin. According to Walker, mapping distant lands was “an inherent exercise in state logistical power” because it showed that the state was strong enough to amass the manpower and ships to embark on such endeavors. The imperial processes that would enable Japan to successfully incorporate the southern part of Sakhalin (called Karafuto) into the Japanese empire in 1905 were thus set into motion almost a hundred years prior to Karafuto's colonization.

Blaxell treats the naturalization and Japanization of the land formerly known as Ezochi (literally “land of the barbarians”) into Hokkaido. Blaxell discusses the transformation of the urban space of Sapporo in the 1870s and 1880s by Japanese working with American advisors. The result was neither Japanese nor American, but distinctly modern and evocative of the imperial age. Blaxell touches upon the simultaneous erasing of the indigenous people, the Ainu, from the land during this re-conceptualization of Hokkaido as Japanese space and land. (The policies directed toward the Ainu after Hokkaido's colonization are discussed in Hirano Katsuya's article in Part II.) Blaxell uses the importation of a quintessentially Japanese characteristic—rice—to the unforgiving climate of Hokkaido and its eventual acculturation as an example of how the processes of colonization helped to naturalize a landscape as Japanese. Her article encourages us not to take for granted the geographic space—whether urban or “natural” —and understand how it is the result of both constructive (for some people but not others) and destructive human actions.

Duara argues that the relationship between Manchukuo and Japan was a new form of imperialism, rather than a mirror-image of European imperialism. As Duara explains, the political relationship between the two showed “a strategic conception of the periphery as part of an organic formation designed to attain global supremacy for the imperial power.” The Japanese developed this strategy in response to growing nationalist movements by colonized people for independence after World War I. Many Japanese also thought they could win the cooperation of those movements by stressing their own frustrations at racial discrimination in the international sphere. Further exacerbating the sense that they were criticized by everyone, the Japanese faced racial discrimination when they tried to emigrate to Europe and North America and were refused even the principle of racial equality at the Paris Peace conference in 1919. Japan thus began to articulate itself as the anti-imperialist leader in Asia, set to lead the other Asian nations and throw off the yoke of western imperialism.

Japanese imperial authorities sought to justify their imperial project in Hokkaido by racializing the Ainu, whom they displaced in 1869. At the time, the Ainu, with their Caucasian features and beards, were considered racially and culturally distinct from the Japanese (wajin), explaining why some western anthropologists marveled at the feat of a yellow race colonizing a white race. Therefore, the Japanese racialization of the Ainu as a culturally inferior and primitive race at the brink of extinction turned conventional racial taxonomies on their head. In this article Hirano introduces the term “colonial translation,” referring to the process by which the cultural and social differences between the Ainu and Japanese were rewritten to cast the Ainu as primitives. The institutionalization of these depictions of Ainu as primitive people enabled the colonizer to justify rule over the colonized. Although by the turn of the 19th century the majority of Ainu were engaged in wage labor or trade with the Japanese, the passage of the 1899 Protection Act attempted to turn the Ainu into farmers. More precisely, the imperial project in Hokkaido was justified by the argument that the Ainu were not capable of settling the land and cultivating it; the Japanese as a more civilized and advanced race needed to take charge. Expropriation of land and the limitation of Ainu hunting and fishing rights all occurred simultaneously with the “nativization” of the Ainu.

In contrast to the previous article, in which Hirano upholds Ainu Chiri Yukie as an example of a colonized subject who established an ethnic pride in her Ainu identity, Park's article examines the other side of the colonial coin by focusing on the notion of self-assimilation in “pro-Japanese literature” (shin'nichi bungaku in Japanese, chin'il munhak in Korean). Such writing was written in either the Korean or Japanese language by Koreans who portrayed Japanese colonial rule in positive terms. Park argues for a re-evaluation of this literature which is “often taken as nothing more than an explicitly state-approved literature;” the writings can provide insights into the thinking of Korean colonial subjects of the time. He claims that “in fact, no writing more effectively expresses the confusion of Koreans during the late 1930s to mid-1940s, when the pressure to become ‘Japanese’ took place under the banner of ‘Japan and Korea as one body’ (naisen ittai).”

Tomiyama addresses the main issue introduced by Park and Hirano, the process of becoming Japanese. While Park analyzes literature to argue that becoming Japanese involved individuals disciplining their bodies and everyday actions, Tomiyama explains how lifestyle reform movements were ways in which the Ainu, Koreans, and Okinawans worked to improve themselves and become Japanese, or “good people of society.” Tomiyama uses a different approach to explore this question because he believes that analyzing discourse is limited; instead he argues that we must consider “imperialism's actual scenes” and understand that, for colonial subjects, becoming Japanese was realized through concrete actions that “unfolded as the performance of a model lifestyle.” Tomiyama also stresses a connection between this self-disciplining in everyday life and mobilization to work and fight for the nation. Tomiyama argues that colonial subjects’ mutual surveillance of each other and auto-surveillance of themselves in everyday life was the first step in their “mobilization for the violent invasions of others.”

Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power

Rabson's chapter explores the experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, specifically the diaspora communities that developed in Osaka from the early 20th century to the present. These communities faced discrimination much like Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants in America. Rabson's likening of Okinawan experiences on the mainland to that of foreigners trying to assimilate in a new country is an apt analogy. For example, as in America, some Okinawans changed their names to de-emphasize their Okinawan ethnicity, and laborers found they earned a lower wage than did other Japanese, and at times were told not to apply for certain jobs. Worsening economic conditions in Okinawa in the first decades of the 20th century had caused the sudden migration of Okinawans to the mainland, while other Okinawans migrated to Taiwan and the islands of Micronesia during the colonial period.

The Japanese administration of Formosa from 1895-1945 changed the island's social landscape forever; not least by bringing the Austronesian First Nation people of eastern and central Taiwan under the administration of the modern nation-state for the first time. The Taroko tribe of Northeastern Taiwan (formerly part of the Atayal tribe) was the last tribe to submit to Japanese rule, but only after the violent subjugation of an anti-Japanese uprising in the 1930s. Shortly thereafter, however, Taroko men were recruited into the Japanese Imperial Army. The names of those who died during the war are now honored at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a situation that occasionally becomes the object of protests by Taiwanese politicians. This article, based on field research in a Taroko community in Hualien, looks at how social memories of the Japanese administration have contributed to both Taroko identity and to various other forms of nationalism in contemporary Taiwan. How do Taroko individuals and collectivities remember the Japanese? How do these memories articulate with nationalist ideologies in the larger Taiwanese society?

Kawabata and Kitazawa's article addresses the Battle of Okinawa, which was fought as a war of attrition; the Japanese government leaders knew that the more they prolonged a battle in Okinawa, the longer they would be able to stave off invasion of mainland Japan. One of the horrors of war that unfolded during the nearly twelve-week conflict was the Japanese military's abandonment of the civilian population. The number of civilian causalities reached around 100,000, among the highest total for any single battle in the Pacific Theater during the Asia-Pacific War. During the battle the Japanese Imperial Army encouraged Okinawan civilians to kill themselves rather than surrender to American forces, asserting that the Americans would rape, torture, and sadistically kill them. Over one fourth of the Okinawan civilian population died and many of these deaths have been attributed to the Japanese army's direct orders to commit suicide. The army distributed grenades and poison and instructed families on how to commit group suicide. Even though many survivors of the battle have recounted their experiences, the Japanese Education Ministry in 2007 challenged their accounts, insisting that the military leaders had not demanded that Okinawans die for the emperor. The Education Ministry called for the removal of the term “group suicide” (shudan jiketsu) from history textbooks, a step that most Okinawans view as an attempt to whitewash history. The authors of this article recount several survivors’ stories of the battle, including the Japanese army's encouragement that they commit suicide. Okinawans believe it is important to remember their treatment by the Imperial Army as well as the horrors of civilian suicides, because it is part of a longer legacy of colonization and discriminatory treatment by those from the mainland.

While Kawabata and Kitazawa's article regarding the whitewashing of history and erasure of the term “group suicide” from history textbooks shows the Japanese government trying to hide its crimes of the colonial period, Underwood describes a more positive— albeit small—step forward in redressing colonial harm. Due to former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's actions between 2003 and 2008, the process of repatriating the remains of Koreans to South Korea has begun, after several attempts by previous administrations stalled.

In this article, lewallen discusses a pivotal moment in Ainu history, when on June 6, 2008, the Ainu were formally recognized as an indigenous people by the Japanese government. For a people whose history of colonization has often been brushed aside in studies of Japanese history, such as in textbooks, this official recognition appears to be a step in the right direction. However, this is probably not the last battle. The government recognized the Ainu as indigenous due to international pressure that came when the G8 summit was hosted in Toyako, Hokkaido in 2008; it was a potential cause for embarrassment if the host country was seen to be blatantly ignoring indigenous people's rights. Therefore, some Ainu leaders have doubted the commitment of the Japanese government to their needs, since Japanese officials have not acknowledged that imperial government policies marginalized and impoverished Ainu. Fundamentally, it remains to be seen whether the government will enact policies that actually redress colonial treatment of the Ainu.