Abandoned Japanese in Postwar Manchuria

The Lives of War Orphans and Wives in Two Countries

Yeeshan Chan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415591812
• eBook ISBN: 9781136883897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Antropologia

This book relates the experiences of the zanryu-hojin - the Japanese civilians, mostly women and children, who were abandoned in Manchuria after the end of the Second World War when Japan's puppet state in Manchuria ended, and when most Japanese who has been based there returned to Japan. Many zanryu-hojin survived in Chinese peasant families, often as wives or adopted children; the Chinese government estimated that there were around 13, 000 survivors in 1959, at the time when over 30, 000 "missing" people were deleted from Japanese family registers as" war dead".

Since 1972 the zanryu-hojin have been gradually repatriated to Japan, often along with several generations of their extended Chinese families, the group in Japan now numbering around 100, 000 people. Besides outlining the zanryu-hojin 's experiences, the book explores the related issues of war memories and war guilt which resurfaced during the 1980s, the more recent court case brought by zanryu-hojin against the Japanese government in which they accuse the Japanese government of abandoning them, and the impact on the towns in northeast China from which the zanryu-hojin were repatriated and which now benefit hugely from overseas remittances from their former residents. Overall, the book deepens our understanding of Japanese society and its anti-war social movements, besides providing vivid and colourful sketches of individuals' worldviews, motivations, behaviours, strategies and difficulties.

1
Approaches to the study of zanry

-h

jin

Aims

This essentially ethnographical study explores three significant areas: 1) transnationalization in East Asia; 2) ethnic and cultural roots; and 3) negotiations for betterment among the “powerless”. First, the generations of zanry

-h

jin families have constituted an important type of actor in the long process of East Asian transnationalization. These people were hindered by Japanese military-operated migration activities, but their situation has now been eased in the context of China’s modernization and Japan’s late capitalism. Second, the concept of ethnic roots has been manipulated in both Japanese and Chinese societies, manifested through the processes of zanry

-h

jin’s repatriation and emigration to Japan. However, these migrants should no longer be seen as passive beings suffering from the loss of national identity, as zanry

-h

jin themselves actively exploit the idea of ethnicity to maximize their opportunities. Third, these migrant families have negotiated for favorable positions in the Sino-Japanese transnational market situation in a space within and between rural China and cosmopolitan Japan, where the control by the two nation-states is blurred – a space that provides zanry

-h

jin with a mixture of rules/resources, barriers/strategies, and freedom/uncertainties.

Throughout the study, ethnographic explanations and analytical measurements will focus on the following three major questions, which will be answered in the conclusion.

1 Today’s East Asian transnational practices have been transformed from those involved in the creation of Manchukuo in the 1930s. To what extent have the aspirations of zanry

-h

jin migrant families been hindered or eased in this long process of transnationalization?

2 The concepts of ethnic roots and kinship have been manipulated in both Japanese and Chinese societies. How do zanry

-h

jin migrant families exploit these concepts to maximize opportunities? Can they become “repatriates” who want to distinguish themselves from other groups of migrants in Japan, and so be accepted as fellow Japanese by the mainstream Japanese?

3 How do zanry

-h

jin migrant families negotiate for favorable positions in the Sino-Japanese transnational market situation within the framework of two nation-states? What rules/resources and barriers/strategies can be found in the space between rural China and cosmopolitan Japan?

Gaps to bridge

To give satisfactory answers to the questions above, my study must shift away from the existing works on the zanry

-h

jin literature. First, the concept of life-world has been advocated in migration studies to capture the overall life and multi-layered world of an encapsulated migrant experience (Ishii 2005). The dynamic life-world of zanry

-h

jin can be vividly depicted through interactions and comparisons between families, as well as within a family’s transformation across national and cultural boundaries alongside the emergence of new inequalities within the family. However, this private sphere is still unexplored. In order to break through the stagnation of zanry

-h

jin studies, presenting thick ethnography to include their extended families can reach a deeper private sphere of this community and thus deliver a more comprehensive analysis.

Second, the classic approaches to ethnicity, identity, minority, and citizen rights have been dominant in the zanry

-h

jin studies (e.g. Araragi and his contributors 2000; Efird 2004; Narangoa 2003; Ward 2006). These foci are undeniably important in examining Japanese multiculturalism and testing out cultural beliefs about seeking a homeland. But these approaches may run the risk of uncritically and unintentionally harboring a fetishism of ethnicity, as their basic assumption is that zanry

-h

jin are ethnic Japanese who behave in Chinese ways, and therefore that their ethnic identities trouble them in both nation-states. In fact the majority of zanry

-h

jin don’t display the quality of “repatriate,” as many have “repatriated” with neither memory of Japan nor memory of any Japanese community life outside Japan. Most zanry

-h

jin had no ethnic relations in Japan but “repatriated” via marriages or ex-marriages. Their settlement in Japan is often taken for granted to be merely a matter of repatriation or returning to a homeland from exile, in conformity with the East Asian notion of ethnic roots. One of my major tasks is to decode this well-established concept of roots within the zanry

-h

jin literature. But I am aware that neither the classic approach to ethnicity nor zanry

-h

jin’s identity as repatriates can be undervalued, as the very premise of admitting them into Japan is their “Japanese blood.”

This correlates to my challenge to the methodological perspective based on an understanding of zanry

-h

jin’s traumatic experiences during the war and the crisis of Cultural Revolution, advocated by Shinzo Araragi (2000). Such emphasis on victimization tends to assign zanry

-h

jin to a higher ranking of “Japaneseness” by highlighting them as “war-displaced Japanese.” I shall provide more critical analyses and comprehensive ethnographies to tackle the relationship between the real lives of zanry

-h

jin and the label of “war-displaced Japanese.” Critically, Kinoshita (2003) rethinks the politically loaded name zanry

-koji as an identity to Japanize some new...

Table of contents

• Japan Anthropology Workshop Series
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Japanese word list
• Chinese word list
• Individual informant list
• Family informant list
• Who are they? Prologue
• 1 Approaches to the study of zanryū-hōjin
• Part I Structures
• Part II Families
• Part III Negotiation
• Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index