Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Han, Eric. Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014

Main points:

Conclusion – this concluding chapter examines how the Yokohama Chinese had understood their relationship with China, Japan, and Yokohama in more recent years, as well as the implications of the Yokohama Chinese identity position. (194)

- until the 19^th century, immigrants from China were affiliated primarily with their native place. The rise of modern nation-state worldwide changed this situation. (195) The ideology of a new state extended its influence to Yokohama Chinatown in the late 1890s and promoted a diasporic hauqiao identity after the founding of the ROC in 1912. (195)

- in the period of peace after 1945 the need for Chinese and Japanese to demonstrate loyalty to their respective countries was diminished, and local solidarities became more relevant in daily life.  (195)

 “With increasing work opportunities in mainstream Japanese society, the cohesiveness of the ethnic enclave has lost some of its pull. This shift has been more a product of economic forces than the social and legal development.”(195)

- the district now served less an ethnic enclave and more a pillar of Yokohama’s cultural distinctness. Yokohama Chinatown was no longer solely for the Chinese. (198) Yokohama’s Chinese schools also served as an index of the cross-generational integration of Chinese into local life. (198)

- Japanese national were now the majority in the two schools: respectively the pro-ROC and pro-PRC. It bore mention that most of the Japanese nationals at the school’s today were ethnic Chinese or of Chinese-Japans parentage. It reflected the shift toward intermarriage and Japanese naturalization among Chinese. (199)

- “taken together, these developments in commerce and education suggest the ways that mutual acculturation between Chinese and Japanese have helped constitute multiethnic society in this local space”. “By expressing their identity as Yokohama-ites, Yokohama Chinese were acknowledging their belonging in the local community even as they maintained a hauqiao identity”. (200)

- the burgeoning influence of local identity discourses among Yokohama Chinese correlated as well with waning psychological identification with the homeland. (201) Sociologist Guo Fan’s findings indicated that young Chinese shard a pattern of “transnational identity” at variance with the “ethnic identity” of their grandparents and the “national identity” of their parents. (201)

 Members of the younger generation considered their Chinese to be only one of their identities, which included links with Japan and the world. (202) Their transnational identity derived not from a homogenizing globalization, but its local registers produced what might be termed cultural bricolage (fusion): a mixing, particularization, and fragmentation of existing identities. (202)

- from the 1980s the arrival of large number of immigrants form the PRC also weakened identification with the Chinese homeland by introducing a new local-national axis of differentiation.(203) The intelligibility (or the degree of understanding) of the acculturated Yokohama Chinese identity had derived in part from differentiation from the newcomers. Many local Yokohama-ite felt themselves less Chinese when meeting Chinese fresh form the mainland. (203) The newcomers enjoyed a much less harmonious relationship with Japanese society then the older community. (204)

- less visible in media reports but demographically significant were the returned Japanese war orphans form China, wives of Japanese nationals, student sand transnational entrepreneurs. These newcomers (scattered in the whole country) in aggregate now outnumber the old Chinatown communities by tenfold. (204)

- a historical perspective also contributed a good deal to our understanding of newcomer’s transnational lives. A study showed that their life choices “maintain a closely-knit transnational society field and preserve their social and cultural roots in the home country”. The report noted the salience of border-crossing child rearing and instrumental acquisition of Japanese nationality and permanent residency. (205)

- Yokohama Chinese identity also raised issues germane (relevant) to recent discussion on citizenship in Japan and the social position of foreigners. Yokohama Chinatown could serve as a prominent example of the foreigner as local citizen concept, which since the 1970s had become a vehicle for foreign resident to acquire political rights in Japan. (208)

- Zainichi Koreans had experienced many of the same identity transformation as the Yokohama Chinese. Japanese government stripped Korean of their Japanese imperial citizenship following the end of the Asia-pacific war. (209) Korean representative organization Mindan and Chongryun (set up by the first generation Korean) promoted competing version of Koran nationalism. “These ethnic organization did not seek to expand right, but rather espoused an ideology that reject full participation in Japanese society. In contrast to the first generation, the second accept the permanent of their settlement in Japan, even while maintain a stable identification with a largely unknown homeland. This diasporic form of identity derived from a combination of ‘Korean descent and Japanese livelihood’ amid ‘the persistent of Japanese discrimination.’”(210)

- like the Yokohama Chinese, zainichi Korean began openly expressing hybrid identities as both local residents and foreign nationals. (210) The zainichi Korean third-way and fourth-choice debates also pointed to a dramatic difference between Korean and Chinese in Japanese in their level of explicit political activism. (212) Several explanations might be made for this difference, ranging from demographic circumstance of migration and circumstances of migration. (213)

- today, the idea of local citizenship was shaping the way local municipalities were dealing with a rapidly expanding population of foreigners. (215) The political controversy suggested some hard limits to local citizenship initiative. (219)

- expression of local cultural citizenship carried the potential to reconfigure national citizenship by altering underlying understandings of Japanese identity. Yokohama Chinatown, as a globalized local community was a key example in this regard; it confounded the assumed priority of national over local spaces by demonstrating the viability of multi-ethnic communities within a presumptively mono-ethnic state. (220)

Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Han, Eric. Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014

Main points:

-ch. 5 – (title: A town divided: the Cold War in Yokohama Chinatown, 1945-72) – Yokohama Chinatown experienced enormous social, cultural, and economic transformations in the three decades from the end of the Asia-pacific war to the normalization of relation with PRC in 1972.(157)

- during these decades, the popularity of multi-cultural gastronomy allowed Yokohama Chinese to join with administrator in Yokohama city and Kanagawa prefecture to promote Chinatown’s restaurants as a premier tourist attraction.(160)

- the localism emerged from an era that also saw the universalization of the ethnic nation as an individual’s final identification. The years after 1945 witnessed national identity surging after decolonization. Japan lost is multiethnic empire and turned instead toward a mono-ethnic national identity. (160)

Jus sanguinis nationality laws continued to define formal citizenship and enacted social closures according to shared descent – an ethnic people (minzoku) in both popular understanding and government policy. (160) For Chinese resident of Japan, this historical transition meant their position within Japan would be ethnically marked but socially accept resident aliens. But they were not alone in this regard. (161)

- this chapter examines the way the Yokohama Chinatown community mediated their national and local identities in the three decades after the end of the Asia-pacific war. It deals first with the ideology of Japanese mono-ethnicity, and its congruence with efforts by the two China regimes to maintain Chinese patriotism in Yokohama. (162)

- in March 1946, the China mission in Tokyo representing the ROC ordained the Yokohama Chinese Association as an official node of its worldwide network of huaqiao associations. As allied nationals, huaqiao carried economic benefits. Advantages made the pre-1952 the economic ‘golden years’ for the huaqiao in japan. (163)

- after Chiang Kai-shek lost the Chinese civil war, Japan continued to regard his regime as the legitimate government of China until 1972. (164) During this period the ROC sought to quash leftist inclination among Chinese in Japan through its dominance of huaqiao institutions. (168)

- in 1952, the Chinese Mission peremptorily installed a new principal from Tokyo at a local Chinese school. Thus began the so-called school incident that would bifurcate Yokohama Chinese institution into two fractions. Teachers, students and parents object to the new principal as interference by the state. In short, the desire for local autonomy was prominent. (170) The movement opposing the China Mission went door-to-door to advocate self-determination. (170)

-one could no longer passively remain in huaqiao society without taking a position within the political map of the community, a situation that threatened to run any collective activity into a political contest. (173)

- across Japan, huaqiao status became an economic liability after May 1952, when the San Francisco peace treaty came into effect and ended the Allied occupation of Japan. Chinese in Japan lost their special advantages as allied nationals. (175)

- the Yokohama Chinese turned to their restaurant for economic survival which proved to be the most resilient sector of the Chinatown economy. (177) Chukagai became the accepted name for Chinatown, replacing Nankinmachi. This change of name dislodged the public’s long-held perception of Chinatown as filthy and dangerous. (179) Chinatown- both its Chinese and Japanese residents – had in the 1950s adopted a model of economic development focused on Chinese cuisine and tourism, and by the 1960s yielding results. (180)

-in sum, the events following the normalization of ties with the PRC suggested a continuation of self-destructive rivalry between the two political foes; neither could claim credibly to be the representative authority. (184) At the same time, cooperative commercial development was legitimating a different conception of community. The YDA was eminently positioned to represent this local community. (184) Since the 1970s the YDA took a leadership role in the community. (185)

- amid the economic and institutional developments, the meaning of Chinese identity in Yokohama began to shift once again. A Japanese wide survey of huaqiao in 1966 confirmed that an overwhelming majority showed deep concern for the homeland. (187) Another survey of the 1960s suggested that the diasporic orientation Chinese identity was gradually being superseded by what might be best described as a minority orientation. (187)

- the widespread acculturation of the Chinese in Yokohama meant that their commonly assumed Chinese was not the aggregation of cultural traits shared, but was defined by markers of difference from the Japanese. A 1967 survey of graduates of the pro-ROC school indicated that 61.7 percent of their household, Japanese was the primary language. Most had also adopted Japanese-style funerals, primarily ate Chinese food at home. (188)

- the integrity of the Yokohama community, therefore, derived less from intrinsic Chinese-ness then their position of otherness within Japanese society. In that sense, the Chinese ethnicity approached the ethnicity of American usage, defined by marginality and otherness as well as people-hood. (189)

Yokohama Chinatown now became more in common with the Chinatowns of San Francisco and NY where scholars had noted that Chinese minority identity had been determined more by ethnic discrimination form outside than cultural unity or economic solidarity.  The markers that mattered were not language and ritual observances etc. as the preference toward Chinese food was one of the clearest markers that distinguished the Chinese form the Japanese. (189)

- but more importantly, the status was entirely local in scope. The pull of local society made these Chinese more ready to identify as Yokohama-ites; this identification did not imply belonging to the Japanese nation, as many still maintained Chinese nationality. (189)

- by the 1970s some zainichi Koreans were advocating identity that moved beyond diaspora by rejecting homeland politics, emphasizing permanent settlement. (190) At the end of the decade, the concept of a minority status for zainichi Koreans was given forceful, controversial expression by the concept of a “third way” between diaspora and assimilation, that is, “living as ethnic Koreans and, at the same time, as citizens of japan”.(190)

- the zainichi Korean third way differed somewhat form Yokohama Chinese identity in both content and effects. Zainichi Korean activism possessed national clout (influence) as former colonial subject whereas Chines in Yokohama found refuge in profitable economic niche. (190)

- chapter conclusion – Chinese-ness was thus reconstituted not through substantive political, culture, or ethnic ties with the homeland, but as a minority status defined in relation to the Japanese majority. Chinese were no longer unified by political loyalty to a homeland. Tie of blood were weakened, many children were Chinese-Japanese parentage. (191) Naturalization did not necessarily reduce the subjective sense of Chinese identity among Yokohama Chinese; many of the leaders of the pro-ROC Chinese association had naturalized but keep separate business cards for their Chinese and Japanese names. (192) Thus over time the objective determinant of Chinese-ness became fewer in comparison to the many contextual and subjective links with Japanese society. (191)-Yokohama Chinatown thus provided an example of how Chinese culture could be construed as cultural foreignness from a national perspective but simultaneously incorporated into Yokohama’s cosmopolitan local identity (192) The local identity was more than a mere economic instrument since it continued to encompass social, cultural and political dimensions. Yokohama Chinese had become minority in Yokohama society. (192)

(to be continued)

Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Han, Eric. Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014

Main points:

- ch.3 – (title: Cooperation, conflict, and modern life in an international port, 1912-32) – this chapter examines the complex process by which Yokohama Chinese became huaqiao even as they integrated into Yokohama society. (91) The ROC linked the overseas Chinese communities to the new state, developed both the justifications and institutional means to control their overseas citizen. (91) National identity gradually became more deeply embedded in social life. Chinese now integrated into Yokohama society more explicitly as representatives of the Chinese nation. (91)

- this overall process was not unique to Chinese nationalism. By the end of the 19^th century, Japanese were also arriving at a consensus that ethnic groups should be sovereign political units. Japan’s social culture was recast as foundation of a national culture. Discourse of ethnic nationalism became extremely influential worldwide. (91) “Across the same time frame, ethnic-national identity acquire a much stronger legal and institutional basis. The imperative to regulate overseas Chinese played a role in the creation of jus sanguinis nationality laws in both countries” (i.e. China and Japan).

- the Chinese citizenship law of 1909 (in Japan) was jus sanguinis and informed by an understanding of the China as an ethnic community. The law was a belated attempt to establish internationally recognized guidance for Chinese citizenship. It decreed that the granting of naturalization to Chinese would need a discharge from the Qing government. (92) This suggested the intention to prevent the large-scale of naturalization of overseas Chinese, and the reduction of their political attachment to the homeland. (92)

- “During the 1920s, a steady solidification of a Chinese identity took place, which was over-determined by political mobilization and ethnic stereotypes. The various new originations of the 1920s were the functional unit of a mixed local community, but one overlaid by the format of international relations. However, even as Chinese identity came to be accepted as an organizing principle in the community, Yokohama Chinese maintained a strong attachment to local place.”(118)

- chapter conclusion – even as the consolidation of Chinese identity as huaqiao subordinated provincial affiliations to the idea of a Chinese nation, many still identified with the local Yokohama community. (122) Yokohama Chinese contributed to Yokohama society and culture, as shown by local baseball games and Chinese cuisine. These examples provided illustration of the linked process of integration and differentiation. Liang’s baseball team was a regular participant in local tourneys, but as the Chinese team. For Chinese, baseball and Chinese food helped unify those of different provincial origins into common culture. (122)

- from the 1910s to the 1930s, the vocabulary available to describe identity was increasingly constrained by nationalist ideologies in both China and Japan. For Yokohama Chinese their integration into Yokohama society was as foreigners, specifically, as huaqiao. (123)

- after the full-scale fighting in the summer of 1937, many Chinese in Yokohama chose to remain. They judged incorrectly that the fighting would end quickly. Japan’s Ministry of foreign affairs and Home ministry faced the thorny issue of how to deal with an entrenched community of potential enemies in Yokohama. Their solution, as we would see, was to co-op the discourse of Chinese identity and the very institutions that the ROC employed to produce patriotic national subjects in the first place. (123)

- ch. 4- (title: Sino-Japanese war, Sino-Japanese friendship and the Yokohama-ite identity, 1933-45) – this chapter examines how Japan’s strategic imperatives (to respect, understand, and honor the Chinese traditions and social customs) had shaped Japan’s wartime treatment of the Chinese in Japan. The Japanese state under an umbrella of Asian unity, became an active participant in the construction of Chinese-ness. The Yokohama Chinese maintained their identities as such through both resistance to and complicity with these imperatives. (125)

- by relying heavily on records published or compiled by Japanese authority during wartime time, the histories  written there in would exaggerate the hegemony Japan’s wartime ideology. Official documents in wartime did not provide compelling evidence of actual ideological commitments. In other words, the appearance of Chinese compliance should not be treated as a definitive prove of Japan’s ideological hegemony. (128)

- by the late 1930s, Chinese in Yokohama had overwhelmingly accepted a diasporic national identity as hauqiao. (128) To understand what cooperation with the wartime Japanese state meant to the Yokohama Chinese, it was crucial to examine who chose to stay and who opted to leave. (136)

- the Chinese who elected to remain in Yokohama during the war were those acculturated and socially integrated into the local community. Some Chinese leaders in japan lamented that many of their compatriots had married Japanese, forgotten how to speak mandarin, and were willing to naturalize if the situation demanded it. (141)

- in Japan’s mass media, the most visible Yokohama Chinese supporter of Japan’s war mission was the Yokohama-born Chen Dongting. (142) He helped define a localized Chinese identity what was reconciled to collaborationism. In 1940 he argues: “we huaqiao who resided in Yokohama are real huaqiao, but our relationship to Japan is like that between close relatives… and many here have Japanese wives”. The journalist described Chen as “a pure Yokohama-ite”; this was the first recorded usage of the term hamakko to refer to the Yokohama Chinese and implied an ironic acceptance of ethnic heterogeneity within a “pure” local identity. (144)

- another venue for the performance of Chinese collaborationism was the establishment of the Nation Gymnastic Movement. (145) Genuinely believed or not, slogans of Sino- Japanese amity were essentially performative. Repeated enunciation allowed Chinese to remain in Yokohama, unmolested by the police. (146)

- “neither Chen nor Bao [Bogong] intended to deny a role for the Yokohama Chinese in promoting friendship between Chinese and Japanese. But by evoking their identification with Yokohama, they undermined their standing as representative Chinese. The friendship discourse depends on the coherence of separate Chinese and Japanese nation. For the Yokohama Chinese, their local and national identity both enabled and undercut their exploitation as propaganda tools by the Japanese government. Living as ‘pure Yokohama-ies’, aligned their interest with Yokohama society, and like it or not, Japan as a whole. Yet, this local integration separate them form Chinese in China and other huaqiao around the world.”(153)

- chapter conclusion – from the 1920s, Chinese and Japanese government cooperated in constructing the national subjectivity of the Yokohama Chinese. The ROC built a network of national representative through its OCAC, and Japanese researcher conducted volume of research on huaqiao that promoted the vision of a global community of diasporic Chinese. Wartime imperative then elevated nationality as the overriding modality of identity. Japanese propagandist wanted Chinese spokesperson for Japan’s war mission and crafted pluralistic, non-assimilationist policy.

Participation in the discourse of Sino- Japanese amity in it various guise – gymnastics, parades, propaganda – helped construct Chinese-ness even as it buttress Japan’s legitimacy in the conflict. (155) These Chinese tolerated Japanese government intervention into their community, however, because they were also socially invested in Yokohama.  (155) These leaders in Yokohama Chinatown were the same men who guided community association prior to the war –second generation Chinese in Japan like Chen Dongtin and Bao Bogong. (155)

-collaborationism was therefore a method to resolve competing attachment to Yokohama and China – in other words, to continue living as Yokohama Chinese. It was however an imperfect solution. Living as Yokohama-ite contradicted the deployment as mode, representative Chinese. The contradictory terms used by Chinese leaders revealed a yawning gap between their national and local identifications. (155)

(to be continued)

Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Han, Eric. Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014

Main points:

- chapter 5 traces the development of Yokohama Chinatown into a cohesive enclave and economic niche against the backdrop of the Cold War and Japan’s economic rise, culminating in the normalization of diplomatic ties between Japan and the PRC in 1972.(21)

The conclusion examines Chinatown from the 1980s and the district’s rising commercial fortune and further institutionalization as a key pillar of Yokohama local identity. (21) Chinese gained public acceptance as local resident, a status that conferred certain citizenship right. (21)

- ch. 1 – (entitled “the Sino-Japanese war and ethnic unity, 1894-5”) – Chinese settlement in Yokohama began in 1859. Modern conceptions of citizenship based on global system of nation-state made Chinese and Japanese identities mutually exclusive. (21) The “transformation in the meaning of being Chinese in Japan did not take place in one stroke; it took decades, and the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5 was a watershed.” (24)

- the Japanese victory in 1894-5 brought about a re-evaluation of the Japanese images of the Chinese, reducing them to cowardly masses and laborers. (24) Among the Japanese vocabulary in the 19^th century, the so-called acha-san were Chinese by virtue of their visible difference from Japanese society and trade connections with china. (26)

- social order underwent radical revision in the 19^th century as a result of a modified political order: the rise of global system of national states and the intrusion of aggressive western imperialism into East Asia. They forced both China and Japan to conduct their world affairs in accepting to western norms. (28) Chinese entered Yokohama under the treaty port system in the second half of the 19^th century. They built homes and business in the so-called foreign settlement. (29)

- the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5 boosted the development of modern nationalism in both China and Japan. The same might be said of ethnic consciousness among Yokohama’s resident Chinese until this point, there was not self-aware and unify community of Qing subjects. (35) The Japan’s victory in the War raised feeling of Japanese pride. When these images began impinging negativity on the lives of Chinese, they began to think of themselves as one people. (36)

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- just as the war forged Japanese unity, it produced new conditions that forced Chinese to imagine themselves as one group. (47) The working-class Chinese were initially indifferent to this. This attitude changed with the promulgation of the new legal framework to govern Qing subject and the obligation to register with Kanagawa prefecture.  The legislation prohibited certain economic activities, placing the Qing under the Japanese legal system.(47) The end of extraterritoriality was particularly threatening to the Chinese working class who previously been spared Japan’s prohibition on gambling and opium use. (47)

- for Yokohama Chinese, identification with China coexisted with the manifold forms of association linked to the native place: local culture, dialect, hometown, and lineage. The war merely changed the relative priorities of these identifications. Prior to the war, Chinese in Yokohama displayed scant attention to the Qing regime. (49)

-chapter conclusion – the rise of ethnic unity might best be understood as a change in perception and priority. The Sino- Japanese War forced individuals to see their lives in ethnic terms and to place their collective identity above individual ones. (55) It would take the arrival of expatriate leaders to mold the Yokohama Chinese into active Chinese citizens. (55)

- ch. 2 – (entitled “Expatriate nationalist and the politics of mixed residence, 1895-1911”) – the 1894-5 War forged a degree of ethnic solidity among Yokohama Chinese, but it did not yield modern ethnicity, much less nationhood. (56) In the late 19th century, overseas Chinese held their sense of pan-Chinese identity was primary cultural, not political. (56) The fighting in 1894-5 was the Qing’s war, it was not their war. (56)

- the discourse of nation disseminated in Yokohama enabled an elite group to claim their authority to speak for a nation and to represent their own interest as those of the collective (or to guide/lead). This chapter examines the process of political mobilization, its social consequences, and its limits. (59)

- Inukai and Okuma were instrumental in allowing Kang and Liang to escape China. Miyazaki support Sun Yat-sen. These Japanese supporters believed that only an alliance between Japan and a revived Chinese would be able to resist Western domination over Asia. (60) A more direct political application of expatriate leadership took place in the summer of 1899 when diplomatic development between Japan and the world called into question the legal status of Chinese residents in Japan.(73)

- beginning with July 1894 Japan successfully renegotiated its unequal treaties with western power that was the judicial foundations of the treaty ports. It would end the 40 year history of the foreign settlement and terminate extraterritoriality. Japan prepared for an era of mixed residence, or direct contact with foreigner. (73) Ideological fractures was generated in Japan around the question of whether Chinese would be “left in the pot” after treaty nations had been granted the right of mix residence in the interior. (74) The debate invoked the issues of hygiene and labor completion. (75)

- on a more abstract level, the import of the term ‘shinajin’ appeared to have been a deliberated denial of their status as Qing subject, implying that these Chinese were ungoverned, anarchic immigrants.  An essay in 1899 said that Japan should not consider diplomatic relation with Shina [China] the same as with Euro- American countries because Shina did not have the qualification to be considered a complete country. (76) Their people were no longer Qing subject, but were Shinajin, a race who moved from place to place. (76)

- in the end elite Cantonese petitioner were rewarded their wished-for rights of mixed residence in the interior of Japan. It was resolved that after August 4th 1899; migrant labors would be restricted to the former treaty-port foreign settlement, whereas merchants and industrialist would be allowed residence on the same basis as European and Americans. (78) The social reality of late-Meiji Chinatown demonstrated a kind of urban mixing and cultural exchange that defied the national boundaries espoused by Japanese and Chinese elites. (80)

- chapter conclusion – form the Sino- Japanese War to the early 1900s (before 1911), Chinese of Yokohama began to see themselves by degrees as a single ethnic nation, unified by shared interest and difference from the Japanese. (86)

-  Chinese ethnic consciousness in Yokohama was therefore on display in the early years of the 19th century, anchored by an ethnic nucleus of Confucian tradition, ideas and shared descent, and expatriate (Sun/Kang) leadership. These Chinese leaders sought to turn this China ethnic identity into nationhood by promoting the idea of a political active citizenry. In these early years, this sense of nation was in no way predetermined. It was stall a contest aspiration, divided between competing ideas of the Chinese nation as either guomin or minzu, and undermined by other sub- and non-national forms of identity. (87)

- after the establishment of the ROC in 1912, a regime that would become intensely concerned with the status, education, and regulation of its oversees citizen. The application of this state power on Chinese life in Yokohama would be the subject of the next chapter. (89)

(to be continued)

Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title: Eric Han. Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014

Main points:

- Introduction - Japan was not often thought of as an immigrant-receiving country. Its barriers to foreigner were well recognized: citizenship law based on bloodline and restrictive naturalization procedure. (2) Yokohama was only 17 miles away from the capital; it had been cultivated as a thriving tourism industry. (4)

- the book narrates the development of a Chinese community in Yokohama, from the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 to the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in 1972 and beyond. (5) Han seeks to show how an awareness of national difference emerged through interactions between Chinese and Japanese. Such national conscious was an outcome of historical interactions that also yielded non-national collective identities. (5)  The public acceptance of Chinese hamakko challenges the Japanese myth of ethic homogeneity. (6)

- before we can speak of the local integration of these Chinese, we need to investigate the category of Chinese and how a collective identity as such emerged in Yokohama in the first place. (6) Yokohama Chinatown was an important state for the nation-building process at the end of the Qing dynasty. This book addresses the contributions of non-elites who over time acquired a Chinese political consciousness. (7) This consciousness signified a diasporic identity for these Chinese. The diasporic Chinese identity was denoted by the term hauqiao.

- according to Wang Gungwu, hauqiao was a militant commitment to remaining Chinese. This diasporic conceptualization of Chinese identity emphases homeland patriotism and downplay attachment to place of settlement. (7) The diasporic condition was instructive for understanding the process by which individual come to accept national identities. The imagination of a nation self was never uncontested. (7)

- as  Prasenjit Duara had argued, nationalist ideologies south to “fix and privileged a single identity form among the contesting multiplicity of identifications”.  Outside the homeland, nationalist ideology had to assert a vertical relation with the nation while denying other collective identities that linked the immigrant to her host society. (8)

- there were multiple and overlapping version of Chinese-ness, including the elite civilizational conception of China, political allegiance to Qing. This book tells the story of how a modern Chinese nationalism was reconciled within existing affiliation and interpreted. (8) Conversely, this study examines the institutional, social economic and legal mechanism by which individuals developed linkage to both China and Yokohama (8)

- the marker of Chinese self-identity were not static; the meaning of being Chinese in Yokohama shifted along with changing relations with Japanese society and their Chinese homeland. (12) A major theme of this book was the ongoing “social construction” of Yokohama Chinatown as a place and the Chinese as a community. (12)

- several Japanese detective fiction could help us probe the cultural meanings of the site of Yokohama Chinatown as an enclave with both threatening and alluring dimensions. (13) Akutagawa prize-winning author Okamatsu Kazuo’s 1988 novel narrates the two decades friendship between Akigawa and Arima, two men born in Yokohama but of different ethnic heritage. The half-Chinese, half Japanese Arima struggled to construct his life in local term – according to an ideal of Yokohama. (14)

- Arima’s psychological predicament, as both imperfect Chinese and Japanese, spoke to the exclusivity and narrowness of Chinese and Japanese identities, there was no Chinese Japanese identity analogous to Chinese American. Arima chose to self-identify as diasporic and as Yokohama-ite (hamakko)’ (15)

- since the 19^th century, political modernizers in both Japan and China had sought to inculcate national and ethnic consciousness. Government policy policies institutionalized national identity as an individual’s ‘terminal’ community. As Rupert Emerson explains, such a community was expected to override “the claim of lesser communities within it.”(16) Han’s study rejects the assumptions and priorities inherent in such terminal identities. It offers a critical examination of collective identities Yokohama to show both their historicity and multiplicity. Collective identity was relational categories that structured social life, defining friends and foes. They were distinguishable from self-identity, which was defined as the “absolute uniqueness” of an individual. (17)

- collective and individual identities were easily confused in everyday language, the  multiplicity of group affiliation that made up a unique pattern of personality were not always apparent.(17) When an individual reduced his or her multiple social affiliation to terminal one-dimensionality, the result was the annihilation of true identity. (17)

- For some scholars, the concept of diaspora had offered a way to counter one-dimensional identification with a territorial nation-stare. (17) In their work, the diaspora subject could function as “a figure for double and multiple consciousness … that crisscrossed boundaries.”  Identification with a diaspora is thus a mode of resistance. (17)

- the wider aim of this book was to consider how people attempted to reconcile a cosmopolitan and inclusive local identity with national ethnic identities that were exclusive and conflictual. (18)

- the first chapter opens with a discussion of Chinese migration to Japan form the premodern period. (19) Chapter 2 examines how, in the years before the Chinese revolution of 1911, Chinese expatriate leaders attempted to turn a sense of ethnic unity into active Chinese citizenship. Chapter 3 traces the institutionalization of Chinese identify in Yokohama from the founding of the ROC in 1912 to the Manchurian incident of 1931-32. The new Chinese state extended its power into the lives of its overseas citizen by registering them to be patriotic huaqiao.

- chapter 4 narrates the effect of these wartime developments on Chinese community cohesion in Yokohama. For this part, the Yokohama Chinese attempted to resolve the competing imperatives of local attachment and national patriotism. (21) Chapter 5 traces the development of Yokohama Chinatown into a cohesive enclave and economic niche against the backdrop of the Cold War and Japan’s economic rise, culminating in the normalization of diplomatic ties between Japan and the PRC in 1972.(21) The book conclusion examines Chinatown from the 1980s and the district’s rising commercial fortune and further institutionalization as a key pillar of Yokohama local identity. (21) Chinese gained public acceptance as local resident, a status that conferred certain citizenship right. (21)

(to be continued)

Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title:  Grimes, William. 2001. Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Main points:

Ch. 6. - as Japan entered 1993, important new forces seemed poised to affect macroeconomic policy.(162) The Japanese economy did not seem to have been very stimulated by either of the discount rate cuts of 1992, or by the August fiscal stimulus plan. The stock market remained soft, land prices began to drop. More and more reports were surfacing concerning the bad loans. (162)

- prior to the July 1993 election, political pressure surely compounded the pressure on the Miyazawa administration for economic policy change. Subsequently, the non-LDP coalition government of Hosokawa Morihiro and Hata Tsutomu faced pressure to fix the problem of the economy. (163)

- in the period 1993-7, then, continuing economic problems and political uncertainty were intertwined. Bureaucrats in general and MOF officials in particular, became targets of political and media attacks alleging incompetence, even corruption. (163)

- following a successful vote of no confidence against PM Miyazawa’s administration on June 18, 1993, and the subsequent Lower House election on July 18,  Japan’s first non-LDP PM since 1955 Hosokawa Morihiro, was elected . He entered office as the head of a coalition of seven parties. (168)

- despite consistently strong citizen and market sentiment for fiscal stimulus, the year 1993-7 instead saw a stop-and-go approach to fiscal policy. For the most part, the policies of the increasingly unpopular MOF carried the day. (191)

-the overall strategy by LDP and other politicians to contain MOF included extremely heavy political pressure. As the next chapter demonstrates, by 1955, the MOF goal of maintain autonomy was under fire from a number of new directions. Following the catastrophic failure of the 1997 fiscal consolidation, the Ministry became the scapegoat, and contributed the fundamental structural change and a substantial weakening in its policy-making influence. (195)

-Ch. 7- by the mid-1990s, politicians were gaining a degree of power at the expenses of the MOF while playing within the existing rules of the game of macroeconomic politics. But by 1996, they were beginning to map out a new set of rules that would fundamentally change the game. (196)

- this chapter sticks closely to the themes of structural power and structural changes by focusing on personnel and organization changes. Following that, it turns to actual macroeconomic policies and to show how structural changes promoted policy changes. (197)

- in March 1998, there was finally a break in the old pattern when governor Matsushita and deputy governor Fukui were both forced to resign. The Hashimoto cabinet appointed Hayami Masaru as Governor, a long-retired BOJ OB. The cabinet appointed two deputy governors as well. For the first time since 1969, MOF retirees were excluded from the top ranks of the bank. (198)

- a final set of attacks on the personnel system of MOF could be seen in the forced resignation of two consecutive administrative vice-ministers in 1995.  In 1998, there was yet another forced resignation. (201)

- the attacks on MOF had multiple reasons. For one, the MOF was under fire for having protected weak and corrupt financial institutions. In addition to the scandals, the MOF was also tarred in the public eye with the label of incompetence and arrogance. At least some ruling party politicians were motivated by revenge for the slights of the non-LDP coalition period. With the element in place of widely recognized policy failure, public disapproval, a weakened relationship with ruling politician, and politician’s increased sensitivity to public opinion, the Ministry was vulnerable. (202)

-the reorganization ideas being floated by 1996 were extremely worrisome for the MOF. These included the reform and reduction of government financial institutions. Another idea that constituted an even more profound attack on MOF prerogative was a plan to move budgeting function to the PM office. (203)

-the most significant check on the MOF power in macroeconomic policy making was the revision of the Bank of Japan laws passed by the Diet in June, 1997.(204)

- along with the BOJ law revision, the cabinet also submitted bills to establish a new Financial Supervision Agency to take over MOF’s role as supervisor of the banking, security, and insurance sectors.(207)

- the changes in the macroeconomic policy-making structure seen were truly historic. It would have been nearly unimaginable in 1985, or even 1995, that the MOF would lose its preeminence in monetary policy, let alone be dismembered. BOJ was now largely autonomous. The Diet became the official overseer of the BOJ, it also took back the initiative in budgeting, and was the architect of the dismantling and reconstruction of Japan’s macroeconomic policy apparatus. (215)

Conclusion: over the previous seven chapters, the author has shown that the structures of power and information in Japanese macroeconomic policy making had fundamentally influenced the policies actually followed in japan. (218)

- this study has demonstrated the usefulness in using ‘the framework of institutional competition' in understanding an otherwise dauntingly confusing set of events and policies in the actual historical record. (219).

Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title:  Grimes, William. 2001. Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Main points:

Ch. 3- this chapter begins with fiscal policy, then turns to monetary policy, and finally to exchange rate management. The central contention in fiscal policy was the national budget. The first step in understanding Japan’s fiscal policy is to consider the general account budget. (74)

- the tools of the BOJ are essentially the same as those available to other central banks. They include manipulation of the discount rate, interbank market and reserves policies. (94) The basic operational goal of the BOJ included stable prices, sustainable economic growth, stable currency, the integrity of the financial system, and organizational autonomy. (98)

Ch. 4.-in the name of reducing international imbalance, the Japanese government was pressured to allow the yen to appreciate rapidly and to promote domestic demand. It responded with a policy mix that was fundamentally unsound and set the stage for the bubble burst. (108) To understand that response, we had to look at the domestic policy-making structure. The period could be broken down into four phases. From spring 1985 to the year end it emphasized on lowering the level of dollars through foreign exchange market intervention. Second, from January to June 1986, ad hoc monetary policy emerged as the centerpiece of international coordination effort.  From July 1986 before the Louvre Accord in February 1987, more bilateral US-Japan coordination began. From the Louver Accord until the end of 1987, there was a shift to coordination of domestic demand management. (108)

- in November 1980 voters in the US elected Ronald Regan on a platform of tax cut. The experiment, known as Reaganomics, began with unprecedented tax cuts accompanied by increased in government spending.  Coupled with the anti-inflationary program, the result was high interest rate drawing massive foreign investment and raised the value of the dollar. (109)

- analysts of the Plaza-Louvre period (1985-87) had used a variety of theoretical perspective to explain Japan’s action in the period. Each of this perspective offered some insight, but no satisfactory explanation could be made without considering the structure of Japanese macroeconomic policy making. Only by combining domestic structure with internal and external pressure were we able to come up with a consistently satisfactory explanation (127).

- the primary problem facing policy makers in 1985 were ‘bring down superdollar’. Recognizing that the US dollar was much overvalued, a cheaper dollar was needed to reduce current account imbalance. (127)

- looking at events from a two-level perspective suggested that the ultimate failure of the Louver strategy was that international-level commitments exceeded what domestic actors were willing to accepted. (134) On the Japanese side, we again saw the reluctance of MOF to use the fiscal policy tool, and its ability to block politician from using it. (135)

Ch. 5.-the year 1988 opened with a weak dollar and a lack of consensus among the G-7 countries on questions of coordinated action. 1988 saw a stabilized dollar against the yen. (136)

- much of the prosperity of the late 1980s was based on a speculative bubble. The bubble was fueled by rapid increase in the money supply caused by the continuation of BOJ’s low interest rate policy until May 1989, at least a year beyond the point at which it had ceased to be economic justifiable (an over-short).(137)

-monetary policy both encouraged and ended the bubble, but it was not able to put the economy back on track. This chapter examines both the economic policies that caused prosperity and then led to disaster, and the macroeconomic policies behind them. (137)

- in December 1989, governor Sumita of BOJ ended his term; he was replaced by his deputy Mieno Yasushi. Mieno was a BOJ careerist. Almost immediate, he acted to raise interest rate for the third time in seven months. (142) Mieno’s proposal angered the powerful Finance Minister, Hashimto Ryutaro, who exercised his legal prerogative to postpone any change in the discount rate. But the market situation forced Hashimato to drop his position. BOJ under Mieno would raise interest rate twice more. The last of the rate hikes was striking, coming as it did in the middle of a rapid decrease in stock prices on August 30, 1990; the Nikkei has fallen to 26,000 from the level of over 33,000 in early June. (142) These rapid rate rises were the monetary equivalent of driving a truck into a brick wall. (143)

- despite the BOJ’s aggressive reversal of its bubble-bursting policies of 1989-90, the growing financial mess proved difficult to reverse. The fall of asset prices had led to a large increase in bankruptcies. (148)

- politicians were increasingly frustrated, one sign of this was LDP kingmaker Kanemaru Shin’s widely reported comments in February 1992 to the effect that “the discount rate should be lowered even if it means the PM firing the governor of the BOJ”. (149-150)

(to be continued)

Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points are:

Book title:  Grimes, William. 2001. Unmaking the Japanese Miracle: Macroeconomic Politics, 1985-2000. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Main points:

Introduction: the major puzzle facing observers of the Japanese economy in the 1990s had been a straightforward one:  ‘What went wrong?’, or “why did it go wrong?” To understand the ‘why’ question, we must turn to politics. In this book, the author argues that the structure of power in macroeconomic policy making was largely responsible for the policy failures since the mid-1980s. (xvii)

- the story began with the Plaza Agreement in September 1985 which marked the beginning of international economic policy coordination among the (then) G5 countries to increase the values of the yen and other currencies to the dollar. (xviii)

- this book addresses Japan’s macroeconomic policy making in a logical progression. Ch.1 lays out the structure of the macroeconomic politics. Chapter 2-3 offer more detailed analysis of the each institution.(xx) The central premise was that the way policy were made had an important effect on the shape of the policies themselves. (xx)

Ch. 1. - this chapter describes the structures. The subsequent chapters will demonstrate how it contributed to the expansion, and eventually bursting of the bubble, and show how changes in policy-making structure had altered the available policy choices. (1)

- a variety of explanation had appeared in recent years to account for both specific Japanese macroeconomic policy; yet more explanation focused on the problem of exchange rate, international power and the failures of the bureaucracy etc.(1)

- Japanese macroeconomic and the exchange rate policy making were essentially a game among the three official actors – the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Japan and the leadership of the Diet.(11) Policy making was a game played on two levels: the individual and the institutional. In the case of macroeconomic policy in Japan, we had to first ask ourselves what incentives were facing the individuals in the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Japan, and the political parties. These were primarily a function of career path of the officials/politicians. (13)

-to make sense of the collective action, we began at the level of individual. What incentive did the individual member of organization face? The individual would pursue his goal subject to the environment. The author assumes that the main goal for the individual was power and prestige.  The bureaucrat joined the agency not for amassing wealth. They entered their career through a sense of duty, or commitment to ideals. The best way to advance these ideals was to advance one’s own personal position in an agency, i.e. the mission was consonant with one’s own goal: seeking power and prestige. For the politicians, they looked for re-election. (14)

- there would be no conflict if the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) had identical objectives. The bank’s overriding objective had been price stability; they would be blamed for inflationary mistakes. The Bank rejected the possibility of a trade-off between growth and inflation. (21)

- there were three political actors. Until the BOJ law revision in 1998, the MOF was the central actor in Japanese macroeconomic policy making due to its broad legal jurisdiction and effective manage of information. It was responsible for fiscal policy and exchange rate management and was answerable to the Diet. (23)

- BOJ was responsible for making monetary policy. It had two objectives: to ensure low inflation, and improve autonomy in the conduct of monetary policy. The third actor was the Diet which had the authority to direct the Ministry in serving the nation. (24)

- in 1998 a number of key structural variable changed, leading to a major change in the game of macroeconomic politics. A quick summary was that there was a major structural-legal change in 1998. It was the implementation of a revised Bank of Japan laws and the establishment of the Financial Supervision Agency (FSA) that constituted changes that were important in reducing the power and network of the MOF. (28)

-Ch. 2- this chapter fleshes out the previous schematic description of the institutional actors and examines the resources and constraint under which these three parties had to operate. Career path and information managements pattern were central to an understanding the organization’s power. (30)

- the MOF had a degree of authority over macroeconomic policy making and implementation. Tax policy and collection, budget making etc. all been centralized in the Ministry. (30) The main counterpart to the MOF in macroeconomic and exchange rate policy was the BOJ. (39)

- the Diet had a variety of roles that impinged directly and indirectly on the policy-making process. In the areas of fiscal policy and exchange rate management, MOF was legally answerable to the Diet, or specifically to the Cabinet. (56)

- the Japanese macroeconomic policy-making system tended to limit the short-term option of political leaders for having a meaningful effect on policies. The overall picture had been one of a highly pork-barrel-oriented political party with little expertise and only sporadic interest in macroeconomic impacts. (71)

(to be continued)