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 19th
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 19th
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 19th 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)
\
- 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)
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