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)