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 19th 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)
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