The World of East Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. viii, 295 pp. (Illustrations.) US$52.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3860-7.
Faye Yuan Kleeman’s In Transit: The Formation of the Colonial East Asian Cultural Sphereprovides a fascinating description of Japan’s empire and the cultural exchanges that flowed within it through the life stories of ten of its subjects and citizens. As Kleeman points out, even though the Japanese empire might not have been as large as that of Britain or France, its compact nature allowed for the relatively easy internal flow of people, cultural knowledge, ideology, art, and material culture. Through her biographical approach, Kleeman shifts the discussion of such movements away from larger entities, such as particular colonies or ethnic groups, to individuals so as to “illustrate the intertwined and multifarious relationship between the personal and the national, the private and the public, in the grand scheme of the Japanese colonial enterprise” (7). She consequently argues:
It was not through the ideologies championed by the state apparatuses that people were persuaded to participate in the imperial enterprise; rather, it was through the lure of desire and pleasure, through their romantic imaginations that everyday people came to be engaged in the seemingly abstract concept of empire. Simple drives to see the outside world, to better one’s social and financial standing in society, and to experience the vicarious pleasure of information about new and exotic places drew individuals into the narrative of the empire. (9)
Thus, while acknowledging its use for exploitation, Kleeman contends that the “Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” was not simply a government construct for the purpose of propaganda but something based at least in part on the realities of colonial cultural exchange, which, while problematic, were to some degree a response to the demands of individual subjects.
In Transit begins with its only male biography, that of Miyazaki Tōten, a nationalist and Pan-Asianist who participated in China’s 1911 revolution and subsequent nation building. Kleeman next examines in chapter 2 the life of Kawahara Misako, the daughter of a samurai Confucian scholar. As a “new woman,” Kawahara dedicated herself to bringing modern education to the people of China and Mongolia and then as a “good wife, wise mother,” devoted herself to her husband and household. In chapter 3, Kleeman explores how the Japanese empire’s marriage politics shaped the family lives of Nashimoto Masako, whose marriage to Yi Eun linked her with the Korean imperial family, and Saga Hiroko, whose union with Pu Jie, the brother of Pu Yi, tied her to the imperial house of the old Qing dynasty. Kawashima Yoshiko, the cross-dressing Manchu princess and spy executed as a Japanese traitor to China and Ri Kōran, the Japanese actress who played Chinese parts in films and passed as a Chinese during significant parts of her life, serve as the subjects of chapter 4. In chapter 5, Kleeman examines the lives and writings of Masugi Shizue and Sakaguchi Reiko, both of whom made literary careers in colonial Taiwan and wrote sympathetically about the aboriginal peoples there. The lives of Choi Seunghee and Tsai Juiyueh, Korean and Taiwanese dancers respectively, provide the concluding chapter to In Transit.
I found much of In Transit to be gripping. In particular, chapters 3 and 4 were hard to put down. Kleeman has a knack for revealing the pathos of her subjects through her exploration of the conflicts and tensions within their lives, providing a humanistic perspective that helps us to make better sense of issues of “collaboration” with empire. While I believe she may have understated the impact of imperial ideology on the subjects of empire, her point that there were other, more individual, factors at work is well taken, and amply proved through her biographies. Likewise, her argument that there was a prior reality of cultural exchange that the co-prosperity sphere built on is significant and demonstrated throughout her book.
Despite its strengths, In Transit also has its flaws. At times the text has a disjointed feel and interesting questions are raised without being fully answered. For example, in seeking to answer the question of whether Ri Kōran was a “propaganda tool of the Japanese empire,” Kleeman provides a summary of an article by Tanikawa Kenji entitled “The Reproduction and Sustainability of the Ri Kōran Myth,” in which he compares her to the anti-Nazi movie star Marlene Dietrich, and the maker of Nazi propaganda, Leni Riefenstahl (145–146). The section then ends without Kleeman directly answering the question she raised. Considering her sensitive treatment of Ri, I think it would have been edifying had Kleeman gone on to situate her between Dietrich and Riefenstahl. In Transit itself ends in essentially the same way, without a conclusion, which considering Kleeman’s deep knowledge of her subject and excellent powers of analysis, is unfortunate. There are many common themes that arise throughout her book that could have been examined more fruitfully. For instance, Kleeman argues that since men are often the centre of works of this period, she has chosen to focus on the lives of women. However, men constantly appear in the lives of the women she studies, particularly as fathers (adopted or biological), as lovers, and as husbands, shaping the women Kleeman studies and their own histories. Perhaps then a reflection in her conclusion on how relationships influenced the lives of the people her book featured would have been interesting, particularly as a focus on “modern” relationships would have resonated with the reformed Confucianism of such figures as Miyazaki Tōten and Kawahara Misako.
Despite these flaws, Kleeman has made a significant contribution to the study of Japan’s empire through her sensitive exploration of the lives of individuals who made up the Japanese colonial cultural sphere. I recommend In Transit to anyone interested in this subject matter and time period, particularly those who focus on history, literature, and the arts. Moreover, this work would also serve well in a graduate seminar dedicated to any of those fields.
Franklin Rausch
Lander University, Greenwood, USA
pp. 936-938