Harvard East Asian Monographs. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Asia Center [distributed by Harvard University Press], 2019. xix, 406 pp. (Maps, B&W photos.) US$35.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-674-23728-5.
Scholars of Japanese imperial history all know of the lack of historical scholarship that uncovers the historical realities of colonized people. Nonetheless, a few have attempted to investigate the historical experiences of colonized people or have encouraged their postgraduate students to do so. There are many good reasons to avoid the challenge of writing about colonized people’s histories as historical studies are only possible if there are documental records; however, most of archival records from the Japanese imperial period were recorded by the hands of the Japanese colonizers. It has been assumed that there are simply too few records that document the colonized people’s subjectivities. Besides, there is a risk of misinterpreting these voices by only relying on the subjectivities of the colonizers. Although many serious historians would shrink from such a challenge, author Kirsten Ziomek bravely tackles the difficult project of recovering the lives of the people Japan colonized—mainly Ainu, Indigenous Taiwanese, and the islanders of Micronesia (Nanyô).
The book is composed of three parts and eight chapters. The first four chapters (part I) feature the human pavilions of the industrial expositions during the early twentieth century, including the one from the Fifth National Industrial Exposition held in Osaka in 1903. Before reading through the chapters, I was doubtful whether I would find anything new about the notorious “Human Pavilions” from the Meiji period. Not only has the Human Pavilion in Osaka become the subject of numerous Japanese books and scholarly articles, but it has also provided subject matter for the popular theatrical performance titled, “Jinruikan” (Human Pavilion), which was first performed in 1976 and received the honorable Kishida Prize for Drama in 1978. Indeed, the display of the Human Pavilion in Osaka (1903) is today recognized in Japan as the iconic event that revealed the Japanese imperialistic gaze of that time towards Okinawans, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups.
Despite the powerful existing images of the pavilion, Ziomek successfully illustrates the inside stories of the participants involved in the Human Pavilion in Osaka. Through careful examinations of various sources, including the St. Louis Republic and West London Observer, Ziomek traces the stories of those who were involved in the Human Pavilion, and presents an alternative perspective of these human displays from the Meiji era than what has been told and retold in the previous scholarship.
Part II focuses on the tour programs from the colonies to the metropole, which were sponsored by the Japanese colonial governments in Taiwan and Micronesia. Again, it is well known that the colonial governments organized such tours; yet, while previous studies have uncovered the logistics and policies behind the programs, the individual faces of actual participants have been hardly known to date. By exploring the life histories of several Indigenous Taiwanese who joined the tour to the metropole, Ziomek elucidates the complicated relationship between the Japanese officials and demonstrates how “the Japanese colonial administrative apparatus in Taiwan relied on indigenous interlocutors to maintain rule” (251). Compared to other former Japanese territories, such as Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria, the historical experiences of the local people in Micronesia are even less known. In drawing upon records of previously conducted interviews by other scholars, chapter 6 illustrates what some individual Micronesians experienced in Japan and highlights the legacies of their travel experiences.
The objectification of humans was not unique to these kinds of expositions during the early twentieth century. Such displays could be observed in tourism and entertainment industries across the globe. Ainu tourist villages have long been criticized as tourist sites that the Japanese exploited. In exploring the development of the tourism in Ainu residential areas of Hokkaido since the early twentieth century, part III elaborates how the Ainu population sometimes resisted Japanese colonial power, while at other times, collaborated with their colonizers in order to enhance their positions. Ziomek argues, “[e]thnoracial differences were used and mobilized by both colonized and colonizer, for different and varying reasons, all invariably connected to power” (378).
Lost Histories focuses on the least represented groups of the Japanese colonial empire: Ainu, Indigenous Taiwanese, and Micronesians. In sum, the book illuminates how the colonial experiences of these three different colonized subjects were diverse, with each group resisting against and collaborating with Japanese imperial power in varying ways. Drawing upon several historical cases, Ziomek pays particular attention to the local power structures that were entangled with Japanese colonial power. In narrating the intriguing stories of these heretofore underrepresented groups of people, she demonstrates an alternative way to write Japanese imperial history. Lost Histories should be recommended not only to students and scholars of modern Japanese history but also to those seeking alternative ways to write the history of underrepresented peoples across the modern world.
Hiroko Matsuda
Kobe Gakuin University, Kobe