Introduction by Ruselle Meade, Cardiff University
In 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Japan seized Germany’s territories in the North Pacific, having invoked its formal alliance with the British to combat what it deemed “German piratical activity” in the region. When hostilities ended, Japan was granted a class C mandate over these territories. Micronesia, comprising the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands, then remained part of the Japanese Empire until the end of World War II in 1945. These north Pacific atolls had long attracted the attention of outsiders. The northernmost islands, the Marianas, had been declared a possession of the Spanish crown in 1565. However, following its defeat in the Spanish-American war of 1898, Spain sold these islands (except for Guam) to Germany, which added them to its Pacific territories of the Caroline Islands and the Marshall Islands that Germany had acquired a few years earlier.
Japanese interest in Micronesia—referred to as Nan’yō (the South Seas)—predated its formal occupation. Private Japanese traders had been operating from these islands since the 1880s, with government-led anthropological surveys carried out in the 1890s. By the late Meiji period journalists and public figures were clamoring for Japan to take these islands to gain a foothold in the Pacific—one that could be used a steppingstone to even more lucrative territories in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
The League of Nations granted Class C Mandates for territories where the population was deemed “not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” Japanese authorities gained support for their claim to these islands by pledging “to protect these islands and to improve their living conditions.” From the Japanese perspective at the time, the population of Micronesia was racialized into two categories: chamoro (now CHamoru) and kanaka (a pejorative term today and no longer used). Though both indigenous to the islands, chamoro was used to designate Christianized Micronesians, mainly located in Mariana Islands, who had contact with, and in some cases married, Spanish settlers. The term kanakareferred to those, mainly in the Caroline and Marshall Islands, who had more firmly retained their traditional way of life. It was this latter—and more populous—group that attracted the bulk of the attention of colonial administrators and scientists. They were seen as an untapped source of labor, and a segregated schooling system which lasted a mere three years, aimed to turn them into laborers conversant in Japanese.
“Sovereignty and Mandate Boundary Lines in 1921 of the Islands of the Pacific,” The National Geographic Magazine, December 1921. Courtesy of McMaster University, Digital Archive.
However, efforts to mobilize indigenous Micronesians as laborers was hampered by persistent population decline, which colonial administrators blamed on traditional customs and sexual mores. Efforts to reverse the decline were unsuccessful and Micronesia instead became an outlet for migration, particularly from Japan’s newest prefecture of Okinawa. The population of the former Ryukyu Kingdom was particularly hard hit by the plummeting price of sugar on the global market in the 1930s. Migration from Okinawa, and elsewhere from the Japanese empire, was at such levels that by the mid-1930s the number of Japanese people living in Micronesia exceeded the Micronesian population.
This translated text is an excerpt from Daichi no harawata (Earth’s Belly), written by biologist Nishimura Makoto (1883-1956). When this work was published in 1930, Nishimura was a science communicator at Osaka Mainichi newspaper. Nishimura had worked as a teacher in Manchuria before completing a doctorate at Columbia University in New York and then taking up a post at Hokkaido Imperial University. In this excerpt, Nishimura recounts his travel to the South Seas. These Pacific archipelagos attracted attention, not only from administrators and migrant laborers, but also from scientists. Their pronouncements, cloaked in the guise of scientific objectivity, played key role in shaping the Japanese public’s understanding of these far-away territories and their peoples.
Source Information:
Nishimura Makoto, Daichi no harawata [Earth’s Belly] (Tokyo: Tōkō shoin, 1930)
North and South of the Equator
Saipan
Saipan was where I first encountered both land and people in the South Seas. The island lies just 15 degrees, 40 minutes north of the equator. Polished by occasional squalls, the vegetation along its coastline glistens under the fierce sunlight, the vibrance of its greenery displaying a vast range of hues rarely seen north of the tropics.
These mountains, the lush vegetation … I hadn’t laid eyes on anything like it since leaving Japan. Floating on this sea, which was as transparent as a jewel, were canoes created from breadfruit trees, painted in vibrant reds and yellows. Both near and far they were being guided by naked copper-colored figures.
Looking back at myself
As I stepped onto land, the first thing that shocked me was the fierce appearance of the natives. These stout, copper-colored, naked figures were holding rusty spears, their heads wrapped in what looked like dried seaweed. Their crimson-colored mouths reminded me of bloodthirsty sharks. They had furrowed brows, and cold and sinister eyes that looked like slightly open clams. I was seized by a sense of dread that they might pounce on me at any moment with those spears! When I arrived at the hotel, along with a sense of relief came my first realization of just how hot it was. I glanced at the mirror. The face staring back at me had a strange expression. My face was an ordinary looking face, but it looked so strange. I burst out laughing and threw myself on the bed, laughing by myself as if I had I had gone crazy.
It was as though I had, on my way here, begun to look exactly like those scowling natives.
In the South Seas, the sunlight is so intense that you can’t open your eyes properly. I had been acting as if I were a civilized person but, of course, I was just like the natives. Actually, I must have looked even more ridiculous, with my hat and clothes over my naked body.
A throng of naked bodies
One day, taking shelter from a squall in a village surrounded by a forest of coconut trees, some kanaka took me under their wing. They were all naked, both the men and women. As they wear no clothing whatsoever, perhaps even down to their hearts are pure. They were meek and simple, smiled easily, and were easily surprised. Essentially, they were like big children. I can remember the beautiful scene even today; the face of the man who split the coconut and offered me its juice, and the face of the woman who fetched two taro leaves from the forest behind so that I could shelter from the rain. Their expressions were completely different from those in interactions between civilized peoples.
The rain cleared up and I was surrounded by a throng of naked bodies of youngsters and children from the village. Smiling faces of both young and old, men and women, peeped out of the windows of the huts, and from time to time I could hear laughter coming from inside. A cool breeze followed the rain. I left along a path lined in bright red flowers, seen off by a crowd of naked bodies. It was like I was dreaming when I noticed that I still had the taro leaves covering my head. My life until now receded to the distant past and it was as if I had been living in the village for some time. I left the village, but where was I heading? I wondered as my gaze drifted out to the sea. Should I just abandon everything, throw away my clothes, and spend the rest of my life here living aimlessly in the midst of nature? Having experienced island life, I had no desire to return to a world suffocated by black smoke and full of jealousy and spite.
I began to wonder why we didn’t create a civilization that strived for true happiness for humans.
A resourcefulness borne of necessity
The natives, who somehow manage to live, do not find enjoyment in the hardships necessary to survive. Having run out of ideas about how to use the natives as laborers, the sugar company in Saipan now uses many Ryukyuans. There were about two thousand Ryukyuans aboard the ship I was on, all of whom were coming to work for the sugar company. In any case, since the natives have little need for skills or creativity to survive, there is little they have produced worth noting. Native arts and crafts are scarce in our South Sea Islands. What little craft they produce consists of carvings used in their ritual sites, household furniture, baskets made from palm and coconut leaves, as well as bracelets and necklaces made from shells, stones, teeth, and horns. They also make combs from bamboo and other materials. The natives are almost always naked, so they decorate their skin with tattoos, but these designs are mainly influenced by civilized people (from Spain and Germany) and are not really original. However, I was delighted by their canoes and fishing spears. Naturally, there is “a resourcefulness borne of necessity” and there is a true beauty in their sailing and fishing techniques. They are skilled at thrusting their fishing spears from their boats to spear fish swimming below the surface of the sea. They can even dive into the water to spear fish as they dart between the coral reefs.
They are naked because of the environment of the South Seas. They escape the heat by going into the sea, and they have become as familiar with the water as kappa because they need to go into the sea to find their food. They climb trees with as much ease as monkeys because the fruit of these trees forms part of the daily diet. Their most fearsome enemy in the groves are wasps and so their eyes are particularly adept at seeking out wasps’ nests and their ears are keenly attuned to the buzzing of these poisonous insects.
(Translated by Ruselle Meade)
Questions:
- From this passage, what might be ascertained about wider Japanese attitudes toward Micronesia and its inhabitants during the colonial period?
- How are such attitudes likely to have informed the administration of the islands, particularly in light of Japan’s obligations under the League of Nations class C mandate?
- What factors might have motivated those such as Nishimura, who were not migrant laborers or colonial officials, to travel to Micronesia during this period?
- What impacts might the large-scale migration of laborers to Micronesia have had on the Micronesian population?
Further reading
Kadia, Miriam Kingsberg. Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020.
Mason, Michele M. and Helen J.S. Lee eds. Reading Colonial Japan: Text, Context, and Critique. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.
Mori, Akiko and Wendy Matsumura, ‘A History of the Excluded: Rethinking the Sugar Industry in the Northern Mariana Islands under Japanese rule’, Historische Antrhopologie, 27/3, 2019, pp.321-443
Peattie, Mark R. Nan’yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988.
Tierney, Robert. ‘The Colonial Eyeglasses of Nakajima Atsushi’, Japan Review, 17, 2005, pp. 149-196.
