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Bibliographic Data: Watt, Lori. When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009.
Main Argument: Watt argues that "the unmaking of empires everywhere is a complex process, and the human remnants of Japan's empire--those who were moved and those who were left behind--served as sites of negotiation for the process of disengagement from empire and for the creation of new national identities" (1). Arguing that "Japan's empire facilitated a degree of ethnic mixing in East Asia not seen before or since," Watt also points out that "the postwar settlement, more than the war itself, shaped East Asia in the latter half of the twentieth century," as the Allies unceremoniously moved people en masse to suit their vision of a world in which the boundaries of nations matched those of states (2, 3) [because ethnic mixing was seen as the casus bellum for the predations of Hitler. Remember Eleanor Roosevelt's remark: "There are no minorities."].
Historiographical Engagement: John Dower, Embracing Defeat; Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics; Ruth Rogaski, Hygenic Modernity
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Watt discusses three transformations of postwar Asia: first, that it was "more ethnically homogeneous than it had been during the time of the Japanese empire;" "the uneven and incomplete process of absorbing and re-categorizing the fragments of empire within Japan," namely the process by which both colonial and metropolitan Japanese had to construct a new non-imperial identity; and finally the process by which the multiethnic empire of Japan, the center of the region, came to be "a monotonic nation on the far edge of the American sphere of influence" (4, 5)--Fukuzawa Yukichi's "leaving Asia" accomplished at last. According to Watt, "this process of 'third party decolonization' profoundly influenced the uneven, incomplete, and vexed dissolution of Japan's empire in Asia" (12). Another thing that vexed this process was the friction of reintegrating colonial Japanese--who gave the lie to the "either/or" dynamic of what it meant to be Japanese--and unfinished business with Korea and China, to say nothing of the role that the "Shôwa single-digit generation," which included people who returned from the colonies as children or teenagers, many of whom became the leading lights of postwar culture (not coincidentally, as they felt isolated from "ordinary") Japanese.
( The return to Japan )
Critical assessment: Overall, this is a useful study of an aspect of Japan’s post-imperial experience that has been overlooked despite its obvious consequences for postwar Japan and postwar East Asia: the process of repatriation to Japan and the construction of the repatriate as a troubled, marginalized figure in Japan. While I appreciated Watt’s study very much, I found myself wishing strongly that she had engaged in a more comparative approach at points.
In particular, two areas where a comparative analysis would have provided further illumination stand out for me. The first is Watt’s casual assertion that the imperial geography of the Japanese empire (i.e. a core archipelago surrounded by an outer ring of colonies) was “particular” to the Japanese empire (32). While the geography of imperial Japan was unusual in the modern era, at least one major classical empire—Rome—possessed a “ring” imperial structure in several stages of its history, which in the Roman case had interesting repercussions for the discourses of metropolitan/provincial and civilization/barbarity as the empire developed.
Another area that sorely cries out for a comparative analysis is Watt’s discussion of the sexual violence Japanese (and presumably non-Japanese) women in Manchuria suffered at the hands of the invading Red Army. Mass sexual violence was a notable feature of the Red Army’s occupation of territory in both the Asian and European theaters; I immediately wondered what an autobiographical account such as the Japanese equivalent of A Woman in Berlin might have added to Watt’s analysis.
The conclusion, by contrast, has a different problem, which is that Watt uses it to raise a potentially interesting comparative point (the ethnic homogenization of Europe and Asia following World War Two, in contrast to the ethnic heterogeneity that was a common feature of the modern, so-called “national” empires) only to briefly discuss “ethnic sorting” and to conclude that there’s more to be done. Personally, I find the point that the ethnic makeup of modern empires were not uniform to be a potentially fascinating comparative point, but Watt’s discussion is very result-oriented (i.e. possibly the most ethnically homogeneous point in history).
Watt’s study has several large benefits, not least of which is illuminating the connections between Japan’s immediate post-imperial period and its more recent present (I had never known the true origin of the derogatory term sangokujin, for example, until reading this book). In the end, this is a competent, nicely organized foundational survey that will probably serve well as a spur for someone else to write a more inspired analysis of some of its aspects, such as cultural production.
Further reading: Andrew E. Barshay, The Gods Left First; Uchida Jun, Brokers of Empire; Christopher Bolton, Sublime Voices
Meta notes: Historians are not always qualified for artistic analysis.
Main Argument: Watt argues that "the unmaking of empires everywhere is a complex process, and the human remnants of Japan's empire--those who were moved and those who were left behind--served as sites of negotiation for the process of disengagement from empire and for the creation of new national identities" (1). Arguing that "Japan's empire facilitated a degree of ethnic mixing in East Asia not seen before or since," Watt also points out that "the postwar settlement, more than the war itself, shaped East Asia in the latter half of the twentieth century," as the Allies unceremoniously moved people en masse to suit their vision of a world in which the boundaries of nations matched those of states (2, 3) [because ethnic mixing was seen as the casus bellum for the predations of Hitler. Remember Eleanor Roosevelt's remark: "There are no minorities."].
Historiographical Engagement: John Dower, Embracing Defeat; Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics; Ruth Rogaski, Hygenic Modernity
Introduction: Argument, Sources, Examples Watt discusses three transformations of postwar Asia: first, that it was "more ethnically homogeneous than it had been during the time of the Japanese empire;" "the uneven and incomplete process of absorbing and re-categorizing the fragments of empire within Japan," namely the process by which both colonial and metropolitan Japanese had to construct a new non-imperial identity; and finally the process by which the multiethnic empire of Japan, the center of the region, came to be "a monotonic nation on the far edge of the American sphere of influence" (4, 5)--Fukuzawa Yukichi's "leaving Asia" accomplished at last. According to Watt, "this process of 'third party decolonization' profoundly influenced the uneven, incomplete, and vexed dissolution of Japan's empire in Asia" (12). Another thing that vexed this process was the friction of reintegrating colonial Japanese--who gave the lie to the "either/or" dynamic of what it meant to be Japanese--and unfinished business with Korea and China, to say nothing of the role that the "Shôwa single-digit generation," which included people who returned from the colonies as children or teenagers, many of whom became the leading lights of postwar culture (not coincidentally, as they felt isolated from "ordinary") Japanese.
( The return to Japan )
Critical assessment: Overall, this is a useful study of an aspect of Japan’s post-imperial experience that has been overlooked despite its obvious consequences for postwar Japan and postwar East Asia: the process of repatriation to Japan and the construction of the repatriate as a troubled, marginalized figure in Japan. While I appreciated Watt’s study very much, I found myself wishing strongly that she had engaged in a more comparative approach at points.
In particular, two areas where a comparative analysis would have provided further illumination stand out for me. The first is Watt’s casual assertion that the imperial geography of the Japanese empire (i.e. a core archipelago surrounded by an outer ring of colonies) was “particular” to the Japanese empire (32). While the geography of imperial Japan was unusual in the modern era, at least one major classical empire—Rome—possessed a “ring” imperial structure in several stages of its history, which in the Roman case had interesting repercussions for the discourses of metropolitan/provincial and civilization/barbarity as the empire developed.
Another area that sorely cries out for a comparative analysis is Watt’s discussion of the sexual violence Japanese (and presumably non-Japanese) women in Manchuria suffered at the hands of the invading Red Army. Mass sexual violence was a notable feature of the Red Army’s occupation of territory in both the Asian and European theaters; I immediately wondered what an autobiographical account such as the Japanese equivalent of A Woman in Berlin might have added to Watt’s analysis.
The conclusion, by contrast, has a different problem, which is that Watt uses it to raise a potentially interesting comparative point (the ethnic homogenization of Europe and Asia following World War Two, in contrast to the ethnic heterogeneity that was a common feature of the modern, so-called “national” empires) only to briefly discuss “ethnic sorting” and to conclude that there’s more to be done. Personally, I find the point that the ethnic makeup of modern empires were not uniform to be a potentially fascinating comparative point, but Watt’s discussion is very result-oriented (i.e. possibly the most ethnically homogeneous point in history).
Watt’s study has several large benefits, not least of which is illuminating the connections between Japan’s immediate post-imperial period and its more recent present (I had never known the true origin of the derogatory term sangokujin, for example, until reading this book). In the end, this is a competent, nicely organized foundational survey that will probably serve well as a spur for someone else to write a more inspired analysis of some of its aspects, such as cultural production.
Further reading: Andrew E. Barshay, The Gods Left First; Uchida Jun, Brokers of Empire; Christopher Bolton, Sublime Voices
Meta notes: Historians are not always qualified for artistic analysis.