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- Convenor:
-
John Hennessey
(Linnaeus University)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Michele Mason
(University of Maryland)
- Discussant:
-
Michele Mason
(University of Maryland)
- Stream:
- History
- Location:
- Bloco 1, Piso 0, Sala 0.06
- Sessions:
- Saturday 2 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
Investigating American advisers that spread technologies of settler colonialism and "human exhibits" of Ainu, this panel will set Japan's colonization of Hokkaidō in the context of transnational colonial trends, nuancing the oversimplified description of Meiji expansionism as "mimetic imperialism."
Long Abstract:
Criticizing one-empire approaches, calls to apply much-needed transnational perspectives and methodologies to colonial history have recently emerged. This groundbreaking scholarship has already revealed extensive cooperation during the period of New Imperialism between European empires previously understood merely as rivals, along with myriad examples of exchanges and transfers of colonial knowledge.(1)
Historians of Japanese imperialism have always been aware of the large degree to which it emulated Western colonial discourse and practice. Nevertheless, an oversimplified description of Meiji expansionism as "mimetic imperialism" ignores the degree to which all imperial powers imitated each other during this period and the great extent to which Japan was involved in multidirectional inter-imperial exchanges. It also risks explaining important differences between Japanese and Western imperialism as merely a failure to copy Western colonial models.
This panel will address these challenges and join the growing body of scholarship that questions 1895 as the starting date for Japanese imperialism by setting the Meiji state's encroachment into Hokkaidō in the context of transnational colonial trends. Japanese colonialism in Hokkaidō is still too often described as the "development" of a mostly empty "frontier" by "pioneers", whereas closer investigation reveals that the process bore important linkages with contemporaneous examples of Western colonialism. Danika Medak-Saltzman explores how oyatoi-gaikokujin Horace Capron drew on his previous experience as a United States Indian Agent to further Japan's settler colonial goals in Hokkaidō. John Hennessey shows how American advisers charged with establishing an agricultural college in Sapporo spread colonial knowledge to future colonial administrators and analyzes their conceptions of empire. Further problematizing "mimetic imperialism," Kirsten Ziomek argues that Japanese displays of Ainu as "human exhibits" were failures. In contrast to Western displays, where such displays were seen as a way to reinforce colonial hierarchies, Japanese displays defied expectations about the roles of the displayed and viewer.
(1) Simon J. Potter and Jonathan Saha. "Global History, Imperial History and Connected Histories of Empire". Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 16:1 (Spring 2015); Volker Barth and Roland Cvetkovski, eds. Imperial Co-operation and Transfer, 1870-1930: Empires and Encounters (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 2 September, 2017, -John Hennessey (Linnaeus University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates how American oyatoi-gaikokujin William Smith Clark and David Pearce Penhallow spread colonial knowledge to future colonial administrators at Sapporo Agricultural College in the 1870s and analyzes their conceptions of empire.
Paper long abstract:
Long featured in history textbooks, the story of William Smith Clark is familiar to most Japanese. Clark, the founding president of Massachusetts Agricultural College, was hired in 1876 by the Kaitakushi to establish a comparable institution in Hokkaidō. At Sapporo Agricultural College (SAC), Clark's charisma, educational zeal, and his conversion of many students to Christianity became legendary. Many early SAC students, including Uchimura Kanzō, Satō Shōsuke and Nitobe Inazō, went on to become influential leaders. Clark's legacy is most famously encapsulated in his supposed parting words, "Boys, be ambitious!" dramatically delivered from horseback before he rode off into the sunset.
Far less well-known is the significant role that SAC played in the formation of Japanese imperialism. Despite Clark's high profile and the plethora of biographical works about him, his tenure at SAC has never been analyzed from a postcolonial perspective. This is no doubt in part because Hokkaidō is seldom discussed in colonial terms despite the systematic dispossession of the Ainu using colonial technologies that its settlement involved. Hokkaidō became a model for Japan's later colonial ventures, with many of SAC's early students serving as leading colonial administrators. Most notably, Nitobe Inazō worked for the government general of Taiwan before becoming Tokyo Imperial University's first professor of colonial studies, a new academic discipline that had debuted at SAC.
This paper will investigate how Clark and one of his successors as president of SAC, David Pearce Penhallow, served as conduits for the transmission of colonial knowledge between Japan and the United States. Letters, newspaper articles and their published work reveals that both had a strong anthropological interest in the Ainu that was profoundly influenced by the colonial thought of the age. Both men not only spread such ideas and worldviews to their Japanese students but also defended Japanese expansionism after their return to the United States. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what terms Clark, Penhallow and Meiji leaders used to describe Hokkaidō - a "frontier", "colony" or other kind of territory - and what this can tell us about their mindset and intentions.
Danika Medak-Saltzman (University of Colorado Boulder)
Paper short abstract:
This paper argues ideas about Indigenous peoples bore a significant influence on early U.S./Japan relations. An Indigenous Studies perspective on this era is employed to consider how Ainu peoples were impacted, how spectral and indelible ideas about "Indians" influenced these early relationships.
Paper long abstract:
Using the life and career trajectory of U.S. citizen and oyatoi gaikokujin Horace Capron, I argue that the influence of ideas about Indigenous peoples bore a greater influence on early U.S./Japan relations that has been considered. Capron is best known in Japan, and in the literature about Japan's use of oyatoi gaikokujin, as an advisor to the Kaitakushi. However, a different image of why he might have been selected for this role emerges when his career trajectory is examined as more than a sum of it's parts. Considered this way, questions about the influence of U.S. American Indian Policy, and of ideas about "Indians" more generally, on Japan's Meiji era interactions with Ainu people begin to emerge. Capron's time as a Kaitakushi advisor, considered in concert with his earlier career (as an Indian Agent, a General in the U.S. Civil War, and as the head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) allows for his position as an oyatoi gaikokujin to become an obvious next step in a career spent acquiring key settler colonial skills rather than an anomaly. I argue that it is this career trajectory--that involved the managing of lands and people Indigenous to those lands, protecting those same lands from those who sought to take it away, and then developing those same lands to feed the settler nations--that influenced how Capron understood and carried out his role in Hokkaido. This paper presents an Indigenous Studies perspective on oyatoi-gaikokujin, that also considers how Ainu peoples were impacted during this time of flux, and how spectral and indelible ideas about "Indians" influenced Capron, in particular, and early U.S./Japanese relationships more generally. Using my theoretical frame, "specters of colonialism," I will show how the ghosts of colonial goals influence the choices scholars make when using archives, that function to elevate the importance of some details while dismissing the significance of others. In short, this paper examines how understudied elements the United States' colonial mentorship of Japan have the potential to reshape thinking about US foreign policy/use of colonial technologies abroad.
Kirsten Ziomek (Adelphi University)
Paper short abstract:
While the Japanese were influenced by western modes of empire building, human displays of Ainu deviate from typical western narratives. I argue that these displays raised questions about Japan's position as an imperial power, rather than reinforced its prestige as an imperial power.
Paper long abstract:
As Japan's nascent empire grew in the mid 19th century so did its involvement in conducting anthropological and ethnographic studies of its colonial subjects. Japanese anthropologists emulated human displays at international expositions in the west, where colonial subjects were displayed in reconstructed villages or dwellings. This paper will examine human displays where the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, along with other colonial subjects, were displayed in domestic expositions in Japan as well as at international expositions from 1903-1913. By looking at their varied motivations, experiences and recollections, the individuals involved in these displays are revealed to be multi-faceted. Not only do some of the individuals involved in these displays make us re-think the premise that their involvement in such displays was derogatory, the reactions to these displays reveal that contrary to expectations, some Japanese questioned the boundaries of who was a colonial subject.
Furthermore, displays of Ainu at international expositions were often placed side-by-side displays of Japanese. The Japanese had a history of being displayed at international expositions, and viewed such displays with suspicion. They treated similar displays of its own colonial subjects critically, illustrating that these displays defy characterization as mere representations of Japan's imperial power over its colonized people. I argue that ultimately human displays in Japan failed to gain popularity as a representation of empire, and instead offer an opportunity to see how opinions regarding colonial subjecthood were formed. Understandings of imperial boundaries and colonial subjecthood were not endowed unto the masses, but rather were debated and contested processes which involved not just Japanese voices, but colonial subjects' voices as well.