There have been many discussions about the nature of Japan’s colonialism. These can be categorized into two approaches: one particularist and one universalist. Particularists argue that Japan’s colonial rule over Korea or Taiwan was different from that of the Western powers, and it was intended to give the local people as many rights as possible, equal to those of people living on the mainland. In contrast, universalists argue that Japan’s modernization was essentially a “catch-up with the West,” with many of its institutions and policies imitating those of the Western powers. The same is true in the analysis of other colonial orders. Most of the examples of “uniqueness” claimed by the particularists can be found in similar examples of the Western powers.
Looking back on these arguments, it is important to note that Japanese colonialism was an extension of Japan’s own attempts to modernize and form a nation–state. In other words, the question of whether Japanese colonialism was unique or not is a question of whether the process of modernization and nation-building in Japan was unique or not (Kimura Reference Kimura, Yamauchi and Hosoya2023).
Waiting for the Cool Moon is an ambitious and penetrating study of Japanese colonialism and its impact on people in the process of modernization and nation-building. It is an ambitious and impressive work. In particular, it emphasizes the imposition of “categories” on people by the state in these processes. For example, in conscription, labor mobilization, education, and political participation, people in modern societies are classified according to various criteria and assigned specific rights, duties, roles, and even places. In other words, “citizens” or “nationals” in modern society are not a single people. It is a collection of people classified according to a complex set of subcategories.
Within these given categories, some people are given full rights and responsibilities as “citizens” or “nationals” – in the author’s words, as full “human beings” – and other people, conversely, are given lesser rights and responsibilities. The result of this categorization of human beings can be an important source of discrimination, and the people categorized as less “human” try to struggle to overcome it. As one of these modern nations, Japan is, of course, no exception.
Thus, from this standpoint of the universality of a society in the midst of modernization and nation-building, rather than its particularity, the author describes the social situation in prewar Japan in four sections.
The first is an introduction to the “Basic Surveys of Farmers” conducted in prewar Japan. The author argues that this classification assigned different economic roles and statuses to different people.
The second is the conflict between “ippanmin” and “burakumin” over the right to use the commons, where the author shows that the spread of private land ownership and restrictions on the right to use it made the difference between “ippanmin” and “burakumin” visible. The author concludes that the struggle of the burakumin was not simply because they were denied the right to use the land but because they were treated as a less human category of people.
The third is the economic and social impact of the influx of agricultural laborers from the Korean Peninsula. Special emphasis is placed on the process by which the influx of cheap labor from the colonies led to the transformation of rural women into housewives, showing the connection between the colonizers and the problems surrounding women.
Finally, there is the issue of the Okinawan people, which is related to the author’s own background. It is shown that the entry of Okinawans into Japan’s Pacific colonies as laborers was accompanied by a degree of discrimination and that there was resistance by the Okinawan people to this discrimination.
In describing and analyzing Japan’s colonial rule in the broad sense of the word in the prewar period, the author’s main source of information is the “Farm Household Economy Surveys,” which were conducted repeatedly during this period. The author makes two significant findings in these Surveys. One is data showing the living conditions of the peasantry at the time, and the other, and more important, is material for considering the impact of the “categorization” of people.
The author’s analysis is bold and convincing. At the same time, however, this does not mean that the book has no limitations. In particular, two things should not be overlooked when considering it as an empirical study of Japanese colonialism and history. One is that the agricultural Surveys of that period were conducted on a very small number of farmers and did not use random sampling to select the subjects of the Surveys. This means that the data presented in these Surveys is only a small sample, and even if the “categories” used in the Surveys had some effect on the farmers Surveyed, the effect itself would have been extremely limited.
A typical problem with the author’s approach of trying to uncover problems in prewar Japanese society from such limited data can be seen in her analysis of the impact of agricultural laborers from the Korean Peninsula on Japanese rural households. For example, Ken’ichi Yasuoka, a leading scholar in this field, estimates that the total number of “agricultural laborers” in Japan in 1930 was 193,448, of whom 8598 (4.4%) were Koreans (Yasuoka Reference Yasuoka2010). On the other hand, Japan’s agricultural population in 1930 was 13.74 million. It is difficult to imagine that the presence of fewer than 10,000 Korean farm workers would have had a significant impact on the division of labor in Japanese agriculture.
The problem with a book like this, of course, is that while it relies heavily on a wealth of microdata to describe a particular social phenomenon, it fails to place that phenomenon within a larger framework, namely the extent to which it affected the order of prewar Japan. This is not a study that uses quantitative methods, and it is therefore necessary to make some caveats and clarifications.
The limitations are not only in materials but also in the author’s method of analysis. The author does not reveal her reasons for selecting the cases she presents, although she uses the research records of the Farm Household Economy Surveys at Kyoto University and other institutions to depict colonialism and people’s resistance in Japanese society at the time. If the author intends to use such micro-cases to clarify the issue of Japanese colonialism or colonialism in general, it would be unfair, to say the least, to present only those cases that fit her framework as a portrait of Japanese society and colonialism at that time. Another problem with this book is that its significance is not necessarily so clear. If the purpose of this book is to use the case of Japanese colonialism to raise questions about colonialism in general, then the book should clarify what new insights can be gained from the Japanese case.
On the other hand, if this book is an attempt to use the recent discourse on universal colonialism to conduct new research on prewar Japanese society and its colonialism, then it is necessary to clarify how this book relates to the numerous previous studies on Japanese colonialism or discrimination. The same goes for the theoretical framework. There are numerous studies on the importance of the state’s imposition of “categories” from above on the process of modernization and nation–state formation and its impact on the structure of discrimination in society. Of particular importance in Japan is the impact of the introduction of the family register system on the Japanese family structure, about which much has been written.
The author has focused on the registers of the Farm Household Economy Surveys, which have been used only as materials for agricultural economic analysis, and through the analysis of these registers, the author has analyzed colonialism in prewar Japan and the categorizing function that the Surveys itself had for the people. However, the author did not provide evidence to show how serious the effects of categorization were in prewar Japanese society. In this sense, the author’s analysis is still limited to the introduction of some typical cases and ideological hypotheses.
In order to overcome these weaknesses, it is necessary to re-examine previous studies on Japanese colonialism and state categorization from above. Once again, the well-known case of the family register system is a typical example of the significant impact of state categorization from above, and I wonder why the author ignores it. Other examples of the effects of the top-down categorization of Japanese colonialism can be found in the education system. One such example could be the gender-segregated education system, while another example that deserves attention is the implementation of “ethnically segregated education” in Korea and Taiwan. For example, the Korean education system under Japanese colonial rule was long segregated between “regular users of the national language” and “non-users of the national language,” and it was not until the Third Korean Education Ordinance of 1938 that they were integrated. The family registration system was different in mainland Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The existence of these colony-specific family registers, which clearly separated Japanese and Koreans before and after the war, had the effect of destabilizing the social position of Zainichi Koreans in Japan as well as the social status of children of Japanese and Korean parents. It is well known that the imposition of these categories from above in the process of modernization and nation-building transforms society and sometimes creates discrimination.
This book is a well-documented and impressive work that uses prewar Japan as an example of this phenomenon. However, it could have been written more carefully as an academic book. I regret that this great work lacks the finishing touch.
