Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan's Colonial Peoples

by Kirsten L. Ziomek

Overview

A grandson’s photo album. Old postcards. English porcelain. A granite headstone. These are just a few of the material objects that help reconstruct the histories of colonial people who lived during Japan’s empire. These objects, along with oral histories and visual imagery, reveal aspects of lives that reliance on the colonial archive alone cannot. They help answer the primary question of Lost Histories: Is it possible to write the history of Japan’s colonial subjects? Kirsten Ziomek contends that it is possible, and in the process she brings us closer to understanding the complexities of their lives.

Lost Histories provides a geographically and temporally holistic view of the Japanese empire from the early 1900s to the 1970s. The experiences of the four least-examined groups of Japanese colonial subjects—the Ainu, Taiwan’s indigenous people, Micronesians, and Okinawans—are the centerpiece of the book. By reconstructing individual life histories and following these people as they crossed colonial borders to the metropolis and beyond, Ziomek conveys the dynamic nature of an empire in motion and explains how individuals navigated the vagaries of imperial life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674237285
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/08/2019
Series:	Harvard East Asian Monographs , #418
Pages:	426
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kirsten L. Ziomek is Assistant Professor of History at Adelphi University.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Figures ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Note to the Reader xvii

List of Abbreviations xviii

Introduction 1

Part I Boundaries of Late Meiji Colonial Subjecthood

1 Colonial Reality and Subaltern Subjectivity 26

2 Meeting the Man on the Other Side 66

3 The Paupers' Grave at Margravine Cemetery 112

4 Welcome to the Empire 151

Part II Journeys Between the Metropole and the Colonies

5 The Taming of the Barbarian and Other Savage Love Stories 196

6 Two Coconuts and a Bonito Stick 254

Part III Performing and Living Racial-Alities

7 Dividing Space, Creating Barriers 308

8 A Mountain of Bones 354

Conclusion 379

Bibliography 383

Index 401

Editorial Reviews

Lost Histories has several strengths to recommend it and should be required reading for scholars and students in modern Asian history and colonial studies…the method of shifting away from official records (colonial archives) and instead looking to nonofficial records that are textual, oral, visual, and material has opened up new and unfiltered documentation of personal experiences of colonization.

Alice Y. Tsengn Historical Review

As a work of original research that is both empirically grounded and conceptually bold, Lost Histories is highly recommended to scholars and students of imperial culture, colonial governance, and East Asian history.

Journal of World History - Paul D. Barclay

Well written and fascinating, the book demonstrates that these lives tell us as much about colonialism as about the impact of colonial subjects on the conduct of Japanese colonial practices.

Choice

If, as the Naïve Idealist says, ‘a person’s name has the power to open a connection into their world,’ Kirsten L. Ziomek’s Lost Histories demonstrates that power. Her dogged pursuit of the names and life stories of people who lived within Japan’s formal empire is truly impressive. In several cases Ziomek circumvents the limitations of the ‘colonial archive’ to provide us with portrayals of people whose lives were certainly affected by the ‘oppressive nature of Japan’s colonial policies’ but were nevertheless full and fascinating.

Journal of Japanese Studies

Conceptually ambitious and expertly crafted…Lost Histories is especially commendable for its re-creation of the life stories of individual colonial subjects…The quality of scholarship…is superb…Useful to anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of East Asian international relations today.

Monumenta Nipponica - Erik Esselstrom

Ziomek’s remarkable book Lost Histories occupies a unique place within this wave of scholarship [on Japanese imperialism] and represents a valuable contribution to it. What she has done…through her dogged research, is to force us to bring greater precision and empathy to our arguments about ethnicity and agency in colonial rule, in view of the lived experience of colonial subjects. In that sense, the book is truly a gift, one that I hope will feature prominently in future scholarship and teaching on the topic.

H-Diplo Reviews

A meticulously researched, vividly illustrated collection of micro-histories that bring to life the diverse peoples inhabiting the Japanese Empire…Ziomek contests narratives that see Japanese essentialization of ethnic difference as an attempt to strengthen their own position of power. Japan’s fixation on ethnic difference reveals not its success in securing a position of power atop the colonial racial hierarchy but instead the ‘precariousness’ of Japanese rule in the colonies.

Journal of Asian Studies

Lost Histories has several strengths to recommend it and should be required reading for scholars and students in modern Asian history and colonial studies…the method of shifting away from official records (colonial archives) and instead looking to nonofficial records that are textual, oral, visual, and material has opened up new and unfiltered documentation of personal experiences of colonization.

American Historical Review - Alice Y. Tseng