Translating the Occupation
Translating the Occupation
The Japanese Invasion of China, 1931–45
From 1931 to 1945, as Japanese imperialism developed and spread throughout China, three regions experienced life under occupation: the puppet state of Manchukuo, East China, and North China. Each did so in a distinct manner, but making sense of experiences and decisions made during this crucial period has been an elusive goal for historians.
Despite the enduring importance of the occupation to world history and historical memory in East Asia, Translating the Occupation is the first English-language volume to provide such a diverse selection of important primary sources from this period for both scholars and students. Contributors from six different countries have translated sources from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean on a wide range of subjects, focusing on writers who have long been considered problematic or outright traitorous. Each text is accompanied by a short essay to contextualize the translation and explain its significance.
This volume offers a practical, accessible sourcebook from which to challenge standard narratives. The texts have been carefully selected to deepen our understanding of the myriad tensions, transformations, and continuities in Chinese wartime society. Translating the Occupation reasserts the centrality of the occupation to twentieth-century Chinese history and opens the door further to much-needed analysis.
This book will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers of East Asian history and the history of the Second World War, and will find use in undergraduate and graduate courses.
This timely collection of translated primary sources and contextualizing essays complicates, refines, and enriches our understanding of imperial Japan’s invasion and occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s.
Jonathan Henshaw is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. He is now authoring a biography of Kiang Kang-hu. Craig A. Smith is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. His articles have appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Twentieth-Century China, and Modern Asian Studies. He is currently working on a book about twentieth-century China-centred regionalism. Norman Smith is a professor of history at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Resisting Manchukuo: Chinese Women Writers and Japanese Occupation and Intoxicating Manchuria: Alcohol, Opium, and Culture in China’s Northeast.
Contributors: Xue Bingjie, Timothy Cheek, Timothy Cronin, Annika A. Culver, Son Yoo Di, Matthew Galway, Timothy Iles, Lee Jonghyun, Naoko Kato, Jennifer Junwa Lau, David Luesink, Brian G. Martin, Janice Matsumura, Ota Norio, Xie Miya Qiong, Christopher Rea, Morgan Rocks, Hua Rui, Bill Sewell, Ronald Suleski, Torsten Weber, Guo Weiting, Yun Xia, Wang Yu, Zhang Yuanfang.
Introduction: Discarding Binaries and Embracing Heteroglossia / Jonathan Henshaw, Craig A. Smith, and Norman Smith
Part 1: Manchukuo
1 Tales of Opening Manchuria / Ronald Suleski
2 Sakuta Shōichi, "The Light of Asia" / Bill Sewell and Norio Ota
3 Writings of Manchukuo’s Prime Minister Zheng Xiaoxu / Hua Rui
4 Education Policies and Theories in Manchukuo / Wang Yu
5 The Second Sino-Japanese War, Propaganda, and Medical Publications: Kaneko Junji’s “The China Incident from the Perspective of Psychiatry" / Janice Matsumura
6 An Inspection Report on Ideological Movements in Literature and Arts Activities / Xie Miya Qiong
7 Collection of Literary Selections by Each Ethnicity in Manchukuo-1, "Statements by Selectors" / Annika A. Culver
8 Open Letters from Women Writers of Manchukuo: Mei Niang and Wu Ying, Jia Ren to Yang Xu / Norman Smith
9 The Lives of Korean Women in Manchukuo / Jonghyun Lee
Part 2: East China
10 Xu Zhuodai, "Remarkable Soy Sauce!" / Christopher Rea
11 The Diary of Zhang Gang: An Excerpt / Weiting Guo
12 Two Indestructible Pillars of the Great Wall / Jennifer Junwa Lau
13 Uchiyama Bookstore: Sino-Japanese Cultural Exchanges in the Midst of War / Naoko Kato
14 Finding China’s "Asia" in Japanese Asianism / Torsten Weber
15 Collaboration and Propaganda: Yang Honglie and His Eight Speeches on Great Asianism / Craig A. Smith
16 The New Citizen’s Movement and Wang Jingwei-ism / Craig A. Smith
17 The Diaries of Zhou Fohai: Selected Translations from 1938 / Brian G. Martin
18 Kiang Kang-hu: "Starvation is a Serious Matter" / Jonathan Henshaw
19 Guan Lu, "How to Be a New Woman": Shanghai, March 1942 / Norman Smith
20 Yuan Shu: "The Current Stage of the Chinese Revolution and the Problem of Constitutional Government" / Matthew Galway
Part 3: North China and Beyond
21 Tang Erhe’s Educational Collaboration with Japan in North China, 1937–40 / David Luesink
22 The Transformation of Zhou Zuoren’s Thought and the Rhetorical Strategies Found in His Writing: "The Problem of Chinese Thought" / Xue Bingjie
23 Zhou Zuoren’s Letter to Zhou Enlai / Timothy Cronin
24 Lin Yutang: Non-Aligned Intellectual on the Japanese Occupation / Son Yoo Di
25 Struggles between Local Powers and Collaboration: Yan Xishan, the CCP, and the Western Shanxi Incident / Timothy Cheek
26 Tapping Into the Premodern Work-Contracting System / Zhang Yuanfang
27 An Anarchist Popular Resistance: The Awakening and China’s Resistance War at Home and Abroad / Morgan Rocks
28 Resolutions on Preventing Hanjian Activities and Espionage / Yun Xia
29 Kishida Kunio and the Problems of Culture / Timothy Iles
Contributors; Index
Chinese Comfort Women
Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves
By Peipei Qiu, with Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei
