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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
By any measure, Japan's modern empire was formidable. The only major non-Western colonial power in the twentieth century, Japan at the height of its empire controlled a vast area of Asia and numerous archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean. Its reach extended from Sakhalin Island north of the Japanese archipelago to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific and expanded into Manchuria, areas of China, Korea, and much of Southeast Asia and Micronesia. Over the more than seven decades of Japanese colonial rule (1869-1945), Japan successfully naturalized two colonies (Ainu Moshir/Hokkaido and the Ryukyu Kingdom/Okinawa) into its national territory. The massive extraction of resources and extensive cultural assimilation policies radically impacted the lives of millions of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The political, economic, and cultural ramifications of this era are still felt today.
1 [Translator's Note] Komori's essay first appeared in the book Media, hyosho, ideorogii: Meiji sanjyunendai no bunka kenkyu (Media, Representation, Ideology: A Study of the Culture of the Third Decade of Meiji), eds. Komori Yoichi, Kono Kensuke, and Takahashi Osamu (Tokyo: Ozawa shoten, 1997), 319-34. I would like to thank Kim Tongfi, Inoue Makiko, Masayuki Shinohara, and Leslie Winston for their invaluable help with this translation. A special thank you to Komori Yoichi for allowing us to include this essay in our volume.
2 [Translator's Note] In previous centuries Japanese were under the mistaken notion that Hokkaido was geographically close to Manchuria and Santan, an area in China. It is true that historically Ainu conducted what Japanese called “Santan trade” with various groups on Sakhalin for Chinese goods, such as silk and colored beads.
3 Kaitakushi nisshi 4 (Journal of the Development Agency 4) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1987).
4 Hanasaki Kohei, “Ainumoshiri no kaifuku: Nihon no senjyuminzoku Ainu to Nihon kokka no taiainu seisaku” (The Restoration of Ainu Moshir: Japan's Indigenous Ainu and the Japanese State's Policies toward the Ainu), in Iwanami koza gendai shakaigaku 15: sabetsu to kyosei no shakaigaku (Contemporary Sociology Vol. 15: Sociology of Discrimination and Coexistence), ed. Inoue Shun et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), 93-108.
5 Takakura Shinichiro, Ainu seisaku shi (The History of Ainu Policy) (Tokyo: Nippon hyoronsha, 1942), 401.
6 Kaitakushi nisshi 2 (Journal of the Development Agency 2) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1987).
7 [Translator's Note] Smith was a professor of chemistry and president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College from 1867 to 1879. He is most famous in Japan for his parting words, which were, according to legend, “Boys, be ambitious!”
8 Utari mondai konwakai (Ainu Issues Discussion Group), 1988.
9 Murai Osamu, “Kindai Nihon ni okeru nation no soshutsu” (The Construction of the Nation in Modern Japan), in Iwanami koza, gendaishakaigaku 24: minzoku, kokka, esunishitei (Contemporary Sociology Vol. 24: Race, the Nation-State, and Ethnicity), ed. Inoue Shun et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), 117-38.
10 Takakura, Ainu seisaku shi, 571.
11 [Translator's Note] This debate emerged out of a larger discussion of the “racial” origins of the Japanese. Tsuboi argued for the existence of a non-Ainu Neolithic people, based on his discovery of an Ainu legend that spoke of a “dwarf-like people” (kor-pok-un-kur in Ainu, koropokkuru in Japanese) who had preceded Ainu settlement, while Koganei suggested that the Jomon people, known through archaeological evidence, were in fact Ainu. See Richard Siddle's discussion in Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan (London: Routledge, 1996), 81-84.
12 “Ainu no hanashi” (Stories of the Ainu), Kokumin shinbun (Kokumin Newspaper), Mar. 27, 1894 (emphasis added). [Translator's note: The interpolations “bear” and “salmon” appear in the newspaper article.
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