1 - Treaty Ports and Traffickers

Summary

Chapter 1 focuses on the trafficking of children from Japan to China.  It shows how, following the opening of treaty ports in Japan, local markets in children were brought into contact with Chinese-centered regional markets, and how Japanese authorities endeavored to prevent this type of integration or subsumption by increasing their capacity for territorial control at the physical borders of Japan, in the Japanese state's diplomatic interactions with the Qing state, and in the legal regulation of family relationships and transactions in people. Their efforts were never completely successful.  Moreover, stories of Japanese children being trafficked to China constituted a powerful element in popular memory and imagination, fueling rumors about Chinese organ-snatchers and blood-takers (themselves rooted in a much older folklore derived in no small part from Chinese sources) as well as anxieties about Japan's place in the region.  By the 1930s, these stories were invoked to justify Japanese military actions in pursuit of a greater East Asian empire.