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Retrieving Prostitutes' Live Source Materials and an Approach for Writing the History of the Ah Ku and Karayuki-San of Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Jim Warren
Jim Warren
Affiliation:
Murdoch University
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Extract

A new found interest in social history, recent developments in historical thought and methodology and a fresh awareness of the importance of gender-specific experience have led historians to question an ‘ordinary woman's place’ in Singa- pore's past. In the historiography of Singapore, there is a need to foreground the critical importance of the ah ku and karayuki-san in the sex,politics and society of the city, stressing not only alterations in their life and circumstance, but also variations in the role of the colonial government, and changes in the ideology of sex and social policy.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 96 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1990

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References

Footnotes

1. See Zunz, Oliver, Reliving the Past. The Worlds of Social History (Chapel Hill 1985)Google Scholar; Warren, James Francis, Coolie, Rickshaw. A Peoples History of Singapore (1880–1940) (Singapore 1986) 218Google Scholar.

2. Ah Ku is a general term of address in Cantonese for woman or lady irrespective of age. Ah ku was the polite way to address a prostitute. Loi kui or "whore' was the opposite denigrating term in Cantonese. Karayuki-san was the word used traditionally by the Japanese of Amakusa and Shimabara, Kyushu Island, to describe rural women who emigrated to Southeast Asia and the Pacific in search of a livelihood. The ideographs comprising karayuki-san literally mean "going to China', as Kyushu, the place were most of the women were from, was the part of Japan closest to China. Karayuki-san in common parlance nowadays has become a popular term for describing women from the poorest sectors of society during the Meiji-period who lived abroad specifically as prostitutes. See Warren, James Francis, "Placing Women in Southeast Asian History: The Case of Oichi and the Study of Prostitution in Singapore Society' in: At the Edge of Southeast Asian History (Quezon City 1987) 148–164Google Scholar.

3. On locating the karayuki-san within a wider framework of analysis see Morisaki Kazue, Karayukisan1 (Tokyo 1976); Tomoko, Yamazaki, Sandakan Hachiban Shookan-Teihen Joseishi Joosho (Tokyo 1972)Google Scholar; Haka, Sandakan no (Tokyo 1977)Google Scholar; ‘Sandakan No. 8 Brothel, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (1975) 52–60; Hane, Mikiso, Peasants, Rebels and Outcastes The Underside of Modern Japan (New York 1982) 207–225Google Scholar.

4. Warren, James Francis, ‘Richshaw Coolie: An Exploration of the Underside of a Chinese City Outside China, Singapore, 1880–1940’, in At the Edge of Southeast Asian History, 73–81.Google Scholar

5. Prostitution is mentioned briefly in Ping, Lee Poh, Chinese Society in Nineteenth Century Singapore (Kuala Lumpur), andGoogle ScholarTurnbull, C.M., A History of Singapore 1819–1975 (Kuala Lumpur 1977)Google Scholar; while Ching-Hwang, Yen deals with it only as a social problem as part of a chapter in A Social History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya 1800–1911 (Singapore 1986)Google Scholar.

6. See Lerner, Gerda, "Placing Women in History; a 1975 Perspective’ in Liberating Women's History, ed. Berenice A. Carroll (Chicago 1976) 357–67;Google ScholarKelly-Gadol, Joan, ‘The Social Relations of the Sexes: Methodological Implications of Women's History’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol.2, No. 4 (1976) 809–824;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDavin, Anna, "Women and History’, The Body Politic: Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, ed. Wandor, Michelene (London 1969–1972) 217–23;Google Scholarsee also Warren, James Francis, Placing women in Southeast Asian History: The Case of Oichi and the study of Prostitution in Singapore Society’, 148–156Google Scholar.

7. Prostitution in Singapore was linked to economic factors in rural China and Japan. Congenital poverty, weak family economics, natural catastrophe, and rising econo-mic expectations were all part of a set of prevailing conditions that created a vast source of supply of Chinese and Japanese women en young girls for international traffic. Poverty was a handicap which struck hardest at the daughters of peasants and rural labourers. Extreme conditions of agrarian poverty, overcrowding and falling levels of productivity became almost impossible to bear. One of the only ways such rural conditions of wretchedness could be mitigated was to leave China and Japan to work abroad. Patriarchy in traditional Chinese and Japanese culture wasalso respon-sible for the exploitation of women financially, physically, sexually and emotionally. Prostitution in Singapore was directly linked to the economic, social and personal problems experienced in traditional family life due to a "male' ideology that asserted that there could be no such thing as equality for women. Female children were considered expendable by peasants living on the margin of despair, who could not afford another mouth to feed. Thus theChinese and Japanese patriarchal system con-stantly produced womenand young girls for prostitution abroad. On the question of the fundamental inequality of Chinese women and the trade in women as prostitutes in the late Ching and early Republican periods see Gronewald, Sue, Beautiful Merchan-dise: Prostitutes in China, 1860–1936 (New York 1982)Google Scholar; on Japanese women see Tomoko, Yama-zaki, "Sandakan No. 8 Brothel’, 52–60Google Scholar.

8. Tomoko, Yamazaki, "Sandakan No. 8 Brothel’, 52Google Scholar; if the situation arose that a Chinese or Japanese family had to partwith a child because of agrarian poverty or over-population, it wasnaturally to the girls that the parents first turned. Young girls and women were sold or pawned by their own fathers or sometimes their brothers to complete strangers who, in turn, after having paid the usual indemnity money to the parents or a brother, had the right to transfer the child again against the same kind of indemnity to a brothel keeper in Singapore. Traffic in women and children from China and Japan and licensed brothel prostitution in Singapore were inextricably linked. Trans-Oceanic traffickers, who had experience in dealing"illegally’ with local authorities, organised the clandestine passage and often accompanied the girls on the entire journey.Despite increasing efforts to curb traffic in women and children fromthe late 1880s onward, which only resulted in higher costs for importation, the system proved difficult, if not impossible to curtail, because it was lucrative and the demand was so great.

9. Vaughan, J.D., The manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits Settlements (Kuala Lumpur 1974).Google Scholar

10. Chu, Li Chung, “A Description of Singapore in 1887”, China Society Twenty Fifth Anni- versary Journal (1975) 20–29.Google Scholar

11. Siang, Song Ong, One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore in 1887” (London 1923; reprinted Kuala Lumpur 1967 and Singapore 1987).Google Scholar

12. See , Lee, Chinese Society in Nineteenth Century Singapore, 53, 57, 80, 86Google Scholar; Trocki, Carl, Prince of Pirates: The Temenggongs and the Development of Johore and Singapore 1784–1885 (Singapore 1979) 32, 211Google Scholar; , Tumbull, A History' of Singapore 1819–1975 86–90Google Scholar.

13. , Yen, A Social History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya 1800–1911, 248–283.Google Scholar

14. Iheiji Muraoka, Muraoka Iheiji Jiden (Tokyo 1960).Google Scholar

15. Mori, Katsumi, Jinshin Baibai (Tokyo 1959).Google Scholar

16. , Yamazaki, Sandakan No. 8 Brothel’, 59.Google Scholar

17. Yano Toru traces the development of interest in the karayuki-san in historical circles in Japan and compares Yamazaki's work with Morisaki Kazue's Karayuki-san. See Toru, Yano, Nippon-no Nanyo Shikan (Tokyo 1979) 131–133Google Scholar.

18. Ibid.

19. Quahe, Yvonne, We Remember Cameos of Pioneer Life (Singapore 1986) 1.Google Scholar

20. See Frick, R.L., Ch'ing Policy Toward the Coolie Trade (Taipei 1982)Google Scholar; Hwang, Yen Ching, Coolies and Mandarins: China's Protection of Overseas Chinese During the Late Ch'ing Period (1851–1911) (Singapore 1985)Google Scholar; , Warren, Rickshaw Coolie 14–19;Google ScholarEe, Joyce, “Chine-se Migration of Singapore, 1896–1941”, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2,(1961) 33–51;Google ScholarJackson, R.N., Immigrant Labour and the Development of Malaya, 1786–1920 (Kuala Lumpur 1961)Google Scholar; Chen, Ta, Emigrant Communities in South China. A Study of Overseas Migration and Its Influence on Standards of Living and Social Change (New York 1940)Google Scholar; Campbell, Psia C., Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countries Within the British Empire (London 1923)Google Scholar.

21. , Warren, “Placing women in Southeast Asian History: the Case of Oichi and the Study of Prostitution in Singapore Society” 156–164.Google Scholar

22. See Hirata, Lucie Cheng, “Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in Nine- teenth Century America”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 5, no. 1 (1979) 3–29;CrossRefGoogle Scholar the traffic between different ports, cities and regions in Asia gave the populations of Singapore's Chinese brothels a fluid character, as the houses were being repopulated on an annual bases. In 1882, when Singapore had a population of 60,065 Chinese men and 6,601 women, between the ages of 15 and 60, Pickering, the Chinese Protector, estimated that at least 2,000 were prostitutes, almost all Cantonese and some Teochiu. By 1897 there were over 3,000 identifiable prostitutes in Singapore, about three quarters of these women were China-bom, the rest were mainly Japanese. But there was still room for the Chinese Protectorate to underestimate. There was a great deal of sly prostitution in private brothels. In the early 1900s it was estimated that there could have been as many as 4,000 ah ku in the metropolitan area.

23. For the significance of the term Hua-Chïao in Southeast Asian Modern History see Gungwu, Wang, “Southeast Asian Hua-Chïiao in Chinese History Writing, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. XII, No. 1 (1981) 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. On sources and an approach see , Warren, Rickshaw Coolie 3–11;Google ScholarAt the Edge of Southeast Asian History XVI-XVIII.

25. See “Memorandum by the Secretary for Chinese Affairs (G.T.Hare) dated 12 June 1898” in “Correspondence regarding Prevalence of Veneral Diseases and Condition of Inmatesof Brothels in the Straits Settlements”, Straits Settlements Legislative Council Proceedings, 1899, Appendix No. 30.Google Scholar

26. On the significance of the investigative role of the Coroner for the historian of society see, Cobb, Richard, Death in Paris, 1795–1801(London 1978) 17, 32–35;Google Scholar, Warren, Rickshaw Coolie 5–8Google Scholar.

27. Alex Gentle, who first came to Singapore in 1864, was an ex-businessman, former President of the Municipal Commissioners and Coroner of Singapore during the first decade of the twentieth century. Frederick Bourne was the Coroner of Singapore at the height of the Depression in the mid 1930s.

28. , Warren, “Rickshaw Coolie: An Exploration of the Underside of a Chinese City Outside China, Singapore,1880–1940” 79–81.Google Scholar

29. The notebooks of the Magistrates Courts primarily cover the period from 1918–1939. These records were located by Ms Katherine Yeo Lian Bee, a postgraduate student at Monash University, in the Subordinate Court building, during the course of her researches on hawkers in Colonial Singapore. I am grateful for her kind assistance in reproducing and making available to me cases pertaining to prostitutes. See her forth-coming article in Asian Culture, “Crimes and Offenses: Court Note Books as a Source for Singapore Social History”.Google Scholar

30. On the strengths and weakness of oral history for writing social history see Thompson, Paul, The Voice of the Past Oral History (London 1978)Google Scholar; , Warren, Rickshaw Coolie 8–9;Google ScholarO'Farrell, Patrick, “Oral History: Facts and Fiction”, Quadrant (November 1979) 7–8;Google ScholarSamuel, Raphael, “Local History and Oral History”, History Workshop, I (Spring 1976), 192–208Google Scholar.

31. , Hane, Peasants, Rebels and Outcastes; the Underside of Modern Japan, XI.Google Scholar

32. , Yamazaki, “Sandakan No. 8 Brothel” 53–54.Google Scholar

33. The interviews were primarily carried out in September and October of 1987 at the Ning Yueng (M.B.A.) Home for the Aged located in the Hong Lim Shopping Centre-Apartment Complex and at the Lee Kuo Chuan Home for the Aged which is run by the Salvation Army and located on Upper Bukit Timah Road.Google Scholar

34. Kai, Fong Chiok, interview held with the assistance of Ms Tan Beng Luan in the Committee Room of the Kreta Ayer Community Center, Singapore, 1 October 1987.Google Scholar

35. Toer, Pramoedya Ananta, Child of All Nations (Harmondsworth 1987).Google Scholar

36. , Motoe-Terami-Wada, “The Karayuki-san of Manila: 1890–1920”, Philippine Studies, Vol. 34(1986)292.Google Scholar

37. On the importance of photography to the social historian see Becker, Howard, “Photography and Sociology”, Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication Vol. 6 (1974) 3–26;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFalconer, John, A Vision of the Past; A History of Early Photography in Singapore and Malaya; The Photographs of G.R.Lambert and Co., 1880–1910 (Singapore 1987)Google Scholar; Warren, Jim, “Social History and the Photograph: Glimpses of the Singapore Rickshaw Coolie in the Early 20th Century”, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 58, No. 1 (1985) 29–43Google Scholar.

38. See Singapore Retrospect through Postcards: 1900–1930 (Singapore 1982).Google Scholar

39. On the language of Kimono wearing seeDalby, Liza Crihfield, Geisha (Berkeley 1983) 282Google Scholar.

40. , Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore (1880–1940) 10–11,323–327;Google ScholarAt the Edge of Southeast Asian History XIV-XVIH.

41. See Ranum, Robert Forstner and Orest, Deviants and the Abandoned in French Society (Baltimore 1978) VIII-XII.Google Scholar

42. Shue, Vivienne, “The Long Bow Film Trilogy-a Review Article”, The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 46, No. 4 (1987) 848.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. On the Micro-Dynamic Approach see , Warren, Rickshaw Coolie; A People's History of Singapore (1880-1940) 7, 10, 323–324Google Scholar.

44. Pleck, Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H., A Heritage of Her Own; Towards a New Social History of American Women (New York 1979) 19.Google Scholar

45. Ibid. 20.

46. The data are often drawn from a wide variety of sources that complement one another. On method and examples of this research technique, see Stone, Lawrence, “Prosopography” in The Past and the Present (London 1981)Google Scholar; Lockhart, James, The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru(Austin 1972)Google Scholar; Escott, Paul D., Slavery Remembered. A Record of Twentieth Century Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill 1979).Google Scholar On the significance of prosopography as a technique for writing Southeast Asian social history, see Warren, James Francis: The Sulu Zone 1768–1898. The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State (Singapore 1981) 237–51;Google ScholarCoolie, Rickshaw7–8;Google Scholar At the Edge of Southeast Asian History XVII.

47. On the significance of career patterns in prostitution, see Best, Joel, “Careers in Brothel Prostitution: St Paul, 1865–1883”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1982) 597–619CrossRefGoogle Scholar.