Memory maps: the state and Manchuria in postwar Japan

Abstract

Between 1932 and 1945, more than 320,000 Japanese emigrated to Manchuria in north-east China with dream of becoming land-owning farmers. Following Soviet invasion of Manchuria and Japan's surrender in August 1945, their dream turned into a nightmare. Since late 1980s, popular Japanese conceptions have overlooked disastrous impact of colonization and resurrected utopian justification for creating Manchukuo, as puppet was known. This re-remembering, Mariko Tamanoi argues, constitutes a source of friction between China and Japan today.Memory Maps tells compelling story of both promise of a utopia and tragic aftermath of its failure. An anthropologist, Tamanoi approaches her investigation of Manchuria's colonization and collapse as a complex history of present, which in postcolonial studies refers to examination of popular of past colonial relations of power. To mitigate this complexity, she has created four memory maps that draw on recollections of former Japanese settlers, their children who were left in China and later repatriated, and Chinese who lived under Japanese rule in Manchuria.The first map presents oral histories of farmers who emigrated from Nagano, Japan, to Manchuria between 1932 and 1945 and returned home after war. Hikiagemono (autobiographies) make up second map; third examines oral and written memories of children of Japanese settlers who were left behind at war's end but returned to Japan after relations between China and Japan were normalized in 1972. The memories of Chinese who lived age of empire in Manchuria make up fourth map. In final chapter, Tamanoi considers theoretical questions of the state and relationship between place, voice, and nostalgia.