Japan\u2019s\nentry into the modern, globalised era arguably came in the 1850s with Commodore\nMatthew Perry\u2019s expedition to Japan in 1853 and the forced opening of Japanese\nports to Western trade and commerce. The bluntness of Western imperialism, as\nepitomised by Perry\u2019s expedition, encouraged Meiji Japan\u2019s own imperial\nexpansion in East Asia, driven further by state aims of modernization and the growing\nneed to protect its fragile national security. Migration became a crucial facet\nin the growth of this Japanese empire in two interconnected ways; firstly, in\nplaces that Japan occupied such as Taiwan (1894), Kwantung Province (1905) and\nKorea (1910), settler colonialism helped to establish a lasting Japanese\npresence and secondly, Japanese emigration and settlement across the Pacific to\nsites on America\u2019s Western frontier like Hawaii and California from the\nmid-1880s was increasingly utilised by Japan as a model to aid in modernization\nand empire-building back home. This project\u2019s focus lies in the latter \u2013\nexploring this link between emigration to America and Japan\u2019s imperialism in\nEast Asia, focusing on the context of wartime policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nhistoriography<\/strong> in this field has so\nfar sparsely addressed the transnational linkages between Japanese American\nimmigrants and the empire back home largely due to the gulf between Japanese\nAmerican history and modern Japanese history. This gulf has largely been\nsustained by Asian Americanists since the 1960s who have emphasised their\nracial history against Eurocentric narratives within histories of America\u2019s\nnational formation. This issue points not only to the politics of ethnic\nstudies but also the conventional nationalisation<\/strong>of fundamentally transnational\nexperiences. Yet some pioneering work has been able to escape these limiting\ntrends. Notably, Eiichiro Azuma\u2019s work \u2018Between\ntwo empires\u2019 <\/em>has greatly contributed to a nuanced understanding of the\nIssei (first-generation Japanese to immigrate to America), their simultaneous negotiation\nof American and Japanese identities and issues of racial subordination. Pedro\nIacobelli\u2019s (et al.) volume Transnational\nJapan as History <\/em>has also highlighted Japan\u2019s interconnectedness to regions\nbeyond the Asia-Pacific from a variety of different scales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However,\nscholars bridging fields of Japanese-American history are yet to assess the\nrole of war<\/strong> in the Issei\u2019s (and\ntheir descendant\n\u2018Nisei\u2019) engagement with the\nJapanese nation-state and empire and reciprocal use of Issei experiences by the\nJapanese state, which is surprising given the frequent passing comments to\nIssei patriotism during wartime across existing research. This project seeks to\naddress this gap, whilst re-balancing the focus towards the ideas, motives and\nactions of the immigrants themselves, not only how the Japanese state managed\nthem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With\nthis in mind, this project currently forwards a three-pronged hypothesis<\/strong>; firstly, that Japanese immigrants in\nAmerica from 1894-1945 did provide a fitting example for Japanese imperial strategy\nin East Asia. Secondly, and more importantly, that Japanese Americans themselves<\/em><\/strong>\nforwarded nationalist and colonial narratives – interacting with their homeland\nin the context of their marginalisation within American society. Thirdly, that\nthis sentiment grew stronger in the contexts of Japan\u2019s wars in this period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To\nconstruct this argument, Japanese immigrant experiences in America will be contextualised\nin the cases of the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), the First World War\n(1914-1918) and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). These cases are\nchosen pragmatically for the scale of impact these wars had on Japan, and to a\nlesser extent, America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From\na methodological standpoint<\/strong>, because\nthe central focus of research is on how far Japanese immigrants across the\nPacific were affected by, and subsequently contributed to (directly and\nindirectly), Japan\u2019s East Asian wars, the analytical perspective will begin and\nend with them. In doing so it will also have to evaluate the driving motives of\nimmigrant actions \u2013 was it marginalisation by American society or an existing\ndeeply-held allegiance to Japan that drove Issei (and Nisei) patriotism? To\nanswer this question requires the roughly fifty-year\ntimeframe<\/strong> adopted by this project. With all this in mind, this research will\nuse a micro-historical approach, particularly when making the empirical and\nanalytical connections to Japanese state policy in wartime. Similarly, it will\nfollow the transnational turn within migration studies to view migrant lives in\nthe context of an ever-evolving reciprocal relationship between homeland and\nreceiving country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Forming\nthis composite argument, which accounts for the perspectives of actors within\nAmerica and Japan and covers scales from the ordinary Japanese American\nimmigrant to the Japanese military official, will require primary source material\nto be diverse. In particular, this project will look at the writings of\nimmigrant intellectuals (termed by Azuma as \u2018Issei Pioneers\u2019), the numerous\npolitical pamphlets published by the Japanese Association of America and\nJapanese Chamber of Commerce and translated statements of Japanese officials \u2013\namongst other sources from digital archives charting the Japanese American\nimmigrant experience, such as the Densho digital archives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reference\nList <\/p>\n\n\n\n Azuma,\nEiichiro, Between two empires race, history, and transnationalism in Japanese\nAmerica<\/em> (Oxford, 2005).<\/p>\n\n\n\n