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Prince of Wales Island: A British ‘tropical paradise’

As the Europeans expanded their imperial domains across the globe in order to secure lucrative commodities, they colonised lands that were vastly different to their home countries, with the climate being the most pressing difference as it affected how people lived, the gastronomy and the animals that inhabited there.1 In this context, the primary account written in 1804 by George Leith, the first Governor General of Prince of Wales Island, known as Penang Island in the present day will be used as a centrepiece to illustrate the biased and flawed attitude the Europeans had towards the tropics and how this source ties into the wider theme of tropicality.

Given that the account was published during the time the British were seeking to expand their hold overseas to dominate trade under the Napoleonic Wars, cutting French supplies and establishing a foothold in the Malacca Straits was a top British priority as stated in the source.2 In order to make the colony functional, the British had to build infrastructure and provide amenities for the both the coloniser population, new immigrants and the locals. In the source, Leith explicitly states that the island is abundant with water and soil, the harbour is well shielded by the Malay peninsula, overlooks the Straits of Malacca, has reasonable high altitude hill retreats to escape the dry season, and the biggest settlement, George Town has brick buildings, hospitals, roads and houses which implies a sign of modernity. By stating all those factors, it can be assumed that Leith is attempting to encourage settlement on the island as all those factors make it attractive for colonists looking to maximise their profits in an expanding empire. Secondly, he notes how the island has a reasonable climate as compared to India. This point strikes me because, in the secondary readings, it was often assumed that the Indian subcontinent was the epitome of ‘tropical romanticisation’ due to its abundant natural resources and relative similarities to how the British or other Europeans envisioned a ‘tropical society’ where there are abundant resources and good weather.1 By shining the island’s potential in a positive light, it allows the Europeans to see that its climate is favourable and suitable for economic investment. This is in stark contrast to my elective secondary source reading on French Indochina, in which the French saw their colony as a deathbed with a 2% death rate and that the average life expectancy of a Frenchman is only around the 40s as the colony was filled with diseases.3 As a result, the ‘tropical climate’ or European colonies with hot weather can vary from being romanticised as a paradise or described as a place filled with disease and ‘bad air’ like how the French saw Indochina. As a result, the tropics are often ‘imagined’ in the European mindset.

Leith explicitly classifies occupations and characteristics of certain races in a sub-section called Inhabitants. He describes the Chinese, Parsees and Chooliahs as the races doing most of the hard work and are well-behaved which makes them useful as coolies and labourers to successfully run a colony. Conversely, he describes the Malays as indolent, vindictive and treacherous because they are an uncivilised race and are useless for labour. This signifies that inhabitants in the tropics are often seen by the Europeans are more lazy which is based on ancient Greek ideas of how the hotter the climate, the lazier and less warlike an individual becomes as illustrated by Hippocrates.4 This signifies that ‘tropicality’ is not based on science but rather supported by pseudo-philosophy by ancient philosophers like Hippocrates which do are not grounded in scientific methods and create a racial division line that separates races according to their ‘usefulness’ and perceived ‘nature’.  Therefore, it is evident why ‘tropicality’ is a flawed and biased concept. In the case of the British Strait Settlements, the British like Leith perceived that the Malays are lazy and uncivilised, Chinese and Indian labour had to be bought in from other colonial possessions in order to maximise profits, thus altering the settlement pattern and demography of present-day Malaysia and Singapore.

To sum it up, the concept of ‘tropicality’ is biased in the sense that it was based on pseudo-science, assumptions and, imaginations hence making it flawed.

  1. Arnold, David John. The Tropics and the Travelling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856 Introduction + Ch 4 From the Orient to the Tropics [↩] [↩]
  2. Leith, George, Sir, A short account of the settlement, produce, and commerce, of Prince of Wales Island, in the Strait of Malacca  [↩]
  3. Jennings, Eric Thomas. Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina Ch 1 Escaping Death in the Tropics [↩]
  4. Hippocrates v. 1 ‘Airs Waters Places’ XII-XVI pp. 105-117 [↩]

A Utopian Facade?: Japanese statecraft in Manchukuo and the development of ‘Asian Revivalism’

In this short visual analysis, I will argue that the distinctive phases of architectural style visible in the architecture of Changchun and Xinjing illustrate the Japanese state’s search for an international modern style to characterise Manchukuo as a ‘utopian’ state. Space within the cities was used to portray the technical capability of the Imperial government whilst also appealing to Asian sentimentally.1 Young emphasises the speed and proficiency with which the Japanese puppet state introduced railway lines. Indeed, over 5,030km of new track was built between 1932 and 1938 and the resultant rapid formation of railway towns and cities.2 Similarly, running water, underground sewage systems, gas and electricity were efficiently introduced during the construction of Manchukuo’s cities.3

Whilst these elements of city planning were clearly defined necessities within Japanese conceptions of ‘utopia’, the style, organisation and decoration of state and public buildings was a more complex process of evolution, trial and error. The utopian vision following the Manchurian incident in 1931 sought to establish the state of Manchukuo as a source of mutual benefit and liberation for the Japanese colonisers and the Chinese colonised.4 Whilst Japanese commercial enterprise was prioritised, the Architecture of Changchun and Xinjing reflected Chinese revivalism and the emergence of Manchurian style in the search for the ideal ‘utopian’ structure and facade. The design and implementation of these structures are used to implement order. They demonstrate the manipulation of European styles as a means to connect with Western merchants and the inclusion of Chinese and Manchurian styles to encourage cultural mixing to align with the ideals of a modern, cohesive society.5

Figure 1: Manchukuo’s Hall of State6

Figure 2: Manchukuo’s Ministry of Public Security.7

Figure 3: Unity Plaza8

The construction of a ‘utopian’ vision for the puppet state of Manchukuo was realised through assimilating Chinese architecture with a modern Japanese style.9 The scale of the state buildings constructed in the Manchurian style used symmetry to reflect a desire for a utopian balance and harmony between the Chinese and Japanese inhabitants of the city.10 The conflation of Japanese and Chinese building practices alongside the sheer size of these state buildings functioned as Japanese propaganda by emphasising the capabilities, power and legal monopoly of Japan over Manchukuo. Significantly, this blend of European columns and stonework with Asian roofs instilled notions of Asian superiority over the European style to create Xinjang’s bureaucratic expressions of Manchukuo as a ‘utopia’.

Asian Revivalism was an architectural style that aimed to mask Xinjing’s initial period of architectural chaos, these buildings were often characterised by a Japanese-styled roof.11 This building style was referred to as the “Manchukuo bureaucratic building style”.12 The Hall of State, built between 1934 and 1936 was designed by Ishii Tatsure and contained a pagoda-style roof flanked by two similar roofs at the end of the central section of the buildings.13 Freestanding columnar entryways positioned beneath the capped roofs also separated also distinguished the Hall of State from previous styles14 Columns appear in fours throughout the wings and central structure of the building, enhancing the European-inspired element of verticality.6. Similarly, the Ministry of Public Security also sported capped sloping tiled roofs. Built between 1935 and 1945, it is of note for housing the Manchukuo military headquarters.15 These buildings began the initiation of a “rising Manchurian style” notable for its implementation of verticality and the adoption of Japanese-style roofs with exposed roof gable.7

These buildings surrounded the ‘Unity Plaza’ (depicted in figure 3), a 36-metre wide extension to the SMR settlement that conformed to the grid pattern of the SMR settlement and was designed to reinforce elements of national architectural heritage and was named to imply the unity of the various groups, Manchu, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese which formed Manchukuo.16 Unity Avenue, a 36-metre wide road extending from Unity Plaza, was a site of consistent ceremonial celebration where thousands gathered for mass meetings throughout the 1940s in support of Japan’s wars in Asia.17 The construction of these broad plazas and large authoritative Bureaucratic administration buildings reflect the significant role of urban planning and constriction to the state regulation of Manchukuo and the role of “Asian Revivalism” in attempting to create a modern harmonious city. As Buck asserts, Chinese residents of Xinjing continued to experience subordination throughout the puppet states’ influence over Manchukuo18 Indeed, these works of architecture reflect the tensions between the ideological harmony desired by the intelligentsia and their understanding as ‘utopia’ as the consideration and inclusion of ethnic groups that lived in Manchukuo and the harsh imperial reality of the motivations of the Japanese government.

  1. Bill Sewell, Constructing Empire: The Japanese in Changchun, (Toronto, 2009),  p.76 [↩]
  2. Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, Twentieth-Century Japan, (Berkeley, 1999), p.244. [↩]
  3. Young, Japan’s Total Empire, p.245. [↩]
  4. Ibid, p.242 [↩]
  5. Sewell, Constructing Empire, p.79 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.84 [↩] [↩]
  7. Ibid, p.85 [↩] [↩]
  8. David Buck, “Railway City and National Capital: Two faces of the Modern in Changchun” in Joseph Eshwick (ed), Remaking the Chinese city: Modernity and National Identity, 1900-1950 (Hawaii, 2000), p.83. [↩]
  9. Young, Japan’s Total Empire, p.241 [↩]
  10. Sewell, Constructing Empire, p.87 [↩]
  11. Ibid, p.81 [↩]
  12. Ibid, p.81 [↩]
  13. Ibid, p.82 [↩]
  14. Ibid, p.83 [↩]
  15. Ibid, p.85 [↩]
  16. Buck, “Railway City and National Capital”, p.84 [↩]
  17. Ibid, p.86 [↩]
  18. Ibid, p.88 [↩]

Manchukuo: A Japanese utopia

Manchukuo, a puppet state that existed from 1931-1945 is often misrepresented or misunderstood by mainstream media as being a state of repression and a showcase of Japanese imperialism to repress Chinese nationalism and Japanise it.1 However, in reality, Manchukuo is unique in the field of spatial history as it showcases Japanese ambitions to combine multiple cultural styles and modern techniques to turn it into a ‘utopia’, making it even more advanced than the Japanese home islands itself and what it managed to achieve during wartime makes it even more remarkable. This blog will analyse a primary source of a tourist pamphlet then tie it to the wider theme of the Japanese vision of a multicultural utopia and how it aims to achieve it.

Figure 1: Japanese tourist pamphlet showcasing attractions of Liaoyang, Harbin and Fengtian (present-day Shenyang) extracted from: http://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/wordpress014/%E6%88%A6%E4%BA%89%E3%83%BB%E8%B2%A0%E3%81%AE%E9%81%BA%E7%94%A3/%E6%98%A0%E5%83%8F%E8%B3%87%E6%96%99%E3%81%AE%E8%AA%AD%E3%81%BF%E6%96%B9/3785-2/

Description/rough translation: 

This source is a tourist pamphlet produced in the 1930s by the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway Company with added annotations from the blog’s author. From the far left the large captions it translates to a starter guide of travels to Manchuria and it showcases an ancient pagoda in Liaoyang, a city not far from Shenyang. In the middle, we can see the Cyrillic script of Harbin and the Japanese hiragana which translates to: Tourism in Harbin. The interesting thing to note is that usually, foreign locations excluding China and Korea are usually written in the Katakana script but Harbin, a city with a Chinese name is written out in Hiragana, which implies the multicultural nature of the city. On the right, the pamphlet shows the old city gate of Fengtian, the name of Shenyang at the time, which showcases the rich Chinese cultural heritage of the city.

Inferences/Analysis:

In relation to the source above, the Japanese prioritised the needs of the Japanese citizens and realised the necessity of making Manchukuo as Japanese as possible to ensure permanent settlement to create a settler colony to alleviate the Japanese overpopulation of the home islands.2 However, given Manchuria’s already-present diverse population, the need for labour and the threat of possible Chinese and Soviet attacks from Manchukuo’s borders, and the international isolation Japan faced after its invasion of Manchuria, it aims to cultivate an image of racial harmony through its use of space.3 In order to make Manchukuo ‘Japanese’, the Japanese embarked on ambitious plans to create walled villages populated with men acting as both farmers and part-time soldiers, incorporating modern techniques such as wide streets and rows of housing organised in a hexagonal structures. This proved to be overly-ambitious as the Japanese did not have enough Japanese immigrants that moved to Manchukuo and that not all parts of Manchukuo were fertile as some parts were mountainous and not suitable for Japanese settlement due to climate differences. The cities that were populated by Japanese were mainly the cities close to the South Manchurian Railway like Dalian and Fengtian.

In relation to the picture however, the Japanese are using the cultures of Manchuria to promote tourism to justify its own expansionism and that former sites of cultural importance to those ethnic groups are reduced to mere tourist sites for Japanese to see how ‘exotic’ life in Manchuria is.  By producing it for Japanese residents, the Japanese imperialists or the army aimed to draw support from the local Japanese populace to attract them to eventually settle into Manchukuo. In addition, the Japanese is also trying to use Manchukuo as a testing ground to test out their new city-planning techniques such as the incorporation of Chinese roofing techniques and Russian equipment like pechkas (Russian ovens) into Japanese-styled houses as Manchukuo is relatively undeveloped and much larger compared to the already-established colonies of Taiwan and Korea.4 Manchukuo attracted the attention of many famous Japanese architects and even world-renowned foreign architects like Le Corbusier that aimed to construct modern cities with public transport, hotel, amenities, religious spaces and green spaces while making sure residents have access to proper housing. This demonstrates how this often-overlooked aspect of empire building is multifaceted and that imperial urban constructions and utopia is an important pillar of empire building.

  1. Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, Twentieth Century Japan (Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1999), “Brave New Empire: Utopian Vision and the Intelligentsia” 241-268. [↩]
  2. Tucker, David, “City Planning without Cities: Order and Chaos in Utopian Manchukuo” [↩]
  3. Buck, David D., Railway City and National capital: Two faces of the modern capital in Changchun [↩]
  4. Sewell, Bill, Constructing Empire: Japanese in Changchun, 1905-45 [↩]

Unveiling Nanjing’s Architectural Dreams: A Journey into Y.Y Wong’s Vision

In the late 1920s, Nanjing was chosen as the capital city of the Republic of China as the Guomindang (GMD) embarked on its mission of ‘national reconstruction.’1 The individual at the forefront of this endeavour was Sun Yat-sen, a revered Chinese revolutionary leader, who dreamt that Nanjing would become a central hub of progress and modernity. A large group of individuals were instrumental in helping Sun Yat-sen dreams come true, but Y.Y Wong is a standout individual who requires significant attention. By delving into his fascinating body of work, we can unravel the captivating narrative of Nanjing’s urban development and, more profoundly, gain insight into Nationalists’ pursuits of modernity.

Figure 1. Architect Wong Yook-Yee plans for the New Nanjing Capital, 1929, Two Years of Nationalist China (1930)

Figure 1. Wong, Yook-Yee, Plans for the New Nanjing Capital, 1929, Two Years of Nationalist China (1930)

Figure 1., presents Y.Y Wong’s designs for the new Nanjing Capital in 1929, which is an interesting blend of Western architectural principles harmoniously intertwined with traditional Chinese aesthetics. At first glance, one is struck by an array of characteristics that might be expected when viewing places such as Washington D.C., London and Paris. Indeed, the sense of order and fluidity created by the architectural structures was an international standard, and one that Nanjing’s city planners hoped to replicate.2 Moreover, on closer inspection the image showcases structures that resemble Chinese characteristics, notably the upturned roofs in majority of the buildings. This fusion of modern western characteristics and classical Chinese motifs was a revolutionary in the realm of Chinese architecture.

A noteworthy feature of this image is the arrangement of the windows on the buildings. This detail is discussed by Charles Musgrove in his article ‘Building a Dream: Constructing a National Capital in Nanjing 1927-1937,’ as he highlights how the windows adhered to standardised patterns and were interspersed with rows of stone columns, which symbolised European and colonial neoclassical style.3 Indeed, as much of Musgrove’s article exclaims, Nanjings’ city planners were learning from Western sciences to help move into an era of modernity. The work of Y.Y Wong underscores the influence of spatial planning, not only in shaping physical landscapes but also in imbuing them with symbolism to help achieve governmental agenda.

Significantly, the time that this drawing was produced was during a pivotal juncture in China’s history with the establishment of the GMD. At the core of their mission was ‘national reconstruction,’ and Nanjing was at its epicenter. Indeed, throughout China’s dynastic history, rulers frequently employed spatial reorganisation as a means to reinforce their political authority, and the GMD were no exception.4 They ushered in a new cosmology, which established fresh conceptions of Chinese modernity and national identity.

It is crucial to note, that Y.Y Wong’s plans were not entirely replicated and Sun Yat-sen’s dreams were never lived, due to wider political and economic issues that came to fruition in the late 1930s and 1940s. From this one incontrovertible truth emerges: socio-political development is far more complex and nuanced process than often assumed, and therefore warrants close consideration.

Despite failure to fully implement the dreams of Y.Y Wong and Sun Yat-sen, Nanjing did undergo urban development through the creation of broad boulevards, the implementation of sewer systems, urban zoning, and the displacement of thousands of residents which profoundly altered its urban landscape.3 This did, in turn, create a new Chinese society, but one that had been influenced and shaped by western ideals of modernity; which leads one to a question of what China is. This iterates the need to understand what connects nation and urban place and, perhaps, what can be best deciphered from the case of Nanjing and Y.Y Wong’s drawing is that the creation of place is not static or an independent event but an active and multifaceted process.

  1. Carmen Tsui, ‘State Capacity in City Planning: The Reconstruction of Nanjing, 1927-1937,’ Cross-currents: East Asian History and Cultural Review, 1:1 (2012). [↩]
  2. Charles Musgrove, ‘Building a Dream: Constructing a National Capital in Nanjing 1927-1937’, in Joseph Esherick (ed)., Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900-1950 (2002), p. 142. [↩]
  3. Mungrove, ‘Building a Dream,’ p. 148. [↩] [↩]
  4. Marijn Nieuwenhuis, ‘Producing Space, Producing China: A Critical Intervention,’ Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (2012), p.5. [↩]

Japanese city-planning of Keijo (modern-day Seoul)

Korea is a milestone for a rapidly growing Japanese empire, as Japan took control of the peninsula after defeating Qing China and Imperial Russia, consolidating its status as a great power. In order to showcase their progress and power in relation to other imperial powers like Britain, France and Germany, the Japanese colonial government in Korea embarked on a plan to ‘modernise’ and ‘re-create’ Keijo, or modern-day Seoul. I argue that the Japanese had succeeded in laying out plans for a modern city not for the sake of the majority of its residents, but rather to benefit Japanese interests. I would focus on a primary source and support it with the reading: Assimilating Seoul by Todd Henry.

https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2018/05/maps-of-seoul-south-korea-under-japanese-occupation/

The primary source I have chosen is a map of Keijo published by the Japanese Tourist Bureau in 1913, three years after the Japanese took full control of Korea and produced in English for foreign tourists. As we can see from the map, the orange signifies the main thoroughfares of the city and red represents what the Japanese colonial government deems as important sites. The important sites are well connected by the roads and supported by a tramway system, which implies that the colonial government puts the interest of the coloniser above the colonised, as evident in urban planning. Subsequently, given that the source is produced for a Western tourist, it aims to showcase Japan’s modernity which is showcased in the map that the areas labelled in red are all structures built for Japanese interests like railway stations besides a few Korean palaces and mausoleums. Anything related to Korean culture or promoting Korean distinctiveness is blurred out in the purple background or branch streets as labelled on the map.

One thing that caught my interest was the labelling of green spaces on the map. The garden-city movement became a cornerstone for the development of colonial cities to produce green spaces for the colonising power to relax. {{ Peter Hall Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design since 1880 (2014 4th ed.), Ch 4 “The City in the Garden }} Within the city boundaries of Keijo, green spaces surround the neighbourhoods and all the government-associated buildings have an abundance of green space near them. This is to showcase the absence of chaos to imply power and dominance. {{ Henry, Todd A. Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (2014) }} This is a practice inherited from the British in their colonial city planning as showcased in Robert Home’s book Of Planting and Planning. [[ Home, Robert K. Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (1996) ]]. 

The findings of the map are backed up by Henry’s argument that although the city-planning of Keijo was intended to integrate the Koreans as loyal Japanese subjects through Japanification, numerous factors, including the lack of funding, war and the failure of Japanese economic policy ensured the gap between Koreans and Japanese settlers persisted and that little was done in improving the housing conditions of over 50% of Koreans living in poverty. [[ Henry, Todd A. Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (2014) ]]. Subsequently, the town planning committees were overwhelmingly dominated by Japanese settlers and the lack of organisation of the funding system implies that Keijo was hard to become a reality for the Japanese city planners in achieving their ultimate plan in promoting their own imperial urbanism. 

Asia’s Burial Grounds: The Last Bastions of Resistance Against the Will of the State?

The burial ground, throughout the world, has for centuries been considered a sacred place. At the physical level, they provide the setting for laying loved ones to rest peacefully and for paying respects and remembering those who came before us. Throughout history, they can be seen as symbolic sites of power, memory, and identity. Lily Kong and Brenda Yeoh’s The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore: Constructions of ‘Nation’, however, has been a landmark publication analysing their competing role against the will of the ‘modernising state’.1 Using this text as a foundation, this post aims to show that whilst one might expect such personal, spiritual and sacred spaces to contest modernisation and urbanisation, they have offered little resistance, especially in an Asian spatial context.

When studying the physical manifestations of Chinese burial practices and rituals, one is struck by the immensity of tradition, laws and its geomancy. The dead are considered to play an important role in family life, with Chinese custom believing them to have an important role in looking over their ‘earthly descendants’.2 In accordance with feng shui, the Chinese burial space is carefully considered, planned and maintained.3 In China particularly, perhaps more so than in other places, they are sites of familial kinship and loyalty, of home comfort and spirituality and of personal exchange between the living and dead. As Kong and Yeoh have noted the importance of burial site configuration in ensuring ‘benign influences’ are drawn from earth and transmitted to descendants of the dead.4 Any interference with such a custom, would bring risk to the wellbeing of the deceased’s family. With these facts in mind, such sacred sites are widely considered to be immune from external influences and government intervention.

Yet, despite this, such Chinese sites and their stakeholders offered little resistance when modernisation and urbanisation efforts by the Singaporean government commenced in the second half of the 20th century. Such sites, which occupied large areas of physical space, and which many considered to be focusses of disease, proved to be obstacles to expanding townscapes and cityscapes and land acquisition program. This was especially the case with specific regard to Singapore’s relative shortage of land to develop. Whilst some Chinese clans, the YFFK and SHHK sought a level of compensation for their burial grounds being disrupted or moved5, the Singaporean example shows these sacred spaces to have offered little challenge to the will of the state.

To move up the chain of abstraction, it is important to perhaps consider this phenomenon from an alternative, more critical perspective. Whilst Kong and Yeoh note that practices of cremation and the use of columbariums were promoted as a valid and useful alternative to traditional funerary sites, this lack of resistance may also have been a by-product of changing attitudes and perspectives amongst Chinese huangxi themselves. Whilst Kong and Yeoh cite several accounts that highlight the sentimentality in the very beauty, ‘finding’ and ‘activity’ of tending relative’s graves, there is evidence that communities throughout Asia felt less affinity to family and community and instead felt part of a larger, modern and cosmopolitan society. Su Lin Lewis’ Cities in Motion brings to light the rise of ‘globalisation in the public sphere’ and a growing sense of cosmopolitanism throughout Asia.6 Organisations such as the YMCA, YWCA and the Rotary helped foster feelings of community service and international consciousness across Asia. To provide a counter argument to Kong and Yeoh, perhaps communities felt less compelled to engage in the traditions of burial and with ancestral or clan connections and instead felt more kinship to the state.

If one critically unpacks the physical ritual of tending to the dead, such an activity often involves time, offerings and is a practice for entire families or communal groups. However, with modernisation comes displacement, geographical fragmentation and greater restrictions on time. Accompanying the building of new towns comes the relocation of communities and the foundation of new lives, ideas and identities. Affinity to home, albeit not lost, can become more ambiguous and obtruse. Whilst the ritual of visiting and supervising sacred spaces should not be underestimated in the spirituality and comfort it can bring to people, Kong and Yeoh’s analysis reveals the success the Singaporean example had in shaping the material landscape of columbariums to accommodate traditions and still offer meaning for loved one’s of the dead. Indeed, between in 1962, the Mount Vernon Crematorium was performing four cremations per week and by 1995 it was averaging 21 cremations per day.7  Niches could be selected and adjusted to suit the personal preferences of the family, providing an acceptable and more financially viable alternative.8

Whilst this blog has built upon and provided a critique of Kong and Yeoh’s article, further inquiry into the relationship between burial sites, national identity and the state would prove incredibly fruitful. In the contemporary world, disagreements still take place over burial and memorial sites. The removal of George Floyd’s memorial in Minneapolis in 2021 received much criticism with demonstrators protesting that it damaged the city’s collective memory of the incident.9 Such an example proves the power that such sites can have as symbols of resistance, community and identity. Burial grounds have the potential to be places of power, struggle and memory and will continue to provide a fascinating lens through which to study civil autonomy and the will of states.

  1. Lily Kong and Brenda S. A. Yeoh, The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore: Constructions of ‘Nation’, (Syracuse, 2003) [↩]
  2. Wilson, B. D., “Chinese Burial Customs in Hong Kong”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 1 (1960), p. 115 [↩]
  3. Michael Paton, Five Classics of Fengshui: Chinese Spiritual Geography in Historical and Environmental Perspective, (2013) [↩]
  4. Lily Kong and Brenda S. A. Yeoh, The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore: Constructions of ‘Nation’, (Syracuse, 2003), p. 53 [↩]
  5. Kong and Yeoh, The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore, p. 65 [↩]
  6. Su Lin Lewis, Cities in Motion, (Cambridge, 2016), p. 120 [↩]
  7. Kong and Yeoh, The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore, p. 61 [↩]
  8. Ibid, p. 72 [↩]
  9. Deena Winter, ‘Minneapolis Removes Memorials and Barricades From ‘George Floyd Square’, (2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/george-floyd-memorial-minneapolis.html [↩]

How convincing is the ‘From-race-to-class-segregation’ argument when discussing if income was the significant factor affecting the makeup of neighbourhoods in desegregated Indonesia 1930-1960?

When examining city planning in the Southeast Asian colonial context, a commonly held view is that ethnic or racial categories formed the main division of residential areas, reinforcing residential patterns that mirrored ethnicity divisions in society. Historian, T.G. McGee describes the colonial city as a “mosaic of ethnic quarters” with this trend of separation between different ethnicities persisting until the 1960s[1]. Although the Raffles Town Plan was based upon the spatial layout of Singapore, it is a great example of how spaces were reserved for a separate and specific race and function: i.e., the “European Town”, “Arab quarters” and “Kampong” areas within the colonial city[2]. Before independence in Indonesia, the same historical quarter system existed.

Ethnic divisions in colonial times were made more visible through the legal classification between indigenous, foreign Orientals and Europeans. The law code that was developed in the mid 19th century required strict categorisation of a citizen as: European, non-European (which included Chinese and indigenous) and Foreign Oriental, which developed as a category later in the period. However, as the categories of classification expanded, so did their flexibility; you could apply to move categories based on a number of factors including income and profession. For example: in 1899 Japanese residents successfully transferred from ‘foreign Orientals’ to the ‘European’ category. In essence, this development show us that although racial distinction was common within everyday colonial life, it was not stringent in the same way of the African colonies.

Dutch historian Freek Colombijn proposes the ‘From-race-to-class-segregation’ thesis which postulates that residential patterns were strongly influenced by changes in the social status system. After independence in Indonesia, and de-segregation of society, Colombijn argues the main factor determining residential patterns and their divisions was no longer ethnicity but income and economic status. His maintains that even before independence, ethnic groups lived in more mixed communities than given credit for. For example: in Subraya, indigenous people lived in neighbourhoods designated for Chinese and Arabs[3]. This was because traders chose to live in the same communities; it was their profession in common (i.e., Earthenware and brass workers) that brought them to live in the same neighbourhood. Therefore, he promotes the idea that racial segregation as the basis for residential patterns is over-emphasised within the historiography because of the evidence supporting the claim that professional specialisation had an influencing factor on a person’s motivation to live in a specific neighbourhood.

In this way, it can be said that living in a neighbourhood based on class and economic status, was a general continuation of the pattern of living in areas based on professional specialisation. People that worked in the same jobs, would generally earn the same wage and therefore form a class amongst themselves. After conducting several interviews with those living in independent Indonesia, the author found a recurrent theme to be that housing was found through social networks, especially through work colleagues, strengthening the argument that it was social class that dictated residential patterns in the later twentieth century.

A key problem with the theory is that the issues of race and social class are strongly related to one another. Within the colonial system, native Indonesians failed to receive the same level of education and would often need to begin working earlier in their lives to support their families. With no access to high paying jobs, and limited accessibility into white collar work, the colonial system effectively froze the social mobility of the country. Therefore, the ‘from-race-to-class’ thesis becomes less convincing because even after independence was granted, natives born, and non-European citizens were not trained to take up jobs that were higher paying.

To answer the question first set out, I agree with the author that the ‘from-race-to-class’ thesis is a convincing argument, to an extent. I think that it has been proven to a reasonable degree that there were normalised exceptions to the racial classifications in society, such as indigenous people living in Arab and Chinese quarters. Although the categories existed and intermixing casually was not the norm, the racial segregation was not as embedded in society as African colonies which makes it more realistic to think that people would choose to reside in neighbourhoods based on other factors such as profession and income. I believe that there are faults with the argument too; firstly, that it invites a pro-Dutch perspective within the context of Indonesian colonialism, which is problematic. Secondly, that it infers after Indonesia gained independence that social mobility would be fluid and that the obstacles put in place by the colonial government would be gone just because the government was. Although there was a white-collar workforce of Indonesians, these were men born into their privileged positions and challenges remained for indigenous people to become qualified and educated to apply for bureaucratic jobs. Nevertheless, this thesis’s greatest strength is the focus on the changing status and economic power of the emergent middle class. These were the families who began working in fortuitous industries (i.e., traders and workmen) which encouraged them to move to neighbourhoods with people which they worked.

[1] McGee, T.G, The Southeast Asian City; A social geography of primate cities of Southeast Asia. London, Bell.

[2] Plan of the Town of Singapore, Lieut Jackson, Survey Department Singapore, Survey Department Singapore (London, 1828).

[3]Colombijn, Under Construction: Race, Class and Segregation, p.85

Beyond Objectification: The Role of Women in the Wartime Economies of Japan and Vietnam

While stationed in Yokosuka during the American occupation of Japan, the cartoonist Bill Hume began drawing cartoons featuring a character named “Babysan,” a highly sexualized caricature of Japanese women.  Babysan: A Private Look at the Japanese Occupation was published in 1953 and in 1965, Tony Zidek published a similar collection of cartoons called Choi Oi! The Lighter Side of Vietnam, while serving in the Vietnam war.  Published as “morale-building” material for deployed soldiers as well as nostalgic accounts for those who had returned to the US, the books depict the interactions of American soldiers with Japanese and Vietnamese women.  Looking beyond their overt objectification of women, they provide insight into the roles these women played in the economic systems which developed under the American presence.

The women depicted in Babysan belong to “the greyer category of what were sometimes referred to as onrii (from ‘only’ or ‘only one’), or women who engaged in serial, ostensibly monogamous relationships with ‘only one’ uniformed lover at a time, and who received various forms of material compensation in return.”1 Although Japanese women are portrayed primarily as objects of American consumption, the cartoons suggest that women held considerable power over financial transactions.  One cartoon features Babysan remarking, “No dependent?” as she looks over her boyfriend’s tax form.2 Hume describes how the boyfriend is not only expected to support Babysan financially, but in some cases her family as well.  Women are depicted as being dependent upon the support of American soldiers, but also as financially intelligent and using their “resources” (American soldiers) as effectively as possible.  Hume states that, “Japanese women are traditionally the holders of the purse strings, so Babysan knows of many more practical ways of using his okane.”3 Not only do women control the “purse strings” of American soldiers, but Hume suggests that many women had multiple American partners and therefore multiple sources of income.

To ensure their financial security, women relied on networks of information to learn the whereabouts of their partners.  In Babysan, Hume describes how “She and her girl friends, with apparently the help of everyone else in town, have a highly efficient communication system that the Americans call the grapevine,” a system which “gives them a forecast of their economic future.”4 Although Babysan makes no direct references to black markets or prostitution, they were highly successful around American bases and likely relied on similar systems of communication.  Around 70,000 women were employed legally as prostitutes and thousands more worked on a private basis.5 Each of these ventures relied on the capital provided by Americans, combined with an internal network of information.

Like Japan, Vietnam saw the rise of black market operations following an influx of American soldiers.  “American goods dominated storefronts and street vendors’ stands in Saigon, Hue and Da Nang, putting a tight pinch on local manufacturing which could not compete. American soldiers and civilians, and the United States government, had money to spend… Vietnam realised with equal cleverness that there was money to be made.”6 As black markets flourished in Vietnam, so did currency fraud which was facilitated by informal street vending stalls or “Howard Johnsons.”  One cartoon from Choi Oi remarks, “Saigon’s ‘Howard Johnsons’ do have a flair for providing ‘extra’ services also.  Numbered among them is the illegal exchange of money.”7 Another cartoon depicts a Howard Johnson advertising the daily exchange rate of piastres to dollars and an exchange between the woman running the stall and an American soldier.8

Vietnamese, particularly women, often played the role of go-between in these schemes. For example, a soldier might get wind of an upcoming MPC conversion date… A soldier would take X piastres to the US exchange at a particular installation and purchase US dollars. He (or his Vietnamese house servant or girlfriend) would then take the dollars to the black market and purchase X + Y piastres, Y being the difference between the rate at the American exchange and the black market rate of exchange.9

Women were both “go-betweens” for Americans as well as the ones exchanging money and operating stalls.  Their role extended beyond that of wife or girlfriend, and even beyond the Vietnam War itself.  After socialist forces took and renamed Saigon, “In Ho Chi Minh city women from the middle and upper classes were involved more in socio economic activity, they were also more active in business and financial transactions, and in the black market.”10 Even after the American presence in Vietnam disappeared, women continued to play important roles in the economic systems that had taken hold as a result of the war.

While the women in Babysan and Choi Oi appear as sexualized objects of humor and entertainment, the cartoons suggest that their real role in post-war and wartime economies was varied and complex.  The American presence in Japan and Vietnam was a major contributing factor to the economic hardship faced by Japanese and Vietnamese women, but while American soldiers were present, women used soldiers both as a source of income and as a way to make the most of the financial situation caused by their presence.

  1. Kim Brandt, “Learning from Babysan,” review of Babysan, by Bill Hume, Japan Society, 3 https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/learning-from-babysan#sthash.pt5iJI39.dpbs. [↩]
  2. Bill Hume, Babysan: A Private Look at the Japanese Occupation (Tokyo: Kasuga Bocki K.K., 1953), 56-57. [↩]
  3. Hume, Babysan, 92. [↩]
  4. Ibid., 98. [↩]
  5. Brandt, “Learning from Babysan,” 2, 9. [↩]
  6. William Allison, “War for Sale: The Black Market, Currency Manipulation and Corruption in the American War in Vietnam,” in War & Society 21 no. 2, (2003): 135. [↩]
  7. Tony Zidek, Choi Oi! The Lighter Side of Vietnam (Rutland & Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1965), 34. [↩]
  8. Zidek, Choi Oi!, 35. [↩]
  9. Allison, “War for Sale,” 146. [↩]
  10. Tran Phi Phuong, “Work and family roles of women in Ho Chi Minh City,” in International Education Journal 8 no. 2, (2007): 290. [↩]

Examining the 1933 Shanghai Power Company Strike – A Prospectus

In the autumn of 1933, some two thousand workers at the Shanghai Power Company went on strike over the dismissal of a number of employees over the previous four years. With such a large strike at a company vital for the daily life of Shanghai’s citizens, the prevailing opinion was that the company would give in to the strikers demands instead of risking power outages across the city. However, after about three months of striking, the workers returned to the company, defeated and in need of wages, which the company loaned out to them upon their arrival. Using newspaper articles, correspondence between trade unions, as well as reports from the Shanghai Municipal Police, this essay examines the reasons for the failure of the strike, as well as how the factors influencing the strike’s failure offer insight into the legal and social realities present in Shanghai in 1933.

There has been a growing list of works on Labour movements within early twentieth century Shanghai. While S.A. Smith’s work “Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895-1927” focuses on the time period before this strike, the conclusions drawn by Smith are still present in 1933. While a national identity is recognised by Chinese workers, struggles for recognition are still present during industrial action, as seen by certain opinion pieces covering the SPC strike. Furthermore, a lack of unity within these disputes still hampers the effectiveness of strikes, as Chinese public opinion was split over their necessity, and other unions offered little more than respectful financial support for the strikers.

This essay found that the factor offered by most media observers as having caused the failure of the strike was the fact that the Shanghai Power Company was foreign owned, having its headquarters in America and not China. This allowed the company to listen less to the opinions of Shanghai’s Chinese citizens, who were broadly in favour of the strikers at the commencement of industrial action. In particular, “the obstinate attitude on the part of the Company” was seen as a key reason why a settlement was not quickly reached – something which would likely be different had the Company been based within Shanghai itself.

However, it should be noted that the weak national government, as well as the legal complexities within Shanghai undoubtedly made the task of the strikers much more difficult. Both the strikers and the Shanghai Power Company used legally questionable methods over the course, the former by intimidating workers wishing to return to the Company, the latter by employing thousands of strike breakers and sequestering Chinese workers within the power plant so they could avoid interacting with the strikers. Here the narratives created around the strike by newspapers played a vital role in harming the objectives of the strikers. The intimidation of workers by those on strike was emphasised, and used as proof that the Water and Electricity Union was being run by violent radical individuals, who were holding the rest of the workers hostage during the strike. As the union itself struggled to combat these characterisations, public sentiment quickly turned against the strikers, leaving them without the motivation or financial support necessary to continue their action.

Overall, this essay argues that the three broad reasons for the failure of the strikes – the international nature of the SPC, the lack of government adjudication of the strike, and media characterisations of the strikers, show how Shanghai’s political and social situation in 1933 limited the progress trade unions, particularly Chinese-based unions, could achieve. Such a confused legal space, with strong divisions surrounding ethnicity, allowed strike breakers to be employed within days of industrial action commencing, crippling the impact of such strikes. Furthermore, the fears present in Shanghai surrounding Communism made it easy for strikers to be presented as subverting the state, a characterisation which diminished their popularity. In Shanghai, a city socially and ethnically distrustful, as well as one so legally complicated, creating a labour movement that could remain united against foreign-owned companies was a difficult task, and one which the 4th District Water and Electricity Workers’ Union were unable to achieve in the latter half of 1933.

Natures Resistance: The Spatiality Aspects of Trees Within Urban Areas

‘It probably would be safe to bet that more people take pictures of cherry blossoms than any other subject in Japan – but of all the millions of pictures captured, only a small percentage capture the subtle beauty on film. ‘1

The space which Cherry blossoms occupy is difficult to categorize because of its temporality.  Therefore, springtime in Japan has become a favourite time for tourists to visit the country and flock around cherry blossom trees in full bloom.  As a consequence of the cherry blossoms’ appeal to both tourists and the Japanese, many of the spaces which these trees occupy have become public spaces such as parks and pedestrian routes. Despite modernity taking over and urbanizing Japan, sacred parts of nature have ensured that modernity has had to be built around them, rather than over them. This is similar to the alun-alun in Malang, which is a large space occupied by the banyan tree. The alun-alun holds similarities because the sacredness of the banyan and the beauty of the cherry blossom ensuring that these spaces cannot be remodelled into a product of modernity. Not only that, but the act of cutting down these types of trees was and still is associated with superstition and uneasiness. Therefore, tourism and superstitions have aided in the progress of creating these green spaces into a social setting in which tourists or locals could benefit from.

However, much like the alun-alun in Malang, there is difficulty in defining what the spaces in which trees such as the Banyan and cherry blossom occupy are. The people who gather in these spaces are not there to primarily consume or socialize, but as a result of planting such trees, products of consumption and space for socializing are created. Therefore, defining such spaces becomes complicated due to the conflictive uses of the space. Without the cherry blossoms, these spaces become pathways, parks, and green spaces, but the temporality of the trees allows these spaces to transform into a place to consume, observe, socialize, and entertain.

Although the alun-alun is different in its purpose, the banyan tree aids in how spaces can be defined differently depending on how it is used. ‘The banyan tree, which was once considered sacred in the context of Javanese culture, was deprived of its aura as the crowd of modern-day tram passengers used it casually as a tram shelter.’ 2 Therefore, what the banyan tree provides is a safe place for indigenous Javanese to step out of the exclusiveness that westernization has brought to society and seek sanctuary under the banyan trees in the alun-alun. Sacred attachments to nature allow spaces such as the alun-alun and those which cherry blossom trees occupy, to strengthen the cultural value which modernity has threatened.

‘However, if the indigenous people could not take part in the colonial social activities inside the buildings surrounding the alun-alun, they could at least defy the Western life-style.’3 Furthermore, this ability to escape into a space that functioned outside of westernization and modernity was aided by the banyan trees which allowed not only shelter but a connection to culture and history that was being overshadowed by a changing society. Although this is perhaps an environmental factor, the trees construct how a specific space can be used for social and leisure means.

‘In Hindostan, where it reaches the greatest perfection, a famous tree stood on the banks of the Nerbudda. It was said that formerly 7,000 men could find shelter beneath its shade.’4 

The result of this has meant that urbanisation has had to be shaped in a way that accommodates trees such as the cherry blossom and Banyan because they are rooted into local culture and history. In cases such as the banyan, superstition has protected them because of the act of cutting it down being to risky. Therefore, enabling a unique space to be formed around them. However, in terms of the Cherry blossom, there are multiple factors which have enabled their survival, which are centred on culture and tourism.

  1. Pacific Stars and Stripes, Cherry Blossoms expected to lure millions to Parks (Tokyo, 1961) p.7. [↩]
  2. Purnawan Basundoro, The Two alun-alun of Malang (Brill, 2015) p.282 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p.281 [↩]
  4. Scientific American, The Banyan Tree (1890) p.215 [↩]