Recent scholarship on the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo or Manzhouguo (1932–1945) increasingly views this "country" as a transnational space. Japanese colonialism in Manchuria was not only a struggle between Japanese and Chinese; at its height, Manchukuo had a population of 46 million people of over twenty different ethnic groups in a land more than half the size of Mexico. Thus in this panel we will investigate more closely the multiple and shifting relations of conflict, resistance, and accommodation among various ethnic/national groups, including not only Japanese and Chinese but also Koreans, Russians, and Mongols. We will explore the politics of Manchukuoan citizenship, and the ways that different non-Japanese groups resisted against and appropriated, at different historical moments, Manchukuoan ideologies of "ethnic harmony," and colonial rhetoric of belonging through Manchukuoan citizenship. In turn, we will consider how multiethnic Manchukuoan transnationalism has shaped historic Chinese, Korean, and Japanese diasporic movements, as well as identity politics, nationalism, and the politics of memory in China, Korea, and Japan in the present day.

Reflecting the heterogeneity of Manchukuoan space that we hope to emphasize, the panel is interdisciplinary and transnational in its membership. Specific topics panelists will address include the fluidity of racial classifications in Manchukuo as a reflection of the colonizer’s anxieties, invention of tradition in early-period Manchukuo, transnational Manchukuoan citizenship and rhetorics of borderlessness, memories of Western minorities in Manchukuo, and identity politics among Russian immigrants in the puppet state. By comparing and contrasting historical and contemporary transnational discourses in East Asia, we hope to further open up discussions regarding relations between transnationalism and colonialism, diaspora, indigeneity, gender politics, multiculturalism, deterritorialization and denationalization in Asia and beyond.

Thomas Lahusen, Duke University

The paper is devoted to the memoirs of former "Western" inhabitants of Manchukuo, such as Jews, Russians, Poles, etc. The narratives of these memoirs and the circumstances in which they were and still are written are testimonies of a peculiar experience of colonialism, in which most of the "colonizers" were refugees, expatriates, and for whom there was often no "national space" to return to. Instead, their identity was shaped by an inner motion of communal integration that was to last a lifetime. Judging from these memoirs, and in particular from the materials published in the bulletin of the Association of Former Residents of China in Tel Aviv since 1950 (Igud Yotzei Sin), many of them feel part of the same "Chinese family" until the present day. My argument is that the Jewish residents of North-East China, and other such minorities which were not counted among the "five races" of Manchukuo’s alleged racial "harmony," had no other choice than to contribute to a "differential space" (in Henri Lefebvre’s understanding) against the "abstract space" of nationalism and racism. I will also argue that their narratives challenge present-day hegemonic attempts from within and outside (North-East) China to rewrite history for the sake of a new type of "harmony"—that of the nation and transnational capital.

Mariko Tamanoi, University of California, Los Angeles

Although the agents of colonization possess immense power, they do not necessarily share a uniform conception of morality and progress. Focusing on the ambivalence and confusion on the part of colonial agents, we are better able to look into the colonialism as the product of a historically layered colonial encounter, not entirely dictated by the states. My paper explores the colonizer’s anxieties, who were involved in the practices of racial classifications in northeast China while it was under Japanese imperial rule. Here, the diverse agents of colonization were the "Japanese," who were themselves caught in their own acts of racial classifications as they reflected on the hegemonic racial ideologies of their period. In the present study, I will undertake this task in three different but overlapping domains. First is the domain of what Paul Carter calls "imperial history": the objects of my analysis are the official classifications presented in the public documents. In such documents, idioms of dominance coexist with those of ambivalence and confusion. It is the latter where I will explore the purposes, directions, and meanings of their practices of racial classifications. In the second domain, my focus is on the personal diary of Morisaki Minato, a "Japanese" student of the Manchurian Nation Building University as he related himself with the students of other races. His diary offers me compelling representations of specific racial relationships unfolding in specific localities. The third domain is the oral and written narratives of former "Japanese" peasant settlers who emigrated to Manchuria in the 1930s and 40s and yet returned to Japan after 1945. This domain is therefore different from the first two in terms of both time and place.

In my discussion, I will suggest that, in order to restore agent to those involved in racial classifications, it is imperative to integrate several domains of analyses that crisscross different classes, generations, occupations, genders, time periods, and spaces. I will also suggest that pursuing an ever more "scientific" classification leads us nowhere but to reproduce the same narratives of racism of the past. Rather, I will suggest that, while it is imperative to further examine the colonizer’s power, we should also explore the varied imaginations of the Japanese, here finally without quotation marks.

Taro Iwata, University of Oregon

This paper will examine identity politics in the puppet state of Manchukuo from 1932 to 1945. Although Manchukuo boasted of its national goal of ethnic harmony or concordia, a number of existing studies by Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Western scholars agree that Japanese imperialism in this multiethnic "nation’ was marked by severe forms of oppression, discrimination, violence, atrocities, and abuses of power based on essentialistic notions of the "superiority" of the Japanese and the "inferiority" of all other groups. But were essentialistic notions of ethnic differences the only form of colonial identity politics used by the Japanese in the puppet state? Historical evidence suggests that many Japanese planners used what I call "precursorial postmodern" arguments, holding that national boundaries of China were imagined and constructed, and thus subject to change. This in turn denationalized and deterritorialized Manchuria on the rhetorical level, and gave Japanese colonizers a "legitimate" transnational insider belonging there. Moreover, Japan asserted that it removed coloniality from Manchuria by abolishing most of its own extraterritorial privileges, which Manchukuo had inherited from China. However, by "losing" their colonial privileges, the Japanese in Manchukuo legally became "equal" to the indigenous inhabitants of Manchuria, and this further obscured the boundaries between indigenous insiders and invading outsiders. Using historical evidence from the 1930s and 1940s, I will argue that the precursorial forms of postmodern ideas such as borderlessness, shifting identities, in conjunction with modern notions of fixed identities and colonial "grand narrative," worked to help the Japanese to effectively colonize Manchuria.

Suk-Jung Han, Dong-a University, Korea

Manchukuo is increasingly seen as transnational space. The puppet state declared "unity" and "racial harmony" as its official ideology. The government was keen on preserving and promoting ethnic particularity. For instance, Lama monks were sometimes sent to Japan and a center was built for Russian residents. On official occasions, the Manchukuo and Japanese flags were observed. Some posters were put in three languages—Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Also, there were religious ceremonies for Guandi and Yuefei, ancient Chinese martial heroes. In a sense, multi-ethnic variety prospered in the early period.

With its cosmopolitan character, however, there coexisted a strong sovereign outlook in Manchukuo which emphasized the building of a new nation and citizenship, while designating state enemies. The so-called "State Foundation Spirit" (Jianguo jingshen) was the most frequently uttered theme in this period. When the element of ethnic particularity collided with sovereign state making, the former became a loser.

I will explore the cohabitation and tension of sovereignty and transnationalism, or the strategy of the former against the latter which tried to exercise restraint toward the former. In so doing, I want to approach the state, which is still an intriguing puzzle to students of social change, as an effect. I will suggest that the state is both a real object and a mythical one. That is, modern states try to show their existence through various means. Among them is what I call "monologue of the state," or invention of tradition, regardless of outside recognition. Once declared a "sovereign country," the state form of Manchukuo mandated its managers to make relevant efforts for its appearance.

Sabine Breuillard, University of Paris

Russian emigration to Manchuria began after the collapse of White armies in Siberia and the Far East between 1920 and 1922. When Manchukuo was formally established, there were about 110,000 Russians in the territory, and among them about 70,000 Russian emigrés. What distinguished Russian emigration to Manchuria from other Russian emigrations in Europe was that it came to Harbin, an already existing Russian cultural center, built by Russians at the beginning of the century in the core of Manchuria. That is to say in Chinese territory.

Ideologically there was little unity among the Russian emigres, with some attempting to gain the support of the Japanese, while others rejected it and emigrated again. Meanwhile, Manchukuo’s authorities, pursuing their official politics of harmony between the races, attempted to integrate the Russians as full members of their multiracial state. But it was no easy matter to integrate the anomalous Russian population into a "theory of the five races," all of which were Asian.