Jiyu Banzai! A Japanese Timeline

[Roland Traveler]

“An American in Kagoshima’s Ryukyutown”

- Sam Hawthorne

Note: This article was written in April 1930 for the American magazine Foreign Life. As such, it contains language that is appropriate for the time. Random House has elected to avoid changing the text to provide a better window into the past.​

To many, Japan is a nation of unequaled stature. Not only did it take the best ideals of our Founding Fathers, they built upon them and improved them, arguably being better Americans than we ourselves are. Yet at the same time, they think of Japan as a land of exoticism, a source of a fad in the 1870s that still has its claws sunk in society today (I am certain many readers grew up with the “Tea Ceremony”). But what is not thought about is that Japan, like the United States, is a land of more than just one race.
To the South of the Home Islands lies the Kingdom of Ryukyu, an autonomous part of the Japanese state. A people with their own history, doubtless the first time many Americans heard of them was four years ago when China and Russia raised fuss and feathers about their annexation. Even fewer have heard of the Ryukyuan diaspora, which has spread far and wide, including to our own hemisphere. According to the 1920 census, some 3,000 people of Ryukyuan descent live in California, and there exist sizable communities in Hawai’i, Brazil, and Peru. Short in stature like their northern cousins, these people have greatly enriched Japan with their inclusion in its nation.
One of the largest Ryukyuan communities in Japan exists in the city of Kagoshima. Kagoshima, while not one of the most well-known towns in Japan, is a place well-worth visiting. Its naval dockyards are an impressive sight to see, while its automobile factory is the only one of its kind in Japan. The food is delicious, the climate mild, and the surrounding region is home to numerous farms where one can purchase fresh produce from bronze-skinned farmers in the summer and autumn seasons.
In the city’s eastern outskirts lies the neighborhood of Nantoo-shi, the thriving center of Ryukyuan living in Kagoshima. Here one can find statues of Shisaa, half-dog half-lion creatures from Ryukyuan folklore, on virtually every building. Those already familiar with Japan may recognize the Komainoo that dot the country’s shrines and temples, which would be an astute observation! While both draw inspiration from Chinese culture, Shisaa serve to protect homes while the Komainoo are typically relegated to religious places. These animals are the first signs of the simultaneous closeness and separation between the Ryukyuans and the Japanese.
Once you get past the guardians of Nantoo-shi, you can find yourself in a region dominated by the smell of food. This is Monnitori, the center of life in Nantoo-shi. Here you can find vendors hawking wares, yatai carts selling food, and busy locals going to and fro to the local trolley stations. The food is delectable, with the vendors showing off a wide variety of dishes from their homeland. My favorite was the Ryukyu soba, a noodle dish in which the Ryukyuans mix wheat noodles with a soup and meat from the Ryukyu Islands. When drunk with Amui rice wine, the meal is downright heavenly.
Alongside the food is the fascinating culture of Nantoo-shi. The Ryukyuans still practice their ancestral superstitions, and while they may be similar to the Shintoo rites, they are very clearly different. Chief among these, which you will find out if you walk into any one of their shrines, is that the priests in charge of their rites are women. Called Nuru, they hold strong religious authority over the Ryukyans, helping to participate in the consecration of new homes and apartments to protect them from evil spirits.
During my visit, I was able to meet a Nuru who spoke perfect English, a rarity even among normal Japanese. She explained to me that, while the old kings had tried to suppress the long-standing tradition of female priests, Ryukyuans still held firm to their old ways. Even in the modern era, when such superstitions that these women represent seem to be falling ever more to the wayside, the Ryukyuans continue to cling to the beliefs of their forefathers. When we finished speaking, she offered to send me to a yuta to ensure that I did not bring back any negative spirits with me to America. I thanked her, but politely declined the offer. (For those who wish to learn more about the religion of the Ryukyuans, I suggest reading Robert Palston’s excellent “Religions of the Orient”, which has an entire chapter dedicated to their beliefs.)
But the most peculiar thing about Nantoo-shi isn’t the exotic foods or religions, but rather the remarkable dearth of Yamato Japanese. Some can be found, often those who work in the area or have married into a Ryukyuan family, but by and large they are absent. Instead the population of Nantoo-shi seems to consist solely of Ryukyuans and the odd tourist such as myself. I asked my local guide about this curiosity, but all he could tell me was that this was what it was like in most places with a Ryukyuan neighborhood. To the wider Japanese population, Ryukyuans are seen as little more than country bumpkins, akin to how us Americans see our negroe and chicano countrymen. While outwardly polite to their countrymen, most Japanese go out of their way to avoid interacting with Ryukyuans.
Despite this feeling of disdain by much of the Japanese population, the Ryukyuans I spoke to still felt grateful to be Japanese subjects. “While the Yamato are sowa*, the government has brought us many opportunities,” my tour guide told me. “I remember the stories of my mother’s childhood, how they often had to struggle to just put food on the table as farmers. Now, she still lives in the same house she feared losing, she never has to worry about feeding my father and herself, and her eldest son gets to live in Honshu! It will take more than a little rudeness to make me forget that.”


*Ryukyuan slang for an uptight person. Comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia for fidgeting and the Ryukyuan stereotype of Yamato Japanese as being extremely stiff and quick to fidget as they struggle to maintain niceties when something doesn’t go their way.

 

[AeroTheZealousOne]

It lives! Welcome back, by the way.

 

[Knightmare]

Ah, good to be back.

 

[TimTurner]

Nice chapter.

 

[theonering3434]

Welcome back!

 

[Roland Traveler]

The Revival of Hunminjeongeum​

Much like the rest of Korean identity, the very language itself was torn between a local identity and its adulation of China. While the Korean language was its own, early in its existence it had adopted the Chinese script as part of the attempt at turning Korea into Sojunghwa, the Little China. Even in the modern day, after Korea had officially turned from China to viewing itself as superior, the elites of Korean society prided themselves on their ability to write in proper script, Hanja, compared to the script of the commoners, Hangul.
Contrarily from what may be expected, Hangul was not created to distinguish Korea from China, but rather as a purely practical measure. Designed by King Sejong the Great in 1443, Hangul was designed to create a writing system that the then-illiterate peasantry could easily learn. Disdained by the upper classes and occasionally suppressed by the monarchy, the system survived and became the alphabet of the lower classes and popular literature. King Heonjong had begun the dissemination of Hangul among the government bureaucracy, mandating that a copy of every document which was available to the public be written in both Hangul and Hanja, but even his monumental efforts could not shake the deep-seated elitism of the upper classes. It would not be until the 1910s that discussions on standardizing Korean into either Hanja or Hangul would begin to emerge in the Korean consciousness.
The chief motivator behind this issue wasn’t a growing literacy of the Korean population, indeed, thanks to Hangul Korea had been an incredibly literate society even before the arrival of the Europeans, but their growing politicization. Most commoners could read Hangul, but very few could read Hanja. Yet with a government presiding over a growing bureaucracy that produced more and more documents and a booming mass media, the traditional class lines between Hangul and Hanja would enter into the political sphere.
The first time that the script debate made a significant impact would be in 1919, when the Minjok-aligned newspaper “The Korean Voice” published a piece stating that Korea deserved a national script that was developed by Koreans, and that Hanja was simply a relic of a bygone era. Gathering significant public attention, the piece would spark a series of back and forth articles between various newspapers both for and against using Hangul as a basis for standardizing the Korean writing system. Alongside the publication of comics, this period marked the beginnings of Korean newspapers steering away from merely reporting the news rather than trying to shape it.
Public discourse over the script debate would eventually spark a government response when Minsaeng Diet members officially put forward a bill to adopt Hangul as the national script in 1924. Although the bill would fail to gain significant traction in the Diet itself, it prompted the government to organize a committee to look into the pros and cons of both sides of the debate.
The Committee on the Matter of a Standardized National Script would take nearly two years to gather information and deliberate before coming to a conclusion. Acknowledging that Hangul had a use among the common people of Korea, they still concluded that Hanja drew from a deeper, more meaningful cultural well and that a nation as great as Korea deserved a more refined writing style than the simpler Hangul script.
The result was public outrage. Even newspapers that had previously been neutral or opposed to the adoption of Hangul denounced the remarks. The committee’s makeup, seating almost solely members of Korean families with ties to the government going back generations, was used to justify accusations of a lack of impartiality and classism at the implication that Hangul was less cultured than Hanja. The newly-formed Gungminmiraedang would take the opportunity to advance their agenda, lambasting the government as dividing the Korean people along class lines when in reality all Koreans should be treated as equals.
The end result was a public embarrassment for the Minsaeng, as they were forced to overrule their own committee. Although Hanja would still see limited use on government documents, plans to implement Hangul as the official script of Korea were put into motion. The old Committee was quietly disbanded and its members urged to avoid the public eye while the new Bureau of the Korean Language was established to oversee all matters relating to the Korean language.

The Bureau of the Korean Language was given two tasks at its inception. The first was to chronolog the Korean language and its dialects, a chronicle of the history of the Korean people and their growing divergence from China. Although opposed by some members of both the Minsaeng and the Baerunmirae as legitimizing “backwater bastardizations,” statements by the Korean academic community would sway the Diet. Its second goal was to create a unified language and writing system that would replace all of it, a truly unifying element of Korean identity. Just as France had taken great strides to assimilate its minorities, so too would Korea.
Despite the scope of both of these tasks, the Bureau was granted significantly less staff and funding than was required. A mere 200 people were assigned to it, and with a budget of 70,000 mun (around ~400,000 in modern-day USD) they were left starving for funds very quickly. As attempts to catalog Korean bogged down due to a lack of money, Director Cho Tung-yun would regularly appear before the Diet to appeal for a larger budget and more manpower so that the Bureau’s job could proceed at a faster pace.
Even with the budgetary issues plaguing the Bureau, its team continued to plug on ahead. By December 1928, they had finished with their first task and were prepared to submit their 218 page abridged report to the Diet. In it, they gave a rundown on the regional dialects, the history of their development, how they diverged from the original attempts at standardization, and how the approach to applying a standardized language to each region should proceed. Although for the mainland it was deemed that the drift had been minor enough that after a few years any deviation would be a regional flair, for the island of Jeju it was suggested that a dual-use system would be implemented to minimize friction with the locals. Unlike the rest of Korea, Jeju’s dialect was different enough that the Bureau had significant concerns at even labeling it a mere dialect rather than a closely-related language. The Diet would quickly accept the report, folding the Bureau into the Ministry of National Education and ordering to prepare both a standardized language and alphabet for the entire nation and a curriculum to apply it.
With the increase of funding coming from its joinder to the Ministry of National Education, the Bureau was able to make quick strides. Distribution of the new Korean dictionary began on April 4, 1929, while the curriculum was finalized on June 15. Through close cooperation with the teachers of Korea, the Bureau organized several test-classes for the 1930 school year. The classes would prove to be overall successful, with most students showing sufficient levels of aptitude and an easy switch to the new standard. As a reward for this success, the Bureau of the Korean Language would become a permanent part of the Ministry of Education. Renamed the Bureau of Linguistic Affairs, it would oversee the academic development of proficiency in Korean, as well as work to maintain its use in expat communities and spread its use across the globe.

 

[Changundramon]

As an avid learner of Korean, I approve of this chapter.

 

[TimTurner]

I like the look of Korean with hanja mixed with hangul. It will be interesting to see how this evolves going forward.

 

[sarapen]

So it's sort of like Japanese, a mix of more-logographic Chinese-derived characters and a more phonetic alphabet/syllabary?

 

[Changundramon]

So it's sort of like Japanese, a mix of more-logographic Chinese-derived characters and a more phonetic alphabet/syllabary?

Hanja is used OTL, but not as much as the Japanese use Kanji. The more official a document, the more likely it will have Hanja.

 

[Roland Traveler]

So it's sort of like Japanese, a mix of more-logographic Chinese-derived characters and a more phonetic alphabet/syllabary?

Hanja is used OTL, but not as much as the Japanese use Kanji. The more official a document, the more likely it will have Hanja.

Yeah, with this Korean shifts mainly to an alphabetical writing system. As you said, Hanja is mainly used on official documents (and by some of the upper class).

 

[Roland Traveler]

Shinsei Nihon-Damashii: The Rebirth of Japanese Conservatism​

Perhaps the thing most key to understand about the Japanese people during the Pink Revolution was that they in many ways had been extremely lucky. Their democracy, which had lasted for over half a century at this point, had never in its existence come under attack. The Japanese economy, although it had seen its ups and downs, was stable and ensured the average Japanese citizen would not have to wonder where their next meal would come from or if they could make rent. Although social issues still cropped up regularly, the aftermath of the Three Abuses left the country with a feeling of finality, that a future where society’s ills didn’t exist was right around the corner. The Tohokai, reborn from the ashes, were smoothing out the kinks in the system and making sure everything worked as it was supposed to.
Meanwhile, as Japan was experiencing a veritable golden age, the world seemed to collapse around it. The Brazilian Civil War, the Second Mahdist and Indian Wars, the Second Franco-German War, the Balkan War, the rise of tensions in Central America, instability in Ecuador, racial strife in the United States, revolution in Russia, the Chinese Civil War, and the rise of Korean ultranationalism showed that the world as a whole lagged behind Japan.
The result was that as Japan’s own history ended, its people came to grow more and more interested in foreign affairs. Where once the status of women voting and conscription were the big issues of the day, by 1932 it was replaced by wondering if Korea would turn, whether the German Social Republic’s government would finally be able to legitimize itself, if tensions in India would once again boil over. Although the shift to a more involved stance was predicted for quite some time as Japan’s neighborhood became more and more unstable, the catalyst for this shift was one that few saw coming.
In 1924, the economic world had been taken by storm when Harvard Economics Professor Harry Gunnison Brown released a paper in the Harvard Quarterly Journal of Economics titled “The Wealth of Nations Revisited: An Empirical Study of Economic Output” in which he proposed a method of which to evaluate the strength of a nation’s economy. Referred to as Total Domestic Economic Output (TDEO), it took into account a nation’s consumption, exports, imports, and many other economic factors to determine the size of its economy. While the utility of such a unified model was appreciated, debates in Western academic circles over its universality and potential inflexibility were significant parts of the surrounding academic discourse. Further papers would attempt to fine-tune the model to more accurately show comparative economic strength between nations with radically different economic systems.
It just so happened that Japan, as a nation which did not emphasize profit-making or maximizing output and consumption, was one of those radically different economic systems. When Japan was first introduced to TDEO in 1927 by an Edo newspaper, it was initially meant only as an interesting report on differing values between the United States and Japan. Many Japanese readers, however, misunderstood the paper’s attempts at translating the technical jargon involved and became convinced that Japan had fallen far behind the economies of other developed nations.
Though this likely would have remained a fringe piece of miscommunication in a different time, during the latter years of the Pink Revolution numerous readers felt this was the most important matter of the day. Japan, the image of benevolent governance and compromise between tradition and progressivism, was lagging behind the world in economic development. As the final proof of the superiority of the Japanese style of governance, it was imperative that this be corrected. Yes, Japan was already strong economically, but how much longer would that be true if the current trajectory continued?
This discourse, initially localized to Edo, would spread nationwide over the course of 1928 as Japanese economists, many annoyed with the amateur analyses, began analyzing Brown’s original work themselves and either attempted to translate it to the circumstances of Japan or prove it to be fundamentally misunderstanding Japanese economics. When an Osakan newspaper, whose writer had read the ongoing academic discourse, printed an article heavily critical of the initial Edo article, the result was many Osakans experiencing their first introduction to macroeconomics. Intrigued, many procured copies of the Edo article and found that they agreed with it more than the Osakan one. Sales increased by 30%, causing a surge of economics-based articles in the Osaka and Edo areas.
Other newspapers had not ignored the ongoing events, and began feeling out their own markets’ interest in the economy. Many would find that their readers were very amenable to the discussion of a previously niche subject, and, more surprisingly, that their readers were more than happy to learn more and more about the foreign world outside of Korea.
Indeed, the comparisons between Japan’s economy with those of other nations drew the interest of the insular Japanese people outward. News previously deemed as uninteresting, such as the ongoing Third Schleswig War, began to attract more attention as people began comparing the participants, and their perceived failings, with Japan and picking sides. The Japanese public, which had previously been content with predominantly ignoring what happened outside a 2000 km radius of Kyoto, began to demand Japan take a greater role in the world. Japan's role in anti-piracy during the Chinese Civil War was praised as a step in the right direction, as was its continued support for Hawai'i and the Philippines. Inspired by these events, a steady undercurrent pushed the idea that Japan needed to be the leader of a moral world order in which the chaos and devastation of the current day was eradicated and imperialism ended. This shift, driven by the idea that Japan’s own development was rapidly reaching its conclusion and referred to by later historians as Itai Doshin, saw voters increasingly base who they supported on foreign policy and how well they felt Japan was upholding its ideals overseas.


Despite their collapse in the aftermath of the Three Abuses, the Rikkento would continue to exist in the Japanese political sphere. Although the Rikken Minseito would slowly fade away, the Rikken Kokuminto absorbed its remnants and continued the fight to defend Japanese social mores throughout the 1920s.
This would prove to be insufficient to resurrect the party’s political fortunes as they continued to campaign for issues that many in Japan viewed as more and more settled. By the 1920 election, the Rikkento was a mere shadow of its former self. The Japanese right, seeing a split between nationalist and social-focused wings, demanded changes.
They would not have to wait, as in 1921 several Diet members would split off from the Rikken Kokuminto to form the Aikoku Koto (Association of Patriots). The new Aikoku Koto would manage to gain ground among traditionally leftist areas by concentrating on foreign affairs, the need for Japan to assert itself overseas, and the need to strengthen the national economy. Gaining 94 seats in the 1926 election, they would slightly overtake the Rikken Kokuminto’s 86, showing the Japanese people that in many ways the legacy of the Three Abuses was starting to fade.
With the rise of the Aikoku Koto, the right wing of Japanese politics would rebrand themselves away from the Rikkento to the Nihonkokai, the Japan Association, as the Rikken Kokuminto accepted their secondary status through gritted teeth. Although the coalition would still support socially conservative causes, the coalition would posit itself as the only sane option in a world that seemed to stumble from crisis to crisis, if it was kind enough to limit itself to just one at any particular moment, for the past 30 years. In particular, fears of increasing Chinese instability and the rise of the Korean far-right would see the Nihonkokai gain enough seats to form a tentative government in 1932.

Unlike the governments of the past, the first Nihonkokai government would not have enough seats for a majority. Despite this, the coalition would find many allies in all places across the aisles as Japan’s political landscape faced a massive realignment. The Tohokai, revitalized during the Pink Revolution, and the Jinminto, which was concentrating on microeconomic issues at a time when they were increasingly less important to the Japanese voter, regularly collaborated with the Nihonkokai to pass legislation they supported just as often as they fought them tooth and nail on others. Indeed, the Nihonkokai’s coalition members would often prove to be more troublesome than their supposed opposition as internal rivalries and personal vendettas spilled over into the political sphere.
The reasons for this was simple: despite all supporting a conservative vision for Japan, many in the Rikken Kokuminto did not appreciate their former members abandoning the party, especially since many had been granted refuge after the dissolution of the Rikken Minseito. The fact that they had become more successful, and had even managed to make inroads into left-dominated areas such as Shikoku, was further salt in the wound. Coupled with different priorities, the two largest parties on the Japanese right were often their own worst enemies as they clashed over policies and budget allocations.
Despite this inter-coalition strife, the Nihonkokai would continue to hold firm as the parties involved had more in common than not. The passage of maternity leave in 1935, an action with support from across the spectrum, would do much to shore up internal relations as the Aikoku Koto attempted to pivot toward China and oppose Russian influence on the mainland. With conscription being unnecessary for the first time in its history due to a glut of volunteers, the military would also see expansion as Japan moved to assert itself on the global stage.

 

[sarapen]

Nice, GDP gets invented and conservatives get their foot back in the door. I like this kind of left-field development.

 

[Mitridates the Great]

I'm not sure I understand the cause-effect relationship between "a newspaper publishes an obscure and abstruse economic article that probably the vast majority of the population would not understand or find interesting", "said article somehow ends up becoming THE BIG PROBLEM around the which all Japanese domestic politics revolves around (even though, again, it's an article written by gaijin who don't understand Japan and probably wouldn't matter to anyone but a handful of academics anyway)," and "This somehow, which is also not developed, leads to Japan and its people becoming more interested in foreign affairs."

It seems to me like an overly roundabout tortuous way of getting to the point "Japan is interested in what happens outside its immediate environment."

 

[sarapen]

I'm not sure I understand the cause-effect relationship between "a newspaper publishes an obscure and abstruse economic article that probably the vast majority of the population would not understand or find interesting", "said article somehow ends up becoming THE BIG PROBLEM around the which all Japanese domestic politics revolves around (even though, again, it's an article written by gaijin who don't understand Japan and probably wouldn't matter to anyone but a handful of academics anyway)," and "This somehow, which is also not developed, leads to Japan and its people becoming more interested in foreign affairs."

It seems to me like an overly roundabout tortuous way of getting to the point "Japan is interested in what happens outside its immediate environment."

You're missing a step. The economics article was written by a Harvard professor, presumably in English, and started a debate in orthodox economics. Then 3 years later a Japanese newspaper wrote about the original article. The discussion was very technical and hard to understand but the gist that the Japanese audience incorrectly got was that Japan was falling behind other countries in its economy.

Anyway, I took it as Japan being ready for a conservative surge and the GDP article was just its catalyst. Political earthquakes don't really spring from a single event, even if it that's how people usually talk about it. Right wing ideology never fully went away, it was just dormant, and clearly its time had returned in this other Japan.

 

[Roland Traveler]

I'm not sure I understand the cause-effect relationship between "a newspaper publishes an obscure and abstruse economic article that probably the vast majority of the population would not understand or find interesting", "said article somehow ends up becoming THE BIG PROBLEM around the which all Japanese domestic politics revolves around (even though, again, it's an article written by gaijin who don't understand Japan and probably wouldn't matter to anyone but a handful of academics anyway)," and "This somehow, which is also not developed, leads to Japan and its people becoming more interested in foreign affairs."

It seems to me like an overly roundabout tortuous way of getting to the point "Japan is interested in what happens outside its immediate environment."

It's mainly the confluence of two things: a complete misunderstanding about what the article is actually talking about due to it delving into a niche field and the Japanese population at large feeling that domestic politics is becoming less and less important. Japan's domestic situation is settled, they're reaching the ultimate society (which is why the period is referred to as Itai Doshin, a Japanese phrase roughly meaning "united in spirit"). So if Japanese domestic politics aren't something to be concentrated on, what is there? The talk about economics gives the public something to concentrate on, something that people can talk about. Due to the entire point being that Japan is lagging behind compared to other countries, people start paying attention to these other countries. Initially, this is a (rather shallow) analysis of foreign economies, but it steadily expands into "how does this nation's politics affect its economy?", then "Wait a minute, what is this nation's politics, and how does it interact with others?" This isn't a 180 from domestic to foreign policy dominating politics, as foreign policy had been seen as more and more important since the 1910s due to the, well, everything starting to burn down in that decade, but it serves as a catalyst to speed up the shift and make the Japanese public pay more attention. Most attention is still fixated on Asia, but due to how intrinsically the European Great Powers are tied to the region, it causes frequent spillovers from the European sphere. The Americas and Africa, for instance, are mainly ignored save for how they affect the Europeans.

It's also important to note that this isn't a shift that happens overnight, it's something that occurs over several years. Even after the shift, the politics of Japan are still a mix of foreign and domestic politics, it's just that foreign affairs are considered more important at this time as domestic politics is viewed in the light of "Who's going to be the best captain to steer this ship to its inevitable destination?" rather than "What should our destination be?" Foreign policy is also still very... hands off? The Japanese are interested in foreign policy, yes, but they don't want Japan getting into fights, and want it to be a political leader rather than to assert itself militarily. If, for instance, the government got Japan into a war with China by publicly supporting rebels and blockading them because China isn't democratic, people would be pissed, but if Japan sends political barbs across the bow and consistently criticizes them? People would support that. It's still very much a theoretical position and posturing that people don't expect to have to back up rather than jingoism.

Another thing to note is that the affect on actual government policy isn't a massive realignment. Japan has never been afraid of throwing its weight around. It jumped to support Korea during the Manchuria War, had no problem intervening in Hawaii, served as a mediator between the US and the Philippines, and has become a go between for the Socialists and their enemies when it comes to Asia. Rather than changing any of that, those actions more in the public eye. Japan being anti-imperialist isn't exactly a secret, but a Japan empowered by the public to position itself as a moral arbiter? That is new, and gives public blessings to what was previous policy.