The Making of Karafuto Repatriates
Bull, Jonathan Edward (2014-03-25). The Making of Karafuto Repatriates (Thesis). Hokkaido University.
- Has attachment: File:XSICSJ29.pdf
Abstract: This dissertation examines the mechanisms through which Karafuto repatriates were constructed in the early period of the post-war. Existing research has focussed on the meaning of repatriates for Japan’s decolonization after 1945 and the difference between “repatriate” and “official” narratives of the former empire and its collapse in August 1945. By concentrating on Japanese repatriates who moved from Karafuto to Hokkaido, this dissertation moves away from other research which is overwhelmingly based on the example of Japanese who were in Manchuria.
The time period chosen for analysis also includes the pre-war and wartime to place repatriates within a “trans-war” context. In the early years of the post-war, many repatriate groups were formed. Previous research has viewed these as an expression of the growth of civil society in the wake of the Occupation’s reforms to Japanese society. However, in the case of repatriates from Karafuto, many of the groups which formed in Hokkaido were dominated by “men of influence” from pre-war and wartime society. Their status in Karafuto society was what qualified them to take on positions of responsibility in the post-war. Repatriate groups were, therefore, less an expression of popular democracy than another example of the “passage through” to the post-war of wartime elites.
The origins of repatriate groups such as Zenkoku Karafuto Renmei show that they were closely tied to the State. Previous research has argued that, on the subject of the former empire, the Japanese government was largely silent until the 1980s. By following the activities of repatriate groups in building monuments and writing histories, this dissertation argues that the State was influential in the construction of public narratives about the former empire during the first three decades of the post-war. Previously described as “repatriate activists”, the men who played influential roles in repatriate groups can be better understood as “semi-officials” who worked closely with government officials and politicians. One consequence of the actions of repatriate groups was the co-opting of dissonant narratives. The success with which alternative views of the end of the empire were incorporated into the narrative of the Karafuto repatriate (but before the boom in jibunshi writing in the late-1970s) has led to the misleading view that Japanese existed (and still largely exist) in a culture of silence and denial about the former empire. During the 1950s and 1960s alternative interpretations did exist but the influence of repatriate groups and the semi-officials who led them meant that they found increasingly less expression in public narratives. This was the foundation upon which the thousands of “self-histories” about the empire were later written.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14943/doctoral.k11184
