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ABSTRACT
Studies of childhood in Japan frequently neglect to engage with the texts and images that young people produced, focusing instead on the adult imagination of youth. By looking solely at adults’ conceptions, we miss the importance of other children in forming their peers’ subjectivity. By analyzing the diaries, letters, postcards, yosegaki, and artwork of evacuated children during World War II, this article shows how adults framed the process of language acquisition, but also that children contributed to the creation of a shared language for describing their experiences. When children combined language learning with group experience, which was inscribed through collective writing practices, evacuees came to embrace a strong group identity. Grasping the relationship between collective experience, life-writing, and children’s culture is crucial to understanding how children perceived their world. Apart from these methodological considerations, dismissing the documents left behind by evacuees as mere recapitulations of adult discourse does the history of childhood a great disservice.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Peter Cave, L. Halliday Piel, Gregory Johnson, and two anonymous readers for their critical feedback.
Abbreviations
| AARM: | = | Aomori Air Raid Museum (Aomori Kūshū Shiryō Jōsetsu Tenjishitsu) |
| ETM: | = | Edo-Tokyo Museum (Edo-Tōkyō Hakubutsukan) |
| HsPM: | = | Hiroshima Peace Museum (Hiroshima Heiwa Kinenkan) |
| KaPM: | = | (Yohohama) Kanagawa Peace Museum (Chikyū Shimin Kanagawa Puraza, Heiwa Tenjishitsu) |
| MHI: | = | Aomori-ken Aomori-shi Hashimoto Junjō Shōgakkō, ed., Manshū hakengun imonbun-shū [Collection of Consolation Letters to the Manchurian Expeditionary Force]. Aomori: Self-published, February 1932 (AARM). |
| NWHM: | = | (Tokyo) Nakano Ward Local History Museum (Nakano-ku Kyōdo Shiryōkan) |
| OIPM: | = | Osaka International Peace Museum (Ōsaka Kokusai Heiwa Sentā) |
| PA: | = | (Nagoya) Peace Aichi (Aichi-ken Kokusai Heiwa Kinenkan) |
| SIPM: | = | (Ōmiya) Saitama International Peace Museum (Saitama Kokusai Heiwa Kinenkan) |
| SM: | = | (Tokyo) Shitamachi Museum (Shitamachi Fūzoku Shiryōkan) |
| SWHM: | = | (Tokyo) Sumida Ward Local History Museum (Sumida-ku Kyōdo Shiryōkan) |
| SWPM: | = | (Tokyo) Setagaya Ward Peace Museum (Setagaya-ku Heiwa Jōsetsu Tenjishitsu) |
| TSGSS 1: | = | Toshima no shūdan gakudō sokai shiryōshū: nikki /shokan-hen 1 [Records of Toshima’s Mass Student Evacuation: Diaries and Correspondence 1]. Toshima Kuritsu Kyōdo Shiryōkan, self-published, 1990. |
| TSGSS 2: | = | Toshima no shūdan gakudō sokai shiryōshū: nikki /shokan-hen 2. [Records of Toshima’s Mass Student Evacuation: Diaries and Correspondence 1]. Toshima Kuritsu Kyōdo Shiryōkan, self-published, 1991. |
Notes
1 A kamishibai is a ‘paper play’, or series of illustrations depicting a story that is narrated by a performer. During the war years, they were often put on as free entertainment in order to sell candy to children, but adults enjoyed them as well.
2 Osaka-shi, ‘Takumashiku, tadashiku’.
3 For a comprehensive collection of data on the evacuation experience, see Zenkoku sokai gakudō renraku kyōgikai, Gakudō sokai no kiroku.
4 For the impact of the China war on Japanese society, see Yoshimi, Grassroots Fascism.
5 Jones, Children as Treasures.
6 Lincicome, ‘Nationalism’, 339, n. 1; Nolte, ‘Industrial Democracy’.
7 Frow, Genre.
8 Roden, Schooldays, 9; Motomori, ‘Kodomo’ katari no shakaigaku, 48–49. On the British case, see Fletcher, Growing Up in England, 283–91.
9 Saitō, ‘Nikki shidō ni tsuite’, 474. Thanks to Peter Cave.
10 Garon, The State and Labor; Gordon, The Evolution of Labor Relations; Gerteis, Gender Struggles. On working class children and resistance in Britain, see Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels?
11 Branch and Newcombe, ‘Racial Attitude Development among Young Black Children’, 719. For a general overview, see Ruble et al., ‘The Development of a Sense of “We”’; Prinstein and Dodge, Understanding Peer Influence, 3–16.
12 Lassonde, ‘Age and Authority’; Maynes, ‘Age as a Category’.
13 MHI, second frontispiece.
14 Chiyodani, ‘Tatakai gokko’, 14.
15 Nakajima, Ryūdaiji-han, 8 July 1944.
16 Fukushima, postcard to Takejirō (father), date unclear (soon after 14 August 1944).
17 Naoko Shimazu, personal correspondence, 15 May 2013. According to Shimazu, early Russo-Japanese imonbukuro included hagaki written by jogakkō students. Kan Yoshiko described a letter exchange with injured soldiers in Nagano while she was evacuated there. Kan, Diary, 44 (16 April 1945).
18 Sonoda, ‘Manshū no heitai-san e’, 88.
19 Nakamura, ‘Shussei gunjin e okuru’, 16.
20 Machii, postcard to Nakamura Masao, 21 September 1944.
21 To give three examples from Hiroshima, Sumida Ward (Tokyo), and Osaka: Ninomiya, Diary, 14 May 1945; Kondō Shikiko pleaded with her mother, ‘Why haven’t you written to us?’ in Kawaharada (Kondō), correspondence, 14 March 1945; and Kon’ya Hiroaki, letter to his mother, 610.
22 Nakajima, ‘Ehagaki no kakikata’, 2 (1 November 1944).
23 Tsuda (Primary Grade 4), ‘Shūdan sokai’, 564.
24 Nagashima, postcard to father, 3 September 1944.
25 Tsujiguchi family correspondence, 17 September 1944 and undated (probably early 1945). In a later letter to Masaaki, Yōko wrote, ‘You had good weather for the student sports day (undōkai) … did you manage to come first?’ (30 September 1944).
26 Kon’ya, family correspondence, 610–611.
27 Fuji, Diary, 590 (24 November 1944).
28 Shino family correspondence, Kataoka letter to Chizuko, 38 (4 September 1944).
29 Ibid., Chiyoko letter to Chizuko, 96–97 (24 July 1944).
30 Ibid.; contrast a pre-evacuation letter to Chizuko (68, 29 February 1945) with the translated letter here. Yutaka letter to Chizuko, 87 (26 March 1945). Note: There was no 29 February in 1945, so this was actually 1 March.
31 Watanabe, ‘Endō-sensei’, 18 (22 August 1944).
32 See the examples in Tsutamoto gakuryō, Omoide no Yumoto, ‘Dai-1-ppan’ (Group 1), 1944–1945.
33 Ibid., ‘Dai-7-han’.
34 Ibid., ‘Dai-5-han’.
35 Ibid., ‘Dai-2-han’.
36 ‘Dai-4-bundan joshi 6-nen’, March 1945.
37 Nakajima, Ryūdaiji-han, 6 May 1944. Following entry for 14 May: ‘Everyone at Ryūdaiji is living happily, but today two people have left due to circumstances at home. It has been suddenly decided that they will go home, and so they left at 2pm. … Everyone thought they had it good.’
38 Ibid., preface.
39 Ibid., Umano entry, 2 May and 21 June 1944.
40 Stargardt, Witnesses of War, 55–56. Also see Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, and The People’s War, 38–50.
41 Nakajima, Ryūdaiji-han, 4 May 1944.
42 Ibid., 16 May 1944.
43 Piel, ‘Food Rationing’.
44 Nakajima, Ryūdaiji-han, 23–24 (6 June 1944).
45 Anonymous, paper dolls by evacuated children, 1944 (SWPM).
46 Nakajima, Ryūdaiji-han, 9 July 1944.
47 Kondō Shikiko mentioned composing a diary while fulfilling her meal duties during evacuation to Akita, ‘writing with one hand while doing lots of different jobs’. Kawaharada (Kondō), letter to elder brother, 18 July 1945.
48 Mochida, ‘Gakusei nisshi’, 10 April 1941.
49 Kikukawa, Diary, 6 (8 January 1945).
50 Amano, ‘Nikkichō’, 6 August 1945.
51 Kamiya, ‘Sokai nikki’, 29 August 1944 to 5 September 1945.
52 Sakaguchi, ‘Shōgakusei nikki’, 1939 blank diary introduction.
53 Kikukawa, Diary, 25 (19–20 March 1945).
54 Okaisan is a rice gruel made with low-grade hōjicha, which was a popular twentieth-century dish among poor families in the Kansai region. Umeda, Diary, 605 (7 October 1944).
55 Watanabe, Diary, 16 (10 and 24 September 1944).
56 Umeda, Diary, 602–603 (5 October 1944).
57 Sakaguchi, ‘Shōkokumin nikki’, 1 March 1942.
58 Coles, The Political Life of Children.
59 Rohlen, ‘Order in Japanese Society’, 5–40.
60 Opie, The Language and Lore of Schoolchildren, 6.
61 Maynes, ‘Age as a Category of Historical Analysis’, 116. The article draws explicit parallels with Scott, ‘Gender’, 1053–75.
62 Opie, Children’s Games, 331.
63 Donaldson, Children’s Minds, 61.
64 Watanabe, Diary, 18 (2 November 1944).