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Abstract
In order to reassess the dominant images of popular militarism or stoic suffering in wartime Japan, this paper takes a street-level view of provincial society during the major conflict with Russia, 1904–1905. It focuses on three main sites of wartime contact between the community and the military: the rail station, the cinema, and the cemetery. By mining local press reports and especially letters to the press from local people, it exposes the diversity of public attitudes towards the war, the military and those in authority; these attitudes include a healthy cynicism and satire towards elites or propaganda, as well as a readiness to express discontent rather than suffer in silence.
Notes
1 Variations of this paper have been given at a number of places including the Columbia University Seminar on Modern Japan, Cambridge University, and the biennial conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. My thanks to Theodore Cook, Stephen Large and Sandra Wilson, respectively, for arranging these invitations.
2 To take just one example, the anthropologist Ohnuki-Tierney (Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms, 96–97, 135–137) is far too quick and uncritical in reaching conclusions about the level of popular support for, or subordination to, war and the military in Meiji Japan. For more nuanced comments on the case of 1904–1905, see Shimazu, ‘The myth of the “patriotic soldier”’; also, Sandra Wilson, ‘The Russo-Japanese War and Japan’. My earlier work on the Sino-Japanese war is Japan's First Modern War.
3 See, for example, Kasahara-machi, Kasahara no rekishi, 576, which in a specific chapter on military affairs and wars deals only with the figures of servicemen and casualties, and does this in less than half a page; Shimizu, Zusetsu Sainō no rekishi, 114–115, on war dead and burden of war taxes and bonds; and Niwa and Itō, Gifu-ken no hyakunen, 129–131, which concentrates entirely on the numbers of prefectural men involved in the war, the number killed, the unfairness of the draft system, and the economic costs of the war to local people.
4 Gifu City Office statistics, Gifu Nichi Nichi Shimbun (hereafter GNN), 24 May 1905.
5 Figures for servicemen and war dead, Tobe, Gifu-ken kyōiku hattatsushi, 124; Gifu-ken, Gifu kenshi: Tsūshi-hen Kindai, Vol. 2, 413; Nakagawa, Nichi-Ro taisen-shi: Gifu-ken sembotsusha, 291.
6 Ōta, Tarui eki monogatari, 218–220. Upon his return from war on 6 December 1905, Oyama's train stopped at Tarui for three minutes.
7 Ōta, Tarui eki monogatari, 221.
8 Sawada Nikki, 17 April 1904, Nohara Toshihiko, ‘Kita Nagamori Sawada nikki ni miru Nichi-Ro sensō’, 124.
9 Letters, GNN, 11 October, 20 November 1904. One woman, O-Rei of the Matsuokaya house, was said to be such an enthusiastic attendant of sick and wounded troops at Gifu station that she was planning to visit the army hospital at Kanazawa, GNN, 3 November 1904.
10 Red Cross ‘ancients’, GNN letter, 16 October 1904; nurses, GNN letter, 28 October 1904. Aikoku Fujinkai, lack of sick visits, GNN letter, 2 June 1905, and see also letter of 12 May 1905; postcard donations, GNN, 5 May 1905.
11 Quotation on ‘beyond knowing’, GNN letter, 30 September 1904. Criticism of Giyūkai accounts, GNN, 11, 21, 22, 27 October 1904 (the Gifu Red Cross meanwhile was accused of keeping its accounts secret from its members). Gifu-ku and city victory celebration, GNN, 3, 4 June 1905.
12 Tan'o Yasunori and Kawada Akihisa, Imēji no naka no sensō, 17–21. POW numbers and locations, GNN, 14 September 1905.
13 Criticism of station crowds' abuse of POWs, GNN, 8 April 1905. Quote on ‘universal brotherhood’, GNN letter, 3 June 1905. ‘Sei-Ro’, GNN editorial, 13 April 1905.
14 Russian POWs in Nagoya, Asahi Shimbun Nagoya Shakaibu, Meiji—Tōkai seijishi, 243; adoption of Japanese dress, GNN, 26 July 1905; Hamadera incident, GNN, 2 July 1905.
15 In this, a welcome addition is High, The Imperial Screen.
16 Tan'o and Kawada, 13, on ‘mobilisation of imagery’. High, ‘The dawn of cinema in Japan’, especially 34–38.
17 Lt. Wakamiya movie, GNN, 14 June 1905.
18 Playbill of charity showings, GNN, 6 October 1904; audience response, GNN, 8 October 1904; Horiguchi speech, GNN letter, 9 October 1904.
19 Popularity of war movies, Gifu-ken 1972, 409. Diorama shortcomings, GNN, letters, 19 August, 2 September 1904. Asahi-za narrator, GNN letter, 13 June 1905; advertisement error, GNN letter, 15 June 1905; Midono-za quotation, GNN letter, 17 August 1904.
20 Asahi-za playbill, GNN, 9 May 1907. Quote on war theatre, GNN letter, 20 July 1905. Audience for Napoleon, GNN letter, 16 August 1904.
21 Forgacs, A Gramsci Reader, 373–374, ‘The operatic conception of life’ and ‘Popular literature, operatic taste’.
22 9th Division (Kanazawa) regulations on funerals of war dead, GNN, 14 August 1904, 11 September 1904, 27 July 1905. Two examples of wartime eulogies by Governor Kawaji, GNN, 4 September, 19 October 1904.
23 Examples of large-scale wartime funerals, GNN, 19 October 1904, 13 November 1904, 21 April 1905, 25 July 1905.
24 9th Division regulations, GNN, 27 July 1905.
25 Kamo county funerals, GNN letter, 16 April 1905; Ōno county, GNN letter, 7 April 1905; prefectural clerk's complaint, GNN letter, 16 April 1905; Takayama discrimination, GNN letter, 23 April 1905; private funerals, Sawada diary, Nohara, 131–132; desolate graves, GNN letter, 18 April 1905. Despite the call for joint funerals, separate ceremonies were still announced at one village in Yōrō county on 19, 22, 27 and 28 September 1905, GNN, 22 September 1905.