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Tanxu spent much of his career in Qingdao under Japanese occupation. Typically, men in his position are characterized as collaborators or resistors: did he serve his new masters, or struggle against the occupation? This chapter struggles to understand this period given Tanxu’s silence on the subject. The chapter argues that resistance and collaboration must be understood as a continuum, along which everyone who lives through the experience of occupation falls. Tanxu neither actively aided, nor actively fought against, the Japanese occupiers, and making sense of his accommodation to this situation gives insights into the dynamics of moral decision-making.

The exercise of British power in South-East Asia until 1914 was shaped by the expansion of the colonial state, fluctuations in world capitalism, nationalist reactions, and international relations. The more heavily colonialism bore down upon South-East Asian societies, the more complex became problems of managing collaborators, controlling opponents, manipulating minority groups, and balancing communal interests. Preoccupied with Europe and lacking either an alliance with the United States or adequate military resources to act alone, Britain was unable to defend her South-East Asian Empire during 1941–2. A discussion on British imperialism and South-East Asia nationalism to 1941, the Japanese occupation and British wartime planning during 1941–5, and the new imperialism and end of Empire after 1945 is provided. The history of the British Empire in South-East Asia during the 20th century is partly a tale of diminishing British power associated with economic and military decline, aggravated by local resistance.

This chapter explores impacts of the Sino-Soviet conflict of 1929 and the 1931 Japanese occupation of Manchuria that affected the Argun borderland, compelling the regimes to considerably increase their peripheral power. Strictly speaking, the fourteen subsequent years of Japanese rule in Manchuria might be regarded as an interlude in the borderlands' development since, in a political sense, the Soviet Union did not encounter China at its borders. This rupture notwithstanding, that decade and a half might also be regarded as extending or perhaps even accelerating the process of border formation and the alteration of the borderland because many of the changes inscribed by the Japanese remained after their defeat in 1945. The history of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo was not a repetition of seemingly similar developments of the imperial expansion of Russia or the West but something that can be called “new imperialism.” Therefore, the chapter shifts the perspective away from borderlanders' lives to policies imposed by the metropoles.

The chatty movie magazine Eiga no Tomo (Friends of the movies), which first appeared in January 1931, offered a vision of modern, everyday gestures to its readers. In its monthly illustrated narratives of the private practices of stars and starlets, in its gossipy accounts of scenes on movie sets, and in its sensational ads for foreign and Japanese movies, the magazine firmly established moviemaking and moviegoing as embedded in seikatsu, with some meaningful shifts in emphasis over the decade. A close chronological reading of select material from the magazine from 1931 through 1941 reveals a transition from a focus on sensual pleasures grounded in sexualized gender difference, and in a discourse of national difference that also insisted on universalizing, to a transposition of eikatsu onto the Japanese occupation of China.

This chapter details Saw Ralph's experiences during the Japanese invasion. It chronicles his mother's early death and Saw Ralph's encounters with new people. Alongside these personal events are Saw Ralph's personal encounters with death and violence, beginning with the death of his mother and moving toward the casualties of Japanese occupation and British reoccupation. In those days, Saw Ralph recalls being afraid. The Japanese occupation was both a good time and a bad time in his life, because he and his fellow children liked the Japanese occupation. The occupying forces taught them the Japanese language and Japanese songs and engaged with them. The chapter concludes with Saw Ralph's experiences after the occupation.

This chapter describes the rise of modern Islamic schooling in China and the disappearance of the traditional curriculum, partially based on Persian textbooks on the unity of being (wahdat al-wujūd). In the 1920s and 1930s, Islamic reformism became popular among city dwellers in the Chinese coastal regions. They wanted to foster bilingual (Chinese and Arabic) religious and educational leaders who accepted modern schooling, to require Chinese literacy of Muslim students and to promote nation building against foreign pressures. They judged that the traditional learning in both Arabic and Persian was both too time-consuming and ineffective in legitimizing Sino-Muslims’ presence in Chinese society. In Japan’s occupied area during the Anti-Japanese War, however, Persian learning was preserved by some non-political members of Sino-Muslim society. Persian learning is now rapidly disappearing in China, especially since the political turmoil of the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution.

This chapter focuses on Guam at the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent invasion by the Japanese. Under the assumption that Japan would permanently retain Guam, the Japanese authorities renamed the island as well as Agana and all the villages. Guam became Ōmiyajima (Island of the Imperial Court), while Agana became Akashi (Red City). As the Chamorros would learn, the symbolism of the color red was ominously appropriate to life under the already bloody bayonets of their new conquerors. Conditions in Guam were harsh, and in order to keep up with wartime demands, the Japanese occupation has resulted in forced labor, food shortages, and a number of more violent atrocities as the pressures of war begin to take its toll in the region.

Chapter Three examines the apparition events at Lipa, Batangas, where in a convent in 1948, Mary appeared and announced herself as “Mary, Mediatrix of All Grace” to a Filipina novice of the Order of Discalced Carmelites. The timing of this apparition is significant, for Lipa was the provincial headquarters of the Japanese Military Administration during World War II, and its inhabitants witnessed both mass killings at the hands of the Japanese and the total razing to the ground of their city by American forces. The chapter takes this lens into consideration, but also examines the equally significant response of the local Church, which after conducting a brief investigation condemned the events in a decree issued in 1951. Unpublished testimonies of the visionary and her Mother Superior, primary sources from the monastery archives, and oral histories reveal the apparitions at Lipa Carmel as enacting a complex mediation of authority and legitimacy in the postwar period. The story presents, on the one hand, a global monastic order of spiritual renown trying to take root in this war-torn locale, and on the other hand, a global institution whose ranks were undergoing growing pains to “Filipinize” in the newly independent nation.

Many sales took place during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong 1941-1945. The surviving land deeds reflected a traditional society breaking down as people sold their trust property. These transactions sometimes happened without a middleman or a family council. The deeds written during this period contained odd grammar and did not state the reason of alienation: perhaps starvation and extreme poverty were so widespread that there was no reason to state it. Deeds also reflect the Japanese presence in the different territories. In the areas where the Japanese presence was thin, like Sai Kung, the deeds stated sale prices in Hong Kong dollars, and dated the transaction by the year of the Republic. In areas under heavier control of the Japanese, such as Lok Ma Chau and Lantau, the deeds stated prices in Military Yen and were dated by the Showa year.

This chapter shows how, with the rise of a national movement couched by some of the actors in terms of Islam, the advisors and their reformist fellow-travelers would be blamed and marginalized by a reactionary colonial state, just in time for the Japanese occupation. The disastrous events of the Afdeeling B and its aftermath did not immediately destroy the relationship between the colonial advisors and the state, but they showed only too clearly that matters modern were not resolved. They also empowered forces whose ascent would result in the practical excommunication of the Office for Native Affairs from key decisions impacting the lives of Indonesians disabused of the promises of colonial tutelage. The campaigners of Sarekat Islam and related bodies would be forced to withdraw as well from a political field increasingly dominated by nationalist and communist agitators, who directed their rhetorical attacks at those they believed had engendered the pervasive backwardness of Indonesians.

This chapter begins with an overview of the different categories of war crimes that were tried. It examines the notion of ‘the laws and usages of war’ that lay behind the concept of war crimes in these proceedings. It then moves on to the trials for war crimes committed against civilians in occupied territory, where these cases provide more material for substantive assessment. It considers the trials of the two Kempeitai chiefs in relation to the forced displacement of approximately one million persons from Hong Kong to occupied China, and attempts to understand the resulting judgments in Noma and Kanazawa through comparison with the contemporaneous Chinese trials of Sakai and Isogai, and the Andaman Islands case from Singapore. Through Kishi et al and other cases, the chapter also engages with the issue of what the Japanese occupying forces, in the Second World War, could or could not do, in relation to civilians allegedly involved in ‘anti-Japanese’ activity or resistance, as opposed to giving their obedience.

Chapter 1, “The Golden Bridge,” provides historical and ethnographic background on Karoland and its people, discusses the “puzzle” of Karo nationalism and the literature on peasant rebellion and resistance, and considers methodological issues related to interviewing and the perils of ethnographic intimacy. It raises issues of silence and absence as well as the pleasure of ethnographic detail. This leads to a consideration of the place of violence both within narrative and in the wider sociopolitical context of the interviews themselves.

This chapter offers a different perspective from mainstream scholarship regarding the mass violence of 1965–66. It emphasizes the historical forces, actors, and contingencies that were most important in facilitating and shaping the violence of 1965–66. The chapter begins with a brief look at Indonesia's colonial history, before tracing the emergence of leftist and nationalist movements in the early twentieth century, the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, the struggle against Dutch rule that culminated in independence in 1949, and the first tumultuous decade and a half of independence. It then examines in more detail each of the principal political actors that emerged in the postindependence period and the tensions that developed among them. Finally, the chapter provides a description of the final year before the alleged coup when these tensions came to a head, and shows how a number of key decisions and events helped to create the preconditions for the events of October 1, 1965, and the violence that followed.

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the experiences of Chinese capitalists during the Sino-Japanese War, particularly during the Japanese occupation of lower Yangzi. The results indicate that the romanticized view of the heroic industrialist does not fit the actions of the vast majority of the key business leaders in the lower Yangzi area. However, most Chinese businessmen also do not fit the profile of the collaborator. Most of the capitalists attempted to use foreign registration as a cover to preserve control over properties in the occupied areas, which indicates a desire to prevent Japanese control.

The Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941. Some members of the congregation died in the fighting. Members of the clergy were interned at Stanley. Union services were held in the internment camp while Sunday school and worship continued in Bishop’s House. During the Occupation, the Japanese used the Cathedral as a social club, it was stripped of its Christian imagery and furniture. Chinese and Japanese Christians gave their support while Roman Catholics offered to house the furniture. After the Occupation, donations and loans from the business community helped restore the Cathedral. Once again, St John’s became the centre of activity. But the traditional debate over the status of the clergy persisted. In 1951, after the Chinese Revolution, the Diocese of Victoria separated itself from the Diocese of Kwangtung and became the Diocese of Hong Kong.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the experiences of Chinese capitalists during the Japanese occupation of Lower Yangzi. The book details the wartime situation of Chinese entrepreneurs, discusses how they survived or failed to survive the war, and analyzes their relationships with the occupying forces. It suggests that the war wrought enormous damage on the physical plants of Chinese businesses, disrupted markets, devastated transportation, and reduced Chinese currency to worthless paper. The book argues that the war left a strong imprint on the organization and operation of Chinese business.

The 300,000 Europeans and Eurasians residing in the Indies in March 1942 soon learned that the Japanese occupiers planned to implement political, economic, and cultural policies that would integrate the newly “liberated” colony into the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” This goal of “Japanization” was to transform everyone living in the Indies into loyal subjects of the Emperor, with one important exception: “Asia for the Asians” meant there was no place for the white race in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI). Additionally, the Japanese in the archipelago were true believers in the warrior code of Bushido, which led to widespread mistreatment of prisoners of war and spilled-over into the treatment of civilian internees. This chapter explains how the Japanese intended to eradicate Dutch civilization and how the “Asia for the Asians” philosophy and Bushido code of behavior resulted in the commission of horrific war crimes, especially against whites and Eurasians.