Yukiko Koga
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226411941
- eISBN:
- 9780226412276
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226412276.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Inheritance of Loss explores how contemporary generations come to terms with losses inflicted by imperialism, colonialism, and war that happened decades ago, and how descendants of perpetrators and ...
More
Inheritance of Loss explores how contemporary generations come to terms with losses inflicted by imperialism, colonialism, and war that happened decades ago, and how descendants of perpetrators and victims establish new relations in today’s globalized economy. Approaching these questions through the lens of inheritance, rather than memory, it focuses on Northeast China, the former site of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo. As China transitions to a market-oriented society, this region is restoring long-neglected colonial-era structures to boost tourism while inviting former colonial industries to invest, all while inadvertently unearthing chemical weapons abandoned by the Imperial Japanese Army at the end of World War II. This book explores how long neglected colonial remnants are transformed into newly minted capital through the rhetoric of “inheritance.” It chronicles sites of colonial inheritance––tourist destinations, corporate zones, and mustard gas exposure sites––to illustrate entangled attempts by ordinary Chinese and Japanese to reckon with their shared yet contested pasts. It identifies the political economy of redemption as a new mode of generational transmission of the past that makes visible the entangled processes of “after empire,” which points to the often invisible, displaced, or seemingly separate postcolonial and postimperial processes that shape the afterlife of losses and their redemptions, to envisioning present and future relations to what remains, and to renewed desires for going after empire. Inheritance of Loss shows how structures of violence and injustice after the demise of the Japanese Empire compound the losses that later generations must account for, and inevitably inherit.Less
Inheritance of Loss explores how contemporary generations come to terms with losses inflicted by imperialism, colonialism, and war that happened decades ago, and how descendants of perpetrators and victims establish new relations in today’s globalized economy. Approaching these questions through the lens of inheritance, rather than memory, it focuses on Northeast China, the former site of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo. As China transitions to a market-oriented society, this region is restoring long-neglected colonial-era structures to boost tourism while inviting former colonial industries to invest, all while inadvertently unearthing chemical weapons abandoned by the Imperial Japanese Army at the end of World War II. This book explores how long neglected colonial remnants are transformed into newly minted capital through the rhetoric of “inheritance.” It chronicles sites of colonial inheritance––tourist destinations, corporate zones, and mustard gas exposure sites––to illustrate entangled attempts by ordinary Chinese and Japanese to reckon with their shared yet contested pasts. It identifies the political economy of redemption as a new mode of generational transmission of the past that makes visible the entangled processes of “after empire,” which points to the often invisible, displaced, or seemingly separate postcolonial and postimperial processes that shape the afterlife of losses and their redemptions, to envisioning present and future relations to what remains, and to renewed desires for going after empire. Inheritance of Loss shows how structures of violence and injustice after the demise of the Japanese Empire compound the losses that later generations must account for, and inevitably inherit.
Yukiko Koga
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226411941
- eISBN:
- 9780226412276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226412276.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This introductory chapter, “Colonial Inheritance and the Topography of After Empire,” introduces the concept of colonial inheritance to make visible generational responses to the losses incurred ...
More
This introductory chapter, “Colonial Inheritance and the Topography of After Empire,” introduces the concept of colonial inheritance to make visible generational responses to the losses incurred through the Japanese imperialism in China, as set in motion through China’s transition to a market-oriented society. While public discussions on the question of coming to terms with contested pasts primarily revolve around the politics of memory, this chapter presents the recent capitalization of colonial inheritance in Northeast China as pivotal and underexplored sites for the generational transmission of unaccounted-for pasts in the economic realm. Similarly, while much attention has been paid to the question of apology and historical responsibility for Japan’s wartime violence, this chapter points to the importance of framing this “history problem” in East Asia through the framework of after empire, which situates the question within intertwined processes of postimperial, postcolonial, and postwar dynamics. Seen through the lens of colonial inheritance, what is usually described as China’s “transition” to a market economy (or else subsumed under rubrics of globalization or neoliberalism) is revealed as an integral part of a larger economy of inheriting––inheriting socialist modernity, inheriting colonial modernity, and the dynamics between the two in navigating what is to come.Less
This introductory chapter, “Colonial Inheritance and the Topography of After Empire,” introduces the concept of colonial inheritance to make visible generational responses to the losses incurred through the Japanese imperialism in China, as set in motion through China’s transition to a market-oriented society. While public discussions on the question of coming to terms with contested pasts primarily revolve around the politics of memory, this chapter presents the recent capitalization of colonial inheritance in Northeast China as pivotal and underexplored sites for the generational transmission of unaccounted-for pasts in the economic realm. Similarly, while much attention has been paid to the question of apology and historical responsibility for Japan’s wartime violence, this chapter points to the importance of framing this “history problem” in East Asia through the framework of after empire, which situates the question within intertwined processes of postimperial, postcolonial, and postwar dynamics. Seen through the lens of colonial inheritance, what is usually described as China’s “transition” to a market economy (or else subsumed under rubrics of globalization or neoliberalism) is revealed as an integral part of a larger economy of inheriting––inheriting socialist modernity, inheriting colonial modernity, and the dynamics between the two in navigating what is to come.
