Asian History Commons^™

Japan’S Assimilation Of Okinawa, Alex Thompson

ASPIRE 2024

. My research shows that the initial motivation for assimilating the Okinawan people was to create a national cohesive culture in Japan. Still, it fell short because of the actions of the average citizen in Japan and the governmental strategies. The idea of racial superiority and discrimination kept the Okinawans from ever being recognized as Japanese citizens. In this paper, I will discuss the Japanese government's assimilation practices and how Japanese people contributed to the assimilation policies. After exploring Okinawan culture and how this unique culture was formed, I will examine how the average Japanese citizen's racial superiority complex, humiliation …

Gaijin Shogun: The Effectiveness Of Macarthur In The Early Stages Of The Military Occupation Of Japan, Jack Cashion

Senior Honors Theses

In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied powers occupied Germany and Japan to ensure a peaceful transition at the end of the war. While the Allies had conquered Germany in its entirety, Japan’s surrender in the wake of the atomic bombs forestalled a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. President Harry Truman granted General Douglas MacArthur the title of Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) when he appointed the general as the leader of America’s occupation force in Japan. As SCAP, MacArthur oversaw the initial years of the reconstruction of Japan and its transition from a war-torn …

Comic Legacies Of The Japanese Silver Screen, Aaron Gerow, Xavi Sawada, David Baasch, Eugene Kwon, Adam Silverman, Anna Tropnikova, Chloe Yan

Film Series Commentaries

Pamphlet created for the film series “Comic Legacies of the Japanese Silver Screen” presented at Yale University from February to April, 2024. Starting with an introduction outlining the history of Japanese film comedy, the pamphlet contains plot summaries and commentaries on the following films:

Buddhist Mass for Goemon Ishikawa (1930, Saitō Torajirō) Fighting Friends (1929, Ozu Yasujirō) Romantic and Crazy (1934, Yamamoto Kajirō) Singing Lovebirds (1939, Makino Masahiro) Akanishi Kakita (1936, Itami Mansaku) Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryō (1935, Yamanaka Sadao) Room for Rent (1959, Kawashima Yūzō) Doctor’s Day Off (1952, Shibuya Minoru) Oh, My Bomb! …

Gangsterism, The Urban Ruling Elite, And The Guomindang: Power Sharing During The Early Years Of The Chinese Republic, 1927-1937, Evan Boyle

Undergraduate Research Symposium

China’s Republican era, prior to the Japanese occupation and while under the authority of Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang (c. 1927-1937), has in many respects been underexplored by historians. The Shanghai Massacre, Chiang’s subsequent military campaigns against the Communists, the factious divisions within the Guomindang, and the ongoing Japanese campaign to annex parts of the Chinese mainland are often highlighted. In my presentation, rather than focusing on the various foes of the Guomindang, I plan to focus on the political alliances Chiang forged. In particular I will explore his ties to, and alliances with Organized Crime (specifically Du Yuesheng and …

Ontological Complexity Of Interpolity Orders: The Encounter Between Chosŏn And Tibet In Qing, Inho Choi, Minju Kwon

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines the ontological complexity of interpolity orders with a focus on peripheral polities in the Qing order. Existing multiculturalist studies of the Qing order emphasized diverse cultural representations of a single imperial reality, lacking an understanding of multiple realities experienced by peripheral participants. Our analysis reveals the ontological complexity—rather than cultural diversity—of the Qing order, in which multiple ontological agents experienced different lived worlds, from the encounter between Chosŏn Korean envoys and the Tibetan Panchen Lama at Emperor Qianlong’s birthday ceremony. By analyzing the Chosŏn envoy member Pak Chiwŏn’s travelog and Tibetan records, we argue that the Chosŏn …

National Integration And Institution Building, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

The mutual dependence between national integration and institution building is established in a formal model. It is shown that a decrease in transportation costs, but not necessarily an increase in population size, reduces the equilibrium number of states and the adoption of rule-based institutions. With endogenous transportation costs or endogenous population size, the unification process can feed on itself. The model is illustrated by the state of Qin's unification of China in 221 BC. During this process of national integration, transformations from relation-based governance to rule-based governance happened.

Forgetting Stories From The Islands, Jeju And Calauit, Raymon D. Ritumban

English Faculty Publications

The traumatic experiences of people from peripheral islands are susceptible to mnemocide. Such erasure of memory is facilitated by “defensive and complicit forgetting,” which, according to Aleida Assmann, leads to “protection of perpetrators.” My paper reflects on the vulnerability of traumas from the islands to mnemocide by looking into [1] the massacre of communists and civilians on Jeju Island, South Korea in 1948 as described in Hyun-Kil Un’s short story “Dead Silence” (2017; English trans.) and [2] the eviction of residents and indigenous people from Calauit Island, Philippines for the creation of a safari in 1976 as imagined in Annette …