Session 3: Shanghai
Professor Frederic Wakeman
Professor Wakeman turned his attention in this talk to a previously unexplored population in that city, Chinese doctors, during the Japanese occupation of the city 1942-1945. By looking through the lens of Chinese doctors, Wakeman was able to elaborate the complex choices that groups in Shanghai faced—and elucidate one of the central issues in this period, collaboration and resistance.
Wakeman opened his talk by mentioning that one of his undergraduate students who wrote his honors thesis on the theme that the infamous Shanghai gangster Du Yuesheng was nothing but a philanthropist; the student then identified himself as the Du’s great-grandson.
Turning then to the paper, he explained that this paper corroborates an argument he developed in his recent book, The Shanghai Badlands. In that book, he examined crime and politics in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation of the city, and he particularly probed the reasons why the Japanese had such an easy time ruling Shanghai. Based on the sources up to 1942, he concluded that the sheer volume of disorder, terror, and assassinations, had rendered the inhabitants of Shanghai war-weary. This paper shows that that argument still holds water between 1942 and V-J day in August 1945.
Wakeman examines this tumultuous period largely through the memoirs of a medical professional, Chen Zunren. Chen’s memoirs were much better-written and more revealing than most wartime memoirs. Doctors like Chen were among the most mobile groups in occupied Shanghai, possessing permits to travel to many sectors of the city. Thus, they were uniquely positioned to observe the city as a whole under occupation.
Moving to a comparative perspective, Wakeman discussed the case of physicians in wartime Europe. In that case, physicians were known to maintain a sort of solidarity that made them less likely to collaborate with the Occupation governments that tried to co-opt them. In China, however, physicians were not able to maintain an equally strong “united front” against Japanese co-optation. One weakness that the Japanese were able to exploit divisions between doctors trained in Western and traditional Chinese medicine (zhongyi). The debate between these two groups started before the Japanese occupied the city. For example, the GMD leader and later head of the Nanjing puppet government Wang Jingwei had a reputation of being staunchly anti-traditional medicine and pro-Western medicine. However, Wang’s wife, Chen Bijun, began to support traditional medicine during the war. According to Wakeman, this gave the Japanese the opportunity for Japanese cultural authorities in Shanghai to enlist the support of Chinese doctors, through their control of the Chinese Medical Association, as a way of extending their influence in the ranks of more than over 1,000 medical doctors. These traditional doctors were crucial to medical care in the city because of the lack of access to Western medicines and the takeover of the pharmaceutical industries by some Japanese firms.
The organizations offered Chinese doctors the opportunity to maintain themselves vis-à-vis their Western-trained colleagues in what was a very profitable profession. While these organizations offered many opportunities to the doctors, there was also a risk: of being labeled a traitor (hanjian) and of being entrapped by that label were the War to end in China’s favor. Still, many doctors took the risk, exploiting the profitable market in medicines and fake medicines. On the other hand, these doctors played a very constructive, even innovative role during the War, developing new treatments and assembly line techniques to treat the ever-spreading disease.
Professor Johsua Fogel responded to Professor Wakeman’s talk, lauding the paper as “vintage Fred Wakeman, mixing rich scholarship on a new topic with the art of storytelling at the highest level.” Fogel observed that while the putative topic of the paper was the fate of Chinese medicine during the years of the War with Japan; the theme, interesting as it is, is overshadowed by the powerful stories retold by the author.
Fogel offered Wakeman several questions pointing back at that theme. First, when did “medicine” become “Chinese medicine” and cease being just medicine? When did it cease being universally accepted among doctors? Noting that we do not think of our doctors today as Western doctors, Fogel suggested that the debate must have had an earlier beginning, perhaps as late as the start of the 20th century; still, he was surprised that it continued into the Nanjing Decade [1927-1937].
Second, Fogel asked for additional comparative work with Nazi-occupied regions, particularly with regard to the shortage of medicine, the hoarding, and the ravages of disease that Wakeman documented so vividly in his paper.
Third, Fogel could not help but mention how similar Wakeman’s account of Chen Zunren was to the story of Harry Lime, the sleazy character played by Orson Welles in the 1949 movie The Third Man. Lime watered down needed drugs in post-War Vienna, but did so with an almost Olympian, dismissive attitude.
Finally, Fogel offered two related comments about the sources. Taking the memoirs that Chen wrote in 1975 as evidence has its pitfalls, notably, that they could be self-serving. Fogel noted that Chen identified one person as a “qinripai xuezhe” (a scholar sympathetic to the Japanese). These terms could be charged with a post-War perspective. His account also seems tinged with an appreciation for Hollywood drama. Fogel concluded his remarks by saying that we should not dismiss sources like Chen’s (or, for that matter, those of Chiang Kai-shek, the Communists, or the Japanese imperial army) for these reasons; rather, we should try to corroborate their account with evidence from other sources.
Professor Hirofumi Takatsuna, “Shanghai Nostalgia Among Japanese Repatriates: The Inception of ‘Hometown Shanghai”
Professor Takatsuna prefaced his talk by discussing how he came to be interested in the issue of emotions and nostalgia. He discussed how he periodizes the development of the Japanese community in Shanghai, and he concluded with a call to bring the category of emotion into historical analysis.
Takatsuna began his research with the goal of mining the memories of Japanese residents of Shanghai to clarify their experiences. He was surprised that his subjects’ eyes brightened when they began speaking of their time in Shanghai. He realized that he would not be able to deal with the objective circumstances of their time in Shanghai unless he could first sort through their emotions. Thus he embarked on this research to explore the nostalgia in this community.
He divided the history of the Japanese community in Shanghai into three periods: A preliminary period from 1871-1895, a period of development from 1895-1937, and the period of occupation from 1937-1945. During the first period Japanese residents stayed in the foreign concessions. They were largely small-scale merchants accompanied by their families; women also came and worked as prostitutes, and they were known as karayuki-san.
In the second period, which followed the Sino-Japanese War, Japanese residents gained extraterritorial rights. This new state of affairs made it possible for them to carry on their lives as permanent residents of Shanghai as if they were living in Japan; they were guarded by the Japanese navy, organized into Japanese residents’ associations, and could visit Japanese medical clinics, music clubs, etc. By 1915 Japanese had become the largest group of foreigners in the city, outranking English residents. Regular steamship service between Shanghai and Japan made the passage even easier and further increased the population.
In the third period, Shanghai came under Japanese occupation. Japanese numbers surged to over 100,000, while British and American subject were all interned or expelled by 1943. Summing up a section of the written version of the paper, Takatsuna mentioned that there were many Japanese opportunists who came to Shanghai, damaging public morality and order in the city.
Takatsuna turned then to the nostalgia that his subjects, who lived in Shanghai during this third period, expressed. He argued that their enthusiasm for Shanghai under the Japanese, their imperialistic attitude, led them to talk about what they frequently called “Shanghai, my home town.” He noted that after the war most members of the community never spoke of their experiences in Shanghai. They were forced to leave Shanghai without any of their possessions, unlike those who had resided in Manchuria. After repatriation, they felt they had lost their position in life and felt a deep sense of frustration.
In conclusion, Takatsuna argued that the process of the development of emotions is amenable to historical research, and that emotions such as nostalgia could be treated as a cultural element that can be valuable to historical research.
Commentator
Professor Parks Coble noted that there were many elements running through Takatsuna’s interesting, rich paper: (1) the creation of cultural organizations during the war itself, such as the Shanghai Research Group; (2) the universal phenomenon of older people feeling nostalgic about their youth and desiring to group with the people from that period to reminisce; (3) the fact that this memory of Shanghai becomes political, fitting into wide range of political issues between China and Japan memory.
Coble suggested that Takatsuna’s paper might gain perspective through comparative work. Citing the research on imperialism, Coble said a common theme in imperialism is control over knowledge. In the case of British India, he said, it is commonly understood that British exerted control through knowledge in many ways: the study and classification of geography, the Latin names they gave flora, the classification of languages, etc. Coble sees many Japanese projects, such as the Shanghai Youth Group that Takatsuna discusses, in terms of this attempt to grasp and create knowledge — knowledge which is interesting in and of itself, but which is also useful for control.
Coble suggested additional parallels in terms of the nostalgic emotions returnees felt after the war. The British returning home from India, who’d perhaps had never set foot in their home country, created groups such as alumni organizations for the schools they had attended in India. Coble contended that if you’d asked the people who returned in 1948-50 about superiority of Westerners, statistics would’ve been the same as Takatsuna’s results for the Japanese. There were many parallels, indeed.
Next, Coble suggested that Takatsuna consider how other groups of foreigners in Shanghai displayed their relationship with the city. For example, foreigners held commemorations of the 50th and 100th anniversary of international settlement. The “old Shanghai hand” mentality, studied by Wasserstrom, is another example. Coble cited studies of the Jewish community in Shanghai, who also came in waves: some came from Baghdad from 18th and 19th century, followed by a sudden influx of Jews with the second world war. Although the Jews were powerless and stateless, Coble still believes there are many parallels. He cited a recent book, The Diaspora Groups of Shanghai. He suggested even considering Chinese refugees in Shanghai, who in many ways had to adjust just as the foreigners did. In other words, Takatsuna’s research could fit into a wider study of diaspora nostalgia.
Coble speculated that, for those Japanese who returned to Shanghai in the 1980s, the experience must have been jarring. They would have found a city essentially unchanged, more-grimy version.
Coble concluded, saying that “this is a fascinating study, and it could be enriched with mentions of comparisons with other imperialistic situations and nostalgia in general.” He apologized for not dealing with the issue of memory in Japan and China.
Discussion
A Canadian professor began his comments with a question about the translation of the phrase “I feel sorry for…” on pages 8 and 12 of the two English versions of the paper. He suggested that the Japanese phrase was much stronger. He then asked how Takatsuna might put these memories in a “global context.” In other words, whereas Takatsuna referred to the his subjects more or less as imperialists, how could he reconcile this with the fact that, in 1957 and 1967, the Japanese repatriate groups successfully petitioned the Japanese government for formal compensation? On the other hand, the Japanese government refuses to grant formal compensation to comfort women, laborers, etc. He asked if the people Takatsuna spoke with had any thoughts on this contradiction.
An American professor wondered if any of the memories of those interviewed were fabricated. His own experiences growing up as a largely sheltered child in wartime Macao left him with sweet memories; but those ten years his senior, who experienced the atrocities firsthand, had a much more bitter recollection. He suggested that the Japanese in Shanghai may have been similarly sheltered and that their memories might therefore be biased.
An American professor expressed how surprised he was that Japanese would call Shanghai their “hometown”. Given that this concept is very specific in East Asia, it is very curious to have a “hometown” abroad.
Another comment from the floor seconded Coble’s calls for comparative work with imperialism and memory, suggesting that Takatsuna’s paper does not engage the extensive debate among Japanese and Chinese scholars about memory and the war. The commentator recalls a conference at Harvard with a fierce debate between Japanese and Korean scholars, as well his own works on memories of Hiroshima. He qualified his statement, saying that he did not mean to doubt the nostalgia of the group, “an elite group”; rather, he would like a broader exploration of the Japanese experience in Shanghai.
An American professor added a correction to a statement in the paper that the memoir boom began in 1972; he cited an example of a person who wrote in the 1950s about his experiences in Shanghai.
An American professor asked if there were emotions other than nostalgia; specifically, did any of the subjects curse the Japanese as Orwell did the British?
Another American professor echoed the comments on the debate between Chinese and Western medicine. As he understands it, the practice of Chinese medicine changed considerably during the Republican period, because so many Chinese began studying in Japan, where textbooks on Chinese medicine were already influenced by knowledge of Western medicine and anatomy. He asked what Wakeman could say about the practice of Chinese medicine during the War and Japanese occupation in this respect; did it continue to change along these lines? He cited several examples from Wakeman’s paper of how what was called “traditional Chinese medicine” had obviously been introduced through the influence of Western medicine.
An American professor asked about reprisals against accused collaborators after the end of the War.
A Chinese professor brought up his personal experience of having grown up in Shanghai during the war to question some details in Wakeman’s paper. Wakeman had mentioned that the Japanese brought in to Shanghai, in addition to their own troops, Chinese recruited from North China. According to Jin’s recollection, these so-called “fur hat people” (pimaozi) were not Chinese. In contrast to the regular Japanese troops, who were quite disciplined and well-behaved (with some notable exceptions, in his memory), these troops had horrible discipline, breaking into homes, and making women fear leaving their homes. He suggested that there must be records on these troops that Wakeman could consult.
An American professor compared Takatsuna’s findings to hers on the Japanese community in Beijing. The Japanese population in Beijing was small; before the war the Korean population outnumbered the Japanese. Only with the war did Japanese employees come in, and their population then multiplied by twenty-fold. She has discovered some memoir literature there among this group. She said that she regrets never asking about their “hometown.” But she said she would never forget the story of a man who was born in Manzhouguo and moved to China; after the War he said he felt like a zai-Nichi Nihonjin (a Chinese resident in Japan).
Professor Takatsuna addressed some of the remarks made in the remaining time. He reiterated the difficulty he has faced in the past ten years of interviews in dealing with emotions of his subjects. He also interviewed Korean and Taiwanese residents in Shanghai, trying to understand the differences between the responses of the Japanese and these other groups. He hopes to further compare the Japanese experiences in Shanghai with those in other parts of the Japanese colonial empire, such as Taiwan and Korea. He wants to understand whether they differed from the memories of the people in Shanghai. He is interested not simply in the facts but the emotional realities of those who lived through the period.
Addressing the statement that his interviewees were elites, Takatsuna countered that he had interviewed those from Shanghai who were not elites [translation mentions “native peoples and unknown peoples”]. These were those whose parents had come from Japan during the Meiji era and who were born and grew up in Shanghai; they considered Shanghai their homeland. He noticed a correlation between those who had lived in Shanghai their whole lives and those who spoke of Shanghai lovingly.
Finally, Takatsuna said that he has been studying this subject for ten years but has not reached any conclusions yet; the comments he received have been very helpful.
In response to various points raised, Professor Wakeman said that when the GMD reoccupied Shanghai, the Communists circulated propaganda that the secret police were taking bribes in exchange for letting accused collaborators out of jail. Indeed, this practice was part of Chiang Kai-shek’s and Dai Li’s (and other GMD officials’) strategy. On the other hand, it is difficult to determine who, among those serving the puppet government as police, were actually GMD operatives. As a result, the number of people actually tried of collaborating was quite small, approximately 2,000. Some crucial individuals who could have testified on the behalf of the accused were not able to, such as Dai Li, who died in 1946.
He noted that Chen Zunren had indeed bought books in Japan, and that there were efforts to establish institutes for a hybrid study of the two traditions. Wakeman maintained that he was not qualified to discuss actual techniques, but he continues to return to the problem of the cognitive dissonance between the doctors trained in one or the other tradition, trying to merge the two.
He also noted that Chen, in addition to being a doctor, was a dramatic writer. Wakeman did not have time in preparing the paper to corroborate all of Chen’s account, but he wonders how much of it is a dramatic reconstruction.