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Purposes of this Symposium
From the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, significant waves of Japanese emigrants journeyed to regions including Hawai‘i, North and South America, Korea, and Manchuria. The symposium seeks to reassess the transformative impacts of these migrations through the lens of the expanding Japanese Empire's interactions with the Pacific world, particularly focusing on the Americas. By analyzing these dynamic movements of people, material, and capital, we aim to illuminate the complex interplay between migration and imperial expansion, challenging traditional historiographical boundaries that have often treated discussions of migration in isolation from broader diplomatic contexts.
The primary importance of adopting this perspective lies in bridging the spatial divisions that have characterized traditional studies of US-Japan relations and immigration history. Conventional narratives often depict immigrants primarily as diplomatic “problems,” whereas immigration histories focused on specific regions frequently overlook broader patterns of human mobility. Building on recent scholarship regarding transpacific mobility and the concept of a “Pacific Empire,” which aims to connect North America, Taiwan, and Manchuria, this symposium seeks to present a more three-dimensional and multilayered portrayal of imperial Japan. It does so by emphasizing the roles of diplomatic missions and government-affiliated financial institutions operating at the forefront of empire in the Pacific world, as well as the diverse networks—such as remittances to home regions, kenjinkai (prefectural associations), and media—that functioned with relative autonomy from state-led structures.
The second significance of this perspective is its potential to bridge fragmented approaches to mobility by comprehensively examining the flows of people, goods, capital, and information. While human migration is inseparable from those other movements, connecting immigration history with socioeconomic contexts has proven challenging. Recent analyses of archival materials from the Yokohama Specie Bank, which employed global strategies to recirculate funds acquired from Japanese immigrant communities within the empire, have illuminated intriguing historical realities—such as the expectations and frustrations immigrant societies had toward the Japanese government and the specific routes through which substantial remittances reached the home country. Through this symposium, we also aim to contribute new perspectives to the history of US-Japan relations by exploring the roles that goods, capital, and information played in shaping the ideas and actions of immigrants.
Event Details
Traversing the Socio-Economic Frontiers of the Empire of Japan and the Pacific World
Co-hosted by the Center for Modern Japanese Legal and Political Document, Faculty of Law, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo and the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Date: July 13, 2025
Location: No. 1 Building, Room No. 25, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, Faculty of Law, Hongo Campus, University of Tokyo (see map)
Presentations
9:00–9:10 am: Opening Remarks
Ryosuke Maeda and Eiichiro Azuma
9:10–11:40 am: Session 1: Diplomatic and Economic-Financial Networks in the Pacific World
Session Chair: Eiichiro Azuma
Session Discussants: Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu and Takayuki Hamaoka
Presentation Language: Japanese
- Presentation 1: “Japan’s Emigration Policy: History and Lessons”
Kaoru Iokibe
This talk provides an overview of the evolution of Japan’s immigration policy before World War II, focusing on two key aspects: first, the relationship between nation-building in Japan and its immigration policy; and second, how Japanese emigration to various countries and regions shaped the lessons and constraints of subsequent immigration policies. Cutting-edge research on the socioeconomic conditions of diverse Nikkei communities abroad offers a framework that helps participants integrate these findings comprehensively. - Presentation 2: “Labor Migration to the New World and Family Strategies”
Toshio Yanagida
This study reconstructs the trajectories of individuals who migrated to the New World for labor opportunities by analyzing scarce contemporary materials, such as letters they wrote to their families. By focusing on family strategies centered on the migrants themselves, the research explores the continuities and discontinuities of human mobility across temporal and geographical dimensions: from the premodern to the modern era, and between domestic migration and movements to colonies, spheres of influence, and beyond. Labor migration to the New World often spanned one or two decades, during which both the sociopolitical landscape of regions and nations, as well as the circumstances of migrants and their families, underwent significant transformations. In this dynamic context, migrants’ decisions—whether to return home with remittances or savings, settle permanently in their host countries, or even consider another destination—took on new and evolving meanings. - Presentation 3: “A State Reluctant to Invest in Its Emigrants: Yokohama Specie Bank and Prewar Nikkei Communities in the Pacific”
Ryosuke Maeda
This paper re-examines the interplay between Japanese diplomacy and its expatriate communities in the prewar era, with a focus on the investments and influence of Yokohama Specie Bank (YSB). While existing scholarship on diplomatic and immigration history has extensively analyzed patterns of Japanese emigration driven by imperial expansion and Japan’s policies in Asia, recent studies have broadened the scope to include Japan’s Pacific endeavors, including Hawai‘i and North and South America.
However, regional differences in governmental support for emigrants remain underexplored. In territories including Korea and Manchuria, Japanese emigrants benefited from military and police backing. In contrast, emigrants to other countries, such as the United States and Brazil, relied solely on diplomatic and economic support, with YSB playing a pivotal role. Despite this, YSB’s global strategies often disregarded the voices of overseas Japanese, resulting in weakened loyalty to their homeland.
This study seeks to highlight these disparities and shed light on the complex and often overlooked dynamics between diplomacy and emigration, emphasizing the nuanced challenges faced by Japanese expatriates in regions lacking direct governmental support. By analyzing these interactions, this research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of Japan’s global engagement during the prewar period. - Discussants’ Comments and Q&A
11:40 am–12:40 pm: Lunch Break
12:40–15:10 pm: Session 2: From Microhistory to Migrant Networks
Session Chair: Kaoru Ueda
Session Discussants: Mariko Iijima and Jordan Sand
Presentation Language: English
- Presentation 4: “The Making of Japanese American War Heroes and the Rearmament of the Armed Forces in Occupied Japan”
Eiichiro Azuma
This talk traces the politico-cultural process in occupied Japan that gave birth to a public image of the Japanese American fighting man as a model for soldiers of a democratic Japan under US military occupation.
After the defeat of imperial Japan, the United States set up a military government in Tokyo, trying to democratize the former enemy on its terms. That project included the complete destruction of Japan’s military capabilities and an educational campaign against militarist and feudal traditions in Japan. From late 1948, American occupation policy nonetheless underwent a “reverse course” from demilitarization to rearmament of the defeated enemy. Between the rise of Communist China and the outbreak of the Korean War, US military brass at the Pentagon and officials at MacArthur’s GHQ (General Headquarters) in Tokyo looked to the World War II accomplishments of the famed all-Japanese American (Nisei) 442nd Regimental Combat Team to marshal popular support for the remaking of occupied Japan as a junior US ally. Accompanying this development was the glorification of the “American soldiers with the Japanese face” as a trope for the new democratic soldiers of postwar Japan. In this reverse propaganda campaign, a few thousand Nisei troops in occupied Japan—mostly GHQ linguists—performed an equally important role in the effort to present them as a paragon of democratic soldiers.
Taking advantage of the trope of Nisei war heroes, many Japanese nationals also engaged in their own versions of Nisei glorification, which elucidated their continuing belief in the superiority of the Japanese culture and race. This talk examines the triangular contestation and complicity among White US occupiers, Japanese American occupation troops, and Japanese leaders in a hitherto unrevealed aspect of US-led remilitarization of post-defeat Japan. - Presentation 5: “A Microhistory through Remittances from Japanese American Communities: Analyzing Remittance Records of Yokohama Specie Bank of Los Angeles Branch in the 1930s”
Yoko Tsukuda
This paper illustrates a microhistory of the transpacific network revealed through individual remittances of Japanese emigrants in the United States. The Oka Collection of the Japanese American History Archives holds individual forms of kyōri sōkin, remittances to hometowns, from Yokohama Specie Bank’s Los Angeles subbranch in the late 1930s. Even though the available records are minimal, thousands of hand-written slips show the socioeconomic, cultural, and political connections between prewar Japanese communities in Los Angeles and their hometowns and beyond.
The purposes of the remittances were remarkably diverse, extending beyond mere monetary support for their families in Japan. They included imon-kin, “comfort money,” to the Japanese military or to emigrants’ home villages to prove their loyalty to the motherland, and overseas subscriptions to popular Japanese magazines. Several Issei parents sent remittances to young adult Nisei children residing in Japan for secondary education; one of the slips proved a connection to a famous political figure, Takeo Miki. Several Koreans also sent money to their families in colonial Korea. By tracing the paths of the remitters and the recipients through the wartime and postwar periods, this paper aims to connect the microhistory of transpacific migration and remittances to the broader global context. - Presentation 6: “Japan's Local Imperialists: Expansive Ideas of Hometown and Empire within the Asia Pacific World”
Hannah Shepherd
This paper focuses on a case study of one Japanese prefectural association and its monthly magazine to reassess the importance of prefectural associations (kenjinkai) beyond the diaspora communities in North America that until now have been the subject of Anglophone scholarly focus. It also returns an imperial dimension to histories of domestic prefectural associations, underemphasized in Japanese-language scholarship on kenjinkai and ideas of the “hometown”. Arguing that the expansive ideas of the “hometown” created through the networks of prefectural associations and the pages of their publications gave rise to ideas of borderless empire and frictionless mobility, this paper demonstrates how histories of prefectural associations and magazines like Fukuoka kenjin present a new, regional perspective on both empire and the idea of the hometown in prewar Japan. The existence of such associations in and beyond Japan’s empire was not unique: this paper puts the history of kenjinkai in conversation with other such regional settler networks around the globe that were happening at the same time. It then looks at the transwar continuities and ruptures felt by overseas associations in both North America and among former Japanese colonists, before contextualizing the rise of a “third wave” of domestic migration and hometown discourse in the 1960s. - Discussants’ Comments and Q&A
15:10–15:20 pm: Break
15:20 pm – 17:50 pm: Session 3: Media, Discourse, and Transnational Networks in Northeast Asia
Session Chair: Ryosuke Maeda
Session Discussants: Barak Kushner and Shin Kawashima
Presentation Language: English
- Presentation 7: “Human Migration and the Newspaper Network in late Nineteenth-Century East Asia”
Hiroyuki Shiode
This paper examines the development of newspapers in East Asia during the late nineteenth century, revealing their role in forming a transnational network of news and opinions. The emergence of newspapers in the region was closely tied to the migration of people and the integration of East Asian countries into the global market economy. Following the Opium War, British merchants introduced English-language newspapers in China and Japan as part of their trade activities. These newspapers engaged in a cross-border circulation of news and perspectives through the practice of reprinting articles. This model inspired the establishment of Chinese- and Japanese-language newspapers, which contributed to the transnational exchange by translating and disseminating articles.
In Korea, newspapers initially appeared under Japanese influence after the country’s opening to trade, but as Korea approached annexation by Japan, both Korean and British publishers began to play significant roles in shaping the local press. This study underscores the interconnectedness of East Asian media and its pivotal role in fostering transnational communication during a period of profound socioeconomic transformation. - Presentation 8: “Exchange of Correspondents in the Japan-Soviet Negotiations to Establish Diplomatic Relations (1922–1925): “Movement of People,” “Circulation of Information,” and Contact Between Red–White Russians”
Mizuki Sato
This presentation examines the exchange of Japanese and Soviet correspondents during the Japan-Soviet negotiations from 1922 to 1925, highlighting its significance in the movement of people and the circulation of Information amid contrasting political regimes. Using records from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it explores how correspondents gathered and transmitted critical intelligence to their governments, served as informal emissaries in unofficial negotiations, and became instruments of diplomatic maneuvering, with authorities leveraging entry permissions and communication restrictions as bargaining tools.
The analysis also considers tensions between White Russian refugees in Japan and Soviet correspondents. White Russians opposed the entry of Soviet agents, advocating for police protection and restrictions to curb Soviet influence. These interactions reveal how correspondents’ activities extended beyond diplomacy, intersecting with security concerns and ideological conflicts. - Presentation 9: “The Policies and Discourses Leading up to the Japanese Emigration to Manchuria”
Kenji Kimura
This paper explores when, where, and in what forms Japanese emigrants were sent abroad, focusing on the policies of the Japanese government, the activities of various organizations, and the discourses in the media and public opinion. The study spans migration across the Pacific Rim, encompassing Japanese laborers, agricultural workers, fishers, merchants, and corporate employees from the early Meiji era to World War II.
Given time constraints, the presentation will focus on two key cases: migration to Korea during the Meiji period and the transition from Brazil to Manchuria as a key destination for emigrants during the prewar Shōwa era. Through these examples, the paper seeks to clarify the fundamental role of overseas emigration in modern Japan and provide insights into what overseas migration symbolized for Japanese society during this period. This research is part of a broader investigation into the socioeconomic and ideological underpinnings of Japanese emigration in the modern era.
17:50–18:10 pm: Concluding Remarks
Kaoru Iokibe
Symposium Attendee Biographies
Ryosuke Maeda is an associate professor of Japanese political and diplomatic history in the Department of International Relations at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. His research focuses on nation-state and empire building, the party politics of social and economic policy, and international and imperial finance in East Asia. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Tokyo.
Eiichiro Azuma is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2020. He specializes in Japanese American history, transpacific migration, and interimperial relations between the United States and Japan. His award-winning works include Between Two Empires (Oxford University Press, 2005) and In Search of Our Frontier (University of California Press, 2019). His forthcoming book, Brokering a Race War, will be published by Oxford University Press.
Kaoru Iokibe is a professor of Japanese political and diplomatic history at the Graduate School for Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo. He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Tokyo. His research focuses on diplomacy under restrictions of sovereignty, as well as party politics and mass media.
Toshio Yanagida is a professor emeritus at Keio University, specializing in Japanese migration history to Latin America. He graduated from the Graduate School of History, Keio University, and served as a professor at his alma mater for a long time. He was also a visiting professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu is a professor and the Dunlevie Family Chair of the Department of History at Rice University. She is a historian of the United States’ relations with the wider world, with a particular emphasis on US- East Asian relations since the mid-nineteenth century. Her publications include Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War (University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
Takayuki Hamaoka is the assistant director at the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. He is on the editorial staff of Nihon gaikō bunsho (Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy) and has extensive knowledge of both prewar and postwar diplomatic records of the Japanese government. His publications include “Japan-U.S. Relations and Economic Assistance Initiative to Southeast Asia: Kishi-Eisenhower Era” (2019) and “Management of Official Documents at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the Introduction of the ‘New Document Management System’” (2021), and he supervised the translation of Sumio Hatano’s One Hundred Fifty Years of Japanese Foreign Relations from 1868 to 2018 (Tokyo: JPIC International, 2022).
Kaoru Ueda is the curator for the Hoover Institution Library & Archives’ Japan and Japanese Diaspora Collections at Stanford University and develops the Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection. She edited Fanning the Flames: Propaganda in Modern Japan (Hoover Institution Press, 2021), and coedited, with Eiichiro Azuma, Japanese America on the Eve of the Pacific War: An Untold History of the 1930s (Hoover Institution Press, 2024).
Yoko Tsukuda is an associate professor at Seijo University, Tokyo. She received an MA in ethnic studies from San Francisco State University and a PhD in American studies from the University of Tokyo. Her research interests include the transpacific migration of Japanese, the history of Japanese American communities, and media representations of Nikkei.
Hannah Shepherd is an assistant professor of the history of modern Japan and its empire in the Department of History at Yale University. Her first book, The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region, is due to be published in December 2025.
Mariko Iijima is a professor at Sophia University, Tokyo, specializing in Japanese migration history and the global history of Asia-Pacific agricultural commodities. Her recent book, A Global History of Kona Coffee (Kyoto University Press), examines the complex interplay between human migration and coffee cultivation. She holds an MPhil and a DPhil from the University of Oxford.
Jordan Sand is a professor of history at Georgetown University and Kokugakuin University. He researches and writes widely on the social and cultural history of Japan and the Asia-Pacific.
Hiroyuki Shiode is a professor in the Graduate School of Letters at Kyoto University. He earned a PhD in area studies from the University of Tokyo in 2004. He served at the University of the Ryukyus from 2006 to 2018, before joining Kyoto University in 2018. He specializes in modern and contemporary Japanese history and Japanese political history. His major work, Ekkyōsha no seijishi: Ajia Taiheiyō ni okeru Nihonjin no imin to shokumin (The political history of transnational migrants: Japanese migration and colonization in Asia Pacific) (Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2015), offers a comprehensive analysis of Japanese migration and colonization in the Asia-Pacific region.
Mizuki Sato is a graduate student specializing in Japanese political and diplomatic history at the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics of the University of Tokyo. Her research examines the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ information operations during negotiations with Soviet Russia between 1920 and 1925.
Kenji Kimura is a professor emeritus at Shimonoseki City University. Kimura specializes in the history of modern Japan-Korea economic relations and modern Japanese migration history. His major publications include Kindainihon no imin to kokka・chiikishakai (Modern Japan’s migration and the nation-state/regional society) (Ochanomizu Shobō, 2021) and 1939-nen no Zainichi Chōsenjinkan (Perspectives on Koreans in Japan in 1939) (Yumani Shobō, 2017).
Barak Kushner is a professor of East Asian history in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has edited numerous books and written several monographs, including the award-winning Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (Harvard University Press, 2015) and The Geography of Injustice: East Asia's Battle between Memory and History (Cornell University Press, 2024). He also appeared on the NHK program Ramen wo shiritai, which explores ramen studies from a historical perspective
Shin Kawashima is a professor of the Department of International Relations at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. Kawashima is the author of numerous publications on the diplomatic history and foreign policy of Japan, China, and Taiwan, including Chugoku no furontia: yureugoku kyōkai kara kangaeru (China’s frontier: Reflecting from shifting borders) (Iwanami Shoten, 2017), 21-seiki no 「Chūka」: Shū Kinpei Chūgoku to Ajia (Twenty-first-century “Zhonghua”: Xi Jinping’s China and East Asia) (Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 2016), and Chūgoku kindai gaikō no keisei (The formation of modern Chinese diplomacy) (Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2004).
