Building Japan's Empire: Local Practice and Colonial Expertise in Northeast China, 1905–1953

Abstract

This dissertation explores the development of Japanese legal, social, and technological expertise in colonial spaces in Northeast China (historically Manchuria). This dissertation is at the intersection of three fields: the study of Japan’s empire, materiality and expertise, and the modern history in East Asia. It shows that Japanese colonial technicians and officials extensively observed and absorbed local practices and vernacular knowledge in terms of material production and ownership, and further translated this local knowledge into their colonial expertise to consolidate Japan’s hegemony in Manchuria. Also, borrowing the theory of “assemblages,” the dissertation redefines our understanding of expertise. Instead of seeing expertise as a quality that Japanese technicians and officials developed before their arrival to Manchuria, the dissertation shows how Japanese colonial expertise grew out of the interactions between Japanese colonial officials and technicians and the local society, as well as the natural environment during the process of infrastructure building. Last but not least, with a focus on railway auxiliary zones, the dissertation shows the indirect influence of Japan’s empire building on other Chinese administrative regions, shaping their imagination of cities and their understanding of modernity. Drawing on archival materials from regional and national archives in five languages: Japanese, Chinese, Russian, English, and Korean. In the analysis of building technology and expertise, the dissertation also places the discussion of technology in the specific social and material context by cross-examining technical reports with personal memoirs, government reports, oral interviews and visual images. The dissertation includes six chapters. Chapter One engages the production of legal expertise, Chapter Two to Three, social expertise, Chapter Four to Five, technological expertise, and Chapter Six on the transformation of such colonial expertise in the immediate postwar era in Japan and China.