Reading notes on Nitobe Inazo and Kawano Tsuneyoshi

My first day of serious research this summer has basically confirmed what I assumed already: that Hokkaido was colonized directly on models of American settler colonialism. This was confirmed by a somewhat astonishing pamphlet written by the famous Japanese intellectual (and colonial administrator) Nitobe Inazo, "The Imperial Agricultural College of Sapporo, Japan". This pamphlet givens a general overview of the history of the school (today Hokkaido Daigaku), however, Nitobe also gives a frank and straightforward history of the rationale (both practical and ideological) behind the creation of the college as it relates to the larger colonization project. This is tied to Kuroda Kiyotaka (the Hokkaido Colonization Office director)'s 1870 fact finding mission to the United States:

In General Kuroda's mind there was one source whence he could expect wisdom and knowledge pertaining to new settlements; and that was America. Thisther, therefore, he himself proceeded in the fall of 1870. He studied the rapid and wonderful progress of colonization in that country, and thought that the modus operandi at work there might well produce similar results in Japan.

While this clearly confirms my hypothesis about Japanese settler colonial practices, Nitobe writes extensively about the ideological framework on which the colony was based. Arguing that the "simple adoption of American methods without trained hands to rightly direct them, would merely amount to an apish trick," Nitobe describes a wave of American experts brought to the Imperial Agricultural College to teach Japanese students (who would largely go on to be colonial bureaucrats, including the author). Experts such as Clark taught not simply agricultural methods, but imparted on his students the "manly spirit" of the United States to transform Japanese students into "exemplary pioneers". Interestingly, while it becomes clear that the colonization of Hokkaido is both technologically as well as ideologically grounded on the "advanced civilization" of the United States, Nitobe also stresses the school "promote[d] conceptions of [the students'] relations to the state and to society." Given studies of early Meiji education and barracks life as being tied to the formation of modern national subjects, the Western education and paramilitary training that students in Hokkaido received from American teachers is striking. This may prove interesting later on looking at Ainu educational (assimilative) institutions.

Secondly, the past few days I've started to go through some of the source books I brought back from Hokkaido. The first of these is Kawano Tsuneyoshi's 1894 edited volume Ainu Shiryōshū Series 2 Volume 7 アイヌ資料集第七巻 〈第二期. This is split into three smaller volumes:

1. アイヌ聞取書 (Ainu Oral Testimony)
2. 『啓明会』往復書翰 (“Seimeikai” Return Ticket Notes)
3. アイヌ関係新聞記事 (Newspaper Articles Related to the Ainu)

The first of these that I've looked into is the book of newspaper articles. While these articles focus exclusively on articles between 1900 and 1927 (and therefore not entirely useful for talking about the ideological formation of Hokkaido), it's tightly packed with articles on the plight of the "wretched Former Aborigines" (referring to the Ainu) following the "Former Aborigine Protection Act" in 1899, including some criticism of the act itself. I found newspaper articles like this in Hokkaido as well, which showed an awareness of some (presumably) ethnic Japanese journalists in Hokkaido of the hypocrisy of regimes of "protection" for those subject to them. Also interesting in this volume is a shift to anthropological views of the Ainu in the early 20th century, including an article striking in it's paternalistic arrogance titled "We Must Protect (hogo) the Ainu as Witnesses to Ancient Times". It's becoming obvious that the legal and discursive aspects of protectionism will become central to my research, and these sorts of articles will be extremely useful.