Source overview: Kangoku Hōrei Ruisan - Ch. 20 Genpei Oyobi Tondenhei Kankei

This brief section of this wide-ranging book on criminal justice in Japan deals with the Tondenhei and the military police. The chapter consists of seven ordinances regarding military courts, six of which relate directly to the Tondenhei. While there is no commentary included, these provide something of a primer for further studies on the Tondenhei, as it clearly states the following:

• Tondenhei colonists, even while primarily working as farmers, were subject to military and not civilian law
• The Tondenhei was officially a branch of the Japanese army (rikugun)
• The Tondenhei was, at least as of 1899, a volunteer army
• Tondenhei members were recruited between the ages of 17 and 30
• A separate Tondenhei military court, subject to the ministry of defence, was established in Sapporo
• Graduates from the Sapporo Agricultural College (who under Clark's instructions, received basic military training) were fast-tracked into the officer corps when they joined the Tondenhei
• Tondenhei members with children could retire if family responsibilities became to much, and non-officers could retire and remain attached to the Tondenhei as reservists

It becomes exceptionally clear that the Tondenhei were highly integrated into the Japanese armed forces and were not colonists with a simple ceremonial connection to the army. In other words, while they were farmers that worked to clear the land, and presumably after being discharged from service were granted portions of this land to farm individually, they regularly trained for combat.

This certainly highlights Michele Mason's assertion that the Tondenhei were an occupying army on Ainu land. And, I wonder to what degree they were at the time officially regarded as such. The Tondenhei branch was abolished in 1904 but was resurrected in the 1930s in Manchukuo with much the same purpose. But, we simply don't see the Tondenhei active in Taiwan or Korea or Nan'yo or other Japanese colonies. It was, at least until the Japanese colonization of Manchuria, a system unique to Hokkaido.

Another consideration is the question of the origins of the Tondenhei. While the name itself is clearly an allusion to the ancient Han dynasty's Tuntian system of military colonies in borderlands, a major difference is that Chinese agri-colonies were borne out of logistical necessity as supplying large occupying armies with food was extremely difficult and it was easier for them to grow their own. With this in mind, some scholars have linked the actual Meiji Japanese system to the Russian Empire's Cossacks who lived semi-autonomously in the empire's borderlands and represented the first wave of settlement, though unlike the Tondenhei, shared a balance of power with the Russian imperial government. Moreover, the Hokkaido government's own museums show that the Tondenhei lived in balloon-frame housing based on models used by American frontier cavalry, and the Hokkaido settlers guidebook I wrote about in a previous post shows plans for log houses used by Tondenhei which were typical of first-wave colonists' housing on the American western frontier. It seems that the Tondenhei were extremely hybridized, though Michele Mason was absolutely correct.