I've began selectively reading through this collection of recollections of the children of influential Meiji-era figures involved in the colonization of Hokkaido. Today I read through the first two chapters belonging to Nagayama Takemi, the son of Tondenhei head and Hokkaido governor Nagayama Takeshirō, and Dan Mariko, the daughter-in-law of the American Kaitakushi employee, rancher, and diplomat Edwin Dun. In both cases, I'm reading these short, intimate family biographies to try to better understand these figures outside of their formal role in colonial politics.
Nagayama Takeshirō
Takemi, the third son of Nagayama Takeshirō, remembers his father as a stern, almost severe man. It's clear that Takemi loved his father, though always at some distance. In contrast, Takeshirō was deeply loved by other soldiers, and seemed to reciprocate. He seemed to be a 'soldiers' soldier', being visited frequently by high ranking officers in the Imperial Army, and being visibly energized as he lay dying of cancer by news about the Russo-Japanese War, and particularly devastated to hear about the death of a friend. He was not, according to Takemi, completely without affection for his children, but largely the children seemed to be afraid of their father when they were young. There's a sense that there were some issues beyond the Nagayama patriarch simply being an authoritarian father. We learn that he suffered from stress headaches, apparently from overwork during the time he was simultaneously the Tondenhei commander and the Hokkaido governor, and in all of this, there's some sense of him as being an incredibly repressed person who is unable to connect with his own family members except in brief instances.
We learn that Takeshirō's last wish, while dying in Tokyo, was to return to Sapporo one last time, which he wasn't able to do because of his health and the arduous journey by train and sea to what was still then a remote location. Takemi recounts that his father said 「じぶんは屯田兵と約束しているから、東京では死にたくない、札幌の家へ帰って、あの庭を見ながらおれは死にたい、骨は、豊平の墓地に埋めて欲しい」(I've made a promise to the Tondenhei, and so I don't want to die in Tokyo; I want to go back to my house in Sapporo and I want to die there while looking out at my garden. I want my bones to be buried in the Toyohira cemetary.). About this, Takemi explains that his father welcomed incoming Tondenhei recruits by saying 「おまえたちは途中で内地に帰ってはならぬぞ、北海道の開拓というものは、容易なものじゃない、おれもおまえたちと同じように、ここの土になる」(You guys don't to go home to the mainland part way through. Colonizing Hokkaido is no easy job, and like me, all of you are going to become dirt here).
In this, there's a powerful sense of connection between Takeshirō as a settler and the land, for the most part typical of settler colonial discourse elsewhere. More on this later.
Edwin Dun
More briefly, the second essay gives a sketch of an elderly Edwin Dun from the perspective of his daughter in law, Michiko. While it consists of short glimpses into Dun's life, particularly during a reassessment of his historical importance in the post-war years as a sort of civilizer of Japan/pioneer of Hokkaido.
We learn that Dun was deeply moved by his encounter with the Meiji emperor, which is a sentiment seemingly shared by Horace Capron. Dun, however, was not simply awed by the experience of being honoured by a monarch, but rather claimed well into his old age (at which time the Meiji emperor was long dead) that 「日本でいちばん好きな人は明治天皇さま」(My favourite person in Japan is His Royal Highness Meiji).
Moreover, we learn about Edwin Dun's infamous campaign, evidently successful, to exterminate the Hokkaido wolf with strychnine. Michiko recounts this story fondly, using it to demonstrate Edwin's humility in simply saying 「″ご飯だ″と言われたから手を洗ってテーブルのところへ行ったら、お皿にはもう何もなくバターのおふたが取れていて歯形がついていた」(We're told "dinner!" but when we get to the table, there's nothing on the plate, the lid to the butter's missing, and there are teeth marks in it). Others have discussed this a length, but Dun is referring indirectly to ranchers losing livestock to wolves as a sort of domestic theft, which can be directly contrasted to the perceived value of wolves, foxes, etc., just a few short decades earlier in the Tokugawa period where these predators helped in the cultivation of rice by killing rodents. Similar to Leonard Cohen's line that "there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order", it is actually quite shocking how nonchalant the decision was on the part of Dun and his contemporaries to drive a species into extinction to minimize unpredictable loss and thereby maximize the profits of large scale commercial agriculture.
This too is a common occurrence in other settler colonies, including Dun's birthplace, the United States, where wolves, bears, and buffalo alike were largely exterminated to allow for high profits in ranching and to allow for uninterrupted lines of transportation to be opened. This is a particular form of capitalist accumulation which should be explored further.
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