In the long pause since the last entry, I've moved back to Canada and took about three weeks off of research. While there are still plenty of online resources available, and plenty of books available in Canada containing primary and secondary resources, I'm cut off from archives in Japan and easy book-buying. This creates a situation where my dissertation is, at least for the time being, limited to what I have and I may find the resources I've collected insufficient for the type of writing I eventually want to produce.
For now, though, I've jumped into reading on the Tondenhei, which will make up for a full chapter of my dissertation, as well as provide critical details on daily life in early colonial Hokkaido. This comes largely from interviews conducted in the early to mid 20th century of Tondenhei veterans and their family members.
While most Tondenhei resources available in public archives in Japan relate to the troops themselves, and a lot of it is quite bureaucratic at that, I've been much more focused on gender and family structure as it relates to Tondenhei villages. In particular, the militarized nature of the villages, which required daily inspections and constant military drills was inseparable from domestic life in which soldiers were by law the heads of the household. Their wives and children were not Tondenhei themselves, but were to an uncertain degree integrated into the system. They were inspected in the mornings along with their husbands. If the head of the household dies, the eldest son -- if of age -- would by law be forced to take over as a Tondenhei soldier. Moreover, due to the constant drilling, women and children were largely the breadwinners, farming in place of their husbands.
It was a life of poverty. There is a great deal of evidence that, like 'protection' policy for the Ainu, there was poor planning on part of the state and both housing and arable farmland were insufficient. People escaped poverty by, often, leaving Tondenhei villages as day labourers (and most certainly leaving for good in many cases after their term of service ended). Foodstuffs consisted of the most basic of staples: flax or, eventually, potatoes, which many people reported as insufficient after the three year period of food aid expired. The houses were frequently drafty, which sent snow in through the roofs during winter storms, though not well ventilated enough to let smoke from hearths escape, leaving many people in smoky, frigid houses. At least some of these houses were built by prison labour. While this is outside my scope of knowledge at the moment, it seems likely that the Tondenhei system was supported by prison labour clearing roads, building houses, helping transport the military settlers, etc. Similarly, while not formalized, accounts by family members (though not the men themselves) frequently reference Ainu. Either to suggest that they were forced off the land which the Tondenhei settled early enough that Ainu religious paraphernalia were still scattered about, or in direct reference to everyday interactions with resident Ainu such as Ainu teaching settlers how to make proper clothing for the winter (as settlers were not provided with any). Others reported forming friendships with local Ainu. And, moreover, it seems quite likely that later Ainu 'protection' policy was based on Tondenhei policy, with the latter providing a tentative model to transform the former into would-be settlers on their own colonized land.
Another topic which comes up frequently, perhaps most frequently, in these accounts is dialect. It wasn't until the late 19th century that something resembling a national language even started to form, largely through state efforts to erase local dialects in favour of a universal Japanese language. As scholars have noted, it was in large part through classrooms and military barracks that this happened. But through the Tondenhei, we see this process play out. Second and third waves of Tondenhei were recruited from across the country and represented dozens of local dialects which were in some cases not mutually distinguishable. While some recalled this fondly, thinking of funny stories about miscommunications, this left others despondent. It seems that women were particularly effected by this. As men were often training together, they would quickly be forced to learn how to communicate with one another. One would imagine school-aged children would be no different. Women and other adult dependents, however, would be farming individuated plots and would have fewer chances to interact with each other. Some Tondenhei men reported that their wives were extremely lonely. Some women themselves expressed great relief at finding some people in their villages that they could understand, with some referring to the particularly troublesome Tohoku dialects in particular, saying things along the lines of "They weren't from Tohoku so I could understand them." Of Tohoku Tondenhei in particular, one person suggested that they were mixed in with Tondenhei from other regions specifically because they were experienced with colder northern climates and, in particular, agriculture in the upper extremes of the temperate climate of Japan and could act as teachers for the others. This difficult interaction seems to have been a major feature of communal life in Tondenhei villages.
Another theme that is repeated again and again in men's testimony are reasons for enlisting. Perhaps half reported believing nationalist propaganda about the 'northern gate', while others escaped poverty or, in some cases, personal tragedies. The former in particular seem to have been almost instantly dispossessed of their sense of patriotic duty as they saw the actual conditions that they would live in. They frequently describe carrying children or the elderly out of the port town of Otaru and into narrower and rougher paths into the bush until they find small clearings, sometimes dark during the brightest time of day due to the thick forests surrounding them. It seems to have been almost universal for family members to break down in tears upon arrival. Many of these family members were forced against their wills to go, sometimes without having been informed until the last minute. They would often leave behind loved ones. Some Tondenhei family members describe a particular member of their group as having pushed the others into enlisting and becoming something of family pariahs upon arrival due to the sense of betrayal for putting the others into such conditions. Particularly the second and third wave Tondenhei were recruited from Kyushu or southern Honshu who would neither be prepared for the radically different climate and would have no realistic notions of seeing friends or loved ones from their home regions again.
Finally, there is a clear division of class within the Tondenhei. Early waves were divided into officers (from Satsuma) and general staff (from Tohoku). Later waves gave priority for advancement to graduates of Sapporo Agricultural College. Importantly, officers were given more land to farm, which would give them a better chance of gaining self-sufficiency or even making a profit. They would gain more land if they were able to use up their allotted land: a privilege not given to regular soldiers.
More later.
