Review by Dr. John Hennessy, Uppsala University
Original English-language version of a book review translated into Japanese and published in 日本研究, Oct. 2021, pp. 203-206
Ethan Mark’s magisterial book takes the Japanese occupation of Java as its empirical case, but is actually about the wartime Greater East Asia [大東亜] ideology, and as such should be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand the ideological underpinnings of the Asia-Pacific War, even in other contexts than Southeast Asia. Put simply, Mark aims to answer the question of how this ideology, later so quickly and dramatically discredited as Japanese military fortunes declined, could hold such a strong appeal to so many diverse groups.
As Mark insightfully argues, the radical disparity between Japan’s idealistic, anti-(Western)-colonial, brotherly pan-Asian rhetoric and its cynical, obviously colonial, exploitative, chauvinist practice has led to unsatisfactory, oversimplified postwar explanations. It has proven all too easy for Japanese to attribute this yawning gap between rhetoric and practice to a cynical conspiracy by Japan’s top leadership, while nationalists in other Asian countries have often explained this with the Japanese’s ostensibly “evil” character. As Mark eloquently argues at the close of his book, these are poor explanations that obfuscate the very real appeal that the Greater East Asia ideal held for many Japanese and other Asians alike, and it is important to gain an accurate understanding of this in the face of a resurgence of Greater East Asian discourse since the 1990s in the form of an essentialist espousal of common “Asian values” in much of the former Japanese Empire.
As “a transnational history”, Mark’s book treats the contact of two Asian societies, giving roughly equal weight to both Japanese and Javanese attitudes while recognizing the internal diversity of both sides, a remarkable achievement. In this, it is strongly reminiscent of John Dower’s classic Embracing Defeat (1999) about the American occupation of Japan, and also mirrors that book’s analytical strengths.
After two chapters offering concise but rich descriptions of the state of each society on the eve of the occupation, a series of thematic chapters offers an approximately chronological view of the seismic changes in attitudes and policies that occurred over the three-and-a-half years of Japanese occupation of Java. Starting with the arrival of Japanese forces and their remarkably swift defeat of the Dutch, Mark chronicles a “honeymoon period” during which expectations ran euphorically high among both the Japanese and the Javanese. For the Javanese, the defeat of their European overlords of three centuries in a matter of days by a modern, non-Western country electrified the populace. Many hoped Japan could serve as a model and provide active guidance for an independent Indonesia. For the Japanese, many of whom had substantial experience with a recalcitrant China where the Japanese military was stalemated, this warm welcome, coupled with Java’s tropical climate and its inhabitants’ seeming racial and cultural affinities, led to similar dreams of unlimited future possibilities.
As Mark wisely notes, such high expectations on both sides could never be fulfilled, but the rapidity with which Japanese occupying forces squandered the large degree of goodwill that they had at the time of their arrival is still remarkable. Indonesia’s flag, which had been hoisted alongside the Japanese flag at the time of invasion, was banned within one month, together with its anthem. Japanese troops treated the local population with disdain, and the widespread practice of slapping those deemed disrespectful touched a nerve among the local population, violating a strong taboo against touching others’ heads. As the occupation progressed, Indonesians’ initial hopes were repeatedly, almost systematically, dashed, as nationalists suffered brutal interrogations by the kenpeitai, promises of independence were withheld until virtually the end of the war, and Japanese wartime demands exacerbated the already dire situation of workers and peasants. And things only got worse. As Mark puts it, “many among Java’s working class… remembered the latter part of the occupation as a nightmarish haze of ‘dizzily searching for food,’ eating cassava for lack of rice, being ashamed to venture outside for lack of decent clothing, hated participation in physical drills, and forced labor” (p. 265). Mark does not primarily aim to document this suffering, however (this has been written about elsewhere), but rather to answer the pressing question of why the occupation, which seemed to have such bright prospects at the beginning, could become such a fiasco. More importantly still, why did so many Japanese and even Javanese, including top nationalist leaders like Sukarno, continue to cling to the dreams of “Greater Asia” until the bitter end?
One of Mark’s most important conclusions is that much of the occupation’s character can be explained by the heterogeneity of the actors involved, on both sides. Following an impressive variety of individuals and groups throughout the different phases of the occupation, Mark masterfully illustrates how their diverging worldviews and interests intersected, sometimes converging, but often leading to contradictions that explain many of the occupation’s disasters. “Greater Asia,” in particular, could mean very different things to different people. Much of Mark’s account follows the so-called “propaganda squad” (gun senden butai), a group of Japanese bunkajin from various cultural and artistic fields that had been recruited to sell Japan’s wartime ideology and win hearts and minds in Java. Many of these were wholesale believers in Japan’s pan-Asian rhetoric, viewing Indonesians as “brothers” whom they hoped to help achieve national independence. Nevertheless, as civilians, the members of the propaganda squad were deeply mistrusted by the conservative military establishment. The cynical quashing of Indonesian nationalist aspirations that followed shortly after the propaganda squad’s initial attempts to co-opt this very nationalism put them in a difficult position and led to much private frustration, but they still did their best in public to spin this policy shift, for they ultimately believed in the supremacy of Japan and its interests, no matter how positively they viewed Indonesians. Mark further breaks down the military and the propaganda squad, treating different individuals’ varied backgrounds and ideologies that led to even more mixed messaging.
On the Javanese side, Mark distinguishes between conservative, collaborationist elites and native officials in the Dutch administration, different nationalist groups of newer elites with opposing strategies (those in favor of gradual change under the Dutch and “non-cooperators,” among others), younger, more radical nationalists, the Javanese working class and ethnic Chinese (kakyō), many of whom were extremely wealthy after close cooperation with the Dutch and consequently despised by most Javanese. Through extensive primary research in a variety of sources, Mark picks apart the blend of self-interest and genuine idealism that led all of these groups to collaborate with the Japanese at different points. Mark paints a compelling picture of “Greater Asia” ideology as alluring to Javanese who, like many Japanese, were disgusted with Western imperialism and sought an alternative, collective path to modernity. They dreamt of a path that would draw on traditional Asian culture to avoid the excesses of both capitalism and communism that seemed to be part and parcel of Western modernity. While Japan was genuinely admired by some, expressions of admiration were also used as a cover for more autonomous action. Mark, for example, presents an alternate explanation for the 3-A movement (Asia no shidōsha Nippon, Asia no hikari Nippon, Asia no botai Nippon), which has previously been attributed to Japanese pomposity. The movement, Mark argues, was probably conceived and largely run by Indonesians seeking a legal space to undertake nationalist community-building programs that had been banned under other auspices. After the demise of this apparently ultra-patriotic movement after suspicion from some quarters of the Japanese military, nationalist hero Sukarno tried to build up a new national movement in the shadow of the occupation. In this he played a dangerous double-game colored by both cynicism and naïveté, Indonesian nationalism and belief in “Greater Asia”. The fact that elite nationalists like Sukarno did not suffer as directly as the Javanese working class also made it easier for them to continue to cooperate. Mark’s scrupulous avoidance of essentialism both among occupiers and occupied is this book’s main achievement, allowing him to transcend the stereotypes of “evil Japanese” and “powerless Javanese” that characterize so much history-writing.
Despite its title, the book is not a comprehensive history of the Japanese occupation of Java. While Mark is right to focus on the Japanese and the Javanese, rather than writing yet another Eurocentric history, the fate of the Dutch receives surprisingly little attention, apart from a description of Dutch comfort women (ianfu). Japanese treatment of Dutch prisoners could shed much light on their views of “Greater Asia,” the Javanese, and Japan’s paradoxical anti-imperial imperialism. Likewise, the story of Dutchman Leo Jansen, whose firsthand observations of the occupation are a major source for Mark’s arguments, is left untold. One wonders how he was able to live and work in such a presumably hostile environment. The end of the Japanese occupation is also left undescribed, with the narrative ending just before Japan’s surrender. An analysis of how the diverse individuals and groups whose stories are followed across the occupation reacted to Japan’s defeat and the declaration of Indonesian independence would have been highly relevant to the book’s main themes. One can only hope that Mark will take up these issues in his future work. These omissions notwithstanding, as a study of Japanese pan-Asianism and its many formulations among diverse individuals and groups in two societies, this work is a major success that should take a prominent place in the field for many years to come.
So this is what it’s come to: the equation of Islam and fascism on Dutch primetime television, with nary a ripple in the mainstream media in response. On the talkshow “Pauw” monday night, in the context of a debate about whether Muslims should feel compelled to publicly distance themselves from ISIS and its crimes, journalist Arnold Karskens said the following, and we quote:
We’re talking about genocide in the name of Islam. That’s what the [members of ISIS] themselves say. Don’t say they’re not Muslims. If you say ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, you can also say the death camps had nothing to do with fascism. They have everything to do with it. Eighty years ago we had fascism that wore a mustache, now it wears a beard, and if we’d alerted the Germans to the dangers eighty years ago, they would probably never have gone so far, and therefore it is the duty, I call it really a duty for everyone, but especially the intellectual leadership of the Muslims, spiritual leaders, politicians and the like, to make clear that we can’t make this mistake a second time.*
OK so let’s get this straight: the atrocities of World War Two happened because….too many people said to the Nazis, “You guys aren’t really fascists”? Or is Karskens’ comparison saying rather: Islam is an ideology of destruction and death just like fascism. A small problem with this comparison is that where fascism converted millions to a genocidal ideology in a decade, you need to explain why it took 1400 years for Islam to generate this small extremist band of several thousand murderous maniacs only now–while leaving the other 99,99% of Muslims worldwide unmoved and unconvinced that mass murder is somehow lurking as the secret essence of Islam. In fact given this situation–in which the ISIS fanatics claim they act in the name of Islam, but very few Muslims actually buy this–what could be a more logical anti-ISIS strategy than for prominent Muslims to deny ISIS its precious claim to Islam? Karskens, however, won’t allow this. Because ISIS, he insists, has ‘everything to do with’ Islam. Just what ISIS itself is so fond of saying…..
OK we give up. Can somebody help us with this?
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s rather Arnold Karskens–and the millions of other self-appointed European “Islam experts” like him–who really need some help?
In the meantime perhaps you can forgive us for getting a little hot under the collar on behalf of the Netherlands’ one million-odd Muslim citizens and residents. And also on behalf of the remaining 1,599 million-odd Muslims around the world who do not identity with ISIS either. Perhaps it’s about time we asked their opinions on other things besides whether they condone mass murder?
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*Karskens’ original statement in Dutch reads:
“We hebben het over genocide in naam van de Islam. Dat zeggen die gasten zelf. Zeg niet dat het geen Moslims zijn. Als je zegt van, de Isis heeft niks te maken met de Islam, dan kun je ook zeggen van, de vernietigingskampen die hebben niks te maken met fascisme. Die hebben daar alles mee te maken. 80 jaar geleden hadden we fascisme dat droeg een snor, en nu draagt het een baard, en als we 80 jaren geleden de Duitsers hadden geattendeerd op de gevaren, dan hadden ze waarschijnlijk nooit zo ver gekomen, en daarom is het de plicht, ik noem het echt de plicht voor iedereen, maar met name de intellectuele leiding van de Moslims, geestelike, de politici en dergelijke, om hen achterbaan duidelijk te maken dat we geen tweede fout moeten maken.”
In a historic ruling today, July 3rd, 2014, the administrative court of Amsterdam acknowledged that Black Pete represents a “stigmatizing” and “offensive” caricature of black people. On the basis of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees “the right to one’s private and family life,” it therefore ruled that a group of plaintiffs who sued to stop the annual arrival of Black Pete with Sinterklaas in the city last year have a legitimate complaint. While the final decision on whether to issue a permit remains with the mayor’s office, the court insisted that the mayor take this factor into official consideration before issuing a permit, both retrospectively and–more importantly–next time around.
While it was a Dutch court that made the ruling, it was only through recourse to European civil rights law that this ruling was possible, and a look at popular blog sites today suggests that the ruling is about as unpopular among the general public here in the Netherlands as any in living memory. The vast majority of commentators have expressed feelings of disbelief, aggression, and reaction, with the plaintiffs repeatedly described as a handful of “outside” troublemakers oblivious to and disrespectful of “our culture,” “whiners” who should “go back where they came from.” The racism of such statements is never very far from the surface.
But as the above poster (which appeared during the Indonesian war of independence) reminds us, whether it’s “the Japs,” the United Nations, a judge, or European law, blaming “outside agitators” is the easiest way to ignore an inside problem, but it doesn’t usually work for long. It might involve a lot of kicking and screaming, but change is inevitable. Much as we may “love” “our good old friend” Black Pete, it’s time to let go of this colonial relic. As in the mid-20th century, so in the early 21st: This is not the first time so many people in the Netherlands find themselves on the wrong side of history.
(English Translation of the Poster Text: Holland and the Indies Black Pete belong together. A bond of centuries will not be broken by the Japs a judge”)
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
–Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
A statement that aims to kill two birds with one stone: The Golden Coach and Black Pete!
Dutch text reads: “Racism belongs in a museum…not on the street!”
For more information on Prinsjesdag, the Golden Coach, and Black Pete, see for example: Zwarte Piet and the Colonial Inheritance: The Roots of Dutch Racism Denial
If you’re interested in making a T-shirt of your own, here’s how to do it:
1.Download this image.
2.Upload this image to the on-line T-shirt provider of your choice. Note: Providers will often add extra charges for a colored shirt, and delivery charges vary widely. You might also want to inquire into the T-shirt brand used–and its associated labor practices!
3. Add the line “…niet op straat.” in Arial font, in the color of your choice. The model you see here was made using the on-line T-shirt designer at Vistaprint.nl, using a white font on a black T-shirt.
4. Font size/positioning: Vistaprint centers the added text and adjusts the letter size for you automatically; with other design software you may need to play around with this a bit yourself.
5. See you on Prinsjesdag!
Another on-target essay from Egbert Alejandro Martina:
On the Containment of Blackness in Dutch Anti-Racist Organizing.
When’s the last time you saw African people, or people of African descent, depicted as they are in the cartoon to the left? 1960? OK, maybe as recent as 1970? Then you’re lucky enough to live in a place where civil rights struggles have yielded at least a modicum of change in consciousness regarding everyday racism. In the Netherlands, we’re still stuck in the present tense: This cartoon appeared on page 3 in the Metro Newspaper–distributed for free in public places across the Netherlands and read by hundreds of thousands each morning–on May 21st 2014. Sadly enough we’ve gotten used to this in depictions of Black Pete–many of whose supporters excuse the explicit racism of such images by claiming that Black Pete is a fantasy figure with no relation to any actual person of any ethnic background, living or dead (!) But if it’s possible to think of a context in which the deployment of such representations could be even more offensive, then certainly one of these would have to be using them to make a joke at the expense of the desperate thousands of people from Eritrea currently risking their lives, their security, their families–their everything–just to take a chance on the crossing to Europe. A Europe that views them, for the most part, simply as an unwanted nuisance.
The accompanying text reads: “If the water level keeps rising a bit longer, we’ll be able to sail to the Austrian border.”
The rising waters are a reference to recent, dramatic flooding in the Balkans, whose suffering is thus also made light of for maximum humorous effect.
LOL.
If you’re as shocked and offended as we are please feel free to let the Metro editors know how you feel: nieuwsredactie@metronieuws.nl
Update: In an e-mail response to those who have sent in complaints, the author of the cartoon issues an apology–to the people of the Balkans! Not a word, on the other hand, addressed to the issue of the representation of Africa, Africans…or racism.
Our attention was recently drawn to “the Lewis Model,” a mapping of the supposed essential characteristics of the cultures of the world by British world traveller and linguist Richard Lewis which is claimed to “explain every culture in the world.” Since its appearance in the mid-1990s, Lewis’ book has sold over one million copies–enough reason for Business Insider Australia magazine to recently pronounce that Lewis had “nailed it.”
We beg to differ. In fact we would argue that behind its fresh appearance, Lewis’ attractive looking pyramid diagram is rather a model of something very old, but nevertheless as powerful and appealing as ever: Orientalism and national essentialism.
So we decided to produce our own model, to chart the power relations that create people like Richard Lewis: confident and arrogant enough to feel that they–and they alone–are uniquely qualified to explain all the cultures of the world with a neat little model, and remarkably successful in selling it. Dedicated to another Lewis who served as a major inspiration for the establishment of the Wishful Thinking Blog.
Enjoy!
The Lewis Mayo Model Explains Those Who Think They Can Explain All the Cultures of the World
Too bad for those of you who can’t read Dutch, but we’ve just discovered tumbler site (now also in a facebook version) that takes aim at Dutch media stereotyping and hits the satirical bull’s eye with every shot. The author remains anonymous for now, but whoever this comrade in arms may be, thanks for your inspired efforts!
Only: Now an English version please, for maximum global accessibility!
The Dutch Media and the Definition of Dutchness
Wesley de Laat, owner of the housecleaning company Budget Cleaning Brabant in the south of the country, has been in the media spotlight in the Netherlands recently for posting advertisements that openly and proudly proclaim that his company “only employs Dutch.” Accused of discrimination and “maybe even racism” by numerous Dutch media commentators, and likewise under heavy attack in the blogosphere, he has answered by characterizing his “no hiring of aliens” (allochtonen) policy not as discrimination but as a commercial strategy pure and simple: When polled on the question “would you rather have a Dutch person or an alien working in your backyard,” he notes, some 85% of roughly 10,000 residents in the area where his firm does business, in the posh neighborhoods of Waalwijk, Oisterwijk and surroundings, responded “Dutch please.”
As he characterizes it, he is thus merely responding to a “gap in the market.” He further points out that the only difference between his company and so many other Dutch companies is that he is honest and straight about who he will hire and who he won’t; countless others do the same thing but merely beat around the bush in explaining it.
Here de Laat certainly has a point: A study in 2011 found that when researchers posing as potential employers asked Dutch temp agencies if they would be willing to refrain from supplying workers of a Turkish, Moroccan, or Surinamese background, nearly 77% of those contacted responded in the affirmative.
While few would dispute that de Laat is discriminating on the basis of ethnic origin, it remains unclear whether he has in fact broken any Dutch laws.
Of interest amidst all the hubbub, however, is also what the Dutch media is not discussing. Particularly striking is how infrequently Wesley’s separation of the local population into the two categories “Dutch” and “alien” (allochtoon) has itself come under any media scrutiny. Although he uses the term “Dutch” (Hollands) as his hiring criteria, Wesley is of course not talking about nationality but about race and ethnicity. Whether a job applicant was born in the Netherlands is after all of no interest to him–what matters is his or her color.
This is an important and telling definition of “Dutch” indeed, reaffirming what is in fact a common notion here in the Netherlands–and indeed much of the rest of a Europe that remains deeply racist on this score–that what makes one “authentically Dutch” is not where one was born, nor whether one wishes to be Dutch, nor indeed what it might say on one’s passport, but rather one’s ethnic background pure and simple. See for example the headline underneath the above interview, which reads, “Wesley de Laat wants to employ only Dutch” with no quotation marks around the word “Dutch” (“Hollandse”).
In the interview itself, de Laat is accused of discrimination, but not questioned about how he defines being “Dutch.” However critical of de Laat’s discriminatory practices Dutch mainstream commentators may strive to appear, in their coverage of the controversy, they have nevertheless consistently joined him in uncritically reproducing the category “Dutch” as equal to “white.”
Outside the European context, it is hard to imagine a similar failure to use quotation marks in such a headline: Just for comparison’s sake, imagine a headline that read, “Employer X seeks to employ only Americans.” In the North American context, unless quotation marks were to appear around the word “American,” it would presumably not even be clear that the employer was doing anything other than obeying the law–only with the use of quotation marks to draw attention to it, would it start to become clear that this news item might refer to discrimination on the basis of a dubious association of a particular race or ethnicity with nationality (or a lack thereof). In today’s Netherlands, in contrast, consciously or not, the equation of “Dutch” with a particular racial category–“white”– remains so automatic that the use of quotation marks in such a headline is not yet even a commonplace.
Though it may just be wishful thinking, we look forward to a day when “Dutch” and “white” are no longer such a “common-sense” equation…
