P

Mariko 1Tamanoi“East Asian Community and Intercultural Studies”
Symposium

anelistSensibility, “Categories,”
and the East Asian
Community
Mariko Tamanoi

Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles

INTRODUCTION

timizer” and the “victim,” the “colonizer” and the “colonized,” etc.). The history of East Asia is no exception

If history refers to the totality of what happened into this rule. Particularly since the end of the last world

the past, we can “represent” only a minuscule portion ofwar, as the state has become one of the active story

it. This is why, I believe, Jacques Le Goff wrote thattellers of history, these “concepts” (all the words above

history is a “narrative, which can be true or false, basedin quotation marks), some of which form a binary, seemon ‘historical reality’ or on pure imagination”

to have gained new power as the means of politics. Yet,

(1992:192). In other words, history is only what wedo these concepts help us to expand the range of history

manage to narrativize in writing and/or in speech, is al-that we could narrativize? Do they assist us better toways contested in terms of “truth,” and is thus in “thereach historical realities? And if they instead prevent us

realm of the inexact” (Ricoeur, quoted in Le Gofffrom doing so, what are the alternatives? In this chapter,

ibid:105). Nonetheless, to still pursue “historical real-

while attempting to answer these questions, I would likeity,” we resort to various tactics that include: 1) dividing

to invoke and discuss “sensibility” as the means of in-time into eras (“ancient,” “medieval,” “pre-modern,”terrogating these “concepts,” which have been conven-“modern,” etc.); 2) dividing space into parts (“empires,”tionally used in the writing of East Asian history,“nation-states,” “regions,” “cities,” “villages,” etc.); andparticularly since 1945.

3) categorizing people, the subjects of history, into
groups in terms of nationality, race/ethnicity, gender, oc-

What I will propose is not new: rather, it is some-cupation, generation, class, status, and so forth (“Japan-

thing we often forget, and I was indeed reminded of myese” and “Americans,” “men” and “women,” “soldiers”

own forgetfulness by the book by a German linguist,and “civilians,” the “old” and the “young,” the “rich”

Uwe Pörksen, titled Plastic Words: The Tyranny of aand the “poor,” the “enemy” and the “friend,” the “vic-Modular Language (1995). While this is not the place25

Sensibility, “Categories,” and the East Asian Community

where I summarize this book, one example of such

he had tried to put his experiences in narratives of poem

“plastic words” will suffice my purpose, “develop” orand prose. What follows is a passage from one of his“development.” Pörksen argues that the verb “develop”

publications, Nichijô e no kyôsei, published in 1970.

is both transitive and intransitive verbs. As a transitive
verb, it means: “The subject A develops the object B.”

Perhaps when violence and harm are juxtaposed,

As a intransitive verb, it means: “B changes over time.”

the victim “exists only as a collective.” What is ofYet, the conventional meaning of “development” fails

infinite concern to me is the “retreating figure” of

to indicate “who changes what”, and we confuse “de-the man who, amid the flux of harm inflicted andvelopment” with “forward change” or even with “his-harm suffered, is shocked by the discovery in him-

tory.” Are many concepts we use today in writing East

self of a steadfast victimizer, withdraws alone from

Asian history plastic words? And if so, dose our “sen-the group, and leaves it behind him (1970:256-57).1

sibility” to these words help us to untangle the problems
we ourselves create by relying on conventional concepts? These are the questions I pose in this chapter.

Aizawa Yoshi was a teacher of Harbin Higher
School for Japanese Women in Manchuria whom I met
in Tokyo in 1999. In 1940, she lost 20 students and 2

TWO NARRATIVES OF MEMORY

colleagues of this school in the typhoid epidemic thatbrazed through the city of Harbin. For several decades

Let me begin with the narratives of Ishihara Yoshirôafter Japan’s capitulation and her repatriation, Yoshi be-(1915-1977) and Aizawa Yoshi (1914-2004), who in mylieved it was the general lack of hygiene in China thatview tried to rescue themselves out of the establishedcaused the epidemic. When I met her, however, she con-concepts/categories of history to reach closer to “histor-

veyed to me her firm belief that her students and col-ical realities.”

leagues got sick and died of typhoid caused by bacilli

Ishihara was one of the members of the Kwantung

spread by Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of theArmy, Japan’s 700,000-strong Manchurian garrison.

Japanese imperial army. In comparison to the pain of

When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Au-

thousands of Chinese victims and their surviving fami-

gust 8, 1945, the Army was decimated and some 55,000

lies, “my pain is only the size of a poppy seed”（私の痛of them were believed to have died within a week. Most

みは芥子粒ぐらいのものだけれど）, so prefacingof the remaining soldiers, including Ishihara, were sen-her remark, she said:

tenced to terms of 15 to 25 years for a variety of “counterrevolutionary” offenses against the Soviet Law andRecently, I was deeply surprised to hear that thoseinterned in the Soviet gulag in Siberia. Ishihara did not

who had sprayed the bacilli were the soldiers of

return to Japan until 1953. Since before his repatriation,

Unit 731, the notorious bacteriological unit that ap-

1

It is Andrew Barshay, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, who alerted me to Ishihara and his works. The translation of
the original in Japanese is also his, which appears in his unpublished article “The Painted Gulag: Kazuki Yoshio and The Siberia withinMe.” The original is the following:“ おそらく加害と被害が対置される場合では、被害者は“集団としての存在”でしかない...私が無限に関心を持つものは、加害と被害の流動の中で、確固たる加害者を自己に発見して衝撃を受け、ただ一人集団を去っていくその“後ろ姿”である” （石原 1970: 256－57）

26

Mariko Tamanoi

pears in Morimura Seiichi’s documentary, Akuma

the multi-ethnic and vanquished Japanese Empire. Fur-no hôshoku [Devil’s Gluttony]. Unit 731 threw thethermore, while the Japanese “civilian” victims havebacilli in a pond for the purpose of infecting the

been incorporated into the “Japanese war victims,” they

Chinese. Without knowing it, a Chinese whohave been hierarchically placed under the “soldier vic-

washed the vegetables in that pond came to ourtims.” For this reason, their surviving families haveschool and a dormitory houseboy bought these veg-

never been entitled to any form of compensation frometable. Having learned this, I feel outraged but I do

the Japanese state. While the state assumes that “sol-not know to whom I should direct my anger. Since

diers” died for the sake of the country, the same state

my fellow countrymen did this, rather than being

also assumes that the “Japanese civilian victims” wereconcerned about myself, I feel deeply sorry for thekilled by Japan’s enemies and thus died for the sake ofpeople in China. My hatred against war, that often

the country. Those killed by the Japanese army, then,changes humans to devils, has grown further (1999,

are not war victims but merely the products of unfortu-

personal communication).2

nate accidents. Since the 22 victims of typhoid whom
Yoshi remembered were “nothing” to the state, Yoshi

In these narratives, both Ishihara and Yoshi face thebecame skeptical of the ways in which the conventional

formidable limit posed by the binary of the “victim” andnarrative of the history of East Asia has always catego-

the “victimizer,” and in the sense that they suffer fromrized people into the “Japanese” and the “Chinese” orthis challenge, both emerge as the “suffering victimiz-

the “friends” and the “foes.” Here, then, I would like toers.” In the conventional narrative of the history of East

propose the “history of sensibility” to replace the “his-Asia, however, there is no such concept/category as thetory of concepts and categories” to rescue Ishihara and“suffering victimizer.” Hence, Ishihara could only ex-

Yoshi from what Ishihara calls nichijô (daily routines),press his identification with the “suffering victimizer”

and many other survivors from the same predicament.

in the process of first “discovering” the “victimizer” in

But first, a few words about “sensibility.”

himself as he oscillates between the “victim” and the“victimizer,” and leaving alone the collectivity of the

In my own discipline of anthropology, “sensibility”“victim,” and yet he could show only his “back” to theis often considered to be one of the twins: another twin

“victims.” Likewise, Yoshi struggled with the category

is “culture.” In the introductory course of cultural an-of the “war victim,” the boundary of which was by nothropology, for example, we learn that the notion ofmeans clear in her mind. After all, it is the Japanese“culture” has only been democratized since the late 19thstate that counts the “Japanese war dead,” but even the

century. In other words, the idea that “everyone is cul-

category of the “Japanese” is unclear in the context oftural” or “everyone has culture” was new then in the2This quote is my own translation of the transcribed records: “最近ね、私の（経営する）本屋さんに来たある方がね、チフス菌をばらまいたのはあの 731 の隊員だと言ったの。ほら、あの森村誠一の“悪魔の飽食”に出てくる細菌部隊よ。731 がまず満人をチフスにかからせるためにチフス菌を池にまき、それを知らずにとある満人がその池の水で野菜を洗って、その野菜を学校の寮の食堂のボーイが買ったらしいの。このことを知ってからね、怒りがおさまらないのよ、でもその怒りを誰にぶつけていいのかもわからないの。我が同胞がやったわけだから、自分自身がどうのこうのというよりも、中国の人たちにたいしてほんとうに申し訳がないの。戦争というのは人を悪魔にかえてしまう—だからその戦争を憎むしかないのよね。” See Tamanoi(2000) for the full discussion of my interview with Aizawa Yoshi.

27

Sensibility, “Categories,” and the East Asian Community

West, as before the late 19th century, only a small seg-come with their own problems (which I will discuss inment of population―the middle- and upper-class Euro-

conclusion).

peans― were considered to be cultural. The foundersof cultural anthropology wrested this “culture” from the1) Question the established concepts and categories.

European elites and made it into the property of every-

In so doing, we should be “sensitive” to that: (1)one while battling with the Social Darwinism populareach category/concept does not represent a homogenous

in the West. This is how I was taught of the democratic

entity; (2) each category/concept has a porous boundary;foundation of cultural anthropology. The history of(3) there are always those who refuse to be categorized“sensibility” in the West is almost parallel to this history

and those who are unsure of which group they belongof “culture.” Thus, Daniel Wickberg writes that there

to; and (4) such a category/concept may prevent us fromare two roots of the modern concept of “sensibility”: one

exploring the intricate power relations among those wholies in the 17 century British empiricism that equates

claim their memberships in it. Here, I specifically note“sensibility” with the human biological capacity for sen-that the “past” and the “present” are also already estab-sation; another root lies in the idea of moral and emo-

lished categories/concepts. Relying on the divide be-tional capacity beyond the narrow biological capacity

tween the two, we often define the past and the presentthfor receiving impressions from the external world. This

un-problematically, as the colonial period (the past) andsecond root suggests that only a fraction of people―thethe post-colonial period following the end of formal(European) elites―had “sensibility” while others didcolonialism (the present). We therefore must be sensi-

not. Yet, akin to what happened to “culture,” “sensibil-tive to that: the present determines the way people nar-ity” too was democratized in the late 19 century andrativize the past experiences to a great extent.

thbecame the capacity of everyone. As Franz Boas would
say, every human being is cultural and sensible. I will
therefore use “sensibility” to refer to the capacity to per-2) Be sensitive to the narratives of memory.
Since the 1990s, East Asia has become one of theceive and feel, which anyone is believed to possess, andmost “remembered” geopolitical regions of the word,

here I am interested in the sensibility of the one who nar-causing at times a war of memories. “Memory” in itself

rativizes history, whether s/he may be a scholar, an au-

is a vast subject. Memory is infinite because all con-thor of autobiography, the state, or the so-calledsciousness is mediated by it. Memory is also social, as

informants of our inquiry.

people tend to share memories with others. In addition,
memory never exists in isolation from social context.

TO THE HISTORY OF SENSIBILITY

Thus, we must approach memory with due caution, andin this respect, the four approaches to memory that Ann

The question, then, should be: what should we learn

Stoler and Karen Strassler have recently proposed arefrom the sensibilities of Ishihara and Yoshi? Or how canuseful for anyone who attempts to write the history of

we as researchers cultivate our sensibility to reach closer

sensibility of East Asia. The first approach―a storage

to the historical realities of East Asia? In my attempt tomodel―envisions memory as a storehouse of knowl-

answer this question, I will make the following propos-

edge that contains the information about particularals, but note that these proposals are still half-baked andevents in the past. The second―a hydraulic model―is28Mariko Tamanoi

a variant of the first: it interprets memory as a repositoryof “facts,” but explore how individuals, groups, nations,of alternative histories and subaltern truth. The third―and states have remembered to challenge the hegemony

an identity model―views memory as constructions ofof remembering and forgetting.

and for the present. Stoler and Strassler then argue thateach of these three models has its strength and weakness. The storage model is valuable for empirical research, but anyone who relies on this model must be

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I would like to respond to the possi-

aware of the interpretive problem that it elides: bothble critique to the history of sensibility. Such critiquememory and experience come to us only through medi-

may be twofold and they are related to each other. One,

ation of narration. The hydraulic model can be credited

the history of sensibility may seek for those “Japanese”

or discredited for the same reason. Yet this model is use-

who identify themselves with the “victimizer” and/or

ful when we think of the (lack of) power of those who

those “Chinese” or “Koreans” who sided with theremember the subaltern truth. Under this model, re-“Japanese” authorities. Two, we need something thatmembering may be an act of resistance by a marginalcan be named. Without it, we cannot criticize the for-group of people. The identity model, which places moremidable power of imperial “Japan” and “Japanese” peo-emphasis on what remembering does for the present

ple, nor can we assess the power of the collectivities ofthan on what can be known about the past, best points“Chinese,” “Korean,” or people of any other nationali-

to the nature of memory as constructions for and of theties who were courageous enough to challenge the im-present. Yet, in using this model, we should keep inperial power. The argument expressed in these critiques

mind that memory is not a mere construct, nor is it ais based on the history of concepts and categories, andfunctional response to the need of and for the present.

it is precisely this history that I try to reorient in thisHence the need to integrate all these approaches calls

paper. Here, in lieu of answering these critiques directly,

for yet another model, which Stoler and Strassler call

let me briefly discuss what Alexis Dudden has recently“memory-work”: to treat memory as an interpretive

called an “international apology boom” (2008). Think,labor, and for this end, to examine “not only what is re-for example, the “official apology” made by the gener-

membered but how” (Stoler and Strassler 2000:9, em-

ation of Japanese prime ministers since the early 1990s

phasis original).

to the international community, which goes something

Indeed, the narratives of Ishihara and Yoshi have

like: “That war turned out to have given much agony

already suggested to us the importance of memory-and sorrow to the people of many countries, particularly

work. They did not just “recall” the event; rather, re-of our neighbor countries of Asia” (Obuchi Keizô 1998).

membering for them was an arduous process, which had

Here, I would like to note that: (1) this apology has little

no end or destination as long as they kept remembering.

to do with history in terms of finding out what happened

In other words, we need a dialectic treatment of memory,to whom, when, where, why and how it happened; (2)in which the divide between the past and the present has

this apology has been coopted by the Japanese stateno place. If they keep remembering, we researchers

leaders to make national apologizing work to strengthenmust keep remembering with them. We should not be

the state; (3) this apology has become for some statesatisfied with what has been remembered in the nameleaders of East Asia and civic groups the primary goal29

Sensibility, “Categories,” and the East Asian Community

to attain; (4) this apology in itself has helped generate

Barshay, Andrew (unpublished) “The Painted Gulag::and spark the unstable present; (5) this apology is no

Kazuki Yasuo and The Siberia within Me.”

longer about history but about political policy; and fi-

Dudden, Alexis (2008) Troubled Apologies: Among

nally (6) this apology has created the problem of who

Japan, Korea, and the United States. New York:

would decide when an apology was real. The root ofColumbia University Press.

these problems, then, is the fact that this apology lacks

Ishihara, Yoshirô (1970) Nichijô e no Kyôsei [Subjec-

sensibility, is tantamount to “wishing to turn the pagetion to Daily Routires]. Tokyo: Kôzôsha.

and, if possible, wiping it from memory” (Adorno

Le Goff, Jacques (1992) History and Memory, trans-

1986:115), and is also based on the history of concepts

lated by Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman.

and categories. Against “apology,” then, can we think

New York: Columbia University Press.

of something else, that is, “reconciliation,” which isMorimura, Seiichi (1983) Shinpan Akuma no hôshoku

grounded in the arduous process of remembering of[Devil’s Gluttony, New Edition].

what happened to whom, when, where, why and how it

Kadokawa Shoten.

Tokyo:

happened, and which involves not only the states but nu-

Pörksen, Uwe (1995) Plastic Words: The Tyranny of amerous individuals. I do not think that the history ofModular Language. Translated from German bysensibility dismisses the power of Japanese imperialism

Jutta Mason and David Cayley. University Park:or the power of collective resistance against it, for thePennsylvania State University Press.

one who tries to narrativize history with sensibility neverStoler, Ann, and Karen Strassler (2000) “Casting for themiss the power of such collectivities while capturing its

Colonial: Memory Work in ‘New Order’ Java,”

effects on him/her and others regardless of their nation-

Comparative Study of Society and History 42:1:4-

alities, classes, genders, generations, and so on. The his-48.

tory of sensibility, then, demands us to get together inTamanoi, Mariko Asano (2000) “War Responsibility

one place and dialogue where each one of us is the sub-and Japanese Civilian Victims of Japanese Biolog-

ject of history.

ical Warfare in China.” Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars, 32:3:13-22.
References

Adorno, Theodor W. (1986) “What Does Coming toTerms with the Past Mean?” In Bittburg in Moraland Political Perspective, edited by Geoffrey H.
Hartman, pp.114-137. Bloomington: University ofIndiana Press.

30

Wickberg, Daniel (2007) “What is the History of Sensibilities? On Cultural Histories, Old and New.”
American Historical Review 112:3:661-84.