1939 Foundation for Colonization Awards Map of the Global Japanese Diaspora

Emigration for Empire.

This is an unrecorded 1939 Japanese-language map of the world, prepared by the Foundation for Colonization Awards and published in the magazine Across the Sea. It reflects hopes for greater overseas migration, which by this time was clearly tied to Japan's wider imperial expansionism.

A Closer Look

The map presents the world on an unusual azimuthal-like projection centered on the southwestern Pacific, near New Guinea. Black circles of various sizes represent Japanese diaspora populations, with the smallest being between 250 and 1,000 people and the largest representing 1,000,000. A statistical table at bottom-right provides specific statistics for each country, including whether the Japanese population was growing or shrinking, with caveats about some statistics likely being outdated given the rapidly changing situation (by this time, Japan was already engaged in a full-scale war in China). Here, Hawaii is separated from the rest of the U.S. in consideration of the Pacific archipelago's large Japanese population. Although there were interestingly small communities of Japanese emigrants in places such as British East Africa, South Africa, and Iran, the largest communities were in Manchukuo, China, Hawaii, the U.S. (excluding Hawaii), Brazil, Peru, the Philippines, and Japanese-controlled islands in the southwestern Pacific (the South Seas Mandate taken over from Germany after the First World War). As Taiwan, Korea, Karafuto, and the Kuril Islands were part of the Japanese Empire, they are not included in these overseas statistics.

Colonization and Japanese Imperialism

From the late 19th century, government officials in Japan were eager to promote emigration as a means of alleviating Japan's population crisis, which was also a source of potential social and political volatility. Thousands of Japanese emigrated to Hawaii, California, South America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, usually with government support and coordination. For example, in South America, officially sanctioned programs created semi-private corporations to purchase vast swaths of land, especially in Peru and Brazil. The 'colonists' did not necessarily relocate of their own free will and were largely the poor, religious undesirables (Christians), second and third-born sons, and agricultural workers from southern provinces. To this day, Latin American Japanese communities are the largest such outside of Japan. At the time, increased Japanese influence in Latin America drew the attention of the FBI, and during the Second World War, hundreds of Peruvian-Japanese were forcibly extracted and interned in camps in the United States.

A different group of Japanese emigrants moved to destinations closer to home, especially Taiwan, Korea, and Manchukuo (nominally independent though a colony in all but name). These migrants were usually driven by hopes of upward social mobility, or at least the promise of cheap or even free land, especially in Manchukuo. Many professionals, bureaucrats, and businessmen also emigrated, forming a more affluent group of Japanese abroad. By the late 1930s, there were more than 300,000 Japanese in Taiwan, 400,000 on Karafuto, some 800,000 in Korea, and over two million in China, mostly in Manchukuo. Unlike the Japanese Diaspora in the Americas, most of these migrants returned to Japan during or just after the Second World War. Depending on the location and the history of the community, some people tried to remain after the war and assimilate, for instance, by changing their name (this was common among Japanese-Filipinos and Japanese Mestizos in the Philippines).

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by the 'Foundation for Colonization Awards' (財團法人拓殖獎勵館) and appeared as a supplement to the new year's edition of the monthly magazine Across the Sea (Umi o koete, 海を越えて) in January 1939 (Showa 14). This organization was one of the many dozens if not hundreds of pro-imperialist groups that sprang up in the 1930s as Japan's territorial ambitions grew. Its name would suggest that it existed to finance Japanese emigrants' relocation expenses. The Foundation for Colonization Awards unsurprisingly had a close relationship with similar organizations such as the Colonial Institute of Japan (日本拓殖協會, see our Philippines-colonialinstitute-1942 by them) and with the Japanese government itself; Across the Sea was published by the Investigation Department of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (外務省調查部). We have been unable to locate any other examples of this map in institutional collections, while Across the Sea itself appears quite rare (OCLC 1463224134).

Source

月刊海を越えて 新年號 (昭和十四年一月).    

Condition

Good. Laid down on archival tissues. Fill repairs at all four corners and at a few fold intersections.