Social Science Japan Journal Advance Access originally published online on February 27, 2009
Social Science Japan Journal 2009 12(1):101-119; doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyp003
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Social Science Japan Journal 12:101-119 (2009)
© 2009 Oxford University Press
Nation or Colony? The Political Belonging of the Japanese in Karafuto
SHIODE Hiroyuki is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law and Letters at the University of the Ryukyus, specializing in Japanese Political History. His publications include ‘Meiji Rikkensei no Keisei to "Shokuminchi" Hokkaido’ (The Formation of the Meiji Constitutional System and the ‘Colony’ Hokkaido), Shigaku Zasshi 111(3): 55–84 (March 2002), and ‘Meijiki Hawai Zairy
Nihonjin no Sanseiken Kakutoku Mondai’ (The Issue of Suffrage for the Japanese in Hawaii during the Meiji Era), Nihon Rekishi 663: 56–72 (August 2003). He can be reached at the University of the Ryukyus, Faculty of Law and Letters, 1 Senbaru, Nishiharach
, Nakagamigun, Okinawa 903-0213, Japan, or by e-mail at shiode{at}ll.u-ryukyu.ac.jp
This article charts the process of policy formulation regarding the political status of Japanese settlers in Karafuto, a Japanese colony in southern Sakhalin from 1905 to 1945. With a focus on the voices of colonists themselves, I analyze the ups and downs of their political movement to obtain the franchise to vote from 1924 to 1945. From the early 1920s, Japanese residents in Karafuto demanded representation in the National Assembly (Diet). They claimed that since the island's majority population was Japanese, settler–colonists possessed the full rights of Japanese citizens (unlike Karafuto's Indigenous Peoples, the Taiwanese or the Koreans). However, before granting the franchise, the central government stipulated a change in Karafuto's administrative status, from colony to unit of local administration. This condition prompted Japanese settler–colonists to resist full political integration with the mother country due to economic dependence on the Karafuto Colonial Government's development and public works projects.
* Translated from the Japanese by Paul Barclay.