2023 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
The role of private charities in repatriation from the Japanese Empire
| Project/Area Number |
18K12493
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| Research Institution | Hokkaido University |
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Principal Investigator |
ブル ジョナサンエドワード 北海道大学, メディア・コミュニケーション研究院, 講師 (60735736)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | repatriate / repatriation / 引揚者 / Allied Occupation / decolonization |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This year the PI was able to complete archival work for this project, gathering documents about the role of the YMCA in the Occupation of Japan that were held at the Australian War Memorial. The main research achievement this year was a jointly-edited book which includes a chapter by the PI providing an overview of Japanese-language research about repatriation. The PI was also one of the book's editors and contributed the introductory chapter. In the introduction the PI used ideas developed over the course of this research project to argue that repatriation after the dismantling of the Japanese empire should be understood as 'end of empire' migration. Analysing repatriation and repatriates in this way enables more comparison to be made with population movements that happened after the end of European empires in the twentieth century.
Overall, the research project indicated the importance of organisations that were ‘in-between’ the state and repatriates in facilitating repatriation and 'starting again'. Previous research had omitted the perspective of such organisations in order to analyse the role of government officials. Historians have a good understanding of the government bureaucracy and have used many of the documents available in the archives. This research project's main contribution, therefore, has been to explore the role of a different set of actors whose work may not have been as obvious as government officials but was no less vital to enabling repatriation.
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