Gerteis, Christopher

The American Historical Review

Christopher Gerteis

Crossref

Ken C. Kawashima . The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan . (Asia‐Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society.) Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press . 2009 . Pp. x, 297. Cloth $84.95, paper $23.95.

SOAS Research Online

Ken C. Kawashima. The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan.Author(s): Christopher GerteisSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 5 (December 2010), pp. 1462-1463Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.115.5.1462 .Accessed: 08/01/2011 06:08Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. .Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.The University of Chicago Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.http://www.jstor.orgbest of a bad bargain for their weak and vulnerable so-ciety, hoping thus to ride piggyback on Japanese “mo-dernity.” A few visionary ones, echoing the Pan-Asi-anist circles of Japan, thought that because of racial andcultural affinities with Japan they might assist Tokyo indeveloping a northeast Asian umbrella under which theKoreans and Japanese would coexist and flourish asequals. Conceivably, for some others the eventualemergence of a transcendent, “hybrid” identity on theBritish model appears to have been attractive, as theauthor suggests in the book’s conclusion.Of course, as Caprio amply documents, such visionsfoundered on the rocks of widespread Japanese notionsof superiority leading to harshness, discrimination, andslights inflicted daily on all but the most privileged mi-nority of Koreans. Patterns of education, employment,services, and residence for the most part continued toreflect serious disproportion and humiliating barriersbetween Japanese and Koreans, despite some marginalimprovements over time. Even among those theoreti-cally willing to extend their trust and goodwill to Ko-reans, there was often the condescending talk of “pre-paring” the Koreans for equality under decades of“advanced” Japanese tutelage. (This rhetoric remindsme of the stillborn trusteeship idea that the Allies inWorld War II cooked up for the restoration of Koreansovereignty “in due course.”) Perhaps, given the in-flated notions of Japanese “uniqueness” based on theirthrone’s “divine” origins myth—ancient in provenancebut more assiduously nurtured after the Meiji Resto-ration—it was impossible for most Japanese to enter-tain the idea of equality between the two nations. I sus-pect that at the psychological level, notwithstanding theracial and cultural affinities between Koreans and Jap-anese that some politicians and scholars stressed as abond between them, and despite the fact that Shintoand emperor-centered rituals were relentlessly pushedby the Japanese rulers of Korea, this would have re-mained an insurmountable task; the project obviouslymilitated against Japanese “uniqueness.”Caprio has fleshed out the theme of assimilation withrich detail and nuance and thrown a fresh light on thecomplex nature of Japanese rule in Korea and its lim-itations—a rule that was riddled with logical holes allover its fabric and, among other things, proved quitenaı̈ve as well. His work handsomely complements thestudies of Michael Robinson and Kenneth M. Wells onrelated topics and injects balance into simpler narra-tives of Japanese misrule and Korean resistance.VIPAN CHANDRAWheaton CollegeNorton, MassachusettsKEN C. KAWASHIMA. The Proletarian Gamble: KoreanWorkers in Interwar Japan. (Asia-Pacific: Culture, Pol-itics, and Society.) Durham, N.C.: Duke UniversityPress. 2009. Pp. x, 297. Cloth $84.95, paper $23.95.Ken C. Kawashima has crafted a robust book examiningthe daily lives of Korean day laborers as a means ofrevitalizing discussion of the processes of class-forma-tion in interwar Japan. Perceptively, and sometimesquite humorously, Kawashima offers a unique view onthe ways in which the commodification of labor poweris “interrupted, disrupted, suspended, deferred, de-layed, and prolonged” (p. 10). He argues that Koreanday laborers, although “chronically unemployed, immi-grant day workers in the public works industry,” wereamong the first members of Japan’s prewar industrialproletariat precisely because they were “expropriatedfrom their land in Korea, and compelled to find workin Japan—but with no guarantees of finding it” (p. 10).In doing so, Kawashima has relocated the axis of work-ing-class formation from the contingency of employ-ment within the factory to the continuously contingentexperience of finding and re-finding work itself.At times burdened by an overly elaborate theoreticalposition, Kawashima has nevertheless presented aunique and powerful social history that will reshape ourunderstanding of the codeterminant processes of col-onization and industrialization. He observes that Ko-rean in-migrants to Japan after 1920 were “caught be-tween agricultural immiseration in Korea . . . and anindustrial recession in Japan.” Market forces combinedwith ethnic discriminatory practices to create condi-tions in which Korean men coming to Japan to find fac-tory work “increasingly faced closed factory doors, andeven when they were open, Koreans were soon cast outas disposable and temporary workers” (p. 65).Kawashima argues that this “virtual pauperization”channeled Korean men into the day labor market“through the mediation of various state apparatusesand their disavowed and supplementary forms, such asKorean welfare organizations” (p. 67). Even mutual aidsocieties, ostensibly formed to lend a helping hand tothe struggling day laborer, further facilitated the pro-cess of pauperization by ameliorating a few minor con-ditions without significantly changing the struggle tofind and re-find work at the core of the day laborer’sexistence. “It is here,” asserts Kawashima, “that Koreanworkers felt the double shackles of low wages and eth-nic discrimination in a ‘particular and highly specific’way” (p. 93).In chapter four (“Urban Expropriation and theThreat of the Outside”), Kawashima examines the ex-tent to which blatant patterns of discriminatory rentingpractices on the part of urban landlords over-deter-mined the tenancy opportunities of Korean workers inJapan. He argues that inflated rent prices relative tofalling wages, which characterized employment pat-terns for Korean day laborers from the late 1920s to thelate 1930s, resulted in the expropriation of lease-hold-ing property from ethnic Koreans in a fashion “uncan-nily similar” to the conditions that had originally pre-cipitated the process of in-migration from rural Koreato urban Japan (p. 128). Even in an economy charac-terized by rapidly declining wages, landlords chargedethnic Koreans higher rents while simultaneously beingmore likely to evict Korean tenants. Importantly, Ka-washima identifies key forms of resistance in the way1462 Reviews of BooksAMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 2010that Korean day laborers rented under Japanese namesand counter-extorted “eviction fees” from landlordswho sought to displace them. When push came toshove, however, landlords called on police and thecourts to enforce their property rights, and state in-volvement favored them in all but a few cases.Ultimately a form of what he astutely identifies asstate regulated employment insecurity, the Unemploy-ment Relief Programs (UERP), institutionalized the“basic conditions for the exploitation of Korean laborpower as cheap, colonial labor.” Created in 1925, theUERP created an elaborate registration system osten-sibly designed to minimize intermediary exploitationand regularize the incomes of urban day laborers byfixing minimum wages. Kawashima argues, however,that wage differentials between Korean day laborersand their Japanese counterparts remained unchangedeven after the inception of the UERP. He argues thatthe UERP instead operated as a means of registeringKoreans “with state apparatuses in order to promote,regulate, and enforce a life indebted to wage labor andthe state” (p. 203).Kawashima’s argument is situated within a compel-ling narrative of the struggle to find work during an erawhen being Korean also meant being a subaltern sub-ject of an expanding Japanese empire. While Kawashi-ma’s theoretical agenda clearly lies elsewhere, a greatdeal of recent scholarship has demonstrated the impor-tance of gender when seeking to unpack the history ofthe working class. Many of the source materials exam-ined seem laden with gendered notions of class and eth-nicity, as well as classed and ethnicized notions of gen-der, that warrant further examination. This book wouldhave particularly benefited from an examination of theextent to which notions of gender also influenced theexperiences of the male day laborers at the center ofKawashima’s study. Despite these few drawbacks, Ka-washima has delivered a well-researched social historythat should be added to the reading list of all seriousstudents of modern Korea and Japan.CHRISTOPHER GERTEISSchool of Oriental and African Studies,University of LondonANDREW M. ROE. Waging War in Waziristan: The BritishStruggle in the Land of Bin Laden, 1849–1947. (ModernWar Studies.) Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.2010. Pp. ix, 313. $34.95.Waziristan is a remote mountainous region of Pakistansituated on the border with Afghanistan. Inhabited bywell-armed and independent-minded Pashtun tribes,the mountains of Waziristan form a natural fortress.The Pashtun tribes have been described as “the largestknown potential reservoir of guerrilla fighters in theworld” (p. 59). In recent years, Waziristan has becomea sanctuary for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, and apossible refuge for Osama bin Laden. On the westernside of the international border, in southern Afghani-stan, troops of NATO armies and their Afghan alliesface similar challenges of tribal insurgency.Andrew M. Roe has produced a timely study ofWaziristan. Roe claims that “practical measures andvaluable insights into the British experience inWaziristan remain relevant and worthy of consider-ation by today’s policy makers” (p. 13). In 1893, the Du-rand Line established a formal international frontierbetween northwestern India and Afghanistan. Thetribes of Waziristan thus acquired a legal status as Brit-ish subjects. Centuries of seclusion, however, had cre-ated an anarchic society in the mountains. The Muslimtribes lived by a code of honor known as Pashtunwalithat emphasized the need for vengeance, hospitality,skill at arms, and individual autonomy. Tribal head-men—maliks—exercised only loose control over theirclans. When the tribe faced a threat from outsiders, re-ligious leaders proclaimed jihad to unite the clans un-der the banner of Islam.British colonial policy prior to World War I generallywas to leave the tribes in isolation. Roe compares themto tigers in a national park: “They could kill what deerthey liked in the park; they risked a bullet if they cameoutside and took the village cattle” (p. 195). After afierce revolt in Waziristan in 1919–1920 a policy of“control from within” was adopted by the government(p. 95). Roads were built and tribal police were em-ployed to guard government property. Large regulararmy garrisons were based deep in Waziristan, a prac-tice not generally pursued in other tribal areas apartfrom the vital Khyber Pass. Political agents and para-military scouts were the eyes and ears of the regime. Asystem of tribal allowances already in existence was re-fined and paid to clan leaders to build leverage in tribalsociety.Renewed warfare erupted in Waziristan in Novem-ber 1936. Mirza Ali Khan, the Fakir of Ipi, led oppo-sition to the government’s presence in Waziristan at atime of heightened religious tension. The permanentbasing of regular troops deep in tribal territory playeda major role in sparking the revolt. In 1937, 40,000troops and paramilitary forces failed to capture the Fa-kir of Ipi, “something from which Osama bin Laden candraw some comfort” (p. vii). The biplanes of the RoyalAir Force did not make a decisive impact. Aerial bomb-ing was merely a new way to antagonize tribal society.The insurgency continued into the 1940s. After the cre-ation of Pakistan, the new authorities continued the oldcolonial methods, but without the stationing of armygarrisons in tribal territory.Roe’s book does not set out to provide an overall nar-rative account of the British period in Waziristan. Thefighting of 1919–1920 is only referred to briefly. Rather,he focuses primarily on the last major revolt to takeplace, which is the Fakir of Ipi’s insurgency from 1936onward. Roe views this period as the most relevant partof the colonial period as it is the most recent. The workconcludes with three chapters of analysis of the con-nections between the past and present. Roe stresses theneed for careful study of Waziristan if state authoritiesAsia 1463AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 2010

Review of 'The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan' by Ken C. Kawashima

https://soas-repository.worktribe.com/file/338917/1/Gerteis_on_Kawashima_-_ahr.115.5.1462.pdf

Review of 'The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan' by Ken C. Kawashima

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Crossref

SOAS Research Online