2006 Volume 56 Issue 4 Pages 864-881
All the inhabitants of the Ogasawara/Bonin Islands are emigrants. They started immigrating to these islands in 1830 from all parts of the world. They made a living by trading with whalers who halted at these islands. The Ogasawara Islands were the center of the autonomous life world in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. In 1875, “the Empire of Japan” began to occupy these islands and these settlers were naturalized as “Japanese” citizens; however, they were named “kikajin” (which means naturalized people) and were controlled by the “exceptional” law in “the Empire of Japan.”
In this study, I examine how the naturalized people managed to survive under the occupation. Particularly, the manner in which they rearranged their economic practices by negotiating with the sovereign law of “the Empire of Japan.” They continued trading with “foreign” seamen who halted at the Ogasawara Islands. They were employed as hunters on a yearly basis by the “foreign” schooners to the Sea of Okhotsk for furseal hunting, often “violating” the borders of “Russia” or “Japan.”
This type of rearrangement of the autonomous life world of the naturalized people deviated from the “expanding and marginalizing” movement of the “nation empire” (the modern empire) and often resulted in “demarginalizing” border transgression.
