This article shows the situation in depth about the independence of the Ba Maw government and compromise from the Japanese army, through the issue of transferring the enemy’s property to the Ba Maw government. The literature indicates that the Ba Maw government acted autonomously and did not try to avoid a head-on collision with Japan. Such a relationship between the local regimes and the Japanese army is a focal issue for the historical assessment of establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. However, there is no established theory regarding how much importance can be attached to the relationship. This article aims to examine the strategy of transferring the enemy’s property in Burma by utilizing historical documents collected in Japan and Burma.

The first section will review the events related to the transferal of the enemy’s property before Burma gained “independence” in August 1943. In “Biruma Dokuritsu Shido Yoko（緬甸独立指導要綱）（The Guideline of Burmese Independence）” that was established at the Liaison Conference between the Japanese Government and the Imperial General Headquarters, it was decided to transfer items other than those that were special and important after the “independence,” implying that Japan would not transfer oil fields, mines, and railways. However, Ba Maw disagreed with the decision and succeeded in establishing the format that oil fields and mines would once be transferred. Also around this time, transferring forest income to the government of Ba Maw became permitted.

The second section will examine how the enemy’s property was transferred after the “independence,” and how Ba Maw tried to actualize it. In “Tekisan Shori Yoryo（敵産処理要領）（The Main Point of the Enemy’s Property）” that was completed in October 1943 by the Burma Area Army, it was decided that in addition to oil fields and mines, railways would also be transferred. However, when the transfer was executed in March 1944, the transfer for railway was postponed. In response to this, Ba Maw proposed that railways, mines, and factories should be jointly operated by Japan and Burma, leading to the agreement that the Burma side would possess 60% of the share. In addition, Ba Maw also announced the general rule to lay a tax on Japanese in Burma, and succeeded to continuously make the Japanese army pay above the actual cost for the forest management.

In this way, this article suggests that Ba Maw persistently continued the effort to recover Burma’s rights and interests. Japan was unable to constrain it and had to compromise every time.

The purpose of this paper is to study the political utilization of the ethnic minorities’ folk-literature in Socialist Vietnam.

In Vietnam, folk literature is being considered as the soul of both the nation and the proletariat and under the Socialist regime, the collection and publication of folk literature was promoted. Especially, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, some of the ethnic minorities’ legends drew attention as moral lessons for achieving national unity, since they highlight that each and every Vietnamese of various ethnic groups is born from the same parents. The Muong people’s legend is a fine example in this case. Originally, male faith healers had inherited the ethnic Muong’s funeral prayer, Mo, in the oral tradition. Under the guidance of the provincial cultural bureaus, a part of Mo was collected during the 1960s, and subsequently was published in a book entitled The Birth of the Earth, the Birth of Water （Đẻ đất đẻ nước, ĐĐĐN） in the mid-1970s. Prior to this, the Association of Vietnamese Folklorists, the Institute of Literature, the Ministry of Culture and other related agencies sanctioned the draft of the book, which was to make it the “official legend” of the Muong people. At that time, performing Mo in funeral ceremonies was prohibited by governmental instruction promoting “the new way of life （nếp sống mới）,” which included the elimination of superstition and the simplification of funeral rites, wedding ceremonials and festivities. Therefore, the intention of publishing ĐĐĐN as folk-literature was to separate Mo ‘text’ from its ‘performance’ at the funeral.

From the end of the 1980s, as the Doi Moi policy goes on, the meaning of ethnic / national culture has been re-evaluated in terms of “national unity in diversity.” Consequently, the Mo began to be seen not as a form of superstition, but as a symbol of Muong ethnic culture. Accordingly, a number of books on the study of Mo were published introducing it as a whole, including both the text and performance. Since the funeral rites of the Muong people were simplified and shortened due to the implementation of “the new way of life” policy, some parts of Mo were omitted and faith healers already gave up handing it down to the younger generation. Currently, a growing sense of crisis that they would lose their traditional Mo among the local people, has led them to collect and publish it for preservation though the faith healers are facing difficulty to maintain memory of some parts of Mo that are no longer used in their rites today. In conclusion, the collection and publication of Mo, as a symbol of ethnic / national culture （heritage）, continues to be a means of promoting national unity.

Violence can take several forms, which cannot only be categorized under the concept of physical violence. Rather, it can sometimes take the form of a threat or the blackmail of others. Despite the wealth of studies concerning the Japanese occupation of the Philippines published over the past three decades, very few scholars dealt with the topic concerning nature of violence. In an article with the title “Politics by Other Means” in 1980, Alfred McCoy explored the nature of factional strife among the local elites in Panay Island by examining the political violence which transpired in the province during the Japanese occupation. He also wrote a compilation of essays, An Anarchy of Families in 1993, discussing the political and economic feuds among leading families of the Philippines by utilizing rent-seeking theory in the field of economics. The former touches on the provincial factionalism in the island during the time of war, while the latter deals with how Filipino economic tycoons could sustain their political and economic power in the country. Despite the fact that both works discuss the nature of violence, neither thoroughly analyzes the violence committed, not only by the Japanese but also by Filipinos during the Japanese occupation. Such violence might have paved the way for the political and economic hegemony of leading Filipino businessmen after the war.

The paper will study two economic collaborators in the Leyte Province during the Japanese occupation, Manuel Abesamis and Alfonso Peñalosa. These case studies will examine how leading businessmen utilized violence to sustain their vested interests until the end of the war. During the Japanese occupation period, both Manuel Abesamis and Alfonso Peñalosa collaborated with the Japanese occupying forces to provide them with necessary war supplies fulfilling their military demands. Their collaboration involved threats, blackmail or torture to the Filipinos who refused to do business with them.

Despite their incarceration by the CIC (Counterintelligence Corps) agent of US Army for alleged treason, very few cooperated in testifying against them. The newly established Philippine Government also filed treason charges against them in 1946. The two cases could not be established due to insufficient and non-corroborating evidence from witnesses. Former guerrilla members testified that Abesamis was pro-American, wholeheartedly cooperating with the guerrilla groups in providing them with confidential information of the Japanese.

The Japanese occupation period resulted in war atrocities and violence. As the case studies show, there were “opportunistic” Filipinos who not only collaborated with the Japanese, but also collaborated with guerrilla groups, both of whom were involved in inflicting a form of violence, from which these businessmen gained plenty of profits. Even if some of them faced the treason charges after the war, they succeeded in creating an economic hegemony over the province.

Myanmar is a country where Theravāda Buddhism has been thriving since King Anawyahta, the founder of the Bagan unified dynasty introduced it from the Mon kingdom of Thaton in the latter part of the eleventh century. This Buddhism is generally known as the ‘monastic Buddhism’ which is principally focused on the monkhood. But it has also been permeating among the laity until the present day. We may regard the successive dynasties of Myanmar, which had introduced this Buddhism into the political sphere, as the ‘Theravāda Buddhist State’, which placed the dhamma （Law of Buddha） in the core position of the state structure. Therefore, the relationship between kingship or government （ānācakka） and religious authority （buddhacakka） has always been strained and the former has usually intervened and has been standing at predominance over the latter until today.

Although the Theravāda Buddhist Polity collapsed with the fall of the Konbaung dynasty in the late nineteenth century due to the British colonial rule, it has been regenerated as a ‘sovereign independent state’ after independence under the Constitution of the Union of Myanma adopted in 1947. Even though once Myanmar inclined towards a ‘religious state’ during U Nu’s regime under the Constitution （Third Amendment） Act in 1961 because of his treatment of Buddhism as the state religion, the country was brought back to a secular state by its strict secularity under President U Ne Win’s policy of ‘the Burmese way to Socialism’ under the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma （1974）. It had principally continued until the end of the regimes of the military administration by both the Senior Generals Saw Maung and Than Shwe in March, 2011 when the new regime of President U Thein Sein began under the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar （2008）.

This paper is an attempt to examine the characteristic of a modern Myanmar secular state, through further detailed analysis of its previous studies on the provisions of religious affairs and also a new approach to the preamble of the constitution （2008）, comparing it with those of previous constitutions of 1947, its 1961 （Amendment） and 1974.

In January 1885, anti-French rebellions broke out at various points in the Kingdom of Cambodia. France concentrated four thousand troops on Cambodia and barely suppressed the rebels with the help of the Cambodian King by the end of 1886. In general understanding, those rebellions were the reaction of Cambodian elites to the treaty which the Governor of Cochinchina, Charles Thomson, forced to King Norodom on 17 June 1884. Although much attention has been given to the roles played by supreme elites, such as the Governor of Cochinchina, King Norodom, Second King Sisowath and Prince Si Votha during those years, little is known about the situation in each region under the rebellions. In this paper, I inquire closely into the activities of the rebels who uprose along the Mekong River between Kampong Cham and Kracheh. After the rebellion subsided, this region began to develop significantly under the French colonial rule which guaranteed the safety of the traffic on the Mekong River from Cochinchina to Laos.

The rebellion in Kampong Cham─Kracheh region occurred in inland srok srae （the land of paddy field）, and the main participants were Khmers. Prei （forest） or phnom （mountain） behind srok srae were not the foothold of the rebels, but served as supply and escape routes for them. Ethnic minorities and religious or magical authorities were not included in the main body of the rebels. Most chiefs of the rebels were officials who held traditional titles as governors and balats （deputy governor）. They led hundreds of people, held their own grounds in the plain of srok srae, and shared information about the maneuvers of French troops by exchanging letters with each other. They had been respectively appointed by different authorities, and some of them were appointed by Si Votha who had maintained another independent kingdom to the north of Kampong Thum, which contacted with the territory of Siam. A dozen “Burmese warriors” were distributed under chiefs who had strong ties with Si Votha, and Siamese of Siem Bouk played an important role in supplying guns and ammunition for the rebels. These facts suggest that the rebels maintained close connection with Northeast Thailand area. The targets of the rebels were those who related to the French colonial rule, Chinese merchants, and Malay and Chams along the Mekong River.

The French did not have enough military power to defeat independent chiefs to control the entire srok srae, but could find skilled pro-French local officials and nominated them as governors in the process of suppressing the rebellion. During the decade after the outbreak of rebellion, the chiefs of the rebels disappeared one by one, and the governors newly appointed by the name of the King were received by the local population. Then the French succeeded in stabilizing their rule to promote “a colonization without collision” on the territory along the Mekong River to the edge of prei and phnom.