Japanese Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
Online ISSN : 2424-1377
Print ISSN : 0563-8682
ISSN-L : 0563-8682
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Volume 52, Issue 2
Displaying 1-17 of 17 articles from this issue
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Articles
  • Scramble for Thai Railways between Thailand and Japan during World War II:
    How Did Thailand Recapture and Maintain Its Train Operations?
    Ichiro Kakizaki
    2015 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 137-171
    Published: January 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.52.2_137
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This article aims to analyze how Thailand tried to recapture its railways from the Japanese army and maintain them during World War II. While many military trains went south toward Malaya after the outbreak of war, few returned to Bangkok. Thailand, therefore, took the hardline stance of refusing to allocate its rolling stock to the Japanese army unless its rolling stock in Malaya was returned. As a result, Japan proceeded to return Thai rolling stock from Malaya.
     Thailand also said that more trains should be used to transport rice from the Northeast and East in order to satisfy Japanese demand, for which it requested a military train that was currently running on the Southern line. Although the negotiation ran into difficulties, the Japanese army finally accepted this reduction in the number of military trains.
     Furthermore, there was a severe shortage of lubricating oil, which was indispensable for train operations, after the outbreak of war. Thailand wanted to buy lubricating oil from Japan, but Japan was reluctant. It agreed only after Thailand warned that it would curtail its loan of military trains to Japan.
     In this way, Thailand succeeded in reclaiming and maintaining its railways. The main factors behind this were negotiation by bargaining points and the acquisition of concessions through sympathy. Thailand used bargaining points to negotiate with Japan; it insisted that Japan's demand could not be met unless Japan accepted its request. Furthermore, Thailand had to persuade Japan that it was incapable of accepting Japan's demands; it did so by presenting reasons for Japan to sympathize with it. Thailand's two-pronged strategy—presenting bargaining points and acquiring concessions by eliciting sympathy—functioned well to a certain extent.
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  • Religious Activities of Chinese Philanthropic Foundations in Thailand:
    Chinese Religion, Thai Buddhism, and Ngi Tek Tung
    Tatsuki Kataoka
    2015 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 172-207
    Published: January 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.52.2_172
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This paper examines religious aspects of Ngi Tek Tung (Ruam Katanyu Foundation),a Chinese philanthropic foundation in Thailand, to expand our field of discussion on Thai Buddhism and to reconsider the very concept of religion itself. Ngi Tek Tung emerged from a spirit-medium cult of Khlong Toey slum to become one of the largest philanthropic foundations in Bangkok. Its pantheon is a unique product of the fusion of Chinese religious tradition, Theravada Buddhism, and Thai local beliefs. Ngi Tek Tung's case also shows that the Chinese religion and Thai Buddhism mutually form repertoires for each other. Even though Ngi Tek Tung has the legal status of a secular organization, it provides occasions for merit making targeting recipients in this world as well as in the afterlife. Throughout Ngi Tek Tung's activities, a unique concept of rescue overarches both secular and religious domains. However, Ngi Tek Tung's emphasis on religiosity has been declining after the founder's death, which means the extinction of the tradition of the spirit medium cult. Today's Ngi Tek Tung can be viewed both as a secular foundation to encompass the religious domain and as a religious organization engaged in profane activities. This in-between nature of the religiosity of some Chinese philanthropic foundations poses a challenge to conventional understandings of religion, which have been concentrated on a dichotomy of church-style institutions and traditionalism embedded in communities.
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  • What Justifies Japanese-Language Education in Areas Occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army?
    Analyzing Memoirs of Japanese Teachers Deployed to the Philippines in the Asia Pacific War
    Akira Kinoshita
    2015 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 208-234
    Published: January 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.52.2_208
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    The purpose of this paper is to analyze memoirs of Japanese teachers deployed to the Philippines in the Asia Pacific War. The Japanese military tried to teach Filipinos the Japanese language in order to make them accept the legitimacy of the Japanese invasion. Education was the basis of the occupation policy, with about 180 teachers being deployed all over the Philippines. Their students were not only children but also bureaucrats, police officers, and Filipino Japanese language teachers. After American forces came back to the archipelago, however, the Japanese language classes were gradually terminated and teachers struggled to survive in the mountain areas. Some survivors contributed articles about their war experiences to the journal Sampaguita after the war. This paper looks into their stories to understand what they thought about their work in the Philippines. Many of them gave themselves high marks for their education, even though they criticized the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. There are several reasons for their mindset, including the influence of US colonization policies and Japanese occupation policies on the Philippines, as well as teachers’ occupational identity. The teachers are proud of having worked at schools, because they engaged in education their entire lives and maintained good relationships with former students after the war. They considered the friendships to be evidence of their educational achievement.
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  • Collection and Study of Folklore in Relation to Cultural Policy in Socialist Vietnam
    Sayaka Oizumi
    2015 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 235-266
    Published: January 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.52.2_235
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This study investigates how the collection and study of folklore in socialist Vietnam contributed to the Communist Party of Vietnamʼs and the governmentʼs cultural policy. It focuses on the Sino-Vietnamese terminology used in the folklore studies of socialist Vietnam and explains their changes in relation to cultural policy. From the end of the 1950s, the collection of folk literature (van hoc dan gian) was promoted in provincial areas because of the Partyʼs mass cultural policy. There, both politicians and scholars recognized that the collection of folk literature could not be separated from the collection of folk arts. This led them to introduce the term van nghe dan gian (VNgDG), a phrase that combines the terms for folk literature and folk arts, to reorganize the collection. In the late 1970s, the Party strengthened its control over the cultural sphere to abolish traces of the “old regimes.” It thought that VNgDG contained many “old” elements that needed to be modified into more appropriate ones. And as China-Vietnam relations critically worsened at the end of the 1970s, VNgDG was finally criticized as being of “no use” because of its Chinese oriented content and methodology. On the other hand, scholars had to highlight the tradition of “Vietnamese culture” in order to confront the “long-lasting Chinese culture,” which led them to approach folklore from a historical perspective. At the same time, some scholars commented that VNgDG had become too “socialized” and emphasized the importance of scientific research on folklore. Consequently, they began to use the new term van hoa dan gian (VHDG), which literally means folk culture, to rejuvenate folklore studies. Currently, after the Law of Cultural Heritage was issued in 2001, the popularization of the concept of “intangible cultural heritage” (di san van hoa phi vat the) has made the status of the term “VHDG” unstable.
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  • The Labor Strike Movement in Hanoi 1936-37
    Tomokazu Okada
    2015 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 267-294
    Published: January 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.52.2_267
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    What began as a series of small labor strikes in Hanoi in the fall of 1936 had developed into a major movement by the beginning of 1937. According to police investigations, it was members of the small newspaper company Le Travail who incited Hanoi labor to strike. But why was the Le Travail group concerned in this movement? What was the Le Travail group? What was its purpose? We analyze this social movement in the worldwide context of the economic crisis after1930 and the application of the labor law of Indochina in 1936—which was an indirect cause of the labor strike that broke out in Hanoi in 1936-37 and triggered the implementation of social policies on the same level as in metropolitan France—and also in the context of “legal” or “ illegal” policies of the Indochinese Communist Party. In conclusion, this strike had the effect of creating “a new indigenous social network” grouping management and workers into professions in Hanoi. This article examines the social structure of colonial cities in French Indochina. Its focal point is the influence of colonization on society and urban inhabitants in Vietnam, based on the case of Hanoi during the first half of the twentieth century.
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  • Reconsideration of the Karen Image in Mid-Nineteenth Century Burma within the Context of the American Baptist Mission
    Hitomi Fujimura
    2015 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 295-322
    Published: January 31, 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: October 31, 2017
    DOIhttps://doi.org/10.20495/tak.52.2_295
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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    This paper aims to argue for a reconsideration of the historical interpretation of the Karen image in Burma through a contextual analysis of descriptions of Karen Baptists in the mid-nineteenth century.
     Karen history has been written with a heavy focus on Karen Baptists, who account for only a minority of the Karen population, and has relied on missionary documents accumulated in the nineteenth century. This Baptist-centered viewpoint is under criticism since it overlooks the existence of the remaining majority, Buddhist Karens. In addition, it has been pointed out that the image of the Karens is biased since it is based on foreigners' views: missionaries' writings on the Karens were highly vulnerable to the missionaries' own motives to depict the Karens the way they wanted them to be. This paper sets its focus on the latter argument, since there has not been enough analysis on it; if the writings on the Karens are biased due to missionaries' views, those descriptions and background factors need to be understood within the context of the Baptist mission.
     Examining a missionary writing, The Karen Apostle, as an example in the formation of the Karen image, this paper clarifies that Baptist doctrines and mission policies had an important influence on the depiction of Karen Baptists. The author Francis Mason described the first Karen convert, Ko Thah Byu, as an example of “ideally hardworking, pious Baptists” to emphasize the success of the Karen mission and obtain financial support for future development. This finding implies that the depiction of Karen Baptists in the mid-nineteenth century should be interpreted not only in terms of ethnicity or nation but also with reference to American Baptist history. This viewpoint calls for a need to reconsider the historical understanding of Karens from a different perspective, such as from within the context of the American Baptist mission.
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