Nanyo-Orientalism: Japanese Representations of the Pacific By Nao ...

economics of representation that can be understood as Nanyo-Orientalism. Murai called it “south island ideology.”

Nanyo became popular with the opening of the South Sea shipping lanes, the publication of guidebooks, a wave of migrants, and a climate of “self-determination.” Because imperialist drumbeating (i.e., the open affirmation of imperialism) could no longer be done openly, there was a shift toward an affectionate regard for the indigenous people and a vision of relationships with them as reciprocal. In this anticonquest discourse, islanders were represented as lovable beings, usually either docile, loyal children or erotic dancing girls. The most influential texts disseminating the popular version of Nanyo-Orientalism included a book called Torakku-to dayori (A letter from Truk) that was used for teaching schoolchildren, a popular song entitled “Shucho no musume” (The chief's daughter), and a cartoon story called “Boken Dankichi” (Dankichi the adventurous).

In the colonialist fancies of being on good terms with the colonized people in which help and love are reciprocated, elastic images of brown maidens play important roles. Torakku-to dayori, written by a scholar of Japanese literature named Takagi Ichinosuke, was composed for one of the government-designated textbooks used at elementary schools from 1918–1932. This work depicts a beautiful and romantic tropical environment, presenting it courteously rather than heroically. The book also mentions a native girl who has received formal Japanese schooling and who can sing Japan's national anthem. The textbooks attempted to introduce schoolchildren within the empire to Japan's extended colonies of Seoul, Dairen, Taiwan, and Micronesia—the last location imagined to be the most primitive, paradisal, and nonhistorical of the colonies, possessing mild-tempered people who did not harbor any bad feelings toward the Japanese.