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

Sea Islands), and its people were dubbed Nanyo dojin (South Sea natives) or tomin (islanders). Officially, the natives were seen and made to think of themselves as beings that should attempt to identify with the Japanese (though they never could). Here, Japan's colonial power transformed representations of the “remote” Other into the “close” Other—the colonized as “different but similar” subjects (of Tenno, or the Emperor of Japan) in a space “different but continuous” (with the mainland of the Japanese Empire). This view of the colonized as the “potential Japanese” was to be projected into Japan's colonial policy: native children experienced “corporal reform” through the teaching of “standard Japanese,” Japan's national anthem, and marching at school, separated from the children of Japanese immigrants (Peattie 91–95).

On the basis of such national assimilation policy, in the 1920s and 1930s, popular romantic representations of Nanyo spread through primary education and popular entertainment. Such a new program emerged against the background of the mass society based on the standardized large-scale compulsory education. As Japan came to regard itself as a full-fledged empire in the 1910s and 1920s, its cosmopolitan consciousness was raised, and there was a decline in its hostility toward the West and its sense of solidarity with Asia. For the Japanese, Micronesia under Japanese colonial rule should then have been just a place where they could enjoy greater comfort and profit. Murai Osamu pointed out that the creation of Japanese folklore as an area of study was initiated during this period by Yanagita Kunio, who had been previously involved in Japan's colonial policy in Korea. According to Murai, Yanagita attempted to obliterate his involvement in the imposition of an agricultural policy on Korea by seeking national roots in Okinawan customs and lore. The “south islands” therefore served a political function within an