Ryota Nishino

Dialogues with shadows: reflections on identity, history and travel

After the end of my solo journey in Southeast Asia, I felt shadows from the trip were following me. It took me some time before I began reflecting on the shadows. My reflections attempt to merge the academic and the personal, and bring my motivation and observations into scrutiny. This reflective exercise begins with my motivation for the journey, and moves to a few individuals and their personal life histories. The reflections made me aware of the naivety and shortcomings in my approach to identity, and the need for continuing dialogues with the shadows.

The awakening of a journalist’s historical consciousness: Sasa Yukie’s Pacific Island journeys of 2005–2006

ABSTRACT Between 2005 and 2006 a female journalist Sasa Yukie (b. 1974) participated in and documented the commemoration of Japanese soldiers who died in the Pacific Islands during the Pacific War with other veterans and the families of deceased soldiers. Sasa’s book, Onna hitori gyokusai no shima o yuku (2007), integrates her travel experience, impressions of her fellow travellers, historical accounts, and reflections on battlefields and commemoration sites. This article charts the two-stage process of Sasa’s emerging historical consciousness in this travelogue. The first phase involves her growing empathy with her fellow tour members. Sasa follows a well-established Japanese literary trope that exalts the protagonists’ loss to a noble cause. Thus, Sasa turns tour members and dead soldiers into tragic yet honourable heroes on her terms rather than theirs. The second phase involves Sasa’s transformation into a passionate advocate for the greater recognition of and respect for deceased soldiers, veterans, and bereaved families. This article is a critical reading of this text, and argues that her travel experience was an impetus for Sasa’s nationalistic tendencies. Her reduction of the memories of war and Islanders into metaphors of hōganbiiki discourages questions about the responsibilities and suffering of those involved and implicated in the war. I argue that this book is significant because it enabled Sasa to carve a particular journalistic niche as a journalist-activist promoting the interests of Pacific War veterans.

The self-promotion of a maverick travel writer: Suzuki Tsunenori and his Southern Pacific Islands travelogue, Nanyō tanken jikki

Suzuki Tsunenori (1853–1938; also known as Keikun) was one of the pioneering writers on Pacific Islands in the Meiji period. Recent scholarship has exposed flaws in his representation of Pacific Islanders in his landmark travelogue, Nanyō tanken jikki [A True Chronicle of South Seas Exploration] (1892). While the criticism undermined his reputation for his ethnographic eye, this essay employs an alternative critical angle on self-presentation. Suzuki promotes himself as a shrewd multi-talented traveller, culturally astute and willing to venture into the wild. First, this essay sketches the circumstances under which Suzuki embarked on his southern Pacific Islands journey of 1889–1890. Then it analyses how Suzuki projects his desired persona in Jikki. He seeks to develop and exploit these attributes to advertise his performance as a reporter, a cultural interlocutor and a grassroots ambassador. An inward-looking orientation helps us to present a clearer picture of Suzuki’s life and travelogues.

Ukiya Tôjirô and his motorcycle journey in August 1957: crystallising ambitions and identity

One of the formative experiences the motorcar racer Ukiya Tôjirô (1942–1965) had was his first long-distance motorcycle journey. His long-selling travelogue, Gamushara 1500 kiro [My frantic 1500-kilometre journey] chronicles his travel and demonstrates his growing awareness as a young member of an elite socio-economic stratum. This article situates his motorcycle journey in Japanese social history. It then analyses his writing from a socio-economic perspective. Of particular importance were the different reactions the sights of the working people triggered in Ukiya. Busy workers embarrassed him and had him reflect on his leisurely status. Episodes at the cinema and films he saw empowered him to arrive at his future ambitions. Yet, idle workers stirred fear in him and left considerations of socio-economic disparity under-explored. The differences in his reflections not only suggest his selective use to elevate and justify his status, but also reveal an attitude he had towards the under-privileged.