In their Own Words: Personal Reflections as History. Autobiographical Writings when Japan Ruled the Pacific. Introduction

The three papers collected here were presented at the International Historians of Asia Conference (IAHA) held in Taipei in December 2004 in a panel called “In Their Own Words: Personal Recollections as History”. They explore select diaries, memoirs and biographies from various parts of eastern Asia to assess their usefulness for the writing of history. Another common feature in the papers is that the sources all relate to experiences with colonial regimes in Asia, notably in Korea, Vietnam and northern Borneo. The people whose lives have been recorded either by themselves or by others all experienced the might and reach of an expanding new power, that of Japan. The papers thus bring together some very useful illustrations of the function of these “ego documents” among several kinds of colonial subjects in Asia during a period when both Europeans and Japanese were introducing their native subjects to the demands of modernization. Ann Heylen, who was also the organiser of the panel at IAHA in 2004 has been so kind to act as guest editor for this thematic issue.

The first theme about the use of personal recollections is of universal concern among historians. The issue, how history writing can successfully utilize various kinds of witness accounts of events by contemporary protagonists, is particularly acute for modern historians. This may be especially difficult in regions where, until recently, the tradition of writing diaries and memoirs was weak and idiosyncratic. The reliability of personal recollections has always posed problems for historians. The need for corroboration by other independent sources would always be necessary but what if they are single isolated sources from territories like northern Borneo where relevant documents are scarce? Under such conditions, it is tempting to treat single accounts of events as more or less usable with clear qualifications being emphasized. The papers here suggest that “ego documents” written in modern Asia may be more difficult to handle but are in essence no different from similar sources in countries that have stronger traditions of historiography.

The authors have studied a variety of such documents: one set of diaries, a posthumously published memoir, and a series of other memoirs and biographies. They are written in different languages: Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Malay and English. The period covered begins with the end of the nineteenth century and ends after the middle of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, the authors are sensitive to the fact that these sources are problematic in different ways. Each author has set out to demonstrate that, when the documents are read in themselves, some are clearly self-serving while others are even self-incriminating.

There are two exceptional features of these examples of “personal recollections”. The individuals wrote, or were described, in the context of rulers like the British (the Brookes and the trading company in northern Borneo) and the French (in Indo-China), on the one hand, and the Japanese in Korea, on the other. Thus, comparisons may be made not only in terms of the marked differences in the “ego-styles” in their writings but also in terms of their contrasting experiences of European and Japanese rule. From the various documents, the Japanese appear to have had a more distinct political and cultural agenda than the French and understandably even more so than the Brooke family’s “private empire” in Sarawak and the merchant interests in North Borneo. Thus, although the memories were fragmentary and hardly reliable, the diaries and memoirs captured the variety and nuances of work and life under colonial conditions. The Japanese were clearly more impatient to consolidate their rule over Koreans and thus could not avoid being more interventionist in the private lives of their subjects.

Even more interesting is the fact that all papers involve the Japanese during the most powerful period of their international history, that is, the half-century from the defeat of China in 1894–1895 to their final defeat by the allied forces in 1945. The impact of Japan’s early modernization was profound where the rest of Asia was concerned. The diary of Yun Ch’iho studied by Mark Caprio...