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9 Land Deeds and the Japanese Occupation, 1941–1945 Eleven of the deeds in Part 3 come from the period of the Japanese Occupation and throw some light on the difÀculties of that period.1 These eleven deeds are, as a group, the poorest drawn of all the deeds in Part 3, and show the poorest calligraphy. The normal conventions of the traditional land deeds are mostly present, but in many cases show clauses omitted which might be expected, unusual variants, poor grammar, and strange turns of phrase. Some of the deeds show men selling off trust property,2 otherwise a very rare transaction. Some deeds show transactions without a middleman where one would be expected,3 without a family council,4 and without any mention of the offer of Àrst refusal to the immediate close relatives, again where such an offer would be expected.5 Deed 84 seems to imply the presence of the village community at the point of transfer, but only Deed 87 does so speciÀcally. While all this may be due to the vagaries and chances of survival, they seem more probably to show a traditional society under considerable stress, perhaps at risk of breaking down. These deeds also suggest widespread and severe starvation in this period, leading to desperation. Deed 83 states that the vendor is selling because “his family is in desperate need, dying of privation, and without resources”. Deed 84 states that the sale is essential because the vendor “is out of money in his household to spend” (in this case it should be remembered that the more normal wording is that the family was “short of money to spend”, not “is out of money to spend”). Deed 85 states that the family “does not have enough for subsistence”, Deed 81 states that the vendor is “lacking food and cannot borrow money”, going on to say that the vendor had gone to the widow of a clan cousin to beg for help, and that she, on behalf of her infant son, had agreed to succour him in her son’s name. Deed 91, like Deed 84, says that the sale is essential because the vendor’s family is “out of money in their household to spend”, while Deed 94 uses the more normal wording, that the vendor “is short of money to spend”. These deeds tend to give an air of 172 The Customary Land Law and Transactions in Land genuine desperation. Deed 87, alone of the deeds from this period, gives a reason other than starvation for the sale: it states that the land was being alienated in order to buy other land better located. Four deeds give no reason for the alienation: far more than at any other period.6 That there are no fewer than four deeds in this small collection which give no reason for the alienation is signiÀcant, and probably to be understood as suggesting that starvation was so widespread at the time that there was no reason to state why the sale was being processed. Under Japanese rule, use of the old Hong Kong dollar was forbidden: everyone was supposed to use the new Japanese Military Yen currency. However, almost as soon as the Military Yen was introduced, it began to collapse in value; by the end of the Japanese Occupation period, it was almost worthless. Villagers carefully hoarded any silver dollars they might have and tried to insist on them in any signiÀcant transaction. However, any deed giving a sale price in Hong Kong silver dollars might well have been considered proof of an anti-Japanese stance, perhaps bringing serious consequences to both vendor and purchaser. Similarly, the Japanese insisted that all valid deeds be dated by the reign-title of the Japanese Emperor (the Showa 昭和 year). The Hong Kong authorities had always been happy to accept deeds dated by the year of the Chinese Republic: villagers wanted to continue to date in this way. However, to do so would, once again, have risked being seen as an indication of an anti-Japanese stance. Finally, the Japanese are believed to have declared that the Block Crown Lease and the New Territories Land Registry system were “colonialist” enforcements, inaccurate and ill-run. The Japanese had undertaken a very full and accurate cadastral survey in Taiwan and seem to have indicated that they would do the same for the New Territories, in due course. They never did so, however, but, in the meantime , use...

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