Panel
2. From Oceanic Crossroads: Empires, Networks and Histories
During the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), Japanese intellectuals promoted nanshin (southward expansion). Notable figures such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Shiga Shigetaka, and Takekoshi Yosaburo advocated for this concept, viewing the nanyo (the “south” encompassing the Southern Ocean and Southeast Asia) as an integral frontier within Japan’s future imperial and even colonial ambitions. Yet it was not the movement of male intellectuals or urban elites who began to cultivate Japan’s nanyo on the ground. Rather, it was the work and world of karayuki-san, or female prostitutes, who seeded what the nanyo was in the 1880s and what it became by the 1930s. From Penang, Melaka, and Singapore to Jolo, Surabaya, and Sandakan, karayuki-san, many of whom were from rural Kyushu, populated the coastal ports and inland towns of the nanyo well into the interwar period. Their physical and commercial presence served as a gateway for Japanese medicines, commodities, migrants, and businesses to flow into markets, cities, and out-of-the-way islands such as Aru. This paper draws on multilingual sources to show how, and explain why, karayuki-san were central to realizing Japan’s nanyo in terms that were not only imperial and intellectual, but also, and more importantly, gendered, lived, material, and violent.
Meta Sekar Puji Astuti
Universitas Hasanuddin, Indonesia