<論文>島嶼地域をめぐる〈移住〉の社会学 : 小笠原諸島における歴史民族誌の再文脈化作業から

Abstract

In this paper I examine historical and ethnographical materials about people in the Ogasawara/Bonin Islands, which lie in the Pacific Ocean 1000km to the south of Tokyo City. Until the 19th Century these Islands were "uninhabited islands". So we can say that all their inhabitants have been "emigrants". Since the 1830's ex-sailors of the whaler and their "wives" or "servants" emigrated to Ogasawara/Bonin Islands from the U.S., the Europe or the islands of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. In the 1870's the Empire of Japan occupied these islands, began to naturalize "non-Japanese" people, and people from the "Japanese" islands--including the "Japanese Mainland"--began to settle. The former were brought under "Japanese" rule as "kika-jin" (the naturalized) while simultaneously being excluded from the "Japanese" emigrant society as "ijin" (aliens/barbarians). In particular, I discuss an ethnographic report about a "Kanaka" woman named "Kete-san" (Ketty) from Chichi-jima (Father Island) in the Ogasawara archipelago, written by a famous folklorist, Kiyoko Segawa. In 1931 when "Kete-san" told Segawa of her experience, "Kete-san" bore the burden not only of housework but also wagework and of a debt for her "Japanese" husband, an unskilled worker. She was often called "Ijin" by him and by other "Japanese" people. "Kete-san" also told Segawa that when called "Ijin" she was nearly excluded from the employment opportunity on the Chichi-jima Fortress. Under such circumstances "Kete-san" was under constant pressure to perceive herself as a stranger and to look back/forward on the "past"/"future" existence of her and her family as that of "emigrants". Her recollection of "the past" as that of "emigrants" came about in the insecurity of "the present". This "emigrant past" led to the "appropriation" of her "present" as she was forced to undergo the experience of what we may call "inner-emigration". "Kete-san" recollected two fragmentary episodes concerning emigration. The one is connected to the "emigrants" from various places to the Ogasawara/Bonin Islands in the 1860's and 1870's. These people--including the parents and the families of "Kete-san"--lived through the web of terrors, in the process of the occupation of Ogasawara by Japan. And this web of terrors exploited by the geopolitical strategy of the Empire of Japan. The other episode concerns the (re-)emigration of "Kete-san" and her children from Ogasawara to the "Nan-yo" (Micronesia) Islands after W.W.I. Their (re-)emigration was caused by their exclusion from employment opportunities in Ogasawara. In the process of the occupation of "Nan-yo" by the Empire of Japan, this (re-)emigration was part of the web of exploitative powers: "Kete-san" was involved in the exploitation of Micronesia even as she herself became an exploited subject as part of the sugar manufacturing labor force. When "Kete-san" recollected her and her family's experience, the web of terrors and powers of "the past" possessed her (narrative). But in the middle of these <conjuncutres> she had to "survive". She was "surviving" as an "(inner-)emigrant" on the Ogasawara/Bonin Islands in the colonial Pacific Ocean.