A Journey through Colonial Sakhalin ：Iwaya Sazanami’s Experience in Sakhalin

Abstract

Iwaya Sazanami(1870-1933) was a prominent figure in modern Japanese children’s literature. He traveled to the colonial Sakhalin one time in his life, the main purpose of this journey being to give oral presentations of fairy tales to children in Sakhalin. He energetically traveled the colony, including Toyohara (currently Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), Ōdomari (Korsakov), Shirutoru (Makarov), Noda (Chekhov) and Maoka (Kholmsk).However, regarding Sazanami’s visit to Sakhalin, as far as I know, there is no previous research. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to clarify what kind of experience Sazanami had in Sakhalin under Japanese rule, and the essence of the literature(Haiku), political ideology(His view of Sakhalin and the Ainu people) he formed there.In conclusion, Sazanami was a hardcore imperialist, colonialist and nationalist who was delighted to have won the territorial struggle with Russia, the enemy country, and made Sakhalin his own. And he strongly hoped that Sakhalin and the Ainu would be included and integrated as part of the Japanese nation and people, and that Sakhalin would achieve further civilizational development in the future.