Re-centring education in Manshūkoku (1931–1945): school and family in Chinese oral history

Abstract

This article explores the ambiguous social experience of occupation in north-east China (‘Manshūkoku’, 1931–1945) through an analysis of oral histories of education. These works, collected by Chinese and Japanese scholars and published in the early 2000s, highlight complexities to the occupation experience that the starkly polarised national narratives of war typically neglect. Interviews conducted in the city of Dalian (formerly, Dairen) give particular weight to family ambitions and interventions in education. Without openly contradicting orthodox narratives of war, empire and resistance, these oral histories suggest that the hierarchies of occupation were fragmented, uneven in their effects and open to manipulation, and that families exploited these opportunities to build family economic security through tactics of accommodation and appropriation as they pursued personal interests within the occupation school system.