The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 15 | Issue 1 | Number 2 | Article ID 4996 | Jan 01, 2017

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Rasa Island: What Industrialization To Remember and Forget

Hiromi Mizuno

Abstract: Rasa Island, a small, remote coralatoll of Okinawa, was once a robust companytown of Rasa Phosphate Industry Inc. Nowabandoned and forgotten, the barren islandnonetheless tells a rich story of Japan’sindustrialization, a counter-narrative to theproblematically simplified and celebratoryhistory provided at the Meiji IndustrialRevolution Sites recently inscribed on theUNESCO World Heritage list. By using RasaIsland and critical heritage studies scholarship,this article examines the place of “industrialheritage” in post-industrial societies and whatkind of heritage is performed at Japan’s WorldHeritage sites.

Keywords: Rasa I s land , fer t i l i zer ,industrialization, World Heritage

Unlike the sites discussed in the other articlesin this special issue, my site, Rasa Island, is aforgot ten one. In fact , i t i s a s i te o fabandonment. Because of that, it raises theissue of what is and should be “heritage,” andwhat k ind of narrat ive o f industr ia ldevelopment gets mobilized for “industrialheritage” for Japan. I present the story of RasaIsland here as a historical counter-inquiry intothe fixated meanings the official industrialheritage sites attempt to attach to industrialruins, such as Japan’s Meiji Revolution Sitesrecently inscribed on the list of World HeritageSites.

Rasa Island

Rasa Island — also known as Oki Daitōjima— isa coral atoll, located 220 miles southeast ofOkinawa. Only 0.44 square miles, it is thesmallest of the Daitō Islands group (with KitaDaitōjima and Minami Daitōjima). It is a

deserted island with no tree, no inhabitant, andvirtually no topsoil left.

Okidaitōjima

The island’s history is intimately tied to colonialexpansion over centuries. Its first recordedsighting was by the Spanish navigatorBernando de la Torre, on September 25, 1543during his mission to find a return route for theSpanish military and trade ships from thePhil ippines to New Spain. After that,Portuguese, Dutch, French, and other Spanishtraders and navigators sighted and charted theisland and gave it various names on their maps.In 1815, the last Manila Galleon, the Spanishfrigate San Fernando de Magallames, chartedthe island as ‘Isla Rasa’ [the flat island], andthe name stayed.1 While recognizing theexistence of the island on their maps, however,the Europeans did not take any measures toclaim the island.

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It was Okinawa prefecture that put the firstflag on Daitō Islands. In 1885, the Meijigovernment ordered the newly createdOkinawa prefectural government to survey thethree Daito islands. Six researchers weredispatched, along with the prefecturalgovernor, who erected a flag. Privatebusinessmen flocked to the Okinawa governor,pleading for the right to explore the islands.After fierce competition, a businessman andexplorer named Tamaoki Han’emon won theprivi lege. 2 Rasa Island was off icial lyincorporated into Japanese territory in 1900.

Why were these islands of such great interest?It was because of seabirds, the short-tailedalbatross called “fool birds” [ahōdori] inJapanese as they are extremely easy to capture.Some entrepreneurial Japanese discovered, assoon as Japanese ports were opened up fortrade with the West, that short-tailed albatrossfeathers could be sold for a high price toWesterners who fetishized feather bedding andadored decorative feather ornaments andstuffed birds. Tamaoki was one of them. Hemade a fortune out of the Hachijōshima islands,Torishima, and other small islands in the1890s, where the birds were hunted in thescale of millions, to the point of near extinctionwithin a few decades.3 Tamaoki developedsugarcane plantations on Minami Daitōjima andKita Daitōjima for Tōyō Seito 東洋製糖/DaiNippon Seitō 大日本製糖. Dai Nippon Seitolater also extracted alumina for aluminumproduction, using its byproduct, ammoniasulphate, for chemical fertilizer for its sugarplantations in Okinawa and Taiwan. Rasa Islanddid not become a settler colony. As a result offierce competition among explorer profiteers, adifferent kind of entrepreneur eventually wonthe privilege of monopolizing Rasa Island. Thiswas not for seabirds; it was for something elsethat the island had — high-quality phosphatedeposits called Guano, made of seabirds’fossilized excrement.

Rich in all three essential soil nutrients —

nitrogen (N), potassium (K), and phosphorus(P) —Guano had been a well-recognizedfertilizer throughout human history but came tobe especially valued in the 19th century. Assuch, seabird droppings were a powerfulhistorical agent. It moved the US Congress toestablish a law, the Guano Islands Act of 1856,resulting in what Jimmy Skaggs called “TheGreat Guano Rush”: a large number ofAmericans raced across the Pacific and claimedmore than 100 islands as US territories underthe 1856 Act, creating a new type of territorytermed the “insular area.”4 Guano also caused awar between Spain and the Peruvian-Chileanalliance (the Chincha Islands War, 1864-1866)and the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) betweenPeru and Chile. After this war, Chile, thewinner, became the world’s largest exporter ofnitrate.5

Meiji Japan too relied on Chile for nitrate (Chilesaltpeter/salitre), and its import was costingthe nation as much as 5 million yen a year. Inorder to find a domestic alternative, the Meijigovernment established the Fertilizer MineralResearch Institute in 1901 and searched forphosphate ore all over the country. Its firstdirector, Tsunetō Norikata (1857-1939),discovered that Rasa Island was a “gold” minefor phosphate. Tsunetō was one of the firstrecipients of a doctorate in agriculturalsciences in Japan. A graduate of KomabaAgriculture College, Tsunetō had collaboratedwith Max Fesca, a German agronomist, insurveying soil and geology in Japan.6 When theFertilizer Mineral Research Institute wasclosed only two years later, Tsunetō decidednot to seek another position and instead to“devote my own meager savings to findphosphate ore in southern islands (南方諸島)for the future of Japanese agriculture.”7

“Imagine if and when phosphorous imports areterminated for whatever reason. Our farmerswould forever suffer from the lack of fertilizer,”Tsunetō reasoned.8 One of the first thingsTsunetō did was to send a team of researchersto Rasa Island. The 1907 expedition came back

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with a good report : Rasa Is land hadexceptionally good quality phosphorus rocksthat contained more than 30% phosphate. Afterfierce competition and negotiation over theright to explore the island, Tsunetō and one ofhis competitors, Kuki Monshichi, agreed tojointly invest in the development of the island.Kuki, an affluent merchant who ran a fertilizerand vegetable oil business in Yokkaichi, hadearlier attempted but failed to claim the island.In 1911, Rasa Island Phosphate Company waslaunched, with Tsunetō as the president andKuki as the largest investor (it changed thename to Rasa Industry Inc., in 1934). This wasa big deal, as Rasa Island was virtually the onlyplace in Japan proper that had phosphorusrocks whose quality was good enough tocompete against imported phosphate.9

Development of the island was slow anddifficult. Frequent typhoons and steep, rockyshorelines made the voyage dangerous andsometimes impossible to berth. When they firstreached the island, it was covered with thicktrees, its surface buried under layers of fallenleaves. Clearing for roads was a laborious taskrequiring setting fire and burning trees.Transporting equipment, food, and othernecessary items by ship and on the island tooktime. The island produced no drinkable water,which also made settlement extremelychallenging. Rails, a simple pier, housingfacilities, and storage spaces were eventuallybuilt, and phosphate rocks began to bedynamited, extracted, and transported to thestorage facility in Osaka, but the companyencountered an obstacle. Mitsui, which was themajor distributer of imported phosphate,attempted to obstruct the business of thenewcomer in the industry, by orchestrating aboycott.10 The Rasa Phosphate Company’s earlydays were, in the words of Tsunetō, “utterlymiserable, as if we were destined for atragedy.”11

After tenacious toiling on the island andpersistent negotiation with the fertilizer

companies, things began to take a turn forbetter soon. By 1913, Rasa Phosphate Companywas selling phosphate to major fertilizerproducers such as Japan Artificial FertilizerCompany and operated its own small fertilizerfactory in Tokyo. With the prospect ofsustainable business in sight, the companyexpanded infrastructure on the island. The1919 publication by Rasa Phosphate Company,The Authentic View of Rasa Island, lists animpressive array of facilities: pit railways androads that extended in multiple directions, fourpiers, a water tank, a hospital, a Shinto shrine,a police station, a bath and bathrooms, severalhousing complexes for workers, miners, andfarmers, an agricultural field large enough tobe self-sufficient, and more.12 A radio mast anda weather observation tower were added (builtby the government), after two company shipswere sunk by typhoons. Many buildings andfacilities on the island were repeatedlydestroyed by typhoons as well, but thecompany managed to rebuild them each timeand made them stronger. With this expandedinfrastructure, phosphate production and salesdramatically increased. In 1911, Rasa Islandhad shipped out 10,000 tons of phosphaterocks.13 By 1918, the annual sale of phosphatereached 182,624 tons.14 It was soon shippingout 200,000 tons of phosphorus rocks annuallyat this time, providing one third of Japan’sdomestic needs.15 Rasa Phosphate Companyalso diversified its business by absorbing OsakaSulfuric Acid Company and selling chlorine,sulfuric acid, and soda. Its growth was soremarkable that a 1920 stock advice booklisted Rasa Phosphate as one of “the twentyseven company stocks one should buy.”16

Much of this growth had to do with WWI. Whenthe Great War broke out in Europe, Japan’sfertilizer imports ceased and its need fordomestically produced fertilizers increased.The rice riots of 1918, triggered by theSiberian Intervention, caused domesticfertilizer needs to soar even higher. As thephosphate business grew so large and

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lucrative, Rasa Phosphate sent five expeditionteams to the Spratly Islands in the South ChinaSea in search of more phosphate ores andbegan digging in Itu Aba Island.17 The so-called“fertilizer boom,” however, ended abruptly atthe end of 1920. With the return of Europeancompanies, the fertilizer market became toocompetitive and collapsed suddenly. RasaPhosphate went into debt, and mining at theisland stopped in 1922.

It was another war that boosted its businessagain. After drastic structural and managerialadjustment, the company finally freed itself ofdebt and changed its name to Rasa Industry in1934. The following year, it resumed Rasamining. But with the war in China, it grew to bea major, multifaceted chemical company. In1939, it built a large refinery in Miyako City,Iwate Prefecture, where the tall chimneybecame — and remains to this day — the city’ssignature. Metals and coals from Tagawa CoalMines, Taiei Gold Mine (Korea), Kera Mine(Okinawa), Taio Mine (Sado), and Tarō Mine(Iwate) that Rasa Industry acquired over theseyears were transported to the Miyako factory.18

Rasa Island was (and still is) owned by RasaIndustry. It was a company town on an island.As many as 2000 people — all employees andlaborers shipped by the company — lived onthis island of rocks at one time. The smallminority were company employees —men andwomen — sent from the Tokyo and Osakaoffices and their families. The majority wereminers. Initially, all miners were recruited frominner prefectures. However, they al l“complained and demanded a return home”after bad weather and high ocean wavesdestroyed the supply of drinking water andfood. The company therefore recruited asecond group from coastal areas of Shikoku,Kyûshû, Ogawasara Islands, and Izu OshimaIsland, assuming they would be betteraccustomed to life on an island.19 From 1913onward, however, the company adapted apolicy of recruiting miners from Okinawa and

opened a recruitment office in Naha. WhileTsunetô explained the reason to be “theirexcellent work performance,” most likely it wasbecause of cost.20 The company not onlytransported new recruits by ship to the islandbut also needed to evacuate them and bringthem back in time of emergency, such as anunusually long spell of no rain that dried up theisland’s drinking water supply completely.21 AsTsunetō repeatedly claims in the 1919 companypublication, such measures were very costly. Itis also likely that Okinawan miners were paidless than Japanese counterparts. The 1919publication does not mention specific wagesand describes labor relations on the island asrather peaceful, but we can detect signs ofdissatisfaction, such as the 1914 revolt byOkinawan laborers against Japanese officeworkers and police.22

Number of miners on Rasa Island23

Okinawan Japanese from naichi1911 0 1601912 290 1201913 320 1201914 384 1201915 750 1701916 1370 1801917 1500 190

As late as winter 1944, about three hundredRasa Industry employees and miners weremining what little was left on the island. Bythen, the island, once covered by lush greens,was reduced to “a skeleton, left over, that isghostly.”24 It is hard to believe the ImperialArmy and Navy in April 1944 sent 220 officersand soldiers to this small island with littlephosphate deposit left, with the “gyokusai”military order to commit suicide rather thansurrender in the event of battle. Seeing theisland on the map helps to understand why. Itis located between Okinawa and Iwo Jima, on

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the route along which US ships were expectedto advance. Evacuation of miners and officeworkers began in April 1944, but it was as lateas January 22, 1945 that all civilian residentswere evacuated to Amami Island. A memoirewritten by then Lieutenant Morita Yoshio,commander of the Rasa garrison, describes indetail the difficult lives of his troops on theisolated island with virtually no communicationfrom Okinawa or Tokyo while facing repeatedattacks by the US Navy. The garrison unitsurvived the war and handed the islandpeacefully to the US on October 12, 1945.25

While Rasa Island is unique, the company’strajectory is a typical one for Japanese chemicalfertilizer producers — established in the 1910s,became profitable during WWI, and expandedthrough colonial development and wareconomy in the 1930s and early 1940s. RasaIndustry was a phosphate fertilizer company,but nitrogenous fertilizer companies such asNihon Chisso fit this trajectory as well.

Despite its peripheral location, Rasa Island haswitnessed, experienced, and enabled Japan’srapid industrialization contingent on theexpansion of Japanese capital and territorialacquision in the context of empire building.After 1945, it experienced the rise of anotherempire. Rasa Island, together with Okinawaand other surrounding islands, were placedunder the American rule. The island has beenand still is a training site for the US Navy forlarge force exercises, enduring the latest bomband anti-sub technology. That is, the island isalso a witness to important postwar changes:the development of military expansion of whatChalmers Johnson called the American garrisonempire, and Japan’s joint military training withthe US, as well as Okinawa’s sacrifice inexchange for Japan’s economic prosperity.

WHAT INDUSTRIALIZATION?

In other words, Rasa Island is a site of Japan’sindustrialization as powerful as — and in manyways richer than — the “Sites of Meiji

Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel,Shipbuilding and Coal Mining,“ inscribed onthe UNESCO World Heritage List in thesummer of 2015. Composed of 23 sites inKyushu, Iwate, and Shizuoka, these sites,according to the UNESCO web page,“represent the first successful transfer ofindustrialization from the West to a non-Western nation.”26 They include Yawata SteelWorks, a few oyatoi (foreign advisor) engineers’houses, Mitsubishi shipbuilding yards, andMiike and Hashima coalmines. Controversysurrounding this World Heritage inscription isstill fresh in our memories: South Koreacriticized the inclusion of Hashima and sixother sites, where some 60,000 Koreans wereforced to work during wartime. The Japanesegovernment defended its nomination byinsisting that the World Heritage inscriptiononly concerned the period from the 1850s to1910, not the 1940s. At the end, the Koreangovernment conceded when Japan promised toinclude a description of wartime Korean forcedlabor at the site, and UNESCO officiallyinscribed the industrial ruins as World HeritageSites.

As previously discussed by Takazane Yasunoriand William Underwood at Japan Focus, theperiodization singling out the 1850s to 1910, isawkward and problematic. Awkward becausethe Meij i period did not end in 1910.Problematic, not only because the year 1910seems to have been chosen to prevent the 1910Annexation of Korea from entering the picture,but also because it does not representHashima’s development adequately. AsTakazane points out:

“the very fact that Hashima began to resemblea battleship from afar – and thus acquired itsfamous nickname of Gunkanjima or BattleshipIsland – was due to the high-rise buildings onthe island, even the oldest of which was builtonly in 1916. There are no pre-1910 buildingson the island today that could be added to theWorld Heritage Register.”27

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Koreans were not the only victims of wartimeforced labor. Underwood reminds us thatnearly 40,000 Chinese men and boys, and35,000 Allied POWs, were forced to work in1943-1945; the majority labored in Kyûshû,such as Moji port facilities, also part of theMeiji Industrialization World Heritage sites.28

What is also intriguing is the inclusion of HagiCastle Town and Shōkasonjuku as industrialheritage sites. If the time frame of the 1850s to1910 is as def init ive as the Japanesegovernment insisted, Hagi Castle Town haslittle to do with the Meiji Industrial Revolution.The castle town flourished as the political andcommercial center of the Chōshû domainduring the Tokugawa period. Hagi Castle, builtin 1608, was taken down after the MeijiRestoration, like many other castles throughoutJapan, as useless remnants of the feudal timeand has never been rebuilt. Designated as anational historic heritage site and wellpreserved, the town attracts many touristsbecause of the buildings, warehouses, andstreets that retain their appearance from theTokugawa period. The website provides a briefexplanation in English, “Castle Town providesthe essential context for the birth of Japaneseindustrialization, without which the speed ande x t r a o r d i n a r y n a t u r e o f J a p a n e s eindustrialization would be difficult tocomprehend.” This makes an informed readerwonder why Hagi was “the” essential context,not others. Its Japanese text is different. It ismore modest and bolder at the same time thanthe English text: “Hagi Castle Town symbolizesthe social structure of the feudal period, at theend of which the Chōshû domain and itssamurai challenged Western science [author’stranslation],” as if it were Chōshuō samuraiwho industrialized Japan. Did we forget thatthis castle town was the site of a large uprisingby ex-samurai — the Hagi Rebellion of 1876 —against the Meiji government’s modernizationpolicy? While there is no denying of thesignificance of Chōshuō samurai for the MeijiRestoration, the fact remains that Hagi Castle

Town is not and has never been an industrialsite. Shōkasonjuku, located at the edge of thecastle town, was not an industrial site either.Its listing as a Meiji industrialization site isjustified by the promotional committee as “aprivate school which produced many of the keyfigures in Japan’s modernization andindustrialization at the end of the 19th century.”The webpage that used to exist was indeed allabout Yoshida Shōin: “Shōin was only able toteach for less than three years. . . but duringthat time, 90 students studied there. Shōindevoted himself to educating young Japaneseand was recognized at the end of the EdoPeriod as one of the most inf luentialintellectuals in Japan.”29 This page is nowreplaced by a much shorter text, “Many of hisstudents became key figures in the MeijiRestoration and drove the subsequent politicaland industrial modernization of Japan.”30

Yoshida was a strong proponent of Japan’seventual colonial expansion, which his studentIto Hirobumi dutifully followed. However, ashas been pointed out, the website makes nomention of this aspect of his teaching andsolely focuses on his promotion of the adaptionof western science and technology. As ithappens, Yamaguchi Prefecture is a hometownof influential politicians such as Prime MinisterAbe Shinzō; his registered residence remains inYamaguchi Prefecture where his renownedmaternal and paternal grandparents were from.It is fair to say that the UNESCO inscription ofthese sites has a lot to do with Yamaguchinative politicians wanting to bring to theirhometown economic benefit and internationalrecognition expected from World Heritageinscription. As Underwood argues, “A primarygoal of the UNESCO bid, in fact, may be toprovide a vehicle for repackaging and retellingmodern Japan’s story to the Japanesethemselves. If badly handled, the WorldHeritage listing could degenerate into aboastful nationalistic project for rehabilitatingthe domestic narrative not only about forcedlabor in wartime Japan, but also about ImperialJapan’s aims and actions across the Asia

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Pacific.”31

In the narrat ive put forth by Japan’sDepartment of Industrial Heritage, theprotagonists of Meiji Industrialization were thesamurai from Chōshū and foreign engineersand businessmen they hired. No laborersappear. When the promotion committee for theUNESCO inscription had the websiteexplaining the values of the Meiji IndustrialRevolution Sites, it at least contained a fewpages describing the hard labor of (Japanese)miners. Now the website has been replaced byone created by the Cabinet Secretaries Office,and even those few pages are gone.

Upholding the Meiji Restorationists and “their”industrialization by skipping the wartimeperiod is a political act, for it determines thehistorical narrative of modern Japanese history.The interpretation of the Meiji period carries aheavy weight in Japanese historiography. AsLaurajane Smith asserts, “heritage is amultilayered performance — be this aperformance of v is i t ing, managing,interpretation or conservation — that embodiesacts of remembrance and commemorationwhile negotiating and constructing a sense ofplace, belonging and understanding in thepresent.”32 Performative function of the twoHagi sites — the symbol of the Chōshū legacy— indeed needs to be recognized; it overlapsChōshū and the nation, displays the heroic andlinear narrative of the nation/Chōshū, andenforces a direct connection between the MeijiRestoration and present-day Japan. Left out areanything that happened in between, notablylaborers and their exploitation, larger anddeeper contexts of Japanese industrialization,and Japan’s expansive empire.

The absence of laborers and the celebratoryconnection between the Meiji industrializationand present–day Japan is also apparent in theofficial representation of the “Tomioka Silk Milland Related Sites,” inscribed on the UNESCOWorld Heritage list in 2014. UNESCO describes

the value of the Tomioka Silk Mill and RelatedSites as illustrating “Japan’s desire to rapidlyaccess the best mass production techniques,”demonstrating “a model that enshrined Japan’srole in the global raw silk market at thebeginning of the 20th century,” and bearing“witness to the early advent of a sharedinternational culture of sericulture.”33 Thewebsite created by the prefectural office isprimarily about technologies imported andimproved in the Meiji period, such as theunique brick layering pattern, French machinesand engineers, and so on. The only womanworker mentioned on the website is Wada Ei,daughter of a former samurai in Matsushiro,Nagano, who became a well-known silk-reelinginstructor and engineer director at another silkfactory. Wada was among the first recruits ofsilk reelers that the government specificallysought from established families in order todemonstrate the safe and respectable workenvironment to future female workers. As weknow, these women were quickly replaced bydaughters from poor families, who made up themajority of industrial workers in Japan duringthe Meiji period. There is no mention of these“factory girls” on the Tomioka Silk Mill webpage.

One may say silk, iron and steel, shipbuilding,and coal mines commemorated at the MeijiIndustrial Revolution Sites and the TomiokaMi l l a re represen ta t i ve o f J apan ’ sindustrialization that began in the Meiji period.One may also think that Japanese ingenuity anddie-hard efforts to catch up led to thesuccessful and rapid industrialization, asemphasized on those websites. Theseassertions are not entirely wrong but myopic.The story of Rasa Island gives us a differentstory.

First, the Rasa Island story reminds us thatJapan’s industrialization could not beunderstood without its colonial expansion.Uninhibited and territorially undeclared, theDaitō Islands’ colonization cannot be compared

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to that of Korea or Taiwan. However, theislands, together with numerous other islandsin the Pacific, were colonized, settled, andexploited by Japanese entrepreneurs for thepurpose of extracting resources for Japan’sindustrialization. One should also rememberthe colonization of Okinawa and Hokkaido inthe Meiji period. Phosphate in Rasa Islandcould not have become fertilizer for Japanesefarmers without thousands of Okinawanlaborers working there, whose migratory laborwas a sad consequence of the Meiji colonizationof Okinawa. Industrialization required access toinexpensive raw materials, energy resources,and the market that colonies and informalcolonies provided; development of industrialcapitalism went hand in hand with imperialexpansion, as eloquently narrated inHobsbawm’s Age of Capital .3 4 Japan’sindustrialization was no exception.

Second, Rasa Island also reminds us that warswere central to industrialization. The Meijiwars, the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, are missing from the websiteinformation on the Meiji Industrial Revolutionfor whatever reason, but economic historiansknow we l l how much Japan ’ s heavyindustrialization depended on the indemnityfrom the Sino-Japanese War and Japan’sexpansion as a result of the Russo-JapaneseWar, in addition to the sheer fact that militaryneeds boosted the business of the mining,shipbuilding, iron and steel industries.Needless to say, the role of the Great EuropeanWar and the Asia-Pacific War needs to be firmlyacknowledged in the story of Japan’s industrialdevelopment, as exemplified by the RasaIndustry’s history. WWI played a pivotal rolebecause the absence of European productsprovided a strong impetus and protection forJapanese industries. Rasa Industry’s sale wentdrastically up during the Great European War,and so did demands and sales for otherbusinesses in the industrial sector in Japan. Itwas during WWI that the Japanese governmentimplemented various measures to promote the

development of key industr ies , R&Dinfrastructure, and science education that laidthe foundation of science and technology intwentieth-century Japan.35 The crucial rolewart ime mobi l i za t ion p layed in thedevelopment of technology and industry hasbeen well established among historians ofscience and technology since Hiroshige Tetsu’sinfluential works in the 1970s.36

Lastly, Rasa Island also reminds us that thechemical industry is often missing in theconven t i ona l na r ra t i ve o f J apan ’ sindustrialization. Chemical industry is widelyacknowledged as an essential industry in theindustrial revolution, and this was especially sofor Japan, where the first and second industrialrevolutions took place almost simultaneously.Economic historians usually date the secondperiod of industrialization between 1870 and1914. By the end of the nineteenth century, themomentum of early modernizing branches suchas textiles, iron and steel, steam engines andrailway transport had slowed in the industriallyadvanced parts of the West. As David Landesdescribes, it was “the rise of new industriesbased on spectacular advances in chemical andelectrical science and a new, mobile sources ofpower — the internal combustion engine. . . thecluster of innovations that is often designatedas the second industrial revolution.”37 Thesecond industrial revolution involved thechanging organization of production, with theeconomies of scale powered by hydrogenatedelectrical power and the emergence of largeconcerns that invested in not just technology,as was the case ear l i e r , bu t i n newtechnological systems. Electrochemicalindustry was a vital feature of the secondindustrial revolution. In Japan, the artificialfertilizer industry propelled this development.It was the cutting edge industry that droveindustrialization in Japan and elsewhere in thefirst half of the twentieth century, alongside ofthe steel and mining industries monopolized bylarge zaibatsu that Meiji Industrial Sitesenshrines. We can ponder the assessment

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Barbara Molony gives in her study of thechemical industry in prewar Japan. Accordingto her, it was “prewar technology-intensiveindustries — many of which were not zaibatsu-related — who pioneered most of the well-known areas of Japan’s modern high-techeconomy” and “the archetypical prewar high-technology industry” was the chemical fertilizercompany.38

WHAT HERITAGE?

It is not fair to say that Japan considers theMeiji Industrial Revolution Sites the onlyimportant sites in the country. In 2007, theMinistry of Economy, Trade, and Industry(METI) presented its own list of industrialheritage sites in a report titled “33 HeritageConstellations of Industrial Modernization.”The list is interesting, diverse, and historical. Itincluded, among other things, sites ofHokkaido’s coal mining, agriculturaldevelopment, food processing and pulpindustry; mineral and oil mining in the Tohokuregion; hotel and recreation industry; brick andcement industries; the Ashio copper mine andi ts surrounding e lec tr ic power andtransportation system; the Yokohama and Kobeports; soy source factories along the ToneRiver; textile factories in Osaka; and Okinawa’ssugar cane and Ishigaki’s coal mining. Here,dams and hydropower stations along the Kisoand Kurobe Rivers are listed, along with keyindustries such as fertilizer production andpharmacy, demonstrating a full awareness ofthe importance of the system, rather thanindividual sites, of the industrial revolution.The significance of the 1930s and wartime isacknowledged; the Kansai industrial area, forexample, is explained in the context of thetransition from the light to heavy industrythrough WWI, the 1930s, and wartime. Theelectrochemical/fertilizer industry featuresprominently on the list too, through figuressuch as Noguchi Shitagau, the founder ofNihon Chisso. Overemphasizing the MeijiIndustrial Revolution Sites as the only or even

most representative of what Japan considers itsMeiji as well as its industrial past would be todeny the diversity and breath of voices andinterests that compose a list like the METI’s.

The making of this list was part of METI’sprogram to promote local economy, and this ismade clear in the first sentence of the report:“To invigorate local economy, it is extremelyimportant to learn the path of our predecessorsand turn it into stimulation for the future.Modernization process from the Bakumatsu toearly Showa period is especially and highlysignificant as the foundation of the present-day‘Japan the great creator’ [monozukuri taikokuNihon] and the roots o f ma jor loca lindustries.”3 9 As the report includes adiscussion of how many tourists can beexpected from earning the status of heritagesites, METI’s initiative clearly is intended tolink the preservation of industrial ruins withthe promotion of tourism for the declining localeconomy.

Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites seem to signifythis same desire at the national level, the desireto turn the industrial past into the post-industrial future. Ito Yûichirō, the governor ofKagoshima Prefecture who acted as the head ofthe promotion committee of the Meiji IndustrialRevolution Sites for the UNESCO inscription,states that “I headed the promotion committeebecause Japan needs to have pride as anindustrialized country by making clear thepioneering role played by the steel, iron,shipbuilding, and coal mining industries inhistory. I believe the inscription of [these sites]provides an opportunity to look back at theorigins of industrial Japan and to reviveJapanese economy once again.“40 Japan ishardly unique in this regard. The UK and theUS started registering their industrial sitesdecades ago. As Smith writes, “In Britain,heritage became synonymous with right-wingpolitics and entrepreneurialism, with somecommentators associating it with Thatcheritecultural and social control and free market

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enterprise.”41

Ever since the first inscription was made in1978, the World Heritage Sites list has grownexponentially. By 1990, the list contained 335sites, prompting heritage scholar DavidLowenthal to call the landscape “saturated with‘creeping heritage.’”42 As of 2016, there are1052 properties on the list. Many scholarscharacterize this ubiquity of heritage — notonly World Heritage Site but also museums andlocal heritage destinations — as a distinctivephenomenon of late-modern globalization.

Rodney Harrison, scholar of critical heritagestudies, has aptly summarized this: “Heritagehad shifted from a process of the production ofa public sphere in the eighteenth century toone of nation-building in the nineteenth andtwentieth, to become concerned largely withthe management of redundancy and waste inthe late twentieth and early twenty-firstcenturies.”43 The rise of industrial heritage sitesin the late twentieth century is certainly areflection of how far our society has beenremoved from the industrial revolutions.Deindustrialization rendered various industrialsites obsolete and more suitable for museumexhibits. What to do with this material excess ofports, factories, shafts, and so on that have nouse any longer? A more flexible form of capitalaccumulation in late capitalism has madeheritage tourism an attractive industry, leadingto an expansion of heritage sites beyondancient buildings and national parks. Gainingthe recognition of “heritage sites” makes thoseredundant and waste re-usable again, as anattractive tourist destination. In this context, asHarrison maintains, World Heritage becamethe most marketable brand, rendering the“World Heritage Emblem” a sought-aftermarking logo.44

For non-Western countries trying to get on theUNESCO list, giving meaning to those ruins hasan additional task. Unlike Ironbridge Gorge,Cornwell and West Devon Mining Landscape,

and Albert Dock in Liverpool in the UK, whicheasily made it into the inscription list asexhibiting the “universal value” of humancivilization, non-Western late industrializerswould have to justify why mines and docks intheir countries are not just more of the same,mere duplicates of the West. One of the mostimportant factors behind the rise of WorldHeritage Sites is the attempt to overcome whatLaurajane Smith calls Authorizing HeritageDiscourse (AHD), specifically Euro-centrisminherent in UNESCO World HeritageCommittee selection. Because the WorldHeritage enterprise is based on the “universalvalues” initially conceived by the West andmanagement requirements overseen by mostlyWestern or Westernized experts, its operationscontinue to reinforce Euro-centric views ofwhat should be marked as heritage of theworld. Criticisms, protests, and movements byindigenous heritage activists, critical heritagescholars, and non-Western representatives inthe 1980s led to adjustments of the criteria. Asthe door widened, more non-Western countriessought the World Heritage Emblem, althoughstill almost half of the World Heritage Sitesremain located in Europe.45 Japan’s vigorousattempts to get Meiji industrial sites took placein this context. Ultimately, however, theinscription of the Meiji industrial sitesreinforces AHD, through the repeated phrase ofthe “first successful transfer” of Westernindustrialization to the non-Western world asits universal value justification. This in factmight be perhaps the only way to get non-Western excess ruins acknowledged underAHD. Additionally, the Meiji industrializationsites needed to add another layer of meaningsin order to accentuate their universal yetunique significance, that is, how those sites ledto Japan’s prosperity and contribution back tothe world. Here, there is no space foracknowledging Japan’s exploitation of coloniallabor or wartime aggression. None of the WorldHeritage Industrial Sites in Europe in factacknowledge those things. By joining AHD, theMeiji Restoration story can be told, and can

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only be told, in an equally triumphant andunreflective way as AHD has done.

Rasa Island exhibits a universal story ofmodernization and industrialization from itsfirst sighting to exploitation. It shows that therise of mercanti l ism and imperial ismauthorizing conquering of the sea and newlands, the exploitation of nature and humanlabor, modern colonialism that justified thissystem of exploitation, and the central role ofwars and militarism were not just a “dark side”of the history that should be added to themainstream history for a moral or politicalpurpose but were rather integral to the historyof industrialization. The Meiji IndustrialRevolution Sites emphasize that the firstsuccessful transfer of Western industrializationtook place in Japan. Rasa Island also shows thesuccessful transfer of colonization, exploitation,and industrialization took place in Japan asJapan was integrated into the modern system ofcommerce, empire, and international politics. Itis not a glorious history. In contrast to steel,coal, and shipbuilding that could easily belinked to “Japan as No. 1” of the postwarperiod, Rasa Island could only tell Japan’s storyof seabird slaughtering for profit, fertilizerexploitation for the condemned empire,

inexpiable sacrifice of Okinawa, and defeat andsubjugation to the US. In terms of the myopicline the World Heritage Sites attempt toestablish between the Meiji Restoration andtoday’s Japan, Rasa Island has exhausted itsindustrial utility as well as recycable utility forpost-industrial Japan. But historians’ job is tokeep telling stories so that these forgotten sitescould come out of abandonment and into thelight of history and tourism. Criticism andtensions do produce dialogue. Criticism againstGunkanjima and the wartime undergroundtunnels did get people involved in discussingwhat is to be remembered and what is to beneglected. It is my hope that numerousabandoned places such as Rasa Island willencourage questioning about what is beingforgotten through abandonment. Lowenthalonce wrote that “Heritage in Britain is said toreflect nostalgia for imperial self-esteem, inAmerica to requite angst for lost community, inFrance to redress wartime disgrace, inAustralia to supplant the curse of Europeanregency with indigenous antiquity.”46 In Japan,I would say, heritage is to confirm Japan’s placein the world by insisting on its membership inEuro-centered universality, at a time when itspost-industrial condition weakens the nation’sstanding in world geopolitics.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Remembering Japan’s Industrial Development, Preserving its Dark Heritage

Edited by Hiromi Mizuno with Tze M. Loo

Tze M. Loo, Japan’s Dark Industrial Heritage: An Introduction(https://apjjf.org/2017/01/Loo.html)

Miyamoto Takashi, Convict Labor and Its Commemoration: the Mitsui Miike Coal MineExperience (https://apjjf.org/2017/01/Miyamoto.html)

Jung-Sun Han, The Heritage of Resentment and Shame in Postwar Japan

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(https://apjjf.org/2017/01/Han.html)

Hiromi Mizuno, Associate Professor, History, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Notes1 Bernhard Welsch, “Was Marcus Island Discovered by Bernardo de La Torre in 1543?,” TheJournal of Pacific History 39, no. 1 (2004): 109–22.2 Takara Kurayoshi, “The Senkaku Islands Problem as Seen Through Okinawan History,”Challenges for Japan-China Relations and Okiawa (March 2013), 100-101.3 Hiraoka Akitoshi, Ahodori to teikoku nihon no kakudai (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2012), 70-83.4 Jimmy Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion(NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). According to Hiraoka Akitoshi, seabirds and their excrementsalso drove Japan’s colonial expansion to the South Pacific. See Hiraoka, Ahodori to teikokunihon no kakudai.5 Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global EcologicalHistory (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Michael Monteón, Chiele in the NitrateEra (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982).6 Sato Hiroyuki, “Tsunetō Noritaka to hiryō kōbutsu chōsasho,” Chishitsu Nyūsu, no. 278 (Feb1986): 36, 39.7 Tsunetō Noritaka, Yo to rinkō no tanken (Tokyo: Tokyodō, 1936), 26.8 Tsunetō Noritaka, Rasatō shinkei (Rasa Rinkō, 1919), no page number.9 Rasa kōgyō kabushikigaisha shashi henshūsha, Rasa kyōgyō hachijûnenshi (Rasa kōgyō,1993), 18-23; and Hiraoka, 194-5. Tsunetō’s career pattern resembles that of TakamineJōkichi, internationally renowned chemist-cum-entrepreneur. Takamine worked for theMinistry of Agriculture and Commerce before he established Tokyo Artificial FertilizerCompany in 1877, the first superphosphate works to produce chemical fertilizer in Japan. Thecompany changed its name to Japan Artificial Fertilizer Company in 1910 and became one ofthe largest chemical companies in Japan, Nissan Chemical Industries. Takamine went on tobecome one of the most successful Japanese entrepreneurs in the U.S. with the successfulisolation and production of adrenaline and amylase that he patented.10 Tsunetō, Rasatō shinkei, 19-21; and Hiraoka, 196.11 Tsunetō, Rasatō shinkei, 15.12 Tsunetō, Rasatō shinkei, 33-39.13 Yamada Gentarō, Rasa tō no ippan (no publisher information, 1911), 4.14 Rasa kōgyō hachijûnenshi, 36; and Hiraoka, 196-8.15 Ishikawa Ichirō, “Superphosphate Industry in Japan,” Journal of Chemical Industry 24, no.281 (July 1921): 63.16 Chōfûsō tsurikyaku, Kaubeki kabu nijuunana shu (Tokyo: Imai sennosuke, 1920).17 Rasa kōgyō hachijûnenshi, 46-8.18 Rasa kōgyō hachijûnenshi, 59, 84, 92, 95.19 Rasatō shinkei, 18-9.

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20 Rasatō shinkei, 46, 62.21 Rasatō shinkei, 48.22 Rasatō shinkei, 52.23 Rasatō shinkei, 73.24 Morita Yoshio, Rasatō shubitai ki: gyokusai wo kakugoshita heishitacih no ningen dorama(Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 2011), 96, 133.25 Morita, Rasatō shubitai ki. The original was published in 1995 by Kawade shobō.26 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron andSteel, Shipbuiding and Coal Mining,” (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1484/) [last accessedSeptember 28, 201627 Takazane Yasunori, “Should ‘Gunkanjima’ Be a World Heritage site? The Forgotten Scars ofKorean Forced Labor,” (http://apjjf.org/2015/13/28/Takazane-Yasunori/4340.html) JapanFocus Vol 13, issue 28 (July 13, 2015).28 China and advocates for former American and British POWs also complained about thenomination of these sites to World Heritage without acknowledging this negative page inhistory. William Underwood, “History in a Box: UNESCO and the Framing of Japan’s MeijiEra,” (http://apjjf.org/2015/13/26/William-Underwood/4332.html) Japan Focus Vol. 13, Issues26, Number 1 (June 2015).29 “Shokasonjuku Academy,” (http://www.kyuyama.jp/e/kyushuyamaguchi/ky_hagi_05.html)Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Kyushu-Yamaguchi and Related Areas. [lastaccessed March 20. 2016]. This webpage has been replaced by a new web page created bythe Japanese government’s Department of Industrial Heritage under Cabinet Secretariat.30 Department of Industrial Heritage, Cabinet Secretariat, “Shokasonjuku Academy,” Japan’sMeiji Industrial Revolution. Last accessed on Sept 11, 2016.http://www.japansmeijiindustrialrevolution.com/en/site/hagi/component05.html31 Underwood, “History in a Box.”32 Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (London and NY: Routledge, 2006), 3.33 UNESCO, “Tomioka Silk Mill and Related Sites,” World Heritage Centre, last accessed Sept28, 2016, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/144934 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Capital: 1848-1875 (London: Little, Brown, and Company, 1975,1995).35 James Bartholomew, The Formation of Science in Japan: Building a Scientific Tradition(Yale University Press, 1993); and Hiromi Mizuno, Science for the Empire: ScientificNationalism in Modern Japan (Stanford University Press, 2009).36 For example, Hiroshige Tetsu, Kagaku no shakaishi (Tokyo: Chûō kōronsha, 1973).37 ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 4. See also Joel Mokyr, “TheSecond Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914,” in The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativityand Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).38 Barbara Molony, Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990), 2-3.39 Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, “33 Heritage Constellations of IndustrialModernization” (2007) and “Zoku 33 Heritage Constellations of Industrial Modernization”(2008). The quote is in the first page of both 2007 and 2008 reports.40 Sangyō isan kokumin kaigi, “Sangyō kokka nihon no genten: ‘Meiji nihon no sangyō

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kakumei isan’ o jisedai he,” Nyûsu letaa 6: 4.41 Smith, Uses of Heritage, 39.42 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1985), xv.43 Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches (NY: Routledge, 2013), 81.44 Harrison, Heritage, 89.45 Forty-nine percent, to be precise. See UNESCO, “World Heritage List Statistics,”(http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/stat/#d3) World Heritage Centre, last accessed December 12,2016.46 David Lowenthal, “The Heritage Crusade and Its Contradictions,” in Giving Preservation aHistory: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States, eds. Max Page and RandallMason (NY: Routledge, 2004), 14.