1263592 Marine Vessel and Road as a Socializing Vehicle Enroute Experiences, Transnational Encounters and Exchanges
Organizer(s):
Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Osaka University (hsmt@let.osaka-u.ac.jp)
Maritime ship, whether
mercantile or military, have been considered as a metaphor or miniature of a
society. Multi-layered and multi-cultural passengers, even if nearly segregated
according to the economic status or tracking system, are supposed to form a community
bound together by common destiny or destination. In the literature, films and
paintings, a marine vessel has been represented as a positive example of
meritocracy: no matter how diversified it looks, it is to be hierarchically
integrated and organized by a chain of command. Otherwise it would be turned
out to be the ship of fools. It is hardly surprising, therefore, the stories
concerning warship and civilian ship has increased with the rise of the
nation-state and the national consciousness.
Meanwhile its socializing process on board have been nearly
ignored although a number of travelogues has described the unexpected
encounters, experiences and troubles on the maritime road. Cabins are strictly
classified but the passenger’s
identities would not be static and its category system of the ship usually
would mold, cross and re-draw the borders of race, class and gender of his or
her own society after they left behind. It is not uncommon that impoverished
workers or farmers would develop the class and national consciousness including
racism after they travelled in international steerage. Ports of call also
formed and revised the traveler’s view of the world.
Many Japanese tourists, on their way to Europe and America for study or
business, had been impressed by the culture and people of the port of call.
Their impression of China often depends on the observations in Shanghai and
Hong Kong, and their image of India was exclusively based on their brief stay
in Colombo. So the following four presentations of this panel are going to
emphasize the importance of enroute experiences of the marine road,
transnational encounters and exchanges on the vessel.
Firstly, Hashimoto’ s “The Two Faces of a Travel Agent: Japanese Passengers and A. K.
Hasheem at Colombo” focuses on the representations of
an Indian souvenir shop by the Japanese passenger. Once Colombo had been a port
of junction between the intellectuals heading to Europe for study and the
workers heading to South America for work. Both types of passengers used A. K.
Hasheem & Co., jeweler and travel agent dedicated mostly to Japanese
passengers. Middle class intellectuals, business person and military officers
had considered Hasheem and his staff merely as good men of business while
working class immigrants often recorded their sympathy or racial solidarity
with them. Interestingly, a Japanese owner of tea plantations in Brazil usually
would tell that the secret of his business was stolen tea seed from Lipton,
with the help of Hasheem’s clerl. This unlikely story
might be inspired by his experience of seeing a racial discrimination in Cape
Town.
Secondly Inaga’s “Under the Shadow of Apartheid: Maritime Road of Transnational
Communication” uncovers the unexpected encounter with
the background of racial discrimination in Cape Town. William Plomer
(1903-1973) and Laurens Van der Post (1906-1996) came to Japan in 1929 via
maritime route, crossing the Arabic and Indian Ocean under the command of
Captain Mori Katsue (1890-1989) of the Osaka Commercial Line. Not only the way
they encountered Mori in Durban, under the heavy burden of Apartheid, but also
their stay and experience in Pre-War Japan are rich in relevant anecdotes in
cross cultural mutual understanding between Africa and East Asia. To the two
topics interests in comparative literary studies, the paper also adds two
others factors. One is the experience of the ship navigation crossing the
Oceans. The other is the byproduct of their discovery. While William Plomer
took interest in Japanese mediaeval theater Noh and collaborated with Benjamin
Brittten (1913-1976), Van der Post’s learning of the
Japanese language and his familiarity with the mentality helped him survive in
the camp of the Prisoners of War in Java. By referring mainly to Yet Being
Someone Other (1982), the paper will investigate into the
siginificance of transnational navigation touching upon the maritime
imagination.
Thirdly Negawa’s “Crossing “Manchukuo” and Brazil: Immigration Ships as Contact zones” examines the exchange between “Manchukuo”, a kind of Japanese version of British Commonwealth, and Brazil.
Negawa also considers an immigration ship’s networking
of the countries / regions globally as a contact zone where people, goods,
animals and plants cross over. In this paper, he will focus on the exchanges of
animals and plants among Japan, Manchuria and Brazil via Japanese immigration
ships to Brazil. Flora and fauna exchanges, Japanese cherry, for instance,
Manchurian animals and Brazilian orchids, emerged around 1940. Closely analyzing
materials in Japanese in the period just before the Pacific War would clarify
the political background and meaning of the crossing between Imperial Japan and
Brazil.
Finally, Garasino’s “Navigating Between the West and the Rest: East Asia’s modern Experience in the Works of Enrique Gomez Carrillo
(1904-1907)” gives another perspective from South
America, examining how South American people looked and experienced at the same
maritime road. This paper will discuss the writings of the literary critic,
journalist and travel literature author Enrique Gomez Carrillo (1873-1927) on
East Asia and Japan at the closing and the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War
(1905-1907). Focusing on maritime travel, both as a narrative resource and as
an actual means of mobility in transnational intellectual encounters, this
paper will illustrate one example of the impact of Japan's modern experience on
the Latin American intellectual sphere at the beginning of the twentieth
century. In doing so, it will analyze how Carrillo attempted to challenge and
decenter hierarchical divisions of West and East.
With the above papers, this workshop aims to emphasize the
importance of marine vessel and road as a socializing vehicle. It would lead to
rediscovery of nearly forgotten travel writing as a marine literature and
reinterpretation of the novels apparently describing maritime ship as a
metaphor of a society.