| This dissertation narrates the development of a Chinese community in the Japanese port city of Yokohama from the Sino-Japanese War of 1894--1895 to the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in 1972. This city was home to the largest and most politically important Chinese community during this time, and Japan's most prominent Chinatown. This story describes Sino-Japanese relations as it was lived by individuals in an ethnically mixed city, but also the rise of competing identity discourses for Yokohama's Chinese residents: a diasporic national identity and a local Yokohama identity.;The rise of the nation-state form worldwide and ideas of ethnic difference demarcated the Chinese from the Japanese. This transformation was promoted by efforts among the Chinese, such as the periodicals, schools, and associations established by Chinese reformers and revolutionaries in the 1890s, which then gradually exerted an influence on the consciousness and social organization of the Chinese in Yokohama. Externally, repeated military conflict with Japan, notably wars in 1894--1895, 1931--1932, and 1937--1945 clarified the ethnic consciousnesses of Chinese and Japanese in Yokohama. The imperatives of loyalty in times of war forced them to adopt antagonistic postures toward one another. The politicization of this Chinese identity was completed in the early postwar years by the intervention of the Republic of China during the Allied Occupation of Japan.;In times of peace, however, mutual acculturation and the interactions of daily life in the city also gave rise to a local community, binding Chinese and Japanese together. Over the same time frame, economic relations, mutual acculturation, intermarriage, participation in local organizations and leisure activities, have led to a Yokohama-specific conception of identity. Local society has come to recognize the Chinese and their Chinatown as a part of Yokohama city, and an important component of their local culture.;Given the strong ethnic determinants of Chinese and Japanese identity expressed in jus sanguinis citizenship laws in both countries, and their rivalry in the geopolitical domain, the Yokohama Chinese could not integrate into the Japanese nation. Their integration into the host society took place instead under a rubric of local identity, yielding a status as ethnically marked but socially accepted resident aliens. The dissertation concludes with a consideration of the political significance of Chinese participation in this Yokohama local identity, especially in light of Yokohama City's official embrace of Chinatown since the 1970s despite the persisting animus between China and Japan. |
