Medium Post #3
Throughout the past few weeks of discussion, I have been fascinated by just how underrepresented different groups are throughout Japanese history, or even history in general. Focusing on the incompleteness of archives through Korean, “buraku”, and Okinawan women and men makes us wonder if we will ever uncover the reality of the past. It can often times be easy to ride solely off a historians words, but in reality, they are interpreting information to the best of their abilities and in doing so, it is near impossible to get the full picture and reality of the past. We can utilize the tools, information and evidence of the past in order to piece together the most accurate picture of historical realities as possible.
When we look back at the Farmhouse Surveys in Okinawa, it is made evident that people were viewed as labor inputs. We know a lot about how they contributed economically, how productive they were, but that is about it. We know their stats, not their well being, or their state of mind. Farmhouse Surveys were just a tiny piece of what life was really like for those Okinawan people, not a single question was asked on those surveys about their well being, family life or overall happiness. So it is up to us, to dig deeper and try to grasp through the minimal materials we have, to give a voice to the voiceless people of the past.
Archival silences and omissions lead us to ponder about what is the reality of past events… and do historians accurately depict them? It is vital that we take the critiques of archival authorities seriously.
The Korean migrant workers are a perfect example of being underrepresented and under appreciated from a historical standpoint. Although everyone in Japan shared the objective of enduring the reproduction of capital, there was big gaps of discrimination between different groups. The lecture this week brought to my attention the horrible reality that low absolute numbers of colonial subjects in the Japanese countryside were left in the dust and were very rarely addressed or mentioned, in other words, viewed as not worth studying.
As I reflect on my life today, and the whirlwind of events that happened last year, I quickly realize that the likelihood of my emotions and thoughts of being accurately transcribed by historians is very low. Sure, they could dig and find social media posts, medical records, employer records and make a rough outline of my life, but even I, the owner of my thoughts, cannot perfectly transcribe my thoughts onto paper. I know last year was a rollercoaster of emotions for me, so there isn't a single feeling or headspace that I was in, it was ever changing. That being said, even if my thoughts were perfectly transcribed, that is all it would be, my thoughts. We then cannot generalize a sex, age group or ethnicity to belong to a certain experience or emotion during any given year or time in history. Just because I had a certain experience as an Asian American 21 year old in 2020, does not mean it will be similar or the same to another Asian American 21 year old in 2020.
As far as what kind of history-writing about the lives of the women is ethical, I believe that sharing more than their work stats and bringing attention to them as hard working women who contributed greatly to society and Japan is how we tell their stories in an ethical way. Erasing them from history, or leaving out their voice by not using archival materials is the utmost sign of disrespect. In order for historians to ethically write about these strong women in an ethical manner, we must be careful about how we represent them by using the archival materials as a way to represent them, and not use it for selfish reasons, i.e. a historian trying to prove a point and only using selective pieces of archival materials in order to do so.
If I were relate this all back to me from a historical standpoint, I would be open to have historians dig through only certain information about me and my experience with the pandemic. It is difficult to draw the line of what should be shared, and what is meant to stay private. However, I truly believe that if the information is shown in a respectful manner, and is related to the time in history in order to help depict the reality of living through 2020 (or any given time in history), I believe that information is worth sharing. The beautiful thing about history is everyone has a different take on the events in history depending on their perspectives and how it personally effected that person.
