====== PNC Abstract (one page) ======

# Sea distance vs Cultural Vicinity? The Japanese Tombstone Column in Okinawa and Penghu: Field notes, data analyses and open questions

## Authors: Oliver STREITER, Yoann GOUDIN, Meigo CHEN

## Field Workers: ZHAN Ya-Qing, James X. MORRIS, Sara Yuting WANG, Tammy Yiting LIU, Gerge KANG, Ares TANG, CHEN Naiyu, Sandy Lilun LIN

1879 and 1895. Only 16 years lie between the Japanese Empire's offical annexation of Okinawa and its conquest of Penghu. Until the end of WWII both archipelagos shared a similar geo-political and cultural framing, a similarity which is largely unexploited in the study of cultures and acculturation.

Not knowing much about each other, not knowing that they entered a period of shared history and not knowing that their common history would split again after 1945, the inhabitants of both archipelagos had to find ways to accomodate new military and executive forces, a new dominant language, a new administration and pressures to cultural adaptation.

That streets and shops of contemporary Okinawa, after the American handover in 1972, look similar to those in Japan might not surprise. Yet we content, that the form of acculturation on Penghu before 1945 showed stronger features of assimilation than Okinawa. Can this hypothesis be evaluated and eventually be confirmed, and if so, can it be explained?

To operationalize the vague notion of japanization, we investigate the temporal and spatial distribution of the Japanese tombstone column on Okinawa, Penghu and for comparison on the Amami islands and on Taiwan. Tombstones, we content, are an appropriate means to approach questions of acculturaltion, assimilation, coopting or other forms of cultural exchange, as they are located at the interface of the private and the public. Tombstones also present beliefs and values of a local community, but only to an extent that is tolerable to a ruling force.

What makes tombs and tombstones even more suitable for academic reserach in cultural processes is that fact that tombs are locally anchored and usually dated by an inscription. In a word, tombs can be easily put into a geo-temporal grid, a foundation for the empiric studies of cultural practices. Burial sites, in addition, have also been marked on maps, showing when and where there used to be burial sites and, presumably, who and when removed them. If tombs and tombstones can still be found, their spatio-temporal data allow for detailed studies of languages, symbols, conceptions, and discourse in the struggle between classes and social groups.

Based on a on-going project running since 2007 about Chinese related cultural – mainly funerary and religious – practices, our demonstration relies on our multimedia database filled with pictures shot with GPS cameras then annotated and transcribed in order to attempt to make sense of this data collected among communities from Europe to Hawaii and from Singapore to Korea. The proposal we develop here is based on our decade-long digital fieldwork on the Penghu and Okinawa archipelagos with a special focus on tomb and tombstones including features such as erection date and government change sensitive patterns and so the shift from previous tomb shapes to Japanese style like column.

====== PNC Abstract (end) ======

# The Japanese Tombstone Column in Okinawa and Penghu: Field notes, data analyses and open questions

## Authors: Oliver STREITER, Yoann GOUDIN, Meigo CHEN, TO Manwai Mandy

## Field Workers: ZHAN Ya-Qing, James X. MORRIS, Sara Yuting WANG, Tammy Yiting LIU, Gerge KANG, Ares TANG, CHEN Naiyu, Sandy Lilun LIN, TO Manwai Mandy

1879 and 1895. Only 16 years lie between the Japanese Empire's offical annexation of Okinawa and its conquest of Penghu from the 23rd to the 26th of March 1895, 3 weeks before signing the treaty of Shimonoseki on April th the same year. Until the end of WWII both archipelagos shared a similar geo-political and cultural framing, a similarity which is largely unexploited in the study of cultures and acculturation.

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)

Not knowing much about each other, not knowing that they entered a period of shared history and not knowing that their common history would split again after 1945, the inhabitants of both archipelagos had to find ways to accomodate new military and executive forces, a new dominant language, a new administration and pressures to cultural adaptation.

[comment]: <> (Leave your comments here:
)

That streets and shops of contemporary Okinawa, after the American handover in 1971, look similar to those in Japan might not surprise. Yet we content, that the form of acculturation on Penghu before 1945 showed stronger features of assimilation than Okinawa. Can this hypothesis be evaluated and eventually be confirmed, and if so, can it be explained? Were the Japanese more fierceful in Penghu, or the people in Penghu more submissive to Japans colonial ruling than their conterparts in Okinawa?

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To operationalize the vague notion of japanization, we investigate the temporal and spatial distribution of the Japanese tombstone column on Okinawa, Penghu and for comparison on the Amami islands and on Taiwan. Tombstones, we content, are an appropriate means to approach questions of acculturaltion, assimilation, coopting or other forms of cultural exchange, as they are located at the interface of the private and the public. Thus differently form e.g. languages, which can be different in private and in public contexts, and money, which is necessarily the same in private and in public contexts, tombstones have to accomodate public and the private expectancies and thus represent a true battlefield in the struggle between opressors and the oppressed. Tombstones present beliefs and values of a local community, but only to an extent that is tolerable to a ruling force. The governmental destruction of tombs by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang and Hainan, by the Japanese Empire in Tainan, visualize the intensity and brutality of this fight.

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Oliver:Reference to tomb-destructions needed.
)

What makes tombs and tombstones even more suitable for academic reserach in cultural processes is that fact that tombs are locally anchored and usually dated by an inscription. In a word, tombs can be easily put into a geo-temporal grid, a foundation for the empiric studies of cultural practices. Burial sites, in addition, have also been marked on maps, showing when and where there used to be burial sites and, presumably, who and when removed them. If tombs and tombstones can still be found, their spatio-temporal data allow for detailed studies of languages, symbols, conceptions, and discourse in the struggle between classes.

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Before going into the details of our investigation, some preliminary remarks are necessary with respect to geographic references, sampling and mapping and definitions of concepts we use.

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Oliver: I want to use Japan instead of Mainland Japan. I don't like the term Mainland, but is this a good idea?)

The geographic space of this empiric research is enormous. While Penghu and Tainan on Taiwan have been extensively researched, our 6? visits to the Ryukyus are not sufficient to cover all relevant spaces. The authors and the readers should thus always be aware that the statements me make are limited through our practical view and data, cross-checked through the literature we can consult. Therefor we summarize here the field trips we did in the Ryukyus through the following maps.

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Oliver: Maps needed)

Without giving further justifications of our definitions, we define here:

- *acculturation* as *the balancing of two cultures under the pressure of a prevailing culture*,
- *assimilation*, or *cultural assimilation*, as *a form of acculturation that is characterized by the internalization or enacting of the values and practices of the dominant culture*
- *culture* as *the practice of the acquired*
- *practice*, or *cultural practice*,
- *recuperation*, or *coopting*, as
- *cultural operation" as

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Islands that belong nowadays to *Amami* have been under the forceful control of Okinawan kingdoms for some time and each thus represents a historical laboratory of local, Okinawan and Japanese cultural influences. The southern Amami islands Yoron and Okinoerabu were fell under Okinawa control in the *Sanzan* period (1314 - 1429). From where Okinawas gradually exteneded their reign upto the Tokara Islands, with exception of Kika Island. The Amai islands and the Tokara Islands are part of the Satsunan Islands. In 1611, after its military defeat, Okinawa ceded the Amami Islands to the Satsuma feudal domain, from where they became in 1871 part of the Kagoshima prefecture. INCLUDING YORON???

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After their integration into the Satsuma domain, the islands were exploited in a colonial style, producing, among other, sugar and cole. Burial sites in the mountains were evacuated and Japanese-style graveyards were established in coastal areas. The Japanese tombstone column is a quite common tombstone style in these sites. Although most of them have been carved into soft local stone, such as coral rocks or sandstone, the oldest tombstones we could localize in a fieldtrip in 2017 was ...

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In Okinawa, after 1879, burial practices remained unmodified, as can be seen from the multiple photos that had been shot by American soldiers at the end of WWII. Burial practices on Okinawa changed only after 1945, with the removal of burial sites by the American forces for the construction of miliary facilities, the introduction of cremation and the mobility of the population who could no longer rely on local mountain caves for their burials.

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Japanese tombstone columns appear first in Naha as a supplement to otherwise complete tombs, honoring the soldiers who had died in WWII. By the 'supplementary' nature and their poor materialization in concrete, we assume that these columns have been erected by the Japanese forces for Okinawa soldiers.
Related to the fact that Okinawan tombs before 1945 did not have tombstones, and if so, they fulfilled another function than tombstones in Japan, Japanese tombstone columns on Okinawa appear as late as in the 21st century.

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On Penghu, the military forces settled after a few unequal battles of medieval Qing forces and the modern army of the Japanese Empire. And the smell of blood and gunsmoke sent shockwaves through the Penghu villages and the workshops where tombstone carvers for centuries had carved an expression of loyalty to the Qing government. Not knowing ...

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The Japanese tombstone column appeared first on ... in ... and was continued to be used even after 1945 as an expression of a distinctive history and identity.

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On Taiwan, which was annexed by the Japanese Empire after the treaty of Shimonoseki, and a few battles with the newly founded by short-lived Republic of Formosa, the Japanese faced a far more linguistically and culturally diverse population than in Penghu or Okinawa, with three groups identifying themselves as having their origin in China, i.e. Hakka, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou and hundreds of indigenous villages which have been continuously classified and re-classified into several dozens of groups. Under the pressure to unify under a common shinto belief system, the large Christian community on Taiwan did not use, maybe were not allowed to use, a cross as a tombstone form. Instead they recurred to using the Japanese tombstone column, probably as a symbol of external submission which would give them some internal liberty. After 1945 many Christian families and communities continued to use the Japanese tombstone column as their tombstone form.

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The first Japanese tombstone columns on Taiwna, were used for tombs erected by the Japanese government for soldiers who had died in WWII fighting for the Japanese Imperial Army. Contrary to the column erected at the same time in Okinawa, the column in Tainan were bold, nicely rounded, made from granite which must have been brought from the Asian continent.

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Funerary and epigrpahic practices on Okinawa before the Japanese colonialization by no means have been uniform. The tombs in the cliffs of Unten Port, the Yagura-baka in Iheya,the Tomb of King Gihon in Hedo, or the Urano tombs in Yonaguni are famous examples of very different tombs. A unifying feature of these practices might be to use a natural cave to let a corpse decompose and for storing the bones in jars or wooden chests. In Okinawa and Yoron we observe the practice of the bone-washing (洗骨) as transition between the decomposed body to the storage of bones.

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This practice is similar or related to practices of a second burial (撿骨) or bone washing which can be observed on Taiwan, Penghu, regions in southern China. The second burial has been a practice in all regions where Austronesian have arrive, e.g. Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, or Madagascar. Whether the secondary burial in its most general form, in the form of bone-washing, the usage of burial jars or just the naming as *洗骨* happened under the cultural influence of China, ie. the Ming and Qing period during which Okinawa was a tributary state to China is currently unclear to us.

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Obvious however is the gradual transformation of burial caves into cave-bound turtleback-shaped tombs for which the similarity to southern Chinese tombs is obvious. As on are single visit in 2017 we couldn't find a turtleback-shaped tomb in the Amami Islands, we assume that his funerary practices was handed over from China top-down in Okinawa and became a common practice only after 1600, the time the Amami Islands were handed over to the Satsuma domain. In Amami we thus assume a rapid transition from a local cave-based burial to a Japanese-style burial in the coast-near newly arranged burial sites. We currently ignore the precise burial practice in the time after 1600, the wind burial, the decomposition in the cave could no longer be practices and therefor bodies were buried into the sandy ground of the coastal burial sites. This view is supported by the general lack of wood and the need to export charcol to Japan. Cremation might thus not have been a feasible option. This view is further supported by the omni-presence of sand bags in these graveyards, probably serving to fill in holes that show up after a corpse or a coffin decomposed. Much research remains to be done.

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On Okinawa, but also Yoron, the second burial was practices up into the second half of the 20th century (Yoron that long? Have to check photos).

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Funerary inscriptions on Okinawa are mainly on the urn, at its outside, if the urn is nicely decorated, or under the lid of the burial urn, in both cases, written with a brush and ink, making it persiable to water. Inscriptions under the lid are far more common, but also quite inaccessible and are usually found only after a tomb has been evacuated and the urns discarded in the environment. Data reported there are the data of birth and death, the date of the bone-washing, the name of the person, his or her social position, the name of the village and the *yago* (屋號).