[REALITIES OF JAPANESE PAN-ASIANISM IN SHANGHAI AND THE EFFECTS OF TOTAL WAR].

上海東亜同文書院大学在籍日本人学生による書簡. [Shanhai Toa Dobun Shoin Daigaku zaiseki Nihonjin gakusei niyoru shokan].<BR> [Letters Home from a Japanese Student at Tung Wen College, 1944-45].

[Shanghai and Okayama]. 1944-1945. Stock ID #222257

A group of correspondence comprising seventeen letters in envelopes (ninety five sheets in total), three postcards, and a business card. Sixteen of the envelopes measure approximately 22 × 8.5cm, and contain between one and fourteen leaves; the enclosed letters vary in size, though are predominantly 16 × 21cm, or 25.5 × 18cm in size. The seventeenth envelope measures 15 × 9.7cm, and contains a letter measuring 20 × 30.6cm. The three postcards measure 14 × 9cm, and the business card measures 9 × 5.5cm. The collection is in good to very good condition, the envelopes show sign of wear and are chipped in places but still intact, there is some occasional foxing or browning but overall in good to very good condition.

A fascinating collection of Japanese wartime letters sent between members of an Okayama-based family named Takei. The letters date from the last two years of the Pacific War. The eldest of the three sons of the family, Takei Minoru (武井稔), was at that time a student at the Tōa Dōbun Shoin University (東亜同文書院大学, also known as Tung Wen College) in Shanghai, a higher educational college established in 1939 by Japan's Tōa Dōbunkai (East Asia Common Culture Society), a Pan-Asianist organization which promoted Japanese cultural links with China while also seeking to expand Japan's power and influence throughout East Asia.

Most of the letters in the collection were sent by Takei Minoru from his college in Shanghai to his family in Japan. Minoru's detailed letters give a vivid picture of life in college, reporting the courses he was taking, which included Chinese language, literature and geography, martial arts, and 'Theories of the Japanese Spirit' (Nihon Seishinron). Initially, Takei Minoru seems to have been a good student, but the letters also document his homesickness and the increasing difficulties of life in wartime Shanghai. The collection includes a circular sent to Minoru (and presumably also other students) by the Tōa Dōbunkai authorities in December 1944, explaining the wartime labour in shipbuilding and other factories which the students were now required to perform. The letter also discusses soaring inflation in Shanghai and the impact that this is having on the students' lives, while another letter from the Tōa Dōbunkai, dated October 1944, gives statistics of the hyperinflation in war-torn China, which the organization offers as the reason for its plans to raise college fees. Minoru himself describes being sent to work in an engine factory, and his letters express his growing concern about the war situation, though he also describes happier moments such as celebrating New Year at the house of a Japanese resident in Shanghai.

In a later letter in the collection, Minoru describes how he has been called in for a medical examination for military conscription and been found fit for service at the highest level of fitness - a result he was hoping to achieve. He was hoping to return home before joining the military, but wrote to his younger brothers that he had not been permitted to do so. By March 1945, the Shanghai college is pursuing Minoru for unpaid fees in letters addressed to his family's home address, which suggests that he had left the university. The fact these letters were kept might imply that Minoru did not return from the war.

An intriguing insight into the everyday life at a college campus in Shanghai of a young man in the midst of the chaos of war.

When referring to this item please quote stockid 222257.

Price: $1,750.00 AU

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