“The Political Visions of Chinese Collaborators with Japan: Before and After the Second Sino-Japanese War”(Nagoya University Press, 2019)

Tomohide Seki(Associate Professor, College of Liberal Arts, Tsuda University)

It is an honor to be the recipient of the prestigious Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. I would like to thank all the staff at the foundation, the selection committee, and all the people who supported me during the writing process of this book.
The Political Visions of Chinese Collaborators with Japan is a book which focuses on the movements of Chinese people who cooperated with Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It is widely known that Masayoshi Ohira worked at the Mengjiang Liaison Office of the East Asia Development Board (K?ain) in Zhangjiakou, China from 1939 to 1940. Indeed, he was involved with the collaborators that this book addresses. It is, therefore, a great and indescribable pleasure for me that this book could win a prize related to Mr. Ohira, who possesses such a background.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese people who collaborated with Japan were criticized for being hanjian (Chinese traitors) by those who fought against Japan such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. This evaluation endured even after the war’s climax, as both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China in Taiwan used the victory of the Second Sino-Japanese War as a basis for deriving their political legitimacy. In scholarship, too, these Japanese collaborators were labelled as “rebels”, and little was done to reevaluate or reconsider their legacy.
One must bear in mind that Japanese-occupied territories were an essential component of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Furthermore, we must not forget that when these collaborators worked with Japan, the prospects for the outcome of the Second Sino-Japanese War, including the possibility that Japan could secure a victory, was still unclear. It could even be said that the decision made by the collaborators to cooperate with Japan, who envisioned a future for China which was premised on cooperation with Japan, was a reasonable one.
How then did the Chinese who cooperated with Japan perceive the Second Sino-Japanese War and what did they envision for China’s future? Focusing on the changes of various governments that existed in the Japanese-occupied territories of China, this book looks at the identities and activities of various Japan collaborators from the twilight of the outbreak of the war up to the postwar period. As a result of this research, it was possible to gain a deeper understanding of the identities of collaborators who cannot be understood by the label of “rebel” alone. Furthermore, this research has also allowed us to gain a more broader picture of the Second Sino-Japanese War in general.
So as to live up to legacy of the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize, in the future, I will endeavor to continue to research topics which will help us to broaden our understanding of Japan-China relations.

Profile
1977 Born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan
2001 B.A., Faculty of Letters, The University of Tokyo
2004 M.A., Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo
2014 Ph.D., Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo
2015 Postdoctoral Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
2018 Research Fellow, Toyo Bunko
2020 Associate Professor, College of Liberal Arts, Tsuda University
Specialist in the history of modern and contemporary China and the history of Sino-Japanese relations.