The scientist and the South Seas: Micronesians in the Japanese Imperial gaze

Meade, Ruselle ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1428-3489 2025. The scientist and the South Seas: Micronesians in the Japanese Imperial gaze. [Online]. Available at: https://japaneseempire.info/the-scientist-and-the-...

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Abstract

In 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Japan seized Germany’s territories in the North Pacific, having invoked its formal alliance with the British to combat what it deemed “German piratical activity” in the region. When hostilities ended, Japan was granted a class C mandate over these territories. Micronesia, comprising the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands, then remained part of the Japanese Empire until the end of World War II in 1945. These north Pacific atolls had long attracted the attention of outsiders. The northernmost islands, the Marianas, had been declared a possession of the Spanish crown in 1565. However, following its defeat in the Spanish-American war of 1898, Spain sold these islands (except for Guam) to Germany, which added them to its Pacific territories of the Caroline Islands and the Marshall Islands that Germany had acquired a few years earlier. Japanese interest in Micronesia—referred to as Nan’yō (the South Seas)—predated its formal occupation. Private Japanese traders had been operating from these islands since the 1880s, with government-led anthropological surveys carried out in the 1890s. By the late Meiji period journalists and public figures were clamoring for Japan to take these islands to gain a foothold in the Pacific—one that could be used a steppingstone to even more lucrative territories in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Item Type:	Website Content
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Date of Acceptance:	7 January 2025
Last Modified:	21 Jan 2025 15:58
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/175131

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