Lecture 2003-02-17
The Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands: A Multilingual, Multiethnic and Multicultural Community in Japan
Dr. Daniel Long

Our speaker for the evening was Dr. Daniel Long, Associate Professor of Japanese Linguistics at Tokyo Metropolitan University, and his subject was "The Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands: A Multilingual, Multiethnic and Multicultural Community in Japan." Dr. Long began by saying that, as far as he knew, his was the first talk to be given to the Society on the subject since 1876, when Russell Robertson had spoken about a recent visit. The islands lie about 1,000 kilometres south of Tokyo, on a line of ocean floor disturbances which passes through the Izu Islands and continues to Iwojima and Guam. They bear the names, first of a wedding party: Mukojima (bridegroom), Nakojima (go-between), Yomejima (bride); then family members, such as Chichijima, Anijima, Otojima, and Hahajima, Anejima, Imotojima, besides other kinds of names indicating their situation such as Mukojima and Minamijima.

It was during the 1830s that a multiethnic band of settlers began to collect on the islands. Of these, all the women and many of the men were Pacific Islanders from the Marianas, Polynesia and Micronesia, and there were others from China, the Philippines and Bougainville. Some of the most influential men were Americans or Europeans, including English, German, Danish, Portuguese and French. In this linguistic mix, with very few native speakers of English, it is remarkable that by the second generation a new language, which we may call Bonin Creole English, had emerged. (Dr. Long then explained that a creole is the native language of people who have grown up hearing their parents speak pidgin, a form of communication devised by people who have no common language.) There are very few records of such a creole, but its existence is pointed to by such factors as the multiethnicity of the population, with mixed-language households, the absence of literacy, reports by visitors of communication in "a kind of English", and certain words reported by Japanese seamen shipwrecked there in 1840. The Japanese ignored the existence of foreigners living on these islands to which they themselves had tacitly laid claim earlier, but there were other visitors, as European and American ships, whalers and the like, used to put into port to replenish their supplies. The most renowned visitor of this period was Matthew Calbraith Perry, who, while there in 1853 on his way to Japan, purchased land from the island leader, the American Nathaniel Savory.

A Japanese attempt to settle in 1862 failed because of the shifting political situation at home, but the Kanrin-maru that arrived there carried a famous translator, Nakajima (John) Manjiro The first actual colonists came from Hachijima in 1876. They found 66 people living on the islands, nearly all on Chichijima. By the end of 1878, 194 Japanese had migrated there, and by 1900 the population of Chichijima had climbed to 2,366, reducing the non-Japanese settlers to a minority. The Japanese have sometimes referred to these original settlers as "Westerners", but the general term now is eikei, that is, islanders of European and American descent, though before the Pacific War they were called kikajin, 'naturalized people'. They have no special term by which they refer to themselves. (Dr. Long said that he himself used "Westerner" for the sake of convenience, although he did not consider the term to be entirely satisfactory.)

This influx of Japanese resulted in a new linguistic situation. The Japanese set up the first schools, and the younger of the original settlers quickly acquired the Japanese language to the point of being bilingual. But the two languages were used in different situations ('domains'), Japanese at school or at work in a Japanese company, and English at home and in church. In this 'diglossic' situation, Japanese was the 'high' language and English the 'low'. It was during this period, in 1893, that another famous person made a cameo appearance. A young seaman recorded his experience after some nights ashore in Chichijima of waking up after a debauch to find himself robbed of all his possessions -- even his shoes! He later published the story under the name of Jack London.

At this point Dr. Long spoke of the names used by descendants of the original settlers. Most have a Japanese name and an English name, and generally also a nickname. Back in the Meiji era, the "Westerners" were not required to take Japanese family names when they were naturalized, and for a couple of generations they used katakana representations of their own family names. In 1940 a law was introduced forcing people with non-Japanese surnames to change them (a law that especially affected Koreans.) Some of the islanders adopted kanji for their names; thus Savory became Sebori, and Webb, Uebu (later pronounced Uwabe, a more natural reading of the kanji). Other families simply took arbitrarily-chosen Japanese names. Before the Pacific War, given names were English; during the war, Japanese; and after the war, Japanese again.

Besides the names, other signs of European and American influence are seen in religion and food (which includes dumplings, and puddings in the British sense). The Christian congregation dates back to 1891, and there had been a church designed by Josiah Conder, dedicated in 1909 (but later destroyed). The graveyards contain crosses, but other items of Pacific or Japanese origin are found, such as wreaths of hibiscus and benjamin bush, and o-sonae-mono, offerings of food and drink to be enjoyed by the dead. Other non-Japanese cultural phenomena are songs, dances, canoes and fishing techniques which derive from various Pacific island cultures. After the 1870s, settlers continued to arrive from Micronesia and Melanesia, and after Japan was given the mandate of Micronesia and Palau in 1919, islanders went to work in Palau and the Carolines, and several who lived on Guam or Saipan learnt to speak the Chamorro language. This contact also continued during the period of occupation by the U.S. Navy.

When Japan became a military state, the "Westerners" came under suspicion, and from 1938 the use of English was prohibited. The Westerners were conscripted into the Japanese army, many serving as translators. It was during this period that yet another famous visitor arrived on the scene, George H.W. Bush, who was shot down offshore in 1944. During the last days of the war almost all of the civilian population were evacuated to the mainland, and after the war they appealed to the U.S. military to be allowed to return. In 1946, only those of Western descent were allowed to return; the others had to wait another quarter of a century.

Under the U.S. Navy administration, the diglossic situation was reversed, with English becoming the high language, and Japanese the low. Also by this time Japanese schoolchildren had begun to create a mixed language of Japanese and English, in which the regular grammar of each language is retained in the respective words used. Dr. Long gave an example of a conversation which began, "Oh, good morning. Omae yesterday doko itta kai?" Of this generation, some can speak perfectly natural English, and others perfect Japanese, and a few are equally proficient in both. But some can only speak the mixed language with confidence, because it was their first language, and they would have to separate out the elements if they wanted to speak only English or Japanese. Such a mixed language is different from pidgin or creole, in which the grammatical structures of the original languages are broken down and reorganized. But, as in the case of creoles, where the grammar is taken from the mother's language and the vocabulary from the father's, so we find Japanese grammar and English vocabulary where a Western man has married a Japanese woman.

Today the islands, which are administratively part of Tokyo, have a sizable floating population of residents who stay for a few years and then return to the mainland. The return of the islands to Japanese sovereignty in 1968 has meant that Japanese has once again become the dominant language. Members of the younger generation have generally lost their English, and this means that the Westerners are losing their identity. All the islanders today, whatever their origin, are searching for a Bonin Islander identity, which includes material evidence of their Pacific island heritage. It may seem a matter for regret that the unique ethnic identity of the islanders is disappearing, but the situation can also be looked at from another perspective. The curiosity and craving for adventure that originally lured people to these islands continues today, as islanders take themselves to all parts of the globe. And unlike the situation in 1830, when Nathaniel Savory left his home in Massachusetts knowing that he would never return, modern communications mean that contacts are maintained. Two global Savory family reunions have been held, and these have been attended by other island families, the Washingtons and the Gilleys. The islanders are now self-empowered pioneers, using their creativity and resources to forge a new community that is anchored to, but not bound by, the shores of Chichijima.

Dr. Long's talk drew forth a number of questions. The first concerned the origin of the names for the islands, which he had not had time to address earlier. Ogasawara was the clan name of a samurai of the 1700s who falsely claimed that one of his ancestors had discovered the islands before Shimaya's time. He had been severely punished for the fraud, but a later government nevertheless used his story to support the Japanese claim to the islands, although Shimaya's survey would have served the purpose just as well. The name "Bonin" was no less inaccurate: on maps of the 1800s the islands were called Bunin (another reading of mujin 'uninhabited') and this was taken as a name and corrupted into Bonin in European maps. A second question was about the church, which is part of the Anglican Diocese of Tokyo. The congregation predated the Conder church, and one of the people who started it was a Revd. Cholmondeley, who visited the islands many times and published a book in English on them in 1915. Some years ago Dr. Long had found that Cholmondeley's records were in the possession of one of the Tokyo churches, which planned to publish them. In reply to a third question, about the islands' being administratively a part of Tokyo (the cars have Shinagawa number-plates!) Dr. Long said that when they were added to the country at such a late date the multiethnic population represented a frontier open to visitors from many countries; the Meiji government had wanted to keep them under close observation. Asked about value of the islands' "multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural" nature, Dr. Long said that the islands hold up a mirror to Japan; his Japanese students, for instance, discovered what "Japaneseness" meant -- something that they are not aware of at home!

The vote of thanks was proposed by Dr. Erich Berendt, our immediate past President, who spoke from personal experience of the charm of the islands from the point of view of their tourist attractions: excellent roads, jungles and white sand beaches; a pristine tropical island paradise marred only by the all-too-prolific goats.