Introduction Title Page with the author’s auto-sketch

 

 


Illustration in the front page from:

Yoshichika Tokugawa, Jagatara-kikau, Kyōdo-kenkyu-sha, Nagoya 1931


 

 

 

 

About the Author, the Book and the Historical Background

   As readers may notice from his title, the author was a peer, the 19th heir of the Owari-Tokugawa, a branch of the Tokugawa family[1] who established the Shogunate in the beginning of the seventeenth century and ruled Japan for nearly three centuries until the Meiji Restoration (1868). The following is his brief profile given by Mr. Yoshinobu Tokugawa, the author’s grandson.

   Yoshichika (infant name, Kinnojō) was born on the 5th of October in 1886 as the 5th son of former Lord Yoshinaga Matsudaira of Echizen. He was adopted to succeed to the peerage and the property of Owari-Tokugawa in 1908 and married his predecessor’s daughter, Yoneko in 1909. His career was rather extraordinary for an aristocrat of warrior background. While most others of similar heritage became politicians, diplomats or servicemen, he read history and biology at Tokyo Imperial University and continued his study in “The Tokugawa Institute for Biological Research” and “The Tokugawa Institute for the History of Forestry” which he built by himself in 1918 and 1923, respectively. These laboratories were not a kind of a rich man’s recreation room but highest level research institutions and, as the director of the former, he ‘head-hunted’ Prof. Hirotaro Hattori, a distinguished biologist and his teacher in the university. In 1931, he also created “The Tokugawa Art Museum” for donating his family’s huge treasures and opening them to the public, and incorporated the museum together with the above mentioned laboratories in The Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation[2] established in the same year.

    It was also unusual that such an academic’s biggest hobby was wild game hunting, not pheasants and foxes but bears, tigers and elephants, as he commented himself [3], a pursuit which led him to become acquainted with the Sultan of Johor. Malaya was the place he had chosen, instead of the then prevalent Hawaii, in 1921 for a change of air for his allergy and it was on his way that he called at Java for the first time. In the same year, he went to Europe with his wife and stayed there for one year. His second visit to Java in 1929 was on the occasion of the Fourth Pacific Science Congress held at Batavia-Bandung, in which he participated as a member of the Japanese delegation, and, on his way back to Japan, he extended his journey to Borneo, Celebes and Malaya. These travels were “the travels of a lord” as his grandson comments but it is surprising that he behaved in the same way as the common people whenever possible. When alone in Singapore, for instance, he stayed in a cheap hotel and got food from stall restaurants in front street. In the jungles in Malaya, he camped together with local people and ate whatever servants cooked. He never employed an interpreter but mastered the Malay language by himself and, later, co-authored a textbook, “Malay Language in Four Weeks” (Yoshichika Tokugawa, Sumitaka Asakura, Bahasa Melayu dalam Ampat Minggu, Daigaku-Shorin, Tokyo 1937).

    Marquis Tokugawa was a liberalist and “The Last Lord” as he called himself in the title of his memoirs. As a member of the House of Lords, he surprised Japanese society by proposing “the abolishment of the peer system” long before it was actually compelled by the Americans after the Second World War. Indeed, he donated his family’s huge estate in Nagoya to the city authorities earlier in 1931.

    He was a humanist, too. When the Second World War began in the Pacific area in December 1941, he immediately offered himself as a civilian officer and flew to Singapore, but it was not to cooperate with the army of occupation in a simple manner. As the Supreme Consulate Advisor for the occupation army, he made full use of his imperial rank, which was much higher than that of the Commander-in-Chief, to take good care of the sultans and the native people as well as his academic friends, including Dr. R. E. Holttum, the Director of the Botanical Garden, with whom he had travelled together to Java for the Fourth Science Congress twelve years earlier. He protected the Raffles Museum almost perfectly and let the research activities be continued, together with Japanese scientists and British staff, the latter being exempted from imprisonment by his orders. He also organised a meeting of Japanese scientists despatched to occupied areas to coordinate their activities. He paid his third visit to Java during his stay in Singapore but perhaps he was not then in the mood to write an essay.

    Despite his endeavours, Marquis Tokugawa was forbidden to engage in public work for some period after the War, having been judged to have cooperated with the Japanese military regime at General MacArthur’s Tokyo Court.

    After the War, he patronised the establishment of the Socialist Party, but he stood later, and failed, due to inadequate preparation, for an election of the Mayor of Nagoya, his home town, for the Conservative Party. He became the master of many schools and the chairman of many companies. He loved hunting wild beasts but he had his own criterion to distinguish between harmful and unharmful animals and became the leader of wild-life protection. He had special concern for the welfare of handicapped people and worked on it for a long time. His grandson recalled that his motivation was always for someone else, i.e., the country, human beings, science, culture, family, someone he met in a train or whoever. He passed away on the 6th September in 1976 at the age of eighty-nine years and eleven months.

    In the preface of the collective volume, “Journeys to Djakatra” published in 1931, Marquis Tokugawa mentioned that the purpose of its publication was to call public attention to Nanyō (= c. nanyang. lit. southern ocean, the region now called south-east Asia), when the Japanese imperialists and capitalists were widening their scope from the Far East, and campaigned the importance of the South-East Asia. He deplored the fact that the activity of freelance Japanese in the area was discouraged and the number of Japanese inhabitants there was decreasing, blaming the regulations of the authorities[4]. He urged contemporary youngsters to remember the free-traders and mercenaries who were active in the sixteenth-seventeenth century before the country was closed[5] ironically by his own ancestors in the Shogunate government. He also thought about the respectable settlers he had met in local towns in Java and Malaya, wishing for the common people to look at Nanyō without prejudice[6].

    In fact, his articles were plain travel reports in oral-style Japanese[7], retaining the mode of a diary, in which he described honestly and humorously what he saw, heard and thought as precisely as possible. His observations were both sharp and deep, proving that they were obtained only through the transparent and reflective eyes of a scientist and historian. They were evident not only in scientific explanations, such as how plants and animals had revived on the Krakatau Island which had once been desertified by volcanic eruption, but also in his remarks on the art of Hindu remains at Prambanan and the past of the ruin of the Sultan’s Water Palace, or in the variety of his topics. His unique view is highlighted in the description of Borobudur, “The Buddhist monument even looked more precious, when I thought about the time and effort that must have been spent for the restoration.” His report often extended into great detail, so that today’s impatient readers might feel it to be verbose, but it was perhaps because he was a perfectionist who did not like to abridge or modulate the facts he had acquired and to express everything by pen. A number of fine photographs taken by himself - a luxurious hobby for a traveller at that time - were inserted independent of the text.

    It is amazing how he was able to gain such a great deal of knowledge within the limited period of his short journeys, beyond the level of guide-books, even if one takes account of his advantage as a high ranking peer that enabled him to visit the inside of palaces and speak directly to kings and nobles[8]. That he was highly cultured in both oriental and occidental backgrounds manifests itself in the quotations of history and literature as well as similes and metaphors used abundantly in his compositions, not to mention the biological terms of his academic repertory. He was fond of the usage of phrases and idioms of Chinese origin, too, a practice which became less common after the policy of “simplification of the national language” induced under post-war American influence.

    It could look odd to present readers that no native people appeared in the scene of the Fourth Pacific Science Congress and, in fact, the proceedings recorded only a few native names among the members from the Dutch East-Indies. Is it in accordance with some Indonesians’ complaint that the Dutch were not eager to give education to the natives[9]? Opponents would say that it was the time when only a limited number of people could take part in science, even in advanced countries, and only about one dozen highest education institutions existed in the whole Dutch Empire including three high-schools installed in Java[10]. Aside from this argument, one may assume that those efficient staff of the Buitenzorg (Bogor) Botanical Garden and able assistants in the High-altitude Botanical Garden at Cibodas were natives who inherited the facilities and research traditions after their independence, or the expulsion of Europeans in the 1950s. In fact, young staff of Landbouw Hoogeschool and Nederlandsch Indische Veeartsen-school, and Technische Hoogeshool te Bandoeng became professors of Institut Pertanian Bogor (Bogor Agricultural University) and Institut Teknologi Bandoeng (Bandung Institute of Technology), respectively.

    Throughout his essays on Java, Marquis Tokugawa did not make any comment either on politics or the Dutch rule of the East-Indies. During his first visit in 1921, the author remarked with regard to an old cannon in old Batavia, the unification of which with another was believed to ensure the independence of Java, that many pilgrims visited there for another belief, that they would be given a child if they visit here for pilgrimage, “leaving aside the matter of independence for the time being”. He also said rather humorously, when discussing the skull of the eighteenth-century traitor, Pieter Erbervelt, “It is frightening that a head should be made into a stone-like skull, if one betray the Dutch”. During his second journey in 1929, he did not mention anything about the signs of changes that became reality in the next decades. In Java, he must have heard about the growing activities of nationalists and communists[11]. In Manchuria, his country’s military units were intensifying their movements[12]. Was he indifferent to these matters? Definitely not, because he had seen both poor Asia and prosperous Europe and was aware of the severity of colonial powers. In fact, he showed his sympathy to an aide of the Sultan of Johor who complained of the harshness of British control in Malaya (in a part of the travelogue not included in this translation). One may recall, however, that it was just after the First World War when the whole world welcomed the restoration of peace, and that the international relations in Asia was extremely relaxed.

    It was probable that a great reader, Marquis Tokugawa, must have read a book written by a naturalist precursor, Alfred Russell Wallace, and shared the same view with the latter. In his famous book, “The Malay Archipelago” published in 1869, Wallace wrote, “I believe that the Dutch system is the very best that can be adopted, when a European nation conquers or otherwise acquires possession of a country inhabited by industrious but semi-barbarous people”, agreeing completely with J. W. B. Money’s “Java or How to Manage a Colony (1861)” and depreciating Multatauli’s “Max Havelaar or The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company(1860)” as “a very tedious and long-winded story, full of rambling digressions”. Money valued the culture system, otherwise notoriously called the forced culture system, and wrote, “The lower-class native people are cheerful, apparently happy, and the richest peasantry I have ever seen in any country but North America”. An authority on Javanese history, Donald M. Campbell concluded, “When all is said and done, however, the culture system did an immense amount of good for Java (Campbell, D. M., Java: Past and Present, Vol. I, William Heinemann, London 1915).”

    That Java was an rich island must have been true for centuries as the Chinese mentioned in 1172-78 in “Answers to Questions about the Exterior of Mountain Peaks (嶺外代答)” that “Kediri (Java) and Sriwijaya (in Sumatra) were the richest and most prosperous foreign countries only next to Tajik (Saracen)”: they also recorded in the fourteenth century in “Concise Notes on Foreign Islands (島夷志略)” that “The land is wide and the most densely populated in the East-Ocean. The fields are fertile and flat and the productivity of rice is twice that of others. People never steal and never pick up anything dropped on the roads. That is why it is called ‘pacific Java’” (H. Wada, A History of Races in The South-East Asia (a text book for University of Air), 1987).

    When Marquis Tokugawa visited, Java was still a rich and peaceful country where the relationship between the natives and the foreigners appeared as a whole excellent, as praised unanimously by Frank G. Carpenter (1926)[13] and John C. van Dyke (1929)[14], who both visited there from America.

    These comments may sound rather contradictory to post-Second-World-War generations, not only of former colonial countries but also of suzerain countries, who are taught in school as if colonialism were unconditionally wrong and the people under foreign control were always suffering. Some historians also say in such a tone that the Dutch had exploited everything from present Indonesia before the country became independent, with little contribution to the development of the country. Are they not neglecting the fact, whether deliberately or unconsciously, that the wealth of the East-Indies before ores and fossil resources became important came solely from agricultural products which were renewable every year, not like the gold and silver of the Aztecs and Incas which had been snatched by Spanish Conquistadors? For the Dutch, Java, if not all of the East-Indies, was not a mere colony of economic interest any more[15] at least after the late nineteenth century when the Suez Canal was opened and the voyage of over ten-thousand miles from Holland became easier and safer and more women joined men to settle there together[16]. They invested an enormous amount for the furnishing of the infrastructure and, at that time, Java was the most advanced area in Asia[17]. Obviously, they did not lay such a complete railway network just for the convenience of only two hundred-thousand Dutch inhabitants. The welfare to the people was enhanced greatly with the introduction of the Ethic Policy[18] urged by Queen Wilhelmina at the beginning of the 20th century. Such contributions by the Dutch were hardly given to independent Indonesia by foreigners who returned there after the country’s independence, purely for their own economical interest with no responsibility for the country’s development and people’s life. A contemporary visitor from Japan, described the Dutch colonial rule as “the aristocracy of good faith” with only highly qualified officials (Tsurumi, Yusuke, Nanyō Yuki (Travels around Nanyang), Dai-Nihon Yubenkai, Tokyo 1917). The author’s grandson pointed out that Marquis Tokugawa was not a simple anti-colonialist and appreciated the positive side of suzerains, and he was particularly in favour of the Dutch who were no longer an aggressive world power and were concentrating on the modernisation of the East Indies.

    It was at least certain that Marquis Tokugawa was interested more in the country itself, than in the nation or state, as well as in the life, the culture and the history of the people. He praised the Dutch-built city of Batavia (present Jakarta) as “a city of shining green-shades where smart white-painted houses are placed to match the environment” and commented similarly on other cities. He described thatched-roof, bamboo-walled village houses of the natives in a countryside as “similar to insect cages” but cozy, not dirty[19]. On his way to Java, Marquis Tokugawa had enjoyed a comfortable voyage on a Dutch passenger-boat, appreciating the atmosphere provided by cleanliness-loving Dutch people. He repeatedly said that “the car ran like an arrow on whetstone-like smooth roads” which also made visitors from Europe envious. As a biologist, he was much admired by the laboratory of the Botanical Garden, saying “The facilities were extremely good and I wished I could stay there for a while and do my work free from any disturbance.” He complained occasionally with humour, however, about the locomotive which burnt wood for economical reasons, the beds in hotels which did not provide blankets, etc.

    The author wrote a lot about native people, not only the jongos on a passenger-boat, a night-watchman in a hotel, traditional music players and wayang dancers whom he watched from a certain distance. He gratefully gave coins to lovely village girls who offered flowers at a lake-side. He bought jewel beetles from a shabby-looking boy, knowing they were expensive. He saw trouble between an old woman and his colleague as a comedy and a policeman who solved the problem as a man to be respected. He never looked down on them. He had no prejudice towards races. He mentioned, “some other races look like swollen responseless wood carvings . . .”, but it was to accentuate the beauty of Sundanese girls.

    At the Buddhist monument of Borobudur, Marquis Tokugawa wondered not only at its art but also its unknown history. In fact, old documents and records before the arrival of Islam scarcely remain in Java and the peripheral islands[20]. Marco Polo, who stopped in Lesser Java (Sumatra) in 1292(?) on his way back from China and wrote in detail about the Islamisation of divided kingdoms, did not reach faraway Java and only noted that, according to the hearsay of seamen, the people were idolaters ruled by a powerful monarch in a big rich country (Polo, Marco (translated by R. E. Latham), The Travels, Penguin Classics, London 1958). With regard to Buddhism, I-Ching, a Chinese Buddhist priest recorded in the late seventh century in a volume of Buddhism books, Vol. 5 (根本説一切有部百一羯磨・巻五) that “Study is highly esteemed in the capital of Sriwijaya (in Sumatra) and there are one thousand bonzes who are going about asking for alms. The level of study and the quality of bonzes are equivalent to middle India. Those among the bonzes of Tang who wish to read Buddhism are recommended to stay there for a year or two, before they go west to India” (H. Wada, A History of Races in The South-East Asia (a text book for University of Air), 1987). Was the atmosphere like that in old-day Kyoto, Japan, for which we can have a good image from plenty of literature and paintings? I-Ching’s description suggests that Buddhism was equally or more prosperous in ninth-century Java.

    At the site of the Hindu remains at Prambanan, the author had thought over “the unknown masters, or the grand artists of unknown time who left those splendid arts, at these pagodas, that are comparable or even better than famous works in Europe.” At the Buddhist monument of Borobudur, he was impressed by a lonely researcher’s comment, “It is interesting, isn’t it? The life of Javanese people depicted here more than one thousand years ago is not much different from the life of today’s Javanese.” Although Islam became predominant over Java, the tradition of the former religions and old animism persisted, as people continued to love the Mahabarata and the Ramayana, a quite situation different from the Near-East and other neighbouring countries of Arabia. It did not change after the arrival of Europeans either. Marquis Tokugawa felt sympathetic for many pilgrims who must have tried in vain to touch the Buddha statue in the hope of realizing their wishes. He was successful but said, “I don’t think my wish will be realised easily, because it is a very difficult one.”, leaving what was his own wish to the conjecture of readers.

    The magnificent Governor-General’s Residence in Batavia and the gorgeous Susuhunan’s Palace in Solo might have overlapped in his mind with his own family’s old castle in Nagoya surrendered to the Emperor after the Meiji Restoration (that was to be burnt down in an air raid in 14 May 1945) but he did not mention it. Perhaps, he had always a strong sense of democracy, and put his viewpoint at the level of common people, if ‘democracy’ is adopted as the right anonym of ‘aristocracy’.

    His curiosity about Javanese culture reached its height when he saw the old-fashioned procession of the Sultan’s army in Yogyakarta. It was not a parade but an ‘exerccise’, he emphasised. He said, “Perhaps, the word anachronism is unnecessary in Java”. It is still true now, after more than a half century, in the independent Republic of Indonesia, and the same drama is still replayed every year, as it happened to be witnessed by the translator himself in recent years.

    In fact, one may point out that the love of tradition is the most characteristic feature of the Javanese, or the Indonesian people. During the seven decades after the time of Marquis Tokugawa’s visits, they have experienced the most turbulent time unprecedented in their thousand-year history, when they saw the Japanese invasion, the struggle for independence, political conflicts, and economic difficulties, on a nation-wide scale. The rapid economic expansion during the New Order regime under President Suharto has caused “The rich to become richer and the poor to become poorer . . . .”, as a popular singer, Rhoma Irama sings, among a population which has trebled during the last half century, and led to the recent monetary crisis. It seems, however, that the series of incidents and resultant change of social structure did not much affect the life-style or the way of thinking of Indonesian people, as present travellers may encounter the same scenes described by Marquis Tokugawa. Is it the strength or the weakness of Indonesian people, or both?

    Indonesian people also like to maintain or rebuild old things. Whilst skyscrapers stand side by side in the newly developed area of Jakarta, the town of old Batavia is preserved as it used to be and many houses in old Weltevreden, including the Governor-General’s Residence, are conserved and utilised, the only changes being the names of streets and buildings. They could hardly imagine replacing the wood-trussed arch roof, an exquisite early-twentieth century architectural trait, found in Bandung Institute of Technology’s auditorium which served as the venue for the Pacific Science Congress, or in the local railway station of Pekalongan in Central Java. The Bogor Botanical Garden, including the Dutch Grave Yard inside, is kept clean and tidy, although the laboratories have inevitably lost their past eminence. Prambanan is not a miserable ruin any more, as the result of their efforts to solve the three-dimensional jig-saw puzzle, a home-work left by the Dutch. In addition, Indonesians like to enhance their heritages. It is not only the brewery of Bintang Beer, the legacy from Heineken. The new building of National Museum, Jakarta, with Parthenon style front design looks like a twin of the old one build in 1868. At Gedung Sate in Bandung, now in use for the West Java Government’s Office, one can see a new assembly hall which was designed to match the original architecture of the 1920s. New research buildings added recently to Bandung Institute of Technology have the same roofs and stone-pillars as Marquis Tokugawa saw, although they are multi-storeyed and modern. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the country has lost many old houses, and even streets, in recent decades[21].

    Such tradition of the Indonesian people seems not quite typical of Asia but has been much influenced by Europeans through their four hundred years of contact, whether they say they are proud of it or not. Singapore does not retain any trace of the past image recorded in Marquis Tokugawa’s book. In a country in Asia, a grand former colonial headquarter building was demolished by order of a civilian president as it was regarded as ‘a national shame’, fifty-years after their liberation. Marquis Tokugawa as well as contemporary travellers from overseas, who had pointed out the similarity of culture and life between Java and Japan[22], would perhaps comment differently, if they saw the latter today where the Second World War had destroyed not only the systems but also the traditional hearts of the people.

    With regard to the Fourth Pacific Science Congress held in the Dutch East-Indies, readers, if scientists in particular, may share the same view with the translator that it was an event of “the good old days” when scientific activities were held in absolute value, as the author explained earnestly in respect to the objective of the congress, and scientists themselves received full respect from the authorities in various countries, being permitted to be independent from other societies. In fact, the author repeatedly called his colleagues and himself as “easy-going scientists” and mentioned “such people (called scientists), having their own research discipline, do not mind others”. He also quoted his colleague’s words, “The Dutch government is very generous” to treat almost three-hundred guests for a period of one month. Perhaps, participants in the previous congress in Australia and Japan and the subsequent ones in Canada and the French Indo-China would have received the same hospitality from the respective governments.

    Those elite scientists were not just easy-going but high-minded people who were “prepared and willing to discuss and solve problems, standing aloof from politics and free from national chauvinism and other more or less egotistical motives”, as Dr. de Graeff, the Governor-General of the East-Indies, had exactly expected in the opening address of the Fourth Pacific Science Congress. When Singapore fell to the hand of a Japanese army in February 1942, it was Prof. Tanakadate, a volcanoist and geologist and a regular member of the Congress, who rushed there, without clear official orders, from Saigon where he was visiting for a different mission. At the Raffles Museum, the Library and the Botanical Garden, he appointed himself as the director, with Dr. Holttum and young Dr. Corners as his deputy and his secretary, respectively, and played a crucial role to protect these institutions and the British staff in the initial stages of the occupation until September 1942 when he persuaded and handed over the post to Marquis Tokugawa who had arrived from Tokyo in March[23] (Tanakadate Hidezo Achievements Publishing Group, Tanakadate Hidezo - Achievements and Memoirs, Sekai-Bunko, Tokyo 1975).

    They recovered books from abandoned houses and put them in the library’s collection. When Prof. Tanakadate and Marquis Tokugawa heard of an unpublished work undertaken by a botanist, they immediately printed the manuscript, at their own expenses, at Kuala Lumpur, where printing facilities had survived the bombing. They did not care about the use of English, the language that the Japanese authority prohibited in those days. Prof. Koriba, emeritus Kyoto Imperial University, another member of the congress of 1929, came later and took over the responsibility, after his two predecessors left, until the island was finally returned to Britain in September 1945. Scientists were cosmopolitans and there were no enemies amongst them. Some of these stories were included in The Marquis: A Tale of Shonan-to, written by Prof. E. J. H. Corners and published from Heinemann Books (Asia) Ltd. in 1981.

    The contribution of Japanese scientists to protect science were significant also in other parts of Asia. Prof. Hatai, the leader of Japanese delegation for the Fourth Pacific Science Congress, went to the Philippines to become the director of the Bureau of Science, Manila. In Java and Sumatra, all research institutions in Batavia, Bandung, Buitenzorg, Medan and elsewhere were protected, in March-April 1942, by Prof. Tanakadate who, requested by Marquis Tokugawa, went there almost immediately after the surrender of the Dutch and ordered imprisoned Dutch staff to return to their positions (Tanakadate, Hidezo, The Seizure of Southern Cultural Institutions, Jidai-sha, Tokyo 1944). An episode has it that Prof. T. Nakai from Tokyo Imperial University and Prof. R. Kanehira from Kyushu Imperial University, who served as the Director of the Buitenzorg Botanical Garden and the Head of the Herbarium, respectively, strove to protect the Garden, when the Japanese army wanted to cut down and use the trees for lumber (Levelink J., Mawdsley A. and Rijnberg T., Four Guided Walks: Bogor Botanic Garden, Bogorindo Botanics, Bogor 1996).

    It is remarked that the activities of Japanese scientists at that time in Asia, coordinated by Marquis Tokugawa, were in contrast to those of writers and artists recruited as propaganda staff and despatched there to justify Japanese rule[24].

    “Journeys to Djakatra” has long been out of print and is scarcely read in Japan, as tourists prefer quick guide-books full of “how-to” information. Knowledge is of another kind. The translator believes that the book can still be useful as a reference book about Java, as the author had wished his work to be a long time ago, and that it is not an ‘anachronism’.

 

 

References

 


[1]Ieyasu Tokugawa (1542-1616), a warrior lord during the ‘Age of Battles’ in sixteenth century Japan, won the final war in 1600 and founded the Shogunate government at Yedo (present Tokyo) in 1603. This lasted until the government was returned to the Emperor at the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu created three family branches, Nagoya (Owari), Wakayama (Kishã) and Mito (Hitachi). The Tokugawa came from the Matsudaira family, a lineage of the Genji which originated from the Emperor Seiwa (reigned 858-876) and was powerful in the twelfth to thirteenth century. Thus, the author’s father’s line was linked to the Tokugawa. His father, Lord Yoshinaga Matsudaira of Echizen (1828-90), was an important man in the last stage of the Shogunate and the Finance Minister in the new Meiji government.

[2]The Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation was established in 1931. The Tokugawa Art Museum is one of the best museums of fine arts in Japan in which the entire treasures and documents accumulated by the Owari-Tokugawa family during the previous three hundred years are collected and sorted. Studies on the collection are continued up until the present. The Tokugawa Institute for the History of Forestry also remains as one of a few private research institutions and issues its own bulletin. The Tokugawa Institute for Biological Research was closed in 1970.

[3]In “On Hunting in the Jungle of Malaya”, Yoshichika wrote when he received his wife’s letter at Singapore,

“A few photographs came out when I opened the envelope. They were pictures I had taken in laboratory and left unprinted due to lack of time. There were some stains due to failure in development but the images were recorded. On seeing these photographs, I felt that myself locked up in a laboratory and peering into microscope, and myself preparing to have a fight against dangerous elephants and tigers without caring about the heat of tropics were like two different persons who live in different worlds, and wonder which one is the real one. It is sure that I have two extremely different characters.”

[4]Many Japanese emigrated after the Meiji Restoration. Whilst most of the emigrants to Hawaii, California and Brazil were groups of farmers from the poor countryside, those who moved to south-east Asia were independent people. Some of them were merchants but, many men worked as cooks and labourers. Many women engaged in the night business. Marquis Tokugawa wrote in “On Hunting in the Jungle of Malaya”:

“Japanese girls in Malaya Street in Singapore used to be famous. It is ironic that Japanese are disappearing from Nanyō after the Japanese Consul prohibited their business and got rid of them three years ago (1918). The reason was that it was considered ugly and the shame of the nation. Soon or later, Japanese will lose their bases of activity in Nanyō completely.”

Even so, the Japanese population were as many as 7,000 in around 1940 and 51 Japanese communities existed in Java alone, as capital investment proceeded (Ishii, Yoneo (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Indonesia, Dōhō-Sha Publ. Tokyo 1991). They were linked to their home government towards the start of the Second World War, and lost their free-mindedness, just as Marquis Tokugawa had worried about.

[5]Before Japan was closed to other countries and travelling to and from overseas was prohibited finally in 1639 by the Third Shōgun, there were a considerable number of Japanese inhabitants in south-east Asia, estimated as more than five thousand. Among the mercenaries, the most famous was Nagamasa Yamada who, together with his men, was appointed the guard of the King of Ayuthia. The VOC recruited more than three hundred Japanese by 1620 and sent them to Batavia and other part of the East-Indies. Men were traders and warriors (samurai) and women were volunteers to become consorts of Dutchmen. The warriors played a role in the seize of Jakarta from the Bantam-English Alliance in 1619. English troops defending Ambon who were defeated by the Dutch in 1623 also included 9 Japanese. (From Wada M., Modern History of South-East Asia (a text book for University of Air), 1991 and other references)

[6]Contrary to the Tokugawa’s “Journeys to Djakatra”, “Nangokuki (Travels around the Southern Countries), Niyu-sha, Tokyo 1910”, by Yosaburo Takekoshi, and “Nanyō Yuki (Travels around Nanyang), Dai-Nihon Yubenkai, Tokyo 1917” by Yusuke Tsurumi, were written on more or less nationalistic viewpoints. These two books would have been influential for the development of the so-called “Nanshinron (The theory towards the South)”, although the authors had never intended to mastermind such military activities that actually became real three decades later. That some other countries also had potential interests in the rich East-Indies would have been true, as was found in the Carpenter’s book (Java and the East Indies, Doubleday, Page & Scott Co., Garden City-New York 1926) as, “Bandong, where I write this, would be a popular resort if it could be dropped down upon United States.”

[7]The essay, “Game in Malaya”, not included in this translation was written in easy-to-read but formal-style Japanese.

[8]That Marquis Tokugawa was able to pay courtesy calls to the Sultan of Jogjakarta and the Susufunan of Solo was rather exceptional for Japanese citizens, as throughout the prewar period the Dutch colonial office was extremely wary of Japanese contacts with native rulers, afraid that these would undermine their power base. In fact, both Yosaburo Takekoshi, a statesman and writer, and Yusuke Tsurumi, a high official from the Ministry of Railways, had failed to see them, because “the Sultan was busy for preparing his daughter’s wedding” and because “the letter from the Governor-General only arrived on the day of his departure from Solo”, respectively (Yosaburo Takekoshi, Nangokuki (Travels around the Southern Countries), Niyu‑sha, Tokyo 1910; Yusuke Tsurumi, Nanyō Yuki (Travels around Nanyang), Dai-Nihon Yubenkai, Tokyo 1917). The courtesy calls of Marquis Tokugawa was arranged without problems, probably because he was neither a politician nor an official but a pure-minded academic, even though he had a seat at the House of Lords as automatically allocated to a high-ranked peer.

[9]It is generally said that the Dutch regarded natives as “half-children” and wanted to keep them at that level. It was undeniable in earlier times but one of the difficulties for the Batavian government for reversing the earlier policy and introducing modern education, after the late nineteenth century, was how to cope with the religion-oriented curriculum in the traditional Islamic schools, pesantren. Another difficulty was that the construction of schools did not catch up with the fast increase in population, that soared exponentially at the rate of 1.8 times over 25 years (Abdullah, Taufik ed. (Japanese translation by S. Shiraishi, T. Shiraishi), Islam in Indonesia, Mekon, Tokyo 1985). For higher education, it is said that not many upper class parents were ready to see its value and send their children to universities and colleges.

[10]Technische Hoogeschool te Bandoeng (1920), Rechten Hoogeschool Batavia (1924) and Medische Hoogeschool Batavia (1927). The origin of the last one dates back as early as 1852. According to the scheme of the comprehensive University of Batavia, Schools of Literature and Agriculture were created in 1940 and 1941 at Batavia and Buitenzorg, respectively.

[11]For instance, the Indonesian Communist Party was formed in 1920 and caused riots in 1926, the Nationalist Party of Indonesia was formed in 1927 and Soekarno was jailed in 1929, the young-men’s Oath was issued for defining ‘Indonesia’ as the common name of the nation, the races and the language in 1928, etc.

[12]The Japanese army stationed in Port Arthur after its acquisition from Russia became a semi-independent military unit, Kanto-Gun, after 1919, and advanced into Manchuria to protect the Manchuria Railway. On 7 July 1932, the war against China was triggered with the Incident at Marco Polo Bridge. At home, the militarists became dominant and the Public Peace Keeping Law was enforced in 1925 to control and purge not only communists but also liberal-minded citizens.

[13]Frank G. Carpenter wrote in “Java and the East Indies”, Doubleday, Page & Scott Co., Garden City-New York 1926:

“The little brown people of Java are the most lovable of all coloured races outside Japan. “

“I have already travelled all over it (Java), and I have yet to meet a native who looks hungry. The country is feeding itself, and in addition is sending away millions of dollars’ worth of its products every year. . . .”,

“The Javanese officials are treated just like the Europeans and the native chief’s wife has the same standing as the wife of Resident. The Resident and Regent sit together at state dinners, and seem to be equals. . . .”, etc.

[14]John C. Van Dyke wrote in “In Java and the Neighboring Islands of the Dutch East Indies”, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York and London 1929:

“lt is hardly worthwhile hemming over some minor error in the Dutch administration of Java and the islands. The fact is that the Netherlands East Indies are well managed, better managed than any colonies elsewhere on the map. The American administration of insular possessions may approximate that of the Dutch in efficiency, but it is carried on at a financial loss. The Dutch are indirectly making money out of Java, but they are letting the natives make money, too. Moreover, they are putting back into the country millions in development. They are trying to establish a just and equable government and a prosperous colony. To that end they are confirming the land rights of the natives, introducing improved methods of irrigation and husbandry, concerning the forests, establishing native schools and universities, building cities, roads and bridges, opening up new transportation routes, and doing a thousand and one things looking to the betterment of town and country. The result is the natives are well fed, well housed and dressed, 1ook happy, seem contented. And Java is a joy to the traveller, the most delightful of all the tropical countries. The Dutch must receive the credit for much of this. Why not say so without reservation?”

[15]Constitutionally, the East Indies as well as Surinam and Curacao acquired the same status as the Netherlands in 1922. It was quite different from some other Asian territories, e. g., British India and the Spanish/American Philippines. Thus, it was not unreasonable for the Governor-General of the East Indies, Mr. A. W. L. Tjarda Van Starkenborgh Stachouwer to have proposed in 1941, when the Netherlands was occupied by Germany, to move the seat of Queen Wilhelmina and the government in exile in London, to Batavia, without anticipating the Japanese invasion that took place a year later. (This idea was not agreed to by Winston Churchill nor by the Queen herself.)

[16]The majority of the Dutch in the East Indies were settlers, whereas many colonialists, e. g., the English in India, tended to return home after their retirement. The settlement of both sexes and, accordingly the reproduction of pure white stock, had been limited before the late nineteenth century due to the difficulties of women undertaking long voyages, whereas it had been more common, e.g., in the Cape Colony. In early days, most men had to find their partners among natives, especially the Ambonese and Bugis who had already been converted to Christians during the Portuguese era, or among half-casts (Eurasians or “Indo’s”). In the old days before Japan closed the country in the early seventeenth century, the Dutch invited Japanese women to become their partners as they were well civilised and their religion, Buddhism was more tolerant than Islam for marriage to others (Boxer, C. R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800, Penguin Books-Hutchinson, London 1990, and other references).

[17]Urban construction in Batavia and other cities as well as the country-wide road system was initiated between the years 1808 to 11 by Marshal H. W. Daendels who was despatched as the Governor-General from French-controlled Holland. After the return of the East Indies to the Netherlands from Britain in 1816 according to the agreement in the Peace of Vienna held in the previous year, the modernisation of Java was accelerated. The first tele-communication system was introduced in 1858, a submarine cable to the outer-islands was laid in 1859, the postal service was inaugurated in 1862, the public railway was opened in 1867, the modern port at Batavia’s Tanjung Priok was constructed in the 1870s, type-writers were introduced into all government offices in 1900, and so on, only 10-15 years after they had been introduced in the Netherlands (Torchiana, H. A. van Coenen, Tropical Holland, An Essay on the Birth, Growth and Development of Popular Government in an Oriental Possession, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1921, Shiraishi, Takashi, Brochure of “Pramoedya Series 2: The Earth of People 1", Mekon, Tokyo 1986, and other references).

[18]Various actions were taken at great speed to transfer the governorship of the East Indies from Den Haag to Batavia and to local authorities. For the education of native people, schools of primary and secondary levels were open and three supreme educational organs were devised by the 1920s. The Volksraad was inaugurated in 1918. While the policy created educated elites engaging in the administration, it also cradled anti-colonialist movements.

[19]J. W. B. Money wrote in “Java or How to Manage a Colony” in 1861 that the East-Indies government had introduced a law to wash and repair houses twice a year, not only for Europeans, and the natives learnt with pleasure how to live in a clean environment.

[20]Unfortunately, the arrival of Islam in Java was long after the era of Abbassid Caliphate (750-1258) when Moslems had paid respect to the old wisdom of Greece, or India, or China. Also, most of Arabs who came to Java were merchants who had little or no interest in culture and arts. It is assumed that the temples, abbeys, books and documents of old religions in Java were neglected, if not intentionally destroyed, during and after the Islamic conquest (15-16th C.).

[21]An example is the Harmonie Society building constructed by a native contractor in 1815; it was demolished in April 1985 by order of the State Secretariate who did not know of its historical value, just to broaden a road and to provide parking space (Heuken, SJ Adolf, Historical Sites of Jakarta, 6th Ed., Cipta Locka Caraka Foundation, Jakarta 2000). Old prestigious hotel buildings such as the Hotel des Indes, Hotel der Nederlanden and Hotel Koningsplein no longer exist either. In Bandung, Jalan Dago (formally, Jalan Ir. H. Juanda) and Jalan Cihamplas, once beautiful streets which had cozy houses and shady, spreading trees, have completely turned into clamorous shopping streets during the last 15 years. Now the area of Jalan Pasteur is being destroyed for building a flyover.

[22]A typical example is Scidmore’s observation:

“The Javanese are the finest flowers of the Malay race - a people possessed of a civilization, arts, and literature in that golden period before the Muhammadans and European conquests. . . . They have gentle voices, gentle manners, fine and expressive features, and are the one people in Asia besides the Japanese who have real charm and attraction for the alien. . . . Their language is soft and musical - ‘The Italians in the tropics’; their ideas are poetic; and their love of flowers and perfumes, of music and the dance, of heroic plays and every emotional forms of art, proves them as innately aesthetic as their distant cousins, in whom there is so large an admixture of Malay stock. Their reverence for rank and age, and their elaborate etiquette and punctilious courtesy to one another, are as marked even in the common people as among the Japanese; . . . (Scidmore, E. R. Java - The Garden of the East (first published in New York 1899), Oxford University Press Pte, Singapore 1984)”

[23]Under the section title, “Receiving the New Director”, Prof. Tanakadate wrote:

Maintenance is not my job. Thinking that if a questionable person came to became the director and the Museum and the Library were to be turned over to the Pandemonium of Shonan (Singapore), that my past efforts for restoring and fostering these institutions (ever since the fall of Singapore) would be reduced to nothing, I wanted to ask Marquis Tokugawa to come every day as the advisor.

As however there was no room suitable for the Marquis, I named the office of the former director, the ‘Marquis Room’ and furnished it with the most beautiful furniture stocked in the Museum and Library. Then, I made arrangements for the two ladies in the bloom of life who were shortly to arrive from Japan as the secretaries to the Marquis, to be appointed also as Library staff, and prepared for their desks to be next to the Marquis Room. The office was thus made ready, receiving praise from the Mayor, Mr. Oodachi, who came to see it, as being surely the most comfortable office in the city. Having brought in books that the Marquis liked, he began to appear in the office once or twice a week from August saying, “I have come here to study”. Eventually, on the 28th of August, he said “I shall take charge as the Director of the Museum and the Botanical Garden”.

In Japan, Marquis Tokugawa presides over an art museum and also owns an institute of biological research built by himself. Accordingly, there was no question as to his qualifications, but other people had rejected my proposal, saying, “It is not fitting to ask Marquis Tokugawa, who has received a Third Class Order of the Sacred Treasure*, and is The Supreme Advisor of The Malaya Military Administration, to take on such a humble position as the director of the museum.” Now, however, my wish has come true. It is the greatest of achievements to have Marquis Tokugawa as the new director of the Museum and Library which I have cherished like my child. With Marquis Tokugawa as the director, the status and authority of this academic research institution in the new territory has been further enhanced. The new director presented himself every day in the morning from the 1st of September, but I continued to take charge of administrative works until the successor came.

*Translated to reflect the original Japanese which reads “Juunii Kun San-tou” but the original is a mistake. The Marquis indeed received the Third Class Order of the Sacred Treasure in May 1924 but was only of rank ‘Shou shii’ at that time. It was not until 1941 that he reached the rank of ‘Juunii’ but in April 1940 he had received the Second Class Order of the Sacred Treasure, which is one rank above the Third Class Order.

[24]The translator refrains from commenting on “The Islands of Fire - An Account on Java and Bali (1944)” by Tomoji Abe, but questions how an eminent writer and distinguished scholar of English literature could criticise the suzerain in such a disgusting tone, even though he was obliged to justify the Japanese rule, having reached Java on a military vessel which was sunk during the Battle off Batavia on 28 February 1942. Personally, Abe seems to have associated rather sympathetically with Dutch people under the occupation and wrote after the war a novel, The “Flowers of Death (Shin-bungeisha 1946)”, about the fate of a Dutchman. Essays written by Takeo Kitahara, another writer despatched together with Abe, and compiled in, “The rainy season has come (1943)”, are quite objective with almost no criticisms or comments on the Dutch rule and the Japanese occupation.

Many writers and artists seem to have just enjoyed their stay in the Japanese-occupied area in their own lifestyle (Kamiya, T. and Kimura. K. (ed.) Writers Conscripted to the Southern Area - the War and Literature, Sekai-shiso-sha, Tokyo 1996).