Item No: #362533 [New Southern Travel Initiative] Nanpo shin tokoho. Shigeshi Nagata.
[New Southern Travel Initiative] Nanpo shin tokoho

Former Issei Recruits Japanese Civilian Occupiers During WWII

[New Southern Travel Initiative] Nanpo shin tokoho

Notes: A book encouraging Japanese civilians "of all classes" to emigrate to the regions newly under Japanese control following the outbreak of the Second World War in the Pacific, including Thailand, Burma, and the Philippines. There is even a short chapter describing Hawaii (pp. 94ff). The book adopts the imperial Japanese expansionist rhetoric of the time, referring in the introduction to Japan's "great global mission... to guide and educate the world's 1.2 billion human beings."

The author was a former Issei (Japanese immigrant to the United States) who became disillusioned by the increasing anti-Japanese sentiment in California and began advocating for new Japanese colonies in Brazil, which would become the largest Japanese community in the New World. He led the Nihon (or Nippon) Rikkokai, a Christian organization that promoted the idea of immigration to the poor in Japan.

For more on Nagata and the Rikkokai, see Tsurutani Hisashi's America-Bound (pp. 77–79) and Eiichiro Azuma's Between Two Empires, p. 81.

[2], 3, [1], [7], [1], 327, [1], 26, [1] pages.

OCLC: 673813776 (National Diet Library)

Edition + Condition: First edition. A very good copy in the original printed wrappers. Text paper very tanned; the book reflects typical poor wartime book production values.

Publication: Tokyo: Nihon Rikkokai, 1942 (Showa 17).

Item No: #362533

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