Fascist Sheep: Land and Livestock in Inner Mongolia under Japanese Rule
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East Asian Studies Speaker Series Talk - "Fascist Sheep: Land and Livestock in Inner Mongolia under Japanese Rule"
Professor Sakura Christmas, Bowdoin College
Tuesday February 24, 4:00 PM | 680 Sherbrooke Room 1041
Co-sponsored by the Centre for Global Chinese Studies
Abstract:
In the early twentieth century, the steppe borderlands between China and Mongolia erupted in violence. This contentious overlap between Han and Mongol communities posed fundamental problems in governance for imperial Japan as it expanded into the region. In response, Japanese militarists and Mongol leaders converged on a radical solution in 1932: Demarcating an autonomous territory for minority peoples in Manchukuo fifteen years before such zones would exist in the People鈥檚 Republic of China. In this talk, Sakura Christmas explores the fraught delineation of this autonomous territory as not only ethnic, but also environmental in kind. In the 1930s, Japanese authorities relocated indigenous inhabitants and cultivated a pastoral ecology in King摹an Province to reinforce corresponding identities. They viewed seasonal migration and native livestock as obstacles to economic autarky under fascist imperialism. Under the banner of "improvement," they introduced engineered breeds to settle Mongol herders and maximize output, which led to land degradation under the conditions of total war. The disastrous consequences call into question the underlying purpose of "improvement" heralded by agricultural science.