About This Project
Since I began my undergraduate research on Japanese memoirs of the Second World War in Malaya and Singapore, there has been increasing awareness of and interest in Japanese-language sources on the occupation period, and the broader history of the Japanese community in Singapore. This rich body of sources has made possible several new and exciting directions for research and public history.
While specialists in this field are generally aware of the size of this corpus, a major obstacle facing them is accessibility. First, the sheer volume of sources makes it challenging to efficiently determine which items are relevant, particularly since book titles alone may not be particularly informative, even for scholars proficient in Japanese. Second, because most of these sources are not digitized, scholars working outside of Japan have little choice but to make costly international trips to physically access these sources, a fact not made easier by recent global disruptions. Third, since most of these sources are in Japanese, the two aforementioned challenges are magnified for scholars whose research would benefit from access to these sources, but who lack Japanese-language proficiency.
By building an online database of Japanese primary sources related to Singaporean history, I hope to increase accessibility to these historically significant sources for the scholarly community and the wider public.
Contents of this Archive
This website catalogues a selection of over 100 Japanese-language primary sources on the Second World War in Southeast Asia, based off a series of bibliographies compiled by Japanese scholars in the 1990s. These bibliographies were translated by Dr. Iioka Naoko under a joint project with Dr. Sandra Manickam entitled ‘Ando Kozo and the Medical Department of the Japanese Military Administration of Malaya (1941-1945),’ funded by the Sumitomo Foundation. Many of these are memoirs of former Japanese soldiers and colonial administrators who survived the war, returned to Japan and recounted their experiences. As my doctoral research continues, I hope to be able to make further additions to the archive and topics based on user feedback.
Acknowledgments
This project was made possible thanks to a generous grant by the Social Science Research Council of Singapore. I would also like to thank Dr. Sandra Manickam and Dr. Iloka Naoko for allowing me use of their translation of the late Dr. Akashi Yoji’s bibliography on materials related to the invasion and occupation of Malaya and Singapore. I also would like to express my great appreciation for the guidance and patience of my mentors, Prof. Joey Long of the National University of Singapore’s History Department, Prof. Naoko Shimazu at the University of Tokyo, and Prof. Laura Hein at Northwestern University. Any errors and shortcomings of this website are my sole responsibility.
About the Author
Ling Xi Min is a doctoral student at the Department of History, Northwestern University. He is co-author (along with Regina Hong and Naoko Shimazu) of Postcard Impressions of Early 20th-Century Singapore, Perspectives from the Japanese Community (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish International, 2020). His research interests include global public history and war memory, military history and war in popular culture. He is the recipient of the George Romani Prize (2022), and the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies M.A. Thesis Prize in Japan Studies (2020).