This workshop is one in a series of forums that will discuss and publicise the findings of an ongoing joint project of the same name by the universities of Essex, Hong Kong, and Konstanz. This project aims at introducing a more nuanced view of the ‘Great War in Asia', which commenced in earnest with the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Thus far, Western scholarship on World War II has been dominated by a rather Eurocentric view on events and experiences. It has drawn almost exclusively on Western testimonies and has largely seen the conflict in Asia in terms of fullscale involvement of Western powers, which started in 1941. China specialists, on the other hand, have viewed the war in Asia first and foremost in terms of Chinese ‘national resistance', starting as early as 1931. They often overlook important diasporic connections that linked its expression, understanding, and even funding to other parts of Asia.

The "Writing the War in Asia"-­ project seeks to recover and make available to scholars and educators a variety of sources articulating the wartime experiences of Asian agents from different walks of life. This will allow us to better understand how the social traumas and transformations generated by the conflict had been felt, interpreted, and utilised by local agents throughout Asia. This workshop will bring together scholars mostly based at European institutions who have independently examined a variety of sources that have hitherto received little attention in both public and academic discourse. At Konstanz, the speakers will give an insight into the complexities of collaboration and resistance in Japanese-occupied Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia, illuminate intra-­Asian links through humanitarian aid, map networks of female intellectuals in China, unravel Japanese dreams of a new world order, and trace vernacular memorymaking in postwar Malaysia.

This workshop is funded by the Exzellenzinitiative at the University of Konstanz.

Programme:

09:00  Introduction

Mark R. Frost (Essex), Daniel Schumacher (Konstanz)   -  Welcome address

09:30  Panel A: Wartime Migrations

Vivienne Guo Xiangwei (King's College London)   -  From Shanghai to Wuhan: Chinese Intellectual Women's Migration and Unification in World War II

Maria Framke (ETH Zürich)   -  "And One Did Not Come Back": Political Humanitarianism in the Late Colonial India and Its Memory Until Today

10:30  Coffee Break

11:00  Panel B: Reporting on Resistance

Rebecca Kenneison (Essex)  -  John Creer's Report: The Guomindang Guerrillas of Japanese-occupied Malaya

Takuma W. Melber (Mainz)  -  "We Must Be Better Prepared After This War": The Greater East Asia War Diary of Major-General Kawamura Saburō

12:15  Panel C: The Complexities of Collaboration

Priscilla Roberts (University of Hong Kong)  -  The Complexities of Collaboration: The Case of Claro M. Recto

Sven Matthiessen (Heidelberg)  -  The KALIBAPI-Party and Japanese Pan-Asianism in the Philippines, 1942-45

13:15  Lunch

14:15  Panel D: Homefront Propaganda & War Memory

Daniel Hedinger (LMU München)  -  A New Global Axis? The Anti-Comintern Pact in Japanese Medias 1936/7

Hamzah Muzaini (Wageningen UR)  -  Sybil's Clinic @ Papan: Remembering a Malaysian War Heroine

16:00  Round-table and conference dinner

• Dr. Hamzah Muzaini (Wageningen University)

• Dr. Priscilla Roberts (University of Hong Kong)

20.00  End of Conference

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Contact:

Daniel Schumacher

University of Konstanz

P.O.B. D173

Universitätsstraße 10

D-­78457 Konstanz

Germany

Email: daniel.schumacher@uni-­‐konstanz.de