A New “Nationalist” Education and Policies after Pearl Harbor

Curricular innovation, especially at the secondary-school level, is often directed toward fostering new citizens and shaping their political identities. Among the Chinese who had fled Japanese military incursion, many feared that “Japanese slave education” would transform Chinese children into loyal subjects of the Japanese empire, in a manner in keeping with policies in Korea and Taiwan. These fears obscured the role that Chinese collaborators played in creating a new ideology -- one that was obviously pro-Japanese, but also anti-Communist, anti-Soviet, and to some degree anti-(Western-) imperialist. Unlike in Korea or Taiwan, Japan actively tried to support collaborationist governments in coastal China.

This paper examines these efforts as they were attempted and envisioned by the Wang Jingwei regime, based in Nanjing, but with jurisdiction over the treaty-port of Shanghai. By examining tests for schoolteachers and students, as well as textbook reform, in conjunction with new policies, the paper arrives at a sense of how the regime was trying to experiment with developing its own system. Among the most significant findings, this paper shows that Wang’s regime immediately sought to renationalize education in the Anglo-American-dominated International Settlement (on the morning of December 7, 1941). Not waiting for formal re-negotiation of the unequal treaties, Wang’s regime indicated its commitment to opposing Western imperialism. This impetus, together with larger educational efforts, illustrate the regime’s vision for a new ‘Nationalist’ educational system -- one that allowed for a much greater voice for Chinese collaborators than is often assumed. The paper further examines the essay exams of a re-nationalized school in the International Settlement to uncover some of the ways that middle-school children articulated their identities within the regime. Despite the ephemeral nature of a short-lived regime, this case study helps to complicate and diversify our understanding of Japanese imperial policies during the Second World War.