I got to be tea lady again for the Sino-Japanese history research society (日中関係史研究会) which my professor Hirano helps run. It is great opportunity because in exchange for pouring tea I get to hear some interesting presentations on the Sino-Japanese war that usually only a small group of professors get to attend. The group is the Japanese chapter of the Joint Study of the Sino-Japanese War project.
Today’s presentation was by 小浜正子, a professor at 鳴門教育大学 talking about refugee relief in wartime Shanghai. Her presentation was filled with detailed statistics on relief efforts, fund raising, refugee flows, and the various organizations who did the work. A lot of her materials were from Red Cross records, the popular Shanghai newspaper 申報 and records from 上海市档案馆. She also discussed a Japanese book I’m going to have to look at: 『日中戦争期の上海』edited by the 日本上海史研究会. Because her essay, full of rich empirical material will probably be published in a year or two I don’t want to go into her presentation in detail, but the interesting discussion following the presentation often revolved around whether or not you could treat the highly successful fund raising campaigns for refugees as part of an outpouring of anti-Japanese resistance sentiment. I found one of the slogans she dug up as quite telling: 不救難民不能談救國 (If we don’t save the refugees, how can we save the country?) I think the phrase is playing on one of the popular slogans during the war of the resistance: 抗日救國 (Resist Japan, Save the Country).