ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between rural villages in Japan and Japan's colonies during the wartime period, with particular reference to the emigration of Japanese farmers to Manchuria (Manchukuo). For a thorough understanding of this relationship it would be necessary to consider capital and commodities as well as labor, but here I confine my attention only to labor, in the form of the movement of people. My aim is to identify some of the key characteristics of Japanese emigration during this period and, by means of a comparison with emigration to Korea at roughly the same time, to reveal some of the distinctive features of the Manchurian case. I will focus mainly on Yamato Village in Yamagata Prefecture. The prefecture itself ranked second in the nation as a source of emigrants to Manchuria, and the village ranked with Ōhinata Village in Nagano Prefecture and Nangō Village in Miyagi Prefecture as one of the top three villages nationwide in terms of the total number of emigrants produced.
