ABSTRACT
In 1965, Japanese journalist Magoroku Ide accepted an invitation from the government of the People’s Republic of China to visit the country. Still seven years before the resumption of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, travel to China was restricted to those officially invited and even they were subject to state surveillance. Among the places he and his fellow Japanese journalists visited was the city of Anshan in northeast China. Having boarded the train to return to Beijing at the conclusion of their visit, they heard the clear voice of a woman saying, “Please take care of yourselves, goodbye,” in Japanese. Not visible from their train window in the crowd of Chinese who came to bid farewell, Ide and his colleagues were stunned to hear the voice of a Japanese woman. Although they wondered whether it was possible that Japanese were living in Anshan in 1965, they could not make the connection between her and the approximately 10,000 Japanese who were then living in northeast China, much less to the Japanese imperial past (Ide 1993).
