Anti-Jewish Policy in Japanese Occupied China during the War Period 1937–1945

It has often been claimed by both Western and Chinese historians in the field of Sino-Jewish studies, that ‘anti-Semitism’ never existed in China. ¹ Unfortunately, such statements were often superficially made with no reference to what was meant by ‘anti-Semitism’. Therefore, it may be instructive to clarify firstly what is understood by this problematic term ‘anti-Semitism’. Coined by Wilhelm Marr as part of the scientific discourse on race in the nineteenth century, ‘anti-Semitism’ was, as Sander Gilman put it, ‘half of the dichotomy of “Aryan” and “Semite” which haunted the pseudoscience of ethnology during this period and beyond.’ ² According to Maurice Olender, both the terms Aryan’ and ‘Semite’ were taken from nineteenth-century linguistics and were socially constructed categories. ³ Based on Olender’s study, Gilman then defined ‘anti-Semitism’ as a ‘real and on-going category in Western culture’, evoking ‘a specific stage in the history of Western Jew-hatred.’ ⁴ If Gilman’s ‘half dichotomy’ theory is anything to go by, then the claim of the non-existence of ‘anti-Semitism’ in China is justifiable, for it is, according to Gilman, ‘a category in Western culture’. However, this doesn’t eliminate the existence of ‘Jew-hatred’ outside Western culture. In his recent book Jews in the Japanese mind, David Goodman has demonstrated that ‘Jew-hatred’ certainly existed in Japan. Such hatred might not directly correspond to the dichotomy of ‘Aryan’ and ‘Semite’, but ‘Western anti-Semitism’ certainly provided the raw material for it. It was also socially constructed. Furthermore, it is half of the dichotomy of ‘East’ and ‘West’, of ‘Japan’ and America’ and of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity. It is still apparent in Japan today. ⁵ Such hatred may seem less political and less damaging than ‘Western anti-Semitism’ for there was a considerably smaller Jewish presence in the East. It, however, played an integral part in Japan’s attempt to build a ‘Great East Asia Sphere’. It did not result in mass genocide of the Jewish population, or a Holocaust, but it did affect thousands of Jewish refugees’ lives in the Japanese occupied territories, especially in Shanghai. As studies have already been done on the history of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai, ⁶ my chapter will focus on material concerning Wang Jingwei’s ‘pro-Japanese’ government in Nanjing and other ‘pro-Japanese’ organisations in China, and examine their attitudes and policies towards the Jewish population/reality in China, and towards the imagined ‘Jews’. It will also look at their responses to Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy.