Grounding Empire Through Burial Grounds

This article examines how the Japanese military, notably the Kwantung Army, used the acquisition and maintenance of military burial grounds to challenge Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria (currently Northeast China) and expand Japan’s territorial control in seemingly “peaceful” periods. The burial grounds became contested sites where debates over sovereignty and different groups’ claims of land use played out. With a close focus on the military-use land, this article challenges the previous depiction of Japanese imperialism in Manchuria as informal imperialism and enriches our understanding of how the military reshaped social and political relationships in the empire through the control of land. This article also enriches historical writing on the Kwantung Army, which tends to focus on its military roles. The Kwantung Army in Manchuria not only enacted its power through military actions but also far more extensively penetrated Manchuria’s local communities even before the Manchukuo era (1932–45).