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Paper short abstract

This paper investigates the rare visual and written records about Japan’s Siberian Intervention produced by rank-and-file soldier Takeuchi Tadao. It draws on his life as a farmer, artist, and soldier to highlight the paradoxes of the presence of Japanese troops in Russia during the Taisho period.

Paper long abstract

The Japanese Intervention in Siberia during the Russian Civil War lasted for over four years, between 1918 and 1922, and involved in aggregate two-hundred and forty thousand soldiers. Yet only a sparse number of individual records remain to document the experience of Japanese servicemen in the Russian Far East during those years. The sketches and notes, together with visual and written narratives, produced by Imperial Japanese Army recruit Takeuchi Tadao in 1920 and 1921, offer therefore a unique insight into the conflict and what it meant to leave the Taisho peace and prosperity at home for the chaos and brutality of a civil war in neighbouring Russia.

The records reflect in diverse and interesting ways Takeuchi’s experience before and during the military operations in which he participated. As a farmer hailing from the mountains of Nagano who ventured outside Japan for the first time, he paid particular attention to the way of life of local peasants, the various cultures he encountered, and the challenges of the Siberian wilderness. As an accomplished draughtsman and amateur poet, he interspersed texts and images in a unique and personal blend of sharpness and melancholy, inspired by the artistic tradition of his place of birth. As a member of the IJA’s Thirteenth Division, he was mindful of his status as a soldier of the Empire, distilling in his work the tropes of military propaganda, ethnic discrimination, and allegiance to the state.

My presentation will examine Takeuchi’s accounts of his experience in Siberia from three combined perspectives – that of a farmer, an artist, and a soldier. It will highlight the poor preparedness of the Imperial Japanese Army, the often-blurry distinction between friend and foe, and the unintelligibility of the conflict to ordinary soldiers. It will conclude that Takeuchi left to posterity a vivid but puzzling account of the presence of Japanese troops in Siberia during the Taisho period.