Bodies and Structures

Consular police report on Ōyama Chiyoko, 1932

We of course need to take press accounts with a large grain of salt. During their 1932 tour, Japanese consular police officers had compelled Zai and his brother to release Ōyama Chiyoko and were preparing to lead her out of the village when a male neighbor, who was also married to a Japanese woman, persuaded her to give life with her husband another try. This part of her story did not make it into the newspaper version, whether through her own omission or that of the reporter. In contrast to the news story, the consular police report noted simply that Chiyoko had realized upon her arrival that her emotional ties to her family were not as close as they had been in Japan, and so began to consider the possibility of leaving.
(Report by Sergeant Itō , July 16, 1932, DAMFAJ 3.4.2.3. )

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