“Mapping Middle Road” is a social history project which attempts to reconstruct the prewar Japanese community in Singapore. The history of the Japanese community in Singapore remains relatively unknown apart from the period of wartime Japanese occupation. This presents an apparent gap in Singapore’s historical landscape, as the prewar Japanese community played an important role in enriching the identity of Singapore as a cosmopolitan port city. The Japanese occupied a fraught position in prewar colonial society, as subjects of an imperial power but also as fellow Asians in an overwhelmingly Asian urban population. Some Japanese ascended to the highest levels of colonial society, while others inhabited some of the most marginalized positions in that same society. Some settled in Singapore whilst others counted as more typical sojourners. An investigation of this community can help us to better understand the relationship between colonizer and colonized, between rich and poor, and between Asians and non-Asians in prewar Singapore.

We ask the following research questions: why did Middle Road become the locus of “Little Japan”? Who were the Japanese people who came to work and live in the “Little Japan”? Why was Singapore important to the Japanese? How integrated was the Japanese community, and how did the Japanese position themselves in the cosmopolitan culture of the port city?

PI & Co-PIs: Clay Eaton, Naoko Shimazu & Lee Chee Keng

Funding Agency: National Heritage Board Heritage Research Grant
Project Duration: 31 August 2022 – 31 August 2024