Meiji graves in happy valley : stories of early Japanese residents in Hong Kong  Meiji Graves in Happy Valley: Stories of Early Japanese Residents in Hong Kong 

• Product Details

  Product #

  2623154B

  Author(s)

  Nakano, Yoshiko

  City

  Hong Kong 

  Country

  Hong Kong 

  Language

  English 

  ISBN

  9789888876853 

  Date of Publication

  2025 

  Publisher

  Hong Kong University Press  

  Cover Type

  Soft cover 

  Pages

  193 

  Series

  Royal Asiatic society Hong Kong studies series 

  Subject

  History, 19th Century and Earlier

  Subject

  History, 20th-21st Centuries

  Subject

  Statistics

   

• Product Details in Original Language

  Author

  Nakano, Yoshiko

  Publisher

  Hong Kong University Press  

• Description

  Meiji Graves in Happy Valley: Stories of Early Japanese Residents in Hong Kong The Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley is home to over 470 graves connected to the city’s Japanese population. Most of these graves belong to individuals who died during the Meiji era (1868–1912), a remarkable period of modernisation and opening up of Japan that saw thousands of its inhabitants travel to other parts of the world to study, work, and settle. Who were these people? What were they doing in Hong Kong? And why were unbaptised Japanese buried in what was called at one time the ‘Protestant Cemetery’? Hong Kong’s Meiji-era Japanese community was one of two halves. Company executives sat atop the social ladder and karayuki-san, or prostitutes, occupied the lower echelons, with tradespeople and professionals somewhere in between. By revealing the personal journeys of these mostly forgotten Japanese, the authors aim to add to transnational perspectives on Hong Kong and Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as increase recognition of this fragmented community’s place in the development of this diverse city.