Reviews 551

These remarkable features of Oita are placed alongside accounts of the ordinary lives of its resi-
dents. The book reveals how the residents of Oita became increasingly engulfed by war. During
Japan’s war in China, military indoctrination prepared children to die for the Emperor while gov-
ernment censorship mixed with a sort of unquestioning confidence in victory made the war seem
quite distant. One finds glimpses of what could have been a very different history had the Japanese
Empire survived. Shunsaku Nanri recalled moving back to Beppu in 1944 from Shanghai, where
thousands of Japanese citizens had moved in the wake of Japanese occupation. Japan experienced
two separate invasions at the end of the Second World War: the return en masse of Japanese sol-
diers and civilians and the American Occupation. After 1941, the daily lives of residents in Oita
changed dramatically as the war expanded into the Pacific. American bombers eventually made
regular life impossible, and the authors focus on the desperate living conditions on the ground.
During the Occupation, Oita became the home of Camp Chickamauga. The authors show how
the dire need for American support often tempered fear of American soldiers. A sense of trust
and understanding eventually grew with the assistance of things like bubble gum and baseball.
Far less pleasant is the examination of the “comfort stations”, or government-supported brothels
established by the Japanese to serve American soldiers. Over 100 legal brothels employing
between 800 and 1,000 prostitutes eventually operated in Beppu. These girls volunteered, but con-
ditions were so dire that few felt they had many other options. American patronage was so rampant
that 70% of the soldiers in one division had at least one STD at one point. The Japanese felt com-
pelled to establish these “comfort stations” out of fear that American soldiers would rape Japanese
women without such an outlet. Depressing on its merits, readers will still likely feel the need for
greater context here. The incorporation of a few comparisons to the Allied occupation of Germany,
where the racial and cultural fault lines were far different, would have given many of the authors’
observations more weight.
The book contains a few errata, some more important than others. These include the listing of
the battleship Yamato as a “super aircraft carrier”, a description of a Grumman “fighter jet” straf-
ing the Japanese countryside, and the title of Chapter 15 entitled “Hungary, Confused, and
Afraid”. Still, this is a deeply moving read with too many captivating accounts to relay here.
The book had an emotional impact on the authors themselves. Both prove willing to share
their connections to their work. The authors should be congratulated for recognizing a valuable
story and taking the time to record it for posterity. This book would make an excellent source for
an upper-division course on Modern Japan or a specialist looking for material on civilian life
during this era.

doi:10.1017/S0165115319000639 Joshua Rocha, University of California at Santa Barbara

George Bryan Souza and Jeffrey S. Turley, eds. The Boxer Codex: Transcription and Translation
of an Illustrated Late Sixteenth Century Spanish Manuscript Concerning the Geography,
Ethnography and History of the Pacific, South-East Asia and East Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
711 pp. ISBN: 9789004301542. €203.00.

The Boxer codex is a stunningly-illustrated bound manuscript housed at the Lilly Library that
has inspired generations of scholars who study the Philippine Archipelago. Souza and Turley,
the editors of this critical edition, have made a momentous contribution by making the

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Cornell University Library, on 15 Sep 2020 at 17:26:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use
, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115319000640
 552 Reviews

manuscript available for the first time in a printed format. Their decision to include the original
Spanish text along with an English translation ensures that the manuscript will have the wider
audience it deserves.
The book’s introduction explains the provenance of the codex, describes its contents (reports,
accounts, and illustrations by named and anonymous creators), and lays out some postulations
for why it got made. The edition has two parts. The first part is a faithful transcription of the
Spanish text. The original is fully-digitized and available online (Boxer Manuscript II). Those
unfamiliar with Spanish palaeography will now have this edition to facilitate their reading and
research. The second part contains Turley’s English translation, an excellent scholarly apparatus
that promotes understanding of the text. A useful glossary precedes it, with terms related to com-
merce, local customs, governance, religion, and other aspects of human life. The origin of these
words, borrowed from Cantonese, Malay, Nahuatl, Visayan, and many other languages, is a testa-
ment to the multilingualism and ethnic diversity of the region that produced the codex. A short
bibliography of secondary sources and helpful index are at the end.
This reviewer’s understanding of the codex is that it consists of documents collected from the
mid-1570s to 1590s by Spanish Hapsburg officials in Manila to inform their colonial project in
the Archipelago and beyond. They worked at a precarious time for the newly-established trading
outpost, which had a skeletal military crew mandated with establishing a colony and maintain-
ing alliances with local chiefs (i.e., principales). Manila-based officials gathered descriptions
from informants and wrote down accounts about three main groups because garnering informa-
tion was central to the work of empire. The first group was people who lived in Luzon, the
Visayas, and other islands where Spain claimed some sovereignty. Imperial policy necessitated
having information about new vassals (tribute payers) to promote good government and guar-
antee a financial return for the crown’s investment. The second group were people ruled by
sultanates who lived in Mindanao and other islands in the Sulu Sea. Colonial officials
mainly sought out intelligence about Muslim subjects (so-called Moros) for defensive purposes.
The sultanate of Brunei was particularly threatening to Spain’s aspiration of expanding its geo-
political footprint in the region. The third group were those who lived in polities further afield:
Champa, China, Japan, Java, Maluku Islands, New Guinea, Patani, and Siam. Knowledge about
these societies was critical to diplomatic relations and to fostering mercantile connections.
Officials organized materials about these three main groups into chapters (22 sections in the
codex), with titles that refer to linguistic families, such as “Tagalogs”, and more topical titles
like “Chinese deities”.
Secular and ecclesiastical officials in the employ of the Hapsburg were conscientious research-
ers; they interviewed locals, conversed with visitors, read widely, corroborated reports, worked with
translators, and generally collected intelligence in a pretty systematic way. They wrote regional his-
tories and reported ethnographic information about societies throughout the empire. The materials
in the Boxer codex are akin to these writings, which await intrepid researchers in archival reposi-
tories in the Philippines, Mexico, and Spain. The information gathered by Spanish bureaucrats was
only as good as their informers, and they synthesized the data according to their world views. So,
readers of the Boxer Codex, as with all primary sources, must be cautious with the contained facts
and sceptical of generalized opinions.
The Boxer Codex reads like an encyclopaedia of Spanish knowledge about the broader region at
the end of the sixteenth century. The chapters, for example, have information that merchants would
have wanted to know upon settling in Manila, such as the location of essential ports. There is also
information about people’s beliefs that would have interested Jesuit priests. Read from this

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Cornell University Library, on 15 Sep 2020 at 17:26:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use
, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115319000640
 Reviews 553

perspective, the book offers a window into late-sixteenth century Southeast and East Asian soci-
eties, especially of peoples from the Philippines. Colour images from the original codex will inspire
imaginative readers.
The Boxer Codex is an absorbing collection of information. All research libraries deserve a
copy, and specialists will find it a beautiful addition to their bookshelves.

doi:10.1017/S0165115319000640 Tatiana Seijas, Rutgers University

Pius Malekandathil, Joy L.K. Pachuau, and Tankia Sarkar, eds. Christianity in Indian History:
Issues of Culture, Power, and Knowledge. Delhi: Primus Books, 2016. 283 pp. ISBN:
97893840408266. $74.95.

This collection contains four sections that respond to “established and dominant historiographic
tendencies that have come under a question mark quite recently” (ix). These tendencies are to
focus on the links between Christianity in the sub-continent and western empires and missionaries,
rather than on the rich diversity of belief structures, ritual and cultural practice evidenced in
Christianity in the sub-continent. The book has four sections: Historiography, Conversion
Narratives, Identity Formation, and Conflicts and Dialogue. Its essays focus from the early
sixteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century. The book opens with a beautiful
eighteenth century late-Mughal depiction of Christ’s birth that begs analysis of the meanings of
presenting this scene in Mughal court form.
The first section of the text consists of a single essay by J. Webster on the Dalit Christian his-
toriography. Webster argues that this experience was under-represented by missionaries and in the
secular era post-independence. Subsequently, varied and sophisticated treatments of theology,
material political and communal change have been produced, such as the essays in this volume.
Webster’s piece richly argued and might have well been integrated into the introduction to the
book rather than standing on its own. I would have liked the author to better address the argument
that rural Dalits be analysed alongside that of the educated Christian elite. What is also missing here
and, in fact, throughout the entire collection is the meaningful application of feminist analysis. The
excellent work of Eliza Kent is mentioned but not woven into the work itself, and this could be
beneficial.
The next section consists of six essays focusing on conversion. Staples’s “We Are One” outlines
the complexity of belief and practice in a close study of one Christian community, brought together
by treatment for leprosy. His essay embeds specific Indian Christianities within a view of
Christianity and communities more broadly. In the next chapter, J. Pachau presents an ethnography
of “Christianity in Mizoram”. In this community, denominational affiliation links to ethnicity, and
formal religious institutions exist alongside “lay expressions” of faith. In the next chapter, Nongbrai
presents another example of how a local identity shapes Christian identity in the Khasi Hills. The
author sees aspects of conflict, assimilation, and incorporation not as displaced Khasi traditional
religion, but as a “mission made” Christian complex. Dube’s beautifully written “Vernacular
Christianity” focuses on the journals and diaries of Indian catechists in Chhattisgarh. These
spoke of localized spirituality by affirming similarities through their local cultural idiom, while
remaining linked to colonial authority. L. Pachuau’s “‘Assistants’ or ‘Leaders’” is a carefully con-
structed history of recovery, concluding that while missionaries were responsible for early work, it

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Cornell University Library, on 15 Sep 2020 at 17:26:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use
, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0165115319000640