Thousands of pages of manuscript notes, pasted-in clippings of scholarly articles by him and others, photos, etc. China: 1920s-30s.

Before Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, Kobayashi Yasuo (1874?-1964) worked as an engineer for the South Manchuria Railway Company (known as mantetsu 満鉄). This organization had been founded in 1905 upon Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War. It was nothing less than an organ of Japanese imperialism in northeastern China, controlling vital infrastructure — far exceeding the railroad connecting the major cities of the region — in what in 1931 became the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Mantetsu’s sphere... More