Pacific exposures : photography and the australia–japan relationship

Abstract

Sometime around 1915, a dozen Australian women paused for a photograph as they readied for a Japanese-inspired parade at Wallaroo Mines in Kadina on South Australia’s remote Yorke Peninsula (see Figure 0.1). The women are dressed in homemade interpretations of kimonos and obis and wear chrysanthemums in their hair. Two of them hold Japanese umbrellas and one a painted fan. A young child clutches a Japanese doll and large paper chrysanthemum as she sits in a sedan chair decorated with flowers. The Japanese war flag, the ensign of the powerful Imperial Navy, flutters somewhat limply near the front of this little procession. Japan, for the time being, was an ally if not quite a friend. Its navy was protecting Australia’s coastline and escorting Australian troopships to distant wars for and on behalf of Great Britain. This wartime connection is elsewhere apparent in the photograph. Towards the back of the pictured group, one woman has adorned her Japanese robe with the ribbon of the Australian Red Cross Society, formed in 1914 to provide comforts to serving soldiers overseas such as knitted socks, vests and chocolate bars.