US-Japan/War

Nisei and the POWs

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 1 Comment

I just want to take a moment to share a photo that I think captures an interesting and perhaps a bit of an awkward moment. The photo is taken from a 1946 report on the “mop-up” of Japanese troops in the summer of 1945 in the Philippines.1 In it we see a, possibly staged, moment of interaction between a US Nisei (Japanese-American) soldier and Japanese POWs sometime after August 15, 1945, who are about to go out and attempt to persuade their fellow Japanese soldiers in the area to surrender.

Nisei and POWs in Luzon

I was hit by a range of emotions and thoughts when I saw this. On the one hand is the interaction of this Japanese-American, whose loyalty has always been seen as suspect by his fellow Americans, with the Japanese, who most probably see the Nisei as a traitor to his own people.

Completely separate from this interaction is the predicament of the POWs who are about to leave the camp, which was likely no pleasant hotel, but which represented a site of sufficient food and safety reached only after an extremely risky surrender. At that moment of surrender they faced the possibility of being shot either by Americans, or even more likely, their own officers or fellow soldiers. Only a few pages before this photo we read that while, “the good faith displayed by the Americans in holding their fire” (which was not by any means universal on the part of US troops) had lead to many desertions, “many Japanese soldiers were shot by their own troops as they tried to make their way to the American lines.”

Here we see these POWs about to return to the jungle where fellow soldiers were starving and dying of disease. Instead of mounting active attacks on US forces by this time, these Japanese remnants were reportedly only launching desperate nighttime raids for food on local communities. These scenes are, of course, common to almost every description of Japanese forces throughout the Pacific in the summer of 1945. As the report records, “Patrols found individuals and small groups who had apparently starved to death…prisoners of war told of acts of cannibalism,” and of active fighting between the Army and Navy over remaining food supplies.” If these POWs failed to persuade their dying comrades to surrender, would they be able to make their way out safely again? Would they be forced to remain with the others?

One thing that we might keep in mind is that the jungles and hills of Luzon of that summer were full of “Japanese” who were not from the archipelago, as the final report on casualties and POWs from July 1 to August 20 operation reveals:

Dead 20,311
Japanese Prisoners 1,254
Formosans (Taiwanese) 1,065
Koreans 77

  1. Report of the Commanding General Eigth Army on the Luzon Mop-up Operation 27 February 1946. Surplus Copy found in Widener Library, Harvard University.  ↩

Books and Articles/English/Foreign Views/globalization/Historiography/Japan/martial arts/US-Japan/安土桃山/江戸

Young Samurai: Way of the Dragon and the Battle of Osaka

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

The third installment of Chris Bradford’s Young Samurai series shifts modes mid-book, when the action moves from the original Harry Potter-esque bildungsroman mode to the tragic — Young Jack is on the side of the Toyotomi, as it turns out — Battle of Osaka.

[More Spoilers Ahead]1

The book is considerably longer than the first two installments, a common feature of end-of-series climaxes, and continues with the cultural and historical bad habits noted in the first two works.2 At least, being a climactic moment, many of the historical alterations are clarified — if not well justified. There are two substantial changes to the historical record, which explain most of the other distortions: postponing the Tokugawa dominion of Japan until after the Battle of Osaka, and transforming the banning of Christianity into xenophobic nationalism and a popular movement, rather than a geo-political calculation.3 And ninja. Lots of ninja. I’m going to focus on the historiographical oddities this time, though I reserve the right to note new contextual and literary failings.

Continue reading →

  1. I don’t really consider that a spoiler; it’s an actual event. Knowing how things turn out is fundamental to historical work. Though I must concede that Bradford’s willingness to mess with the timeline does raise some doubt.  ↩

  2. The Way of the Warrior and The Way of the Sword. Also, the book jacket copy is unchanged.  ↩

  3. Needless to say, the historical changes require substantial alterations to the characters of many historical figures. One can only hope that the bad pseudonyms shield young readers from connecting these caricatures with real people. At one point, the Miyamoto Musashi stand-in orders Jack to commit seppuku, then retracts it and calls it a “little joke.” (72)  ↩

Archaeology/China/Current Events/Public History

Managing History in China

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

Historic Preservation is the process of  preserving historic stuff, mostly building and sites. China has lots of history. 5,000 years of it, in fact. Historical Preservation, or Cultural Resources Management, or whatever you want to call it is something they have less of as shown by recent events in the Great Within. Basically, the Beijing Forbidden City Cultural Development Company has been accused of setting up a special club for rich people inside the Forbidden City.

Preserving the past is tricky, since it is sometimes hard to figure out what needs to be preserved. It is also sometimes hard to figure out what ‘preserving’ might mean. It could mean ‘don’t touch anything’ but in practice somebody has to touch things in order to maintain them, and people do have to get in to look at things, or else what’s the point?

Even at this level things are more complected that you might think. What exactly -is- this site?  Versailles would not be itself without the gardens, but the park just to the west of the Forbidden City, once considered part of the grounds, was taken over by squatters in 1949. Do they have to be driven out and the pristine park of the past re-created? 1

The big problem though is money. History and the National Essence are priceless, and thus can’t be connected to money, which is dirty. No gift shops. No tacky tourist stuff. No guards in fake old uniforms. Pure, un-commercialized history. That of course is bunk. Every historical site sells stuff, in part because they need the cash and in part because the broad masses want it and helping people connect with the past is what these places do, and buying stuff is part of that. Also, your guests are humans. They need to eat and drink, and they enjoy both of these things a lot. The more of that you let them do it while looking at the history the better they will like it. So maybe some selling things is o.k., but you need to keep it tasteful.  So part of running a historical site is making money, but making it look like you are above money.2

This is particularly important when you are running something like the Forbidden City, a Top Class #1 tourist draw and source of national pride. Some time ago they drove Starbucks out of the palace. This struck most of my students as a good thing. We would not let commerce sully the Lincoln Memorial, why should the Chinese let money into the Forbidden City? Having been there I point out that the palace is enormous, and that having a few places to get a drink or buy some postcards or get a popsicle makes it a lot better. Hiring it out to a foreign company defiles the purity of the Chinese nation, however,  so it had to go.

The current brouhaha has something to do with lack of professionalism on the part of China’s Historical Preservation Financial Asset Management Teams.  Lots of foreign museums rent out space for parties or whatever. You just need to do it with a bit of class. China has a distinct lack of old money, so this is a problem. Good Cultural Managers can help with this by providing a touch of distinction to a commercial transaction, but unfortunately the ones at the Forbidden City can’t even manage a grammatically correct press statement. Of course it also has something to do with class resentments in contemporary China. If the Forbidden City belongs to the Chinese people why are some Chinese people getting to party there and the rest being stuck making electronics in Shenzhen? Plus given what I can find out online  about the entertainment habits of Chinese rich people I’m guessing that the club does not run to dry white wine and chamber music. Massive amounts of vile booze and lots of ladies of negotiable virtue sounds more likely.

Finally, I must add that I am a little disappointed with the Beijing Forbidden City Cultural Development Company. I could forgive the   for prostituting China’s cultural heritage or being sub-literates, but their ‘vengeance’ against the whistleblowers is pathetic. Firing people and confiscating a few cellphones?  This is the Forbidden City!  Cixi plotted here, as did Wei Zhongxian, and there are such things as standards. Couldn’t they boil someone alive and serve the broth in the restaurant, or exile someone to Xinjiang, or something?

I got this from Jeremiah Jenne, who I note left Beijing just before this whole thing blew up.

  1. There are also lots of pasts in various places. Which aspect of the palace are you trying to preserve? As I recall the Forbidden City (and it’s been a few years) they seem to push a pretty a-historical view of a timeless palace, saying nothing about the Republic and running the Ming and Qing together. ↩

  2. Even if you could get the money out of the site that would just mean asking for more from the state or some sort of foundation.  ↩

Archives/bibliography/Guides/Libraries/Okinawa

Collecting Local Materials in Okinawa

Posted on by sayaka / 3 Comments

It seems there is increasing attention to Okinawan history recently. Okinawa is such an obviously interesting place for its own rich cultures, languages, customs, and complicated historical relationships with Yamato Japan and surrounding countries. The complexity should not overwhelm comparative historians, however, because there are a couple of advantages in studying the Okinawan history even only for a short period of time.

First of all, there is a tight community of Okinawan studies scholars who are very approachable, and many materials are available even from Tokyo. The library of Hosei University’s Institute for Okinawan Studies is a great place to find basic materials, and probably to get to know people.

Second of all, Okinawa’s prefectural and municipal governments have been devoting a lot of resources to organizing local sources. Almost everything they collect and publish are available at the Okinawa Prefectural Library in Naha. If you are doing postwar histories, the Okinawa Prefectural Archives is the place to go to. I spent most of my time in the Prefectural Library. Generally speaking, there are not many documents left from the prewar period because of the magnitude of the Battle of Okinawa as well as the occupation by the US forces afterwards. For many issues and years, the only sources are newspapers (琉球新報, 沖縄タイムス, 大阪朝日付録九州沖縄版, 沖縄新報, 沖縄毎日新聞 etc) preserved mainly in Tokyo or Kyushu and the old people who lived through that period. I realize that the Okinawan officials are indeed desperate to collect everything left when I saw this:

沖縄県文化振興会『植物標本より得られた近代沖縄の新聞』　2007
They collected about 300 pages of newspapers that were used as wrappers of botanical samples between the 1910s and 1930s in Kyoto University.

To those who want to know the backgrounds of the major newspapers ( in Okinawa, Ota Masahide (大田昌秀)’s “Okinawa no minshu ishiki” (『沖縄の民衆意識』1995) is a must read although the focus is the Meiji period.

Many municipal governments, like in Miyagi but often even more eagerly, have a city history section which regularly publishes new studies. I contacted Nago city history section. Their city history is one of the most thorough ones, and like other cities in Okinawa, they indexed and re-published newspaper articles and organized all the available statics related to Nago in three volumes. The republished version of newspaper articles is much easier to read than the original bad printing, of course. Nago city also distributed an index list of “newspaper articles related to education in Nago before 1945,” which came in extremely handy for my research. Besides that, I don’t know if this is really doable for other cities, but they publish contacts of senior citizens of the city — in case you are looking for the elderly to interview, I guess…

The staff at the Nago history section is also very helpful in introducing local historians to me from the local Meio University (名桜大学) and in responding to my additional request for a copy of a couple of newspaper articles that I could not find in the Prefectural Library.

You could also visit the national Ryukyu University, whose library is one of the oldest in Okinawa. I found a few issues of 沖縄教育 that were missing from the reprinted version and random village youth periodicals there. But overall their collection is not as thorough as the Prefectural Library, and it is less conveniently located. If you suddenly need to refer to English publications, Ryukyu University is the place to go to.

Shimoina in Nagano Prefecture is probably the most popular site of research because of its rich local sources, but it seems there is an equivalent of Shimoina in Okinawa — Ogimi (大宜味）village in Kunigami (the Northern one third of Okinawa). To be precise, rather than a lot of materials left, there are more historians who write about this village from early on. Besides their very well-written 大宜味村誌, Fukuchi Hiroaki (福地曠昭) has written a number of works based on many oral interviews and his own experiences of growing up in the village in the 1930s and 40s. Ogimi, in a way, is a peculiar case because the youth created a “soviet” in the village in 1931. 山城善光 was one of the leaders in this movement, and he wrote a memoir “Yambaru no hi” (『山原の火』1976）as well. When I visited Ogimi village last summer, they just created a new village history office. Kin (金武）village is also gaining more and more attention because that village produced a large number of immigrants.

I do not need to convince others about the importance of Okinawan studies. Neither do I need to persuade Okinawan people to engage in local histories. I was totally impressed by their continuous efforts, and I hope they will get attention and admiration that they deserve.

Authors/China/English/Historiography

Make it Just So, Mr. Fukuyama

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 1 Comment

I have been reading Francis Fukuyama’s new book The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. It is, as the title suggests, the first of two volumes that will explain the development of human politics from the dawn of time to the present. As a big picture sort of guy, Fukuyama claims that “human politics is subject to certain recurring patterns of behavior across time and across cultures” As a historian this type of talk tends to worry me, as I assume that any universals of human politics are either so vague as to be meaningless, or flat out wrong. Still, he is trying to present a theory of world political development that goes beyond Europe and gets as far as China, if not New Guinea, and when a big picture book gives that much attention to China I have to buy it.

The book begins with some discussion of the creation of the first states.

But in the end, there are too many interacting factors to be able to develop one strong, predictive theory of when and how states formed. Some of the explanations for their presence or absence begin to sound like Kipling Just So stories.

So, the Key To All Mythologies that we are looking for here is not the origins of the state, but a strong predictive theory of the origins of the modern stable, democratic, peaceful, prosperous, inclusive and uncorrupt state. In order to create this one needs 1. A state 2. The Rule of Law 3. accountable government. 1

Fukuyama posits Qin China as the world’s first modern state.  This is somewhat problematic, since the main reason he calls Qin modern is that they had gotten away from patrimonialism and had established “a more impersonal form of administration.” China scholars usually refer to the Qin/Han period, since Qin lasted only from 221 to 206 BCE. How can you make a Huge Comparison or talk about Large Processes while resting everything on such a small sample? The Han of course built on the Qin model, but Fukuyama’s discussion will not help anyone trying to understand the relationship between Confucianism and Legalism or Modernism and Classicism in the Han, a dynasty where bureaucratism and familism were both very important in a very complex sort of way.  Fukuyama’s account of Qin/Han is based mostly on Harrison The Chinese Empire Harcourt Brace 1972 and Levenson and Schurman China: an Interpretive History. California 1969, although he does manage to cite Loewe a few times. This is not the book to read if you are a China scholar hoping that a broader perspective will help you understand China-y stuff. 2

Well, in any case eventually the Chinese fall behind, reverting to patrimonialism. Lots of stuff happens. Why did China not develop? A cocoon becomes a butterfly, a wad of dough placed in an oven becomes bread. Why did China not become Denmark?

The book is, among other things, Fukuyama’s take on the Great Divergence debate, the arguments over why China fell behind after 1300 or 1500 or 1700 or whenever; why China failed to have an industrial revolution, or more generally failed to modernize properly despite such a promising beginning. A lot of very interesting stuff has been written on this issue in recent years. Most other scholars who write on this topic focus on economics, and their books are full of complex discussions of comparative institutions.

How does Fukuyama explain China’s manifest backwardness in the modern era? Well, the book includes the most serious discussion of Oriental Despotism to have been published in the last 50 years.3

Oriental Despotism is nothing other than the precocious emergence of a politically modern state before other social actors could institutionalize themselves , actors like  a hereditary territorially based aristocracy, an organized peasantry, cities based on a merchant class, churches, or other autonomous groups.

So this is yet another checklist book, with a roster of European traits one needs to be modern, and then you either check them off or don’t. He does talk a bit about the ability of the bureaucracy to constrain the Emperor, but for some reason this does not count.  For the most part he focuses on China’s lack of The Rule of Law.

“Early Chinese kings exercised tyrannical power of a sort that few monarchs in either feudal or early modern Europe attempted. They engaged in wholesale land reform, arbitrarily executed the administrators serving them, deported entire populations, and engaged in mad purges of aristocratic rivals. …European state development had to take place against a well-developed background of law that limited state power. European monarchs tried to bend, break, or go around the law. But the choices they made were structured and checked by the preexisting body of law that was developed in medieval times.”

This seems wrong, but at least in a way that might potentially be productive. China -was- institutionally different from “Europe’4 and a comparison could be enlightening, but looking at Europe as possessing a system of law that was ‘preexisting’ does not seem accurate. It does make it easy to explain China’s backwardness, since although there is a lot of scholarship on Chinese law none of it describes the creation of a legal system which was distinct from existing systems of power and could constrain rulers by its mere legality. In fact if you look at that way you can ignore pretty much everything written about China in the last 30 years. 5

Having explained China’s failure to create a Rule of Law6 Fukuyama then goes on to explain the failure of economic development. One aspect of Great Divergence debates is that there are disagreements about when China fell behind. I guess failure to create the Rule of Law is in the Tang or something, but he also gives a Ming date for China’s economic failure.

What China did not have is the spirit of maximization that economists assume is a universal human trait. An enormous complacency pervaded Ming China in all walks of life. It was not just emperors who didn’t feel it necessary to extract as much as they could in taxes; other forms of innovation and change simply didn’t seem to be worth the effort.

His examples here are the old chestnuts of the end of Zheng He’s voyages and Su Sung’s mechanical clock, which somehow did not lead to an industrial revolution. For some reason he leaves out the Chinese abandonment of movable type. In any case this  spirit of what I guess you can call Oriental passivity is his explanation of the “binding constraints that prevented rapid economic growth from taking off in Ming-Qing China.”7

This seems to be so wrong as to be silly and embarrassing. There is no footnote for this enormous complacency.8 It must be easier to make a big argument when trans-historical cultural factors can just fly in and then just as mysteriously fly out again.

So, all in all I would say the book was not worth the money, despite all the promises of China discussions in the Table of Contents. Reading this book will not help you understand China better. I’m pretty sure it will not help you understand Europe better. If you are looking for something that can explain everything in general but nothing in specific, this may be the book for you.

It does have the benefit  that each chapter begins with a little summaries of what is to come. Thus chapter 21 Stationary Bandits…

Whether all states are predatory, and whether the Chinese state in Ming times deserves to be called that; examples of arbitrary rule drawn from later periods in Chinese history; whether good government can be maintained in a state without checks on executive authority.

These little snippets are not very common nowadays, and it gives the agreeable feel that one is reading a work of scholarship that has somehow fallen through a time warp from the 19th century.


  1. Do you have a Kindle? It’s nice. You can carry it anywhere, and its always full of books, so if you want to read recent scholarship, classic literature, or trashy novels they are all there right now. Unfortunately it does not give page numbers. It claims this is from p. 15,  location 503  ↩

  2. If you are a non-China person Lewis Writing and Authority in Early China is a good place to start. ↩

  3. Since he  is not particularly interested in economics we don’t get anything on the Asiatic Mode of Production. ↩

  4. just as Italy was different from England ↩

  5. I also find his use of dates frustrating. What is an Early Chinese King? Where are these examples coming from? Or are they just taken at random from the Shang-Qing period? ↩

  6. Has anyone played Civilization 5 yet? Is it any good? ↩

  7. Fortunately these constraints no longer exist. This timeless aspect of Chinese culture is now Gone with the Wind, leaving behind only ‘an emphasis on education and personal achievement’ Apparently the May Fourth Movement was a big success. ↩

  8. Maybe he got this from reading Tim Brook? Craig Clunas? It’s a mystery. ↩

China/English

Japan and Catfish

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 1 Comment

On the assumption that some of our readers teach East Asian History and thus may on occasion have to talk about Japan, history, and earthquakes, I offer two links.

The obvious place to look for historical understanding of Japan and earthquakes is Gregory Smits “Shaking Up Japan: Edo Society and the 1855 Catfish Picture Prints” Journal of Social History 39.4 (2006) He has lots of cool pictures, and you can find even more (thus impressing your students with your knowledge) at the Pink Tentacle .

If you want a more modern assessment, this is a good choice.

 

Archives/bibliography/Guides/Libraries

Collecting Local Materials in Miyagi

Posted on by sayaka / 2 Comments

To express my deep gratitude to those who helped my research in Miyagi this summer, and to encourage more researchers to explore sources in Tohoku when things return to relatively normal, I would like to share some of my experiences in visiting libraries and archives there. I will also give my experience of doing a similar research stay in Okinawa in the next post. Several weeks of research in the local prefectures do not suddenly make me a specialist of the regions of any sort, but my point is that, thanks to the taxes well spent on organizing local histories in Japan, even short stays like mine could lead you to interesting case studies in local contexts.

I am not writing this post only to support the Tohoku region after the earthquake, but mainly because Tohoku is really worth a look for many issues because it offers rich, and often unique, historical contexts. Sendai, the center of the Tohoku dynamics, is a good place to explore for that reason. The three must-visit facilities in Sendai are, Miyagi Prefectural Archives, Miyagi Prefectural Library, and Tohoku University Library. All of them are temporarily closed because of the damage of the earthquake and aftershocks.

Miyagi Prefectural Archives (MPA) have hundreds of thick files, many of which are hand-written, recording administrative conducts of the prefectural and district governments. [My friend just let me know that the archives will be moved to the Prefectural Library around February 2012, and you can download the lists of their holdings here (go to the very bottom of the page)]. You can officially bring in a digital camera to take photos. There is a professional archivist, Kanehira Kenji, who is very helpful in finding out sources and locating the ones even outside the MPA. From what I saw there, their materials on education from Meiji to Showa are impressively thorough. They have lists and resumes of thousands of teachers, for example. Many local researchers often come to the MPA, so it might be a good place to ask about and meet local historians.

Miyagi Prefectural Library is located outside of Sendai City, and it takes about 30-40 minutes on the bus to get there. They have a big local history section, and you find most of the books, including personal memoirs and journals, in open stacks. They keep rare books inside the closed stacks, however. They will let you take digital photos within the limitation of copy rights in the back room. They have the most thorough collection of Kahoku Shimpo and other local newspapers in microfilms as well. Unfortunately the important years (around 1919-1930) of Kahoku Shimpo are completely missing, but some articles related to agricultural business could be found at Kobe University’s digital archive.

Tohoku University’s library is open to the public, but unfortunately most of the books are in the closed stacks. Visitors can make a library card to check out 2 books at a time. Even though this is a little inconvenient, you must check out their online catalogue because some retired scholars have donated tons of rare books to the library. Besides, local academic journals are available in open stacks. They also received and organized the donation of a massive amount of the documents of the Saito Faimily, who used to be the second largest landholder in Japan. I have not tried but you can take a look at the list of Saito documents online by registering.

Many of the city and town offices in Miyagi also compile and revise their local history series regularly. This is partly because many administrative units are going through mergers lately and they try to record a full account of the old city histories. For example, I was doing research on Shida village in Miyagi, which was merged into Furukawa city, which became a part of Osaki city recently. The Osaki city history section have just finished the new Furukawa city history. Because their volume on “sources of modern history” included very relevant materials, I inquired whether I could take a look at other sources they have. They were both very professional and laid-back — they collect as many personally-archived materials from their citizens as possible and digitize everything, and they are willing to share these sources with researchers. They also shared with me an index of Kahoku Shimpo articles written on the region which took three city officials a couple of full months to complete. When I needed to contact individuals in the city, this city history section also helps me by going in-between.

I hope it is clear that Miyagi (I actually imagine that many other prefectures as well) is very historian-friendly, both because they have many interesting materials and because there is personnel who helps you. If you have any possible excuse to include an event, a person, a company, a perspective from Miyagi, I strongly encourage you to devote a few hours searching these catalogues and asking these professionals.

Last Updated: Nov. 10, 2011.

China/Culture/Current Events/English/Public History

Zhang San and Li Si's Excellent Adventure

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 1 Comment

China Hush reports that the Chinese film and TV industries have been ordered to stop making time-travel dramas, on the grounds that “The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore.”

I find this convenient if wrong-headed. Convenient because while Americans may talk about what what our history means to us it is hard to pin down what historical orthodoxy is. China makes it easy. Wrong-headed because the Chinese government is very big on encouraging young Chinese to identify with “5,000 Years of Chinese History.” Getting people to do that is actually hard, and time travel might help.

David Lowenthal talks about time travel stories in The Past is a Foreign Country. Modern science fiction stories are only the tip of the iceberg, as there are countless stories of a knock on the head, a strange dream or a pact with the devil sending people to the past. Although lots of these stories are about about how you can use your amazing knowledge to make money gambling, or fix the present or whatever, many of them deal with how disconcerting and foreign the past is. In some stories you can’t talk to people, they may kill you for being a heretic, or you might starve to death. In any case, you will almost certainly want to go home. I have not watched any of these TV dramas, but all of them seem to open with the past being frightening and dangerous, but with the hero eventually finding their feet and, of course, true love. This would seem to be good from a Chinese nationalist perspective, since all these people are traveling to a past that is supposed to be ‘theirs.’ If Americans want to go a long way into the past we visit King Arthur’s court, which is obviously in a foreign country, and thus if we don’t identify with it and have to kill everyone to liberate them, that’s o.k. Chinese kids should -like- visiting Ancient China Land, and apparently they do.

Needless to say there are some serious problems. The past is really different from the present in ways that are being ignored in these stories. Sex and lust were probably the same things in the Qin Dynasty as now, but love? I doubt many people are learning much about the past as it is understood by historians from these shows. On the other hand, the official line seems to be that history is a nationalistic catechism to be memorized, respected, and bored by. That’s even worse. The article also reports that there is to be a ban on productions of the Four Classic Novels. Again, the problem is apparently a lack of respect for the treasures of Chinese culture, and you can see the point. If you let the current generation of Chinese youth get their hands on these stories they might portray the Monkey King as some sort of  turbulent troublemaker or Li Gui as a drunken hoodlum. Heck they might even imply that Baoyu was gay! Far better to stick these stories in boring classrooms and museums than to risk what might happen to them in the present.

 

Via Jeremiah Jenne

1911/China/English

Assassination and uprisings

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

On April 8th, 1911  five days before the scheduled Canton revolt an independent radical from Singapore assassinated the Manchu governor of Canton, Fu Qi. This threw the not-very organized revolutionaries into disarray, and headed the Canton revolt towards yet another failure.

By 1911 the revolutionary forces in China had been trying and failing to overthrow the Qing since at least 1895.  In later histories this string of failed revolts can sometimes seem like they are rising to a crescendo, but at the time things did not seem so clear cut. This led to any number of debates on method, one of which was over the value of assassinations in fomenting revolution. Influenced by Anarchists and Russian Narodniks and assorted Japanese radicals， various Chinese began a fascination with direct action. Part of this was based on the idea the a person like the knight-errant of old could rectify the world with a single stab, or, as one radical newspaper put it. (taking advantage of the ease in putting ‘ism’ on words in Chinese)

“Republicanism, Revolution-ism, Blood-Sacrifice-ism, Assassination-ism, none of these can be undertaken without knight-errant-ism ” ”共和主义，革命主义，流血主义，暗杀主义，非有游侠主义 不能担负之“ 1

While some revolutionaries like Huang Xing and Sun Yat-sen were trying to broaden the revolution, bringing in more people, more groups and more money, the assassins seemed attracted to the fact that a single person was all that was needed. Probably the best example was Wu Yue, who was killed in 1905 when a bomb he was going to throw at the five commissioners the Qing were sending overseas to examine Western methods exploded prematurely.  Wu Yue felt that the Chinese people had become so weakened by Manchu rule that only the shock of assassinations could arouse their spirit 伸民气, and the sacrifice of revolutionary lives would be needed to establish a new nation.2

Wu is perhaps best classified as an assassin, rather than an Anarchist. Although clearly influenced by Russian ideas other Anarchists dismissed him for his anti-Manchu racism, which they saw as counter to their internationalist ideas.3 He was certainly no reformer, nor does he seem to have had very clear ideas about -how- assassinations were going to lead to his ultimate goal of a constitutional government. He claimed that a stage of assassination had to proceed a stage of revolution, which would in turn lead to constitutional government, but it was not clear how this was supposed to happen.

Wu’s attempt did get a lot of attention, however, as it was the biggest thing anyone had tried yet, and right in the heart of Beijing. Traditionally those convicted of particularly heinous crimes were dismembered through lingchi 凌遲 and their bodies displayed. This penalty had officially been abolished earlier in 1905 as part of the modernization of Chinese judicial practice, and had last been imposed in 1904 on a mass murderer. Public execution in this extreme form was the ultimate expression of the state’s (and heaven’s) disapproval.  Wu Yue’s body was photographed and the photographs pretty widely distributed, perhaps as a final, modernized version of this punishment. (I have put the picture beneath the fold.) Perhaps Wu Yue would even have been pleased by this. His assassination attempt had failed, but the state had anointed him the most dangerous of revolutionaries. If nothing else he could not be lumped in with the milquetoast reformers he was so contemptuous of.

Needless to say, it was hard to build a revolutionary movement out of bomb-throwers like Wu Yue and fundraisers like Sun Yat-sen.

 

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  1. 朱育和， 辛亥革命史 人民出版社， 2001 p.247 ↩

  2. 朱育和， 辛亥革命史,  人民出版社， 2001 p.251, Rankin Early Chinese Revolutionaries p. 107 ↩

  3. Dirlik Anarchism and the Chinese Revolution p.94 ↩

Academia/Current/Recent Events/English/Foreign Views/Japan/Media/US-Japan

History as it happens

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

Though I’m usually not shy about speaking historically when big events happen, I’ve been very reticent on the Tohoku disasters. As others have pointed out, this is such a multi-faceted disaster — Any movie pitch that included a massive earthquake, historic tsunami, and a nuclear power plant meltdown would be rejected as implausible (except by the SyFy channel, maybe) — that historical analogies seem to have very little utility. Still, there’s some value in having people who know what they’re talking about contributing to the general discussion.1

There’ve been some of the inevitable discussions comparing these events to the 1995 Kobe/Hanshin disaster, to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, to the 1755 Lisbon catastrophes. More obvious comparisons, like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the recent flooding in Pakistan, don’t seem to be coming into play. Maybe because Western journalists just don’t know enough about these societies to draw conclusions about them? Maybe because Japan’s status as an industrialized society makes it conceptually different to them? The Katrina/New Orleans levee disaster would also seem like an obvious comparison that I haven’t seen yet.2 Once the problem with the Fukushima nuclear power plants manifested, the discussion has ranged from Three Mile Island to Chernobyl to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since nuclear power accidents have been rare, there is a very rough continuum of events for comparison, and it is still not clear at all what the situation is going to be. The combination of widespread tsunami destruction and nuclear dislocation which could be both widespread and nearly permanent, plus the potential economic effects of long-term power problems in Tokyo and Eastern Japan, really does constitute a nearly unique moment in human history.

In the absence of clarity, there’s been an immense stream of cultural commentary.
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  1. Presumptuous? There’s real social science to prove it!  ↩

  2. There have also been comparisons to Godzilla and Akira, which is something that only an eminence like Bill Tsutsui could get away with. Don’t try this at home!  ↩

1911/China/English

Widespread Panic in 1911

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

On March 31, 1911, the Japanese consul in Fuzhou filed a report on Chinese concerns about foreign invasion. That foreigners were going to divvy China up into colonies or “carve the melon” had been a major fear in China for several years, and in the Spring of 1911 rumors were again circulating that the foreign powers were meeting, perhaps in Paris, to decide on the division of China. The foreign press (and some Chinese papers) poo-pooed these wild rumors, by which they meant that there was not a formal meeting going on to divvy up China’s provinces among the Powers. The process of gradually absorbing Chinese sovereignty was of course still going on. Foreign-run factories, railways, and mines were dotted across China, the Treaty Ports were open for business, and Korea had been formally annexed by Japan on August 29, 1910, moving it from the status of semi-colonized to fully colonized. Given the general lack of faith in the court, there were calls for popular militias to organize to defend the nation. In this atmosphere of heightened suspicion even innocent foreign actions could seem sinister, and in any case there were plenty of actual hostile acts by foreigners for Chinese to be concerned about. This atmosphere had a lot to do with the explosive impact of the Sichuan Railway case in the Summer of 1911 and the Revolution in the fall.

In the case of Fujian, students in Shanghai and Japan were urging their fellow provincials to prepare to defend the nation. As Fujian was assumed to be part of the Japanese spoils in any division, the Japanese consul took interest in their activities

It appears that around 13 March some gentry here held a meeting to discuss the situation. After that, they distributed a leaflet entitled “Appeal for the Immediate Organization of a Militia.” This is attached to this re­ port as Exhibit I. In summary it says: Britain raided Pianma; France moved large troops to Yunnan under the pretext of protecting the rail­road; Russia is aiming at Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Yili areas. The division is close at hand. Japan and Germany are also about to take ac tion. Since foreign troubles always come with domestic discord, we have to organize a militia for self-defense now that we cannot rely on govern­ment forces.

The British consul filed a protest with the Fujian authorities as it was known that a copy of the leaflet appeared in a school run by a British national. The American consul, who was appointed to the post earlier, visited other consuls here and discussed whether they should make their attitude clear about this matter. Their conclusion was that they did not have to take any action since the leaflet was not causing serious trouble.

Yet there were rumors circulating in the city. One of them said that farmers in the suburbs were preparing arms and banners to attack Japa­nese. There were also far-fetched arguments based on a visit made by Canton consul-general, Segawa; the Hong Kong consul, Funatsu; and myself [consul Takasu]. They stopped over here on the way back to their posts, and visited local government officials, including the general-in-chief and the governor.

This was followed by a harbor call by the receiving ship Tsugaru. It was said that the consuls met with an important mission, that the warship called to spy upon Fujian or that six warships gathered on the open sea.

Attached to the report was a copy of the call for establishment of a militia

Further Appeal for the Immediate Establishment of a Militia

Compatriots: Britain has occupied Pianma; France aims at the mines in Yunnan; Russia is getting closer to Mongolia and Yili. Students in Japan, the United States, and assemblies in every province are sending out emergency telegrams one after another. We assume you saw our first leaflet and already understand quite well what is going on in our country. From what you have read in Beijing and Shanghai newspapers and the Jianyanbao, which has recently been published in Fuzhou, we believe that you have understood that we are not exaggerating things. We had expected that you would take countermeasures quickly to protect yourselves, your families, and your property. In the last ten days, however, further worsening of the foreign troubles has led people in all other provinces to rise and take action. At the moment, the Merchants Asso­ ciation in the capital, Fuzhou, the Nantaizhen Board of Directors, and the schools are working out countermeasures. They are organizing mer­ chant militias, beginning to train militias, setting up an Association for Physical Education, or making military calisthenics a compulsory subject. Responses vary, but the object is one and the same.

However, we wonder how people in other prefectures, districts, and counties [other than Fuzhou] are going to protect themselves, their families, and their property. It is quite strange that they are doing nothing about it. We cannot keep silent because we want to protect ourselves, our families, and our property as well as yours. This is why we are making another appeal to the people of our hometown.…..Just think about what Japan does these days. The Japanese government as well as its people have been targeting the Northeast since the powers began their actions. According to a detailed report we have obtained, there are four times as many Japanese troops stationed in the Northeast as Chinese troops deployed across the entire country. The report also says that they have introduced wireless telegraph throughout Mongolia to communicate secret information. It is reported that they are going to send two more divisions to the Northeast.5

Next are a series of telegrams between various provincial assemblies.

A telegram from the Xian provincial assembly to the Fujian provincial assembly: “A telegram from Yunnan says that Britain has occupied Pianma, and Japan and Russia are making a raid on the Northeast. The only way to save our country from danger is for people to arm themselves. In cooperation with other provincial assemblies, we would like to start training a militia under the pretext of maintaining order. On 9 February (9 March in the solar calendar) we requested the National Assembly to obtain permission from the government.

From the Fujian assembly to the Tianjin assembly: “The matter is quite urgent. A joint conference of assemblies should be convened.” From the Fujian assembly to the Grand Council: “We are now facing a national crisis. People are very afraid that the nation may perish. When diplomacy is faced with difficulties, the government should turn to public opinion. If we are allowed to ask His Majesty for an extraordinary session of the National Assembly and to express there how angry our people are, we think it might be possible to reduce the foreign countries’ contempt for us and gain time to work out countermeasures.”

These are only a few examples. We have much more information, but it is simply impossible to carry all the details that were reported by Beijing and Shanghai newspapers and by the Jianyanbao, which has recently started in Fuzhou.

The leaflet concludes as follows:

Just think, our property is about to be lost, and so are our lives, our families, and our country. Is there any easy solution to such a serious crisis? Proverbs say, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well,” and “Try everything even if there are no prospects.” If you do not care if the people of our nine prefectures and two districts lose their country, their lives, their families, and their property, we do not care, either. But if you do, set up a militia promptly. If one group of people appeals, many other groups will respond. If one village rises, others will follow. If we expand the movement from one village to one county, one county to one pre­ fecture and then to one province using the same system, and if we keep in close touch with one another, we will be able to maintain order in our homeland in peace-time and assist the army in time of war. This is what we have to do right now to save our country. Compatriots, time never returns. If we rise now there is a chance to recover our nation. We sincerely ask you to seriously consider our proposal.

From Ono Shinji “A Deliberate Rumor: National Anxiety in China on the Eve of the Xinhai Revolution.” in Eto Shinkichi and Harlod Z. Schiffrin China’s Republican Revolution University of Tokyo Press, 1994.

 

China/Current Events/Economics/Geography

A fun toy

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

The Economist has a fun toy where you can compare Chinese provinces to various foreign countries.  Some of the comparisons don’t help much, given that some of these places don’t mean a lot to me. Yunnan has the GDP per person of Vanuatu and Guangxi of Swaziland? O.K. On the other hand, Sichuan having the population of Germany is a helpful comparison.

The only thing I would have liked to see them add would be a comparison of income distributions. It’s nice to know how much wealth the people of Beijing would have if the money was all shared out equally, but of course it is not. Not sure if they have the data for that, though.

1911/China/English/Republican/Revolution

Sun Yat-sen: If only a Revolution -were- like a dinner party

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

Livebloging 1911

Someone once said “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

That is a pretty radical statement. Also a somewhat analytical one. Very few have ever accused Sun Yat-sen, father of the 1911 Revolution of being either a radical or overly analytical. He was however, great at dinner parties. On March 19th he was not in Canton, where the April uprising would be happening, nor in Hong Kong, where it was mostly being planned. He was in Vancouver, 1 talking to audiences of Overseas Chinese. He raised $7,000 HK, which was the largest total raised for the April uprising anywhere in the world. If Huang Xing was the organizer of the revolution Sun was the publicist and fund-raiser. Having been abducted in London in 1896 and briefly imprisoned in the Chinese legation made him by far the best-known Chinese revolutionary overseas, and his tireless fund-raising and organizing in Southeast Asia, North America, Japan and elsewhere made him the best known spokesman for the overthrow of the Qing and establishment of a Republic. So although he played a pretty limited role in the actual 1911 revolution it is worth thinking about him for a bit. They also serve who only wrangle invitations to banquets and give speeches.

Although the bulk of his uprisings were failures, a revolution costs a lot of money, and while giving speeches all over the world on the Overseas Chinese rubber chicken circuit must have been a drag he kept at it, and had a rare ability to convince everyone from wealthy Cantonese merchants to railroad laborers to part with their cash.  Sun’s personal ability to persuade people to support the cause was a major asset, even if it was not clear what all these resources, both money and recruits, were best used for. So today is a fine day to remember Sun Yat-sen, who among his many other achievements, was the after-dinner speaker who financed the 1911 Revolution.

  1. Or somewhere in Canada. The nianpu I have is not very detailed, but in was in Vancouver about the 19th.  ↩

1970s/General/Korea-Japan/Science / Technology/US-Korea

Nuclear Power in Korea / Domestic and International

Posted on by John P. DiMoia / 2 Comments

Just a quick note, even as the Japan situation continues to unfold, to recall that (1) the current ROK government wants to prioritize nuclear exports in the coming years; and that (2) the domestic industry provides a significant portion of the nation’s energy (28 plants either in operation or under construction).

At this point, it would be unfair to make any sweeping generalizations or loose analogies with the Fukushima site, but it is not unfair to recognize similar types of actors (General Electric) and contractors dating to the late 1970’s, in roughly the same part of the world, and to ask some hard questions about those plants and their lifespans.

More on this later, but I have been surprised (although I suppose I should not be) about the press coverage from Japan, much of which has focused on TEPCO, and very little of it looking at the reactor origins and hardware.

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