China Beat has a nice post up linking to some teaching resources. Although they list some really good resources that you should all go look at they leave out the the best part of the Asia Society page, which is AsiaFood. Besides being a good on-line cookbook it lets you search based on what ingredients you happen to have on hand and recommends things.
Academia/bibliography/Books and Articles/Diaspora/English/General/Japan/Science and Technology/US-Japan/明治
Wonders of Modern Life
I’m pleased to announce the publication by Shinsensha of the translated version of Japanese Diasporas, ｼﾞｬﾊﾟﾆｰｽﾞﾃﾞｲｱｽﾎﾟﾗ, 足立伸子 （編著), including my article “一八八五～九四年の移住者への訓示.” 1 I learned, in the process of writing this post, that my article (in the English language edition) is actually cited and used correctly on the Wikipedia Japanese Diaspora page: “The Japanese Government was keen on keeping Japanese emigrants well-mannered while abroad in order to show the West that Japan was a dignified society, worthy of respect.” I may have to revise my opinion of wikipedia, after all.
In other news, Manan Ahmed sent me this Japanese Robot video, and while watching it I was struck by the realization that the early modern Japanese robots are based on a much older Japanese technology: Bunraku puppets. In this video, for example, you can see a demonstration of how the facial features are manipulated.
Professional Question: Is the translation listed as a separate publication on the c.v.? If so, do you note that it is a translation of an earlier publication? If not, do you just list it under the original publication: “published in translation as….”? ↩
Martial Arts and the Korean Colonial Police in 1938
The relationship between Korean martial arts and Japanese martial arts is usually a touchy one. This is because, like the history of so many other things in modern Korea, it is susceptible to what I like to call the “Colonial Death Touch.”
The Colonial Death Touch works like this. Any practice which can be demonstrated to have its origins in the Japanese colonial period, was reborn during the colonial period partly out of inspiration or imitation of some Japanese practice, or was significantly influenced by similar Japanese practices is ruled to be inauthentic. Inauthentic things, of course, cannot be authentically Korean, and thus risk, at the very least, losing its place in the national cultural or historical repository. At most, it can destroy any popularity such practices might enjoy.
The Colonial Death Touch is sometimes delivered by, for example, Japanese nationalists who want to anger their Korean neighbors. However, it is also often used domestically. For example, practitioners of Korean martial art X might claim that they are superior to martial art Y because they are “pure” Korean while martial art Y is soiled by its evil Japanese roots. I’m sure many readers familiar with Korean martial arts can think of some examples of this.
These sorts of exchanges, whoever their participants might be, are silly childish games of nationalist mudslinging. They depend on a simplistic idea of authenticity, a laughable faith in cultural uniqueness, and a conception of the colonial period as cultural and economic black hole out of which only the bright shining light of Korean national resistance can possibly shine.
One martial art that became popular during the colonial period which remained popular in the postwar period is 검도(劍道, J: Kendō) or swordsmanship. In recent years, perhaps partly due to the ever present threat of the colonial death touch, the martial art has undergone some degree of “Koreanization” while other innovations in technique, uniforms, etc. probably are more simply attributable to the evolution of all such arts across time.
Reaching back to the time of liberation in 1945, however, I did find it remarkable that 검도 seemed to remain particularly popular among the Korean police. Like the popularity of Kendo among the Japanese police down to this present day, Korean police publications from the late 1940s and 1950s show pictures of 검도 practitioners gathered in huge numbers. This is somewhat surprising since the sword of the police in the colonial period was one extremely hated symbol that often gets mentioned in anti-police newspaper articles. The post-Liberation police stopped carrying the sword after a reform of November 8, 1945 and replaced it with a police stick. Admittedly, one could argue that the symbolic weight of a sword carried is different from that of the bamboo 죽도(竹刀 J: Shinai) used by 검도 practitioners, but I find the resilience of 검도 to be impressive and admirable all the same. Others, however, might point to this as yet another expression of the “pro-Japanese” tendencies of the police.
It is not surprising to learn that many Korean police during the colonial period were also working hard at various martial arts. In a 1938 Japanese imperial government report on the colonial police, there is an interesting table listing the number of Japanese and Korean police holding various degrees of skill in three martial arts: Judo (유도), Kendo (검도), and Kyudo (궁도, Japanese archery).1 The degrees are listed by dan beginning with shodan (in some martial arts this is often now called the first degree “black belt”). Below are the number of police holding first degree or higher in the three martial arts for 1938:
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日帝下 戰時體制期 政策史料叢書 第67卷 警察과 思想統制 4(昭和13年 警務要覽 外) p.45 (40 in original report) ↩
East Meets West
Yang Liu , a Beijing artist trained in Germany, comments in a series of banners on the differences between Chinese and German culture. Ms. Yang’s Website is here: http://www.yangliudesign.com/
The German is in blue, on the left, the Chinese in red, on the right, continued beyond the “more” marker!
China-Japan/Current/Recent Events/General/Historiography/Japan/Korea-Japan/Memory/Nationalism/Okinawa/War/昭和
How do you say “Fast of the First Born” in Japanese?
I was thinking about whether to even attempt a contribution to the latest symposium on the role of historical animosities — and their appeasement — in present political tensions when a holiday happened: Passover, the Jewish celebration of the Exodus from Egypt. On the first evening, we celebrate the Seder — literally “order” — a process of remembrance and celebration. But there are elements of sadness: in the midst of telling the story, we spill wine from our cups in honor of the plague-suffering of the Egyptians. Before the Seder even begins, first-born Jews refrain from eating and drinking from sunrise, in remembrance of the first-born Egyptians slain in the final plague. It’s an odd practice, historically, nearly unprecedented: a deliberate rehumanization of “the enemy” enshrined at the heart of what is, arguably, the most centrally Jewish celebration of the ritual year.
I’m not entirely sure that it helps, since there never was an historical reconiciliation between the ancient Israelites and the Pharonic Egyptians.1 But I think it is an important “Zeroth” condition to add to Valérie Rosoux’s Four Conditions:
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Then there’s the question of the historicity of the biblical narrative…. ↩
The Korean National Archives
I just came back from a day at the Korean National Archives headquarters in Taejŏn (Daejeon) and thought I would share some details of the experience in case someone comes across this posting who will be making the trip down there at some point in the future. I also plan to get around to making a detailed entry on the East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki. Read on for the meat.
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Blasts from the Past
If you have not seen it already, UCSD has put a lot of reviews of classic works on Chinese history on-line. They look to me like the type of things grad students in a reading circle for their comps would be passing around, which makes them handy if you are studying for yours or if you just want to know more about Chinese history. They are more useful that reviews from journals, particularly for the older books, as they tend to try and figure how how valuable some of these things are given developments in scholarship since they were written.
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/chinesehistory/pgp/index.html
Review of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas
I just found the wonderful open access journal Museum Anthropology Review. There are a few reviews available there that will be of interest to Frog readers.
See for example this review of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas.
It looks like the museum raises some interesting questions about the material objects on display, for example:
As you begin a clockwise tour of the room, the introduction on the wall asks, “When Does an Object Become an Artifact?,” beginning a passage that is unfortunately obscured by the very artifacts that it goes on to describe. For those who succeed in reading between the legs of a wooden stool, however, a series of questions challenge their understanding of everyday objects: “Why are certain objects selected and labeled as meaningful? What do the objects say about their owners, their abandoners, their salvagers? Do they merely fulfill a useful function or do they also contain our longings, our identities, our imagination?” These rhetorical questions linger in viewers’ minds as they begin their round.
Remembering Meiji: Translations
Keene includes several extended reminiscences of Meiji published immediately after his death. Unfortunately, some are included in the original French (pp. 707 and 709). Many thanks to Nathanael Robinson, who generously and meticulously translated these from the 19c formal French. I’ve appended these to the chapter guide for future reference.
Ito Hirobumi:
Whatever might be the causes which helped Japan in its progress, and whatever part we might have had in its success over the years, all that is insignificant when compared with what the country needs from his majesty, the emperor. The imperial will has always been the light that guides the nation. Whatever could be the contributions of those, like myself, who are trying to help his enlightened government, it would have been impossible to obtain such remarkable results had it not been for his great, wise and progressive support that is always behind every new reform.
Suematsu Kencho:
His Majesty provides the steadiest attention to each area of the affairs of the state. Every day, from the early morning till the late hours, he works with his cabinet on public affairs. He knows what matters concern each department, above all that which affects the army and navy. . . . Sometimes he astonishes [us] with his knowledge of events among his people. He takes a keen interest in everything that happens in the major countries of the world, his only desire being to learn from other nations.
The comment of the French editorialist was astute:
The emperor was able, at certain times, to influence the policy of his ministers, because his ability to act and his intelligence were not in doubt. But his main work, which he achieved with remarkable wisdom, was to be the head of state, the living symbol of national life and the public interest . . . . The great kings are not those who, like Philip II, want to manage the affairs of state by themselves, but those who, having placed their trust in great ministers, support them with all the prestige of the monarchy.
Reporter for The Journal (G. de Banzemont)
Mutsu-hito was not only one of the most celebrated emperors of Japan, but also one of the greatest monarchs of the modern world. One need only recall the anguish that gripped the Japanese nation at the first news of the sovereign’s illness. Over several days, the tearful crowd marched, without concern for the torrid heat, under the windows of the imperial palace. On their knees, their foreheads covered in dust, in a common voice, they pleaded with the gods. And as soon as a dull lamp, illuminating the room of the deceased, announced that the monarch passed away in agony, there came the most violent explosion of sorrow that can be imagined.
Ito’s comment seems somewhat noncommittal — “support” and “guides” aren’t specific — but emphasizes the “progressive” modernizing elements of the regime.1 Suematsu, on the other hand, who served as an ambassador and Home minister, is effusive and clear. The “astute” French editorialist presents what could well be a summary of Keene’s own views.2 de Banzemont’s narrative is echoed, but not quite confirmed, by Japanese sources Keene cites, and seems a bit excessive.3
Freedom of speech in China
Danwei has some links on the current war over free speech in China. The whole thing was sparked by an April 3 editorial in Southern Metropolis Daily. The author, Chang Ping, was critical of some of the Chinese responses to western media coverage of Tibet. I have not read every single post at Anti-CNN, but the main issue that was making people angry was that some media outlets were publishing pictures of Tibetans being arrested in Nepal and claiming that they were pictures of what was happening in Tibet.
<>According to information compiled by netizens, certain media in countries such as Germany, United States, United Kingdom and India made clear factual errors in their reporting. From the viewpoint of journalistic professionalism, these errors were very wrong, even deliberately misleading. Although some media outlets have issued apologies and corrections, the damage from the inaccurate news was already done and the Chinese people find it hard to forgive. Like any kind of fake news, the damage is first and foremost on the public trust in the media themselves, because ten thousand truths cannot undo one lie. If in the reporting of the incident (as well as other major incidents), the Chinese media are not allowed to report freely and the overseas media are suspect, then where is the truth going to come from?
I was not too surprised by this mix-up, nor by the fact that the Western media did not make a big deal about the correction. Hey, it’s some Asian cops, who really cares if they are Chinese or not. More to the point, CNN would probably claim that the basic story (unrest in Tibet violently suppressed by Chinese security) was correct, so no harm no foul. Even the liberal Chang Ping however would not buy that. He goes from an “error” to “deliberately misleading” in just one sentence. Then it becomes “fake news” which “the Chinese people find hard to forgive.” Not quite Milton on free speech. Still, Chang Ping was to some extent criticizing Chinese nationalist criticism of the West, and this set off a firestorm, triggered in part by an editorial in Beijing Evening News
I took a look at the so-called speech of this Southern Metropolis Chang Ping. I noticed immediately that this individual had brought “free speech” to an appalling or even “terrifying” degree. The heart of the matter for which he was criticized was this: “Free speech intrinsically includes the freedom of mistaken speech and particularly the freedom to question authority. More frightening than rumors is the removal of free speech.” And he openly held this up as a universal value. According to his logic, “free speech” means that you can muddy the truth, fabricate facts, indiscriminately distort history, speak irresponsibly, “freely” rumor-monger, “freely” smear, “freely” toss about labels. Just like the western media’s hysterical performance on the issue of China’s Tıbet. Was that free speech? That was violent speech. I have never seen the western media enjoy that kind of freedom of speech in their own country, because that would be an infringement on the rights of others, and it would trample social justice and betray fundamental ethical principles.1 If this is the “universal value” that Southern Metropolis Chang Ping wants to protect, then honor is the price he pays in return.
There are lots of more temperate voices out there, but the one I found most interesting was 十年砍柴 who compares the whole thing to the Evening Chats at Yanshan incident during the Cultural Revolution. A number of his comments pick up on this theme 大家快跑,文革又来了! I actually think this is a pretty good point. One problem with the Deng years was that that it was not certain what the sacred cows of the New China were. It is not news that nationalism quickly became one of them, and that the Olympics and Tibet are currently flashpoints for Chinese nationalism. What I find interesting is how the old CR political culture is coming back. Orthodoxy as the key political value.2 Battles in the newspapers over words that can be read as anti-Mao/anti-China. Key essays that will end up in a future Modern China class. The state is not actively doing much about these cases, but what I would call New Red Guards are taking (or at least talking about) direct action. Apparently the Maoist political culture is proving to be more resilient than one would have hoped.
Colonial Period School Architectural Archive
Thanks to a posting at The Marmot’s Hole I learned about a project being undertaken by the National Archives to display a variety of information, archival documents, and media about school architecture during the colonial period. The project home page can be found here:
You can also read more about the 3D materials being put up related to Keijo Imperial University (경성제국대학). Whether in movies like “Radio Days,” commercials with people in colonial-period attire, or projects like this, I think there is a healthy trend of starting to reclaim the colonial period as part of Korean history rather than simply a black hole from which it emerged reborn.
On the technical side it was remarkable to discover that the whole site seems to work fine on non-IE browsers and on a Mac. I can only hope this is also a new trend since full operability with non-IE browsers is almost non-existant in Korea. In fact, one can see the Macintosh imprint on the website itself. Someone who has more time on their hands than I might want to send the project an email and let them know their web designers engaged in a little bit of artistic theft as they nabbed three Macintosh OS icons for their buttons:
Here you can see the icons for three Apple applications that come with every new computer: iMovie, iChat, and iPhoto. As Mac users may recognize, the designers decided to make a few changes to the iPhoto icon, perhaps because the palm tree in the background didn’t fit the website’s theme. Compare to the original here:
Look at this blog
Sorry, no Chinese history content here. I stumbled across a couple of cool blog tools and thought I would try them out. One of them is Touch Graph
The applet generates the image above, which shows where this blog fits in the general blogosphere.1 Apparently we are somewhere between the China blogs and the history blogs, which sounds about right.
This image is generated by http://www.forreststevens.com/htmlgraph/ and shows the link structure of the blog. If I were more tech-savvy I could probably learn something from this, but as it is it is a pretty picture and it is cool to watch it generate itself.
It’s not just who links to who, but is based on mutual references ↩
Studying Keene’s Emperor Meiji
Much of my Meiji Japan course is taken up with Donald Keene’s Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his World, 1852-1912. It’s been a pretty good experience, but I probably won’t do it again. I’ve enjoyed reading it1 and my students do seem to be getting a great deal out of it, but it is too long and really fails to answer some of its own critical questions. My students are in the process of writing about it now, and I thought it was time to share some of my own reactions.
As part of the reading process, I created a page of short chapter highlights: one of Keene’s quirks is that the book’s sixty-three chapters are neither titled nor listed in a table of contents. The book is arranged almost entirely chronologically, so it’s not too hard to find what you’re looking for if you know when it is, and it has an index (with definitions of Japanese language terms, so it doubles as a glossary), but it still seems deliberately perverse — or perhaps novelistic — to have such fine-grained divisions without explanation.2
I read through it last year along with my directed study students, but I was doing the directed study on top of a four-course, four-prep semester, so it was a perfunctory read. ↩
Another moment of perverse traditionalism comes from the pages of untranslated French on p. 707 recording thoughts on Meiji’s reign by the late Itō Hirobumi, Suematsu Kenchō and an “astute” French journalist and p. 709 recording “the sorrow of the Japanese people.” I will add translations of those to the summary page when I have them. ↩
Battle of Qufu
I am somewhat fond of public history despite knowing nothing about it. So, one of the things I am assigning to my Modern China students is Dahpon David Ho‘s “To Protect and Preserve: Resisting the Destroy the Four Olds Campaign, 1966-1967”1 Ho looks at the Cultural revolution history of the Confucius Temple Qufu, Shandong. I’m not sure if anyone knows if Confucius actually lived there, but it has been the home of his descendants the Kongs and a central part of the Confucian cult throughout the imperial period. Thus it would be a place that the Red Guards would very much have wanted to destroy. They were not able to do so because the place was ably defended by locals, and why and how they did it is the topic of Ho’s essay.
One thing that Ho makes pretty clear is that lots of people thought destroying cultural relics was wrong from the get-go. Zhou Enlai gets a lot of credit here but there were plenty of others, and most of them used revolutionary rhetoric to defend these relics, confiscating things and then claiming that destroying them would be destroying state property, closing museums and temples to the public or, as in the case of three memorial steles for Jesuit missionaries, having the Red Guards help bury them. One could also praise the workmanship of ancient peasant craftsmen, or point out that the Japanese had also tried to destroy these relics. Calling something “old” is just one way of attaching history to an object, and of course there are others.
In the case of Qufu, Ho shows that local pride was a major factor. Qufu county secretary Li Xiu had begun organizing supporters even before the Red Guards arrived. He claimed later that he felt he was “defending our country’s cultural relics.” Local youth had smashed a lot of “four olds” but they had ignored the Confucian sites, which were “built with the blood and sweat of countless generations of laboring masses.” Chairman Mao had toured the site in 1952, and while he had not said anything nice about it (as he had at other sights) he had not called for its destruction either. It was not until August of 1966 when the sites were attacked by students from Qufu Normal Institute (mostly not local people). They were driven back by locals, but they soon began to find allies among students in Beijing. Eventually a fair amount of damage was done, but the buildings themselves were preserved as a reminder of the “Kong family landlords.”
What I found most interesting about the article is how spot-on it shows the Anti-Four Olds campaign to have been. A lot of Western accounts treat it as a silly/stupid thing that may have caused a lot of destruction but had little “real” importance. Actually, there seem to have been few signs of “feudal” society that meant more to those destroying them and those protecting them than relics. Ken Ling, one of the Red Guards was moved by the willingness of (mostly old) people to risk their lives to defend these relics. “The stubbornness of these people angered me, but it also moved me.” And, one presumes, made him think.
in Esherick et al eds. The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History Stanford 2006. ↩
A New Theory of Japanese History: Robots
At No Fear of the Future, Jess Nevins has a new theory of modern Japanese history [via]:
It’s clear, isn’t it? When Japan makes a new robot, a white person steals it, and bad things happen to Japan. Japan, beware the white man! He will steal your best stuff and ruin your country!
Implausible? Well, examine the evidence:
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