China/Web Sites and Resources

Blasts from the Past

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

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

China/China-U.S./English/Web Sites and Resources

Review of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 2 Comments

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.

Academia/Books and Articles/English/General/Historiography/Japan/Translation/明治

Remembering Meiji: Translations

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 2 Comments

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

  1. Keene, in footnotes, says that the date of this statement “is not clear” but doesn’t explicitly remind the reader that Ito’s been dead for three years.  ↩

  2. That’s what “astute” means: agrees with me  ↩

  3. At some point, when I have more time, I want to go back to Japanese newspapers of the time.  ↩

Blogs and Carnivals/China/Current Events/Maoist era (1949-1976)

Freedom of speech in China

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 22 Comments

FreeSpeechwar

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.

  1. Are Chinese media people really this ignorant of the western press or is he just lying? ↩

  2. You get some of this everywhere, of course. Not that I’m bitter ↩

Colonial/Cultural/English/Korea/Korea-Japan/Seoul/Web Sites

Colonial Period School Architectural Archive

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 0 Comment

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:

일제시기 학교건축도면 컬렉션

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:

icons.jpg

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:

iphoto.jpg

Blogs and Carnivals/China

Look at this blog

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 1 Comment

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

Touchgraph-1

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.

HTML graph

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.

  1. It’s not just who links to who, but is based on mutual references ↩

Academia/Books and Articles/Historiography/Japan/Pedagogy/Teaching/明治

Studying Keene’s Emperor Meiji

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 8 Comments

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

Continue reading →

  1. 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.  ↩

  2. 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.  ↩

China/Maoist era (1949-1976)

Battle of Qufu

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 2 Comments

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.

  1. in Esherick et al eds. The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History Stanford 2006. ↩

English/Historiography/Japan/Science and Technology/US-Japan

A New Theory of Japanese History: Robots

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 2 Comments

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:
Continue reading →

China/Gender/Hong Kong

Old folks at home

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 2 Comments

Guy with bird. Nanjing

Man with bird in Nanjing

Or actually old folks out on the street. I knew that lots of old Chinese people kept birds, and that taking birds for a walk was a popular thing for old men to do early in the morning. But where is the scholarship on Chinese bird-keeping culture? Well, I found some, a study by Ho-hon Leung1Leung did a survey of Hong Kong bird keepers (all over 50, almost all male, most born on the mainland). Most of them lived with their children, who they claimed took good care of them, and most were married. So they are well taken care of, but seem to get little satisfaction out of home life.

This is where birds come in. They need to be raised and trained to sing, and there is a element of expertise here, so you can feel proud of your accomplishment. You can’t do that with dogs and cats, which in any case take up too much room. Plus, birds make it easy to meet people, especially other old men, since you all need to go out and walk your birds and of course talk to them and to the other birdmen. I suppose I could have guessed a lot of this, but I do find it interesting that birds are the chosen pet for this form of male bonding. I know at least in Meiji Japan dog-keeping was a very clear sign that one was a modernizer, and I wonder if anyone has seen anything the evolution of Chinese pet culture.

  1. Ho-Hon Leung “The Lives of Elderly Bird-keepers: A Case Study of Hong Kong” in Chi, et al eds. Elderly Chinese in Pacific Rim Countries: Social Support and Integration. Hong Kong University Press 2001 There is a lot of interesting stuff in it, although it is more social science than a cultural studies approach  ↩

China/Current Events/Tibet

Learning about Tibet IV

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

Lots of stuff out there on Tibet. Maybe most interesting to me is the blog of 江达三, a 72 year old former PLA flyer who spent time in Tibet and is now blogging about the events there. China Digital Times translated one of his posts on the time in the 50’s when they rounded up a bunch for Tibetan troublemakers and demonstrated airpower to them by having planes fly over and blow up some drums of gasoline and drop a few bombs

This frightened “the spectators” like they’d never been frightened before, particularly the superstitious lammas and living Buddhas, who’d never seen planes before and, out of fear and respect, referred to the bombers as “spirit eagles” (神鹰; note: this is the Chinese phrase for condor, the birds involved in Tibetan sky burials). At that point they really believed the PLA was “Heaven’s Army” (天兵天将) A few people couldn’t take it and fainted, some pissed in their pants, and others shouted slogans at the top of their voice: “Long live the Communist Party! Long live Chairman Mao!” A truly strange and ugly scene.

That’s how to do shock and awe. One thing I found interesting is how he, like a lot of other Chinese commenters, links Old Tibet to feudalism. He compares it to Taiwan, of course, as another version of split-ism, and he hates the worthless Dali Lama and his clique 达赖集团又疯狂地唆使顽固不化藏独份子. Unlike Taiwan, however, Tibet is easier to link to Feudalism, and given the CIA connection in the 50’s, to Imperialism. It is easy to say that China wants to keep Tibet because of “Nationalism” but I think it helps a bit to think about what aspects of Chinese nationalism. If you learned in school the old May Fourth catechism that China was weakened in the 20th century by the evils of Warlordism, Feudalism, and Imperialism it is easier to see these things in Tibet. Before being “liberated” Tibet really was a theocracy, and the CIA really was involved there. If you want to fight the evil forces you found in your schoolbooks, Tibet is the place to see them. It’s a bit harder to call Taiwan feudal.

Some of the methods for fixing problems are old too. Jiang is big on the railway to Tibet as an important strategic link that will make it easier to control the place. (It’s railway imperialism!)

English/General/Historiography/Korea/Korea-Japan/Law/Nationalism

Korean War Criminals in the Movement to “Set History Straight”

Posted on by sayaka / 2 Comments

Frog in a Well welcomes a guest posting from Sayaka Chatani on the issue of Korean War Criminals and the difficulty Korean historians have found in addressing them in modern Korean historiography. Sayaka is a PhD student in the History Department of Columbia University. Her research interests are in the transnational history of early to mid-twentieth century East Asia, mainly focusing on the colonization and decolonization of Korea and Taiwan.

Introduction

Colonial legacies are one of the most hotly debated political issues in South Korea. The phrase “legacies of Japanese imperialism (ilche chanjae)” is ubiquitous in newspapers and in bookstores, and the topic not only triggers controversies among academics, but inspires social movements, and leads the government to adopt policies to resolve the remnant problems.

Among the many controversies surrounding the history of Japan’s colonial rule in Korea, much attention has centered on the question of collaborators. Many Korean historians argue that former pro-Japanese collaborators subsequently prevented Korea’s unification and brought about significant harm to South Korean society. They see punishing them as a prerequisite to restoring a healthy society.1 In the context of ‘setting history straight,’ The South Korean government has confiscated the property of descendants of nine collaborators.2 A presidential fact-finding panel has finished its second investigation to identify the names of pro-Japanese collaborators, and continues working on a third investigation.3

In contrast to their excitement over the issue of collaborators, historians have only given very limited attention and analysis to the issue of Korean war criminals despite the significant number of Koreans put on trial and executed as Japanese prison guards. When a few Japanese and Korean historians do face the issue, they tend to simplify the complex experiences of Korean war criminals to fit the dominant minjung discourse that blames a distinct group of collaborators for betraying the majority of Korean people. The fact that Korean war criminals were both victims and victimizers makes it difficult for nationalist historians to openly discuss the issue.

Continue reading →

  1. For example, Ahn Byung-ook, “The Significance of Settling the Past in Modern Korean History,” Korea Journal, Autumn 2002, pp.7-17, and Chung Youn-tae, “Refracted Modernity and the Issue of Pro-Japanese Collaborators in Korea,” Korea Journal, Autumn 2002, pp.18-59  ↩

  2. New York Times, “World Briefing, Asia: South Korea: Crackdown On Collaborators” May 3rd 2007.  ↩

  3. The Korea Times, “202 Pro-Japanese Collaborators Disclosed.” September 17, 2007  ↩

Academia/Christianity/English/Korea

檀紀 Conversion Dashboard Widget 1.0

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 0 Comment

Here at 우물 안 개구리 we are delighted today to bring you an amazing new tool that will revolutionize your life. Well, at least if you are reading Korean texts or newspapers which put all the dates in 檀紀 years. And you are so mathematically challenged you can’t take a number and subtract 2333 in your head. And you haven’t bothered to memorize the 檀紀 years for the period you are interested in. And you have a Mac with OS X installed. And you can’t be bothered to do the calculation on paper.

Ok, maybe it won’t revolutionize your life, and the potential beneficiaries of this wonderful new product may not earn me a whole lot of karma, but I’m happy to announce the results of 1.5 hours of fiddling with the “Dashcode” developer’s application on a slow Friday night:

The New Frog in a Well 檀紀 Dashboard Widget

convertyear.gif

It is a thoroughly amateurish job, but if you install this widget, enter the 檀紀 year and press return, it should give you the year in a more familiar form.

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