Archaeology/China/English/General

For the want of a Monsoon

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 3 Comments

According to Yahoo Asia Nature will be publishing an article tomorrow that claims that climate change was the cause of the fall of the Tang dynasty. A team of German scientists looked at core samples from Guangdong and determined that the summer monsoon was very weak from about 700 to 900, thus explaining the fall of the Tang in 907.

All I have read is the Yahoo summary, not the actual article. I assume Nature published it because the team did something neat about finding data on ancient climate. If the authors actually claim to be explaining the fall of the Tang, however, this strikes me as lousy history. For one thing, 700 to 900 is a long time, stretching well into the middle Tang, and thus could not really explain the fall of the Tang. More importantly, Guangdong, and I would guess even Jiangnan were pretty insignificant to the Tang. The agricultural heartland was still the Yellow River plain, and the monsoon would seem to have little to do with agriculture there.

Unless I am missing something this seems to be a case of someone finding out something really interesting and then making wild historical claims from it.

Historiography/Korea/Korean War/North Korea/Politics/Postwar

Revisionism (History news round up I)

Posted on by Owen / 2 Comments

It’s been a bit quiet around here lately, but hopefully that will improve with the new year. To kick things off this year I thought I’d gather together the various thoughts and abandoned posts that have been knocking around for the last few months and do a series rounding up recent history news that has caught my attention.

There was much talk of ‘revisionism’ in Korea a couple of months ago. It’s a word that fascinates me purely because its meaning is so completely dependent on context. First President Roh Moo-hyun was accused of this crime for referring to the Korean war as a civil war during a visit to Cambodia. This is significant for Roh’s rightwing detractors because it appears to reflect the ‘progressive’ view of the Korean war that owes much to Bruce Cumings’ masterwork, The Origins of the Korean War. So, setting aside for the moment the fact that it would be perfectly feasible to call the war a civil war (ie two parts of a country going to war against one another), Roh’s statement was revisionist in the sense that it appeared to ‘revise’ the standard South Korean government position that the Korean War was simply a war of aggression initiated by Stalin. As the Chosun Ilbo put it in its usual blunt style:

“The Korean civil war” is a term coined to glorify the invasion by North Korea. It does not appear in our elementary, middle and high school textbooks. Yet it comes out of the mouth of the president, who symbolizes the legitimacy of the republic, and who doesn’t mean anything by it.

After Roh, his candidate for Unification Minister, Lee Jae-young joined in, in his confirmation hearing, apparently causing general apoplexy among GNP politicians.

Irrespective of which side one agrees with in this dispute,* what we learn from this is that in the specific context of South Korean society, the term revisionism (수정주의 修正主義) means questioning the orthodox view of history created and maintained by successive rightwing governments in the postwar decades. But as Wikipedia shows rather nicely, revisionism means many other things elsewhere. In the UK for example, it has been used to refer to the (now orthodox) historical view that attempted to overthrow Christopher Hill’s earlier Marxist interpretation of the English Revolution. In the Soviet Union, it was constantly used as a term of abuse for anyone straying from the orthodox Marxist-Leninist line (ie the ideology of the Soviet regime), while in Maoist China it became a term of abuse for the Soviets under Krushchev. Most notoriously, the term revisionism is used to refer to people like David Irving (recently out of an Austrian jail cell) who attempt to deny or minimise the Holocaust. In other words, just about anyone can be a revisionist.

So, my advice is that any time you need an all-purpose but suitably intellectual-sounding piece of invective with which to assail your opponent, calling them a revisionist will probably fit the job. Unless of course you have something better up your sleeve.

*My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that most people outside of Korea would rightly view the position of the South Korean right as somewhat absurd – there was no doubt an element of civil war in the Korean War, whatever way you look at it. On the other hand, I don’t agree either with the view that the war was simply some sort of ‘revolutionary civil war’ in which the imperialists interfered to prevent the unification of the Korean people under a glorious socialist government, as the DPRK and its supporters in the South would like to paint it. The Korean War seems to show that wars can be both civil and international (perhaps they often are?); can have elements of social war and elements of senseless fratricidal bloodshed; can be both inter-imperialist wars for territory and influence and personal squabbles among rival aspirants to the leadership of a country.

On that rather depressing note…
여러분 새해 복 많이 받으세요!

Books/China/Sino-Japanese Wars

Democracy Quote of the Day

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 6 Comments

“We Communists always oppose a one-party dictatorship, and don’t approve of the Nationalists having a one-party dictatorship. The CCP certainly doesn’t have a program to monopolise government because one party can only rule in its own interests and won’t act according to the Will of the People. Moreover, it goes against democratic politics.” Deng Xiaoping, 16th March 1941

Quoted in David S. G. Goodman Social and Political Change in Revolutionary China: The Taihang Base Area in the War of Resistance to Japan, 1937-1945 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, ML, 2000, p61. Cited as in Deng Xiaoping “Guanyu chengli JinJiYu bianqu linshi canyihui de tiyi” in Balujun zongbu zai Matian Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1990, p29.

Blogs and Carnivals/China/English/General/Japan

The Wall Is Great!

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 2 Comments

One of these days we’re all going to get tired of Great Wall metaphors for China…. I hope. For now, it’s being over-visited by tourists and stripped for raw materials.

I recently discovered the China Blog Carnival, which gave me some hope for the Asian blogosphere, but it’s listed at blogcarnival.com as both “ongoing” and “discontinued”….

It’s nice to see a historian of China honored with a Kluge Prize: Yu Ying-shih’s prize acceptance speech gives you some idea of his breadth and depth. It’s particularly interesting, in this absurd age of cultural essentialism, to see him integrating the indigenous tradition of Tao with democracy promotion.

Like “democracy,” “human rights” as a term is linguistically specific to the West and nonexistent in traditional Confucian discourse. However, if we agree that the concept of “human rights” as defined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of 1948 is predicated on the double recognition of a common humanity and human dignity, then we are also justified to speak of a Confucian idea of “human rights” without the Western terminology. Recognition of a common humanity and respect for human dignity are both clearly articulated in the Analects, Mencius and other early texts. It is remarkable that by the first century C.E. at the latest, the Confucian notion of human dignity was openly referred to in imperial decrees as sufficient grounds for the prohibition of the sale or killing of slaves. Both imperial decrees, dated 9 and 35 C.E., respectively, cited the same famous Confucian dictum: “Of all living things produced by Heaven and Earth, the human person is the noblest.” Slavery as an institution was never accepted by Confucianism as legitimate. It was this Confucian humanism that predisposed late Ch’ing Confucians to be so readily appreciative of the Western theory and practice of human rights.

I still have some trouble reconciling Humanism with the hierarchical monarchism of Confucius, myself. Andrew Meyer notes the growth of indigenous Christian sects in China, especially their syncretic and rather traditional nature, but concludes that their Christianity is a meaningful measure of something interesting going on in rural society.

China’s interest in it’s own history remains a subject of great debate. Chinese Wikipedia will naturally be a site of contention, and the history of great powers is a natural sell. Rising prosperity in Asia may not have directly contributed to the almost US$20M price tag for a porcelain bowl, but it’s certainly going to play a role in the future.

Chang/Halliday’s Mao biography is spawning zombie errors.

Finally, some historical testimony: if you succeeded in bribing officials to overlook your crimes, would you commemorate the event in bronze? And some oral history testimonies, from an American who experienced Maoism and elderly Chinese women.

Academia/China-Japan/English/General/Historiography/Japan/Museums/Nationalism/Occupation/War

Grading Finished; Blogging Resumes

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

She really has no conviction to her writing. It seemed merely argumentative and she was just trying to prove her points through facts. That’s alright to me but why write in the first place then if you don’t have any real excitement to it? I think that she does not make any real strong opinions, but rather forms opinions based on the excerpts from her source material.

Yes, this is my students’ writing. Apparently we need more passion in our scholarship, and less evidence. And the semicolon in the first sentence of the following takes normal empty waffling to a whole new transcendant level:

Society is based on differences and similarities; this is what makes the past history unique. Throughout history many people depict these differences. Some empires may be fighters while others are communicators. Domination, learning, and success are what set these apart from each other and what joins them together. Asian and Roman empires built strong states, and dominant leaders that rose up to defind the country and people. Civilization in the early ages shaped society to what it is today with its culture, trade, and power.

Seriously, though, there’s been lots of interesting stuff coming across my desk that I didn’t have to grade recently. Just today, PMJS informed me that the folks at Bowdoin, led by Tom Conlan, have made the Heiji Monogatari Emaki available, in the same lovely detail and interactive utility as the Mongol Invasion Scrolls they published last year. Just in time for my Early Japan class next semester!

For those of you who didn’t get enough Pearl Harbor stuff earlier in the month, here’s some belated Pearl Harbor anniversary blogging:

Also via Eric Muller, an article about the Densho Project, an innovative oral history and archive centered on the WWII evacuation and detention. The glossary and discussion of terminology and euphemism is worth the price of admission (It’s free; that’s an expression) alone.

On the other end of that war, more debates about atomic bombs, this time featuring Howard Zinn (and Gar Alperovitz) v. D. M. Giangreco. Also, details about the MacArthur-Hirohito meeting.

There may be some historiographical hope in the news, though: Chinese and Japanese historians meeting, and making progress, and the museum at Yasukuni Shrine altering its presentation slightly in the direction of balance and realism. However, as if the Japanese school system didn’t have enough problems, now they’re responsible for patriotism.

China/Classics/English/General

Naughty or Nice?

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 1 Comment

As it is time to think about the good or bad behavior of children, I have been wondering why so many Chinese sage-kings had rotten kids. Lewis points out that one reason for this is that the rotten kids are actually just like their fathers in that both are those odd, extraordinary people who are beyond education. Lewis cites Huainanzi

There are those whose persons are correct and natures good, who in firm resolve perfect their excellence, who in righteous indignation carry out their duty, who by nature are open to persuasion and without study accord with the way. Such are Yao, Shun, and King Wen There are those who sink into drunkeness and licentiousness, who cannot be taught the Way nor enlightened through virtuous power. A severe father cannot correct them, nor a worthy teacher transform them. Such are Dan Zhu and Shang Jun.p83

So most people are in the category of educatable, but the sage-kings and their progeny are different. Like super-heroes and super-villains they are more similar than you might think.

Lewis goes on to show that all children were regarded as dangerous. One group of dangerous children were those who were too much like their parents, born on the same month, born with eyes open, etc. More common were animal children, like Yangshe Shiwo who howled like a wolf when he was born, or triplets (born in large groups like animals). According to Lewis -all- children are animalistic as “the belief that the child was not fully human was and extension of the conventional Chinese idea that humanity was not given at birth but fashioned through education and ritual practice.”(p.88) Thus all the fears of childbirth, nursing women, etc. that you find in later Chinese culture. There are of course various ways of dealing with all these fears, and of teaching children to be good, but threats involving Santa do not seem to be part of the Chinese tradition

From Mark Edward Lewis The Flood Myths of Early China

General

“Anti-americanism” – an important law of thumb

Posted on by noja / 6 Comments

I guess it is not only my experience – looking upon the past and getting oneself surprised about “how could I say/do this?” 15 years ago, when I was a 3-year student, on exchange at Koryo University, I once suggested in a discussion with my advisor at that time, Prof. Cho Kwang, that the presence of the American troops in South Korea might have benefited the smooth development of Korea’s capitalism by bringing stability and defraying the security costs South Korea was in no position to shoulder in the beginning. Further, I lamented that no GIs were forthcoming to the USSR, in the pains of (what I considered at that time) “transition to democracy”. Prof. Cho was in a sort of consternation on having heard this revelation from his 18-year old charge, but, being possibly the gentlest person I have ever met in Korea (and, frankly, elsewhere as well), just limited himself to saying that foreign troops is not something a normal nation-state is supposed to depend upon. Well, if I were to hear something like my 1991 apologetic account of the GI presence from somebody today, I am afraid my reaction may be much harsher…. An interesting thing – in the USSR back in 1991, the positiveness of the attitude towards the former cold war enemy was in reverse proportion to the intensity of the Stalinist denunciations of “American imperialism”. Folks back then used to read Pravda assuming that the truth was the direct opposite of what was written – the sort of attitude NYT and WP readers seem to be seriously lacking. For many people around me, America was a sort of great unknown – and was assumed to offer some solutions for “our” problems – while the evils of Stalinist system were more than well known. And today, after 15 years, the malnutrition and chaos of the IMF-dominated early 1990s, after the ruins of Belgrade and Baghdad… I am afraid that if some bolder tourist company in Moscow would recruit clients for a week-long hunt for some unlucky GIs in cooperation with a business-minded Iraqi resistance group, the business would prosper. The euphoria of the early 1990s is gone, and a stubborn, strongly emotion-laden enemy picture has taken its place – after 15 years of getting better, more direct knowledge about what a combination of McDonalds with McDouglas (and also Harvard University – where many of the consultants for the “Yeltsin reforms” happened to come from) may mean for “the rest” of the world, and after a decade of economic growth, which, at least, gave a part of the urban middle classes an option of NOT going to the Russian branches/affiliates of the assorted Mcs hat in hand looking for a job.

So, a rule of thumb is here – a decade of more of being directly subject to GI presence/”shock therapy” on Dr.Reagan’s precepts/”vicarious assaults” (many people in Moscow or Beijing assumed that the bombs pouring upon Belgrade were pouring upon them too) and more + some degree of capitalist well-being (a more or less definite position inside the world capitalist system) = outpouring of the “anti-hegemonic sentiments”. Not to be confused with anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist ones – as the majority of those (reportedly up to 10 thousand) Muscovites who telephoned Iraqi embassy back in 2003 asking whether they may be of any help in the Defence of Baghdad, had no intention of defending Grozny against the assault of their “own” thugs in uniforms a couple of years before that. In fact, strongly nationalist/masculine/militaristic “anti-hegemonism” is largely destroying the ground for the real anti-imperialism/anti-capitalism – just like the way it happens with the NL (“national liberation”)-dominated Korean left today.

Back to Korea! The same rule of thumb applies here as well. Before 1945, when the “white men’s burden” was mostly borne “in the Korean field” by several hundred of missionaries, and for the majority of Koreans, even for those with some education, “America” was more of a myth than reality, “anti-Americanism” in Korea – if we do not count the official Japanese Imperial declarations against “Anglo-American beasts” after 1941 – amounted to very little. Well, Yun Ch’iho (1865-1945) bitterly complained in his diary about being racially insulted and gravely assaulted while in the US in 1888-1893, and struggled not to lose the newfound faith in the Protestant God in the sight of the dog-eats-dog realities of God’s “chosen country” – but he chose to follow a typically American combination of Protestantism and Social Darwinism, and did not explicitly criticise the US in his published Korean writings until it became a trendy issue at the beginning of the Pacific War. An Ch’angho (1878-1938) was in a perfect position to know what racism against “Orientals” meant, as he, unlike Yun, lived in the US as a migrant worker/activist, not as a student, but he chose a typical middle-class, Protestant trick of blaming the victim for its own victimization – and mostly criticized Koreans’ supposed lack of “hygiene”, “moral strength” and good manners, not the institutionalized racism of the host country. Pak Honyong (1900-1955), Korea’s great – if misled – Communist, made some good salvos against the American Myth back in 1925:

“세상은 米國建國의 역사를 보고 淸敎徒的 殉道의 정신과 英雄的 行爲가 충만하다고 찬미하나 그것은 표면만 본 皮相的 관찰이 아니면 그짓말로서 정확한 史實을 숨기는데 불과하다.
米國의 역사는 「土人虐殺」로 그 첫페이지가 열린다.
米國에 처음 이주한 歐洲人은 新領土의 森林과 荒野에 사는 土人을 放逐하고 土民을 학살하고 土人의 住家를 약탈하는 일이 彼等에게 上帝가 준 「神聖한 事業」이엿다. 원래 土人은 歐洲人의 移住에 대하야 적극적으로 능동적으로 방해한 것이 아니엇다. 그런데 和蘭人, 佛人, 英人, 西班人들은 基督敎의 博愛主義를 신봉하고 맘대로 土民의 住家를 蹂躪하고 粉碎하고 彼等을 虐殺 屠戮하고 그리고 서서히 彼等에게 愛의 福音을 선전하엿다.
神을 사랑하고 사람을 불상히 녀긴다는 淸敎徒는 토인의 土地를 약탈하고 土人의 가옥을 태우고 土人을 죽이고 토인을 죽이지 안해도 土人을 속이어 彼等의 富를 맨드럿다.” (“歷史上으로 본 基督敎의 內面”, < 개벽>, Issue 63, Nov. 1925, pp. 67-68)

“The first page of America’s history begins with the ‘massacre of the natives'” – NOBODY said this in such an open way in the whole 30-40 year-long history of Korea’s modern intelligentsia before Pak, and that may be one more reason to appreciate the contribution of the Communists to our modern ideological development. But then, the same Pak happened to believe in September 1945 that the invading GIs are “our liberators from a democratic country” (the Soviet Stalinists, who worked with him at that point, are partly to be blamed) – until the “democrats” sent him fleeing in September 1946. So, the pre-1945 “anti-Americanism” was a bookish exercise at best, without a systematic, independent approach, or sometimes just a simple personal reaction against mistreatment. In 1950-70, we have some intellectuals coming to the understanding that the externally imposed hegemonic power greatly limited the possible range of development for the country (the brilliant poet Kim Suyong, for example), but that did not come to the mass level even among the intellectuals – Korea was still too poor to allow itself the luxury of standing up to its Big Brother. And the breakthrough came, as is well-know, after Kwangju 1980 – when Korea accumulated enough experience with the “democratic liberators”, and when its middle classes became confident enough to question whether they needed their erstwhile benefactors any more. That is how I explain the origins of the “NL mood” among quite a big stratum of Korea’s educated (I do not necessarily speak about hardcore “chusap’a”). And I am sure, this phenomenon – just like back there in Moscow – will stay and flourish here, given the fact that the New Rome still did not learn to retreat gracefully.

General/Japan

“D-Mat” and the whole “blood type/temperament” thing…

Posted on by M.G. Sheftall / 14 Comments

Wondering if anyone else on FIAW has seen this article by David Picker in the NYT about Matsuzaka Daisuke’s blood type…

I don’t think Picker has gotten the straight dope about the origins of the Japanese blood-type obsession — and (surprise, surprise) I suspect the usual cosmetic smokescreens regarding Japan’s militarist past on the part of whoever the “buffer” (someone alert van Wolferen!) was who was feeding Picker his J-cultural background info.

Anyway, after hearing from my students here in Japan about the wonders of blood-typing practically since the day I stepped off the jumbo jet, I have long been interested in the origins of the whole blood-type-as-personality-indicator deal. From what I have been able to gather so far, this was NOT the brainchild of some 1971 journalist, as Picker attests, but rather, and as is the case with so much of what is glossed over today both for domestic and foreign consumption as quaint, innocuous, quirkily regimented aspects of Japanese society (e.g., “radio calisthenics”, morning 朝礼 motivational speeches at schools and workplaces, 回覧板 neighborhood association circulars, etc.), I strongly suspect it has its origins in Japanese militarism/mobilization programs of the early Showa Period.

Here’s the “real deal”, as far as I have been able to ascertain: in the 1930s, the Army Ministry tasked a university researcher (Kyoto, IIRC) to develop a quick method that could be carried out at draft induction centers to determine which conscripts would be most suitable for assignment to infantry units. The university prof, for some reason, latched onto blood type difference as promising data in this regard. Eugenics, of course, was very much in the air at the time — it being the era of the Nazis and cranial calipers and Social Darwinism and similar creepy, exploitation-legitimizing research. Moreover, as is typical of military bureaucracies everywhere, the Japanese were planning their next war on the expectation that it would be similar — if not identical — to the last, i.e., in this case, a combat environment along the lines of the Western Front in 1914-18 (which Japanese exchange officers had observed and had the you-know-what scared out of them — this experience was also very much the impetus for Yamagata Aritomo and Tanaka Giichi’s initial “総動員” {general mobilization} planning, of course) putting similar psychological stresses on its combatants. In other words, what they were looking for were recruits with the kind of thick-skinned, somewhat passive personality that would enable them to endure long months of immobility in trenches under enemy artillery barrages without turning into nerve-wrecked shellshock cases, and who could best be expected to unquestioningly follow orders to charge into sweeping machine gun fire. The professor determined that people with “O” type blood — whom the doctor characterized as being distinctly “cattle-like” in temperament — would make the best infantrymen for the next expected trenches/gas/machine gun war.

Not exactly the samurai sword-swinging swashbuckling “Type O” “warrior” of Picker’s imagery, is it? But then again, I have a hard time imagining “D-Mat” patiently hunkering down in a trench under an artillery barge without running to the nearest field phone to call his agent…

Anyway, the “science” of it all was — and is — pretty bogus, but several million Japanese Army conscripts brought the basic concept home with them after their service, and it has become a fixture in the national imagination ever since (as well as in former Japanese colony Korea).

This may explain why the blood-type-reading genre is relatively unknown outside of these two countries. Moreover, it has been my observation that most Americans, at least, don’t even know their blood type unless they are: 1) regular blood donors; or 2) are military veterans with vague recollections of an A, AB, B or O stamped onto their dogtags.

By the way, according to the old Imperial Army categorizations, as a nervous, obsessive/compulsive “Type A”, I would have been assigned — for my own good and that of others around me — far from the “sound of the guns” . So much for my childhood dreams of martial glory…(sigh)…

Archives/English/Web Sites

Announcement: East Asian Libraries and Archives Wiki

Posted on by K. M. Lawson

The Frog in a Well project is expanding. While we hope our three bilingual collaborative weblogs dedicated to the study of East Asian history will continue to develop and add more contributors, I would like to announce a new project that we are hosting here, the East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki, or EALA:

The East Asian Libraries and Archives Wiki

This wiki will serve as a central collection site for information about archives, libraries, museums, etc. in East Asia that are of potential interest for anyone doing research on or in East Asia. It will also include sections dedicated to other kinds of resources but its primary focus it to provide researchers with a good starting place and reference for information on sites they may be visiting. While many archives have websites, my experience has been that they vary significantly in quality, convenience, organization, and speed of access. Also, visitors to archives can often provide extremely useful information to future visitors that may not be of the kind you are likely to read on the archive’s official homepage. The two most important aspects of each archive entry will be: 1) Basic reference information that will help a researcher plan ahead for their visit and easily find links to more details 2) Provide a place where researchers may record their personal experiences in the archive. As a wiki, anyone will be able to edit the individual entries, update information that might be out of date, and record their own experiences.

The East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki was originally founded in 2003 and originally hosted in a similar form at Chinajapan.org. It was inspired by the Chinese archives website at UCSD which hosts a range of useful, if somewhat outdated information for students and scholars wanting to do research in the archives of China.

I hope that other students and scholars of East Asia will share some of their experiences and, as they conduct their own research will consider updating information available. You may read more about the site here, and there are numerous help files on how to edit and create pages on the site here. The wiki has links to a blank archive form (PDF, Word, and wiki formatted text) for convenient note taking on your visit. I have posted a few entries from my time in Japan, which I added to the original site in 2003-4. To get an idea of what kind of information entries can include, see for example the entries for International Library of Children’s Literature, the Ōya Sōichi Library, and the Yokohama Archives of History.

While it is off to a slow start, I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce the Frog in a Well Library, or the 文庫, where we will host various primary documents related to the history of East Asia: The Frog in a Well Library

China/Databases/English/General

Announcement: East Asian Libraries and Archives Wiki

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 3 Comments

The Frog in a Well project is expanding. While we hope our three bilingual collaborative weblogs dedicated to the study of East Asian history will continue to develop and add more contributors, I would like to announce a new project that we are hosting here, the East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki, or EALA:

The East Asian Libraries and Archives Wiki

This wiki will serve as a central collection site for information about archives, libraries, museums, etc. in East Asia that are of potential interest for anyone doing research on or in East Asia. It will also include sections dedicated to other kinds of resources but its primary focus it to provide researchers with a good starting place and reference for information on sites they may be visiting. While many archives have websites, my experience has been that they vary significantly in quality, convenience, organization, and speed of access. Also, visitors to archives can often provide extremely useful information to future visitors that may not be of the kind you are likely to read on the archive’s official homepage. The two most important aspects of each archive entry will be: 1) Basic reference information that will help a researcher plan ahead for their visit and easily find links to more details 2) Provide a place where researchers may record their personal experiences in the archive. As a wiki, anyone will be able to edit the individual entries, update information that might be out of date, and record their own experiences.

The East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki was originally founded in 2003 and originally hosted in a similar form at Chinajapan.org. It was inspired by the Chinese archives website at UCSD which hosts a range of useful, if somewhat outdated information for students and scholars wanting to do research in the archives of China.

I hope that other students and scholars of East Asia will share some of their experiences and, as they conduct their own research will consider updating information available. You may read more about the site here, and there are numerous help files on how to edit and create pages on the site here. The wiki has links to a blank archive form (PDF, Word, and wiki formatted text) for convenient note taking on your visit. I have posted a few entries from my time in Japan, which I added to the original site in 2003-4. To get an idea of what kind of information entries can include, see for example the entries for International Library of Children’s Literature, the Ōya Sōichi Library, and the Yokohama Archives of History.

While it is off to a slow start, I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce the Frog in a Well Library, or the 文庫, where we will host various primary documents related to the history of East Asia: The Frog in a Well Library

English/Korea/Web Sites

Announcement: East Asian Libraries and Archives Wiki

Posted on by K. M. Lawson

The Frog in a Well project is expanding. While we hope our three bilingual collaborative weblogs dedicated to the study of East Asian history will continue to develop and add more contributors, I would like to announce a new project that we are hosting here, the East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki, or EALA:

The East Asian Libraries and Archives Wiki

This wiki will serve as a central collection site for information about archives, libraries, museums, etc. in East Asia that are of potential interest for anyone doing research on or in East Asia. It will also include sections dedicated to other kinds of resources but its primary focus it to provide researchers with a good starting place and reference for information on sites they may be visiting. While many archives have websites, my experience has been that they vary significantly in quality, convenience, organization, and speed of access. Also, visitors to archives can often provide extremely useful information to future visitors that may not be of the kind you are likely to read on the archive’s official homepage. The two most important aspects of each archive entry will be: 1) Basic reference information that will help a researcher plan ahead for their visit and easily find links to more details 2) Provide a place where researchers may record their personal experiences in the archive. As a wiki, anyone will be able to edit the individual entries, update information that might be out of date, and record their own experiences.

The East Asian Libraries and Archives wiki was originally founded in 2003 and originally hosted in a similar form at Chinajapan.org. It was inspired by the Chinese archives website at UCSD which hosts a range of useful, if somewhat outdated information for students and scholars wanting to do research in the archives of China.

I hope that other students and scholars of East Asia will share some of their experiences and, as they conduct their own research will consider updating information available. You may read more about the site here, and there are numerous help files on how to edit and create pages on the site here. The wiki has links to a blank archive form (PDF, Word, and wiki formatted text) for convenient note taking on your visit. I have posted a few entries from my time in Japan, which I added to the original site in 2003-4. To get an idea of what kind of information entries can include, see for example the entries for International Library of Children’s Literature, the Ōya Sōichi Library, and the Yokohama Archives of History.

While it is off to a slow start, I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce the Frog in a Well Library, or the 문고, where we will host various primary documents related to the history of East Asia: The Frog in a Well Library

Blog Carnival/English/General/Japan

AHC #10 is up

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

Gracchi at Westminster Wisdom has put together a fantastic 10th AHC. The material ranges from the Russian Near East to Japan, Mongolia to India, and closes out the year with a very strong finish.

It’s not too soon, though, to start thinking about next year! AHC will take a short break (I don’t think anyone wants to do a 1/1 edition!) and come back rested and ready on February 2nd. Host volunteers for that, and future, editions welcome. As we’ve seen before, you don’t have to be a specialist to be a good host, so don’t be shy!

China/Classics/Education/English/General

Such are the guidelines for students

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 3 Comments

For the end of the semester, Guanzi on Duties of the Student from the Rickett translation


The teacher presents his teachings; students take them as standards for their behavior.
By being docile and reverential and keeping their minds completely open, their learning is maximized
On seeing goodness, they follow it; on hearing of righteousness, they submit to it.
Docile and compliant, filial and respectful toward their elders, they never display arrogance nor resort to physical force
Never false nor depraved in purpose, their conduct is certain to be correct and straightforward.
Observing constant standards whether abroad or at home, they are certain to seek out those who are virtuous.
Their features being well composed, their inner thoughts are certain to be exemplary in their correctness.
Though they awaken early and go to bed late, their dress is certain to be tidy
Mornings being devoted to enhancing their learning and evenings to practicing what they have learned, they are ever cautious of doing anything wrong
Being ever diligent in concentrating on these things—such are the standards for study

Nothing terribly new here. Students are docile and reverential, their minds are open, their appearance is neat and tidy. A standard
picture of the start of the semester be it today or during the Warring States. The text gets more interesting as it goes into the rituals of learning, especially the rituals of how students serve their teachers.

At mealtimes, when the teacher is about to eat, a student prepares food for him.
Having pulled up his sleeves, washed his hands, and rinsed his mouth, the server then kneels down to present the food.
When the sauces, grain, and various dishes are set forth, it must be
done in an orderly fashion.
Vegetable stews are served before dishes of fowl, meat, fish, or turtle. Both the stews and sliced meat dishes are placed in the middle but kept separate.
Meat dishes having been placed in front of the sauces, the entire setting forms a square. The grain is served last; on the left is the wine, on the right is water.
Having reported that everything is ready, the student withdraws and, cupping his hands before him in obeisance, stands to one side.
[The normal meal consists of] three servings of grain to which soup is added twice,
The student holds in his left hand a pottery serving dish, in his right chopsticks or a ladle.
He refills the various dishes in order as soon as he sees they are becoming empty. If two dishes become empty at the same time, he refills them in the order they were originally served.
Having refilled all the dishes, he begins the cycle again.
Since his serving implement has a foot-long handle, he does not need to kneel—such are the guidelines for making refills.


This tradition has basically died out, students no longer serve meals to their teachers. The whole text reflects a very different level of intimacy between students and teachers than we have today, and a different purpose to education, which was in this context more about moral training than about filling their heads with knowledge and skills.

More interesting to me is the ritual presentation of the food, which is matched by equally detailed descriptions of how to sweep a floor. I’m sure if the teacher had been in the mood he could have explained the ritual importance of serving food in the proper order, and how a proper ritual creates the proper relationship between teacher and student. Of course many students would not have grasped this at first, and would have been forced through the ritual over and over again without understanding it. Most teachers would probably regard that as o.k. Just going through the ritual does you good. The modern historian’s comparison is probably footnotes. A thing full of meaning for us, but no matter how often we explain it they tend to see it as a pointless bit of ritual. Of course it can sometimes seem a pointless bit of ritual to the teacher as well, (who has not though their students were going through the motions) but still they are convinced that ritual practice will have some effect.

When the teacher is about to retire, the students all stand. They respectfully present him with his pillow and mat and ask him where he would like to place his feet. The first time they arrange his sleeping mat, they request this information, but once the pattern has been established, they do not.

Another dead ritual, as students no longer tuck their teachers into bed. Although a fair number of students think, like the author of this text, that teachers do not exist outside of the context of teaching. I am always amazed by the number of students who seem to think I lie motionless in a coffin through the break until students appear again and I re-animate. Actually, I have a life of my own and spend most of the break acting like a normal human.

After the teacher has retired, each student seeks out his friends,
Dissecting and polishing,
Each one strengthens his arguments.
The day’s routine having been completed, the next day it begins
anew. Such are the guidelines for students.

And so the semester ends, and students go off to contemplate and perfect what they have learned.

Current/Recent Events/English/General/Historiography/Japan/US-Japan/War/幕末/昭和

Pearl Harbor and the longue duree

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 8 Comments

In honor of the 65th anniversary, HNN has a Pearl Harbor extravaganza this week. There’s a little recap, and the obligatory zombie error smackdown, which are fine. The article by George Feifer, though, is considerably more challenging: he argues that Pearl Harbor is a direct result of Perry’s opening of Japan.

Think about that one a minute. The argument, roughly, goes like this: by forcing Japan to recognize its technological and cultural inferiority, by humiliating the nation, the US put Japan on a path of competitive militarization and power expansion directed at mirroring and surpassing specifically US power, which ultimately resulted in the clash of empires which never coincides with anything convenient in the academic calendar. He even argues, echoing Ishiwara Kanji, that the US shouldn’t have been surprised, given how the US-Japan relationship begins, by the result.

I don’t find that argument any more convincing than the ones which argue a straight line between Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are some interesting assertions — not much in the way of evidence, but it’s a short piece — about the military commanders involved, Ishiwara Kanji and Yamamoto Isoroku, but it’s a long way from poetic justice to historical causality. You can’t draw straight lines across broad fields of contingencies. To fixate on the US-Japan relationship, to the exclusion of Japan’s other unsatisfactory international relationships, to fixate on Perry as the cause to the exclusion of basic facts of geography in an age of geo-politics, to distill a complex of policy and principle down to a simplistic vengeance “served cold”, may make for a satisfying narrative, but doesn’t — it seems to me — adhere to any of the principles of good historical logic which we’re supposed to model for our students and leaders.

Feifer is actually doing more than just arguing a long causal chain; he’s also drawing parallels between the opening of Japan and the US intervention in Iraq: misleading public statements about goals (“The shipwrecked-sailors issue was the weapons-of-mass-destruction boondoggle of its day”), cultural supremacism, imperialistic zeal (he compares Commodore Perry with Vice President Cheney, which really puts the “conservative” back in “neo-con”) and the role of coal as the oil of the 19th century. You could find those four elements — really only three: supremacism, imperialism and resource security — in lots of 19th and 20th century interventions. He ends with the portentous lines: “The galled people with the punctured conviction of their own superiority took special pleasure in the sinking of four ships on Battleship Row: the number with which Perry first menaced them. Shouldn’t that prompt thought about the unintended consequences of using force?” The implication here is that even if our adventurism in Iraq turns out well inthe short or medium term, it’s likely to come back to bite us eventually. While I’m sympathetic to this argument in some forms (and I know how hard it is to find a good closing line, too), its overreaching: ultimately there are no uses of force which don’t have possible unintended consequences.

If the Americans hadn’t gotten Japan to sign treaties, others would have — Russians, British — and it would have been no less humiliating. If the Americans hadn’t colonized the Pacific, the Spanish and Dutch and British would still have been there. If the Russians hadn’t been agressive in northeast Asia… well, they wouldn’t have been Russians, and then we’re talking way-out counterfactuals. Japan had a lot of reason to feel threatened, a lot of nations looking down at them, and its success made conflict over resources and territory very likely. Single lines don’t connect all these dots.

Academia/Education/Japan/Teaching

The Trials and Tribulations of Teaching

Posted on by Morgan Pitelka / 11 Comments

A friend who teaches American and sometimes Asian history courses sent me the following enquiry, which she received via email from one of her American history students. I am happy to say that I have never received a student message this inane or inarticulate, though the fundamental confusion about the geography of the world and the chronology of our recent past is somewhat familiar.

Now, I have a question pertaining to the history of World War 2. I was wondering why we dropped the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. because we didnt do it until 1945 and Pearl Harbor was in 1941. Also, we had already gotten back at them on April 18, 1942 in Tokyo right? First it was Hiroshima on August 6th and then three days later we dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki in 1945, correect? My other question is if Japan is a seperate country from North Korea and I know its seperate from China, but do they speak Chinese. Last night I was watching Pearl Harbor and in it they said to remember these words, I can’t say them, but they were in Chinese. I thought it was the Japanese we were mad at in Tokyo. I am a little confused about this please help.Thanks, XXXXXXXXXX

Of course the general ignorance of this message is frustrating, but what really bothers me is the lack of formality. I have talked with colleagues about this, and many disagree. Email is the students’ natural medium, they say, and they are not used to writing in the style of a letter as I would prefer: “Dear Professor So-and-So.” Still, it rankles me when I get emails from students that begin, “Hey, I was wondering . . .” Related to the lack of formality is the absence of care regarding spelling and grammatical errors. We all send emails (or publish blog entries) without spell-checking, but the above message is just egregious.

Correect?

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