General

“Resistant collaborators” and “collaborative resisters”

Posted on by noja / 7 Comments

I am in a small room on Kyushu University’s campus now trying to finalize the second volume of my Russian textbook on Korea’s history, and while plodding through the valley of sorrows called “1930s” I feel all the time how difficult it is to find clear-cut, “textbook” definitions for what was “resistance” at this period (to be praised) and what was “collaboration” (to be taken to account, at the very least). Generally, my theoretical starting point is what Marx once said on the dominated—the people who are both oppressed/exploited by the existing system, and at the same time have to accept both material and discursive superiority of this system, being mostly unable, at least before the start of the modern socialist movement in Europe, to decisively break away from the ideas, beliefs and conventions of their exploiters. Modernity seems to bring a twofold change to this condition of existence—on one hand, there emerges a liberational ideology of a new and completely different kind, but on the other hand, the system of domination assumes much stronger control over the individual lives, and resistance requires much more resources, usually to be supplied by one or another fraction of the global ruling class. Take, for example, the recent glorious victory of Hizbollah partisans. I have no doubt that they do represent a genuine resistance potential of the Lebanese people and were led to the victory by a wave of mass support; but when you think about the Syria-supplied Russian anti-tank guns or Iranian missiles they used, the whole thing also begins to look like an episode in the global proxy war between the weeker “junior” Eurasian bullies and the huge “senior” Athlantic one on the playground called the “world capitalist system”—the war, in which, so far, the mightiest bully is being assiduously bleeded by his smaller, but more agile and cleverer competitors. My point here is that there is no clear, unequivocal dividing line between the Ahriman of domination and Ormazd of the resistance to it: in real life, the line gets constantly blurred, and if you wish to defeat imperialist A., you often have to tap the resources of the rival imperialist B., being also strongly influenced by B.’s mode of actions and beliefs in the process.

What relation have all these musings to my textbook business? Well, take our saint Kim Ku (1876-1949), usually supposed to be an uncompromising resistance fighter and contrasted to the “collaborators” who presumedly lacked the guts to choose the way of bomb and pistol and in the end sacrificed their integrity by working with some of the “Japanese imperialist” institutions. The problem is—Kim Ku’s way of the bomb and pistol could have been chosen only due to the fact there was “Western imperialist”-founded international settlement in Shanghai to use as a base camp (and there were obviously some reasons for the settlement police to tolerate Kim’s activities, the reasons not necessarily belonging to the realm of charity), and that both bombs and pistols were supplied by the GMD and their semi-fascistic “Blue Shirt” guards in the 1930s. And the influence of the ultra-right wing GMD ideology upon such figures as Kim Ku or Yi POmsOk (1900-1972) is something their Korean hariographers prefer not to touch. So, we have a classic situation when the strongest (regional) bully is being fought through an unequal alliance with a weaker tough. Should we continue to describe such things in moralistic terms, as if we are speaking about the fight between absolute good and absolute evil? Then, there is another “textbook” case – Yi Kwangsu (1892-1950), the epitome of both Social-Darwinist (and a rather racialized) theoretical belief in the inevitability of an incorporation into the greater Yamato nation and political collaboration with the Japanese authorities. Yet, his position as the colony’s foremost “moderate intellectual” did not save him from imprisonment in 1937 in connection with Suyang Tonguhoe case (he got 5-years jail sentence in the end, but did not serve it)—An Ch’angho’s truthful follower, he still wished to explore the possibilities of modernity beyond its Japanese variant, and was duly punished. Should we follow good old Confucian logic in making Kim Ku into an example of “loyal retainer” while punishing Yi Kwangsu posthumously by demoting him to a “treacherous subject”? Well, I personally think that we should stop (ab)using moralising categories in historical writing – but certainly without becoming moral relativists. That is, fascists/Japanese imperialists etc. were certainly atrocious – but that does not make all those who opposed them authmatically into angels, and does not mean that all these incorporated into their systems, were already moral failures by this very fact.

General/Korea

나의 리움미술관 기행기

Posted on by Gyewon / 0 Comment

나의 리움미술관 기행기

명색이 미술사학도이지만, 솔직히 말해 미술관 기행이 별 재미가 없다. 유명한 작가의 작품은 거기에 켜켜이 쌓여있는 아우라의 무게에 짓눌려 재미가 없다. 유명하지 않은 작가의 작품은 오랫동안 제도 밖에 머물어 가난하고 빈곤하다. 그렇게 “제도”의 힘은 강력하다. 특히 미술관이라는 제도란, 그 미학적 효과 때문에 더욱 더 강력하면서도 탈정치적이다. “예쁘다” 라는 형용사가 가진 위력은 생각보다 크다. 금자씨(영화)에 등장하는 “예뻐야 돼” 라는 대사는, 그래서 더욱 더 무섭다. 우리는 그 예쁨의 전후면을 삐딱하게 살필 필요가 있다.

입장료 1만 5천원, 인터넷으로 사전 예약시 1만 2천원. 미술관 예약제라는 새로운 제도를 도입, 세계적인 건축가 세 명(마리오 보타, 장 누벨, 램스 쿨하스)에 의해 완공된 세 개의 독립적인 전시 공간, 삼성(이라기보다는 삼성 회장 부인의 개인) 소장품, 그리고 이태원이라는 공간.

충분히 세간의 이목을 끌만한 요소들을 두루두루 갖추고 있는 리움미술관에서는 작년 12월, 세계적인 아티스트 매튜 바니의 작품들이 전시되고 있었다. 크라이매스터 씨리즈의 다수가 전시되거나 상영되고 있었으며, 다국적 기업의 지원을 받아 만들어진 크라이매스터 최신작 또한 상영되고 있었다. 상설관은 삼성가의 소장품으로 채워져 있었다. 서양관/한국관이 아닌, 현대관/근대관으로 나누어져 있었는데, 한국 미술품들은(물론 “한국 미술품”이라는 개념 또한 정의하기 힘들지만) 시기별로 분류되어, 대략 일제 강점기 이후의 미술품들은 현대관으로, 흔히 “청자/백자”로 대표되는 근대이전의 미술/공예품들은 근대관에서 전시되었다. 오늘날 국제비엔날레에 출품되고, 국제적 네임밸류가 있는 미술가(이를 테면 백남준 등)의 작품은 개념적으로 한국미술품들이 전시되어 있는 근대관이 아닌 현대관에서, 동시대 외국 작가들의 작품 (이를 테면 요셉 보이스 등)과 나란히 전시되고 있다는 점에서, 적어도 리움은 미술품의 “국가적” 분류라는 근대적 전시체계를 고수하지 않고 있는 것으로 보인다.

리움의 현대관을 한마디로 정의하자면, “중학교 미술교과서의 집대성” 이다. 내가 이를 자신있게 말할 수 있는 것은, 중 3때 “17년간 모의고사(고등학교 입학용 입시 서적)”에 미술과목이 포함되어, 진짜 열심히 미술책에 있는 작품들을 외웠기 때문이다. 따라서 단지 미술사가 뿐만 아니라 대한민국 중등교육을 충실히 받은 사람이라면, 리움에서 자신이 교과서에서 보고 들었던 유명한 작품들을 연대기순으로 감상할 수 있을 것이다. 요컨대 삼성가는 거액을 투자하여, 입시에 나올법한 서양미술사의 거작과 근현대 한국 유명작가들의 작품들을 수집하였던 것이다. 그러나 중학교 미술 교과서의 수준이란 지극히 일반적이다. 리움의 수집 경향은, 따라서 일반적인 미술사의 상식을 거스르지 않는다. 그저 안전하게, 미술책에 나열된 이러저러한 유명작들을 착실히 사서 모았을 뿐이다. 이러한 “착실한” 취미생활은 건축가 장 누벨의 뛰어난 실내/외 디자인에 의해 다른 차원의 종합 예술로 탈바꿈된다. 삼성의 뛰어난 재력, 훌륭한 기획력, 미(美)에 대한 사랑, 이 모든 것들이 하나의 전시 공간에서 종합 예술로서 막을 올릴 때, 그 때 관객의 입에서 나오는 탄성은 차라리 자연스러운 것이 되고 만다. 많은 미술사가들이 MoMA의 탈정치적 전시 의도를 비판하는 글을 써왔고, 많은 아티스트들이 서양 제도권 미술에 저항해왔다. 그러나 MoMA의 기획력이 훌륭한 것은 사실이며, 그렇기 때문에 더욱 더 위험한 것이라 비평가들은 목소리를 높였다. 리움의 경우는 어떠한가. 현대관에 어떠한 기획이 담겨있다면, 그것은 장 누벨을 데리고 와서 미술관을 건립할 수 있었던 삼성의 재력과, 중학교 수준의 미술사 장르 인식이라고나 할까. 그렇기에 1만원이 넘는 입장료는, 남의 취미생활을 감상하는 대가로서 지나치고, 사전 예약제도는 그래서 더욱 더 비관행적이다. 남의 취미생활을 구경하는데 사전 예약을 해야하다니, 나폴레옹이 원정대를 이끌고 다니며 중동에서 휩쓸어 온 보물들을 구경하는데에도(루브르 미술관) 사전 예약따위는 하지 않는다.

리움의 근대관은 어떠한가. 나는 한국에서 태어나 그곳에서 30년을 넘게 살았지만 한번도 한국미술품이 이렇게 “예쁘고 멋지게” 전시된 것을 구경해 본 적이 없다. 만약 몬트리올에서 함께 공부하는 동료가 한국에 잠시 다녀온다면, 혹은 나의 지도교수가 한국에 잠시 오신다면, 그들이 한국의 미술관을 순례하고 싶으시다면, 나는 리움을 추천하는데에 1초도 서성이지 않을 것이다. 그것은 새로운 발견이었다. 나는 청자와 백자가 이렇게 아름다운 예술품이었는지 이전엔 미처 알지 못했다. 청자/백자 자체가 달라졌다기보다, 리움이 그것을 보여주는 방식이 아주 훌륭했다. 혹은 다른 말로 하면, 기존 박물관에서 청자/백자를 “전시”하는 방법이 너무도 가난했기 때문에, 리움의 전시방법은 더욱 더 빛이 났다. 국공립 미술/박물관이 가난한 것은, 물론 경제적으로도 그렇지만, 그들의 전시방법이 아무런 미학적 고민도 질문도 효과도 없었다는 점에서 더욱 더 빈곤했다. 그런데 리움의 근대관에서 청자/백자는 다시 태어난다 깜깜한 실내에 한줄 오롯이 들어오는 조명과, 그 조명이 가리키는 곳에 조그맣게 빛을 발하는 한국의 자기들. 코너를 돌며 내려올 때마다 경탄은 더해간다. “한국의 미”라는 것이 이데올로기적 구성물이라는 것을 잘 알지만, 무언가 한국의 특수한 미적 경험이 있다면, 바로 저런 것이 아닌가 되새겨 볼 정도로, 리움이 보여주는 미술품들은 아름다웠다. 현대관에서 보여준 중학교 미술책 수집방식은 근대관에서도 계속된다. 삼성가는 심지어 신라시대 탑도 소장하고 있다. 그것도 금탑을. 삼성가는 심지어 사극에서나 볼 수 있었던 일월도 (주로 임금 옥좌 뒤에 나오는 병풍)도 소장하고 있었다. 고려미술의 찬란함을 단적으로 보여주는 반가상들은 리움에서 너무도 엄숙했고 종교적이었다. 이 모든 디스플레이의 기술은, 그간의 국공립 미술/박물관에서는 부재하던 것이었다. 한국미술이 이렇게 보여질 수 있다는 것은 분명 새로운 발견이었다. 그러나 그것이 국가차원이 아니라, 한 사기업의 차원에서, 그것도 삼성이라는 이름으로 가능했다는 사실 또한 무척이나 놀라운 발견이었다. 결국은 세계 어디에 내놓아도 빠지지 않을 청자/백자의 아름다움을 뒤로 하며, 탄식성 질문을 하지 않을 수 밖에 없다. “그렇게 돈이 많아?”

리움에 감탄하는 이유는 단 하나다. 그 많은 돈을 쏟아부워, 국립 미술제도에서 하지 않은/못한 일을 했기 때문이다. 평론가들은 상업화된 미술의 대안의 하나로, 공공미술의 가능성을 이야기해왔다. 그러나 공공미술은 무엇인가. 단지 사적 공간 외에서 보여지고 감상되는 미술인가. 그렇다면 공공미술의 태반은 쓰레기만도 못하다. 한국 대기업 빌딩 앞에는 동/구리로 만들어진 기묘한 모양의 조형물이 있다. 그 조형물들의 대다수는 미적 질문을 던져준다기보다 차라리 시각적 오염에 일조한다. 게다가 그 목적이 기업의 세금감면에 있다는 점에서 더욱 더 음흉하다. 나는 공공미술의 영역뿐 아니라 그 “개념”을 확장시켜야 한다고 생각한다. 그것은 국민이 내는 세금으로 미술관과 박물관을 건립하고, 재미있는 전시를 열고, 좋은 작품을 소장하여 작가를 지원해주고, 동시에 좀 더 폭넓은 미적 경험의 기회를 주는, 그러한 제도의 문제까지 포함해야 한다. 그러나 어찌된 일인지 미술관은 늘 가난하고, 학예연구원들은 외국전시를 들여오는데에 급급해야하며, 작가들은 늘상 굶주린다. 고작 청자/백자에 멋지게 조명 주는 게 뭐 그리 대단한 일이냐고 물을 수도 있지만, 그것이 국공립 미술관에서 가능해지려면 아마도 국가의 행정체계 자체를 “포맷”시켜야 하지 않을까. 그러나 그 동안 이미 삼성은 기업이 아니라 제국이 될 것이다. 리움이 미술관의 모범/전형/규율, 그리고 권력이 된 것과 마찬가지로. 

Blogs and Carnivals/Books/China/China-Korea/General/Japan

AHC Call for Posts, plus

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 1 Comment

Roy Berman, the MutantFrog himself, will host the next Asian History Carnival at Mutant Frog Travelogue on the 18th. Get your nominations in to him directly (roy dot berman at gmail dot com), through blogcarnival.com or with del.icio.us tags. Remember, if you don’t submit anything, we may pick the worst thing you ever posted publicly….

A few other news notes:

Pandas are cute particularly when they move

China establishes new rules for News services, and they’re not liberalizing them, either.

“No surprises”: Korea-China History Wars Continue, in anticipation of the collapse of North Korea. Or just because.

Jeffery Wasserstrom reviews Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones, and finds it superior to Kristof and WuDunn among others. It’s going on my shortlist for next semester’s “Issues and Problems of Contemporary China”.

NPR’s take on the new Mao-lite Shanghai textbooks.

Blog Carnival/Current/Recent Events/General/Japan

AHC Call for Posts, plus

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 2 Comments

Roy Berman, the MutantFrog himself, will host the next Asian History Carnival at Mutant Frog Travelogue on the 18th. Get your nominations in to him directly (roy dot berman at gmail dot com), through blogcarnival.com or with del.icio.us tags. Remember, if you don’t submit anything, we may pick the worst thing you ever posted publicly….

A few other news notes:

Japan is the final resting place of … Jesus Christ? Maybe he was looking for the lost tribes of Israel…

Slightly Expurgated government documents, our own, in this case, because we don’t want to admit yet what we were doing in Japan in the sixties

Everyone’s got an opinion: Latest (and loudest?) contributors to the debate over Hiroshima? Methodists v. Episcopalians: Episcopalians apologize and theconservative Methodists use FrontPageMag to object.

Blogs and Carnivals/General/Historiography/Korea/Korea-China/US-Korea

AHC Call for Posts, plus

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 1 Comment

Roy Berman, the MutantFrog himself, will host the next Asian History Carnival at Mutant Frog Travelogue on the 18th. Get your nominations in to him directly (roy dot berman at gmail dot com), through blogcarnival.com or with del.icio.us tags. Remember, if you don’t submit anything, we may pick the worst thing you ever posted publicly….

A few other news notes:

Korean-American relations have always been tense says Daniel Sneider. This is an excellent brief survey of the last fifty years, a stark reminder that even our staunchest allies have minds of their own….

And in the “full employment for nationalist historians” category, Korea-China History Wars Continue, in anticipation of the collapse of North Korea. Or not, but they continue anyway.

Academia/Current/Recent Events/English/General/Japan/Memory/Nationalism

That 9.11 Incident

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 4 Comments

Of course I remember 9/11/01. You don’t forget the day when you think you’re watching a rerun of a terrible accident — how quickly they got footage, you marvel briefly — and realize that you’re actually watching an atrocity in progress. You don’t forget the day when a student’s cell phone gets a text message that a plane has crashed on the Mall in DC (one day when you don’t care about them text messaging in class, and you don’t forget the relief that it wasn’t true, either). You don’t forget the day when you watch people die on TV, while your 8-month-pregnant spouse checks insulin levels.

I really did try to have class that morning. It was my Modern Japan class, and I tried — oh, how I tried — to talk coherently about terrorism in Japanese history. Nothing wrong with current events, if you can relate it to the course material, right? I talked about the bakumatsu assassination campaigns, about the right-wing assasinations and coup attempts of the ’30s; I honestly don’t remember if I got the Great Treason Incident in there or not, what with text messages and sharing what little we knew, and all. I do remember running out of things to say and dismissing them early, and being grateful when the president of the college cancelled classes for the remainder of the day. I went back to my office, called the college chaplain to see what was going on with regard to our small but noticeable Muslim student population (Everyone was fine: Cedar Rapids has the oldest mosque west of the Mississippi river and the local Muslim community is quite well integrated and respected), and went home to my pregnant wife.

It was a shocking event, to be sure. But it wasn’t quite such a surprise. It wasn’t all that long after I’d read Tom Clancy’s excreable Debt of Honor a book whose only redeeming feature (I’ve read quite a bit of Clancy’s work, and I find it wildly inconsistent in quality, which is why there’s always hope about a new one) was the ending — yeah, I’m gonna give it away — in which a businessman/pilot steals a jetliner, talks his way into the DC air traffic patterns, and obliterates a Joint Session of Congress, Tokkotai-style. (If you want to know how the immortal Jack Ryan solves the problem, you have to read Executive Orders, which is considerably more exciting and interesting and plausible….) Obviously, anyone teaching Japanese history has had to wrestle a bit with the issue of suicide attacks — human bullets, shattered jewels, divine winds, etc. — and they had been increasingly common in the Middle East of late.

Being Jewish, I have that slightly-greater-than-average-American-interest in Middle Eastern affairs, and that slightly-greater-than-average-paranoia about violent, hostile forces. Not only wasn’t the 9/11 attack not the first large domestic terror attack, it wasn’t even the first large, Islamist, domestic terror attack on the World Trade Center. The Taliban had long since destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas (nothing like destruction of cultural property to get an historian’s attention), not to mention imposing strictures on Afghani women that would make Draco blanch. US interests had been attacked overseas, the bombing of the Jewish center in Argentina proved the reach of anti-semitic violence (recently revealed to be al-Qaeda related, even) outside of the Middle East.

What changed for me, five years ago? As an historian, very little. The market for Asianists got a bit tighter, as the market for MidEast and Islamic specialists got better. I stopped having to work so hard to explain the terror of the Cold War, the potential of sudden death and the existence of ideologically and politically hostile entities on a world-wide scale. Changes in Japan since then have been subtle, and mostly not at all linked to our own national trauma. Hardly anyone, still, has made any substantial links between Japan’s history of suicide attacks and terrorism with our current situation, but I don’t see there being all that much to say about it except to suggest that people would be less surprised if they paid attention. I remain convinced that paying attention to historical evolution and forces is one of the best ways to anticipate problems and sometimes even to find solutions. Airport security changes have rarely affected us — though our 7-month-old got randomly selected for special screening, and they really did pat him down.

Historians really don’t do anniversaries (though we try to remember our spouses and parents as appropriate). The press does, because it’s easy to count by years, or fives, or tens, or twenty-fives, or hundreds, and then they come talk to us or to people who were directly involved [via], and we get an odd sort of retrospective and update. Historians don’t care about even numbers: for us, the “Sixties” ended with the Vietnam War, and both the 18th and 19th centuries were “long” ones; every “20th century” course I’ve ever taken started in 1890. But outside of the journalistic need for a “hook” to look back, there’s nothing special about five years.

There’s nothing all that special about 9/11, either…. yet. What meaning 9/11/01 will have, its historical import, is still up in the air, no matter how much anyone claims that it must mean this or that, that things have or haven’t changed as a result. 9/11 was the largest act of terror to strike the United States, just as the Holocaust was the largest anti-semitic genocidal event, but neither of them stands alone and to focus all our attention on those events of such distinctive scale to the exclusion of myriad “smaller events” before or since is historically stunted, or dishonest. That so many people were so shocked by the event, and have yet to put it in anything like proper context or perspective, suggests to me that historians — not alone among scholars, but perhaps uniquely — have a long way to go in inculcating (recovering) our long-term vision, our sense of complexity of the world, our experience — indirect but nonetheless real — with cultural and ideological and technological change and conflict.

China/Gender/General/Identity/Imperialism/Qing

Elvis is everywhere

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 2 Comments

Elvis in China

A nice little picture from Shenbao, one of Shanghai’s most important early 20th century newspapers. The caption complains about Chinese women. Specifically it points out that Chinese women have taken up the habit of smoking on the street, and that when Westerners see them doing it they point out that in the West women don’t even smoke at home, much less in the street. Yet another example of how different commodities fit differently in different societies. Smoking is a particularly tricky one (not the most relevant link, but the best film of struggling with use of cigarettes I could find.) The cigarette is the best way to walk around while smoking, and to make smoking a part of all your everyday activities, rather than a separate social space, like gathering around an opium pipe or a complex tobacco pipe. For a western woman to smoke in the street at this point would have been a defiance of gender roles. For a Chinese woman it marks you as modern. The caption-writer seems to be trying to create a less brazen definition of modern Chinese femininity. It seems to have worked, too, since Chinese women today are a lot less likely to smoke in public than men.

Of course the picture is also cool because it seems to be an early Elvis sighting.

General/Japan

Self-intro: M.G. Sheftall

Posted on by M.G. Sheftall / 28 Comments

Mina san, konnichiwa.

My name is M.G. Sheftall. I’m an ex-pat NY’er (attended and Stuyvesant High School and Fordham University there) living in Japan since 1987. I am currently an associate professor at Shizuoka University in Hamamatsu City, Japan and a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University.

First of all, I must say I’m happier than a kaeru during tsuyu to be joining the official posters’ lineup here on Frog in a Well. I’ve been a lurker on this site for quite a while now, and am familiar with many of the bylines around here from various books and articles I’ve read over the years (and coincidentally, I’ve just recently finished Brian McVeigh’s magisterial Nationalisms of Japan, which I cannot recommend highly enough to students of the collective ways and mores of the residents of our favorite archipelago). I’d also like to say that I’m very much looking forward to interacting with you all from hereon out on a regular basis, and I hope I’ll be able to overcome innate cognitive shortcomings and temperamental proclivities to contribute more than politically incorrect irreverence and obtuse, misanthropic observations to these proceedings (although I can’t make any promises, especially once classes start up again next month). Yoroshiku. 

Some personal background info towards the tiresome yet nevertheless de rigeur “How did you end up in Japan?”: 

Japan has been a personal obsession since I was a preschooler — literally. The details of this nascent Orientalism are convoluted and possibly Freudian, involving a Japanese exchange student babysitter, a viewing of You Only Live Twice with my dad in 1967, and finding my grandmother’s awesome National Geographic stash shortly thereafter. Things became progressively monomaniacal after I watched Tora! Tora! Tora! in 1970 and decided that my goal in life was to become a Zero fighter pilot. Needless to say, the Imperial Japanese Navy security clearance background check and citizenship requirements posed ultimately insurmountable obstacles, but I think we can all begin to see the pattern forming here.

In spite of the numerous distractions and temptations that came with the territory of a “dazed and confused” 1970s New York City adolesence, a bud of J-longing remained safely sequestered in my youthful bosom, glowing and intact, merely waiting for the right circumstances under which to reach full blossom. However, fate was to intervene with yet another impressionable cinematic experience that, in this particular case, detoured me quite catastrophically from my destined path in Japan Studies: a viewing of Apocalypse Now at the Ziegfeld Theater — bolstered in effect by consideration of the financial circumstances of a household facing two additional sets of tuition bills just a few more years down the line — somehow convinced my fragile eggshell 17-year-old mind that I should turn down Columbia University in favor of a tuition-free education at West Point via an appointment to the Academy from Congressman Bill Green (R/NY) in January 1980. So-o-o, it was goodbye Donald Keene, hello M-16.

Although there were many aspects of the soldier’s life I enjoyed (e.g., firing automatic weapons; experiencing temporary ego death in the testosterone-fueled, cadence-chanting, buzzcutted anonymity of The Group), and others for which I displayed a natural ability (I shined a mean shoe, for instance), it eventually became clear to all involved that my talents might be better applied in an endeavor other than the profession of arms. After two years at The Point, the Academy and I reached the amicable — if perhaps a tad premature — decision to part ways, leaving me free to meander back home to Manhattan neither with my shield nor on it (sticking to the allegory, the Spartan in a similar situation might have opted to fall on his sword, but I am an innate self-preservationist), and I enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx a few months later. Alas, there was no Japanese Studies program at this fine Jesuit institution, but I opted for something I thought sounded almost as exotically intriguing and considerably more timely — a concentration in Islamic/Middle East Studies as a Poli Sci/International Relations major.

One thing led to another at Fordham, some roads led nowhere, and none (thank God) led to Baghdad, but a fortuitous phone call from an ex-roomie landed me in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan in February ’87, a few months shy of my twenty-fifth birthday, and I’ve been a Nihongo and kanji freak pretty much since stepping off the 747. My on-topic professional research activity from about the mid-90s on was decidedly job-oriented, concentrating on culture-specific (or at least culture-salient) affective variables in the context of the Sisyphean realities of Japanese EFL. Anyone who has 1) “done the Eigo/Eikaiwa thing” for any length of time and 2) has a working knowledge of Japanese cultural studies should readily understand how this particular research interest — nudged in my case by concurrent initial encounters with Karel van Wolferen, Ian Buruma, Bruce Stronach and Harumi Befu — eventually led me to focus on Japanese cultural/national identity issues.

I wound up in the Japanese national university system as a full-timer in Spring 2001 all set to continue in this vein…then 9/11 happened and everything, as the saying goes, changed. Several stunned months of insomniac BBC and CNN viewing and sobering ruminations on the dialectic of national/ethnic/religious identity and ideologies of self-sacrifice eventually led me to Googling “kamikaze” one day in January 2002 and stumbling onto a veterans’ association of kamikaze survivors (yes, as oxymoronic as that may sound, there actually are some) based in Setagaya, Tokyo. I have been studying and observing the history, rituals and pedagogical activities not only of this association but of the entire Japanese subculture of kamikaze collective memory ever since. A book, BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND: HUMAN LEGACIES OF THE KAMIKAZE, resulted from the first three years of this research. This was published in English by NAL Caliber in 2005 (paperback in 2006), and a J-translation will come out from Bungei Shunju some time next year.

My dissertation at Waseda is a continuation of work on this theme, after anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace’s classic “Revitalization Movement” concept, aiming to model veteran-centric collective memory formation in traditionally exclusivist sociopolities that have experienced catastrophic military defeat and subsequent foreign occupation. My methodology owes much to the substantial literature in this field dealing with the experience of the post-Civil War American South, especially the work of C. Vann Woodward, Rollin Osterweis, Gaines Foster and Charles Reagan Wilson. Partly in acknowledgment of this methodological debt, but more importantly because I just love the way it reads, the title of the dissertation will be Gone With The Divine Wind: the Kamikaze in Japanese ‘Lost Cause’ Mythology, 1945-Present.

Additional (but very much related) research interests for me are: military influence in the formation of Japanese national identity from Meiji to the present (I’m a big Yoshida Yutaka fan, btw); Yasukuni issues (2006 has been a great year for these!); popular Japanese attitudes towards — and interpretations of — modern history, particularly regarding the Asia-Pacific War; the relationship of culturally-patterned masculinity and formalized violence; depiction of the Asia-Pacific War in popular culture/media; (as per the above paragraph, the numerous and endlessly fascinating) parallels between the cultural, ideological, pedagogical and psychological mechanisms of dealing with the aftermath of defeat in postwar Japan and post-Civil War American South (my ancestors on both sides of the family were Confederates, so there is an element of personal interest on my part in exploring this aspect of the respective collective experiences of both my ancestral and adoptive cultures), et al.  

***** 

A quick personal profile:

Family: Married, two sons (eight and three years of age, respectively).

Currently listening to:  Station-to-Station, by David Bowie; The Sand Pebbles soundtrack (Jerry Goldsmith, RIP)

Currently reading: Kudakareta Kami by Watanabe Kiyoshi (a kind of Rosetta Stone of postwar J-veteran trauma; now I can see why Dower thought it was worth devoting six pages of “Embracing Defeat” to…Powerful stuff!)

Favorite Japanese movies: Yojinbo; Kumo no Bohyou yori Sora Yukaba (hands down the best kamikaze movie ever made)

J-turn-ons: Hokusai woodblocks; hanabi; the gracious art of tatemae displayed in consideration of others’ feelings; winsome smiles; the Imperial Palace o-hori walkway near Chidorigafuchi, at night, under cherry blossoms; prewar J-Art Deco (Waseda campus has some nice examples, btw); crisp autumn breezes; Nihonshu and oden on winter nights

J-turn-offs: requests for personal anatomical data, particularly from strangers; any and all comments/lines of questioning about chopstick/Nihongo ability and/or edible/inedible Japanese foods; Nihonjinron genre (comedic value aside); self-serving, obsequious tatemae; just about any building erected in Japan since about 1965 (although I do like the Asahi Beer corporate headquarters); 95% of J-television programming; tsuyu and summer weather in Central Japan

前世 existences: Post-Impressionist painter; Chuushingura co-conspirator; Greek hoplite; Egyptian architect.

*****

Dewa, mina san, yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

China/Education/General/Post-Mao/Teaching

Braudel in Shanghai

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 2 Comments

There has been a good deal of comment on Chinese history textbook revisions of late. Mao is gone! For foreigners who can only name one Chinese historical figure this must be troubling. The project is supported by Zhu Xueqin, and according to one of the authors of the new textbook they are trying to take a more Braudelian approach, emphasizing social change over politics. According to Zhou Chunsheng,

“History does not belong to emperors or generals,” Mr. Zhou said in an interview. “It belongs to the people. It may take some time for others to accept this, naturally, but a similar process has long been under way in Europe and the United States.” via NYTimes

I have not seen the textbooks, but at least for the pre-modern period it seems like a good change. Memorizing a list of dynasties and events without making any attempt to explain why they matter is bad history teaching, and it seems to be common in China. Dropping the whole revolution is bad, but perhaps better than doing the old revolutionary catechism. Needless to say there has been some controversy. Danwei has a nice summary.

The thing I found most interesting is that almost all the Western commentary claims that it is Chinese textbooks that are being revised. Actually it is just in Shanghai so far. The old narrative of Chinese history stressed class struggle, that the ordinary people of China were being oppressed, mostly by foreigners, but also by fellow Chinese. I like most of Zhu Xueqin’s ideas, but I also suspect that Shanghai authorities like his ideas in part because if anyone is oppressing people in Anhui today it is likely to be people from Shanghai. Emphasizing harmony and unity over the revolutionary power of the exploited masses is probably a good idea, and also fits in well with the interests of the Shanghai elite.

Archaeology/China/General/Nationalism

Shine on you crazy diamond

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 0 Comment

Have you been to the British Museum? One of the best museums in the world, largely because it contains the loot of empire, stuff the Brits brought back from all over the place, mostly from the days when archeology was more like looting. They have the Elgin Marbles which have been the source of a good deal of controversy, with the Greeks wanting it back and the Brits not wanting to return it.

One of the jewels of the BM collection is the Diamond Sutra from Dunhuang, the world’s first printed book.

Diamond Sutra

Although it was “acquired” by Aurel Stein under conditions that would not pass muster today, as far as I know the Chinese have not asked for it back. This is a bit surprising to me. Part of it is that the whole reclaiming antiquities thing seems to be less common in East Asia then in the West. I think it also has to do with where things fit into the popular mind. Greeks want the Elgin Marbles back because they are masterworks of Greek art and they are Greeks. China has requested some stuff from An-yang back, but they have not, as yet, been interested in this. Maybe it’s just a matter of time before Chinese nationalists start demanding back the treasures of Chinese culture all over the world. I suspect that even then the Diamond Sutra would not be as big a deal for China since being Buddhist it may fit less well into modern Chinese conceptions of the treasures of Chinese culture than it does for westerners. It’s one of those things which seems, to me anyway, to loom larger in the foreign concept of China than the Chinese one.

Academia/Archaeology/Art/Blog Carnival/Current/Recent Events/English/Gender/General/Historiography/Japan/Memory/Museums/Nationalism/Politics/Religion/Teaching

History Carnival #38

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 9 Comments

“For both nations and inviduals have sometimes made a virtue of neglecting history; and history has taken its revenge on them.” — H. R. Trevor-Roper “The Past and the Present: History and Sociology” (1969), cited in Tosh, ed. Historians on History, p. 197.

Welcome to the September 1, 2006 edition of history carnival. I’m finally hosting a carnival with a number as high as my age! In honor of the quotes meme making the rounds, I’m going to use my personal quotation file as, um, decoration around the rich collection of material in this carnival. As usual, I’m making up categories as I go along: anyone who treats them as strict or comprehensive cataloging gets what they deserve!

Continue reading →

Archaeology/Colonial/Korea/Korea-Japan/Koryŏ/Late Chosŏn/Law/Libraries/Museums

History news round-up (brought to you by the Korea Times)

Posted on by Owen / 0 Comment

For some reason the Korea Times seems to be quite a decent source of history news these days, so in the absence of a more heavyweight post, here’s a round up of articles I’ve come across in the last week or so:

A couple of weeks ago the Korean Supreme Court released a bundle of court rulings from the early colonial period for the first time. The rulings date from 1912-1914 and the article notes how at that time custom still had an important influence on how the law was executed:

The court acknowledged concubines and gave supreme rights to the eldest sons of families. A person’s legal capacity was decided not by his or her age but by whether he or she had the intelligence to determine gains and losses.

Last week it was announced that a number of Chosŏn royal seals are missing, having been lost by various Korean museums. This is really not good for Korean museum PR:

The Board of Audit and Inspection also said that the surface of a royal seal made for the concubine of King Sonjo rusted away and a turtle-shaped seal, made of jade for the wife of King Sonjo, had been destroyed.

They said that every one of the of 316 seals owned by the National Palace Museum of Korea had been damaged in some way.

Two wooden ships found off the coast of China last year have turned out to be extremely rare examples of Koryŏ flat-bottomed wooden ships.

“It provides evidence that flat-bottom ships could sail as far as Shandong Province. Flat-bottom is a unique feature of ancient Korean ships unlike Chinese ships that had relatively pointy-shaped bottoms,” Choi Hang-soon, professor at the Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at Seoul National University, told The Korea Times.

“It seems the Koryo ships arrived in the Chinese port, and had some big repairs there,” said Choi, who participated in the international academic conference on the ancient ships last week in Penglai.

And finally… A KT student guest columnist lauds the philanthropic attitude of Chosŏn dynasty sŏnbi (Confucian scholar-officials). This is something that interests me a lot as I’m planning to do some research on the ‘gift economy’ in Chosŏn Korea. However, I must admit that I can’t help being a bit put off an article when I see empty catchphrases like ‘sŏnbi spirit’ being thrown around and I’m not entirely convinced about the idea of seeing members of the exclusive and exploitative yangban class as moral models for our age, however philanthropic they may have been. Actually I could criticise numerous aspects of that column, but that would seem rather misanthropic of me…

China/General

Sharing syllabi

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 1 Comment

As is becoming a timeless tradition here at Frog in a Well, I am posting my syllabi for comment and suggestions. Not much China stuff this semester. I am stuck teaching Modern Japan (actually, I kind of like Japan) so there is not much China stuff. I am trying a bit more primary source stuff in the Japan class. I am also teaching ASIA 200, our introductory course on Asian Studies. I posted a version of this before, and made a few changes based on what people told me. (Sorry, the old version is now gone, but I really did make some changes.) I was aiming at something inter-disciplinary and Pan-Asian, but I think I ended up with something that looks like it was done by a China historian.

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