General/Japan

In Memorium: Edward Beauchamp

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

From the UH News:

Professor Emeritus Edward Beauchamp died Aug. 8 at the age of 72. Beauchamp joined the College of Education in 1969 and was a valued faculty member in both Educational Foundations and Curriculum Research Development Group for 32 years. He specialized in comparative/international education and the history of education.

In addition to his years of service to UH, Beauchamp was a Fullbright professor at Keio University, Tokyo and Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary.

I remember Beauchamp’s An American teacher in early Meiji Japan as one of the books I read my first year in graduate school — one of the first books I actually went out and bought that wasn’t a class assignment — as I fumbled around looking for a “hook” to study the internationalization of Meiji Japan.

A lot of his other publications, looking at our library records (our journal databases are down, at the moment, but references to noteworthy works appreciated), were edited volumes and documentary collections focused on the post-war era, on education, recent history, economics, international politics, and women’s issues. He also edited and annotated Richard Burton’s memoir of early Japan and coedited a volume with Akira Iriye on foreign employees in Meiji Japan. In recent years he edited Routledge’s East Asia series. As a result, he played a role in many a career.

I never met him; Hilo and Manoa are separated by ocean, not to mention an even vaster cultural gap. But his work bridged a lot of other gaps.

China/Economics/General/Labor/Social History

Working like a slave

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 4 Comments

I have been to busy to post much of late, as I have been very busy. Not quite working like a slave however,

as the slave contract below shows. I use this in classes as a nice picture of the Han economy, but it is also a

lot of fun in other ways, so I thought I would post it for the beneift of our countless readers.

The Contract for a Youth

WangPao(fl. 61-54 b.c.e.)

Wang Tzu-yuan of Shu Commandery went to the Chien River on business, and went up to the home of the widow Yang Hui, who had a male slave named Pien-liao. Wang Tzu-yuan requested him to go and buy some wine. Picking up a big stick, Pien-liao climbed to the top of the grave mound and said: “When my master bought me, Pien-liao, he only contracted for me to care for the grave and did not contract for me to buy wine for some other gentleman.”

Wang Tzu-yuan was furious and said to the widow: “Wouldn’t you prefer to sell this slave?”

Yang Hui said: “The slave’s father offered him to people, but no one wanted him.”

Wang Tzu-yuan immediately settled on the sale contract, etc. The slave again said: “Enter in the contract everything you wish to order me to do. I, Pien-liao, will not do anything not in the contract.” Wang Tzu-yuan said: “Agreed!” The text of the contract said:

Third year of Shen-chiao, the first month, the fifteenth day, the gentleman Wang Tzu-yuan, of Tzu-chung, purchases from the lady Yang Hui of An-chih village in Chengtu, the bearded male slave, Pien-liao, other hus­band’s household.

The fixed sale price is 15,000 cash. The slave shall obey orders about all kinds of work and may not argue.

He shall rise at dawn and do an early sweeping. After eating he shall wash up. Ordinarily he should pound the grain mortar, tie up broom straws, carve bowls and bore wells, scoop out ditches, tie up fallen fences, hoe the garden, trim up paths and dike up plats of land, cut big flails, bend bamboos to make rakes, and scrape and fix the well pulley. In going and coming he may not ride horseback or in the cart, nor may he sit crosslegged or make a hubbub. When he gets out of bed he shall shake his head to wake up, fish, cut forage, plait reeds and card hemp, draw water for gruel, and help in making tsu-mo drink. He shall weave shoes and make other coarse things, catch birds on a gummed pole, knot nets and catch fish, shoot wild geese with arrows on a string, and shoot wild ducks with a pellet bow. He shall ascend the mountains to shoot deer, and go into the waters to catch turtles. He shall dig a pond in the garden to raise fish and a hundred or so geese and ducks; and shall drive away owls and hawks. Holding a stick, he shall herd the pigs. He shall plant ginger and rear sheep; rear the shotes and colts; remove manure and always keep things clean; and feed the horses and cattle. When the drum sounds four he shall arise and give them a midnight addition of fodder.

In the second month at the vernal equinox he shall bank the dikes and repair the boundary walls of the fields; prune the mulberry trees, skin the palm trees, plant melons to make gourd utensils, select eggplant seeds for planting, and transplant onion sets; burn plant remains to generate the fields, pile up refuse and break up lumps in the soil. At midday he shall dry out things in the sun. At cockcrow he shall rise and pound grain in the mortar, exercise and curry the horses, the donkeys, and likewise the mules—three classes.

When there are guests in the house he shall carry a kettle and go after wine; draw water and prepare the evening meal; wash bowls and arrange food trays; pluck garlic from the garden; chop vegetables and slice meat; pound meat and make
soup of tubers; stew fish and roast turtle; boil tea and fill the utensils. When the dinner is over he shall cover and put away leftovers; shut the gates and close up the passageways for dogs; feed the pigs and air the dogs.

He shall not argue or fight with the neighbors. The slave should only drink bean-water and may not be greedy for wine. If he wishes to drink good wine he may only wet the lips and rinse the mouth; he may not empty the dipper or drain the cup. He may not go out at dawn and return at night, or have dealings with close chums.

Behind the house there are trees. He should hew them and make a boat, going downriver as far as Chiang-chou and up to Chien-chu. On behalf of the storehouse assistants he shall seek spending money, rejecting the strings of cash which are defective. He shall buy mats at Mien-t’ing, and when traveling between Tu and Lo he should trade in the small markets to get powder for the ladies. When he returns to Tu he shall carry hemp about on his pole, transporting it out to the side markets. He shall lead dogs for sale and peddle geese. At Wu-yang he shall buy tea, and he shall carry lotus on his pole from the Yang family pool. When he travels to market assemblies he shall carefully guard against the practice of theft. When he enters the market he may not squat like a barbarian, loll about, or indulge in evil talk and cursing. He shall make many knives and bows, and take them into Yi-chou to barter for oxen and sheep. The slave shall teach himself to be smart and clever, and may not be silly and stupid.

He shall take an axe and go into the mountains; cut memorandum tablets and hew cart shafts; if there are leftovers he should make sacrificial stands, benches, and wooden shoes, as well as food pans for pigs. He shall burn wood to make charcoal; collect stones and heap them into retaining walls, make huts and roof houses; and whittle books to take the place of commercially prepared writing tablets. On his return at dusk he should bring two or three bundles of dry wood.

In the fourth month he should transplant; in the ninth month he should reap; and in the tenth month gather in the beans. He shall gather quantities of hemp and rushes and stretch them into rope. When it rains and there is nothing to do, he should plait grass and weave reeds. He shall plant and cultivate peach, plum, pear, and persimmon trees. He shall set out mulberry trees, one every thirty feet in rows eight feet apart, and fruit trees in corresponding sequence with the rows and intervals matching. When the fruit is ripe and is being picked or stored he may not suck or taste it. At night if the dogs bark he should arise and warn the neighbors, block the gate and bar the doors, mount the tower and beat the drum, don his shield and grasp his spear. Returning down he shall make three circuits of inspection.

He shall be industrious and quick-working, and he may not idle and loaf. When the slave is old and his strength spent, he shall plant marsh grass and weave mats. When his work is over and he wishes to rest he should pound a picul of grain.

Late at night when there is no work he shall wash clothes really white. If he has private savings they shall be the master’s gift or from guests. The slave may not have evil secrets; affairs should be open and reported. If the slave does not heed instructions, he shall be bastinadoed a hundred strokes.

The reading of the text of the contract came to an end. The slave was speechless and his lips were tied. Wildly he beat his head on the ground, and hit himself with his hands; from his eyes the tears streamed down, and the drivel from his nose hung a foot long.

He said: “If it is to be exactly as master Wang says, I would rather return soon along the yellow-soil road, with the grave worms boring through my head. Had I known before I would have bought the wine for master Wang. I would not have dared to do that wrong.”

From Mair

China/Chinese/General/Language/Post-Mao

他媽的

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 4 Comments

I caught a couple of episodes of Firefly on TV a bit back. The thing that hooked me was that some of the characters were swearing in Chinese, of a sort. The series is about space smugglers in the far future, and every so often one of the crew will break into Chinese. The Chinese (Mandarin) is not very good, and not very important to the plot. Plus, looking at the on-line glossary of all the Chinese used in the show (I love geeks) it seems that a lot of is stuff that Americans might say that was then translated into Chinese. Or at least it does not sound very slang-y to me. Of course I don’t hang with Chinese space pirates all that much so maybe they really do say things like 太空所有的星球塞盡我的屁股 and 我的媽和她的瘋狂的外甥都

What I found interesting is that according to Wikipedia the explanation for this in the show’s backstory is that the Chinese and the Americans were the main early explorers of space, and thus Chinese is a pretty common language in the future. I’m not really sure the show pulls that off. Nobody seems to really speak Chinese, they just toss in a few words here and there. Still, it was interesting to see the Chinese as the people with a future. The obvious comparisons are Burgess’s nadsat, from Clockwork Orange, which has a lot of Russian in it, and Blade Runner, which I remember as having a bit of Japanese. Now making Science Fiction with Russian in it would seem weird, and even Japanese does not work as well.

Colonial/English/Intellectual

English craze as a modern Korean tradition

Posted on by noja / 6 Comments

Even having seen for around 15 years how one’s ability to follow the CNN anchors’ pronounciation habits functions in South Korea as the modern equivalent of the old treasured skills of Chinese poetizing, I still often feel baffled by the degree that the English craze has reached. On one plane, you have badly informed moms having the tongues of their kids operated on so that they can ideally conform to global standards; on another plane, my old Korean alma mater proudly proclaims that it will switch 60% of its teaching to the most scientific language in the world in 5 years. Korean history isn’t going to be exempt from this new duty of linguistic globalization , and it really feels eerie – after all, it was permitted to teach 조선사 and 조선어 in Korean even in during colonial times when Japanese remained the principal language of teaching, after the Law on Korean Education was revised in 1921-22 in what is considered one of the Government-General’s main concessions to the nationalistic spirit shown by the March 1, 1919 events. Although that too changed after the mid-1930s in many good schools, and I remember having seen the notes for Ewha lectures prepared by the later Prof. Yi PyOngdo (이병도) during that time – they were all in Japanese, of course. Anyway, it looks as though in these times cultural self-colonization may be much more thorough and destructive than anything forced from the outside by the classical “gun-boat” imperialists.

However, whatever I might have felt looking 7 years ago at my Kyunghee students making “study circles” for the collective reading of Newsweek (for me, it sounded like making a voluntary association for studying Pravda in the good old Stalinist days), I guess we have to acknowledge the enormous importance of English learning is a part of what may be called Korea’s “modern tradition”. It is quite obvious for the pre-colonial and post-colonial periods, and less obvious, but no less true for the colonial days. For pre-colonial and colonial Korea, building one’s cultural and social capital by learning English was by no means simply a feature of the life-stories of missionary school graduates like Yun Ch’iho and Syngman Rhee: what is really interesting is the role English played in the lives of the members of the fledgling modern elite who had no Christian connections.

It is largely unknown, but even early modern Korea’s greatest opponent of “동화적 모방” (‘assimilational imitation’ – that is how the “exclusion of national spirit from the modern education” was termed in one of Taehan Maeil Sinbo’s awe-inspiring editorials), Sin Ch’aeho, learned English on his own in the mid-1910s, while in China – and read Carlyle’s opus on hero worship, as well as Gibbon’s meditations on imperial declines and falls (“decline and downfall” being only too timely a topic for a militant nationalist like Sin 3-4 years after 1910), in their originals (변영로, “국수주의의 항성인 단재 신채호 선생”, – < 개벽>, 62호, 1925). Then, there is the inspiring story of the three Pyŏn brothers, Yŏngt’ae (변영태: 1892-1969 – Prime-minister in 1954-56, by the way), Yŏngno (변영로: 1897-1961) and Yŏngman (변영만: 1889-1954). All three – no conversion story involved, to my knowledge – began learning English by themselves, although Yŏngno was greatly helped by the YMCA services, and Yŏngman owed a debt to the pre-colonial School of Law Officers (법관 양성소). And all three were talented to the point of linguistic – and literary – genius. Yŏngno wrote his first English poem in 1914, and Yŏngman tried hard to create a new, novel genre of Chinese classical writing, influenced by European, primarily English literature.

Interestingly enough, English was also an OBLIGATORY subject in the colonial Advanced Normal Schools after the 1922 reform – it was taught 5-7 hours a week on average, while Japanese was taught 6-8 hours (강내희, “영어 교육과 영어의 사회적 위상”, – 공제욱, 정근식 편, < 식민지의 일상: 지배와 균열>, 문화과학사, 2006). So, lots of modern English loan words in Korean entered the language, in fact, much before 1945, although their spelling varied greatly. All this may provide, in fact, some interesting food for thought concerning the relationship between a global subsystem called “Japanese Empire”, and the British/American-dominated world-system as a whole…

Academia/China-Japan/Cultural/English/General/Intellectual/Japan/Memory/Nationalism/War

Defining Japaneseness: a miscellany

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

This report (with followups here) suggests that Japan is no longer a “classless society” but I wonder to what extent the concept of class simply to mean “income strata” is useful?

This research by Mark J. Hudson and Mami AOYAMA, drawing heavily on the work of fellow WellFrogger Brian McVeigh, shows a fascinating diversity of opinions by young Japanese about their own ethnicity, by looking at their responses to a final exam question about same…. How do you grade that?

Mariko Tamanoi’s War Orphan chapter from Japanese Diasporas (Full Disclosure: I wrote chapter three) focuses on the nexus between nationality and identity, noting, for example, that Japanese repatriation services only work with orphans who wish to take Japanese nationality after repatriation, not those who want to retain Chinese passports.

Academia/bibliography/Historiography/Korea

James B. Palais (1934-2006)

Posted on by Owen / 5 Comments

I was very saddened to hear that Professor James Palais has died. Everyone in the world of Korean history will have heard of him and anyone who has read any of his books and papers will know that his scholarship was at a level that leaves you in awe just a few pages in. Unfortunately, many of us at a relatively early stage in our studies will never have the opportunity to meet Professor Palais.

There is a rather perfunctory obituary from Yonhap. Hopefully there will be something more substantial soon via the Korean Studies discussion list which I will post here.

UPDATES:
Obituary from the Northwest Asian Weekly
Obituary in the Seattle Times

In the spirit of cross-linking, back-linking or something like that, here’s Antti’s post on the death of James Palais, which links here and also includes more interesting links to obituaries and the personal reflections of people that knew him.

Below is a probably rather incomplete bibliography for James Palais, gleaned from the Korean History Bibliography:
Continue reading →

Books/China/English/General/Web Sites and Resources

Used books online in China

Posted on by Scott Relyea / 5 Comments

The book markets and used bookstores of Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and pretty much everywhere in between; their dusty piles of colourful, frayed cultural revolution cartoon books interspersed with old dictonaries, Mao buttons, and piles of post-liberation 檔案 or pre-liberation photos… This is undoubtedly a scene those of us researching or studying in China have passed through numerous times. Sometimes on these hunts we’ve also found more than simple kitsch or interesting trinkets to disperse as gifts to friends and family on our return, sometimes even come across the odd Republican era textbook or early PRC atlas (one of which lies at the origin of my own dissertation project). The amount of particularly CR materials for sale at these markets may seem endless, but then again so too may the stacks of unsorted books in the more permanent, neighbouring bookshops seem almost limitless. It could take countless days of scrutinising, sneezing visits, though, to even begin to be aware of what’s available, and to find what’s related to your research…

So after getting consumed in the twice weekly book market near 杜甫草堂 Du Fu’s Cottage soon after arriving in Chengdu earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised that some random, non-linear meandering online brought me to a web resource that has been absolutely invaluable for discovering just what lies within those dusty piles. 孔夫子旧书网 Kongfz (http://www.kongfz.com/index.php) is a bit like Biblio with which many of you might be more familiar. The site claims to be: 全球最大的中文旧书网站 Its constantly growing database renders easily searchable the holdings of literally thousands of bookshops in all corners of the PRC, large and perhaps surprisingly minuscule. Indeed, what I found when I went looking for one of these ‘shops’ in Chengdu was the owner and his brother having a quiet lunch in their sparsely furnished flat, while each room in the flat across the landing was overflowing with the books they had for sale. The booksellers themselves maintain their own online databases and many seem to add new books daily, as well as sell books daily, so there’s a bit of urgency sometimes to reserve what interests you the moment you see it as the next day it may already have been sold.

Most of the books on offer are out of print, published over the last two decades or so, (as print runs were generally quite small), but what’s available goes well beyond such more purely secondary sources. Many published collections of archival materials as well as 地方誌 both old and new and other collections of original materials are available for sometimes widely varying prices, as well as reprints of Qing or Republican era books. Among the items I’ve purchased was a 油印本 version of a book which original a certain library in Chengdu was only grudgingly willing to let me see, but certainly not photocopy or even photograph.

Original copies of some Republican and even Qing books also are listed on Kongfz, though the prices tend to be a bit high. Overall, the cost of most books is quite reasonable, but purchases can only be made in China as Kongfz has no online purchase facility; rather you must first make a deposit into the bookseller’s bank account and then wait for the books to arrive. Through quite a few orders, I’ve only had one small problem, and the ratings for each shop are quite high, so it seems overall quite a reliable service. And indeed extremely helpful for research. Check it out once in a while and you might just find that book that all your Chinese colleagues and friends have referred to but until now has been maddeningly elusive…

Blogs and Carnivals/Korea

Asian History Carnival #6

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 2 Comments

Welcome to the sixth Asian History Carnival with some of the great blog postings related to Asian history from around the past month.

China

EastSouthWestNorth is one of the best blogs online covering the Chinese media in English and often offers full translations of Chinese media articles with commentary. In a recent posting, complete with an article translation, we learn of an example of what happens when massive numbers of online gamers respond to rumors of a pro-Japanese conspiracy on the part of the game’s designers. A flag looking suspiciously like Japan’s found in the online historical/fantasy setting of the game gets a closer evaluation in the posting.

Matt from Blind Man and the Elephant discusses Lydia Liu’s Translingual Practices and the work of American missionary Arthur Henderson Smith, especially his work Chinese Characteristics in his recent posting Arthur Smith and Chinese Characteristics

Dave and Stefan over at Blogging…Walk the Talk continue to post wonderful Hong Kong related historical articles based on contemporary historical documents and media. One recent posting looks at local resistance to British on April 1st, 1899, when the flag was to be hoisted in the New Territories leased from China. Another entry looks at Immigration and the Sanitary Laws of Hong Kong in the 19th century, especially during the outbreak of a plague in 1894-5.

Dave and Stefan also bring up the Kowloon-Canton Railway, its controversial status in 1899, and the uses of railway lines to increase imperial power – drawing a direct connection to China’s Tibetan line today.

Alan Baumler at Frog in a Well: China also wrote a posting about the Tibetan rail line and Sun Yat-sen’s earlier dreams of a similar railway in the aftermath of the 1911 revolution.

Our newest member at Frog in a Well: China Scott Relyea has posted about two illustrations he came across from Chengdu in 1912 and what we can learn about the growth market economy and crony capitalism in China.

Dan Harris over at the China Law Blog confesses his pro-capitalist views and sympathy for David S. Landes’ explanation of Why China Stagnated in some of his recent writings.

Korea

Gerry Bevers over at Korean Language Notes has continued his now 13 chapter long examination of the history of Ulleungdo for the purpose of challenging Korea’s claims to the controversial Dokto/Takeshima islands. His thirteen postings include clippings of the royal annals in the periods discussed in Classical Chinese, modern Korean, and English translation. His first posting on the topic, in May of this year, can be found here.

Over at the Sanchon Hunjang, there is an interesting posting about a memorial table in a Seoul park, the author Taemin’s attempt to understand the tablet, some of its more interesting features, and questions one might raise about the nearby explanations provided on site. Read Owen Miller’s comments on the posting here at Frog in a Well.

Here at our own Frog in a Well: Korea, Pak Noja (Vladimir) has been busy posting some English summaries and comments on recent Korean historical works he has been reading. See his postings on South Korea’s welfare policies in the 1960s, Patriotic School Athletics in the colonial period and after, and South Korea’s War on Rice (or the “쌀밥 전쟁”)

Asia All Around

I have put other postings on regions which didn’t merit their own section this time below:

In a posting by Matt at No-Sword there are some interesting quotes from and comments about the English writing of two famous Japanese writers (Natsume Sôseki and Dazai Osamu). While your visiting No-Sword, which often has postings on Japanese language, literature, and pop culture, don’t miss Matt’s own translations of Japanese literature in the links at the left.

Joe Kissell writes a posting about the history of the Indonesian language and contests the simplistic claim that the language is nothing more than an “artificial language”

Michael Turton from The View From Taiwan posts a summary of a July Meet Up on the history of martial arts in Taiwan. In includes something of an outline of points from each period which might be worth further discussion, with perhaps reference to Craig Colbeck’s posting on Karate and modernity over at Frog in a Well: Japan.

Resources and Articles

Mutanfrog links to a scanned online wartime comic which claims to show Americans how to accurately identify their enemy.

Owen here at our own Frog in a Well: Korea wrote a posting about the Glossary of Korean Studies.

In a separate recent posting, I noted that Yun Chi-ho’s Diary can be viewed online at history.go.kr.

Jonathan Dresner has pointed to some of the gems at the Korean Heritage Library in his posting here.

Read about UC Berkeley’s Japanese Historical Text Initiative announcement here.

T. Mills Kelly has written an interesting article on the Role of Technology in World History Teaching at World History Connected.

Check out this wonderful collection of Chinese propaganda posters at Maopost.com. The collection is being constantly updated and includes translations of the text.

After being down for a short period of time, Japan Focus is up and running again with a new design.

Alan Baumler points to an online biography of Western Language Publications on Chinese popular Religion.

Thanks to everyone for their submissions! The next Asian History Carnival will be hosted at the Mutantfrog Travelogue on September 9th.

Books and Articles/Korea/Military/임진왜란

African mercenaries in Chosŏn

Posted on by Owen / 1 Comment

I meant to post a note on this interesting piece at the Oh My News website a couple of weeks ago, but other things intervened. It recounts the story of the black mercenaries who fought with the Ming troops in Chosŏn during the international war of the late sixteenth century (known as the Imjin waeran 임잔왜란 in Korea). Well worth having a look if you can read Korean.

While I have to say that I felt a little uncomfortable about one or two of the author’s somewhat narrow-minded observations (eg that Black people are renowned for their physical strength) this is still an informative piece of popular history writing about a little-known part of Korea’s history. It is also the second part of a series by the same author that may be worth following. Part one is here.

Blogs and Carnivals/China/Diaspora/English/General/Historiography/Identity/Nationalism/Qing/Taiwan/Web Sites and Resources

Chinese in Motion

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 13 Comments

Migration and identity are tough issues, particularly as our tendency towards literalism (you thought we were all postmodernists? Not even close.) with regard to concepts like nation and ethnicity continues to grow. Using Nationmaster, Sun Bin produced some lovely maps of the Chinese Diaspora. My only big quibble is the lack of data for the Russian Federation, given the thousands of Chinese in the Russian East before the PRC and particularly in the present. Still, it’s a fantastic example of the ease with which data and imaging tools can produce fantastic graphics.

A while back, I ran across this critique of media coverage of Taiwan [via] from Michael Turton (a fantastic Taiwan-based blogger, with lots of links and interesting things to say, including a regular roundup of Taiwan blogs that looks like a great resource) which actually illustrated for me this tendency to literalism quite strongly. In this particular post he actually argues that “China has never owned Taiwan” largely because Taiwan was “never the possession of any ethnic Chinese emperor.” In other words, the Qing dynasty which conquered Taiwan and which was the acknowledged possessor of it in international law (up to 1895, when the Japanese got it as part of the Sino-Japanese war indemnity), doesn’t count as Chinese.

From a strictly literal ethnic point of view, and based on thoroughly modern concepts of international law, there’s some grounding to that: the Qing dynasty was Manchurian in origin, ethnically distinct and based on conquest. Though Qing emperors lived very typical Chinese Imperial lives, throughout the Qing, the government was deeply concerned that non-Manchu Chinese would discover some ethnic solidarity or identity (Kuhn’s Soulstealers is a good example, from mid-dynasty) and there’s no question that part of the fall of the Qing was related to irredentist Han nationalism. But that’s a very late development; there’s about two centuries of the Qing dynasty in which nobody seriously questions the legitimacy of Manchu rule. If the Qing isn’t legitimately Chinese, then the modern borders of China — based on Qing conquests — need serious reconsideration, particularly in the west.

But the “strictly literal ethnic” and “thoroughly modern concepts of international law” are absurdities when applied that far back or that literally. While I’m sympathetic to Turton’s position on Taiwanese independence, applying the same principles would delegitimize its current government — based on ethnic migration and conquest — and probably (since Turton seems to acknowledge Japanese colonization) result in US control of the island. More to the point, it presumes an historical purity which runs counter to all experience.

Non Sequitur: a bibliography of Chinese popular religion scholarship

English/Korea/Late Chosŏn/Libraries/Web Sites

Yun Chi-ho’s Diary Online

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 1 Comment

Owen has posted some great links on the study of pre-modern Korean history. In one of his postings he mentioned the National History Compilation Committee (국사편찬위원회 國史編纂委員會). I poked around the site when Owen linked to it but had no idea they had great modern materials as well.

A Japanese friend of mine just returned to Japan and Waseda after spending a week here collection some colonial period materials. He was hoping he could buy a copy of Yun Ch’i-ho’s original Chinese/English diary while he was here which he had heard was out of print and only now available in Korean. I went used book shopping with him but we had no luck. However, after his return, he discovered—and was kind enough to tell me—that the entire diary is online via the 국사편찬위원회 website.

To find this diary, simply go to the history.go.kr website, enter 尹致昊日記 or 윤치호일기 in the search box and you will find three hits. The first hit will lead you to a volume index, followed by a year and month index where you can read his entries directly online. Whoever compiled it was also nice enough to mark proper nouns as “People” or “Places.” If you are not sure what kind of thing one of the specially colored words are, simply hover your mouse over it and it will tell you whether it is a person, place, etc.

Memory/Nationalism/昭和

More Yasukuni News

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 2 Comments

In a recent posting I summarized some recent developments related to the Yasukuni shrine issue in Japan. In addition to a steady stream of articles in the Japanese media about whether or not Koizumi or the most likely future Prime Minister Abe Shinzô will be visiting the shrine, etc. there has also been several new discoveries related to the history of the shrine.

1. Yutaka Shuichi and a friend of mine, Miyaji Yu wrote an article on Asahi’s scoop related to two 1956 documents discussing government policies towards the shrine. Their article shows that as late as 1956 the central government was considering a reversion to the prewar practice of choosing who to memorialize—the postwar constitution notwithstanding. The documents help clarify, at the very least, what kinds of cooperation between the government and the shrine were being considered.

Though a lot remains unclear about the inner workings of this process at the time, the article notes that the following year, 1957 (two years after the consolidation of the right and the formation of the LDP we might note) 470,000 names were memorialized in contrast to the decade since 1945 when only twice did the number exceed 100,000.

2. This Japan Times article claims that a document obtained by the writer Yamanaka Hisashi around 1980 shows that in July of 1944 Tojo Hideki, who was executed for war crimes and later memorialized at Yasukuni in 1978, ordered that ‘only military personnel and civilian military employees whose deaths “resulted directly from military service” should be enshrined at Yasukuni.’ Those who did not die on the battlefield were not to be memorialized. Though this contributes very little to the debate, it does add to the “irony factor” of people like Tojo, who certainly did not die on the battlefield, even if they are seen as “Showa’s martyrs” being memorialized at the shrine.

3. Since the memo regarding the emperor’s opposition to the enshrinement of war criminals came out, a former Yasukuni Shrine official Baba Hisao has made some interesting comments that are quoted in this Japan Times article (Free registration required). He claims that he remembers that during the period when Yasukuni was considering the enshrinement of the war criminals, there was opposition from the Imperial Household Agency and the shrine officials were told that the Emperor would stop visiting the shrine if the war criminals were included. The article also briefly discusses the question of whether visiting the shrine can every only be interpreted as going to “mourn” or includes, as has been the practice up to the end of the war, an “honoring” of the enshrined souls of the shrine.

Art/Cultural/General/Japan/Translation

Eloquent oddities

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

There aren’t a lot of good Japanese-themed quizzes out there….

You Are a Sarariiman!
Or “salaryman.” Whatever. Treadmill off, treadmill on. Most of the sleep you get is on Tokyo’s extensive subway system, since you are putting in 14 hour days. You’re a workaholic who works hard for no overtime. And vacations? Forget about it. You spend most of your trip hunting around for gifts to bring back all of your coworkers.

Moving the other direction, from English to Japanese, a friend sent along this link to a collection of Jabberwocky translations. It’s been a long time since I could summon the mental energy to disagree with someone about their translation of nonsense verse, but apparently there’s a lot of views on the subject, all represented here. Quite a few of the translators appear to be relying on the Gardiner annotations, is all I’ll say, which is … a choice.

Though WWII remains unsettled between Japan and Russia, The Russo-Japanese War has finally ended for Japan and Montenegro.

Finally, in art news, three times. First, an interesting discussion of private art museums in Tokyo illustrates the power of individual collectors and non-canonical thinking. Second, though I can’t possibly get there for the exhibit, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Art of History is a lovely online experience, though I have mixed feelings about the “elegant mash-up” postmodern elements of the art itself. Some of it (including the Hirohito image) is chilling; others (e.g. Henry’s wives) are barely clever. Finally, Ansel Adams’ pictures of Japanese internment camps in the US are available online, fantastic documentation, not to mention photographs.

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