China/General

Visualizing cultures

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 1 Comment

The M.I.T. site is back up. The most controversial part was the section on Old China, New Japan. There is a cache of the old version here

The only change that I see at first glance is the disclaimer, which is, I think, as should be, as I thought the text was quite good to begin with.

lots of discussion on H-Asia

(My H-Asia post)

I think the point made by Vincent Pollard, among others, that these images are being read in different ways, and then when scholars put things on the internet they have less control over how they are reacted to than they might in a classroom setting is a good one, but also I think, misses the problem of how these images are being read. It is certainly true that once something is posted on the internet one looses control over it, and it is technically easier for someone else to take your work and place it in another context than it would be if one did printed scholarship. On the other hand, what seems to be happening here, at least at M.I.T. and H-Asia, is not a misunderstanding, but a deliberately different reading. Winnie Wong (5/12) states that the text needs better editing to “[make] visible the historian’s intervention as much as possible.” As she claims that the needed changes are self-evident I am not sure what she means, but Kas Ross (5/13) agrees with her

I’d like to express my agreement with Winnie Wong’s comment over the need for sharper editing on the MIT Visualizing Cultures website. Statement such as ‘In short, the Chinese are riotous in every way, disgracefully so in their behavior, and delightfully so in their accoutrements’ are ambiguous, I think. Adding a few words (‘In short, the Chinese are portrayed as riotous in every way’) makes the critical stance more obvious.

Ross at least implies that there is a critical stance, and that he can see what it is, but that the text needs to be more clear so that this will be apparent to unspecified other readers. This is the same position taken by the M.I.T. students

we are confident that the authors do not endorse the wood prints’ contents in any way beyond their artistic and historical value. Nevertheless, we cannot condone the irresponsible manner in which such material has been presented. An exhibit should provoke discussion, but in this case, it could have been done in a more delicate manner.

A lot of comments I have seen about this seem to be from people who are not offended, but are speaking on behalf of those who might be. As far as I can tell, both Ross and the M.I.T. students seem to be saying that they understand the authors’ meaning, but that other possible readers might not, and that the authors should take this into account. I suppose I agree with that, but I suspect that these other readers are a very small, possibly non-existent, group. Apparently some readers of the site deliberately took images from the site and posted them without context or with deliberately misleading context, an act which Peter Perdue condemned, rightly I think, as “despicable.” Kas Ross and possibly Winnie Wong seem to be saying that Dower and Miyagawa have created a text that they can read in the sense that the authors intended, but that they could also chose to read the text in another way, and that the authors should try to create a text that is not susceptible to deliberate misreading. I’m not sure that is possible, nor am I sure that it would be desirable if it were. Historians are notoriously bad writers, and this site is one of the few on the internet that tries to bring Asian history to a broader public and does so in a way that draws an audience in. Sprinkling the text with caveats as Ross suggests seems to serve one bad purpose (deliberately trying to distance the reader off from the text) and no good purpose (deliberate misreading will always be possible unless historians become lawyers.)

I think that Dower and Miyagawa have handled this affair in a fairly clear way. The contrast between the revised site and the original (cached here) is quite clear. As far as I can tell the only change is to add a disclaimer asking readers to (among other things) “PLEASE VIEW & USE THESE “VISUALIZING CULTURES” UNITS CAREFULLY & IN THE SPIRIT IN WHICH THEY HAVE BEEN PREPARED.” In other words, they are asking for a scholarly reading of their work. Are there those who will refuse this request? (I don’t think anyone on H-Asia or at M.I.T. would fit in that category) Probably there are such people, but Dower and Miyagawa are, in effect, ignoring them, and I think that is the best approach to take. The process of expanding scholarly discussion beyond traditional scholarly circles and formats is complex enough without attempting to create texts that cannot possibly be misinterpreted.

Contemporary/Economic/General/Nationalism/US-Korea

Manifesto from the Suyu Research Institute on the S.Korea-USA FTA plans – The Twilight of Empire?

Posted on by noja / 10 Comments

Dear colleagues,

Below I put the English text of the manifesto penned by two of the most promising post-nationalist scholars I know in South Korea, namely Dr. Ko Byeong-gweon (고병권) and Prof. Yi Jin-gyeong (이진경), both affiliated with Suyu Research Institute – an autonomous community of post-nationalist scholars, many of whom are working on the early modern period. The manifesto, dealing with the pressing issue of the planned conclusion of the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) between ROK and USA, raises questions, which are of great significance for the whole “progressive” (use this word for the lack of a better term) movement in South Korea (and elsewhere). What is the real strategy beyond promotion of the FTA by the empire in (arguably, terminal) decilne? Why does the ruling bureaucracy in South Korea prefer to ally itself economically, in the form of FTA, with the “old”, declining hegemon, instead of making the best out of its growing interdependence with the new, regional hegemonic force? Will the logic of almost unconditional support for Pres. Roh’s camp, simultaneously pursuing the strategy of co-optation of North Korean bureaucracy and following the imperial agenda on the FTA issue, divide and split the left-nationalist camp into “unification activists” (playing down their anti-US sentiments so far the USA does not harm Pres. Roh seriously) and an “anti-American group”? I personally do not agree with some of the theses proposed by Dr. Ko and Prof. Yi, but the manifesto is an interesting and thought-provoking reading, showing very well the directions of “progressive” thought in S.Korea today.

Vladimir (Pak Noja)

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General/Japan

Graduate programs in Japan to be modernized?

Posted on by Morgan Pitelka / 5 Comments

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that graduate programs in Japan will be modernized (NOTE: link may require subscription) through a “a five-year reform plan.” Apparently, this “will release graduate students from a system that requires them to serve almost as apprentices did in feudal times, and instead will encourage them to conduct more original research.” Wow, all that in just five years! And will they clean up the dorms and student-run facilities as well?

First of all, who decided that medieval apprenticeship systems deserved all this criticism, anyway? What is this, the Meiji Restoration? Was it the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT)? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that bloated bureacracies justify political “reform” with historical revisionism. No, not surprising at all.

Second, would MEXT be willing to have a go at some American graduate programs? Any ministry that can cram public schools, sumo, nuclear energy, and keitai research under one umbrella ought to be able to handle at least one more major portfolio. Lets go ahead and make it the California state universities to keep things simple.

I was also struck by the similarity between the passage below, which describes the problems in the system, and amorous descriptions of how the traditional arts in Japan famously function (which can be found in just about any Japanophilic publication out there):

The concept was that students, as young researchers, learned by watching professors conduct research; students were discouraged from conducting their own research.

You know what this means, don’t you? Either MEXT is soon going to attack ceramics, the performing arts, and all the other traditional practices that still employ these pedagogies, OR, MEXT will officially recognize academia as a traditional art and set up a system of living national treasures. Yoshida Nobuyuki, ningen kokuho.

1970s/Cultural/Korea/Law

The Marijuana Crisis of ’75

Posted on by Owen / 2 Comments

I’ve been dipping into an excellent book on the history of Korean popular music now and then (이혜숙 & 손우석 – 한국대중음악사) and came across a fascinating passage on Park Chung-hee’s use of drugs scares to suppress the emerging youth culture that he found threatening. Here’s an excerpt (my rough translation):

After the defeat in Vietnam Park Chung-hee set about strengthening his dictatorship by stressing an external policy of self-reliant defence and an internal policy of ‘defending the system’. To that end, the possession of nuclear weapons, national harmony and traditional culture were all emphasised. However, the imitation of the Western youth culture of jeans, long hair, [folk] guitar and pop songs was widespread. At a time when it was necessary to defend the system and achieve national unity and a self-reliant defence it was impossible to remain indifferent to this degenerate Western youth culture. It was necessary to tighten social discipline. In the view of Park Chung-hee the base and degenerate culture of the West appeared in two forms: one was the folk guitar singers and the other was the entertainers who had originated in the [clubs frequented by] US Eighth Army soldiers. A crackdown on these people was urgent. He began by banninglarge numbers of pop songs and kayo and then moved on to a crackdown on marijuana. On December 2nd, 1975 a huge number of entertainers were banned completely from working in the so-called ‘marijuana crisis’ (대마초 파동). [한국대중음악사, p86]

The book goes on to quote Park Chung-hee himself on the marijuana problem:

“At this grave juncture that will settle the matter of life and death in our one-on-one [struggle] with the Communist Party, the smoking of marijuana by the youth is something that will bring ruin to our country… You must pull up by the roots the problem of marijuana smoking and similar activities by applying the maximum penalties currently available under the law.” [Chosun Ilbo, 3 February 1976, quoted in above book, p88]

There was a little bit more to this story, because the president’s own son, Park Ji-man, had smoked marijuana and been influenced by hippy culture. As the authors of the book point out, this was possibly further motivation for Park’s crackdown.

Of course there exist semi-conspiracy theories as to why marijuana is prohibited throughout the world and how it came to be prohibited in the first place. We can also ask the broader questions about why states would want to outlaw commodities for which there is a clear market and which could be so lucrative to both capitalist entrepreneurs and government tax revenues (David Harvey has some good passages on the limits of commoditisation in his recent book on neoliberalism).

This is probably not the place to get into all the historical reasons why this particular commodity happens to be prohibited. But the history of controlled drugs all over the world shows that social control is often one aspect in the calculations of governments enforcing prohibition laws. Korea was and continues to be a good example of this. The fact that illegal drug use is very low in Korea by world standards did not and does not stop the authorities from stamping down on the merest hint of usage, particularly when it comes to people in the public eye. As I’ve mentioned in a post before at my blog, there continue to be periodic scandals with prominent Korean entertainers being busted and sometimes having their careers ruined. And this is not confined to the world of pop singers or TV hosts – one of Korea’s most talented traditional musicians, percussionist and dancer Yi Kwangsu, has been in and out of jail a number of times as a result of his fondness for the odd reefer.

Of course, as a fibre crop hemp was crucial to the economies of both Korea and Japan for hundreds of years. But that’s another story…

General/Korea

World Congress

Posted on by Owen / 0 Comment

Antti has already got there first and flagged this up at his site, but for those people not on the Korean Studies list or regular Hunjang visitors, the Academy of Korean Studies have today announced the 3rd World Congress of Korean Studies (that’s the 3rd World Congress, not the Third World Congress). I’ll post the details below.

In the meantime, I hope like Antti, that it’s more successful than the last one which suffered from a bit of a hiccup in the smooth process of North-South reconciliation and cooperation (which was incidentally and ironically the theme of the conference).

This time the theme is ‘Cultural Interaction with Korea – From Silk Road to Korean Wave’ which means, I expect, that many historians like myself will have to find ways of shoe-horning our rather parochial topics into a more cosmopolitan, interactive mold.

________________________________________

The 3rd World Congress of Korean Studies
Call for Papers
The organizing committee of the 3rd World Congress of Korean Studies announces call for papers to all academics and professionals in Korean Studies.

Cultural Interaction with Korea -From Silk Road to Korean Wave-

A new phenomenon of cultural exchange called the Korean Wave has recently emerged across the world. However, there has been a stream of cultural exchanges with foreign countries throughout Korean history indeed. Academic discussions in the congress are expected to deepen our understanding of the background, stages, patterns, and influence of the cultural interactions, which will ultimately contribute to the promotion of mutual understanding and collaboration in the global community.

Dates : October 27(Fri) ~ 30(Mon), 2006
Venue : Cheju National University, Jejudo, ROK
Language : Korean, English

Co-organized by
The Academy of Korean Studies(AKS), Association for Korean Studies in Europe(AKSE), Central Asian Association for Korean Studies(CAAKS), International Society for Korean Studies(ISKS), Korean Studies Association of Australasia(KSAA), Pacific and Asia Conference on Korean Studies(PACKS)

Sessions:
History — Sociology — Culture — Economics — Folklore — Law — Art — Political Science
— Literature — Education — Philosophy — Religion — Language — Science & Technology — Free topic sessions

Qualifications:
Scholars, professionals, and students holding MA degree or above are encouraged to participate.

Important Dates:
Submission deadline : June 6, 2006
Acceptance notification : June 14, 2006
Final paper due : September 3, 2006

For more details, please visit our website at http://www.aks.ac.kr/eng_home or contact us at lovekorea@aks.ac.kr
International Support Division
The Center for Information on Korean Culture
The Academy of Korean Studies
Tel : +82-31-709-9843 / Fax : +82-31-709-9945

General

Petition to reinstate expelled Korea University students

Posted on by noja / 2 Comments

Dear colleagues,

What follows below is a petition for the annulment of the severe punishment meted out by the Korea University (KoryO taehakkyo) authorities to several students, written by Prof. Kang Sudol (Korea University, Economics and Labour Relations).

The students are being accused of forcibly detaining the leading managers of the university (mostly chiefs of various departments in the administration) of a professorial background during a demonstration. As The Korea Herald tells us in a recent article, “Earlier this month, nine professors at Korea University were forced by about 100 students to stay overnight in a school building. The protesters demanded that the students at the college of health, which the university acquired last year, be given voting rights in student council elections.” (http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2006/05/01/200605010005.asp).

Of course, it looks as if the students used extreme and unusual methods to press their demands. But what most mainstream newspapers in Korea conveniently forget to mention is that the students’ demand (voting rights to the college of health co-students) was not that unreasonable as such, while the tough line taken by the managers, who flatly refused even to accept the petition from the demonstrating students (and that led students to pressing their demand further through allegedly blocking exit from the building), appears to be unusually and humiliatingly authoritarian – from the viewpoint of the students, at least.

The punishment meted out to the seven “leading activists” is “permanent expulsion without any right of re-entry” (ch’ulgyo), which means that all their grades and credits earned so far are being cancelled. It has not been used at Korea University since the 1970s, even against the leaders of very violent demonstrations in the 1980s. It feels as if there are grounds to suspect that the “permanent expulsion” of the activists is just a way to supress the student movement on the campus, which hardly suits the ideals of co-determination and democratic participation in the management of the university. You can read a Hangyoreh article on possible motives for the sanctions: (http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/118925.html)

Against this background, I ask if any of our colleagues reading this blog would like to join the petition for the nullification of the punishment. Anybody wishing to join please, make contact with Prof. Kang Sudol (ksd@korea.ac.kr).

Full text of petition (in Korean) below.

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China/General

Japan's war guilt

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 4 Comments

As is being discussed elsewhere, the Dower exhibit on Visualizing Cultures has become controversial, as it contains images that some people find offensive, specifically woodblocks of the execution of Chinese during the Sino-Japanese War. According to the MIT Chinese Student and Scholar Association

we are confident that the authors do not endorse the wood prints’ contents in any way beyond their artistic and historical value. Nevertheless, we cannot condone the irresponsible manner in which such material has been presented. An exhibit should provoke discussion, but in this case, it could have been done in a more delicate manner.

In other words, we don’t think Dower and Miyagawa are racists who enjoy the thought of killing Chinese people, but we do insist that they be more “delicate” and less “irresponsible.” Part of the problem is that I’m not sure what they were looking at.

The authors should provide the proper historical context for the prints as an introductory paragraph at the top of the page. This text should include warnings stating that the images are graphical in nature and could be emotionally damaging, and also address the racist sentiment and provide the historical perspective (the wood prints’ wartime propaganda nature).

Speaking as one who looked at the exhibit before it vanished, there was a lot of context. The images were used to illustrate an argument about the role of the war and its images in creating Japanese ideas about China and Asia. The execution images were pretty clearly presented as examples of wartime propaganda. I don’t think anyone could honestly look at the exhibit and think that the authors were endorsing the murder of Chinese, and the MIT students say as much. Like Johnathan Dresner, I find this type of thing tiresome. Textbooks use pictures of Hitler all the time, but they don’t include disclaimers that the authors and publishers are not Nazis. In American politics this protest is the type of thing that is sometimes called a kabuki dance, a show of passion and interest that everyone knows is staged and that nobody, even those claiming to be outraged, takes seriously. 1

Of course lots of people are not looking at the exhibit, and so it would not matter what context was provided.. China News Digest is currently updating their site, and it is pretty much unusable, but I did find this http://www.cnd.org/my/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php%3Ftopic_id=45179&forum=1

The first poster says 屠杀中国人是‘艺术’？！(slaughtering Chinese is art? ! !) and gives links to what I assume were two individual images. One commenter points out that the text is actually worth reading. Another asks is the people being killed are not Chinese but subjects of the Qing dynasty 杀的是大清国人吧？ 仔细看看脑袋后的辫子。那时中国还不存在呢 “This is a China that no longer exists.” The first poster disagrees, but allows the other his “broadminded” attitude. The final poster on the page points out that Chinese have images “like this” as well, presumably meaning that these images should not be taken as evidence that the Japanese are a race of sub-human savages, unfortunately a point some people think needs to be made. Taken out of context some of these images would be great for working up a two-minutes hate, which seems to be something that could happen.

I have a few half-formed thoughts on the role of Japan in Chinese nationalism that I will try to work up and post later.

1 In using the term Kabuki I am not intending to disparage Chinese forms of drama.

Update

Peter Perdue’s open letter to the M.I.T. Chinese students

The text, minue the disappered images

Academia/Art/China-Japan/English/General/Japan/Media/Memory/Nationalism/Pedagogy/Web Sites/明治

China-Japan Historical Struggle Reaches MIT

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 7 Comments

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
— Maya Angelou, Inaugural Poem

I had planned to blog on a John Dower web project cited by Alan Baumler, because it’s a fantastic collection of historical images, nicely curated. Now, if you follow the the link, you get redirected to an MIT Press Office Statement that explains that the exhibit is offline while Dower and Miyagawa negotiate with members of the MIT Chinese student community who objected to an image of a Chinese being beheaded, a classic piece of Japanese propaganda, one that sets the tone for the next half century. The problem, according to the articles I’ve seen (thanks to both Manan Ahmed and Ralph Luker) was a lack of “accessible historical context” clearly warning viewers of the violent and racist content of the imagery.

Perhaps they need something like my syllabus boilerplate:

Advisory
History is about real people, diverse cultures, interesting theories, strongly held belief systems, complex situations, conflicts and often-dramatic actions. In certain contexts, this information may be disturbing. Such is the nature of historical study.

I don’t see it myself: unless you happen to read Meiji Japanese and stumble across the image by accident, and are inclined to think that we need more, not less, beheadings in the world, isn’t it pretty obvious that this is old, bad, material? (the woodblock prints should be a giveaway, if nothing else) If you know anything about the history, it’s pretty obvious that it’s racist, that it leads to great tragedy, and that it’s important visual evidence. If it wasn’t obvious beforehand, then reading the attached commentary would make it pretty clear: my recollection (Alan can throw in his two cents here) is that the accompanying text was pretty clear on all these issues (Update: Alan confirms my recollection, and adds some useful thoughts, including a look at Chinese language discussions.

This raises concerns for me. Part of the value of creating an on-line exhibit is to allow the images to be used by students and teachers and researchers as evidence in their own researches. Insisting on immediate warnings and commentary (and how, technically, they’re going to make those inseparable from the image, I’m not sure, but I am nervous) will make it harder to use the material, pedagogically.

There are those who argue that nothing offensive to anyone should be published anywhere without caveats and controls; I’m not one of those. There are those who argue that “it’s only speech” excuses everything, and that we cannot have a truly free society without license to express everything, everywhere, anytime; I’m not one of those, either. There are some who say that the classroom is no place for controversy; I reject that. There are some who say that the classroom belongs to the teacher, without exception; I reject that, as well. I do think that teachers ought to be given a great deal of leeway with regard to how they present and handle sensitive topics, particularly those with track records of balanced and sophisticated scholarship, public writing and teaching, and that attacks (and it’s very clear from the MIT President’s statement that there have been some very vigorous attacks) without context and from outside the student and scholarly community which has some understanding of the issues and people, are injurious to academic freedom and accomplishment.

Even scholars are sometimes prone to put blame before understanding, but that doesn’t mean that we should privilege this. On the other hand, I have the greatest respect for John Dower as a scholar, teacher and individual: if he agrees that these images need more context, I will respect that.

I think it’s very important for scholars of Japanese history to be clear about the impact that Japan had on its neighbors and the world in its modern imperialist phase; I don’t understand attacking a scholar who is addressing precisely these issues with evidence, publications, teaching, etc.

Update: Alan Baumler found a cached version of the text, which is exceptional, and a Letter from Prof. Peter Perdue, also at MIT, defending Dower and the project. Vigorously, to say the least.

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