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.

Continue reading →

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.

Academia/Cultural/Events/Japan/US-Japan

Japanese diaspora

Posted on by Morgan Pitelka / 1 Comment

This past weekend I was a discussant at a graduate student conference at UCLA, sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies. The title (a bit wordy for my taste but interesting nonetheless) was “Transculturation and National Signifiers:’Japan’ In, After, and Via Diaspora and Return,” and included papers on hot topics like the Japanese diaspora in Latin America; literary production among the Issei; and Japanese ethnic identities, agency, and politics in “traditional” cultural practices such as tea, martial arts, and music in global contexts. I also notice that there is a conference at UCLA this weekend on a somewhat similar topic, titled “LA as offshore Japan: Transnational Networks and Cultural Entrepreneurship across the Pacific Rim.”Continue reading →

Books and Articles/English/Events/Memory/昭和

To Stab a Historian

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 6 Comments

I have been compiling notes and comparing various narratives of modern Japanese history in preparation for my orals. It is easy to lose touch with the bigger picture when reading lots of books that focus on one issue, period, or question.

I wrote a little about the dearth of information on North Korea in the Enyclopedia of World History (somewhat clunky online version here) over at Frog in a Well – Korea. The book is something of a massive timeline for reference and I just finished going through the Japanese history entries in the work.

In the just over three pages for the postwar period there were a few items that were not included which I saw in most other narratives and timelines of the period. 1) There was no mention of Japan’s entry into the United Nations in 1956. 2) There was no mention of end of the Allied occupation in 1952 (Though there is mention of the peace treaty going into effect). 3) There was no mention of the “Nixon Shocks” of July (US abandonment of the gold standard with its resulting impact on the exchange rate with Japan) and August (Nixon announces a visit to China), 1971. Although they are not events which had Japanese actors involved, they had a strong impact on Japan and always gets at least a mention. I suspect that most Japanese also see the shocks, along with the return of Okinawa and the shock of the oil embargos, as defining moments of the early 1970s.

These were the only items that you find in most works which were missing. There was, however, one event which I had heard about but I have never seen mentioned in other timelines or in surveys of modern Japan:

1964, March 24. U.S. ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer was stabbed by an allegedly deranged young Japanese.

I wondered why this would have made the cut with such limited space? Don’t get me wrong, it is not that I think the stabbing of the US ambassador is a trivial affair. Reischauer is not only an incredibly important historian in our field but was also an important player in US-Japan relations. I am also very grateful for a generous summer fellowship the Reischauer institute awarded me last year.

I then looked at the list of editors for earlier editions and noticed that both John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer are listed. It would seem reasonable to assume Reischauer made the call to include mention of his own stabbing.

In fact, the 1964 stabbing incident must have left a particularly strong impression on Reischauer as its aftermath would continue to affect his health throughout the remainder of his life. An old biography of Reischauer has this description of the event which adds a little context:

On March 24, 1964, as he was leaving his office, Reischauer was attacked and stabbed by a mentally disturbed Japanese youth. He could have gone to a United States Army hospital, but chose instead to go to a Japanese hospital. Unfortunately, a blood transfusion he received there was tainted with hepatitis virus. He suffered irreversible liver damage and felt the ill-effects for the rest of his life. Reischauer was in Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii until July 1 rehabilitating a partially paralyzed leg and recovering from hepatitis. The incident elicited a flood of visits, mail, and gifts from Japanese well-wishers. Upon release from the hospital, he resumed full duties in the Tokyo embassy.

Not only was he stabbed, but was given a tainted blood transfusion! But there is more. In LaFeber’s The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History we find this added detail:

“…[President] Johnson wanted far more [support for U.S. policies on Vietnam and China] from Japan. [Dean] Rusk blamed Reischauer for being too pro-Japanese, for not educating Japan about the great danger, for assuming that the two nations were converging in their interests while, in reality, the Japanese were going off on their own. As Reischauer lay in serious condition after he was stabbed in 1964, neither Johnson nor Rusk sent him a personal note. In mid-1966, Reischauer was finally replaced by the hawkish U. Alexis Johnson.1

1. LaFeber, Walter The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 343.

Books/China/English/Historiography/Maoist era (1949-1976)/Post-Mao/Teaching

Bashing Mao Bashing

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 6 Comments

My one regret, really, of not going to the AAS this year, was that I could not go to the 20th Century China Forum round table on Chang and Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story. (Honestly, if I had time to read through the catalog, I’m sure I could come up with other regrets, but this is the only one I know about: feel free to e-mail me or comment here with triumphal gloating about the great panels I would have loved….)

Because I teach 20th century China (and World History; I just covered Mao today, in fact), I’ve been following the reviews and discussions of Chang/Halliday pretty closely; I even have a copy of the book, though I haven’t had time to get more than a few chapters in (and read bits and pieces from middle sections) and certainly not had time to do compare/contrast exercises with my other China sources (which includes a couple of Mao books by Spence, Terrill, Salisbury, and Short). The radical revisionism, the centrality of Mao’s legacy to modern China, and the difficulty of talking about Mao without working through (multiple) political and historiographical lenses, makes this challenging material. More so for teachers, I think, because the popularity of the book makes it all the more likely that we will encounter (versions of) their claims in the classroom and in popular discourse. If we chose to ignore the book in our syllabi, it will be the “Elephant in the Room” — an unacknowledged but massively intrusive presence — in the discussions. If we try to tackle the material directly, by assigning the book, then we’ll be involved in a constant critical struggle. Though it’s possible to have a good educational experience by assigning a bad book, the publicly contested issues and the strain on students of constantly doubting a textbook (when all they want is reliable, testable information) nearly guarantee a difficult term.

So I was thrilled to see one of the Forum participants, Joseph Esherick, announce on H-Asia that a student project he had supervised had produced a web site with carefully sourced fact and source checking on some of the dramatic claims. Since one of the book’s main selling points is its cataloging of Mao’s status as the greatest mass murdering autocrat of modern history, the deconstruction of death figures is a great starting place. The Mao site is part of the UCSD Chinese History Resources, a fantastic collection of quick-reference scholarship and reviews (including this cautious review of Chang/Halliday, which pretty closely captures my own feelings about the book on first reading of it).

It seems pretty clear, from the credible reviews and this web site, that Chang and Halliday have been very sloppy, historically speaking, but there is a great deal of new material which might indeed have new and interesting implications. (Honestly, when I write a sentence like this, I’m put in mind of Holocaust denier David Irving, who frequently drew on previously untouched sources … and abused them endlessly to distort the historical record) It needs to be reexamined, published by scholars who are less opaque with citations and sources; primary source collections and interview notes will be necessary before their claims can be accepted.

I’m going to be going through this material in some detail over the next two months: One of the papers I’m delivering at ASPAC 2006 will be a consideration of the political and historiographical issues of teaching Mao, which I hope will spark a discussion and shed more light on the issues. I’ve also proposed and had accepted a new course here, a seminar course on Mao’s life, with a focus on comparative biography and analysis of the discourse around his legacy. Like Esherick, I hope that my advanced students will be able to draw significant conclusions about the flaws and (if we can find any) strengths of Chang/Halliday, with careful guidance.

I’ll finish up here with a link I’ve been holding on to for a while: Photographs of the Cultural Revolution. Most are unexplained, but seem to be public humiliation sessions.

China/General

Imperial Self-Images

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 4 Comments

This is a picture of the Empress Dowager Cixi

Cixi

She is shown in the guise of Guanyin attended by two of her eunuchs in the guise of bodhisattvas. 1 According to Princess Der Ling, Cixi explained her motivation for having this photo taken as such..

“Whenever I have been angry, or worried over anything by dressing up as the Goddess of Mercy it helps me to calm myself, and so play the part I represent. I can assure you that it does help me a great deal, as it makes me remember that I am looked upon as being all-merciful. By having a photograph taken of myself dressed in this consume, I shall be able to see myself as I ought to be at all times.”

Liu points out that it is interesting that Cixi chose to see herself as Guanyin, a deity of confusing gender, since as a ruling empress she was also violating gender conventions.2 I find it a bit more interesting that this is the most explicit case I have seen of imperial spectacle aimed at the ruler themselves. Imperial and royal spectacle is usually studied on the assumption that the audience was the populace or the court or the citizenry or something. One obvious hard to study audience is the ruler themselves. Chinese imperial ritual was intended to constrain as much as to empower the ruler, emperors were probably aware of this, but their reaction to the ritual is hard to know.

Cixi’s was a private spectacle aimed only at herself and apparently intended to make it possible for her to always remind herself of her attribute of benevolence. It is thus an aid in a sort of Confucian (or maybe Buddhist) process of self-cultivation. It is a physical aid in self-cultivation, much like the ledgers of merit and demerit, or possibly a mandala, focusing on which is also supposed to help one attain a mental state. It seems to be something that she came up with on her own, which figures given that a proper Han court ritual would not involve Buddhism, and a Manchu ritual would, I think, not involve Guanyin.

1 From Lydia Liu’s The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making p.163

2 I’m not sure if Cixi would have seen in that way. Liu points out something that is pretty general knowledge among scholars that in India Avalokitesvara was male, and then gradually became female in China. Would this have been known to Cixi?

General/Japan

Introduction

Posted on by Morgan Pitelka / 1 Comment

Greetings, and thanks to Konrad for inviting me to join. I’m a historian of Japan. I received my Ph.D. in 2001 and now teach in the Asian Studies department at Occidental College in Los Angeles.. My research focuses on the relationship between material culture and notions of national identity. I originally intended to work on the sixteenth century, but my studies led me into the early modern period, which in turn led me to Meiji, and now I’m also looking at the 1930s. So I suppose I’m a historian of Japan from the 16th-20th centuries. Longue durée cultural history. Information about my publications and current research can be found on my website. I also maintain a blog for one of my seminars, titled “Displaying Premodern Japan,” previously mentioned by Jonathan Dresner in the Asian History Carnival #3 on froginawell/china. I look forward to participating!

Books and Articles/English/Korea/North Korea

North Korea in the Encyclopedia of World History

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 3 Comments

I recently ordered a very reasonably priced used copy of The Encyclopedia of World History, now edited by Peter N. Stearns but based on many earlier editions by William L. Langer. I vaguely remember hearing mention of a book referred to only as “Langer” and my roommate, who introduced me to the work, explained that some professors use the book for reference. They recommended it to him as a handy source to check dates etc. and even, apparently, hinted that this mysterious “Langer” book might be handy to use when preparing for PhD oral exams.

With PhD oral exams only precious weeks away for both my roommate and I, the desperate race is on to synthesize all our notes, remember the various arguments made by the many authors we have read, and read, skim or read reviews of any straggler works on each of our four book lists that we were supposed to have read ages ago but haven’t even looked at yet. While my examining advisors seem to be most interested in “big picture” questions, broad narratives, and problem-based discussions rather than wanting to use the rite of passage known as “orals” to check our memory of dates and details, we still have to know the facts. It wouldn’t do for me to place the Kwangju massacre in April 1960, for example. The facts are, as one of my old professors described it with an unusual laundry metaphor, “the clothes pins upon which we hang the sheets of history.” Enter tools such as the personally compiled timeline, people lists, and books like this encyclopedia which, except for a few topical essays, resembles a massive thousand page timeline.

Unfortunately, when I look through books like this, I just can’t resist the urge to go “meta” and look at them from a critical perspective. It is especially tempting for chronologies, dictionaries and encyclopedias since they have the tendency to magnify all the historiographical issues by virtue of their more acute need to condense, abridge and generalize. I have a lot of sympathy for those who work on compiling such volumes as I am sure it is no easy task. However, if I had the time, and I’m already on borrowed time writing this entry, I would love to discuss some of the broader issues of a work like this such as its distribution of world events, the almost complete domination of political and military history, the consequences of using a national history category approach (though to its credit, the encyclopedia does a lot of cross-referencing when multiple categories have bearing upon events), and the tendency to portray history as a series of distinct events rather than showing trends and continuities across time or describing structural elements.

This evening I read through the approximately 5 pages dedicated to the topic of “Korea (North and South), 1945-2000” among a total of over one thousand pages of world history in this encyclopedia (p1028-1033). That is actually not that bad in terms of space provided, all things considered. Korea has certainly done better than postwar Mongolia (1/3 page, 8 event entries). Also, it did better than postwar Japan (about 3 pages). This is easier to understand when we note that the period of the Korean War from 1950-1953 takes up a full page worth of entries (with lots of cross-referencing to US entries, and one link to China when it intervenes). Korea also does well when compared to postwar coverage of Europe. All of peaceful postwar Scandinavia gets about 4.5 pages, Poland just over 4, Greece about 2, and only large powers like Russia (12 pages + a full page map) get significantly more space for the postwar.

What I wanted to leave the reader with today, however, is that there is an almost complete absence of North Korea in those five pages of entries. It serves as a reminder of just how little scholarship about, knowledge of, and perhaps interest in North Korea there was when this edition of the encyclopedia came out in 2001.
Continue reading →

Archaeology/English/General/Japan/Nationalism/US-Japan

Read the Bones

Posted on by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

Forensic anthropologists who got a look at the earliest known human remains found in North America think he looks Ainu rather than Native American.

Some Ainu’s facial features appear European. Their eyes may lack the Asian almond-shaped appearance, and their hair may be light and curly in color. However, this does not mean that Kennewick Man necessarily was European in origin. His features more closely resemble those of the natives of the Pacific Rim than those of Native Americans.

The details available through forensic anthropology are amazing, and this interestingly complicates the history of the Americas (and maybe the history of Japan, as well). I remember well the first time I read an archaeology paper comparing Northwestern US neolithic sites to Jomon sites….

China/General

Local democracy in China (Special finals week edition)

Posted on by Alan Baumler / 7 Comments

On his recent trip to Washington Hu Jintao was asked about democracy in China. To the surprise of some observers he did not immediately grow horns and start eating babies on stage, but rather gave the standard rather vague position that “democracy” is hard to define, but that a culturally appropriate form of democracy is clearly in China’s future. This is not surprising to anyone who has been following China’s rhetoric on this, and while it is easy and appropriate to mock things like last Fall’s White Paper on democracy and China as attempts to obscure the government’s position and placate foreign critics, I think it is pretty clear the “democracy” does mean something to a lot of people in the Chinese government, and that they are in favor of it.

It is pretty common knowledge that China now has democratic elections at the village level, however problematic they sometimes are. From www.chinaelections.org I find this story about selection of officials for province-wide deputy slots in Jiangsu. It’s not democracy, although ”the nomination and voting process should be based on the principle of openness, equality, legality, and democratic centralism.” The government has vetted candidates for educational level and experience, then there is a debate section, where the candidates are whittled down to two, and then there is an election.

I find the debate section the most interesting, as

Each candidate had to make a 10-minute speech on the topic of “how to make policies and boost economic development along the Changjiang River“, which required using Jiangsu province as an example.

It looks as if these speeches were pretty important, as they seem to have been one of the things that went into the process of narrowing the number of candidates. When Sun Yat-sen planned his Five-Power Constitution he included an Examination Yuan (考試院) which had the duty of selecting people for government office. This was obviously influenced by the old examination system, and apparently that influence is still around today. Although from the Song on it was the written exam that mattered most there is also a long history of oral exams, and that question sound exactly like one of the policy questions on the exams. The Jiangsu thing does not seem to be a central initiative, so apparently someone in Jiangsu came up with this one. If you are in the mood to be hopeful about these things it looks like a balancing of ideas of democratic legitimacy and civil service professionalism.

1960s/Film/Korea/Korea-Japan/US-Korea

4.19 and 5.18: spot the difference

Posted on by Owen / 2 Comments

In lieu of actually providing some original content myself (soon…), can I point our patient readers once again toward the excellent blog Gusts of Popular Feeling, where Matt has provided a fascinating comparison of photographs of the uprisings that took place in Seoul in April 1960 and Kwangju in May 1980. The similarities between the pictures, although perhaps not all that significant, are intriguing.

As an aside, Matt’s mention of the Japanese film director Oshima Nagisa sent me on one of those distracting internet excursions, at the end of which I decided I really must see the film Koshikei sometime. I wonder if anyone knows anything more about the Korean actor who played the lead in the film, Yun Yungdo (not Yu To-yun as it says in this link)? A search on Naver only turns up this entry on the film.

Current/Recent Events/International Affairs/Japan/War

The Return of Uwano Ishinosuke

Posted on by Nick Kapur / 1 Comment

 Japanese World War II military stragglers are still showing up on the newswires six decades after the end of the conflict. This past week, Japan has been captivated by the return of Uwano Ishinosuke, 83, a former soldier in the Japanese Army who was stranded on Sakhalin Island when the Russians took over, and has been living for the past 50 years in the Ukraine with his Ukranian wife and family. Speaking only Ukranian and travelling on a Ukranian passport, Uwano visited the graves of his parents and some relatives in Iwate prefecture before returning to the Ukraine.

 Having last been sighted in 1958, Uwano’s family had had him officially declared as “war dead” and removed from the household register in 2000. Uwano’s existence came to light last year after he asked friends in Ukraine to help him contact the Japanese government and was eventually put into contact with the Japanese consulate in Kiev, which arranged his return visit. The Japanese government estimates that there may be as many as 400 Japanese military stragglers still living in the former Soviet Union, although the whereabouts are known for only 40 of them.

 In other straggler news, last year reports of former Japanese soldiers living near a remote village in the Philippines caused the Japanese government to sent an official search party, but the soldiers were not found.

 For those interested in learning more about Japanese Imperial Army stragglers, there is a pretty decent book on the topic by Beatrice Trefalt: Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950-1975. Unfortunately it is published by RoutledgeCurzon and is therefore prohibitively expensive, so a university library may be the best place to get it.

English/Web Sites

Kyushu and Okinawa Studies Online Symposium

Posted on by K. M. Lawson / 1 Comment

I just got an email from Steve from Kostudies.com announcing their first online symposium complete with academic contributors. Here is more from the announcement:

Two myths dominate the story of Japan’s relationship with the outside world. The first and most common is that Japan was an isolated country, opened by the arrival of Commodore Perry. The second compares Japan to an oyster, because the foreign influence that it accepted was no bigger than a grain of sand.

In recent years, those myths have come under attack from researchers studying medieval communication between Kyushu and the Asian continent. We are delighted to announce the participation of two authors whose work details a far richer and more complex environment. Professors Batten and Wang describe a time in which pirates, diplomats, traders, monks and soldiers sailed to and from Japan.

Much of this scholarship is new. For example, Professor Batten examines the Kôrokan, the official guest-house for foreign visitors, which was located in Hakata, now located inside the modern-day city of Fukuoka. A thousand years ago, most visitors to Japan would have arrived by ship at Hakata Bay, the one and only authorized gateway to Japan. For years the site was buried underneath the city’s baseball stadium and only in recent years, after the demolition of the stadium, has the evidence been unearthed. Professor Wang also utilizes recent archaeological findings and little-known archival material to come to new conclusions about relations between Japan and the outside world.

Professor Batten approaches the topic by covering the history of Hakata from 500 C.E. into the medieval period. He has chapters focusing on war, diplomacy, piracy, and trade. Professor Batten has spent his professional career focusing on Kyushu and has had access to the latest archaeological discoveries in the area. Chapter 4 of this book, “Gateway to Japan”, available to visitors of this symposium, focuses on a single case study. By focusing on the particularly well-documented case of a Chinese junk that arrived in Hakata in 945, Professor Batten showcases many of his findings, including those on immigration, trade and official attitudes toward the outside world.

Professor Wang’s focus is on diplomatic relations and a series of important embassies sent from the Japanese islands to Sui and Tang China. Wang explains in detail the rigorous criteria of the Chinese and Japanese courts in the selection of diplomats and how the two prepared for missions abroad. He journeys with a party of Japanese diplomats from their tearful farewell party to hardship on the high seas to their arrival amidst the splendors of Yangzhou and Changan and the Sui-Tang court. One of his central ideas, outlined in the introduction is that the traditional view of China’s tributary system is oversimplistic. He argues that it was not a unilateral tool of hegemony but a more complex situation in which multiple partners were able to modify the rules depending on the times and circumstances.

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