Frog in a Well

Reading Mote’s Imperial China 900-1800 I came across an interesting quote (p.45)

On the (rather irregular) death of Emperor Zhuangzong of the Later Tang in 926 an ambassador was sent to Abaoji, ruler of the ethnically Khitan Liao dynasty to inform him of this fact. According to the ambassador…

Abaoji uttered a wail of grief, then speaking through his flowing tears he said: “I swore brotherhood with the father of that lord of Hedong Province; that Son of Heaven is Henan was my son, as the son of my dear friend….That my son should have come to such an end! It is so unjust! He wept uncontrollably.

It is a long account, and Mote mines it for a number of interesting things on Abaoji and his attempts to appear a good Confucian. I was struck by the tears. Did he really cry? He had no doubt heard that Zhuangzong was dead some time before (Abaoji was on campaign against the Bohai, so the ambassador took a long time to find him), so even on the off-chance that Abaoji really cared about Zhuangzong personally, it seems unlikely that this is what we would call a spontaneous reaction. I suppose the ambassador could have lied, but according to Mote this comes from a fairly private account, and that would only push the question back a bit, why would the ambassador think that the tears would reflect credit on Abaoji? That he would get credit for having a close friendship with Zhuangzhong makes sense, but why the tears?

Of course as an American male I am never supposed to cry, but as a historian I am well aware that this (men don’t cry) is a cultural construct that, if pressed, I would associate with the Victorians. I know that medieval white men cried, and that we don’t so it seems like blaming the Victorians should work. Certainly I try to teach my son (and daughter) to display their emotions in a socially appropriate way, which may mean not crying but certainly means not melting down in the cereal aisle when I won’t buy them what they want.

Abaoji was apparently raised to emote visibly in appropriate situations. I’m wondering if this is a Chinese thing. At least in the Secret History I don’t recall any displays like this from nomadic leaders, which Abaoji sort of is. On the other hand in at least some Chinese texts visible signs of emotion are signs of sincere emotions.

The one that pops to mind immediately is a Mock Contract between a Slave and His Master, a Han dynasty text reprinted (p.231) in Cho-yun Hsu’s Han Agriculture The story begins with a slave insisting that serving wine is not his job, and then having the master write out a long contract explicitly stating every duty a slave could possibly have. The document is a nice tour of the Han rural economy. It is a student favorite in part because of the slave’s reaction to having his duties spelled out.

After the contract was read, the slave was utterly speechless. In reckless agitation, he knocked his head repeatedly, and struck himself with both hands. Tears fell from his eyes and snivel from his nose hung down a foot.

Students of course love snot. The way I explain this is to say that given Chinese medical ideas about proper balance of the 5 elements and such any physical or emotional upset almost has to lead to visible tears and oozing viscera. The slave is emotionally upset, and you can see this in his losing control of bodily functions. (I’m not sure how accurate this is, but they seem to accept it.) Abaoji has to cry to seem really sad, so he does. I’m not so much saying he is putting it on as that he has been raised to emote visibly in socially appropriate situations. Is this a common thing in East Asia? When were Heian courtiers supposed to cry? Qing bureaucrats?

For a picture of Abaoji’s home town, go here

K.C. Johnson calls our attention to a post by which discusses the state of military history. K.C. is mostly interested in getting military historians the representation they deserve in the academy. He links to Tom Bruscino at Big Tent who is more interested in making military historians a bit less defensive about what they do.

As luck would have it, my copy of JAS has arrived, and in it is Mary Elizabeth Berry’s Presidential Address to the Association of Asian Studies “Samurai Trouble: Thoughts on War and Loyalty.” Presidential addresses are often things best listened to over drinks, and in most cases probably don’t need to be printed. Usually they are think pieces which are sometimes quite good, but often are both not very revealing to those who know the President’s work and opaque to those in another field (a real problem in the Association for Asian Studies, a “big yurt” sort of organization.)

Berry sidesteps this problem by building her talk around teaching. This was a good thing in a number of ways. One, I liked it, because an article on how Berry teaches the sengoku period is of course, worth reading. It also sort of immunizes her from attack and frees her up to take intellectual risks. In a presentation like that, or on a weblog, there is a certain tendency for historians to be timid. Don’t speculate, someone will jump on you.¹ If you are just talking about teaching you can get away with more by saying its only for undergrads. The most important thing, however, is that it lets her give a fairly basic lecture to her colleagues without directly talking down to them.

One of her points is that military history is worth studying and that war is not just something to be skipped over. While I agree with that I also find it rather stunning that a scholar who published a book on Hideyoshi in 1989 in would be saying that in 2005. She gives a footnote to Geoffrey Parker whom she thanks for his “generosity in response to my many fumbling queries about his field.” To some extent this is just typical academic politeness, but I found it odd that she would call it “his field” and that the whole piece has the tone of someone discovering a set of ideas for the first time. Maybe this is just a ploy to help convince a probably skeptical audience, but it does not really feel like it. While I think what she is doing is admirable and interesting, I’m also a bit bothered that it has taken so long. As Bruscino points out “Is there a historiography on women’s history that goes beyond burning bras?” is not a question one would expect to hear among historians of any sort, and one would certainly not get points for open-mindedness for asking it.

A more substantive point of the Berry piece is that there is a complex relationship between the experience of war and the way it is remembered and re-made. Almost all of the lessons about loyalty and duty and such do not grow directly out of the experience of battle in sengoku but rather out of stuff like The Book of Five Rings and later movies. It is not just modern (P.C., liberal academic, etc.) scholars who try to obscure what war is. Berry was struck by the fact that while West Point takes its ethical responsibilities very seriously, a search of its web page for the words “kill” and “killing” yields mostly references to the volleyball team. It’s a good article and worth reading.

¹ In the printed version she deals with some of the objections that were brought to her attention immediately after the original talk. It doesn’t take long.

I participated in the East Asia Graduate Students conference at the weekend, and it was great to meet so many people working in the field, especially those with fields intersecting with mine. I also got to meet Motoe Sasaki-Gayle, another contributor to this site, as we were on the same panel, discussing the New Woman in China.

It is a shame there is nothing equivalent to this in Europe, it is an idea I kicked around a bit at my college at Cambridge, the idea of hosting a graduate students conference, having seen how successful the Columbia model is, I might try to pursue it further.

I hope the conference organisers publish the proceedings.