Frog in a Well

Asian History Carnival 2

Posted on December 6, 2005 by K. M. Lawson / 0 Comment

The 2nd installment of the Asian History Carnival is coming next week, December 12th. The announcement is out a bit late but send your nominations to konrad [at] lawson.net. I’ll be hosting the carnival at my own Muninn.net

See the full details on submission in the official announcement. If you missed the first carnival, take a look here. Also, pass on the word! Unlike the excellent bi-weekly History Carnival, our own bi-monthly carnival is just getting off the ground! I hope Frog in a Well readers will take a moment to make a nomination or two of good Asian history related postings by midnight December 11th EST.

UPDATE: The new Asian history carnival is now up over at Muninn. The next carnival will be February 2nd, 2006. Please contact me at konrad [at] lawson.net if you are interested in hosting the third installment of the Asian History Carnival.

Blog Carnival

Asian History Carnival 2

Posted on December 6, 2005 by K. M. Lawson / 0 Comment

China/General/Hong Kong

Provincialism and democracy

Posted on December 5, 2005 by Alan Baumler / 3 Comments

Everyone is talking about the protests in Hong Kong, for good reason. What I find most interesting is the official response. (All links via Simon’s World, the one-stop shop for China stuff.) Xinhua’s take was almost comical, pointing out that bus routes were disrupted and giving no idea what the protests were actually about. Much more interestingly, Donald Tsang, the Beijing-appointed Chief Executive seems to be making noises about democracy.

“I am 60 years of age. I certainly want to see universal suffrage taking place in Hong Kong in my time,” Mr Tsang said.

I find his remarks interesting because I wonder what they say about center-local relationships and the relationship of democracy to power in China. He could of course just be throwing a sop to the protesters, but it is more interesting to wonder if he is telling the truth, that is that he wants an expansion of democracy. As is pretty well-known, the Chinese central government has been claiming that China will eventually become democratic, and elections, if often problematic ones, are held at the local level. The central government likes this because it makes it harder for low-level party bureaucrats to entrench themselves in power and it helps to re-constitute order in a place At the very least they favor a bit of democracy for instrumental reasons.

On local democracy in China see Susan Ogden Inklings of Democracy in China

More interestingly, I assume at some point these local leaders are going to take advantage of the greater legitimacy democratic elections give them to defy the center. That is basically what happened in 1911, provincial assemblies that claimed to “represent” “the people” (it’s really complicated) took their provinces out of the empire. The provincial assemblies had considerably more legitimacy and influence than the central government, and for that reason, among others, the revolution was relatively quick and bloodless.

That the center and the provinces bicker a lot today is not news, although it takes a serious Zhongnanhai-ologist to know what is actually going on. Adding democracy into the mix seems to be almost inevitable, and very bad for the center. Eventually Hong Kong will have its first freely elected Executive, and this will potentially give him a lot of power in relation to the Beijing. I think that is why the center is so nervous about this. If you look at the structure they are talking about it seems that even a freely elected Executive would be pretty constrained in a formal sense. Hong Kongers seem to generally buy the government line that order and national power are more important than individual liberties, and my guess is that anyone who was elected would be pretty agreeable to much of what Beijing wants. Hong Kong is not France, or even the U.S. Still, once you let democracy jump to the provincial level its hard to see how it can be contained, other than by more democracy. I think the most encouraging thing about the demonstration is that Beijing really is afraid, and they have good reason to be.

Books and Articles/English/Intellectual

Takeuchi Yoshimi on E. H. Norman

Posted on December 1, 2005 by K. M. Lawson / 4 Comments

It is a fairly rare thing to see Japanese public intellectuals pour praise on the work of historians of Japan who are active outside of Japan. It is heartening, however, to occasionally find examples of this and be reminded that our worlds of writing are not completely separate. Some examples from my recent reading that come to mind are when Kang Sangjun praises and makes use of my advisor, Andrew Gordon‘s conception of “Imperial Democracy” in his essay on “Radical Democracy” or a few articles I have read recently that build on ideas from Carol Gluck’s many essays. Of course, Gordon and Gluck have many of their works translated into Japanese or write actively for Japanese publications.

Even more rare, I think is when such a historian of Japan’s work is referred to as a, “work of art.” Today I found a particularly early example of this kind of attention in Takeuchi Yoshimi’s 1948 essay “What is Modernity” (translated by Richard Calichman, who also has a forthcoming work on Takeuchi that I’m looking forward to entitled Takeuchi Yoshimi: Displacing the West) The context of the quote is a discussion by Takeuchi of Lu Xun’s parable of the wise man, the fool, and the slave, and about what Takeuchi believes to be the unique connection between the claims to the “superiority” of Japanese culture and its “slave mentality.” He finds echoes of this in the Marxist scholarship of E. H. Norman:

The following words are found in Norman’s Soldier and Peasant in Japan. Of the books I’ve read recently, this one made a particularly deep impression, striking me as virtually a work of art. It hits home through the weight of its content. The text possesses a formative logic, with the wealth of its resources rising up like a Rodin sculpture. It is classically beautiful in its abundance of life force. Toward the end of the book, when the militarists become the tool of capital (which lagged behind European capital) and set off for the mainland invasion, the inevitable process of barbarization on the part of the modern army is captured in precise psychological realism: “The common Japanese man, himself an unfree agent enrolled in a conscript army, became an unwitting agent in riveting the shackles of slavery on other peoples.” After this Normand adds, “It is impossible to employ genuinely free men for enslaving others; and conversely, the most brutalized and shameless slaves make the most pitiless and effective despoilers of the liberties of others.” (80)

Cultural/English/General/Japan/Literature

Murakami Rocks!

Posted on December 1, 2005 by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

I didn’t even know it was out, but Murakami Haruki’s latest novel, in English translation, is on the New York Times’ Top Ten Books of 2005 List. My holiday recreational reading is now officially spoken for.

Current/Recent Events/English/Japan/Korea-Japan/Politics/大正/明治

Semantics and History: Did Japan “Invade” Korea?

Posted on November 26, 2005 by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

Well, the obvious answer to that question is yes, but that’s not the invasion we’re talking about. Over on the Korea side, there’s a lively discussion on the case of the Japanese teacher disciplined for making her class apologize to South Korea with regard to a Tokyo councilman’s statement that “Japan never invaded Korea.” Here’s a portion of the comment I made:

On the substantive question, I have something of a mixed feeling. In a technical sense, I don’t think you can really point to any of Japan’s actions against Korea as an “invasion” in the sense of a mass military operation. That doesn’t mean that Korea wasn’t dominated militarily, that Japan didn’t use force when necessary to protect and expand its control, that colonial occupation wasn’t brutal and damaging. It does mean that we need to carefully educate our students about the “soft” (formal and informal) processes of colonial domination and control, and the realities of subaltern experience. It’s a “distinction without a difference” and while the statement may (and I’m open to disagreement, really) be technically correct, it is still objectionable because the intent of the statement clearly is to make the occupation of Korea a “blameless” non-violent process, which is a distortion of the truth.

This could be, I suppose, a useful teaching moment…. I’ll have to bring it up in my 20th century Japan course and see how my students respond. In the meantime, come on over and join the discussion. If you want some more background on the history, I recommend Konrad Lawson’s comparative historiography for starters.

[crossposted to Cliopatria]

Colonial/Korea/Korea-Japan/Nationalism/Textbooks

Japanese teacher disciplined for opposing nationalist textbooks

Posted on November 24, 2005 by Owen / 31 Comments

I wonder whether anyone else has seen this article from the Christian Science Monitor, which I picked up via the Marmot’s Hole and Far Outliers. It concerns the story of a teacher in Tokyo who has been disciplined for attacking the view that “Japan never invaded Korea.”

[W]hen a Tokyo city councilman in an official meeting said “Japan never invaded Korea,” her history class sent an apology to Korean President Roh Moo-hyan – an action that sparked her removal from her classroom.

[…]

Masuda, who says her two sons have Korean friends, got censured after her class did a study group on Japan’s occupation of Korea. Her social studies class wrote a letter of apology to Roh, and sent it to the Korean Embassy in Toyko. In a cover letter, Masuda said that councilman Koga Toshiaki’s remarks were “a disgrace” by objective historical standards, but “regrettably [they] can be presented proudly as a triumph in the assembly of Tokyo, the capital of this country.”

The class never heard from the Korean consul. But Masuda did hear from the Tokyo Board of Education. Her letter was discovered by a Yasukuni shrine support group and they complained to city officials. Masuda was told that while Mr. Koga did speak in public, it was “inappropriate” for Masuda to repeat his name in a letter that was not private, and a violation of city employee codes.

Masuda is now ordered to spend her days in a small room studying public servant regulations, a serious humiliation she says. She in turn is trying to fight in court.

I wonder if there is any sort of support campaign for Ms Masuda, or if there is an e-mail address where those of us who want to can send messages of support.

English/General/Korea

Self-introduction: Kim Yuna

Posted on November 24, 2005 by yuna / 6 Comments

Greetings.
My name is Yu-na Kim. I’m a master course student at Seoul National University in South Korea. I’m currently writing a thesis about ancient China’s public health system and national organization. My focus is on the ancient history of china, but I also have a strong interest in Korean history and culture.

I have a keen interest in the life and culture of our ancesters – what they thought and how they lived. It might even be from myth or legend and my interests extend even to ancient clothing, customs and taboos.

My postings on my personal weblog are mosly about Chinese and Korean history, culture and literature but I write only in Korean.

This is my first time writing on an international weblog. But I’m very excited to be participating. I look forward to discussing many historical topics here.

안녕하세요, 만나서 반갑습니다.

Academia/Books and Articles/Cultural/Film/General/Korea

Cinema, nationalism, and nostalgia

Posted on November 23, 2005 by Remco Breuker / 4 Comments

I have just finished reading a new book on Korean cinema (New Korean Cinema, New York: NYU Press, 2005, edited by Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Springer). It was a satisfactory read, most of the essays in it are good, some excellent. It has left me with some questions, though, and I am curious how other academics working on Korea think about these questions. Reading this book (and others as well), I have come across repeated statements on nationalism with which I find it hard to agree. The first one is the generally shared assumption that South Korea is an intensely nationalist country and that art (cinema) has to overcome nationalism (and nationalism alone) to become ‘real’ art. While superficially this may seem to be the case (especially from the outside), I have often found that, with the exception of the radical nationalists, nationalism is often a matter of rhetorics, not entirely perhaps, but to a significant extent at the least. Cultural studies in particular seem to take the all-pervasive influence of nationalism as a given, without problematizing what kind of nationalism is being discussed, in what context and from whom it emerges and for whom it is intended. The rhetorics of nationalism, as those of any influential ideology, must perhaps not be taken at face value, but be seen as a distinctive and for its users familiar way of communication.

Related to this is the also popular notion (present in several essays in this book) that due to the disappearance of the oppressively propagated nationalism of the 70’s and ’80s South Korea now is more fragmented, more anxiety-ridden and more diverse than it was during the 70’s and 80’s.Continue reading →

General

Market economy and exchange in ancient Korea

Posted on November 22, 2005 by noja / 9 Comments

Dear all, one topic that might be interesting to discuss is the degree of the development of market relations, exchange economy and internal trade in early traditional Korea. I myself fell in love with this sort of things while reading the materials on the discussion on the so-called “Asiatic mode of production” in (still Marxist-Leninist) Soviet historiography of the 1960-70s. My older colleague, Prof. S.V.Volkov, was, in fact, a champion of this theory, which was also carefully backed by my dissertational adviser, M. N. Pak – also the latter chose not to irritate the mighty orthodox opponents of the “Asiatic mode” thesis and speak very carefully about “early feudalism”, with an “extremely low degree of the development of market relations”. Of course, now I understand more or less that the over-generalisations about “Asian” history as a whole smack too heavily of Orientalism to be taken seriously; China and India after 15-16th C. had the degree of the “proto-capitalist” development Europe could be envious of at that point, and some archaic “European” societies (Spartan, for example), also seemed to have highly centralized exploitation/redistribution systems. So, if we want to continue developing this thesis, we probably should speak of early statehood in a more general context, taking references to “Asian” out; we may also speak, I guess, about agrarian bureaucracies, which manage to preserve and develop to a fantastic degree of complexity the centralized redistribution mechanisms rooted in the “state exploitation” technologies of the early antiquity. But, with all these reservations and precautions duly taken, I still suppose that the earlier Marxist insights about centralized redistribution and its historical trajectory in the agrarian monarchies continue to be valid – and wonder what the others think about it.

For one thing in Korea particularly, a fact Korean historical textbooks seem to studiously avoid mentioning is that Korea began minting metallic coins only in the late 10th C. (and on very small scale) – compared with Japan’s 7-8th C. coins production and China, which had coins already for almost a millenium to that point. In fact, various Chinese coins seem to have been used by the proto-Korean state already in the ancient Chosŏn time – but mostly for external exchange and/or prestige purposes. The media of the internal exchange in Unified Silla seems to have been either rice or textiles: the markets in the capital were managed by the state (kwansi) and most of the high-level artisanship in the capital was concentrated in state workshops. State was the biggest actor in these commercial transactions, which still took place – buying, for example, lots of paper for the sutra-copying at the state-run temples (we have mokkan materials on these transactions). Private external trade started to flourish when central controls weakened in the late 8th – early 9th C. – but powerful merchants like Chang Pogo were more interested in acquiring state power than in the development of the purely commercial side of their enterprises. So, shouldn’t we conclude that “early feudal” (to use M. N. Pak’s term) Korea really largely lagged behind in the terms of market economy development, compared to its neighbours – the state both controlling the existing (internal) market operations and largely substituting the market with its own production/distribution network?

China/Gender/General/Qing

Why didn’t Manchu women bind their feet?

Posted on November 22, 2005 by Alan Baumler / 20 Comments

It is well-known that even after the conquest of China Manchu women did not bind their feet. The Qing emperors took clothing and hair very seriously as ways of defining groups under the empire. Thus after 1644 all Han men were expected to wear the Manchu hairstyle of shaving their foreheads and growing a queue in back as a way of symbolizing their submission to the dynasty. At the same time the state was Manchuizing Han men via their hair it was ordering Manchu women to keep their feet natural (天足). This was one of many things that were done to preserve a specific Manchu identity.

In the seventh month of 1638 the Manchu emperor Hong Taiji (Abahai) decreed that the Chinese custom of footbinding was not to be adopted. “Those who imitate the clothes of another country or order their women to bind their feet, [they] have their bodies in our dynasty but their hearts in another country.”¹ There were at least some who defied this order. In 1804 the Jiaqing emperor was furious to find that women of the Chinese Bordered Yellow Banner (ethnically Han, but politically “Manchu”) were binding their feet. (Elliot p.470) Still, in general Manchu women did not bind their feet. In 1911 when the banner population at Nanjing and Hankou were slaughtered women’s feet were the one marker of ethnic difference that could not be disguised.
manchu Feet
This illustration is from 1911 and is one of a series on Manchu women adopting Han dress. (Rhoades Manchus & Han)On the woman’s left foot she is wearing a typical Manchu “horse-hoof” shoe that makes it appear the wearer has tiny feet. The other foot is, maybe, being bound, even though she is far too old for it at this point. Although some Manchu women may have tried to sinify themselves in the last years of the dynasty, for 200 years before that they were quite willing to keep their natural feet

The question I have is: Why footbinding? Why was this custom chosen as alone of the “evil habits of the Han” (Elliot p.470) as the one that would be unambiguously rejected by the Qing state? More importantly, why did the Manchus accept this imperial order? They were more than willing to smoke tobacco and later opium, to quit learning Manchu and do all sorts of other things that the Emperors did not want them to do. Perhaps most interestingly, how can this be connected to the current scholarship on footbinding?

I think we can safely dismiss Hong Taiji’s apparent assumption that footbinding was something done to women on the orders of men. Dorothy Ko suggests looking at footbinding as “a device inscribing the Confucian ideal of a centripetal woman and as a central event in the development of a women’s culture in the boudoir [and] as a means women employed to cater to the erotic fantasies of men” (Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers p.263) Footbinding was, among other things, a way for Han women to demonstrate (mostly to other women) their self-cultivation and self-discipline. It was the feet of Chinese women that separated the Han from the non-Han.²

Pamela Crossley suggests that natural feet symbolized the active economic and political lives of Manchu women, and thus a rejection of women’s passive role in Chinese society. (The Manchus p. 27) There is probably a great deal of truth to this, but at the same time Manchu women seem to have embraced their own foot customs as coeval to and superior to those of the Chinese. Zhou Hong presents this Liaoning folksong as an example of Manchu women’s attitudes towards feet. (满族妇女生活与民俗文化研究p. 96, My apologies for the translation)

找个木匠锛鞋底
找个木匠做鞋帮
绒线用了一板半
细布用了八皮箱
一共做了三年整
一双绣鞋做妥当
叫来姑娘把鞋试
还是短来还是长
姑娘伸脚试绣鞋
鞋小脚大箍得慌
趔趔歪歪倒后墻
左脚踩死八只虎
右脚踩死九只狼

Get a carpenter’s adze to make the shoe-bottoms
Get a carpenter to make the outside of the shoes
Use a card of yarn
Eight lengths of fine cloth
Altogether it will take three years
To make a pair of embroidered shoes
Call a girl to try the shoes
Whether short or long
The girl stretches her foot
to fit the embroidered shoes
The shoe small the foot large
Constrained and uncomfortable
Awkwardly and crookedly to the back wall
The left foot crushing eight tigers
The right foot crushing nine wolves

This poem shows, I think, how Manchu women tried to appropriate the meaning of footbinding despite their big feet. Right from the beginning the comparison to Chinese customs is implicit but never stated. Manchu shoes involve violent re-shaping, but it is of wood rather than the body. The girl stretches her foot to meet the shoe, rather than shrinking the foot to meet it. The process of making the shoes is said to take three years, which seems a little long no matter how elaborate the embroidery is, but it matches the time and dedication that go into binding feet. The girl, once mounted on the shoes, moves just as awkwardly as a Chinese women, and like them her feet become the center of her potency. Being a Manchu she crushes tigers and wolves rather than attracting poets, but the idea seems the same.

I suppose, then, that part of the reason Manchu women did not bind their feet was in part because it they were ordered not to by the Emperor and other men, who saw their feet as a marker (the marker) of ethnic difference. They were also able to gain all the benefits of footbinding, a visible symbol of their refinement and culture, without having to bind their feet.

¹ “若有仿效他国衣帽及令妇女束发裹足者，等于身在本朝，心在他国.” I’m not sure how valid this quote is. 周虹 “满族妇女生活与民俗文化研究” 北京：中国社会科学出版社， 2005，p. 95, takes the quote from the 光绪朝东華錄. On the other hand, Elliot The Manchu Way p.470n61 says that he has been unable to locate the original edict, which makes me think their may be something wrong.

² Dorothy Ko’s new book on footbinding is probably the best of the new scholarship, although I have not seen it yet. Wang Ping synthesizes some of the new scholarship in Aching for Beauty.

Academia/Economic/English/General/Japan/幕末/明治

A Welcome Find

Posted on November 22, 2005 by Jonathan Dresner / 6 Comments

One of the very interesting things I discovered doing my dissertation was the relatively meager state of scholarship on Meiji era financial institutions, particularly on the ways in which Japanese used (and avoided) new systems of savings, transfers/remittances, loans, etc. I ended up being quite impressed by the financial sophistication of supposedly unsophisticated peasant migrant laborers, and considerably more sympathetic to the assumptions of economic history as a result.

My advisor even tried to steer me in that direction: I had to do some background reading on the Yokohama Specie Bank, which played a role in early Hawai’i-Japan remittances (by establishing one of Japan’s first overseas bank branches!), and he was disappointed that the bank itself did not sufficiently fire my historical curiousity that I might take it up as a topic in itself. It is true, though, that there remain questions which I can’t answer to my own satisfaction because I don’t know enough about Meiji banking.

Well, Sharon Howard forwarded me a link to Michael Schlitz’s Histor¥ which is described both as a “weblog about Meiji financial reforms” and (quite tantalizingly) an “opensource project on Japanese financial history 1850-1917.” I’m thrilled to see this topic getting the attention it deserves and available on-line, to boot! Now, I just need time to read through his archives and make notes….

China/English/Events/General/Post-Mao/Taiwan

Taiwanization?

Posted on November 19, 2005 by Jonathan Dresner / 0 Comment

When President Bush cited Taiwan as a model for mainland China, though he wasn’t quite as aggressive as the headlines suggest, he raised some interesting historical specters: what if the Nationalists hadn’t lost China? Does the success of Taiwan validate the socialist Republicanism (and stages of political development) of Sun Yat-sen? And, of course, is Taiwan’s model of transition from single-party developmental state to multi-party (if still somewhat immature) democracy with flourishing high-value economy something that China could draw on?

Andrew Meyer, who’s been studying Taiwan and China for two decades or so has some thoughts on the plausibility of the president’s model.

This analysis, though [via Simon World] suggests that the Taiwanisation argument is in no small part wishful thinking to cover up the fact that we don’t like to admit the developmental success of (some) unfree societies.

English/General

Self-introduction: Vladimir (Pak Noja)

Posted on November 17, 2005 by noja / 4 Comments

I am working with Oslo University (Norway) currently teaching a strange combination of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, which include East Asian religions and philosophies on one extreme (?) and something called “East Asia: Capital and Labour”, and mostly dealing with the relationship between corporate capital and unions in South Korea and Japan, and the rising current of labour militancy in China, on the other. I used to teach Korean language as well, having proudly produced around 6 graduates in 5 years. I have thought before that the University of Oslo must be the only place in the world where three teachers (me and two colleagues working part-time) teaching two students a language no business around might demand, would be tolerated and left in peace. Well, it was a naive illusion – Oslo University is following the same “party line” as elsewhere, and the teaching of Korean is going to be terminated next year, at least for the time being.

My academic trajectory (?) is odd enough to doubt its seriousness. I began with Kaya studies, when I was MA student and then PhD candidate – for those sane enough not to jump into the abyss of the ancient history, I can just explain that Kaya proto-states (they stood somewhere between a well-developed chiefdom and an early state) controlled a large part of the Naktong River valley and the southern coast of what is KyOngsang Province now, until being eaten up by Silla in 562 (http://www.gayasa.net/). I wrote a PhD thesis on this, mostly using Nihon shoki (720) as my source material. I guess that is the only monograph written on Kaya in Russian – and it is likely to maintain its monopoly (?) for the time being, given the sad situation in the Russian academia. Then, I started to dabble in Korean Buddhism – after having been greatly surprised at sight of a reserve corps military uniform at one temple I frequented, and having understood how much practice might differ from theory. The last “side jump” was my love (or rather hate?) affair with Korea’s (and, by extension, China’s and Japan’s) Social Darwinism, which began around 5 years ago, and still fails to end. I am still struggling to understand in which ways and to which degree Social Darwinist consciousness contributed to the making of Korea’s nationalism in the 1880s-1900s, and what was the logic behind the Social Darwinist conversion (?) of many intellectuals who might have espoused different dreams as well – reformist Confucians, Christian converts, and some younger Buddhists.

Academia/bibliography/Books and Articles/General/Korea

Finding Korean journal articles online

Posted on November 16, 2005 by Remco Breuker / 2 Comments

Following up on Owen’s very useful posts, I’ll write a few words on finding Korean journals online. I have used the RISS site a lot and they do have an option for foreigner users now, but there is a snag if you want to download articles for which you have to pay. This used to be possible by using a credit card and the prices were reasonable, between 2ooo to 4000 won per article, depending on length, journal and newness. About a year ago, however, when the site became more friendly towards those unfortunate souls without a Korean ID number, it also became impossible to pay with foreign credit cards. I don’t think the site itself has any control over this, because they use a widely used plug-in from a large electronic banking company. Anyway, it has become impossible to charge non-Korean credit cards. The last time I tried was about four months ago. As for obtaining articles for which you should pay, the best way is still to ask someone on a Korean campus. As most Korean universities are subscribers of journal article databases, anybody with a campus ID address can download any article they require. This is probably also the best way to get hold of unpublished MA and Ph.D. theses, although for those you need to have an ID address of the university where the particular thesis you want was submitted. Complicated, but often worth it.