{"id":105,"date":"2006-04-07T23:39:29","date_gmt":"2006-04-08T04:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/2006\/04\/china-at-war\/"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:41:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:41:12","slug":"china-at-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2006\/04\/china-at-war\/","title":{"rendered":"China at war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Gusts of Popular Feeling<\/a> I found this site<\/a> by John Dower where he uses Japanese woodblocks to teach a number of things about the Japanese history of the war period. There is a whole section on Japanese images of China and the Chinese, which are mostly what you would expect, and he connects them, correctly, I think, as attempts to break the link between China and Japan. There are only two positive images of Chinese in the collection. One is an image of Admiral Ding Juchang about to commit suicide after his fleet has been sunk.
\n\"Admiral<\/p>\n

Another is an image of Captain Awata in battle with a Chinese soldier<\/p>\n

\"Awata\"<\/p>\n

I think Dower is quite correct in saying that these are much more respectful of the foe that a lot of the other stuff he shows, but I was struck by the empty middle between the two pictures. Yes, Admiral Ding is a cultured and civilized man in a traditional sense, and that is still a good thing. You can see this in the treatment of the room he is sitting in. He is also a brave man unwilling to live with the shame of defeat. On the other hand he is also passive and away from the action. All the Japanese admirals shown are on their ships and seem to be almost physically urging them forward. The Chinese solider is a formidable foe, but he is also hairy, barefoot, and almost subhuman. The middle ground of the modern, active, brave man is inhabited entierly by the Japanese.<\/p>\n

Were I trying to explain <\/span>China<\/span>\u2019s defeat I would probably emphasize the superior training and discipline of the Japanese. The Chinese had about the same technology, and were certainly willing to die for the cause. Even the Japanese do not usually show the Chinese running away from battle. Although <\/span>China<\/span> had borrowed Western physical technology, they had not yet borrowed the social technology of the modern military, and thus were defeated by the Japanese, who had borrowed both.<\/span><\/p>\n

My view is a pretty modern one, <\/span>however, and was apparently not shared by either the Japanese or the Chinese. The Japanese images Dower presents emphasize the courage and daring of individual Japanese officers (admittedly more dramatic) over training and discipline. Chinese after-action analysis was the same. In his study of Luo Fenglu, one of <\/span>China<\/span>\u2019s most important foreign-trained naval experts, Kong Xiangji explains that Luo concluded that <\/span>China<\/span>\u2019s defeat could be attributed to a lack of sufficient determination. There were not enough who \u201c<\/span>\u6709\u7cbe\u5fe0\u5831\u570b\ufe50\u6b7b\u800c\u65e0\u61be\u7684\u51b3\u5fc3<\/span>\u201d<\/span> (<\/span>Had the determination to die without regrets and to serve the nation with unreserved loyalty.) Even for <\/span>China<\/span>\u2019s most modern naval expert, and apparently for his Japanese counterparts as well martial spirit was key to success in modern warfare. While I would look at both Ding Jucheng and the soldier on <\/span>Taiwan<\/span> as being noble but not necessarily useful for the task at hand, the Chinese view was that more of this was what would save <\/span>China<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Quote from <\/span>\u5b54\u7965\u5409<\/span> \u201c<\/span>\u665a\u6e05\u53f2\u63a2\u5fae<\/span>\u201d <\/span>\u6210\u90fd\uff1a\u5df4\u8700\u4e66\u793e\uff0c<\/span>2001 p.25<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Gusts of Popular Feeling I found this site by John Dower where he uses Japanese woodblocks to teach a number of things about the Japanese history of the war period. There is a whole section on Japanese images of China and the Chinese, which are mostly what you would expect, and he connects them,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[165,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5072,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/5072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}