Organizer and Chair: Catharin Dalpino, Brookings Institution
Discussants: Ezra F. Vogel, Harvard University; Jisi Wang, Chinese Academy; Pranee Thirparat, Chulalongkorn University; Abul Ashan, Independent University of Bangladesh
This roundtable will identify and discuss Asian and American attitudes which underlie—and influence—the key issues in U.S. policy toward Asia. Some are compatible, such as the broad (if often tacit) recognition that the United States continues to play a leading role as a guarantor of regional security. Others are in competition or conflict with one another. Many Asians, for example, perceive the U.S. to be unilateral in its approach to Asian partners; conversely, some Americans believe that Asians are seeking to exclude the United States from regional affairs with the establishment of new groups such as ASEAN-Plus-Three and the Asian Monetary Fund. In the 1990s, Asian-American relations were affected by rising nationalism in both allies and adversaries of the United States, and by alternating waves of triumphalism as the Asian economic "miracle" gave way to the Asian economic crisis. These dynamics have lingered into the new decade of U.S.-Asian relations.
This roundtable brings together the Asian and American leaders of an eighteen-month project on America’s Role in Asia, which commissioned parallel task forces to identify problems in U.S.-Asian relations and recommend measures to bridge gaps in both policy and perception. The project is one of the few efforts to seek commonalities in U.S. relations across the entire Asian spectrum—Northeast, Southeast and South—and over a full range of issue areas. This roundtable discussion will provide valuable insights for Asian and American policymakers, and for scholars of U.S.-Asian relations.
Organizer: Susan L. Huntington, Ohio State University
Chair: Lewis R. Lancaster, University of California, Berkeley
Relics and the reliquaries that have been created to house them are among the most important objects of veneration in Asian religions and culture. This panel explores issues relating to relics and reliquaries in Asia, emphasizing the role that relic veneration has played in Asian culture.
The timeliness of this panel is suggested from the number of recent studies that have been produced on relics, relic cults, and pilgrimage over the past decade, both in the European and Asian fields. This panel promises to contribute to the dialogue by bringing new issues and documents to light.
Included in this panel are presentations on relics in Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. Two papers explore the use of relics in the Buddhist context, arguably the most important relic tradition in Asia. The first, by Dr. Susan L. Huntington, proposes that relics were the principal objects of veneration in early Buddhism and that relic veneration is a dominant theme in the art. The second paper, by Dr. Lewis R. Lancaster, explores relics in relation to the concept of portable sanctity, and, specifically, the spread of the Indian Buddhist relic cult to China. Dr. Julia K. Murray’s paper discusses physical relics associated with Confucius by examining Kongzhai, a little-known shrine to Confucius that formerly existed near Shanghai. The final two papers by Dr. Cecelia Levin and Ms. Mary-Louise Totton examine the concept of the relic in Southeast Asia, specifically in Javanese Buddhism and Hinduism and in relation to the type of Javanese monument known as a candi.
Relics, Images, and the Early Buddhist Art of India
Susan L. Huntington, Ohio State University
For more than a century, art historians and archaeologists have been puzzled by the lack of Buddha images among the earliest surviving Buddhist artistic remains in India. Noting the popularity of Buddha images in later artistic traditions, the early scholars concluded that the absence of the Buddha in the early artistic corpus must have been deliberate, and hypothesized that it was due to prohibitions against creating anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha. The so-called "aniconic theory," which has prevailed in scholarly literature for well over a hundred years, was thus born.
This paper questions the primacy accorded to images by proponents of the "aniconic theory," and instead proposes that early Buddhism and early Buddhist ritual practices were primarily focused on Buddhist relics. Further, it is argued that the importance of relics in early Buddhism is so foundational to the entire Buddhist phenomenon that relic practices were exported to all regions of Asia where Buddhism spread, and today remains a vital focus of much Buddhist practice. In the end, I suggest that a new paradigm should be put in place regarding the early art of Buddhist India, and, in particular, the use of images in relation to the relic cult and relic practices. Such a new paradigm will pave the way for a better understanding of the early artistic remains, as well as their role in the rituals and practices of early Buddhism.
Buddhist Relics in a Foreign Land: Portable Sanctity
Lewis R. Lancaster, University of California, Berkeley
The creation of the relic cult in early Indian Buddhism preceded the development of image veneration. The spread of this practice into Central Asia and from there to China and the rest of East Asia, was a significant part of the religious development. As the rituals and artifacts of the relic appeared along the trade routes of Eurasia, the influence of this particular type of religious practice spread to Syria in the West and from there passed into Christianity. The East Asian relic cult remained within the confines of Buddhism.
One way of viewing the spread of the relic is to see it in terms of the portable sanctity of Buddhism that allowed the religion to move from its homeland to distant areas. The portable sanctity was found in four major aspects of Buddhism: holy persons, sacred texts, relics, and images. Buddhist holy persons were not polluted by travel or contact with strangers, sacred texts could be translated into any language without loss of meaning, and relics and images were transported without ritual problems. The relics of holy persons were brought into China. An unknown practice among the Chinese, the use and reverence of relics was not easily assimilated. The way in which the relic was treated within this region allows us to see one aspect of how cultural and religious traditions transcend boundaries and undergo transformation in a foreign environment.
Bringing Confucius to the South: Relics and Representations at the Qingpu Kongzhai
Julia K. Murray, University of Wisconsin, Madison
In modern times, the religious aspects of the veneration of Confucius (Kongzi; ca. 551–479 BCE) have been denied and suppressed, and he is now generally regarded as a paragon of secular humanism and ethical culture. However, one of the religious dimensions of his cult is signaled by the importance of relics at Kongzhai ("Kong Residence"), a now-destroyed shrine in modern Qingpu county, near Shanghai.
Although Confucius never crossed the Yangzi River, later men wished to associate him physically with the South. In 606, a descendant brought Confucius’s cap, clothes, and jade ornaments from his ancestral temple in Qufu, Shandong, and buried them between Songjiang and Shanghai. The transfer of these "contact relics" signified that the spirit of Confucius could reside in a place where he never set foot. By the mid-Tang, the area had a temple or shrine to Confucius and was known as Kongzi zhai, later simply Kongzhai. In the seventeenth century, coalitions of local residents and serving officials worked to make the Kongzhai a simulacrum of the temple, grave, and home of Confucius in Qufu. In 1705, the Kangxi emperor conferred official recognition on the shrine.
My paper focuses on the multivalent significance of the relics of Confucius and their relationships to alternative forms of representation in the construction of the Kongzhai as a religious site. The presence of relics made it possible to enshrine portrait icons in the offering hall, despite the 1530 ritual reform, and connected the site with popular beliefs and practices relating to deified individuals.
The Hindu-Javanese Candi as a Reliquary
Cecelia Levin, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Classical period of Java (ca. 750–1500) is associated with the enculturation of cultural forms from South Asia, resulting from Java’s contact with India’s religious and philosophical systems. In Java, Hindu temples and Buddhist monuments were recast as candis. The Indian prototypes were initially recognizable, although they were constructed to serve a variety of contemporary purposes. In addition to housing a Buddhist or Hindu deity, they functioned as a memorial to a deceased ruler who had now achieved a divine form, and may have served as a focus for royal funerary rituals.
The preeminent Javanologist Willem F. Stutterheim (1892–1942) envisioned the Javanese candi as a reinterpretation of ancient ancestral cult worship within the framework of Buddhist-Hindu monumental architecture. Unfortunately, his theory was based on the misconception that candis were mortuary edifices containing the remains of a deceased ruler. This line of thinking has been revised through the work of Soekmono who uses archaeological evidence to show that the Javanese candis were commemorative in nature. Despite this more current viewpoint, it can be argued that Stutterheim’s general premise holds true: the Javanese candi did function as an architectural reliquary. While the deceased may not have been buried within, ritual objects and the cult-statue of the deceased ancestor-ruler in the monument’s program likely served as surrogates for the ruler’s earthly remains. Moreover, I propose to show that the changes in style that occurred in the later phase of Java’s Classical period, both in terms of the architectural structure and the stone relief carvings, support the concept of candi as a funerary monument.
Central Javanese Reliquaries and Pripih: A Case Study of Candi Lord Jonggrang
Mary-Louise Totton, University of Michigan
Twenty-eight ritual deposits have been discovered in the main courtyard of the ninth-century complex of Candi Loro Jonggrang of Prambanan, Central Java. My research reveals that the contents of these stone and metal caskets and clay and bronze urns, as well as the several unusual interred skeletons have multivalent functions that are key to the efficacy of this site, the largest Hindu complex of insular Southeast Asia. I argue that the interments of Candi Loro Jonggrang reflect the cosmopolitan connections of its patrons, their indigenous spiritual heritage, and the tendency to amalgamate imported religious doctrines. Furthermore, these deposits map out a cosmology manifested in the orientation and ornamentation of the site’s structures.
At issue is the ongoing discussion of just what these reliquaries were and how they contribute to the definition of what a "candi" is. Soekmono, in his 1977 "Candi Fungsi dan Pengertiannya" (later published as The Javanese Candi: Function and Meaning, 1995) argues that these sacred structures were never funerary monuments although most of the reliquaries contain ashes and bones. He calls these pripih, or ritual deposits, "the soul of the candi," yet Soekmono asserts that because no one has proved that these ashes are mortal remains of a human, we must understand them ultimately as godly relics. Although it is widely recognized from the inscriptional and literary evidence that sacred structures were built to house images representing deified royal ancestors, Soekmono wishes to deny any mortal deposits of these extraordinary beings at those same shrines. I propose careful examination and interpretation of the relics before forming universalist conclusions.
Organizer and Chair: Ruth Mabanglo, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Discussants: Frederick H. Jackson, Foreign Service Institute; Ngampit Jagacinski, Cornell University; Elizabeth Riddle, Ball State University; Margaretha M. Sudarsih, University of Michigan; Julian K. Wheatley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords: language instruction, Southeast Asian languages.
While acknowledged as crucial to area studies, language teaching has generally been viewed within Southeast Asian studies in the U.S. as a service to the social sciences and other fields, rather than as an academic discipline in its own right requiring professional expertise in special areas of linguistics, education, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. This has contributed to an over-reliance on untrained native-speaker graduate assistants as teachers (often studying some totally unrelated field) under the assumption that those who can speak a language can teach it, given some supervision. Consequences include few well-prepared teachers, lagging curriculum development, and lack of good materials, especially beyond the elementary level. The roundtable will address the state of Southeast Asian language teacher preparation, qualifications, selection, continuity, and working conditions, the ramifications thereof for curriculum and materials development, and the consequences for student achievement. Parallels will be drawn with professionalization in the teaching of other Asian languages as well as more commonly taught languages such as Spanish and English as a Second Language.
The participants represent a variety of languages, topical expertise, and employment perspectives. Each will respond to specific questions as well as contribute remarks in their special areas of expertise. Most of the session will be devoted to discussion among the panelists and the audience.
Organizer: Anna Brettell, University of Maryland
Chair: Miranda Schreurs, University of Maryland
Discussant: Esook Yoon, University of Maryland
Keywords: China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, East Asia, comparative politics, international relations, environmental protection, mass media, state-society relations.
The panel participants’ papers focus on the impact of actors, interests, and information on environmental policy in East Asian countries. Each paper explores environmental politics within the context of economic development and social stability. Each paper seeks to further understand how environmental and social outcomes are shaped at the domestic level and to understand these processes from a comparative perspective.
Climate change, like no other environmental issue, has the potential to have a huge impact on the direction of economic development and international relations. Dr. Schreurs’s paper compares energy and global climate change policy in three countries, including Japan. Her research will explain how specific actors, interests, and ideas have led to divergent/convergent policy outcomes in each country.
Dr. Jahiel’s paper examines the increase in the Chinese media’s coverage of environmental issues, the nature of that coverage, and its impact on environmental policy. She argues that as an actor, the media’s attention to environmental issues is especially significant and she explores the channels by which it affects environmental outcomes.
One hypothesized effect of strengthened media coverage of environmental issues is the increase of public participation in environmental policy processes. Ms. Brettell’s research examines this proposition as well as examining other possible factors that may have led to the observed increase in public participation in China. Specific channels of participation are examined in relation to the particular political, economic, and social circumstances present in China.
Dr. Turner’s research focuses on a specific form of public participation, the activities of environmental non-governmental organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong. She explores the nature of these groups and the relationships these organizations have formed with their respective governments.
Energy and Climate Change Policy in Japan, Germany, and the United States
Miranda Schreurs, University of Maryland
This paper will present the findings of several years of research and workshops on comparative energy and climate change politics in Japan, Germany, and the U.S. The paper will focus on how these three states are balancing pressures for market liberalization, anti-nuclear sentiments in the population, growing energy demands, and the imperative of greenhouse gas mitigation. The paper will examine the question of whether these three states are converging or diverging in their approach to these issues and why.
An Environmental Movement with Chinese Characteristics
Anna Brettell, University of Maryland
Because of its huge population and rapid economic development, China has the potential to have a detrimental effect on the global environment. This has made scrutiny of China’s implementation of environmental policies increasingly more important. The general literature on environmental implementation suggests that public participation is a crucial factor in determining implementation success. The China-specific literature lacks a discussion of this factor, mainly because there was not much participation to speak of. However, that is no longer true. In the last five years, public participation has increased significantly.
Officials in China have begun to recognize that citizen participation is necessary to achieve environmental protection goals. On the other hand, the government must channel rising environmental awareness, handle the inevitable complaints about pollution, and manage environmental disputes peacefully to avoid social instability and maintain economic growth. The politics of this delicate balancing act are the focus of this paper.
This dissertation research examines the connections between rising pollution levels, greater economic growth, and increased environmental awareness with specific measures of public participation in environmental policy processes in China. It documents growing citizen activism, explains why certain forms of citizen participation are increasing, while other forms are not, and examines the impact of this participation. Preliminary findings indicate most participation is mobilized and "contained" by various government organs and specific laws. At the same time, research indicates that the government accommodates citizen concerns about environmental pollution when social stability is threatened or when more "face" is possible from accommodation.
The Media and Environmental Protection in China
Abigail R. Jahiel, Illinois Wesleyan University
Severe environmental degradation is now a well-documented, sordid by-product of China’s exceptional growth. Also well-documented are the actions the Chinese government has taken to forestall the problem (developing an environmental protection institutional structure, body of law, and set of policy mechanisms) as well as the serious impasses these efforts have faced.
In recent years, the policy arena has expanded notably, however, as forces outside of the established environmental bureaucracy have became involved in environmental issues. Individuals have increasingly fought violations of environmental law; local environmental "interest groups" have emerged, and the media—newspapers, radio and television—have begun to cover a broad range of environmental issues, reporting with depth and frequency on both successes and failures. To fully understand the prospects for environmental protection in China, it is therefore important to consider the role of these new actors.
This paper presents a preliminary study of one of these actors: the media. It argues that the active attention of the media to environmental issues is of particular significance. The media can attract a greater degree of visibility to environmental problems than can individuals or small interest groups. They can directly influence politics by drawing the attention of influential government leaders to environmental concerns, thereby shaping policy agendas; they can also indirectly influence the policy process by creating environmental norms to counter the profit-oriented norms pervasive throughout Chinese society. The paper considers the impetus for the mainstream media’s increased reportage of environmental issues, the types of environmental issues covered, and the effect of media reporting on environmental policy.
Comparing Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong
Jennifer L. Turner, Woodrow Wilson Center
My central focus will explore what I found as one striking difference between environmental non-government organizations (NGOs) in Taiwan and Hong Kong and their relationship to the state. In Taiwan, the majority of the environmental NGOs are focused on grassroots/local issues and appear to focus on protesting against the government in demanding changes in development practices, pollution cleanup, etc. The Taiwanese environmental movement played a big role in the democratization movement there. In Hong Kong, however, they have a much more corporatist system with environmental NGOs working with the government trying to elicit green changes in development and pollution protection issues. Most green groups in Hong Kong appear to neglect grassroots activism.
Organizer: Robert L. Brown, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair: Elizabeth Horton Sharf, University of Michigan
Discussant: Robert Sharf, University of Michigan
Asian religious texts speak frequently of the need to protect from harm. We read of deities converted to Buddhism who vow to protect the faith, while on a more concrete level, sacred words were made into amulets and images or figured in rituals which aimed to protect individuals or the state from catastrophe. This panel explores some of the different ways in which religions were entrusted with the function of protecting from danger. It aims to understand how traditional Asian societies categorized the harms that beset them and how they enlisted supernatural forces to ward off that harm. Each paper deals with a different aspect of this complex phenomenon. We explore protection of the state, of the Buddhist law, of Buddhist sites, and of children. The religions are both Hinduism and Buddhism, but also popular and localized religions. The panel deals with India, East, and Southeast Asian societies. In its methodology it is broadly interdisciplinary, bringing together two art historians and two textual scholars. All of the papers share a common concern with elucidating the concept of supernatural protection, trying to understand what kinds of protection religious rituals, texts or images offered. Ultimately we hope that by pursuing the issue across cultures in this way we may better understand Buddhism and Hinduism in their Indian origins and their flexibility to respond to local needs, both in and outside of India.
Hariti’s Hordes: Protecting Children in Early Indian Religions
Phyllis Granoff, McMaster University
While early Buddhist texts, for example, the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya, the Mahavastu and the Avadana Sataka, reject categorically the use of religious rituals to conceive a child, this by no means indicates a lack of concern for children and their welfare. One of the most familiar images in early Buddhism is that of Hariti, surrounded by her children. Images of Hariti abound in the Gandharan region and texts preserved in Sanskrit and in Chinese tell the story of how Hariti terrorized people by taking away their children until she was converted to Buddhism. But Hariti was only one of a host of demonic figures who caused children harm. In this paper I examine some early Indian stories about the demonic beings who attack children. My sources are the vinayas, avadanas and jatakas for Buddhism and the Mahabharata and Harivamsa for Hinduism. I argue that both Buddhist and Hindu stories may be read as similar developments of early Indian notions of demonic agents of disease. But in Buddhist stories, instead of the familiar paradigm of banishing the offending demon, she is made to serve as a protector of children and of Buddhist sites. It is this transformation from source of danger to source of protection, absent from early non-Buddhist texts like the Harivamsa, that will be the main theme of my paper.
The Place of the Yaksa/i
Daniel J. Ehnbom, University of Virginia
To judge from much scholarly literature, our contemporary understanding of the yaksa/i is determined largely by a retrospective reading from the time in which the divinities’ roles were much diminished. Functioning as protective images and attendant figures in later phases of early Indian sculpture, in the elite streams of Indian religion they gave up their power to the Buddha, bodhisattvas, and brahmanical gods and goddesses, but at a popular level they remain powerful divinities to this day. The later diminished state of the yaksa/i has influenced how we read ancient images, both free-standing and attached to large architectural monuments. A common assumption is that by the 3rd century B.C.E. the yaksa/i had already been "demoted" in the Buddhist context to a protective attendant figure. Both literary and visual evidence suggest that this process was not an abrupt change but one of gradual erosion of power over several centuries. Seeing this gradual process as documented in the visual representation of yaksa/i figures places the transformation into an arena of assertion and even contention rather than simply one of simple adaptation of forms and functions. This is especially evident in a clearly gendered "visual language" that over several centuries (roughly 3rd c. B.C.E. to 3rd c. C.E.) progressively transforms the female form from remote and divine to more overtly eroticised, a progression that seems not to have an analogue in representations of the yaksa for which the power shift is indicated by visual eclipse in monumental art and/or absorption into other divinities. An understanding of these progressions helps clarify both sculptural chronology and the contestation of religious power as reflected in early Indian imagery.
Daoxuan’s Protecting the Dharma: From History to Eschatology
Koichi Shinohara, McMaster University
I propose to explore the idea of protecting the dharma in medieval Chinese Buddhism, focusing on the terms hufa (protecting the dharma) and zhuchi (upholding or preservation). The idea of protecting the dharma is highlighted in the biographical collection compiled by the prominent vinaya master and historian Daoxuan (596–667). The experience of the persecution of Buddhism under Northern dynasties (in 441 and 574) lies behind this innovation. Apologetic concerns appear to have guided other aspects of Daoxuan’s work, for example, the effort to compile a record of Buddhist miracles that occurred in China. In another context Daoxuan uses the term zhuchi in the sense of upholding, protecting, and preserving the dharma. The record of the instruction Daoxuan is said to have received from visiting gods appears to have been collected under the title "The record of the miraculous [instruction] on preservation (zhuchi)," and was organized around the theme of the Buddha’s entrusting of the teaching and various objects to his disciples and the preservation of the traces of the Buddha’s life and teaching in sacred places (Fayuan zhulin, fascicle 10). These ideas are presented here against the background of future persecutions of the Dharma. Here I will examine the biographies Daoxuan collected under the category of hufa and compare the apologetic concerns expressed there with the idea of zhichi as it is presented in other types of writings.
A Magic Pill: The Protection of Cambodia by the Recitation of the Vinasikhatantra in A.D. 802
Robert L. Brown, University of California, Los Angeles
In A.D. 802 King Suryavarman II went to the top of a mountain and there performed certain rituals that were to protect his kingdom of Cambodia from foreign rule, transformed himself into a cakravartin, and found the Angkor dynasty. Four texts were recited, the names of which we have in an inscription, but none of which was extant. In 1985 Teun Goudriaan published a study and translation—The Vinasikhatantra: A Saiva Tantra of the Left Current (Delhi)—of a previously unknown text discovered in the national archives of Nepal in 1974. Goudriaan argues this is one of the texts recited in Cambodia in 802. If true, we must completely rethink the nature of religion in early Cambodia, for the text is a full-blown tantric text unlike anything ever considered to be present in Cambodia. That the very Angkorian kingdom was based on such a text is completely unexpected, and nothing of the art or inscriptions that follow in the next 400 years of the kingdom appears to reveal anything related. This paper asks how this can be, and if, in fact, the Vinasikhatantra can be proposed as being recited by Suryavarman II at the beginning of the ninth century as a protection against his enemies.
Organizer: Cindy Postma, Columbia University
Chair: Michael R. Auslin, Yale University
Discussant: Ronald Toby, Tokyo University
Keywords: Malay world, Shanghai, Yokohama, popular culture, history, international relations, geography.
This panel seeks a definition for an "Asian" maritime culture that embraces East and Southeast Asia. The panel’s papers describe three different maritime communities among the two regions: Shanghai (China), Yokohama (Japan), and Japan in a "Malay" world. These papers take history as their disciplinary medium—a history that reflects not only by texts, but also by things. Thus, the panel proposes an approach to history and culture.
We set out first to define a "maritime culture." The maritime is that of commerce or navigation: as an idea, it encompasses both an exchange and transport of objects and industries over comparatively large bodies of water. Maritime culture begins with the sea—or "seaborne." It is a culture of exchanges and encounters that appears in high relief at sea-bordering settlements and cities. It is also a culture that floats in the imagination of people thinking about the far away and exotic.
Second, the panel grapples with an idea of Asia. While the panel does not exclude inland connections and significance, we describe an Asia by its maritime communities.
Drawing interpretations from art, international relations, geography, and commerce, the panel proposes the following:
To define spatial boundaries that are mapped around the exchange of objects or their industries, and the maritime and cosmopolitan culture that is encompassed within this space.
To describe maritime cultures through their media of transmission. The use of these objects and industries for exoticizing and orientalizing is depicted or contested in the sites of their use: Yokohama, Shanghai or Singapore/ Batavia.
The maritime is often—by its nature of exchange—an exoticized and transient culture. Through an examination of its materiality and ideality, we propose a new approach that illuminates types and degree of inter-cultural exchange. The panel suggests a cultural facet within international relations that hitherto has been ignored. Through these papers, we show how cultural exchanges vitally contribute to the formation of a new Asian and maritime culture.
Framing a Maritime Culture: "Modern" Spatial Considerations of Japan in a Malay World
Cindy Postma, Columbia University
In his South Seas Chronicles of 1910, Takekoshi Yosaburô defined the outlines of a territory called the Nanyô. At its edges, he states, are the southern countries of the Malay peoples.
This paper depicts a Japanese and "Malay" world of the South Seas (Nanyô). Starting with Takekoshi’s frame, it charts the Japanese South Seas as they were mapped and written about by Meiji (1868–1912) and late Edo (early nineteenth century) travelers and observers. But this world was not only described by Edo and Meiji visitors, it was also advertised in Nanyô sources—by an 1870 Singapore dealer of "fine Japanese silks" and "oriental curios," for example. In his novel about the Dutch East Indies of 1898, Pramoedya described a result of Malay-Japanese maritime culture: the Kembang Jepun, or "Japanese flower" districts of Batavia and Surabaya. This paper employs a reading of both Japanese histories and of Southeast Asian sources to frame—thus describe, highlight, and set out a space for—a maritime culture.
The idea of a maritime culture finds a place for a Japan-Nanyô relationship within what is often described as the era of "high" (European) imperialism. This paper draws a picture of Japan’s nineteenth-century connections to parts of Southeast Asia during that era. It is part of a larger study that addresses Japan’s material and trade relations to the Nanyô during and after sakoku ("seclusion").
Art and Cultural Resistance: The Shanghai Museum’s Chinese Collection
Laura A. McDaniel, Vanderbilt University
This paper will address the colonial legacy of art and archeology collections in Shanghai.
The concept of the museum was introduced to China from the West, and the Shanghai Museum was the joint domain of French missionaries and the British Royal Asiatic Society until 1952. Much in this collection—including everything from cooking pots to priceless watercolors—emphasized the exoticism and timelessness of Chinese culture.
The paper focuses on the ways in which the Chinese museum-going public (both before and after 1952) effectively resisted, accommodated, and domesticated this colonial master narrative—in an effort to mold the Chinese national heritage. For example, there was an exhibit in 1935 of ornately carved Ming furniture. In their notes and public descriptions of this exhibit, the British curators indicated that they saw this artisan work as "clever," "delicate," "exotic," "refined," etc. However, local urbanites commenting on this exhibit in newspapers complained that the furniture was "impractical" and "uncomfortable." Thus, it was evidence of China’s failure as a culture to achieve the "modernity" that was so coveted at this time.
This paper—while it is not about political history per se—aims to revise the notion of Asian impotence under different treaty regimes/colonial regimes. It accomplishes this through an analysis of power and impotence on a subtle, cultural level—not on a political/economic one.
Transgressing Boundaries: Cultural Malleability in Mid-19th-Century Yokohama
Michael R. Auslin, Yale University
This paper will critique the longstanding portrait of the Yokohama treaty port as comprising two self-sealed worlds: one Japanese, one Western. While issues of language and cultural practice posed formidable hurdles for the Japanese and Western traders interacting at the port, often unheralded were both the concrete cultural exchange and the concomitant perception of that change. Moreover, this exchange flourished in the years before the Meiji Restoration and the subsequent "Westernization" of Japan.
This paper will explore how Yokohama in the 1860s became a public space—not merely an economic one—in which both Japanese and Westerners began to grope toward a more complex cultural understanding of each other. Buttressing this was the physical layout of the port, which—I will endeavor to show—was not as isolating as it seemed. Rather, it contributed to the cultural and economic interchange. Informed by Japanese historians such as Yoshida Nobuyuki, I will employ the work of contemporary Japanese woodblock print artists—primarily Hashimoto—and investigate their perception and artistic creation of a new type of international cultural entrepôt. I also will use selected contemporary Western accounts by diplomats and merchants to show that this probing of cultural boundaries was not limited to Japanese. In short, members on both sides of the relationship sought to overcome the inherent obstacles to free interaction.
This paper is bound up with a larger study of the Japanese response to the unequal treaty regime of 1858, a study which questions whether Japanese government and society were really impotent in the face of seemingly overwhelming Western power. Rather, contestation of the treaty regime was the norm, and Yokohama became the nexus of this cultural and political encounter. As such, it played a vital role in the formation of a new Asian maritime culture.
Organizer and Chair: Nancy Gottovi, North Carolina State University
Discussant: H. Leedom Lefferts, Jr., Drew University
Keywords: tradition, pottery, identity, Korea, Japan, Thailand.
Pottery communities are landscapes of economy, memory, and tradition in which localized identities and power relations between community members are expressed and constituted. What happens when local craft communities become linked to national and global economies? What happens to traditional power relations between community members when the state intervenes with institutions to preserve tradition? This session will examine modern pressures facing several traditional Asian pottery communities chiefly in terms of economic transformation and survival, and the pressures and pitfalls of maintaining "traditional" identities.
In northeast Thailand, economic and ecological factors have resulted in a change from loosely-structured household-based pottery production to factory-based production wherein traditional potters have become employees engaged in making wares for a broader, national market. Potters in the Japanese pottery towns of Mashiko and Shigaraki recognize that the economic viability of their craft is tied to the community’s reputation as producers of important "authentic" "traditional" art and craft. Yet this (re)construction and (re)production of authenticity requires immense efforts on the part of communities in the face of economic, political, and social change. Conversely, over the past century onggi potters and pottery in the Republic of Korea have never enjoyed the status of more elite forms of Korean ceramics. Yet despite a growing interest and celebration in Korean folk culture and crafts, onggi potters still have remained marginalized from Korea’s cultural institutions due to its association with lower class and rural people and the mundane. Together, these papers will explore the changing politics and economics of tradition in pottery communities.
Transforming "Tradition": Creating a Village-Based Factory to Make and Market Stoneware Jars in Northeast Thailand
Louise Cort, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution
Located in Northeast Thailand near the Mekong River, the village of Phon Bok was part of the network of Thai-Lao farming communities where men earned supplementary income during the dry season (January–May) by making unglazed stoneware ceramics, primarily large jars used for storage and mortars used in cooking. In the long-standing pattern of production, men worked in teams of two (usually relatives or members of the same household), with several teams sharing the use of a wood-firing kiln in rotation. Recently, market competition from factory-produced ceramics, shortage of wood for fuel, and other factors have reduced the profitability of such wares, while contract labor for overseas construction companies in the Middle East, Singapore, and Taiwan has offered a more attractive source of income. Many communities have ceased making stoneware, and production in Phon Bok using the team-based pattern has drastically declined. Since 1990, however, one Phon Bok man has followed an entrepreneurial strategy to capture a larger slice of the remaining market by creating a factory. He supplies capital to buy truckloads of clay and firewood, hires skilled Phon Bok men as workers, and rationalizes production using several different kilns for specific wares. He also markets aggressively, treating not just the Northeast but all of Thailand—and even adjacent Laos—as his potential market. The success of his strategy has led other Phon Bok men to regroup in several other factories. Thus, change initiated by one resourceful individual has produced a fundamental transformation in the production process within the entire community and also enabled it to continue.
The Politics of Pottery and Tradition in Shigaraki, Japan
Nancy Gottovi, North Carolina State University
Shigaraki has been identified as one of the six oldest pottery centers in Japan, having a stoneware tradition since well before the 12th century. In the 16th century, Shigaraki vessels became much appreciated in the tea ceremony, and as the tea ceremony flourished across Japan, so did the reputation of Shigaraki’s potters. As an important traditional pottery community, Shigaraki has undergone many changes throughout its history: in the mid-nineteenth century (Meiji era) Shigaraki artisans began focusing much of their production on highly functional wares such as hibachis, flowerpots and ornamental garden wares, and other more "industrial" ceramic objects, which still account for the majority of the community’s current production.
Recent changes have had a dramatic impact on the small community. The new Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park (Shigaraki Togei-noh-Mori) opened in 1990 which according to some led to fission in the community primarily over a perceived threat to the reputation of Shigaraki as an important traditional pottery town. Though the SCCP was created with the goal of "promoting local [pottery] industry," the Park also has as its mission the training of ceramists from around the world and for whom it provides housing and studio facilities. As Shigaraki has become more internationalized, there has emerged a new "pottery politic" in the community concerned with the preservation of authenticity and tradition. This paper will examine a "heritage" industry in light of these transformative events, and efforts to preserve and culturally redefine "tradition."
Clay Culture: Assessing the Recent Crafts Revival in South Korea
Robert Sayers, National Endowment for the Humanities
The Republic of Korea has emerged in recent decades as something of a potters’ mecca. An entire valley southeast of Seoul supports a thriving industry in revival ceramics, contemporary versions of Korea’s historic celadon and porcelain wares. This comes on the heels of efforts by museums and private collectors to purchase and repatriate the scarce originals, many of which have surfaced in Japan, North America, and Europe, back to their country of origin. At the same time, university art departments are filled to capacity with young students who seek inspiration in both their country’s rich ceramic heritage and the creative currents alive in the international arts community. In my presentation, I will examine the interlocking motives—nationalism, cultural preservation, and nostalgia for a pre-industrial Korea—that undergird all of these developments. At the same time, I will pay particular attention to two case studies that highlight the tension between authentic and "invented" traditions. On the one hand, I will explore the recent emergence of a Korea "tea culture" patterned, its middle-class adherents maintain, after long-lost court ritual. On the other hand, I will discuss the belated, somewhat grudging recognition of a community of artisans—producers of the ordinary foodwares (onggi) once common to virtually every household in the Republic—whose large unheralded work connects in vastly important ways to the very fabric of Korean society.
Contesting Tradition in Modern Mashiko
John Singleton, University of Pittsburgh
The Japanese potters’ town of Mashiko is known around the world as a center of traditional folk art. Aspiring potters have long gone there to learn from established potters; many remained to open their own studios and kilns. Others arrived to open studios after training in art schools or in communities that refused to accept newcomers’ workshops. Newcomers and old-timers identify with a wide variety of pottery arts, technologies, and traditions, some of them associated with the history of Mashiko. Despite a continuously expanding potter population, it remains an economically viable center for pursuing independent art careers. Much of the thriving local tourist industry celebrates specific local traditions of pottery style, local clay, and handcraft technologies. But potters, and other entrepreneurs, pursue many strategies for economic survival in pottery. Most potters work out of small individual or family shops, but a few factories employ specialized workers in old, and new, forms of mass production. There are many different claims for authentic art and local tradition. "Tradition" is contested and invented, even as it is maintained and transmitted in various forms of local instruction and patterns for learning. Working in a community historically associated with a pottery "tradition" provides a frame for establishing oneself in a craft world. But it also requires sustained efforts to maintain, and construct, the authenticity of art and/or a folk "tradition."
Organizer: Taro Iwata, University of Oregon
Chair: Prasenjit Duara, University of Chicago
This panel, entitled "Pan-Asianism, Internationalism, and (De)Colonization: Struggles Over the Meaning of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere" seeks to address the relationship of Pan-Asianism to internationalism and (de)colonization. This panel is part of three closely-related but independent Border-Crossing panels (see panel 65 and panel 107) that seek to examine how various forms of nationalisms and transnationalisms functioning within the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere articulated with Japanese rhetoric and institutions related to national and ethnic boundaries.
This particular panel will turn the focus on pan-Asian rhetoric broadly conceived, with special attention to the ways that internationalist ideas were deployed within a pan-Asian rhetoric to achieve a variety of often starkly opposing goals. Ranging in geographical scope from the Middle East to India, Russia and Japan, the papers in this panel will shed new light on the relationship between pan-Asianism and colonial and decolonizing projects, and bring attention to racial, ethnic, religious and national identity in the analysis of Japan’s Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere. Specifically, the papers will explore the convergence of Pan-Islamist arguments and Japan’s pan-Asian rhetoric of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere; the transnational career of influential Indian nationalist Subash Chandra Bose who collaborated with both Nazi Germany and Japan in order to weaken the British hold over India; the intersections between race and class within Comintern internationalism and the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere; and the relations between nation-state borders and pan-Asianism in the Coprosperity Sphere.
Defining an Anti-Western Internationalism: Visions of Civilization in the Pan-Asianist and Pan-Islamist Arguments for Solidarity Between Japan and the Muslim World (1905–1945)
Cemil Aydin, Harvard University
This paper explores the convergence of Pan-Islamist arguments about Japanese-Muslim solidarity against the Western hegemony and Japan’s pan-Asian rhetoric of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere. A close analysis of the Japanese policy towards the Muslim societies in Asia reveals certain peculiarities, such as the assumption that Muslims will be their potential allies in a possible alternative international order in "Greater East Asia", and the belief that Japan shares a common Asian identity with the unfamiliar cultures of the Asian Muslims. In particular, military policy in the occupied Muslim lands of China and South East Asia showed distinct characteristics compared to Japanese policy towards other occupied Asian nationalities. Did the Japanese political elite’s assumption about transnational Muslim support for their leadership in Asia affect their calculation of power, and influence the decision-making process in the design and ideology of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere? What was the link between Japanese Pan-Asianist visions about Muslim societies and Japan’s "Islam policy"?
This paper argues that the character and language of the "Islam policy" of the Japanese government during the 1930s had been shaped by the discourse of anti-Western Asian internationalism developed within the context of the ties among Japanese Pan-Asianists and Muslim nationalists since the 1905 Japanese victory over Russia. It traces the vision of Asian internationalism based on a thorough analysis of the writings of Okawa Shumei (1886–1957) and Abdurresid Ibrahim (1854–1944). Okawa Shumei was not only the most prominent Pan-Asianist influencing Japanese leadership, but he was also the founder of Japan’s Islamic Studies in the 1930s, and the long-time advocate of Japan’s alliance with the rising Muslim nationalism. On the other hand, Pan-Islamist activist Abdurresid Ibrahim contributed to the formation of Japan’s "Islam policy" in the 1930s by his intellectual influence on Asianist organizations and thinkers in Japan. While the paper underlines the character, dilemmas and legacy of the Asian internationalism that advocated the solidarity between the Shintoist Japanese Empire and Muslim nationalists, it will make comparisons to liberal and left internationalism of the interwar era.
Subash Chandra Bose, Japan, and British Imperialism
T. R. Sareen, Indian Council of Historical Research
The history of India’s struggle for freedom was unique in the sense that it was fought on two fronts, i.e., one inside the country under Gandhiji, who wanted to achieve it by nonviolent means, and other by the Indian nationalists, who tried to end British domination with the help of foreign powers by violent means.
In this paper, an attempt is made to project the personality of Subash Chandra Bose, his differences with Gandhiji and how he tried to internationalize the Indian liberation movement. Bose collaborated with many foreign powers to weaken the British hold over India. His activities, however, were looked at from different angles by the Americans, the British, the Chinese, and even the Indian political leaders. This paper seeks to dispel much misinformation so far assiduously propagated against Bose by those who categorized him as "guilty," "fascist," and "quisling."
Passing any judgement on Bose’s role during the Second World War and the liberation of India with the help of Japan is not easy. But even his worst critics never had any doubt that Bose was a sincere patriot and his alliance with the enemies of the Raj was only for weakening the British hold over India. Even his blind faith in the sincerity of Japanese intentions—distorted by Allied powers for the regeneration of Asian people—was not devoid of truth.
I will analyze how Bose’s identification with the nationalist aspirations of Southeast Asian countries encouraged its wavering leaders to fight against Western colonialism, and how it gave a certain amount of legitimacy to Japan’s slogan to the Coprosperity Sphere.
The USSR’s Comintern Internationalism and the Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere
Vladimir Kojevnikov, Far Eastern University of Vladivostok
The Soviet Union’s Comintern internationalism and Japan’s Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere do not at first appear closely related, but a comparison of these two historical constructs provides an interesting perspective on the study of the relationship among nationalism, internationalism, and transnationalism.
The GEACS was a concept based on principles of racial independence and collaboration. Of course the main goal of the framers of this Coprosperity Sphere was economy—to secure resources for the Japanese Empire. But for Japan, the idea of Asian racial unity meant more than just procuring mineral resources from Southeast Asia; the Coprosperity Sphere also became an ideological basis for an Asian transnational framework which would stand in opposition to the "white world." The participating governments and national leaders of the GEACS proclaimed liberation from "white colonialism" and prepared for independence in some cases. The organizing principle was a form of racial transnationalism.
The Comintern, on the other hand, was organized around an ideology—specifically, communist ideology. This organization was created to protect the first communist state (USSR) and to help communist parties in other states to take power, without regard to nationality. It was a proletarian class internationalism. The participants of the Comintern came not only from the "white world", but also from Asia, and Asian participants were some of the most active in it. They organized around the idea of the construction of a communist (international) world, which was not explicitly racialized.
The two historical developments then reveal a subtle but important distinction between race-based transnationalism and class-based internationalism. This paper will illuminate how race, class, nationalism, and internationalism intersected within "Greater East Asia." It will also examine how Japanese and Russian imperialisms engaged with each other through the Coprosperity Sphere and the Comintern.
Pan-Asianism, Diplomacy, and Boundaries: Official Japanese "Foreign" Policy in the Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere
Taro Iwata, University of Oregon
Is borderlessness a new concept? How does transcendence of nation-states occur? What is the relationship between (de)colonization and the changing meaning of boundaries? This paper will examine and situate the notion of borders and borderlessness in the historical context of Japan’s colonial expansion in Asia from 1940 to 1945. Specifically, it will interrogate the relations between nation-state borders and pan-Asianism by examining Japan’s "foreign policy" in the coprosperity sphere. I will focus on the influence of pan-Asian ideals on official Japanese perceptions regarding nation-state boundaries in Asia.
The paper will specifically inquire into the meaning of the separation of the Foreign Ministry that handled "pure diplomacy" and the Greater East Asia Ministry (1942) that dealt with other "foreign affairs" within Greater East Asia. What did Prime Minister Tojo Hideki imply about borders and borderlessness when he stated in 1942 that there was "no need for foreign relations" within the Coprosperity Sphere? In what nations and areas did borders blur, and in what other places did borders become elucidated? Analyzing government, military, academic, and media sources on the Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere in the first half of the 1940s, I will propose a theoretical framework that illuminates an intricate relationship among formal/informal empires, (de)colonization, pan-Asianism, and "blurred boundaries." Throughout, I will demonstrate that Japanese colonialism did not depend simply, as has often been argued, on Japan’s imposition of essentialistic and fixed ethnic and national identifications on colonized populations, but also on a strategic manipulation of non-essentialistic discourses of flexibility and equality.
Organizer: Christophe Jaffrelot, Center d’Études et de Recherches Internationales
Chair: Jean-Philippe Beja, Center d’Études et de Recherches Internationales
Discussants: Christophe Jaffrelot, Center d’Études et de Recherches Internationales; Jean-Philippe Beja, Center d’Études et de Recherches Internationales; David Camroux, Instut d’Édudes Politiques, Paris; Françoise Mengin, Nationale des Sciences Politiques; Karoline Postel-Vinay, Center d’Études et de Recherches Internationales
For long, foreign policies have been analyzed through a realist view of the world, and dominated by issues of war and peace. Asian countries’ foreign policies are no exception. However, political discourses are constitutive of their very object. Therefore, one should bring to the fore political and social practices that are constitutive of foreign policies on the one hand, and contextualize the latter, on the other hand.
Yet, the issue at stake is not to adopt a culturalist view of politics, but to pinpoint the dialectics between culture and politics in the field of foreign policy. Such an analysis requires not only to lay stress on the values that are mobilized in order to build a diplomatic discourse, but also on the interaction between domestic and foreign issues, particularly in an era of globalization. Generally speaking, this roundtable intends to adopt a historical sociology methodology that attends to the interplay of meaningful actions and structural contexts in order to make sense of the unfolding of intended and unintended outcomes.
As this roundtable will bring together specialists of India, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, it will show how the same cultural heritages can lead to opposed political discourses and vice-versa. This in turn should bring to the fore irreducible historical trajectories.
Organizer: Takashi Yoshida, Columbia University
Chair: Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania
Discussant: Leonard Blussé, Leiden University
Keywords: war and memory, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, United States, history, post-WWII.
In creating shared spaces for citizens to commemorate war, the state inevitably participates in shaping the communal memory. In assuming this role, the state must ask what is to be forgotten, and what remembered? How does the state deal with its "people’s war" in national history and memory? Who should be remembered and mourned in a national war memorial? In confronting these questions, the panel examines national museums and the literature they have generated in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.
Arthur Waldron will evaluate military museums in China and Taiwan; Takashi Yoshida will consider the disputes in Japan over Shôwakan; Sheila Miyoshi Jager will analyze the War Memorial in Korea; and Matthew Levey will examine the Enola Gay controversy at the Smithsonian Institution. Leonard Blussé will relate these controversies to similar debates over public memory in Europe. Each paper presenter is a specialist in the area to be considered and is familiar with the pertinent literature in her/his nation of specialty.
Through a comparative examination of museums and related writings, the panel will explore how the commemoration of war mobilized a variety of discourses about the nation that sought to reinforce the solidarity of a particular national community. To the extent that this commemorative process grew out of, and sought to re-shape, both individual and collective knowledge about war, the panel will address the intimate connection between war and memory, war and nationalism as well as the uniquely distinctive ways in which these nations have remembered their dead.
Military Museums in China and Taiwan
Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania
China is currently paying more attention to its military tradition than it has for fifty years, given the fundamental importance of issues of nationalism, patriotism, and social solidarity in the People’s Republic. My presentation will approach these larger questions by examining and comparing military museums in China and Taiwan. Although both states have strong militaries and military traditions, neither has paid much attention until recently to their history.
Obviously military museums exist chiefly because we have armies and militaries, just as war memorials exist above all because wars have been fought, cost lives, and demand something. But one can cautiously push beyond such obvious points, as I intend to, and look at what is displayed, what is the tone of the display, how accurate or tendentious is the presentation, as well as who are the sponsors, the intended audience, and the anticipated effect, if any. One can also ask, for Taiwan and China, how the differing political courses of the two states—one toward liberalism and pluralism, the other increasingly toward state-sponsored nationalism—are related to the specifics of the museums.
Further material I will draw from includes literary documentation and descriptions found in Chinese publications, guidebooks, memoirs, and so forth, to try to establish the larger context of the museums within both countries, and also pay attention to the extensive comparative literature, with which I already have some familiarity, dealing with memory and memorialization of things military in Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and other states.
Disputes Over Shôwakan: Whom Should We Remember, Asian Victims or Japanese Patriots?
Takashi Yoshida, Columbia University
In March 1999, Shôwakan, Japan’s first national museum commemorating the Pacific War, was opened after more than a decade of disputes. The original plan to build a museum was proposed by the Association of Bereaved Families, Japan (Nihon izokukai) in 1980, mainly to mourn military personnel killed in action and to honor their bereaved families. After years of disputes between liberals, who urged that the museum stress destructions inflicted on Asia by wartime Japan, and conservatives/nationalists, who strongly opposed this approach, the museum finally decided to exclude potentially controversial subjects and artifacts. Without detailed explanation, it simply exhibited materials such as "thousand stitch" belly warmers, ceramic irons, and wartime posters. Even the museum’s library observes a careful balance among various ideologies, from Marxist to ultra-nationalist.
The disputes over Shôwakan and the "proper" role of museums typify an ever-intensifying cultural struggle. Since the mid-1990s, such disputes have proliferated throughout Japan. Examining Shôwakan and its controversy will help us understand contested history and memory of the Fifteen Year War (1931–45) in Japanese society. My presentation will begin with a brief overview of the nationwide controversies over museum exhibits. I shall then analyze the motives of those who quarreled over Shôwakan and trace the history of the disputes since 1980. I argue, inter alia, that Shôwakan’s case was a stalemate, not a defeat for liberals who wished the museum to give extensive recognition to Japan’s role, not as a victim, but victimizer.
Monumental Histories: Manliness, the Military, and the War Memorial, South Korea
Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Oberlin College
At the turn of the century, shortly before Korea’s colonization by Japan, Korea’s leaders were steeped in Confucianism, wedded to the Choson dynasty (1392–1910) and had no specialized military knowledge. Half a century later, Korea was ruled by people who had been trained primarily as military experts, believed in military values and were known for their military position. The military coup d’etat of 1961 reduced the problem of modernization into a struggle that required a military-like violent assault on old political structures thought to be preventing national "progress." During the economic crisis of 1998, the selective recuperation of Korea’s "warrior" culture was even suggested by the Kim Dae-jung government as a way to get South Koreans out of their economic slump.
Sincere efforts to reproduce and memorialize this warrior past were made with the opening of the War Memorial in 1994, a huge museum/memorial complex located in the middle of Seoul that provides the locus of coalescence for state political expression, identity and history. Far from simply being a poignant reminder of State military power, I argue that the War Memorial is heir to the particular legacy of militarism and nationalism in Korea that sought to link national "progress" with martial prowess, economic "survival" with the cult of martial masculinity. The War Memorial sought not only to tell the story of the strong and heroic nation against the plight of its colonial past; it also advocated martial manhood and brotherly strength as patriotic values against the plight of its divided future.
Fifty Years Later: The National Air and Space Museum and Public Remembrance of World War II in the United States
Matthew A. Levey, Birmingham Southern College
The "Enola Gay controversy" (along with the opening ceremonies of the "National D-Day Museum" and the popularity of "Saving Private Ryan") arose from the convergence of a stable "public" memory of World War II (as "the good war" fought by brave and heroic soldiers to preserve freedom, liberty, and democracy) with a changed "veterans" conception of their wartime past, from being highly critical, in their memoirs and war fiction, of this public depiction of the war to accepting this public version of the war.
The impulse to write changed, from a desire to explain the "reality" of combat to those at home (who, returning soldiers frequently thought did not—and in many cases, even try to—understand their experience) to a desire to be remembered by adopting the commemorative voice of public ceremonies and sites of remembrance. Wanting to show those at home that war is not about "democracy" and other "big words," servicemen depicted graphically the violence and horror of war. Today, horror is much reduced and is mediated by the surrounding flavor of "the good war" conducted by "the greatest generation."
Discussion of "comradeship" illustrates this. Because soldiers tried to explain to their readers that comrade groups were both inclusive and exclusive, often with grave consequences, they initially wrote about comradeship to illustrate that in war you fight for those close to you, not for some "big words" conception of the overall aims of the war; today, because the concept involves only its moral implications (you do anything for your "buddy" because there was "true" love among buddies), "comradeship" is one of those big words.
Easy Help: East Asian Scholars Electronic Help Desk Pilot Project
Sharon H. Domier, University of Massachusetts; Gail King, Council on East Asian Libraries
The East Asian Scholars Electronic Help Desk, a joint project of the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) and the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) of the Association for Asian Studies, is a variety of reference services for isolated East Asian Studies scholars in North America. The Electronic Help Desk responds to e-mail requests for digital reference services and provides brief written and electronic guides to processes such as ordering books from Asia, options for document delivery, and configuring personal computers to send and receive vernacular text over the Internet.
Following the lead of the Virtual Reference Desk and services such as AskAsia, this pilot project attempts to support the needs of isolated faculty and librarians through a cooperative effort and by applying new technologies. A group of volunteer faculty and librarians agree to ask and answer an equitable number of questions that cannot be handled locally. The goal is not to replace traditional library services, but to provide a network of support for individuals or institutions that would otherwise be left without any specialized library service.
The pilot of the East Asian Scholars Electronic Help Desk began in September 2000, and its preliminary findings will be presented in this poster session. We look forward to receiving feedback and suggestions from a larger audience through this session, with the goal of launching a full version to serve Asian studies scholars in the near future.
Op-Art Perspectives on Indonesia’s Reformasi Movement During Wahid’s First Year as President
C. Richard Ostrom, California State University, Chico
The op-art works of several Indonesian artists have been featured in exhibitions in Indonesia (and elsewhere) since Suharto’s resignation in 1998. This poster presentation will feature photocopies (most in color) of several of these insightful and thought-provoking works. The poster will also include written information that will aid viewers in their efforts to understand the key points each artist is trying to communicate.
The specific works presented will be chosen from among the following original works I collected in Indonesia in 1998 and 1999:
1. We Need "Democrazy" (sic)
2. Habibie is Suharto’s Puppet (and allows Suharto to continue to loot the country)
3. Habibie’s reform task is like that of Sisyphus (in Greek mythology) and will never be achieved.
4. The Indonesian army poses a dangerous military threat to the reform movement.
5. Indonesia’s reformers must find their way through a complicated maze of barriers to achieve their goal of "total reform."
6. The reforms achieved so far have not yet helped the common people.
I will be revisiting Indonesia prior to my presentation, and will search for more op-art works to add to (or substitute for) those described above.
My students have enjoyed the challenge of interpreting these interesting op-art works, and I am confident that my colleagues will too.
"Women’s Role and Duty" According to the National Morals Textbook During the Russo-Japanese War
Jason Barrows, Hokkaido University
While there is little doubt that the boys were trained to be the soldiers of the future during their school years by the National Morals Textbook, the question of what the girls were to contribute socially and culturally to imperial Japan still remains. This question was addressed by the National Morals Textbook in answer to the effects of the Russo-Japanese War, when the husbands, the main money makers of the family, were drafted and either killed or injured on the battlefield.
There is a section that teaches girls the mother’s responsibility to her family and to the nation. Girls were taught how women should respond to the demands of "total war" and how the parts they played in the conflict challenged traditional ideas about women’s "proper role" in society as wives, mothers, workers, victims, and patriots. A mother’s first duty is to her children. She must properly maintain a home, which is definitely a full-time job, but she must also be employed in some type of work in order to support the family, not to mention she must pay taxes in order to support the war. This poster session will analyze the impact of the Russo-Japanese War on the lives of mothers and on the culture in general.
Japan and Ethiopia in the 1920s–30s: The Rise and Fall of "Sentimental" Relations
Tetsushi Furukawa, Kyoto University
Japan’s relations with various regions of Africa increased during the 1920s and 30s, but Japan and Ethiopia particularly developed close ties since the beginning of the 1920s.
These two "colored" independent nations, exposed to the threat of Western imperial powers, developed "sentimental" relations based on perceived similarities in their history and political situation in a "white dominated world." The mission of Ethiopian Foreign Minister Heruy Walda-Sellasse to Japan in 1931 contributed significantly to the cultivation of close ties between the two nations in both an official and unofficial sense. However, the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis of 1935–36 brought considerations of "realpolitik" to the surface. Instead of being guided by the ideal of Afro-Asian solidarity, Japan’s diplomacy of the time chose the more pragmatic path of cooperation with Italy and gave no substantial support to Ethiopia. The Pro-Ethiopian movement led by Japanese nationalists during the crisis also died out rapidly. The Japanese government agreed to recognize Italy’s annexation of Ethiopia after the crisis, and was followed by Italy’s recognition of Japan’s role in Manchuria. "Sentimental" relations between Japan and Ethiopia were thus sacrificed for the sake of "realpolitik" in the international arena.
Memories of War, Dreams of Peace: Music in Postwar Okinawa
James E. Roberson, Musashino Women’s University
Music, it has been widely noted, is one of the common means of cultural and individual identity construction. This poster session will investigate how music is implicated in the construction of cultural memory in Okinawa. More specifically, this poster will consider the implications for Okinawan cultural identity of the continuities and changes in musical (lyrical) representations of war and peace in Okinawa.
From songs telling of the parting of soldiers going to war, of the terrible experiences of the Battle of Okinawa, and of prisoner of war camps, to the continuing desire for peace in the now fifty-five years of the postwar period, music has been reflexively engaged in the construction of Okinawan cultural identity through its commentaries on and (re)constructions of experience and memory. Okinawan complicity, critique and resistance as lyrically constructed will be examined in relation to the multiple reflexivities of past and present, memory and identity, as these are focused on war and peace. Related discourses about the songs, both contemporaneous with the songs’ first appearances and later uses and interpretations will also be incorporated into the poster.
Okinawan music is here broadly defined to include folk (min’yô), "uchinaa pop" and various other genres of songs written and performed by Okinawan musicians. However, songs by mainland Japanese artists which have a specifically Okinawan lyrical focus will also be included.
The poster format will be utilized to display relevant song lyrics and related images, and will be supported with laptop computer generated graphics and sound.
Kannagara no michi: The World Through Shinto Eyes
E. Leslie Williams, Clemson University
Despite the omnipresent influence of Shinto in present-day Japan, and the undeniable role that this belief system has played for centuries in Japan’s society and culture, for academics it still largely remains a mystery. Shinto is a spiritual tradition that inculcates reverence for ancestral spirits, the kami. Precisely because Shinto is much more a matter of practice than it is a matter of doctrine, previous academic inquiry has tended to be either descriptive or historical in character, not addressing issues of why specific kami tradition ritual symbols persist in particular patterned aggregations.
And yet, there are very definite, socially-perceived and transmitted ideas that serve to constitute a unique Shinto worldview. The data of this research are the result of more than ninety ethnographic interviews and participant observation of over seventy kami rituals conducted in shrine and non-shrine contexts in 1995–96. By compiling and comparing several informants’ voices on a single issue, a specific, unifying kami tradition cosmology emerges from the preceding mosaic of responses.
Kami belief, as a rule, is focused on boundary phenomena. This fact, in addition to Shinto taboos that are focused on the earth and females, led to the discovery of an "earth-womb" root metaphor which is an important element of Shinto cosmology. This poster will: succinctly outline the mechanics of the "earth-womb" root metaphor; explicate how and why Shinto beliefs regarding ancestral spirits, agriculture, and sexuality become a homogenous whole; and present a stimulating, new theoretical approach to this important topic for all Japanologists.
The Eastern Garden of Yangzhou: Walking into a Lost 18th-Century Chinese Garden
Jin Feng, Purdue University
In the 18th century, the design of Chinese landscape gardens reached a new level of sophistication. An increase in building density on a garden property created a series of spaces with contrasting scenes of varying characteristics. Walking through the spaces of a garden was usually quite sensational as described in literature. Although we can still experience similar sensations when walking through those preserved traditional Chinese gardens, most of them have been altered in later times. Therefore, claiming the existence of the complex and sensational composition of Chinese gardens in the 18th century has yet to be supported by historical evidence.
This presentation is a demonstration of a research project that uses computer generated virtual reality technology to reconstruct the 18th-century garden Dong yuan, or Eastern Garden, in Yangzhou, based on a painting by Yuan Jiang (c. 1680–c. 1755). The demonstration allows viewers to virtually walk into the garden to experience the spaces. Critical views that link one space to another are presented as evidence to support the theory that the garden scenes were created according to compositional principles. The results of this research project indicate that the spatial experience of the garden is quite dramatic. The spaces of different characteristics were beautifully composed so as to enhance the experience of the garden scenes by sensational contrast while entering from one from another. In the walkthrough, we can see that the views in the garden were more likely to be carefully planned than randomly obtained. In terms of methodology, this study indicates that the advancement of technology can surely assist historians to see more of the lost spaces.
Imperial Geography, Local History, and Changing Notions of Territory in Modern China
C. Pat Giersch, Wellesley College
Scholars often note that the Qing dynasty’s conquests provided the basis for modern China’s sovereign territory. Yet, this simple statement conceals complex processes that produced a nation from an empire. As Chinese adopted new standards of territorial sovereignty, for example, they demanded that geographers and historians develop new methods to represent and justify that authority. Relying on numerous maps and historical documents, this paper explores the intersection of geography and history by investigating the Sino-Burmese frontier from 1720–1961.
Qing officials often conceived of frontiers as zonal space, which was usually left to indigenous clients (tusi) to rule. Imperial geographers recorded general topography but did not exhaustively survey frontiers, nor did imperial historians inquire too deeply into local histories. These practices changed as Qing officials adopted international norms of territorial sovereignty. In the 1890s, joint Qing-British teams demarcated the Sino-Burmese frontier for the first time. This process was rancorous as British officials manipulated their cartographic and historical knowledge to challenge Qing claims to tusi regions. In the end, only parts of the boundary were demarcated.
In the 1930s, Chinese scholars reexamined the disputed boundary and accused the British of occupying Chinese territory. These scholars mobilized geography and history to support their claims, but their techniques for map-making and historical interpretation were different than in Qing times. After 1949, PRC officials relied on these techniques to negotiate and map a final boundary and to codify a history that justified their inclusion of erstwhile imperial frontiers in the new Chinese nation state.
Cartoon and Vernacular Power in the Sichuan Railway Rights Protection Movement
Danke Li, Fairfield University
Scholars in the West and Japan have long noticed that Sichuan was a frontrunner of the Railway Rights Protection movement. In May 1911 when the news of the Qing government’s railway nationalization decision reached Sichuan, the movement quickly developed into a mass movement and anti-Qing military uprisings in many parts of the province. However, little has been documented as to why this happened in Sichuan while the same movement gradually died out in other provinces. Existing studies in the West and in Japan suggest that the unique way of the railway taxation in Sichuan and the role of the Gelaohui in the movement were the explanations. This study does not dispute the importance of these approaches, yet it argues that local elite political propaganda in the form of cartoon and vernacular publications and popular culture also played an important role in the making of a mass Railway Rights Protection movement and the 1911 Revolution in Sichuan.
This research studies various cartoons and vernacular newspapers that were created by both the pro- and anti-Railway Rights Protection forces during the movement in order to show how and on what issues the local elites and the Qing provincial government used those new mediums for mass mobilization. It also reveals that, in Sichuan before the New Culture movement, cartoon and vernacular publications had become legitimate and important media for elite political propaganda.
Bringing Chinese Feminism From Elite to Mass: Women’s Studies in Contemporary Popular Women’s Magazines
Sharon R. Wesoky, Allegheny College
In the 1990s, there was a vast expansion of interest in women’s studies in China. This poster will examine how this interest has had a wider impact, beyond institutions of higher education and government, on China’s "laobaixing," or commoners, through women’s studies scholars publishing articles in popular women’s magazines, as well as forming new such publications. Such work on the part of women’s studies scholars includes efforts to raise consciousness on a variety of issues that might be considered "new" in the Chinese context, such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. Such consciousness-raising can be seen as one way that a newly active women’s movement in China seeks to "frame" new issues in a way that is acceptable to both state and society.
The Origins of Taoist Graphic Talismans
Li Yang, University of Arizona
Taoist graphic talismans discussed here mainly refer to a highly stylized form of mystical script utilized by the Taoists as a means of communication with spirits. My study focuses on those that developed parallel with the formation of the Taoist religion from the second through the sixth centuries. During this period, Taoism emerged to establish its claim as the religion of the Chinese people, distinguishing itself from the restricted imperial cult, the assorted practices of popular religion, and the imported religion of Buddhism. As we shall see, Taoist graphic talismans played an important part in early Taoist tradition. They came to be the most important ritual objects used in virtually every Taoist rite. However, treated with utmost reverence, their transmission was strictly kept in secrecy. As a consequence, their origins have been obscured and their meanings are no longer intelligible. It is on such matters that the present author hopes to provide some preliminary speculations in her paper. I hold that Taoist talismans are products of bureaucratization of the Taoist religion, and they are modeled on secular credentials of imperial authority; their immediate origin traces to the graphic talismans practiced in Han popular religion; the composition of graphic talismans embodies Taoist ideology but is deeply rooted in magico-religious traditions, especially those of exorcistic nature; there are principles underlying the making of Taoist graphic talismans. In studying a subject that has received scant attention in Sinology, my research is mainly based on archaeological discoveries and early Taoist literature.
Organizer: Taro Iwata, University of Oregon
Chair: Peter Duus, Stanford University
This panel, entitled "Unifying and Dividing Nationalism: The Influence of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere on Asian Nationalisms," seeks to address the unifications and the divisions of Asian nationalisms. This proposed panel is part of three closely-related but independent Border-Crossing panels (see panel 45 and panel 107) that seek to examine how various forms of nationalisms and transnationalisms functioning within the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere articulated with Japanese rhetoric and institutions related to national and ethnic boundaries.
This particular panel will focus on the multiple and often contradictory effects of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere on emergent Asian nationalisms in Vietnam, the Philippines, Manzhouguo, Indonesia, and Korea. Exploring the often unexpected alliances that were formed across national, religious, ethnic and gendered boundaries, the papers in this panel complicate any simple binary understanding of imperialist Japan’s impact on "Greater East Asia" during World War II.
Ultimately the panel will shed light on the ongoing effects of the Coprosperity Sphere in Asia’s postwar experience. Specifically, the papers will explore the role played by the GEACS in the wartime and postwar development of the nationalist and militant religious group of Hoa Hao in Vietnam; a wide variety of nationalist choices made by the Filipinos under the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere; women’s reconfigurations of gender roles and national identities in Manzhouguo before, during, and after the period of GEACS; and the relationship between Thai irredentism and the Coprosperity Sphere.
Under the Japanese Umbrella: South Vietnam’s Hoa Hao during the Japanese Occupation and Aftermath
My-Van Tran, University of South Australia
World War Two brought a new chapter to the history of Vietnam as well as Japan. In the name of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere Japan played a major part, directly and indirectly, in shaping developments inside Vietnam. This paper examines the political and military emergence of one particular group, the Hoa Hao during this period. The focus is on Huynh Phu So, founder and leader of the Hoa Hao—a religious and nationalist group in Cochinchina—who relentlessly sought national salvation from the French colonialists under Japanese "protection." Huynh Phu So, popularly referred to as Venerable Master-Preacher (Duc Thay) by his devotees, succeeded in building and mobilising a large group able to prosper under the Japanese-French alliance that then dominated Vietnam.
Thus the paper highlights the Japanese impact on the Hoa Hao, including its quasi-military armed wing, the Protectors of Peace (Bao An); itself a creation of the wartime Japanese-French regime which went on to become a nationalist military force following the Japanese surrender. During the following turbulent period from late 1945, which witnessed both the reestablishment of French colonial authority and the rise of the Communist led Viet Minh, and the effort of other nationalists to bring genuine independence to Vietnam, the leader of Hoa Hao emerged as a national leader who posed a challenge to the Viet Minh. Consequently he became a victim of the Viet Minh
The paper concludes that the overall impact of the Japanese occupation on Vietnamese national inspirations was in some respects negative. The nationalists’ hope for genuine independence in peace and unity was diminished. What is more, there are echoes between events in the aftermath of Japanese withdrawal to recent conflict between religious and nationalist groups in South Vietnam, most importantly the Hoa Hao, with the contemporary Communist authorities. Even 53 years after the disappearance of the Hoa Hao’s most revered leader, the Hoa Hao within Vietnam and abroad still seek to pursue his unfinished agenda.
Filipino Nationalism Under Japanese Occupation
Ricardo T. Jose, University of the Philippines
Prior to the Second World War, the Philippines had been set on the road to independence. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 established the semi-autonomous Philippine Commonwealth government, which would serve as a transition government towards independence in 1946. Independence had long been fought for by Filipinos since the time of Spanish colonial rule. Not everyone was happy with the Commonwealth government, however, although these were in the minority: some sectors wanted immediate independence, others wanted social reforms with independence, others doubted the Americans and sought assistance from Japan. When the Japanese occupied the Philippines during the Pacific War, they thus came across varied reactions.
The majority reaction was resistance, direct and indirect. These tied in with the Filipino tradition of fighting for independence were seen as patriotic and the height of nationalism. Many of these groups were strongly allied with the American forces, who were seen as Philippine allies. Other armed groups however, allied themselves with socialism or communism, while others remained independent. Prewar politicians saw themselves as being patriotic by joining the Japanese-sponsored government and standing up to Japanese demands from within the system. Still others equated the Asian spirit of the Japanese with nationalism, and thus sided with the Japanese. The variety of reactions thus led to a confusing definition of nationalism, a confusion which persists to the present.
Gender in the Construction and Deconstruction of Manzhouguo
Dan Shao, University of California, Santa Barbara
This paper will examine the Japanese construction and Chinese deconstruction of Manzhouguo from the perspective of gender. I will use newspapers, popular magazines, biographical materials, memoirs, governmental publications, novels, and movie story plots to analyze what gender roles were assigned to and perceived by women when national and ethnic boundaries were shifting in Northeast China (Manchuria) in the first half of the 20th century.
This paper begins by laying out the historical background of Manzhouguo (1932–1945). I will focus on the major rhetorical strategies concerning ethnic and national relations used by Manzhouguo side and Chinese government. Gender, ethnicity and nationality were closely interwound in the discourse of colonialism and nationalism. In the second part of this paper, I will analyze how women were represented in changing political platforms and ideals, such as ethnical harmony, the Coprosperity Sphere, nationalism, and transnationalism. Then I will use biographical materials to bring the faces and lives of individual women to this study of the construction of gender roles and national identity. Finally I will try to explain how a gendered analysis can help us reach a more comprehensive understanding of the conflict between Chinese and Japanese nationalism, and what insights it brings to our knowledge of the tension between transnationalism and nationalism in political rhetoric and personal experience.
Thai Irredentism and the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere
E. Bruce Reynolds, San Jose State University
Thailand nationalist leader in the late 1930s, Phibun Songkhram, stirred his countrymen by evoking the nation’s past glories and emphasizing the critical importance of military power in an unsettled time. He looked favorably on the rising Japanese influence in Southeast region largely because he hoped that the Japanese would facilitate his quest to regain peripheral lands once under Bangkok suzerainty, but subsequently lost to the French and British. This created a dilemma for the Japanese, who desired Phibun cooperation but were unwilling fully to endorse his territorial ambitions.
Although Phibun did ally with Japan, he did so only after a Japanese military invasion forced an embarrassing Thai military capitulation. Belated and limited Japanese efforts to satisfy Phibun expansionist desires in mid-1943 could not dissipate the tensions and ill will that had developed behind a façade of Thai-Japanese cooperation. Nor could the Japanese disguise the fact that the tide of war had turned against them. Ultimately his unhappy alliance with Japan cost Phibun his position.
Forced to return the redeemed territories after the war, Phibun rival, Pridi Phanomyong, responded by advocating a new type of Thai regional leadership through a Southeast Asian League. Pridi, however, failed to consolidate his domestic political position and his hopes for a Thai-led regional movement were dashed when the army seized power in Bangkok in 1947 and Southeast Asia divided into hostile camps with the intensification of the Cold War.
Organizer and Chair: T. J. Pempel, University of Washington
Discussant: Peter Katzenstein, Cornell University
Keywords: regionalism, Asia, economics, competing networks.
Organizational developments such as NAFTA, the European Union, Mercosur, and ASEAN have led many to conclude that regionalism is a growing and worldwide phenomenon. Certainly, since the early 1980s, ties among many Asian countries have grown closer. Any such generic picture of enhanced Asian closeness, however, masks at least four important sub-trends. First, Asian connections are typically less politically institutionalized than those in most other geographical regions. Instead, Asian connectedness has been driven largely by economics, notably enhanced trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows and production networks. Second, these new economic connections have been far from uniform across the region. Instead, several quite distinctive nodes of connectedness bring together only two, three, or four countries, not the region as a whole. Thus, a "Greater China Network" links Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and sometimes Singapore. Quite distinctive is the network driven by Japanese-owned companies, one that is typically tied to labor intensive production in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Still a different network centers on the Southeast Asia services trade with Singapore and Hong Kong at the core. Third, many ties within Asia are predicated on high levels of national and intra-regional competition. Fourth and finally, the United States and its companies are by no means absent from the "Asian region." The U.S. is the ultimate market for many Asian exports while many U.S.-owned companies compete vigorously throughout Asia; the "Asian" region is actually trans-Pacific. The papers in this panel explore these different facets of the emerging Asian regionalism.
Regional Power Networks: Implications of the Disk Drive Industry
Richard F. Doner, Emory University
This paper grows out of a decade of detailed empirical research on production networks in different industries within Asia. Most striking about the disk drive industry—in contrast to autos or electronics—is the extent to which U.S.-based companies have proven far more competitive than their Japanese, Korean, or Taiwanese-based counterparts. Central to this U.S. corporate success have been ‘regionwide’ production facilities premised on increased political cooperation and declining trade barriers across Southeast Asia. This strategy has thus ignored demands by nationalist politicians to set up complete and independent production facilities in "my" country and even forced increased regionalization.
Positional Power in Asia: How Japanese Machine Manufacturers Gained the Upper Hand in a Regional Contest with U.S. Rivals
Walter Hatch, University of Washington
Hatch is the co-author with Kozo Yamamura of the book, Asia in Japan’s Embrace, a study of efforts by Japanese corporations to expand their production facilities throughout Southeast Asia. This paper is based on three years of detailed follow-up research dealing specifically with Japanese policies aimed at encouraging foreign production in labor-intensive industries throughout Asia and local government policies aimed at industrial development though foreign direct investment. Hatch relies on extensive corporate interviews with Japanese and Southeast Asian executives in the machine tool industry to show how Japanese networks have penetrated Southeast Asia, allowing Japanese-owned firms to increase their world market share of machine tool exports at a phenomenal pace. The consequences for local industrial development, however, have been far less locally beneficial.
Remapping Asia: Competing Networks of Regionalism
T. J. Pempel, University of Washington
This paper grows out of five years of work on Asian regionalism and Asian political economy. It examines recent patterns of foreign direct investment, trade, and private sector portfolio loans across Asia. All show uniform increases, indicating that Asia is indeed becoming more economically connected. But several distinctive economic nodes are apparent—one centered around "Chinese money" that moves from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore into the People’s Republic, another centered around Japanese loans and foreign direct investment going to Korea and Southeast Asia, as well as several others, e.g. nodes involving services centered on Hong Kong and Singapore, and investment and production by Korean companies in Northeast China, Russia, and Southeast Asia. This paper maps these different economic nodes, and examines their political underpinnings and the consequences they present for regional integration.
Japanese FDI after the Asian Crisis: Leveraging Networks and Clusters
Dennis Tachiki, Fujitsu Research Institute
Prior to the Asia economic meltdown in 1997, Japanese money poured into the region in the form of official foreign aid, foreign direct investment, bank loans and real estate purchases. Such loose money was at least partially responsible for the 1997 crisis. Since 1997, Japan’s long-term economic slump, combined with the overall slowdown throughout Asia has meant a general reversal of these earlier trends, but Tachiki’s paper demonstrates how, despite domestic economic problems, Japanese government and business leaders have cooperated in resuming the country’s financial outpouring into the broader region. Almost always, Tachiki argues, this has been in support of Japanese-owned operations. As a result, Japan has gained enhanced political leverage over a number of countries in the region and is using this to ‘regionalize’ production by Japanese-owned firms.
Organizer: Kenneth M. Swope, University of Michigan
Chair: Morris Rossabi, City University of New York
Discussant: John E. Wills, Jr., University of Southern California
Keywords: Ming, international relations.
The Ming dynasty is commonly portrayed as a static, insular state. Received wisdom has it that the Ming adhered to the dynastic founder’s injunction to refrain from unproductive and costly foreign affairs. The Ming ban on maritime trade is typically cited as evidence of this interpretation. Yet a closer examination of the realities of Ming international involvement suggests that this picture needs to be substantially revised. While the Ming may not have been a great seafaring state, China remained the center of trade and culture in Asia and China’s neighboring states were eager to tap into these resources. Scholars used wisdom gained in China to better their own positions at home. Consumer habits among the wealthy in China helped make kings in Myanmar.
There were other dimensions to Ming foreign relations which have, to this point, been largely dismissed as part of the tribute trade system. The Ming was asked to invest kings with their titles, to mediate local and regional disputes, and, as in the case of Korea, to protect its tributaries from military threats. Recognition of authority by Ming emperors was a measure of legitimacy all over Asia and a yardstick by which many of these states judged one another. This panel will demonstrate that Ming foreign relations encompassed a variety of dimensions and situations beyond mere tribute trade, which was in itself flexible and ever changing.
The Giraffe from Bengal: A Symbol of Yongle’s Foreign Relations?
Sally K. Church, University of Cambridge
In 1414 King Saifu-‘d-Din of Bengal sent a giraffe as tribute to the Ming emperor. Presented as a qilin (unicorn), the beast created a stir in the Ming court. To Emperor Yongle, it was an auspicious sign which confirmed his mandate to rule. To eunuchs like Zheng He, in charge of the maritime expeditions responsible for its arrival, it was an opportunity to flatter the emperor. To the king of Bengal, it was a means to improve relations and trade with China. To China’s bureaucrats it showed the frivolity of overseas voyages—the gap between the court’s interests and the people’s needs.
What does this giraffe tell us about China’s foreign relations during Yongle’s reign? China played a variety of roles as master of the "Western Oceans": trade broker, taxi service for foreign envoys, transporter of Chinese goods overseas and of foreign goods and curiosities back home, and international policeman, cleansing the seas of pirates, expelling local usurpers, conferring legitimacy on rulers, and administering law and order. How and why did the Middle Kingdom come to assume these roles in the southern seas? By examining the official and unofficial Ming historical records, the writings of eunuchs who were involved in the voyages, and those of others who watched from outside, I hope to reopen the question of the purpose of the expeditions with a particular eye to the notion that Yongle’s primary motive, as a usurper who needed to win bureaucratic support, was to seek international prestige in order to legitimize his rule in China.
Vietnamese Embassies and Literati Cultural Contact
John K. Whitmore, University of Michigan
Ming times saw the major impact of its model across East Asia, bringing greater emphasis on Confucian ideology, bureaucratic structure, and literati life. There arose in Dai Viet a new cohort of literati who wished to follow this modern Chinese pattern. The composition of the numerous embassies sent by the Vietnamese to Beijing came to include an increasing number of these literati. On their return to Thang-long, many of them received promotions and served in privileged government positions. They also acted to reinforce the social and cultural position of their cohort within Dai Viet. This paper will examine how service on the embassies to China helped strengthen the literati culture and its place in Vietnamese society.
In so doing, I shall look at the changing patterns of the embassies and their composition through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Using Vietnamese and Chinese documents, I shall attempt to see how the Vietnamese literati presence in and around the Ming court contributed to the position of their cohort within Dai Viet and how the experience that they brought back to their capital helped shape political action there. As these Vietnamese Ming modernists interacted with fellow East Asian literati, observed the Ming government in action, and lived in the midst of Chinese civilization, how did they perceive their own society and what did they think they might be able to accomplish there?
Shan Gems, Chinese Silver, and the Rise of Shan Principalities in Modern Northern Myanmar, c. 1450–1526
Laichen Sun, California State University, Fullerton
Ming China’s overland trade with the Shan principalities in modern Northern Myanmar has received no systematic discussion and its implications for Shan amd Myanmar history have hitherto been completely ignored. Using a variety of Chinese, Burmese and Thai sources, this paper deals with the flow of gems and silver between Ming China and two major Shan principalities (Mongmit and Mohnyin) and offers an economic interpretation of the rise of Mongmit and Mohnyin in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. With the recovery of the Ming economy in the mid-fifteenth century from the devastations caused by the dynastic change a century earlier came the pursuit of extravagant lifestyles in China, punctuated by the fervent search for precious stones across China, especially in the Ming capitals. This "gem fever" drove eunuchs, officials, and civilians to Mongmit and Mohnyin to fetch gems in order to satisfy the gigantic market in China. Consequently the production of, and trade in, gems boomed in these two places. As gems flowed to China, silver from China flowed in the opposite direction in exchange for these symbols of conspicuous consumption. The enormous profits thus accrued from the gem trade greatly enriched the coffers of these two Shan principalities. This economic strength explains, at least in part, Mongmit’s independence from Hsenwi (another Shan principality) in 1484 and Mohnyin’s sack of the Burman kingdom Ava in 1526.
Caught Between the Dragon and the Rising Sun: Sino-Japanese Negotiations Over the Fate of Korea, 1593–1596
Kenneth M. Swope, University of Michigan
In May of 1592 a force of over 150,000 Japanese landed at Pusan in Korea. Within weeks the invaders had chased the Korean King out of his capital and he was holed up on the Chinese border asking the Ming for help. After the defeat of a Ming expeditionary force, the Chinese emissary managed to negotiate a truce with his Japanese counterpart. Initial talks failed and the two sides resumed hostilities early in 1593. The fighting continued through May after which the Japanese retreated to Southeastern Korea and peace talks began.
These negotiations dragged on for over three years and ended in one of the greatest diplomatic blunders of all time which resulted in a renewed Japanese invasion in 1597. Negotiators on both sides manipulated official communications and distorted the facts to their respective governments. The bitter irony of it all was that the Koreans were largely powerless in these talks as the Chinese negotiated on their behalf even though the Koreans were initially vehemently opposed to opening peace talks. This paper shall look at the twists and turns of these events in the context of Korea’s place in the Ming tributary system. The primary sources, which include official dispatches between commanders, letters from the envoys and records of Ming court deliberations, indicate the Chinese did regard their role as Korea’s protector seriously, even if China’s actions were self-motivated to some extent. Thus the Sino-Korean tributary relationship was not confined to trade but encompassed diplomatic and military dimensions.
Organizer: Donald M. Nonini, University of North Carolina
Chair and Discussant: Aihwa Ong, University of California, Berkeley
Keywords: new spatialities, spatial imaginaries, globilization, regions.
Southeast Asia is distinctive during the post-Cold War period in the degree to which it has witnessed experiments with and re-envisionings of the spatiality of political and economic life that challenge the formulaic conundrum of "globalization" widely deemed applicable elsewhere in Asia—one which identifies the nation-state defined by a national territory and a resident citizen population, as passively opposed to an external, threatening, and penetrating "global economy." In contrast to this conventional wisdom, throughout Southeast Asia, there have emerged "zones of graduated sovereignty" (Ong 1999), e.g., export processing zones, "growth triangles," and transnational technology parks—where states negotiate sovereignty and the rights of residents; the acknowledgment of diasporic connections and imaginings that cross national borders in the name of flexible production, trade, tourism, hypermodern consumption, and popular culture (Ong and Nonini, 1997); the entrepreneurial state that deploys public-private ventures beyond national territories (e.g., Singapore-Suzhou Township Development Company) (Sum, 1999); the transnational migration of workers in ways that fundamentally refigure national labor markets as partitioned by nationality, gender and race; and the cultural production of a regional "imagined community" of ASEAN nation-states. These experiments are simultaneously cultural and political, gendered and raced, individual and social: they harness personal and social imaginaries, itineraries and biographies even as they regulate and reorder regional spaces for governance and profit-taking.
In this panel, we seek to engage the insights about these experiments from scholars of Southeast Asia with those of scholars of East Asia. In this light, our papers examine the production of "greater China," the Korean diaspora in Japan, and similar phenomena, with the objective of displacing recent mainstream assumptions about the powerless and passive nation-state, the superpotency of "global financial forces," the external, natural, and inevitable character of "globalization," and the futility of political agency, in favor of more fertile theorizations.
Place-ment as a Social Movement: Resident Koreans in the "Hometown" of Japanese Culture
Bruce R. Caron, University of California, Santa Barbara
Descriptions of transnational migrations and diasporic communities usually focus on these being agents of globalization, extra-national solvents that erase the solid cultural boundaries of the nation-state. Here I would also suggest that these communities can also work to redraw internal boundaries, and redefine local differences that states have elided in the construction of national "imagined communities." Local communities excluded from the national narrative can also provide critiques on this narrative and about the interests that maintain it.
In Kyoto, Japan, Korean nationals have created a festival to re-place their social/cultural position in the locale. Kyoto City sells itself as the hometown (furusato) of Japanese culture. Its cultural institutions reflect the story of a homogeneous national race/culture. Most of its Korean population live in districts, such as Higashi-Kujo (East 9th Street) that also include members of Japan’s internally excluded population, namely, buraku neighborhoods. Together, Koreans and buraku-dwelling Japanese comprise most of the local population of individuals whose active exclusion reveals the racial logic of the narrative of "cultural" homogeneity in Japan.
In 1993, members of these communities joined together to create the Higashi-Kujo Madang festival: a multicultural forum with the objective of promoting heterogeneity as an integral feature of the modern state of Japan. They challenge their Kyoto neighbors to re-imagine a national community where exclusion is not the core logic. In this paper I will describe how this new festival logic works as a social movement to re-place the locale of Kyoto as a home for all of its residents.
The Challenge of Cybercapitalism: The Remaking of the ‘Greater China’ Space for Speed-Time
Ngai-Ling Sum, University of Manchester
The emergence of the trans-border spaces of "Growth Triangles" in (South-) East Asia has challenged both the ‘space of flows’ and dichotomistic ‘global-national’ accounts of globalization. This paper seeks to rethink globalization in terms of a complex, tangled dialectic of changes in temporal horizons and spatial scales. To this end, I introduce a middle range concept of "time-space governance" to capture the novelty of these trans-border processes as they developed up to the Asian Crisis. This Crisis and its aftermath have re-opened time and space for trans-border reconfiguration. This now involves a response to the challenges of the so-called "information age." Private and public actors within ‘Greater China’ are re-positioning/re-organizing themselves to capture the benefits of changing space-time relations brought about by information and communication technologies. This paper argues that the region is currently undergoing a transformation of space into speed-time. Given the complex and evolving nature of these changes, I focus on one way in which private-public actors are re-organizing accumulation regimes, namely, through the strategy of siliconization.
The latter involves: (a) the privileging of "silicon valley" discourses (e.g., Hong Kong’s "Cyberport," Taiwan’s "Green Silicon Island," and Shenzhen, the "next Silicon Valley"); (b) discursively constructing new objects of "future growth"; (c) re-configuring techno-economic subjectivities/identities (e.g., "creativity," "enterpreneurial spirits," "high risk, high gain") in the hope of stabilizing a new "regime of truth" based on the knowledge-based economy; and (d) re-ordering certain spatial-material practices in and through struggles and contestations around these issues.
Negotiated Reunion: Creating a Space for Separated Families in Inter-Korean Relations
Nan Kim, University of California, Berkeley
This paper examines how the recent changes in inter-Korean relations have opened a symbolic and social space between North and South Korea around the issue of separated families. Since the Korean War, several million families have been divided across the North-South Korean border, most without the means to contact or learn the whereabouts of their estranged kin for over fifty years. At the historic North-South summit in June 2000, the two Korean leaders agreed that 100 families from each side would be allowed to travel to the other respective country to meet with their family members, presumably opening the door to more regular and widespread exchange of information and further family reunions.