[ Interarea Table of Contents ]
[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
Organizer: Lisa Claypool, Lewis & Clark College
Chair: Suzanne Wright, University of Tennessee
Discussant: Thomas Lentz, Smithsonian Institution
Keywords: Meiji Japan, Late Imperial China, museum, gender, display, exposition, nationalism.
This panel explores the cultural valencies and problematics of exhibitions in China and Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. It poses three broad questions: What are the relations between exhibitions and cultural politics? How do exhibitions fit into developing stories about the nation and modernity in East Asia? What role do exhibitions play in the organization of social relations of power, including those of class and gender?
The panel brings together scholars from the fields of history and art history, with equal attention given to China and Japan. Susan Fernsebner presents a history of China’s first national exposition, examining the appropriation of new techniques of material display by late Qing elites in a revolutionary effort to reinvent a Qing empire in the form of a new, national community. Angus Lockyear looks at the representation of Japan at late Meiji expositions, both at home and abroad, arguing that the goal and function of the latter was not the construction of national identity, but rather the use of representation and exposition to connect local, subnational producers to intra- and international audiences and potential consumers. Lisa Langlois explores the ways that discourses of gender and class were entangled in the construction and representation of Japanese national identity at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, comparing the Japanese Lady’s Boudoir with the Phoenix Hall in Japan. Lisa Claypool studies China’s first museum, the Nantong Bowuyuan, with an eye to its architectural references to colonial museums and public gardens in Shanghai.
The Economics of Identity: Expositions, Entertainment, and Late Meiji Japan
Angus Lockyer, Wake Forest University
By the turn of the last century, Japan had long been an exposition enthusiast. But the enthusiasm had migrated. At home and abroad, expositions as a central plank of state industrial policy had given way to expositions informed by municipal interests and private capital. Difficult to corral for state purposes, both the form of the exposition and the marks of national identity could be mobilized most profitably by those who could afford to be indifferent to, or at least were not officially associated with, the formulation of what it meant to be Japanese. The process was already visible in Osaka in 1903, where the totalizing vision and bureaucratic classification of earlier industrial expositions gave way to public entertainment backed by regional boosterism and entrepreneurial initiative. In Saint-Louis and London, in 1904 and 1910 respectively, the official narrative of ancient history, successful modernization, and imperial power was offset by enthusiasm for the unofficial spectacles of sumo, tea, and Ainu. Finally, by 1914, the Tokyo Taisho Exhibition could promise a "total image" of Japan, but it was one authorized by city rather than state, businessmen rather than bureaucrats. This paper will therefore argue the medium of exposition served most effectively to connect subnational producers to intra- and international audiences. Representing Japan at the exposition served less to construct a particular national identity than to render Japan, among others, as entertainment, thus attracting audiences, facilitating commerce, and justifying development.
Zhang Jian and China’s First Museum
Lisa Claypool, Lewis & Clark College
The first Chinese museum, the Nantong Bowuyuan, was established in 1905. Four years later Zhang Jian (1853–1926), a reformist, entrepreneur, and the director of the museum, wrote in a letter to his colleagues in the Nantong area of the precious objects within it: "There is one great law to protect [the patrimony]. In times of military invasion, the people from other countries cannot take or destroy it. Those who destroy it can be forced to make reparations. This is called the International Law (wanguo gongfa)." This paper explores Zhang’s efforts to define and preserve what he perceived to be the Chinese patrimony. It considers both his use of the language of nationhood and citizenship in this project, as well as his desire to make the museum space in Nantong distinctly Chinese. Zhang ends up with a curious amalgam at Nantong: a museum space that combines design elements from colonial museums such as the Jesuit’s Musée de Zikawei (the Ziran lishi bowuyuan, established in 1868) and Royal Asiatic Society’s Shanghai Museum (established in 1874) with Chinese garden design; a space that hovers uncomfortably between public and private, just as other purportedly public gardens of the time did; a space that was inscribed with both the literary language of Mencius and with new scientific (and sometimes English) terms. The Nantong Bowuyuan ultimately served as a space which called into question just what a modern China was meant to look like.
The Phoenix Hall and the Japanese Lady’s Boudoir: Gender and National Identity at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893
Lisa K. Langlois, University of Michigan
How did discourses of gender and class inflect Japanese national identity formation at the World’s Columbian Exposition? Initially declining to participate in the Woman’s Building, Meiji officials later agreed to display three rooms: a boudoir, library and gallery for women’s artworks, collectively known as A Japanese Lady’s Boudoir. The exhibit, its accoutrements, accompanying pamphlet, and book, Japanese Women, were financed by the Empress. Nevertheless, the exhibits drew upon state resources and complemented the ideological content of the Hôôden (Phoenix Hall) and its didactic text by Okakura Kakuzo. This paper argues that although the Boudoir has received less scholarly attention than the Hôôden, both served to legitimize the sovereignty of Japan’s new constitutional monarchy and to galvanize support for its renegotiation of "unequal treaties."
Participation in expositions served the Meiji state by rhetorically constructing its identity as a "modern" nation with ancient "traditions." Japanese commissioners in Chicago wished to counter foreign criticism by demonstrating that in modernization Meiji Japan had not lost its cultural authenticity. This was achieved in part by promoting historical sources for architectural exhibits and by representing Japanese women as simultaneously bearers of tradition and rivals of their Victorian contemporaries in education, philanthropy and industry. Following Kumari Jayawardena, I suggest that this dual-time nature of femininity was an effective strategy in Japan’s anti-colonial efforts seen at the fair. My study focuses on how the built environment and supporting materials argued for benevolent rule by the Emperor and thus removal of extraterritoriality and other "unequal" clauses in trade treaties.
Unruly Objects and the Problem of Display: Managing Things at the Nanyang Exposition of 1910
Susan Fernsebner, University of California, San Diego
My paper examines the first national exhibition staged in China, the Nanyang Exposition, held under the auspices of the Qing dynasty in Nanjing during the summer of 1910. Situated in the context of a "New Policies" decade, and particularly the constitutionalist reinvention of the state conducted by the Qing, the Nanyang Exposition marks an important point in the political and cultural history of modern China. This event was a joint effort of Qing officials and regional merchant-gentry to stage a national fair. Its organizers, led by young, urban elites (many of whom had been educated abroad), worked to present a national spectacle, one intended to create a citizenry by encouraging the masses to participate in a certain material choreography of things—objects and treasures and products—that would both serve and save the nation. I suggest that these exposition planners pursued a revolutionary agenda in this effort to arrange things, as it were, moving objects and people as they sought to reinvent a Qing empire as a modern nation and claim a position of status within a new global culture of "material civilization." Of course even the best laid plans have a tendency to go astray and there were moments when both people and things themselves caused problems for their choreographers. My paper explores these successes and failures, and particularly the potential for mixed messages presented by objects-on-display, in the context of an ongoing nation-building project in China during the early twentieth century.
Organizer: Sumit Ganguly, University of Texas, Austin
Chair: Michael E. Brown, Georgetown University
Discussants: Michael E. Brown, Georgetown University; June Teufel Dreyer, University of Miami; Jacques Bertrand, University of Toronto; Sumit Ganguly, University of Texas, Austin
This roundtable is based upon a forthcoming book co-edited by Michael Brown and Sumit Ganguly. The book is focused on language policies in Asia. The study encompasses as many as fifteen countries in Asia.
Specifically, the project analyses the impact that different kinds of language policies have had on ethnic relations in polyethnic countries in Asia. The project’s participants have examined the origins of disparate language policies, traced how these policies have evolved over time and assessed their impact on ethnic relations on the country in question. They have identified the different kinds of problems that different kinds of language policies have generated and the conditions under which language policies have successfully promoted ethnic harmony and ethnic justice. Finally, the project has resulted in explicit policy recommendations that have flowed from these analyses—in terms of both individual countries and in more general terms.
This roundtable will focus on six cases from the overall study, namely, China/Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, and Indonesia. June Dreyer will discuss China and Taiwan, Sumit Ganguly will discuss Malaysia and Singapore, Alyssa Ayres will focus on Pakistan and Jacques Bertrand will deal with Indonesia. One of the co-editors, Professor Michael Brown, will also discuss certain general propositions and policy recommendations that can be gleaned from the larger study.
Organizer: Michael G. Kulma, The Asia Society
Chair: Robert Hathaway, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars
Discussants: Harry Harding, Jr., George Washington University; Mark W. Frazier, University of Louisville; Francine R. Frankel, University of Pennsylvania; Steve Hoffman, University of Wisconsin, Madison; James Clad, Georgetown University; George Perkovich, W. Alton Jones Foundation
A paradigm shift is required in the thinking of U.S. policymakers about Asia. At present, nuclear developments in India and Pakistan have reinforced patterns established during the Cold War of formulating policy toward India in isolation from the rest of Asia, including China. Yet, even in nuclear matters, non-official observers, from the mid-1990s, have recognized the China connection with Pakistan as a major element driving India’s nuclear weapons policy. Both keep close tabs on the other’s military developments, whether planned blue water navies or missile tests or the exercises of troops along their common border.
In the imagination of U.S. policymakers, India and China inhabit different parts of the world without significant overlap. If the U.S. is to take seriously its role in the emergent post-Cold War schema of shifting loyalties and fuzzy alliances, it must better understand what drives national policies in regions of interaction heretofore left to the periphery of our policy vision.
This roundtable will represent a partial culmination of a major discussion of these issues. The scholars are currently involved in writing an agenda-setting research volume to examine the relationship between India and China with a view toward thinking U.S. policy anew. The chapters in this volume have been supplemented by a delegation trip to Shanghai, Beijing, New Delhi, and Bangalore for workshops with Chinese and Indian counterparts as well as numerous briefings with officials in both countries.
Organizer and Chair: Sheila M. Jager, Oberlin College
Discussant: Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania
This panel will examine the relationship between militarism and nationalism in Asia, focusing particularly on the question of how war—and the discourse about war—has shaped modern Asian identities. Although warfare in Asia has been an intimate part of the history of the region, few studies have actually attempted to connect war with state-building, social and cultural values, gender issues and ethics in the context of their emerging identities as modern nations. What historical relationship, if any, did the building of a modern military have with the creation of a modern consciousness about nationhood? How did war—or the threat of war—mold identities and forge alliances to create a national consciousness? How did public commemorations of war, and the memory of it in public rituals, literature and media, shape national identities? By comparing different histories of the memories of war, the aim of this panel is to analyze how the nation reproduces in memory the conditions of nationalism. It will also address the complex role of the military in that memorialization process.
Speaking Power to Truth: Military Commemoration in Postwar Burma
Mary Callahan, University of Washington
In Southeast Asia, militaries have wielded unparalleled political power for decades and anchored themselves at the core of modern definitions and debates over national citizenship. Throughout the region, militaries have constructed monuments and museums enshrining the centrality of the armed forces in each country’s history. Museum and monument visitors are expected to feel the power of the carefully crafted displays, and to embrace the "truths" of the scripted narratives about violence and citizenship.
This paper will explore how one such military museum was constructed and how it evolved into a complicated, unwieldy text on citizenship. Originally commissioned for construction in 1955, the Burmese military’s Defense Services Museum was not in fact opened until forty years later. For its originators in the 1950s, the museum was considered a natural, necessary component of a modern, national military organization, which had the duty to present the truth about the nation’s military heritage. Junior officers spent years collecting artifacts such as uniforms, guns, grenades, photos, oral histories, all documented for authenticity, filed away and properly preserved so that citizen-visitors could connect to and be in awe of their origins. When the museum finally opened in 1995, however, the collection of artifacts was dwarfed by the display of firepower, both on the battlefield and in the Secretariat. In forty years, an enormous distance had come to separate exhibit-creators and visitors, the military and its citizenry.
Revisiting Wartime in Contemporary China
Rana Mitter, University of Oxford
This paper will approach the way in which various "vectors of memory" in contemporary China have helped to reformulate national identity through their changing interpretations of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45. It concentrates on two main "vectors," museums and memoirs. Building on earlier published work by the presenter, the paper will draw on fieldwork in mainland China in summer 2000 in museums commemorating the war to show the way in which they have been used as a tool to reshape public memory and re-legitimize the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power. It will also examine the way in which memoirs published in recent years in China have reflected the new political priorities of the Chinese state and have helped to shape public memory of the war. In particular, the reviving of anti-Japanese sentiment and the attempts to rewrite the Kuomintang contribution to the national narrative will be considered.
The paper will use statistics on attendance in museums of the war in contemporary China to draw preliminary conclusions about the extent and penetration of new state-sponsored understandings of the war era. It will also draw on interviews with curators of the museums to build up a picture of the purpose which the state educational apparatus has for these institutions. Analysis of the text of recently-published war-era memoirs will shed light on another aspect of what Arthur Waldron has called "China’s new remembering of World War II."
The Korean War and Local Memory
Sheila M. Jager, Oberlin College
Official history of the Korean War in Korea has always emphasized its internationalist dimensions, namely, that it was a global war fought between democratic and communist forces on a local stage. As "defenders" of democracy, the South Korean military has largely viewed itself as a historical player on this world stage, which accounts, at least on an ideological level, for Park Chung-hee’s decision to send Korean troops to Vietnam. Although later scholarship challenged this internationalist view by attributing the "cause" of the war less to global developments than domestic conditions within Korea following the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945, the release of new archival materials following the demise of the Cold War has rearmed the old internationalist perspective. South Korea’s "triumph" over communism has largely shaped Korea’s official public history of the war and has helped to legitimize the South Korean military as a nationalist force and institution.
The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between this official version of Korean War history and local memory, by attempting to discern how local memory has worked in Korea to both affirm and undermine this history. Using as my starting point of analysis the AP report on the alleged massacre of Korean civilians at No Gun Ri by U.S. forces and the extensive follow-up investigations, I show how the AP investigation and its aftermath spurred similar investigations in Korea of other alleged massacres of civilians committed by the South Korean military during the war and in Vietnam. My aim is to explore how unofficial commemorative practices and local memory have forged competing and often contradictory representations of the Korean War, the nation and the military.
Invocations of War and National Identity in Viet Nam
Christoph Giebel, University of Washington
Although the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese were either born after 1975, the end of the so-called Viet Nam War, or just prior to 1975 to have no memory of war, commemorations and invocations of the wars against the French (1946–1954) and, especially, against the Americans and their Vietnamese allies, are ever-present in contemporary Viet Nam. Indeed, no other event of the recent past is more celebrated than the Communist Party-led, victorious struggle for national "salvation" and unity just as Viet Nam is moving towards international integration, insisting that it is "a country, not a war."
This paper intends to take a closer look at what Hue-Tam Ho Tai has described as "hypermnemosis" and "compulsive commemoration" of war. It will offer a Vietnamese perspective to the panel’s engagement with the relationship between war and nationalism. Focusing on the quintessential paradigm of the "Tradition of Heroic Resistance to Foreign Aggression," it will situate modern Vietnamese attempts to formulate coherent versions of history and national identity not only within the political-ideological exigencies of post-1945 developments, but also within colonialism’s rhetoric and intellectual currents and precolonial models of describing the past. It will identify prescriptive poses and teleological narrative orientations as established features of Vietnamese historiography since premodern times, with many centered around themes of warfare in the service of the realm/country/nation. Within the context of centuries of political divisions and warfare, processes of privileging certain themes and silencing others have worked to shape the country’s collective memories and national identity.
Organizer and Chair: Afroza Anwary, Minnesota State University
Discussant: Abu Amin, Riverrand Community College
Keywords: civil society, state, poverty, gender, empowerment, development, non-government organization.
One of the major innovations of the twentieth century is the civil society organization, i.e., private, voluntary, self-governing, non-government organizations of various types. Although the common assumptions of the cause of the proliferation of the civil society organizations is the failure of the state to respond to collective needs, many argue that this essential conflict between the state and the civil society is somewhat conflated. These organizations, with or without the state support, are successful especially in underdeveloped societies in creating poverty alleviation programs of various types, boosting employment, providing micro-credit loans for family housing for the poorest members of society, as health care providers, social service agencies, self-help groups, and numerous empowerment oriented associations for a long excluded and marginalized group, i.e., women. The success of these organizations provides an exciting new model for development theory and practice.
This panel breaks new ground in its exploration of the role of the state, the civil society organization and women’s empowerment in the context of South and South East Asian countries. It examines several major issues: first, the need to bring a gendered dimension to the understanding of development in underdeveloped societies; second, the relationship between the state and civil society in responding to the collective needs of women; and third, the success of the civil society sector to alleviate various types of poverty allocation programs in underdeveloped societies.
Grameen Bank and Uttoron: The Role of Civil Society in the Empowerment of Women in Bangladesh
Sharful Alam, State University of Minnesota
This paper focuses on the role of two non-government organizations (NGOs) in the socio-economic growth of Bangladesh. Grameen Bank and Uttoron provide collateral free micro-credit loans to entrepreneurs who are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. They provide employment opportunities and ownership of property to women and help them to transform society by providing them with greater visibility and participation in public life by bringing them outside the more traditional confines of the home. The paper demonstrates the role of women in the socio-economic growth of Bangladesh that is perceived by many conservative Muslim men and women as a sign of the violation of the law of Islam, whose reforms are believed to threaten religion, culture, family, and society. It explains how women, with their new power, challenge the interpretation of Islamic laws by male leaders of Bangladesh. I explain how these NGOs challenge the stereotypical view of many Western scholars that women in traditional Islamic societies are repressed, passive, and do not take any initiative to change their situation, while acknowledging the very real obstacles to women’s initiatives in these societies. The paper examines some ways in which the lives of poor people of an underdeveloped country are changing in general. This paper is likely to inspire a lively debate on why government organizations involved in many poor nations often fail to solve the poverty of the country.
Many Voices but No Chorus: Growth of Women’s Issues and Civil Society in Thailand
Darunee Tantiwiramanond
In the past quarter century, there has been a growth in urban women’s organizations in Thailand. The growth was financially supported by international donors and was initiated and nurtured by the first generation of enthusiastic women professionals and activists. But as external support funding declined, followed by the regional financial crises, Thai women’s groups have engaged more in their survival and keeping up the programs rather than pushing for widespread public agenda or issues that are related to the Thai women majority. The Thai state being feudal and patriarchal has not been very supportive to women’s pressure. Legal amendment and reinforcement to prevent prostitution and trafficking has not been a formidable task.
With the opening of political and civil society space, women’s organizations have participated in forming a people’s constitution and creating networks such as "HomeNet" for factory laid-off turned home-based workers. Some women’s studies programs and elite women’s associations have also become active, but their effectiveness and reach is limited. This paper describes the growth of women’s organizations in Thailand and their internal contradictions based on the differences of first and second generation women’s activists, lack of human resources and capacity of women leaders, liberal strategies of elite women activists (do-gooders), and the ambivalent/weak relationship between government and non-governmental organizations.
Human Rights Abuse and Women’s Organization of Bangladesh: A Test of Sociological Institutionalism and Feminist Theory
Afroza Anwary, Minnesota State University
Acid attacks on women are increasing in Bangladesh. Inexpensive and easily available sulfuric acid that can mutilate a human face in a moment has emerged as a weapon used to disfigure these women. Early organized responses to acid attacks stem from the internal mobilization inspired by Naripokkho, a women’s organization in Bangladesh that endeavors to organize the victims of acid attack. Knowledge about acid attacks started to spread outside Bangladesh after 1995 and various international organizations began to shape the debate on acid attacks. The government of Bangladesh developed the Women and Child Repression Control Act, 1995 and the Cruelty to Women and Children (Prevention) Act, 2000 to stop acid attacks. Human rights advocates question whether this law will be effective in changing behavior. Acid attack is a classic exemplar of the different ways that gender conditions legal institution. The failure to bring the attackers to justice demonstrates that the reason for developing this particular law has more to do with political maneuvering than a genuine commitment to women’s rights.
Using sociological institutionalism and feminist theory, this research examines why laws are ineffective in changing people’s behavior. In this paper I demonstrate that laws may be developed because of the internal mobilization by various women’s organizations in Bangladesh and pressure from the international community. The paper predicts that laws will be ineffective in changing people’s behavior when the larger society is insensitive to acid attack. The research also has implications for the important topic of how best to implement a human rights agenda.
Organizer: Jinbao Qian, Harvard University
Chair: Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley
Discussant: John W. Garver, Georgia Institute of Technology
This panel brings together historians from Asia, North America, and Europe, whose current research is primarily grounded in wartime government archives in mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and Europe, as well as elsewhere. Qian’s paper investigates the secret negotiations between Tokyo and Chongqing. Contrary to existing scholarship, Qian finds that Chongqing’s intelligence apparatus kept Chiang Kai-shek completely in the dark about the details of a peace route in the name of Chiang’s brother-in-law. Henriot’s paper examines the Wang regime’s collaboration with the Japanese economic control in the Lower Yangtze area. Henriot finds that the material control agencies on the part of both the Japanese and the Wang regime were overlapping and inefficient. Lin’s paper, which also has a component on the material control, is a study on the economic warfare between Chongqing and Japanese occupiers, with a focus on the smuggling trade from Shanghai to unoccupied areas. Lin contends that Chinese traders from Shanghai to unoccupied areas were by and large driven by their desires for greater profits rather than by their patriotism. Finally, Bastid’s paper places the Wang regime in a comparative context and examines the perceptions of the Wang regime by its European counterpart. One very modest goal of this panel is to offer archive-based new perspectives on the inner history of the Sino-Japanese war in general and the Wang Jingwei regime in particular.
In the Name of Chiang Kai-shek’s Brother-in-Law: Chinese Wartime Military Intelligence Operations in Hong Kong and Macau
Jinbao Qian, Harvard University
One legendary Chinese wartime intelligence operation was Chongqing’s secret negotiations with Japan in Hong Kong and Macau from March to September 1940. The Chinese principal negotiator was supposed to be Chaing Kai-shek’s brother-in-law Song Ziliang, with Chiang’s official letters of authorization. Tokyo code-named this peace route as "Kiri Kosaku" (Tung Operation). The negotiations went so far that the Japanese side even prepared a direct meeting with Chiang. The Chinese side demanded that Japan renounce the support for Wang Jingwei and his puppet Nanjing regime before a direct meeting with Chiang could be held. Tokyo wanted a Wang-Chiang joint government in Nanjing instead. Wang Jingwei and his followers did as much as possible to sabotage the negotiations. The supposed Song Ziliang turned out be an agent of Chinese military intelligence under Chiang’s trusted intelligence master Dai Li. The Japanese side did not find this out until towards the end of war. Neither did Chiang know of a peace route in the name of his brother-in-law until September 1940. Outraged with the existence of such a peace route and the forgery of his authorization, Chiang immediately ordered Dai Li to investigate it. One agent was placed under house arrest. However, Chiang’s intervention ended up in an investigative cover-up by Dai Li. This paper is based on the recently declassified Chinese wartime intelligence records.
Control and Smuggling: The Trade of Cotton Products in Wartime Shanghai
May-Li Lin, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Based on wartime government archives, as well as other primary sources, this paper studies the Chinese wartime economy during the war with Japan in 1937–1945, with a focus on the trade of cotton products in wartime Shanghai. In the early years of war, cotton products were traded freely in Shanghai in part because of the existence of Western concessions there. After Pearl Harbor, Japan took control of the whole of Shanghai. The Japan-sponsored Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing started to impose strict economic control, culminating in the formation of the National Trade Control Committee. Harsh measures were introduced to regulate the price of cotton products and block their flow from Shanghai to unoccupied areas. The results were mixed. Some traders collaborated with the Wang regime, but others smuggled cotton products out to unoccupied areas. The Chiang Kai-shek government in Chongqing competed hard with the Japanese occupiers and the Wang regime for much-needed basic resources. The control of cotton products in Shanghai evolved into a fierce economic warfare. The smuggling economy flourished in Shanghai. Traders with connections to Chongqing reaped huge profits at the risk of punishment if caught. One particularly successful example was the Tongji Trade Company. This study finds that the Chinese smugglers from Shanghai to unoccupied areas were by and large driven by their desires for greater market profits rather than by their patriotism.
Scales of Interest, Duty, and Weakness: French Diplomats and Colonial Authorities in East Asia Facing the Wang Jingwei Regime, 1941–1945
Marianne Bastid-Bruguière, Center National de la Recherche Scientifique
There are relatively few first-hand Western accounts about the Wang Jingwei regime. The reason is that after Pearl Harbor, all of the Allies’ diplomatic representatives had to leave the Japanese occupied area, preceded or followed by most of their nationals, the remaining ones being locked up in camps or forced residence, with very little outside communication. Since France maintained her diplomatic and consular representation in occupied China during the whole war, the French diplomatic correspondence contains a fairly rich direct information. To this can be added the reports and intelligence from neighboring French Indochina. These French sources are of special interest firstly because they provide immediate evidence on how daily life was lived and managed on a local scale, but also because the political similarities with the situation in their own country at the same time gave the French a somewhat different perception from the German, Italian, Spanish, or Swiss diplomats who remained also in occupied China. Moreover, through the Catholic missionaries and their numerous consulates they had a wider information network. Until the coup of 9 March 1945, they also enjoyed from Japanese authorities a less restrictive treatment than their other European colleagues, Axis diplomats included.
The Wang Jingwei government included, besides Wang himself, several head figures who had stayed or studied for a long time in France and who were fairly well acquainted with French affairs and representatives. Based on these unused French sources, the paper will focus on the analysis of "collaboration" on both sides during the wartime years, with special consideration to the lack of "collaborationism" which the French noticed on the Nanjing side, and their emphasis on the resilient nationalism which they always faced in their dealings with the Wang Jingwei regime, despite their low appraisal of most of its establishment.
The Control of Material Resources in the Lower Yangtze Area, 1937–1945
Christian Henriot, Universite Lumire, Lyon
The Japanese invasion in 1937 was a major watershed for economic development and state building in China. Whereas the Nationalist government had attempted to unify the country and mobilize resources for its economic and military ambitions, the various centers of power that emerged after 1937—both Chinese and Japanese—entered into a fierce competition for the control of material resources. Modernization was no longer the objective, however. The control of commodities became an end in itself. The enduring conflict between the Japanese occupiers, the Chongqing-based Nationalist government, the various puppet authorities and the Ally powers transformed China into a vast reservoir of goods, which each party sought to tap in order to support its war effort. Part one of this paper studies the Japanese policies to harness the local economy in the Lower Yangtze area to support the war. Part two investigates the structures and policies designed on the Chinese side, especially after the formation of the Wang Jingwei government in occupied Nanjing. Part three examines the impact of the controlled economy (tongji jigji) on the cotton industry. This paper is primarily based on wartime government archives in Asia and the West.
Organizer: Yuki Terazawa, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair: Feng-ying Ming, Whittier College
Discussant: Sai-Shing Yung, National University of Singapore
Keywords: historiography, politics of representation, popular culture, gender, nationalism, globalization, cross-cultural examination, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan.
This panel investigates the politics of representation in high and popular culture in late-twentieth-century East Asia from historical and comparative perspectives. Between the 1960s and 1990s, East Asia experienced both political repression and liberalization, as well as rapid economic growth followed by the downturn of the late 1990s. These changes were accompanied by a tremendous increase in the international traffic of money, goods, people, and culture. These historical trends shaped the ways in which cultural artifacts reinforced or subverted political ideologies in each region of East Asia. The panelists explore subversive possibilities in these productions, but, at the same time, question whether ostensibly progressive historical developments necessarily lessen repression in the area of cultural politics. Tracing representations of women in film, television drama, and comic books from the 1960s and 1990s, Daisy Ng and Yuki Terazawa discuss the ways popular culture helped bolster conservative gender ideology. Yue Meng and Jin-kyung Lee analyze the artistic and conceptual strategies writers adopted for resisting ideological domination. The four papers discuss different media (theater, fiction, film, television drama, and comic books), including both established, high-brow productions and their popular counterparts, as well as investigating particular ways each medium helped produce and circulate certain ideas and images.
Jane Bond, Irma Vep and the Modern Woman: Icons of Modernity in 1960s Hong Kong Cinema
Daisy Sheung-Yuen Ng, National University of Singapore
The "Modern Woman" was the icon of modernity for Hong Kong in the 1960s, a time of rapid industrial development. The most popular images of the "Modern Woman" were the factory girl and the office girl, as reflected by the vast number of "Youth Films" made in the latter half of the sixties. Around the same time when the "Youth Films" peaked in production, another genre was also at its height of popularity. This was the action movie that featured a female secret agent or thief. The "Youth" and Jane Bond/Irma Vep genres may appear to be opposite in orientations, with the former inclining towards realistic portrayal and the latter towards free play with imagination. Yet I would argue that both genres work towards creating the fantasy of the "Modern Woman" as having economic freedom, independence, self-confidence and autonomy.
The sixties’ films have become the object of nostalgia in the "Nostalgia Films" of the eighties and nineties. Interestingly, in these films which often tell a rags-to-rich story, the dominant images of the factory girl and the office girl in the sixties are almost completely absent. The rags-to-riches story, which upholds the "Hong Kong Myth" of achieving success through individual effort, is presented entirely as the men’s story, as in the numerous "Old Time Buddy" comedies. Some "Nostalgia Comedies," however, do feature the once positive Jane Bond/Irma Vep figure in an ambivalent manner. My paper will discuss the marginalization of women in the popular nostalgic discourse of the eighties and nineties.
Remembering Girlhood, Mothers, and Grandmothers in a Different 1950s South Korea: "National" History of Other Places in O Chong-hui
Jin-kyung Lee, University of California, San Diego
Following the gradual decline of the dissident student and labor movements in the early 1990s, women’s issues have emerged as one of the most urgent social problems in contemporary South Korea. In the context of very active publication and consumption of a younger generation of women writers in South Korea, this paper proposes to re-examine two earlier works by O Chong-hui, The Garden of Youth and The Chinese Street, published in the late 70s and the early 80s, a period of intensified political repression and radicalized opposition by the student and labor activists. I will situate O Chong-hui’s stories in the context of publication of a series of important works by male writers, which narrate the previously suppressed history of class struggle in the post-1945 Korean peninsula, viewed as an integral part of the resistance to the authoritarian regimes. My reading of O Chong-hui’s two stories will investigate the ways in which O Chong-hui’s writing of the memory of the Korean War and the post-war era challenges the progressive camp’s nationalist historiography, problematizing their linear conception of history, realistic mode of representation and marginalization of women. O Chong-hui’s stories represent the war as a time and a space of women’s emancipation from patriarchy. They also explore motherhood, prostitution, and domestic work through varying conceptualizations of temporality and space. This paper is particularly interested in the ways in which her narrative strategies resist a simple inclusion of the hitherto marginalized sectors of the national community.
Avant-Garde Theater in Post-Socialist Beijing: Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the ‘Left’
Yue Meng, University of California, Irvine
Avant-garde theater in post-socialist China has become an unexpected site where cultural actors engage in critical tasks in ways that ‘Chinese intellectuals’ cannot partake any longer as a whole in the era of globalization. Yet unlike the adaptation of European modernism in the 1980s, the theatrical adaptations of the ‘Left’ at the turn of the century China is characterized by ‘postmodern’ features. Two plays, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (and The Anticipated Death of a Leftist Artist) and Che, reintroduced, even re-invented, the theme of ‘Left’ and ‘Revolutionary’ in a non-discursive, ‘performative’ manner. Why would avant-garde theater in post-socialist China re-adapt the ‘Left’ and the ‘Revolutionary’ in the era of postmodernity and globalization? Why is the re-adaptation enacted in such a specific way? These are the questions this paper seeks to explore.
Unglamorous Cinderella and Witches in the Basement: Japanese Girls’ Comics and the Television Drama Shomuni (1998–1999)
Yuki Terazawa, University of California, Los Angeles
The Japanese television drama Shomuni, broadcast during the 1998–1999 season, gained far-reaching popularity. The show centers on six unique female clerical workers who challenge conventional norms within contemporary Japanese corporate culture. Their audacious characters differ dramatically from conventional representations of women in a wide range of cultural productions in Japan. A closer analysis, however, suggests the following questions: Does Shomuni reflect real changes in gender ideology in Japan during the 1980s and 1990s? Do these portrayals really help advance feminist goals?
The main plots of Shomuni adopt tropes developed in Japanese girls’ comics between the 1960s and 1980s. One such trope follows the Cinderella fairytale by idealizing marriage to a rich and powerful man. Within this trope, a good-natured girl without remarkable beauty, talents, wealth, or family background, in this case, Sawako, wins the heart of a young man portrayed as the ideal lover and future husband. A second trope revolves around women with supernatural powers. In comic stories, these women, while helping ordinary people, remain outsiders, eventually leaving the community where they had contact with normal human beings. Similarly, the resourceful Shomuni members are total outsiders to the regular corporate hierarchy. Their office is located in the dark and dusty basement of the company headquarters, as if to emphasize that their power needs to be hidden and confined. Because of this recycling of comic book tropes, I argue, the show ends up sending out highly ambivalent messages regarding gender roles and attributes and compromises its "progressive" message.
Organizer and Chair: Susan S. Bean, Peabody Essex Museum
Discussant: Sugata Bose, Harvard University
American relations with India were launched by merchants immediately after the republic’s founding in 1783. For the next several decades American trade with India was vigorously pursued and became the platform for the development of Indo-American relations. The first American missionaries arrived on a merchant vessel from Salem, Massachusetts, in 1812.
The papers in this panel explore commercial, religious, and intellectual aspects of this formative era of Indo-U.S. relations. The panel opens with an examination of the commercial climate for American trade with India in the first half of the 19th century. Following are papers which consider the texture and complexity of American encounters with India in the 19th century. One paper looks into the experiences of American mariners, particularly their varied responses to Indian religious practices in the context of the contrast they perceived between these and their very Christian world view. Two papers consider aspects of the missionary experience showing in one case that, although the missionary encounter began as a effort to bring enlightenment to "heathen" souls, as American missionary experience grew in India the motivations and purposes became much more complex, and a second paper enlarging on this theme, bringing to light the role of American Baptist missionaries in the development of vernacularism in Assam.
Factors Affecting United States Trade with India in the Nineteenth Century before 1857
David G. Dickason, Western Michigan University
India held many attractions to American merchants during the pre-industrial era from American Independence until the Rebellion of 1857 and the American Civil War. The relationship of the United States to India was unequal, with the United States being the economically disadvantaged partner playing a subdominant role in India’s trade despite the imaginative entrepreneurship exercised by some Americans. This paper examines particularly the trade and shipping factors that limited the range and scale of trade linkages between the United States and India in the first half of the nineteenth century. The economics and role of American shipping in the pre-steam era changed markedly in association with the size and manpower requirements of new ship designs at the end of the age of sail. These and other factors of trade and transportation are brought together through a three dimensional interaction model based on complementarity, transferability, and intervening opportunity to understand the dynamics of interregional commerce. Specific comparisons are made between the trades in pepper and in natural ice. The pepper trade, although for a time extremely successful, provides an example of the trade conditions more generally governing trade between the United States and India. The natural ice trade constituted an important exception to the general conditions of trade between the two regions.
Yankee Mariners and Hindu Practices
Susan S. Bean, Peabody Essex Museum
Between the opening of direct trade with India in 1784 and its sharp decline in the years after a protective duty was levied in 1816, hundreds of American ships sailed to Indian ports. Among the surviving record of letters written home and journals kept of voyages, one is struck by the prominence of reports on religious practices. Besides constituting the earliest American responses to Indian, principally Hindu, religiosity, these accounts were exercises in identity construction in which Americans contrasted themselves with Others encountered in their world voyaging.
In the complex landscape of the contact zone in which their trade transpired, American mariners experienced perplexing juxtapositions—between what they perceived as Hindu barbarism and genuine Hindu religious experience, between true Christianity and misguided Christianity, between enlightened Christian morality and grasping imperial ambition. This paper explores the terrain of their experiences as they reported these in letters to their families and recorded them in journals of their voyages and shows how the contrasts, conflicts, and ambiguities they perceived and brought home to New England helped prepare the ground for deeper intellectual encounters with Indian religiosity that developed from the middle of the 19th century.
Nineteenth-Century American Missionaries and India: The View from the Field
Carl T. Jackson, University of Texas, El Paso
Because they were among the earliest Americans to spend extended time in India, missionaries were in an unusually good position to view Indian religious and social practices at first-hand. The first American missionaries arrived on the sub-continent in 1812 and over the course of the century many more made the journey. Unfortunately, few early arrivals seemed to utilize their opportunity to get to know more about Indian society and Hindu religion, intent on replacing the "heathen" practices they observed with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Thus, the usual American missionary portrayal of Hinduism and Indian social practices dwelled on extreme forms of austerities, superstitious beliefs, and such societal practices as female infanticide and sati. The reports sent from the field and published in such leading missionary journals as The Missionary Herald and The Panoplist unquestionably had a major influence in the formation of nineteenth-century American views of Hinduism and Indian society.
However, there is another side to the missionary story. An examination of early issues of the Journal of the American Oriental Society reveals a heavy participation by missionaries (from China as well as India). As John Pickering, the American Oriental Society’s first president, declared at the Society’s inaugural meeting, America’s missionaries were "more active" and provided a "greater number of proficients" in the "various languages of the East" than any other group. With greater experience, some missionaries moderated their views, quietly laying the groundwork for the more sympathetic view of Hinduism and Indian society that would emerge in the twentieth century and laying the foundations of Asian scholarship in America.
Colonialism, Conversion, and Vernacularism: Assam and American Baptists in the Nineteenth Century
Dilip K. Basu, University of California, Santa Cruz
In this paper, I wish to examine episodes of convergences among elements of colonialism, conversion and vernacularism in Assam in the nineteenth century.
Assam was colonized and ruled by the Ahoms of Southeast Asian Shan background. They gave the territory its name. However, they had "converted" to Saktism and become patrons of Brahmans, Sanskrit and the Asamiya vernacular which was enormously enriched by the great sixteenth-century Vaisnava leader Sri Sankaradev who also practiced a form of "conversion" that appealed to multitudes in the Valley. Conversion and vernacularism went hand in hand leading to the production of a variety of literary genres. The British annexed Assam in 1839. Their Bengali informants noted the similarity of Bengali with Asamiya and declared it a patois of Bengali. Bengali was formally instituted in 1836 as the official language of Assam.
Asamiya intellectuals were joined by two American Baptists to have Asamiya accepted as the official language of the province. Rev. N. Brown and Rev. O. T. Cutter established the first printing press in Assam in 1836, and started to publish the first Asamiya-language newspaper in 1846. Although the Missionaries’ primary purpose was conversion, they offered Arunaday, their newspaper, as a forum for spirited articles by advocates of Asamiya. In 1873, Asamiya was recognized as the vernacular of the area.
I shall base my narrative on the available issues of the Arunaday and the recent scholarship on the subject in Asamiya, English, and Bengali. Theoretically, I shall relate my arguments to the recent works of Guha (Colonialism), Viswanathan (Conversion) and Pollock (vernacularism).
Organizer: Karen Derris, Harvard University
Chair: Steven Collins, University of Chicago
Discussant: Anne M. Blackburn, University of South Carolina
Keywords: Buddhism, Southeast Asia, South Asia, texts, historiography.
The Pali canon is foundational for the self-definition and self-presentation of Theravadin Buddhists, as well as for scholars seeking to understand the Theravada and its adherents. Charles Keyes, Steven Collins, and Anne Blackburn have each shaped our understanding of the many roles played by the canon in Theravadin thought and practice. This panel seeks to build upon the distinction, proposed by Blackburn, between the formal canon and the multiple ‘practical canons’ of the Theravada. The conservative ideal of a fixed Pali canon does not prevent the formation and use of practical canons comprised of collections of texts, not exclusively canonical, in different times and places within the Theravadin world.
The papers in this panel examine practical canons from Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma in order to gain a greater understanding of the historical developments of the Theravada. Panelists explore the importance of texts and manuscripts in Theravadin practices, the relationships between texts in a practical canon, and how practical canons shape and were shaped by particular practices, ideas, and beliefs. The study of the texts that have been put to use in different Theravadin communities affords greater insights into the ways in which people have altered and extended the authority of the Pali canon in the cultures of South and Southeast Asia.
Monastic Biographies as Practical Canons in Contemporary Burma
Jason Carbine, University of Chicago
This paper will explore how biographies of 20th-century Buddhist monks in Burma function as ‘practical canons.’ It will assess how biographical texts about Burmese monks try to mediate the incorporation of Buddhist ideas, embedded in the Pali canon, into the everyday life of both monks and laity alike. For monks, such ideas are preeminently tied up with how they participate, as part of a lineage that traces its heritage back to the Gotama Buddha, in the communal life of the Dispensation. For the laity, such ideas are related to monastic lineage, particularly in terms of how they are depicted as a support for the constitution of certain monastic lineages. Monastic lineages, and the laity who support them, provide a bedrock for the development of Theravada practical canons, of which biographies of contemporary monks in Burma form a significant part. Specific consideration will be given to a representative biography, about the Vebu Sayadaw (1896–1977), in order to tease out relationships with the Pali canon, and in order to highlight the different kinds of thought and practice that monastic biographies as a whole attempt to engender on the level of day to day practice.
How to Be Buddhist: Theravadin Identity and Textual Authority in Cambodian Practical Canons
Anne R. Hansen, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
This paper responds to recent scholarly conversations and reappraisals concerning the nature of "canon" by Charles Keyes, Steven Collins, and Anne Blackburn that have shifted the attention of Theravadin scholars to local and vernacular Buddhist literature. In her recent article posing a distinction between the "formal" and "practical" canons employed by South and Southeast Asian Buddhists, Blackburn suggests that examining this distinction enables us not only to gain a ". . . more vivid and detailed understanding . . . " of how Buddhist identity has been constructed in particular Buddhist localities, but also offers a new way of understanding the importance of certain texts in relationship to their cultural political contexts and to trans-cultural Theravadin notions of textual authority.
Applying Blackburn’s notion of formal and practical canons to the context of colonial Buddhism in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Cambodia, this paper examines the contested and shifting nature of both the formal and practical canons of Khmer Theravadins during this period, and how these inter-related notions of canon construct each other. New notions of canon emerged in Cambodia in response to the influence of Thai, French, and Khmer reforms on Buddhist learning practices and the introduction of changed technologies for textual production. In particular, the paper will examine the shifting interpretations of the authority of several inter-related vernacular ethical texts intended to teach Buddhists "how to live." The paper argues for the relevance of "practical canons" for understanding local Buddhist identities as well as the larger tropes and values that account for the cosmopolitan appeal of Buddhism.
History-Writing as Buddhist Practice in Premodern Sri Lanka
Stephen Berkwitz, Southwest Missouri State University
This paper examines how activities connected with writing non-canonical Buddhist histories were depicted as forms of religious practice in the manuscript culture of medieval and early modern Sri Lanka. Extending the notion of "practical canon" from discrete units of text to include the bibliographical conventions related to the writing and copying of Buddhist texts by hand, I describe how manuscript labor was conceived as valued and meritorious work.
Attention to the production and materiality of palm leaf manuscripts assists us in understanding how Buddhist histories were read and used prior to the widespread use of the printing press in Sri Lanka during the nineteenth century. By examining the relationships that existed between text, author, and scribal editor in the writing of Buddhist histories in premodern Sri Lanka, I outline the manner in which the practice of making books affected the interpretations of historical narratives. To this end, I analyze the appearance of authorial voice in Buddhist histories and the stylized aspirations (prarthana) often inserted by scribes into the introductory lines and colophons of palm leaf manuscripts. These self-referential comments help to demonstrate not only how Buddhist histories were seen as works consistent with the Pali tipitaka-based tradition, but also how Buddhist histories were frequently imagined to have "practical" effects on those who composed and copied them by hand.
A Narrative Practical Canon: The Collection of Pre-Sumedha Stories in Pali Texts
Karen Derris, Harvard University
Biographies of the Buddha form an important part of the practical canon of the medieval Theravadin world. This paper focuses upon a collection of stories, prominent in this biographical practical canon, concerned with the earliest lifetimes of the Bodhisatta Gotama. These stories, set in the time before the Bodhisatta’s well-known lifetime as the ascetic Sumedha, are not found in the formal canon of the Pali tipitaka, but appear as a narrative unit in many medieval Theravadin biographies of the Buddha, as well as in Theravadin chronicles and commentarial texts. My paper explores the function of this narrative collection in compiled texts belonging to these distinct yet overlapping genres
The broad outlines of the pre-Sumedha stories are generally uniform in the different texts in which they appear. But narrative detail, emphasis, and omission produce subtly distinct versions of these stories, creating particular effects shaped by the narrative agendas of each text in which they appear. The relationship between pre-Sumedha stories and the formal canon is central to the power they have, since the stories often serve as a preface or preamble to extensive quotations of texts from the formal canon, most notably the Buddhavamsa. My literary analysis considers the authority ascribed to these stories, an authority made evident by their prevalence in the medieval Theravadin world. At the same time, the variations between the stories suggests a flexibility in the compilation process of later Pali works. This flexibility allowed for innovation and divergence within a single practical canon.
Organizer and Chair: Caryn White Stedman, Yale University
Discussants: Lynn Parisi, University of Colorado; Norman Moline, Augustana College; Roberta H. Gumport, University of Illinois; Joan E. Ericson, Colorado College
Keywords: field study, pedagogy, anthropology, education.
The National Commission on Asia in the Schools has identified experiential study in Asia as critical in encouraging professional and general study of Asia. Opportunities for long- and short-term field study in Asia for undergraduates and educators have expanded significantly over the past several years. For many of the undergraduates and most of the educators taking part in such programs, a single field-study may be their only opportunity to experience Asia.
This roundtable focuses on models for and issues in responding to the call for experiential study of Asia for students and non-specialist educators. How can those planning field-study opportunities structure them so that they are meaningful educational experiences? How can field-study directors ensure that participants return with an understanding of essential themes rather than vague and sometimes stereotyped impressions? How can directors plan experiences that run smoothly? Discussants with a range of experiences designing field-study programs throughout Asia discuss developing themes or frameworks to organize onsite study, integrating disciplinary study and pedagogy, working with on-the-ground partners, logistics and group dynamics, pre-departure and follow-on training, assessing the experience, and expectations for final products.
Joan Ericson develops and offers undergraduate block courses on Japanese culture that integrate experiential learning in Japan with academic seminars. Norm Moline will discuss models from three decades of experience conducting multiple-country study tours for undergraduates, as well as AsiaNetwork’s "College in Asia Institutes," through which faculty of liberal arts colleges are introduced to strategies and resources for conducting undergraduate study tours. Lynn Parisi and Caryn Stedman discuss approaches to field-study as components of long-term K–12 teacher development programs in Asian studies. Roberta Gumport co-ordinates undergraduate academic-year and short-term exchanges, as well as summer courses for K–12 teachers. Roundtable discussants invite participation from those with experience organizing field-studies as well as those considering making field-study opportunities available for students and educators.
Organizer: Robert B. Albritton, University of Mississippi
Chair and Discussant: Larry Diamond, Stanford University
Participants on this panel represent a sub-set of scholars currently engaged in a project, Comparative Survey of Democratization and Value Change in East Asia. These papers include the scholars representing Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Other units in the project include Japan, the People’s Republic of China, Philippines, and Indonesia. The project focuses on measures of: understandings of democracy, democratic legitimacy, regime satisfaction, economic evaluations, trust in institutions, political efficacy, citizen empowerment, traditionalism, democratic versus authoritarian values, social capital, political participation, electoral mobilization, and social and political cleavages.
The panel is an opportunity to introduce this work to the larger community of Asian scholars. It offers empirical evidence, based upon probability sampling, of selected dimensions of the project. All papers apply contemporary theories of political behavior in the Asian context. The results indicate similarities and differences between behavioral scholarship in Europe and the United States of America and evidence from surveys from Asian nations. In addition to comparisons with Euro-American scholarship, the papers emphasize considerable variation not only within Asia, but within Asian nations, as well. In the final analysis, the papers indicate the utility and limitations of behavioral research in Asia, as well as modifications of general behavioral theories applied to an Asian context.
Support for Democracy in Thailand
Robert B. Albritton, University of Mississippi; Thawilwadee Bureekul, King Prachadipok’s Institute
This paper examines sources of support for democracy in Thailand under a new constitutional form of government. The study, based upon a probability sample of 1,200 respondents, covers relative commitments to democracy in terms of region, class, and urban-rural cleavages. It tests the thesis of Anek Laothamatas that Bangkok and other areas of Thailand have distinctly different concepts of what democracy means. In addition, there is an examination of the roles of traditional culture, civil society, and attitudes toward corruption across these dimensions.
The Political Significance of Insignificant Class Voting
Ko-Wei Hu and You-Tsung Chang, Academia Sinica; Yun-han Chu, National Taiwan University; You-Tsung Chang, National Chung-cheng University
An important finding from classics of contemporary political studies is that membership in social groups, social class background in particular, is the key to understanding political division in Western democracies. In studying new East Asian democracies, however, this important field has been a relatively neglected area in the past, due to the political insignificance of individual voting decisions on election outcomes. In this context, the writings on the effects of social class on political behavior and voting are in most cases inconsistent, usually leading to contradictory views that, despite its lack of political significance, social class has been a visible force in leading socio-political movements during this period, indirectly contributing to the rapid spread of democracy. The primary purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between social classes and their political inclinations using data collected from Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1993. The study of voting in these two societies has theoretical implications in providing a unique setting to examine social support for democracies, not just in societies of the same cultural background, but in East Asian democracies in general.
Democratic Legitimacy in Hong Kong
Siu-kai Lau and Hsin-chin Kuan, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Democracy in Hong Kong is new and partial. In times of stress, new democratic institutions, such as free elections and competitive parties are vulnerable to breakdown. To some extent, democratic transition depends upon the support of the public, at least as an effective deterrent to anti-democratic forces. This paper examines the public’s belief in the legitimacy of democracy and its correlation. The study finds that, in Hong Kong, the belief in the legitimacy of democracy has little to do with political disaffection or traditional Chinese values. Political discontent turns out to be the most significant factor, followed by age and certain fundamental beliefs such as liberalism, post-materialist and socialist values. The low level of support for non-democratic alternatives and the strong support for further democratization, however, indicate that the deficit in democratic legitimacy reflects the lack of actual experience with genuine democracy by the people of Hong Kong who have lived a good part of their lives under a benign authoritarian system of British colonialism.
The Dynamics and Sources of Voter Turnout in South Korea
Doh C. Shin and Junhan Lee, University of Missouri
Since its transition to democratic rule, South Korea has experienced a steady decline in voter turnout. What factors have steadily discouraged the Korean people from participating in presidential and general elections? This paper attempts to explore this complex question by estimating and comparing across elections the relative impact of political, psychological, regional, and socio-economic factors on voter turnout. Decreases in the mobilization of individual voters by political parties and other civic associations are found to have contributed most to downward trends in voter turnout in democratic Korea.
Organizer: Robert J. Perrins, Acadia University
Chair: Ka-che Yip, UMD Baltimore County
Discussant: James R. Batholomew, Ohio State University
Keywords: Japan, Korea, China, history, public health, medicine, colonialism.
The pursuit of medical knowledge and the development of public health policies and institutions were important components in both the creation of the ‘modern’ Japanese state and the construction of its colonial empire. This panel examines the roles that medical issues played in the history of East Asia, and particularly the Japanese Imperium, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Ruth Rogaski examines the translation and dissemination of Western hygiene texts in Meiji Japan and late Qing China, thereby introducing the topic of public health and its relationship to Japanese and Chinese conceptualizations of ‘modernity.’ Dr. Rogaski compares the linguistic strategies used by Chinese and Japanese translators in their understandings of the terms weisheng and eisei, noting both the similarities and differences in the two nations’ search for a ‘modern’ understanding of hygiene and health. Susan Burns’ paper provides an excellent base from which to explore the development of public health concerns within Japan proper. This paper analyses the central role that Gotô Shimpei played in the development of public health and, specifically, the Japanese Home Ministry’s Hygiene Bureau during the 1890s. Dr. Burns demonstrates how even proponents of a strong centralized state such as Gotô came to the conclusion that the best chance for the development of a ‘modern’ and healthy nation was for the central government to work closely with existing local authorities in building popular support for public health campaigns.
The other two papers examine the migration of Japanese concepts of state-sponsored public health to two colonial settings and provide points of comparison between the experiences of the rulers and the ruled, men and women, and public health in the Home Islands and the overseas colonies. Barbara Brooks explores Japanese public health initiatives and policies in Korea, demonstrating that in the name of public health the authorities exacted a number of policies that had a tremendous impact on not only the colonized Korean population, but also on the lives of the local Japanese community. Robert Perrins examines the efforts by Japanese authorities in the Guandong Leasehold in southern Manchuria to develop public health policies that would serve to protect the territory from the dangers posed by diseases and to demonstrate to the West the ‘progress’ that Japanese rule had brought to this region of northeastern China.
It is hoped that this panel will appeal to not only historians in the fields of modern Japanese, Korean, and Chinese histories, but also to those interested in the issues of ‘modernity,’ medical history, the history of science, and the culture(s) of colonialism.
Between National Policy and Local Practice: Cholera, Gotô Shimpei, and the Formation of the "Hygienic State"
Susan L. Burns, University of Texas, Austin
Gotô Shimpei (1857–1929) served as head of the Hygiene Bureau within the Japanese Home Ministry between 1892–1893 and 1895–1898. A physician by training, he had established himself as an important theorist of public health policy in the late 1880s with the publication of two works, Principles of State Hygiene (Kokka eisei genri) and A Theory of Hygiene Policy (Eisei seidô ron). He was personally chosen by Nagayo Sensai, the key figure in the formulation of early Meiji medical policy, to head the Hygiene Bureau in 1892.
In this presentation, I will explore the concept of the "hygienic state" that was articulated by Gotô in the 1880s and 1890s. Although a strong proponent of state authority and a career bureaucrat, Gotô argued that in its early decades the Meiji government had mistakenly tried to implement public health policy goals through the use of police force and with little concern for the local customs and popular concerns. The result was conflict, dissension, and the failure to achieve the desired level of "national health." Gotô argued that by working through established forms of community and authority, it would be possible to facilitate the diffusion—indeed, the interiorization—of new ideas of hygiene. Focusing on the issue of cholera prevention, a major aim of public health police throughout the Meiji period, I will analyze how Gotô’s concept of "self-government" took form and assess its influence on public health policy after 1890.
Colonial Power and Public Health in Japanese-held Korea
Barbara Brooks, City University of New York
This overview of Japanese medical and public health initiatives and policies in colonial Korea will assess Japanese colonial medicine in a comparative framework. An extensive literature on colonialism has illuminated Western medicine as a "tool of imperialism" that came to advocate some of the colonizers’ greatest interventions into indigenous societies in the name of public health. The Japanese case was no exception; in fact, the paper will argue, the Japanese went further in their public health interventions into Korean local life than did the British in Malaya or Hong Kong.
Specific programs that the paper will take up include: the colonial government’s measures against cholera; the introduction of Japanese-style midwifery; the push to manufacture smallpox vaccine in Korea itself and related inoculation campaigns; campaigns against parasites in raw freshwater shellfish; and finally, the creation of medical infrastructure and programs to control venereal disease within the colonial licensed prostitution system. These measures resonate with European colonial medical programs imposed on colonized people elsewhere but also with programs of the authorities at home that changed the ways of local Japanese communities. The linkage to metropolitan policy and the lives of Japanese subjects as well as Koreans is crucial to understanding the context and design of Japanese colonialism. At the same time, drawing out the implications of medical policy in Korea for both colonizers and colonized, as well as for men and women, brings us closer to reconstructing the complicated dynamics of this culture of colonialism.
Combating Illness and Constructing Public Health: Disease and Hospitals in Japanese-controlled Southern Manchuria
Robert J. Perrins, Acadia University
China’s Northeast (Dongbei), more commonly referred to as Manchuria, was under Japanese colonial control for much of the early twentieth century. Agents of the Japanese colonial administration worked hard to build Manchuria into a showcase that they hoped would not only strengthen the economy of the Home Islands, but also demonstrate to the West that modern Japan had come of age. A key component in this effort was the development of colonial healthcare institutions. Efforts to control disease and establish medical facilities in Manchuria often worked within, and contributed to, the broader development of mechanisms of colonial governance. This paper examines the intersection of medical, social, and political developments in the history of the Guandong leasehold, and specifically the port city of Dalian during the first two decades that the city was under direct Japanese control.
In Dalian, the Japanese authorities built the largest ‘public’ hospital in northern China, trained hundreds of Japanese and Chinese doctors, nurses, and laboratory technicians, and enacted numerous laws and regulations aimed at creating a ‘sanitary colony.’ This paper focuses on the history of diseases and their mortality rates in Dalian (emphasizing the plague epidemic of 1910–11, the great influenza pandemic of 1918–19, and a major cholera outbreak in 1919), quarantine regulations in the port, the creation of the city’s sanitation and water systems, and the construction of ‘modern’ hospitals and laboratories. This paper explores the intersection between the history of public health concerns and the wider field of colonialism in East Asia.
Writing Western Hygiene in Nineteenth-Century East Asia
Ruth Rogaski, Princeton University
This paper compares the ways that European and American hygiene texts were translated and disseminated in Meiji Japan and Qing China up to the years of the first Sino-Japanese War. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Chinese, Japanese, and Westerners in Nagasaki, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Osaka translated a wide variety of European-language texts on the maintenance of health. This paper traces the origins of the texts, examines the circumstances of their translation, and considers possible routes of circulation of published translations between East Asian coastal cities. Finally the paper considers the important role these translations played in shaping emerging modernities in China and Japan.
Although Western ideas of hygiene were in considerable flux during the nineteenth century, translators throughout East Asia used the single term weisheng/eisei to convey these concepts as a unified, scientific approach to the prevention of disease. Other important unifying themes emerge both the Chinese and Japanese texts, such as the central role of chemistry in reconceptualizing the relationship between the natural world and the human body. However, linguistic strategies used by Chinese and Japanese translators exhibited crucial differences. Most importantly, the circumstances of acquisition and dissemination of the texts and their concepts differed greatly in China and Japan. These differences were to have important implications for both the configuration of Japanese imperialism and the Chinese experience of colonialism in the twentieth century.
Organizer and Chair: Jennifer Amyx, University of Pennsylvania
Discussants: Leonard Schoppa, Jr., University of Virginia; Mike Mochizuki, George Washington University
Keywords: financial crisis, Asian Monetary Fund, regionalism, Japan.
Financial crises are endemic to the nature of capitalism, striking advanced industrial as well as emerging market economies. They have become particularly frequent in recent decades, raising the importance of international financial crisis management. Some governments are able to resolve their crises without external intervention; others must rely on outside assistance from the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This panel examines the political dynamics of financial crisis management in Asia, focusing in particular on self-help regional institution-building efforts since the outbreak of financial crisis in Asia in 1997. The papers examine the opportunities for institutional complementary between exclusive regional efforts and broader, more global schemes for financial cooperation. At the same time, the papers explore the tensions between these two modes of financial cooperation, highlighting constraints bearing down on individual nations in the region as they struggle to balance important bilateral relationships with extra-regional actors and dependency on international markets with strategies to move forward Asia-only institution-building endeavors.
The panel furthermore delves into the complexities of reconciling often divergent preferences of nations within Asia. Intra-regional variation in preferences derives from the very different political systems of member nations, as well as from the wide range of financial capabilities of regional actors. While the panel’s focus is not exclusively on Japan, Japan’s role as regional arbitrator and institution-builder and the political dynamics underlying Japan’s Asian Monetary Fund initiative receive particular attention.
Japan’s Counterweight Strategy: Cooperatively Challenging the US Agenda in International Finance after the Asian Crisis
Saori N. Katada, University of Southern California
This study examines the nature of cooperation and competition between the two major creditor governments, the United States and Japan, in managing the Asian Financial crisis as well as the broader issue of international financial architecture. As the crisis hit the prospering East Asia in the early summer of 1997, the Japanese government took an active initiative in mitigating the crisis in Thailand. But later on, the leadership role shifted to the U.S. government and the IMF as the crisis spread to Indonesia and South Korea. The Japanese government also kept revisiting the possibility of alternative perspective to international financial architecture in forums such as Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and other international settings.
The study focuses on Japanese foreign policy strategies to increase its leverage to influence the policies of the United States in the world of international finance. The Japanese government has struggled to promote alternative solutions by using a "counterweight" strategy through regional and international avenues vis-à-vis the United States. By doing so, Japan is now in the process of alleviating tension between economic regionalization in Asia and predominantly international financial crisis management structure dominated by the United States and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs).
Moving Beyond Bilateralism in Regional Financial Crisis Management? Japan and the Asian Monetary Fund
Jennifer Amyx, University of Pennsylvania
In August 1997, after financial crisis had broken out in Thailand, Japanese officials proposed the establishment of an Asian Monetary Fund. The proposal encountered a number of obstacles—the most formidable of which was opposition by the U.S. and the IMF. Consequently, Japanese officials aborted the initiative. The notion of an AMF resurfaced in a variety of forms thereafter, however. Most recently, a network of bilateral currency swap arrangements has begun to emerge among the ASEAN + 3 nations under the auspices of the May 2000 Chiang Mai Initiative. In an ironic twist, however, the release of 90 percent of the funds in this new facility is predicated on the recipient country having an IMF program in place.
This paper delves into the puzzle of why Japan attempted to embark on regional institution-building independent of the U.S. and IMF in 1997 but since May 2000 has supported close linkage of a regional financial crisis management institution to the IMF, thereby guaranteeing continued U.S. influence over regional arrangements. The study reveals the formidable difficulties faced by Japan in attempting to circumvent existing U.S.-dominated multilateral financial institutions. The findings suggest that primary constraints derive less from simple power politics or philosophical or historical considerations—factors that have often constrained Japan from playing a greater regional role in the past—and more from practical considerations specific to the issue area of finance.
Malaysia and International Financial Cooperation: When Does It Play, When Does It Opt Out?
A. Maria Toyoda, Stanford University
Malaysia surprised many observers in 1998 by imposing capital controls on its short-term flows in reaction to the spread of the Asian financial crisis. International experts (mostly in the U.S. and Europe) routinely goad developing nations to liberalize their cross-border financial transactions. Bucking international pressure, Malaysia passed on this advice and money offered by the International Monetary Fund. Yet, its long-ruling Prime Minister, Mahathir, has been a strong supporter of regional efforts to cooperate on trade and finance, particularly on occasions where the U.S. is excluded. For example, Mahathir proposed the Asia-only East Asian Economic Group, which was rejected in favor of the broader APEC, and has floated the idea of an Asia-only currency bloc. Malaysia also lent strong support for the Japan-led initiative to create an Asian Monetary Fund. When that failed to materialize, Malaysia backed the New Miyazawa Initiative and the Chiang Mai Initiative urging, against the tide, for no linkage to the IMF.
This paper will look at the reasons for Malaysia’s support of exclusive regional efforts and opposition to broader, more global schemes for financial cooperation. It examines, in particular, the political institutions and interest groups in Malaysia that drive the preference for regional action. The paper argues that consociationalism and nationalism are important considerations for Malaysian policymakers and help explain Malaysia’s support for the attempt to create an Asian Monetary Fund in contrast to its rejection of the IMF remedies.
Organizer and Discussant: Ian Condry, Harvard University
Chair: Anne Allison, Duke University
Does globalization colonize minds through consumption? There is a growing sense that lifestyles of consumption (McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pokemon) represent a kind of cultural power. But what kind of power? This panel examines diverse border crossings of consumer culture to, from, and within Asia. East Asia has long been a crossroads for cultural exchange, but one wonders what is different about today’s media-saturated information age. Transnational dread may be a symptom of the new millenium: American parents (at times) resist Pokemon; expatriate Japanese want their kids to be cosmopolitan but not American; minority Miao in China consume media in creative ways; and "Asia" is marketed through the pervasively cute culture of Hello Kitty. As people and products cross borders, how do we evaluate the power of consumption?
Our aim is to facilitate discussion by examining border crossing itself as a challenge for Asian studies. By limiting papers and discussant to 15 minutes each, we plan a full 45 minutes for discussion. Our hope is that concrete examples will help others in the audience to bring in their own experiences. Allison and Yano offer contrasting examples of enormously popular commodities (Pokemon and Hello Kitty, respectively) being consumed worldwide, which, in ways, have come to represent Japan, and more generally, Asia. Schein and Speilvogel examine cultural others—minority Miao in China and expat Japanese in Michigan, respectively—to examine how their consumption practices produce a sense of identity that at times adopts, at times resists, dominant cultural ways. What are the links between community, identity and consumption that help us evaluate cultural power? Then together, these topics allow us to question the value and status associated with consumer culture in a global era.
The Cultural Politics of Pokemon Capitalism
Anne Allison, Duke University
When Pokemon, the media-mix entertainment complex and mega kid’s hit, took off in the States, the Japanese press reported it as a sign of Japan’s "cultural power" that was finally gaining recognition and cachet around the world. It was telling that reception of this Japanese pop product counted for so much in the States: itself the long-time world capital of children’s fantasy-production and hegemonizer of global (including kid’s) culture. What does it mean, though, to calculate national prestige on the basis of imaginary monsters packaged in the form of commodity fetishism targeted to a global (and millennial) consumerism? And does the success of Japan’s children’s entertainment industry with Pokemon and other properties in the 1990s (which, according to some, is part of a wider "expressive strength" that promises even bigger capital of all sorts for Japan in the 21st century) indicate a shift in the geo-political domination of global trends by Euro-America and particularly the United States?
In this paper, I address these questions by examining two sets of shifting junctures—culture/ commodity and global/national—against each other in the case of marketing Pokemon both in Japan and the U.S. How, I will ask first, has a discourse reading national(ist) pride and cultural identity in the global success of children’s play products been constructed in Japan? And, second, how have Pokemon marketers in the U.S. dealt with what they perceive as its "cultural" inflection when (re)packaging the property for American kids? The culturalization of a global property like Pokemon can, and is, read in various ways, I conclude. But it is also true that the global success and prominence of Japanese fantasy production is giving Japan a symbolic capital which is historically new both for Japan and the world mapped by/onto cultural trendsetting.
Bringing Consumption Home: Mobile Miao and the Question of Rural Ethnoconsumerism in China
Louisa Schein, Rutgers University
This paper takes under consideration a notion of productive consumption in a rural Miao region of southwest China. Miao and other minorities in China have been amply represented as cultural producers, valorized sources of archaic and vital traditions that kept China’s dwindling treasure house stocked with vestiges of particularity. Consumption, on the other hand, has been characterized as belonging to a kind of totalized modernity that has been sweeping across the face of China. Consumption represents a vehicle of assimilation, a mechanism for minorities’ participation in dominant, urban, even global, culture.
I want, by contrast, to ask here whether it is not overly simplistic to think of consuming practices as necessarily sinicizing, urbanizing, or globalizing. What else might consumption do? Asking questions about how Miao or other minorities might consume differently falls under the rubric of what could be called "ethnoconsumerism." Will Miao villagers take up newer technologies and style choices as means for marking themselves as Miao? Will consuming become an activity that is productive of and for the Miao? How does the elaboration of rural Miao consumption articulate with the urbane experiences of returned workers from the cities? Are returned Miao workers simply agents of the erasure of local cultural particularity, or are they themselves forging migrant Miao forms of style? Based on episodic fieldwork in a Guizhou Miao village over the last two decades, I chart the ways in which a certain site might reveal the effects of burgeoning consumerism in localized and perhaps ethnicized ways.
Consuming America: Japanese Expatriates and the Negotiation of Identity
Laura Ginsberg-Spielvogel, Western Michigan University
How do Japanese expatriates in Battle Creek, Michigan manage their identity through consumer practices? This ethnographically grounded paper will explore the shifting boundaries of community and nationhood as they are negotiated through the consumption of culturally symbolic institutions and products. Roughly five hundred Japanese have settled temporarily in southwest Michigan to manage local branches of transnational manufacturing companies such as Nippon Densu. Consequently, a substantial industry of Asian grocers, Saturday Japanese language schools, and cross-cultural community centers have found a lucrative niche. Yet despite the convenience and familiarity these reminders of Japan afford, the secure insularity provided by these Japanese-tailored services and accommodations can be suffocating for the Japanese who long to embrace American culture. For this group, is becoming American, if only temporarily, simply synonymous with eating sandwiches instead of soba, reading the Detroit Free Press rather than the Yomiuri shimbun, and most importantly, learning English?
I will explore how the "gilded cage" of an insulated Japanese community in Michigan offers insight into the dynamics of border making and border crossing in an age of globally mobile workers. On the one hand, linguistic difficulties, the limitations of short-term residence, and the often hostile reception of the Michigan locals, generally work to tie the Japanese population together. But at the same time, efforts to raise bilingual children, an enthusiastic consumption and collection of "American" souvenirs, and a reluctance to return to the perceived stoicism and rigidity of Japan all complicate notions of a cohesive Japanese identity.
Kimono Kitty: Marking "Asia" in Japanese Global Products
Christine R. Yano, University of Hawaii
This paper analyzes the production and consumption of "Asia" as iterations of cultural power in the global markets of Sanrio, a Japanese company specializing in cute goods such as Hello Kitty. From its inception in 1974, Hello Kitty was meant as a global product—a Japanese feline challenge to the American rodent, Mickey Mouse. In its initial imaging, however, the national origins of that challenge went unstated: Hello Kitty’s image was Euro-American, not Japanese or Asian. Over twenty-five years later, one can see shifts in that image. In spring 2001, for example, McDonald’s offered a Sanrio "Asian Wedding" promotion, with Hello Kitty in wedding outfits from Japan, China, and Korea. Some may interpret this as an assertion of Asianness in a meeting of one global power with another. However, this is Asia with deliberately bound feet, reduced to style, not substance.
The question of consumer meanings shows other kinds of intersections with Asia. One avid middle-aged female collector in Minneapolis links Hello Kitty to her own subjectivity, tying together her love of cats and Asia. Another female nursing student in Hawaii distances herself, critiquing Hello Kitty and Japanese females as "too cutesy." A radical feminist Asian-American performance artist uses Hello Kitty as a symbol of hyper-sexualized Asian female stereotypes. These consumers map their own "Asia" onto the flat space of Kitty. This paper juxtaposes different versions of "Kitty Asia" to suggest ways by which the seemingly innocuous concept of cute defuses as well as ignites sociopolitical processes.
Organizer and Chair: Edward J. Shultz, University of Hawaii
Discussants: Frank Baldwin, Social Science Research Council; Oh Sung, Sejong University
Keywords: nationalism, East Asia, history, historiography, Korea, China, Japan, textbooks, globalization.
In East Asia the writing of history has been a serious task for more than two millennia. Ever since China’s earliest historians started to compile official histories, East Asian states have been directly involved in the presentation of the past. Seeking to arrive at the correct interpretation of a contested past frequently embroiled dynastic houses in serious disputes that on occasion resulted in the elimination of one group or faction from power.
Today a new dispute is challenging the ability of China, Korea, and Japan to come together collectively in dealing with their past. In the spring of 2001 the Japanese Ministry of Education approved the publication of several middle school textbooks that the governments and peoples of Korea and China consider an affront. This textbook issue is not new as the disputes that developed in the past year have actually simmered for more than thirty years whenever a new series of Japanese textbooks has received official sanction.
This panel will examine the current textbook issue from the perspective of the three countries directly involved: China, Korea, and Japan. Scholars from each of these countries will grapple with the textbook issue from their individual vantage points searching for answers to questions about how to present national histories that inform students of their past. Also probed will be the issues that emerge behind attempts to write national histories and the responsibilities of historians and governments. The conflicts that emerge when nationalist histories are read in a broader global age is an issue that may occupy the future.
Some Problems Concerning Japanese Textbooks for Middle School Students
Seung-ki Hong, Sogang University
Eight different kinds of Japanese history textbooks for middle school students have recently acquired the approval of the Japanese Ministry of Education for publication and distribution. Some of the contents and descriptions in these books regarding Japanese relations with foreign countries are controversial among Korean and East Asian scholars.
Korean scholars argue that much of the writing related to Japan’s relationship with Korea is based on distorted facts. The textbook that was published by the Society for Writing the New History Textbook is allegedly the worst case of the reported misrepresentation of facts by Japanese authors. The Korean government has asked the Japanese government for the revision of such wrong explanations. Meanwhile, leaders of Korean scholarly societies gathered on two occasions in order to issue proclamations of protest. But the Japanese government has not been willing to accept the Korean protests.
I hope to discuss two topics concerning the Japanese textbook problem. The first is the diversity of viewpoints in understanding history, while the other will be a discussion on the nationalist point of view in writing history. The Japanese publishers of the textbook have asked the worried Koreans to respect the diversity of viewpoints and they have also boasted their nationalist standpoint. In relation to this, what most deserves attention is the textbook A New History Textbook published by the Fushosha Publishing Company.
In the beginning of the book there is a passage entitled, "What do we learn from history?" The writing of this passage conveys the message that each nation has its own interpretation of history. The writer of the book suggests that a nation has its own subjectivity that in turn determines its own point of view. On these points, I have questions I will raise in my discussion. First, what does the diversity of viewpoints mean? Second, can the subjectivity of the nation really exist? Does the interpretation of a certain historical fact vary depending on the difference of the nation? I would like to attempt to answer these questions from an epistemological perspective.
In addition, there is a two-page passage at the end entitled, "Why do we learn history?" The writer of the textbook stresses the fact that the sense of independence and self-confidence should be enhanced among the people of a nation. The author explains the reasons by saying that the defeat of Japan in the Pacific War was devastating and it led to a great loss of self-confidence among the Japanese populace. Finally, he suggests that pupils should learn history in order to recover the lost self-confidence.
The nationalist point of view is vividly reflected in these explanations. I will discuss the following questions concerning nationalism. First, what is nationalism? Second, what is the relationship between the facts and the nationalist interpretation of history? How can the nationalist point of view contribute to the global community of today? I would like to prepare my own answers to these questions by referring to concrete historical facts.
Official Histories, Official Protest: China’s Reaction to the Textbook Issue
Xiaorong Han, University of Hawaii, West O’ahu
Modern East Asian governments (Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Mainland China, and Vietnam) have inherited their common tradition of compiling official histories. Throughout East Asia, the government takes as its responsibility to write or to approve the history textbooks used in schools. The textbook dispute can therefore be viewed as a conflict of official histories. It is beneficial because through the dispute the neighbors can help each other write better histories. The Japanese government will have a better understanding of how Japan’s neighbors remember the past, and Japan’s neighbors can also learn from the dispute about how to write true and fair histories. In China’s case, the Chinese attack on the Japanese official history should help Chinese historians to rethink about how to evaluate China’s invasions of her neighbors in the past.
How Japan’s neighbors react to the textbook issue is to a large degree determined by their internal political structure and conditions. In South Korea, the government and the people together have made a loud voice of protest. In Taiwan, the pro-independence and pro-Japan government has been silent on the issue, but the people have been very active in staging protests. In China, the government has made repeated official protests, but the voice of the people is weak. It is not that the people are not concerned about the issue—their voice has been suppressed by their own government for political reasons.
Contemporary Japanese Views on the Asia-Pacific War: A Background of the Textbook Controversy
Hiromitsu Inokuchi, University of East Asia
One of the major points in the current textbook controversy in Japan is the representation of Japan’s war crimes and its responsibility for the war. My major question in this presentation regards how the majority of Japanese view those war-related issues, especially Japan’s war crimes. While nationalist discourse denying Japanese responsibility of war crimes and anti-nationalist discourse opposing nationalist discourse have been identified, critics see that both are political minorities, and that the "silent majority" in the middle holds the deciding vote. However, the sociological (empirical) examination of the majority public opinion concerning war-related issues is a neglected area. I will approach the issue by reviewing the results of various public opinion surveys regarding war-related issues conducted during 1990s, and examine whether changes in public opinion have occurred in the 1990s. In fact, the period of the 1990s is very important with respect to the issues of Japanese war crimes, as well as for its great economic prosperity and severe downturn. It was in 1991 that the wartime "comfort women" came out and demanded compensation, while Japanese economy was at the peak. At the end of the decade, a revisionist textbook emerged as the Japanese economy suffered from a severe slump. While my main focus is to analyze the changes in the Japanese public opinion on the war-related issues, I will also attempt to hypothesize other factors affecting those changes.
Organizer: Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame
Chair: James R. Bartholomew, Ohio State University
Discussant: Kevin M. Doak, University of Illinois, Urbana
Today, complexity theory provides the template through which many people understand global interchange. Moving from the description of the world provided by science, social commentators slip, perhaps all too quickly, into prescriptions for social and economic globalization. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in a similar way, evolutionary theory, transfigured as social Darwinism, provided a powerful analytic tool for understanding national development and international competition. Indeed, it could be argued that social Darwinism was Europe’s greatest intellectual export to Asia during these years. However, social Darwinism was not a single set of ideas. As this panel will demonstrate, social Darwinism took many forms in China and Japan, sometimes allied with right-wing political positions (Szpilman), sometimes with leftwing views (Thomas), sometimes used retrospectively to understand how the Chinese race emerged (Fan), sometimes used prospectively to urge eugenic therapy to create a stronger race (Chung and Szpilman). Not only do these papers address the often over-looked complexity of social Darwinism and its offshoot, eugenics, but they also attest to its particular history in East Asia. In the mid-nineteenth century, social Darwinism helped constitute East Asia as East Asia, placing Japan and China together within the competitive struggle dominated by Western powers. However, as Sino-Japanese tensions erupted into war, first in the 1890s and later in the 1930s, social Darwinian theory appeared to be a way of distinguishing between these two cultures. Because social Darwinism is rarely accorded the intellectual respect of its contemporary competitor, Marxism, scholars have ignored its power and pervasiveness. This panel aims to refocus the attention of historians of politics, science, and culture on the way concepts of social evolution shaped Asian modernity.
Social Darwinism’s Progressive Posture in Meiji Japan
Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame
Social Darwinism has a bad reputation. The phrase conjures up the worst sort of political and social theory, based on a predestined struggle for survival devoid of liberty, the triumphalism of the strong, and the deserved misery of the weak. When social Darwinism, especially Herbert Spencer’s ideas, swept through Japanese intellectual and political circles around 1880, it might be expected that these ideas would support only the most authoritarian forms of government and political subjectivity. However, they did not. There are, as my paper will argue, two ways in which social Darwinism abetted less authoritarian visions of the state than the Meiji oligarchy would have liked. First, advocates of representative, constitutional government such as Baba Tatsui used social Darwinism to argue that since natural political teleology dictated the ultimate creation of democratic government, Japan should swiftly become democratic rather than go through earlier, harsher stages of social evolution. As with progressives in Europe, Baba Tatsui drew on Spencer’s early non-conformism to argue that an egalitarian society was in the offing and should be embraced forthwith. Second, and more surprisingly, conservatives such as Kato Hiroyuki, in trying to marry ideas of amoral social Darwinism to moral government, envisioned a maverick political elite, rising above nature’s deterministic authority, but directing the struggle for survival to ethical ends. I will argue that as Kato negotiated between necessity and freedom, he promoted an elite who enjoyed a political subjectivity that partook of greater liberty than had social Darwinism not been invoked. In short, upon closer analysis, social Darwinism, as the ally of utopian social visions and liberated political agents, ill-served the Meiji state ideology that was fully articulated in the 1890s.
Struggle for National Survival: Social Darwinism and Chinese Eugenics
Juliette Yuehtsen Chung, Hofstra University
Social Darwinism has been a driving force for the introduction of eugenics into China and Japan in the late 19th century. While social Darwinism rationalized superiority and hence the domination of certain races, nations, ethnicities, and classes over the lesser ones, eugenics worked both ways for the dominators and the dominated since it was considered as the science of human betterment through the application of genetic laws for the dominated to measure up to superior standards, and for the dominators to restrain tendencies of racial degeneration and maintain supremacy. This paper analyzes the development of Chinese eugenics within the historical frame of two converging moments in the first and second Sino-Japanese Wars (1894–95 and 1931–45) and the ways in which eugenics engaged themes such as the coinage of scientific terminology, national character, population quality and growth, war deployment, and the split signification of the fittest and the survivors between the Spencerian and eugenic views. Whereas Spencer affirmed "war" as an evolutionary mechanism, the eugenicists opposed it as dysgenic since the best stock tended to be put on the front lines and the worst tended to suffer least and prevail. In the first converging moment when both Japan and China were in the same struggle for civilizational progress, Japan was a source of inspiration, mediation, and emulation for Chinese eugenics development. However, Japan became the competitor after moving from the dominated to the dominator. Ironically, both Chinese and Japanese eugenicists defined the Sino-Japanese confrontation in the second converging moment as an evolutionary passage of becoming the fittest.
Nature, Nation, and Social Darwinism in Early Twentieth-Century China
Fa-ti Fan, State University of New York, Binghamton
This paper examines theories of race, migration, geography, and the environment in international research into the history and anthropology of the Chinese in the first decades of the twentieth century. At the time new theories in the life and environmental sciences were introduced to explain the origins and development of the Chinese race and Chinese civilization. Western and Chinese scientists were involved in a series of dialogues and debates over the environmental history of China. Where did the Chinese come from? Were they one race or a mixture of different races? What were their biological and historical relationships with the neighboring races? How did the climate and geography of China shape or influence the history of Chinese civilization? Recent discoveries of the fossils of pre-historic humans and animals only fueled the controversy. The dominant interpretive framework of many of the theories was some form of social Darwinism that incorporated a variety of evolutionary and environmental theories. However, scientific discussion did not take place in an ideological vacuum. It was instead entangled with Orientalism, imperialism, nationalism, scientific internationalism, and other ideological convictions current at the time. A close look at the controversy not only complicates national and ideological boundaries in scientific research and controversy, but also raises questions about science, ideology, and modernity in national and transnational contexts.
Social Darwinism and the Japanese Right Wing in Interwar Japan
Christopher W. A. Szpilman, Takushoku University
Social Darwinism was pervasive enough in the Japan of the 1920s and 1930s for social Darwinist arguments to be used, among other things, to combat liberal and democratic ideas, discredit party politics, condemn the evils of individualism, refute the concept of the class struggle, deny political rights to women, help perpetuate the patriarchal family system, oppose cuts in the military budgets, castigate pacifism, condemn the League of Nations, justify Japan’s territorial expansion in East Asia, etc. This paper analyzes social Darwinist arguments, traces their impact on Japanese society (e.g., eugenics), and looks at some Western models (including racism and Nazism), which influenced Japan’s social Darwinists. Specifically, the paper focuses on a number of prominent conservative and radical right wing figures such as Professor Uesugi Shinkichi (professor of constitutional law at Tokyo Imperial University), Kano Jigoro (a member of the House of Peers, educator and inventor of judo), Dr. Kanokogi Kazunobu (philosopher and professor at Kyushu Imperial University), Mitsukawa Kametaro (journalist and professor at Takushoku University), Dr. Takeuchi Kakuji (lawyer, President of Hosei University), and Ikeda Ringi (journalist and in the post-WWII period a baseball promoter). These men, all of whom had connections to at least one of two well-known right-wing organizations, the Kokuhonsha and the Yuzonsha, combined (in varying proportions) the concept of the survival of the fittest with an organic theory of the state to justify both the political and social status quo and (paradoxically) reforms they believed essential to maintain Japan’s greatness.
Organizer: Guobin Yang, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Chair and Discussant: Ernest Wilson, University of Maryland
Keywords: Internet, online communities, Asia, China.
This panel is designed to contribute to the understanding of the culture and politics of the Internet in Asian societies in two ways. First, each paper in the panel will offer insights into the uses of the Internet in one or more Asian countries. Dr. Matthew Ciolek’s presentation aims to paint a panoramic view of the geography of the Asian cyberspace. Dr. Guo Liang will focus on the impact of the Internet on the openness of Chinese society. Professor Guobin Yang maps the online Chinese-language spaces in and outside of China and examines how these online spaces may be regarded a global public sphere. Professor Eric Thompson studies the experience of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean academics using the Internet and estimates the prospects for building scholarly communities within and beyond the borders of Southeast Asia via the Internet. Our discussant, Professor Ernest Wilson, will thematize the key issues of the panel and address broader concerns and trends in the emerging field of Internet studies.
The second contribution of our panel is to lay out the terrain for future research. This includes identifying key empirical issues and exploring major theoretical and methodological issues. We approach this from two angles. First, existing social science literature on the Internet suggests that this is more of an interdisciplinary field than traditional fields. It crosses borders in many ways, not the least because the Internet itself is a border-crossing technology. Therefore, we have not only brought together scholars from different disciplines and regions, but all the five panelists also cross borders in their own work. Dr. Ciolek is an anthropologist by training, but he is also one of the world’s pioneers in networked research and communications regarding the Asia-Pacific region. Dr. Guo is a philosopher turned social scientist. Professor Yang was trained in two academic disciplines—literary translation and sociology. Dr. Thompson is an anthropologist focusing on Southeast Asia but with interest in globalization. Professor Wilson is a political scientist who crosses borders between the academy and policy areas. Such diversity is crucial for a fair representation of empirical concerns. The empirical issues we will explore include the geography, demography and logistics of the Asian cyberspace, political openness, public sphere, online protest and global civil society, and online communities. Our second consideration is to have all the five scholars bring their multi-disciplinary expertise to bear on some key analytical and methodological issues in the study of the Internet. By bringing them into conversations with one another, and especially with the AAS audience, we hope to explore how a new phenomenon—the Internet, may be approached in different yet related ways, both methodologically and at the analytical level. Despite the proliferation of academic literature on the Internet, this is an emerging field with no established theoretical or methodological traditions. Researchers still face the challenge of understanding how existing theories and methodologies may help to illuminate the new phenomenon and how the new phenomenon may compel the modification of existing theories and methodologies. We believe our panel will contribute to this intellectual endeavor as well.
Targets of Electronic Attention in Asia: Who Watches Whom in Cyberspace?
Matthew Ciolek, Australian National University
The paper provides a statistical analysis of the first systematic survey of web resources from all 49 countries of Asia. The study, based on several million dat