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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 data points collected in July 2001 and January 2002, identifies and describes a series of clear-cut patterns of geographic preference/avoidance within the body of the ever-fluctuating hypertext connections criss-crossing individual countries as well as geo-political regions of both Asia and the world as a whole.
The cultural, political, and economic implications of the uncovered patterns suggest that in addition to the traditional research on spatial distribution and movement of people, goods, services and money in the countries and regions of Asia, there is also a growing need for systematic research on geography, demography and logistics of the Asian cyberspace and its electronic information.
The Internet and Openness in Chinese Society
Guo Liang, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The Internet is fast growing in China. Based on its distributed network, packet switching system and Hyper Text Marked Language, the Internet is an open system. Yet whether the open technology will make the relatively closed and traditional China become more open remains a question. A recent survey, conducted by the Center for Social Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is the first major effort by Chinese researchers to explore the uses of the Internet and its social impact in China.
Based on the analyses of the survey, this paper will discuss: (1) what is "openness"? (2) whether Internet users are more open than non-users, according to the author’s definition; and (3) the contribution of people’s age, education and access to the Internet to the personal openness. I will argue that: (1) the Internet does indeed contribute to openness, because it provides an important source of information and (2) it also contributes to public expression in China.
Online Chinese-Language Sphere as Global Public Sphere
Guobin Yang, University of Hawaii, Manoa
One interesting development in the contemporary world is the emergence of an Internet culture. Not only have people begun to use the Internet for business, shopping and entertainment, they have also begun to use it, to varying degrees in various parts of the world, for personal expression, private or public communication, civic association, and political participation. Because of the globally networked nature of the Internet, the emerging Internet culture is a global phenomenon. The new spaces on the Internet, while linked in various ways, are as diverse as their functions.
This article delineates those Internet spaces that may be broadly referred to as the Chinese-language public spaces. These are the spaces where the Chinese language is the dominant mode of communication. They may be supported by computer servers based in or outside of China. They are public not just in the sense that they are publicly accessible. Rather, they provide spaces for social interaction and public expression. This paper examines the basic elements, dynamics, and impact of these online spaces. Based on ethnographic research, the paper develops two central arguments. The first is that this Chinese-language cybersphere may be regarded as a public sphere, and an inherently global one at that. The second is that this global Chinese-language public sphere has had visible influences on both international politics and on civil society within China as a nation-state. In conclusion, the article discusses the implications of an online Chinese-language public sphere for understanding global civil society and considers some theoretical and methodological issues in the study of the socio-political impact of new information technologies in the age of globalization.
The Internet in the Southeast Asian Academy: Emergent Technology and Uneven Development
Eric Thompson, University of California, Los Angeles
Based on research conducted in 2000, this paper examines the experience of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean academics using the Internet. While the study finds that a large number of Southeast Asian academics are accessing the Internet, the development of Internet use remains at best uneven. There is a great deal of enthusiasm about the possibilities that the Internet holds. And many individuals and institutions are undertaking a variety of Internet initiatives. Yet numerous institutional, technical, and socio-cultural obstacles stand in the way of the integration of Internet technology into Southeast Asian academic institutions and networks.
This paper assesses key Internet initiatives in the Southeast Asian academy, uses of the Internet by Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean academics, and the prospects for building scholarly communities within and beyond the borders of Southeast Asia via the Internet.
Organizer: Clark W. Sorensen, University of Washington
Zoomorphic Divine Animals and Animal-Human Relations in Ancient China since the Bronze Age: Generative Bases, Cognitive Processes, and Aesthetic Synthesis Revealed from Complex of Archaeological Artifacts, Mythological Evidence, Religious Scriptures, Linguistic Systems, and Early Historical Textual Fragments Existing in the Region
Jian Tang, Institute of Oriental Studies
Since prehistoric hunter-gathering society, early inhabitants of China established important animal-human relations; they developed a rich tradition of sophisticated artistic expressions and a complex symbolic system formulated around the worship of animals in their various aspects. This research focused on the analysis of major zoomorphic divine animals created and worshiped since the Bronze Age onward, exploring the nature of this cultural phenomenon via level-ordered operations.
The research indicates that human exploitation and conceptualization of the natural world from Neolithic Age formed the generative bases of animal worship. From gynocentric cultures to all subsequent androcratic societies, divine animals have their primitive religious significance and differentiated ceremonial functions, performing as intermediations between the world of humans and the world of the gods. The research indicates that cognitive processes are the second level from generative bases. The generalization shows there are at least six cognitive processes from which all major types of stunning divine animals with natural images, abstract images, anatomic images, mystic images, splitting images, metatheses images, etc. are created and revealed from archaeological findings. The research further indicates that aesthetic synthesis is the third-level operation which is responsible for high degree of artistic creation, aesthetic achievements, nonmaterial values, and freedom of expressions of graceful beauty and refinement of divine animals, demonstrating highly developed philosophical thinking and perfect craftsmanship.
A combination of fields—archaeology, mythology, religions, linguistics, aesthetics, history, and historical data—provides the possibility for apprehending both the material and spiritual realities of this cultural phenomenon. Extremely important artifacts are depicted here as supporting evidence which are unknown to the world.
The Indian Ocean Rim: Towards "New Regionalism"?
Kuldeep Kaur, Punjab University
The Indian Ocean has passed through several phases in the post-war period. Viewed first as a zone of Cold War rivalries and conflict, and projected subsequently as a potential ‘zone of peace,’ the region has in more recent years begun to be explored as a ‘zone of cooperation.’ This poster presentation proceeds from the belief that in the foreseeable future there will, in fact, be an increasing emphasis on the role of regions both as a focus for economic interaction and as a means of enhancing the ability of individual states to advance their particular interests. Mutual trade complementarities and immense investment potentialities exist to deepen cooperation in the Indian Ocean Rim. The combined will to translate complementarities into working strategies is set in motion by initiating open regionalism to meet global changes. This process of working together has resulted in the establishment of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC). The significance of the presentation lies in the fact that with the changing political concerns in this area, academic perspectives too have changed. As a subject of scholarly exercise, attention has now shifted from geostrategy and geopolitics to geoeconomics. Locating itself in the domains of geoeconomics and International Political Economy (IPE), this presentation seeks to focus, in particular, on the dynamics of ongoing cooperative trends in the IOR and prospects for their success, and thereby explores the advent of ‘New Regionalism’ in the Indian Ocean, with the help of specially drawn maps, tables, diagrams, and text.
Images of China: Austro-Hungarian Political Cartoons on China, 1894–1914
Monika Lehner, Vienna University
My poster will introduce a source for the history of European images of China, which has been widely ignored up to now: political cartoons and caricatures.
Using a number of Austro-Hungarian periodicals, which are to some extent similar to "The Punch" in Great Britain, the perception of some events in China (e.g. Sino-Japanese War, 100 Days (1898), Boxer Uprising, Russo-Japanese War, 1911 revolution) will be analyzed.
During the two decades before World War I, Austria-Hungary was maybe the most "European" of the Great Powers. Although foreign politics concentrated mostly on the direct neighbors Russia, Germany and Italy, events in Asia, America, and Africa were closely observed by the diplomatic and consular representations all over the world—concentrating on possible repercussions on European affairs.
China had a special role in this process: Austria-Hungary, whose diplomatic representation in Beijing had been established at the end of the 19th century, had not participated in the scramble for concessions (Austria-Hungary had a small concession in Tianjin 1901–1917), but had observed the efforts of both her European partners and her opponents.
But China was also a common topos—Austria was referred to as the "European China" regarding bureaucracy and the lack of flexibility to cope with new developments.
Both aspects will be discussed in the poster, demonstrating that political cartoons provide very striking comments on the events in China, when interpreted with great care and put in a broader context.
Bali’s Transition from a Traditional to a Modern Society: Some Op-Art Warnings about the Tradeoffs
C. Richard Ostrom, California State University, Chico
Perceptive and thoughtful Balinese artists have sought to warn the island’s people about some of the perilous tradeoffs inherent in their transition from a traditional to a modern society. Bali’s transition has been fueled by its development into a world-class tourism destination and the economic benefits many of its people have enjoyed. Inherent in these economic benefits, however, are some perilous tradeoffs.
This poster session will present these costs in the following categories:
1. the commercialization of Bali’s traditional arts and ceremonies
2. the negative impact that the building of tourism facilities are having on the island’s environment
3. the desecration of some of Bali’s Hindu temples
4. the decline of shadow puppet plays as an important agent of socialization
5. the erosion of the traditional morals of Bali’s youth.
Urban Growth, Housing, and Economic Interaction from Bangkok’s "Congested’ Communities"
Curtis N. Thomson, Richard Stockton College
Bangkok is experiencing many growth-related pressures that create enormous needs for land and housing, with markets straining to accommodate the rapid change. In 1980 about 82 percent of Thailand’s population was living in rural areas, but the majority of its urban population resided in Bangkok, which was gaining about 200,000 people per year, resulting in a rapid demand for housing in the region. Such a large increase in new households put tremendous pressure on the housing market and by the mid 1980s, there were concerns that increasing land prices had made housing so expensive that it had restricted potential buyers to those in higher income brackets. In the last decade these conditions have worsened and today there is a serious lack of low-income dwellings with related services and infrastructure.
The result of these conditions is that today approximately one-quarter of Bangkok’s population lives in one of the 1600+ ‘congested communities’ where housing conditions are considered to be harmful to their health and security. This paper will address several aspects of low-income settlements through an examination of housing and economic activity throughout the city. This work begins with a depiction of community distribution, infrastructure, and homogeneity and then uses information from surveys in these communities over the last decade to examine a variety of general characteristics of the residents and reasons why they select a particular community. It will also display how residents of these communities differ in occupations from the larger district and the extent to which their economic interaction extends from a given community.
"The Indigenous Gentleman": George Keyt and the Making of Sri Lankan Modernism
R. Byron Breese, Graduate Theological Union
George Keyt (1901–1993) embodied the model for the development of South Asian modern art. Keyt’s influence is confirmed within India by the likes of the painter M. F. Husain and within Sri Lanka at the numerous events sponsored by his namesake’s foundation. Born into a Burgher family, Keyt benefited from the social opportunities afforded by his Dutch ancestry while his learning of Sinhala granted him access to the Buddhist Sangha and the village practitioners who were his earliest subject matter. Raised a Protestant Christian he rejected Christianity in favor of Theravada Buddhism in the late 1910s, but ultimately adopted mythic Hinduism both as his creative subject matter and his world view. Keyt’s involvement in Sri Lanka’s first modern artist collective, the ‘43 Group, introduced him to the early Cubism of Braque and Picasso, while several trips to India introduced him to Sanskrit literature, Hindu mythology, and the frescoes of the Ajanta caves. This visual presentation will provide an overview of two of Keyt’s personal transformations: the stylistic and the religious as an exemplar of late colonial and early post-colonial South Asian art. Examples of his paintings, illustrations, and personal correspondence as well as quotes from interviews with his friends and colleagues will trace Keyt’s creative development and locate his work in the larger art historical context of twentieth-century modernism.
Keeping the Jungle Out: Discourses on Crime and Deviance in Rural North India
Julia Wardhaugh, University of Wales
This poster presentation is concerned with questions of law and order in rural North India. Both British colonial and Indian perspectives on crime, deviance, and justice will be considered. In particular, the use of the ‘jungle’ as a metaphor for crime and deviance will be explored in relation to both British and Indian discourses. Illustrative materials will be drawn from sources such as Kipling’s (1895) The Second Jungle Book, and ancient Indian legal texts such as the Apastamba Dharmasutra.
The themes outlined above will serve as a backdrop to the main concern of the presentation: the maintenance of law and order in contemporary North India. Based on the presenter’s own fieldwork in a village in western Uttar Pradesh, a number of questions will be addressed. Key among these is the apparent dichotomy between local custom and formal law, and between formal and informal mechanisms of social control. One or more case studies (for example, the practice of child marriage) will be used to highlight such questions.
The visual display for this presentation will include a brief narrative paper, maps, short extracts from relevant texts, and fieldwork photographs.
Indian Dance in the United States
Malini Srirama, Malini’s Dances of India
Malini Srirama is a classical Indian dancer/teacher/ choreographer with more than twenty-five years’ experience in the United States. She has observed and experienced the various changes and developments in the field of Indian dance here in America. Once viewed as exotic and only performed in the cultural capitals, it has proliferated into smaller cities and suburbs.
Malini attributes this boom in popularity to three main factors. First, the amount of funding available to the arts has increased dramatically over the years. Second, the growth in the Indian population has created more of a desire to embrace their native culture. Third, the relaxing of visa regulations has made visiting artists more available.
Malini’s outlook on the future of classical Indian dancing is very positive. She predicts a fusion among dancing styles: a blend that links Western dance styles with classical Indian dancing, thus giving birth to a contemporary Bharatanatya. Malini is also concerned with quality control. If the audience cannot distinguish good dancing from bad, what will happen? If the audience does not appreciate nuances, what is the motivation for the students to learn and for the teachers to educate?
Malini Srirama’s ideas for the poster board revolve around these changes and possible future developments to classical Indian dance as well as Malini’s distinguished dancing career. Malini plans on demonstrating this via: a pictorial timeline; newspaper articles from the past 25 years; and flyers and programs from previous performances.
Unequal Beginnings: Social Class and Parenting in Japan
Yoko Yamamoto, University of California, Berkeley
This study challenges the long-held assumption that Japanese society is egalitarian and children receive equal educational opportunities nationwide. Japan is viewed as an all middle-class society. Education is believed to be a tool to enhance class mobility based on individual efforts and aspirations regardless of family backgrounds in Japan (Kondo, 2000). However, recent findings reveal widening discrepancies in educational opportunities depending on socio-economic status (SES) (Hashimoto, 1999). If the Japanese educational system has accomplished the ability to provide an equal learning opportunity to every child nationwide, why are there increasing discrepancies in the academic achievement of children based on social and economic differences?
The proposed research focuses on SES and its influence on different educational opportunities in the realm of family environment in Japan. The data include questionnaires and open-ended tape-recorded interviews of 116 mothers of yochien-ji, preschoolers, in Osaka and Sapporo. Beliefs about parental roles in supporting their child’s learning during the transition from preschool to elementary school were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. The findings address various aspects of parenting associated with social class and other social factors, such as gender and geographic region. The results suggest that lower SES families perceive themselves as less competent and limit their responsibilities in helping their children’s learning.
What Does Amae mean to Japanese Today? A Multifaceted View of the Concept of Amae
Kazuko Y. Behrens, University of California, Berkeley
This paper reviews the concept of amae, much discussed culture-specific concept in Japan, with a new approach to reconsider its characteristics and functions for Japanese people today. The goal here is not to reduce amae to a single definition, but rather to take a multidimensional approach, and discuss different types of amae beyond a mere theoretical level. I provide anecdotal examples involving amae situations, thus incorporating into a theoretical construct, experiences that average Japanese people are likely to possess. The anecdotes that I provide here are based on two sources of data. One is obtained from a pilot study that was conducted in Japan, interviewing forty mothers of preschool children regarding their general parenting practices and relationships with their children (Holloway and Behrens, in press). The specific amae-related questions were: (1) What are the situations when [Child] wants to do amae? (2) Are there any particular situations when you want [Child] to do amae? (3) Are there any particular situations when you want [Child] to do less amae? Another set of anecdotes is provided by ten native Japanese informants who are mostly professionals and currently reside in California’s Bay Area. They responded to the question, "Have you observed or experienced amae lately?" I have identified five different types of amae in three developmental stages, infancy, childhood, and adulthood. The five types of amae are; Amae—Affective, Amae—Manipulative, Amae—Reciprocal, Amae—Abusive, and Amae—Presumptive. I discuss each type in context with focus on intentionality, hierarchy, intimacy, and instrumentality and provide evidence to illustrate the construct.
Women Organizing to Impact Legislation: The Role of Human Rights Groups in Creating the 2001 Domestic Violence Prevention Law in Japan
Ruth Grubel, Kwansei Gakuin University
Until recently, violence among family members was not considered a matter for government interference in Japan. Corporal punishment of children and violence between spouses were considered unsavory, but not unusual realities of family life. However, as Japanese citizens became aware of anti-harassment and anti-violence movements in other countries, and became conscious of suffering among family members in their own communities, they began to seek solutions. One of these solutions aimed at addressing the problem of domestic violence was national legislation to protect the victims. Representatives from various human rights and social action groups led information campaigns and lobbying efforts to urge the Diet to create legislation which would prevent abuse by spouses or lovers. Because many of the rights group members are women, this campaign has been another example of women’s impact on policymaking in recent years. This poster presentation will chart the course of events and the various groups involved in the creation of the Domestic Violence Prevention Law of 2001.
Beyond Borders: Transnationalization of Japanese Domestic Actors in Global Atmospheric Politics
Atsuko Sato, University of Hawaii, Manoa
In analyzing Japan’s policy on global atmospheric issues, including ozone layer depletion and climate change, one phenomenon has become strikingly clear: the emergence of transnational networks composed of traditional domestic actors who share knowledge, discourses, values, and beliefs beyond borders. This new phenomenon, which I call the transnationalization of domestic actors, has eroded the traditional distinction between the domestic and international. This paper examines the erosion of this distinction via a focus on Japan. More specifically, I examine the changing role of Japan’s domestically-based actors—including business and environmental groups—concerning the issue of ozone layer depletion and climate change. In general, I argue that the transnationalization of domestic actors has provided hitherto unavailable channels to exercise political power in general and to influence Japan’s policy concerning the global atmosphere in particular. The main conclusions of my analysis are as follows: domestic Japanese actors have succeeded in shaping policy through the creation of horizontally-organized, transnational networks. These networks allow for quicker, more coordinated and therefore more effective responses. They are particularly effective when corresponding networks exist with key government agencies—as in the relationship between certain Japanese business interests and MITI. Even without strong ties to government, however, the emerging transnational networks are upsetting orthodox bureaucratic policymaking in Japan.
The Path of Grammar Change in the Japanese Connective Nagara
Hidemi Sugi, University of California, Los Angeles
In the field of Historical Linguistics there are two dominant theories of semantic change, namely that of Traugott’s theory of unidirectionality and Bybee’s theory of frequency. Both attempt to account for the mechanism of language change but do so taking two very different approaches. Traugott posits that concrete meanings tend to become abstract over time, and attributes the mechanism of semantic change to the development of subjectification. Bybee, on the other hand, attributes semantic change to the frequency of words in certain contexts, the more frequently a word is used the more likely it is to undergo semantic change. Academics tend to treat these two theories as diametrically opposed; however this perception is inaccurate.
A detailed analysis of the change in meaning of Japanese connective nagara (English: while, although) over the past 1,300 years indicates that both hypotheses are necessary to completely and accurately account for the word’s semantic odyssey. Originally a stative/ temporal connective, nagara took on concessive and then temporal meanings over time. While the theory of unidirectionality provides the framework by which we can explain this transformation at a high level, it is not until we apply the theory of frequency that we understand the specific motivation for this change. The current research will show how two historical linguistic frameworks, generally considered antipodal by modern scholarship, can in fact compliment each other. As such, this analysis is intended to assist Japanese language teachers’ ability to account for nagara’s confusing polysemy.
The Japanese Challenge to Conventional (Western) Theories of Corporate Trade Policy Preferences
Mark Elder, Michigan State University
This paper argues that standard theories of corporate trade policy preferences do not adequately explain the trade policy preferences of many large Japanese companies in important manufacturing industries. There are a number of important and puzzling instances in which large exporters like autos appear to support, or at least acquiesce in, protection for key supplier industries like steel. This contradicts standard theories (mainly based on the experience of the U.S. and Europe) which argue that companies which are highly export dependent and have extensive multinational operations should oppose protection, particularly for key inputs. It also contradicts theories that argue that globalization should intensify the free trade preferences of multinational/export oriented companies. The standard argument is that protection not only raises the price of the inputs, thereby harming exporters’ price competitiveness, but it also can stimulate retaliation by their customer countries. This paper will argue that several industrial organization issues and possibilities for logrolling coalitions can result in corporate trade policy preferences that are different from what is predicted by conventional theories. In particular, export industries in Japan appear to acquiesce in or support protection for key supplier industries in return for compensation which often takes the form of protection for themselves in their home market. Protection was often made less transparent (often taking the form of lax enforcement of the antimonopoly law) in order to avoid retaliation (from the U.S.), which was not always credible. There will also be brief comparisons with other cases in Japan and other countries. This analysis shows that the study of the Japanese case can help us to create a more general picture of the determinants of trade policy preferences. This focus on the determinants of trade policy preferences also fits in with the conference theme of the nexus between comparative politics and international relations.
Interpersonal Conflict Resolution: Mongolian Men as Cultural Text(s)
Andrew Jared Critchfield, Howard University
The purpose of this poster presentation is to discuss interpersonal conflict resolution practices in Mongolia. Additionally, it is interesting to define conflict within another culture as perceptions of conflict, or an escalating conflict, are culturally defined and biased. Data was collected during focus groups conducted with young Mongolian men and by ethnographic fieldwork during three extended visits to Mongolia.
Mongolia is an interesting nation of study due to the significant influences and recent reigns of neighboring China and Russia on local culture and practices, its recent democratic gains and continued Communist influence, and its increased interaction with other foreign nations and donor nations, such as Japan and the U.S.
Conflict resolution between individuals in other Asian countries, most notably China, is compared and contrasted to Mongolian practices of ignoring the conflict, addressing the offending other vocally, shouting about the conflict, or a solution-seeking physical interaction.
The Slanting Parallel Lines: A Study of the Oblique Projection in the Rule-Line Depiction of Architecture
Jin Feng, Purdue University
In the rule-line style paintings of ancient Chinese architecture, slanting lines on the sides of buildings project the architectural form into the created depth of space. In most of the cases, this projection of the third dimension is a parallel projection. Without this projection, the architectural form can only be flat. In parallel projections, the oblique projection is usually reduced in scale to obtain a realistic proportion of the side of the building. In literatures on the rule-line paintings, however, these very important technical issues on how to define the oblique angle and the reduction rate of the projection lines have not been discussed. This poster presents a study that explores the oblique angles and reduction rate in a survey of rule-line style paintings of different periods of time. It will report the measured angles and observable oblique reduction rate in the surveyed paintings and examine their relationship with individual painters and historical periods. A theory to explain how the ancient painters defined and constructed these lines will also be proposed based on mathematical inductions and archaeological evidences.
Building an Academic Library’s Chinese Collection from Next-to-Nothing to Something: A Case Study
C. David Hickey, University of Florida
Librarians and faculty must work closely within tight budget limits to develop academic library collections that serve the particular curricular and research needs of the field or area of study at their institution. In the area of Chinese Studies at the University of Florida, the library collection manager strives to collect vernacular materials that support the undergraduate programs, satisfy the research interests of faculty and students as reflected in the upper-level courses offered year-to-year, and build a core of appropriate materials for future master’s degree expansion. This poster session examines basic selection criteria, various mechanisms used to elicit faculty and knowledgeable staff assistance in identifying titles from vendor print and online catalogs, the taking up, where possible, of opportunities like American Library Association-assisted participation in the Hong Kong Book Fair, the subsequent final selection process, and the complications in getting the material ordered, cataloged and shelved. A new system being implemented to enable library patrons to view University of Florida Chinese and Japanese catalog records in vernacular form will have major implications for enhancing collection development and usage.
China’s Internet Policy between Technological Development and Political Reaction
Jens Damm, Freie Universtät, Berlin
This poster will present results of fieldwork carried out in February and March 2002 by a group of researchers from the Center of Chinese and East Asian Studies (FU Berlin, Germany) working on a two-year research project (funded by the DFG).
The research will focus on different aspects of China’s Internet Policy, e-government in a macro perspective, content analysis of the web presentation of local/regional political communities and the impact of e-commerce from a foreign company perspective.
A major research concern is focusing on the problem of political institutions’ adjustment to technological change and the resulting consequences to the stability of governmental control. Since the mid-1990s, the PRC has been implementing an active Internet policy after hesitating and temporary focusing on scientific objectives in the beginning. Meanwhile the number of users increased from 2.1 million in 1999 to over 27 million in 2001.
The two main objectives of this regulative policy of the Chinese leadership are contradictory at first sight: on the one hand, there is the conflict between the control attempt of the Internet and its usage by the Chinese state and on the other hand, there is the contribution to economy development by technological modernization in the fields of information and communication.
Research carried out in the social sciences so far has been very limited. Therefore this research project focuses on analyzing the consequences for the political decision makers of the PRC as a process which will fundamentally redefine the Chinese information policy as a central instrument far maintaining the Chinese Communist Party’s autocratic rule.
Islamic Calligraphy in China: Traditional Styles and Recent Innovations
Ma Yiping, Independent Scholar
The Muslim population of China dates back to the Tang period (618–907), and over the past 1,300 years different styles of Arabic calligraphy have evolved and been maintained throughout different regions of China. Some of the most exquisite examples of early Chinese Islamic calligraphy can be found in the Great Mosque in Xi’an, where Ma Yiping serves as an imam. One of China’s most well-known Arabic calligraphers, Ma Yiping first studied under master calligrapher Chen Jinhui in Beijing, and later at Medina Islamic University in Saudi Arabia and at Al-Azhar in Cairo. His knowledge of Arabic calligraphy includes both the traditional styles of Shaanxi and other Muslim regions of China, but also the classical calligraphic styles of the Muslim Middle East.
For his poster session at the AAS, Ma will display examples of different Chinese Arabic calligraphy styles of northwest China with written explanations in both Chinese and English of the characteristics of each style, as well as a translation of the meaning.
During his two-hour presentation, Ma Yiping will personally introduce Chinese Islamic calligraphy by writing out individual examples of major styles. By personally demonstrating the unique techniques of this important religious artistic tradition, Ma will provide an exceptional opportunity for AAS scholars to have a better understanding of this important but almost completely unknown subject which blends artistic styles from two great cultural traditions.
Organizer, Chair and Discussant: J. Thomas Rimer, University of Pittsburgh
Keywords: Japan, China, Korea, theatre (modern).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Japan was considered by other countries in East Asia as possessing a progressive culture able to successfully engage with new ideas and attitudes from Europe. A striking example in the arts can be found in early efforts to create a Japanese spoken theatre based on European models which by the beginning of the twentieth century had begun to challenge hegemony of kabuki with political engagement and a fresh focus on contemporary cultural and psychological issues.
Inspired by the challenge of these new forms, young intellectuals in Japan took to these new theatrical movements with enthusiasm. Students from China and Korea, resident in Tokyo, were powerfully inspired by the Japanese example. Their efforts brought about similar movements to found a spoken drama in those two countries as well.
Subsequent decades often saw these early efforts thwarted. In colonial Korea, it was ironically the Japanese occupation authorities who curbed many of these theatrical activities. In China, Mao and the Communists destroyed the possibility of creating a viable and critical spoken drama until quite recently. Nevertheless, the roots for the vibrant contemporary theatre now found in all three countries began in Tokyo a century ago.
These connections have been little studied until now, partially because of the language difficulties involved. This panel involves participants from all three countries and doubtless marks the first time when these historical forces have been examined in any systematic way.
New Theatrical Developments in Tokyo: 1890–1930
Shinko Matsumoto, Waseda University
The period under consideration involves the activities of those participating, both from Japan and abroad, in three aspects of the evolution of the Japanese theatre.
Historically speaking, the first of these was the development in the last decade or so of the nineteenth century of overtly political plays, usually referred to as sôshi shibai, in which such theatrical innovators as Kawakami Otojirô (1864–1911) were involved.
The second and most important of the movements in China and Korea involves the creation and evolution of shimpa ("new style theatre"), created roughly at the same time, which proved a usable and popular bridge for audiences from the traditional kabuki to the possibilities inherent in a spoken drama. In the early decades of the twentieth century, it was a powerful and highly appreciated form of theatrical representation. While certain features of kabuki were often retained, such as the use of onnagata or men playing women’s roles, shimpa proved a powerful example of how a contemporary theatre could make artistic advances while still attracting large audiences.
The third involves shingeki ("new theater"), spoken drama based directly on such European models as Ibsen and Chekhov. Tsubouchi Shôyô (1859–1935), later to become famous for his pioneering translations of Shakespeare, was an important founder of the movement with his Literary Society, but many of the achievements in this form during the early decades were due to the efforts and great talents of Osanai Kaoru (1881–1928), whose early productions beginning in 1909 of Ibsen, Gorky, and others fired a whole generation. His efforts were consolidated in the formation of the Tsukiji Shôgekijô (Tsukiji Little Theatre) in 1924, which stood at the vanguard of such experiments until Osanai’s death four years later.
Such was the background of experimentation in the midst of which the Korean and Chinese students found themselves.
The Development of a Modern Chinese Theatre: The Japanese Connection
Steven Liu, University of Pittsburgh
A number of young Chinese intellectuals resident in Tokyo became interested in the possibilities of a true theatre and joined together to find a means to bring about changes in traditional Chinese drama. Perhaps the most important of them was Lu Jingruo (1885–1915), who studied with Tsubouchi Shôyô. Later, his colleague Ouyang Yuqian (1889–1962) would become active in presenting productions in Shanghai, the urban center most open to experiment in the arts. Lu also studied with two leading shimpa actors, Fujisawa Asajirô (1866–1917) and Ii Yôhô (1871–1932).
Fired by his new enthusiasm for Western drama, Lu and his associates, who called themselves the Spring Willow Society, attempted productions in Tokyo for the many Chinese residents of the city, presenting works of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Molière, and Tolstoy, but without much early success. Their production of a dramatization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, on the other hand, with its obvious political implications for the semi-colonial China at that period, remains a major moment in the prewar history of Chinese modern theatre. The group also performed plays by a popular Japanese playwright of the period Satô Kôroku (1874–1949).
The coming of the war and other problems caused a halt in many of these activities, but for this first generation of Chinese writers and actors, the Japanese example, and the friendships they established with Japanese mentors and colleagues while living in Tokyo, remained an important inspiration throughout their lives.
The Movement Towards a Modern Korean Theatre
Jae-Oh Choi, University of Pittsburgh
The example of Japan remained very important for those inspired to begin a spoken theatre movement in Korea. The presence of Korean students in Tokyo, as in the Chinese case, provided the stimulus needed to begin these undertakings. As in the Chinese case, the contact between Korean students and their Japanese mentors proved crucial.
Probably the most important person who undertook this activity was Kim U-jin (1897–1926), who studied at Waseda University (with Shôyô and others). His energies helped create among those Korean students in Tokyo a group entitled the Society of Comradeship, dedicated to these new theatrical forms. Another member of the group, Hong Hae-song (1893–1957) apprenticed with Osanai Kaoru. Kim as leader of the group made a tour in Korea performing spoken drama as early as the summer of 1921.
Another important group formed by Korean students resident in Japan was the Earth and Moon Group founded two years later, in 1922. The leader of the group, Pak Sung-hui (1901–1964), produced productions of his own plays as well as works by Chekhov and Ibsen. These activities culminated in the formation of the Theatre Arts Research Society in 1931.
As the movement developed in Korea, the sometimes covert political nature of these productions brought about surveillance and censorship from the colonial Japanese government. Ironically, it was not until the postwar period that a movement begun in Japan could come to full flower on Korean soil.
Organizer: Elizabeth Sinn, University of Hong Kong
Chair: Siu-lun Wong, University of Hong Kong
Discussant: Adam McKeown, Northeastern University
Keywords: Chinese diaspora, internal migration, Chinese history, women, transnationalism.
The study of Chinese migration has made significant progress in recent years. It is no longer mired in issues such as assimilation and adaptation in the receiving countries and the migrant’s cultural, social, and economic ties to the qiaoxiang are also being amply examined. ‘Transnationalism,’ ‘globalization,’ ‘deterritorization’ and other concepts further inform the discussion. This panel aims at providing ideas that may open up yet newer horizons.
The first paper shows that the migration of Chinese ‘overseas’ in late Imperial China may be seen as the extension in recent centuries of deeply-imbedded internal migration. While showing that the Chinese diaspora was not a marginal phenomenon in Chinese history, it also shows that the history of ‘nations’ could be reconstructed in flexible, nonboundaried terms. The second paper looks at ‘in-between places,’ points of intersection where many different migratory trajectories meet. It argues that they provide coherence and unity that transform the mere movement of peoples into ‘diaspora.’ The third paper enters but transcends the old discourse on the ‘absence of women’ among Chinese and Indian migrant communities in the United States. Stressing the economic conditions that had prevented the migration of women with their men, this paper demonstrates the links between the processes of agrarian change and patterns of migration, thus highlighting the hitherto neglected interconnectedness between different global processes. All three papers offer points for comparative studies and highlight the dynamic linkages between multiple processes.
The Historical Ecology of Chinese Migration
Philip A. Kuhn, Harvard University
The survival strategies of Chinese families during the late Imperial period were formed around particularisms of region, ritual, occupation and kinship. These particularisms formed the structure of a massive internal migration, of which the external ‘diaspora’ was a by-product. Familiar aspects of the diaspora, such as qiaoxiang, sojourning and chain migration were well-developed social realities within late-Imperial society.
"Where are the Women?" A Global Perspective on Cantonese and Punjabi Male Immigrations to the United States
Sucheta Mazumdar, Duke University
Standard narratives of the first phase of Chinese and Indian immigration to the U.S. stress the absence of women in these communities. In the Chinese case, although this was the largest group of immigrants from Asia, there were over 103,000 Chinese men in the U.S. and fewer than 4,000 women in 1890, and the vast majority of these women were either prostitutes or wives of merchants. Punjabi migration tells a similar story. Although there were probably as many as 10,000 Punjabi in California around 1910, records indicate that there were fewer than a dozen women who emigrated, and that too after the 1920s. This skewed gender ratio has been explained by reference to either cultural constraints such as bound feet, filial piety, and so on, or the political and economic barriers erected by the racist policies of the U.S. Immigration Services. However, as this paper intents to show, this narrative of arrival and the lens through which Asian immigration history of the U.S. is viewed is deeply flawed. The paper argues that by incorporating a global perspective that links the processes of agrarian change in these two regions of Asia with patterns of migration we can arrive at a better understanding of Cantonese and Punjabi migration patterns.
In-Between Places: The Key Role of Localities of Transit in Chinese Migration
Elizabeth Sinn, University of Hong Kong
The migration process should not be viewed only as one of getting from one place to another. Often, it is a stop-and-go relay process covering many intermediate points. Over time, major hubs emerged, the intersections of tens of thousands of different migratory trajectories. I call these ‘in-between places,’ and this paper looks at nineteenth and early twentieth-century Hong Kong as a key ‘in-between’ place in the Chinese diaspora. It examines the infrastructures—physical, social, political, cultural, and religious—that enabled it to act as a transit point not just for people but also for consumer goods, ideas, remittances and other funds, news, entertainment, human remains. It argues that Hong Kong not only made it possible for people to leave China, but for them to maintain ties with and to return to China in multifarious forms, thus providing the coherence and unity that transformed the mere movements of individuals into a diaspora. It emphasizes the fluidity and multi-directional nature of Chinese migration and asks how far ‘in-between places’ acted as catalysts to the dynamic process. It raises a more general question of whether ‘in-between places’ also exist and operate in the migration of other peoples, and what roles they may have played in shaping the world history of migration.
Organizer: Alexis Dudden, Connecticut College
Chair: Mark Bradley, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Discussant: Marilyn B. Young, New York University
Keywords: state identity, human rights, memory.
The emergence of a new politics of human rights is reshaping international politics. As demonstrators in Genoa recently brought into relief, the circulation of people and standards that comprise these new politics are as much an element of the phenomenon of globalization as is the more celebrated transnational flow of capital. Shifting the focus from the sovereignty of the nation to the rights of individuals, the interaction between the local and the global in human rights claims is clearly redrawing boundaries between the rights of individuals, states, and the international community.
This panel examines claims against a variety of Asian pasts. Our three fifteen-minute presentations juxtapose differing perspectives, methodologies, and concerns, but together they underscore the need to consider Asia’s volatile recent histories in a border-crossing venue. Importantly, they foreground the global crisscross of the present-day discourse of human rights claims on the past. In her paper, Alexis Dudden posits the reflexive nature of Japan’s official apologies for the state’s imperial past and argues that the international practice of apology may empower the state in ways that potentially contradict the atonement sought by human rights activists. Lindsay French focuses on a variety of meanings attending the circulation of images and narratives concerning Cambodia in the wake of the Khmer Rouge’s rule. Finally, Namhee Lee examines layered presumptions inherent to South Korea’s Cold War era national identity, analyzing how the South’s anticommunism policy has both defined the state against the North as well as sustained human rights violations within its borders.
Japan’s Reflexive Apologies
Alexis Dudden, Connecticut College
Contemporary war crimes investigations are establishing themselves as increasingly common elements of engagement between nations. Moreover, recent examples from around the world have also shown it both possible and desirable to hold living national leaders accountable for their nations’ past. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, national leaders—Japan’s included—have become guilty points of reference for the history of their countries. The apologies they utter authorize cash atonement as well as inscribe new national definitions.
My paper concerns Japan’s apologies to South Korea during the 1990s in relation to the complicated and mutually lived colonial past that the countries share. As Japanese, Korean, and other human rights activists have made their demands for Japan’s atonement known around the world, the compressed international atmosphere of apology has only further encouraged pundits to wear their "Japan-as-different-from-the-norm" lenses, ascribing particularistic explanations to Japan and its practice of apology. The myopic "why Japan?" approach at once allows Japanese national aggrandizers to complain that the rest of the world always singles out Japan for retribution and attack as well as more commonly continuing to ask why Japan cannot be more like Germany. My paper attempts to step around this debate by focusing instead on how internationally reflexive apologies indicate a new and vital component of national definition and legitimacy that may likely prove counter to what activists have been demanding.
The Artists’ Turn
Lindsay French, Rhode Island School of Art & Design
This paper considers the role of art in the ongoing process of constructing collective understandings of recent history in Cambodia. Understanding that the past is no more fixed than the future, and that history is as politically and emotionally fraught as events in the present, this paper looks at how various writers, painters, actors, directors, and curators have used their art to understand their own and others’ experiences in Cambodia, and to promote a particular perspective on the past. Among other topics, the paper considers the difference between art and propaganda, the rights of memory, the differences between history and memorialization, and the role of outsiders in the telling of a painful past.
In the Name of Our State: Anti-Communism, Human Rights and Dissension in South Korea
Namhee Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
I argue that anticommunism in post-colonial South Korea, a "created category" between Koreanness and the Other, constituted a self-identity of the South Korean state and society. The birth and sovereignty of the South Korean state were contingent upon the existence of North Korea as the Other. At the same time, North Korea’s difference, its separate ideological, political and cultural development embodied in its Juche Ideology, was a source of crisis to the imaginary representations of South Korea as a legitimate entity. The process of otherizing North Korea and the concomitant and systematic violation of human rights carried out under the national policy of anticommunism were a part of the nation-building process.
I also argue that anticommunism in South Korea increasingly has taken a form of Orientalist discourse, the material basis of which is South Korea’s "superiority" in the areas of economy, political development, and international standing. The globalization and internationalization (segyehwa) initiated by former president Kim Yong Sam has brought new attitudes and perspectives toward North Korea. At the same time, there has been a parallel development of orientalistic assumptions and attitudes towards North Korea. These assumptions and attitudes are manifest most clearly in South Korea’s northern policy but are also revealed in South Korea’s policy toward its own political prisoners.
Organizer: Eun Mee Kim, Ewha Womans University
Chair and Discussant: Hagen Koo, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Keywords: Asian financial crisis, economics, political science, sociology, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia.
In 1997, Asia was swept up in the worst financial crisis it ever experienced since many of its rapidly growing economies began their march toward industrialization. The financial crisis quickly moved through Asia starting from Thailand in early summer to Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and to South Korea. By early December, South Korea signed a relief package with the IMF, trying to save itself from a national bankruptcy. However, Malaysia under the leadership of Mahathir refused to receive a relief loan and the requisite "structural adjustment" package from the IMF.
Five years have now passed, and it is critical that we take stock of what has happened to these once rapidly growing economies. It is pertinent that we reassess the causes of the crisis, since there were domestic economic and political circumstances, which in some cases exacerbated the crisis, while in others helped to abort the crisis. Secondly, it is important to examine the solutions implemented in each country. Finally, it is critical to provide recommendations for sustained growth in the region since the financial crisis has hampered short-term growth.
This panel brings scholars from Asia and the United States, representing the different disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology. These scholars have all been actively engaged in the research of the respective economies long before the financial crisis. Thus, they are able to bring first-hand research from a longer historical horizon. The papers also address both the broader issues as well as empirical case studies from specific countries. The first two papers provide a broad overview and analysis of the crisis, while the last two papers bring empirical research from Thailand and South Korea.
East Asian Recovery from Crisis and Sustainable Growth Prospects
K. S. Jomo, University of Malaya
The paper will focus on the prospects for sustained development in the four East Asian economies most adversely affected by the crises of 1997–98. These include all three second-tier Southeast Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs)—Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia—as well as South Korea, the most adversely affected first-generation newly industrialized economy (NIE).
The circumstances leading to the onset of the East Asian crises of 1997–98 are reviewed to assess whether and how the East Asian ‘models’ may have contributed to the crises. Macroeconomic indicators in Malaysia and the three most crisis-affected economies—i.e. Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea—are reviewed to establish that despite some misdemeanors, the crises cannot be attributed to macroeconomic profligacy.
The discussion of economic recovery in the region begins by asserting that recovery in the region since 1999, especially in Korea and Malaysia, has been principally due to successful reflationary measures, both fiscal and monetary.
Instead of the Anglo-American-inspired reforms currently being touted, reforms should create new conditions for further ‘catching up’ throughout the region. Although the prospects for international financial system reform remain dim, a reform agenda in the interests of the South will be outlined.
The Asian Financial Crisis: Some Lingering Controversies
Tun-jen Cheng, College of William and Mary
While the Asian financial crisis seems to be over, three controversies about it remain unresolved. The first controversy addresses the cause and cure for this crisis. The second debate pertains to the role of political institutions in crisis management. The third controversy centers on the idea of forming an Asian Monetary Fund. The Asian financial crisis may be ending too prematurely, making it impossible to assess competing explanations on various aspects of this crisis.
Thailand After the Crisis: Transparency, Good Governance, and Challenges of Upgrading in the Sugar Industry
Richard F. Doner and Ansil Ramsay, Emory University
Thailand’s financial meltdown initiated in the 1997 East Asian crisis. But problems in the "real" sector began to emerge prior to the onset of the crisis and may prove to be more significant than those in finance. Overcapacity and declining exports reflected a loss of competitive advantage in labor-intensive products and a general failure to improve product quality and to reduce costs. Although most evident in manufactured goods, these problems also plague agriculture, including sugar. In past decades, low labor and land costs enabled Thailand to become one of the top three sugar exporters in the world. Now rising labor and land costs, coupled with liberalization of world agricultural markets, mean that Thailand must improve cane yields to remain competitive.
This paper builds on several years of fieldwork and secondary data collection to explore the political and institutional bases of early Thai success in sugar, recent problems, and new initiatives to address these challenges. Theoretically, the paper develops a framework that combines political economy with new institutional economics. The core argument is that past success reflected significant institutional arrangements that went well beyond neoclassical expectations; however, those arrangements require significant modification to address the challenge of upgrading. The paper is especially significant given the relative shortage of political analyses of agricultural sectors in Southeast Asia.
Korean Business Groups in the Middle of the Asian Crisis: Tracking Down Networked Changes
Eun Mee Kim, Ewha Womans University; Dukjin Chang, University of Chicago
Up until the 1997 crisis, Asian business organizations had been well known for their connectedness through business networks. The crisis seems to have changed the major academic discourse from a focus on networks to the state-market debate. We revert to the traditional academic interest to examine what changes have occurred in the Korean business networks before and after the crisis. Using equity holding data for Korea’s top 30 chaebol business groups across a five-year span from 1996 to 2000, we closely follow the changes in these networks, deriving strategy implications.
The analysis returns several empirical findings and theoretical suggestions. First, despite the crisis and the changed academic discourse, networks are still there mediating between market forces and business group resistance to such forces. This suggests that networks matter not only in times of thriving, but also in times of hardship. Second, based on the analysis of equity network, there are different types of adaptation strategy to the changing market environment. The commonality is that they all take advantage of their relatedness—i.e., networks—that they had built before the crisis to increase the chances for survival. Third, it seems that in economies where hierarchical networks prevail there is a hidden dimension of moral hazard. In this type of environment owners of business groups can lower their equity share while still controlling the business group through hierarchical networks.
Organizer: Patricia Schiaffini, University of Pennsylvania
Chair: Hsiao-yen Peng, Academia Sinica
Discussant: Ayako Kano, University of Pennsylvania
This panel addresses some of the dilemmas and contradictions writers under colonial situations have to face: knowing when to resist and when to cooperate with the colonial presence in order to survive and engage in creative work; borrowing ideological or linguistic forms from the metropolis in order to better reject its colonial discourse; and finding ways to be true to oneself while transgressing the identities imposed on them both by the colonialists and by the colonized.
Jina Kim’s paper focuses on the works of Kang Kyong-ae, a female Korean writer in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, and her struggle to surpass gender, cultural and national barriers. This paper explores the significance place has in Kang’s works, at a time when Korean people were denied of a country of their own. Bert Scruggs focuses on the Taiwan author Yang Kui during Japan’s occupation of Taiwan and, more particularly, with his involvement in Japanese leftist political circles. In order to determine the extent of the author’s ideological and literary relationship with Japanese proletarian literature, Yang’s works are examined together with those of Kobayashi Takiji, one of its most important representatives. Patricia Schiaffini analyzes how the changing ethnic policies regarding Chinese-occupied Tibet affected Tibetan writers, with special attention to the works of Tashi Dawa, a Sino-Tibetan author who, in spite of being educated as a Han, received an imposed "Tibetan" identity when the creation of modern Tibetan literature was officially promoted.
The study of Kang’s prose elucidates the predicaments of a colonial writer who had to come to terms with her multiple identities: as a writer under Japanese colonial rule, as a woman in a patriarchal society, and as minority in a foreign land. Yang’s life presents the paradox of a colonial writer who borrowed subversive ideological premises from the metropolis in order to oppose class oppression in both the metropolis and his own land. Tashi Dawa’s ethnic and cultural hybridity exemplifies the case of those colonial writers who, having access to colonialist and local cultures, are often alienated from both. In sum, this panel explores the creative venues of three Asian writers who tried to define their identities amidst the colonial crossfire.
A Place of Their Own: Korean Woman’s Literature in Manchuria
Jina Kim, University of Washington
Manchuria, unlike many other regions in East Asia, is often represented in a singular or simplistic image in Korean historiography and in Korean literature. Far from the idyllic images of green pastures and fertile farmlands, Manchuria is often represented as war-torn, poverty stricken, barren and frigid. In Korean historiography, Manchuria is, more often than not, a place of nationalist or revolutionary activity. This kind of simplistic image, I will argue, denies the place of its history and the identity of the Korean Manchurian author in literary history.
Charles Armstrong eloquently muses that perhaps, "modern nationalism . . . is often first articulated by those who have left their country of origin" and that perhaps, "exiles who feel the loss of a nation most acutely . . . see themselves as most qualified to define what the nation is" (see note 1) as the case might be with Kang Kyong-ae. I will explore the significance of the place of Jiandao (Kando in Korean) in Kang Kyong-ae’s (1907–1943) writings, particularly through her autobiographical essays on Kando and short story "Salt."
In reading Kang, I will pay particular attention to the "place" and situate the place of Kando (or the larger region called Manchuria) in a larger historical context in order to bring to relief the relationship between Korea and Manchuria and a Korean woman writer’s Japanese colonial experience in Manchuria. Kang’s essays reveal a seemingly odd juxtaposition of place and history. By this, I mean that this minority author brings together concepts that would be at odds with each other. History would suggest movement and passage of time. On the other hand, place would appear to be fixed. Yet the interplay of these two independent concepts produces an array of motion from which we can examine and question the boundaries of nations, histories, and identities and how Korean people traversed through these boundaries, especially during a moment in history when they were denied of their own nation (Japanese occupation of Korea 1905–1945)—a place of their own. Thus, this paper will problematize "nation," "citizenship," and "gender" through close readings of Kang Kyong-ae, a Korean woman author writing and living in Manchuria during the Japanese colonial period.
1. Charles Armstrong, "Centering the Periphery: Manchurian Exile(s) and the North Korean State," Korean Studies 19, no. 1 (1995).
Deckhands, Paperboys, and Capitalists: Early Twentieth-Century Proletarian Literature in Taiwan and Japan
Bert M. Scruggs, University of Pennsylvania
Following the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party success in 1917, giddy communist authors and labor organizers in East Asia strove to establish their own proletarian governments. The Japanese and Taiwanese intelligentsia were especially active; and, though literary Bolsheviks remained a minority in both locales their work reached audiences sufficiently large to anger more conventional literati and attract violent, sometimes deadly, government reactions. Particularly interesting is the participation of Taiwanese, Japan’s colonial subjects, in Japanese leftist political circles and the leftist bundan during the early twentieth century.
This essay elucidates ideological struggles and literary linkages between Taiwanese and Japanese proletarian literature. I examine the authors Yang Kui (Yô Ki) and Kobayashi Takiji (Xiaolin Duoxi’er) and their respective works "The Paperboy" (Shinbun Haitatsufu [tr: Song bao fu]) and "The Factory Ship" (Kani Kôsen [Xie gong chuan]) in particular because the plight of exploited workers is central to both works and reveals similar socio-political concerns; and, the trope also presents well the leftist idiom and narrative style of the era for critical examination and interpretation. Such analysis reveals and elucidates the overlapping and conflicting hegemonies/regimes of national and class identities inherent in the authors’ lives and their characters’ worlds as well as exposes stylistic conventions the authors served. Finally, with the work of these authors I attempt to shed light on the idea of individual free will, or agency, in cultural identity—whether such an identity is predicated on class, ethnicity, or some other human quality.
Imposed Identities: Creating "Tibetan" Literary Voices in the PRC
Patricia Schiaffini, University of Pennsylvania
The first secular literary works published in Tibet following the end of the Cultural Revolution were mostly politicized and not very creative essays and poems written by Han cadres, and by a few Tibetans educated in Han territories or inside the People’s Liberation Army. Partly because of the devastating effects of the Cultural Revolution on Tibetan culture, and partly because of the lack of a secular tradition in Tibetan literature, the Han editors sent to work in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) at the end of the 1970s were initially unable to locate modern Tibetan writers. A strong belief in Deng Xiaoping’s liberalizing policies, mixed with a sense of Socialist "civilizing" duty, and a regret for the oppression imposed by the Cultural Revolution in Tibet inspired these Han editors to seek Tibetan intellectuals who could invigorate Tibetan culture and develop a modern literature of Tibet. When they failed, their zeal to bring modern literature to Tibet let them to create "Tibetan" writers and to impose a set of characteristics for Tibetan literature.
This paper deals both with the creation of "Tibetan" identities for a few young ethnically hybrid writers who had been educated in Han territories—with special attention to the case of the writer Tashi Dawa—and the establishment of a set of official rules these "new-born Tibetans" should follow in their literary creation. This study also explores the effect that changing ethnic policies in occupied Tibet had on the lives of Tibetan intellectuals, who were sometimes asked to embrace Han culture, and sometimes asked to show their Tibetanness.
Although the 1980s finally brought about a new generation of talented Tibetan writers who developed a modern literature in their homeland, the contradictions of the Chinese colonial rule over Tibet had already created culturally and ethnically hybrid Sino-Tibetan writers who, due to their often imposed and always ambiguous identities, feel caught in the politics of ethnicity, language, and nation.
Organizer: Jiweon Shin, Harvard University
Chair: Kathleen L. Lodwick, Pennsylvania State University
Discussant: Daniel H. Bays, Calvin College
Keywords: Christianity, East Asia, indigenization, conversion, nationalism.
Christianity was transplanted in East Asia in the context of colonization and modernization. The impact it had in each society was profound, not only in the realm of religion but also in other spheres of the society. The study of Christianity so far has relatively been limited to theology, missiology, church history, and religious studies. However, the social phenomena related to the reception/indigenization of Christianity deserve more diverse academic attention. The purpose of this panel is two-fold: (1) to promote academic inquiry/research on Christianity in East Asia through interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology, cultural history, anthropology, and area studies; and (2) to understand the societal phenomena incurred by Christianity from global/comparative perspectives. Chong Bum Kim explores the interpretation of Christian doctrine in Korean Protestantism, showing how Christianity was appropriated in light of traditional culture/religion. John Stanley, tracing the process of change in evangelical methods in Shandong, China, explains how missiological methodology adapts to domestic circumstances. Lida Nedilsky applies techniques of cultural analysis, narrating the conversion of the intellectuals in Hong Kong: she points out the dialectic relationship between convert and collective in the establishment of civil society. Jiweon Shin analyzes the implantation period of Christianity in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan from a comparative perspective: utilizing ‘institutional approach’ in sociology of culture, the study argues for the viability of political/economic/ cultural resources for Christianity to stabilize its social niches. Combined, this panel emphasizes the importance of cultural, social, and political contexts in the indigenization process, encompassing interdisciplinary frameworks/methodologies from micro-cultural to macro-structural levels.
Kil Son-ju (1869–1935) and Millennialism: The Culture and Politics of Protestantism in Colonial Korea
Chong Bum Kim, Harvard University
Kil Son ju (1869–1935) is a central figure in the history of Protestantism in Korea. Hailed by some as "the father of Christianity in Korea," he was a legendary preacher who helped to bring about the rapid growth of Protestantism in the early period. Kil is also remembered as a great nationalist, being one of the thirty-three signers of the Korean Declaration of Independence that sparked off the nationwide demonstrations against the Japanese colonial rule in 1919. His primary concern was, however, spreading the new faith and laying down its foundations. And part of the reason for his success lay in the appropriation of Protestant doctrine and practice in light of traditional Korean culture and religion. Kil was especially drawn to the millennialism of the Western missionaries: the belief in the Second Coming of Christ and the advent of a new world. But his personal vision of the event was strongly influenced by his previous background in folk religious traditions; thus, it resonated with the millennialist expectations and desires flowing through popular piety in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Korea. Yet, unlike other Korean millennialist movements and in spite of Kil’s own nationalist reputation, his millennialism did not translate into a mass movement against the Japanese. On the contrary, he was opposed to the political involvement of his believers and instead called on them to faithfully await the divine intervention that would usher the direction of a new order.
Taking the "Foreignness" out of Christianity: The Story of the City Evangelization Movement in Weixian, Shandong
John R. Stanley, Juniata College
The Christianization of China began in 1807 with the arrival of Robert Morrison. From the beginning, the movement was dominated by foreign missionaries. Although they were the leading force, the foreigners had not intended this. It seems that they favored the ‘Nevius method’ which required a small number of foreign evangelists to lay the seeds of the Church and then watch them grow. This method was much more successfully used on the Korean field. However, in China the missionaries found themselves confronted with opposition that did not permit this method of dissemination. Because of the level of opposition, new paths to the people had to be found. This was eventually to result in the massive institutionalization of the Christian movement and a decrease in the desire to allow the Chinese to take a large part in the decision-making bodies. By the early-1910s we begin to see a greater need, usually due to financial considerations, to have the Chinese Christian population take on a greater role in the support and expansion of the Church. The Weixian station of the American Presbyterian Church (North) is a perfect example for this study. It was one of the only stations in the Shandong Mission that was able to claim success in both the institutional and evangelical movements. This study will look at: (1) how the City Evangelization Movement came to be put in place; and (2) the new impetus it gave to the Chinese to take control of the Christian movement.
The Role of Conversion in Establishing Civil Society in Hong Kong
Lida V. Nedilsky, University of California, San Diego
Christian identity as a basis for political critique and civic participation in Hong Kong has achieved visibility that is disproportionate to its numbers. With roots in Hong Kong’s modernization of the 1960s, indigenous Christian activism today takes the form of faith-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs). I explore the role of Christian evangelism in making Christianity a viable personal identity among Chinese in Hong Kong, and a viable collective identity for social engagement. More specifically, I apply techniques of cultural analysis to interpret conversion accounts of the educated, middle class professionals that dominate membership in Christian NGOs. Accounts of conversion, I argue, reveal the dialectical relationship between convert and collective. Conversion to a new religious community opens the door to a modern project of self-cultivation, where personal decisions supercede familial obligations and interests. Conversely, in the pursuit of self-fulfillment, the convert looks to a widened array of Christian organizations to accommodate his or her unique identity as it evolves. All this occurs within a site historically shaped by religious pluralism and a variety of religious forms. Ultimately, modern evangelism in Hong Kong contributes a framework for citizenship: conversion directs the individual in pursuing personal interests of self-development; in this pursuit, the convert embeds himself in an ever-expanding and increasingly complex faith-based collective.
States, Nationalism, and the Institutionalization of Christianity: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan (1880s–1945)
Jiweon Shin, Harvard University
Since Christianity was introduced in the early modern period, Asian nations have shown various responses in their reception of this Western religion. The cases of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan provide interesting sociological phenomena regarding the reception/indigenization of the alien faith system: despite their similar religio-ideological heritages, they have shown contrasting results in accepting Christianity. This paper deals with the following basic question: why has the spread of Christian churches been so fast and successful in Korea whereas the penetration of Christianity/Christian institutions into the societies of Japan and Taiwan has been impeded? Statistics show, as of the late 1990s, that Christians occupy as much as 25 percent of the total population in Korea, yet 3 percent in Taiwan and less than 1 percent in Japan. Critically examining previous explanations of ‘cultural affinity theory’ and ‘colonial experience theory,’ the author suggests an alternative explanation, based on the ‘institutional approach’ in sociology of culture, with a comparative perspective. Focusing on the implantation period (from the 1880s through 1945), the paper shows that the level of political/ financial/cultural resources Christian organizations had confronted made the difference in creating social cleavages favorable or unfavorable to the reception: for the transplanted Christian organizations to find their own stable niches and to be integrated into the core sphere of each society, the conjuncture of: (1) state capacity in manipulating ideological resources of the society; (2) the strength/direction of nationalism; and (3) the degree to which Christian institutions were involved/intertwined in the process of modernization/ nationalization were essential.
Organizer and Chair: John E. Wills, Jr., University of Southern California
Discussants: Carl A. Trocki, Queensland University of Technology; John F. Richards, Duke University; David Bello, Southern Connecticut State University
We are in the midst of a major revival of interest in the roles that trade in and use of opium has played in Asian history. Carl Trocki’s Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy and Brook and Wakabayashi, eds., Opium Regimes are the major landmarks. The histories traced in these books link India, Southeast Asia, and China and make major contributions to our understanding of the origins of Europe’s domination of Asia from about 1750 to 1950, and of state-building and imperialist (including Japanese) aggression in modern China. Issues of cultures of consumption and addiction are very challenging.
We believe a roundtable format is most appropriate in this subject where the range of relevant expertise is so great and where every worker in the field is still trying to formulate the issues. Wills serves mainly as organizer, and will have some suggestions to make about work that needs to be done in Dutch records on opium in eighteenth-century Java. Trocki has devoted his entire career to this range of topics, with special focus on the Malay Peninsula but with wide reading and ambitious interpretive agendas. Richards, one of America’s leading historians of the Mughal Empire, is completing a major book on opium under the British Raj. Bello brings fresh and surprising data on opium trade and production in inland China before the Opium War, and a number of suggestions for future research. We also would note that we are aware in general terms of the session on narcotics in history being organized by Professor Frank Dikötter of the School of Oriental Studies (China and Inner Asia panel number 137), and we think the presence of two such sessions on the AAS program would do a great deal to further interchange of ideas on these important topics.
Organizer and Chair: Jane Parish Yang, Lawrence University
Discussants: Scott McGinnis, National Foreign Language Center; Hiroko Kataoka, California State University, Long Beach; Vijay Gambhir, University of Pennsylvania; Julian K. Wheatley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords: Asian languages, language proficiency, relationship with area studies/disciplines.
Over the past twenty years since the development of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines, foreign language professionals have emphasized functional competency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing along with general measures to assess student achievement in these four skill areas. With the introduction of National Standards three years ago, language professionals have further sought to place language learning in the larger, more holistic context of cultural practices and perspectives. The recent emphasis on culture is particularly important for us in less commonly taught Asian languages, for many of our students come to the study of language because of an interest in the target culture.
This roundtable will assess our progress over the past twenty years and look ahead to challenges in the field: shrinking tenure lines, relationships with heritage speakers, the need for more intellectual (content-based) instruction in language courses, the isolation of language programs from the disciplines, and the neglect of the use of target-language resources for research. We hope to discuss ways to integrate language courses with area studies so competency in the languages can serve the disciplines and background in the disciplines can aid understanding of the languages.
Organizer and Chair: Clark W. Sorensen, University of Washington
An Interpretation on the Peculiarities of Sakra Buddhist Rituals in the Koryo Dynasty (918–1392)
Jee Won Ahn, Seoul National University
Why did Sakra Buddhist Ritual take the form it did in Korea, in which Sakra was and is still venerated as the first and most important of all the spirit protectors of the Buddha? In China and Japan, for comparative examples, Sakra is just one of the spirit protectors.
My paper, first, will trace various appearances of Sakra Buddhist Ritual performed throughout the Koryo Dynasty in history books and literature in Korean premodern Times. Next, they will be compared with those before and after the Koryo Dynasty and with those of China and Japan.
It focuses on these two questions: (1) Why did Sakra Buddhist rituals flourish in Korea unlike those in China and Japan? (2) What social factors in the Koryo Dynasty made the roles of Sakra Buddhist rituals more diversified than those before and after?
I will show that the peculiarities of Sakra Buddhist Rituals in the Koryo Dynasty were associated with cultural transformation. First, the conception of Sakra was adopted as a political ideology and was made much of by the royal court only in Korea as a catalyst of the indigenous heavenly god worship. Second, according as Sakra Buddhist Rituals limited to the royal court began to spread to all the classes through regional Buddhist temples, which served as centers for social and cultural exchanges, they played a variety of roles in Koryo society. Since then, belief in Sakra has been inherited in Korean cultural tradition.
The History of Hinin Settlements in Early Modern Osaka
Christian M. Hermansen, NCC Center for the Study of Japanese Religions, Kyoto
According to Hiden’in yuisho (written in 1670/1789), as included in Hiden’in monjo (Okamoto and Uchida eds., 1989), and other available sources, four hinin settlements had been established on the outskirts of Osaka by the end of the 1620s. Among the first inhabitants were korobi kirishitan, Christians who had renounced their religion (cf. Dotonbori hinin kankei monjo, Okamoto and Uchida eds., 1974, pp. 1–2). A history of Osaka from 1680 claims that the first leaders of the hinin settlements were former samurai affiliated with the Toyotomi family and on the losers’ side in the decisive wars against the Tokugawa family. Hiden’in yuisho on the other hand argues that the first leaders of the oldest settlement were appointed by Shotoku Taishi.
The organized hinin never exceeded one percent of Osaka’s population during the early modern period. As everybody knows, hinin like their settlements were located on the outskirts of society. But analyzing their own history writing shows us how they actively worked against the stigmatization and marginal status ascribed to them by the social norms of the early modern Japanese society. My presentation is such an analysis.
Buddhism and the Kings of Wuyue
Yi-hsun Huang, College of William and Mary
The Wuyue Kingdom (Wuyueguo, 907–978) falls in the period called the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (Wudai shiguo, 907–960), between the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279). During this period, most of China collapsed into a state of turmoil following the downfall of the Tang, but the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms still benefited from the high culture and complete political system of the Tang. Historical accounts of Buddhism in this period fill only a few pages in works on Chinese Buddhist history by Kamata Shigeo, Makita Tairyo, and Tang Yongtong.
In these authors’ accounts of Buddhism in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the system of Buddhist officials was maintained, and the emperors, officials, and people participated in many Buddhist activities. Tang Yongtong, with two short paragraphs describing the Buddhism of this period, comments that the way the emperors worshiped Buddhism is "ingratiating themselves with Buddhism" (ningfo).
This paper examines the relationship of the kings of Wuyue with Buddhism and other religions in order to illustrate the general religious landscape, and then analyzes the specific role of Buddhism in the Wuyue Kingdom. As it will be shown in this paper, Buddhism in the Wuyue kingdom frequently contradicts Tang Yongtong’s comments on it. Instead of ingratiating themselves with Buddhism, the kings of Wuyue maintained a high degree of control over the Buddhist community. While the specific nature of Buddhism’s relationship with each king differed, Buddhism always served both political and religious functions for the kings.
Takuga: Religious Authority in Fourteenth-Century Japan
Sybil Anne Thornton, Arizona State University
Takuga (1284–1354) was the seventh patriarch of the Japanese religious community now known as the Jishu (Time Sect). As joint head of the order and leader (1338–1354) of the traveling mission established by Ippen Shonin (1239–1289), Takuga was vested with the order’s principal responsibility, to promote the practice of chanting the invocation of the name of Amida Buddha or nembutsu. Moreover, a great deal of his time and effort was spent in addressing the organization and supervision of the order itself, which had grown enormously since its establishment in 1325. The range of Takuga’s functions in administering the order and negotiating relations with the world in which the order existed are indicated in his Tozai sayo sho, the enumeration of 254 items of proper and improper (mostly improper) conduct, and his extant letters, which survive in three collections. Moreover, they indicate the very principle informing Takuga’s relationships within and without the community. That is, the monk’s or nun’s initial vow to accept the head of the order as Chishiki, religious guide, established Takuga’s absolute authority to define the state of salvation. His status as the last word on salvation was realized both as a personal and ultimate responsibility for the conduct of each and every religious and lay adherent and as the opportunity to act as a spokesman for the Pure Land community as a whole.
Organizer: Tong Lam, University of Chicago
Chair: Michael T. Tsin, University of Florida
Discussant: Douglas Howland, DePaul University
Keywords: Japan, China, Korea, nation, knowledge production.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan, China, and Korea each engaged with "Western knowledge," reconfiguring it into a new foundation with which to order society and the nation. Under these new structures of knowledge, traditional knowledge and techniques of government were regarded as irrational and unscientific. Existing social orders, meanwhile, appeared chaotic.
Within Japan, China, and Korea, narratives of nation were put forward to quell disruptions and order society. Social ordering involved efforts to establish and organize difference among the nation’s population (in terms of class, ethnicity, gender, etc.) while simultaneously producing the homogeneous citizen the nation demanded. Internationally, each sought to rework the knowledge structures that sustained their inferior position within the "Western" imposed civilizational hierarchies.
Each of this panel’s four papers explores the issue of adapting "universal knowledge"—of science (Hiromi Mizuno), society (Tong Lam), political-legal structures (Jacqueline Pak), and ethics (Richard Reitan)—to the particular strategies of the nation-state for ordering society. The "border-crossing" format will allow this panel to address questions specific to the nation in East Asia, but with broad transnational implications: What tensions emerged, both within and outside of the nation-state, as Japan, China, and Korea engaged with, reconfigured, and disseminated "Western" structures of knowledge? To what extent were these new knowledge structures accepted as universal, and in light of this, how did this both constrain and enable the efforts of each to establish its own national particularity? Finally, how did claims to universal knowledge—sustaining certain ideological agendas while suppressing others—become a new basis for violent struggle?
Packaging the Wonder-Full World for Sale: Popular Science Magazines in Interwar and Wartime Japan
Hiromi Mizuno, University of Minnesota
Popular science magazines in Japan began to appear in the mid 1920s. Two magazines I focus in this paper, Science Illustrated (Kagaku Gaho) and Children’s Science (Kodomo no Kagaku), have been little studied by scholars but were among the most widely circulated popular science magazines in interwar Japan. Targeting younger readers and adults with little knowledge of science, these magazines used many photographs, illustrations, and short texts to educate readers on a variety of topics in sciences. They presented the world as full of wonders (kyoi) and emphasized that science was the entry to this wonder-filled world. Science in these magazines was a neatly packaged knowledge of the world for sale, wrapped in the colorfully illustrated covers. My paper traces the epistemology and commercial strategy of these popular science magazines to those of the world fairs and department stores, placing them at the intersection of commercialism and imperialism. I pay special attention to not only the colonial order of the world but also the representation of the emperor in these magazines. This paper also examines how these popular science magazines, while initially characterizing science as universal, joined a discourse on a uniquely Japanese science by the late 1930s, especially in relation to the New Order Movement by the wartime Konoe Cabinet and its major reform of science curriculum in 1942.
Investigating and Ordering Chinese "Society," 1890s–1930s
Tong Lam, University of Chicago
This paper addresses the historical emergence of a scientific conception of "society" and the concomitant rise of social survey—both statistical and narrative in nature—as a mode of knowledge production in China during the turn of the 20th century. Central to this process was the arrival of the modern governmental rationality that replaced the traditional Chinese art of government. This paper specifically focuses on the growing interests in understanding "society" and gathering social facts among Western and Chinese social experts and cultural elites. And despite their different motivations and competing conceptions of society, they all operated on the assumption that facts about "society" could be investigated objectively and that "society" could be intervened scientifically.
While this novel scientific conception of "society" indeed enabled a range of social engineering projects from social reform to nation-building and even gave rise to new senses of political subjectivity, neither social facts nor methods of surveys were culturally and politically neutral as claimed. Competing political regimes deployed contending methods of survey to foster their own visions of "society" and agendas for social reconstruction. "Society" and social facts, in short, quickly became a new site of cultural and political contestation.
In Search of Independence and Freedom: The Origins of Constitution in Korea
Jacqueline Pak, Library of Congress
The incipient constitutionalism in Choson Korea was borne of the late nineteenth-century maelstrom in East Asia. Caught between China and Japan while encountering the Western encroachment, an acute sense of peril gave Korean constitutional stirrings a particularly progressive and innovative, if urgently nationalistic, character. In 1897, an unprecedented public forum against the absolutist monarchical government, the Independence Club (Tongnip hyophoe), was created by So Chaep’il (1866–1951), who returned from America as a Christian physician. An Ch’angho (1878–1938), a young Christian activist in the Independence Club, later emerged as the preeminent republican constitutionalist and exiled nationalist-revolutionary. He wrote a series of constitutions for his diasporic secret societies from 1905, before the Japanese annexation in 1910, to the 1930s. Following the March First Movement in 1919, An Ch’angho drafted the first presidential constitution of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai. Here, the origins of Korean constitution will be explored by investigating the archival collections of the private papers of So Chaep’il and An Ch’angho, the pioneering constitutional democrats of Korea. For example, the "Debate Rules of the Independence Club" from the 1890s and the earliest extant draft of the republican constitution prepared by An Ch’angho from the 1900s will be highlighted. Especially in light of An Ch’angho’s evolving constitutional philosophy and praxis, the focus of the paper will be to illuminate the manner in which So and An critically reinterpreted and reconfigured the (re-)ordering of society and nation.
The Emergence of Rinrigaku (Ethics) in Meiji Japan: Unifying Society through the Creation of a Common Moral Outlook
Richard Reitan, University of Chicago
In 1880s Japan, amidst intense social disruption and its attendant moral disorientation, academics, religious apologists, and natural-right advocates vied with one another for the authority to speak for the "good," each putting forward their respective ethical prescriptions for re-ordering, "civilizing," and unifying society. Within academia, scholars objectified "the good" and established ethics as a formal field of study. This paper explores the emergence of ethics as an academic discipline (rinrigaku) in the context of competing conceptions of the "good" in late nineteenth-century Japan.
Rinrigaku, drawing on "Western" scientific and moral discourse (e.g. Comtian Positivism, Spencer’s Evolutionism, and the Utilitarianism of Mill), insisted upon its universality and sought to establish its own methods and conceptual vocabulary as the only legitimate mode of ethical inquiry. Through its efforts to undermine competing views for social re-ordering (and the ethical foundations upon which they were based), rinrigaku, I argue, functioned from its inception as a mechanism for social control by providing philosophical justification for the suppression of "socially disruptive" thought and practices that ran counter to the needs of the state. By masking socio-moral divisiveness and heterogeneity in this way, rinrigaku helped to sustain the fiction of social unity the "Japanese nation" required. Ultimately, this paper underscores the dangers of the desire to produce moral hegemony—the universalization of one normative position through the suppression of others in the hopes of creating a common moral space.
Organizer: Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, Independent Scholar
Chair: H. Leedom Lefferts, Jr., Drew University
Discussant: Theodore C. Bestor, Harvard University
Keywords: material culture, identity, development, peripheries, minorities, nationalism.
With the end of colonialism, imperial rule, and U.S. occupation, East and Southeast Asian states defined new national identities. Elites constructed new conceptual entities, translating themselves into identities recognized by Western powers, fictive homogeneities that excluded both broader, regional ties and ethnic groups at their peripheries. Initial motivation for these identities was primarily political. But in the past twenty years, development, including household production and tourism, has exposed economic and symbolic potentials of material culture. National advocates and peripheral populations asserted their identities, exploiting and reconfiguring their material cultures. Okinawa’s circumstances parallel Southeast Asia’s as a maritime area that experienced colonization and military occupation; where the integration of ritual, material culture, and everyday life persists within an ongoing modernization; and where development of tourism and commodity-oriented craft production challenges traditions. Analyzing the changing roles of things in these places offers a broad context for discussion.
This panel explores negotiations and transformations of things as identity markers. Lynne Milgram examines how designers have transformed piña cloth from an indicator of Lowland elite status into a marker of multifaceted Philippine identity. Cherubim Quizon links a Southeast Asian perspective in contemporary Philippine painting to older nationalist-indigenist discourses through the role of the Marcos dictatorship. Leedom Lefferts discusses multivalent perceptions of foods associated with the Thai-Lao in Northeastern Thailand and their appropriation by elites asserting national homogeneity. Amanda Stinchecum looks at symbol formation in the transformations of a sash across boundaries of class, and everyday/ ceremonial and personal/commercial use in Okinawa. Discussant Theodore Bestor provides an expanded perspective on the materiality of culture and the evolving roles of things beyond national boundaries.
"Indigenism," Identity, and the Dictatorship in Contemporary Philippine Painting
Cherubim A. Quizon, State University of New York, Stony Brook
The place of the Philippines in the art and culture of Southeast Asia has always been ambiguous. Until the 1960s, it had been seen as an Asian country so thoroughly Latinized by three centuries of Spanish colonial rule that it shared more with Central and South America than with its neighbors. By the end of the 20th century however, all of Philippine art, whether traditional or contemporary, had become part of a late-modern Asia-Pacific continuum. This shift in perspective was profoundly rooted in the development of the concepts of nation, identity and culture within the Philippines. In addition, international efforts, such as high profile cultural initiatives by organizations such as ASEAN and collecting policies of museums also played a role in this change. The notion of an "authentic" and "indigenous" cultural identity has been a central concern in Philippine art since independence in the late 19th century. This idea has now been recast by proponents of a regional Southeast Asian art, who assert that a Southeast Asian-ness has always been present in Philippine art.
In contrast, my paper will link to older discourses the recasting of indigenism as "Southeast Asian identity" in contemporary Philippine painting. These were framed in terms of nation building and patriotism and also as syncretic, mystical nationalism. I will focus on how the Marcos dictatorship helped shape the content and form of this latter, pan-Malay Filipino cultural iconography, and show how a seemingly innocuous "mixed media" avant garde subverted and ultimately appropriated the indigenist idiom.
Piña Textiles and the Project of Philippine Nationalism: Negotiating Regional Production and Identities for a Global Market
B. Lynne Milgram, York University
With the return of democratic government to the Philippines in the mid-1980s private and government projects were mounted to reify belief in the nation state. Piña (pineapple fiber), a Philippine textile produced only in the central island region and formerly circulated for special occasion purposes, was identified by the government as a local commodity capable of manifesting such national spirit.
My paper explores how contemporary Philippine designers have transformed this regional textile from a marker of elite majority status, formerly dominated by government discourse, to one that reflects the multivalent pastiche of Philippine culture. I argue that the increased demands on piña production have raised tensions within the industry. These have led to a renegotiation of a previously well-defined division of labor. Government developers and fashion designers have formulated a hierarchical code of aesthetics based on commercial markets and homogenizing nationalist goals.
Designers framing international reputations rooted in Philippine "tradition," and government representatives fashioning their nationalist discourse endeavor to alter these regional textile emblems and the socioeconomic relationships they engender. I argue that such ruptures of local systems carry potentially volatile political, aesthetic and economic implications for those in Kalibo’s piña industry.
Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation in Yaeyama: Symbol of Island Identity
Amanda Mayer Stinchecum, Independent Scholar
Yaeyama, the southernmost island-group of Okinawa prefecture, lies on the farthest periphery of Ryukyuan cultural influence. Yaeyama has remained distinct from the political center of Okinawa.
According to local legend, for 300 years the women of Yaeyama have woven minsa- sashes to give to their prospective husbands, incorporating a combination of ikat motifs read as a rebus, meaning "Yours forever more." Today, in ritual and secular performances of dance and drama, as well as in congregant participation in religious ceremonial, the sash has become a marker of the "simple, island people of Yaeyama." Local textile cooperatives, district governments, and island officials promote this legend. Islanders also use the legend to clarify and enrich their self-identities as "simple island people." Primary documents and object-derived data raise doubts about the historical basis for the legend and for production predating the introduction of machine-spun cotton yarn in the later 19th century. These sources also establish the intimate association of the sash with the gentry.
I explore the transformation of the sash from a utilitarian object associated with the gentry class to a symbolic identity marker of the islands’ people of formerly commoner status, and from an object made entirely for personal consumption to a product for outside markets; and the transference to the sash of meaning as a protective token gifted by women. Since World War II, the people of Yaeyama have reinvented this simple sash, with its array of identities and rich histories, to embody the multiplicity of changing traditions.
Sticky Rice, Fermented Fish, and the Course of a Kingdom: The Ethnicity of Food in Northeast Thailand
H. Leedom Lefferts, Jr., Drew University
Sticky rice and fermented fish form the foundations for the customary food of the Thai-Lao of Northeast Thailand (Isan). Accounts from the 1880s show that consumption of this distinctive food has long identified Lao in Thailand. Over thirty years of Isan fieldwork, I have seen the growing importance of sticky rice and fermented fish for defining regional pride, as Central Thai administrative and symbolic structures associate this food with a minority ethnic group. A panoply of state-mandated structures and meanings designed to amalgamate Thai-Lao into the kingdom’s mainstream accompanies Thai development. Central Thai have mobilized health, tourism, and agriculture to depict this food as unsanitary, unwholesome, and smelly.
These measures have resulted in the creation of a material focus for regional consensus and pride. In Isan and Bangkok, eating sticky rice and fermented fish declares solidarity with Thai-Lao. Election campaigns display sticky rice baskets and Isan food paraphernalia to indicate candidates’ allegiance with Thai-Lao voters. As Thai-Lao maintain their dominant position in Bangkok’s laboring class, itinerant vendors have brought their food to the streets and lanes of that city. This food has also become available in restaurants for middle-class Thai. Rather than fostering homogeneity, efforts to sequester and eradicate the consumption of sticky rice and fermented fish have produced consciously selected markers embodying regional identity and pride. Today in Thailand, food provides a material basis for peoples under pressure of modernization and development to express common origins and identities.