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06 July 2008 @ 01:10 pm
Yasukuni [靖國神社]  
Yasukuni [靖國神社]. Dir. LI Ying [李纓]. Perf. Naohara Kariya, Ryuken Sugahara, Ciwas Ali/Kao Chin Su-mei [高金素梅]. Dragon Films: 2007.

An important and emotionally difficult documentary on the Yasukuni War Shrine in Tokyo, where soldiers who died in service of the emperor are enshrined. Li Ying begins with an interview of the last surviving Yasukuni swordmaker -- a hale, stately, and reticent old man. "Please share your memories," pleads the filmmaker. "Your memories are important." For all that the swordmaker is unwilling to verbalize, the director tries to show. Much of the footage is captured on-site, centering on the controversy around Prime Minister Koizumi's "personal" visit to honor the dead at the war shrine in 2005. Citizens who get screen time include other Yasukuni worshippers, protestors, local politicians, tourists, aged militants and right-wingers, and more.

Director Li Ying has managed to pull together an impressive range of funding from his native China, Japan, as well as Korean sources [to be confirmed? I thought I saw funding from the Pusan Film Festival in the final credits...]. Nevertheless, to even broach this subject outside of domestic context is to invite controversy. ( more )
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14 March 2007 @ 12:49 pm
Souvenirs entomologiques and Shanghai Neo-Sensationism  
Peng, Hsiao-yen. "A Traveling Text: Souvenirs entomologiques and Shanghai Neo-Sensationism." Center for Chinese Studies. University of California, Berkeley. 14 March 2007.

The Hong Kong poet Ogai Kamome (Ouwai Ou) published a seemingly nonsensical palm-of-the-hand story in Furen huabao (The women’s pictorial) in 1934. Titled "[研究觸角的三個人] Yanjiu chujiao de sangeren" (The three who study antennas), it used the science of insect behavior to interpret man-and-woman love in a playful fashion, typical of Neo-Sensationist stories. But the meaning of the mini-story goes beyond pleasantry. Although no names or books are ever mentioned, it implies Lu Xun’s advocacy of Jean-Henri Fabre’s ten volume work Souvenirs entomologiques: étude sur l’instinct et les moeurs des insects (Memories of insects: study on the instinct and manners of insects; 1879-1907) during the 1920s. Lu Xun, who did not know French, read the Japanese translation, titled Konchûki (Book of Insects, 1922-1931), by Osugi Sakae and Shiina Sonoji, two anarchists during the Daishō period. The intriguing questions this paper addresses include: Why were anarchists attracted to Fabre’s work? Did it ever occur to Lu Xun, who used Fabre’s work to comment on the Chinese national character, that science carried special meanings for anarchism? Was Ogai Kamome, intending to ridicule intellectuals like Lu Xun, aware of the complex implications of Fabre’s work, including his famous disputes with Charles Darwin on the theory of evolution? This paper will explore how texts and ideas travel in the Euro-Asian context, and how certain values are lost during the transaction, while others are accrued during the process. (Website description)
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06 July 2006 @ 11:09 am
Empire of Signs  
Barthes, Roland. Empire of Signs. 1970. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

I have a painful time slogging through French theory in translation, but I must say that Barthes' application of theory to example makes for great prose poetry in this tidy little book. As far as traveling books go, I recommend this as something you can take with you on a trip, especially when you know you're headed for a heavily touristified experience.

The murmuring mass of an unknown language constitutes a delicious protection, envelops the foreigner (provided the country is not hostile to him) in an auditory film which halts at his ears all the alienations of the mother tongue: the regional and social origins of whoever is speaking, his degree of culture, of intelligence, of taste, the image by which he constitues himself as a person and which he asks you to recognize. Hence, in foreign countries, what a respite! Here I am protected against stupidity, vulgarity, vanity, worldliness, nationality, normality. The unknown language, of which I nonetheless grasp the respiration, the emotive aeration, in a word the pure significance, forms around me, as I move, a faint vertigo, sweeping me into its artificial emptiness, which is consummated only for me: I live in the interstice, delivered from any fulfilled meaning. How did you deal with the language? Subtext: How did you satisfy that vital need of communication? Or more precisely, an ideological assertation marked by the practical interrogation: there is no communication except in speech.

Now it happens that in this country (Japan), the empire of signifiers is so immense, so in excess of speech, that the exchange of signs remains of a fascinating richness, mobility, and subtlety, despite the opacity of the language, sometimes even as a consequence of htat opacity. The reason for this is tha tin Japan the body exists, acts, shows itself, gives itself, without hysteria, without narcissism, but according to a pure -- though subtly discontinuous -- erotic project. It is not hte voice (which we identify the "rights" of the person) which communicates (communicates what? our--necessarily beautiful--soul? our sincerity? our prestige?), but the whole body (eyes, smile, hair, gestures, clothing) which sustains with you a sort of babble that the perfect domination of the codes strips of all regressive, infantile character. ... it is the other's entire body which has been known, savored, received, and which has displayed (to no real purpose) its own narrative, its own text. (9-10)
On Japanese packaging...
Yet, by its very perfection, this envelope, often repeated (you can be unwrapping a package forever), postpones the discovery of the object it contains -- one which is often insignificant, for it is precisely a specialty of the Japanese package that the triviality of the thing be disproportionate to the luxury of the envelope: a sweet, a bit of sugared bean paste, a vulgar "souvenir" (as Japan is unfortunately so expert at producing) are wrapped with as much sumptuousness as a jewel. It is as if, then, the box were the object of the gift, not what it contains: hordes of schoolboys, on a day's outing, bring back to their parents a splendid package containing no one knows what, as if they had gone very far away and this was an occasion for them to devote themselves in troops to the ecstacy of the package. Thus, the box acts the sign: as envelope, screen, mask, it is worth what it conceals, protects, and yet designates: it puts off, if we can take this expression in French -- donner le change -- in its double meaning, monetary and psychological; but the very thing it encloses and signifies is for a very long time put off until later, as if the package's function were not to protect in space but to postpones in time; it is in the envelope that the labor of the confection (of the making) seems to be invested, but thereby the object loses its existence, becomes a mirage: from envelope to envelope, the signified flees, and when you finally have it (there is always a little something in the package), it appears insignificant, laughable, vile: the pleasure, field of the signifier, has been taken: the package is not empty, but emptied: to find the object which is in the package or the signified which is in the sign is to discard it: what the Japanese carry, with formicant energy, are actually empty signs. (45-6)
Barthes had a lot to say about drama, dovetailed with Brecht's "alienation effects" and comparative differences between Eastern and Western drama:
We must recall that the agents of the spectacle, in Bunraku, are at once visible and impassive: the men in black busy themselves around the doll, but without any affectation of skill or of discretion and, one might say, without any paraded demagogy; silent, swift, elegant, their actions are eminently transitive, operative, tinged with that mixture of strength and subtlety which marks the Japanese repertoire of gestures and which is a kind of aesthetic envelope of effectiveness; as for the master, his head is uncovered, smooth, bare, without makeup, which accords him a civil (not a theatrical) distinction, his face is offered to the spectators to read, but what is carefully, preciously given to be read is that there is nothing there to read; here again we come to that exemption of meaning (that exemption from meaning as well) which we Westerners can barely understand, since, for us, to attack meaning is to hide or to invert it, but never to "absent" it. With Bunraku, the sources of the theater are exposed in their emptiness. What is expelled from the stage is hysteria, i.e., theater itself, and what is put in its place is the action necessary to the production of the spectacle: work is substituted for inwardness. (61-2)
One very long sentence:
What one can add is that these infinitesimal adventures (of which the accumulation, in the course of a day, provokes a kind of erotic intoxication) never have anything picturesque about them (the Japanese picturesque is indifferent to us, for it is detached from what constitutes the very specialty of Japan, which is its modernity), or anything novelistic (never lending themselves to the chatter which would make them into narratives or descriptions); what they offer to be read (I am, in that country, a reader, not a visitor) is the rectitude of the line, the stroke, without wake, without margin, without vibration, so many tiny demeanors (from garment to smile), which among us, as a result of the Westerner's inveterate narcissism, are only the signs of a swollen assurance, become, among the Japanese, mere ways of passing, of tracing some unexpected thing in the street: for the gesture's sureness and independence never refer back to an affirmation of the self (to a "self-sufficiency") but only to a graphic mode of existing; so that the spectacle of the Japanese street (or more generally of the public place), exciting as the product of an age-old aesthetic, from which all vulgarity has been decanted, never depends on a theatricality (a hysteria) of bodies, but once more, on that writing alla prima, in which sketch and regret, calculation and correction are equally impossible, because the line, the tracing, freed from the advantageous image the scriptor would give of himself, does not express but simply causes to exist. "When you walk," says one Zen master, "be content to walk. When you are seated, be content to be seated. But above all, don't wriggle!": this is what, in their way, all seem to be telling me -- the young bicyclist carrying a tray of bowls high on one arm; or the young saleswoman who bows with a gesture so deep, so ritualized it loses all servility, before the customers of the department store leaving to take an escalator; or the Pachinko player inserting, propelling, and receiving his marbles, with three gestures whose very coordination is a design; or the dandy in the cafe who with a ritual gesture (abrupt and male) pops open the plastic envelope of his hot napkin with which he will wipe his hands before drinking his Coca-Cola: all these incidents are the very substance of the haiku. (79-80)
Other segments of note: his description of Pachinko, chopsticks used to prod the nothingness between rice pellets, the texture of sushi.
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24 April 2006 @ 10:20 pm
Samurai Trouble: Thoughts on War and Loyalty  
Berry, Mary Elizabeth. "Presidential Address -- Samurai Trouble: Thoughts on War and Loyalty." Journal of Asian Studies 64.4 (November 2005): 831-47.

Mary Berry's lecture at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting (2005) addresses the urgent need for Asian Studies scholars to be mindful of how they narrate military history and represent icons of war.

She presents her lecture in two propositions, the first being: "War is not an act of nature and therefore inevitable and inexorable; it is an act of humans and therefore subject to decision and control" (834). Historians tend to fall into a trap -- and here, Berry faults herself as well -- of naturalizing war, charting the procession towards outbreak of official conflict almost as a series of inevitably linked calamities. Scholars still need to be reminded to interrogate every step along the way, acknowledging it as an ultimately human decision, not something pre-ordained.

That, however, does not mean that bellicosity needs to be regarded as a universal. Indeed, she raises an intriguing -- though barely substantiated -- point about how, in this modern day, the cost of war is absolutely wasteful, particularly when compared to the relative cost of peace: "But at least in our day, when the staggering investments required by war might meet some of the staggering needs required for peace, it seems perverse to think war can ever do better than brilliant budgetary politics" (839). This statement sparked, for me, a starting point from which to clearly imagine alternatives -- how many college educations could you trade for a submarine? For every soldier you send out there who's ostensibly "willing to die" for their country, could you send a non-combatant humanitarian worker who would/could be similarly martyred?

This leads to her second proposition, "The martial virtues are not absolute, nor are they universal standards of conduct" (840). As Berry points out through her own research on Japanese history, Asian Studies scholars must be vigilant to the perennial faddishness and/or long-standing cult adoration of typically martial icons -- such as the samurai (or the wuxia swordsman, kung fu hero, jianghu gangster taking the law into his own hands)... She sees the romanticism tied to samurai culture very much akin to the mythology of the valiant American soldier -- comparing, for example, Saving Private Ryan with The Last Samurai. The fact that they kill and are killed -- and often for less-than-noble reasons -- is subsumed by the overarching construction of their image as loyal and other virtuous ideals.

Samurai, for example, are cultishly revered for everything but their most hideous, actual purpose -- they can kill. They may execute their missions most efficiently, or even artfully, or with skill, but trumpeting these traits just masks the murder that underlies their existence. I think now of the stereotypical freezeframe-sword-slash, and artful spray of blood floating in the distance... or a very Beat Takeshi-esque aestheticization of violence. They're nostalgic but potent representations all too related to the modern "good soldier", and this is why uncritical depictions can still be problematic.

Berry traces one of the main sources of the noble samurai image to the 18th century Hagakure, "a nostalgic piece of work, composed in peacetime by an ironically masterless samurai who longed for the presumptive clarity of war and the godlike absolute signified by the lord. So he invented a code of abject loyalty... to alleviate the pain of existence. The text ignores the betrayal and opportunism among samurai that was commonplace in wartime. More egregiously, it ignores the reality that military service, in Japan as in elsewhere, was dictated by coercion -- by hereditary obligation or conscription or an absence of alternatives. To speak of loyalty in such circumstances is deceptive silliness" (842).

So how far have we come since the 18th century? Or World War II? Apparently, not far enough. Yeah, Mary Berry asks tough questions in this article.
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22 January 2006 @ 10:45 pm
... Taiwan's Sino-Aboriginal Boundary in the 1870s  
Eskildsen, Robert. "Foreign Views of Difference and Engagement Along Taiwan's Sino-Aboriginal Boundary in the 1870s." 畫中有話: 近代中國的視覺文化構圖 / When Images Speak: Visual Representation and Cultural Mapping in Modern China. Ed. 黃克武 Huang Ko-wu. Taipei: 中央研究院近代史研究所 Institute of Modern History, Academica Sinica: 2003. 253-287.

Western cartography, far from being an 'objective', scientific visualization of territory, developed on the back of modern imperialism. Eskildsen's fascinating comparative study of American Charles LeGendre's maps of southern Taiwan (U.S. Consul at Amoy from 1867-1872, and advisor to the Japanese government from 1872-1875) vs. Japanese-created maps during Japan's southern expedition in 1874 shows how foreign representations, while differing in technique and precision, shared similarly intrusive ways of mapping Taiwanese terrain. This matters because the southern expedition of 1874 and the terms -- in both written and visual language -- used to describe southern and eastern coasts of Taiwan directly affected the cultural and political future of Taiwan just twenty years later, when it was handed over to the Japanese as its first colony.

After the 1867 Rover incident, in which an American ship crashed onto the southern shores of Taiwan and the crew was murdered by aborigines, Qing China's refusal to provide reparations prompted American officials to question China's sovereignty over these island frontiers. The most vocal arguments were spearheaded by Charles LeGendre, who used the imperial court's claims to map out rigidly delineated borders between "Chinese" territory and "savage" (that is, uncontrollable) territory. Later, when LeGendre became advisor to the Japanese government, these maps were used to argue for the possible invasion and colonization of Taiwanese territory, land that the imperial Chinese court, by its own admission, could not be held "responsible" for though it still claimed sovereignty over that area.

A Japanese crew suffered a similar fate as that of the Rover in 1871, when a boatload of Okinawans were beheaded after their ship ran aground, also in southern Taiwan. Citing this incident as the official reason to pursue vigilante justice against the responsible tribes, the Japanese sent an expeditionary crew, along with a "war correspondent" to follow the story for newspapers back home. Accompanying materials include maps similar to LeGendre's sketches, but Japanese landscapes tended to be more descriptive and less 'accurate', in that mountain shapes would be sketched only approximately, the planimetric maps bore little resemblance to a 'realistic' view, etc. Nevertheless, LeGendre's maps and Japanese maps served the same purpose of bolstering aggressive, militaristic claims to southern Taiwanese territory.

Consider also that the maps were often supplementary to other colonialist discourses -- missionary guides, travelogues, battle plans, territorial intelligence, etc, and the point is made clear that even maps cannot be considered unbiased visual representations. Eskildsen wraps up by briefly surveying the descriptive narratives of southern life, revealing that there was actually a lot of interaction across the borders, that these contact zones were obviously more porous than these foreign maps would lead one to believe, which only further problematizes the kind of arguments that LeGendre and the Japanese were trying to make.
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05 November 2005 @ 07:14 pm
Shanghai, Li Xianglan, and the 'Great East Asia Film Sphere'  
Stephenson, Shelley. "'Her Traces Are Found Everywhere': Shanghai, Li Xianglan, and the 'Greater East Asia Fiml Sphere'." Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai: 1922-1943. Ed. Yingjin Zhang. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 222-245.

This is an amazing and well-written article dissecting Li Xianglan's career as a "Chinese imposter". Portrayed as ethnically Chinese, she was Japan's hope at ideologically penetrating the Shanghai star system and presenting their pan-Asian vision of an ideal, industrious Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Born in Manchuria to Japanese parents but recieving a Chinese education, Li Xianglan (born Yamaguchi Yoshiko) was a young star in Man'ei, but virtually unknown in Shanghai, the heart of the Chinese film industry. After the Japanese occupied Shanghai, the press engaged in a full-out campaign to induct her into the Shanghai star system, unfortunately to no avail. She is hardly written about in Chinese presses until after her appearance in 1943's 萬世流芳 (Eternity), by which time her ruse as a "true-blooded" Chinese patriot was just about to scooped by the Chinese presses. It is her absence in the star system that is romanticized, drummed up in the Japanese press. Stephenson explains it much more elegantly. Li Xianglan was something else, though... a real-life example of how celebrity power also translates as audience power... people see in their celebrities what they want to see: Chinese, Japanese, or even Korean or half-Russian...
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30 October 2005 @ 05:25 pm
Fukushû suruwa wareniari (Vengeance is Mine)  
Fukushû suruwa wareniari (Vengeance is Mine). Dir. Shohei Imamura. Perf. Ken Ogata, Mayumi Ogawa, Rentaro Mikuni, Mitsuko Baisho, Nijiko Kiyokawa. 1979.



Driven perhaps by an inexplicable distaste for authority, Iwao Enokizu flees home one fateful day, abandoning his devout Catholic father and his "marriage of convenience". To finance his life on the lam, Iwao murders a string of acquaintances and strangers, commits a series of frauds, and eventually shacks up at the Asano Inn, posing as a well-to-do professor and winning over its charming madam Haru and her eccentric mother.

As the majority of this movie is told in confessional flashback, we know that Iwao gets caught. The public is screaming for his head and Iwao is more than ready to skip off to the gallows. The viewer is taken slowly, carefully, through the course of his unrepentant actions. I don't think you're supposed to emerge from this movie feeling any sympathy for Iwao, who is clearly sociopathic to the worst extremes (yeah yeah, there's a little bit of that in all of us)... but it concludes as a rather bleak indictment of all of modern society, where no mortal is free to judge.

Shizuo: Iwao, you must live in fear of God though you've been excommunicated.
Iwao: I don't need God. I killed innocent people. So I'll be killed. That's it. That's all there is.
Shizuo: Then why did you keep running like you did?
Iwao: Because I wanted to run. Free, by myself. Go now. Meeting adjourned.
Shizuo: Father and Son -- this is what it amounts to, huh?
Iwao: Yes. You and I will be different even after we die.

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29 October 2005 @ 12:28 am
Politics of Occupation Cinema 1941-1945  
Fu, Poshek. "The Struggle to Entertain: The Politics of Occupation Cinema, 1941-1945" and "Epilogue: Filming Shanghai in Hong Kong." Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Cinese Cinemas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 93-152.

Again, a deconstruction of the binary stereotypes that characterize movie production during the time that Shanghai was under Japanese occupation. Those that fled with the Nationalists to Chongqing were considered the "heroes" and "true patriots" working with the central motion picture company, whereas those who stayed and collaborated with the Japanese-backed Zhonglian (中國聯合製片股份公司) were villainous and opportunistic traitors, especially Zhang Shankun (張善琨, also S.K. Chang). After the Japanese lost the war and the Nationalist government retook Shanghai, Zhang was jailed for his collaborations with the Japanese. This is ironic, considering he was also jailed by the Japanese for having secret associations with Chongqing movie industry personnel and consistently refused to make films that fit into Japanese propagandizing agendas. He eventually fled to Hong Kong and then... to Taiwan.
The cultural politics of... Zhang Shankun's double arrest force us to rethink the simplistic dichotomy of resistance and collaboration that has structured conventional historical narrative of wartime Chinese life in general and occupation cinema in particular. This binary logic was at the center of the twentieth-century nationalist discourse (including, above all, Resistance art and literature produced during the war) that valorized heroism--self-sacrifice for the abstract ideal of nationhood and self-denial in the collective interest--as the unifying theme in Chinese national history. The binary concepts of resistance and collaboration are essential categories that homogenize the diversity and multiplicity of human experiences in specific historical situations into a set of simplistic stereotypes. They deny historical subjects the multiplicity of their situations and choices. ...

Indeed, as exemplified by the politics of occupation cinema in Shanghai, the historical experience of occupied China was fluid and heterogenous, defying the either/or binarism of the nationalist discourse. Occupation cinema was an institutional part of the Japanese propaganda apparatus, yet it produced only popular entertainment that was irrelevant to the legitimizing efforts of the occupying power. Making only popular entertainments was a tactic involving calculated risks, enormous resourcefulness, and political ingenuity. As we know, as long as they had to live under the enemy, any negotiation with the occupying power brought forth a wrenching choice that always required a mix of complicity and refusal. It was a projection of the "heroic resistance" myth, but utterly unrealistic, to expect Solitary Island filmmakers to openly challenge the Japanese in occupied Shanghai. It was in this dilemma that their tactical insistence on popular cultural values brought to the fore the political ambivalence of cultural production under brute power: in the highly politicized situation in which Shanghai filmmakers found themselves, apolitical entertainment that was deliberately depoliticized became significantly political. (130-1, emphasis in original)
Specifically, Fu focuses on the making of 萬世流芳 (Eternity), a film that Zhonglian wanted to produce in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Opium Wars. The Japanese had hoped that the film would include a message that would unite all Asian races against the imperialist Western forces. However, the end product was basically a love story centered around some semi-historical figures, and references to imperialism were inserted so ambiguously that audiences were all too free to draw their own conclusions as to who the "real" enemy was.
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10 September 2005 @ 11:29 pm
Cultural Brokerage and Interethnic Marriage  
Barclay, Paul D. "Cultural Brokerage and Interethnic Marriage in Colonial Taiwan: Japanese Subalterns and Their Aborigine Wives, 1895-1930." Journal of Asian Studies 64.2 (May 2005): 323-360.

Sidestepping the usual colonial power dynamics based on nation-state identities within interethnic marriages, Barclay looks at marriages between Taiwanese aborigines and Japanese colonial administrators in the early to middle period of Japanese rule in Taiwan, using world systems theories and their shifting operations on cultural frontiers. At first, the Japanese resisted the Qing precedent of using tongshi (通事), Han Chinese interpreters who acted as "cultural brokers" in communications with upland aborigines (shengfan, 生番). Though many Han Chinese tongshi stayed and worked as interpreters for the Japanese, their roles as linguistic intermediaries allowed them too much room to maneuver the situation to their own advantage, making their services both unreliable and costly -- both economically and politically. Instead, the Japanese tried to teach their civil servants aboriginal languages, trying to take the matter into their own hands, but the reality was that aboriginal languages were too hard to learn, and given the diversity of languages amongst both plains aborigines and uplands aborigines, learned languages were often of limited use.

Thus, the Japanese government actually promoted and subsidized interethnic marriages, particularly in frontier locations such as Nantou County and Puli, pushing for Japanese men to enter into political marriages with aboriginal women. Aboriginal women, then, often assumed the rather influential and powerful role of interpreters and informants. Some tribes considered this to their advantage, as well, colluding with the official government and gaining access to guns and supplies. And this was especially important for the Japanese, who needed to penetrate uplands territories in order to extract increasingly valuable resources such as camphor, a hot commodity in the world economic system of the early 20th century.

Barclay makes no mention of women's agency in this story, though, and I think it's a real pity to sidestep those power dynamics altogether, when the tragedy is that these political marriages ended up being profitable and fruitful for few involved. Many of the aboriginal women were never officially entered into the Japanese household registers, so when and if the men bailed out of the marriage, the women would end up "divorced, abandoned, dead, or disgraced" (325). At the beginning of colonial rule, it may not have been readily apparent that those were the risks involved, but on the other hand, an aboriginal woman could have a lot to gain from a position of relative power and at least the hope of a sinecure as "payoff", should the marriage be dissolved. The Japanese, in an attempt to gain cooperation from all tribes, also did not account for intertribal conflicts where tribal leaders would take umbrage at rival tribes gaining access to guns and other trade resources, thanks to the economic interactions that their tribe's political marriage offered. Supposedly, these miscalculations contributed to periodic uprisings such as the massive Wushe Uprising of 1930.

Analyzing this phenomenon along gendered lines may not be particularly interesting for Barclay, but he defends his reasons for ignoring arguments of racial purity and moral, monogamous relationships -- arguments more commonly found in interethnic marriage concerns in Western colonialism. According to him, those arguments just did not appear as a prominent concern. I don't know if that is because these aboriginal women were considered an expendable, peripheral concern right from the getgo, or if it is, as Barclay insists, part of Japan's exceptional imperial evolution. This study does reveal, however, some of the pragmatic approaches of Japanese colonial policy -- even if they weren't entirely successful or even beneficial to all involved.
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18 August 2005 @ 10:40 am
Kokugo and Colonial Education in Taiwan  
Tai, Eika. "Kokugo and Colonial Education in Taiwan." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 7.2 (1999): 503-540.

I haven't read many English articles on life in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. Eika Tai's article covers the birth of Kokugo as a standardized, assimilationist national language to be taught to Japanese colonies. The debates that plagued its early formation were distinctly connected to Japan's imperial mindset, and language policy itself was tied to control over the direction that colonial assimilation policies were going to take. One camp believed that proper national language education could help Taiwanese "turn Japanese" -- as it was believed that language embodies cultural ideology, so true mastery of the language would "automatically" breed essential Japanese cultural traits. However, implementation was dubious, uneven, and ultimately unsuccessful. While many Taiwanese did master the language, the "cognitive framework" of Japanese colonial govenrment presented the main obstacle to successful assimilation. There were still large gaps between theory and practice, and what the Japanese government gave its Taiwanese subjects was too little, too late.

The first major wave of education reforms came in 1910, in response to mainland Chinese political upheavels that preceded the 1911 revolution. More changes came with more progressive colonial administrators, as with prime minister Hara Kei in 1918 and his appointee Den Kenjiro as governer-general of Taiwan in 1919. 1922's laws allowed Taiwanese and Japanese to be educated in the same schools, but only those who used Japanese on a regular basis qualified for higher quality Japanese education -- such as at Taihoku Imperial University, which had a medical school, etc. In the 1920's and 1930's, the Japanese government saw an increase from 25% to 50% of Taiwanese citizens who went to school, but education levels were still pretty low. Education came mostly in the form of indoctrination in imperial servitude and the agricultural importance of Taiwan to Japan's expansionist cause.

After 1937, there was another step up in educational programming, in response to Japan's war waged against China proper. 1942 allowed Taiwanese to enroll as volunteer soldiers in the Japanese imperial army, but even the Japanese were apprehensive about this, given the language barriers that they still had to overcome. Even though, in 1940, everyone under the age of 70 was supposed to be given formal training in Japanese language schools, you can imagine how it really wasn't enough. Though 57% of Taiwanese were supposed to be "competent" in Japanese, according to a 1941 survey, the results are questionable given the segregation of rural and urban Taiwanese, the concentration of Japanese residents in urban centers, the vastly different social circles that most Japanese and Taiwanese circulated in, the continued use of Taiwanese in most homes, especially in rural araes where 60z% of Taiwanese still lived... Fudged results, basically. Overly optimistic.

This article also touches on Nihongo, Japanese as a foreign language, to be taught to the rest of the world, and its contrast to Kokugo as a tightly guarded, revered, ideologically-driven language. I don't know enough about the Japanese language to know what the differences actually were, but my impression of it is that one was more formal than the other. Nowadays, Nihongo is the norm used to refer to the constructed national language, says the author.

One important element that Kokugo was supposed to teach, in theory, was subservience to the emperor. To be Japanese, you had to be willing to die for him... The Japanese never reached that level of confidence in Taiwan, so they never implemented a compulsory draft.

Fascinating article. Will clean up this entry later.
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07 June 2005 @ 02:03 pm
Taiwan in Japan's Security Considerations  
Yoshihide, Soeya. "Taiwan in Japan's Security Considerations." Taiwan in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective View. Ed. Richard Louis Edmonds and Steven M. Goldstein. China Quarterly Special Issues New Series 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 130-146.

because of Japan's unique relationship with China and Taiwan before the war, their "two Chinas" policy emerged by default. American pressure to ally themselves with the "proper" side in the cold war led the Japanese to acknowledge Taipei as the legitimate capital of China -- the Cold War issue was basically at the forefront of everyone's considerations. Japan basically did everything the United States asked of it, with regards to the China issue, though they kept economic channels open on both sides, with the understanding that they needed China's economy to help Japanese economic growth.

so basically, Japan was being good and doing as the United States commanded it, so they felt somewhat backstabbed with Nixon suddenly decided that it was okay to switch over to Beijing. Japan kind of wanted to lead that process, but the Americans jumped the gun on them in 1971. so, Japan switched over in 1972, "by default", but they were still allowed to maintain economic and cultural ties with Japan. though these ties remain on an "unofficial" level, the point is that Beijing allows Japan to do so, despite their occasional bouts of hypersensitivity and attempts to corner Japan into an explicit decision.

anyway, to this day, Japan's got our back, but only if the United States says so. and right now, the U.S. (more or less) says so.
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30 March 2005 @ 01:19 pm
Against the God Emperor  
Anarkowic, Stefan. Against the God Emperor: The Anarchist Treason Trials in Japan. London: Kate Sharpley Library, n.d.

The methods of State repression are universal... all use exactly the same methods to repress, to kill, to suppress discontent, using any and all dirty tricks possible to maintain themselves in power. Sometimes to understand what is happening around us very clearly, it is necessary to step outside the situation, to see the wood for the trees, so to speak. By using the example of Japan which is, both geographically and culturally, so different from Europe and North America, we can see what is happening to us who live inside these countries (introduction).

... There is one other item, which appeared too late to be consulted here, but which must be mentioned: The Libertaire Group's A Short History of the Anarchist Movement in Japan (Toikyo, August, 1979). COnceivably unique in the history of anarchist publishing, the book becomes an deven more astonishing achievement when one considers that it was produced entirely by Japanese people with no help from native speakers of English (postcript). ... as if Japanese anarchists, though certainly influenced by Western ideas, were unable to formulate political theories of their own. Pshaw.


Anyway, I agree that it's important to document how even in Japan's early history of imperial aggression, there were activist clusters who tried to check the fact that horrendous things were being done in the name of the Japanese emperor. Most of what they did was disseminate ilicit information (like translatiosn of "The Communist Manifesto", Kropotkin, etc.) and make plans -- including a plan to assassinate the emperor using bombs, for which they were fingered and 24 out of 26 anarchists were put to death. However, the stuff that really got the Japanese government's goat resonated with the instability of the times. For example, on November 3rd, 1907, an "Open Letter to Mutsuhito, the Japanese Emperor, from Anarchists-Terrorists" was nailed to the door of the San Francisco Japanese Consulate. The letter defied the Emperor's claim to divine heredity, and threatened him with assassination should the regime remain unchanged -- a fate similar to that experienced by Russian, French leaders, etc.

Because of this letter, Kotoku Sugako, one of the prime anarchist agitators, was trailed and dogged by police. He denied involvement, but it was known that he was in charge of underground printing presses (confiscated and fined several times) and met with other anarchist and communist groups. Anyway, this zine makes the point that they were all closely shadowed, and they all knew it ... which makes their eventual capture, imprisonment, and execution seem the more inevitable.

The problem with this writing is that it comes across as dogmatic as state-sanctioned propaganda or religious literature. Of course, he's preaching to the converted, trying to add fuel to the fire by providing case histories. But I don't understand the approach... if you're going to smash the system, of course you've got to be smarter, sneakier, and more resourceful than the system. And guess what -- that kind of organization takes more than a eulogy for dead revolutionary martyrs. Tactics, not lamentations. Yet, while it's good to know that not everyone was drawn into the emperor worship trap, the anarchists were not in the right situation to succeed. Power and state resources were really too concentrated at the top. They had no chance.
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15 February 2005 @ 12:26 am
Flirting With the Foreign  
Kelsky, Karen. "Flirting With the Foreign: Interracial Sex in Japan's 'International' Age." Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary. Ed. Rob Wilson, Wimal Dissanayake. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. 173-192.

Kelsky takes on some of the shifts in Japanese gender relations, honing in on the active role that Japanese women take in pursuing foreign men. While it's a small minority that pursues foreign gaijin men, or actively promotes their [subjective] superiority to Japanese men, this minority has become the focus of popular attention in literature, magazines, and slang. They're called "yellow cabs", a term that comes from foreigners' slang -- 'yellow' to denote Asianness, 'cabs' because like taxis in New York, you can ride them at any time. (I must admit, I've never heard this term before... I'm not sure if this is still a commonly used term, or if it was briefly popular at the time this article was written in the early 1990's.)

However, Kelsky regards this 'trend' as an implicit critique of Japanese male treatment of Japanese women. This becomes more explicit when you ask the 'yellow cabs' themselves why they date foreigners instead of Japanese men. According to Kelsky, the most common response is that foreigners are kinder (yasashii). There are physical stereotypes of course -- that foreigners are more hung, that they're better looking... but according to some respondents, it's not just physical. Japanese men are "too childish", "can't take care of themselves", etc. This may imply that Japanese women date gaijin because they're NOT childish, they CAN take care of themselves, that they 'know how to treat women', etc., but of course there is no generalization that fits across the board.

Where Kelsky sees the problem is the male response to these female desires. "Japanese men's response has not been to embrace women's demands but to exaggerate the threat they represent: to precipitate a crisis" (186). Even when high profile novelists insist that (generally speaking) they're not being treated fairly in love and romance, the male response is usually to fall back on "essentialist, nativist, and male-centered representations of "Japanese culture"; and to compel Japanese women to conform to such representations" (186). that is, Japanese men just aren't prone to emotional displays. Japanese society in general is more conservative about public displays of affection, let alone private displays of affection, and these are borders that Japanese women should respect, instead of going wild and turning their back on their 'Japaneseness'. In other words, "The men co-opt the women's voices, and in their highly influential media accounts, twist this discourse on gender intoa discourse on sex and nation" (187).

This is not to say that interracial relationships should just be accepted and taken at face value. Far from it. Kelsky fully acknowledges the Orientalist fetish that foreigners often put on all Asian women, as notorious sex guidebooks will reveal. However, enough has been written about that, and she wants to point out that the women who choose to date foreigners also have a certain kind of agency. As more young, single, Japanese women gain economic clout, they are traveling more and even being preyed upon by foreigners who look to them as temporary flings/literally, financial sponsors of romantic trysts. To Kelsky, the fact that Japanese women are increasingly able to engage in free, extramarital relations (free as in 'public') shouldn't be criticized to the extent that is has been, especially if the Japanese media and Japanese culture in general isn't going to condemn the notorious Japanese sex tours which, of course, have typically been the luxury of men.
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01 January 2005 @ 04:45 pm
Lee's visit lends Taiwan dignity  
"Lee's visit lends Taiwan dignity." Editorial. Taipei Times 1 January 2005 <http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/edit/archives/2005/01/01/2003217585>. Accessed 1 January 2005.

China's whining and threatening to "punish" Japan for allowing former president (and vehement spokesperson for Taiwanese independence), Lee Teng-hui, to visit Japan (civilian visa, personal matters). Sometimes, China pisses me off so much.

Related stories:

Lee banned from alma mater campus in Japan (1 January 2005)
China seeks to punish Japan over Lee visit (31 December 2004)
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26 November 2004 @ 11:04 pm
Shirayuri Club Goes to Tokyo  
Shirayuri Club Tokyo e iku (Shirayuri Club Goes to Tokyo). Dir. Nakae Yuji. Perf. Shirayuri Club, The BOOM. Shirayuri Project: 2003.

the Shirayuri Club is an amateur band from Shiraho, the small, southernmost island of Okinawa. they formed in 1947 and have been playing continuously, with most of the same members, since then. this documentary follows their first performance at the Kinema Club in Tokyo, sponsored by the BOOM.

the content is pretty simple. the documentary has been called an "Okinawan 'Buena Vista Social Club'". i still haven't seen BVSC, but my impression is that BVSC is and was more popular than the Shirayuri Club.

to me, the Shirayuri Club is less a documentary about music, and more a meditation on age. having lived through the hardships of World War II and post-war poverty, the club members nevertheless strove to lead a fulfilling life. their music fits a general theme of resistance against prevailing circumstances -- as in Viva Tonal, music is lauded as a way to elevate spirits in the midst of depressing times. close-knit communities are remarkably tenacious during hard times -- how does music (in local performance groups or as a mass-distributed medium) bridge human relationships?

most of the members were in their teens when they started in 1947. the chairman, one of the co-founders of the group, is now 81 years old. they are all remarkably active, especially in comparison to the elderly in America. not only do they continue to play music and dance, there's even footage of them running farms, picking okra, even playing tennis (nimbly, at that).

and i wonder how my outlook on life will change when i am that old -- if i even reach that age. friends will start dying off, and how will that affect one's character? the most touching part of this documentary was when four of the members assembled in front of the camera, placed on the deceased co-founder's (another founder, not the chairman featured in the film) grave, and performed one of his songs. i don't even know how to describe it. it was so solemn, so ritualistic, yet so loaded with sentimentality. i cried while watching a documentary, dammit.

then again, maybe it was because i was surrounded by members of the Shirayuri Club (literally sandwiched by them, because my assigned-seat ticket put me in one of the three rows reserved for the guests of honor), in attendance at this Golden Horse screening, and i could hear them all quietly crying during this segment. i'm sure they've seen their own documentary dozens of times already, but the moment still affects them -- it's a powerful segment.

the concert footage of the Shirayuri Club performing "Shimauta" with the Boom and audience members dancing after the show to some bushi encore was rather moving, too. i don't think i'd ever read a translation of that hit song before, but it's so HEAVY with nostalgia, wow... but something appreciated by young and old alike.
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13 July 2004 @ 10:28 pm
Recentering Globalization  
Iwabuchi Koichi. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Iwabuchi questions the traditional theories of cultural imperialism that assume a "West/East" binary, in which the Eurocentric "West" [primarily America] is the propagator of mass culture and the undeveloped "East" is the submissive receptacle of the West's influence. While certainly a lot of work has been done to question the overall validity of such a linear, unidirectional model [Iwabuchi is heavily indebted to and quotes liberally from Appadurai, Stuart Hall, Bhabha], Iwabuchi claims that there hasn't been enough exploration on the "East" as an active participant in the globalization [specifically, global cultural domination] process.

so he looks at the Japanese culture industry and and their ethic dochaku, "glocalism," or global localism, "a global strategy which does not seek to impose a standard product or image, but instead is tailored to the demands of the local market" (Featherstone, in Iwabuchi, 46). the Japanese do not specifically create their goods for Asian domination, but the extent to which it has been integrated into Asian economies such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, etc. [not to mention otaku communities in North America and Australia] is spoken of in disturbing, problematic terms. from what Iwabuchi has found, nationalist Japanese writers are very self-congratulatory when describing the spread of Japanese mass culture across Asia, and many non-Japanese audiences have been infected with a sort of "longing" for Japanese modernity via these pop cultural products.

what Iwabuchi sees in Asia is a tendency towards a mutually exclusive trichotomy of "West"/"Asia"/"Japan", in which Japan is separate from the rest of Asia for a whole host of reasons. the superiority is derived partly from the belief [both in and out of Japan] that the Japanese are the world's best cultural synthesizers -- they've mastered the ability to digest Western influences and spit out something "uniquely Asian", yet not entirely Japanese. it is their ability to bring modernity to the rest of Asia -- still in development, and many parts quite unevenly -- that sets them ahead of the pack, and in part relieves them of historic guilt. being able to win back the trust of Asia, if only on a superficial, economic level, gives Japan a sense of assurance that they did have something unique going on all along:

It is claimed that the appeal of Japanese popular culture lies in its subtle indigenization of American popular culture, making it suitable to "Asian tastes," and that therefore Japan has had a special leading role in constructing the sphere of Asian popular culture. The hybrid nature of Japanese popular culture is also seen to present modern, liberal facets of Japanese society to other parts of Asia. In this case, the spread of Japanese popular culture in other parts of Asia is conceived as improving Japan's image as an oppressor in Asia and thus overcomes the legacy of its history of imperial aggression in the region. (19)

Iwabuchi breaks it down, analyzing common media spectacles with Japanese origin -- certain game show formats, anime, and the commercial cult of the idol singer. he talks a lot about economics, and how it was mainly in the 80's and 90's that Japanese culture was all the rage, peaking alongside the Asian economy. but after the crash of the 90's, the rest of Asia was given a chance to "catch up" to Japan in industrial development, so Japan no longer has the upper hand on pop culture production. he uses case studies in Taiwan, with Japanese TV dramas, Singapore's Dick Lee, and Hong Kong's movie industry [specifically Wong Kar-Wai] to show that the assymetrical structure of transcultural exchange, mainly through popular Japanese points of view. the Japanese are very proud of themselves when their media products are accepted so fanatically in other parts of Asia, but when the Japanese consume other Asian pop cultures, they tend to condescendt it by framing foreign achievements as "the rest of Asia is becoming as capable as we have been," or the rest of Asia's cultural products being somehow more "pure" or "tender" or "vigorous", qualities that Japan is seen to have "lost" after its economic crash.

his examples are extensive, but ultimately inadequate -- not to mention inelegantly analyzed. i'm really skeptical of his readings, especially when (a) his informant pools are so small and restricted and (b) as seemingly innocuous and shallow as pop culture might be, it's nearly impossible to generalize because its superficiality leads to so MANY possible readings. reading Iwabuchi, i thought, of course mass culture's weakness is that the SAME message is piped out to millions at the same time, but the wonder of it, the reason a society can still sustain mass culture, is that so much can happen on the reception side -- and i can think of dozens of more active responses than what Iwabuchi considers for Asian audiences.

for example, his conclusions on Taiwan were based on a few dozen extremely qualitative interviews. no matter how closely he listened, it's still statistically irrelevant. granted, he tried talked to a wide swath of people -- industry experts, marketing analysts, mothers and fathers and teenaged fans alike, but his conclusions seem so selective and dated. after all, the ban on Japanese-language television in Taiwan was only lifted in 1993. and there's still so much residual tension to counter the growing popularity of Japanese TV dramas that now many dramas ARE overdubbed, and there's a whole industry of similarly stylized, Taiwanese-based and produced TV dramas to bring the phenomenon back to a localized level. and if you want to count number of titles on the shelf, let's be perfectly frank -- you'll find the MOST Japanese titles in the hentai and porn section. that's the stuff that escapes official recognition, and wouldn't that throw a wild hammer into the cogs of whatEVER the Japanese want to think about their cultural superiority? when it comes down to it, how much does official, public, or even academic rhetoric really do to influence individual use and reception?

(to be continued.)
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03 June 2004 @ 12:31 am
The Global Soul  
Iyer, Pico. The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home. New York: Vintage Departures, 2000.

i'd initially picked up this book, remembering a poetic article about some of Iyer's travels. this title, obviously, points to more of the same. but i had hoped that this book would be more about "people like me", and was disappointed that inevitably, it's more about "people like Pico Iyer" -- a whirled riddle, a "global soul" that's really kind of... shallow and soulless.

not that he lacks keen observation or writing skills. it's still very humorous and poetic writing -- like the most poignant blogs or magazine articles that i can imagine. the pages that read like visual catalogs get tiresome after a while though. instead of arbitrary facts and anecdotes bracketed by blank line breaks, i wished for something more substantive, more grounded, more committal and communicative. it takes until the very end for Iyer to acknowledge his own lack of any firm stance:

I, by contrast, lacked [my friends'] furies and felt I'd inherited none of their enmities. I had no traditions to protect, I felt, and I reveled in those like Adorno saying, "It is part of morality not to be at home in one's home." Instead of their passions, I (like many a Global Soul, I think) was more prone to floating dispassion; and instead of their fierce sense of right and wrong, I had a more unanchored, relativistic sense. "Perhaps there is an advantage in being born in a city like Monte Carlo, without roots," says Brown, the suitably anonymous character in Greene's Comedians (having seen his "unknown brother" Jones die along the international road), "for one accepts more easily what comes." (258)

it was a confession that surprised me, like he was directly responding to the key slings i'd been thinking, up to that point.

truth is, i most admire writers with morals. i enjoy moral philosophers, provided i don't feel like i'm being preached to, but i can't abide being preached to by a moral-less philosopher. that's postmodern journalism for you. that's Pico Iyer. whereas i insist that Effort makes a home. and Iyer chooses, instead, to float. after all, he's made a career and identity out of his instability.

but even he needs borders, too. i thought his explanation for living and loving in Japan (chapter, "The Alien Home") to be the most truthful part of the book.
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08 April 2004 @ 11:24 pm
Yukoku  
Yukoku (The Rite of Love and Death/Patriotism). Writ. Yukio Mishima. Dir. Yukio Mishima, Domoto Masaki. Perf. Yukio Mishima, Yoshiko Tsuruoka. 1966.

Sure, everyone talks about the DEATH part of this 28-minute film, since this is the film that infamously predicts Yukio's 1970 suicide by seppuku. nobody ever mentions the LOVE part -- which is agonizingly stylized, and consumes at least a good 50% of this film. But there's some interesting camera work, perhaps more visually intriguing due to the heavy pixellation of my .avi copy. The entire film is shot in black and white, dialogue-free, and outrageously scored (Wagner plays throughout the film).

Another important historical film obtained with the help of the magical World Wide Web.
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23 July 2003 @ 09:54 pm
Now It Can Be Told  
Smulyan, Susan. "Now It Can Be Told: The Influence of the United States Occupation on Japanese Radio." Radio Reader. Edited Jason Loviglio and Michele Hilmes. New York: Routledge, 2002. 301-317.

maybe it's my DJ-instincts, but i absolutely loathe dead air!! the fact that an extra second (or more) of radio silence makes me wince, or curse the amateur DJ (even at college stations, they should be better trained than that) contradicts my purported love of silence, but that's partially because i take such stuffy pride in the way i craft my own segues.

Smulyan explains dead air in cultural terms. Japanese listeners used to write NHK, requesting an extra five minutes of silence after some programs, so that they could digest the information. the American producers, of course, balked at the idea that these dumb Japanese listeners were asking for "valuable time not available for sale". to hear Smulyan tell it, the SCAP-sponsored Council of Information and Education (CIE) just did not have a very high opinion on Japanese audiences' listening abilities. stunted by years of "primitive" production techniques, the Japanese were not expected to know a good thing when they hear it.

hence, the Japanese listeners' revulsion to the NHK/CIE-produced program, Now It Can Be Told, was because "to the ears of a people long alienated from the truth, the facts sound strange and unbelievable" (307). but here were listeners telling them that they didn't like the tone or ideological content of the broadcasts, they didn't like the music or the melodramatic dramatization of their history, they didn't like how quickly the dialogue moved. and CIE's response was along the lines of, "shucks, C'MON! this is the democratic way of broadcasting! are you dense or haven't you been listening? you'll get used to it, and we'll show you that this commercialized, Americanized format of broadcasting WILL indeed serve YOUR needs!"

Columbia University makes yet another appearance. a handful of occupation-era Japanese (NHK) broadcasters were sent to Columbia in order to learn American broadcasting techniques. they got to learn with some of the best (well, most insightful and statistically-thorough radio scholars. of the time, anyway)! -- Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta Herzog, Erik Barnouw, etc. but the director of CIE's radio branch stopped sending more graduate students there because he didn't think the broadcast training was fitting -- there were no "top-flight American network representatives." maybe Dwight Herrick thought that meant the department was stuffy and impractical .. but i think a skilled broadcaster possesses more than technique and corporate savvy. a knowledge of the history of the medium, and some thoughtful ideas about why and how it works and affects culture and society at large really helps to bolster the maturity and authority of the broadcaster. so they can be more than just a talking head (or a squawking, uh, voicebox?). it's morally imperative that they are more than a talking head.
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Current Music: Mali Lolo! Stars of Mali
 
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30 June 2003 @ 10:30 pm
Soy Sauce Music: Haruomi Hosono and Japanese Self-Orientalism  
Hosokawa, Shuhei. "Soy Sauce Music: Haruomi Hosono and Japanese Self-Orientalism." Widening the Horizon: Exoticism in Post-War Popular Music. Ed. Philip Hayward. Sydney, Australia: John Libbey and Company, 1999. 114-144.

goes a lot in explaining why Harry Hosono is my favorite YMO.
Hosokawa is kind of light on the theoretical fluff, which is good, because I prefer the histories and backgrounds of these artists -- at least someone cares to relate the story.
good section on G.I. music.
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