現Boss WongSY:
「香港人(学生)95%的(Tuto)時間都是講無意義的説話--只是發声、不是思考」
他界的 陳特先生:
「人総是儍儍地跟着他人行動」
前Boss G.M:
「Go to the conference, you will be suprised how stupid scholars are」
SY
「為什麼総是有些人要控制他人?」
Lee TM
「獅子看見羚羊煞有介事地闘争時候的笑容、是『獅笑』」
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Moe Rurubu 採訪(上)
經友人介紹,今天與もえるるぶ(JTB)計畫的發起人佐野先生吃晚飯(新宿的山西刀削麵店)。
這本經日本各大電視媒體報導的萌系觀光書,一時成為城中話題。無獨有偶,佐野先生的東京大學時代也是主修社會學(也一樣對所謂主流社會學的「重要性」無大所謂),畢業論文也當然是以一眾御宅族為研究對象。編者先生的女友青木小姐(竟然)又是鐵道愛好者(鐵道旅行),整晚自然環繞動漫與鐵道的話題進行社會學的知性討論。
談起本書,編輯先生的計畫原來是有點意外地得到接納的。JTB(200多人的會社)的RURUBU系列的風格從來與萌系東西風馬牛不相及。話說連社長也出席的會議上,編輯連計畫書也沒有就(竟然)得到社長接納。奇就奇在會議中的一眾老餅上司們根本連什麼是萌啦、maid café啦、cosplay啦、通通不知道是什麼東西,提出計畫的又是年青的(怪?)人,根本無可能得到接納。事後聽聞,原來社長的千金是cosplayer(汗),倒也算是個奇跡。實情如何不得而知,就是知道籌備半年,銷量不錯,約七萬本。(順便無料拿了一本,謝過謝過)(<-まだ買っていないの??)
問到編輯的女友對本書的看法,想當然(又竟然?)是她幫忙不少,尤其是cosplay的情報 (稍後還介紹可愛的cosplayer給筆者認識,不賴不賴)。至於編輯,則負責本書的意念及主要採訪maid café的取材(哦呵呵),當然聽了不少專業分析。(下次飯局地點當然是編輯認最好Sa-bisu(服務)的maid café了)
OMAKE
另外,毫無疑問地(?),JTB會社內就是鐵道迷最多,以工作為名整天一邊看鐵道時刻表一邊怪笑(?)的員工不少,負責到各地取材的兼職工到會社拿車票的時候,邊談邊笑,與正職社員談的商務公事都是鐵道旅遊大計(真是駭人聽聞 汗)。
這本經日本各大電視媒體報導的萌系觀光書,一時成為城中話題。無獨有偶,佐野先生的東京大學時代也是主修社會學(也一樣對所謂主流社會學的「重要性」無大所謂),畢業論文也當然是以一眾御宅族為研究對象。編者先生的女友青木小姐(竟然)又是鐵道愛好者(鐵道旅行),整晚自然環繞動漫與鐵道的話題進行社會學的知性討論。
談起本書,編輯先生的計畫原來是有點意外地得到接納的。JTB(200多人的會社)的RURUBU系列的風格從來與萌系東西風馬牛不相及。話說連社長也出席的會議上,編輯連計畫書也沒有就(竟然)得到社長接納。奇就奇在會議中的一眾老餅上司們根本連什麼是萌啦、maid café啦、cosplay啦、通通不知道是什麼東西,提出計畫的又是年青的(怪?)人,根本無可能得到接納。事後聽聞,原來社長的千金是cosplayer(汗),倒也算是個奇跡。實情如何不得而知,就是知道籌備半年,銷量不錯,約七萬本。(順便無料拿了一本,謝過謝過)(<-まだ買っていないの??)
問到編輯的女友對本書的看法,想當然(又竟然?)是她幫忙不少,尤其是cosplay的情報 (稍後還介紹可愛的cosplayer給筆者認識,不賴不賴)。至於編輯,則負責本書的意念及主要採訪maid café的取材(哦呵呵),當然聽了不少專業分析。(下次飯局地點當然是編輯認最好Sa-bisu(服務)的maid café了)
OMAKE
另外,毫無疑問地(?),JTB會社內就是鐵道迷最多,以工作為名整天一邊看鐵道時刻表一邊怪笑(?)的員工不少,負責到各地取材的兼職工到會社拿車票的時候,邊談邊笑,與正職社員談的商務公事都是鐵道旅遊大計(真是駭人聽聞 汗)。
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Sunday, June 12, 2005
正式開張
寛頻工事終於完成!本Blog正式営業!
近況
a)研究:讀過基本的鐡道史研究、現正在想研究的理論架構與問題
b)授業:「日本経済史」発表予定;
「日本戦後文学史」発表予定--三島由紀夫の「奔馬」
豊饒之海第二巻:輪廻転生的壮大故事。
継第一巻「春の雪」大正時代的恋愛悲(鬧)劇後、
主人公転生到昭和初期参加神風連行動的英雄史詩式悲(鬧)劇
c)アニメ:Honey And Clover--幾乎是近期唯一較有誠意的作品
或者看Download的動画不能体会到定時定候毎週追看的辛苦之處、
也因此較能品評素質。
分鏡、音楽、動画、表現、氣氛、音楽等、均能顯示作者群的功力。
本動画是唯一不能「錯過」的本季動画電視節目。
d)電影:考慮看「戦国自衛隊」:自衛隊 対 織田信長(汗)
近日日本文化の推薦
ギター侍(結他武士)波田陽區:最近超人気的搞笑芸人。専門挑有名人的名言諷刺一番
本Blog驚人予告
「萌えるるぶ」編集/計画者的面会與訪問 ご期待を!
近況
a)研究:讀過基本的鐡道史研究、現正在想研究的理論架構與問題
b)授業:「日本経済史」発表予定;
「日本戦後文学史」発表予定--三島由紀夫の「奔馬」
豊饒之海第二巻:輪廻転生的壮大故事。
継第一巻「春の雪」大正時代的恋愛悲(鬧)劇後、
主人公転生到昭和初期参加神風連行動的英雄史詩式悲(鬧)劇
c)アニメ:Honey And Clover--幾乎是近期唯一較有誠意的作品
或者看Download的動画不能体会到定時定候毎週追看的辛苦之處、
也因此較能品評素質。
分鏡、音楽、動画、表現、氣氛、音楽等、均能顯示作者群的功力。
本動画是唯一不能「錯過」的本季動画電視節目。
d)電影:考慮看「戦国自衛隊」:自衛隊 対 織田信長(汗)
近日日本文化の推薦
ギター侍(結他武士)波田陽區:最近超人気的搞笑芸人。専門挑有名人的名言諷刺一番
本Blog驚人予告
「萌えるるぶ」編集/計画者的面会與訪問 ご期待を!
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Research log
Research Topics:
1) Institutional Origins:
Mu'en: temple control of roads in medieval period--Japan and Europe
Between Repressive State appratus and Legitimacy: Sankin-Kotai
The public imagination and pratice of Tokaido
2) Introduction of railway and its institutional calibration:
Social control in micro scale
Towards national integration: Covolution of State and Public's control of rail
3) The emergency of national policy via transporatation control
To be a part of the nation: Local responses to integration and its effects to political parties
Seeking autonomy: the evolution of suburban culture in the cities
The birth of Showa: long live the C51
4) Collapse and the rebirth of the national narrative of railway
Strategic failures
Towards the dream of Shinkansen and Discover Japan
National Railway, its supporters and betrayers
?) As rituals
Staff Training
The settings
Social control
?) Cultural imaginaries of the railway
Literature
Manga and Anime
Film
1) Institutional Origins:
Mu'en: temple control of roads in medieval period--Japan and Europe
Between Repressive State appratus and Legitimacy: Sankin-Kotai
The public imagination and pratice of Tokaido
2) Introduction of railway and its institutional calibration:
Social control in micro scale
Towards national integration: Covolution of State and Public's control of rail
3) The emergency of national policy via transporatation control
To be a part of the nation: Local responses to integration and its effects to political parties
Seeking autonomy: the evolution of suburban culture in the cities
The birth of Showa: long live the C51
4) Collapse and the rebirth of the national narrative of railway
Strategic failures
Towards the dream of Shinkansen and Discover Japan
National Railway, its supporters and betrayers
?) As rituals
Staff Training
The settings
Social control
?) Cultural imaginaries of the railway
Literature
Manga and Anime
Film
勧学篇
這個世界之悲哀、在於真實永遠只會呈現其一部分;亦因為只有一部分係真、其他或乃不純之嘘言妄語、或無意義的記号、或個人主観的投射、這個世界及其教育也此充満虚幻。不過、也因為全然虚幻的話語同様亦不可能、希望也同時存在。
押井守監督の名言:
1)戦争映画はある意味アニメにしか存在ない。なぜなら、だれでも体験できないことは語られない。それにしたら、アニメで語るしかない。
2)日本は戦争しないべきか。なぜなら、日本人は戦争が下手だから。
(未及上網、待続)
押井守監督の名言:
1)戦争映画はある意味アニメにしか存在ない。なぜなら、だれでも体験できないことは語られない。それにしたら、アニメで語るしかない。
2)日本は戦争しないべきか。なぜなら、日本人は戦争が下手だから。
(未及上網、待続)
Monday, May 02, 2005
押井守的動漫講座 及其他
如果動漫講座不過係一些既無学問上的啓發性、又無趣的打發時間的活動、則是件非常悲哀的事。
5月9日東京大学安田講堂(ラブひな?)舉行「アニメーションの最前線からのメッセージ」(来自動画最前線的Message)講座、請得押井守等人主講現今日本動画文化工業の前景、特別是海外進出、資金調達、技術発展等話題。現場實況会為大家報告。
其他:
A) 空想研究大計・実行中(難易度 SS)
5月9日東京大学安田講堂(ラブひな?)舉行「アニメーションの最前線からのメッセージ」(来自動画最前線的Message)講座、請得押井守等人主講現今日本動画文化工業の前景、特別是海外進出、資金調達、技術発展等話題。現場實況会為大家報告。
其他:
A) 空想研究大計・実行中(難易度 SS)
- 訪問「銀河鉄道999」作者松本零士先生!
- 訪問「鉄道殺人」推理小説系列作者西村京太郎先生!
- 訪問新海誠先生!
B) 東大本屋訂英文書、貴了¥1000(泣)(但おばさん很好人)
●攻略中●
- 漫画:大城のぼる「汽車旅行」復刻版
- 漫画:浦沢直樹「Pluto」豪華版
- 評論:押井守「すべての映画はアニメになる」
- 小説:三島由紀夫「金閣寺」(鬼畜度 S) 電車中読んだら大丈夫かな?
- 散文:三島由紀夫「英霊の声」
- 鉄道:中村尚史「日本鉄道業の形成1869ー1894」
- 鉄道:松下孝昭「鉄道建設と地方政治」
- 計画書x2:5月20日までに
Friday, April 29, 2005
Thursday, April 28, 2005
尼崎事故
【特稿 JR尼崎事故分析 版権所有、厳禁複製】
近日大量好友慰問(?)本人是否有事。或者大家其実係想知道事件。
説也奇怪、解釈本事件的最好方向、係従大阪的鉄道文化入手。
剛好在明治学院大学聴 原武史教授的課、
他的書 【「民都」大阪対「帝都」東京】 正好與本事件有関。
簡単地説、往来宝塚與大阪的交通、従来都係私鉄会社「阪急電鉄」独占的。
阪急電車亦係日本諸私鉄中最先開創「鉄道帯起地産」、「分期買楼」、「百貨公司」、以至「宝塚歌劇団」等先河的私鉄老大。
旧国鉄民営化変成JR西日本後、以金銭利益為先、福知山線即成為対抗阪急的主要都市線路。
原本一個小時四、五班車兼貴到飛起、只有小猫三、四隻的国鉄福知山線、
87年後、JR西日本大量投入資源:雙線、電化、高速、軽型車両、3分鐘一班的快速列車、大阪駅的直接轉車、直接通過地下鉄到達大阪的娯楽区到同志社大学(所以死了幾個学生)等等方法、
務求做到以「班次、快速、便利」対抗阪急。
阪急電車行一向係JNR、JR、政府以至天皇都不放在眼内、
以本地客源為主、建立「阪急地区文化圏」、傲視同行的「伝統大手私鉄会社」。
被JR的非道手段、這幾年来倒也是一直捱打。
結局、JR以幾乎虐待運転士的手法、以一秒為単位(!)厳正限制列車遅刻、
最後以乗客為犠牲品、完成JR賺銭的偉大目標。
没有了国家理念的鉄道会社、其実是否一件好事呢?
近日大量好友慰問(?)本人是否有事。或者大家其実係想知道事件。
説也奇怪、解釈本事件的最好方向、係従大阪的鉄道文化入手。
剛好在明治学院大学聴 原武史教授的課、
他的書 【「民都」大阪対「帝都」東京】 正好與本事件有関。
簡単地説、往来宝塚與大阪的交通、従来都係私鉄会社「阪急電鉄」独占的。
阪急電車亦係日本諸私鉄中最先開創「鉄道帯起地産」、「分期買楼」、「百貨公司」、以至「宝塚歌劇団」等先河的私鉄老大。
旧国鉄民営化変成JR西日本後、以金銭利益為先、福知山線即成為対抗阪急的主要都市線路。
原本一個小時四、五班車兼貴到飛起、只有小猫三、四隻的国鉄福知山線、
87年後、JR西日本大量投入資源:雙線、電化、高速、軽型車両、3分鐘一班的快速列車、大阪駅的直接轉車、直接通過地下鉄到達大阪的娯楽区到同志社大学(所以死了幾個学生)等等方法、
務求做到以「班次、快速、便利」対抗阪急。
阪急電車行一向係JNR、JR、政府以至天皇都不放在眼内、
以本地客源為主、建立「阪急地区文化圏」、傲視同行的「伝統大手私鉄会社」。
被JR的非道手段、這幾年来倒也是一直捱打。
結局、JR以幾乎虐待運転士的手法、以一秒為単位(!)厳正限制列車遅刻、
最後以乗客為犠牲品、完成JR賺銭的偉大目標。
没有了国家理念的鉄道会社、其実是否一件好事呢?
Monday, April 18, 2005
いろいろなレポート
因為短期内還未有得上網、又無デジカメ相機、唯有簡単報告:
1)【株式新聞】18・4により
―萌えビジネス888億円- 日本の萌えビジネス企業はそんなに多い??
株式新聞の調査によりますと、萌え商品・サービスがないアニメ・マンガ会社の株値は一方的に減っているが、萌えと関係ある株式会社は続いて値上がっている。(後ScanしてUploadします)
2)今学期聴講している授業:
日本鉄道史(慶應)
日本経済史(東大)
日本政治思想史(明治学院大)
現代日本政治論(明治学院大)
戦後日本史と文学:三島由紀夫(明治学院大)
高級日本語(東大)
結構忙しい。
日本漫画・アニメ関係の授業は来学期開設。「子供、漫画、戦争」、「日本アニメ論」他。お楽しみに。
3)生活費:家賃25000円;水道、ガス、電気代:10000円;運賃:20000円。
4)グルメ(最大★★★★★)
東大・赤門定食:450円。 ★★★
横浜・近所ぽかぽか弁当:450円 ★★
横浜・近所めんまラーメン中盛:700円★★★★★
松屋・味噌煮込みハンバーグ:580円 ★★★★
最近の満腹度:60%――お金の節約のため、常に飢餓状態。
5)美人チェック(最大★★★★★)
東○大学: ★★
明治学院大☆ ★★★★
慶應義△大学 ★★★
おわりに:25・4研究計画書提出。所以似乎這個星期Update会很慢
1)【株式新聞】18・4により
―萌えビジネス888億円- 日本の萌えビジネス企業はそんなに多い??
株式新聞の調査によりますと、萌え商品・サービスがないアニメ・マンガ会社の株値は一方的に減っているが、萌えと関係ある株式会社は続いて値上がっている。(後ScanしてUploadします)
2)今学期聴講している授業:
日本鉄道史(慶應)
日本経済史(東大)
日本政治思想史(明治学院大)
現代日本政治論(明治学院大)
戦後日本史と文学:三島由紀夫(明治学院大)
高級日本語(東大)
結構忙しい。
日本漫画・アニメ関係の授業は来学期開設。「子供、漫画、戦争」、「日本アニメ論」他。お楽しみに。
3)生活費:家賃25000円;水道、ガス、電気代:10000円;運賃:20000円。
4)グルメ(最大★★★★★)
東大・赤門定食:450円。 ★★★
横浜・近所ぽかぽか弁当:450円 ★★
横浜・近所めんまラーメン中盛:700円★★★★★
松屋・味噌煮込みハンバーグ:580円 ★★★★
最近の満腹度:60%――お金の節約のため、常に飢餓状態。
5)美人チェック(最大★★★★★)
東○大学: ★★
明治学院大☆ ★★★★
慶應義△大学 ★★★
おわりに:25・4研究計画書提出。所以似乎這個星期Update会很慢
Monday, April 11, 2005
そろそろ
Updateの予定は、今週内です。
ご期待ください。
将会在本週内Updata、敬請期待!
>内容予告<(変更あり)
*東大*地震*明治学院大学の美人*駅弁先生*
アニメ・漫画テレビ紹介*電車*本屋巡回*アキバ*
食事*地下鉄*サクラ*ラーメン
ご期待ください。
将会在本週内Updata、敬請期待!
>内容予告<(変更あり)
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Friday, April 01, 2005
Remembering the Forgotten War
Looking back on the sixtieth anniversary of the surrender of Japan, Rana Mitter finds the political background to the demonstrations in China against Japanese history textbooks are full of complexities.
THE STREETS OF DOWNTOWN SHANGHAI are filled with angry students loudly protesting against Japanese aggression and demanding that the Chinese government stand up to the imperialists from across the sea. This is not the spring of 2005, when anti-Japanese protests in dries across China shocked observers around the world with their virulence, but December 9th, 1935, when students took to the streets, angered by the increasing encroachment of the Japanese empire into north China.
Seventy years after those demonstrations, it seems that Chinese anger against Japan is still a factor that can give rise to popular protest and even threaten governments. Why should this theatre of war remain a flashpoint? Often, the issue is portrayed in stark terms. The argument heard on the Chinese side is that, unlike the Germans, the Japanese have not accepted their war guilt, that Japanese school children do not learn about their country's brutal wartime past in school, and that there is a rising right-wing tide in Japan that wants to rehabilitate the war as a noble undertaking.
Before we in the West pass judgement on the inability of Japan and China to come to terms with the legacy of the Sino-Japanese War sixty years after it ended in 1945, we should consider just how shamefully little we know about that war. The Japanese state, which had had a significant empire in Asia from the late nineteenth century, reacted to economic crisis in the late 1920s with aggression, and encroached onto Chinese territory throughout the 1930s. It justified its occupation of Manchuria and the north by claiming it had a special role in liberating China from Western imperialism, but Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists (Kuomintang) and the Chinese Communists were united in seeing Japanese occupation as merely the replacement of one empire with another. China and Japan coexisted uneasily for several years, until an unplanned clash near Beijing on July 7th, 1937, finally escalated into all-out war.
Over the next few months the Nationalist government desperately attempted to defend China's cultural and economic heartland in the east as Japanese troops poured in from Manchuria, Korea, and by sea. Shanghai was lost by autumn, and the Chinese capital, Nanjing, was evacuated inland to Chongqing (Chungking). What was notable in those early months was the sheer savagery of the conflict. It quickly became a modern 'total war', involving civilians and military alike. The Japanese troops had been encouraged to believe that they would quickly conquer the Chinese, who were portrayed in propaganda as weak and cowardly. When they found that many Chinese troops were well trained and fought bravely, the Japanese became even wilder and more frustrated, laying bloody waste to the areas they conquered. As the Chinese troops retreated, it was often the civilian population that was on the end of the Japanese Imperial Army's anger, as in the notorious Nanjing Massacre (Rape of Nanking) of December 1937-January 1938, when Japanese troops murdered huge numbers of Chinese civilians.
The achievement of the Chinese, and particularly of the Nationalist government, in holding down close to a million Japanese troops in China has been underplayed in later historical accounts, even though the conflict became a part of the wider world war after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. In the absence of detailed figures, estimates of the number of Chinese killed in the war run from 15 to 35 million, comparable to the huge loss of life in the Soviet Union. The number of refugees within China has been calculated at 80 million. The Communist victory in 1949 has been, rightly, attributed in part to the wide sense of disgust at the corruption and incompetence of the Nationalist government. But we should also recognize that the devastation of the Japanese onslaught from 1937 threw the Nationalists utterly off- course and cut short Chiang Kai-shek's attempts to build up a modern state. These attempts had many flaws even before war broke out, but historians have nonetheless begun to reassess Chiang's government as a serious modernizing force. The war cut his project short, and with Chiang Kai-shek's forced move to the far west, and the loss of huge amounts of industrial and agricultural capacity, the Japanese had effectively made the task of reconstruction impossible. The killings committed by the Japanese -- by sword and gun in Nanjing, with bombs at Chongqing -- are the most obvious aspect of that country's crimes against China during the war. But the destruction of the attempt to build a new state was a more fundamental disaster. In 1949, with Nationalist credibility destroyed, the Communists found the mantle of reconstruction fell to them instead.
Yet the reality of Japanese brutality in wartime China should not lead us into a simplistic mistake that nothing has changed in Japan since. Postwar democratization means that there are many different Japanese understandings of the war. These include, but are not limited to, extreme rightwing views which deny that wartime atrocities took place at all. Japan has a lively civil society and a powerful, nonconformist popular culture.
Since the early 1980s, the revision of Japanese school textbooks on the war has become a subject of controversy not just in China, but also for South Korea. The Japanese Education Ministry requires that books used for high-school history classes are approved before they are used, and the contents of some of those textbooks have been the source of conflict. Reports of attempts to replace phrases such as 'Japan's aggression in China' with 'Japan's advance into China' have understandably created anger in countries that suffered hugely during the era of Japanese colonialism.
The textbook that sparked the controversy that led to the Chinese street demonstrations in spring 2005, while approved by the Ministry of Education, is actually used by just 4 per cent of all schools in Japan. Other texts, which give far more detail on Japan's wartime behaviour in China and elsewhere in Asia, are used much more frequently. One reason for this is the continuing power of Japan's teaching unions, which have been strongly left-wing ever since the war. While the Ministry is generally conservative, those who teach in the schools themselves are not. For years, the left-wing historian Ienaga Saburo sued the Ministry on successive occasions to demand the use in schools of a textbook that gave a full account of Japan's wartime guilt. Although Ienaga suffered many setbacks in his battle with the courts before his death in 2002, his overall point was made: by the late 1990s, every single history textbook approved for use in Japanese high schools mentioned the Nanjing Massacre, and all but one gave figures for the number of Chinese dead.
Nor is it true that some conspiracy has prevented the Japanese public knowing about the atrocities committed during the war. Indeed, it is only in recent years that the English-reading public worldwide has been made aware of the Nanjing Massacre, largely because Iris Chang's book on the topic spent weeks on the international bestseller list. The first investigations into the Massacre were undertaken, not by Westerners, nor even the Chinese, but by left-wing Japanese journalists in the 1970s who were determined to uncover a story ignored by a post-war society that had dedicated itself to economic growth and a self-declaredly pacifist approach to international politics. The journalist Honda Katsuichi caused a national sensation in 1971 with his serialized Travels in China, an account of Japanese wartime brutality that drew on interviews with Chinese survivors of massacres.
Honda's purpose was to alert the Japanese public to what he felt was a reluctance to come to terms with the reality of their behaviour in Asia during the war. His work was fiercely attacked by the right, who argued that the evidence was either fabricated or exaggerated, and extremists physically attacked writers and organizations associated with the new historical understanding. Nonetheless, from the 1970s, the idea that Japan had committed terrible crimes in China became a widely understood part of public discussion in Japan, neither censored nor hidden from view.
There is, all the same, real substance to the charge that Japan has not come to terms with its wartime past. Particularly worrying is the recent immense growth in sales of the comic books of Kobayashi Yoshinori, who portrays in cartoon form Japan's wartime experience as a heroic mission to liberate Asia from the yoke of white imperialism.
Many inside and outside Japan have been disturbed by the repeated visits of various prime ministers, including the current incumbent, Junichiro Koizumi, to the Yasukuni shrine, a national memorial where many architects of Japan's wars in Asia and the Pacific are buried. Koizumi's assurance that he is visiting the shrine not to honour any specific individuals, but rather to honour Japan's war losses, cuts little ice in China or Korea. Also, Japan used its American-imposed 'peace constitution' in the post-war era to portray itself not as an aggressive invader before 1945, but rather as a victim nation, the first and only country to suffer atomic bombing.
While no one would argue with the sentiments that such bombings should never be allowed to happen again, there is little discussion in many of Japan's anti-nuclear peace gardens and institutes as to why the bombings took place in the first place, and this lack of context makes it seem as if the US air force simply appeared out of a blue sky to attack a defenceless and innocent nation. Yet Chinese who had lived through the bacteriological bombing of Chongqing in 1939 were probably not that sympathetic to the horrific plight of the Japanese A-bomb victims. As late as 2002, I was told in Chongqing about a local delicacy consisting of a fried egg with chilli sauce on it -- Chongqingers call it 'Bombing Tokyo'.
Japanese courts have tended to dismiss attempts by elderly Chinese survivors of war crimes to claim compensation, on the technical grounds that agreements made in the 1950s officially ended all Chinese wartime reparation claims on Japan. There is an uncomfortable legalism about this argument.
An obvious question can also be asked about the textbook controversy: if it is true that the problematic textbooks are so little used in schools, why approve them at all? The answer is that there is still a domestic right-wing constituency that makes the continuing availability of such books an ideological touchstone. Convinced that there is a left-wing conspiracy in schools, the extreme right seeks assurance from its MPs that they will hold the line on some public presence for the version of history that champions the idea that Japan's wartime role was a liberating and noble one.
The position of most mainstream right-wing Japanese politicians is not to glorify the war, but rather to wish it would go away. As the war fades into the past, there is certainly a more self-confident air among many Japanese politicians and voters who feel that the country needs to move on from the long post-war (sengo) period, and find a new, more assertive role in the region and the world. But for most Japanese, there is little desire to use the country's wartime record as the basis for their new strength in the region: instead, they wish to be seen as a peaceful, economically powerful state with an unfortunate past that is just that -- past.
Just as clearly, as China's own rise in the region becomes daily more apparent, the Chinese have no intention of letting the Japanese portray themselves in that light. The most recent blow-up over textbooks took place just at the moment when Japan was making the case that it should take a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. China made sure that memories of the past would help to scupper Japan's hopes for the future.
Yet China's own role in the textbook arguments is hardly straightforward. One of the reasons why China's wartime contribution was not appreciated more in the West was the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, which turned China from ally to ideological enemy. But Cold War boundaries worked both ways, and in the new People's Republic of China many areas of discussion about the war were simply off-limits. Any account of Chiang Kai-shek, by then heading a Nationalist government in Taiwan, had to paint him as a traitor and demon; no mention could be made of the fact that the Nationalists had played a significant part in the defeat of Japan. On the other hand, the People's Republic saw little benefit in anti-Japanese propaganda. The Japanese were hardly going to invade again, and there seemed to be mileage in trying to detach them from the Cold War embrace of the United States. Therefore, there was relatively little discussion of Japanese wartime behaviour in China from the 1940s to the 1970s.
In the 1980s, however, global and regional politics shifted. Chiang and Mao were both dead, and the leaders of the People's Republic now wanted to tempt Taiwan into reunification. Official propaganda now stressed the unity, rather than the divisions, between the Communist mainland and Nationalist Taiwan and made much of their shared resistance against the Japanese. There was less need to appease Japan; instead, it was felt that reminding Japan of its wartime record (and encouraging the odd popular demonstration against that record in the streets of Chinese cities) was a good way to soften up the Japanese government into giving loans and investment to China at preferential rates, as well as distracting the population from the decline in Marxist ideology at home.
Museums of the Nanjing Massacre and of the wider war against Japan were established in the 1980s in China, but these were openly declared to be 'sites for encouraging patriotic education', not coolly objective institutions for historical explanation. The historical line had changed, but the use of history to serve contemporary politics had not. Neither China nor Japan are monolithic societies. Japan's responses are much more varied than those in China where discussion is still restricted, yet it is too simplistic to argue that the Chinese government is simply manipulating Chinese popular feeling in the dispute about wartime history.
In 2005 the government found it politically useful to give permission for anti-Japanese demonstrations but was alarmed to discover that the young urban population was in fact more genuinely hostile to Japan than it had anticipated. So the authorities abruptly banned a big anti-Japanese demonstration, organized via websites, which was supposed to fill Tian'anmen Square. Not only would the associations of Tian'anmen Square have been problematic for the Communist Party, but memories of the student protests that took place on December 9th, 1935, may have also been in their minds. For while the students of seventy years ago were protesting against Japan, just a few years later they were protesting against their own government of Chiang Kai-shek; and soon after that, Chiang was forced to flee to Taiwan, never to return. The Communist Party has no intention of letting that lesson from history come back into popular memory. Yet if it fails to maintain a strong economy, and if public pressure boils over, it is hard to know whether the Party can continue to control the ways in which popular opinion reacts to the past.
By Rana Mitter
Rana Mitter is lecturer in Chinese history and politics at Oxford University, and author of A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World (2004).
THE STREETS OF DOWNTOWN SHANGHAI are filled with angry students loudly protesting against Japanese aggression and demanding that the Chinese government stand up to the imperialists from across the sea. This is not the spring of 2005, when anti-Japanese protests in dries across China shocked observers around the world with their virulence, but December 9th, 1935, when students took to the streets, angered by the increasing encroachment of the Japanese empire into north China.
Seventy years after those demonstrations, it seems that Chinese anger against Japan is still a factor that can give rise to popular protest and even threaten governments. Why should this theatre of war remain a flashpoint? Often, the issue is portrayed in stark terms. The argument heard on the Chinese side is that, unlike the Germans, the Japanese have not accepted their war guilt, that Japanese school children do not learn about their country's brutal wartime past in school, and that there is a rising right-wing tide in Japan that wants to rehabilitate the war as a noble undertaking.
Before we in the West pass judgement on the inability of Japan and China to come to terms with the legacy of the Sino-Japanese War sixty years after it ended in 1945, we should consider just how shamefully little we know about that war. The Japanese state, which had had a significant empire in Asia from the late nineteenth century, reacted to economic crisis in the late 1920s with aggression, and encroached onto Chinese territory throughout the 1930s. It justified its occupation of Manchuria and the north by claiming it had a special role in liberating China from Western imperialism, but Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists (Kuomintang) and the Chinese Communists were united in seeing Japanese occupation as merely the replacement of one empire with another. China and Japan coexisted uneasily for several years, until an unplanned clash near Beijing on July 7th, 1937, finally escalated into all-out war.
Over the next few months the Nationalist government desperately attempted to defend China's cultural and economic heartland in the east as Japanese troops poured in from Manchuria, Korea, and by sea. Shanghai was lost by autumn, and the Chinese capital, Nanjing, was evacuated inland to Chongqing (Chungking). What was notable in those early months was the sheer savagery of the conflict. It quickly became a modern 'total war', involving civilians and military alike. The Japanese troops had been encouraged to believe that they would quickly conquer the Chinese, who were portrayed in propaganda as weak and cowardly. When they found that many Chinese troops were well trained and fought bravely, the Japanese became even wilder and more frustrated, laying bloody waste to the areas they conquered. As the Chinese troops retreated, it was often the civilian population that was on the end of the Japanese Imperial Army's anger, as in the notorious Nanjing Massacre (Rape of Nanking) of December 1937-January 1938, when Japanese troops murdered huge numbers of Chinese civilians.
The achievement of the Chinese, and particularly of the Nationalist government, in holding down close to a million Japanese troops in China has been underplayed in later historical accounts, even though the conflict became a part of the wider world war after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. In the absence of detailed figures, estimates of the number of Chinese killed in the war run from 15 to 35 million, comparable to the huge loss of life in the Soviet Union. The number of refugees within China has been calculated at 80 million. The Communist victory in 1949 has been, rightly, attributed in part to the wide sense of disgust at the corruption and incompetence of the Nationalist government. But we should also recognize that the devastation of the Japanese onslaught from 1937 threw the Nationalists utterly off- course and cut short Chiang Kai-shek's attempts to build up a modern state. These attempts had many flaws even before war broke out, but historians have nonetheless begun to reassess Chiang's government as a serious modernizing force. The war cut his project short, and with Chiang Kai-shek's forced move to the far west, and the loss of huge amounts of industrial and agricultural capacity, the Japanese had effectively made the task of reconstruction impossible. The killings committed by the Japanese -- by sword and gun in Nanjing, with bombs at Chongqing -- are the most obvious aspect of that country's crimes against China during the war. But the destruction of the attempt to build a new state was a more fundamental disaster. In 1949, with Nationalist credibility destroyed, the Communists found the mantle of reconstruction fell to them instead.
Yet the reality of Japanese brutality in wartime China should not lead us into a simplistic mistake that nothing has changed in Japan since. Postwar democratization means that there are many different Japanese understandings of the war. These include, but are not limited to, extreme rightwing views which deny that wartime atrocities took place at all. Japan has a lively civil society and a powerful, nonconformist popular culture.
Since the early 1980s, the revision of Japanese school textbooks on the war has become a subject of controversy not just in China, but also for South Korea. The Japanese Education Ministry requires that books used for high-school history classes are approved before they are used, and the contents of some of those textbooks have been the source of conflict. Reports of attempts to replace phrases such as 'Japan's aggression in China' with 'Japan's advance into China' have understandably created anger in countries that suffered hugely during the era of Japanese colonialism.
The textbook that sparked the controversy that led to the Chinese street demonstrations in spring 2005, while approved by the Ministry of Education, is actually used by just 4 per cent of all schools in Japan. Other texts, which give far more detail on Japan's wartime behaviour in China and elsewhere in Asia, are used much more frequently. One reason for this is the continuing power of Japan's teaching unions, which have been strongly left-wing ever since the war. While the Ministry is generally conservative, those who teach in the schools themselves are not. For years, the left-wing historian Ienaga Saburo sued the Ministry on successive occasions to demand the use in schools of a textbook that gave a full account of Japan's wartime guilt. Although Ienaga suffered many setbacks in his battle with the courts before his death in 2002, his overall point was made: by the late 1990s, every single history textbook approved for use in Japanese high schools mentioned the Nanjing Massacre, and all but one gave figures for the number of Chinese dead.
Nor is it true that some conspiracy has prevented the Japanese public knowing about the atrocities committed during the war. Indeed, it is only in recent years that the English-reading public worldwide has been made aware of the Nanjing Massacre, largely because Iris Chang's book on the topic spent weeks on the international bestseller list. The first investigations into the Massacre were undertaken, not by Westerners, nor even the Chinese, but by left-wing Japanese journalists in the 1970s who were determined to uncover a story ignored by a post-war society that had dedicated itself to economic growth and a self-declaredly pacifist approach to international politics. The journalist Honda Katsuichi caused a national sensation in 1971 with his serialized Travels in China, an account of Japanese wartime brutality that drew on interviews with Chinese survivors of massacres.
Honda's purpose was to alert the Japanese public to what he felt was a reluctance to come to terms with the reality of their behaviour in Asia during the war. His work was fiercely attacked by the right, who argued that the evidence was either fabricated or exaggerated, and extremists physically attacked writers and organizations associated with the new historical understanding. Nonetheless, from the 1970s, the idea that Japan had committed terrible crimes in China became a widely understood part of public discussion in Japan, neither censored nor hidden from view.
There is, all the same, real substance to the charge that Japan has not come to terms with its wartime past. Particularly worrying is the recent immense growth in sales of the comic books of Kobayashi Yoshinori, who portrays in cartoon form Japan's wartime experience as a heroic mission to liberate Asia from the yoke of white imperialism.
Many inside and outside Japan have been disturbed by the repeated visits of various prime ministers, including the current incumbent, Junichiro Koizumi, to the Yasukuni shrine, a national memorial where many architects of Japan's wars in Asia and the Pacific are buried. Koizumi's assurance that he is visiting the shrine not to honour any specific individuals, but rather to honour Japan's war losses, cuts little ice in China or Korea. Also, Japan used its American-imposed 'peace constitution' in the post-war era to portray itself not as an aggressive invader before 1945, but rather as a victim nation, the first and only country to suffer atomic bombing.
While no one would argue with the sentiments that such bombings should never be allowed to happen again, there is little discussion in many of Japan's anti-nuclear peace gardens and institutes as to why the bombings took place in the first place, and this lack of context makes it seem as if the US air force simply appeared out of a blue sky to attack a defenceless and innocent nation. Yet Chinese who had lived through the bacteriological bombing of Chongqing in 1939 were probably not that sympathetic to the horrific plight of the Japanese A-bomb victims. As late as 2002, I was told in Chongqing about a local delicacy consisting of a fried egg with chilli sauce on it -- Chongqingers call it 'Bombing Tokyo'.
Japanese courts have tended to dismiss attempts by elderly Chinese survivors of war crimes to claim compensation, on the technical grounds that agreements made in the 1950s officially ended all Chinese wartime reparation claims on Japan. There is an uncomfortable legalism about this argument.
An obvious question can also be asked about the textbook controversy: if it is true that the problematic textbooks are so little used in schools, why approve them at all? The answer is that there is still a domestic right-wing constituency that makes the continuing availability of such books an ideological touchstone. Convinced that there is a left-wing conspiracy in schools, the extreme right seeks assurance from its MPs that they will hold the line on some public presence for the version of history that champions the idea that Japan's wartime role was a liberating and noble one.
The position of most mainstream right-wing Japanese politicians is not to glorify the war, but rather to wish it would go away. As the war fades into the past, there is certainly a more self-confident air among many Japanese politicians and voters who feel that the country needs to move on from the long post-war (sengo) period, and find a new, more assertive role in the region and the world. But for most Japanese, there is little desire to use the country's wartime record as the basis for their new strength in the region: instead, they wish to be seen as a peaceful, economically powerful state with an unfortunate past that is just that -- past.
Just as clearly, as China's own rise in the region becomes daily more apparent, the Chinese have no intention of letting the Japanese portray themselves in that light. The most recent blow-up over textbooks took place just at the moment when Japan was making the case that it should take a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. China made sure that memories of the past would help to scupper Japan's hopes for the future.
Yet China's own role in the textbook arguments is hardly straightforward. One of the reasons why China's wartime contribution was not appreciated more in the West was the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, which turned China from ally to ideological enemy. But Cold War boundaries worked both ways, and in the new People's Republic of China many areas of discussion about the war were simply off-limits. Any account of Chiang Kai-shek, by then heading a Nationalist government in Taiwan, had to paint him as a traitor and demon; no mention could be made of the fact that the Nationalists had played a significant part in the defeat of Japan. On the other hand, the People's Republic saw little benefit in anti-Japanese propaganda. The Japanese were hardly going to invade again, and there seemed to be mileage in trying to detach them from the Cold War embrace of the United States. Therefore, there was relatively little discussion of Japanese wartime behaviour in China from the 1940s to the 1970s.
In the 1980s, however, global and regional politics shifted. Chiang and Mao were both dead, and the leaders of the People's Republic now wanted to tempt Taiwan into reunification. Official propaganda now stressed the unity, rather than the divisions, between the Communist mainland and Nationalist Taiwan and made much of their shared resistance against the Japanese. There was less need to appease Japan; instead, it was felt that reminding Japan of its wartime record (and encouraging the odd popular demonstration against that record in the streets of Chinese cities) was a good way to soften up the Japanese government into giving loans and investment to China at preferential rates, as well as distracting the population from the decline in Marxist ideology at home.
Museums of the Nanjing Massacre and of the wider war against Japan were established in the 1980s in China, but these were openly declared to be 'sites for encouraging patriotic education', not coolly objective institutions for historical explanation. The historical line had changed, but the use of history to serve contemporary politics had not. Neither China nor Japan are monolithic societies. Japan's responses are much more varied than those in China where discussion is still restricted, yet it is too simplistic to argue that the Chinese government is simply manipulating Chinese popular feeling in the dispute about wartime history.
In 2005 the government found it politically useful to give permission for anti-Japanese demonstrations but was alarmed to discover that the young urban population was in fact more genuinely hostile to Japan than it had anticipated. So the authorities abruptly banned a big anti-Japanese demonstration, organized via websites, which was supposed to fill Tian'anmen Square. Not only would the associations of Tian'anmen Square have been problematic for the Communist Party, but memories of the student protests that took place on December 9th, 1935, may have also been in their minds. For while the students of seventy years ago were protesting against Japan, just a few years later they were protesting against their own government of Chiang Kai-shek; and soon after that, Chiang was forced to flee to Taiwan, never to return. The Communist Party has no intention of letting that lesson from history come back into popular memory. Yet if it fails to maintain a strong economy, and if public pressure boils over, it is hard to know whether the Party can continue to control the ways in which popular opinion reacts to the past.
By Rana Mitter
Rana Mitter is lecturer in Chinese history and politics at Oxford University, and author of A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World (2004).
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
聽歷史課
雖然來月要到日本,忙得不得了,但這個學期仍然沉迷聽科大衛(David Faure)教授的課,一個星期中最期待的一個半小時就是週二晚上「中國的商業與社會」的講授。以前聽的歷史課也不少,總是擺脫不了那種考試式的依書直說,毫無樂趣可言。科教授的歷史課不單生動、有趣、鬼馬,而且已經到達一種「歷史家的境界」。他要做的,不是要分析「歷史家建立的社會結構、而是人們所認同的制度」,巨細而無遺,與我慣用的制度史異曲同工。間中亦常談及鐵道的事情,用例令人難忘。很難想像沒有聽過這個課,我的未來論文會變成怎麼一個衰樣--歷史永遠只是一個可能性的過程。
精妙例子分享
某美國人到前蘇聯工廠參觀,帶他遊覽的經理說:「我們這些工人對國家貢獻良多」。美國人指著正在工作的「工人」,問「經理」:「這些人又是甚麼呢?」。「經理」指著正在做東西的人,答道:「這些不是地主就是資本家。」
精妙例子分享
某美國人到前蘇聯工廠參觀,帶他遊覽的經理說:「我們這些工人對國家貢獻良多」。美國人指著正在工作的「工人」,問「經理」:「這些人又是甚麼呢?」。「經理」指著正在做東西的人,答道:「這些不是地主就是資本家。」
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
黎明前,是暗是明?
雖然這個地方預備是從四月開始運營,去日本研究之前仍然得熬過這個三月。節目可真太豐富:
- 5日 李天命講座
- 7日 計劃書功課
- 18日 資格考試--文化社會學
- 21日 主持講座--日本宗教:從網野善彥的「無緣性」到村上春樹的「Underground」
- 22日 見領事
- 25~27日 飯局
- 28日 完成所有計劃書、發表等
- 30日 與日研老師吃飯
- 31日 早上請教David Faure,晚上講座
- 2日 與指導老師吃飯
- 4日 Proposal Presentation
- 月底前 各種研究費用申請表格等
5日 出發
除了以上外還有聯絡工作、收拾房間、郵送書籍資料、見各老師、找資料、見朋友
等等等等等,還有各種上課(M3-4 宗教;M5-6 文化;M7-9 方法;T1-2 教育;T5-6 導修;T11-12 商業; W7-9 傳播 ;W9-10 導修; H7-14 電影;F1-3 文化;S3-4 政治)
這樣子這個月像不用睡的樣子///////
Friday, February 11, 2005
情人節
這個是甚麼垃圾節日嘛 (茶)
各位看官看完之前的「無題」連載第一回後,有甚麼感覺呢?
不明白? 這是應該的。故事以後的展開會越來越甚麼甚麼哦(呵呵呵~),敬請期待。
順帶一提,剛看完「神無月的巫女」最終話,評論如下:
各位看官看完之前的「無題」連載第一回後,有甚麼感覺呢?
不明白? 這是應該的。故事以後的展開會越來越甚麼甚麼哦(呵呵呵~),敬請期待。
順帶一提,剛看完「神無月的巫女」最終話,評論如下:
- 雖然很好看,但這種戀愛觀實在太自虐嘛(雖然我同意)
- 自虐不要緊,對白太多了。死不斷氣的。(雖然我很瞭解)
- 一種理想的追求,not bad,問題是這種理想:
- 通常會有大神這種無奈的被害者:對的,整個故事裡面他是一個被遺忘的被害者,而且不容許發聲、不容許不大方的一個存在
- 誰能確定命運會令兩個人同時瞭解這種命運?
或者是兩種很類近的故事也未定,畢竟是人生一種大難題。
不明白說甚麼? 那麼你會有一個快樂的情人節。
Thursday, February 10, 2005
無題(一)
在一夜忘記了月色的黑色帳幔下
圖書館內
對的
在圖書館內
看著那朝日新聞的過去
,對他來說:似乎這段歷史是切身的;
,對她來說:似乎切身的是那個歷史。
一個狹窄的站台上(本來給人站著拿高處的書本的站台)
physically,坐著兩個人
spiritually,沒有人知道那裡有多少個人
交疊在一起的,是無聲的、從嘴邊透露出來的
兩種氣色
帶點溫暖
「看看後面可能有人」
「無所謂」
「我不過來看朝日新聞而已」
「是嗎?」
「!」
兩種溫暖的氣色化為一種慢熱的氣氛
在這個狹窄,既為開放又卻只有兩個人的空間
故事由此開始,也由此完結
(待續)
圖書館內
對的
在圖書館內
看著那朝日新聞的過去
,對他來說:似乎這段歷史是切身的;
,對她來說:似乎切身的是那個歷史。
一個狹窄的站台上(本來給人站著拿高處的書本的站台)
physically,坐著兩個人
spiritually,沒有人知道那裡有多少個人
交疊在一起的,是無聲的、從嘴邊透露出來的
兩種氣色
帶點溫暖
「看看後面可能有人」
「無所謂」
「我不過來看朝日新聞而已」
「是嗎?」
「!」
兩種溫暖的氣色化為一種慢熱的氣氛
在這個狹窄,既為開放又卻只有兩個人的空間
故事由此開始,也由此完結
(待續)
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
新年快樂
去東瀛前的紀錄!
1)研究計劃書、資格考試、pack書本、收拾房間、寫各種文件。去日本前的工作沒完沒了!難怪人家說讓一個人沉醉於歷史檔案之中是一種「孤高的樂趣」。沒有任何實際歷史資料的研究經驗,但--well--如果有興趣,再加一點common sense、一點點人類學sense、一點點點社會學辦法,總會ok吧?
2)(中略)
3)看運程說甚麼今年有小人。甚麼啦,反正今年「驛馬星動」,到處旅行走動對運程有利(這個真的很正確),加上對著的都是研究資料,就算得罪日本全國市民也無大不了(笑)。
談至此,還是欣賞唐君毅「人生之體驗續篇」中論毀譽一文及Ernest Becker "The Denial of the Death"論 "heroism"的論點。人生與社會之大艱難永遠來自「自我處理失當」(李天命語)的問題。
1)研究計劃書、資格考試、pack書本、收拾房間、寫各種文件。去日本前的工作沒完沒了!難怪人家說讓一個人沉醉於歷史檔案之中是一種「孤高的樂趣」。沒有任何實際歷史資料的研究經驗,但--well--如果有興趣,再加一點common sense、一點點人類學sense、一點點點社會學辦法,總會ok吧?
2)(中略)
3)看運程說甚麼今年有小人。甚麼啦,反正今年「驛馬星動」,到處旅行走動對運程有利(這個真的很正確),加上對著的都是研究資料,就算得罪日本全國市民也無大不了(笑)。
談至此,還是欣賞唐君毅「人生之體驗續篇」中論毀譽一文及Ernest Becker "The Denial of the Death"論 "heroism"的論點。人生與社會之大艱難永遠來自「自我處理失當」(李天命語)的問題。
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