AAS Report 5 – The Chinese Origins of Azuchi’s Tenshu

One of the most interesting presentations of the conference, I thought, was one by Mark Erdmann, on “The Chinese Roots of the Azuchi Castle Donjon.” Now, I am by no means an expert on castles, let alone on Azuchi, and so I’m sure that a lot of what I found really new and exciting in this presentation might be old hat for some of my friends at the Samurai-Archives, who are more well-read, and more focused, on such topics. But, precisely because I know relatively little about Azuchi, and as it relates to artistic display, and performance of legitimacy (performativity), and intertextuality – on top of the basic fact that castles are cool – I found it a really fresh, exciting presentation.

Before we get into it, though, I just have to take a moment to say how much I hate the word “donjon.” Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word. But, I really don’t understand why we should ever be using a French word – which is hard to be sure you’re pronouncing it correctly, which sounds too much like “dungeon”¹, and which is just a tad too obscure to be sure that your readers/listeners know what you’re talking about – when we have the perfectly good English word “keep,” and the even more precise Japanese term tenshu.

The modern, post-war reconstruction of Azuchi Castle. I’m not sure which interpretation / version this was based on. But, the gold structure at top, and red mingtang-like structure below it, are clearly visible.

Anyway, that brief aside aside, Erdmann’s talk focused chiefly on two points: (1) the origin of the term tenshu, and (2) a new theory as to the symbolism of an octagonal section near the top of Azuchi’s tenshu tower, which he suggests played an important role in conveying discursive symbolism of Nobunaga’s legitimacy.

Perhaps we should start at the beginning. Azuchi Castle was built over the course of 1576-1579, by Oda Nobunaga, who had just secured his control over most of central Japan. As such, it was built not only as a residence and base of operations, but also as a monument to Nobunaga’s wealth and power, and was covered inside and out in elaborate architectural elements and ornate decorations. Its main tower keep, or tenshu, was decidedly unique and bizarre, and various major elements of its design were not emulated by any later structure; however, the very fact that it had this multi-story tower keep, built atop a considerable stone foundation, and decorated up with various sorts of gables and other architectural elaborations, set a groundbreaking precedent for what would soon afterwards become the standard form for Japanese castles – luxurious aristocratic residences posing as (or doubling as) military headquarters & fortifications.² Perhaps indicative of how innovative a concept it was, Azuchi was not even called “Azuchi Castle” (安土城, Azuchi-jô) at the time, but rather, the “castle” and the town associated with it, were known as Azuchi-yama (安土山, lit. “Mt. Azuchi” or “Azuchi Mountain”).

The castle was destroyed in 1582 by Akechi Mitsuhide, the traitorous retainer who engineered Nobunaga’s demise at Honnôji. More or less all that survives, as I understand it, is what has been recovered through archaeological excavation – in other words, chiefly, the foundation stones. Based on this and various forms of textual and visual evidence, Naitô Akira, in the 1970s, proposed a certain understanding of the style and form of the castle; more recently, Miyakami Shigetaka has revised Naitô’s version, arguing that Naitô did not consider or corroborate enough different sources, and that his own (Miyakami’s) new version is more accurate to what the castle likely actually looked like. From what I gather, these two are the most prominent voices in this debate, and the most prominent competing conceptions of the structure.

What makes Azuchi so bizarre? Well, rather than having a tower of purely rectangular levels (stories), in a consistent, coherent architectural style & aesthetic, built atop a rectangular base, Azuchi included a couple of extra layers that, from the graphics Erdmann showed, look very much like two additional buildings simply stacked atop three stories of much more typical-looking tenshu architecture. The topmost story was three by three bays square, and covered in gold; Erdmann describes it as resembling quite closely the famous Kinkakuji, or Golden Pavilion, of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and in fact argues that it was directly, intentionally, based upon Kinkakuji, in order to draw a symbolic connection between Nobunaga and the Ashikaga shoguns, and to therefore bolster his legitimacy. The layer below that, octagonally shaped, and painted a bright red or vermillion, Erdmann argues, was meant to evoke the Chinese concept of the Mingtang.

Right: Diagram of a mingtang, showing the squares-within-circles arrangement Azuchi attempts to emulate.

The Mingtang (明堂, J: meidô), Erdmann explains, is a concept going back to the Duke of Zhou, an ancient Chinese figure who will come up again when we discuss the origins of the term tenshu. The Mingtang was a powerfully symbolic structure, roughly circular in shape, essentially just the circular space within a ring of columns, which would, like so much else in Chinese Imperial architecture, represent a re-creation of the cosmos. As the Emperor walked around the circle within the Mingtang, he would be symbolically passing through the four cardinal directions (plus center), and through the four seasons, as well as through the twelve zodiac signs, representing the hours of the day, the days, and the years. I don’t quite have the language to express it, and one of these days I really do need to learn the best way to express it – and thus also to understand it – but, traditionally, in China, the Emperor was seen as embodying, or reenacting, or simply existing at the center of, the functioning of the cosmos. And so, already, we can begin to understand what it would have meant, symbolically, discursively, for Nobunaga to walk around within a room resembling, recalling, the Mingtang of ancient China.

According to Chinese belief, only a proper rightful Sage King (C/J: ??) can build a Mingtang; therefore, the very ability of Nobunaga to construct one serves as a sign of his legitimacy. Ones built in China over the centuries have varied dramatically, but all follow certain common forms – namely, much like Azuchi Castle, the Mingtang is composed of squares topped with circles, as seen in the diagram above. This octagonal hall at Azuchi further resembles, or recalls, Chinese architecture with its inclusion of red roofing tiles, a relative rarity in Japan compared to the grey tiles seen on the lower levels of Azuchi, and thus very much evocative of China. Furthermore, the Azuchiyama-no-ki (安土山記, “Record of Mt. Azuchi”) explicitly describes Nobunaga as a “Sage King,” and as a genius for his choice of Azuchi as the site for his castle, recognizing that Azuchi-yama was just as great as Taishan (Mount Tai), the famous Chinese mountain where, incidentally, the first Mingtang was erected. Erdmann questions if Nobunaga’s welcoming of Jesuit missionaries at Azuchi was intentionally, consciously, intended to mirror the Duke of Zhou’s welcoming of “people of the Four Quadrants.” Going beyond the mere architectural forms, Nobunaga also installed within these top two stories (the Mingtang-esque level, and the golden pavilion-style level) series or systems of wall paintings, by great Kanô artists, depicting Confucian and Buddhist themes related to discourses of rightful, virtuous kingship.

There are a few problems with this system of symbolism, however, as Erdmann points out. Firstly, what are the proper dimensions for a Mingtang, and does Azuchi match these dimensions, and the arrangement of circles and squares, well enough to properly qualify, and function, as a Mingtang? Second, sometimes the same thing can have very different meanings in different contexts. The structure Nobunaga placed on this fourth story of Azuchi Castle may have been intended to resemble a Mingtang, but this is also the form of the octagonal halls (円堂, J: endô) seen at Japanese Buddhist temples, where they are associated with memorial functions. Erdmann gives the examples of the Yumedono at Hôryû-ji, dedicated to the memory of Shôtoku Taishi, and the Hoku’endô at Kôfuku-ji, dedicated to the memory of Fujiwara no Fuhito. In Japan, this form reminds people of memorial functions, when in order to serve the discursive purpose of the Mingtang, Nobunaga needs it to evoke ideas of his living power and righteousness.

…

Turning to another side of Erdmann’s talk, there was the issue of the meaning and origin of the term tenshu (天守), which refers to the castle’s tower keep. Erdmann traces the origins of the term to 1579, and identifies it with Nobunaga’s efforts at evoking discourses of legitimacy, by tying himself to complex and ancient discourses related to the Mandate of Heaven (天命). One of the first steps in his discursive schemes was the renaming of Inabayama castle to “Gifu” (岐阜), employing characters connecting him to the Qishan (岐山) of the Kings of Wen & Wu of Zhou, and to Qufu (曲阜), the home of Confucius, and of the Duke of Zhou. It would seem that the origin of the term tenshu is often associated with Gifu, but Erdmann points out that there was no tower keep at Gifu when Nobunaga first renamed it that, and that the term tenshu in fact only came into more widespread usage later.

In the 1570s, Nobunaga also began to employ a seal reading Tenka fubu (天下布武), which might be translated many ways, but which Erdmann, quoting another eminent scholar, translates as “overspread the realm with military might.” A rather awkward translation, in my humble opinion, but the important part is the use of the term tenka, meaning “All Under Heaven,” or, simply, the Realm. By invoking “Heaven,” he recalls connections to Tentô (天道, C: tian dao), a concept very closely related to the Mandate of Heaven, and to the Chinese concept of the Emperor as the “Son of Heaven” (天子, C: tian zi). Nobunaga further pushes his association with rightful rule by having the Imperial era name changed in 1573 to Tenshô (天正), meaning “Right with Heaven.”

Sakugen Shûryô (策彦周良, 1501-1579), apparently the last Japanese ambassador to Ming China, is attributed with coining the term tenshu (天主, “Heavenly Master” or “Master of Heaven” – note the different characters), to refer to a Buddhist temple at the foot of a mountain. This term was employed at Sakamoto Castle in 1573. Erdmann argues there is a connection to be drawn between the tenshu (天主) at the bottom of a mountain, and the tenshu (天守) at the top.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot more scholarship & debate out there on the origins, and meaning, of the term, but, for me, this was all quite new, and quite interesting.

Mark Erdmann is a PhD student at Harvard and, near as I can tell, has yet to publish anything. A shame, considering how fascinating his presentation was. I eagerly look forward to articles he might publish on these subjects, so as to fill in the gaps, learn more about these fascinating concepts, and have something concrete to cite. Best of luck with your dissertation, sir, and thank you for an excellent presentation.

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1) Probably because they’re related etymologically.
2) Someone’s going to tear me a new one if I don’t make a point of being clear that the tenshu, the impressive tower keeps we most associate with Japanese castles, were not the residences; residential buildings were located elsewhere within the castle compound, though, clearly, still nearby somewhere, within the walls.

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AAS Report 3 – The Ming Lives On

The elaborate, ornate costume associated with the Ming in kabuki, loaded with ruffles, can be seen in this “Battles of Coxinga” triptych by Kunichika.

Satoko Shimazaki was the third presenter on the panel “Early Modern News: The Fall of the Ming on a Global Stage,” which I wrote about in my previous post. I was particularly excited to meet her, as she is not only a kabuki specialist, but combines this with research on popular publishing, and on perceptions of the foreign – all things at the core of my research interests.

In her presentation, Shimazaki discussed the appearance of Ming China, or Ming individuals, in kabuki, with a particular focus on the 1715 play “The Battles of Coxinga” (Kokusen’ya kassen).

She first introduced the 1818 play Shitennô ubuyu no Tamagawa　(四天王産湯玉川), in which a Ming princess travels all the way to Japan to see the great actor Ichikawa Danjûrô, and showed us some images of that scene, from illustrated woodblock-printed books of the time. I tried to find a similar image, on Google Image Search, to share with you, but was sadly not successful. This seems a wonderful, amusing example of how playful and humorous kabuki can be – and, also, the cult of the actor, i.e. the power of celebrity, which plays such a major role in the character of the kabuki theatre.

She then turned to discussing The Battles of Coxinga, an epic-length jidaimono based on the legend of Coxinga, aka Zheng Chenggong, a half-Japanese Ming loyalist who led forces on Taiwan in raiding the Chinese coast and otherwise fighting off the Qing (Manchu) forces which had taken much of mainland China. In the play, Zheng is referred to as Watônai, typically written 和藤内, but a reference to 和唐内, meaning “between (内, nai) China (唐, tô) and Japan (和, wa).” Shimazaki argued, however, that these three characters can also be interpreted as meaning not only “both Chinese and Japanese,” but also “neither Chinese nor Japanese,” or “heard of in both China and Japan.”

Shimazaki tells us the term “Japan” appears numerous times in the script. What form this takes, whether it’s Nihon, or Wa, or some combination of those and other terms, is unclear (though I imagine one could figure out quite easily by just finding a copy of the play… and, at least in one scene, a Ming princess in Japan, asking for help, employs the term “Nihonjin”), but, regardless, this is pretty important. Many scholars argue that there was no sense of “national” identity in the Edo period, but, while I agree that there certainly is no integrated nation-state of Japan in the modern sense, and that modern(ist) discourses of “nationalism” might likewise not apply, it is nevertheless clear that there was a conception of “Japan” during the Edo period. It was not solely a local conception, in which identity was based in village, province, or domain. This conception of “Japanese” identity was, however, different from modern conceptions of ethnicity in important ways. David Howell writes about the Ainu being able to become Wajin (and vice versa) simply by changing their appearance, behavior, and customs. This sort of malleable notion of identity is seen too in the play, as Watônai converts some Tartars into Japanese by shaving their pates (i.e. giving them Japanese hairdos) and giving them samurai swords.

This brings us to the question of the word “Tartars.” “Tartar” is a broad, all-encompassing word employed in pre-modern Europe to refer indiscriminately to any and all steppe peoples, including Mongols, Manchus, and various sorts of Turks. This seems a pretty good translation for the Japanese word Tattan (韃靼), which similarly refers indiscriminately to a variety of steppe peoples. The similarity between these two terms – neither of which refers accurately to a specific people – is surprising and interesting; I wonder if Shimazaki addresses this in a fuller (published or to-be-published) paper. I’ve looked it up briefly in JapanKnowledge (an online resource which searches multiple encyclopedias and dictionaries), but didn’t find anything much on the origins of the term… Though, we are told that the Wakan sansai zue (one of the most prominent encyclopedias published in Edo period Japan) associates the term Tattan with the Mongols, Jurchens, Manchus, and even the Russians – anyone who could fit within the category of “Northern Barbarians” (北狄). Part of the identification of the Tattan as barbarians, Shimazaki explained, derives from their identity/location outside of the classic Three Realms: India as the home of Buddhism, China as the home of Confucianism, and Japan as the Land of the Gods (i.e. the home of Shintô), with Tattan thus being the home of none of the major Teachings (教) or Ways (道).

Through these examples, and others, Shimazaki showed that the Ming represented in Edo period popular culture was not the actual contemporary China, but rather an idea, an imagined space of a past era. In other words, the Ming survives on, as an idea in the Japanese collective imagination.

This can be seen, too, in some of the works which I’ve been looking at in my own research, and which Shimazaki brought forward too; books such as Bankoku jinbutsu zue (“Pictures of the Peoples of the World”) by Nishikawa Joken show the Ming and the Qing separately. Of course, there is some validity to this, as in our modern conception of race and ethnicity, we would think to organize such a book separating the (Han) Chinese from the Manchus, which is essentially what they’re doing. But, in works such as Joken’s “Peoples of 42 Countries” (四十二国人物図) and “Expanded Thoughts on Trade & Commerce with Civilization & Barbarians” (増補華夷通商考, Zôho ka’i tsûshôkô, 1708), he labels the Ming explicitly as equaling Chinese civilization or culture (中華), and the Qing as being the Chinese civilization or culture of “today” (今の中華). In other words, there is a sense that the Qing is not the real China, that the Ming is the real China, controlled, occupied, or suppressed, that the Qing may be temporary, and that the Ming could come back. Of course, as of 1708 or so, not even the Qing Court could have predicted that their rule would last the better part of 300 years, all the way until 1911. Even today, when “The Battles of Coxinga” is performed, the Qing is represented as lasting only 180 years, as Chikamatsu had it (actually, it’s kind of surprising that Chikamatsu, in 1715, would put it at 180 years, and not some shorter period, if indeed people had a sense of the Qing being only a temporary blip, and the Ming rising again). Of course, it’s not as if the play is particularly historically accurate in other respects, anyway. It does end, after all, with the revival of the Ming, something that (sadly, arguably) did not occur in reality – the entirety of the Chinese Imperial system, and so much of its traditional culture, fell with the Qing, in 1911, or with the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.

As the Qing Dynasty went on, Shimazaki argues, the concept of the Ming became detached somewhat from the geography – people recognized that Qing Dynasty China was the China of their time. Ming thus became a marker for historical China, for Chinese culture and civilization in a somewhat free-floating way, existing no longer in the physical space of China, but now in a more free-floating cultural, intellectual, conceptual space.

And, while certain aspects of the understanding or conceptualization of the Ming may have been based in accurate historical/cultural understandings, as Keiko Suzuki and others have also detailed, the conceptualization of what comprised Ming culture or identity quickly came to be confused and conflated with a variety of other elements, forming a broader, more general concept of the “foreign.” Shimazaki cites pennants carried in the production of The Battles of Coxinga which read 「清道」 (lit. “Pure Way” or “Way of the Qing”?), and which closely resemble those carried by Korean – not Chinese – embassies to Japan. Another prominent element which she shows us appears frequently in theatre and in prints is the association of the Ming with lavish, ornate clothing, with lots of ruffles. I am no expert on Chinese theatre, but I can kind of see how elements of this aesthetic could be taken from jingju costume; that said, however, when would kabuki performers or ukiyo-e print designers have gotten a chance to see jingju costumes or performances? Shimazaki also pointed out that the goddess Benten is often depicted in these Ming-style robes, looking very much like a Ming princess from the kabuki theatre; why, however, remains unclear, as Benten is, so far as I know, not generally associated with being Chinese any more so than the other six of the Seven Lucky Gods.

In the course of the Q&A after Shimazaki-sensei’s presentation, a number of other questions and issues came up. One was the question of how depictions of China in bunraku & kabuki, as discussed in her talk, compare to representations of China in the Noh. This is certainly an interesting question, given that the Noh comes from a different period, and a rather different cultural context. I would imagine, just off the top of my head, I feel as though Noh is more connected to classic stories of classic figures, and would represent China more as a classical source of Confucianism, Taoism, wisdom, magic, certain legendary figures or certain gods, rather than as a contemporary foreign country or culture in the way Coxinga does, when it engages with recent historical events.

Shimazaki had also mentioned at one point that it was difficult for theatres to put on productions of Coxinga, explaining that kabuki theatres operated on a schedule organized around certain themes. The majority of kabuki plays retell stories from the Japanese past (or from legend), and most plays fit into a particular sekai (“world”), whether that be stories of Yoshitsune & Benkei, or stories of the Soga Brothers; Coxinga, Shimazaki argued, did not fit well into this schema, and so, thematically, it was difficult to find a thematically appropriate time/space to fit it into the schedule of a theatrical season. Indeed, many 19th century guides to the various sekai of kabuki plays either omit Coxinga entirely, or list it under “miscellany.” I have never read or seen Coxinga myself, or studied much about it, but I was interested to learn that, in fact, it was originally composed as a gamble, as something very new and different, to draw audiences to the theatre and keep the theatre going after it lost its chief chanter (Takemoto Gidayû – more or less the founder/inventor of the chief bunraku chanting style). This brings us back to Sarah Kile’s presentation about Chinese playwright Li Yu, who was constantly preoccupied with remaining cutting-edge, new, and fresh, and which I wrote about in the previous post.

I think that Prof. Shimazaki’s research on conceptualizations of the foreign in the Edo period will be of great use for me as I move forward with my research on Ryukyuan-Japanese interactions in that period, and I love that she does kabuki as well. I suppose I won’t be working with her directly any time soon, since we are not at the same institution, but I do eagerly look forward to reading more of her scholarship, and perhaps getting a chance to speak with her more in future.

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AAS Report 2 – How the Ming have Fallen

The first panel I made it to during the Assoc. of Asian Studies conference this year was one titled “Early Modern News: The Fall of the Ming on a Global Stage.” The use of the word “stage” here is quite clever, as the panel was discussing the representation of the Ming and its fall in theatre.

Now, before I go further, I’d like to offer a brief disclaimer: I apologize if I may misrepresent the facts or the arguments from any of these papers – I am merely going from my notes, and there is plenty of opportunity for mis-hearing or misunderstanding things said in an orally presented paper. Also, I am sure that in these panel summaries/reports, for the sake of brevity and cohesiveness of my blog posts, or for whatever reasons, I will be skipping over major sections of papers, or skipping some papers entirely. No offense is meant to those scholars; I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated all of the papers I heard presented at the conference.

The panel began with Sarah Kile, professor at U Michigan, who presented on Chinese playwright Li Yu (1611-1680). I’d never heard of him – I wonder how big-name he is, and if it’d be possible to study the sort of Chinese history in which he’d come up, rather than the course I took last quarter, which was pretty much a total wash, more or less completely useless for my interests. In any case, he sounds like a really interesting figure. I’m not positive what type of theatre he was involved with (kunqu? It’s too early for jingju, right?), but the ways in which he was involved in popular culture & literary circles, as well as his thoughts on theatre, make me very interested to learn more about him, and about the early Qing popular culture realm, in comparison/contrast to that of Edo period Japan.

Right: A collection of the complete works of Li Yu.

Kile said that Li Yu made himself known, by appearing in a variety of publication as commentator, author of the preface, etc. He wrote not only a lot of theatrical plays, publishing the scripts, but also wrote & published a lot of commentaries and writings about theatre. In these writings, and especially in composing his plays, Kile says, Li Yu was perpetually concerned about always staying on the cutting edge, producing something new, in order to attract audiences. I haven’t read that much of contemporary (Edo period) kabuki commentaries, but hearing about this makes me much more curious. How did kabuki commentators or playwrights talk about these same issues? How flexible was the early Qing theatre? Kabuki generally adapted plays into new and different forms with each production, so even if the play itself was largely the same, it still was very much aimed at remaining fresh. … This also places Li Yu more firmly into a popular culture sort of discourse, a very separate set of concerns from those concerned with maintaining tradition, and performing something “properly” according to the proper forms. Did even Noh have the same concerns of maintaining tradition during the Edo period that it does today? I wonder. Perhaps Thomas Looser’s new book “Visioning Eternity” has some answers.

Another very interesting bit that Kile introduced from Li Yu’s writings was his musings on the role of lighting in the theatre. He asserts that the dim light of evening is better than daylight for helping the audience focus in on the play. Daylight, he writes, allows the audience to see everything at once, and for their attention therefore to drift all over the stage; too much light also reveals too much of the artifice of the production, whereas dim light hides the artifice and emphasizes the drama or artistry. This certainly sounds like something relevant too to Kabuki and Noh, especially in terms of cultivating the correct spiritual atmosphere and effect, yûgen or whatever it may be called, in Noh, as well as a much wider variety of effects and atmospheric moods in kabuki. I wonder what kabuki and Noh commentators of the time said about lighting.

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The second paper in this panel was given by Prof. Paize Keulemans of Princeton University. He presented on the fall of the Ming in Dutch literature, poetry, media, and theatre, touching especially on the idea of the fall of the Ming as the first instance of “global news”, and on certain prominent discourses at the time in Northern Europe regarding Self, and China.

The Ming capitol of Beijing fell to Manchu invaders in 1644. By July 1650, agents of the Dutch East India Company had conveyed the news to the Netherlands. Impressive though this may seem, given that it is, quite arguably, the first instance of worldwide news, transmitted/known in a great many places all across the globe in a relatively short amount of time, I’m frankly surprised it wasn’t faster. How long did it take for the news to travel within China and to reach Canton or Fuzhou or wherever it was the Dutch were based? Given the constant back-and-forth travels and trade of Dutch and Chinese ships going to and fro between China, Japan, Indonesia (Dutch East Indies), and Europe, you’d think it’d have spread much faster. No?

Well, in any case, some of the most interesting aspects of Keulemans’ presentation were the discussion of discourses relating to Dutch “Enlightenment.” He highlighted mainly two manifestations of these, both dealing with conceptions of “openness.” Firstly, the idea of China as “closed,” as represented for example in an illustration from the 1655 Novus Atlas Sinensis (“New Chinese Atlas”), which depicts Atlas opening a gate to China, and stating in a sort of “word ribbon” (the word balloon having not yet been invented), “I open that which had been closed.” The gate itself is in a large wall which might be taken to represent the Great Wall of China. By portraying China as “closed,” Kaulemans argues, Europeans could see themselves as “open,” by contrast, as valuing openness, and therefore as more Enlightened, in terms of the European intellectual Enlightenment movement, placing great value on the “open” free flow of information. The free flow of information is a progressive thing, a key to advancement and development of a society, while China’s closedness (to Europeans, at least; whether info flowed freely within China or not is a separate matter) is seen as backwards and self-stifling.

The second side of this Enlightenment discourse of openness which I thought quite interesting was the suggestion that (some? many?) Dutch writers saw the key to advanced, Enlightenment-era power not in possessing territory, but in strength in maritime trade. The idea of the oceans as being an open, free space belonging to no one (and thus to everyone), Keulemans tells us, was a rather new idea at this time, and a major element of this discourse of Enlightened “openness.” I think it should come as no surprise that the Dutch, who were a rather powerful maritime power & wealthy economy at this time and who controlled very little territory compared to Spain, Portugal, France or England, should think this way.

Joost van den Vondel, a rare Catholic Dutchman writing at the time, drawing upon similar discourses, and informed by Jesuit missionaries operating within the Chinese Court, blamed the fall of the Ming on the Emperor’s isolation from knowledge of the outside world. The walls built by the Emperors, he wrote, proved insufficient to defend the realm from invaders. If only they had converted to Christianity, he asserted, China would be able to defend itself against any invasion. In true Catholic fashion, he ignores, or is incapable of seeing, that converting to Christianity would itself be succumbing to foreign influence. How much of Chinese culture and identity – from ancestor worship & local deities, to the political culture surrounding the Emperor’s relationship to Heaven, to the geomantic significance of the layout of palaces and cities, to the numerous Court rituals – would be irretrievably destroyed, lost, if the country converted to Catholicism? But I guess we can’t blame van den Vondel for being a product of his times.

This idea of “openness” is, of course, not so foreign to us, as it is not so different from the logics behind the Open Door Policy extended to (imposed upon) China by the Western powers in the 19th century, and the attitudes surrounding Commodore Perry’s mission to “open” Japan in the 1850s. But, to see it emerging two hundred years earlier, and in a particularly Dutch flavor, is quite interesting. I’d be curious to learn more about exactly how it was articulated, and how it played out, at that time.

For the sake of length, I will leave my summary/discussion of the third paper on this panel, one by Satoko Shimazaki, until the next blog post.

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Quick Links: American Painting & Chinese Architecture

It’s that time again. The open tabs have piled up, and it’s time to share some links while trying to not go overboard with lengthy comments.

*First today is Chinese Vernacular Architecture, a blog by UCSB Art History PhD student Wencheng Yan. He hasn’t updated in quite some time, but among his posts from a few years ago are some excellent ones about the Yuan Palace and efforts to save Suzhou’s vernacular architecture, among other topics.

*Meanwhile, in a piece cleverly titled “>Curator, Tear Down These Walls,” the New York Times’ Roberta Smith has presented an argument for American folk art to be considered right up there with academic art. The power of the canon can be very strong, and even today, even as we question ‘what is art?’ in our classrooms and galleries, even as we work to challenge the canon, we are still somewhat arbitrarily implicitly, or explicitly, elevating some types of art above others. I don’t know much about the intricacies of the politics of American art appreciation, but it reminds me of the way that late Ming Dynasty painter & art critic Dong Qichang, through his incredible influence, was able to shape Chinese tastes all the way down to the present, to appreciate literati art the most, and to disparage academic art. Only very recently have art historians and curators come back around to begin to examine Chinese academic art, and to regard it highly, once again.

*Archaeologists in Tokyo have reported the first-ever discovery of Jômon period human remains in the Kantô plain, outside of shell-mounds. I recently learned that the soil in most parts of Japan is rather acidic, and breaks down human remains – even bones – within just a few hundred years, making it especially rare to find remains outside of what are called “pot burials”, where the bones are placed within ceramic vessels. Actually, now that I think about it, if the soil is acidic enough to break down bones, why doesn’t it break down shell mounds?

And.. that’s all for now. More stuff to come.

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Quick Links: Private Collections, Great Finds

It’s really kind of incredible to think how much stuff is still out there. Art treasures in private collections, historical documents in archives, that simply haven’t come to light in terms of broader, more widespread awareness. But even more than that, things hidden away, that perhaps even their owners don’t even know about. Every now and then, we hear some incredible stories about these sorts of finds and discoveries… In a way, it’s actually encouraging, in that whenever you think that a certain type of artifact or documentation might not exist anymore, there’s actually the possibility it just might still be out there.

Messy Nessy chic, a blog I hadn’t heard about until now but which looks like it has some pretty cool content, posted back in May (I was just pointed to the link the other day) about a Parisian apartment left untouched for 70 years and just recently re-opened.

The owner fled Paris just before World War II broke out, and never returned; somehow, the apartment remained unopened, untouched, for all this time. That is, until, following her death at the age of 91 a few years ago, her heirs finally opened up the apartment, and discovered what was inside. Beautiful now-quite-antique furniture, a Micky Mouse stuffed toy, a taxidermied emu or rhea or the like, and all sorts of other things, including a rather special painting.

The Messy Nessy Chic blog post has some incredible pictures of this time capsule of an upclass 1930s Paris apartment.

…

The Freer|Sackler, meanwhile, has posted a blog post about the apartment of art collector Dr. Paul Singer, which some members of the staff had the opportunity to visit way back in 1998.

Dr. Singer keeps more than five thousand objects, apparently, in his New Jersey apartment, a collection which we are told is one of the largest and most important private collections of Chinese objects in the United States.

I’m not sure there’s much to say here, except to invite you to click through to the F|S blog post, which has a nice photo of the apartment, and to say that I’ve been fortunate to visit the homes of an art collector or two, and that it’s always a fun and breathtaking experience. Some people have such beautiful homes, and such incredible collections; it’s something I look forward to doing more often in the future.

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Can Video Games Be Art?

Let me give away my position on the matter right here at the top: Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

A post from a few days ago by Art Radar Asia focuses on works by five Asian contemporary artists who use video games, or the aesthetics or iconography of video games, in their art. They highlight Cao Fei’s “RMB City,” a creation created entirely within the virtual world of Second Life, and Feng Mengbo’s “Long March: Restart,” an actually playable platform-style game (think Mario) which makes extensive use of Maoist iconography and imagery.

Above: An Art|21 segment on Cao Fei’s “RMB City.”
Below: Feng Mengbo’s “Long March: Restart.”

The article also links to something posted by Roger Ebert a few years ago, explaining Ebert’s opinion that video games are not and cannot ever be “art,” and asks the reader, Can Video Games Be Art?. Here is my response, copied from the comments section on the Art Radar Asia page:

I think the work of Cao Fei and Feng Mengbo just goes to show that video games can absolutely be art. The only things that separate their works from something like Jenova Chen’s “Flower” are (1) being previously already recognized as an “artist”, (2) the commerciality of the creations and connection to a corporation, and (3) the size and type of team involved in the creation of the work.

Video games are creative creations in their visuals, sound, and gameplay/concept. I think that most of the argument against video games being “art” focuses too much on them as “games,” i.e. with rules, goals, and puzzles/challenges, and too little on them as “experience.” Flower is a great example of a game that is visually stunning, and quite creative/innovative in concept. Playing it is not just about earning points, or completing levels – it’s about experiencing the game and having an emotional reaction. If the same exact thing had been created by Cao Fei or Feng Mengbo, would we not call it art? If it were not interactive, but were created as “video art,” or for that matter as a still photo, as digital art, and shown in a gallery or museum, would we not call it “art”?

MMOs like World of Warcraft, GuildWars, and LotR Online, along with giant-sandbox games like the Elder Scrolls Series, and visually stunning RPGs like the Final Fantasy series likewise involve exploring massive worlds filled with beautiful, really, truly stunning environments, each of which is designed by professional concept artists and digital artists with much the same training/background, i.e. as art students, as many more widely recognized as “artists.”

Admittedly, there are also many games out there which are, perhaps, not so clearly beautiful, inspirational, innovative/creative, but all were created by artists, designers, creative minds. All bear the same features as those games – e.g. Flower and WoW – which are, perhaps, more clearly artistic, creative/innovative, and/or aesthetically attractive. So, where do we draw the line? If some games are clearly artistic, or art-esque, then why would other games not be?

If the design of a car or a skyscraper can be considered “art,” if marketing posters, postcards, etc. can be considered art, if arms & armor (such as included in many of the world’s greatest art museums) can be considered art, then why not video games? If it’s the commercial element, or the corporate rather than individual creation element, that is the problem, then why cars, skyscrapers, dresses, and not video games? Those of us coming from a background in Studio Art or Art History are likely to be in favor of the conception that anything can be art. So why not video games?

Roger Ebert, of all people, if he recognizes that art is not only limited to static images (paintings), but extends to incorporate cinema as well, should be able to recognize the strong cinematic qualities of video games. Like video games, films too are the creations of not a single, inspired, genius artist, but rather of a collaboration between directors, producers, costume designers, set designers, actors, musicians/composers, and many others. Unlike paintings, they incorporate motion, narrative, and music, and yet, they are still considered by Mr. Ebert to be art. So, why not video games? Because they are interactive? Because none have yet been canonized? As a critic, Mr. Ebert should be especially aware of the haphazard and arbitrary nature of the construction of the canon – created by scholars, random tastemakers, and critics like himself – and thus, he of all people, should not be taking this to be the determining factor in what is (and is not) masterful. Who decided that George Melies was such a genius, that his creations were such great art? Is Mr. Ebert simply parroting the attitudes of cinema scholars and critics of the past?

Those who fixate on the great names, on the canon, of the inspired/genius artisté, forget that many of those we revere today as great artists were in fact quite commercial in their day. Rembrandt was a commercial painter. Hokusai and all of his ukiyo-e brethren produced emphemera, perhaps no more appreciated in their time than movie posters today. And so many we do appreciate, we appreciate only because the canon tells us so. Was George Melies truly such an artistic genius? Was his creation truly so wonderful as Ebert seems to think it was, or is he just buying into the same canonization that makes us all appreciate Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Picasso without actually considering whether or not we ourselves (as individuals) see the artistry, the beauty, in it? I, for one, see absolutely nothing in Jenova Chen’s creation – aesthetically attractive, masterfully created, innovative in concept, emotionally impactful – that should disqualify it as art.

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Tang Dynasty Copy of Calligraphy by Wang Xizhi found in Japan

For the first time in roughly 40 years, a Tang dynasty (618-907) copy of original handwriting by Wang Xizhi has been found in Japan. Much thanks to the blog Heritage of Japan for re-posting the Japan Times article about it, and thus bringing it to my attention.

Right: The newly re-discovered work.

Wang Xizhi (303-361) remains today the most highly esteemed calligrapher in Chinese history. All calligraphers since then have either revered and emulated his style, or intentionally, purposefully, rejected it. In other words, his is the standard to aspire to, or to compare creative innovation against. His most famous work, and thus arguably, quite possibly, the most famous work in all of Chinese calligraphy, is the Orchid Pavilion Preface, composed in 353 at a now-famous gathering of scholars and artists at a garden / vacation villa called the Orchid Pavilion (蘭亭, C: Lanting). That piece of calligraphy was so treasured by the Tang Dynasty Emperor Taizong (r. 626-649) that he had himself buried with it.

No original works by the hand of Wang Xizhi himself survive today, but numerous later copies, meticulously copied by later Chinese calligraphers, do survive. It is unclear from the Japan Times article whether the piece just discovered is the only known copy of this particular text, three lines of 24 characters total, but the article does indicate that this discovery could help contribute to our better understanding of Wang’s hand, and thus of Chinese calligraphy as a whole. The work, which likely came to Japan via the embassies sent to China by the Yamato (Japanese) Court, was long believed to have been an original composition by a Japanese calligrapher; experts at the Tokyo National Museum, re-discovering the work in a private collection in Japan, have determined that it is in fact by a Chinese calligrapher, and a copy of Wang Xizhi’s hand.

Exciting finds. It would be wonderful if this were to be exhibited in upcoming months, keeping museumgoers (i.e. the public) in the loop as to new discoveries, and perhaps encouraging their excitement about such discoveries. The article makes no mention of any such plans.

Detail of a copy of Wang Xizhi’s Orchid Pavilion Preface.

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On the Senkaku/Diaoyu Debate

This has been much in the news lately, so I suppose it’s about time I post something about it. Incidentally, after not checking on my own site for just a few days, I came back today to find I had 46 spam messages. Wow. I’ve never seen so many at once before.

For those living under a rock the last few weeks, anti-Japanese riots have erupted in China, nominally connected to the territorial dispute over a set of tiny uninhabited islands known as Diaouyu in Chinese, and Senkaku in Japanese. Here is a recent Wall Street Journal article on the events, just one of a countless number published in the last few weeks.

I refuse to get into it here, because then I’m just inviting more debate, more wasteful flamewars (though, at the very least, it would get me to actually have some non-spam comments on this blog..). But, suffice it to say that despite the assertions of a recent NY Times editorial column by Han-Yi Shaw, and numerous rebuttals in which he is gloriously torn apart, this is not really about who truly, legally, rightfully, is in the right regarding claims to these stupid islands. The Chinese rioters, supported by their government, have seen to that. The dispute over the islands, much as they might like to pretend otherwise, was never really their primary attention. Once again, the Chinese have found an excuse to launch anti-Japanese riots, reviving a myriad of issues decades old and conflating them all with what should be a much more limited, specific, political debate, fanning the flames of hate and re-igniting the crucible of Chinese ultra-nationalist fervor & outrage against wrongs committed generations ago.

A friend suggested that we must take Chinese conceptions of nation and national territory into account, understanding Chinese attitudes about how any and all territory that was historically part of China is seen as integral to the wholeness of the Chinese nation-state, and how even the tiniest incursion is thus seen as an attack on the whole. A very interesting thought, and one I kind of enjoy, as I much prefer cultural lines of inquisition to the utterly boring realm of political theory and power politics; the Orientalist idea of China having a markedly different, separate, cultural conception of itself is a wonderfully romantic and intriguing one. I like it, and I’d be curious to know more about this. If anyone has any academic articles to recommend on Chinese conceptions of the essential nature of possession of all Chinese people & land, I’d be curious to read them.

Master wordsmith Murakami Haruki summarizes contemporary Japanese attitudes on nationalistic fervor best, I believe, saying:

“Anger-fuelled disputes of this kind are not unlike cheap liquor: Cheap liquor gets you drunk after only a few shots and makes you hysterical. It makes you speak loudly and act rudely. . . But after your drunken rampage you are left with nothing but an awful headache the next morning. We must be careful about politicians and polemicists who lavish us with this cheap liquor and fan this kind of rampage.”

With any luck, the Chinese and Koreans can learn this lesson too, and won’t have to learn it the hard way, as Japan and Germany did. (Hopefully we Americans can soon learn that lesson as well.)

You can read the entirety of Murakami’s essay, in translation into English, here.

This bullshit of Chinese & Koreans refusing to let go of age-old issues, and refusal to allow relations to become more fully friendly and peaceful has got to stop. It has got to end. What we need, in the words of Genki Sudo, is a “permanent revolution.”

Sigh. If only it were so simple. What magic words can they exchange in negotiations that will make a permanent revolution a reality?

People act as though the world they know, the world of the present, is the only way things could possibly be. Either that, or they believe that the 1890s-1940s are all there is to history. But the relationship between China, Korea, and Japan is more than a thousand years old, and it has taken many dramatically different forms over the centuries. It was different before, and it can be different again. All it takes is a willingness to put the recent past aside, and look to the future.

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Bid for China’s Grand Canal to become a World Heritage Site

I likely at one point commented, or joked, about China’s nationalist push to get more and more sites named World Heritage Sites, as if this is a contest, to have the most World Heritage Sites. It really kind of dilutes the importance and meaning of the designation if you’re going to try to bid for sites beyond those of truly exceptional significance to be included on the list. The 2007 selection of the Iwami Ginzan silver mine in Japan would once have been my go-to case – ask any tourist, or any tourist guide book, and I can practically guarantee that the mine would not be in the top 100 famous sites in Japan. But, it is hard to deny the importance of Japanese silver not only regionally, but truly globally, in the 16th-17th centuries.

In any case, I can hardly think of a more deserving site than the oldest and longest manmade waterway in the world, China’s Grand Canal (大運河). Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not a World Heritage Site already. Roughly 1776 km long, the Canal connects Beijing in the north and Hangzhou in the south, intersects with five major rivers, and has been an extremely major thoroughfare and trading route within China for roughly 2000 years. As Kelly M explains on her blog, “Eye on East Asia,” some of the oldest sections are said to have been built during the reign of King Fuchai of Wu (r. 495–473 BCE); these and other sections carved by other rulers were combined during the Sui Dynasty (581-618 CE) to form “The Grand Canal.”

Other Chinese sites currently or recently bid for World Heritage Site status include Beijing’s “Central Axis” (mostly sites connected to Mao Zedong) and the Shaolin Temple (famous for its associations with kung fu). You can keep up with World Heritage Site news via this keen aggregator of NY Times articles on the subject.

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Chinese nationalists eye Okinawa

Image Above: Chinese investiture envoys (冊封使) arrive in Ryûkyû. Detail from a scroll painting by Yamaguchi Suiô. Sakamaki-Hawley Collection, University of Hawaii Library.

I don’t know how new a development this is – there have probably been people here and there saying things all along – but in recent days it has become a lot more prominent in English-language news that some Chinese nationalists¹ have been calling for Okinawan independence from Japan. Some have gone further, saying Okinawa should be “returned” to China, a truly absurd concept, but I’ll get to that. Of course, much of this comes out of pro-PRC nationalist fervor, anti-Japanese sentiment, and a desire to further the PRC’s national interests. There may be Chinese citizens with a genuine sympathy for the Okinawan people, and an interest in seeing Okinawan independence for the benefit of the Okinawan people, but I don’t think those are the Chinese we’re talking about here.

Chinese/Japanese sovereignty disputes over the Senkaku Islands (C: Diaoyu Islands) have heated up a bit recently, and it would seem that these ideas about Okinawa have come along with it. Many Chinese, it would seem, figure, as long as they’re pushing for Chinese claims to these tiny, insignificant islands that happen to be surrounded by great fishing waters and underwater natural gas deposits, they might as well push further, to argue Chinese claims for the whole Ryukyu Islands chain as well.

I should point out that, in the words of the Financial Times of London, “the Chinese government has offered no [formal/official] endorsement of such radical views.” This is all just individual nationalists expressing their own personal views, not, as yet, anything representing the official position or attitude of the Chinese government (except, of course, insofar as that the government determines the curriculum, and through that citizens learn a twisted version of history, and then speak or act upon the attitudes and understandings obtained through that education). Yet, these do include military officers and government officials, not just random people on the streets.

A week ago, RocketNews24, a sort of aggregator site of Japanese news translated into English, reported on comments made by one particular Chinese officer, a Major General Jin Yinan. Jin speaks of “China’s rightful ownership of all Okinawa too.” What exactly his logic is, is left unclear, but one can easily imagine that he is not alone in holding these opinions. He is not quoted in this article as going so far as to say anything about former Chinese direct control over the Ryûkyû Islands (which China, in fact, never exercised or claimed to), nor even explicitly saying anything about the tributary relationship between the Ryûkyû Kingdom and Imperial China. However, he notes that when Japan formally annexed Okinawa and abolished the Kingdom in 1879, “they threw out all links to China like the Qing Dynasty [dating system] and the Chinese writing style.” These two points are true, as this event severed Okinawa’s tributary relations to Qing China, and with no Ryukyuan king any longer, ended the tradition of the Ryukyuan King being formally invested by the Chinese Emperor. All of Japan, including Okinawa, was now under the Western calendar (albeit with Japanese imperial year).² With the kingdom abolished, the bureaucracy of the royal government went with it, along with the scholar-aristocrat-bureaucrat class, steeped in the Confucian Classics and models of Chinese government, which ran it. It makes sense that writing in Chinese would have severely declined in Okinawa at this time, though I don’t recall reading anything explicitly discussing the matter; as the scholar-aristocrat class was abolished, they all became equal “citizens” with all the former peasants/commoners, and as the nationwide Japanese national education system was put into place in Okinawa, everyone would have begun writing more exclusively in Japanese.

But, getting to the point, the idea of Chinese historical claims to Ryûkyû is essentially absurd. China never landed troops in the Ryûkyûs, never deployed Chinese bureaucrats/administrators to administer the islands as a colony or a province, but only received tribute from a kingdom that paid ritual obeisance to the symbolic authority of the Chinese Emperor. Even in the 1870s-80s, the pro-China faction in Okinawa was never arguing that the Kingdom “belonged” in any way to China, or that they wanted to be annexed by China, but only that they wished to be allowed to continue their traditional tributary relationship. I’m not positive exactly what kind of rhetoric was used at the time by the Chinese, though, who might in fact have claimed back then as well that the Ryukyus “belonged” to China.

Not that I am saying that the samurai domain of Satsuma in 1609, or the Empire of Japan in 1879, were morally or ethically in the right to do what they did, in 1609 militarily invading Ryûkyû and subordinating it to Satsuma’s authority (controlling the kingdom’s foreign relations, demanding taxes, etc.), and then in the 1870s abolishing the kingdom, annexing its lands, sending mainland Japanese administrators to govern the islands, and imposing various sorts of assimilation policies aimed at wiping out Ryukyuan identity, transforming the Ryukyuan people into homogeneous Japanese citizens. If we want to talk about formerly independent kingdoms that have been conquered, Japan has no more “right” to the Ryukyus than England has to Wales and Scotland, except by law of conquest. The Okinawans have been wronged by Japan, most certainly, historically, and if anyone were arguing for Okinawan independence on the merits of that Okinawa used to be independent, and should be again, for the rights and benefits of the Okinawan people, that would be one thing.

But, here we are talking about arguments made for Chinese national interests, and I don’t think that the interests of the Okinawan people really enter into it, in the arguments of these Chinese nationalists. The Financial Times of London reports on and discusses a more widespread, and varied, set of arguments, in an article entitled “Chinese Nationalists Eye Okinawa,” focusing not only on Major General Jin. (My thanks to Tobias Harris for pointing out this article to me.)

They quote one Japan specialist from a Ministry of Commerce think tank, a Mr. Tang, who says, “When I was in Japan, I didn’t even know that the Ryukyus were once ours.” This goes back to what I was saying above, about how China never actually owned or controlled or even claimed to administer or govern the Ryukyu Islands. It was merely a tributary relationship. Fortunately, the Financial Times is on top of things, and makes the counterpoint that needs to be made:

“Once you start arguing that a tributary relationship at some point in history is the basis for a sovereignty claim in the 20th century, you start worrying a lot of people,” says June Teufel Dreyer, a China and Japan specialist at the University of Miami. “Many, many countries had tributary relationships with China.”

Of course, in light of Chinese control of Tibet, Uyghur lands, and numerous other lands that historically belonged to other peoples, Chinese arguments that Japan has no “right” to Okinawa and should return it seem especially hypocritical. If Okinawa deserves independence based on the fact that it was independent prior to 1879, then what about Tibet, which was independent up until 1959?

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(1) Not “Nationalists” as in the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), who opposed the Communists in the Chinese Civil War in the 1930s-40s, and who fled to Taiwan in 1949, but ‘patriotic’ Communists expressing ‘nationalistic’ sentiments.
(2) Japan adopted the Western calendar in 1873. Gone were the days of “the 3rd lunar month, 13th day, day of the ox, hour of the rat [３月１３日丑・子の刻].” Now, when it was Tuesday January 15th, 1879 in London, or in New York, it was “the 12th year of Meiji, first month, 15th day, Tuesday [明治１２年正月１５日火曜日]” (Or 16th day, what with time zones and all that).

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