Orientations Volume Nine

Contents:
TYLER COHEN
E
IN
The Poisonous Haze of the Mountains:
N
E
L :
Borderland Limitations in the Ming and Qing Southwest
M
LU
ES A NS
VO
JESSICA YILAN TSANG
Minority Responses to State Development: Three Experiences of Health in
“Ethnic” China
C LT TIO
JOANNA Y. L. LAI
A History of Tattoo Stigmatization in Japan
R
VINCI TING
T
Speaking Chinese
TIV U
PE CU A
GUILLAUME LAMOTHE
N
The Evolution of Calligraphy and Writing in Mao’s China
IE
SEAN WEBB
The failure of nation-building without a conscience:
R
Khmer national identities in Democratic Kampuchea
RS NS
JOSHUA CADER
O
War Memorial
PE A
JOSHUA FRANK
Japaneseness and the Discover Japan Campaign
TR
O
N
AS
IA
ORIENTATIONS
is a journal run by
students in the
department of
East Asian Studies
at McGill University.
The content of this journal does not necessarily
represent the views of McGill University..
Editorial
Joshua Cader
Joanna Lai
Gregoire Legault
Vinci Ting
Contributors
Anne-Claire Camps
Tyler Cohen
Joshua Frank
Guillaume Lamothe
Adam K.W. Ng
Jessica Tsang
Sean Webb
Layout & Design

Joanna Lai
With Special Thanks to:

Sophia Cho
Xue-Rong Jia
The McGill East Asian Studies Students’ Association
Arts Undergraduate Society of McGill University
AT LEAST WE ATTEMPT TO BE
SELF-AWARE:
When studying Asia, we are constantly exhorted to not exoticize the
subject. But why would we bother being interested in sames? If the area
is not that of the student, area studies is exotic by nature: Other stud-
ies. With this in mind, in this volume are essays that deal with the con-
structed other, and – as we cannot have an other without a self – the
constructed self.
Those that study (that is, us) are, by nature, civilized. We write, we can understand each
other, we specialize. The difference between the civilized and the barbarian is seen in the
ability to recognize and properly communicate. The wild barbarian is only a barbarian
because he is incomprehensible. The unit of the civilized is the civilization.
In the first half of this journal, you will find descriptions of the construction
of the other, characterized by those outside of whatever the constructed
unit is (a nation, a people, a nation-state, a society). The first two pieces
deal with the idea of near-barbarians; that is, in a world where civiliza-
tion is concentric, these are the peoples to be civilized and educated by
the center – in these cases, China. The third piece deals with people that
begin as same and become – in most cases, voluntarily – marked as
other through the medium of tattoo.
The journal is, then, split with a poem dealing with a simultaneously ex-
isting self/other, both split and fused by language, and finishes off with
ruminations on the construction of insides. The desire to find a purer self
is to be found in the recycling of old forms that seem like a more obvi-
ous progression, such as calligraphy put to popular use, or less so, an
attempted regression to a “jungle paradise”. In the last two pieces, focus-
ing on Japan, we have another look at attempts at capturing purity, both
controversial (war memorialization) and benign (picking radishes).
Perhaps the following pages are simply one long excuse: yes, we exoti-
cize and invent selves and others, but everybody else – that is, the other
– does the same for themselves. Without categorization and degrees of
otherness, we would be but lost without much to say, and with no way
to discern the similar.
The Editors
The Poisonous Haze of the Mountains: Borderland Limitations in the Ming and Qing Southwest
Tyler Cohen
The Poisonous Haze of the Mountains:

Borderland Limitations in the Ming and
Qing Southwest
Tyler Cohen
In July of 2009, Ross Walker along and his two friends summitted the tallest peak in
the cangshan mountain range near Dali, Yunnan. Along the way, they wandered off-trail
and found themselves atop a ten meter waterfall unsure of how to continue. One friend
descended safely, while the other fell some seven meters, landing on his hip before being
stopped by a head-first crash into a rock. Ross moved quickly to the aid of his friend, but
fell into the same rock, slicing open his hand in the process. The friend who had descended
safely left shortly thereafter promising to alert authorities and return with medical help.
Ross and his friend were now stranded and soaking wet, lost without food or fire.
They ripped grass from the ground and covered themselves in moss and leaves. For
eleven hours of darkness, they lay holding each other to conserve heat, while hop-
ing that the rain visible in the distance would not reach their small plateau. Ross
would later recall the two of them occasionally spotting a light in the distance – most
likely lightning – and hoping that helicopters would soon arrive. No help came.
The following morning, Ross , with only one functional hand, and his friend , whose hip
was badly injured, deliberated the best course of action in such a dire circumstances.
Since his friend was barely able to walk and was under obvious pain, Ross considered
building a better shelter for the coming night. Initial hope that the third member of their
group would return with help had slowly dwindled. If help had been sent, it would have
already arrived. Without food, fire or warm clothing they both came to believe they were
likely to feel worse as time passed. With each of their options holding potentially di-
sastrous consequences, they opted to ignore all pain and difficulty and continue their
descent. Some six hours later they reached solid ground, exhausted but elated.
The owner of the mountainside lodge where they had eventually stayed been stay-
ing later scolded them for their audacity and stupidity in attempting to follow a river
down a mountain. When Ross asked him why help had not been sent, he told them
that local policy was to wait four days. If after four days someone had still not re-
turned, 500 soldiers would be sent up to find them[1]. The owner related that such
a happening was rare, as most people would call his cell phone if they were lost.
Orientations Volume Nine : Transcultural Perspectives on Asia
When Ross asked what usually happened to people who didn’t have cell phones, the
owner responded; “Well, usually they die.”
The story of Ross and his friend is not unusual. One often hears of such situations about
traveling in western Guangxi province or northern Yunnan. That same month, further
north in Yunnan a Canadian climber was reported to have fallen roughly ten meters be-
fore splitting open his head and being forced to climb two more hours to a road near a
small village. Local Tibetan villagers carried him over the next mountain range before
reaching the nearest ambulance. Such stories go a long way in expressing the sheer
vastness of southwestern China’s frontier. Standing atop these mountain ranges, one
is struck with a sense of the difficulty former Chinese states must have faced in govern-
ing such areas. I can recall Ross once wondering out loud how many years it would have
taken villagers to even find out an emperor had died.
This essay focuses on the difficulties faced by the last two Chinese dynasties, the Ming
and the Qing, in subjugating and governing such areas. As the various Chinese dynas-
ties expanded their territories, new difficulties and attempted solutions arose with the
strains of governing such a vast realm. In northwest China the beg system was intro-
duced, whereas in the southwest the tusi (土司 ) system was frequently employed. In
this essay I illustrate a number of the major troubles the central state confronted when
attempting to govern the tusi areas in China’s southwest and evaluate the success of
some of the proposed solutions
The Origin and Composition of the Tusi System
During the Yuan dynasty[5] (1279 – 1368) many areas of modern-day China’s south-
west first came under the rule of the central Chinese state. The Mongols were extremely
successful warriors and managed to conquer vast areas that had previously only had mini-
mal relations with any Chinese state. Many of these areas in the southwest were in fact
large kingdoms before the arrival of the Ming. Prior to their defeat at Mongol hands,
kingdoms such as the Dali kingdom were fully independent and dominated the area’s
political arena[6]. After the consolidation of the Yuan empire in 1279, many of these
areas officially became part of the Chinese political body for the first time. Whereas be-
forehand relations between these kingdoms and the Chinese state had usually been one
of negotiated alliance in the past, the Yuan gave local leaders positions and titles inside
within the Chinese administrative system, calling them tusi (native chieftaincy[7]), rely-
ing and relied on them to govern the areas as part of their empire[8]. This transition
may have been impossible for a dynasty more dependent on Chinese traditions of state-
craft, Aas the areas in question were seen as savage, uncivilized and generally outside
the proper reaches of the central state, this transition may have been impossible for a
dynasty more dependent on Chinese traditions of statecraft. . The methods of govern-
ing employed by these local leaders were in many cases radically different from standard
Chinese modes of administration[9]. The Yuan, unrestrained by such traditional Chi-
nese evaluation, were content to give normal titles like ‘military commissioner’ to local
leaders.
Tyler Cohen
After the fall of the Yuan dynasty and the rise of the Ming (1368 – 1644), the Hon-
gwu emperor (r. 1368 – 1398), the first emperor of the Ming, and court administra-
tors had obvious reason to retain this system. Many of these southern frontier areas
bordered more dangerous enemies, such as Annam[10], and the Hongwu emperor
was happy to let the native chieftaincy areas act as a sort of buffer zone between the
two and even provide military assistance in the case that Ming China was attacked[11].
Moreover, as with many previous Chinese dynasties and due in no small measure to the
phenomenal ability the Mongols had shown in their earlier conquests in China[12],
the Ming were justifiably more worried about the threats facing the dynasty from the
north[13]. The state had only limited resources and it was judged that it was wiser to
focus military might on the northern frontier while managing the southern borderlands
through extending administrative control[14]. As if the threat of Mongol invasion from
the north was not enough to disturb the emperor’s sleep, there still existed a “linger-
ing Mongol presence”[15] in southwestern officialdom, which the Hongwu emperor
and some officials believed could be brought more fully under Ming supervision.
What exactly was the tusi system and how did it differ from regular Chinese governance?
For the Ming dynasty it was largely a continuation of Yuan-era policies adopted for
the sake of convenience. A given area would be marked off by Ming officials as under
the jurisdiction of either a military-rank native chieftainship or a civilian-rank native
chieftainship[16], though these distinctions often indicated only minimal differenc-
es. In theory, military-rank native chieftaincies held greater legal autonomy and were
“allowed to rule their domains in accordance with their own laws and customs”[17],
though for reasons often beyond Ming control, many civilian-rank native chieftaincies
acted in much the same way[18]. Civilian-rank native chieftaincies were more thor-
oughly incorporated into Ming administrative structure and tended to lie within es-
tablished provincial boundaries. Many of the positions inside the officialdom of these
areas mirrored those of the central state. For example, civilian-rank native chieftain-
cies often had either a native prefecture magistrate, a native department magistrate,
or a native county magistrate--, positions with similar in name and function to those
found within the boundaries of regular Ming control[19]. Of the differences between
civilian-rank native chieftaincies and regular administrative areas, one major distinc-
tion was in found in the process of leadership selection. Though Ming, and later Qing,
policies regarding exactly how chieftains were to be selected fluctuated, it was gener-
ally an inheritance process. This, of course, stands in great contrast to regular Ming
procedure, through which officials are selected and appointed based on their success
in examinations and experience in other areas of governance. As we will see later, the
inheritance of titles became a point of tension between the Chinese state and native
chieftains. Due to the sheer size of southwest China and the variance of local conditions,
it is nearly impossible to characterize all native chieftaincies by any one definition. Later
on we will see some examples of tusi systems and their inner workings in greater detail.
So what difficulties did the Ming and Qing dynasties face in their relations with the
tusi areas? In this paper we will look at three specific difficulties: problems in imple-
menting administrative structure, the difficulties posed by the natural conditions
of the areas, and difficulties establishing an education system in native chieftaincy areas.
Following an exposition of the problems associated with these aspects of imperial rule,
we will take a brief look at the modern sense of “autonomy” granted to areas largely
populated by ethnic-minorities within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Though
there are great differences in the objectives and means available for the Ming/Qing and
the PRC, it will be interesting to see the modern Chinese standards for “autonomy” as
compared to late imperial standards of rule.
The Implementation of Administrative Control and Its Discontents
Faced with great expanses of distant and often difficult to manage lands, the Ming natu-
rally sought to expand administrative control over much of their newfound territory. In
the course of their 276-year reign the Ming bestowed over 1,600 tusi titles, most of
which (960) were military-rank[20]. Most of these military-rank titles were handed out
in Sichuan and Guizhou. In Sichuan, for example, 95 percent (326) of the 343 titles
handed out were military-rank. By In contrast, in Yunnan alone they conferred 434
tusi titles, only 41 percent (178) of which were military-rank. In Guangxi province to
Yunnan’s east there were 337 tusi titles handed out, 92 percent (309) of which were
civilian-rank. The factors involved in determining whether an area was categorized as a
military-rank or civilian-rank native chieftainship were threefold: proximity to “China
proper”; the size of the Han Chinese community nearby; and the natural resources po-
tentially available for the central state. This does not, however, indicate that Guangxi
and Yunnan were more under Ming control than were Sichuan or Guizhou. One factor
that complicates the reading of these statistics is that while the Ming established greater
control in these two provinces they broke up many Yuan-era tusi domains into smaller
domains[21]. One possible reason they did so was to make administration convenient,
however it seems the desire to discourage anti-Han rebellion may also have been a factor.
As this paper focuses more on Yunnan and Guangxi than Sichuan or Guizhou, most of
the tusi areas it discusses were of civilian-rank.
Though the Ming did indeed exert greater control over these areas than the Yuan had or
even wanted to, it was not without difficulty. One problem they faced was the quality of
officials who were sent to work in these areas. The environment and , political structure
and along with the standard of living in many of these areas meant that for Ming-era of-
ficials, being sent to a tusi was far from a pleasure, and for many was seen even seen as
something like aof a death sentence. Consequently, being sent to Guangxi or Yunnan
was not a highly sought after job and the quality of magistrates in these provinces was
often reflective of this fact. The combination of environmental factors – which we look
at in greater depth below – and political difficulties meant that of the officials who did
make it to these areas, many “would avoid either traveling to or staying long in the bor-
der regions.”[22] Even those talented officials who did make it down to the south often
reported feeling “their lives [were put] in jeopardy just by performing their duties.”[23]
One assistant administration commissioner of Guangxi, Tian Rucheng (田汝成), noted
in the mid-sixteenth century that most of the officials in Guangxi were, “either dejected
officials who had been demoted or bookish scholars who lacked practical
Tyler Cohen
experiences.”[24] Another official, the investigating censor Shi Wanxiang (史万祥),
reported that in the 1490s most of the administrators in the southern border provinces
(specifically Guangxi and Yunnan) were individuals who had long ago obtained their jin-
shi degree and had “by the time of their appointments probably given up hopes for more
desirable positions.”[25]
Another set of difficulties faced by the Ming, specifically in Guangxi, revolved around
tax revenues and collection. Guangxi had a much smaller tax base than most of the Ming
state’s other territories and over the course of their reign they were forced to cut close
many offices simply because of budget constraints[26]. Aside from the relatively smaller
tax base other factors contributed to budget problems in Ming Guangxi. For example,
the imperial court was often required to grant tax exemptions to areas hit by natural
disasters[27]. As well, due to minor wars between native chieftaincies, the boundar-
ies between the various tusi frequently shifted, thereby complicating the tax collection
process. As these more volatile tusi areas were gradually brought under Ming control,
borders ceased shifting quite so quickly. However, that did not mean that tax collection
became a simple process or that order was created. It seems that many of these areas
would not deliver their taxes directly, rather relying on Han -Chinese or more fully in-
tegrated subjects of the Chinese state to deliver their taxes for them[28]. Many of these
middlemen were reported by Ming officials to have concealed more than half of what had
been given to them, or simply to have told the local leaders that they owed more than
they in fact did. While the Ming state encouraged tusi areas to deliver their own taxes,
it appears they were “afraid of dealing with Ming officials”[29] and the campaign was
unsuccessful.
Moving from the Ming to the Qing, another set of problems that were faced in the admin-
istration of the southwestern frontier lands were those of Han settlers and Hanjian (漢
奸), or Han traitors. Largely Ffor largely economic reasons, the Ming dynasty had often
encouraged settlers to move into Yunnan[30], and by the time the Qing (1644 – 1912)
took over, Yunnan had a large Han population. Shi Shangxian (施尚賢)[31], born in
Yunnan province in the mid-eighteenth century, was the descendant of one such settler.
In 1748 he left his Han wife and never returned to his hometown, heading southwest-
ward toward the border with Burma. At this time there were up to one hundred thousand
Han already living near the border region, most of them engaged in mining operations.
Though Qing officials were worried about the political ramifications of intermarriage
between Han men and indigenous women, it apparently was quite common, and Shi
eventually remarried with a woman of one of the local Tai (Dai) or upland tribes. In 1765
when the Qing state launched its campaign against Burma – which would become one of
the most disastrous of all Qing campaigns - Shi Shangxian, along with his father-in-law,
opted to side with the Burmese and attack the Qing. Though he was eventually captured
by, ironically enough, a tusi official patrolling the border, Shi’s story was important to
Qing officials because it confirmed the worst fears of the state in frontier lands; “a Han
had migrated to a remote region and turned on the imperial state”[32].
Even when Han settlers did not take up arms for the enemy they were problematic for
the Qing state. Many officials argued that Han settlement would in fact be a positive, os-
tensibly because it could encourage the sinicization – or, more precisely, the “civilizing”
– of the frontier peoples. In fact, this policy seems to have had the exact opposite effect in
many areas. In 1666, one Qing official in Guangxi noted that Han migrants from Jiangxi
and Guangdong province had begun “to occupy native chieftain lands, confiscate and re-
channel vital water resources away from non-Han villages, and kill wildlife and plant life
crucial to the indigene way of life.”[33] To a Qing state determined to create an ordered
and peaceful frontier, this was obviously problematic. Difficulties with Han settlers were
not confined to Han mistreatment of non-Han, however, and the hoped for sinicization
of the non-Han communities rarely occurred. On the contrary, many officials dismayed
that Han migrants to tusi areas tended to adopt local customs. Officials in both Ming[34]
and Qing[35] Guangxi complained that it was often nearly impossible to distinguish be-
tween regular subjects of the empire (mentioned as min – citizens – in the Ming and Han
in the Qing) and tusi subjects. One Qing official reported that when he stumbled upon a
town that he believed to be part of a Miao[36] tusi, he was shocked to find out they were
actually descendants of Ming military officials. Having discovered that they came from
a line of regular state subjects, the official ordered them to cut their hair in the Manchu
style and grow queues, as all regular subjects were supposed to do. He was met with firm
resistance and reportedly was nearly killed by the locals. Many other officials noted that
Han settlers living around tusi and other non-Han areas were, like Shi Shangxian had
in his marriage, adopting non-Han marriage and funeral customs, and even “instilling
among the non-Han people a sense of hostility toward Qing local officials.”[37]
The last administrative issue I would’d like to mention is the problem of the inheritance
of native chieftaincy titles. In 1672 the Kangxi (r. 1661 - 1722) emperor, the third Qing
dynasty emperor, issued guidelines for the native chieftaincy inheritance process[38].
The guidelines indicated that the Qing state strongly favoured the title moving from fa-
ther to son[39], though the Kangxi emperor was willing to acknowledge a title being
passed to a brother. The guidelines further stipulated that it was no longer acceptable to
pass titles onto wives, son-in-laws or any other relation. Moreover, the title could not be
transferred to anyone under the age of fifteen. This meant that when a native chieftain
passed away with his oldest son still under the age of fifteen, his wife or some trusted
retainer would take on the job until the son was ready[40]. Modifications to these guide-
lines in 1680 complicated the issue further as stipulations were added for situations in
which the native chieftain’s wife had not produced a male heir but one of his concubines
had, or if he had a daughter who had borne a grandson but no son himself. Illustrating all
of the complexities of these guidelines is not within the scope of this paper, but we can
take a look at how it operated in practice.
In 1706 in Hubei’s Rongmei tusi region a complicated inheritance scandal nearly led to
inter- and intra-chieftainship violence[41]. Shortly before his own death, the Rongmei
native chieftain, Tian Shunnian (田舜年), told local authorities that his oldest son, Tian
Changru[42], had passed away. Qing law stipulated that Tian Changru’s son, Tian Yinan
(田宜男), was the next legitimate heir. Shortly thereafter, Tian Yinan also died. Having
been quite fond of the young boy, Tian Shunian opted to give Tian Yinan’s younger
Tyler Cohen
brother the same name. Tian Shunian died shortly thereafter and Tian Yinan became the
native chieftain with Tian Bingru (田昺如), the second son of Tian Shunian, acting as
regent.
Problems began to emerge when Tian Bingru openly referred to himself as the native
chieftain. He eventually asked Qing officials if it wasn’t possible that his own son, being
older than (the 2nd and still living) Tian Yinan, become Rongmei’s chieftain. This led
supporters of Tian Yinan to suspect Tian Bingru would of launch launching a power
struggle and they in turn asked Qing officials to name Tian Shunian’s third son, Tian
Yaoru (田曜如) as the new chieftain. A provincial investigation committee was sent
– probably just as confused as the reader - to Rongmei to investigate the situation. and
Tian Bingru, fearing the worst, fled to a neighboring chieftainship. When this area in
turn threatened war unless Tian Bingru was re-instated as native chieftain, the Qing in-
formed them that unless Tian Bingru was handed over immediately they would become
militarily involved as well. The hand-over was eventually made and Tian Yaoru succeed-
ed as the new head of Rongmei. One can imagine the nuisance this would have caused for
the Qing officials sent to handle the matter.
Inheritance issues were not always, or even often, as bloodless and funny humourous
as the story of Rongmei. In Ming dynasty Guangxi violence frequently occurred as a re-
sult of inheritance struggles. One of the major causes of this was that large chieftainship
families would often use marriages to strengthen family power, a relationship that Ming
dynasty officials did not accept. Often times the death of a tusi leader would “lead to
open warfare as powerful families and factions used kinship ties to the deceased tusi to
stake a claim to the tusi post.”[43]
The Foul Air and the Many Tigers: Environmental Limitations
While both the Ming and the Qing were able to greatly expand on military control over
the southwestern frontier areas, they encountered a number of difficulties along the way.
Many of these difficulties were never fully resolved by either dynasty, while a number of
them were actually exacerbated by imperial policies. One example of the latter is the in-
crease in violence in Ming-era Guangxi resulting from military policies laid down by the
central state. It was a common policy at the time for soldiers to be compensated based on
the number of enemies they killed. Many officials would come to blame this system for
the increase in banditry in late fifteenth century Guangxi[44].
One set of problems the central government was simply unable to resolve were those
caused by environmental factors. Ming-era Guangxi was a terrifying environment for
many officials and non-natives. The diversity in wildlife and vastness of territory proved
daunting for many immigrants to the area, as well the state itself. More important for
most immigrants was that Ming Guangxi had a reputation for being a bastion of disease
and death[45]. The main fear was that one would contact miasma (zhang – 瘴), a dis-
ease Ming subjects believed formed when the “poisonous haze of mountains coalesced
with the foul air of forests.”[46] Ming observers believed there to be varying strands and
degrees of zhang-induced sickness, the most severe of which would render victims un-
able to speak or control bodily movement. Contact with this strongest form of zhang was
believed to lead to certain death[47].
Disease was not the only fear for immigrants to Guangxi province. Though modern day
visitors to the PRC’s southern provinces may find it impossible to believe, Guangxi was
once home to a wide array of large and dangerous animals. There Although there exists
no few reliable statistics on just how manythe number of tigers populated that populated
Guangxi during the Ming dynasty[48], but officials traveling through the province often
recorded having seen “many tigers”[49] during their journey. Officials from the latter
half of the Ming dynasty often focus on the difficulties presented by large populations
of tigers. In the 1599 edition of the General Gazetteer of Guangxi, we learn that one
prefectural seat experienced constant attacks during three years in the early-sixteenth
century[50]. The same gazetteer relays an account from a small village in Guangxi where
a single tiger managed to kill and eat more than thirty of the forty-eight residents in one
night. Some immigrants even took to keeping tigers as pets, though for at least one un-
fortunate individual this resulted in the tiger fighting back against his drunken and angry
master[51]. The tiger,tiger “could later be seen lingering around Ma’s grave looking
longingly for its former master.”[52]
Returning to disease but moving further west, Yunnan province presented Ming and
Qing citizens with the difficulties resulting from widespread malaria. During the Qing
dynasty a campaign was launched aimed at bringing tusi areas under greater central con-
trol. The idea was to eliminate the position of native chieftains in as many places as possi-
ble and bring normal administrative structure to the regions[53]. At least in Yunnan, the
implementation of this policy was restricted by the inability or unwillingness of Han Chi-
nese to venture far into the malaria-ridden regions of the province’s south. One private
secretary/local historian writing in Yunnan province between 1716 and 1737 strongly
opposed the tusi system, decrying it for being too far outside normal Qing administra-
tive structure. Though he wished to see the central government exert full administrative
control over the province, he did note that in areas with high frequency of malaria, “it
would be difficult to establish a regular officialdom unfamiliar with the lay of the land,
and malaria would also be unavoidable when deploying garrison troops.”[54] One ex-
ample of the reprucussions of malaria being “unavoidable” in many areas can be seen in
Mianning subprefecture, an area roughly 30 kilometers west of the Mekong. Though it
had been converted from a native chieftaincy into a regular administrative subprefecture
in 1746, by 1812 there still remained at least 20 large areas where Qing troops wished
to garrison but were unable to because of malaria[55]. Thus despite Mianning being
under regular Qing control on paper, for at least 70 years provincial leaders and the
military still had to rely on native chieftains to govern and protect the border.
Loosely Enforced: Confucian Education and the Barbarian
Both the Ming and Qing dynasties viewed the introduction of a Confucian education sys-
tem into the southwestern frontier lands as a necessary step in solving some of the existing
Tyler Cohen
problems. For the Ming in Guangxi province the aim was principally to “civilize” the
people under tusi rule and bring them further under central control. The state experi-
mented first with encouraging native people to send their sons to the Imperial Acad-
emy (Guo zi jian), though in 1395 decided instead to open local Confucian schools in
hopes of reaching more students. The main goal of education in these areas was to teach
students “the proper relations between rulers and subjects, fathers and sons.”[56] In
1444 and later in 1503 the Ming state attempted to enforce requirements that at least
all designated heirs to native chieftaincy positions, and preferably all young males, must
study at Confucian schools. According to the available records, this policy was “at best
only loosely enforced.”[57] Perhaps due to a lack of funds, or perhaps because of the
reluctance of native leaders to send their children to central state schools, by 1605 there
were still reportedly very few schools in Guangxi and few native students at any given
school[58].
In Ming Yunnan one of the great difficulties associated with constructing Confucian
schools was the at of teaching of the Chinese language to the native students to speak
Chinese[59]. Like in Guangxi the goal was for the education system to help transform
the “barbarians” into civilized subjects of the central state[60]. In the mid-sixteenth
century the Jiajiang emperor (r. 1522 – 1566) decreed that all administrative units in
the southwest build at least one community school. In Guizhou a lack of funds and a
general lack of enthusiasm on the part of the tusi meant that local administrators built
some schools in areas only populated by Han subjects and simply renamed other schools
already in operation. This gave the impression that Guizhou had created a large number
of new community schools aimed at transforming the “barbarian” people, when in fact
all that had happened was an increase in availability to education for Han subjects and
a minimal increase in the number of educational institutes. The reasoning expressed
by some officials for this decision was that it would simply be a waste of resources to
bring more tusi students into the fold as they couldn’t keep up with Chinese -language
instruction.
Aside from financial difficulties and lack of interest on the part of native chieftains, at
least one other factor may be helpful in explaining the failure of Ming dynasty attempts at
instituting Confucian education in tusi areas. As John E. Herman explains in Amid the
Clouds and Mist; “non-Han societies were by and large hostile toward Chinese institu-
tions on their territory, and the non-Han peoples in the southwest were unconvinced
of the efficacy of a Chinese education.”[61] Similarly, Qing-era officials complained
that Confucian schools often incited interethnic tension and violence. As was briefly
mentioned earlier, for many of these schools the main goal was simply to teach Chinese
to the new students[62]. School administrators, however, apparently worried that they
“might create an undue burden for the teachers and distract Han students from their
studies.”[63] Teachers often found they were required to split their class time into two
sections. One half of the class would be used for preparing Han-Chinese students to take
part in the imperial exam, as was normally the function of schools, while the other half
would be spent simply explaining basic Chinese to tusi students. Han parents complained
that their children were only getting half of an education and would be unable to pass
the exams. The parents of children from tusi regions complained that their children
were learning nothing of value while they could have been at home helping the family.
Reshaping the Peasantry: “Autonomy” in the PRC
Having explored some of the larger difficulties the late imperial Chinese states experi-
enced with expanding into and governing the southwestern frontier lands, I would like
to now turn towards the People’s Republic of China and briefly look at the status of local
rule in the so-called “autonomous regions” (zizhi qu – 自治区). Many areas in modern-
day Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and southern Sichuan that once fell under the category
of tusi have been incorporated into today’s “autonomous regions”. However, due to
the popularity of the ‘Tibet issue’ in international politics and the recent violence and
struggle within Xinjiang, most of the research available on measuring actual autonomy in
the “autonomous regions” of the PRC is aimed at these two places. Though they clearly
represent the most un-autonomous aspects of modern PRC “autonomy”, this paper is
not focused on Tibet or Xinjiang.
In his article Cultural Life and Cultural Control in Rural China: Where is the Party? Stig
Thorgersen explored the issue of Communist Party control over local culture in the town
of Xuanwei, an area largely populated by members of ethnic minorities in western Yun-
nan[64]. Though centralized control has obviously declined since the Cultural Revolu-
tion (1966 – 1976), the Party still attempts to control the local culture in a variety of
ways. At least since the late 1990s the buzz word of ideology ‘ideology’ has been “civi-
lization” (wenming) and a number of government policies have been aimed at creating
a more “civilized” people[65]. Following the general restoration of local culture after
the 1980s opening and reform period, Xuanwei residents began practicing local cus-
toms that had been abandoned during the Cultural Revolution. Officials complained that
popular religion was making a comeback and, using the term “feudal superstition”[66],
expressed worry that Xuanwei would return to its pre-revolutionary habits. One of the
major efforts launched to combat this shift was the “Ten Stars of Civilization” campaign
(Shi xing ji wenminghua). This campaign was aimed at “evaluating and controlling the
moral performance of each individual household and its members”[67] through a series
of guidelines. These ten pseudo-rules include: using birth control, breeding animals in
a scientific way and earning profits in excess of 10,000 yuan in a year from live stock,
avoiding “feudal superstitions” and not partaking in “extravagant weddings”, respect-
ing ones teachers, and making sure to wash toilet facilities and one’s own house. There is
no stated reward for attaining some number of stars, however it is clear that households
rewarded a greater number will be favoured by the local government. As Thorgersen
says in his article, the idea for the Party is to “reshape this peasantry into an image of
social harmony and material affluence.”[68] Though this may seem like little more than
a humorous anecdote, it does reflect both the ability and want of the state to extend its
control into to the moral, religious, financial and even hygienic habits of its people.
Religion and the role of religious institutions in people’s daily lives is one area the Commu-
nist Party has taken great measures to extend state control over since the fall of complete
Tyler Cohen
central control in the 1980s. Ben Hillman describes in one article the relationship be-
tween the Communist Party and a local monastery in an ethnically Tibetan village[69].
One issue of concern to the monastery was the divide within Tibetan Buddhism between
those who recognized and worshiped the deity Dorje Shugden[70], and those who op-
posed its inclusion in worship[71]. Shugden worship was banned by the current Dalai
Lama in 1996, but because of its nearly 400 year long history in certain areas of Tibet, it
has hardly died out. The Communist Party has since seen a natural ally in current Shug-
den worshippers and has used this rift to its own advantage. Since 1996 the Communist
Party has allocated a greater percentage of funds for Shugden supporters, even going so
far as to make it a near requirement for any monks wishing to obtain a visa to study in
India. The majority of monks at the monastery Hillman studied were anti-Shugden, yet
of the thirteen selected to go to India in 2003, twelve were pro-Shugden. In this same
vein, one of the only areas of the monastery to receive funds for a new prayer room was
that occupied by the pro-Shugden group.
Focusing now on the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), I would like to speak briefly
about the status of language in Tibet. Efforts have begun in recent years to preserve
the Tibetan language through recording indigenous music, oral histories and story-tell-
ing[72]. That being said, Mandarin Chinese still remains the standard language for any
education above the second or third grade level in the TAR[73]. While Tibet University,
the largest higher educational institute in Tibet, is reputed to have excellent Tibetan
language and Tibetan literature programs, one point worth mentioning is that because
any classes not focused on such subjects are taught in Mandarin Chinese[74], Tibetan
students are not provided with any no opportunities outside of the household to learn
political or other terminology. This has obvious benefits for a central state intent on de-
stroying Tibetan nationalism.
Evidence of the central state’s intent to limit use of the Tibetan language and control
the autonomy of the Tibetan people can also be seen in my own experience in China. In
March of 2008 I volunteered to teach English to a group of Tibetan youth who had been
sent to Guangdong province in order to receive a better education[75]. After a wonder-
ful afternoon spent with a group of very enthusiastic children I was briefly interviewed
for a local newspaper[76] and asked if I would continue teaching them on a weekly basis.
I responded that I would be happy to do so every week on my day off. The children were
then asked to perform a “traditional Tibetan song” for myself and the other staff of my
school. The song was about “loving the motherland” (ai zuguo - 爱祖国) and was sung
in Mandarin Chinese. When I asked them why they would sing a traditional Tibetan song
in Mandarin Chinese[77], the children told me they had never learned the song in Tibet
and had only been taught it after coming to Guangdong. While the song featured a rec-
ognizably Tibetan melody, it seems highly unlikely that it is either traditionally Tibetan
or reflective of traditional Tibetan views. Moreover, that these children are now taught
Tibetan history[78] and culture in Mandarin Chinese is an obvious step away from au-
tonomy and encourages Tibetan students to view their own land’s heritage through the
PRC’s eyes. The following week as I was preparing the outline for my second meeting
with these children, I was informed there would be no class. A local government official
had called the owner of my school and told her that foreigners were not allowed to have interactions with Tibet-
an children. The principle of the school the children attended later told me the local government had informed
him that the Tibetan students were to be confined to their dormitories, no longer allowed off-campus.
Conclusion
In comparison with the lose close alliances with local chieftains of pre-Yuan times and the not-quite-insider
status of tusi during the Yuan, the Ming dynasty was able to enforce a greater degree of centralized control over
the frontier lands of modern-day southwestern China. Continuing this trend, the Qing dynasty exerted even
greater control over much of modern-day Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi. Despite this development
towards more centralized control, neither the Ming nor the Qing were able to claim any sort of full control over
much of this territory. Both dynasties encountered difficulties in implementing administration, conquering
or even acclimatizing to the natural environment, and introducing a system of Confucian education to the
native chieftaincies of the southwest. Under administration we’ve seen how the quality of officials, problems
regarding taxation, the behavior of Han settlers and the complicated rules governing inheritance systems all
produced major obstacles to direct rule by the central state. The environment proved a major difficulty to
attempts at governance both because of animal threats and rampant disease. The introduction of Confucian
schools, a policy with the stated intention of bringing “barbarians” over to a more “civilized” way of life did not
produce the desired results and, in fact, often backfired.
In the last section we looked briefly at how the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China regularly
interferes in local autonomy even in so-called “autonomous regions”. While it is obvious that a modern state
with modern similarly modern technology will have fewer troubles collecting taxes than any Ming or Qing-era
government would face, we’ve we haev seen how the central state today works at controlling details as specific
as people’s use of language, religious practices, social mores, and even hygiene.
When we look at the status of autonomy in the PRC today alongside the inability of the Ming or Qing gov-
ernments to control much of the southwest, one question naturally arises: if what the “autonomous regions”
today possess is to be called autonomy, what do we call the status of these tusi areas during the last two dynas-
ties of imperial rule? If autonomy means not having control over the education of one’s own children, not
being able to move freely outside of one’s province[79], having the central state able to influence one’s so-
cial mores, financial decisions and hygiene…every aspect of one’s life, wWhat do we call the tusi areas that
were free of all such interference? If we choose to lump them into the same category and refer to them as
autonomous areas of the Ming and Qing states, we’re faced with a bizarrely broad definition of autonomy
that doesn’t may not seem to fit well with any real sense of the word[80]. If, on the other hand, we choose
to say that these areas were not even autonomously inside the Ming or Qing states, we’ll we will be forced
to deal with the political questions that then arise[81]. Chinese control over areas largely populated by
ethnic minorities is usually justified on the grounds of their historically being part of China, and the Com-
munist Party having first “liberated” these areas and then improved the living conditions of the inhabitants.
If we can never consider them to have properly been a part of any Chinese state we’re we are left with only
the second justification. When confronted with the possibility that Tibetans or some other nationality’s
people may not feel that their lives have improved under Communist rule, it is normal to hear Chinese na-
tionalists or apologists fall back on the historical argument. If both are removed, what justification exists?
One successful aspect of Qing expansionism that was not touched on in this paper was the expansion of car-
tography and ethnography during the last dynasty. While the Ming had been largely content to distinguish
between registered citizens and “barbarians” or “wild” people, Qing officials began a more intrinsically “mod-
ern”[82] enterprise of categorizing and analyzing the ethnic minorities within their borders. This eventually
led to the development of “albums” made by officials to pass on information about the minority groups in or
around their own regions. Commenting on these albums, Laura Hostetler gives us an insight into how they
were viewed at the time:
The albums conveyed a sense that the frontier was known, that there was an order to the exotic
peoples and customs found in these regions, and that by uncovering it the officials could and
did know what they needed to in order to maintain harmony in the region. That the albums in
some ways conveyed a false sense of security is another matter[83].
Tyler Cohen
Living in China or watching Chinese television, one gets a sense that the ‘Ethnic Performances’ and colour-
ful ‘ethnic’ costumes paraded in front of the Chinese people today[84] fulfill much the same function as the
albums about which Hostetler is talking. I believe it would be of benefit to the PRC and the Han-Chinese
majority to pay greater attention to the historical independence of the ethnic minority areas.
[1] A local friend of mine once commented: “Four days? This is not a rescue mission, this is a funeral procession!” The owner of the lodge said that this policy had been used the year prior when an Israeli traveler was lost.
He was found after four days, though in bad condition and unable to descend under his own power.
[2] For further information on the beg system, consult Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise
[3] Regarding the use of Chinese characters in this paper, all names and terms given in Chinese that are discussed in the context of pre-communist revolution history will be given in traditional Chinese characters. In
the latter sections of this paper dealing with post-revolution issues the relevant terms will be given in simplified Chinese. This is done with the intention of making any further research undertaken by the reader easier,
as for classical Chinese names it is required to know the classical characters, whereas modern Chinese terminology is most widely known in simplified Chinese. As is now standard, all Romanized spellings of Chinese
words are done in pinyin.
[4] At this point it is helpful to clarify the use of certain terms. Till now I have been referring to the “Chinese state” or the “central state” instead of using the more common “China”. Determining what, exactly, constituted
“China” in the past is an extremely messy question and outside the scope of this paper. In large part because of the nature of modern Chinese nationalism and the narrative of Chinese history supported by the government
of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it is also an extremely political question. For the sake of this paper and to avoid any difficulties of understanding, I will continue to refer to the Ming and Qing dynasties, or the
central Chinese state.
[5] The Yuan dynasty is more commonly known to western readers as the period of Chinese history when Mongol invaders ruled the state. Though Genghis Khan is perhaps more famous in the west, it was his grandson
Kublai Khan who eventually conquered many of the areas in modern-day China’s southwest.
[6] John E. Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200 – 1700, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007: 103.
[7] “Tusi” and “native chieftaincy” are used interchangeably in this paper.
[8] Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, 103
[10] Today part of northern Vietnam
[11] Leo K. Shin, The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006: 56.
[12] The Mongols had managed to conquer much of modern-day Tibet, the southwestern provinces and all of Song dynasty China between 1206 and 1279, an impressive feat even if one doesn’t look at their further
conquests in central Asia and eastern Europe.
[13] Shin, 57
[14] Shin, 57
[18] Donald S. Sutton, “Violence and Ethnicity on a Qing Colonial Frontier: Customary and Statutory Law in the Eighteenth-Century Miao Pale,” Modern Asian Studies 37.1 (Feb. 2003): 41-80.
[22] Shin, 34
[23] Shin, 34
[24] Shin, 112
[25] Shin, 112
[26] Shin, 34
[27] Shin, 73
[28] Shin, 115
[29] Shin, 115
[30] Herman, 137
[31] C. Pat Giersch, “ “A Motley Throng:” Social Change on Southwest China’s Early Modern Frontier, 1700 – 1880,” The Journal of Asian Studies 60.1 (Feb. 2001): 67-68
[32] Giersch, 68
[33] John E. Herman, “Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftaincy System,” The Journal of Asian Studies 56.1 (Feb. 1997): 55
[34] Shin, 115
[35] Herman, “Empire,” 56
[36] One of modern-day China’s official minority groups
[39] Which was a practice common in Chinese inheritance systems but different from many of the local practices in tusi regions.
[41] Herman, “Empire,” 63-64
[42] The Chinese characters for his name are not given in the article.
[44] Shin, 112-113
[45] Shin, 27
[46] Shin, 27
[47] Shin, 28
[48] We can be certain the number declined during the dynasty.
[49] Shin, 52
[50] Shin, 52
[51] Shin, 53
[52] Shin, 53
[53] In Chinese this policy was referred to as gaitu guiliu (改土歸流).
[54] Bello, 301
[55] Bello, 302
[56] Shin, 71
[57] Shin, 71
[58] Shin, 72
[64] Stig Thogerson, “Cultural Life and Cultural Control in Rural China: Where is the Party?” The China Journal (July 2000): 129-141
[65] During my own stay in China from 2007-2009 the push for “civilization” was still in effect. Though the city I lived in - Huizhou, Guangdong province - had an ethnic Han majority and was one of the wealthier areas of
China, the local government still felt the need to push forward frequent campaigns aimed at “civilizing” the public. One large sign near my workplace urged residents to “Speak in a civilized manner, be a civilized person”
(shuo wenming hua, zuo wenming ren - 说文明话，做文明人). This same sign appeared in every public school I visited.
[66] Presumably this is a translation of fengjian mixin (封建迷信), however the author did not include the pinyin or Chinese characters in his article. As the most common religion in the area is Buddhism, it is likely that
whatever Chinese term was translated as “feudal superstition”, it was referring to Buddhist practices.
[67] Thogerson, 138
[68] Thogerson, 139
[69] The name of the monastery and village are not given so as to prevent any recourse that might be taken against people mentioned in the article. However, Mr. Hillman does tell us that the village is somewhere in Qinghai,
Gansu, Sichuan or Yunnan province. It is likely that this village is in one of the so-called “autonomous regions”, though we cannot be certain. Even if it does not technically fall under this category, it is reflective of the
level of autonomy enjoyed by ethnic minority regions in the PRC today.
[70] Some Tibetan Buddhists believe Shugden to be an incarnation of the 17th-century Tibetan lama Tulku Dragpa Gyaltsen. Tulku was a contemporary and rival to the 5th Dalai Lama and some Tibetan Buddhists believe
he was assassinated by order of the Dalai Lama or some other religious authority. The 5th Dalai Lama later came to believe his spirit was indeed holy, and had temples built in his honour.
[71] Ben Hillman, “Monastic Politics and the Local State in China: Authority and Autonomy in an Ethnically Tibetan Prefecture,” The China Journal 54 (July 2005): 37-39
[72] It is outside the scope of this paper to properly raise this issue, but this obviously gives rise to questions regarding the role of a colonial power in recording the history and culture of the locals. While I support efforts
to preserve the Tibetan language, it is not clear that sending Han social scientists to Tibetan villages actually helps, rather than hurts, the preservation of the language
[73] Edward J. Kormondy, “Minority Education in Inner Mongolia and Tibet,” International Review of Education 48.5 (Sept. 2002): 395
[74] Kormondy, 396
[75] The natural response is that, contrary to the stated intent, the real intent of bringing Tibetan children to more “Chinese” schools is to ensure they grow up away from any connection to Tibetan nationalism.
[76] The article is still available online at: http://city.xizi.com/n/o/200803/21578.shtml
[77] I was genuinely confused, but obviously being somewhat aware of the issues surrounding Tibet and the use of the Tibetan language I was more just curious to hear what answer would be offered.
[78] Again, it’s necessary to acknowledge that what they are taught in Tibetan history class does not necessarily, or even often, reflect the accepted international academia on Tibetan history or the traditional way Tibetan
history was taught in Tibet before the 1950 invasion by PRC forces.
[79] As is the case for most Tibetans.
[80] Interestingly enough, the word “autonomy” in English doesn’t quite seem to capture the sense of the Chinese word used by the PRC. Zizhi (自治) is composed of two characters; the first means ‘self’ and the second
means ‘control’ or ‘rule’. In English “autonomy” often carries the connotation of being part of something larger, whereas the word zizhi, taken out of context, does not carry any necessary connection to an outside or
larger force.
[81] For further discussion on the political nature of evaluating the history of China’s southwest, refer to Hostetler, “Qing Connections”.
[82] For further discussion on the role of cartography in Qing expansion, see Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise.
[83] Laura Hostetler, “Qing Connections to the Early Modern World: Ethnography and Cartography in Eighteenth-Century China,” Modern Asian Studies 34.3 (July 2000): 641
[84] For further discussion on so-called “Ethnic performances” in China today, see Dru C. Gladney, “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities,” The Journal of Asian Studies 53.1
Minority Responses to State Development:

Three Experiences of Health in “Ethnic” China
Jessica Yilan Tsang

This article was adapted from a portion of my undergraduate thesis “Minority Responses
to Development: Alternate Articulations of Progress,” a bibliographical analysis of the
Hui experience of modernity in contemporary China, completed under the supervision of
Prof. Johanna Ransmeier.
h
The ethnic policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is characterized by two major
goals: promoting the socioeconomic development of its officially designated minority
nationalities (shaoshu minzu) and the preservation of their traditional cultures. Though
sometimes contradictory in practice, these two “selling points” are essential to sustain-
ing the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) authority. The preserva-
tion of cultural heritage and promotion of integration (over assimilation) gained greater
importance in the 1980s, in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, during which the
expression of ethnic difference was interpreted as a manifestation of class difference.
Since then, the reproduction of ethnic difference has been ubiquitous and essential to
perpetuating the state’s ideology of modernization.
Soon after the Communist Party took power in 1949, it set out to identify China’s precise
ethnic groups and began formal investigations in 1953. The CPC sponsored ethnologi-
cal missions by anthropologists, historians, and sociologists who identified nationalities
according to Stalinist criteria: common territory, language, mode(s) of production, and
psychology. Influenced by pre-existing racial categories, which permitted the classifica-
tion of Han nationality despite their diversity, as well as the Hui nationality, which self-
identified according to common religion and ancestry, they eventually counted fifty-six
distinct nationalities by 1979.
In order to facilitate socialist revolution among the diverse nationalities, the anthropolo-
gist-cadres also sought out to identify each minority’s level of progress. Nationalities
were categorized according to Friedrich Engels and anthropologist Lewis Henry Mor-
gan’s teleological schema of social evolution, and ranked according to their mode of pro-
duction: primitive, slave holding, feudal, capitalist, and socialist. Already working to-
ward communism, the Han majority was identified as the most advanced, while minority
nationalities were identified as relatively backward, still occupying various lower stages
of social evolution. Based on a purportedly scientific scale measuring socioeconomic
Minority Responses to State Development: Three Experiences of Health in “Ethnic” China
Jessica Yilan Tsang
progress, the results of the classification project gained the status of objective truth.[2]
Although the influence of Marxism has greatly declined in China policy-making (most
notably in economic planning), the hierarchical and materialist distinctions inherited
from the 1950s investigations still persist in state policy and popular thinking. Under
the constitutional principles of “mutual assistance,” the state assists shaoshu minzu with
a variety of development projects, designed to improve the economic output of regions
inhabited by minorities. The state also endeavours to develop the minorities themselves,
making great investments to revive select aspects of minority culture, including tradi-
tional “customs and folkways,” notably song and dance.[3]
However, the policy of development is self-defeating. Targeting minority nationalities

as groups in need of development, while simultaneously defining them “objectively” as
underdeveloped peoples, prevents them from ever realising the ambiguous goal of “de-
velopment.” Instead of promoting equality, Chinese ethnic policy reifies the designa-
tion and perception of minority peoples’ “backwardness” and reifies racial inequalities
with policies that do not respond to the needs and desires of minority groups. This is
not to say, however, that minority nationalities cannot experience development or prog-
ress under the CPC’s regime. Rather, despite shaoshu minzu’s exclusion from state-
determined modernity, minority communities still articulate their own aspirations for
progress, both engaging and challenging the state’s qualifications for development.
Members of the Hui nationality, in particular, in fact reclaim their own trajectory toward
modernity, and work to realize it, independent of the state.
The Huizu are particularly interesting because of their social proximity to the majority
Han Chinese population, into which some Hui communities have long assimilated.[4]
As an ethnoreligious community, the Hui defy Stalinist criteria for nationality. Never-
theless, it is their religious identity (even when non-practising) that sets them back as a
“feudal” minority.[5] It is also their religious identity that serves as an avenue for their
realization and articulation of modernity. With respect to health and education, Huis
attribute their efforts and achievements to the requirements of Islamic tradition. Iden-
tification with Islam also further entangles the Hui in a large global debate surrounding
Islam and progress, where orientalist representations similarly exclude international co-
religionists from limited definitions of modernity.
Looking at the inequalities reproduced in Chinese ethnic policy, public health is espe-
cially demonstrative of the varied experiences of development in different communities.
While the good health of minority nationalities is the goal of all parties involved, the ex-
perience of health and nationalities-targeted health policy is as diverse as the communi-
ties themselves. These differences are evident in the claims of the Hui, as well as those of
the Tibetan and Tai communities in China. However, in spite of the self-defeating nature
of ethnic health policy, the Hui community still manages to succeed in its own terms.
The developmental approach to minorities policy was, and continues to be, carried out
in accordance with this ideology of good health and hygiene. In this vein, the state pro-
vided members of minority nationalities basic biomedical training and further retrained
existing health care practitioners in the first decades of the PRC. Discussing oriental-
ist representations of non-Han development under socialism, Louisa Schein identified
the narrative of minzu progress under China’s contemporary civilising project in a com-
pendium of China’s minority nationalities. It proudly declares that under the patriotic
health campaigns of the People’s Republic, “One after another, new Miao villages are
emerging that are clean, healthy, and literate.”[11]
Following the model of the much-missed “barefoot doctors” who served the country-
side with first aid, primary care, and traditional Han-Chinese medicine (zhongyi, or
TCM),[12] attention was given to the traditional medicine of ethnic minorities on a
pragmatic basis. At the same time, commitment to the health of the shaoshu minzu was
designed around the elimination of religious or superstitious aspects of their medical
practices, which were, and still are, received by the modernizing cadres as not only ret-
rograde, but also fraudulent and sometimes harmful.[13] In doing so, the program of
public health “sutured”[14] any potential recipients of care to the objectives of the state
care-provider, objectives represented as universally desired.
In both the Mao-era of “barefoot doctors” and the post-revolutionary years of develop-
mental policies, the cultural policies of the Chinese state establish a normative reference
point for health. This position orients ethnic minorities as approaching, yet consistently
outside, the qualifications for good health, whatever their own ideas and experiences,
with the successfully modernized and scientized, healthy Han citizen at the centre. To
bypass the problematic ethnic hierarchy this course inherently implies, as well as the
antecedent discourses of racial deficiency,[15] weisheng is identified in physical/mate-
rial-scientific terms, construed as a problem of secular concern, and thus made out to be
apolitical.[16] This prognosis neglects less tangible determinants of health and negates
experiences of good and bad health outside the standard nomenclature.
Nonetheless, communities outside the dominant understanding of weisheng continue

to articulate their experiences of health in ways that challenge, complicate, and engage
the normative qualifications of health; even if their accounts are objectified or made
subaltern. Self-identifying groups experience and realize Illness, health directives, and
acme in very different ways. Tibetan patients in Lhasa’s Traditional Tibetan Medical
Hospital experience poor health not only with the vocabulary of traditional humoural
medicine, but also as a consequence of their modern social environment. In Yunnan, the
province identified as most affected by HIV/AIDS in China,[17] there are significant
gaps between Chinese public health discourse – which has generally considered HIV/
AIDS to be a minorities-problem – and the actual reported cases, raising the question of
whose health is really at stake in state projects to improve citizens’ health and hygiene.
Jessica Yilan Tsang
Finally, members of the Hui nationality credit their “traditional” religious practices for
their good health, but cite “modern” statistics to verify their claims.
As indicated earlier, policies toward traditional medicine, especially ethnomedicine,

have swayed between official and repudiation to the extreme of criminalization.[18] In
recent years, there has been greater acceptance of traditional medicine and increasing
support for its legitimization and incorporation in mainstream medical studies and prac-
tice. Since 1986, Tibetan medicine has taken a significant role in the region’s primary
care infrastructure both within the government’s health bureaucracy and in the realm of
a variety of non-state practitioners. Simultaneously, the nature of what we call “Tibetan
medicine” has undergone many changes under the influence of different modernizing
agents, beginning as early as 1913 with the 13th Dalai Lama Thubten Gyatso, whose
reform projects had lasting effects on the historically diffuse professional sector.[19]
Since the 1980s, a previously heterogeneous curriculum has been increasingly stan-
dardized, secularized, and scientized to meet the requirements of normative “scientific
modernity.” Still, humoural epidemiology remains the primary mode for articulating
the ill health of patients and an accepted means for diagnosis by physicians practising
Tibetan medicine.
As Vincanne Adams points out, in Tibet and elsewhere in China, bodies “wear” social
discontent.[20] In his short history of the evolution of Tibetan medicine over the course
of the 20th century, Craig Janes indicates that the reporting of imbalances of the wind
(rlung) humour – the chief diagnosis in Tibetan epidemiology, spanning a great number
of specific disorders and related symptoms – has increased with “modern social chang-
es,” especially in the tumultuous Cultural Revolution.[21] In the Tibetan Autonomous
Region, such social changes – associated with imposed modernization – include the im-
position of the state upon the physical body, an increase in economic burden, successive
political campaigns, and religious/cultural oppression, among others. In general, these
changes have brought Tibetan subjects increased opportunities for ill health.
In the women’s ward of the Tibetan Medicine Hospital in Lhasa, Adams found many
diagnoses of rlung disorders related to reproductive health, in the face of these “mod-
ern social changes.” Aside from modernity’s introduction of new sexually transmitted
diseases, women faced the demands of the state’s family planning and labour policies.
In addition to maximum birth quotas for urban dwellers and reports of forced steriliza-
tion,[22] employees of government offices or work units (danwei) of state-owned enter-
prises are further required to acquiesce to the birth planning procedures of their danwei
and seek permission to have a baby. Without adequate contraception, those who get
pregnant without authorization are forced to terminate their pregnancies or forego ben-
efits for pregnancy such as maternity leave, future childcare, and even their extremely
competitive employment. Consequently, abortions may be performed in rapid suc-
cession, sometimes in substandard conditions. Without sufficient time to recover and
restore the body’s humoural balance, there are often complications and problems for the
patient’s future health.[23]
In the wider population, both physicians and patients cite the stresses of modern work-
life for the prevalence of rlung disorders. Chronic exhaustion from overworking and
arduous physical labour without corresponding compensation exacerbate stresses upon
the human body. “In Tibetan Medicine, social conditions that are not conducive to elim-
inating the poisons [that interfere with humoural balance] are seen as inherently patho-
logical – as disease producing.”[24] Janes also reports ethnic tension and systemic dis-
crimination as a source of un-health, where overwhelming feelings of social immobility
manifested in physical symptoms, diagnosed as wind imbalance. “A recurring theme
here was not only the demanding nature of the positions [in large government work
units], but, more subtly in some cases, difficult day-to-day contact with Han Chinese,
many of whom wield power over the Tibetan staff.”[25] Anxieties over unemployment
and widespread poverty – well-recognized social determinants for health – contribute
further.
In other instances, the moral dimensions of traditional Tibetan epidemiology are more
striking. In Tibetan medicine, the humours are fully integrated on one level with the
Buddhist “self” and its imperfections; and on another with the fundamental elements
– very simply external factors such as diet or the environment, but also behaviour. As a
result, issues concerning morality and suffering are implicated in the experience of poor
health. Following the state’s modernizing policies, which called for the elimination of
superstitious activities on a popular scale, work units in the 1990s continued to hold
meetings calling for confession and reporting any suspicious behaviour. The obligation
to behave in a manner that contradicts one’s moral principles – by desecrating religious
persons or sites, for example – is yet another pathogen.[26]
In the example of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, experiences of poor health and
subsequent hospitalizations are tied directly and indirectly to Chinese modernization
programs, which have brought with them a great number of new pathogenic situations.
Although the goal of preserving and creating good health in the Tibetan population is
one shared by both Tibetans and state policy-makers, policies that affect arenas of daily
life have had a counterintuitive and detrimental effect to weisheng in the region. As one
physician reported, “the Chinese government makes people unhappy, and so rlung must
be more common… Tibetans have rlung because they are not free.”[27]
Since the 1980s, the southwestern province of Yunnan has been the locus of HIV/AIDS
discourse in China, even as the epidemic grew in other locations across the country.
This diverse, and for a long time remote, part of China has been historically associated
with disease and unhealthy practices, and many Han tourists indicate a fear of disease,
Jessica Yilan Tsang
specifically malaria, in “barbarian” regions of China.[28] HIV/AIDS is espe-
cially mapped onto the Tai autonomous prefectures: Dehong – marked by its
cross-border heroine trade with Burma and high incidence of injection drug-use
– and Sipsongpanna – a site for ethnic tourism and of emergent sex tourism.[29]
In line with this epidemiological topography, Chinese public health literature ascribes
high rates of HIV/AIDS to the Tai nationality. In contrast, in the late 1990s and ear-
ly 2000s, Sandra Hyde found little indication of infection among the Tai population
of Sipsongpanna, and by the turn of the decade, the Han population represented the
nationality with the largest number of cases. Furthermore, while public health work-
ers assumed that minority women were prone to promiscuity and transmitting HIV
in their capacity as prostitutes, Hyde found that eighty to ninety percent of sex work-
ers in Jinghong – the capital of Sipsongpanna Tai Autonomous Prefecture – were in
fact Han-identifying migrants from neighbouring provinces. Catering to male tour-
ists who came with ideas about more “sexually enlightened” Tai women, these Han
women adopted ethnic dress (performing ethnicity) to better attract Han clients. [30]
Nevertheless, this AIDS discourse is reproduced in the anxieties of the Tai community
living in an economy of ethnic tourism. Studying ethnic revival in Sipsongpanna, Sara
Davis found that members of the Tai Lüe community were eager to provide more au-
thentic and representative culture for the Tai than that provided by the state in ethnic
theme parks. “[Pop song-writing monk] Dubi Gang had written songs about social
problems: the one about the Tai Lüe dancer, and others on HIV/AIDS, and the grow-
ing problem of the traffic of Tai Lüe women and girls into the Thai sex industry.”[31]
While public health policies do not ignore HIV transmission between Han workers and
tourists in the Tai prefectures, the dominant discourse and popular perceptions distort
the infectious nature of the disease and continue to place ethnic minorities on the path ap-
proaching but never completely achieving good health. Moreover, inaccurate epidemiolo-
gies and conservative sex education serve as obstacles to state HIV-prevention measures.
Finally, the Hui experience good health with reference to the preservation of tra-
ditional customs, but represent it in very modern terms. In the wake of the Cultural
Revolution, Deng Xiaoping’s reform program identified four key areas for mod-
ernization, the first of which was science and technology. Alongside public health
and modern medicine, embedded in scientific modernization was the emergence
of the discipline of populations science, within which the “truth of numbers” was
health in high esteem.[32] The following passage recalls the quantified health ex-
perience of Hui subjects in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in the mid-1980s:
Hui often say that longevity is the result of Allah’s blessing (Zhenzhu
baoyou) for a devout qing zhen life. They attribute good health to their
maintaining Islamic dietary restrictions and attention to personal hy-
giene. Hui say they are cleaner than Han because they engage in the
“small wash” (xiao jin) 5 times a day before prayer, and the “complete
wash” (da jin) every Friday. Hui are proud to note that, though the Hui
are only one third of Ningxia’s population, the 1982 census revealed
that 21 of the 23 centenarians in Ningxia region were Hui – veritable
proof of the benefits of living a pure qing zhen life.[33]
While the state expressly recognizes weisheng among the Hui, it is represented more
so as a special ethnic characteristic or cultural idiosyncrasy rather than an indication of
collective civilized subjectivity[34] or an expression of modern-ness. In the English-
language brief on the “Hui Ethnic Group” reproduced on various government websites,
the declaration, “The Huis are very particular about sanitation and hygiene,”[35] rests
between descriptions of ethnic handicrafts and festivals. Elsewhere, civilian informants
described Hui weisheng as “compulsive” and “hyperfastidious.”[36] Ironically, there
simultaneously remains the perception among the Han that Hui are “dirty, larcenous,
and immoral.”[37]
Quite differently from the previous examples in which minority members contradicted
the diagnoses of state agents, the Hui respondents in this example cite the census in
particular to validate their claims of good health and hygiene. While the modern census
is often examined as a tool of political domination, the units they define are not always
passive groups to be construed as “social problems.”[38] The “imagination” of a com-
munity – its construction, identification, and reification – even under imposed demo-
graphic topography,[39] occurs both state-to-population and vice versa.
I argue that the Hui subjects’ faith in the census is inherently modern because of the
modern context in which national census taking and the art/science of statistics arose.
Discussing the role of statistics in nation building, Anat Liebler describes statistics as a
project of modernity:
Statistics in its nineteenth-century form was a liberal thought and was

associated with hopefulness for improvement. It reflected a liberal spirit
and a search for social reforms that thrived in that period. Statistics: (1)
was mostly associated with progress due to its capability of describing
comprehensive social reforms toward modernity; (2) signified the dis-
tinction between traditional and modern society; and (3) replaced the
old social order with a new one by giving people new and equal positions
in the social configuration. The last point refers to its identification with
values such as democracy and equality.[40]
Moreover, the emergence of comprehensive census taking, distinguished by its ability to

not only construct but quantify populations arose in the late 19th century in the context
of modern colonial administration.[41]
Jessica Yilan Tsang
Writing on the PRC’s pursuit of “demographic modernity” through population science
and state birth planning, Susan Greenhalgh signals the power of numbers in the defini-
tion and claim of modernity:
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, China’s newly minted population
specialists mobilized a wide array of numbers, some from large-scale
surveys, others pulled from typical location studies, to delineate the
population problem. The specialists defined two sets of problems, one
surrounding the “abnormality” and thus “Backwardness” of the popu-
lation itself, the other concerning the effects of those irregularities on
the nation’s economy and thus the speed of its socialist modernization.
Taken together, these two sets of quantitatively defined problems would
establish China’s backwardness in the global order…[42]
Greenhalgh argues that in state birth planning policy, both population scientists and
ordinary Chinese citizens attributed great stake in the science of numbers and their
power in determining quantified targets of modernity. However, while the population
scientists interpreted their numbers as indicators of “abnormality” and “backwardness”
– problems – in the reproductive health and quality of its general population, the Hui in-
stead found themselves to be quite healthy as a qingzhen community within a multiethnic
order of fifty-size nationalities.
In this particular case, Hui subjects actively pursue an institution that is not only modern
but also inextricable from the state to assert their self-identification with good health. By
both abiding by the terms of the state – identification as one of China’s fifty-five shaoshu
minzu in the census – and taking up the terms of the state – employing specific figures
from census data – the Hui are at the same time engaging and resisting the hierarchical
claims of the PRC’s ethnic policy.
As in other areas in which China’s ethnic minorities are discussed with reference to mo-
dernity, in shaoshu minzu experiences of weisheng, there remains a gap between identi-
fied communities’ own aspirations for progress and state policy’s definition of moder-
nity. In the case of public health in particular, the incommensurability has very tangible
effects on minority groups’ standards of living. In the long run, such consequences will
pose a persistent obstacle of the state’s pragmatic goal of improving the fitness of its
population for the purposes of socioeconomic integration.
While Hui communities have shown success in their health and educational outcomes,
they still receive little recognition from the Chinese state, which continues to orient mi-
nority nationalities on a path approaching, but never attaining, progress. If the CPC is
to truly integrate China’s minorities with its political aspirations of widespread socio-
economic development, it must reform its policy to be more inclusive of the aspirations
of minority communities themselves.
Public health is just one area in which there is a gap between the experiences and aspi-
rations of minority nationalities, and the prerogatives of state development policy. In
everyday sartorial choices, members of minority nationalities – especially female – not

only demonstrate agency in their self-representation, but additionally defy the oriental-
ist representations that often present minority women as “fascination objects of erotic
fascination,”[43] imperative for the visual and ideological reproduction of minority
“backwardness” and “primitiveness.” Concerning education, the Hui once again de-
sign their own avenues to modernity, organising education opportunities for themselves
where the state providers fail to do so. There is much more room for scholarship on the
independently initiated development projects of minority nationalities.
[2] Maris Boyd Gillette, Between Mecca and Beijing: Modernization and Consumption among Urban Chinese
Muslims (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 9-14; Mette Halskov Hansen, Lessons in Being
Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China (Seattle, WA: University of Washington
Press, 1999), 3-4; Stevan Harrell, “Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them,” Cultural
Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press,
1995), 9; and Colin Mackerras, China’s Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation (London, RoutledgeCurzon,
2003), 20-21
[3] State Council of the People’s Republic of China, National Minorities Policy and Its Practice in China,
White Paper (Beijing; Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China)
[4] Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1991), 264: “It is not surprising that, under a Chinese policy […] the Chendai Hui, who lack
most of the outward cultural traits that should distinguish them as Hui, would have difficulty in being officially
recognized. Chendai Hui in almost every respect are cultural similar to their Han nationality neighbours: They
speak the Southern Min (Hokkien) dialect, light incense to ancestors in their lineage temple, do not believe in
Islam, and remarkably, publicly disregard all Islamic dietary restrictions.”
[5] Maris Boyd Gillette, Between Mecca and Beijing (2000), 14
[6] David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 7
[7] Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese (1991), 7-15
[8] Maris Boyd Gillette, Between Mecca and Beijing (2000), 33 & 92
[9] Maria Jaschok & Shui Jingjun, The History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam: A mosque of their own
(Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000), 130
[10] Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2004), 291
[11] Louisa Schein, Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2000), 103-104: from Zhongguo Shaoshu Minzu Editing Group, Zhongguo Shaoshu
Minzu (Beijing: People’s Press, 1981), 457: emphasis my own
[12] Alexander Casella, “Rural China misses ‘barefoot doctors,’” Asia Times Online
[13] Vincanne Adams, “Randomized Control Crime: Postcolonial Sciences in Alternative Medicine Re-
search,” Social Studies of Science, 32:5/6 (2002), 671
[14] Vincanne Adams, ”Equity of the Ineffable,” Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, ed. Sudhir Anand, et al
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 287
[15] Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 1
[16] Vincanne Adams, “Equity of the Ineffable” (2004), 287
[17] State Council AIDS Working Committee Office and UN Theme Group on AIDS, “UNGASS Country
Progress Reprot [sic]: P.R. China,” (Geneva: UNAIDS, 2008), 2
Jessica Yilan Tsang
[18] Vincanne Adams, “Randomized Control Crime” (2002), 667
[19] Craig R. Janes, “The Transformations of Tibetan Medicine,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 9:1
(1995), 14
[20] Vincanne Adams, “Equity of the Ineffable” (2004), 295
[21] Craig R. Janes, “The Transformation of Tibetan Medicine” (1995), 30
[22] Vincanne Adams, “Suffering the Winds of Lhasa: Politicized Bodies, Human Rights, Cultural Difference,
and Humanism in Tibet,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 12:1 (1998), 77
[23] Vincanne Adams, “Equity of the Ineffable” (2004), 294-295
[24] Vincanne Adams, “Equity of the Ineffable” (2004), 299: Such poisons include unfulfilled desires for bet-
ter living conditions, anger over years of oppression under the Chinese state, and ignorance, among others.
[25] Craig R. Janes, “Imagined Lives, Suffering, and the World of Culture: The Embodied Discourse of Con-
flict in Modern Tibet,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 13:4 (1999), 397
[26] Vincanne Adams, “Equity of the Ineffable” (2004), 295-296
[27] Craig R. Janes, “The Transformations of Tibetan Medicine” (1995), 31
[28] Sandra Teresa Hyde, Eating Spring Rice: The Cultural Politics of AIDS in Southwest China (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 2004), 41 & 91
[29] Sandra Teresa Hyde, Eating Spring Rice (2004), 6-8
[30] Sandra Teresa Hyde, Eating Spring Rice (2004), 19, 51 (Figure 5), 81, and 107
[31] Sara L.M. Davis, Songs & Silence: Ethnic Revival on China’s Southwestern Borders (New York, NY:
Columbia University Press, 2005), 72
[32] Susan Greenhalgh, “Globalization and Population Governance in China,” Global Assemblages: Technol-
ogy, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, ed. Aihwa Ong & Stephen J. Collier (Maiden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 357-358
[33] Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese (1991), 144-145
[34] Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese (1991), 15: Gladney and other authors have discussed how, with the
very words qing and zhen have constructed their identity around truth and purity superior to the Han majority
they distinguish themselves from.
[35] For example: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “The Hui ethnic minority,”
15 November 2000 (Beijing: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2000); and Chi-
naCultura.org, “Hui Ethnic Minority” (Beijing: Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, 2003);
among others
[36] Susan D. Blum, Portraits of “Primitives”: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 76 & 138
[37] Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese (1991), 15
[38] Anat E. Liebler, “Staticians’ Ambition: Governmentality, Modernity and National Legibility,” Israel
Studies, 9:2 (2004), 123-124
[39] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Re-
vised Edition (London: Verso, 2006), 169
[40] Anat E. Liebler, “Staticians’ Ambition” (2004), 123
[41] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (2006), 168
[42] Susan Greenhalgh, “Globalization and Population Governance in China” (2005), 358
[43] Louisa Schein, “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China,” Modern China, 23:1 (1997), 77
A History of Tattoo Stigmatization in Japan - Joanna Y. L. Lai
A History of Tattoo Stigmatization

in Japan
Joanna Y. L. Lai
“ There is no body but the painted body, and no painting but body painting.”
Michel Thévoz

When practices are deemed deplorable by the public, it is the responsibility of those
with vested interest in the practice to question the basis and legitimacy of such opin-
ion. Admittedly, it can be difficult if not impossible to draw strict correlations between
intangible general feelings of negativity and empirical evidence, but it is nonetheless
necessary to shed light on the practice to provide for its livelihood and secure its reputa-
tion. To this end, this paper seeks to explore the history of the tattoo in Japan in order
to understand the practice’s stigmatization. Consequently, this paper does not intend to
challenge popular belief as much as it intends to make sense of it. Admittedly, the con-
clusions and results presented are largely dependent on a limited amount of diffuse data
gathered by scholars and students of the topic – the following being merely my modest
attempt to compile the evidence in a manner that offers a relatively objective look at the
issue.
At the dawn of the 20th century, the importance and popularity of traditional Japanese
craft was apparently diminishing. In 1950, the Law for Protection of Cultural Proper-
ties was instituted to protect the livelihood of these crafts, and the practitioners of these
crafts were deemed “National Living Treasures” (Motegi 1984, p.103) by the govern-
ment. Although the Japanese tattoo tradition is widely recognized as the final stage in
the evolution of ornamental markings and one of the only remaining traditional practices
of this particular art form, it would be absolutely unimaginable to anybody familiar with
Japanese attitudes and society that a tattooist would ever be designated as a “National
Living Treasure”. The reasons for the utter lack of regard for a traditional Japanese craft
can ultimately be understood by an appeal to the history of the Japanese tattoo, or ir-
ezumi.
Without going into too much etymological detail, the word irezumi means “to insert ink”
and is the word most typically translated as “tattoo”, although more specific terminology
exists (chiefly used during the Edo period) for tattoos implying differing purposes. At
this point it is necessary to note that tattoo is not definitively native to Japan,
nor is it a definitively imported craft – that is to say, there has been some evidence of tat-
tooing practices around the world dated to around the same periods of prehistory as in
Japan, but there has been no conclusive evidence of the specific origins of tattoo (Mendi,
2004, pp. 42). The origin of tattooing itself is an interesting question, however it is
outside the scope of this paper.
The traditional technique of tattooing uses manual pricking employing the two basic
implements of needles and black India ink (which appears deep blue under the skin).
Thin needles are attached to a shaft of bamboo and range in length from two centimetres
to twenty, as illustrated in Fig. 1 recorded by Wilhelm Joest (van Gulik, 1982, p.94).
The refinement of different sized needles is likely a development of later periods, but as
there are few alternative means for inserting ink beneath human skin, it is reasonable to
presume that similar albeit perhaps more archaic methods were used before the Edo pe-
riod, just as modern tattoos are applied employing the same basic method despite being
more automated. The tattooist applies ink directly onto the skin, and inserts the needle
several millimeters deep into the skin in rapid, repetitive moments until the work is com-
plete. This technique effectively imbeds the ink under the surface of the skin, rendering
it indelible.

Fig. 1 Three tattooing needles arranged by thickness: (a) fine, (b) medium, (c) shading. (Joest, 1887, p. 72)
There is an issue of continuity in the history of the Japanese tattoo in that the available
archeological evidence does not provide enough material for definitive links to be drawn
between different historical periods. There are entire centuries, 600-1600 specifically,
where there has been no evidence of the existence of the tattoo despite evidence be-
ing available for the centuries preceding and proceeding (van Gulik, 1982 p. 21). This
is not to lay blame on archeological deficiencies as there may have very well been no
intentional effort put forth to record the craft of tattoo, or any history for that matter,
during the time. That being said, an in-depth look at the resources available dating from
different periods of Japanese history, even in a slightly disjointed manner, along with an
appeal to resources from other countries, can provide a relatively comprehensive image
of tattoo stigmatization.
The following sections will fill in the picture firstly by establishing the earliest known
appearances of tattoos in Jōmon and Yayoi period artifacts, progressing into the first
evidence of stigmatization in the Kofun and Edo periods, and ending with a dissection of
stigmatization from the post-war period onward.

Jōmon Period (ca. 10,000 BCE – 300 BCE)

Although intensive archeological research in the post-war years has yielded an abundant
amount of evidence for a previously unknown old Stone Age culture in the Japanese is-
lands, the majority of the artifacts found were stone tools, which provide no way to deter-
mine whether or not the people of this time decorated their bodies at all. However, the
excavation of Jōmon sites throughout Japan several decades later yielded a large number
of artifacts and materials that provided opportunities for hypotheses regarding the Jōmon
period to be made (Klompfmakers, 1980, p. 39). The category of artifacts of these exca-
vations that shed the most light on our topic are the clay figurines known as dōgu. These
figurines often feature markings on the face and body that could be representative of
tattoos, although it could just as easily indicate the prevalence of face painting or scarifi-
cation. However, when the facial markings on the figurines are compared with markings
on similar figurines of the same period from various locations in Southeast Asia and the
Pacific Islands, strong indications are provided that the markings on the dōgu are indeed
evidence of tattoo (Takayama, 1969, p. 89). In particular, dōgu from the fourth and fifth
Jōmon period heavily suggest the use of tattoos as body markings. Archeologist Esaka
Teruya diagrammed the evolution of facial markings from the earliest to the latest Jōmon
periods, as shown in Fig. 2.
The evidence available from the Jōmon period can
only lead to tentative conclusions at best. Ultimate-
ly, uncertainty lies in the fact that not enough is
known about the dōgu figurines to conclude that
Jōmon peoples practiced tattooing on themselves.
The dōgu may very well be depictions of animals or
deities, and the markings on the body and face
could have been evidence of scarification or face
paint. Furthermore, they may have even been en-
tirely representational depictions suggesting noth-
ing about reality. However endless the doubt, anal-
yses and ethnographic comparisons made by
Fig. 2 Facial markings on dōgu of the Jōmon
Takayama and Esaka seem to present very strong
period (Esaka, 1967, p.307) conclusions that the Jōmon peoples had practiced
bodily or facial modification at some point in the
later periods. As the existence of bodily and facial modification can only vaguely be sug-
gested, the attitudes that the peoples of the Jōmon period towards tattoo, positive or
negative, can not be at all confirmed with the information available.
Yayoi Period (300 BCE – 300 CE)

Scholars continue to debate the continuity from the Jōmon to Yayoi periods in terms of
carryover characteristics and culture. Nonetheless, archeological evidence shows that
burial practices of the Yayoi period are far more similar to those of those of the popula-
tion inhabiting the Japanese islands from the sixth century, while they are completely
dissimilar from Jōmon period burial practices (Mendi, 2004, p.50). Thus the Yayoi cul-
ture and peoples may be classified as the first known emergence of what can be under-
stood as a uniquely “Japanese” culture. During this time, two Chinese dynastic records
make specific mention of tattoo in Yayoi Japan. The first reference, from “The History of
Wei” (a part of the Records of the Three Kingdoms compiled by Chen Shou in the third
century CE) mentions this about the inhabitants of Japan (or “Wa”):
A son of the ruler of Shao-kang of Hsia, when he was enfeoffed as lord
of K’uai-chi, cut his hair and decorated his body with designs in order to
avoid the attack of serpents and dragons. The Wa, who are fond of diving
into water to get fish and shells, also decorated their bodies in order to
keep away large fish and waterfowl. Later however, the designs became
merely ornamental. Designs on the body differ in the various countries
[...] their position and size vary according to the rank of the individual
(Tsunoda and Goodrich, 1951, p. 10).
The second mention of tattoo occurs in The History of the Later Han, and confirms the
previous description of the Yayoi peoples:
The men all tattoo their faces and adorn their bodies with designs. The
position and size of pattern indicate the difference in rank (Tsunoda and
Goodrich, 1951, p.21).
Although the texts seem might be intended as purely neutral observations from the per-
spective of the writer, it must be noted that the Chinese at the time regarded the prac-
tice of tattooing as abhorrent and characteristic only of savages (Tsunoda and Goodrich,
1951, p. 4). By making specific reference to tattoo, the description draws attention to
their perceived savagery and barbarism, rendering it condescending and critical rather
than tone-neutral. Of course, this can also be attributed to general feelings of animosity
towards cultures and regions outside Chinese territory. The origins of the Chinese at-
titude towards this frequently practiced ritual in Yayoi Japan will not be covered in depth
in this paper; the significance of these attitudes lie in their foreshadowing the future stig-
matization of tattoos in Japan as Chinese ideals and values slowly become the standard
amongst the elite of the proceeding Kofun period.
Kofun Period (300 – 600 CE)
While the textual evidence of tattoo stigmatization in the Yayoi period is found strictly
in the history of Chinese dynasties, three textual references to Kofun-period tattoo are
found in the Nihonshoki, and two more are found in the Kojiki (Japanese documents;
Van Gulik, 1982, p.8). These five references display one of two distinct attitudes to-
wards tattoos: the first of both the Nihonshoki and Kojiki excerpts are relatively neutral
in tone; the latter evidently equate criminality and tattoos. The three passages from the
Nihonshoki demonstrate this attitude transition, the first two being typically dated to
around the middle of the Kofun period (Van Gulik 1982, p.10).
27th year, Spring, 2nd month, 12th day, Takenouchi no Sukune returned
from the East country and informed the Emperor, saying: “In the East-
ern wilds there is a country called Hitakami. The people of this country,
both men and women, tie up their hair in the form of a mallet, and tattoo
their bodies. They are of fierce temper and their general name is Emishi.
Moreover, their land is wide and fertile. We should attack them and take
it. (Van Gulik, 1982, p.4)
At the time that the Nihonshoki was compiled, Chinese attitudes were prevalent amongst
the Japanese elite. Thus the mention of tattoos on the Emishi people is an allusion to the
stigma of barbarism imparted by their presence. The proceeding passages are amongst
the first known textual records of tattooing as punishment for criminal behaviour, in-
advertently linking the presence of tattoos to criminality (Van Gulik 1982, p.10). The
third of the Nihonshoki excerpts, dating to the later Kofun period, also mentions puni-
tive application of tattooing (Van Gulik, 1982, p.11):
Winter, 10th month. A bird of the Bird-department was bitten by a dog
belonging to a man of Uda and died. The emperor was angry, and tattoo-
ing him on the face, made him one of the Bird-keepers guild. (Van Gulik,
1982, p.4)
Similarly, in the Kojiki, the earlier-dated of the two excerpts seems less concerned with
the presence of tattoo compared to the latter, in which criminality and tattoo are linked
explicitly:
Then, when O-kume-no-mikoto announced the emperor’s will to Isuke-
yori-hime, she saw the tattooing around the eyes of O-kume-no-mikoto;
thinking it strange, she sang:
“Ame-tutu
Tidori masi toto--
Why the tattooed eyes?”
Then O-kume-no-mikoto sang in reply:
“The better to meet Maidens face to face
Are my tattooed eyes” (Van Gulik, 1982, p. 14)
While this text does draw attention to the strangeness of tattooed eyes, it does not seem
to imply much else. On the other hand, a later story states:
When they arrived at Kariha-i in Yamashiro, as they were eating their pro-
visions, an old man with a tattooed face came along and seized their provi-
sions (Van Gulik, 1982, p.16)
Here, the old man’s actions and his being labeled as tattooed can indicate that his tattoos
were received as punishment for criminal behaviours.
Although the aforementioned excerpts certainly do not necessarily provide a compre-

hensive look at tattoo practice in the Kofun period, the presence of two very distinct
stages can be drawn from the texts – the earlier Kofun period being a time where tattoos
were still socially acceptable albeit “strange”, and the later Kofun period wherein tat-
toos started being considered as indication of criminality – undoubtedly due to adopted
Chinese practices (Reed, 2000, p.363). These negative associations can be understood
as the beginning of tattoo stigmatization – this viewpoint finally blossoming in the Edo
period despite the popularity of tattoos among the characters of the “floating world”.
Edo Period (1600 – 1868 CE)
The evidence for the practice of tattoo during

the period between the Kofun and Edo period
is scant at best. Van Gulik notes that a reference
to punitive facial tattoo is made in the Jōei code
of 1232, so it could be assumed that this was
the only variety of tattoo available to the public.
Unfortunately, this does not give any explana-
tion for the startling growth in popularity en-
joyed by tattoos in the Edo period, and thus far
no known case for voluntary ornamental tattoo-
ing has been made for the pre-Edo period, al-
though its existence is possible considering the
high level of development evident in Edo period
Fig. 3 Edo period punitive tattoo markings on tattoos (Van Gulik, 1982, p.18). Thankfully
the arm and forehead (Poysden, 2005, p.121) for our purposes, the Edo period tattoo is a
practice for which there is overwhelming documentation and visual evidence, unsurpris-
ingly becoming that which “traditional” Japanese tattoos today draw from. Because tat-
toos were still used as punitive measures during the Edo period (as seen in Fig. 3), cer-
tain terminology surfaced to distinguish between the voluntarily, self-inflicted tattoo and
the punitive tattoo. The word irebokuro, meaning “to insert (a) mole” is typically used
in reference to a small mark or character tattooed with connotations of being a love
pledge. Similarly, horimono was adopted to distinguish figurative tattoos from punitive
ones (Van Gulik, 1982, p.103).
Although tattoos flourished amongst the denizens of the “floating world” – progressing
from simple script characters to elaborate body suits encouraged by the translation of
Shih-Nai-an and Lo Kuang Chung’s Yuan period novel Shui-bu Chuan into the Japa-
nese version known as the Suikoden, it did so in spite of the government at the time. The
Tokugawa bakufu was exceedingly conservative, basing its philosophy on the Chinese
Confucian ideal , and since the Chinese had long regarded the tattoo as a particularly
severe punishment, the Japanese government could not accept approval of non-punitive
use of tattoos by the general populace (Van Gulik, 1982, p.98). During the Edo period,
the Japanese government attempted countless times to issue regulations and prohibi-
tions against the arts that flourished in the “floating world” such as kabuki theatre and
ukiyo-e wood-block prints, along with tattoo (Van Gulik, 1982, p.98). A large number
of laws were issued by the idealistic reformer Sadanobu; and in the year 1811 an edict
forbidding tattooing was issued:
Recently, carefree individuals have been propagating tattooing; they tat-

too all sorts of pictures or characters on their whole body; they apply the
tattooings in black ink and colours. It should be noted therefore that this
custom and particularly the way in which the unblemished body is defiled,
must certainly be called a scandal. Nevertheless, young people consider
it fashionable and do not mind being mocked and laughed at by everyone
behind their backs. Recently, quite a number of people are to be seen who
have had themselves tattooed, and once they have started on this deplor-
able practice, it will even extend to the hands and feet eventually covering
the entire body. Furthermore, even though the people who have them-
selves tattooed are of the opinion that others may perhaps approve, the
decision has been taken, after mature consideration, to censor this highly
improper behaviour that people freely tattoo themselves without any aver-
sion. It is therefore forbidden as of this moment. Pass this order on! (Van
Gulik, 1982, p.82)
One of the most important messages of the traditional tattoo in Japan is the dissidence
of the wearer; that such edicts would be ignored by significant sections of the population
should come as no surprise.
The clientele of Edo period tattoo can be summarized as the type of people who were
known for their rowdy behaviours: chōnin, a sort of homogenous combination of the
two lowest classes of society (artisans and craftsmen). Tanizaki Jun’ichiro summarizes
the diversity of the clientele at the time in his work “Shisei”:
People did all they could to beautify themselves, some even have pigments
injected into their precious skins. Gaudy patterns of line and colour
danced over men’s bodies. Visitors to the pleasure quarters of Edo pre-
ferred to hire palanquin bearers who were splendidly tattooed; courtesans
of the Yoshiwara and the Tatsumi quarter fell in love with tattooed men.
Among those so adorned were not only gamblers, firemen, and the like,
but members of the merchant class and samurai. Exhibitions were held
from time to time; and the participants stripped to show off their filigreed
bodies, would pat themselves proudly, boast of their own novel designs,
and criticize each other’s merits.
There is a fascinating aspect of the attitude to-

wards tattoo in Japan that differs quite a bit from
the Western attitude. In the West, a small, eas-
ily hidden tattoo can be disregarded and ex-
plained away as a mistake even though a large
scale work may evoke more intense feelings of
negativity. In Japan, there are only two catego-
ries: either a person is tattooed, or he is not
(Poysden, 2005, p. 22). Keeping this in mind,
the development from tattoos of simple charac-
ters in the early Edo period to ornate and co-
lourful neck to ankle tattoos in the later Edo
period is a question that has yet to be answered
adequately. If the prevailing Japanese attitude
permitted no gradations, then there would have
been little reason to refrain from tattooing more
Fig. 4: Kuniyoshi: “Yan Qin” Edo elaborate works from the start. Obviously, many
Period, Obwada Collection
factors can come into play, but scholars seem to
attribute this development more or less entirely to the tattooed heroes of Suikoden, one
of which is illustrated in Fig. 4 (Poysden, 2005, p. 41). Although it is somewhat of a le-
gitimate correlation, an even more interesting question arises when one realizes that the
illustrations accompanying the Suikoden were painted by ukiyo-e artists Hokusai and,
later, Kuniyoshi in his own version of the work (Van Gulik, 1982, p.103). The original
text explicitly mentions the heroes’ tattoos, but the illustrations are entirely unique
works by the aforementioned artists – and whether the artists drew inspiration from their
own imaginations and consequently influenced the Edo period tattoo style, or the artists
drew inspiration from the tattooed people of their time, is entirely up for debate. Did
their art attempt to imitate the life around them, or did the life around them resultantly
imitate their art?
Although the art of Edo period tattoo is certainly of heavy interest to art enthusiasts and
tattoo aficionados, it can be said in brief that this specific style of tattoo, regardless of
subject matter, is largely ornamental (Van Gulik, 1982, p.68). Furthermore, the fashion
amongst the chōnin to become elaborately tattooed can also be explained simply as an
attempt to enhance prestige and identify themselves as a part of their societal group.
Naturally, strong group identification through a medium as specific as tattoo involun-
tarily creates a stigma that resulted in the equally specific association of tattoos with
lower classes of artists and tradesmen, alongside criminals, courtesans, and gamblers.
With such a strong sense of class-consciousness in Edo period society, tattoo culture
flourished alongside a growing stigma among the untattooed populace.
Modern Period (1868 – present)
The end of the golden age of Japanese tattoo came to a halt with the onset of the 20th
century. With the end of the Tokugawa bakufu and the dawn of the Meiji Restoration,
the new central government concluded that tattooing would be seen by outsiders as a
sign of barbarism, and rigorous efforts were made to close tattoo establishments and
discourage its practice (Sekai Daihyakka Jiten, 1981, p. 463). Ironically, it was not
forbidden for non-Japanese citizens to have tattoos, and thus began the exportation of
traditional Japanese tattoos via the bodies of foreign sailors, travelers, and apparently
British royalty including the likes of Prince Louis of Battenberg, the Duke of York (later
King George V) and the Duke of Clarence (Burchett, 1958, p.104).
Today, the full body tattoo is more often than not identified with yakuza – those involved
in gambling, prostitution, drugs, and a plethora of anti-social activity. A mythology sur-
rounds the yakuza in Japan and its most recognizable identifying trait is the tattoo – the
visual reminder to which the average Japanese responds when he or she associates tat-
tooing more or less exclusively with yakuza (Poysden, 2005, p.52). Significant amounts
of documentation in the field of Japanese cultural studies stress the pressures to conform
to various norms, usually exerted by one’s peers – it would not be unreasonable to be-
lieve that persons involved in the yakuza participate in the tattoo tradition strictly due to
overt pressure from peer members to demonstrate their solidarity (Saga, 1997, p.14).
Nonetheless, the tattoo stigma is undoubtedly fueled by projections of tattoo-covered
gang members in popular movies and video games, and even by sentiments carried over
from history; it is not an acceptable explanation for the overwhelmingly negative attitude
toward tattoos today (Saga, 1997, p.23). After all, how has the entire chōnin popula-
tion that so identified with tattoo in the Edo period seemingly disappeared within one
century, resulting in significantly fewer people to carry on the tradition? A reasonable
explanation lies in an often publicized government statistic found in various economic
journals concerning the Japanese economy and class structure. The statistic reveals that
an alleged ninety percent or more of Japanese regard themselves as belonging to the
“middle class” – and although there has been much debate regarding the legitimacy of
the statistic – it possibly reflecting only the tatemae side of Japanese society (since com-
parative quantitative studies suggest that Japanese patterns of socioeconomic inequality
show no large deviance from those of other late capitalist countries), if the central Meiji
government was on any level successful in its modernization of Japan (as it was, evident-
ly), instituting universal education and promoting literacy via a government-controlled
framework thereby preparing the citizenry’s entry into a modern, industrial economy
– then a large number of the former lower classes could very well have disappeared with-
in a century (Martin and Olenik, 2005, p.261). Since the tattoo in Japan has been more
often than not self-inflicted “dark marks” of the lower classes or government inflicted
“dark marks” of criminality historically and strongly thought to be associated with the
yakuza currently, the general decline of tattoo enthusiasm and increased stigmatization
of tattooed persons can be attributed to a largely diminishing population of persons who
identify with the lower classes since the beginning of the 20th century.
As mentioned previously, one of the universal messages of the traditional Japanese tat-
too, regardless of wearer or its content, is his dissidence – not simple non-conformity in
the “conformity to non-conformity” sense very present in modern Japan, but a higher
degree of non-conformity that transcends trends such as hair styles or clothing (Hambly,
1974, p.3). This dissidence, instead of the imagined connection to yakuza today, may
be why authority has always and continues to be consistently anti-tattoo, and why the
masses follow with a public consensus shortly thereafter.
The stigma surrounding the Japanese tattoo seems to have always existed throughout
the history of Japan proper (that is, with the possible exclusion of the early Jōmon cul-
ture), and does not appear to waver. The so-called yakuza connection, along with the
diminishing number of practitioners and clients willing to invest time and large amounts
of money in the traditional Japanese tattoo will undoubtedly lead to its eventual disap-
pearance in its native land. Nonetheless, however insignificant authorities may consider
the public preservation of the traditional tattoo, and however permanent the stigma, the
Japanese tattoo will continue to be studied, dissected, and and recognized as a small but
proportionally incredibly significant aspect of Japanese culture.
Works Cited
Bratt, Marco, and Mark Poysden. A History of Japanese Body Suit Tattooing. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers,
2005.
Burchett, George, and Peter Leighton. Memoirs of a Tattooist: From The Notes, Diaries And Letters Of The
Late ‘King Of Tattooists’. Compiled And Edited By Peter Leighton. New York: Crown, 1958.
Hambly, Wilfrid Dyson. The History of Tattooing and Its Significance: With Some Account of Other Forms of
Corporal Marking. Detroit: H. F.& G. Witherby, 1974.
Kitamura, Katie M., and Takahiro Kitamura. Tattoos of the Floating World: Ukiyo-E Motifs in Japanese Tat-
too. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2003.
Klompmakers, Inge. Of Brigands and Bravery: Kuniyoshi’s Heroes of the Suikoden. New York: Koninklijk
Instituut Voor de Trope, 1980.
Lewis, Charlton, W. Scott Morton, and J. Kenneth Olenik. Japan: Its History and Culture. New York: Mc-
Graw-Hill, 2005.
Mendl, Wolf. Japan & Southeast Asia V1. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Kiyoko, Motegi. “Aural Learning in Gidayū-Bushi: Music of the Japanese Puppet Theatre.” Yearbook for Tra-
ditional Music 16 (1984): 97-108.
Reed, Carrie E.. “Tattoo in Early China.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 120 (2000): 360-376,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/606008.
Saga, Junichi. Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan’s Underworld. New York: Kodansha International,
1997.
Tsunoda, Ryusaku, and L. Carrington Goodrich. Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories. New York: Perkins
Asiatic Monographs, 1951.
Van Gulik, Willem R.. Irezumi: The pattern of dermatography in Japan (Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum
voor Volkenkunde, Leiden). Leiden: BRILL, 1982.
Speaking Chinese
Vinci Ting
I can speak Chinese, and I speak it well.
I always know what to say

as they come and go,
as I go and come back,
and I know it’s right
because I see the smiles.
The brief smiles they exchange with one another,
so warm it makes my heart ache
like a hand scorched by the heat of the candle inside a lantern,
the one I had lit
with the love I never received.
When it comes to Chinese New Year (whenever that is,

it seems to be
different every year, like everything else),
they always have a huge feast
of a human heart (not the leg), snake, swallow and elephant1-
as if we didn’t have enough last year;
I don’t know why they call it “New.”
Sometimes I gaze
perpetually
at the moon on the water,
the full moon that we celebrate every
now and then
reflected on that water,
the same water that separates
me from the celebration.
I find myself drowning in it, trying to swim, from
time to time.
Whenever I visit, I enjoy the feeling
of coming back to an exotic home.
Like the feeling a child has when he
explores
the attic of his grandparents’ house (even though there wereno attics
or houses in my grandparents’ time),
Speaking Chinese - Vinci Ting
or when he is playing in the garden behind the house,

pulling out trees
and planting rose bushes instead.
They don’t like red roses much;

they’re different.
At first, they might see us
from a distance
and come towards us, ready to pluck.
They pull at you, and
pull, and pull, and pull
until they see that you’re a beautifully defected plant
2
and toss you away into the corner of the mahjong table ,
roots and all.
But I’m not really a rose. I can speak Chinese.

I can count from one to ten, to the hundred, to the thousand,
to the thousand things
I cannot do.
“Ma-ma,” I say, talking to my other

grandmother one day
(because Chinese people always say one thing
and mean another),
“I’ve brought you a present- a book- from the West,
just like I’m supposed to,
the Chinese way.”
She takes one look at it and replies,
“We Chinese people
don’t need such things;
don’t waste your (or my) time.”
So I took it (and myself) away.
I like books,
but I speak Chinese too.
I never understand them Chinese people,
They think me simple,
even though I speak Chinese.
“You are so easy to read,”
is what I’m always told;
but I think they mean difficult,
since, you know,
they always say one thing and mean another.
So I ask them,
as politely as I can,
“In Chinese or in English?”

Speaking Chinese - Vinci Ting
1: Word play on the sounds of characters in the Chinese saying “人心不足蛇吞象,” which translates to “a man’s heart unsatisfied is like a snake that swallows an elephant.”
This means that man always wants more than what he can hold.
2: A tile that is extra is placed at the corner of the table during a mahjong game and is called 花 (fa), the same character for “flower”.
The Evolution of Calligraphy and Writing in Mao’s China - Guillaume Lamothe
The Evolution of Calligraphy and

Writing in Mao’s China
Guillaume Lamothe
The Archetype of the “Calligrapher”: Feudal Officials and Wandering

Revolutionaries
As Mao Zedong read aloud the document establishing the founding of the PRC on Octo-
ber 1st, 1949, he was perfectly aware that the literacy levels across China were nowhere
near those required for the modern industrialized state he wished to create. Across the
country, over 80% of the people were functional illiterates, incapable of reading any-
thing but the simplest of texts.[1] Of the remaining twenty percent, those who could
write well, according to the old calligraphic principles, were increasingly few. Pencils
and fountain pens were easier to find than brushes in China since the time of the May
Fourth movement. A strict adherence to the old calligraphic principles was no longer
necessary for the large majority of the literate public, who only needed to produce pass-
able characters for everyday life. Even Lu Xun, the PRC’s most revered modern writer,
was a particularly unenthusiastic calligrapher and saw the ritual associated with the
practice as emblematic of everything wrong with China’s old feudal elites.[2] Like Shen
Yinmo, those who still practiced calligraphy as a serious art often had problems making
ends meet, and were victims of the bad social implications of their craft.[3]
Within this turn away from the old calligraphic tradition, it is surprising that the amount
of commercial calligraphy was, in fact, increasing during the 1940s, spurred on by
the growth in demand for billboards and advertisements in China’s recovering urban
economy.[4] Meanwhile, the demand for calligraphy as art was decreasing. While me-
diocre calligraphers were living well by painting billboards, traditional calligraphers
like Ye Gongchuo, were unable to find customers outside of the foreign concessions,
and perceived as hopeless reactionaries.[5] Others, like Deng Sanmu, were only able
to overcome their craft’s negative reputation through generous public contributions to
progressive newspapers.[6] The negative public reaction, against this archetype of the
calligrapher as a feudal offical, was forcing calligraphy to take on a decidedly proletarian
turn even before the Communist takeover.
Away from the cities, however, a new archetype of the calligrapher was being born. His-
torian Richard Kraus terms this archetype “the calligrapher as a wandering revolution-
ary”.[7] Mao Zedong, of his own account, traveled the Jianxi-Fujian border areas with
a special bag for brush, ink, paper and inkstone, where he joked, “I’ll use the four trea-
sures of the scholar’s studio to defeat the four big families of the Guomindang.”[8] Shu
Tong, later the head of the National Calligrapher’s Association, was known during the
Long March as the “horseback calligrapher”, because he so often wrote verses while
the army was on the move.[9] Guo Moruo describes in his autobiography that when he
tried to buy a jacket while traveling in a remote town, the shopkeeper asked him to write
a piece of calligraphy as payment, as intellectuals did not come often to his village.[10]
The experiences of the revolution and of the civil war helped bring Communist wander-
ing revolutionaries into contact with a large number of Chinese people.
For a wandering revolutionary, good calligraphy was practical in several ways. It not only
allowed for attractive propaganda, but it also spoke to the erudition and quality of char-
acter of the revolutionary in question. This explicit link between morality and calligra-
phy was still very strong in the 1940s and survives to this day. In this, the Communists
followed very closely in the old Imperial tradition.[11] Where the calligraphic archetype
of the “wandering revolutionary” differs from that of the “feudal official” is on the issue
of content. For a revolutionary, art had to have a direct social impact:
Communist art workers had two tasks (...) The first was educational: to quickly train many
art cadres (...) to serve the workers, peasants and soldiers. The second was productive: to
use modern printing technology to issue art in large quantities for the masses.[12]
Along these two principles, the sole purpose of calligraphy, like the other arts, was to
further the cause of the revolution. While revolutionary calligraphers certainly made an
effort to establish a link between themselves and the past by showing deep reverence
towards traditional calligraphy (Mao, for example, regularly quoted Li Bai’s poetry),[13]
the “wandering revolutionaries” copied little classic calligraphy while producing a lot of
their own works, unlike the “feudal officials”. These works, mostly slogans or poems,
would often formed a new canon of calligraphy; it is very telling that, under Mao, most
calligraphers felt safer copying Communist poems and slogans than Yan Zhengqing’s
classic pieces.[14]
The 1940s had thus seen the emergence of another popular vision of what it could mean
to be a “good” calligrapher: that the attractive, comprehensible, and purposeful callig-
raphy of the “wandering revolutionary” was accepted in the public imaginary as proof of
his erudition, gentlemanly character, and social righteousness.
Calligraphy for the Elite: Calligraphy as Art
With the fall of the Guomindang, the new China gave rise to two venues within which
the elite could practice calligraphy as an art. If, like Mao Zedong, Guo Moruo, or
Kang Sheng, one was perceived along the lines of the wandering revolutionary arche-
-type, then one could disseminate one’s own calligraphy for political purposes. Indeed,
“the greater one’s fame and influence, the more likely one’s zi (characters) will be re-
vered as art.”[15] If a Communist leader was incapable of producing decent calligraphy
at the very least, a few options remained open to him. He could either hire a ghostwriter,
or show his skill in other proletarian activities, like the Labour Union Chief Ni Zhifu,
who regularly showed his skill in operating machine tools.[16]
On the other hand, if one truly was a skilled calligrapher, then one could attain a posi-
tion of artistic authority under the auspices of the Communist Party without necessar-
ily becoming involved in direct politics after. This was the case for most calligraphers
who had previously fit under the “feudal official” archetype. Emblematic of this is the
story of Li Kuchang, a calligrapher and guohua artist who, as a victim of popular hostil-
ity against the feudalism of his art, lacked official employment in 1949. Worried about
his future, Li managed to write an impressive calligraphic request for work in caoshu to
none other than the new Chairman, Mao Zedong. Unbeknownst to Li, caoshu was Mao’s
favourite style of calligraphy, and within a month Mao had solved Li’s unemployment
problem.[17]
The politician calligraphers, however, such as Mao, Zhou Enlai, or Chen Yi, all followed
in the time-honoured tradition of publicly using their calligraphy to bolster their politi-
cal authority. This was certainly nothing new: calligraphy had been a part of politics for
hundreds of years. High officials, and even sometimes the emperor, had indicated per-
sonal support for particular projects or installations by writing a few characters (xie jige
zi). In the ubiquitous web of Chinese guanxi, (social relations), this indicated a special
connection between the calligrapher and the public area (restaurant, museum, bank, art
gallery, etc.) in which his calligraphy was displayed.[18] By displaying a leader’s calligra-
phy, a particular institution was “borrowing the authority of the leader, which was itself
expanded in the process.”[19] The Communists were perfectly willing to pursue this
cultural tradition; it is told that, in his days as a humble book store owner in Changsha,
Mao Zedong wrote to the provincial governor Tan Yankai, asking if it would be possible
for him to write the sign for his store.[20]
The Communists, however, took the traditional link between politics and calligraphy
to an entirely new level of importance. There are three reasons for this: a technological
reason, a political reason, and a diplomatic reason. Technologically, with the advent of
modern printing and carving techniques, it had become much easier by 1949 for an in-
dividual leader with money to make his characters accessible to a wide audience. During
the Republican Period, Sun Yat-Sen had been among the first to use modern technology
in disseminating his calligraphy, by having his characters “wei renmin fuwu” carved on
the front of many new public buildings. Mao Zedong went a step further than him by
having his calligraphy engraved, not only on public buildings (such as the new Martyrs’
Memorial in Tian An Men), but also on a wide range of household necessities such as
calendars and flower vases to teapots and small porcelain busts of himself.[21] Coupled
with the later necessity of owning a copy of the Little Red Book, Mao’s calligraphy be-
came present, in one form or another, in almost every Chinese household. This led the
populace to become extremely familiar towards his handwriting, and by 1966, it seemed
that almost every literate person in China could instantly recognize Mao Zedong’s char-
acters.[22] In addiction to his particular political position, this gave Mao’s calligraphy
unprecedented power during the Cultural Revolution.
The second reason for the rise in the political importance of calligraphy under Mao was
rooted in the Communist political system itself: in an uncertain world of struggle ses-
sions and rightist deviations, owning a piece of calligraphy by someone better politi-
cally positioned than oneself was among the best guarantees of safety. Guo Moruo was
perfectly aware of this by 1928: when he received an inscription from Mao Zedong with
the request that he forward it to a revolutionary base in Jingangshan, Guo decided to
keep it for himself instead, proudly displaying it in his study as proof of his close rela-
tionship with the Chairman, a useful defense should anyone later question his political
integrity.[23]More than simply indicating guanxi, however, the state of a leader’s pub-
lic calligraphy also became a good barometer of his political fortunes. After Lin Biao’s
defection and death, for example, his calligraphy was hastily removed from around the
country, and further editions of the Little Red Book were published without his calli-
graphic preface.[24] The same thing happened to the head of the secret police Kang
Sheng; villified after his death, his calligraphy (most notably the masthead for the maga-
zine Wenwu) was quickly removed or replaced.[25] Even among those whose political
fortunes were good, there seemed to have been a certain level of competition over who
could get their characters written where; Mao Zedong criticizing Guo Moruo in the early
1960s for writing too many inscriptions is emblematic of this.[26] Also, national insti-
tutions such as The People’s Republic of China or The Chinese Communist Party were
always expressed in neutral printed characters, and were too great for any individual to
personalize.[27]
The third reason for the rise in the political importance of calligraphy was because of
its use in diplomacy. Although China had been using its national culture for hundreds
of years, sending abroad gifts of porcelain, silk, calligraphy, or pandas as symbols of im-
perial favour, the Communists found calligraphy to be of particular use when dealing
with Japan, whose government they had no official contact with until 1972.[28] In the
absence of official political relations, cultural contacts assumed great importance, and it
was a mark of Cold War Sino-Japanese diplomacy, that cultural exchanges always pre-
ceded economic or political ones. This is not to say that the Communists could not put
the cultural exchange of calligraphy to good political use; the linking of art and ideology
is clear in Guo Moruo’s 1955 visit to Tokyo, during which he gave a gift of an inscription
“Seek Truth From Facts,” a quote directly from the Chairman.[29] Interestingly,
Sino-Japanese calligraphic rivalry seems to have, in fact, encouraged the study of cal-
ligraphy as an art in the PRC. In 1957, an impressive exhibition of Japanese calligraphy
convinced Shen Yinmo that “if China was to exploit calligraphy effectively in terms of
improving its relations with Japan, then Chinese calligraphers (...) would need the same
high degree of official backing as was enjoyed by their Japanese counterparts.”[30] Tak-
ing this matter up with the Chairman, in 1960, Shen was made head of the new Shanghai
Calligraphy and Seal Carving Research Association, designed to foster the formation of
Chinese calligraphers capable of competing with those of the Japanese.[31]
Thus, under Mao, calligraphy for the elite was able to achieve the status of art, whether
it was through the calligrapher’s genuine talent or his political position. Politically, cal-
ligraphy was used to increase one’s own authority, both by publicly disseminating it as
an authority booster, and by exchanging it to strengthen one’s position in the tangled
web of guanxi. The diplomatic use of calligraphy as art was also well recognized by the
Communist party, who saw it as a useful tool of national culture to use in dealing with
other nations, particularly Japan.
Calligraphy for the People: Ideological Repositioning
The early years of the PRC were marked by significant intra-party debates over the future
of the entire system of Chinese characters. The left posited two main reasons for their
abandonment: the first was that an alphabetic writing system would make mass literacy
easier, a presently debatable notion considering the current high literacy rates across
East Asia. The second was more complicated but ideological: Chinese characters, tradi-
tionally being products of elitist feudal culture, were considered inherently reactionary.
Chen Duixu, the Dean of Beijing University, summed up the left’s view: “The Chinese
script cannot communicate new things and new principles. It is, furthermore, the home
of rotten and poisonous thought.”[32]
With the establishment of the People’s Republic, however, the old archetype of the evil
“feudal official calligrapher” was largely replaced by that of the good “wandering revolu-
tionary calligrapher”. Though the leftist drive for romanization would officially continue
until 1958, when Zhou Enlai finally asserted that “historically, Chinese characters can
never be eradicated”, Mao Zedong issued a clear rebuttal against the main ideological
pillar of romanization as early as 1951, declaring that calligraphy was “a neutral bat-
tleground on which class conflict was taking place. (...) if the proletariat did not take
the lead in calligraphy, as in music, painting, and chess, then the bourgeoisie certainly
would.”[33] This entailed that characters were class-neutral, a position diametrically
opposed from Chen Duixu’s.
By officially stripping calligraphy of its class association, Mao was ensuring that this
most classically bourgeois of Chinese arts could be used to advance the revolution. It was
with no evident irony that, in 1949, he used his classic calligraphy in a performance
in which he wrote publicly, “Cast away the old, bring forth the new.”[34] Viewed in
this light, calligraphy could then become a weapon of the proletariat in the revolution-
ary struggle. Concretely, this new ideological position would most affect education; the
Party launched mass literacy drives, in complete defiance of the elitism which had sur-
rounded both calligraphy and the characters of which it was composed. As it is impos-
sible to teach one how to read and write characters without teaching him at least basic
calligraphic principles, it is safe to say that these literacy campaigns brought an unbeliev-
able number of Chinese into the realm of calligraphy.
It is perhaps natural that these literacy drives changed the face of calligraphy in several
ways, the first and most obvious being the simplification of characters. The first list of
515 was published in 1956, followed by a second, much larger one in 1964, bring-
ing the total to over 2000 simplified characters. Interestingly, though many of these
simplifications came from unorthodox versions of characters used in the marketplace,
which would have been considered vulgar a few years before, a large number were also,
at Mao’s request, based on literati caoshu.[35]
As calligraphy continued to expand, it also moved beyond the world of the brush. While
Lu Xun had mocked outdated decrees that banned the importation of pens and pencils
into China, by the early 1950s, the new regime was publishing affordable guides on how
to write calligraphy using fountain pens.[36] These pens, in fact, even became fashion-
able for city officials;[37] they were perceived as more practical and proletarian than the
outdated, feudal brushes. For a non-elite, there was always the danger of criticism for
taking too much interest in calligraphy as an art. Though the “Party had concluded that
calligraphy could not – or would not – be eliminated, (...) many still nervously sensed its
association with traditional elite culture.”[38] Even if it was simply aesthetically pleas-
ing, writing with a pen or pencil provided a clear way of avoiding being branded as a
reactionary.
Although writing well aesthetically was a bureaucratic necessity in the PRC (both Mao
Zedong and Zhou Enlai, for example, demanded high calligraphic proficiency of their
underlings),[39] being seen as taking too deep an interest in the art of calligraphy could
lead to accusations of being “divorced from ordinary workers and peasants.”[40] It is
an important distinction between Maoist elite and popular calligraphy that only the elite
could flaunt established bureaucratic conventions. The idiosyncratic level allowed in
one’s writing was directly proportional to one’s political authority.
Thus, in its early years, the PRC did away with the outdated idea of calligraphy and char-
acters as inherently reactionary, and launched mass literacy campaigns aimed at help-
ing the proletariat “take the lead in calligraphy.” This ideological repositioning led to
concrete changes in the social role and aesthetic appearance of calligraphy, as simpli-
fied, proletarian characters were made available to a wide audience using modern writing
implements. As literacy levels increased, the idea of calligraphy as a weapon of the prole-
tariat moved into the realm of possibility, spurred on by exhortations from Mao Zedong
and the Party Center, who, nevertheless, kept for themselves the social right to write for
artistic purposes. Nowhere would this popular calligraphy find a more spectacular and
socially significant expression than in the “Big Character Posters”, or DaZiBao.
Da Zi Bao
By 1956, Mao Zedong was ready to launch the first of his attempts to make the Chinese
people participate in what he saw as China’s continuous revolution. A “democratic wall”
was put up on the campus of Peking University, and intellectuals were invited to paste
handwritten posters on it to make their views heard.[41] Guo Moruo, writing a few cou-
plets to commemorate the occasion, inadvertently gave the new movement its name: the
Hundred Flowers Campaign.[42] Soon, however, the democratic wall bristled with frank
criticism against both the government and the Party, who responded by pasting its own
handwritten signs condemning its critics as “rightists”.[43] Within weeks, hundreds of
leading intellectuals were rounded up and arrested.[44]This was the first time- though
not the last- that DaZiBao were used in a massive propaganda campaign attempting to
link the people to the wider political process. But what exactly were DaZiBao?
The idea of “Big Character Posters”, or DaZiBao, was not fundamentally new; large,
handwritten posters had been used to convey information since the Imperial period, and
most revolutionary intellectuals (Mao among them) had put up DaZiBao at some point in
their life, finding them a useful means to spread their ideas without the printing resourc-
es.[45] The Soviets had also been using similar techniques in the 1920s with their “wall
newspapers”, though by the 1950s they had largely fallen out of use in the USSR.[46]
In China, however, the DaZiBao flourished, first proliferating during the abortive 1956
Hundred Flowers Campaign, and then again in 1958 during the Great Leap Forward. In
fact, a Yugoslav professor visiting the National University of Peking in 1958 remarked
that “the making of posters had become the first and foremost method of general educa-
tion and political indoctrination.”[47] DaZiBao mirrored the social structure of callig-
raphy itself, in that every reader was also a potential producer.
The idea of DaZiBao was that they- having no fixed format, length, or style- were able to
take on any role, from news reports, directives or orders, to proposals, praise or criti-
cism. Their contents, though often regional in nature, ranged from the mundane to the
erudite. One particularly amusing example was that of a DaZiBao condemning a local
cook for making “half-done” millet, with the DaZiBao right next to it being the cook
condemning his accuser for always complaining about his meals.[48] Deng Xiaoping
stated that the practical value of DaZiBao lay in their ability to be “turned into an impor-
tant forum for constantly developing criticism and self-criticism in the factories, offices,
or schools,” as well as helping “the full and frank expression of opinions among work-
ers.”[49] Big Character Posters were seen as a means for the newly literate people to
express themselves.
Of course, however, by 1958 the DaZiBao were closely supervised; Mao had learned in
1956 of the possible happenings if the masses were left to write whatever they wanted.
Production was handled almost like a newspaper, and every government department and
bureau were instructed by the Communist Party to “establish a tatzepao publishing unit
and put up tatzepao regularly.”[50] When everything went well, the propaganda gains
were significant; when the Party enforced the much-resented agricultural commune sys-
tem, for example, it could boast that “the masses posted more than 30 000 sheets of
tatzepao in a few days, resolutely asking to join the people’s commune.”[51] DaZiBao
could give a relatively unpopular policy the veneer of popular support.
The most impressive thing about the DaZiBao was perhaps their abundance; though the
exact number is uncertain, hundred of millions of them seem to have been posted up
during the Maoist era. For example, during the “Double-Anti” campaign of 1958, the
Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party reported that over 100
million DaZiBao had been posted up, more than a third of them within “six or seven
days.”[52] A Soviet Chemist, also writing in 1958, was more descriptive:
(...) imagine my amazement when (...) I found every wall of the vestibule and corridor
literally papered with these multicoloured sheets. On the second day, the sea of paper
had risen up to the staircase and, on the third day, it was all over the second floor. Ap-
parently, the walls of every corridor were not sufficient to carry everything the Chinese
wanted to say, for I found a line stretched down the middle of the hall with tatzepao hung
front it like wash hung out to dry.[53]
Though impressive, the proliferation of Big Character Posters should have been hardly
surprising. Mao Zedong had not only declared them “the best form of struggle, which is
beneficial to the proletariat but damaging to the bourgeois,” but he had also positively
encouraged their mass production:
If you have 10 000 sheets of tatzepao in your plant, that is first class. If you have 5 000
sheets, that is second class. If you have only a few scattered sheets here and there, then
you don’t count at all.[54]
Mao was perhaps more aware of the power of DaZiBao than any other Communist lead-
er, a fact which became apparent with his reluctant abdication of the state chairmanship
in 1958, after the first failures of the Great Leap Forward. Sidelined from the official me-
dia, he was almost certainly instrumental in the 1966 setting up of Nie Yuanzi’s DaZi-
Bao criticizing Peking University’s leadership, widely regarded as the beginning of the
Cultural Revolution.[55]
With the Cultural Revolution, writing DaZiBao went from being regarded as a weapon of
the proletariat to becoming an ideological duty. Even illiterates became expected to pro-
duce them by asking others to help them write.[56] Renmin Ribao clearly summarized
the attitude to take when it declared that “all revolutionary masses like Big Character
Posters.”[57] Not writing DaZiBao during the Cultural Revolution was considered non-
proletarian; even non-political people such as the ping-pong champion Zhuang Zedong
felt pressure to become involved, picking up the brush to signal his desire to rebel.[58]
DaZiBao thus became a sort of enforced spontaneity by which people regularly became
expected to spontaneously voice their support for the Communist regime.
In July 1966, it became clear that the launching of the Cultural Revolution was an attempt
by Mao to use unorthodox communication methods to regain influence at the expense
of his Party rivals. Receiving a nicely written DaZiBao stating “Long live the proletarian
revolutionary spirit of rebellion!” from the first group of students to call themselves Red
Guards, Mao replied, “to rebel is justified (zaofan you li).”[59] Just a few days later, Mao
wrote the heading for a Renmin Ribao article which he entitled “Bombard the Headquar-
ters – My First Big Character Poster”, a literal justification for a top level purge of the
Communist Party.[60] That “Bombard the Headquarters”, apart from its calligraphic
title, was essentially a normal newspaper article and, in fact, not even Mao Zedong’s first
Big Character Poster, emphasized the significance which the Chairman placed on as-
sociating himself with the proletarian calligraphy exemplified by the DaZiBaos of Nie
Yuanzi and the Red Guards. Though he continued to write classically inspired poems,
Mao Zedong clearly wanted to be seen as a proletarian calligrapher, writing Big Charac-
ter Posters like everybody else.
Although the Cultural Revolution was a particularly inhospitable time for elite callig-
raphy with the campaign against the “Four Olds” underway, it also saw the explosion
of DaZiBao and proletarian calligraphy. As self-righteous Red Guards ransacked the
homes of well-known calligraphers such as Shen Yinmo and Pan Tianshou, destroying
their calligraphy as symbols of bourgeois feudalism, they also had calligraphic battles
amongst themselves, the winner being selected to “copy out manifestos and proclama-
tions and to prepare forceful characters for armbands and newspaper mastheads.”[61]
In fact, the calligraphic needs of the Red Guards became so great that the government
art-publishing houses decided to publish booklets for them to help them write attractive
characters. They based their instructions, without any irony, on the works of classic mas-
ters such as Ouyang Xun and Yan Zhenqing.[62] Once more in the People’s Republic,
classical calligraphy was being promoted just as it was being destroyed.
DaZiBao and the context in which they were made thus epitomized the new ideologi-
cal position of proletarian calligraphy. Touted as the best method of struggling against
the bourgeoisie and helping the workers express their frank opinions using their newly
acquired calligraphic skills, their production was nonetheless brought under the strict
oversight of the party. Their role changed somewhat during the Cultural Revolution, as
they not only became an ideological duty for most Chinese, but also a Red Guard weapon
used by Mao to dislodge his political opponents. And though DaZiBao were seen as rep-
resenting everything that was new, good and proletarian in the new China, they were still
written based on the calligraphy of the classic masters.
Conclusion
Thus, as we have seen, the evolution of calligraphy under Mao was steeped in contradic-
tions, alternating from headstrong rejection of its feudal nature to grudging compromise
in the face of its necessity with regards to writing. Calligraphy’s early days in the PRC
were marked by the gradual emergence of the “calligrapher as wandering revolutionary”
archetype, which provided a socially acceptable alternative to the hated “calligraphers
feudal official”. These new revolutionary calligraphers, with their new ideological con-
cept of proletarian calligraphy, launched literacy drives to bring characters to the masses.
Once the masses were made literate, they became expected to produce written support,
DaZiBao, for the regime. Yet, as the DaZiBao proclaimed the death of the Old China,
they were still written using classic models of calligraphy.
Thus, the PRC, despite its best efforts, could never rid itself of its calligraphic tradition,
and the history of calligraphy under Mao is one of compromises with its uneasy feudal
heritage. Characters were retained though simplified, and such simplified characters
were from a mix of popular and elite shorthand forms. The brush was kept, though most-
ly for the elite, as well as controlled propaganda such as DaZiBao; Red Guards wrote
rebellious DaZiBao, though basing themselves on Yan Zhengqing’s classic calligraphy.
Classic calligraphy was still written, despite the purpose of writing being about the use-
lessness of traditions, and the list continues on. Calligraphy under Mao underwent one
of the most momentous changes in its long history, and studying the ways in which it has
changed from 1949 to 1976 shows us a clear example of the competition between not
only two popular archetypes of the “calligrapher”, but also between a classic Chinese
national tradition and an internationalist modern philosophy.
[1] Brushes With Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy, Kraus, R.C., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991,
pg. 75
[2] Ibid, pg. 76
[3] The Art of Calligraphy in Modern China, Barrass, G.S., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, pg. 68
[4] Ibid, pg. 41
[5] Ibid, pg. 76
[6] Ibid, pg. 100
[7] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 58
[8] Ibid, pg. 58
[9] Ibid, pg. 60
[10] Ibid, pg. 58
[11] Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society, Yen, Y., New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005, pg. 33
[12] Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, Frances, J., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, pg. 3
[13] Barrass, G.S., 2002, pg. 116-117
[14] Ibid, pg. 43
[15] Yen, Y., 2005, pg. 31
[16] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 83
[17] Frances, J., 1994, pg. 220
[18] Yen, Y., 2005, pg. 20
[19] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 105
[20] Ibid., pg. 56
[21] Yen, Y., 2005, pg. 3
[22] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 12
[23] Barrass, G.S., 2002, pg. 84
[24] Yen, Y., pg. 111
[25] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 114
[26] Ibid, pg. 119
[27] Barrass, G.S., 2002, pg. 45
[28] Nixon in China, MacMillan, M., Toronto: Penguin Books Canada, 2006, pg. 147
[29] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 59
[30] Barrass, G.S., 2002, pg. 71
[31] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 146
[32] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 76
[33] Ibid., pgs. 77, 78
[34] Ibid., pg. 72
[35] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 77
[36] Ibid., pg. 82
[37] Barrass, G.S., 2002, pg. 46
[38] Ibid., pg. 79
[39] Ibid., pg. 71

[40] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 79
[41] TaTzePao: Its History and Significance as a Communication Medium, Poon, D.J., pg. 189 in Popular Media in China: Shaping New
Cultural Patterns, Chu, G., Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978
[42] Barrass, G.S., 2002, pg. 46
[43] Poon, D.J., 1978, pg. 189
[44] Barras, G.S., 2002, pg. 47
[45] Poon, D.J., 1978, pg. 185
[46] Ibid., pg. 185
[47] Ibid., pg. 187
[48] Ibid., pg. 189
[49] Ibid., pg. 189, 190
[50] Ibid., pg. 192
[51] Ibid., pg. 191
[52] Poon, D.J., 1978, pgs. 190, 191
[53] Ibid., pg. 186
[54] Ibid., pg. 186
[55] Mao’s Last Revolution, MacFarquhar, R.&Schoenhals, M., Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2006, pg. 106
[56] Ibid., pg. 192
[57] Ibid., pg. 198
[58] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 98
[59] Ibid., pg. 88
[60] Ibid., pg. 91
[61] Kraus, R.C., 1991, pg. 98
[62] Barrass, G.S., 2002, pg. 49
Works Cited
1) The Art of Calligraphy in Modern China, Barrass, G.S., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002
2) Brushes With Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy, Kraus, R.C., Berkeley:Univer-
sity of California Press, 1991
3) Mao’s Last Revolution, MacFarquhar, R.&Schoenhals, M., Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2006
4) Nixon in China, MacMillan, M., Toronto: Penguin Books Canada, 2006
5) TaTzePao: Its History and Significance as a Communication Medium, Poon, D.J., in Popular Media in
China: Shaping New Cultural Patterns, Chu, G.,Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978
6) Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society, Yen, Y., New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005
Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, Frances, J., Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994
The failure of nation-building without a conscience : Khmer national identities in
Democratic Kampuchea - Sean Webb
The failure of nation-building with-

out a conscience: Khmer national
identities in Democratic Kampuchea
Sean Webb
One prerequisite for building a “nation” is the presence of a national consciousness to

which the population adheres -- those establishing themselves as leaders need to con-
vince the people they deserve their loyalty and should embrace their national vision.
Leaders wishing to hold state power need to cultivate a kind of nationalism “in which
popular perception of loyalty to the nation and to the state is one and the same.”[1]
Where there are preconceived notions of “nation,” this demands that the leaders in-
doctrinate the population, subordinating societal, and perhaps traditional, concepts of
nationhood and identity to their own concepts if these are not aligned. Ernest Gellner
summarizes this process when he asserts that the “secret to nationalism” is “a high cul-
ture” that “pervades the whole of society” and “defines it.”[2] Ninety percent of the
Cambodian population saw itself as Khmer, creating the impression that “the concept
of the Cambodian nation…coincided with that of the Cambodian state.”[3] This syn-
chronism would seem to indicate that building the Cambodian nation should have been
relatively easy. However, the Khmer Rouge (KR) national vision proposed an identity
that conflicted with that of the population.
Pol Pot and his inner circle were a unique group of students whose world view and opin-
ions of homeland were influenced by their studies abroad and their ties to the indigenous
elite. In short, they had not had the typical Cambodian experience. With an outsider’s
perspective, the group formulated its own ideas of what it meant to be Cambodian and
where Cambodia stood relative to the rest of the world, taking on the French colonial
view of the Khmer people as a fallen race, whose glory needed to be restored. At the same
time, the group proposed a socialist revolution that would allow Cambodians to be to-
tally self-reliant, rejecting foreign support. But, while venerating Cambodia’s traditional
past, the group members failed to incorporate into their national vision the elements of
Cambodia’s culture that had shaped its present identity. For one, they demanded loyalty
to a state quite at odds with the traditional structure of, the monarchy. The traditional
political structure was intrinsically connected to Khmer identity, as the sense of com-
munity was built around the authority of the king, the embodiment of the state and its
religion, Buddhism. Degrading the monarch entailed breaking down the bond between
the state and its people and eliminating the state religion. Further, the group’s form of
socialism implied a radical restructuring of Cambodian society, which included disinte-

grating the family, eradicating what little class formation existed and radical collectiviza-
tion. The fact that the group’s plan denied the vital aspects of Khmer identity a place in
the new society— and would even obliterate them—explains why the KR nation-building
project could never succeed. Success would have required mass mobilization around
the KR national vision ultimately engendering a national consciousness en masse ; the
KR leadership failed to achieve this at all stages of the revolution: before the civil war,
during the civil war and during their rule. This failure resulted in a fragmented ruling
party with little coherence outside the highest levels of leadership and, when coupled
with the radical literalism with which the KR attempted to carry out the revolution, led
the leadership to purge its membership and resort to terror as a means of control. Ulti-
mately, without genuine support, the regime could never hope to achieve its objectives.
1. Imagining the wrong nation: Origins, the Khmer Nation and Cambodian realities
Long live the great and glorious people of Kampuchea[4]
To understand the failure of the KR’s attempt at nation-building, one needs to dissect
their concept of the Khmer nation. This is a three-fold task requiring first an examination
of its origins: the French colonial constructed narrative of Cambodia’s past and its trans-
mission to the Cambodian indigenous elite to which the Kampuchean Communist Party
(KCP) leadership belonged. Second, it requires an understanding of the KR’s concept of
the Cambodian nation and its nationalism. Third, a comparison has to be made between
the proposed Khmer nation and the Cambodian people’s concept of nation to illustrate
the more objective reality of the Cambodian situation. These analyses will demonstrate
that there were significant discrepancies between the KR concept of the Khmer nation
and that of the people-, particularly the peasantry-, and further, that the leadership faced
considerable difficulty in advancing its nation-building project because of this divergence.
In common with much early nation-building in the post-colonial period, the vision of
the Cambodian nation derives from the elite classes that are to lead the project, not from
the masses. That the KR was a small group consisting of educated, elite youths, Pol Pot
and his former schoolmates, is crucial to understanding why the nation-building project
of Democratic Kampuchea was unsuccessful. The education of this small group and its
presumptions about the motherland were in large part shaped (in)directly by the French
colonizers. Their belonging to the indigenous elite inevitably molded the persuasions of
the young leaders concerning their country’s past. Among this elite, there was a domi-
nant narrative of Cambodian history, which owed much to the French colonists. Having
“discovered” the civilization of Angkor for the Cambodians, the French reintroduced
them to their glorious past while highlighting what they perceived as the civilization’s
demise in the 19th century.[5] The French perpetuated myths about the Khmer people
and society that were designed to emphasize their vulnerability, a strategy that both justi-
fied French colonization and shaped the collective memory of the Cambodian elite.[6]
Motifs such as the “gentle land,” “Cambodia’s version of Buddhist Theology” and a
“jungle paradise” in which “the poor but contented peasants passed their days in sen-
sual meditation against a background of ancient splendor” were imbued in the rhetoric
about Cambodian history and society that was later used politically by the indigenous
elite throughout the post-independence era.[7] This produced, what David Chandler
calls a ‘’folie de grandeur’’r among the elite class, which perceived its ancestors as a
civilization that had lost its splendor and thus needed to be revitalized.[8] Pol Pot and his
contemporaries grew up with this collective memory: embracing “what they perceived as
Cambodia’s incomparability” deriving from the glorious age of Angkor Wat, but reject
ing “France’s disempowering protection” that justified itself by emphasizing the passive
nature of the Khmers and their fall from glory.[9] Thus, the KR reading of history can
be seen as at once affirming the French version of Cambodian mythology, which high-
lighted the Khmer’s singularity, and at the same time rejecting the French notion of the
Cambodian need for protection, replacing it with a need to defend Cambodian unique-
ness. Educated in Paris, the group tended to be “more aware of the world at large and the
defects of their own society than other groups in Cambodian society.” [10] Moreover,
the group members’ educational opportunities introduced them to modern political ide-
ologies, notably communism, socialism and nationalism and to Communist revolutions
in other parts of the world.[11] Eventually, the KR would draw on these “–isms” as de-
fense mechanisms against the foreign, ever-threatening “Other.”
According to Khatharya Um, “there was an inherent paradox to Khmer Rouge revo-
lutionary dynamism, that in its forward-oriented aim, it was driven by archaic fanta-
sies.”[12] In its simplest form, the Khmer identity came down to a question of race.
The KR saw their race as unique and separate from that of their neighbors, the Thais
and the Vietnamese. Taken to its extreme, this singularity justified the economic autar-
chy and policies of self-reliance pursued by the KR once in power. After the revolution,
the KR inner circle’s aggrandizement of their race culminated in their belief that their
project was “unprecedented.” However, according to the KR vision, the race had been
defiled. In this defilement, it perceived both an internal and external threat. The Presi-
dent of Democratic Kampuchea, Khieu Samphan, illustrates this in a statement made
on Radio Phnom Penh: “For thousands of years the colonialists, the imperialists and the
reactionary feudalists have dragged us through the mud.”[13] Pursuing this theme, the
KR emphasized the necessity of defending against the Other (particularly the enemies
that infiltrated Khmer society from within and continuing threats from its neighbors on
the borders) to avoid racial elimination. This dual theme— reestablishing a purified so-
ciety and fear of racial annihilation— lay at the heart of the KR nation-building program.
The proposed radical plan (which the Khmer Rouge would follow quite literally), enun-
ciated in a DK government document, was “building socialism on the one hand, and
defending the country and providing a lesson for the future on the other.”[14] These
two objectives were fundamental to a total break with the past and the building of a new
nation. The revolution sought to implement a socialist system that would serve the KR’s
nationalistic ambitions in waging class warfare. The KR linked the socialist revolution
to defense of the nation as it would break ties with, and thereby protect itself against,
the foreign imperialists and the ruling elites, the two historical sources of Cambodia’s
“dependency, economic backwardness and social inequality.” [15]
This vision of the nation must be measured against the historical and present realities of
Cambodia to further contextualize the KR revolution. The question remains: did Khmer
society as a whole subscribe to the same political vision of nationhood and the historical
narrative? To a large extent, the answer is no, as a brief discussion of the pre-revolution-
ary political, social and economic structures will illustrate. Because 85 to 90 percent of
Cambodia’s population was rural, peasant consciousness is a critical factor.[16] The tra-
ditional societal structure, “royalty, officials and peasants,” generally persisted until the
1950s,[17] with little interaction between royalty and the peasants and the officials act-
ing as intermediaries. This disconnect is captured in one peasant’s words: “We worked
at whatever we wanted and we were happy because we didn’t have anyone telling us what
to do.”[18] Moreover, outside the family, there was little social organization in rural
society, which explains the absence of “nationwide movements against the state.”[19]
From the Angkor period until pre-revolution, the “god-king” endured in the minds of
the peasantry as “the official protector of the state and national religion, Budhhism,”[20]
the two essential markers of national identity. The Khmer as a people may have referred
to themselves as “we Khmer,” [21] but this we was entirely different from that proposed
by the KR. In economic terms, the peasantry maintained its small-scale subsistence ag-
riculture throughout the post-colonial era.[22] Even during the French protectorate
years, there was little social mobilization except among a small urban middle class domi-
nated by non-Khmers, such as the Chinese and Vietnamese, who had been selected by
the French.[23] Even the increasing pressure on landholdings due to population growth
in the 1950s and 1960s was insufficient to stir the peasants to anger; the absence of
landlordism, tenant farming, and sharecropping attest to this.[24] Because most peas-
ants worked their own plot of land, they did not face famine or starvation,[25] and even
though the Chinese and Vietnamese capitalists “extracted wealth from the agriculture
sector through usury, taxation or payment for favors,” [26] these “patron-client” [27]
relations were not perceived as taxing. Indeed, the peasants also benefited from the com-
modities the Chinese offered them.[28] Any economic grievances the Cambodian peas-
antry may have had were insufficient to trigger a revolution. It is true that some of the
poorest peasants were known to be disgruntled, but these were isolated cases (yet the
ones the KCP leadership pointed to in supporting their claims).[29]
Nor, despite Pol Pot’s call for purification of Khmer society, did the Khmers harbor such
strong anti-foreign sentiments. This is evidenced in their cordial relations with the Chi-
nese and Vietnamese capitalists. The Khmers may have been resentful of their neighbors
who previously had seized control of some of Cambodia’s border areas, but this did not
translate into xenophobia or fear of racial annihilation.[30] The KCP leaders were aware of
these discrepancies and understood that, to mobilize a support base for their revolutionary
vision, they had to mythologize a strong foreign threat and wake the peasants to their role
in a “hidden” class struggle to eliminate the “apparent” inequalities-; in other words,
to attempt “vertical intensification downwards, obliterating the folk culture and ‘little
cultures’ of the masses.”[31] This task proved intractable, but the way in which the KR
approached it goes some way to explaining their failure at nation-building.
2. An Ambiguous Agenda: Party Evolution from the 1950s to 1975

When pulling out weeds, remove them roots and all[32]
To understand the KR’s failure one needs to look at the development of the Com-
munist party and the leadership strategies for generating support. The party’s in-
ability until the 1970s to garner any support base and its strategic choices in part il-
luminate why it failed to mobilize Cambodians behind the revolutionary cause, a
lack of support that had repercussions for the creation of the Kampuchean nation.
The struggle of Communism/socialism to emerge onto the political scene as a mass

movement in the 1950s and 1960s foreshadows the problems of support and security
it continued to suffer. After Cambodia’s independence, the Communist movement sus-
tained setbacks due to internal factionalism and suppression by the king. There were
two sources of factionalism: ethnic tensions between Khmers and the Vietnamese in-
volved in the party, and differences in political tactics.[33] In addition to this internal
splintering, the King’s ability to suppress the movement as a whole, both politically and
violently, weakened it from the outside.[34] It is in this context that the KCP was born
in 1960 at the Second Party Conference.[35] Although it is unclear whether, as Pol Pot
claimed, the party officially established itself at this meeting, it was here that the “Pol Pot
faction”[36] made itself known. Returning from their sojourn abroad and motivated by
their political education, the young students had maneuvered themselves into a posi-
tion to dominate the party leadership by 1962.[37] However, while their camaraderie
ensured control at the upper levels of the party, attracting a mass membership was more
problematic. Again, it is important to stress that Communist ideals were not popular
among the majority of the population (the peasantry) who were still bound to the tradi-
tional structures of Cambodian life. Despite the claims of Pol Pot’s circle, there was little
evidence that there was a basis for a socialist revolution in Cambodia. Further, by 1963,
Sihanouk’s crackdown against the left had forced virtually all the Paris students to “drop
completely from sight” and “continue their activities underground,” [38] making them
even less popular with the majority. The inability to generate mass support becomes
clearer if one examines the party membership and its armed forces. In 1970, the year
of Lon Nol’s coup d’état and, thus, the beginning of the civil war, the party claimed only
1,000 party cadres and 4,000 recruits in the armed forces; even on the eve of victory,
the recruits had only increased by 3,000.[39] The increasing intensity of party purges
after 1975 suggests that they were unable to identify their rivals until relatively late in the
game.[40] The party’s apparent organizational weakness (except at the “politburo” level)
and lack of membership posed significant challenges and indicates how its national
program diverged from popular sentiments, with tragic consequences for its at-
tempt to build a nation. The literalism with which the party followed its plan re-
quired exceptional organizational capacity and all members to adhere to the program.
In the face of the evidence that there was neither sufficient organization nor sufficient
support for the KR to implement its nation-building project, one might ask how the KR
even came to power in the context of the civil war period. As discussed above, the diver-
gence of the popular nationalism and the nationalism of the Pol Pot group necessitated
a top-down imposition of national identity if the KCP was to achieve its revolution with
mass support -- unless another opportunity arose to mobilize the population. The im-
mediate historical context in which the revolution evolved illustrates the KR’s support-
generating techniques in two ways. First, the U.S. bombardment “constituted one of the
more potent catalysts for national awakening,” in the sense that the catastrophic damage
to the economy and society encouraged the breakdown of “peasant nativism.”[41] There
was mass displacement and social upheaval, with Phnom Penh’s population expanding
“from 600,000 to about two million,”[42] and the economy was “gravely disrupted”
[43] with rice production, Cambodia’s leading export, being particularly impacted. As
Khatharya Um argues, “when the destruction and deprivation are easily identifiable
with a source that is foreign and hereditarily antagonistic, mobilization along the na-
tionalist line becomes that much more conducive.”[44] The Vietnamese occupation of
certain areas also made Cambodians more susceptible to nationalist mobilization. [45]
The KR was the only viable option as the nationalist resistance movement, as even the
KCP admitted in their 1976 account of the party’s history:, “although they did not want
to join us, when the storm came they had to come and take shelter in our refuge.”[46]
Second, King Sihanouk, widely popular among the Cambodian peasantry both for his
position as monarch and for his personality, was ousted from power in March 1970 by the
U.S.-backed, anti-communist Lon Nol, an event of great significance for Pol Pot and his
group. This “combination of economic catastrophe and political opportunity” [47] was
to provide them with the chance to penetrate the political system. The forced removal of
Sihanouk immediately resulted in “violent peasant protests,” [48] and was accompanied
by the installation of an allegedly U.S.-backed regime during the U.S. bombardment.
Concealing its communist identity, the KR strategically allied itself with Sihanouk, rep-
resenting itself as the leader in a united national front against a regime assumed to be
“the faithful servants of the American imperialists” [49] who were bombing the country.
This alliance demonstrates the KR’s awareness that “religious and social values [were]
deeply embedded in the collective consciousness” of the Khmer peasantry; the leader-
ship subsequently linked “traditional values with its cause.”[50] A Cambodian civilian,
Thach Diem, noted that, when speaking with the peasantry, the KR claimed “they had
come to help liberate Sihanouk and that they were there to help Sihanouk fight Lon
Nol so that Sihanouk would win back his country.”[51] At the same time, Thach Diem
recalled that the KR concealed its communist nature, and “even the people who were
working for them didn’t know about it.”[52] Even the revolutionary songs from the
early years of the revolution contain no mention of the communist party, only ap-
pealing imagery alluding to “the land and the harvest” alongside direct attacks aimed
at the Lon Nol regime: “Killing them, until the Lon Nol bandits are destroyed.”[53]
The events of the 1970s provided the KR leadership with opportunities for organiza-
tional expansion. On the one hand, the war and the coup d’état left the population with
no choice but to turn to the KR; on the other, the KR could exploit the symbols of the
monarchy and traditional society. While this tactic proved effective in the immediate
term, it was problematic in several ways. The KR’s organizational expansion should be
attributed not so much to a successful top-down transfer of nationalism as to the peo-
ple’s need to seek refuge in the only possible resistance movement in the face of foreign
attacks and the resulting widespread disorder. Moreover, the strategic alliance with the
king entirely misled the population as to the nature of the KR’s agenda. Most peasants
were confused about what the KR was and what was its political agenda, especially after
the taking of Phnom Penh. When it became clear that the KR was not working for the
King, the genuine support base to a large extent evaporated; nor did the KR’s secrecy
and dissembling aid them in mobilizing the people. How could the regime expect to
engender loyalty if the population did not even know who Angkar (the party) was? By
1973, it had become clear that the king was merely a figurehead with little control over
the liberation front, but by then the KR were firmly in control.[54] By keeping Siha-
nouk out of power and replacing him with Angkar, an organization that enjoyed little
popular support because it did not adequately embody the nationalism of the populace,
the KR effectively destroyed the glue that held the nation together. The failure to forge
popular nationalism with its own vision of nationalism marked a vulnerability in the
KR’s nation-building project, a vulnerability that would extend into the regime’s rule.
3. Continued Incoherence and Neglect: the Revolution in Power

Let us all together commit ourselves to follow the way of the Angkar[55]
Having seized Phnom Penh, Pol Pot and his inner circle were confronted with the para-
doxical task of “realizing their revolutionary vision while maintaining power.”[56] Dur-
ing the KR rule, the incoherent, evolving plans of the leadership, the neglect of “social
engineering and the elevation of political consciousness,” [57] and the lack of strong
support and resulting organizational fragmentation, mutually doomed the leadership’s
nation-building project to failure. The uncompromising nature of the regime’s totalist
policies magnified the consequences of these problems leaving the leaders suspicious
of internal and external threats and ultimately prompting them to resort to terror and
violence as instruments of consolidation and mobilization. When its plans failed, the Pol
Pot group did not attempt to adjust them, but instead, blamed dissent, fueling a cycle of
paranoia and terror that ultimately undid its program.
The Pol Pot leadership premised its utopian revolution on the engineering of a national
political consciousness. A major reason for its inability to generate this consciousness
was that its agenda was clandestine and never fully coherent. The ideas sprang from a
small group of individuals “bonded largely by the urban background … and intermar-
riages[,] … the circle of ‘clandestine camaraderie’ of the years in Paris.”[58] This con-
cealment continued until late 1977, provoking confusion among the mass membership
and particularly the regional leadership as regards policies and plans. Even the party
admitted that “its philosophy and consciousness are [were] not yet clear.”[59] Another
reason the KR were unable to nurture the growth of a national movement was the fact
that they did not invest in an education system that could help to achieve this goal. In
fact, they did the opposite. In May 1975, the core leadership ordered the education sys-
tem to “cease at all levels,” [60] and following this announcement, the KR “destroyed
90 percent of all school buildings, emptied libraries and burned their contents, and
smashed nearly all school laboratory equipment.”[61] They demolished the education-
al infrastructure and attacked those who used it: “75% of the teaching force, 96% of
tertiary students and 67% of all [elementary and secondary] pupils died in Democratic
Kampuchea.”[62] No effective replacement was offered: “education was given, at best,
cursory and pro forma attention.”[63] Regarding the Four-Year Plan to Build Socialism
in All Fields, Pol Pot remarked, that “we study in order to serve the goals of the revolu-
tion.”[64] This attitude led the regime to hire “teachers…from peasant backgrounds
but often with minimal education themselves and no real teaching experiences” and to
select students from peasant backgrounds for the few schools that were established.[65]
However, the limited amount of school, which only the poorest of peasants were selected
to attend, attests to the fact that this strategy was not effective in inculcating the majority
of the population with KR values. For most, education as a means of building revolution-
ary consciousness was translated into work: “seven or eight year olds up to about 13 to
14 years olds were organized in separate work teams.”[66] There were also frequent
meetings at which “dances, songs and music” were used to cultivate revolutionary spirit
and “re-education camps” for those who disobeyed.[67] The weakness of the policies
designed to make the population internalize revolutionary fervor prevented any nation-
alist consciousness from materializing in Democratic Kampuchea; as a 1976 report on
building socialism notes, “political consciousness…lags behind the other aspects. It has
not yet transformed the collectivity, even in economic terms.”[68] The lack of benefits
from economic and social policies further discouraged the people from supporting the
nation-building effort. The rejection of those with technical skills who had worked under
past regimes severely damaged public amenities such as healthcare. Doctors “trained for
six months in simple health care” and were often “nine to thirteen13 year old nurses from
peasant backgrounds, trained for three months.”[69] Modern and foreign medicine was
strictly prohibited “because it was not originally Khmer.”[70] In failing to promote their
revolutionary message effectively and neglecting to take care of the people, the KR for-
feited the opportunity to mobilize the people behind a new nation. The irony behind the
KR project was that their fixations with Angkor’s past glory worked to deconstruct the
traditional elements that had remained a part of Khmer culture, and by extension iden-
tity, until the 1970s. The abolition of the monarch, Buddhism and private property and
the breakdown of the family structure in favor of collective communes and coercion
did not bring about a nation of people actively supporting the KR project, but rather,
a collective fear that made people passively submit to brutality in hopes of survival.
Failure to develop a national consciousness at all three stages of the revolution impacted
it catastrophically. The lack of organization and coherence, a reoccurring theme through-
out the party’s evolution, can be traced to the leadership’s inability to popularize its ideas
of the Cambodian nation among its cadres, let alone its citizens. Without a strong, con-
sistent organization or support base, Pol Pot’s radical agenda could not be carried out ef-
fectively. Across the regional zones of Democratic Kampuchea, there were wide incon-
sistencies as to what the prescribed policies should be and how they were implemented.
Inconsistency translated into inefficiency. Moreover, these discrepancies also resulted in
paranoia at the top, which fuelled purges of suspected counterrevolutionaries who were
infiltrating the system. Gradually mutilating its already small membership, the party ren-
dered its radical vision even more unsuccessful. The only method available for maintain-
ing power was a system of terror and violence with little support from the outside world
(“self-reliance”), the Cambodian population, or even the party members. The radical
plan never took hold in minds outside Pol Pot’s small group, ; and without the national
consciousness on which a nation is built, the revolution fell as quickly as it had arisen.
[1] Kate Frieson, “The Political Nature of Democratic Kampuchea,” Pacific Affairs 61, no. 3 (1988): 411.
[2] Ben Kiernan, “Myth, Nationalism and Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 3, no. 2 (2001): 196.
[3] Kate Frieson, “The Political Nature of Democratic Kampuchea,” 410.
[4] Henri Locard, Pol Pot’s Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2004), 45.
[5] David Chandler, “From ‘Cambodge’ to ‘Kampuchea’: State and Revolution in Cambodia 1863-1979,” Thesis Eleven 50, no. 1 (1997): 36.
[6] Ibid., 37.
[7] Craig Etcheson, The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), 11.
[8] David Chandler, “From ‘Cambodge’ to ‘Kampuchea’: State and Revolution in Cambodia 1863-1979,” 37.
[9] David Chandler, “From ‘Cambodge’ to ‘Kampuchea’: State and Revolution in Cambodia 1863-1979,” 38.
[10] Roeland A. Burgler, The Eyes of the Pineapple: Revolutionary Intellectuals and Terror in Democratic Kampuchea (Fort Lauderdale: Verlag
breitenbach Publishers, 1990), 12-13.
[11] Craig Etcheson, The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, 49.
[12] Khatharya Um, “The Broken Chain: Genocide in the Re-construction and Deconstruction of Cambodian Society,” Social Identities 4, no. 1
(1998), http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ijh&AN=49.1235&site=ehost-live.
[13] Roeland A. Burgler, The Eyes of the Pineapple: Revolutionary Intellectuals and Terror in Democratic Kampuchea, 58.
[15] Ibid., 410.
[16] Kate Frieson, “Revolution and Rural Response in Cambodia, 1970-1975,” in Genocide and Democracy: The Khmer Rouge, the United Na-
tions and the International Community, ed. Ben Kiernan (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, 1994), 43.
[17] Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Pinter Publishers, 1986), 51.
[18] Kate Frieson, “Revolution and Rural Response in Cambodia, 1970-1975,” 43.
[19] Ibid, 34.
[23] Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society, 51.
[24] Khatharya Um, “The Broken Chain: Genocide in the Re-construction and Deconstruction of Cambodian Society.”
[25] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ben Kiernan, “Myth, Nationalism and Genocide,” 190.
[31] Ibid., 197.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid., 46.
[37] Ibid., 47.
[38] Ibid., 59-60.
[40] Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1996), 134.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Ibid.
[52] Ibid.
[54] Ibid., 132.
[57] Ibid.
[58] Ibid.
[59] Ibid.
[60] Thomas Clayton, “Building the New Cambodia: Educational Destruction and Construction under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979,” History
of Education Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1998), 6.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Ibid., 7
[64] Thomas Clayton, “Building the New Cambodia: Educational Destruction and Construction under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979,” 9.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Ibid., 83.
[70] Ibid.
Works Cited
Burgler, Roeland A. The Eyes of the Pineapple: Revolutionary Intellectuals and Terror in Democratic Kampu-
chea. Fort Lauderdale: Verlag breitenbach Publishers, 1990.
Chandler, David. “From ‘Cambodge’ to ‘Kampuchea’: State and Revolution in Cambodia 1863-1979.” The-
sis Eleven 50, no. 1 (1997).
Clayton, Thomas. “Building the New Cambodia: Educational Destruction and Construction under the Khmer
Rouge, 1975-1979.” History of Education Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1998).
Etcheson, Craig. The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea. Boulder: Westview Press, 1984.
Frieson, Kate. “Revolution and Rural Response in Cambodia, 1970-1975.” In Genocide and Democracy:
The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community, edited by Ben Kiernan. New Haven:
Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, 1994.
Frieson, Kate. “The Political Nature of Democratic Kampuchea.” Pacific Affairs 61, no. 3 (1988).
Kiernan, Ben. “Myth, Nationalism and Genocide.” Journal of Genocide Research 3, no. 2 (2001).
Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-
1979. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Locard, Henri. Pol Pot’s Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2004.
Um, Khatharya. “The Broken Chain: Genocide in the Re-construction and Deconstruction of Cambodian
Society.” Social Identities 4, no. 1 (1998), http://search.ebscohost.com/.
Vickery, Michael. Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society. London: Pinter Publishers, 1986.
War Memorial
Joshua Cader
The shrine of memory is the memorial. War memorials are explicit glorifications of war,
or, as this mode of thinking becomes unfashionable in countries that consider them-
selves post-industrial service economies, and thus post-modern (Bennett 269), perhaps
glorification of the second order, that is to say that as war is recognized by those that
consider themselves civilized as terrible, it must be blessed indirectly (as war involves
teams, it is useful for group cohesion, and so should be blessed) by blessing those who
have “sacrificed” themselves (been killed). The “sacrificed” are said to have always died
with the knowledge of what they were fighting for; however, what was died for is com-
monly changed ex-post-facto. In the case of Japan, for instance, those who died fighting
in the Greater East Asia War (大東亜戦争) are said to have fought in the non-existent
Fifteen Year War (十五年戦争) or its component parts, and to have died for the society
formed by the latter, not for the society that the architects of the Greater East Asia War
intended to form. That is, it is implicitly claimed that soldiers died so that their country
could be occupied by the Allies, not for perceived imperial glory (despite obvious indica-
tors to the contrary). To refer to a parallel example, in Canada, those who fought in the
War to End All Wars were not fighting in World War I. They did not fight to set the stage
for World War II (as the sequence of numerals would imply); they fought to end war.
History here decides after the fact what is the “fact”, in part through naming (at the very
least, textbooks require titles and subtitles). Particular memories are not only chosen to
become history; the names by which they will assume this status are also chosen: these
lids on the containers of memory being – in no small part due to history being catego-
rized in texts which require headings in bold and lists of dates associated with events
divorced from context – perhaps more important than the content itself considering the
limited amount that can be communicated if one hopes to reach a mass audience. War
memorials are what history is at a shallow (designed to be affective) level: the impres-
sively physical embodiments of these lids, of a date and a name; they are the lessons,
materialized, which the government wishes to impart to us.
When Fidel Castro declared “History will absolve me” while on trial for armed insur-
rection, it was with a conviction that history, the enactment of human self-development
as found in Hegel, the history as seen through the world-spirit (in a famous example,
Napoleon being designated by Hegel as the “world-spirit on horseback” as an exemplar
of the dynamic process of history), will progress. In
War Memorial - Joshua Cader
other words, Castro’s statement assumes human development will continue to the point
where his actions are recognized as being in line with the linear progress of history.
Therein lies a conviction that one represents the future, or rather, the past upon which
the future will lay judgment. This is, given a reasonable amount of time, always the case
(except when, say, the claims are so ridiculous that they are somehow noted as impor-
tant as a historical ironic joke), as if history did not vindicate the prophecy, the previ-
ous words would not be in line with development and thus would be discarded from the
record as unnecessary. Any lesson can be imparted by the state as the government that
exists is, by definition, the most progressive, and thus in line with history, and can thus
draw on what is history for justification simply by being its descendant.
This is the war memorial, the empty symbol of mere descendence from things that did not
exist at the time they begat the future that has become the present. It could be argued that
this is only those war memorials that have lost their personal character, their relationship
to those actually living, but war memorials that bear marks of individuality are few, as
their function is to elicit group feeling; the more individualized they are, the less sizeable
the group may be that identifies with the message inherent. The more controversial the
subject, the more abstract the material memorial is required to be if it is to function as an
effective factor for cohesion. Perhaps the classic example of this is the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Wall: a massive scar of a gravestone symbolizing a healing wound. Ironically,
there can be controversy about whether or not there is controversy (and thus an abstract
approach would be necessary), which in the case of the Wall, led to a traditional heroic
statue being erected some metres away. A non-statement was identified as anti-tradi-
tionalism (and thus anti-natural and inherently bad). This is seen in Japan as well, with
calls for a secular, abstract memorial to serve as replacement for the religious, concrete
Yasukuni in the national imaginary being derided in traditional quarters.
Individuals (the actual people) themselves can be considered living memorials, but a
proper useful example in this way is rare. That is, “useful” in fomenting the ideal group
spirit, with coherence being required for legitimacy. People can be memorialized as he-
roes when living, but there are always the parts of the person that exist that would be
considered non-heroic under the rubric that outlines the qualities determining heroism
in the first place. A living person will always contain all his or her qualities, and those
non-useful ones cannot be as easily forgotten, or perhaps more accurately, simply not
remembered, as they continue to exist in the present with constant opportunities for
debunking the myths surrounding the halo-encrusted whole.
Even those with a possibility for canonization pre-mortem are invariably those who have
been scarred by the circumstances that cause the shears that are considered to effect
historical progress in the Hegelian sense. Those who have been
scarred are stereotypically considered to not want to talk about it, or, if the words escape,
are so full of vehemence that they are commonly dismissed as marginal. A person memo-
rialized is invariably constructed. The personal is pruned to create the statement, as the
full catalogue of events is pruned to create the history that is enshrined in the memorial.
This is not to say that other strains of history do not exist in parallel to be argued about
by professional historians as competing reconstructions, but the history sanctioned by
the state, that which is to be memorialized, that which will provide the impetus for argu-
ments between state actors, is the history as explained in a high-school textbook (“In
fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue”-type statements). Know-
ing the cause of a historical war (as opposed to one considered currently relevant and still
argued over commonly as it has not yet passed into the common record with a commonly
agreed upon linearity) as a Serbian guy shooting an archduke is more than most would
ask for, however the still-arguable history, the one that positions may be taken on, for
or against various interpretations, among historians – a case of national ambition in the
days of high colonialism – is only recalled by those who consider themselves part of an
enknowledged elite. This history is largely irrelevant, as the history that is under consid-
eration is not that which may or may not exist, but that which is required to be effective,
and it is effective in inverse proportion to the thought it demands, as thought engenders
doubt.
To return to individual war memorialization, such an anomaly will, with the death of the
individuals involved, become overridden by those memorials sanctioned by the largest
and most efficient (in terms of ability to trade and thus produce a society and goods for its
members, and thus commanding default allegiance) group one can identify with in our
nationalized world. It is these, timeless memorials – timeless as long as the government
that created the monument sees the utility of identification with it (though the utility is
quite likely to remain in the form of empty shells with a sort of generally agreed upon
historical value: the governed have already agreed that it is a thing that is less contrived
than the government itself and thus can lend legitimacy), the utility only diminished if
the symbols represented have picked up a disproportionate amount of negative conno-
tations due to their past uses – that we think of when we think of a war memorial. A big
commissioned statue somewhere, a plaque, some ceremony from time to time at a specif-
ic spot, a public park, a square, perhaps on a specific date, etc. Canada’s Remembrance
Day, for instance, initially tied to the historical moment “of note”, the date of the 1918
Armistice, in its becoming further removed from this sacred day as time goes on gains
usefulness as a catch-all state legitimizer that cannot be argued with (as sacrifice, if ac-
cepted, is unarguable, and it is considered foul play to not accept). Ironically, becoming
disconnected from the fact – that is, due to length of time (do the French hold school as-
semblies in, say, remembrance of Waterloo?) rendering the fact less powerful along with
a general sense that the First World War was not as “principled” as the Second, and thus
less useful in imparting a sense of shared principledness – has granted it usefulness,
perceived relevance, and thus survival. This phenomenon can be seen in perhaps its
most evocative and concrete form in the various Tombs of the Unknown Soldier that
began proliferating in various countries after the First World War. These “tombs” rep-
resent nothing except for a vague concept of sacrifice. The vagueness lends legitimacy:
as it does not even memorialize the soldiers of a certain war (the merits and justness of
which could then be argued), all that is imparted is legitimacy for the inheritor state.
This is the war memorial: solemn, unquestionable, with the possibility of being sullied
and thus rendered less useful by connection to the actual lived past (lived by those still
living in our present), but rendered more powerful if it can claim to reach through what
is lived into what is dead (as the dead not are not to be spoken ill of). Yasukuni Shrine is
a fine example.
Takahashi Tetsuya describes Yasukuni’s function, as originally established by the Meiji

state, as the “central locus of a national religion.” (Breen 106). This, along with the func-
tion of education (to support the ambitions of the nation as instituted by the 1890 Impe-
rial Rescript on Education) provided the support base for the nascent military and its
state. In the context of a perceived loss of self-sufficiency and full self-government due to
colonial encroachment, the military was the source of legitimacy of the state as seen from
without, that is other powerful state actors with their own powerful militaries judged the
ability to govern of the state in question from its military power, this being simultane-
ously self-serving and allowing themselves a certain measure of self-justification. The
former as if a country could be taken by force or forced to submit in some way, then it
should be taken over, and the latter, related, can be seen in the British idea of Empire
made up of nations formerly suppressed by inefficiency and backwardness conquered en
masse by a greater (in terms of ability to gain control) state, with its, by implication, more
efficient administrators, creating an environment allowing for the nation to re-emerge
and flourish at some point after tutelage (Bennett 235). Thus the need (to counter such
encroachment) for state power flowing from the barrel of a gun, and thus the need for the
support of these guns in the form of the coalescing of the state around the triple pillars of
a “national” and “patriotic” education system, the military, and Yasukuni Shrine as the
central site for the spiritualization of the nation.
Spiritualization is easy to take as a given where it is present in a form that is seen as

unifying (as it is the appearance of homogeneity and not the fact of it that is impor-
tant in its usability for mobilizing purposes). Unification can only occur within the
context that is aware of the without. In Japan, this oppositional mode, while arguably
present beforehand in relations with China, gained full realization only with the ad-
vent of Meiji, the Meiji Restoration being “a major turning point in Japanese history,
marking the transition from a loose association of semi-autonomous feudal domains
to a highly centralized government bent on instilling a sense of national identity under
the nominal authority of the emperor. The changes were far reaching and dramatic,
driven by a perceived threat from Western imperialism and the need to put Ja-
pan on an equal footing in terms of industrial and military capacity.” (Schnell 270)
Schnell’s assessment does not preclude, of course, an analysis or recognition of compet-

ing interests in the assertion of a state or national identity. An example given by Francis
Robinson of contemporary interest is the “fundamental connection between Islam and
political separation.” (Hutchinson & Smith 216) When the emphasis is on within, it
can be ironically also a coalescing factor by this initial non-realization of the other, that
is, in this example, where a state has an overwhelmingly Muslim population, there will
invariably be parties whose “professed aim is to impose its vision of the Islamic ideal on
contemporary politics and society” (216). Thus the difference is one of degree or type
of belief, as well as differential power relations among those holding various types of
beliefs. The coalescing factor where one would seem to be absent is, when the outside
is encountered as it invariably will be in our media-saturated age, the shock at the differ-
ence being (relatively) one of kind, making the internal difference of degree, heretofore
thought important, recede into the background. As it does in this case, the impulse to
unify with the relatively similar often develops as a response to the shock of encounter-
ing the other. A belief professed to be fundamental is powerful in this way, as it forms
the core of what a person identifies as their being without the intervention of rational
thought. When others that do not have a similar belief at their core are encountered,
it can be – if further probing is not attempted such as the recognition of shared values
through conversation – meeting someone who cannot be reasoned with, as the faculty of
reason is identified as stemming from the fundamental belief.
When a nation’s spiritualization is not in the form of a specific book or canon that can be
read, understood, and thus adopted, the adopter becoming a nation member via an exo-
teric process (such as reading a book to pass a citizenship test), group membership can
be more difficult to inculcate, as it is less explainable and rational. But for the purposes
of the nation it is designed for, it can be far more of a coalescing factor due to its exclu-
sivity. The esoteric quality of the belief can thus be conceived as more of what would be
considered a feeling, that is, what is commonly thought of when the word “spiritual” is
used: ephemeral and ghost-like. It is not explainable by conventional means, and this
provides all the more reason for it to be perfectly open to manipulation and thus useful as
a state tool. If the esoteric spiritual can impress a quality on the nation that is indescrib-
able, it becomes ever harder to reason the unreasonable away and thus distance oneself
from the overarching claim by the spiritual administrators to exclusive rights over the
individuals in a catchment area. A non-canonical spirituality is the best means of con-
tinuously maintaining control over the effects of said spirituality; who is in, who is out,
and what the beliefs are, are completely fluid and indeterminate. There is an expectation
of simple acceptance because it is not a religion in terms of a gospel, guiding principles,
doctrine; it is simply what life is for the nation. If one is truly a member of the nation, this
is the practice – the nation is the spirituality is the nation. The nation is the practices
that uphold it, that is, its culture. While it has been argued (by Kuper, among count-
less others) that the term “culture” is so overused that it is best to break it down into its
component parts and to speak of beliefs, ideas, art, traditions, etc., it is perhaps best to
describe the nation, amorphous in its own right, as buttressed by an equally amorphous
concept, and continuing further down the line to the element of spirituality: the nation is
a ghost. The ghost, however, is accepted to play an important role in determining what a
person belongs to and thus for the purposes of comparison with the other, is. Identifica-
tion, like spirituality – the ghost – is mutable, and thus subject to manipulations, or that
is, the identifying façade (that which is viewed from without and thus leads to differentia-
tion, along national or other lines) is mutable, as what it is cannot be pinned down.
The definition of the nation as a concept is difficult to stabilize and thus put to use. The
role “nations” are seen to play in inter-state or “international” discourse is telling in this
regard. A collection of what are decidedly states is called the United Nations, a confla-
tion perhaps generated by the appeal of the natural in that “nation” evokes tribal con-
notations of the Volk, the grass-roots, the bottom-up formation while “state” implies a
bureaucracy, an elite, top-down formation. This conflation points toward the conclusion
that that the “nation” concept is powerful though it does not exist as a well defined ob-
ject. It is because it does not exist except as ghost-like, however, that it is so powerful,
because what does not exist cannot be questioned. Though attempts have been made at
definition, these are always (with the exception of academia) within the framework of the
useful construction, that is, it is defined in a way that will allow the concept of “nation”
to put to use. For example, Stalin defined it for the purposes of his national homelands
(Autonomous Okrugs and the like) as “a historically constructed, stable community of
people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psy-
chological make-up manifested in a common culture.” (Hutchinson & Smith 20) This
relies on the similarly amorphous “culture”. Further, what constitutes stability is subject
to whether the nation has some sort of recognizable authority that fits into the current
world order to the point where the authority of the other can recognize a same. No mat-
ter how concrete the definition of “nation” is made to seem, there is always at its heart
various abstractions, and thus any characteristic assigned to it can pass as something any
member of the nation should understand according to official and general discourse.
The spirit of the nation is perhaps best described by Renan as being subject to “an ev-
eryday plebiscite.” (Hutchinson & Smith 17) When something is chosen, it is necessary
to choose rationally, if not, the choice becomes arbitrary. If it comes down to accepting
whether there is a common spirit, the price of denial is exile, at least in thought, thus
denial of the communal spirit carries a high cost; the choice is ready-made. Insofar as the
amorphousness of the ghostly spirituality is alluring, once it is followed, the populace
can be more easily corralled.
This spiritual choice, in Japan’s case, can be seen at work in what has come to be known
as “the historian’s debate”; the representative figures of this debate who will be consid-
ered here are Takahashi Tetsuya and the literary critic Katō Norihiro. Katō’s discourse,
as seen in his Haisengō Ron [After the Defeat], identifies a “personality split”, a ref-
erence to the “opposition between the reformists and the conservatives.” (Calichman
194) The reformists represent an “outward looking self”, one that depends on foreign
universal ideas, and the conservatives are an “inward looking self” that is grounded in
“traditional” values of the homeland, purity of ethnicity, the emperor, etc. (194). As
Takahashi points out, the argument is proceeding from the premise that “Japan” ex-
ists as a singular personality in the first place whereas different strains of thought are
universal. He brings up the example of the American Democratic and Republican par-
ties and asks if these are two equally opposed personalities that must be unified. Katō’s
is a typical nationalist argument, consisting of restoring the cohesion that has been
lost at some point in the past that is populated with only the dead – whenever it is, it
is a time that nobody remembers personally, but everybody remembers it as it is what
is remembered by society. The nationalist goal of “oneness” requires the synthesis of
that which was never together (or strictly, apart). In our current system, however, it is
perhaps best that the synthesis is believed possible, and its possibility is heightened by
the acceptance of its putative existence at some point immemorial, but immemorial in
the way that it is always just out of reach to the last person (that is, living and existing
in the commonly accepted existing present) that may remember – grasping at a ghost.
The reason for cohesion, however, is not for its own sake, but for what has been iden-
tified by Katō as a noble cause – the personality split must be repaired, “rigourously
eliminated in order for the Japanese to apologize to the Asian War victims as a uni-
fied ‘national subject’” (194). How can this chasm, identified as a terrible lack of
cohesion that is necessary for the imagined community to exist (that the commu-
nity may be imagined is neglected in Katō’s thought), be repaired? By not, to take a
position identified with the reformists, focusing “solely on the Asian victims” (201)
of the Greater East Asia War, but rather to first of all “deeply mourn the dead of [the
Japanese] nation”, and particularly “the soldiers”, that is to “respect” and “thank”
them from the perspective of those that are considered to form the imagined com-
munity of postwar Japanese. That is, life is good, so the past must be venerated.
This veneration, would, however, ignore three things. First, the present conditions are
not necessarily directly linked to the actions of “soldiers”. Second, that the outcomes of
the soldiers’ actions are opposed to their intentions (stated by their superiors) of creat-
ing an Asia “for Asians”, of creating a sphere free of the influence of those identified as
malevolent by the government that did support and the government that continues to
support war, the latter being made apparent by the continuation of the national venera-
tion project by deciding that there is a need for some form of mourning. For example,
when disparaging the place of Yasukuni, the reason is not given as “there is no need to
to identify with the past”, but rather that Yasukuni is a source of problems in the pres-
ent due to the baggage it is considered to carry (by Japanese nationals and foreigners
alike) as a spiritual place that has been stripped of the required subtlety and hidden
perversity (as opposed to the government-led projects of forming history while hiding
the exact forms to escape criticism), and thus must be replaced by a secular memorial
with less identifiable power, that is a toning down as opposed to a rejection. Third, that
such veneration is not for either the dead or for the living, but rather what is seen to
unite them both (their shared subservience to society, even though their societies are
radically different), and is thus a form of social self-worship (Hutchinson & Smith 65).
It is a worship of the present conditions by mistakenly affirming what the present is not
(say, embroiled in an all-encompassing project such as total war), as opposed to what
it is. This suggests a certain amount of shame about the present, as if there is an un-
derstanding among the administrators that worshipping the inhumanity of the present
society would not create popular support, and suggests a certain amount of popular dis-
satisfaction with current conditions. Can production be worshipped, or exports? Per-
haps, and seeing dams built to wall up the smallest of waterways and then presented as
tourist attractions may be a first step towards honesty in self-worship, but a fully honest
religious system along these lines is unlikely, perhaps due to the rise and fall of eco-
nomic conditions, conditions which are always affirmed to be of the present. That is, the
time lapse between one point identified as an “economic condition” and another is so
short that the causality is either determined by the individual to be readily apparent to
be prone to flux (to those who follow along and, say, read the Nihon Keizai Shinbun or
The Economist) or incomprehensible and unidentifiable (to those who do not). Neither
of these two is suitable for worship, due to instability. Gods must be presentable as im-
mutable, but their existence comprehensible (that is, can be comprehended within the
rubric of the present, and thus provide comfort). The dead at Yasukuni are both firmly
entrenched within an unquestionable historical narrative (for all except those who main-
tain that there should be no mourning at all) and are identifiable (as people who could
be ancestors, and thus part of a recognized continuity). Further, they are perfectly still
and unchanging (as they are dead), and thus cannot be questioned. The problem here
is what it is that cannot be questioned. It is not the actual, past motives of the dead, as
they are unknowable and are subject to aggregation; the individual motives may have
existed but the motive of the mass is a jumble of conflicting desires (that of course do
not exist, following their death). The aggregation is even stated directly, and not indi-
rectly, the latter as in say, when the people who died while wearing a military uniform
are referred to by the collective designation “soldiers”. The former, this directness, at
Yasukuni, comes with the particular way the dead soldiers (or rather, the administra-
tively constructed image of individual dead soldiers) are “enshrined and worshipped as
‘glorious spirits’ in the Yasukuni shrine” (Breen 109), that is, Yasukuni is not “merely
a place of mourning the war dead [say, a site set up so that a daughter could mourn her
father who had died in the war]; it has always functioned as an apparatus of celebration,
one that transfigures the war dead into a sacred, divine existence by enshrining them as
glorious ‘spirits’, and eulogizing their meritorious deeds.” (113, interpolation mine)
Furthermore, these spirits and their deeds are explicitly collectivized, as is shown
by the requests, invariably denied, by relatives of the dead for a withdrawal from
the “enshrinement registers of Yasukuni”. The argument given is that the spir-
its have been collectivized and thus the individual cannot be de-enshrined.
Lawsuits filed with the goal of de-enshrinement have been directed not only against Ya-
sukuni, but against the state representing “Japan” which had provided the list of dead
soldiers to the shrine in the first place. Many of these requests and subsequent lawsuits
are instigated by relatives of the “glorious spirits” that identify as Taiwanese or South
Korean, implying that these dead would, if alive today themselves, be seen as non-Japa-
nese, and adopt (which implies being) a non-Japanese identity. By playing a part in this
process, the Japanese state has committed a grave mistake, not in the sense of moral fault,
but that of strategy. If the state wishes to preserve its coherence, it is important to have
the official history show a direct line of descent. Having a list of names that is Imperial
in character, having people who are considered by those who feel some sort of personal
and not just over-arching societal connection to their memory (the most likely example
being family members) to be non-Japanese according to the outlines of the Japanese
community as imagined and referenced today, shows that the successor state – and if the
state is to claim legitimacy at all, the successor society to the Empire of Japan – is not
today’s official “Japan”, but rather non-existent. By enshrining Koreans or Taiwanese as
Yasukuni gods, the line of descent is complicated and diffused and thus the pure national
subject desired is fragmented. All states will have such slip-ups at one time or another,
allowing more history to creep into the argument than is strictly necessary for claims of
descent (and thus too much, causing braches on the claim, not allowing for neatness).
Present here, in Japan’s case, is the implicit claim of having been built by groups that are
greater than or outside the current group upon which the state, after being legitimized
by these outsiders, confers national legitimacy. For example, Japan’s “closed commu-
nity of mourning” (Breen 205) may be wished for in order to bring about the unified na-
tional subject promoted by Katō, but it is now blurred. Koreans, to whom apologies are
professed to be owed, are also those who should be mourned, and thanked. As are Tai-
wanese. Okinawans, who are supposed to thank and mourn, being within the arbitrary
boundaries of the state, should, according to this rubric, be apologizing to the Koreans
for causing harm to their (at the time) non-existent state. Conversely, Okinawans, now,
according to the logic of the state, a subset of the Japanese, could be apologized to by
“Japanese” (as a whole) for having to “participate in the war at the request of the army”
(Calichman 118) during a time when they could have been executed for “allegedly spy-
ing on the Japanese military”. However, Okinawans, as members of the Japanese polity,
are people who reap the benefits the enshrined spirits supposedly fought for, so they
should be apologizing to someone/thing/society. It is impossible to tell: the logic breaks
down, as it does when the categories it relies on are blurred. To take an extreme example,
what does the man from Nanjing who immigrates to Japan, and becomes a citizen, do?
That the Yasukuni shrine debate is ongoing is largely thanks to the work of people
who are aware of their personal ambiguity, or of their personal connections (direct
or indirect) to those who show the categorizations that nation-propping symbolism
is built on to be figmentary. The idea of unification of voices of apology assumes that
people can be separated into two camps: those who need to apologize, and those who
need apologizing to. This is not ever the case. However, in what is further overreach,
the unification is proposed along national lines, showing it to be a nationalist build-
ing project. Whatever is approaching truth, that is, whatever each individual feels to
be true about those things that they know about, would appear to be quite divergent
from the sanitized, delineated “official” image (that is recognized, as nations are, and
one to a nation). However, if what people are individually and personally connected to
can contain pieces of truth, it follows that the disjointed chimerical picture that would
emerge if the pieces were to be aggregated contains more truth than the simple gloss
of a national image. The national image is used, of course, as stereotypes are used,
because they are easier to work with (censuses being hard enough, to have the aggre-
gate chimera of all truthful things properly measured would be an impossible task),
because they allow for understanding of rules of engagement of and on the outside. If
the stereotype is not adhered to, it is considered the insider’s fault; if the stereotype
is not understood by the outsider, it is the outsider’s fault for the failure of the game.
Works Cited
Bennett, Tony, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris, eds. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of
Culture and Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
Breen, John, ed. Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past. New York: Columbia UP, 2008.
Calichman, Richard F., ed. Contemporary Japanese Thought. New York: Columbia UP, 2005.
Hutchison, John, and Anthony D. Smith, eds. Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.
Kuper, Adam. Culture: the anthropologists’ account. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999.
Schnell, Scott. “Ema Shū’s ‘The Mountain Folk’: Fictionalized Ethnography and Veiled Dissent.” Asian Folk-
lore Studies 65 (2006): 269-321.
Japaneseness and the Discover Japan Campaign - Joshua Frank
Japaneseness and the Discover Japan campaign
Joshua Frank
In the 1970s, Japan National Railways launched a tourism campaign called “Discover
Japan,” in an effort to encourage the country’s population to make use of the railway sys-
tem that had recently been built for Expo ’70 in Osaka. Discover Japan ran for ten years
– far longer than the usual six-month campaign. This paper will address the process of
discovering Japan and the value which the Discover Japan campaign places in doing so.
In addition, it will analyze the defining characteristic of Japaneseness, as presented in the
advertisements. In particular, the advertisements referred to in this essay can be found at
this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmVVocTbe_0.
The essay is divided into three sections addressing three interrelated questions: “How
does one discover Japan, according to the campaign?”, “What is the value of discovering
Japan?”, and “What kind of Japaneseness is presented by Discover Japan?” Discovering
Japan is presented as an adventure, a do-it-yourself process of making memories. The
Discover Japan campaign encourages consumption as a means to personal self-discov-
ery and cultivating Japaneseness, and emphasizes prosperity, freedom, and leisure as
inherent to the Japanese identity.
h
How does one discover Japan?
Discover Japan was intended to bolster interest in travel on the system of railroads built
for Expo ’70. Undeniably, the root of the campaign was to encourage consumption
– only by consuming goods could one truly discover Japan. As the video advertisement
makes clear, the discovery of Japan would be impossible without trains, which allow
travelers to cross the country with ease and comfort. Travel, and the spending that it
entails, is presented as the only way to fully appreciate the country. The young women in
the first ad segment are eating in practically every scene filmed, whether they’re tucking
into meals on the train, visiting a traditional family’s home for dinner, or enjoying on
freshly-picked apples in an orchard. Their continuous snacking demonstrates a certain
disposable income that allows the women to sample various foods, discovering Japan on
a culinary level. The girls also partake in card games on the train, seemingly playing for
money, emphasizing their ability to spend. Furthermore, it appears as though the pair
has specifically purchased a camera for their trip – in one scene, they examine the device
to make sure they’re using it correctly, before taking a snapshot from their moving train.
In the second Discover Japan clip, a woman stands on a country road, consuming the
landscape by taking pictures wit her camera.
On a more general level, taking the time to travel connotes a certain degree of wealth: the
young women appear to have a significant amount of time to devote to leisure. Adorno
criticizes do-it-yourself leisure activities (Free time 167), which people at times seem
to engage in to save money. One imagines that he would take issue with the women of
the Discover Japan ad gleefully picking their own radishes, when an experienced farmer
could do the job much more efficiently. However, I would argue that rather than dem-
onstrate a misguided stinginess on the part of the two travelers, harvesting vegetables
is another example of their freedom to consume. The women clearly have ample time
for such (ultimately impractical) leisure activities, and visibly enjoy stepping down from
their elevated city lifestyle to get their hands dirty.
While the advertisement does depict the pair of travelers taking pleasure in their con-
sumption, their activities are decidedly un-decadent. From crop-pulling to running
through fields, and bathing in hot springs, most of their doings seem within the reach
of the middle class. Even status-markers such as the pair’s westernized clothes and their
new camera would likely have been attainable by those watching Discover Japan adver-
tisements on their personal televisions. The primary signifier of the women’s wealth,
then, is their leisure time, and their ability to use it in creative ways.
According to the National Railway, discovering Japan involves consumption – it is their

campaign, after all. However, the modest leisure activities that the travelers participate
in place their experience as one attainable by more than just the elite class, to whom train
travel was initially more accessible. The advertisement emphasizes consumption while
grounding the quantity of spending that needs to occur, making domestic travel more
appealing to a broader group.
What is the value of discovering Japan?
As Fujioka Wakao, an advertising executive responsible for the Discover Japan cam-
paign, is quoted by Marilyn Ivy, “For discovering, there is no need for nature or scenery
or people. Discovery is really one’s own self.” (Trans-figuring Japan 41) Truly, the focus
of the Discover Japan advertisements is not necessarily on landscapes: the second clip,
for example, shows a woman photographing surprisingly desolate terrain. Instead, there
is a distinct emphasis on gaining new experiences. In the first video, for example, the two
women are shown learning to play cards, read maps, and use a camera. Even the act of
taking trains is new, as Japan’s railways were hardly a decade old by the time the advertis-
ing campaign ended.
Ivy also explains that the use of the word tabi for travel connotes the spiritual journeys of
male poets, but was also re-appropriated by the Japan Railway team and used to signify
women’s overnight excursions. (Trans-figuring Japan 37) This implies self-discovery
taking place on both philosophical and sexual levels. As she later articulates, “Tabi is
everything that society is not: it is the natural, the free, the rural, the humane, the non-
ordinary. […] Travel operates as a line of escape from the everyday.” (Trans-figuring
Japan 40, 41)
The notion of escape, in fact, is essential to the Discover Japan campaign. With the ex-
tremely dedicated Japanese work mentality, free time is perhaps the most valuable re-
source to aspiring travelers. As Ivy notes, young Japanese women in the 1970s were
often the last to enter society, only doing so after marriage. For this reason, the young
woman’s experience is one of freedom from the stressful confines of Japanese society.
To Adorno, leisure is denoted by “the privilege of an unconstrained, comfortable life-
style,” one that the female travelers of the Discover Japan series distinctly evoke. (Free
time 162) The allure of the women depicted in the footage, and the journey they set out
on, then, lies in the motif of breaking free from the restrictions of society.
While it may appear as though Discover Japan works to subvert Japanese society, this is
perhaps too far of a leap to make. After all, the campaign’s very essence is that it supports
the nation’s railways, and seeks to encourage spending on the part of travelers. Adorno’s
claims in “The Culture Industry” attest that there is little subversion in domestic travel:
“both escape and elopement [from society] are predesigned to lead back to the starting
point.” (13) In the case of the Japanese who sets out to discover her country, this process
is hardly a static one, though: the self-discovery involved will cause her to look at her
home in a new light. Ivy comments, “the self discovered is left open to further operations
of difference, to further desires: one always returns home from the sheerly partial plea-
sures of travel, but the home (and by extension the everyday self) to which one returns is
thereby different.” (39-41)
Despite the fact that rail travel is presented as an essential part of discovering Japan, the
National Railway campaign also makes the integral point that travel is a valuable way to
discover the traditions of the past. The first Discover Japan advertisement shows two
young women stopping for a meal in a traditional house, as well as relaxing in natural hot
springs. Figuratively and literally, the pair is shown discovering their roots while picking
radishes.
The film segments also provide the opportunity to reevaluate the past: farming, being
outside, and appreciating simple pleasure are reconceived as leisure activities. The roles
of cameras in both of the advertisements, as well as the sentimental music and snapshot
freeze-frames of the second, demonstrate the power of nostalgia as a marketing tool. On
the topic of looking back in time, Ivy describes Discover Japan as a “mass campaign urg-
ing Japanese to discover what remained of the premodern past in the midst of its loss.”
(Trans-figuring Japan 34) Thus, the examining and reimagining of Japan’s past becomes
an important part of Discover Japan.
What is Japaneseness?
First and foremost, Discover Japan associates the Japanese identity with adventurous-
ness and the desire to travel and explore. By choosing to depict two young, female trav-
elers, the Discover Japan advertisements also highlight the importance of youthful free-
dom to the Japanese identity. Based on the rigorous work ethic Japan is known for, this
aspect of Japanese identity may seem paradoxical. However, the idea of breaking free of
societal roles and norms appears to be a recurring trope in the Japanese consciousness.
The woman in the second advertisement – more mature looking than the first two travel-
ing companions – is shown skipping like a child at various points, as well as interacting
with village children. The use of young, carefree women in the campaign – especially the
actions of the woman in the second clip – seems to anticipate an appreciation for child-
ishness and cuteness that figures into the kawaii culture that came in the 1980s.
Interestingly, Discover Japan offers yet another claim on Japaneseness that seems para-
doxical in the face of cultural tradition. Rather than place importance on particular na-
tional monuments, the campaign valorizes overlooked eccentricities. Ivy explains, “For
the contemporary domestic audience […] no place is too remote, no festival too sala-
cious, no group too impoverished or marginal to be featured in a guidebook or spot-
lighted on television” (Trans-figuring Japan 33)
The Discover Japan campaign also provides insight into the relationship between tra-
ditional Japanese culture and the west in Japanese identity. The presence of the west is
undeniable in the advertisements, from the fashionable clothing the women to the tech-
nology on display – trains and cameras. That being said, the train is used only as a tool to
delve deeper into the Japanese experience. For its part, the camera also serves only as a
means of recording the experience of discovering Japan.
Discovering Japan is a presented by the National Railway as a journey of self-discovery,

one where consumption – whether eating, taking photographs, or picking vegetables
– is an integral part of the experience. The campaign paradoxically associates Japanese-
ness with a certain youthful rejection of Japanese society’s expectations, stressing the
-doxically associates Japaneseness with a certain youthful rejection of Japanese society’s

expectations, stressing the importance of leisure, personal experience, and eccentric-
ity. However, gaining an awareness of Japanese tradition remains essential to the Dis-
cover Japan campaign. While western technology – such as trains and cameras – figures
strongly as a tool to discover Japan, it is by and large overshadowed by the importance
placed in domestic exploration and personal discovery.
Works Cited
1970国铁Discover Japan, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QBHwPP6Xuo

Adorno, Theodor. “Free Time,” The Culture Industry, 162-170.
Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception,” The Consumer Society Reader, 3-19.
Ivy, Marilyn, “Itineraries of Knowledge: Trans-figuring Japan.” Discourses of the Vanishing, 29-65
coin
pocket rivetんコイん
silver selvedge
inside coin
pocket
red tab
(Levi’s repro)
leather patch
back pocket arc

(Levi’s repro)
hidden rivet
front
open buckle
button
leather tassel on
zipper
back
inside

Orientations Volume Nine

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Orientations Volume Nine

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Contents:

Layout & Design

With Special Thanks to:

The Poisonous Haze of the Mountains:

The Origin and Composition of the Tusi System

The Implementation of Administrative Control and Its Discontents

The Foul Air and the Many Tigers: Environmental Limitations

Loosely Enforced: Confucian Education and the Barbarian

Reshaping the Peasantry: “Autonomy” in the PRC

Minority Responses to State Development:

Jessica Yilan Tsang

However, the policy of development is self-defeating. Targeting minority nationalities

Nonetheless, communities outside the dominant understanding of weisheng continue

As indicated earlier, policies toward traditional medicine, especially ethnomedicine,

Statistics in its nineteenth-century form was a liberal thought and was

Moreover, the emergence of comprehensive census taking, distinguished by its ability to

everyday sartorial choices, members of minority nationalities – especially female – not

A History of Tattoo Stigmatization

Yayoi Period (300 BCE – 300 CE)

Kofun Period (300 – 600 CE)

Although the aforementioned excerpts certainly do not necessarily provide a compre-

Edo Period (1600 – 1868 CE)

The evidence for the practice of tattoo during

Recently, carefree individuals have been propagating tattooing; they tat-

There is a fascinating aspect of the attitude to-

Modern Period (1868 – present)

I always know what to say

When it comes to Chinese New Year (whenever that is,

or when he is playing in the garden behind the house,

They don’t like red roses much;

But I’m not really a rose. I can speak Chinese.

“Ma-ma,” I say, talking to my other

So I took it (and myself) away.

“In Chinese or in English?”

The Evolution of Calligraphy and

The Archetype of the “Calligrapher”: Feudal Officials and Wandering

Calligraphy for the Elite: Calligraphy as Art

Calligraphy for the People: Ideological Repositioning

[39] Ibid., pg. 71

The failure of nation-building with-

One prerequisite for building a “nation” is the presence of a national consciousness to

socialism implied a radical restructuring of Cambodian society, which included disinte-

2. An Ambiguous Agenda: Party Evolution from the 1950s to 1975

The struggle of Communism/socialism to emerge onto the political scene as a mass

3. Continued Incoherence and Neglect: the Revolution in Power

Takahashi Tetsuya describes Yasukuni’s function, as originally established by the Meiji

Spiritualization is easy to take as a given where it is present in a form that is seen as

Schnell’s assessment does not preclude, of course, an analysis or recognition of compet-

Japaneseness and the Discover Japan campaign

How does one discover Japan?

According to the National Railway, discovering Japan involves consumption – it is their

What is the value of discovering Japan?

Discovering Japan is a presented by the National Railway as a journey of self-discovery,

-doxically associates Japaneseness with a certain youthful rejection of Japanese society’s

1970国铁Discover Japan, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QBHwPP6Xuo

back pocket arc

You might also like