October 2024 – Page 2 – Rethinking the World in East Asia 1850s-1990s

Lesbian love in Chinese fiction in the 1920’s

The May Fourth movement in China changed many aspects of Chinese society, and during this time, writers, male and female, used this time to create space in fiction for female same sex love. Because of the lack of prevalence of female same-sex love in Chinese society at the time, female same-sex love or desire was seen, especially in the fiction written by women, in more subtle ways. Female same-sex love was also seen often by Chinese society as a temporary state for young women in same-sex schools. There were many stories of girls in schools having same-sex relationships, but the overarching theme of these stories were that the desire, love, or romantic or sexual feelings for each other would leave when they graduated school and got married. This view of female same-sex love as temporary shaped how lesbian fiction was written in the 1920’s and how different genders wrote about female same-sex love.

Female writers of female same-sex love in the May Fourth movement were more nuanced in their lesbian subtext than men, who wrote predominantly to show their fantasies of female same-sex love and to reassure themselves that it was temporary in order to keep their importance in the growing independent woman’s life. Lu Yin, a writer in the early 1900’s, wrote predominately about the spiritual, ideal and liberating love of female same-sex attachment, which surpassed cross-sex love and marriage¹. Her short story “Lishi’s Diary” is a little more overt in its female same-sex love, with the character Lishi feeling more for her female friend Yuanqing than her male friend, Guisheng. She and Yuanqing plan to live together, but when Yuanqing is forced into a (heterosexual) marriage, she dies of melancholy². Lu Yin also experienced female same-sex desire herself. When visiting Japan with her husband, she remarked on the communal baths. She was self conscious in being naked around other women, but when she finally looked around she “admired their bodies” as she prepared to leave the bath, and her “nerves were excited” on her way home³. Her rapture with the female body is suggestive of female same-sex love she may have felt in her life, in addition to her love of her husband.

On the contrary, female same-sex love fiction written by men was very different. They wrote “more explicitly about female-female physical behaviour” and their stories were seen more as fantasies of the male imagination of female-female eroticism. Yu Dafu, a writer in the early 1930’s, “deployed sexological characterisations” of female same-sex love to “metaphorically represent social disorder and national weakness”⁴. His story about a “monstrous third-sexed woman” who seduced young school girls demonises female same-sex love and desire⁵. Another writer, Zhang Yiping, writes about female same-sex love with the intention of, again, suggesting that it was simply a precursor to a heterosexual relationship. A woman confides in her boyfriend that she had a same-sex relationship when she was younger and that she had died, but it brought them closer together in the sharing of the memory⁶.

A notable cross section of the difference of female versus male written lesbian love, a female rewritten story of male written story becomes far more popular than the original. Two female students play Romeo and Juliet, fall in love, and then when one has to get married to a man, the other faints. Ling Shuhua brings more animation to the “barren” version of Yang Zhensheng’s⁷. Yang attributes the affair to the “lack of a proper emotional outlet”, whereas Ling proves their love with true intimacy⁷.

The dismissal of female same-sex love as temporary in many ways in Chinese society in the 1920’s showed the inability for male dominated society to accept that their place in a woman’s life could be unimportant. With the changing world and the rising women’s independence movement in the 20’s there came the fear that men therefore had no place in an independent woman’s life. This is seen overtly and subtly through the constant critique that female same-sex love had to be temporary in order to reassure men of their place in the world.

Sang, Tze-Lan D, The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China (Chicago, 2003), p. 133 [↩]
ibid, p. 140 [↩]
ibid, p. 146 [↩]
ibid, p. 156 [↩]
ibid, p. 153 [↩]
ibid, p. 155 [↩]
ibid, p. 149 [↩] [↩]

Cai Yuanpei’s ‘New Year’s Dream’ and the contradictions in its views of foreign powers

Cai Yuanpei was a Chinese anarchist intellectual, at first associated with the Paris anarchist societies and later Republican minister of education and chancellor of the University of Beijing.¹ This text, ‘New Year’s Dream’, was written at the height of the Russo-Japanese War and describes Cai’s dream of the future, in which China reaches a period of happiness and prosperity, having defeated foreign invaders of the country and instructed the world on how to achieve global peace.²

The text follows Yimin Zhongguo, an intelligent young man from Jiangnan who, having travelled around the world for his education, returns to China during the Russo-Japanese War. Yimin’s life and, in particular, his foreign education draws similarities with the author, who studied in Paris and Leipzig.

After entering into discussion with a group of strangers, in which he dismisses the celebration of New Year’s Eve as ‘just one day at random’ and accuses them of being selfish and idle, he goes home to rest. At this point his dream begins, which takes up most of the text and can be understood as Cai Yuanpei’s anarchist vision for the future.

In his dream he enters into a large assembly hall, its seating arrangement reflecting the country except divided according to China’s river basins, dialects and local customs rather than arbitrary provincial boundaries (as Cai would see them). A speaker begins to implore the audience that they must begin building the nation of China, lest their country becomes a battlefield for wars between Japan, Russia, England, Germany or France. He likens China’s population to selfish children who care only of their toys when their house is robbed, unaware that the money and deeds being stolen guaranteed their future. This argument is much the same that Yimin deployed on the idle strangers celebrating New Year’s Eve the day before.

The man then distributes a pamphlet with five proposals guaranteeing an effective administration of China: a survey of the land and of the population, a survey of the country’s planning and construction, discussions on employment, and ordinances dictating the life-cycle of a person (education between ages 7 and 24, work between ages 24 and 48) and their daily routine (8 hours work and 8 hours rest).

Another pamphlet is distributed, calling for the recovery of Manchuria: the eradication of foreign spheres of influence; and the dismantling of foreign concessions. Ways to grow China’s military strength are discussed at length.

After a discussion of Yimin’s next steps, his dream then accelerates into the future and describes a situation in which foreign powers repeatedly invade China but are ‘driven back every time’. The invaders convene in Berlin where they lament: “the love of the Chinese for their country is so pure that I fear there is no way to break it”!

Having defended their country, the Chinese propose the abolition of every country’s individual army and their replacement with a world army; this is so popular that other countries ‘took it as words from heaven’. From then on, there were no more wars, ‘and people lived happily and peacefully’ – although, Yuan adds of course, ‘with the happiness of the Chinese naturally greatly exceeding that of others’.

China reaches a Utopian state, with railways built across the country, a new easier-to-learn national language implemented, and designations such as ‘father’, ‘son’, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ cease to have relevance.

Yim at this moment wakes up and, forgetting his previous dislike of New Years’ festivities, exclaims “Greetings! Congratulations! It is the New Year, a new world has come!”.

What is most interesting about Cai’s text is its seemingly contradictory views about foreign countries. Yimin is clearly a model Chinese citizen – smart, hard-working, and shrewd – a fact which might be owed to his education in the US (‘because he loved the ideas of freedom and equality’), Germany (‘the vanguard of technology’), France, England, Italy, Switzerland, and Russia. Cai, having also studied in Europe, clearly believed this education was both useful and a source of pride.

However, Cai laments the fact that Russia and Japan are at present warring over Manchuria, and fears for the future when the Yangtze region, Fujian or Guangdong might also be battlegrounds for foreign powers. When describing the invading foreigners of the future, he writes: ‘they looked at China and saw it as this wonderful melon that they had discussed carving up a number of times, and now their occasion had finally arrived’, describing them as malicious and power-hungry.

A further irony of this view is that, in Cai’s vision of the future, China sources her military strength from abroad. The speaker rejoices that ‘the cadets which we had sent to study in England have now returned’ and they plan to, instead of building their own warships, ‘send representatives to the largest shipyards abroad, and […] buy warships that are almost finished’. This contradiction – that one should expunge foreign influence, yet use foreign education and manufacturing to do so, is one of the defining contradictions of Chinese anarchist thought – a philosophy that originated outside of China, yet focused solely on China.

Dirlik, Arif, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 117, 120, 156. [↩]
Cai Yuanpei, New Year’s Dream (1704). Published in Andolfatto, Lorenzo, Hundred Day’s Literature: Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902-1910 (2019), pp. 199-212. [↩]

“Mr. Earnest”: Shifu and dedication to Anarchism

Liu Shifu grew up in a changing time in China’s history. He was born in the 1880’s and died of tuberculosis in 1915, but was still a major figure in the anarchist movement in China. There were many movements that were slowly forming in the time period of Liu Shifu, and his dedication to the movement helped shape it to continue after he was gone. The chapter The New Beginning: Shifu Launches the Conscience Society in the book Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism by Edward S. Krebs detailed the later years of Shifu when he gains importance in China, started the Conscience Society and a printing press owned by himself and his close friends and family, spread his message through China, and unfortunately died of tuberculosis before his work is done. Shifu was astoundingly dedicated to his values of anarchism that he writes in 1912 with his close group of friends and colleagues, and they guided how he taught and lived anarchism for the three chaotic and jam packed years of his life before he died.

In 1912, Shifu and his close compatriots convened for the spring and summer, during which Shifu created a list of twelve points that were “essential” to his personal brand of anarchism.¹ The twelve points were abstinence from meat, liquor, tobacco, servants, riding in sedan chairs or rickshaws, marriage, use of the family name, serving as an official, a member of a representative body, a political party, the army or navy, and religion.¹ For the rest of his life, he committed himself to these values. While his colleagues would ride rickshaws to a block before their office where they printed their paper and taught about anarchism, and then walk the last block, Shifu would walk every day back and forth.² When his doctor suggested that he eat meat in order to help his ailing health that turned into tuberculosis that killed him in 1915, he refused because of his promise to never eat meat, as it was seen as upholding the labor structure of the corrupt government. His values above everything else earned him the nickname of “Mr. Earnest” by his fellows, and was mainly a good way to describe Shifu in his quest for anarchism.²

There are many things that can be said about Shifu’s dedication to the cause of anarchism and his commitment to his values, however, there are places within his life where he seemed to be hypocritical in his values. Shifu’s continued closeness to his siblings and employment of them when printing the Cock-Crow Record in in the face of one of his 12 points, do not use a family name. His belief that family should not be especially important in an individuals life is forgotten when it came to his own siblings and their prominence in his employment of them. One of his sisters married one of his friends who was also intimately involved with his cause. His fathers support and familial monetary funds that went into his printing press also showed his blindness towards his values. “Did he fail to see the irony in this situation?” the text asked, voicing the question that I also had when thinking of his title as “Mr. Earnest”.³ Additionally, Shifu’s partner, Ding Xiangtian, felt no support or affection from Shifu when she was pregnant with their daughter in 1912.² After she was born, he refused to create a public nursery to raise his child in.⁴ To him it was compromising his values, but in doing so, he was leaving his child to no education or support from her father.

While Shifu was determined to stay true to his values of anarchism and the twelve points that were made by the group in 1912, Mr. Earnest may have strayed from being totally earnest in his dedication to anarchism.

Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 102. [↩] [↩]
Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 115. [↩] [↩] [↩]
Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 108, 115. [↩]
Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp.116. [↩]

Paradise on earth: Uchiyama Gudō’s imaginations of a (Buddhist) anarcho-communist utopia

The utopian vision of Uchiyama Gudō (1874-1911), a Zen Buddhist priest who was executed for his purported role in the plot to assassinate the Japanese Emperor Meiji in 1910, offers a unique example of the fusion of Buddhist and socialist ideas in early twentieth-century East Asia. Throughout his writings, Gudō repeatedly imagines a vision of tengoku, explicitly evoking the Christian idea of “soteriological and eschatological” paradise rather than the Buddhist jōdo (Pure Land) or gokuraku (land of bliss).¹ Although connections between Christianity and the development of socialist revolutionary thought in Meiji Japan by Rambelli help to contextualise the contemporary meanings and connotations of tengoku, it is arguably most significant in the negative sense; that is, the imagination of an earthly, anarcho-communist utopian ‘paradise’ over a Buddhist heavenly bliss.

Gudō’s (Buddhist) anarcho-communism formed part of a broader wave of emerging Radical Buddhism in late Meiji Japan. He was not alone in his focus on earthly paradise; contemporary anarchists like Tanaka Jiroku were similarly advocating ideas of genseshugi (‘this-world-ism’).² In China, both Taixu (1890-1947) and Lin Qiwu (1903-1934) developed similar imaginations of a “pure land in this world” where anarchist utopia and Marxism respectively were “one and the same” as the Buddhist Pure Land.³ Yet, not only do Gudō’s ideas predate many of these other anarchists, his utopian imagination also differs in a critical way in its absence of Buddhist spiritualism. Avoiding references to the pure land, Gudō situates his paradise purely in the earthly realm; in a way, he subverts Radical Buddhism, which views socialism and anarchism as paths to an explicitly Buddhist ‘pure land’, and instead proposes an anarcho-communist revolution in which consciousness and freedom is achieved through Buddhism (as Buddhism and socialism are two sides of the same coin) yet paradise itself is defined by its material, social and political conditions rather than ‘heavenly bliss’. For example, during his interrogation for his alleged role in the High Treason Incident of 1910, Gudo describes his intellectual conversion to anarcho-communism as a result of reading about the communal lives of the Buddhist sangha in Chinese monasteries⁴. However, this is framed from a specifically worldly perspective; it was the communal and egalitarian aspects of the sangha that appealed to Gudō, as opposed to their spirituality and religious practice. Thus, Gudō removes the distinction between Buddhism and anarcho-communism; he is not striving for a spiritual awakening to nirvana or pure land, but for a (Marxian) social revolution through labour unions to achieve “the ideal land of anarchist communism, where all are free and live a comfortable life”.⁵

As Rambelli emphasises, Gudō was seeking to transform the (earthly) world as a Buddhist anarcho-communist, rather than “striving for a socialist form of Buddhism”⁶. Paradise would be distinctively and exclusively anarcho-communist. Whilst inherently informed by the semantic, epistemological, and ontological frameworks of Gudo’s Buddhism, paradise on earth in its realised form seems more rooted in classical Marxism. Paradise would thus begin when the capitalist bourgeoisie “reject[s] the old crime of living out of his capital” and “realize[s] that all human beings must secure their clothing and food through their own labor”.⁷

Consequently, Gudō’s vision for paradise was both inseparable from his conception of Buddhism and yet fundamentally material. This fusion of Buddhism and socialism was the path necessary to achieve individual and collective consciousness to eliminate oppression and achieve freedom. Attaining social consciousness and establishing paradise would be achieved through Buddhism not because he imagined a future land of heavenly bliss, but instead because the worldly anarcho-communist ‘paradise’ envisaged by Gudō would be the true realisation of Buddhism on earth.

Fabio Rambelli, Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharam of Uchiyama Gudō (Berkeley, 2013), p.31. [↩]
Lajos Brons, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism (Santa Barbara, 2023), p.76. [↩]
Brons, A Buddha Land in This World, pp.92-95. [↩]
Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.20. [↩]
Uchiyama Gudō, Museifu Kyosan kakumei, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.50. [↩]
Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.30. [↩]
Uchiyama Gudō, Heibon no jikaku, quoted in and translated by Rambelli, Zen Anarchism, p.63. [↩]

Tonghak: Did the religious movement play a positive role in the development of modern Korea?

Young discusses the continuation of the Tonghak religious movement through its transformation into Ch’ōndongyo in 1905, shortly after Korea became a protectorate regime to the Japanese state. This was a period of socio-political turbulence, as Koreans grappled with the slow decline of their national sovereignty till their annexation in 1910. Young emphasises
the antagonistic role the Tonghak and Ch’ōndongyo movements played in Korea’s political dichotomy through the late 19^th and early 20^th century¹. The Tonghak movement was evidently far more than a religious sensation, as it played a critical role in reshaping the socio-political order, contributing to the reshaping of Korean society during modernisation. However, by the 20^th century it led to political diversions that ultimately hindered Korea’s ability to unite to protect its culture as Japan began to impose its influence.

Tonghak was founded in 1860 by Ch’oe Cheu, who drew upon the roots of Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism and local folk beliefs, as well as rejecting Western influences. One of the key elements of this new religion was that it offered an alternative to the Neo-Confucianist philosophy that were the foundations of the Chōson dynasty¹. Confucianism stressed the consistent moral positioning of authority for the objective of social cohesion. The foundations of Tonghak as a movement that emphasised the strength and fundamental equality of all individuals regardless of their social class signified a clear desire to break from Korea’s hierarchical practices.

The worsening socio-economic conditions of the mid-19^th century, from rural poverty and famine, to floods and outbreaks of cholera and smallpox, also provided the ideal setting for this new religious agenda². The Tonghak movement utilised this upheaval to create an inclusive message, emphasising that these hardships were shared societal experiences, in order to build unity and reassure them for the future. Ch’ōndongyo texts portray these growing societal challenges as evidence of the government’s inability to navigate the complexities of modernity. Simultaneously, they presented the movement as being rooted in finding a solution for society to cope with the transition into a new era. They quote that “Daesinsa [the title of Ch’oe Cheu] made clear the fact that humankind has fallen into a state of confusion and degeneration and this has been a necessary situation to open the new era of Hucheon.”³. Whilst the spiritual foundations of this movement are central to its growth, the political context of the period evidently played a significant role in shaping the movement, highlighting the interplay between religious reform and socio-political change in Korea’s path to modernisation.

The Tonghak movement’s nationalist dimensions were treated on par with the Korean political movements of the late-19^th century, such as the Kabo reforms (1894-1896), and the Independence Club, by the Chōson court as part of the attempt to build a new social order. Beyond this, Young goes on to examine the exploitation of the Tonghak in political movements, particularly Ilchinhoe, a pro-Japanese organisation whose advocacy to allow Japan to control Korea’s affairs tied Tonghak much closer to the Japanese than he had ever advocated for. Ilchinhoe consistently relied on its roots from the Tonghak movement to justify its support for the Japanese, arguing that government resistance and reform were a part of their heritage⁴. Despite Son Pyōng-hui’s decision to change the name of the religion from Tonghak to Ch’ōndogyo to reassert itself from these political movements, it is clear that the political dimensions of the Ch’ōndogyo had become so entrenched by the early 20th century that it was difficult to separate the religion from its new political context.

In summary, the Tonghak and Ch’ōndongyo movements played a vital role in reshaping Korean society by fostering a new critical engagement with its social order. Their influence was particularly notable in the empowerment of the southern peasant class, who began to perceive modernisation through a more critical lens. However, this success also left them vulnerable to political exploitation and foreign intervention, which ultimately contributed to the fragmentation of Korea’s cultural and political identity.

Anderson, Emily. Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea. Springer, 2016 Ch 5: Young., Carl. “Eastern Learning Divided: The Split in the Tonghak Religion and the Japanese Annexation of Korea, 1904–1910”, p.80 [↩] [↩]
Kallander, George L. ‘Salvation Through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea’, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013, p.25 [↩]
Ch’ondongyo Documents [↩]
Anderson, Emily. Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea. Springer, 2016 Ch 5: Young., Carl. “Eastern Learning Divided: The Split in the Tonghak Religion and the Japanese Annexation of Korea, 1904–1910, p.93 [↩]