Vasiliy Eroshenko: Esperanto as a Tool for Thriving with a Disability

Born in what is now Ukraine in 1890, Vasiliy Eroshenko was an important figure in the history of blind activism in Japan. His story is one that has close ties with the Japanese Esperanto movement. After a bout of measles left him blind at a young age, Eroshenko learned about how people of other countries lived by listening to his sighted friends read him books about foreign nations.1 He was advised to learn Esperanto and study music in England but shortly after decided to move to Japan at age twenty-four to train as a masseuse (a common viable career option for the blind).2 The Tokyo Eroshenko lived and studied in (between 1914 and 1921) was a hub of transnational activity, a vibrant mixture of foreign and Japanese students, creatives, missionaries, and activists.3 Although not all individuals in Eroshenko’s circle were Esperantists and he was a part of a variety of groups; Esperanto provided the means by which Eroshenko, a blind, disabled man, was able to form a strong support network, make meaningful connections, find fulfilment through activism, pursue his interests, and support himself.

First, Eroshenko’s knowledge of Esperanto allowed him to communicate and find community, which is vital when navigating a new space. Tanabe Kunio (a fellow Esperantist and graduate of the Tokyo School for the Blind) recalls that Eroshenko ‘received every possible assistance from Japanese Esperanto scholars’, who guided him through the streets and helped him find an apartment.4 Eroshenko also made use of this support network when traveling to Siam, Burma, and India after the breakout of the Russian Revolution made his position as a foreigner in Asia uncertain.5 Because of Esperanto’s association with leftist radical politics, Eroshenko was arrested and deported out of Japan. Although they were unsuccessful, his friends did appeal and campaign for his release.6

Besides the practical benefits of having a support network, Eroshenko’s involvement in Esperanto also allowed him to form meaningful connections, befriending individuals who had similar values and lived experiences. For example, one of his good friends, the playwright Akita Ujaku, helped him with his writing and introduced him to a network of other creatives and members of the intelligentsia.7;8 In a Soviet radio broadcast about Esperanto, Akita shares a story that mirrors Eroshenko’s, saying that once he [Akita] made Esperanto friends and teachers in Moscow, he ‘“was able to use their linguistic aid to enter the real life of Moscow…I was able to make contact with workers’ daily lives, home, factory, and club lives”’.9 Eroshenko too benefited from this linguistic aid.

Additionally, Eroshenko’s connections and Esperanto skillset allowed him to pursue his intellectual interests and find fulfilment through activism. His connection with Esperanto and subsequent friendship with Akita led him to develop his talent for writing.8 Akita translated Eroshenko’s Esperanto writings into Japanese and provided him with cultural information when the two saw plays together. As for his activism, Eroshenko was part of the Japanese Congress for the Blind (an advocacy group), taught music and Esperanto courses to blind students, and later helped teach and organise schools for the blind among other activities.10 It can be reasonably said that without knowing Esperanto upon his arrival to Japan, he would have had much more difficulty gaining a footing and thus contributing to the blind activist cause there.

Eroshenko was also able to make a living teaching Esperanto. For instance, he taught at the Tokyo Public School for the Blind and was invited by an Esperantist to take up a position lecturing at Waseda University.11 After his deportation, he was able to make ends meet teaching Esperanto in China.5 Also, Akita helped edit and popularise Eroshenko’s fairy tales to improve his financial situation.12

The popularity and use of Esperanto as a lingua franca amongst intelligentsia and radical groups in Japan is a common thread throughout Eroshenko’s interactions in Japan. Eroshenko faced multiple layers of social oppression as a blind man, living through persecution, multiple arrests, deportation, and living in a foreign land. However, he was able to utilise existing Esperanto networks in East Asia to support himself financially, physically, and emotionally. Language in the early twentieth century was an integral feature of both transnational activity and of Eroshenko’s individual life.

  1. Julia V. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article ‘Familiarizing with the Achievements, Learning from Our Pioneers. Vasiliy Yeroshenko: Staying in Japan and His Friends,’” in Вісник Університету Ім. А. Нобеля. Серія Філологічні Науки 1, no. 17 (Alfred Nobel University: Dnipro, 2019), 107, https://doi.org/10.32342/2523-4463-2019-0-16-10. [↩]
  2. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 107-108. [↩]
  3. Ian Rapley, “A Language for Asia? Transnational Encounters in the Japanese Esperanto Movement, 1906–28,” in Transnational Japan As History, Pedro Iacobelli, Danton Leary, and Shinnosuke Takahashi (ed.), (United States: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 173, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56879-3_8. [↩]
  4. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 108. [↩]
  5. Rapley, “A Language for Asia?” 175. [↩] [↩]
  6. Ibid. [↩]
  7. Ibid, 173. [↩]
  8. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 111. [↩] [↩]
  9. Rapley, “A Language for Asia?” 181. [↩]
  10. Ibid, 112. [↩]
  11. Ibid, 114. [↩]
  12. Patlan, “On Tanabe Kunio’s Article,” 115. [↩]

The Worldist Tongue: Esperanto as Anti-Imperial Ideology in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia

In the early twentieth century, Esperanto, the “planned” language created by Ludovic Zamenhof in 1887, found a surprising stronghold. Beyond its European origins, it was in Japan, and later China, where the language flourished, forming the largest Esperanto community outside Europe by the 1930s.1 Conventional history often dismisses Esperanto as a noble but failed utopian project, especially when compared to the global ascent of English.2 However, this view misses its more profound significance. In East Asia, Esperanto was not a failure but a powerful ideological force. This was a manifestation of a homegrown philosophy known as “worldism” (sekai shugi), which is the belief in a political order that transcended the nation-state and centred on a global community of common people. This philosophy directly challenged the foundations of the Western world order.3

Esperanto’s rise coincided with an era of burgeoning nationalism and a simultaneous search for internationalist ideals. East Asian intellectuals developed a profound critique of the prevailing system, arguing that true peace could never be achieved through the competitive framework of nation-states.4  Thinkers like Japan’s Kōtoku Shūsui and China’s Kang Youwei envisioned a political order built around heimin (“the common people”) as a global, transnational community. For them, Esperanto was not an “international language” (kokusaigo) for state diplomacy, but a “world language” (sekaigo) for the people.5 This distinction was crucial. By embracing Esperanto, Japanese activists, for instance, were engaging in a form of anti-imperial resistance, rejecting their country’s participation in a Western-dominated system.

A key to Esperanto’s appeal was its perceived cultural neutrality. It was viewed as a blank slate, functioning as a transnational medium without the baggage of a specific national history or civilisation.6  This allowed it to become a powerful symbol that could amplify the diversity and equality of all local cultures.7 So more than just a tool for communication, Esperanto represented an ideology of world unification. This vision resonated perfectly with existing East Asian utopian projects. Kang Youwei’s The One-World Philosophy (Ta T’ung Shu), for example, had already called for a universal language.8 Meanwhile, Chinese anarchists in Tokyo saw Esperanto not as a replacement for their “unmodern” language, but as a framework to promote Chinese culture on a global stage.9 The language was successful because it could be seamlessly integrated into local visions of a unified world.

The movement was inherently grassroots, spreading through informal networks rather than state sponsorship. A diverse mix of intellectuals, artists, and ordinary citizens studied it in coffee shops and rural homes, often in evening classes.10 This created a unique space for transnational connection. A notable example is the Russian writer Vasily Eroshenko, a blind Esperantist who gained celebrity status in Japan. His blindness was symbolically interpreted as also being an inability to see racial hierarchies, allowing him to transcend national boundaries and live integrated within Japanese society.11 His influence extended to China, where he later lectured, inspiring figures like the playwright Akita Ujaku, who found that only Esperanto could convey the true meaning of universal brotherhood.12

Despite its non-state origins, authorities viewed Esperanto as “subversive”, and it was indeed used for political struggle, such as in Chinese anti-Japanese propaganda.13 The movement’s enduring coherence came from a continuous, deeply felt desire among its participants to make “concrete connection[s] with the wider world”.14

Therefore, the true importance of Esperanto in early 20th-century East Asia lies not in its linguistic reach, but in its ideological power. It gave tangible form to a comprehensive “worldist” vision. Esperanto was a vehicle for peace and global unity based on individual agency and cultural equality. It stood as a powerful, indigenous alternative to the Western geopolitical paradigm, rejecting a system defined by state sovereignty and a linguistic hierarchy that mirrored imperial power imbalances.

 

 

  1. Rapley, Ian, ‘A Language for Asia? Transnational Encounters in the Japanese Esperanto Movement, 1906-28’, in Iacobelli, P, et al., (eds.), Transnational Japan as History, (2016), p.167 [↩]
  2. Kim, Young S., ‘Constructing a Global Identity: The Role of Esperanto’ in Boli, John and Thomas, George M., Constructing World Culture: International Non-Governmental Organisations since 1875, (1999), p.148 [↩]
  3. Konishi, Sho, ‘Translingual World Order: Language Without Culture in Post-Russo-Japanese War Japan’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 72: 1 (2013), p.92 [↩]
  4. Ibid, p.99 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.94 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.100 [↩]
  7. Ibid, p.93 [↩]
  8. Ibid, p.96 [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.103 [↩]
  10. Ibid, p.91-92 [↩]
  11. Ibid, p.108 [↩]
  12. Ibid, p.106 [↩]
  13. Ibid, p.107 [↩]
  14. Rapley, Ian ‘A Language for Asia?’, p.182 [↩]

Religion or Propaganda: The Red Swastika Society and the Conflict between Nationalism and Imperialism in Manchuria

The Red Swastika Society was founded in early twentieth century China as a philanthropic faith-based organization. However, with the encroaching Japanese militarism in Manchuria, the society was constantly drifting between being persecuted by the ruling authorities and being utilized by them for political purposes. So, to what extent did this organization actually partake in propagandistic politics? Although both Chinese nationalists and Japanese imperialists manipulated the Red Swastika Society to promote their ideals, the founding principles of the society, the persecution by the KMT, and the confusion of its classification under the Manchukuo regime all demonstrate the failure to successfully apply this organization as political propaganda.

In 1922, the Red Swastika Society was officially approved as a legitimate association with the goal of advancing social welfare and world peace. Its founding principles included ‘promoting moral virtue’ and ‘no involvement in partisan politics’.1 As a philanthropic group, the society desired a universal humanitarianism; they wanted to transcend national borders in the name of altruism. For instance, the Red Swastika Society held offices in Paris, London, and Tokyo—showcasing its international quality.2 Motivating certain ideologies would divide the organization from its original purpose. Therefore, at least in the beginning, the Red Swastika Society had little interest in politics.

Furthermore, the persecution of redemptive societies by both the KMT and the Japanese imperialists highlights their distrust of superstitious organizations—including the Red Swastika Society. Ultimately, this distrust hindered these authorities’ usage of the Red Swatika Society as propaganda. The Red Swastika Society is recognized as a redemptive society, which is a term for the religious organizations popularized in China during the early twentieth century. These religious organizations often followed local religions rather than the major groups like Buddhism and Christianity. For example, the Red Swastika Society combined Daoism and Buddhism practices.3 Along with its goal of transcending national boundaries, the superstitious character of the society marked it as a target of KMT’s persecution. The KMT focused on Chinese nationalism and modernity. So, the KMT was critical of superstitious religions, which conflicted with their idea of modernity; they were also threatened by the society’s challenge to nationalism. Therefore, the KMT banned redemptive societies in 1928.4 Although the Red Swastika Society was permitted to operate in the 1930s, this underlying distrust made it difficult for the two groups to work together. Thus, the Red Swastika Society was not completely politicized by the KMT.

While the Japanese imperialists had more success in transforming the Red Swastika Society into a propagandistic tool, they still faced difficulties due to their own troubles understanding how to treat the society. In 1932, Japan set up a puppet government (Manchukuo) in Manchuria. Unlike the KMT, the Manchukuo government sought to convert redemptive societies into jiaohua organizations by minimizing their religious qualities and emphasizing their welfare focus—rather than trying to simply eradicate the groups.5 This goal of transformation influenced the government’s classification of the Red Swastika Society, consequently causing it to be separated into three different categories. First acknowledging the society as a similar religion, the Japanese officials desired to restrict it for fear of encouraging political apathy.6 In this way, the society was treated as it was under the KMT rule. However, the Japanese realized that a manipulation of the society would benefit them. The second classification of the Red Swastika Society as a solely philanthropic entity, without religious connections, demonstrated the early changes to the society. By removing superstitious aspects of the society, the Manchukuo government could mold the society to promote their ideology. The third classification was as a moral suasion organization. With this classification, the society was overseen by the Union Society.7 The Union Society assisted the Manchukuo government in public security. Hence, the Red Swastika Society reinforced imperialist propaganda under the authority of the Union Society. These three different classifications of the Red Swastika Society exemplify how the Manchukuo government could not cohesively decide on a singular strategy for handling the society. This indecision weakened the society’s application as propaganda, for two of the three classifications understood it in non-political terms. Therefore, it was difficult to reconcile these conceptualizations and portray the society as motivating imperialism. Consequently, the Red Swastika Society did not interact with propagandistic politics to the extent in which it could have.

  1. Jiang Sun, ‘The Predicament of a Redemptive Religion: The Red Swastika Society Under the Rule of Manchukuo’, Journal of Modern Chinese History, 7: 1 (2013), p. 110. [↩]
  2. Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, 2003), p. 105. [↩]
  3. Sun, ‘The Predicament of a Redemptive Religion’, p. 108. [↩]
  4. Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, p. 109. [↩]
  5. Ibid., p. 115. [↩]
  6. Sun, ‘The Predicament of a Redemptive Religion’, p. 117. [↩]
  7. Ibid., p. 122. [↩]

Nichiren’s Teachings in Modern Contexts – Tanaka Chigaku and Sōka Gakkai’s Misapplications of Nichirenism

The teachings of the thirteenth-century Buddhist thinker Nichiren inspired numerous twentieth-century intellectuals, who drew on his steadfast belief in the all-encompassing Lotus Sūtra to advance their contemporary agendas. However, their application of Nichiren’s teachings to modern contexts led to reworkings of their core principles and revealed inconsistencies with the Buddhist Dharma, which stemmed from Nichiren’s disloyal relationship with the Buddhist Dharma and that which he preached.

Nichiren believed that he was born in the ‘Final Dharma age’ prophesized by the Buddha, which meant that only the Lotus Sūtra could lead to Buddhahood.1 He regarded Japan as an ideal place to be born, as it had ‘an affinity for the Lotus Sūtra’, and sought to extend the teachings of it ‘worldwide’.2 However, in Nichiren’s time, Japanese expansion was unrealistic as they posed no ‘threat to other countries’.3 Moreover, Christine Naylor argues that many of his teachings opposed Buddhist principles, since Nichiren understood that ‘false teachings’ were leading the world to disaster, and could not ‘promise peace to his followers in this life’.4 Because of this opposition, he believed Japan and the world’s reluctance to follow solely the Lotus Sūtra had resulted in this ruin. Furthermore, Nichiren’s contradictions undoubtedly led to more difficulty in modern interpretations. For example, he initially believed the Japanese kamis protected the ‘devotees of the Lotus Sūtra’, but then ‘threaten[ed] them with punishment’ once he convinced himself they had betrayed him.5 Finally, adding to interpretation confusion, Naylor contends that the misunderstandings partially derive from Nichiren not following ‘the first of Śākyamuni’s precepts, which forbids the taking of life’, as he ‘sanctioned both secular and religious wars’.6

Tanaka Chigaku’s utilization of Nichirenism for imperialist Japan reworked its core principles as they were not intended for the modern context in which Tanaka employed them. As Japan struggled ‘to assume a place among the world’s powers’ during the Meiji era, Tanaka looked to Nichiren’s argument for Japan to globally spread the Lotus Sūtra as a means for expansion.7 Jacqueline Stone argues that Tanaka was possibly the ‘first person in modern Nichiren Buddhist history’ to believe that the worldwide spread of Nichirenism and the kaidan was truly achievable.8 Nichiren, confined to the contexts of his time, had not even thought such a thing to be genuinely realistic.

The major contrasts between Nichiren and Tanaka become apparent when considering the relationships of their principles with the imperial family. Where Nichiren disrespected both Amaterasu and Hachiman, a ‘tantamount irreverence to the emperor’, Tanaka connected Nichirenism with Shinto nationalism, making him ‘indissolubly linked to the modern imperial state.9 Nichiren’s principles opposed the imperial family, whereas Tanaka’s supported them. Moreover, Naylor argues that Tanaka read Nichiren’s passages out of context, which led him to believe Nichiren was ‘an ardent believer of the imperial system’, citing the confusion.10 The fact that Nichiren’s principles support Japanese imperialism ‘only if torn out of context’ supports the notion that Tanaka’s ‘loyalty was to Japan and the emperor, not to Buddhism’.11 Ultimately, the ‘tangled strands of [Nichiren’s] personality and ideas’ made his writings difficult to interpret and even more difficult to appropriately apply to modern contexts.12

Sōka Gakkai, a lay Nichiren Buddhist organization, in the postwar era interpreted Nichiren’s concept of kaidan not from an imperial perspective, but instead from a modern perspective within the limitations of the postwar parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Its second president, Toda Jōsei, believed it was the organization’s responsibility to prevent the ‘sufferings epitomized by the recent war’ from repeating through the supposed peace preached by Nichiren.13 Similar to Tanaka, the third president, Ikeda Daisaku, sought a true nationwide acceptance of Nichirenism and the Lotus Sūtra; he believed this could be achieved if two-thirds of the country supported Sōka Gakkai.14 However, despite these efforts, its core message of peace contradicts Nichiren’s teachings, as seen earlier in this post. Thus, both the imperialist and militaristic interpretations by Tanaka, and the peaceful interpretations by Sōka Gakkai, ultimately fail to understand Nichiren’s teachings, as they are nearly impossible to apply to modern contexts.

  1. Jacqueline I. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree’, in Steven Heinen and Charles S. Prebish (eds), Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition (Oxford, 2003), p. 194. [↩]
  2. Christina Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism, and the Peace Movement’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 18: 1 (March 1991), p. 67. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 66. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 70. [↩]
  5. Ibid., pp. 61-62. [↩]
  6. Ibid., pp. 70-71. [↩]
  7. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, pp. 198-199. [↩]
  8. Ibid., p. 200. [↩]
  9. Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism’, p. 63. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, p. 203. [↩]
  10. Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism’, pp. 64-65 [↩]
  11. Ibid., pp. 73, 60 [↩]
  12. Ibid., p. 56 [↩]
  13. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, p. 205 [↩]
  14. Ibid., p. 211 [↩]

Navigating the Grey Zone: Buddhist Adaptation and Critique in Modern East Asia

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, East Asia was reshaped by the forces of modernity. The rise of the nation-state and Social Darwinism, which framed international relations as a brutal struggle for survival, challenged traditional societies.1 Within this environment, East Asian Buddhist traditions confronted an existential crisis, widely dismissed by modernisers as “superstitious and useless for national survival”.2  In response, Buddhist thinkers adopted a pragmatic strategy of navigating a “grey zone” between outright collaboration and futile resistance.3 This was not a passive position but an active space of negotiation and critical engagement. Through this approach, they sought to ensure the survival of their tradition while safeguarding its ethical core, strategically appropriating modern ideologies and repurposing their own transcendent ideals to critique state power.

This is exemplified by the Korean monk Han Yong’un (1879–1944). Recognising that Buddhism had to prove its relevance against rivals like Protestant Christianity, Han borrowed from the Chinese reformer Liang Qichao. He used Liang’s argument that Western evolutionary theories were inherent in the Buddhist principle of cause and effect.4 However, his critical innovation was his refusal to fully surrender to Social Darwinism’s harsh logic. While acknowledging its descriptive power in the material world, he subordinated it as a provisional, lesser truth, ultimately subordinate to the higher, universal ethics of Buddhism. For Han, the “survival of the fittest” was a phase in a larger spiritual evolution whose ultimate end was a world of transcendental equality and peace.5 This philosophical framework provided a moral foundation to withstand the coercive pressures of Japanese imperialism.6

A parallel, yet distinct, strategy emerged in Japan, where secular intellectuals wielded Buddhist concepts as instruments of political critique. Here, the strategy was not to subordinate a modern ideology but to weaponise a traditional Buddhist ideal itself. The modern distinction between inner belief and outer practice allowed these thinkers to approach Buddhism as a philosophy, rather than a faith. They utilised the resources in the tradition’s transcendent visions, particularly  Pure Land. This is a transcendent realm defined not by what it possesses, but by the absence of suffering. Thinkers like Ienaga Saburō recognised in this ideal a form of “negative thinking”.7  By envisioning a perfect world defined only by what it was not (i.e., not full of suffering), the Pure Land concept provided a moral standard from which to judge and “negate” the existing political order.8  The use of Buddhist concepts by Japanese leftists thus contained a profound irony. While the institutional Buddhist establishment often aligned with the state, secular intellectuals adopted the same tradition to uncover a radical, critical philosophy. This highlights a key division in modern Buddhism where the ‘grey zone’ could be a space for state collaboration for some, and a source of state negation for others, all within the same national and religious context. Thus, a traditional Buddhist image was transformed into a philosophical foundation for challenging the Japanese state’s rising totalitarianism.9

In conclusion, East Asian Buddhism navigated the challenges of modernity by operating within a strategic “grey zone.” Whether by domesticating Social Darwinism within a Buddhist framework in Korea or by radicalising utopian ideals from within the tradition in Japan, thinkers discovered a path to ensure their tradition’s continuity. Their collective legacy is one of intellectual agility, demonstrating that strategic engagement, not isolation, was key to preserving an ancient tradition’s critical relevance in a modernising world.

  1. Tikhonov, V, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings (1880s-1910s), (Leiden, 2010), p.134 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p.117 [↩]
  3. Schickentanz, Erik, ‘Forum Introduction. The Chrysanthemum, the sword, and the dharmakcakra: Buddhist Entanglements in Japan’s wartime empire (1931-1945’, Modern Asian Studies, 58: 6 (2024), pp.1460-1464 [↩]
  4. Tikhonov, V, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea, p.123 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.114 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.135 [↩]
  7. Curley, Mellissa A.M, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, and the Utopian Imagination, (Honolulu, 2017), p.16 [↩]
  8. Ibid. [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.6 [↩]

Shifu’s Purist Anarchism: How His Beliefs Separated Him from Other Anarchists

Although Shifu’s introduction to anarchism followed similar paths of his fellow anarchists, his later articulation of a pure anarchist ideology and critiques of various anarchists differentiated him from others.

Born as Liu Shaobin in 1884, Liu grew up in a supportive, prosperous family. His father encouraged progressive ideals, such as educating his daughters and advocating to end foot binding.1 Liu performed well in school, and he eventually went to study abroad in Japan. There, he encountered revolutionary ideas, which served as the preface to many other contemporary anarchists as well. Following this introduction, Liu changed his name to Liu Sifu and joined Sun Yat-Sen’s Revolutionary Alliance, which promoted assassination as a means for reform. After a failed assassination attempt, Liu lost his left hand and was arrested. In prison, Liu’s conceptualizations of anarchism would foster, ultimately leading to his rejection of violence as the path for reform and to the creation of his own understanding of anarchism.2 

In 1912, three years after his release, Liu and three others established the Conscience Society. The twelve points of this society serve as the basis of Liu’s anarchist ideology, which members must follow. Despite the inclusion of a loophole for members to join while not precisely following the twelve points, Liu committed to them fully.3 His change of name to Shifu, rejecting the patriarchal power of a family name, most clearly represents his strict adherence to the points. His refusal to eat meat and ride in rickshas, even in his ailing health, further depicts his devotion. Shifu understood anarchism as a rejection of politics. Politics caused corruption in humanity, and the only way to rid this corruption from society was to take on social revolution. Shifu reasoned that ‘government would be replaced by people’s voluntary self-regulation’, which would depend on people’s management of their consciousness and behavior.4 The problem with society was politics; only with the complete eradication—not a mere replacement—of all forms of government could China be free. And in order to initiate this eradication, one must strictly devote themselves to dismantling the structure which society was built on by holding themselves to these specific standards.

His critique of fellow anarchists illustrates how Shifu’s strict belief in a pure anarchism separated him from other contemporaries. Shifu condemned multiple people for a failure to uphold anarchist ideology, including Zhang Ji and Wu Zhihui of the Paris anarchists and Sun Yat-Sen and Jiang Kanghu of the socialists. For Shifu, to maintain the anarchist ideology, one must reflect on themselves to completely reject the current structure of society: politics. Restructuring is difficult to do, for a complete reimagination of the foundation of society is often impractical. So, many anarchists accepted offices in the new Republican government, such as Zhang Ji and Wu Zhihui, under the pretense that these offices would allow them to strengthen their beliefs through government-backed organizations.5 However, Shifu contended that this acceptance of governmental office fundamentally went against the concept of anarchism and leaders of the Paris anarchists failed to moderate their own behaviors. Thus, Zhang and Wu could no longer be considered anarchists, for they did not align with Shifu’s strict anarchism.

Furthermore, Shifu discredited socialism as anarchism, on the basis of socialism’s narrowness. Shifu’s explanation that socialism concerns only the economy, while anarchism concerns all politics, sets the foundation for his criticism. In this explanation, anarchism is the broader concept which socialism fits under.6 Socialism argues for social policy to economically equalize society, not social revolution and the elimination of politics. Moreover, socialism works within the government to enact these policies; it simply replaces one government with another sympathetic to its ideology. Therefore, socialists should not portray themselves as anarchists, for they do not follow all of the requirements of anarchism. From this separation between socialism and anarchism, Shifu cements his concept of anarchism, which is strictly followed, as true anarchism. Thus, Shifu’s pure anarchism distinguishes Shifu from other contemporary anarchists.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (Lanham, 1998), p. 2. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 7. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 115. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 119. [↩]
  5. Ibid., p. 121. [↩]
  6. Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, 1991), p. 142. [↩]

How Neo-Confucian Ideology Clashed with Women’s Rights in Song China

At the heart of the Neo-Confucian, or ‘Learning of the Way’, movement in Song China (960-1279) lay a profound contradiction. This is its vision of a perfectly ordered society, which required the dismantling of economic rights that women already possessed. Through the attempts to construct an ideal female subject devoid of economic agency, it inadvertently exposed its own fundamental instabilities. This movement sought to re-establish rigid patrilineal structures centred on the “descent-line system” (tsung-fa).  But what this shows, unintentionally, is the resilient legal and customary rights exercised by Song women.

The philosophical drive behind the Neo-Confucian movement, spearheaded by figures like Chu Hsi (1130–1200), was the promotion of a radical form of patrilineality.1  The core tenet was that “ancestral property must not be divided but must be put in charge of one person”, that being the male lineage head.2 Within this framework, a woman’s possession of personal assets was perceived as a direct threat. It was seen to “undermine the authority of the household head” and, crucially, “siphon assets away from the patriline.”2  The ideal woman was thus conceptualised as an “economic void,” whose economic self-interests must be overlooked.

However, this idealised construction was immediately destabilised by the established legal and social practices. Contrary to the Neo-Confucian ideal, T’ang and Sung law maintained that a wife’s property was “conceptually distinct from that of her husband,” and she retained the right to remove these assets from the marriage in cases of divorce or widowhood.3 Another key practice was the right of a daughter with no brothers to inherit her parents’ estate, a direct transfer of property that Neo-Confucians like Chu Hsi explicitly condemned as “inappropriate”. 4  This reveals that the Neo-Confucian movement had to actively reshape the reality of women’s activity before replacing it with a passive, patrilineal focus.

But lacking the immediate power to alter statute law, the movement turned to moral and social pressure. A primary tool was the strategic use of funerary inscriptions to disseminate models of exemplary behaviour. Chu Hsi and his contemporaries consistently lauded women who performed acts of economic self-sacrifice, such as selling their dowry jewellery to support their husbands’ families or to fund a funeral.5 This pervasive praise, however, proved to be a double-edged sword. By celebrating dowry donation as an “a rare virtue worthy of attention,” the movement tacitly admitted that it was not the normative practice.6  The ideal woman could only be validated through the conspicuous, public surrender of the autonomy she already legally possessed. This created a paradox where the ideology’s need for constant performance of sacrifice served only to highlight the persistence of the autonomy it sought to negate.

The movement’s most aggressive efforts are evident in the judicial rulings of figures such as Huang Kan (1152–1221), a staunch disciple of Chu Hsi. Huang explicitly set out to overturn precedent, asserting in his judgments that a wife’s dowry land automatically “became land of the husband’s family” and reducing women to mere “conduits for inheritance”.7   Yet, even this militant approach encountered the hard limits of established law. In his own verdicts, Huang Kan was forced to concede that a childless widow could legally reclaim her property, acknowledging that the principle of women’s separate ownership was still “plainly in forcea”.8 The gap between ideological ambition and legal reality remained, even in its most ardent enforcers.

Lastly, while the ideology stressed female submission, its vision of the scholarly male, freed from worldly burdens, necessitated the delegation of domestic management to women. Thinkers like Chen Te-hsiu thus instructed women to use “obedience and submission to establish the foundation”, but to apply “strength and intelligence (kang and ming)” in daily action.9  This created an untenable female subject who was subordinate in theory yet dominant in household governance.

In conclusion, the Neo-Confucian endeavour to construct the “economic void” woman was an inherently unstable project. Its reliance on performative sacrifice, its struggles against resilient legal frameworks, and its own internally contradictory demands reveal an ideology constantly at war with its social context. The historical record of this struggle, preserved in the very inscriptions and legal texts meant to enforce the ideal, ultimately serves as a powerful testament to the economic autonomy it could never fully erase.

  1. Birge, Bettine, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (960-1368), (New York, 2002), p.143. [↩]
  2. Ibid [↩] [↩]
  3. Ibid, p.41 and p.52 [↩]
  4. Ibid, p.146 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.149-150 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.197 [↩]
  7. Ibid, p.188. and p.191. [↩]
  8. Ibid, p.190 [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.184 [↩]

From Saikaku to Today: A Literary Lens on Japan’s Queer Identities

“‘Why in the world did ‘the man who loved love’ waste such vast quantities of gold and silver on his myriad women, when the only pleasure and excitement to be found is in male love?”1

The concluding words to Ihara Saikaku’s introduction of his work The Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Okagami) encapsulates his message. Why love women when you can love men? His work, which chronicled forty stories of male–male sexuality, enjoyed broad appeal and faced little controversy at publication.2 In today’s Japan however this is difficult to imagine, with contemporary lawmakers describing same-sex relations as ‘unproductive’ and threatening a ‘breakdown of the family.’3

Through various literary works, Sabine Frühstück surveys the iterations of queer identities that ‘ultimately lead to today’s LGBTQIA+ community,’ arguing that today’s queer communities in Japan variably ‘insist on an ordinariness’ and ‘normalisation’.4

Frühstück’s starting point, Ihara’s The Great Mirror of Male Love, provides an insight into the long tradition of male–male sexual culture present in the warrior class, Buddhist monks, and in the entertainment world. Ihara attempts ‘to reflect in this mirror all of the varied manifestations of male love.’5 In premodern Japan, popular literature incorporated male love as a natural part of the broader literary theme of sexual relationships within society, and as a marker of sophistication and culture.6 For Ihara then, the central tension was not to prove male–male love as natural, but as superior to male–female love.

From The Great Mirror of Male Love, Frühstück takes us to Mori Ōgai’s Vita Sexualis (Wita Sekusuarisu). Published in 1909, reception to Mori’s novel marked a change in attitudes to same-sex love. The semi-autobiographical novel which detailed the sexual history of the protagonist received backlash and was banned.7 The novel’s title marks this shift as well, with the title being derived from Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, which describes same-sex attractions as sexual anomalies and mental degeneration.8 Frühstück describes this change in attitude as a result of an increase in Western influence.9 Indeed, Mori seems to be influenced by a range of European authors. In a two-part article published in 1902 to 1903, he mentions more than fifty European scholars of sexual psychology, including Sigmund Freud.10 By the 1900s, the ‘love of beautiful boys’ illustrated by Ihara was replaced by ‘hentai seiyoku’ or ‘perverse sexual desire’ which emphasised the physicality of relationships over their spirituality.

Next in Frühstück’s survey is Yoshiya Nobuko’s works. Yoshiya was Japan’s first public figure in the twentieth century to openly identify as a lesbian. Notably, she published Flower Tales (Hana Monogatari, 1916–1924), a collection of short stories centering female romantic friendships, and a novel, Women’s Friendship (Onna no Yūjō), serialized in Fujin Kurabu (1933–1935). The author in her own life delayed ‘adopting’ her partner as a means to civil union to advocate for same-sex marriage.11

Miyatake Gaikotsu’s Hannannyokō (Thoughts on Hermaphroditism, 1922), was a collection of stories that centered sexually and gender nonnormative individuals from a mix of rumors and legends. Distributed under the counter and aimed as much at entertaining readers as at imagining a utopian future of universal hermaphroditism, it echoed contemporary European sexology, such as the works of German researcher Magnus Hirschfeld.12 Reflecting a transnational exchange of ideas, the text shows how early twentieth-century thinkers in both Japan and Europe were beginning to question binary gender and sexual norms.

Approaching the present day, Being Lesbian (‘Rezubian’ to aru to iu koto, 1992) by Kakefuda Hiroko critiques ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ and gave impetus to genres of media specifically catering for sexual minorities. The text preceded the HIV/AIDS epidemic which enabled network building between previously disparate gay and lesbian groups, as well as reframing discussions about queer identities as a human rights issue.13

Today’s Japan faces a range of issues concerning LGBTQ+ rights. While public sentiment increasingly recognises the discrimination queer people face, and both corporations and lawmakers move toward institutionalising anti-discrimination measures, same-sex marriage remains unrecognised. Stagnant policies continue to shape the ruling parties’ approach to explicit prohibition of sex and gender-based discrimination.14 The recent election of conservative Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae further signals limited prospects for progressive reform.

  1. Ihara Saikaku, The Great Mirror of Male Love, trans. Paul Gordon Schalow (Stanford, 1990), p. 56. ↩
  2. Sabine Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan (Cambridge, 2022), p. 144. ↩
  3. Ibid, p. 159. ↩
  4. Ibid, p. 60. ↩
  5. Ihara, The Great Mirror of Male Love, p. 56. ↩
  6. Ibid, p. 6. ↩
  7. Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, p. 146. ↩
  8. Yoshiyuki Nakai, ‘Ōgai’s Craft: Literary Techniques and Themes in Vita Sexualis’, Monumenta Nipponica, 35:2 (Summer 1980), p. 228. ↩
  9. Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, p. 146. ↩
  10. Nakai, ‘Ōgai’s Craft: Literary Techniques and Themes in Vita Sexualis’, p. 229. ↩
  11. Jennifer Robertson, ‘Yoshiya Nobuko: Out and Outspoken in Practice and Prose,’ in Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader, ed. Jennifer Robertson (London, 2005), p. 164. ↩
  12. Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, p. 149. ↩
  13. Ibid, p. 152. ↩
  14. Ibid, pp. 154–156. ↩

Hong Xiuquan’s Historical Revisionism

Hong’s Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping was the driving ideology of the Taiping Rebellion. The rebellion has been central to historical study for its scale, brutality, and the mass socio-political upheaval it triggered.1 The ideological vision at its core has been interrogated by historians to determine the nature of intellectual engagement between East and West and map the nature of influence and exchange.2 Understanding Hong’s articulation of the Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping as a teleological narrative of Chinese history is useful to highlighting both the Christian and the Confucian elements of his vision as well as their interaction. The teleological nature of Hong’s narrative was central to establishing a claim to authority – allowing him to draw cultural authority from classical elements of Chinese culture and moral authority from a Christian ethic.

Hong’s articulation of China’s past and future was dependent on Christian narrative elements.3 This narrative temporality was framed within a Christian framework through ideas of salvation and notions of the demonic. He characterised China’s ancient past as Christian in nature – offset by the invasion of demonic forces.2 These demonic forces were associated with a range of influences like the Qing dynasty and Buddhism.4 In response, he presented his Heavenly Kingdom as the means to salvation, the means to set China back onto the course of Christianity.5

Central to his engagement with China’s ancient past was the figure of Shangdi.6 Arguing that the worship of Shangdi was a universal phenomenon in ancient China, he constructed a monolithic depiction of religion and worship.2 Hong’s invocation of Shangdi came from an attempt to construct dialogue with Chinese antiquity. Hong’s first exposure to Christianity was through Liang’s Good Words.7 Pairing the figure of Shangdi with an interpretation of the Christian nature of China’s past was not Hong’s own invention, but one borrowed from Liang.8 However, Hong’s writing drew this connection into a temporal narrative of sin and salvation. Hong’s understanding of Christianity was thus inherently shaped by the cultural contexts embedded in Liang’s interpretations.

The Christian narrative he created was further shaped by cultural context through his medium of articulation. Despite his denouncement of Chinese classical texts, Hong’s narratives drew from this tradition. For example, the three character classic was central to the Taiping instruction of children.6 Hong’s narrative was also constructed within the Chinese language, thus inheriting Chinese cultural contexts. Hong was constructing a novel claim to divine authority. This was a linguistic project and his dependency on terms like tai-ping and tian-zi constructed spiritual and political authority through Confucian ideas embedded in the Chinese language.9 He constructed his authority through notions of familial ties identifying himself as the second son of the Heavenly Father, and as Christ’s younger brother.2 His expressions of Christian obligation were thus tied to the Confucian notion of five relationships.10 He articulated obligation to the Heavenly Father through a language of familial ties and filial loyalty.11 Thus, to convert his Christian visions into transmissible pieces of divine revelation, he was dependent on Chinese narrative forms. So despite Hong’s association with one and rejection of the other, his construction of authority through narrative was thus dependent on both Christian and Confucian elements.

The temporal nature of Hong’s discourse was more than just a narrative device borrowed from the Bible. It was a link between the Christian ethic and cultural authority. This link was central to allow Hong to present not only a vision for religious upheaval but a civilisational ideal that spanned reform across the social and the political realms as well. By historicising the Heavenly Kingdom, he constructed his vision as shaped and driven by the motions of history transcending the earthly not only in the religious sense but in the temporal sense – articulating a mission that was endowed with purpose that transcended the present – a mission that was in service of the past as well as the future.

  1. Richard Lufrano, The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings (New York, 2001), p. 246. [↩]
  2. Ibid. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
  3. Carl S. Kilcourse, Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843–64 (New York, 2016), p. 50. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p.55. [↩]
  5. Ibid., p.64. [↩]
  6. Ibid., p.50. [↩] [↩]
  7. Ibid., p.65. [↩]
  8. Ibid., p.52. [↩]
  9. Ibid., p.49. [↩]
  10. Ibid., p.109. [↩]
  11. Ibid., p.125. [↩]

Failure to Reject Tradition – The Evolution of the New Culture Movement’s ‘xiao jiating’

The family-reform ideals of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century gained widespread popular support from the nation’s young men through periodicals, such as Family Research, which encouraged individualism and attacked patriarchal society. Their absorption in individualism blinded them to the inherent misogyny in their search for the ideal wife—one who was educated and politically conscious. However, it lacked the appeal necessary for a socioeconomic revolution, as those young men did not subscribe to all of the Movement’s radical ideas; often, they subconsciously preferred traditionalism despite their ambition to form a modern state. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party retroactively revised and imposed the New Culture Movement’s xiao jiating, or conjugal family, by forcing individuals to devote themselves equally to their emotional relationships and the state.

In her monograph, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953, Susan L. Glosser argues that those who started Family Research believed family reform was the ‘necessary first step in China’s modernization’, as individuals must first be ‘happy at home’ in order to provide their full contribution to the urban reform movements throughout China.1 The primary obstacle preventing young men from this domestic happiness, they contended, was the patriarch. Under the Confucian standard, the patriarch held great control over his children’s lives. Thus, to free themselves for their ultimate goal of a ‘transformation of the Chinese economy’ and ‘political structure’, they began by attacking the patriarch due to his control and ‘as a stand-in for the nebulous forces of “power” and “class” that strangled China’.2 It was only then, with the happiness from their new family, that they understood that China could modernize economically and socially.3

As happiness, and thus productivity, was believed to be derived from the family, those involved in the New Culture Movement ‘developed a new set of expectations for their wives’.4 In opposition to traditional arranged marriages, they argued in favor of a concept of marriage based on romantic love, in which the couple involved jointly shared ‘intellectual and political interests’.4 However, Glosser declares, these young men failed to consider what an ideal husband might be, and pushed unrealistic standards onto the women of their time.5 Thus, they thought only of what would make them happy in marriage, while expecting their wives to work independently in the domestic sphere and join other social spheres, revealing a misogynistic core behind their advocacy for women’s rights. 

The surveys of two Chinese sociologists, Chen Heqin and Pan Guangdan, that Glosser examines, reveal that despite the insistence of the New Culture radicals, many young men appear ‘to have been willing, and even happy, to make their peace with much that was traditional in the Chinese family’.6 The primary family-reform ideals of the New Culture Movement that they supported were the rejection of arranged marriages and the education of women. However, many young couples were not too interested in establishing ‘households independent of their parents’.7 Moreover, despite wanting to choose their own wife, the qualities they looked for in a wife were more traditional than they might have anticipated—over three-quarters of Chen’s respondents did not list any interest in an ideal wife’s talents.8 In conclusion, Chen and Pan found that many of their respondents simply picked and chose certain aspects of the New Culture’s xiao jiating and ‘ignored or modified others’.9

The Marriage Law, passed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1950, promised the right to choose spouses and ensured equality among men and women.10 It was described by the Party as the final step in ‘the long fight, begun by the New Culture Movement, against the “feudal” customs of traditional China’.11 However, the Party initially hesitated to enforce the law due to concerns that the peasants might react negatively toward legislation that abruptly hindered tradition. Glosser contends that the Party ‘promised to resolve the tension that the conjugal family ideal had created between the individual and the state’ through their ‘version’ of the ideal xiao jiating.12 Although, their method of doing so was to absorb the citizens entirely into the state and make the state the sole legitimizing factor of marriage. Thus, the individuals were forced to jointly devote themselves to their emotional relationships and the state, as marital privacy was stripped away, disguised as the Party’s loyalty to New Culture ideals.

  1. Susan L. Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953 (Berkeley, 2003), p. 31. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 38. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 44 [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 49 [↩] [↩]
  5. Ibid., p. 51 [↩]
  6. Ibid., p. 57 [↩]
  7. Ibid., p. 62 [↩]
  8. Ibid., p. 69 [↩]
  9. Ibid., p. 77 [↩]
  10. Ibid., pp. 169, 171 [↩]
  11. Ibid., pp. 169-170 [↩]
  12. Ibid., p. 195 [↩]