How do we Write Spatial History? Examining Fujianese Maritime Rituals

Spatial history is an analytical framework which seeks to understand abstract layers of the lived experiences of individuals and communities. Exploring the interplay between the physical and the abstract dimensions of a space–whether it be a home, a city or a sailing ship, to name a few examples–can offer us new perspectives on how spaces were felt and understood emotionally by their inhabitants. These emotions, in turn, may illuminate new dimensions of the social or political exercises of certain groups in relation to space and place. Compelling academic work surrounding spatial history often blends together the trappings of many different disciplines such as geography, anthropology, and even environmental sciences to create richer analysis and meaningful storytelling.

However, despite spatial history’s desire to discover and describe such a fundamental human experience–the emotional layers of the spaces we inhabit–the theory and language which are necessary to express these layers sometimes veer dangerously toward the abstract and intangible. This blog post seeks to highlight an intriguing piece of recent scholarship from Cambridge which in my opinion successfully balances dimensions of spatial history with a strong narrative thread which grounds the analysis in its physical space and alongside the human lives which surround it.
Historian Ilay Golan’s article “This Ship Prays: The Southern Chinese Religious Seascape through the Handbook of a Maritime Ritual Master” was published this last September (2024) in the Religions journal. In “This Ship Prays”, Golan uses a Daoist liturgical manuscript from between the late seventeenth to early nineteenth century as his primary source to investigate the religious traditions of Fujianese sailors of the South China Sea throughout the early Qing dynasty. The contents of the manuscript include a vast array of rituals to be undertaken by the ship’s crew, directed by their fellow crewmate and “Ritual Master”, at various points and ports of call throughout their voyages. Golan argues that the rituals possess a “trans-locality” about them, uniquely reflecting both the changes and the constants of the professional maritime lifestyle. The manuscript, referred to as “ACZK” is augmented by other travel accounts of these rituals from European perspectives. This cross referencing of accounts serves to strengthen Golan’s analysis whilst also deepening the narrative engagement of the piece: readers are invited to create a richer, more holistic understanding of the rituals and their practitioners using this wider pool of descriptions.

Golan’s work offers a fundamentally spatial perspective into the lived experiences of the Fujianese sailors who engaged with rituals like those found in ACZK. He discusses the concept of “sacred geography” alongside the trans-spatial worship structures outlined in ACZK, and even the aforementioned European travel accounts work to further situate “This Ship Prays” in a complex, developed sense of space. Additionally, Golan maintains a clear narrative voice throughout the piece that both conveys his argument clearly and makes it easier for the reader to follow along in the visualization of these ritual practices and spaces. This clarity and firm connection to a reconstructed reality is something that theory-heavy spatial history (and spatial geography, social science, etc…) pieces sometimes struggle with. Golan successfully marries his complex analysis with this engaging narrative style. His compelling voice is more than just set-dressing: it makes his history feel ‘real’, and in a sense it also restores humanity to the sailors he discusses.

“This Ship Prays” reminds us that successful spatial histories need not wallow in abstract theory in order to tackle abstract realities. Golan offers thoughtful, respectful analysis to ACZK’s rituals, and in doing so he provides audiences with an impactful vision of the layered space of Fujianese merchant vessels and the South China Seas which surrounded them. The physical helm, the spiritual helm-god. The physical stormy seas, the spiritual angry deity. In understanding the concurrence of the physical and the spiritual, we glean valuable new insight into the lives and landscapes of these historical actors.

The Meiji Restoration and the Productivity of Women

The Meiji system and its perspective on gender offers a critical lens through which to examine the Japanese government’s increasing consolidation of power from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Meiji policies were not aimed at diminishing women’s significance, but rather at positioning them as neutral, dutiful servants of the imperial regime. This new conception of gender from the 1880s was designed to build pride for the ‘motherhood’ role who would contribute to the state primarily through this task.

Hastings and Nolte contend that women’s roles in the industrialisation of Japan was defined between 1890 and 1911, with a vision of women’s increased productivity to serve a more prosperous imperial state. They are adamant to highlight the distinction in women’s position from the Tokugawa regime, countering the historical perspective that Meiji women’s political oppression was simply a continuation of traditional Confucian beliefs. According to the authors, while Meiji policies were “cloaked in traditional rhetoric, [they] summoned women to contribute positively to the state”1. The shift in rhetoric highlights the increased power of this new government to create an institutionalised role for women. The Meiji bureaucrats were intent on modernisation, meaning that whilst a Japanese woman’s role as a mother was a crucial part of her productive role to the state, it couldn’t exist as her only role. New responsibilities therefore emerged: compulsory education for men and women was introduced in 1873; working-class women were considered the foundations of Japan’s industrial economy, and middle-class women were expected to participate in social events like dinner parties to impress foreign diplomats. These evolving social roles extended beyond the domestic sphere and were intricately tied with imperial politics, highlighting women’s importance to the nation’s progress and global standing. In this utilitarianist framework, motherhood became a broader, more flexible concept, encompassing a range of responsibilities centred on sacrifice and responsibility, all in service to the state’s greater ambitions.

Despite these growing public roles, state propaganda including the use of the ‘good wife, wise mother’ (ryosai kenbo) slogan, was key to singling out women’s ultimate service to the developing nation being within the family system. This is portrayed by officials like Vice-Admiral Kamimura, who asserted at the Tokyo Girls’ Higher School “that their studying to become wise mothers and good wives was equally as valuable to the nation as was his fighting on the sea”2. The family unit was portrayed as a microcosm of the state: if families could learn to obey the head of the household, this was expected to transfer into loyalty to the state. In this way, the family became part of the state apparatus for greater control. Education was a key component to this, as by 1899 a higher school for girls was established in each prefecture, with the sole purpose of this education being to refine their duties in the home within the ‘good wife, wise mother’ ideal3.

However, the reinstitution of gender roles was critical in reinforcing the exclusion of women from political participation. The authors compare women’s societal roles to that of civil servants, whose responsibilities were deemed so vital to the nation’s stability that political participation was inappropriate and disruptive to the social order. However, as Hastings and Nolte articulate, these gendered policies “reinforced the image of women, not as weak and fragile beings in need of protection, but as national assets with particular nurturing skills”4. It highlights that their exclusion from politics was arguably not due to an insinuation that women were physically or mentally weak, however their social value simply did not permit them into this field.

Their evaluation is arguably oversimplified, in my opinion, as it is easy to assume that the regime represented a positive change for women simply by opening up new avenues for them to contribute to the national goals. This is particularly the case in the discussion of the factory workers and the insinuation that government idealised working-class women for their productive power to the nation, when in reality women in the textile mills were subjected to abominable working conditions, often contracting severe illnesses such as tuberculous and being forced to work 12 to 14-hour days. This evaluation is important in including a perspective beyond the Meiji bureaucrats of the late 19th century to evaluate how Japanese women themselves experienced and perceived the shift in their role in society.

In conclusion, Hasting and Nolte offer a critical evaluation of the intersection between gender and industrialisation policies in late 19th century Japan, highlighting the Meiji government’s increasing consolidation of power. The rhetoric of ryosai kenbo perceived motherhood as fundamentally about sacrifice which offered them a more productive role within society with distinct responsibilities, yet justified their political exclusion.

  1. Sharon H. Nolle and Sally Ann Hastings, ‘The Meiji State’s Policy Toward Women, 1890-1910’, in Gail Lee Bernstein (ed.), Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (University of California Press, 1991) p.152 [↩]
  2. ibid. p.158 [↩]
  3. ibid. p.157 [↩]
  4. ibid. p.158 [↩]

Heyin Zhen and Achieving True Liberation for Women

Heyin Zhen was a prominent Chinese feminist and anarchist thinker in the early 20th century. Heyin was adamant that gender equality could not be equated with gender liberation. To her, gender equality could only change the nature of gender oppression. True female liberation could only be achieved the complete liberation of all humans and the destruction of all hierarchies and unequal relations.

Heyin argued that traditional patriarchal values regarded women as commodities to be exploited by men for the sake of procreation and parenthood. As such, women were confined to the house and regarded as slaves; indeed all manor of customs and language were developed to uphold this status of confinement. At the same time, Heyin noted that men too suffered from oppression under the patriarchy. Because women were confined to the home, men were forced to shoulder all the financial burden of family.1

For Heyin, the oppression of labor suffered by men was no lesser evil compared to the oppression of confinement suffered by women. As such , Heyin rejected the idea that women could be liberated simply through the assumption of male gender roles. She noted that lower-class women were long forced to shoulder part of the financial burden alongside the men; such an experience was anything but liberating.2 For these same reasons, Heyin was very critical of the male-led gender reform movements in China at the time, as did not truly care about the rights of women, and only sought to use gender reform to further their own interests. Heyin listed three purported ulterior motives of the male reformers.  First, Chinese men saw that the colonial powers were strong and thus sought to emulate them; it just so happened that women in these countries had more freedoms than in China. Second, the economic hardships of the late Qing meant that keeping women out of the labor force was no longer sustainable even for the middle class, thus women were encouraged to “free” themselves from domestic confinement and make their own living. Finally, having long struggled to support their households, these men sought to transfer their burden over to women in the name of “equality.”3  

In attacking the male gender reformers, Heyin asserted that the patriarchy could not and would not reform itself out of existence. Indeed, any “feminist” reform championed would be invariably tailored to ensure the continued existence of the patriarchy. Such reforms, though giving the appearance of emancipating women, in reality allowed men to continue their exploitation of women in a modern environment. If men could not be trusted to free women, the logical conclusion would be that women would have to lead their own liberation. Yet even here Heyin urges caution. 

Heyin was no less critical of contemporary female reformers than she was of their male counterparts. She argued that the reforms championed by such women only created a superficial parity between men and women without actually removing the underlying oppression. Heyin was especially critical of the women’s suffrage movement. Heyin argued that only a small minority of (upper class) women would actually be empowered by the right to vote and this empowered minority would only contribute another layer to the oppression of the unempowered majority. Heyin’s rejection of such tokenization encompassed not only gender, but class as well. She asserted that even the most progressive champions of the masses (i.e. socialists) became just as oppressive as every other member of the ruling class soon as they achieved power.3 Heyin’s attitude towards politics amounted to a wholesale rejection of authority, regardless of who wielded it. To her, any relationship, political or otherwise, that involved one party asserting power over another other was inherently oppressive and worthy of being opposed. Being equal in name only could by no means be called “liberation” if there was no equality in practice. Heyin thus believed that the only true liberation for women was total liberation: liberation not only from the patriarchy, but also from all other forms of oppression and exploitation.  

  1. Zhen Heyin, “On the Question of Women’s Liberation,” Tianyi Bao, 1907. [↩]
  2. Ibid. [↩]
  3. Ibid [↩] [↩]

Making sense of pro- and anti-Japanese behaviour in Tonghak

The Tonghak Rebellion is a popular anti-foreign rebellion in Korea in 1894, led by followers of the Tonghak religion, with Chŏn Pongjun, a local Tonghak leader, at its head. The imposition of Japanese influence at the head of the Korean government following the first rebellion ignited a second rebellion directed at the Japanese, which eventually crushed the rebellion at Kongju.1 With the failure of the Tonghak Rebellion and the crackdown on Tonghak by the Korean government, ideas of political reform gained currency in the now-underground Tonghak, as well as the prospect of Japanese intervention in modernisation.2 Later, the Chinbohoe was formed in 1904 on the basis of Tonghak’s religious organisation with the aim of reforming the Korean government by limited monarchical and local elites’ power, as well as to support the Japanese war effort during the Russo-Japanese war.3 In its advocacy for the Korean people’s rights and reform, Chinbohoe and Ilchinhoe, a political organisation also with the goal of political reform, merged in 1904 under the latter’s name.4

The lineage of Tonghak involvement in both the anti-foreign, anti-Japanese Tonghak rebellion, and the pro-Japanese intervention Ilchinhoe, is curious, and at first glance, contradictory. Yet in both the Tonghak Rebellion and in the later grassroot reform efforts by the Inchinhoe, these did not represent the totality of their aims and motivations, and some similarities can be found in their other stated aims. One such aim rests in a concern for the economic injustices inflicted on their grassroot supporters by the Korean government.

Commonly cited as being the demands of the Tonghak Rebellion, a list of twelve demands for reform promulgated during the middle part of the rebellion seems to suggest an overtly egalitarian and radical program for the benefit of the masses. Its authenticity is disputed, however, originating as it did from a historical novel authored by a writer sympathetic to the Tonghak cause, within a social milieu of strong socialist influences.5 Instead, a list of 14 reform demands submitted to the government during the first rebellion can be considered.6 While the overt egalitarianism that later historiography would attribute to the rebellion’s radicalism would be absent in this list of demands, the demands listed reflected a primary concern with “corrupt” local officials, and more significantly with taxes that were the concerns of its supporters. The underlying motive of the first rebellion lies separate to the anti-Japanese sentiment of the second rebellion.

Around a decade later, the Ilchinhoe engaged in a campaign of ‘tax resistance’ between 1904-1907.7 The underlying motive behind its resistance was the group’s belief in the popular control over taxes and tax administration, in conflict with the Korean monarch’s tax reforms that centralised powers onto the monarchy itself.8 The Ilchinhoe advocated for refusing to pay miscellaneous taxes, promulgated recommended changes to taxes, and brought in tax collectors that operated in parallel to the Korean monarch.9 All this was framed in the Ilchinhoe’s advocacy for ‘civilised rule’, which in their conception was consistent with their support for Japanese intervention in Korea, as Japan was considered a ‘civilising’ force in Korea.

Thus the contradiction between the anti-Japanese sentiments of the Tonghak Rebellion and the pro-Japanese aims of the Ilchinhoe is not intractable as these purposes did not constitute the totality of their group’s existence. Instead, their attitudes to the Japanese stood alongside other aims subsumed within a larger nexus of ideas and grievances about the structure of rule in Korea.

  1. Peter H. Lee, William Theodore De Bary, Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, Sources of Korean tradition (New York, 1997), pp. 262-263. [↩]
  2. Carl Young, ‘Eastern Learning Divided: The Split in the Tonghak Religion and the Japanese Annexation of Korea, 1904–1910’, in Emily Anderson (ed.), Belief and Practice in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (Singapore, 2017), pp. 81-82. [↩]
  3. Ibid., pp. 82-83. [↩]
  4. Yumi Moon, ‘Immoral Rights: Korean Populist Collaborators and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1904—1910’, The American Historical Review, 118: 1 (February 2013), p. 29. [↩]
  5. Young Ick Lew, ‘The Conservative Character of the 1894 Tonghak Peasant Uprising: A Reappraisal with Emphasis on Chŏn Pong-jun’s Background and Motivation’, The Journal of Korean Studies, 7 (1990), pp. 165-167. [↩]
  6. Ibid., pp. 170-171. [↩]
  7. Yumi Moon, ‘Immoral Rights’, p. 33. [↩]
  8. Ibid., pp. 33-35. [↩]
  9. Ibid., pp. 35-37. [↩]

Nannü: He-Yin Zhen’s call for revolution

Who is He-Yin Zhen and why is her work so important? He-Yin Zhen was a preeminent anarcho-feminist who constructed her critique in an early twentieth century China marked by turbulent political, social and cultural reinvention. Her article On the Question of Women’s Liberation utilises nannü, an analytical term that frames the ideological and historical bases of institutionalised gendered social relations.

In The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts of Transnational Theory, Lydia Liu, Rebecca Karl and Dorothy Ko argue that He-Yin’s work represented a fundamental challenge to the conventional ideological foundations of patriarchal society, including that of progressive Chinese male intellectuals who also wrote about women’s rights. For instance, she critiqued Jin Tianhe’s The Women’s Bell for framing the struggle for equality within a nationalist rhetoric of self-strengthening, the slogan behind late Qing modernisations.1 From this perspective, the feminist movement became a means of reforming China in line with Western ideas of gender equality to restore the country’s global prominence as a modern nation, rather than for the sole sake of bettering the lives of women. He-Yin Zhen, on the other hand, saw the emerging movement as a chance to deconstruct traditional conceptions of gender as a source of power, not as a means of enabling women to become better agents of the nationalist cause, but for women to gain true independence in their own right. For instance, she brought these ideas into practice by incorporating her maternal surname with her traditional patrilineal surname, thus including the female element of her identity in a traditional conventionalised space.

While these divergences demonstrate the range of perspectives prevalent in China at the time, this argument can be taken further than Liu, Karl and Ko go by positing that progressive Chinese male intellectuals like Tianhe and Liang Qichao should not be defined as ‘feminists’ at all. While they may advocate for reforms that have characteristics that further women’s rights, such as ending the practice of foot binding or endorsing women’s education, their ultimate motivation to strengthen China undermines the core characteristic of feminism that believes in equality as a sufficient goal in itself. He-Yin expresses this point succinctly when she writes of ‘men’s pursuit of self-distinction in the name of women’s liberation’2, where these men critique the traditions that do not conform with their nationalist agenda and emulate Western powers in a manner that perpetuates the very social and structural hierarchy He-Yin seeks to overturn.3

Liu, Karl and Ko also discuss He-Yin’s solution to the misconception that the state could be anything but a system that perpetuates oppression.4 He-Yin’s anarchism and feminism were fundamentally intertwined. Her theory of shengji, defined as ‘livelihood’ and a more encapsulating term than ‘class’, thus critiques patriarchal capitalism, coloniality, and state tradition by foregrounding the gendered universality of nannü within each of these social systems.5 This attack on the state as a reproducer of conditions that systematically exclude and subordinate women diverges from many of her contemporary reformers, who largely sought to exchange the imperial dynastic regime with a republican state. He-Yin instead called upon women to be the agents of their own liberation, advocating for a social revolution to relieve society of the oppression of nannü. She argued that only with genuine motivation to uproot systems of material oppression will current power structures not be repeated, and women freed from the commodification of their bodies. (ibid., p.25.)) The very point she makes about such historic social hierarchies can be practically evidenced by confronting institutionalised, largely western, terms of reference in attempts to translate nannü.6 Confronting this will enable scholars to adequately acknowledge the discursive multiplicity in the global formation of feminist theory, in which He-Yin played a significant part.

  1. Liu, Lydia He, Rebecca E. Karl, Dorothy Ko (ed.) The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p.7. [↩]
  2. He-Yin Zhen, ‘Question of Women’s Liberation’, in The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, p.60. [↩]
  3. Hershatter, Gail, ‘Disturbances, 1840-1900’, in Women and China’s Revolutions (Maryland, 2018), p.84. [↩]
  4. Liu et al. The Birth of Chinese Feminism, p.23. [↩]
  5. ibid., p.22. [↩]
  6. ibid., p.10. [↩]

Morality in Anarchism and He-Yin Zhen’s Conception of Female Liberation

He-Yin Zhen is an early Chinese feminist and anarchist, who alongside her husband Liu Shipei, published the journal Natural Justice.1 Published between 1907-1908, it is in Natural Justice that He-Yin would articulate much of her feminist theories, in articles such as ‘On the Revenge of Women’, and ‘The Feminist Manifesto’. ‘On the Revenge of Women’ is a text which, through analyses of classical texts in Chinese literary canon, etymologies that embed in them the degradation of women, and the role of social institutions in formalising male domination of women, educe the “instruments of male tyrannical rule”.2 Examples from throughout Chinese history are used to argue that women had long been deprived of the right to bear arms, to hold political power, to be educated, and that in their hapless deaths they were denied their right to life itself.3 As with much of her other writings, the ultimate goal of the article is to advocate for a social, economic, and feminist revolution to the ends of the abolition of private property and the state, as a means of achieving true equality between men and women in the absence of the imbalance of power and wealth that results in domination and the oppression of women by men.4

Much like other Chinese anarchists of the time, He-Yin saw the necessity of a social revolution as a means of bringing an end to the oppression of the state, and to achieve true equality between men and women. The nature of the social revolution — the bounds of acts and acceptability, arguably constitute a standard of morality by which her feminist-anarchism is to be achieved. It is a standard of morality most explicitly articulated in the article ‘The Feminist Manifesto’, echoing ‘The Communist Manifesto’, of which the earliest Chinese translation can also be found in Natural Justice.5 The brief and direct nature of the article suggests her intentions towards the writing as a call-to-arms. In it, He-Yin lists seven actionable things which she implores women to carry out, as a means of combating four basic inequalities which she had identified: monogamy, maiden names, valuing daughters equally, raising daughters without discrimination, separation in marriage, rules for remarriage, and the abolish of brothels.6

Condemnation of prostitution and concubinage is a recurring point in her articles. Polygamy, too, is rejected even if extended to women, considered a transgression and a succumbing to lust.7 In imploring women to strive for the seven goals, He-Yin sees women’s role in rejecting the oppressive social institutions as paramount to achieving universal justice. The emphasis which she places on social revolution carried by women echoes the primacy which Chinese anarchists of her period accorded to social revolution and education in the struggle against the state for equality.

  1. ‘Biography’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 51. [↩]
  2. He-Yin Zhen, ‘On the Revenge of Women’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 146. [↩]
  3. Ibid., pp. 147,152. [↩]
  4. Ibid., pp. 107-108 [↩]
  5. ‘Introduction: Toward a Transnational Feminist Theory’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), pp. 5-6. [↩]
  6. He-Yin Zhen, ‘The Feminist Manifesto’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), pp. 182-183. [↩]
  7. Ibid., pp. 183-184. [↩]

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.

  1. Sang, Tze-Lan D, The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China  (Chicago, 2003), p. 133 [↩]
  2. ibid, p. 140 [↩]
  3. ibid, p. 146 [↩]
  4. ibid, p. 156 [↩]
  5. ibid, p. 153 [↩]
  6. ibid, p. 155 [↩]
  7. 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.

  1. Dirlik, Arif, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 117, 120, 156. [↩]
  2. 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.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 102. [↩] [↩]
  2. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 115. [↩] [↩] [↩]
  3. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 108, 115. [↩]
  4. 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.

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