Correlations and Comparisons of Pre-Imperial Chinese Philosophical Thought and Warring States Military Theory
On the surface, comparing philosophers with military theorists is much like comparing apples with oranges. At a fundamental level they are vastly different. While the philosopher tries to conceive of an ideal existence, the military man must work within the boundaries of war, which can be viewed as the extreme opposite of ideal human behavior. As a result, they appear to be two entirely different lines of thought with neither a sense of being parallel or intersecting. However, as the geometric metaphor implies, it is impossible to have such a condition; two lines must either cross or never cross, but either way there are similarities between the two. Thus is the case with philosophy and military theory, different by their very definition yet similar in many ways.
Generally, for the philosopher war appears only as a portion of a larger theory and it is rarely the starting point in this process. Notable exceptions are times when conflict is constant and when there is not necessary an end in sight, such as the Warring States period in China. The challenge for men like Confucius and Mozi during this time was to shape their own vision against the chaos and conflict that surrounded them. Indeed, it could be said that a significant part of their purpose was to make sense of it all and move away from a state of continual warfare. Conversely, military theorists like Sunzi and his grandson Sun Pin took war as their starting point and were mainly concerned with dissecting the essentials of combat. However, despite this highly-specialized approach, they eventually came to address the same moral and societal implications of war that the philosophers did. This overlapping material is intriguing not only because of what it says about society during this period but also because of the way a gentleman like Confucius and a general like Wuzi could come to similar conclusions.
This paper’s primary intent is to make an introductory but broad textual
comparison. It employs the most notable representatives of the Confucian,
Mohist and Daoist schools and the most important works of military theory,
which includes the Liu Tao, Sunzi’s The Art of War, Sima Fa,
Wuzi, Wei Liaozi and Sun Pin’s Military Methods. Use of these
choices will serve to not only confine the discussion but also focus the
analysis onto the mainstream of classical Chinese thought. This study
seeks to not only bring the obvious connections to light, but to also deal
with the process of how these two types of thought managed to find their
way to common ground despite starting from entirely different points –
a process which may have been due to mutual influence.
February 15 (top) Chen-shan Ellen Wang (wangcs@sas.upenn.edu)
Tenjikuyô architecture in Japan and Fujian provincial architecture in China
Buddhist architecture of the Kamakura period is usually categorized into three styles—Tenjikuyô (or Daibutsuyô), Karayô and Wayô. The former two styles are closely related to the Chinese structures in Song period while the latter is considerably continuing the Heian Japanese flavor. This study mainly subjects on the relationship between the Tenjikuyô architecture and the provincial architecture in Fujian, China from both architectural and social points of view. The avocation of Tenjikuyô is attributed to Shunjôbô-Chôgen, who was a follower of Honen-shonin, the founder of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan. While the new government decided to restore the symbolical temple Tôdai-ji after suffering from fire in the previous warfare, Chôgen was recommended by his master to take charge of this project. According to the historic records, Chôgen had made pilgrimage to China including Tiantai Mountain and Mingzhou three times before being appointed to this great mission. Nevertheless, he invited two bronze masters from Fujian to accomplish this task. After this restoration, Chôgen also built a number of Jôdô Buddhist structures all over Japan. Unfortunately, only three buildings have survived: the Nandaimon of Tôdai-ji in Kyôto, Jôdodô of Jôdô-ji in Hyogo-ken, and Sûtra repository of Daigô-ji.
The first part of this study is describing the architectural characteristics of Tenjikuyô. As the leading theory has drawn its connection to the Fujian provincial architecture in China, I shall make a detailed comparison between the Tenkujiyô examples and the buildings in Fujian with contemporary dates. As a new style in Japanese architectural history, the theories on the origin of Tenjikuyô are varied. The earlier scholars concluded two chief characteristics of the Tenjikuyô are its design of bracketing along a single, transverse axis and its insertion of this system of bracket arms through the body of the column. As early as in Gustav Ecke’s The Twin Pagodas of Zayton published in 1935, they have pointed out the structural similarity between the two stone, timber-simulated pagodas of the Kaiyuan monastery at Quanzhou, Fujian and the Nandaimon. The later scholars by comparing in detail including the insertion of bracket arms into columns, the transverse projection, layout of roof rafters, and various applications of tie-beams.
Secondly, this study is trying an effort on the terminology. It is still
a mystery of the terminology Tenjikujiyô, literally Indian style,
while it is nothing to do with Indian architecture. When the Tenjikuyô
is drawn a close relationship with the Fujian architecture, the architectural
historians tend to believe that Chôgen might have also visited Fujian
during his pilgrimage. As the archaeological evidences have shown the Indian
settlements in Fuzhou and Quanzhou in tenth century, it might give us a
clue that Chôgen might have seen the Indians there. While taking
care of the great task, an architectural style in Fujian with direct Indian
contact became his choice. The social history of Fujian, especially the
foreign relationship will be concerned as well as the architecture.
February 22 (top) Noriko J. Horiguchi (norikoj@sas.upenn.edu)
The Body Politic in Modern Japanese Women’s Literature: Bodies of Women and of the Japanese National Empire in Hayashi Fumiko and Tamura Toshiko’s Writings
My presentation concerns part of my dissertation project, which investigates the female body as part of the body of the modern Japanese national empire as depicted in the literature of two prolific female writers, Hayashi Fumiko (1904-1951) and Tamura Toshiko (1884-1945). More specifically, I examine how the migrant bodies of female characters in modern Japanese women’s literature delineate, confine, and/or expand the political boundaries of the national empire. As the cultural and geopolitical boundaries of the Japanese empire expand during this period, how is the female body inscribed in literature?
In the presentation, I concentrate on the literature Hayashi produced during and after her overseas travels, which extended to what are now called the Republic of Indonesia, the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, the Republic of Korea, the French Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain. There are three themes in Hayashi’s literature, which I analyze in particular. First, I analyze the ways in which the wandering bodies in Hayashi’s work disturb the state-driven nationalist discourse on Japan/other nations and their women. Second, I examine how the migrant bodies, which move in and from Japan to Japan’s colonies as well as to Western territories, operate within the expanding body of the national empire of Japan. Third, I examine how Hayashi’s fiction in postwar Japan reproduces the empire as a place of nostalgia and promise.
In conclusion, I make the followings observations: Hayashi and her female
characters refused to live a domestic and fixated life, and entertained
the status of wandering migrants. With the realization that the native
lands as homes escape the individual’s grasp, Hayashi wrote about the transient
nature of human beings and of their relationships with their native lands.
As migrants, both the author and her characters could have remained strangers
in both their nation and foreign destinations. However, they were
neither able to penetrate their own opacity or deviousness as Japan’s subjects,
nor to find their destinations foreign. Hayashi’s characters attempt
to erase their inadequacies, be they emotional, material, and/or physical
deprivations, and to attain senses of fullness, freedom, security, and
power by incorporating the nation-state’s imperialist discourses of growth,
liberation, salvation, and domination into their stories. In
the final analysis, Hayashi’s writings succeed in overcoming the restraints
of national limits, but fail to transcend the fetters of imperial confines.
March 1 (top) Jia (Jane) Si (sijia@sas.upenn.edu)
Playing Historic Functions:
-- A Study of Chinese Pidgin English via Historical Texts of the 18th
and 19th Centuries
Chinese Pidgin English (abbreviated CPE below) was considered the lingua franca used around the southeast coast of China during the 18th and 19th centuries for a certain kind of commercial purpose. Two groups of people, native Cantonese and Western merchants, commanded a limited range of vocabulary and an incomplete grammar structure to exchange simple trading information. Therefore, speakers of that time first used “broken English” as a specific name of a “contact language,” rather than the linguistic term “pidgin.” Linguistic experts have long noticed this special linguistic phenomenon. They have done an excellent job in collecting vivid examples of dialogues from the frontier of trading contact territories, usually along the coasts and on islands, and from various parts of the world. But as for CPE, it has been difficult to study on the basis of present materials, for CPE has passed over from the early 20th century. Therefore, historical texts are of great importance.
Reinecke, Hall, Bauer, Zhenhe Zhou, Dingxu Shi and others have done
high quality research on the grammar and structure of CPE. Except
for Zhenhe Zhou’s study of the text of Zhu Ci in Shen Bao
in the 1920s describing the so called “Yang Jing Bang” English at
Shanghai, other texts are mainly concentrated in the documents of the East
India Company compiled by H.B. Morse, the article Jargon Spoken at Canton
written by Rev. Samuel Wells Williams in the Chinese Repository,
and some dialogue records showing in the Households. Because
of the limitation of materials during the historical context of CPE, enlarging
effective and useful resources could help us better understand the nature
and development of this special contact language. For example, descriptions
in the earlier voyages to East Asia made by Europeans and Americans in
the 18th century, commercial guides compiled by Christians in the 19th
century, handbooks of tourism, and textbooks of conversation are all of
high research value. These historical records keep us alert to a
certain historical environment where this “jargon spoken” was considered
practical and popular. What is the purpose of both sides using it?
Why is it “pidgin English” instead of “pidgin Chinese,” which foreigners
also could have learned imperfectly so that “broken Chinese” would be spoken
by both sides? We may provide answers to these questions by reexamining
some important points from a historical perspective.
More in March and April (top)
March 22: Jennifer Criss, a second year graduate student in the Art History Department, will give a talk entitled "Western-Style Self-Portraiture in Taisho Japan: The Artistic Paradigms of Yorozu Tetsugoro and Kishida Ryusei."
March 29: We will hold a meeting between graduate students and faculty in order to discuss upcoming concerns in the lives of students--namely comprehensive exams, dissertation proposals, and things of that nature. Also, this will be a chance for students to find out what the faculty is "up to" in terms of research and projects. Hopefully, this will help to build some unity within and without of the department as well as be...fun!
April 5: Meeting cancelled. If you have the opportunity, please attend the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Washington, D. C.
April 12: Max Dionisio (dionisio@sas.upenn.edu), a second year graduate student in the AMES Department will present a talk the subject of which is the Japanese animated film "Princess Mononoke." Gavin M. Walker (gmwalker@sas.upenn.edu), a graduating M.A. student in AMES, will also be speaking on "Death, Universality, and the Politics of the Collective in Mishima Yukio's Taiyô to tetsu (Sun & Steel)." Please see his abstract below.
Death, Universality, and the Politics of the Collective in Mishima Yukio's Taiyô to tetsu (Sun & Steel)
In examining Mishima Yukio's (1925-1970) work Taiyô to tetsu
(1968), I will suggest that the conception of the collective (shûdan)
therein, and its relation to universality in action is the primary tool
through which Mishima tries to obfuscate and elide the personal, singular
nature of the death-drive he theorizes in the text. In Mishima's terms,
Taiyô
to tetsu is a "form between confession and criticism" (kokuhaku to
hihyô to no chûkan keitai) aimed at formulating a theory of
praxis capable of sealing the dualities of the body and language, art and
action, subject and object, and proposing the moment of voluntary death
as the point at which these binaries are sutured. Yet at the climax of
the work he presents this personal death-action as fundamentally collective.
I suggest in this paper that this attempt by Mishima to marry the death-drive
to a universality and specifically to an emancipatory
collective structure is a conceptually sinister and theoretically impossible
endeavor, given the extreme singular vision presented.
I will address the three dualities above, Mishima's theory of the active
death and his conception of the collective, and will also
consider the problematic nature of Taiyô to tetsu itself
as a text, and the place of Mishima himself in relation to his work.
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