Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Most earlier histories sought to recover the ideals of a lost golden age
whether it is the kingdom of heaven in Christian societies or the era of the
sage kings in China; it was a cyclical conception. But the most basic model
for modern history is linear evolutionism, an evolutionism in which the
species—with an origin and destiny-- is replaced by the nation whether
constituted by race, language or culture. Note that different national
The May 4th movement, which spanned the years 1917 to 1921, is justly
regarded as China’s Enlightenment because students and professors at
The principal inheritor of the May 4th legacy was the Chinese Communist
Party that emphasized a vision of national unity (minzu tuanjie) and even an
affirmative action policy towards the national minorities for their shabby
treatment in the past. But while the revolutionary narrative tended to play
down Han nationalist rhetoric of the past, the revolutionaries were
sometimes forced to uphold the greatness of the past particularly when faced
by the contemptuous Soviet view of the Chinese past as having been stuck in
the Asiatic mode of production, a mode deemed to be less progressive than
even the slave mode of production.
In more recent years, of course, the glory of ancient China and the greatness
of the Han people has surged as socialist ideals have ebbed and the need to
tie in with the overseas Chinese has become more pronounced. The myth of
Han Chinese as children of the Yellow Emperor has once again surfaced.
While this may seem like a natural way to connect with overseas Chinese
one should note that it tends to devalue the role of other nationalities in
China, such as Tibetans, Mongols and Muslims, who in turn have also
tended to turn to their own ethno-nationalist roots.
At the same time, however, China has also witnessed more cosmopolitan
efforts as it reaches towards globalization. If in the Maoist years this
cosmopolitanism was informed by a socialist worldview, in more recent
years it has been an effort to embrace a capitalist cosmopolitanism. Thus the
TV series Heshang sought to embrace the “blue oceans” which brought trade
and the Enlightenment and abandon the Yellow River and Great Wall
mentality which they felt was the dominant characteristic of Chinese history.
Heshang was condemned by the Chinese state as having desecrated our
ancestors. Once again in 2006, the city of Shanghai produced a new set of
history textbooks. The high school history books were notable for
eliminating references to Mao Zedong and toning down the references to
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Japanese aggression, imperialism, class struggle and even nationalism. And
once again, these texts met with fierce condemnation across the nation on
grounds that they diluted national solidarity and identity.
I have conducted this long excursus into Chinese history because I want to
show that the 20th century in China has been marked by a distinct oscillation
between thinking historically of the nation as bound by its origins and the
effort to make a new beginning. Indeed we can trace this all the way to the
19th century in China when Chinese thinkers themselves perceived it in
terms of the duality between Ti and Yong (Chinese learning for the essence,
Western learning for practical use) which I will explicate later.
At this point, I will put aside my historian’s cap and venture a bit into
understanding the structural reasons for this oscillation which is in fact not at
all unique to China but to all nations, although it may be more evident
among Asian nations.
However, nation-states tend to overlook the ways in which they are in fact
the product of foreign ideas and practices and of their own adherence to
external norms of “state-like” behavior. Instead, they prefer to misrecognize
their origins, seeing or presenting only the part of the story in which they
express the will and culture of their citizens. Nationalism as the predominant
ideology of the nation-state has tended to locate sovereignty in the
“authentic” history and traditions of the people—the regime of authenticity--
even while these have been considerably re-signified, if not invented, to fit
the nationalist project. Thus, while world and regional cultures have been the
source of many circulating practices transforming societies into nations and
inter-state recognition has been a crucial source of national sovereignty, the
fact that all nations tend to misrecognize sovereignty as emanating almost
exclusively from within the nation suggests that the dialectic of recognition
and misrecognition is essential to nationalism as a whole.
Even in the realm where East Asian national histories evoke their
distinctiveness, they often do so in a common mode. Just as Chinese
nationalists sought to derive the Chinese nation from the mythical Yellow
Emperor and the Japanese from Amaterasu, so did Shin Chae-ho and Korean
nationalists seek to raise Tangun to the same status (Schmid 2002, 183).
Ironically, each of these societies sought to distinguish the authenticity of
their nation often by re-signifying symbols from a common cultural
historical reservoir. One such symbolic role was of the “self-sacrificing
woman” (xianqi liangmu, ryōsai kembo) upon whose sacrifices for the home
and nation, the new citizen and modern society would be built. Similarly,
historical practices of self-cultivation and discipline were evoked from
Confucianism and Buddhism to produce new habits of citizenship, for
instance in the New Life movement of KMT China and later in Korea.
Thus not only have nations been part of the world, but the world has been
significantly within the nation for over a century now. Yet nations often deny
their very globality by evoking the authenticity of national traditions.
Indeed, in some situations, the doctrine of authenticity can blind
nationalisms to the limits of systemically acceptable actions in the world.
During the 1930s, the civilian and internationalist government in Japan was
toppled precisely because it was perceived to have compromised the
authentic traditions of Japan—namely the warrior bushido tradition and
agrarianism-- both at home and abroad. It enabled the nation to defy the
transnational authority of the League of Nations as Japan did in the 1930s. In
a similar manner, the Bush administration has also defied multi-national
authorities in the world.
In our age when overt globalization is making evident the looming tragedies
that require urgent global solutions, can we afford to continue to
misrecognize the common goals and institutions that have formed us? To be
sure I do recognize that humans need community and identity at various
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levels; I am only opposed to the sacralization and hardening of national
identities that can incapacitate common action. Can we overcome the
syndrome that we have identified with the keyword of origins and create
new beginnings?
Today, more than ever, Asia needs to come together because it is growing
increasingly inter-dependent and so are its problems. Interdependence has
both positive and negative dimensions: in the first aspect, we see inter-
investments, job opportunities and cultural efflorescence; negatively, we see
the regional and global effects of climate change, resource and especially
water shortages, economic crises, public health and traveling viruses, among
others. But both need a cultural framework for common action and mutual
sympathy.
The effort to bring Asia together already has a century of history. It began
with early 20th century intellectuals such as Okakura Tenshin, Rabindranath
Tagore, Zhang Taiyan and many others. I will briefly review this effort in
order to understand the older pitfalls and current possibilities so we may
chart our way a little better this time around. There are three axes around
which Asian unity may be conceived: the cultural and for some in the earlier
period, even racial unity of Asian peoples; the second was the powerful anti-
imperialist movement that developed across Asia and later across Africa
during the first sixty years of the twentieth century. Finally, an axis that has
been much less visible until now is the interdependency within the region
and with the rest of the world. Earlier efforts of Asianists focused on cultural
and political projects and were not founded—or begun, as it were-- on
material interdependence in both the positive and negative senses. This time
around we will need to ground Asian cultural and political consciousness
upon this hard and urgent substratum.
I will review here the efforts of three intellectuals, Okakura, Tagore and
Zhang Taiyan because in this early period, Asianism was principally an
intellectual and cultural effort until it was overtaken by the Japanese military
for imperialist purposes. The early efforts are instructive because they teach
us important lessons. Okakura Tenshin or Kakuzo is perhaps most famous
for his opening line “Asia is one” in the book, The Ideals of the East with
Special Reference to the Arts of Japan written in 1901 (published 1903).
Okakura, who was deeply knowledgeable about Chinese art and culture, was
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closely connected with South Asian Asianists such as Tagore and Ananda
Coomarswamy and American art entrepreneurs such as Fenellosa, probably
did more to establish Asian art as a legitimate and viable domain of high art,
fit for museums and the art market.
It was through his conception of the great civilizational arts of China and
India, and not least the aesthetic values of Buddhism, that Okakura saw the
unity of the Asian ideals that reigned before what he regarded as the
marauding of the Mongols and their successors. In a future project it may be
instructive to consider Okakura’s early conception of the unity of Asia
through art for our own Arts Festival. But even as Okakura was articulating
the ideal of Asia, in the same moment he was also carving out a place for
Japan in the civilized world of the West as the inheritor and leader of this
present fallen Asia. Okakura saw Japan as a survivor and a leader. “Thus
Japan is a museum of Asiatic civilization and yet more than a museum,
because the singular genius of the race leads it to dwell on all phases of the
ideals of the past, in that spirit of living Advaitism which welcomes the new
without losing the old” . The temples of Nara reveal the great art of the Tang
and the much older influence of Shang workmanship can also be found in
Japan.
Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura had a close friendship and Okakura spent
considerable time in India, acquiring a deep respect for its arts and culture
even while introducing the utterly fascinated circle in the Tagore house,
Jorasankho, to Chinese and Japanese culture. Both men also sought to live
their lives according to their ideals, even dressing in the clothing of their
historical cultures while most of the Western educated gentlemen were
opting for prestige of the West. Yet, of course, let it not be forgotten that they
possessed the self-confidence in advocating their culture because they were
so knowledgeable and polished in the arts of the West. Moreover, theirs was
also sometimes a troubled relationship in part because Okakura could not
quite overcome the social Darwinist presuppositions and imagery of Indian
backwardness, and partly because he was an object of exotic curiosity, if not
ridicule, among many Indians who had never seen East Asians particularly
in their historical dress.
“Among the various Asian countries, India has Buddhism and Hinduism;
China has the theories of Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi and Yang
Zi; then moving to Persia, they also have enlightened religions, such as
Zoroastrianism. The various races in this region had self-respect and did not
invade one another…They rarely invaded one another and treated each other
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respectfully with the Confucian virtue of benevolence. About one hundred
years ago, the Europeans moved east and Asia’s power diminished day by
day. Not only was their political and military power totally lacking, but
people also felt inferior. Their scholarship deteriorated and people only
strove after material interests.” (VM translation).
Through this brief survey, we have seen how the three major Asian thinkers
were able to conceive of the unity of Asia founded on various different
principles. The idea of a common historical and religious culture, conceived
sometimes as a utopian golden age of peaceful co-existence and dynamic
exchange before the arrival of foreign invaders, may have prompted
Asianists to think of original Asian value. But, by and large they were
looking for new beginnings in the search for alternative values, alternative to
the dominant civilizational narratives of the West. In this sense, they were
the founders of a cultural anti-imperialism and articulators of an Asian
cosmopolitanism.
However, their thought was in advance of their time in that it could not be
sustained by the political societies in which they lived. Ideas of race, culture,
anti-imperialism and imperialism to be found in pan-Asianism all spelt a
close relationship with the dominant trend of nationalism. In the case of
Okakura, pan- Asianism became easily absorbed by Japanese imperialism; in
the case of Zhang nationalism took priority because of the circumstances. In
the case of Tagore, the nationalism of his time made his ideas and
institutions irrelevant for a long period.
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What can we learn from this experience? This time around, the global
conditions of our continued existence are self-evident. Moreover,
nationalism is not as closely aligned with capitalism because capital itself is
transnational and involves interests and investments in different parts of the
region and globe. Even more important, no single power can dominate the
region as Japan sought to in the first half of the century. These are the
conditions under which it is time to make a new beginning – once again—
for Asian connectedness.
The Asian Arts festival we are celebrating is a cog in the cultural engine that
is generating this new beginning. The festival highlights the inescapable
reality of an increasingly interdependent Asia but it must also attend to the
tensions that accompany this interdependence. We will need to chart this still
unfamiliar zone (of a really connected Asia) with all the resources of
imagination, thought and discussion that the arts can produce.