Author Archives: Joel

Joel's avatar

About Joel

Executive Editor, Journals Dept. University of Hawai‘i Press
by | 17 January 2004 · 9:35 pm

Asian Acronyms: Did you teach at GWYX or at Guangwai?

Discriminating linguists sometimes distinguish between acronyms pronounced as if they were a word, like NATO and UNICEF; and initialisms pronounced as a series of letters, like IBM or the UN. This distinction breaks down in orthographies that write whole syllables at a time, like Chinese.

In Chinese, for instance, acronyms are composed of the initial syllabic characters of (usually) two-syllable words. So, Peking (= Beijing) University, or Beijing Daxue [lit. ‘NorthCapital BigSchool’] becomes Beida [lit. ‘NorthBig’]. In Korean, Korea University, or Koryo Taehak [lit. ‘HighBeautiful BigSchool’] becomes Kodae [lit. ‘HighBig’]. In Japanese, it’s a bit more complicated. Chinese characters can be pronounced not just in their Chinese loan forms, but as native Japanese words that mean (more or less) the same thing. This is what makes Japanese far and away the most complex, least efficient writing system on earth. In either case, each character is usually pronounced as two syllables, since Japanese had to add final vowels to one-syllable Chinese roots in order to pronounce any final consonants, most of which have been lost in modern Mandarin Chinese. (The same thing happens to current Japanese borrowings from English: ranchi < lunch, setto < set, beisubouru < baseball, and so on.) So the acronym for Hiroshima University, or Hiroshima Daigaku [lit. ‘WideIsland BigSchool’] becomes HiroDai [lit. ‘WideBig’]. The name Hiroshima is native Japanese (the Sino-Japanese pronunciation would be Koutou = Ch. Guangdao), but Daigaku is Sino-Japanese [= Ch. Daxue].

After China adopted the supplementary Latin-based alphabetic pinyin writing system, which is increasingly used in computer input, you could begin to see alphabetic abbreviations, some of them rather alarming and most of them quite unpronounceable. Very few Chinese syllables start with vowels: a- is not uncommon, but e- and o- are rare, and i- and u- are nonexistent. Even worse, initial q-, x-, y-, and z- are way too common.

So, if you were to take the first pinyin letter of each syllable, Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute would be abbreviated GZWGYYXY < GuangZhou WaiGuo YuYan XueYuan [lit. ‘WideState OutCountry SpeechTalk LearnYard’]. You would do better to take the first letter of each two-syllable word rather than the first letter of every single syllable, in which case the same school would end up as GWYX < Guangzhou Waiguo Yuyan Xueyuan [lit. ‘Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute’]. However, most Chinese acronyms are more economical than that. The common name for this particular school was equivalent to “GuangFor” (Guangzhou Foreign), namely, GuangWai [lit. ‘WideOut’]. (It has now merged into GDUFS, the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, which would still qualify for the acronym GuangWai in Chinese. The unfortunate English acronym must certainly be guh-doofs.)

These syllabic acronyms aren’t unique to Chinese. Indonesian (or Malay) uses a Latin-based alphabetic writing system, but is chock full of syllabic as well as alphabetic acronyms (and initialisms). Acronyms seem to proliferate under big bureaucracies–especially if the military has a free hand. Examples of syllabic acronyms in Indonesian include the names of provinces like Sulsel < Sulawesi Selatan [‘south’], Sulut < Sulawesi Utara [‘north’], and Sulteng < Sulawesi Tengah [‘central’] on the island of Sulawesi (Celebes); schools like UnHas < Universitas Hasanuddin in Sulawesi and UnPatti < Universitas Pattimura in Maluku (Molucca); and terms like tapol < tahanan politik [‘political prisoner’].

UPDATE: Like Japanese and Korean, Vietnamese used to be written in Chinese characters and has lots of Chinese loanwords. Judging from the website of Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamese seem to abbreviate by taking the first letter of each separately written syllable. Thus, (ignoring diacritics) Dai hoc Quoc gia Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh [lit. ‘University National City Ho Chi Minh’] is abbreviated DHQG-HCM. Ho Chi Minh City is also abbreviated TP.HCM, which I’m pretty sure is often pronounced Saigon. Otherwise, I don’t have a clue how these abbreviations are pronounced.

FURTHER UPDATE: Korean usage of taehak seems to be diverging from that of its cognates in Japanese (daigaku) and Chinese (daxue). While each term applies to a variety of institutions of tertiary education, Korean now distinguishes between taehak ‘college’ and taehakkyo ‘university’ very much long the lines of American usage. Taehakkyo indicates a larger institution that offers graduate education. So Kodae now stands for Koryo Taehakkyo, as the Chinese characters and Korean title on their homepage shows. I don’t think the cognate forms, Jp. daigakkou and Ch. daxuexiao, even exist, much less serve a similar function.

Leave a comment

Filed under China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, language

by | 16 January 2004 · 10:54 pm

Soviet Koreans vs. Volga Germans: Deportation Smackdown

Prof. Lee Chai-mun of Kyungpook (North Kyôngsang) University published an article in the June 2003 issue of The Review of Korean Studies entitled “The Lost Sheep: The Soviet Deportations of Ethnic Koreans and Volga Germans“:

The goal of this paper is to compare the forced deportations of two Soviet minorities, Soviet Koreans and Volga Germans in the early [20th] century. Most existing Korean studies tend to emphasize the uniqueness of Korean expulsion, thereby missing crucial factors which explain the origins of forced Soviet Korean deportations in 1937. In this comparative study, first, histories of Soviet Koreans and Volga Germans and their forced deportation processes were reviewed, and then the motives of the deportations were examined. The result of this comparative study gives credibility to the espionage theory for the forced deportations. It also strongly suggests that ethnic conflicts over land issues during collectivization as one of the most important motives for the forced deportations of the Soviet Koreans and Volga Germans.

The published PDF version of the article generates errors, but a more easily accessible earlier draft is online. In it, Prof. Lee notes that individuals and groups from both minorities were deported earlier on for a variety of reasons, such as resistance to collectivization and various other counterrevolutionary activities, but the mass deportations directly followed the outbreak of war in each region. War between Japan and China became official after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937. Over 170,000 Koreans in the Soviet Far East were deported to Central Asia beginning in October that year–after they had a chance to bring in the harvest. Germany’s Operation Barbarossa attack on the Soviet Union began in June 1941. About 450,000 Volga Germans were deported to Central Asia in September that year. In all, more than 1 million Soviet Germans were deported.

Nadira Artyk, a London-based Uzbek journalist, describes the ebbing of that flood of deportations many decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the wonderful Czech journal Transitions Online, in an October 1998 article entitled “An Exodus of Minorities“:

Central Asia has a variety of minority groups, including European settlers (predominantly Slavic), diaspora minorities indigenous to the region (such as Tajiks in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyz in Tajikistan), and people forcibly deported to the area under Josef Stalin (such as Crimean Tatars, Germans, and Koreans).Under Soviet rule, people who belonged to completely different ethnicities and different religions were put together. But in Uzbekistan, for example, Russians and Uzbeks always remained largely separate communities. There was no tension between them simply because they led different lives. They even resided in different places–Russians in apartment blocks, Uzbeks in traditional makhallyas.

The collapse of the Soviet Union heralded a rebuilding of national identities in all Central Asian states, which used to be subjected to merciless Russification. By reviving national language, culture, and history, the Central Asian governments tried to restore their nations’ pride. Ethnic groups had to adopt to the dominating nation or leave.

Thus, after more than 70 years under the Soviet roof, many nonindigenous ethnic minorities chose to return to their historic homelands.

There has been widespread emigration of Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetiyan Turks. Some other groups (such as Koreans) have shown little desire to leave Central Asia. [Well, sure, if the alternative is North Korea–ed.]

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, countries with significant Russian-speaking minorities, tried to strike a balance between restoring their predominant national cultures and not upsetting other ethnic groups. Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev guaranteed equal rights to all ethnic groups, but there are clear signs of power being concentrated in Kazakh hands. Until last year, non-Kazakhs held one-third of all ministerial posts in the country’s cabinet. Now only a quarter of the government consists of Russians and representatives of other ethnic groups….

Of the ethnic groups, deported to Central Asia by Stalin before and during World War II (Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Koreans, Poles, Greeks, Chechens, Meskhetiyan Turks, the Ingushe, and so on), only Koreans and Germans adapted successfully [emphasis added]. Others, such as Chechens and the Ingush, after Stalin’s death returned in large numbers to their homelands at the earliest opportunity, in the late 1950s.

Among the ways Koreans “adapted successfully” was to abandon their native language and to achieve educational levels second only to Soviet Jews. Among the most prominent are the government official Georgy Kim, who attained one of the highest levels of any non-Russian in the former Soviet Foreign Ministry and now serves as Minister of Justice in the Republic of Kazakhstan; and the writer Anatoly Kim.

Until the age of eight, Anatoly Kim spoke only Korean. Then he learned Russian and unlearned his native language forever. Studying painting and later literature in Moscow, Kim’s short-stories and novellas have as varied geographical backgrounds as his own life. In some narratives, Kim alluded to the Korean community on Sakhalin or in Kazakhstan, but he never told of the horrible events of 1937. And only when he was in his fifties–after the Soviet Union crumbled–could he visit Korea for the first time. This voyage, as well as his subsequent stay there for a number of years as a professor of Russian, proved a veritable revelation. For Anatoly Kim’s discovery of the real Korea was that same “voyage in search of a continent,” only that it was not an entirely new one. It was the continent of his roots.

One of the most interesting developments now is the attempt by South Korean religious, linguistic, and cultural evangelists to reclaim these “Lost Sheep.” Recent Fulbright scholar Steven S. Lee has some very interesting observations on identity questions in his Koryo Saram archive.

My project has narrowed to two specific foci: (1) the growing body of literature (mostly in Russian) by Korean Central Asians, and (2) interactions between the Koreans here with Koreans from elsewhere in defining ethnic identity. For this second focus, my driving question is: Who is claiming authority in delineating what it means to be Korean? According to my adviser, German Kim, the South Koreans doing business and mission work here were at first welcomed with open arms by local Koreans, but gradually, these outsiders were perceived as arrogant and condescending, i.e. they considered themselves as the proper purveyors of Korean cultures. Of course, one could hardly call South Korea during the past 50 years as a vacuum for cultural preservation, and more and more, I find it useful to regard ethnicity and tradition as invention, as fiction. This is where my focus on literature comes into play: what I’m searching for is literature that defines ethnic identity–slyly and subtly, I’m hoping.

On this note of ethnicity as fiction, it’s interesting how well Koreans seem to blend in with Kazakhs. I am ethnically Korean, and yet I’ve been mistaken for Kazakh. Accordingly, Koreans here are said to be more contented than Koreans in Uzbekistan, partially because they can blend in more easily. Although Almaty is a wonderful and quite liveable city, I certainly hope to be able to compare the Koreans here with those in Tashkent, where they are a more conspicuous and perhaps less integrated minority group….

Lee is far from impressed after translating Anatoly Kim’s story “A Cry About a Mother in Seoul“:

Considering current attempts at religious awakening within the Korean community, this story is somewhat interesting. The author clearly intends to associate religiousness with ethnic identity; religion as both provoking and salving the dilemmas of ethnicity. Death (the ultimate displacement) provokes the narrator’s (inherent, insufferable) sense of alienation, which is exacerbated further when he visits his historic “motherland,” where, for some reason (probably to make a clever mother-mother connection, one lost figuratively and one lost literally), he can’t stop thinking about his deceased mother. His unstated dilemma (alluded to at the party) is one of faith–the aspersions cast on Providence and ancestors by his displacement and, perhaps, by his saintly mother’s death. The funeral scene serves as the uneasy nexus of spirituality and ethnicity, the deceased mother all alone in a sea of Russian names, the bow as a futile attempt to recoup loss; the mound of snow may be a reference to traditional Korean graves. The dog doesn’t quite work as a symbol.

In lieu of subtlety, the author resolves these conflicting threads with vague promises of Providence, love, the future, and cultural reawakening (that rice field), and I don’t think this works; in fact, this strikes me as an attempt at auto-exoticization. It’s interesting how the mother doesn’t at all raise the point of ethnic alienation. Her prayers and death are essentially commandeered by the narrator, who crudely hammers in ethnic questions….

My adviser, German Kim, returned from some conferences in East Asia last week, and was not at all amused when I began panning Anatoliy Kim. Apparently, he’s a respected Russian author, but according to German, his speciality is surreal “Russian-soul” questions rather than ethnic writing. I’m now translating a longer, much more promising story by a Lavrentii Son, and I’ll post whatever I’ve done by next week then. Sadly, I’ve been told that after a period of euphoria in the early ’90s, interest in ethnic literature and cultural reclamation has waned; people have a hard enough just making ends meet.

Which leads me to the Association of the Koreans of Kazakhstan, once dominated by scholars, but now headed by wealthy businessmen, suggesting an interrelation between ethnic identity and fiscal aspirations. It’s interesting to note that the Korean geh [or kye], in which a group of entrepreneurs regularly pool their money and rotate its distribution (one reason why so many Korean-Americans own small businesses), does not exist here in Kazakhstan. However, some Korean-Kazakhstanis have made a pretty penny by acting as intermediaries between S. Korean conglomerates (eg LG and Samsung) and local markets. LG is the most visible electronics company in Almaty….

Before independence, the Koryo saram had ties to North Korea only, and while in Tashkent, I examined magazines distributed by Pyongyang, propagating their version of Korean culture—for instance, presenting socialist realist art as traditional Korean. By many local accounts, South Korean contacts with the Koryo saram have also been dubious at times. In April I translated an unpublished satire by Almaty writer/director Lavrentii Son, recounting how he was duped by two South Korean professors into providing copies of his films….

I don’t know if Son’s charges are true, and I hope that nobody in the surprisingly politicized field of Koryo saram studies will take offense that I’m posting the satire on this site. I wonder if he’ll satirize me someday…

Leave a comment

Filed under China, Korea

by | 15 January 2004 · 3:41 pm

The Bonin Islanders: Ethnogenesis and Exodus

A lot of people have heard of Iwo Jima, the subject of a recent bestseller by James Bradley about one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific War. But far fewer people know much about the Bonin (or Ogasawara) Islands, the next cluster to the north in the chain of volcanic islands that comprise Japan’s Nampo (‘southward, austral’) Islands, which stretches between Tokyo and Tinian. (See map). However, Bradley wrote an earlier book, Flyboys, about the air war over Chichi Jima [‘Father Island’], the main island in the Bonins. According to the Book of the Month Club blurb:

As the U.S. prepared for the final assault on Japan one key to success was knocking out the heavily fortified monitoring station on Chichi Jima, an island about the size of Central Park. But in the course of their daring mission, eight flyboys were shot down. Only one pilot could be rescued–his name was George H. W. Bush. His fellow fliers were not as lucky. They were captured and subjected to a fate so horrible that the records had been sealed until now.

Another recent book, Sorties into Hell: The Hidden War on Chichi Jima, is rather more explicit about that horrible fate.

In October 1946, Colonel Presley Rixey arrived by destroyer at Chichi Jima to repatriate 22,000 Japanese who had been bypassed during the war in the Pacific. He discovered that the downed flyers had been captured, executed, and eaten by certain senior Japanese officers. This is the story of the investigation, the cover-up, and the last hours of those Americans who disappeared into war’s wilderness and whose remains were distributed to the cooking galleys of Chichi Jima.

There also appears to have been a long-running cover-up involving U.S. nuclear weapons on Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima during the 1950s and 1960s. But I’d like to focus on the what happened to the first permanent settlers in the Bonins. (The Sino-Japanese characters for Bonin–actually Bunin, now usually pronounced Mujin–mean ‘absence [of] people’.) Here’s one rough summary that bobbles a few details.

The Bonin Islands might have been an American possession if President Franklin Pierce’s administration had backed up Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry. Chichi Jima was first settled from Honolulu in 1830 by two New Englanders — Aldin B. Chapin and Nathaniel Savory — a Genoese [Matteo Mazarro], and 25 Hawaiians [more accurately, Pacific Islanders mostly unnamed on the ship manifest], who made a living raising provisions for sale to passing whalers. Commodore Perry called at Port Lloyd on 14 June 1853, next day purchased for fifty dollars a plot of land on the harbor, stocked it with cattle brought over in U.S.S. Susquehanna, set up a local government under Savory, promulgated a code of laws, and took possession for the United States. He intended to make Chichi Jima a provisioning stations for the United States Navy and American mail steamers. But this action was repudiated by the Pierce administration in Washington. Thus, in 1861 Japan was able to annex the Bonin Islands without opposition. The government did not disturb the American colony, and serious colonization of the group by Japanese did not start until the arrival of Japanese fisherman and sulfur miners in 1887. Kazan Retto was formally annexed by Japan in 1891 and administered as part of the Tokyo prefecture….

Following the loss of the Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian, etc.) in June 1944, Iwo Jima was heavily fortified as part of Japan’s inner ring of defenses. The Peace Treaty of 1951 recognized Japan’s “residual sovereignty”, but the United States maintained its occupation and control from 1945 to 1961 [actually 1968] when the island were formally returned to Japanese control.

The lengthiest, but still sketchy, account of the earliest years is by the Rev. Lionel Berners Cholmondeley, an Anglican prelate whose book bears the quaint, 19th-century title, The History of the Bonin Islands from the year 1827 to the year 1876 and of Nathaniel Savory, one of the original settlers, to which is added a short supplement dealing with the islands after their occupation by the Japanese (London: Constable, 1915). (Kudos to Tom Tyler at the University of Denver for mounting complete Project Gutenberg editions of this and many other early 19th-century nautical works, including Melville’s Moby Dick and Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast.)

In June 2003, an Asian studies conference in Japan devoted a panel to Exploring the Rich History and Culture of the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands. A sampling of the abstracts follows.

Daniel Long (Tokyo Metropolitan University), The Unknown Linguistic Heritage of the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands – The Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands are unique throughout not only Japan (of which they are part) but indeed throughout the world. They were settled in the early 19th century by a mixed band of settlers speaking European, Polynesia and Micronesian languages (among others). The descendents of these settlers remain on the islands today and speak English (ranging from Standard English to a more local variety) and Japanese as well as a Japanese-English Mixed Language. These linguistic abilities play a large role in the formation of the Bonin Islander identity, and in turn this sense of a unique identity reinforces language usage.

Robert Eldridge (Osaka University), The U.S. Naval Administration of Ogasawara Islands, 1945-1968 – The United States occupied and administered the Ogasawara, or Bonin, Islands from 1945 until 1968, when the islands were returned to Japan…. While the occupation was undertaken for strategic reasons, much like that over Okinawa, there were several differences in the way that the administration was organized. Firstly, the actual direct administration did not begin until 1951. Secondly, the Navy was in charge. Thirdly, only islanders of Western descent were allowed to return to the islands and former residents of Japanese descent were denied permission to return throughout the period. Fourthly, education and local government was undertaken in English (and not Japanese as was the case in Okinawa). Finally, there was a strong effort by some U.S. Naval officials to encourage the permanent separation of the islands from Japan and the adoption of U.S. citizenship by the islanders.

Junko Konishi (Shizuoka University), The Adoption of Micronesian Song and Dance by Ogasawara Islanders – It was the Oubeikei [‘Euro-American heritage’] Islanders of Ogasawara who brought the Micronesian-Japanese songs and the Nanyou odori [‘South Seas dance’] to Ogasawara. The original forms of these songs and dance were the product of a cultural syncretism between Japanese and Micronesian cultures under the Japanese administration (1914-1945). Oubeikei-Ogasawarans adopted these cultural forms, which reflected the ambiguous identity of the Japanese-educated Micronesians. Soon after it was introduced into Ogasawara in the 1930s, the Nanyou odori spread among Japanese-Ogasawarans as well, and was transformed into its Japanese form with respect to melodic movements, the pronunciation of the lyrics, and body movements. The Micronesian-Japanese songs, on the other hand, were sung mostly in private by some Oubeikei-Ogasawarans until 1988 when a cassette tape of island songs (including these) was released to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Ogasawara’s return to Japan. Songs on the tape, distributed among the villagers, maintained their distinct forms, especially in melodic movements.

If I had presented a paper there, my imaginary abstract would read something like this:

The Bonin Islanders: Ethnogenesis and Exodus – Before the Japanese administration took over the Bonins in 1875, the 70-odd residents there were a motley crew of diverse heritage tracing back to Europe, North America, Africa, and various Pacific Islands ranging from Hawai‘i and Tahiti to Guam and Pohnpei. But, vis-à-vis the Japanese, they abruptly became Bonin Islanders, an ethnic minority subject to the Emperor, like the Ainu in Hokkaido. It was a classic case of ethnogenesis. Until 1945, it behooved the Islanders to identify themselves as Japanese, to intermarry with Japanese settlers, to move to the main islands to pursue educational or business opportunities, even to serve in the military. But when the Americans took over after the war, residual English language skills and non-Japanese heritage conferred more advantage. When the Americans offered them the opportunity to choose U.S. citizenship when the Bonins reverted to Japan, more than a few grabbed the chance and joined the exodus to Guam, Hawai‘i, or California, where they dissolved into the larger population, as did those who remained behind as Japanese. Only subtle traces now remain of their unique, but ephemeral, common heritage.

UPDATE: Prof. Daniel Long of Tokyo Metropolitan University, perhaps the world’s foremost Boninologist, was kind enough to suggest a few corrections and elaborations, which have been incorporated into the text above. He assures me that the farflung former Bonin Islanders hold worldwide reunions every year or two.

I should also have mentioned that Tom Tyler credits Danny Long for his electronic text and reproductions of photographs from Cholmondeley’s work. Prof. Long has also compiled a website on Bonin language and culture that includes a very extensive bibliography of sources (at least when the TMU server is working, which seems to be every other week).

Amritas notes an earlier novel by Hank Searls (author of Overboard) inspired by Bonin history, Kataki: A Novel (McGraw-Hill, 1987), sort of a “Chichi Jima Candidate” tale:

The descendants of 19th century American settlers on one of Japan’s Bonin Islands are caught up in WW II. Though loyal to the emperor, they are suspect. When 12-year-old Matt Bancroft’s mother is killed by a strafing American plane, he vows kataki (revenge). In the confusion of Japan’s collapse, Matt assumes the identity of a dead son of missionaries and is “repatriated” to America. Forty years later, he is manipulated by a rabid Japanese secret society into thinking that Vice-President Bush was the “murdering” pilot.

Gotta watch out for those missionary kids.

12 Comments

Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, migration, U.S.

by | 14 January 2004 · 8:42 pm

Kobayashi Kiyochika: Woodblock Print War ‘Photographer’

I can’t leave the subject of woodblock print artists without mentioning Kobayashi Kiyochika (surname first), a woodblock print artist trained in Western art and photographic techniques. After fighting as a low-level samurai for the Tokugawa shogunate against the successful restoration of the Meiji emperor, he found himself at loose ends after the fighting stopped.

In the beginning he tried to keep his neck above water-level with some odd jobs. Later from about 1875 on, he tried his luck as self-taught painter. He had met Charles Wirgman, an English painter, cartoonist and correspondant for a British newspaper in Yokohama. Kobayashi studied arts with him for a short period. He also met Shimooka Renjo, a photographer, from whom he learned the principles of photography.

From 1876 on Kobayashi Kiyochika created his first woodblock prints, scenes from Tokyo. Although his prints were basically kept in traditional Japanese style, [he] used Western elements like perspective, the effect of light and the graduations of shadows. By that time he probably had read about the French impressionists and seen photographs of their works in newspapers.

After 1880 [his] style became more traditional. He also turned to satirical cartoons and illustrations for newspapers and magazines. During the Sino-Japanese war the artist made about 80 war prints. War prints were like a last commercial resurgence of the old ukiyo-e business. Kobayashi’s war prints are regarded as among the best in this genre – with a masterly play on the effects of light.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts mounted an exhibition of late Meiji prints in 2001, and still has many such prints online. Among the most striking of Kobayashi’s prints are:

Leave a comment

Filed under art, China, Japan, war

by | 13 January 2004 · 10:19 pm

Karhu and Jacoulet – Foreign Japanese Woodblock Print Artists

The two most famous exponents of the art of the Japanese woodblock print in [the 20th] century are not Japanese. Clifton Karhu, whose views of Kyoto’s traditional architecture can be seen on the walls of European galleries and American museums, was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1927. Paul Jacoulet, creator of a gold and platinum Asia that existed mostly in the artist’s fantasy-filled imagination, came to Japan at an early age from France.At first glance, other than being foreign woodblock print artists, these two men would seem to have little in common. Karhu carves his own blocks and adheres to the relatively new Sosaku Hanga (Creative Print) school. Jacoulet, on the other hand, adopted the style of the Shin Hanga (New Print) movement, whose members followed in the footsteps of such ukiyo-e (floating world picture) masters as Utamaro and Hiroshige, who designed and directed the production of their prints, leaving the carving of blocks and pulling of paper to master craftsmen.

For me, Jacoulet the Liar is the more interesting, for the following reason.

Jacoulet earned himself a place in history not just as an artist but as a source of information on Micronesia under Japanese rule. He was one of very few foreigners trusted enough by Japanese officials to be allowed to travel through a vast area of mandated territory in the Western Pacific which the Japanese military was fortifying illegally in preparation for war. Jacoulet’s disdain for the real world of political and economic forces seems to have been well known. As Yun Hwa Rah put it, “The sensei [master] made a point of not reading any newspapers. He said they were full of lies.” In contrast to his postwar prints, which are almost entirely the product of fantasy, his pre-World War II work is grounded in real experiences. In his 1928 watercolor, Talaos Boy, Jacoulet meticulously records his young fisherman subject’s sunken chest and distended belly, signs that life in the South Seas fell far short of the paradise depicted by Gaugin and other European painters.

These quotes are from an article by Andrew Horvat entitled Karhu and Jacoulet: Western Artists Working in an Eastern Medium, a revised version of an article that appeared in the 40th anniversary issue (October-December 1994) of The Japan Quarterly, published by Asahi Shimbun. Jacoulet’s depictions of Yapese will illustrate his blend of accuracy, especially in props, and fantasy, especially in colors and faces.

  • Belle de Yap et orchidees, Ouest Carolines (1934) accurately depicts a traditional woman’s hairdo, tattoos, betelnut-stained lips, grass skirt, and neckcord indicating a woman who has passed puberty, but goes a bit overboard on the decorative cloth strips.
  • Un homme de Yap, Ouest Carolines (1935) accurately depicts a traditional Yapese man’s hairdo, three-pronged comb (or pick), pierced and distended earlobe, betelnut-stained lips, and starfruit hanging in the background, but goes overboard in the necklace decorations.
  • Femme tatouee de Falalap, Ouest Carolines (1935) accurately depicts tattoos, shells, Ulithian lavalava patterns, and even windswept hair, but the face is right off the kabuki stage.
  • Fleurs violettes, Tomil, Yap (1937) accurately depicts a woman’s hairdo, neckcord, betelnut-stained lips and teeth, and hanging flowers. (This is my personal favorite. Tomil is where I first learned to chew betel nut.)
  • Sur le sable, Rhull, Yap (1937) accurately depicts a married woman’s sitting posture, neckcord, and possibly even bracelet, but makes the woven frond basket look too much like canvas, and the grass skirt look too much like vinyl.
  • Yagourouh et Mio, Yap, Ouest Carolines (1938) accurately depicts the grass skits, lack of neckcord, and perhaps unruly hair of two pubescent girls, but makes the faces look too much like the Japanese moga (‘modern girl’)
  • Le betel, Yap (1940) accurately depicts a man’s loincloth, decorative comb, leaf armband, bamboo betel lime dispenser, and pepper betel leaf, but makes the hair look too much like a Japanese moga.

After the war Jacoulet progressively loses touch with reality. It’s not just that memories of Micronesia fade, because certain aspects remain remarkably accurate.

  • La jeune chef Saragan et son esclave Forum, Tomil, Yap (1948) accurately recognizes the caste system of Yap, but fakes the colors and the decorative carvings.
  • La tresseuse de paniers, Remoue, Yap (1948) fairly accurately depicts a woman weaving basketlike objects, but fakes both the color and the weave, so she looks like she’s weaving giant peapods.
  • Le fille du chef, Mogomog [Ulithi] (1953) is almost as much pure fantasy as his mermaid (1951).

2 Comments

Filed under art, Japan, Micronesia

by | 13 January 2004 · 10:17 pm

Order Read to the Dutch at Edo Castle, 1677

For generations it has been ordered that the Dutch shall trade with Japan, and that every year they shall land at Nagasaki. As before we order that under no circumstances shall you be in contact with the Portuguese and their Christian sect. Should we hear from any country that you are on intimate terms with them, we will stop you coming to Japan. Consequently, you shall under no circumstances bring anything of their sect to Japan and, of course, you shall not carry any objects of the sect on your ships.

If you want to continue to cross the seas and trade with Japan, you must report anything you hear about the Christian sect. You must report to the Nagasaki magistrate if there is a new location where the Portuguese sect has entered and also anything you see or hear on your routes crossing the seas.

You must not capture any Chinese ships crossing over to Japan. If among the countries frequented by the Dutch there is one where you meet the Portuguese, you shall under no circumstances communicate with them. You must write down in detail the name and location of any country where you meet the Portuguese, and the Nagasaki magistrate must be informed annually by the kapitan when he arrives.

Addendum: The inhabitants of the Ryukyus are people that submit to Japan, and you shall not capture them regardless of where you come across them.

Empo 5 [1677], the year of the serpent, 2nd month, 25th day

SOURCE: Beatrice Bodart-Bailey, ed. and tr., Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1999), p. 231.

Study question: Did the Dutch VOC [East India Company] compromise itself as much to maintain access to Tokugawa Japan as CNN did in Saddam’s Iraq?

Leave a comment

Filed under Japan

by | 13 January 2004 · 8:56 am

A Shogun Examines Dutchmen

On 20 April 1692, a party of Dutchmen from Nagasaki had an audience with the shogun. Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), a German doctor in attendance, narrates:

The shogun asked [the translator] to welcome us, have us sit upright, take off our coats, state our name and age, get up and walk, first act and dance, and then sing a song and pay compliments to each other, punish each other, get angry, prevail upon a guest, and hold a conversation. Then he had us act like two people close to each other, such as a father and his son, like two friends parting and arriving, or friends meeting again, a husband parting from his wife, people hugging children and carrying them, and so forth….

We had to play husband and wife, and the women laughed heartily about the kiss. Then we had to show how we saluted people of lesser rank, women, nobles, a king. After that, they said I was to sing another piece by myself, and I did this to their satisfaction by singing two, which all liked so much that they asked whether one had to learn this as an art. Then we had to take off our coats, and one after the other step in front of the blinds and bid farewell in the most exuberant fashion, as we would to a king in Europe, and after that we left. Judging from people’s expressions and laughter, they were all very pleased.

SOURCE: Beatrice Bodart-Bailey, ed. and tr., Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1999), pp. 408-409.

Leave a comment

Filed under Europe

by | 13 January 2004 · 6:09 am

Meiji Village Museum

I’ve been concentrating a lot on people of ambiguous national or cultural affiliations, but architecture is another rich area to explore. A nice example is the architecture of the Meiji Village Museum in Japan.

Beautifully located on a hillside facing Lake Iruka, it occupies an area of 1,000,000m2, where currently over sixty Meiji buildings have been brought and rebuilt. Meiji was a period in which Japan opened her doors to the outside world and laid the foundation for Modern Japan by absorbing and assimilating Western culture and technology. Along with the Asuka-Nara period (553-793 A.D.) it is a very important era in the history of Japanese culture. Architecture was no exception. In addition to following the accumulation of excellent traditional wooden architecture from the Yedo period (1615-1867), builders adopted styles, techniques and materials of Western style stone and brick achitecture.

I can’t give direct links to the images, but let me recommend a few of the most striking buildings to view. Just click on “Architectures list” and then work your way down the list. Here are a dozen favorites among the 60+ bastard buildings:

  • Saint John’s Church in Kyoto (built 1907): Its brick exterior is a beautiful blend of Romanesque and Gothic design, the interior features distinctively Japanese designs appropriate to Kyoto’s climate, such as the bamboo blind in the ceiling.

  • Reception Hall of Marquis Tsugumichi Saigo House in Tokyo (built 1877): This was built to entertain guests. The interior is decorated with imported French furnishings.

  • Dr. Shimizu’s Office in Nagano (built 1897): Although this is a house built in a godown style with a Kiso white cedar shingle roof, Western designs are also imitated.

  • No. 25, Nagasaki Foreign Settlement (built 1889): The external walls are double boarded for soundproofing and dampproofing.

  • A Foreigner’s House, Kobe Foreign Settlement (built 1887): This building more accurately captures the atmosphere of a westerner’s residence in the cosmopolitan port of Kobe during a period of rapid development.

  • Japanese Immigrant’s House, Registro, Brazil (built 1919): Although it is built from locally grown wood, Japanese carpenters took part in the construction and Japanese methods were used.

  • Japanese Immigrant’s Assembly Hall, Hilo, Hawaii (built 1889): It was originally a church constructed for the Japanese by Japanese minister Jiro Okabe. [Are those cherry blossoms?]

  • Uji-yamada Post Office in Mie Prefecture (built 1909): This one-story wooden building with copper roofing has a conical domed roof at its center, and its facing is in a half-timber style.

  • St. Paul’s Church in Nagasaki (built 1879): In contrast to the farmhouse-style exterior, the interior is Gothic, with a crossing ribbed vault ceiling, called “umbrella ceiling.”

  • Central Guard Station and Ward, Kanazawa Prison (built 1907): Five wards are arranged radially around the octagonal central guard office. [Shades of Bentham’s Panopticon!]

  • Kikunoyo Brewery, Aichi Prefecture (built 1868): This building is a Japanese-style tile-roofed storehouse, and it consists of a two-storied section with a mud-coated outer wall, and an open eaves section.

  • Main Entrance Hall and Lobby, Imperial Hotel, Tokyo (built 1923): The main finish is Greenish tuff (volcanic rock) carved in geometric patterns, and yellow brick, while ferro-concrete is used to provide structural strength. [The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel survived the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.]

UPDATE: Here’s another online version of the Museum with more information but muddier images.

Leave a comment

Filed under Brazil

by | 11 January 2004 · 11:11 am

Korean-Japanese Cyberwarfare over Dokdo/Takeshima

The Marmot has a depressing post about a bizarre outbreak of cyberwarfare between South Korean and Japanese netizens over the issue of Dokdo (Takeshima in Japanese) in the wake of South Korea’s “highly provocative” issuance of postage stamps featuring Dokdo. Sheesh.

Leave a comment

Filed under Korea

by | 11 January 2004 · 10:49 am

Sakhalin Koreans and Business Development

On 1 September 2002, the New York Times published a story datelined Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk about a tug-of-war between South Korea and Russia over the labor potential of the Sakhalin Koreans. (The text of the story is preserved in a news archive at Arizona State University.)

On one end of the tug-of-war, South Korea is combating a labor shortage by loosening work-visa rules to attract overseas ethnic Koreans, members of the Korean diaspora who are sprinkled from Sakhalin to Uzbekistan. But Sakhalin is also desperate for trained and bilingual workers. The demand is stoked by plans of foreign energy companies to invest $13 billion in Sakhalin through 2006. In Russia’s largest capital investment project of the decade, gas and oil reserves are being developed for export, largely to Japan and South Korea.

Pavel Park, 16, paused from remodeling work at the school to say that he was learning Korean so he could work for a Korean company, as well as talk with his grandparents. Taking a view that once was heresy, he added: “But we were born here, our parents are here, this is our home. We don’t want to go live in South Korea.”

For half a century, the Koreans of Sakhalin – now numbering 40,000 – were a stateless people, inhabiting this desolate island against their will. At the height of World War II, imperial Japan brought them from Korea, then a Japanese colony, to work as slave laborers in coal mines. When Japan lost the war, the Soviet Union expelled the Japanese, but Stalin still needed coal miners. With few Russians living on what was once a czarist penal colony, he refused to release the Koreans.

A year later, on 1 September 2003, another story datelined Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It paints the Sakhalin Koreans as helpless pawns of the Russians and Japanese, most of whom desperately want to leave.

Thousands of Koreans such as Chen went to Sakhalin before and during World War II, sometimes voluntarily — lured by promises of good wages — but often at gunpoint. When the war ended, they were abandoned here. Decades later, they are still waiting to return to their homeland, a tragedy they blame on the Japanese government.

“I’ve always dreamed about moving home,” said Chen, who was overworked and underfed for much of his life. Wiping tears away from his eyes as he spoke in his house on the outskirts of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, he added: “I don’t know if I’ll die here or not.”

At about the same time, on 9 October 2003, the Korea Herald ran a story about the revival of Korean language on Sakhalin, suggesting mainly cultural, rather than economic, reasons.

The young generation, born into a Russian culture, are interested in their homeland thanks to the success of the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

It’s easy to focus on the painful history of the Sakhalin Koreans. That’s the dominant perspective of the “mournful and elegaic” 1995 video entitled A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans, produced by Dai-Sil Kim Gibson, who has produced other films about Koreans victimized abroad. This video does suggest, however, that it is primarily the old people who want to return to Korea. The younger people are more likely to feel that Sakhalin is their home.

The picture I come away with is one of much better economic times ahead for the descendants of the long-suffering Sakhalin Koreans, although they will face a new round of cultural adjustments very similar to those faced by the many Latin American Nikkeijin now working in Japan.

A map of the Sakhalin region and a list of the languages there is available online, and the Sakhalin Museum also has a website. (Warning: glacier-powered server!)

UPDATE: James J. Heinis compiled a long travelogue about his visit to Alaska in 2000. Here’s what he had to say about economic development plans in Sakhalin, looking from the other direction, with a hint about some of the difficulties, too. (I’ve embedded his links and updated two of them.)

At the hostel, back in Anchorage, I talked with a woman who was involved in the Alaska-Russia small business exchange. There is a lot of interest in Alaska about working with the Russians on Sakhalin because of oil. Investors include such companies as Shell, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Marathon (all in Sakhalin-II), Exxon (Sakhalin-I and Sakhalin-lll), and Mobil and Texaco (Sakhalin-III). There is a website on Sakhalin-Alaska development [where a search on “Sakhalin” returns a long list of links] and also one on Sakhalin which is also known as Karafuto in Japanese. The island’s southernmost coast (visible on a clear day from the northern tip of Japan), barely gets warm enough for a chilly late summer dip. The northern half of the island is arctic and is often rocked by seismic activity. Commercial development began in 1977. A large earthquake in 1995 killed approximately 2,000 people on Sakhalin (total island population is about 680,000). Winter brings huge, moving ice floes so the weather is terrible at best: The Sea of Okhotsk is subject to dangerous storm winds, severe waves, icing of vessels, intense snowfalls and poor visibility. The average annual extreme low ranges between -32 deg C and -35 deg C. Ice sheets of up to 1.5 meters thick move at speeds of 1-2 knots. By the way, Dad [a retired botanist] was on the Sea of Okhotsk while in Japan, see [his homepage with 2 dozen travelogues].

The future director of the exchange was upset because she was going to direct the University of Alaska-Anchorage Russia Business Training Center in Yuzhno-Sakhlinsk, Russia. This training center jointly coordinates the dissemination of Western businesses and technical know-how to the management and employees of Russian companies. The previous American directors were deported. In Russia, when you are deported, they wait until the visa is expired and they then put you on a plane going out. Taxes are on 70% of a person’s salary and the only ones who pay taxes are American who are hired part time and have two different jobs to cut down on taxes. The local newspaper made it appear that her predecessors were spies. Russians from Sakhalin do a lot of buying in Alaska of very specific items because it is cheaper.

Leave a comment

Filed under Korea