Category Archives: Korea

by Joel | 20 May 2010 · 6:28 pm

Lankov on Pyongyang’s Recent Blunders

In the Korea Times (20 May 2010), veteran North Korea–watcher Andrei Lankov asks, What’s going on in Pyongyang.

In recent years the North Korean government has begun to do strange things. In the past, the actions of the regime frequently hurt the populace, but the rulers have been very careful in guarding their own interests. This is not the case anymore.

Let’s start with the Cheonan affair. Obviously the operation was revenge aimed at massaging the ego of aging admirals who were hurt by the recent defeats in previous naval clashes. However, revenge is a purely emotional category and as such it should have no place in a truly Machiavellian mind.

From a broader perspective, the affair will greatly diminish Pyongyang’s chances to receive more aid from both South Korea and the U.S. This will make them even more dependent on China, and this is not what Pyongyang rulers want.

Another potentially self-damaging action was their attempt to assassinate Hang Jang-yop, a former top ideologue of the regime who defected to the South in 1997. Upon his arrival in Seoul, Hwang was not very prominent.

The old man in his 80s has largely been a figurehead, presiding over some defectors’ groups, but, frankly, lacking both charisma and practical influence. It did not help that he frequently insisted that juche (self-reliance) ideology is basically a good idea, to be restored to its initial glory.

Hwang is very different from such opposition leaders as, say, Aung San Suu Ky of present-day Burma or Lech Walesa of communist-era Poland. However, had he been killed, he would have become a martyr, a symbol of the resistance movement.

The North Korean diplomacy of the last two years is full of mistakes and miscalculations. They began in late 2008 when North Korea decided to employ the two-stage tactics which it used for decades.

In the first stage, Pyongyang creates a crisis and drives tensions high, while in the next stage it extracts concessions for its willingness to restore the status quo. This time, however, the usual (and well-rehearsed) play was performed badly.

In spring 2009 North Korea launched a long-range missile and tested a nuclear device, while driving the rhetoric bellicosity to unprecedented heights.

However, those excessive efforts backfired. Prior to 2009, a considerable part of the U.S. diplomatic establishment still believed that there would be some ways to bribe and press North Korea into denuclearizing itself.

By now everybody in Washington, D.C., has come to understand that it is not going to happen (they should have realized this much earlier). For North Koreans, this is bad news….

The list of mistakes can easily get longer. But why did the quality decision-making in Pyongyang deteriorate so suddenly and to such an extent?

The most likely explanation seems to be related to the nature of the North Korean state, a personal dictatorship run by one individual who has to approve all major decisions. Dictators tend to micro-manage, and this tendency seems to be very pronounced in the case of Kim Jong-il.

One should notice that the first unusual signs emerged in late 2008 when Kim suffered from a serious illness, in all probability, a stroke. Strokes do not sharpen one’s mental capacity, so it is quite possible that his ability to analyze and judge has been damaged.

It is also possible that now Kim simply has to work much shorter hours, unable to sort out all the important details.

At any rate, Pyongyang is becoming less calculating, less rational and less Machiavellian than it used to be. And this is not good news.

via The Marmot’s Hole

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by Joel | 24 January 2010 · 2:33 pm

Korea ’73 Billy Graham Crusade

From Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea, by Timothy S. Lee (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2010), pp. 94-95:

As 1972 wore on, many Korean church leaders looked forward to the next year with anticipation. For some time, these leaders, led by Han Kyŏngjik had been planning for what they hoped would be a shot in the arm for Korean evangelicalism: a Billy Graham revival. In early 1971 some of these leaders and the staff of the Billy Graham Crusade (BGC) had held a preparatory meeting. At that time they had made important decisions regarding the upcoming crusade; tor example, expenses for the event would be shared by the BGC and the Korean sponsors, with the former assuming all the expenses related to inviting and boarding Graham and other visiting speakers and the latter assuming the remaining expenses, such as renting the necessary equipment and facilities.

The official title of this event was “Korea ’73 Billy Graham Crusade” but it was also called Fifty Million to Christ. Its theme was “Find a New Life in Jesus Christ.” In 1973 the crusade took place in Korea in two phases. In the first phase, between May 16 and 27, a team of BGC revivalists (except Graham) held preparatory revivals in Pusan, Taegu, Incheon, Taejŏn, Kwangju, Ch’ŏngju, Ch’unch’ŏn, and Cheju—Korea’s largest cities after Seoul. In the second phase from May 30 to June 3, Billy Graham himself led evangelistic gatherings at the huge Yŏŭido Plaza.

Given Graham’s prominence and the success of the Thirty Million to Christ campaign, the organizers of this crusade had reason to expect a high turnout. Yet probably few of them expected the kind of turnout the crusade actually generated. In the regional campaigns alone, the crusade drew 1.36 million people, 37,000 of whom made the decision to believe for the first time. But even this regional campaign was superseded by the second phase of the crusade.

The Yŏŭido Plaza at the time was a huge tract of open area (slightly larger than one and a half square miles) in Yŏŭido, a Han River islet near the heart of Seoul. Even in densely populated Seoul, this area was kept off-limits from developers so that it could be turned into an airfield in the event of war. Despite its size, however, from May 30 to June 3, 1973, the plaza became the most densely populated area in Seoul, serving as the site of the most successful Billy Graham Crusade to date.

To make this crusade a success, just about all the Protestant denominations in Korea cooperated. Even Park Chung Hee’s government helped out, giving permission to hold the event in the plaza, temporarily rescheduling the bus routes near it, and sending its army construction corps to build a choir section big enough to accommodate a 6,000-interdenominational chorus.

On the first night, the crusade drew an audience of 510,000. Impressed by the turnout and the preparatory work that had gone into the crusade, Graham predicted that the evening would be the first assembly of the largest evangelistic rally in the history of the church. The turnouts of following nights bore out Graham’s prediction. On each of the first four evenings of this five-evening crusade, the turnout averaged about 526,000, and the last night’s service was attended by 1.1 million people. In addition, during each night of the revival, about 4,000 people stayed up all night to pray. In all, 44,000 of the participants made the decision to believe for the first time.

In this crusade, Graham delivered typical revivalistic messages, emphasizing the sinners’ need to repent, to be born again, and to gain true freedom by accepting God as the sovereign of their lives. By and large, his message found a receptive audience. On the other hand, it did run into some criticism. Most liberals, for example, dismissed Graham’s sermons as being too simplistic and formulaic. They concurred with L. George Paik, not a liberal himself, who opined that Graham delivered what amounted to an “Apostles’-Creed” type of sermon. Some of them also criticized Graham for failing to take a more prophetic stance—that is, for not addressing issues like democracy and freedom in Korea.

In contrast to the liberals, evangelicals found no problem in Graham’s messages. But they did feel dissatisfied that the whole crusade had been conducted under the leadership of foreign revivalists. They felt that Korean evangelicals should have been able to conduct such an event on their own, with their own resources, addressing their own evangelistic needs in their own tongue. These two developments—liberals’ criticism of evangelistic campaigns for ignoring sociopolitical issues and the evangelicals’ desire to Koreanize them—and the tension created between them would surface again in subsequent evangelistic campaigns.

After the Billy Graham Crusade, the next massive evangelistic campaign to take place in Korea was Explo ’74, held at the Yŏŭido Plaza from August 13 to 18, 1974.

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by Joel | 16 January 2010 · 1:22 pm

Protestant Exodus from North Korea, 1946-53

From Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea, by Timothy S. Lee (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2010), p. 65:

As the communists solidified their control of the North, it became increasingly difficult for evangelicals to live there. Consequently thousands of them fled to the South, constituting a significant portion of those who left the North between 1945 and 1953. Figures on the southward migrants are at best estimates, especially with respect to evangelicals. The number of all Koreans who migrated southward between 1945 and 1953 is estimated at between 1,014,000 and 1,386,000—about 10.7 to 14.7 percent of the average population (9,440,000) in northern Korea between 1946 and 1949. Kang Inch’ŏl estimates that in 1945 the number of northern Protestants was around 200,000, about 2.1 percent of the population. Of them, he estimates that 70,000 to 80,000 might have migrated to the South, constituting 35 to 40 percent of the Protestant population in the North and 6 to 7 percent of all northerners who migrated.

In the South, northern evangelical refugees became a force to reckon with. They zealously evangelized and built churches. In 1950 alone, they were responsible for 90 percent of the two thousand or so newly established churches in the South. Especially zealous were the Presbyterians. Their stronghold had always been in the North, in P’yŏngyang, but by the end of the Korean War a great many of them had migrated, constituting one of every four Presbyterians in the South. The northern Presbyterian refugees went on to build some of the largest and most influential churches in the country—including the Yŏngnak (Youngnak) Presbyterian Church (which in 1971 had a membership of twelve thousand, making it the largest Presbyterian church in the world) and the Ch’unghyŏn (Choonghyun) Presbyterian Church (one of whose elders. Kim Young Sam, became president of South Korea in 1992). From the 1950s to the 1970s, northerners led the church growth movement in the South, not only in the Presbyterian Church but in all the churches of evangelicalism.

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by Joel | 16 January 2010 · 12:52 pm

Cracking Down on Korean Christians, 1938-45

From Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea, by Timothy S. Lee (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2010), p. 58:

On June 25, 1945, the governor-general abolished all Korean Protestant denominations and reduced the Korean Protestant churches to the Korea division of the Japanese Christian Church (Ilbon kidokkyo Chosŏn kyodan).

The period from September 1938 (the month of the twenty-seventh general assembly of the Presbyterian Church), to August 15, 1945 (Korea’s liberation from Japan), was the harshest that evangelicalism endured under the Japanese rule. During this time the government-general set about systematically perverting the religion. It abolished all holidays, including Sunday, allowing only an hour or two for worship. Hymnals were bowdlerized to remove any reference to spiritual freedom or mention of Jesus as the “king of kings,” since that would amount to lèse majesté against the emperor. It disallowed portions of the Bible, especially the prophetic books such as Daniel and Revelation. It outlawed key Christian beliefs like the final judgment and the second coming of Christ. Every church worship had to open with a Shintoistic ritual, which included singing the Japanese national anthem, giving a pledge of allegiance (kokumin seisi　国民誓詞), bowing to the emperor’s palace (kyujo yohai [宮城遥拝 J. kyūjō yōhai]), and praying to the Sun Goddess (mokto [黙祷 J. mokutō]). In this latter phase of the Japanese captivity of the church, every Christian church was compelled to install within it a small Shinto shrine (kamidana [神棚]).

With the institutional church now reduced to an instrument of Japanese colonial policy, if Korean church leaders retained their positions, they could not escape from doing at least some amount of collaborative work with the Japanese. Many church leaders did retain their positions and were adroitly used by the government-general. They were forced, for example, to renounce their ties with the missionaries, by making statements like, “We are resolved to set ourselves free from the past principle of reliance on Europe and America and establish a purely Japanese Christianity.” They were also exploited for a variety of war efforts, such as helping to collect church bells to be melted down for scrap metal, raising funds to purchase fighter planes for the Japanese navy, and urging young Korean men and women to fight and die for the Japanese emperor.

On the other hand, even as there were collaborators, there were others—though fewer—who resisted the Japanese imposition till the end. When the Shinto shrine issue arose in the 1930s, Christians all over the country resisted the Japanese demand. These resisters came from both the leadership and the rank-and-file of the church. Though found in just about every denomination in Korea, they were especially numerous in the Presbyterian Church.

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by Joel | 4 January 2010 · 9:06 pm

Manchurian Roots of Korean Protestantism

From Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea, by Timothy S. Lee (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2010), pp. 10-11:

From the beginning, the history of Korean Protestantism is characterized by many people who were attracted to the faith primarily for its message of salvation. Already in the spring of 1886, one year after his arrival [Horace G.] Underwood was sought out by a man known as No Tosa (probably a pseudonym for No Chun-gyŏng), who had become interested in the missionary religion after reading a Chinese translation of the Gospels of Luke and Mark He now came to Underwood for further instruction in the religion. On July 18, 1886, he was baptized by Underwood, with assistance from [Henry G.] Appenzeller—a baptism the missionaries performed only after careful consideration, since the injunction against proselytizing [in Korea] was still in force. As it turned out. No was not the only Korean who came to Underwood around that time seeking baptism, unsolicited. By the end of 1887, Underwood had baptized twenty-four more unsolicited Koreans.

How did this come about? Did these Koreans come to the missionary even though no one had reached out to them, even though they had not heard the Gospel? The fact of the matter is that they had heard the Gospel message several years earlier—delivered by converts of Scottish missionaries working in China, specifically Manchuria. Three missionaries figure importantly here: Alexander Williamson, John McIntyre, and especially John Ross—all affiliated with the Scottish Presbyterian Church. It was Williamson who persuaded [Robert Jermain] Thomas to board the General Sherman for the fateful voyage of 1866 and persuaded Mclntyre and Ross to come to Manchuria as missionaries. In 1865 and again in 1867 Williamson visited a Manchurian border town called Korea Gate (Koryŏmun), the official gateway between China and Korea, evangelizing among Korean residents and sojourners there. Influenced by Williamson, Ross also visited Korea Gate in 1874 and 1876. During the latter visit he met Yi Ŭngch’an, who agreed to collaborate with him on a variety of translation works. Ross, with the help of Yi, published the Corean Primer (1877), The Corean Language (1878), Yesu sŏnggyo mundap (Bible Catechism; 1881), and Yesu sŏnggyo yoryŏng (Outline of the New Testament; 1881). In 1877 Ross and Yi began translating the New Testament, later aided by Mclntyre and several other Koreans, including Sŏ Sangyun and Paek Hongjun. In 1882 Ross published the Gospels of Luke and John, the first Gospels to be translated into han’gŭl. This was two years before Mark was independently translated by Yi Sujŏng, a Korean sojourning in Japan, and published in Japan; copies of the translation were later brought to Korea by Underwood and Appenzeller. Then in 1887 under the initiative of Ross, the first complete translation of the New Testament was finally published in Korean.

In 1879 Ross was on furlough in Scotland, where he published History of Corea: Ancient and Modern with Description of Manners and Customs, Language and Geography, Maps and Illustrations, the first history of Korea in English. That same year, McIntyre, while supervising Ross’ work in Manchuria baptized four Koreans, who thereby became the first Koreans to receive Protestant baptism. Only two of these men’s identities are known with certainty: Yi Ŭngch’an (Ross’s collaborator) and Paek Hongjun (who, upon being baptized returned immediately to his hometown in Ŭiju to evangelize). In May 1881 Ross returned to Manchuria, initially to Newchwang (the next month he would move to Mukden). There he met Sŏ Sangyun, an erstwhile ginseng peddler who had fallen deathly ill a couple of years earlier and was brought back to health owing to McIntyre’s help. McIntyre sought to introduce Sŏ to the Christian faith giving him a copy of the Chinese Bible, only to meet a polite rebuff—So had been steeped in Confucian learning. But becoming curious about the Bible, Sŏ read and reflected upon it for a year or so, before seeking out Ross for further instruction. Under Ross’ guidance, Sŏ underwent conversion and was baptized in May 1881.

After his conversion. Sŏ became an indefatigable evangelist, working closely with Ross as a colporteur. Between 1882 and 1885, Sŏ smuggled copies of the Bible into Korea, given to him by Ross, and distributed them in Sorae, his hometown in Hwanghae Province, and in Seoul. He was never just a seller of religious literature; he sought ardently to impart to his interlocutors the conviction of salvation he experienced in the Christian faith. Consequently, by the end of 1883 he was already able to report to Ross that he had thirteen persons ready to receive baptism. A year later, the number of prospective baptizees So reported to Ross had climbed to seventy. By that time, his younger brother Sŏ Kyŏngjo (also known as Sangu) had converted and, with the help of Sangyun had established a Protestant community in Sorae—that is, before the arrival of Allen. In March 1885, Sŏ was back in Manchuria, in Mukden asking Ross to come down to Korea and baptize the men he had led to the faith—a request Ross turned down reluctantly, owing to the inauspicious political circumstances. A month later Underwood and Appenzeller arrived in Korea. Near the end of 1886 Sŏ visited Underwood and asked him to go with him to Sorae to baptize the new believers. This request was also declined, since Underwood was prohibited from traveling inland. Consequently, in January 1887, Sŏ brought several of the believers from Sorae to Seoul, to be examined by Underwood for baptism.

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Filed under China, Korea, religion, Scotland, U.S.

by Joel | 24 November 2009 · 6:28 am

What Foreign Tourists Like in South Korea

The Chosun Ilbo has been doing a series on foreign tourism in South Korea, which has been growing. (Both Mr. & Mrs. Outlier have attended conferences there this year, and enjoyed a bit of tourism on the side.) Here are a few observations about the statistical preferences of tourists from different countries.

On favorite souvenirs:

The most popular souvenirs among Japanese visiting Korea are dried seaweed, kimchi, and ginseng or citron tea from the Namdaemun Market and superstores, according to the Seoul Station branch of Lotte Mart.

Nail clippers are the most popular item among Chinese visitors. “In China, Korean nail clippers are regarded as luxury goods,” claimed Chung Myung-jin, president of Cosmos Travel. “Chinese people like gold, so they buy dozens of gold-colored nail clippers when they come to Korea.” Gold-plated stainless chopsticks and spoons are also popular.

Southeast Asian tourists usually buy Korean beauty products, which are in vogue in their home countries. Meanwhile, Europeans prefer traditional gifts. “European tourists tend to buy souvenirs at historic sites like Gyeongju, or they buy custom-made Hanbok, or traditional Korean clothing,” said Park Eun-sun of KR Travel.

On Japanese vs. Chinese:

According to a survey of visitors in 2008 by the Korea Tourism Organization, more women visited from Japan than men, with 61.9 percent to 38.1 percent. The proportion of individual tourists (38.3 percent) was close to that of group tourists. As the two countries are close geographically and Japanese have a lot of information on Korea, many there feel it is easy to visit without tour guides or prearranged package tours….

A staffer at a beauty treatment shop in Myeong-dong, said, “Many Japanese tourists have cosmetic eyebrow tattoo procedures, manicure or laser body hair removal, which are much cheaper than in Japan.” They also like Korean food. Some 69.5 percent of Japanese tourists said Korean food is delicious. Food topped the list of souvenirs they buy with a whopping 67.1 percent. Japanese tourists stayed in Korea briefly but spent a lot of money. Each of them stayed 2.7 nights and spent $1,136 ($420 per day) on average….

Chinese tourist stayed on average 6.8 nights and spent $1,413 ($207 per day). Many visited Korea for the first time and were on package tours with group visas. Hanatour spokesman Chung Ki-yoon said, “Many Chinese tourists are on package tours of seven Southeast Asian countries.”…

Haban Tour spokesman Woo Hyun-ryang said, “The Chinese are used to huge cultural monuments like Taishan, the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City, so they usually complain even Mt. Seorak is just like a hill at the back of their village.” This means they need other special programs.

Chinese tourists from different regions also had very different tastes. Those from inland urban areas like Beijing preferred Jeju Island, while those from the booming industrial centers such as Guangzhou, Chengdu, or Shenyang liked to visit Myeong-dong and Dongdaemun shopping districts in Seoul. Rich Chinese visitors enjoyed buying designer goods at Lotte or Shinsegae department stores in Myeong-dong, Seoul, or at Centum City in Busan. Food is the biggest problem for the Chinese tourists, who usually complain that Korean food is not fatty enough for them.

via The Marmot’s Hole

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by Joel | 18 October 2009 · 8:44 am

Flickr’s Fractured Greetings: Korean

Is anyone else as annoyed as I am by Flickr’s cutesy attempts to improve international understanding (or whatever) by telling you how to say some equivalent of Hello in a randomly chosen language whenever you refresh your Flickr homepage? The one that set me off most recently is Korean Bangawoyo ‘Pleased (to meet you)’, which corresponds in usage to Japanese Hajimemashite, French Enchanté, or Romanian Îmi pare bine (or Frenchified Încântat), and so on. None of those equivalents are on Flickr’s list of greetings. For Korean, I would have expected something like Annyeong (안녕), which is a good match for Arabic Salaam or Hebrew Shalom.

Do Flickr’s intrepid researchers just ask random speakers of random languages for greetings and then accept whatever they’re told? Have they never heard of Omniglot? Can someone tell me what Mingalaba really means in Burmese? ‘Come eat!’ perhaps?

UPDATE: Of course, “Haro! Haro!” was by far the most common greeting directed at Westerners when I was a kid, but was somewhat less common when the Outliers visited in 1985, and much, much rarer during our sabbaticals there in 2005-2006, even when we were pretty far off the usual foreigner circuits. Being greeted as if I were a talking parrot used to irritate me a lot as a kid, as did constantly being stared at, or having my skin or hair stroked or cheeks pinched by little old ladies when I was a child. When a bunch of junior high school boys tried out their “Haro!” on me in the gardens of Ginkaku-ji (the Silver Pavilion) in 1985, I responded in Japanese with “Haroharo tte ningen no kotoba desu ka?” (‘Is “haroharo” a human word?’). That seemed to silence them for a few moments.

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by Joel | 2 October 2009 · 6:09 am

Wordcatcher Tales: Datsu-A Nyuu-Ou vs. Datsu-Bei Nyuu-A

One of the frequent catch-phrases in Japanese foreign policy discussions these days is 脱米入亜 datsu-Bei nyuu-A ‘leave America join Asia’, one of many trial balloons floated by the new DPJ-led government. This phrase (r)evokes an older formulation attributed to one of the most avid Westernizers of the Meiji era, Fukuzawa Yukichi, who must hold the world record in Sinographic neologism. (One of the neologisms sometimes attributed to him is minshuushugi [people-master-ism] ‘democracy’.) His policy prescription for Japan in the late 19th century was 脱亜入欧 datsu-A nyuu-Ou ‘leave Asia join Europe’.

How feasible for Japan is 脱米入亜 datsu-Bei nyuu-A ‘leave America join Asia’? Kyushu-based blogger Ampontan is translating and hosting a series of columns by Shimojo Masao, one of Japan’s top specialists on Korea (whose second language is Korean), who weighs in on the issue. Here is Ampontan’s translation of Shimojo’s first column, in its entirety.

The Preconditions for an East Asian Entity

There has been a change of government in Japan for the first time in half a century, and a Democratic Party of Japan administration has taken power under the leadership of Hatoyama Yukio. Among his policy initiatives, the concept of an East Asian entity or community similar to the European Union is receiving widespread attention. The alliance with the United States has been the cornerstone of international relations for Japan since the Liberal Democratic Party came to power. People are discussing whether the change of government might mean Japan has chosen to turn away from the U.S. and place a greater emphasis on Asia.

A full understanding of the distinctive historical characteristics of East Asia is required before embarking on such a course, however. While Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and China on the continent are close geographically, the history of their social systems is different. They have less in common than the members of the European Union, which had shared Christian beliefs and intermarriage of the ruling classes.

In Japan’s case, a social system that incorporated regional authority was formed after the establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate in the 12th century, and the foundation of a market economy was created. That is why Japan, with a system closely resembling capitalism, was quickly receptive to Western civilization after the Opium War of 1840.

In contrast, a system of centralized authority was maintained in China and on the Korean Peninsula despite the arrival of modernization. For many years, they had what amounted to planned economies. The history of Japan vis-à-vis China and the Korean Peninsula is that of relationships similar to the one between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The achievement of an East Asian entity depends on whether Prime Minister Hatoyama is possessed of the awareness of those historical differences and the insight to perceive what is necessary to overcome them.

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Filed under Asia, China, Europe, Japan, Korea, U.S.

by Joel | 1 August 2009 · 4:21 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Nisshoku, Shironiji, Tatsumaki

I’ve just returned from Japan, still jet-lagged, with a harvest of about 600 photos to sort through and dozens of new words. The weather was terrible almost the whole time, and so I’ll start with a few of the meteorological terms I gleaned on this trip.

日食 (or 日蝕; see below) nisshoku ‘solar eclipse’ (lit. ‘sun eating’) – We arrived at Kokura station in Kita-Kyushu to find many bystanders glancing up at the solar eclipse in progress, in a cloudy sky between rainstorms (the previous day and the following day). We had arrived there by rail pass via bullet train on a diversionary quest en route from Hiroshima back to Nagoya. Flooding had closed train lines between Hiroshima and Kokura the previous day.

Our quest was first to find the site of my hilltop home and kindergarten 55 years earlier, where my father began his first job after Japanese language school in Tokyo as a missionary chaplain of Seinan Jo Gakuin. His Japanese teacher there was the head of the English Dept., who used to translate my father’s sermon drafts into flowery, archaic Japanese using vocabulary that students would sometimes later ask him to explain. That prompted my father to begin writing his own drafts in Japanese, using a more down-to-earth style that he still employs in both Japanese and English, whether preaching or conversing.

We finally found both sites after talking with a teacher in the current Mt. Zion Kindergarten, which now stands on the site of a once-separate kindergarten for burakumin children in the neighborhood, along the road to Tobata. The kindergarten I attended was for school employees, and has since been replaced by a swimming pool. The teacher’s husband had attended the same kindergarten during the 1950s, and she was the only person I queried who knew anything about the history of the school going that far back.

白虹 hakkou, shironiji ‘corona, fog bow’ (lit. ‘white rainbow’) – We spent the rest of the afternoon sightseeing in quaint old Mojikō (‘Moji Port’), which advertises its Retro attractions. (On the way there, we mistakenly got off at Moji Station, home of the equally retro Beer Masonry Museum.)

In front of well-preserved Mojikō Station is an unusual statue of three boys at work harvesting wakame, with a poem on the pedestal by a writer whose pen name is (横山)白虹 Yokoyama Hakkou (1899–1983). The poem reads 和布刈る / 神の五百段 / ぬれてくらし (wakame karu / kami no ihodan / nurete kurashi), which I suppose one could translate as ‘The 500 steps to the gods of the wakame harvest lead a wet life’. Better suggestions are welcome.

竜巻 tatsumaki ‘waterspout, whirlwind, tornado’ (lit. ‘dragon roll’) – In addition to all the news reports of rainstorms and flooding, we saw one report about a rare tornado cutting a swath through Tatebayashi, a city in the panhandle of Gunma Prefecture just south of where we lived in 2005–2006 in Ashikaga, on the edge of the Kanto Plain outside Tokyo.

UPDATE: Reader Doc Rock notes that the character for ‘eat’ (or ‘food’) that appears in ‘eclipse’ has another possible shape in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean: 蝕 ‘eclipse, occultation’, with the phonetic element (Sino-Jp. shoku) on the left and the semantic element (虫, ‘bug’) on the right. (The ‘bug’ radical usually occurs on the left or the bottom of characters containing it.) In native Japanese, the same kanji can be read mushiba(mu) ‘to be wormy, bug-eaten; to gnaw into, undermine’. In Sino-Korean, 日蝕 ‘sun eclipse’ means ‘solar eclipse’, while 日食 ‘[land of the rising] sun food’ means ‘Japanese food’ (Jp. 和食 washoku).

Note that the Chinese character for ‘rainbow’, 虹, also has a ‘bug’ radical. Why would early Chinese scribes have associated such magical meteorological phenomena as eclipses and rainbows with creepy-crawly creatures? (And barbarians: 蛮 Ch. man, Sino-Jp. ban!) Weather phenomena are more typically written with radicals associating them with ‘sun’, ‘rain’, ‘water’, and so on.

I am not at all sure, but there are striking parallels in many Austronesian languages, where certain unusual “prodigies of nature” tend to be marked by prefixes that often have shapes derivable from *qali- or *kali- (although there is much variation and irregularity). Compare three words for ‘butterfly’: Brunei Malay kulimpapat, Tagalog alibangbang, and Gedaged (PNG) kilibob. The same prefix tends not to be found on words for much more common and familiar creatures, such as ‘flies’ (Mal. langau), ‘lice’ (Mal. kutu), or ‘mosquitoes’ (Mal. nyamuk).

Now compare three Austronesian words for ‘whirlwind’: Malay kelembubu, Tagalog alimpuyo, and Lakalai (PNG) kalivuru. The same prefix tends not to be found on words for normal phenomena like ‘fire’ (Mal. api), ‘rain’ (Mal. hujan), or ‘wind’ (Mal. angin).

The Austronesian patterns have been analyzed rather comprehensively by University of Hawai‘i Professor Robert Blust in his (2001) “Historical morphology and the spirit world: the *qali/kali- prefixes in Austronesian languages” in Issues in Austronesian Morphology: A Focusschrift for Byron W. Bender, ed. by J. Bradshaw and K. Rehg, pp. 15-73 (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics).

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Filed under China, Japan, Korea, language, travel

by Joel | 13 July 2009 · 9:51 pm

China-Korea-Japan Trade Boom, 1100s

From Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History, by William Wayne Farris (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2009), pp. 94-96:

Commerce grew to become a vibrant sector, primarily because Japan was located next to the most dynamic economy on earth: that of Sung China. Sung Chinese invented gunpowder, the compass, and mass printing. The country also had advanced carbon-stoked iron furnaces producing high-grade ferrous products and a cotton industry producing everything from ships’ sails to military uniforms. The population grew by leaps and bounds during the Sung period, as the “rice bowl” of southern China was more intensively cultivated and regional craft and trade specialization took place as never before.

Trade between China and Japan, exclusively for the archipelago’s elite, was already underway in the tenth century. By the late eleventh and twelfth centuries huge Chinese junks called even more regularly at Hakata, Kamizaki, and other Kyushu ports. By 1100, a community of overseas Chinese took up residence in northern Kyushu cities such as Hakata. They held rank at the Japanese court and some even attended the funeral of an important official in northern Kyushu in 1097. In 1151, two samurai attacked the overseas Chinese there, and the fleeing merchant families numbered more than sixteen hundred. Archaeological evidence also points to a dramatic increase in commerce with China during the twelfth century, as the number of sites in Japan containing shards of Chinese porcelains grew exponentially. Besides Kyushu, Chinese traders also called on ports along the northwestern coast of Honshu. By 1180, some daring Japanese captains attempted the passage to southern China as well.

Chinese merchants traded their silk, spices, and porcelain for northeastern Japan’s furs and gold. The Chinese especially coveted gold; a Chinese trader wrote in 1118 “the country of Japan … in its earth has a wealth of precious products.” Perhaps for this reason, the dynamic Sung state, populated by wealthy consumers, ran a balance of trade deficit with Japan. Piles of Sung cash were soon helping to remonetize the Japanese economy. By 1150 there were signs that the outflow of Sung cash was causing the economic giant problems. In 1199, the Chinese government tried to ban the use of its coins in trade with Korea and Japan. A significant increase in the amount of Sung coins in Japanese sites took place beginning in the 1170s. People wrote of a “cash sickness” in 1179, and then the court banned the counterfeiting of Sung coppers. These proscriptions were apparently ineffective, because the court repeated them in 1187, 1189, and 1192. Along with the cash came an inflationary price spiral, beginning in the 1170s, helping to further destabilize an already teetering social pyramid.

The Ise Taira built a trading empire in western Japan during their tenure as the military arm of the court from 1159 to 1180. They controlled bases such as Fukuhara in modern Kobe, Itsukushima along the Inland Sea, and Kamizaki in northern Kyushu. The Taira made allies of the seafaring families in western Japan. They were so involved in the Sung trade that in 1180 ex-emperor Takakura, born of a Taira mother, was induced by Kiyomori to sail from Fukuhara to Itsukushima aboard a Sung junk.

In addition, the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1258) exchanged goods frequently with Japanese merchants. Following the collapse of the Silla kingdom, relations between the Japanese court and Korea improved. Between 1050 and 1090, Japanese merchants visited Korea in sixteen trade missions, bearing weapons, screens, and precious metals for the Koryŏ court.

This strong external stimulus, combined with the modest demographic recovery, led to a rebound in Japanese domestic commerce between 1050 and 1180. As had occurred during the eighth century, the capital and Kinai constituted the core of commercial activity, because that region had a large number of consumers and the remnants of an advanced transportation system. Commerce was more dynamic in western Japan and probably less important in eastern Honshu. Long-distance exchange, however, enabled the elite to acquire the marvelous products of northern Japan, such as gold and wild horses. The elites also still received most commodities in kind from their on-site landlords and tax farmers, and peasants bought and sold at markets only occasionally, yet demographic and economic recovery supported and was assisted by the return of a more vital market system.