Category Archives: religion

by | 26 January 2011 · 9:06 pm

Common People’s Christianity in Gunma, 1880s

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 269-271:

Although many missionaries, unlike their Japanese colleagues, came from rural farming backgrounds (and thus possibly had a better appreciation of the importance of farming to national strength), they were restricted to the treaty ports. Unless missionaries were employed at Japanese schools or obtained leave to go into the interior for health reasons, they were not free to leave the treaty ports. Thus, the rural evangelistic effort had by necessity, to be largely conducted by Japanese evangelists. By 1884 thirteen churches had been established in the Kantō prefectures.” Kudō Eiichi has pointed out that the ten years from 1877 to 1887 saw a tremendous growth in the Protestant movement, much of which came from the creation of new churches in rural areas.” This growth owed a lot to the activities of students who had studied in Tokyo or Yokohama, where they had contact with Christians returning to their hometowns and villages in the provinces Back-up to the activities of returned Christians came from members of the new city churches in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Kobe, joined shortly afterward by students from the Nihon Kirisuto Ichi Kyōkai Shingakkō in Tsukiji and the Dōshisha school in Kyoto.
…
As Christian activities in Annaka and Maebashi reveal, one of the first areas to be opened up was Gunma Prefecture, an agricultural area to the west of Tokyo with strong ties to the silk-exporting trade through Yokohama. The opportunities for rural economic development as a result of the silk trade helped to open this area to Western machinery and Western ideas. It was in Kiryū that evangelists belonging to the Shin Sakae Kyōkai were able to establish their first church among the rural folk in this important region. In its early years, the Kiryū Kyōkai lacked both a permanent worship place and a resident minister. It grew nevertheless because of the energy of visiting evangelists and its own members. In sharp contrast to many of the first converts in Yokohama and Tokyo, who were shizoku (descendants of samurai), the Kiryū Christians belonged to merchant and farming families. Indeed, the first shizoku member of the church, Ishii Yasaemon, became a member in August 1883 and was the 117th person to be baptized in that church. In microcosm, the challenges that the Kiryū Kyōkai faced help to explain how a Christian community was able to take root in a country area and shed more light on what church activity entailed for country Christians. Sumiya has pointed out that Gunma Christians were different from their counterparts in other places where shizoku had made up the majority of converts because Gunma Christianity was the common people’s Christianity (heimin no kirisutokyo). This was certainly true in the case of the Kiryū Kyōkai….

Between 1878 and 1888, twelve churches were established in the prefecture, with a total membership of 1,466. Among them was the independent church Nishi Gunma Kyōkai, Takazaki Kyōkai, established in May 1884 by Hoshino Mitsuta. The evangelistic power and vitality of the young Dōshisha graduates who formed the vanguard of the Kumiai Kyōkai’s endeavour in Gunma is reflected in the ownership of these twelve churches: nine belonged to the Kumiai Kyōkai, and only one each to the Nihon Kirisuto Ichi Kyōkai, the Baptists, and the Methodists. The majority of the churches were on the main road leading west across Honshu toward Niigata, as was the case in Kiryū, Maebashi, Takasaki, Annaka, and Harashi. Some of these also were on the route of the railway – Isesaki, for instance. Ōhama has pointed out that Gunma Prefecture had 985 Christians in its churches in 1888 and ranked fifth in terms of numbers of Christians living in Japanese prefectures or major cities, and, at 14.75, fourth overall in terms of Christians per thousand of population.

This adds new perspective to our visit to international Ota City in Gunma, which is now home to Japan’s largest Braziltown and has the highest proportion of foreign workers of any prefecture in Japan.

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by | 25 January 2011 · 6:13 pm

Tokugawa Internationalists in Shizuoka, 1870s

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), 159-160:

In mid-November 1871, [Edward Warren] Clark arrived in Shizuoka as the first westerner free to teach Christianity outside the treaty concessions.

In the early 1870s, Shizuoka was by no means a simple provincial town in a prefecture well known for its mandarin oranges and tea. It was the ancestral home of the Tokugawa shoguns, and, as mentioned, it was there that Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, retired after the Meiji Restoration. Many of his former retainers followed him there into semi-exile, and approximately six thousand ex-Tokugawa samurai were living in Shizuoka and its vicinity in late 1871.

Even though it had lost political power with the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa family initially hoped that it might regain its former control of Japan. For this reason, in the autumn of 1868, the Tokugawa family established the military academy at Numazu, approximately thirty miles from Shizuoka, with the leading Western studies scholar, Nishi Amane, as its first headmaster. They were able to marshal a very impressive roster of Dutch and English specialists. With less overtly militaristic aims in mind, the Tokugawa authorities also founded in late 1868 the Gakumonjo in Shizuoka, which in November 1868 began offering classes in English, French, German, and Dutch. There were two headmasters, Mukōyama (Mukaiyama) Komura and Tsuda Shin’ichi, the former a Chinese studies specialist. Nakamura Masanao was also listed as a Chinese studies specialist faculty member. The Tokugawa authorities drew some of the best Japanese foreign-language teachers so that the school would be regarded as equal to the Yokohama Gogakujo in its foreign-language offerings and to Edō Kaiseijo in its Chinese studies. There were some sixty teachers at the Shizuoka school, among them Sugiyama Sanhachi, a Dutch studies specialist. By 1871, this Shizuoka school was the higher education centre of a network of eight or nine junior schools, which the Tokugawa family had established in Shizuoka Prefecture. The purpose of the Gakumonjo was to provide education in Western studies for the sons of ex-Tokugawa samurai. Entry to the school was restricted to those of the samurai class and, importantly, tuition was free. Among the followers of the ex-shogun there was, very naturally, considerable resentment against the new Meiji government, as the déclassé samurai were living in conditions of great hardship and suffering. Katsu Kaishū and other Tokugawa elders thought that by educating the sons of ex-samurai in Western science at least, some of the former Tokugawa influence in Japan could be regained. Moreover, as the demand for experts in Western studies increased, there would be employment opportunities for these young men. In recognizing the future need for Western studies specialists, the progressive spirit of the Tokugawa exiles in Shizuoka Prefecture was clear, albeit directed toward the restoration of their own power rather than the good of all Japan.

Since the Gakumonjo’s founding in 1868, the Tokugawa authorities had wanted to hire a Western teacher for it. After all, the Gakumonjo had been founded to teach Western subjects – English, French, German, and Dutch languages; mathematics, and Western science – as well as traditional Chinese studies. The need for a Western professor became increasingly acute as the Gakumonjo expanded. By November 1871, it had grown to such an extent that it had been divided into four schools: the Shogakujo, the Denshujo, the Shugakujo, and the Shizuoka Honkō (formerly the Gakumonjo). What these divisions meant in practical terms was that Western subjects were now being offered from primary school through to the highest academic level, and to students ranging from young boys to mature men in their thirties. Compounding educational problems posed by expansion was the simply [sic] reality that English had replaced Dutch as the major language of Western studies. The shortage of English-language teachers became clear when, in 1871, the Tokugawa authorities sent Sugiyama Magoroku, the son of Sugiyama Sanhachi, to learn English in Yokohama instead of continuing his Dutch studies. As well as learning English, Sugiyama converted to Christianity and became in 1872 a member of the Yokohama Christian Band. Sugiyama was not the only convert from Shizuoka among the first group of the Yokohama Band; Shinozaki Keinosuke also came from there.

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by | 25 January 2011 · 9:57 am

Japanese Attitudes toward Urakami Christians, 1868-1871

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 100-101, 121-122:

In June 1868, A. Bertram Mitford, then serving as British consul in Osaka, wrote a most interesting letter about Japanese views on the Urakami Christians. Mitford had polled his Japanese friends, very likely the same politically well-connected friends who had provided him with the political intelligence on the imperial side that allowed the British to navigate skilfully through the tortuous months leading up to the Restoration. Mitford observed how little sympathy there was for the Urakami Christians among Japanese of all classes because they had begun to openly preach the Gospel in defiance of the government’s prohibition. He stressed that the Japanese thought the Roman Catholic priests were trying to gain secular as well as spiritual power through their proselytizing activities in Urakami, known as a hotbed of anarchy and revolution. He also pointed out that a new Roman Catholic bishop had been appointed with the ill-chosen title of “bishop of Japan,” which Japanese regarded as “thoroughly offensive to the pride of the nation.” The Japanese saw the crisis in political terms: as a challenge to the political power of the government. According to Mitford, the Japanese already believed that Roman Catholic fathers were exerting an unfortunate influence on the Urakami Christians by forbidding them, to sell flowers as decoration in local temples and shrines and by preaching sedition and treason, which had led to the tearing down of images of the native gods. The spectre of religious warfare was raised.

The Japanese were too diplomatically astute to deny the excellence of Christian teaching but did argue that “the school of Urakami is but a bastard form of Christianity,” that the Roman Catholic priests were not famihar enough with the Japanese language to explain the dogmas of their religion, and that the Urakami Christians had little in common with true Christian. This argument was in keeping with a common snub about the missionaries language ability, with the hint that the Japanese knew a little bit more about the true nature of Christianity and of Urakami Christian beliefs than the Roman Catholic missionaries did. Mitford wrote, “The Japanese claim a high degree of merit for their own faith, which for centuries has taught the people the duties of children and parents, husbands and wives, masters and servants, brothers and friends. This is the religion which the people understand; the mystic doctrines of the Fathers only bewilder them.” Mirroring the contemporary position, he then added, “The danger of a little knowledge in matters of religion is shown by the Taiping Rebellion, which founded on a few Christian tracts, at one time threatened to lay waste the Chinese Empire.” Elements of Christianity could be seen in the ideology of the Taiping rebels, and 1868, the year in which Mitford was writing was only four years after that destructive rebellion’s final defeat. Although it is difficult to see the Urakami Christians leading a rebellion with the same impact on Japan as the Taiping had on China, the new government saw them-as a danger because they could spark a resurgence of armed Tokugawa opposition to the government’s rule. In any case, despite Western ministers’ calls for the Meiji government to take a more moderate stance, Mitford thought the government was still going ahead with its policy to scatter the Urakami Christians throughout the territories of different daimyo. Mitford’s intelligence was very good, for this scattering of Christians was, in fact, carried out. It was all about politics and political power.

…

In late November 1871, the British diplomat Ernest Satow had dinner with Kido Kōin, a senior member of the Meiji government, during which Kido said “he respected highly the Christian religion and was in favour of introducing it into Japan or at least of allowing its practice.” Certainly, this would appear to be a volte-face on the part of someone who was instrumental in carrying out the new government’s policies against the Urakami Christians in 1868. But by late 1871, Kido was concerned with currying favour with the Western powers in advance of the Iwakura embassy‘s imminent departure for the West. The persecution of Christians was an issue that was not going to go away quietly. As Helen Hardacre has pointed out, the question of religious freedom was “a tremendous stumbling block in the achieving of the main goal of Japanese diplomacy at that time,” that is, the revision of the treaties of 1858. When the Iwakura embassy was confronted with the issue of religious freedom, Japanese Christians had already been largely brought to heel.

The Meiji government was quite prepared to take down the public notice boards of edicts prohibiting Christianity (this was, in itself, an economizing measure, as the notice boards were expensive to maintain), but it had no intention of altering its proscription of Christianity. The timing of the removal of the public notice boards was dictated not by Western diplomatic pressure but by the Japanese government in light of its preparations to mitigate the potential harmful consequence to Japan of this action. The Japanese people understood from the example of the Urakami Christians what could happen if they became Christians. Given their determination during the Urakami crisis, it is quite clear that the Meiji oligarchs were not going to allow Christianity to gain headway in Japan. The removal of the notice boards was interpreted by missionaries as the start of a new era in which Christianity could be openly propagated among the Japanese, but it was, in reality, a hollow gesture by a government that had no intention of stopping its search for counter-Christian measures to contain Christianity. Indeed, the major beneficiaries of the dismantling of the anti-Christian notice boards were not Christians but Buddhists, who were now seen as playing an important part in countering any major Christian advance – with the removal of the notice boards, the Meiji government, which had previously been persecuting Buddhists as part of its attempt to promote Shinto, now looked to Buddhists to help them resist the spread of Christianity outside the treaty settlements (something that the government feared might be a possible and undesirable consequence of removing the proscription edicts from public view). Certainly, Ōhama Tetsuya sees Buddhist attempts to counter Japanese Christian evangelistic activities in the provinces becoming particularly pronounced in 1881 and 1882 at a time when Buddhist intellectuals were also trying to discredit Christian theological ideas. Christianity had failed in Japan before it was actively propagated among the Japanese. Missionaries, of course, did not recognize this. Their energies were directed toward overcoming all obstacles to their religious goal of spreading the Christian message throughout Japan. Optimism was a marked, if not an essential, characteristic of their work.

The uproar of protest against the deportation of the Urakami Christians came from Western diplomats and not from missionaries in Yokohama. In this, there is a residue element of anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that saw the persecution of the Urakami Christians as something involving the Roman Catholics and having little to do with Protestants. “Those horrible papists,” Verbeck (who was by no means unusual among Protestant missionaries in his contempt for Roman Catholics) was wont to call Roman Catholic priests. Yet, it is evident that anti-Christian Japanese polemicists saw Protestant missionaries as being as bad, if not worse, than their Roman Catholic counterparts. The Japanese government argued that the Japanese who wanted to learn about things Western found missionaries, in contravention of the treaties, forcing them to read the Bible as an English textbook. From the government’s perspective, private religious beliefs would be tolerated so long as the individual believer did not challenge the public policies of the government. Thus, in the opinion of the Meiji government, the Urakami Christians were not being persecuted for their private religious beliefs but because they had defied established authority.

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by | 24 December 2010 · 2:33 pm

Legacies of Hepburn’s First Dictionary of Japanese, 1867

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 80-81:

[In 1866] Hepburn‘s dictionary was being printed at a rate of 6 pages a day, with nearly 250 pages of the first part of Japanese to English – out of a total of 600 pages – finished. Hepburn was now writing out a second part to the dictionary of English to Japanese (something he had not previously contemplated), which would add approximately another 300 pages. He had a deadline of 1 June to have it completed. It was an expensive business, costing two dollars a page for composition alone, and even though Walsh had agreed to cover any losses, Hepburn was obliged to pay him back all monies from sales until the debt was cancelled. There was going to be no immediate financial benefit to Hepburn from all his work.

Surprisingly, the dictionary was finished ahead of schedule, and Hepburn was back in healthy Yokohama by late May 1867 and able to send off a copy to the mission library back home. Although Hepburn was discounting the early work of his friend Brown in claiming his was the first dictionary, it was an immense achievement, far surpassing any nineteenth-century rival. Yet, the dictionary had its limitations for those learning Japanese. Interestingly, in early 1870, Christopher Carrothers, a new Presbyterian missionary then learning Japanese, wrote that Hoffman’s Japanese grammar was the best assistant for the written language: “Dr. Brown’s Grammar and Dr. Hepburn’s Dictionary are more adapted to the Colloquial. Hoffman is soon to issue a Japanese Dictionary for which we are anxiously waiting. Carrothers was referring to J.J. Hoffman, a German linguist who learnt Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in Europe and in 1868 produced a Japanese grammar in Dutch and English. Even though Hepburn’s dictionary might have been more suited for those using colloquial speech than wanting to acquire the written language, it remains Hepburn’s greatest contribution to opening Japan, not only to missionaries but also to the English-speaking world. It should not be forgotten that Hepburn was helped by the work of other Western scholars who had attempted Chinese or Japanese grammars and dictionaries before him, including W.H. Medhurst, Karl Gutzlaff, and S.W. Williams among China missionaries, and Liggins, Brown, and Hoffman when it came to Japan and Europe. He also benefited from the assistance of Kishida Ginkō, who had been with Hepburn in Kanagawa and accompanied him to Shanghai. In September 1872, the Japan Weekly Mail noted that the second edition of the dictionary “is a fresh encouragement to foreigners in this country to pursue the study of the Japanese language, and to the Japanese it will afford invaluable assistance in the study of ours.” The newspaper predicted that its print run of three thousand would be quickly sold out. It was close to a century later – in the early 1960s with the publication of the Nelson dictionary – before another American missionary produced a dictionary that would have a similar profound impact on those learning Japanese. The Hepburn system of romanization of Japanese, which the earlier dictionary first introduced and the Nelson dictionary used, remains the standard system of romanization.

The dictionary was typeset and printed in Shanghai, where it required “making copper matrices and casting of new Japanese as well as specialized English type, so the actual printing was moving at a snail’s pace” (p. 79).

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by | 19 December 2010 · 4:36 pm

The Loo-Choo Naval Mission, 1846–1861

From: American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan 1859–73, by Hamish Ion (UBC Press, 2009), pp. 9-11:

Although Britain was loath to open trade relations with Japan, British naval officers were instrumental in beginning what is now considered by many (especially Japanese Anglicans) to be the first Protestant mission to the Japanese, the Loo-Choo Naval Mission. Bernard Jean Bettelheim and his English wife were associated with the British Anglican Church Missionary Society and were the Loo-Choo Naval Mission’s resident medical missionary couple in Naha between 1846 and 1854. A miserable time Bettelheim had of it, for he was beaten and ostracized by the Ryūkyūans and held in contempt by commanders of Royal Navy gunboats that infrequently visited them. In early February 1852, Bettelheim wrote to Commander Charles Shadwell of HMS Phoenix complaining about his treatment at the hands of Japanese soldiers and arguing that British settlers would never be safe until gunboat diplomacy was used to teach the Japanese a lesson. Shadwell strongly disagreed about the need for gunboat diplomacy and thought Bettelheim exaggerated his complaints about the Ryūkyūan authorities. In his report on his visit to the Ryūkyūs, Shadwell wrote that Bettelheim’s enthusiastic zeal was undoubted but that he was narrow-minded in his view of the world and that his isolation in Naha had led to “an idiosyncratic turn of mind which renders him an unsafe guide in matters which might involve grave political consequences.” The charge that Bettelheim was narrow-minded was a common criticism of evangelistically minded missionaries, but there is no doubt that he had developed in Naha an idiosyncratic turn of mind.

Bettelheim fared little better when Commodore Perry first visited Naha in May 1853. He had a long conversation with Perry soon after his arrival, very likely giving him a full report of his frustrations with the Ryūkyūans and what he saw as their negative characteristics. McOmie has suggested that as a result of his meeting with Bettelheim/ Perry was prepared to match the chicanery and duplicity that Bettelheim saw in the Okinawan authorities with “a little Yankee diplomacy.” By the end of Perry’s visit to Naha, however. Perry’s relations with Bettelheim were not good, and the commodore rejected Bettelheim’s offer to join the expedition to Japan as an interpreter. This was much to the relief of Samuel Wells Williams, the expedition’s missionary interpreter, who had developed a real dislike for Bettelheim while Perry’s flagship was anchored off Naha. Part of the problem was Bettelheim’s acting as an agent for the American warships in the purchase of provisions during their extended visits in 1853 and 1854, leading to suspicions that he was lining his own pockets. Yet, the officers of USS Plymouth thought his services had been so valuable to them during the winter of 1853 that they presented him with a silver goblet worth $80. Attitudes toward Bettelheim among Americans with Perry’s squadron were mixed. Lieutenant George Henry Preble of the USS Macedonian was generally sympathetic, but he thought that despite Bettelheim’s sincerity and enthusiasm, he was the worst kind of person to be a missionary to the Ryūkyūans: his great contempt for them meant that he knew less about the Ryūkyūans after eight years than some knew after eight months. William Heine, the official artist with Perry, clearly liked Bettelheim. Heine was very impressed when he became, by chance one night in February 1854, an unseen onlooker at the Bettelheim family’s evening prayers. The German-speaking Heine was a young man and possibly a little homesick, which might account for why he found the prayers of a close-knit family so touching. His overall generosity of feeling toward Bettelheim might also be a reflection that the polylingual missionary’s German was better than his English. On 15 January 1854, Bettelheim preached aboard the Macedonian; Preble recorded that “it was an ingenious and animated discourse to which his foreign accentuation and broken English gave additional force. Reading the Hymns was rather a stumbling block to him but he showed he conceived their sense.” Since Bettelheim was unable to convert the Ryūkyūans to Christianity, Preble thought his chief contribution was the translation of the Scriptures into Ryūkyūan language and the construction of a Ryūkyūan dictionary. A linguist said to have mastered thirteen languages, Bettelheim managed to translate four chapters of the New Testament into the Ryūkyūan language. This work was probably the most positive and lasting legacy of his sojourn in Naha. Under pressure from the Ryūkyūan authorities. Perry agreed to evacuate the Bettelheims from Naha.

In March 1854, Perry’s supply ship Supply took Bettelheim’s family to Shanghai, and later in June Bettelheim himself left Naha for good aboard USS Powhatan. He left behind his replacement, C.H. Moreton, formerly of the London Missionary Society, and Moreton’s wife, who had arrived in Naha that February, to continue on the mission alone. Bettelheim made the first step toward establishing Protestant missions in metropolitan Japan, which the northward movement of American warships under Perry from the Ryūkyūs presaged. Unfortunately, in December 1855, his successor, Moreton, fell ill and left Naha to return home. There was difficulty finding another missionary, and in 1861 the Loo-Choo Naval Mission was formally ended. What monies were left over were given to the British Anglican Church Missionary Society for the development of its future Japan mission, which eventually began in 1869.

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by | 4 November 2010 · 6:06 pm

Legacies of Danish Estonia

From The Baltic: A New History of the Region and Its People, by Alan Palmer (Overlook, 2006), p. 45:

The Swedes backed missions to secure Christian footholds in Estonia and in southern Finland, where in 1222 one Swedish king, John Sverkersson, was killed in a skirmish. Valdemar II, King of Denmark 1202-42, demonstrated the effectiveness of sea power by sending a fleet of deep-draught warships to seize the Estonian offshore island of Saaremaa in 1206, establishing a base from which he mounted an invasion of northern Estonia thirteen years later. On that occasion Valdemar came as a crusader and was accompanied by the Archbishop of Lund, two other bishops and their chaplains.

The campaign is steeped in legend. The formidable army that landed at Reval was thrown into confusion by an Estonian attack from the hill of Toompea. When the fighting became desperate the archbishop is said to have knelt in prayer, with hands raised in supplication: a red flag with a white cross upon it floated down from heaven, in token of God’s blessing on the Danish cause; and beneath the banner, Valdemar’s army went on to gain a historic victory. The emblem of Denmark today is still this Dannebrog, the oldest national flag in the world. And Estonia is the only republic with a capital named after the foreign invaders who made it a city; for the word Tallinn derives from the Estonian for ‘Danish Town’ (Tanni linn).

Soon Reval/Tallinn did indeed become in every sense a Danish town, founded little more than forty years after Copenhagen itself. A cathedral, eight churches, a nunnery and a Dominican abbey, all planted from Denmark, were grouped around the castle and royal treasury on Toompea hill, where the king’s lieutenant resided. Between Toompea and the quay-side everything essential to administer a distant dependency was concentrated – an arsenal, commercial warehouses, stables with horses kept ready for any expeditionary force from the homeland. It was, however, a curious form of ‘colonization’. After Valdemar completed a land settlement in 1242 the Danish kings never intervened in Estonian affairs. There was virtually no centralized control; nominal vassals enjoyed a rare independence on their territorial fiefs. The treasury remained in Danish hands but there were many months when the Sword Brothers were virtual masters of the growing city. Yet, despite these obstacles, during a 120-year period thirteen successive rulers of a country 1,300 kilometres west of Estonia could count on steady revenue from the tolls, tithes and taxes of their overseas colony.

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by | 22 October 2010 · 9:13 am

On the Foreignness of Vietnam to Thais

From In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War, by Richard A. Ruth (U. Hawaii Press, 2011), pp. 188-189:

The Thai soldiers saw South Vietnam as a separate country in a conception that differed from their understanding of their immediate neighbors Laos and Cambodia. Many of these soldiers had passed through those two countries in their youth. Private First Class Aran’s childhood home in Nong Khai, for instance, was within sight of the Mekong River and the banks of Laos opposite. As he recalled, “It was like going into my sibling country. Back then Thailand and Laos weren’t that different from each other. There was no ideology [separating them] at all. We crossed over to play like normal. We could eat and sleep, and then cross back. [The Lao people] were like our relatives; we could go back and forth [between Thailand and Laos] all the time.” Those soldiers from the southern Isan subregion, many of them from districts where Khmer was spoken as a first language, enjoyed similar ease in crossing the Thai-Cambodian border in the period before the World Court awarded full ownership of Prasat Khao Phra Wihan (Preah Vihear in Khmer) to Phnom Penh in 1962. For the ethnic Khmer living in southern Isan’s Sisaket, Surin, and Buriram provinces, a jaunt into Cambodia was as unremarkable as the boat ride on the Mekong River made by their ethnic Lao counterparts in the north.

Vietnam was different. Its cultural dissimilarities more so than its geographic distance put it into a separate category. It seemed Chinese. The strong cultural similarities between the Vietnamese and the Chinese made such comparisons inevitable. The historical Vietnamese embrace of Confucian principles, Mahayana Buddhism, Chinese script (as well as Nom, the Vietnamese indigenous script that resembles Chinese to many outsiders), and the classics of Chinese literature encouraged the Thais to see Vietnam as belonging to China’s sphere. It seemed distant beyond the kilometers that separated it from Thailand.

Upon their arrival in Vietnam, the first action undertaken by many Thai volunteers was to acknowledge the presence and sovereignty of the local spiritual regime. As soon as Sergeant Khamron set foot in South Vietnam, he dropped to his knees, scooped up a handful of dirt, and sprinkled it over his head. He carried out this impromptu gesture to ensure that Mae Thorani would protect him while he was in South Vietnam…. “If you are Buddhist, they train you to do things like this,” he explained. “There is a khata [verse] that says, ‘When you go to a foreign land/Entrust your care to Mother Earth.’ It is the same thing when you return. When I got back [to Thailand], I immediately knelt down, took up some dirt, and sprinkled it on my head. I said, ‘I’m back.'” Khamron’s decision to carry out the same action on returning to his homeland underscores the degree to which many soldiers saw South Vietnam’s spiritual forces as belonging to a separate (and specifically Vietnamese) realm. Despite sharing the same physical landmass and duplicating the same flora, fauna, and weather, the two countries were seen to harbor individual and esoteric spiritual actors. The sovereignty of each area belonged to local spirits. For this reason, some Thai soldiers brought their own soil with them. They collected samples of dirt, which they addressed as “Mae Thorani,” and carried the samples with them to South Vietnam.

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by | 3 October 2010 · 6:25 pm

Goals of Thai Volunteer Soldiers in the Vietnam War

Normally, I try not to excerpt from books hot off the press unless they offer new historical perspectives on recent events. This ground-breaking book seems long, long overdue, and the rest of the chapter from which I’ve quoted is available online. It offers a useful corrective to those who view every regional conflict through the lens of their own far-removed national partisanship, those who see every wartime ally of a hegemonic power as a bought-and-paid-for puppet, or those who imagine that Buddhists cannot be just as warlike as members of any other religion.

From In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War, by Richard A. Ruth (U. Hawaii Press, 2011), pp. 4-8:

The most important of the Thai national symbols constructed during the war was that of the volunteer soldier. He was an idealized man who was brave, devout, patriotic, and selfless. His image was the incarnation of modern Thainess in an age of anticommunist furor. For a while, he would be hailed—in Thailand at least—as what was intrinsically good about the Thai nation in the postcolonial age. He would restore honor to the Thai military in the wake of its ignoble adventures during World War II, and make the goals of the military appear consistent with those of the civilian population. In the years before 1973–1976, when this idealized soldier-citizen was put to sinister use by the Thai military and by the Thai paramilitary vigilante organizations that emerged from the military’s dark shadows, he was someone to be admired, envied, and supported.

As symbols, the Thai volunteer soldiers reflected the evolution of Thai society in several critical ways. They stood at the nexus of many of the important themes that defined Thailand’s history in the 1960s. In this way they can be read as the embodiment of the changes that affected the country after World War II. These trends are related principally to Thailand’s relationship with the United States. In the period now known as the American Era, these troops became Thailand’s official representatives in the biggest US-dominated event: the war against communism in South Vietnam. They were physical reminders of America’s close relationship with Thailand during the period of the conflict. They wore American uniforms, carried American weapons, and conducted military operations according to American training. They departed and returned to Thailand aboard American ships and planes. They lived in an American-built camp bearing an American name. They carried American currency with which they purchased items of American material culture. The stories they carried back were as much about things American as they were about the people and culture of South Vietnam. Their repatriated casualties received prominent American visitors—some of them international superstars—in Thai military hospitals. And some of their dead ended up buried in American soil to be mourned far from home by American strangers. In an age defined by an American idiom, they bore the marks of close contact with the Americans.

The troops were also a product of the other great theme of the day: development (kan-phatthana). The American-built roads that transformed rural Thailand’s physical landscape and social and economic systems in the 1950s and 1960s also transformed its people. The infrastructure constructed with American aid, machinery, and advice profoundly altered the relationship between the people of the countryside and those of the urban center. For the first time in Thailand’s history, the people and circumstances of the rural areas rivaled those of the capital in importance to the national state. The need for industrial labor, construction workers, and service employees brought waves of internal migrants from what had once been Siam’s hinterlands to live and work in Bangkok. The newcomers changed the face of Bangkok, a city whose dynamism had previously been understood to be almost the exclusive product of the Chinese immigrant and entrepreneurial energies. And in doing so they changed Bangkok’s self-image. These upcountry people redefined what it meant to be Thai. Their migration patterns from rural to urban were not one-way journeys. Their ties to their homes and the seasonal nature of the farms they left behind contributed to the exchange between two formerly antithetical geographic cultures. The newly mobile brought back the ambitions, ideas, and perspectives of the capital city. These men and women became a migratory population whose outlook was simultaneously rural and urban, traditional and modern, settled and restless.

The Thai volunteer soldiers were products of this age of rural transformation. Changes in national politics, economics, and education were influential agents in the formation of their outlook. Their individual stories describe the profound changes under way in areas where the people had only recently begun to see themselves as belonging to the center, as being truly Thai. This process of transformation coincided with some of the earliest academic studies of Thai regionalism. The experiences of the Thai volunteers complement such studies as Charles Keyes’ Isan: Regionalism in Northeastern Thailand. The stories of their youth and young adulthood, of their time before, during, and after their tours of duty in South Vietnam, are the stories of rural Thailand in this era. The rapid expansion of government public schools, and the emphasis on national loyalties over local loyalties, encouraged rural youths of this era to consider themselves subjects of the state to an unprecedented degree.

Although they were not the first generation to be educated in Thailand’s government schools, the volunteer soldiers were the first to have been schooled at a time when secondary education was a possibility for all children of the rural poor. The expansion of upcountry secondary schools and technical colleges provided some of these people with the educational infrastructure for more advanced degrees and also the broadened ambitions and expectations that come with higher learning. Similarly, the traditional intrusions of the state, obligations such as taxes and conscription, were less odious, if not less onerous, to a young population that saw its adult fate as entwined with that of the nation. As per the requirements of the Royal Thai Army’s guidelines for the recruitment of soldiers for South Vietnam, all of the volunteers had graduated from secondary school, a newly possible feat for the rural poor. Many of them had continued their education while serving as draftees in the army. The sheer number of volunteers who qualified for service in South Vietnam was a reflection of the rise in education levels throughout the country. As young adults, many of these men had wanted to elevate their social status but had failed so far. Most of them had missed out on the opportunities available to the expanding middle class located almost exclusively in Bangkok’s urban sphere. Unwilling to join the unskilled labor force in the capital, they pinned their hopes on gaining positions as civil servants—bureaucrats, policemen, and teachers—in the upcountry provinces of their births. Lacking the advanced education to become teachers and the connections needed to secure a spot in the provincial government, these young men became soldiers. Even this avenue was only a stopgap measure. Like the civil service, the Royal Thai Army lacked the capacity to absorb all of those who sought long-term careers. With the exception of the few who had made a career in the military, most soldiers served only two years as conscripts. The opportunity to reenlist with the Queen’s Cobra Regiment and the Black Panther Division represented an unexpected second chance at an army career.

The strong desire the volunteer soldiers expressed to visit foreign lands and learn about neighboring cultures reflected a correlated elevation in ambitions as well. The largely rural population of young who volunteered for service in South Vietnam had taken the government’s mantra of kan-phatthana and applied it to themselves. A tour of duty as a member of the celebrated volunteer corps confirmed their personal worth as well as their value to the state. Going to South Vietnam became a major goal in their personal program of change. To this day, many veterans cite their time in South Vietnam as the pinnacle moment in this process of transformation. Long after they returned home, and long after they had spent the monetary rewards they had acquired as compensation, the lingering aura of exceptionality garnered them a measure of distinction, of a special social status, in the societies that had produced them. Many got jobs that were better than they would have previously expected. And, a generation later, their children enjoyed even better lives, thanks to the continued financial, educational, and health benefits and expanded horizons that Vietnam service provided.

The Thai volunteers saw themselves as Buddhist warriors. Theravada Buddhism—especially the layman’s expression of Buddhist culture popular in Thailand in the 1960s—played a critical role in the lives of these soldiers and in the national adventure that sent them to South Vietnam. Thailand’s sangha (Buddhist ecclesiastical order), after some deliberation, sanctioned their military mission. The Supreme Patriarch and other prominent monks blessed the departing troops and the returning casualties in public ceremonies. The military units transported Buddha icons along with their weapons and support equipment. A crowded Buddhist altar dominated by a Sukhothai-style Buddha statue was set up in the Thai contingent’s field headquarters as the backdrop to all meetings with the Thais’ “Free World” allies. Some troops put Buddha images on their military vehicles. And the most emblematic symbol of the Thai fighting man was the string of Buddhist amulets that ringed his head and filled his pockets. Some soldiers brought as many as 100 tiny Buddha statuettes—enough to field a full combat company—for their protection. These iconic symbols would impress their American GI counterparts, facilitate their illicit trading schemes, and neutralize foreign magic in the spirit-rich forests of Bien Hoa.

I blogged earlier about South Korean attitudes toward the Vietnam War.

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by | 4 July 2010 · 8:08 am

The Heifer Project’s First Goats for Okinawa

From: Comfort All Who Mourn: The Life Story of Herbert and Madeline Nicholson, by Herbert V. Nicholson and Margaret Wilke (Bookmates International, 1982), pp. 127-129:

An organization called Heifers for Relief, sponsored by the Church of the Brethren, decided to accept my offer to raise money and take goats to war-torn Japan.

Milk was in desperately short supply overseas and the Japanese children were being severely affected by the shortage. Ordinarily the Heifer project sent only bred heifers to ravaged areas. In this case, goats answered the need more readily, so goats were sent for the first time in its history. Later they sent all sorts of farm animals to many countries and aided poor farmers in the United States as well.*

When I received approval of the goat project I went to work. I raised a good part of the money and bought most of the goats myself. Then I gathered a little group of men to accompany me on the first trip. Sim Togasaki, a Nisei from San Francisco, wanted to come because he needed to make contacts in Japan for his importing business. Although he knew nothing about goats, he was a hard worker and a great help because he spoke fluent Japanese. Ted Roberts, a dairyman who had always been interested in the Japanese, and Paul McCracken, a goat expert, also came with us. Paul was a Quaker, too, so I was glad to have him along. My son Samuel also came. He took color slides everywhere which later were a great help in raising money for more goats.

In October, 1947, we arrived in San Francisco ready to load up for a trip when we found, to our great disappointment, that the Army had decided to send us to Okinawa rather than Japan! The following load would be scheduled for Japan. That disappointment was to become God’s surprise for us. What lay ahead was a wonderful adventure.

The Army had built pens for our two hundred goats on the rear deck of the Simon Benson, a small liberty ship which was not in good shape. We had a rough trip across the Pacific and were very relieved when we reached Okinawa safely. Later we learned that on its next trip the ship had split open! It was easy to believe.

Our arrival in Okinawa was an unforgettable experience. The harbor at Naha was full of sunken ships. The city had been completely destroyed. We could only stare in shock and pity.

We received a warm welcome and were greeted by the governor and other dignitaries. It was a delight to discover that Mr. Shikiya, the governor, was a Christian. After the ceremonies, in which we presented a goat to the community, we milked the remainder of our goats and took the milk to an orphanage.

We discovered that we were to be housed at the Military Government Headquarters across the island from Naha. Our escort there was a former missionary to Japan, Everett Thompson, who was in charge of LARA (Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia). The occupation forces did not want to work with a lot of separate relief organizations, so they formed this agency to coordinate all relief efforts. The Heifer project joined LARA, as did the Church World Service, the Friends’ Service Committee, and many others.

At the Military Government Headquarters we were taken to the officers’ quarters. What a surprise to discover that we goatherds were classed as colonels.

* Nicholson seems to have been unaware that the Heifer project had already been sending horses and chickens as well as cattle to war-torn Europe in 1946.

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by | 25 April 2010 · 11:39 am

Madrasahs vs. Secular Schools

From: Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World, by Vali Nasr (Free Press, 2009), Kindle Loc. 3297-41:

Madrasah is a catchall term. A madrasah can mean something as simple as a Koranic academy where young children learn a few religious basics and practice reading from Islam’s holy book. Or it can mean a primary or secondary school meant to compete with national education; or a seminary established to train proper clerics in classical Islamic religious knowledge. Madrasahs, in other words, vary widely in what they teach, how they teach it, and what view of Islam and its place in the world they impart on their students.

Madrasahs are generally conservative and some are troublingly fanatical—some do indeed harbor and train jihadis and terrorists. These are a minority, however, and the problem is less extensive than is usually thought. To begin with, there are not as many madrasahs as common wisdom holds, and they train relatively few students. A Harvard University and World Bank study of Islamic education in Pakistan found that in 2002, fewer than 1 percent of all students in Pakistan were attending madrasahs. That number has risen but only to 1.9 percent in 2008. The report also found that over the decade leading up to 9/11, madrasah enrollment had risen by 16 percent, which was slower than the increase in overall school enrollment. Madrasahs were not gaining, but instead were losing part of an already small market share. Even in Indonesia, where Islamic education is on the rise, only 13 percent of the country’s 44 million students attend some form of Islamic education. The poor do flock to madrasahs, but more so in rural areas than in cities, and studies of students’ economic backgrounds reveal too much diversity to see Islamic education as the domain of the poor.

Terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey argue that the link between madrasahs and terrorism is weak. The anthropologist Robert Hefner estimates that of some 46,000 pesantrans (as madrasahs are called in Indonesia), no more than forty or so qualify as extremist. Perhaps a larger problem is that in many countries, the so-called secular schools teach a great deal of religion, often interpreted in illiberal ways, and sometimes push hair-raising intolerance. State textbooks in Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all stand as cases in point. In Algeria, the battle against Islamic extremism now centers on changing school curricula that have long been under the control of conservative religious leaders. Sometimes, as in Jordan, the problem is that state authorities have tossed fundamentalists the education ministry as a sop. Better to give them that than have them clamoring for the foreign-affairs or finance portfolios, the thinking seems to have run. It is a worrisome reminder of the lack of seriousness with which these governments consider education.

In Pakistan, it was General Musharraf—an avowed secularist and admirer of Kemalism—who changed the law so that a madrasah certificate counts as well as a university degree in qualifying someone to run for parliament. Other rulers seem to feel that a religious formation for young people is preferable to the Marxism or Western decadence that might otherwise vie for youthful attention. Pakistan’s national identity is strongly Islamic, and Saudi Arabia sees Wahhabism as its national creed. Neither country can truly envision education as a secular enterprise. In this, they may not be so different from secular-nationalist regimes that seek to infuse young minds with an almost religious sense of national identity and cohesiveness. Madrasah-bashing will not clean up education; that requires pressing the governments not just the clerics.

Since 9/11, many madrasahs have in fact done better than governments when it comes to reform. The overwhelming bulk of madrasahs in Indonesia and Bangladesh have submitted to government oversight and implemented required curricular reforms. In general, madrasah reform progresses slowly, but in the meantime, Islamic education of a hopeful nature has been thriving outside of the madrasahs.

In one Pakistani poll, 70 percent of those surveyed favored reforming madrasahs to root out extremism and boost educational quality but also rejected secular education. That is not a surprise if you consider that secular education in that country has pretty much collapsed. Too many schools lack textbooks, desks, and blackboards, and too many teachers are underpaid and unqualified. There is very little in way of proper education in sciences and math. All around the Islamic world today, in fact, secular education draws little praise. The demand is for high-quality, useful Islamic education but not extremism; for teaching religious values but not political activism; and vitally, for providing children with the knowledge needed to make it in the competition of the modern, globalized economy.

In Pakistan, Islamic high schools cost far less than secular private schools while producing graduates who do better than average on college-entrance exams and standardized tests. Muslim parents can see the value for money here, especially in a country with numerous young people and a tight job market. In Bangladesh, almost a third of university professors are graduates of Alia madrasahs, a network of government-mandated seminaries that combine traditional Islamic education with English and modern subjects. Between 1985 and 2003, the number of Alia madrasahs in Bangladesh grew by 55 percent. If the goal is upward mobility, Islamic education is the rational choice for many parents in many countries.

In too many countries around the Muslim world, political parties have turned campuses into battlegrounds and gutted higher education in the process.

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