Sino-Japanese War Research Articles

우두 접종의 보편화 과정과 그 영향

In this paper, we investigated what kind of efforts were made to expand vaccination amid a smallpox epidemic in Shanghai in 1938-39, as well as the significance of such efforts.
 In Shanghai, various strategies were employed to achieve universal vaccination. When it was first introduced, theories of Chinese medicine were borrowed to help people’s understanding, and various media outlets were used to promote the effect and safety of vaccination. Health institutions in the foreign concession and the Chinese elites helped to expand free vaccination. At the time, vaccination was not mandatory, and people voluntarily visited a clinic for innoculation. Between 1932 and 1937, the number of fatality from smallpox fluctuated and did not reach a threatening level due to the vaccination effort.
 However, upon the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the number of smallpox patients and the subsequent death toll surged. Some of the refugees who fled to the foreign concession to avoid the war had smallpox, and the disease spread from there. The Japanese military force that occupied Shanghai began mandatory vaccination in a bid to protect the health of Japanese people and soldiers as well as the safety of Japan.
 Setting aside justifications for war and pillage of the colony, the Japanese occupation helped to expand universal vaccination to an extent. Statistical data indicate that the number of vaccination applied by Japan’s health institutions is significant, and the military institution enabled forced vaccination. Various institutions including the Japanese military force, health institutions, hospitals, clinics, charity organizations in the foreign concession joined hands for the shared goal of fighting against smallpox. Due to the nature of an epidemic that does not distinguish between friends and foes or across races, an odd cooperative relationship was formed in Shanghai.
 The significance of an increase in vaccination can be observed in that its infrastructure and method were replicated to fight cholera. Specifically, the two approaches―active and forced innoculation by the authorities and free innoculation in the form of traditional charity work―were first made to increase vaccination and then fully applied to expanding cholera inoculation. Vaccination also paved the way for universalization of inoculation. At the time, the Chinese people were not familiar with the method of cholera inoculation, and its effect was dubious. They suspected that the Japanese injected poison and shunned cholera inoculation. When a rule was implemented that banned people without a certificate of cholera inoculation from traveling to other regions, people forged certificates. In comparison, over a century had passed since vaccination was introduced in China, and people knew its effect well. For this reason, the public probably did not strongly oppose forced vaccination by the Japanese.
 However, this is merely in comparison with cholera inoculation, and the goal of universal vaccination was not attained. Smallpox continued to break out after 1939, and many people remained reluctant to receive vaccination. For peaceful ruling, the People’s Republic of China had to endeavor for vaccination from the beginning of its foundation as did the authority of the foreign concession and the Japanese military force. Reasons for a failed attempt to achieve universal vaccination despite tenacious efforts need to be investigated from various angles including political, social and cultural aspects.

Western Technology and China's Industrial Development: Steamship Building in Nineteenth-Century China, 1828–1895 by Hsien-ch'un Wang

Reviewed by: Western Technology and China's Industrial Development: Steamship Building in Nineteenth-Century China, 1828–1895 by Hsien-ch'un Wang Bert Becker (bio) Western Technology and China's Industrial Development: Steamship Building in Nineteenth-Century China, 1828–1895 By Hsien-ch'un Wang. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. xvi + 229. Hsien-ch'un Wang's book describes the process of transferring steam-engine technology to China in the nineteenth century and the subsequent impact on Chinese technical education and shipbuilding. It highlights how Chinese senior officials either welcomed or hindered technological innovation and progress. Steamship building depended on government subsidies. The book demonstrates the scientific and technological underpinnings of this transfer process. Wang presents the early attempts to build steamers in China in a very readable and even exciting way, with colorful descriptions enhanced by impressive images. Wang writes that once Chinese officials understood the importance of steam power for military purposes, they recruited European technicians and instructors, starting an education process that lasted until the end of the century. Translating steam-engine management manuals and popularized science textbooks from European languages introduced Chinese readers to new terms and concepts. The Fuzhou Navy Yard serves as a case study illustrating the fundamental problems of transferring Western science to China. The major value of the book is that Wang largely and consistently employs Chinese primary and secondary sources. Furthermore, he compares China's path to modern shipbuilding with the Japanese experience around the same time. His aim is to reject common notions that the Chinese government in its years of decline was too inept to acquire steam technology (as U.S. historian John Fairbank's seminal studies suggest), or that internal socioeconomic or political dynamics or a deep-rooted conservative society (as other historians argue) sufficiently explain China's difficulties handling steam technology. Wang sees China's techno-scientific settings as the major factor impeding technological progress. Before the 1911 revolution brought an end to the Qing dynasty, structural inefficiencies such as the dominance of senior officials making poor decisions, a weak fiscal system, and a lack of funds had prevented major progress in China's shipbuilding industry. Remarkably, Wang addresses the problematic lack of private initiatives that turned the Chinese "age of steam" into a government-sponsored phenomenon. Yet he does not draw the logical conclusion that the manic absolute state control of technical developments was perhaps the main reason why China lost out to [End Page 645] its rival Japan, suffering a humiliating military defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). Historians interested in the history of science will find much important and useful information in Wang's book on China's knowledge of Western sciences at the time. It is fascinating to read that missionaries were the first to introduce technical books and discover how "collaborative translations" and complicated teamwork between (mostly English-speaking) foreigners and Chinese translators worked in practice. This is described in such a sophisticated and detailed way that the book is also valuable for linguistics experts. Educational historians will learn about the lack of curricula science in China, the establishment of new schools teaching scientific subjects, and individual students pursuing a science education in China and abroad. For maritime and business historians of China, the chapter on the Fuzhou Navy Yard's founding and development is certainly the most interesting. It is well situated in the context of global shipbuilding history, demonstrating the French and British naval schools' diverse influences creating and shaping the Chinese Navy. Wang rejects the notion that the Navy Yard's progress was hampered by Chinese staff preferring civil service to a technical career. He considers government intervention crucial, an assumption that is reinforced when comparing the Fuzhou Yard with the British Royal Naval Dockyards. By subcontracting work to private shipbuilders such as the prominent marine engineering company Armstrong, the British Admiralty stimulated competition, driving private shipbuilders to develop new designs that attracted contracts from the Royal Navy or even foreign governments. Unable to play a similar role, the Fuzhou Navy Yard received insufficient funding from the central government to provide domestic shipbuilders with the financial resources they needed. It is revealing to learn that, from...

근대 중국의 국민 창출 담론과 실천 - 梁啓超의 『新民說』과 蔣介石의 新生活運動을 중심으로 -

Around 20SUPth/SUP century whose urgent task was to establish modern nation-state, Chinese intellectuals and political leaders started intellectual quest and practices. To most Chinese at that time, options between civic nationalism and static nationalism was rather secondary, because they thought that the mission of establishing modern nation-state was desperate. Two directions of emphasis on individual freedom and rights and emphasis on discipline and regulation have been mixed, coexisted and sometimes confused.BR After quite long time of discursive groping, Jiang Jieshi and KMT finally converted discursive stage of the mission of creation of nation into practical stage by developing nationwide New Life Movement. But Due to various historical and realistic constraints(insufficiency of administrative abilities, scarce placement of police force, Sino-Japanese War, etc), building of strong nation-state through creation of disciplinary and hygienic Chinese people has failed. Republican China lacked institutional devices and social mediating organizations which was indispensible to proliferation of discipline and public order.BR Ironically, Jiang Jieshi and KMT encountered quite perfect conditions for creation of nation in Taiwan since 1949, when they lost civil war against CCP and retreated to the island, which was well prepared in terms of discipline and public order. In China proper, Chinese government is still struggling to establish awareness of discipline and public order, probably because of absence of rule by law. But experience of New Life Movement tells us that discipline and public order can not be achieved by anxiousness or impatience.

1940년대 西安 建都論과 ‘漢唐盛世’ 복원의 꿈

At the time when the Sino-Japanese War was moving into the latter half phase, a lively controversy developed in Chinese society as to where the post-war Chinese capital should be placed at. In the early 1940s, the proposal to designate Xi’an as the post-war capital generated considerable response for a while. They emphasized the threat from the northern continent and argued that Xi’an should be designated as the capital to prepare for future northern inland threats. Their basis was based on China’s historical experience. And also, they presented China’s historical experience and traditional culture as a model for the construction of ‘New China’ after the war. For them, restoring the ‘glory of Han-Tang dynasty’ was the goal of building ‘New China’.BR However, Xi’an was too backward a place to realize this idea. After the Song dynasty, Xi’an was pushed to the periphery of China’s political and economic development, and after China moved into the modern period, the developmental gap with the eastern coastal area widened further. In order to overcome this contradiction between ‘necessity’ and ‘reality’, pro-Xi’an advocates emphasized the development of north west China. The idea was to achieve ‘balanced development’ throughout the country by making Xi’an the capital and developing the northwestern region.BR However, their argument was inappropriate as a realistic alternative. At the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, the arguments of pro-Xi’an advocates temporarily gained resonance, but as the end of the war drew near, the position of Nanjing’s rival city was passed on to Beijing. The traditional inland-defense strategy of the pro-Xi’an advocates did not reflect the changes in the international situation since the 19th century, and the past-oriented nation building concept could not fully contain the task of building a modern nation-state. In addition, the task of ‘balanced development’ to overcome the contradiction between the ‘necessity’ and ‘reality’ of pro-Xi’an argument, was forced to be pushed to the lower priority in a situation where numerous difficult problems had to be solved in a short time with limited resources. The pro-Xi’an arguments show that the past-oriented discourse based on the model of ‘the Golden Ages of Han-Tang dynasty’ was once widely spread among the various ideas that competed for the founding idea of ‘New China’ at the time, but at the same time it clearly reveals its fundamental limitations.

The Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) in the poetry of Chinese authors (on organizing extracurricular activities in History)

The article describes the attitude of the Chinese intelligentsia to the events of 1937-1945 in China, which is reflected in specific activities and creative works. A number of works by Chinese authors are cited in the translations of Russian orientalists. The authors show that in the process of mastering the discipline "Recent History of Asian and African Countries", it seems useful that fourth-year History students of the Petrozavodsk State University in the undergraduate program "Pedagogical Education" (profiles "Education in Subject Areas" and "History and Social Studies") should develop a plan for extracurricular activities on the topic "Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) in the poetry of Chinese authors" in order to develop the ability to critically select educational material and creatively implement educational tasks. The material of the article can be used to organize extracurricular activities in educational institutions on this topic.

Mobility in an Age of Imperialism, Nation-Building, and Revolution: Kawata Masazō's Late-Nineteenth-Century Pacific World

Throughout the nineteenth century, the forces of imperialism, nationalism, and revolution were changing the world's geopolitical landscape at the same time that steamships enabled unprecedented mobility in the Pacific. This article examines Kawata Masazō's life and news reports to ask what he can tell us about how travel, foreign encounter, and intellectual exchange intersected with East Asian geopolitics just prior to the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War in the summer of 1894. Kawata's micro-historical perspective shows that the unique nexus of relationships among Japan, Korea, and China were embedded in the deeply intertwined and contradictory tensions of imperialism, nationalism, and revolution that were playing out across multiple societies in the Pacific world. His story also shows that travel and imperialism are not always, or only, mutually supporting.

The National Spirit Embodied in the Battle of Shanghai and Its Historical Significance

The Second Sino-Japanese War (19371945) was also a page in the development of the Chinese nation that was marked by vicissitudes. During this period, the national spirit, with patriotism as its core, reached an unprecedented height. The Sino-Japanese War lasted fourteen years, divided into the stage of a partial war and a full-scale war. This article focuses on the comprehensive strategic defence phase during the full-scale war from 1937 to 1939, with the Battle of Shanghai as the main focus, and discusses the analysis of the history of the war and the national spirit embodied in it. The significance of the Battle of Shanghai is not only the military strategic consideration of "uploading and transmitting" or buying time for the national industry to move inward, but also the "united mindset" and even "bottom-up" spirit, from officers to popular people. The national spirit of "bottom up" embodied in it provided valuable and rich ideological and psychological reserves for people to resist the war for a long time. The Battle of Shanghai promoted the unity and solidarity of people from all social classes in Shanghai and even the whole country under the call of "resisting Japan and defeating insults, solidarity in the national defense", and promoted the development of an unprecedented new climax of the national anti-Japanese movement.

동아시아 패권전쟁으로서의 청일전쟁 재조명

This paper tries to shed light on the first Sino-Japanese war(1894-1895) from the perspective of hegemonic war. Generally, hegemonic war theories emphasizes differential growth of national power among great powers as one cause of major war. However, some theorists pointed out that foreign policies of middle powers in the midst of great power rivalry can ignite direct confrontation between two powers. Based on this observation, this paper explains what policy did Joseon dynasty take during the power rivalry between Qing Empire and Meiji Japan in the late 19th century. In the face of growing rivalry between Meiji Japan and Qing Empire, politicians in Joseon dynasty began to be divided into pro-Japan faction and pro-Qing faction each other; eventually two factions harshly confronted through Imo military rebellion(壬午軍亂) and Kapsin political upheaval(甲申政變). These internal political clash invited neighboring powers intervention into Joseon’s politics and ignited two powers’ direct confrontation over Korean peninsula’s dominance. Joseon’s younger intellectual Yun Chi- ho’s diary illustrated well how did Joseon’s junior politicians lose the vision of their dynasty’s future and expected advanced foreign countries’ intervention into Joseon’s internal politics.

1930년대 중후반 강원도 개발계획과 삼척지역의 식민지 공업화

This study deals with the development process, its characteristics and limitations of Gangwon-do focusing on the Samcheok area from the mid-late 1930s to the early 1940s. Until the first half of the 1930s, Gangwon-do had ample room for development in forestry, fishery, and mining, but was recognized as an unexploited space due to transportation and geographical limitations. Then, after the mid-1930s, the possibility of development in Gangwon-do expanded in the policy of promoting agriculture and industry by the Japanese Government-General of Korea along with improving transportation infrastructure. At the same time, the Gangwon-do Development Committee was held in 1937, when Japan Empire demanded resource development and productivity expansion after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. The Gangwon-do Development Committee was a meeting where it was declared that Gangwon-do could no longer remain an unexploited area, and it was a space where various interests of the people who would promote development overlapped.
 Samcheok was the area where Gangwon-do’s development plan was most symbolically revealed. With the promotion of anthracite mining, chemical and cement industries, the industrialization of the Samcheok area was accelerated. However, the development and industrialization of the Gangwon region, centered on Samcheok, was a development from above centered on the empire and capital, revealing the limits of development that did not consider the lives of local residents.

Carrying the “Nation’s Thousand-Jin Burden”: Yiyun, the Relay Transportation System during the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Nationalist government established a system of relay transportation, called yiyun, to move military provisions and consumption goods across Free China. The Nationalists’ dependence on locally sourced porters, pack animals, and boats was a product of their unique challenge: waging protracted war within an agrarian economy. While yiyun had its own bureaucratic apparatus at the national level, its day-to-day operations throughout the provinces fell onto local actors, such as the baojia. Through these local agents of control and extraction, the Nationalist state channeled the exigencies of war into the remotest communities and the individual household. The yiyun system demonstrates the wartime Nationalists’ remarkable capacity for organizing resources in a time of crisis. However, its exploitative tendencies also reveal their willingness to trade civilian livelihoods for better odds of survival. Any recognition of the Nationalists’ success in maintaining China’s sovereignty must also accept its foundation in imposed civilian sacrifice.

The National Scientific Imperative in Wartime China and the Complex Motivations of Individual Scientists

Abstract Although by the 1930s both state and nonstate actors generally agreed that science was key to the development of a modern China, there was no consensus on what that meant. The Second Sino-Japanese War stimulated a shift toward applied science that framed engagement in applied scientific activities as patriotic. This way of thinking was prevalent in Nationalist institutions. Although most scientists and social scientists understood themselves to be serving the nation, they did not all share this devotion to applied science. This article examines the Nationalist wartime institutional and rhetorical framework for scientific development and the complex ways in which scientists engaged with that framework. It shows that although the Nationalist state sought to bring science and technology into the service of the state, scientists, technicians, and social scientists, though often framing their work in terms of national need, were in fact motivated by a variety of interests and concerns.

Gender, Christianity, and Peace in Chinese Women's International Thought 1914–1953

AbstractThis paper uncovers the various understandings of peace formulated by Chinese Christian women in the period from the First World War to the Korean War Armistice (1914–1953). In both the literature on Christianity in China and the histories of the national and international women's movements, Chinese Christian women have been subjected to multiple exclusions based on their race, class, gender, and religious identity. Drawing on the memoirs and writings of key Chinese Christian women thinkers active in international women's and Christian networks such as Deng Yuzhi 鄧欲志 and Zeng Baosun 曾寶蓀, as well as all less well-known female students writing in missionary school yearbooks, I dissect how Chinese Christian women variously constructed and deployed their own understanding of peace. How did they appropriate, adapt, or reject the rhetoric of “sisterhood” and maternalist arguments about women's supposed peace-making faculties circulating in the international women's movement for their own purposes? How did they fuse Christianity with early twentieth-century interpretations of Confucian ideas about peace and racial harmony? In what ways did Chinese Christian women active in Communist and Nationalist networks seek to deploy their own understanding of a “Just Peace” during the Second Sino-Japanese War and Korean War? Chinese Christian women's formulations of peace can help us to critically rethink European-centered chronologies of the women's movement and history of women's international thought.

Some lessons from the 1930s Ethiopian and Chinese national liberation wars

To illuminate the debates among socialists on the present Ukraine War (2022–2023), this article proposes to review the debates among Marxists in the 1930s, and in particular the debate with and in the Trotskyist tradition, to both analyze the dual nature of pre-WWII wars of national liberation and the tasks of socialists both in semi-colonial and imperialist countries. Marxists saw that two different yet intertwined political contradictions were unfolding in both the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936) and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), those of national liberation and of inter-imperialist rivalries. They thus warned against any attempt to analyze the war without acknowledging one of these two dynamics, for it would produce a one-sided and biased analysis of a complex reality. Instead, they urged fellow socialists and working people to develop a concrete and regular study of the changing relations of class forces during the wars to adjust their policies. This Marxist methodology was concretized in the reasoning and policy of revolutionary socialists in relation to government economic sanctions, to imperialist material aid packages, and to war budgets and rapid rearmament which the article reviews.

Defending the Samurai: Alice Mabel Bacon and Meiji Japan at War 侍を擁護して:アリス・メーベル・ベーコンと戦時下の明治日本

Alice Mabel Bacon (1858-1918), a friend and colleague of Ōyama Sutematsu and Tsuda Ume, authored three books on Japan and edited the English translation of a Japanese soldier’s war memoir. She and her work cross a wide range of terrain in the gender, diplomatic, and military histories of U.S.-Japanese relations in the Meiji period. In her writing, she depicted the samurai as the driving force in Japanese history from feudalism up to the present. Praising them for their role in developing Meiji Japan into a world power, Bacon identified evidence for her claims in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. In the United States, she challenged the construction of war reporting as a male domain when she questioned press accounts of a massacre carried out by Japanese troops, utilizing her expertise on Japan to stand her ground against a male reporter who emphasized her gender in an effort to undermine her argument. During and after the war with Russia, Bacon extolled bushido as the samurai ethos, which she depicted as having evolved into selfless devotion to the emperor. She also challenged the construction of war itself as a male domain by emphasizing the sacrifices of women on the home front. Bacon thus worked to familiarize Americans with three discourses promoted by the Meiji state and its supporters: the “good wife, wise mother” ideology, the “human bullet” myth, and bushido.

Defending the Samurai: Alice Mabel Bacon and Meiji Japan at War / 侍を擁護して:アリス・メーベル・ベーコンと戦時下の明治日本

Abstract: Alice Mabel Bacon (1858–1918), a friend and colleague of Ōyama Sutematsu and Tsuda Ume, authored three books on Japan and edited the English translation of a Japanese soldier’s war memoir. She and her work cross a wide range of terrain in the gender, diplomatic, and military histories of U.S.-Japanese relations in the Meiji period. In her writing, she depicted the samurai as the driving force in Japanese history from feudalism up to the present. Praising them for their role in developing Meiji Japan into a world power, Bacon identified evidence for her claims in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. In the United States, she challenged the construction of war reporting as a male domain when she questioned press accounts of a massacre carried out by Japanese troops, utilizing her expertise on Japan to stand her ground against a male reporter who emphasized her gender in an effort to undermine her argument. During and after the war with Russia, Bacon extolled bushido as the samurai ethos, which she depicted as having evolved into selfless devotion to the emperor. She also challenged the construction of war itself as a male domain by emphasizing the sacrifices of women on the home front. Bacon thus worked to familiarize Americans with three discourses promoted by the Meiji state and its supporters: the “good wife, wise mother” ideology, the “human bullet” myth, and bushido.

Governing the Dead: Martyrs, Memorials, and Necrocitizenship in Modern China by Linh D. Vu

Reviewed by: Governing the Dead: Martyrs, Memorials, and Necrocitizenship in Modern China by Linh D. Vu Daniel Asen Linh D. Vu. Governing the Dead: Martyrs, Memorials, and Necrocitizenship in Modern China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021. 281 pp. Hardcover ($49.95) or e-book. In Governing the Dead: Martyrs, Memorials, and Necrocitizenship in Modern China, Linh D. Vu examines the questions of “how and why a nation cares about its dead” (2) for a period of Chinese history stretching from the founding of the Republic to the Nanjing Decade, Second Sino-Japanese War, and Chinese Civil War. Vu’s approach is wide-ranging: readers will learn about the narratives and textual genres through which successive early twentieth-century Chinese regimes elevated political martyrs and constructed narratives of national history, the ways in which the state attempted to influence death ritual in order to claim political authority, and the bureaucratic regulations and procedures through which relatives of the war dead were compensated amid expanding domestic military conflict. This book is meant for a wide readership in modern Chinese history. It contains material that will be of interest to those who work in political and military history, social history, and cultural history. Vu’s attention to the details of compensation regulations and the process through which relatives of the dead sought benefits might also be of interest to those who study Republican civil law, given that these issues were so often related to how familial relations were defined in law and social practice. Notably, Vu is attentive to the societal and cultural impacts of wartime mass death and its commemoration in other historical contexts, such as in the United States during the American Civil War and in Europe after the First World War. This attention to the global history of death commemoration—as well as the book’s use of “necrocitizenry” and “necropolitics” as framing concepts, discussed below—suggests the possibility that scholars who work on similar issues in other times and places will find in Vu’s study a useful comparative case. Chapter 1 examines how the anti-Qing Yellow Flower Hill uprising of April 1911 was commemorated under the Nanjing Provisional Government, the regime of Yuan Shikai, and the Nationalist state of the early 1920s. Vu shows that these regimes’ efforts to claim legitimacy by commemorating anti-Qing revolutionaries imbued this uprising with new meanings as a symbol of national identity and unity, Confucian virtue, and partyled revolutionary martyrdom. Chapter 2 turns to the Nanjing Decade and the Nationalist state’s efforts to commemorate and lay claim to a broad range of “martyrs,” including anti-Qing reformers and revolutionaries, Nationalist military personnel who died fighting the forces of the Chinese Communist Party or Japan, and even bureaucrats who died of “overexertion.” The Nationalist government used the memory of these revered figures to augment the narrative of its own indispensable role in China’s recent history and to assert its political legitimacy as the inheritor of the Republic. Chapter 3 examines how relatives of those who were recognized as martyrs interacted with the bureaucracy that provided death benefits in the form of stipends, tuition [End Page E-12] assistance, and burial assistance. Vu shows that in practice this compensation system involved inconsistent regulations, a poorly defined financial base (which relied on local governments’ willingness to follow national compensation policies), and discontent among families who did not receive the benefits for which they petitioned. In chapter 4, Vu examines how widows and other female relatives of martyrs petitioned for compensation, the gendered subject-positions that they claimed for themselves in doing so, and the somewhat ambivalent forms of agency that these interactions with the state involved. Vu argues that, while such women were active agents in engaging the state’s compensation system, their petitioning strategies tended to invoke and thus reinforce “traditional wifely virtues of sacrifice and perseverance” (118). Similar tropes were also deployed in the commemoration of women who died while fighting or resisting the enemy. Chapter 5 examines how the prospect of “mass martyrization” (156) during the Second Sino-Japanese War led to ever-finer compensation regulations and procedures, expanded efforts to collect martyrs’ stories and compile...

STRENGTHENING NATIONAL IDENTITY AND CULTURAL COHESION: WARTIME FOLKLORE STUDIES IN SOUTHWEST CHINA

Folklore studies were closely tied to the emergence of the modern nation states and often used to rebuild national identities. In China, nationalism held an obvious appeal as the people confronted national crises and became increasingly influential in the twentieth centuries. It was not only directly related to the rising interest in folklore from the late 1910s and early 1920s, but also became the dominant theme of the folklore research during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Leading scholars of folklore studies looked to the past in order to strengthen cultural cohesion for the nation as a reaction to Japanese imperialism. Folklore studies in the southwest region under Nationalist control thrived and progressed in related theories and studies of minority customs. Scholars adopted a multi-disciplinary approach and rallied around folklore as a nationalist tool to demonstrate the connection between disparate communities within China. This work examines the great influence of nationalism on folk studies, shining a light on folklorists’ activities, folklore organizations, and primary publications during China’s War of Resistance against Japan.

The Taiwan Question and PRC Politics of Memory towards Japan

This paper discusses the place of Taiwan in PRC’s foreign policy and politics of memory from the perspective of PRC’s raising pressure on Japan and the necessity to solve the Taiwan problem. The Taiwan issue is an important topic for the PRC. Taiwan is still perceived by the Chinese as a reminder of the unfinished civil war and a divided China. The issue of reunification became especially acute during the reign of Xi Jinping, when the need to return Taiwan "to its homeland" became one of the main tasks of the "Great Revival of the Chinese Nation". However, the leadership of Taiwan does not want to lose its de facto independence from the mainland. Besides, the unification of the island with China is not welcomed by other major powers in the region, in particular Japan. Moreover, deep economic, political and cultural interaction has been established between Taiwan and Japan. From the point of view of mainland China, Taiwan cannot have either economic or political independence. To achieve reunification with the island, the PRC resorts to memory politics. The paper analyzes the origins of the Taiwan issue, as well as the positions of the PRC, Japan and Taiwan. The features of the politics of memory of the PRC, which determine the use of memory politics as a foreign policy instrument in relation to Japan, are exposed and analyzed. It is concluded that PRC politics of memory towards Japan is characterized by frequent appeals to the events of the Sino-Japanese war (1931-1945) and the period of Japanese occupation of Taiwan. The PRC claims its right to return the island "to its homeland" as a result of victory in the war and points out that Japan has no moral right to intervene in this issue.

The initial period of the sino-japanese war 1937-1939

The article provides political assessments of the attitude of German military specialists to the processes of the initial period of the Sino-Japanese War. The authors are based on previously little-known documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, some of these documents are put into circulation for the first time. The article reflects the struggle of ideologies on the territory of China during its military clash with Japan. The authors, based on German documents, show the harsh anti-communist nature of Japanese policy in the occupied Chinese territories, and also address the problem of Japanese chauvinism in the late 1930s. The complexity of relations between the Japanese military and representatives of the political and economic elites of China at the initial stage of the Sino-Japanese War led to the support of the Chinese bourgeoisie for the Kuomintang regime, which weakened the position of Chinese collaborators. The article shows the failure of the strategy of the Japanese occupation authorities aimed at splitting the Chinese society. The article reflects the role of Alexander von Falkenhausen at the initial stage of the Sino-Japanese War. The authors highlight the issues of strategic miscalculations of the Japanese high command and shortcomings in the strategy of Chiang Kai-shek.

인천시 부평 외국군 ‘兵站基地’의 성립과 해체, 그리고 현재적 의미

Japanese and U.S. troops have long been stationed in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon. The Japanese and U.S. forces had a different time and purpose when they were stationed in Bupyeong, but they all used Bupyeong as a Munitions base. This was according to the geopolitical position of Bupyeong. With the official return of the U.S. Army's Camp Market to Korea in 2019, there are no more foreign troops in Bupyeong. Bupyeong's history of foreign military presence ends, and now the task of how we can utilize the legacy left by them remains.
 It was after the establishment of the Inchon Army Arsenal in 1939 that foreign troops were stationed in Bupyeong in earnest. As the Second Sino-Japanese War was prolonged, Japan tried to continue the imperialist invasion war by building a Munitions base on the Korean Peninsula. Since then, as Japan expanded its battlefield to Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, Bupyeong's importance has grown even more. In the end, Bupyeong became a place to prepare for the final showdown against U.S. military attacks. It is noteworthy that the Japanese military tried to pass on the “responsibility for harm” and “damage” by building the Munitions base in Bupyeong and mobilizing Koreans.
 After liberation, the U.S. military built Ascom City in Bupyeong and gave it the role of a U.S. Munitions base in Korea. And for a long time it became a place to prepare for another form of war. As time passed, Ascom City, which had been vast, gradually decreased, and eventually, only the Camp Market remained in existence, but was returned to Korea in 2019. The return of the Camp Market means the end of Bupyeong's history of foreign military presence. In the future, we should consider using this place from a historical perspective.