MPAS2001 UNDERSTANDING EAST ASIA

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MPAS2001 UNDERSTANDING EAST ASIA

• Responsible teacher Senior Research Fellow Lauri
  Paltemaa, CEAS (laupalt_at_utu.fi)
• Taken as Lectures, summaries on readings, and
  exercises
• Lecture material available at http//aasia.utu.fi
  /en/studying/
• Reader available at the CEAS office

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MPAS2001 UNDERSTANDING EAST ASIA

• Course Aims
• The course offers an introduction to the wide
  range of issues in the field of East Asian
  studies. The central theme is to introduce some
  central debates in which the meaning of East Asia
  and thus being East-Asian has been defined in
  history. Through these debates East Asias and
  its peoples place have been defined in
  international interaction, especially vis-á-vis
  the West. Here various dichotomous constructs can
  be found in different periods Geographical names
  and boundaries of East Asia, Civilization vs.
  barbarism, totalitarianism vs. Free World,
  modernity vs. backwardness, and universal human
  rights vs. Asian values. Using these constructs,
  how has East Asia it been defined in history? The
  course also introduces major trends and centres
  of modern Chinese and Japanese studies in Europe
  and the US.

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Defining East Asia

• The course approaches East Asia as a construction
• Category of knowledge that exist only because
  people tacitly agree to act as if they exist
  (Steven Pinker)
• A social construct category of socially
  constructed knowledge on social phenomena

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Defining East Asia

• Social constructionism comes in weak and strong
  variations
• Strong constructionism Also knowledge on natural
  phenomena is socially constructed
• Weak constructionism The nature exists outside
  social constructions
• However, our ideas of the nature are not
  inevitable or unchanging
• What we can say about it is always, by
  definition, socially constructed knowledge
  (language is always the medium of communication)
• Same holds about society

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Defining East Asia

• Social constructs (in weak sense)
• Identities (collective and individual) and roles
• Institutions, games, rules, etc.
• Borders
• Narratives of history
• (Social) scientific knowledge controversy over
  its status
• Just another social construct or something
  real?
• The problem social universe as an observable
  universe is not independent of the observer

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Defining East Asia

• Social constructs guide our behaviour in social
  settings
• Constructs may appear natural to people using
  them, but are cultural products internalised in
  social interaction
• In all study of human there is interest of
  knowledge gt politics of knowledge
• Influenced by social position, location
  (metropolitan-provincial), etc.
• It is important to know why we know what we know

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Defining East Asia

• What has been knowledge in East Asian studies now
  and in history?
• What are common constructs on East Asia?
• How have politics and international relations
  influenced our understanding of East Asia?
• What is East Asia? Who belongs to it? What
  belongs to East-Asianess?

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Defining East Asia

• Weak social constructionism and strong social
  constructionism
• There are some objective factual realities
  underlying society vs. all is socially
  constructed
• E.g. gender has biological grounds, but some of
  our perceptions of its meanings are socially
  constructed vs. gender is totally socially
  constructed
• Here the weak line is taken (resembles Anthony
  Giddens structuation theory)

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Defining East Asia

• The course concentrates on selected themes in
  East Asian history and how it has been
  conceptualized in the West and East Asia
  respectively
• Follows a rough timeline from late 19th century
  to contemporary society introducing some central
  constructs during the eras of imperialism, the
  Cold War and the present

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Defining East Asia

• Constructs on Geography Defining East Asia
• Constructs on Society Imperialism and
  Civilization (1840 1945)
• Constructs on Political Systems The Cold War and
  Totalitarian model (c. 1949 1965)
• Constructs on Economy Development Phase and
  Modernization model (1945 present)
• Constructs on Culture Post-Cold War and Asian
  Values Debates (1990 present)
• Studies of Modern and Contemporary China
• Studies of Modern and Contemporary Japan

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Constructs on Geography

• (East) Asias place on the map has always
  reflected its value to the one defining the
  representation
• Eurocentric and Sinocentric views
• Asu (2500 B.C.) in Akkad language means the land
  of rising sun
• Oriens, Latin, means to rise
• Early European views Medieval mappamundi with
  Asia on the top

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Map 1) Early Western representation of the Earth
A medieval mappamundi (Source Wikipedia)
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Constructs on Geography

• Based on the view of Asia as the location of the
  holy city of Jerusalem and the Paradise
• Jerusalem the centre of the universe
• Eden supposedly at the far end of Asia (China or
  India)
• The mappamundi presented Europe and Libya
  (Africa) as inferior to Asia

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Constructs on Geography

• Also India important, East Asia sometimes
  presented as its most remote part
• The representation changed as cartography and
  knowledge of the World increased
• However, the notion of Asia (moved to the right
  hand corner of maps) remained at least equal to
  the West until the 18-19th century
• Contacts through trade, reviews of the great
  empires of the East usually mainly positive
• Parity of power and technological prowess

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Constructs on Geography

• However, at the same time Asia was also
  constructed by the Chinese
• This view remained unmodified longer than the
  Western view
• Sinocentric worldview and Asia
• Perspective that regards China to be central or
  unique compared to other countries

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Sinocentric Worldview

• Based on the view that China was the Civilization
  (??, wenming), other peoples were barbarians
• China (??, Zhongguo) was the centre of the World
  (??, Tianxia), surrounded by tributary states
  (Japan, Korea, Vietnam (Annam), Siam, Cambodia,
  Burma, Java, Sri Lanka, and others)
• Middle kingdom, or Celestial Empire (??
  Shénzhou), ruled by a dynasty with the mandate of
  the heaven over the whole earth

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Sinocentric Worldview

• Sinocentric tribute and trade system provided
  Northeast and Southeast Asia with a political and
  economic framework for international trade
• Countries wishing to trade with China were
  required to submit to a suzerain-vassal
  relationship with the Chinese sovereign

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Sinocentric Worldview

• Peculiar to the Sinocentric view was that in it
  China was not located in any larger geographical
  body as a country like any other
• Although the existence of other countries was of
  course known, China, as the centre, was
  surrounded by inferior states
• The notion of a continent named Asia, which
  China was part of, entered China only through the
  West

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Sinocentric Worldview

• First Chinese renderation of Asia found in the
  map produced by Matteo Ricci in 1602
• The map contained names that were
  transliterations of European names for parts of
  the world the Chinese did not know, or had not
  regarded as needing naming
• This included Asia

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Map 2) The oldest extant Chinese version of
Riccis Yudi Shanhai quantu. (Korhonen 2002, 263)
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Sinocentric Worldview

• Asia became ??? ??? Yàxìyà, lit.
  inferior-border-inferior
• The character ya chosen not only for phonetic
  purposes, but also to denote the inferiority of
  the regions to Middle Kingdom
• Also Yazhou Inferior administrative area
• Also many other continent names included ya
  (Africa, Americas)

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Sinocentric Worldview

• The Ricci map was criticised and then largely
  ignored by the Chinese as it placed China among
  (not as superior to) other countries
• View made it nearly impossible to the Ming and
  Qing dynasties accommodate to Western Westphalian
  perception of international relationships

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Sinocentric Worldview

• China imposed a Sinocentric hierarchy on its
  neighbouring countries Regarding other East Asian
  cultures as off-shots of China
• E.g. the myth of the origins of Japan as a nation
  to settlement from China during the Qin Dynasty
• Not without resistance
• During the Togukawa period equality of
  civilizations asserted by many Japanese thinkers
• After Meiji-restoration rejecting Chuka shiso
  (????), or Zhonghua ideology for being
  actually more civilized
• In the early 20th century using the name Shina
  (??) for China

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Westerners and Sinocentrism

• Westerners and Sinocentrism
• When the first Europeans arrived to China
  (Portuguese in the 16th century), the Chinese
  would not let them use their own names, as this
  would have meant accepting a particular foreign
  worldview
• Europeans were designated as Waiyi, outer
  barbarians, in South especially waiguo emo
  (foreign devil) was used
• Other name was folangji, from Arabic Farangi or
  firingi (Muslim name for themselves), or huihui,
  wanderers (traders)

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Westerners and Sinocentrism

• For the Chinese, the Westerners were all alike
• In Chinese world order, the Europeans were
  described as strange
• Geographer Zhang Xie from 17th century described
  them as two meter tall, have eyes like cats,
  noses like hawks, faces like white ash, tightly
  curled beards and hair nearly red.
• Also Japanese adopted the same attitude
• Europeans called nanban (??), southern barbarians

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Westerners and Sinocentrism

• Red hair, a usual feature in all descriptions
  also in Japan and Korea, may have referred to
  demons in Buddhist imaginary
• The actual nature of Western people and their
  differences remained long a mystery for the
  Chinese
• When replaced by imported / imposed by the
  knowledge of the Westerners the change was
  dramatic and not good for China

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Figure 1) Asia as seen by / from the Great Ming.
Korhonen 2002, 266
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Orientalism

• The Western Response Orientalism
• Edward Said (Orientalism 1978)
• Orientalism in the beginning a name of academic
  disciplines engaged in the study of the Peoples
  of the East
• In larger context it was / is about a distinct
  ways thinking about Eastern nations in everyday
  life, literature, media, politics, etc.

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Orientalism

• Most innocently, the Orient denotes areas located
  to the east of a given community using the term
• But as the target of colonialisation the Orient
  became much more than just this during the modern
  era
• Other term used in the 19th and early 20th
  century was the Far East
• Far East locates East Asia to the fringes of
  Western-ruled world, Eurocentricism

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Orientalism

• Orientalism created to answer the need to
  understand the newly conquered / subjugated
  people in the east
• Happened in the own terms of the Western powers
• Imperialist, racists, social-darwinist, etc.
• Orientalist assumptions
• Western civilisation as the pinnacle of the World
  history
• Rationality of the West vs. irrationality of the
  East
• Modern society vs. the primitive and exotic

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Orientalism

• As the theory of Orientalism sees it,
  constructing its subjects as Orientals made the
  West able to maintain its hegemony over colonial
  subjects
• The Far East and the Orient became by definition
  areas of less developed people, who welcomed the
  Western rule as civilizing (more in the lecture 2)

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Picture 1) An example of an Orientalist
presentation of the Chinese as monkeys for
commercial purposes (Source Suuri
Maailmanhistoria 12, 203)
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The Far East and East Asia

• Geographically the Far East was closer to modern
  East Asia, while the Orient denoted everything
  that was located to the east from the Balkans
• The usage began to change when decolonialization
  began after the WW II
• Also in academic field the Far East became East
  Asia

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Orientalism

• At the present East Asia understood to include
  the PRC, Japan, Koreas, ROC, HK, Macau, Mongolia
• However, the UN defines East Asia in terms of
  Northeast Asia
• Geographic East Asia vs. cultural East Asia

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The Far East and East Asia

• Wider definition and controversies
• The parts of China that are not historically
  dominated by Han Chinese Qinghai, Tibet,
  Xinjiang (considered either as parts of East Asia
  or Central Asia or South Asia in the case of
  Tibet
• The primary base of definition is cultural, with
  geography also at issue
• Mongolia (East or Central Asia?)
• Singapore (SEA?)
• Vietnam?
• Russian Far East?

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The Far East and East Asia

• Mackerras Over 50 different definitions for the
  region in research literature
• The politics of the issue relate to the position
  of China and the US in the possible economic and
  political co-operation / competition in the
  region
• East Asia dominated by the Chinese both in
  cultural and geographic terms

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The Far East and East Asia

• Alternative definitions
• Eastern Asia EA SEA, less dominated by Chinese
  Civilization
• Seen as a valuable identification even for
  Australia and NZ
• Political co-operation in ASEAN N other
  countries
• Asia-Pacific connects Americas to the Eastern
  Asia
• The Pacific Rim as the geographic reference point

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The Far East and East Asia

• Denotes nations on the Pacific Ocean (compare to
  Atlantic)
• The sea as the uniting, not dividing component
• The hot spot of 21st century politics widely
  diverging nations (China, USA and Papua New
  Guinea)
• Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
• Political interest to keep the US out / in

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Conclusion

• From geocentric Christian mappamundi to
  Sinocentricism and modern representations the
  geographic definitions of the region have always
  been about ordering international relations,
  creating hierarchies and allowing / disallowing
  interaction between peoples
• Definitions are necessary in research work and
  every day life, but one needs to remain alert to
  what these definitions do to the world around us

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Exercise I

• Study the attached map that is claimed to have
  been drawn in 1425 based on Admiral Zheng Hes
  explorations
• Based on your readings, what arguments there is
  for or against its authenticity?

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Map 3) The Ming Dynasty World map purportedly
from 1425 (source http//www.marcopolovoyages.co
m/Beijing_1481_Presentation/SectionFour.htm)