Sjeaa Vol. 10 No.2 Summer 2010
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SJEAA Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs volume 10 | number 2 Summer 2010 Cover photography © 2009 by Philipp Stiller, used by permission The Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs (SJEAA) is dedicated to addressing compelling is- sues in East Asia in a manner accessible to a general audience. SJEAA showcases undergraduate and graduate work on East Asia in all academic disciplines from leading universities both in the United States and abroad. Copies of SJEAA are distributed to East Asian studies departments and libraries across the nation. If your department, institution, library, or ogranization is interested in subscribing to SJEAA, please contact us at [email protected]. Subscription is free and editions come out once or twice a year. For more details, please visit our website at http://sjeaa.stanford.edu/. SJEAA Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs Executive Board Editor-in-Chief Stephan Hyeonjun Stiller Publicity Director Xin Shan Editorial Board Section Editor, China Fei Yan Section Editor, Japan Yen Le Assistant Section Editor, Korea HyoJung Julia Jang Assistant Section Editor, Southeast Asia Daniel Clayton Greer Section Editor, Book Reviews Lu (Lucy) Yang Section Editor, Book Reviews Theresa Yacong Wang Chief Copyeditor Aragorn Quinn Assistant Section Editor, Layout Georgianna Kiopelani Gyzen Assistant Editors Karmia Chan Cao (China) Nina Chung (Korea) Andrew Elmore (China) Colleen Jiang (Japan) Jonathan Lau (Southeast Asia) Victor Liu (China) Qinglian Lu (China) Brianna Pang (Southeast Asia / Book Reviews) Aragorn Quinn (Japan) Kan Wang (China) Layout Georgianna Kiopelani Gyzen Theresa Yacong Wang Graphic Design Xin Shan SJEAA Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs Editors-in-Chief Emeriti Josephine Lau Phillip Y. Lipscy Junko Sasaki Dinyar Patel Victorien Wu Andrew MacDonald Stella Shin Shameel Ahmad Hin Sing Leung Betty Manling Luan Geoffrey Miles Lorenz Katie Salisbury Tsung-Yen Chen Josephine Suh Faculty Advisory Board Gordan Chang History Phillip Y. Lipscy Political Science Jean Oi Political Science Daniel Okimoto Political Science Gi-Wook Shin Sociology Andrew Walder Sociology Special thanks to Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University SJEAA Table of Contents Greater China Vivian D. She Woman and Flower 8 David Janoff Bulman China and the Financial Crisis 20 David Laws Voices of Identity in a Selection of Stories by Lu Xun 39 Japan Corey J. Wallace Back to the Land of the Setting Sun? 57 Mindy Haverson Memory and Memorial 69 Michael S. Ignatov Remixing Murakami 81 Korea Won Joon Jang Multicultural Korea 94 Charlotte Marguerite Powers The Changing Role of Chaebol 105 Roy Eun Seok Park Duanwu Festival 117 Southeast Asia Jonathan Ritter Mountbatten, Anglo-American Policy, and the 126 Creation of Modern Southeast Asia after World War II Molly Elgin Asian Values 135 Book Reviews Daniel Clayton Greer Singapore 147 Theresa Yacong Wang Arts of Ancient Viet Nam 149 Lucy (Lu) Yang Mediasphere Shanghai 150 John Wu One World of Welfare 153 Victor Liu The Snow Lion and the Dragon 154 Fei Yan The Rise and Fall of Guangzhou’s Red Flag Faction 156 SJEAA Greater China Woman and Flower Woman and Flower The Aestheticization of Cí (詞) during the Late Northern Sòng This paper investigates a crucial time in the development of song lyric (cí 詞) and ob- Vivian D. She serves the formation of the aesthetics of cí as we know them today. The genre of cí is Harvard University one of the most personal utterances of private emotions in public; its early performances come from the mouths of desirable women who sing of private feelings that are often erotic in content. By the late Northern Sòng, the status of cí had risen gradually due to its popularity among the literati-officials, and the elevation of cí was achieved through the disappearance of women as a desirable object in cí. By studying the removal of desire of the poet vis-à-vis Schopenhauer’s theory of aesthetics, this paper takes an old literary trope – woman as flower – and studies the linguistic dissolution of the physical woman into figuration and metaphors, as the cí matures into a literary art and devel- ops an aesthetics of opacity and obscurity. One abandons normal empirical consciousness by a newly established genre.3 … losing oneself completely in the object, i.e. for- It remains an indisputable fact that Sū Shì getting precisely one’s individual, one’s will, and re- expanded the favorite topics of cí from “boudoir maining only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the sentiments” and “amorous feelings” to almost object; so that it is as if the object alone were there, anything.4 Sū Shì’s contribution to cí can be aptly without anybody who perceives it.1 summarized in the words of the Qīng 清 scholar — Arthur Schopenhauer Liú Xīzài 劉熙載: “as for [Sū’s cí …] there is no sentiment that he cannot bring into [his cí], no Introduction event that he cannot speak about”5.While this hen one thinks of the early stages of de- holds true for the best and best-known of Sū Wvelopment of cí 詞 from tunes sung at Shì’s song lyrics6, this paper takes him instead as a the pleasure quarters of the Táng 唐 to a fully point of departure rather than culmination, and recognized literary genre through which poets examines Sū Shì as the beginning of the poiesis could lament the fall of the Sòng 宋, central cí of the aesthetics of cí – as distinct from classi- figures such as Wēn Tíngyún 溫庭筠 (812-866), cal poetry and prose – inherited by and matured Liú Yǒng 柳永 (987-1053), and especially Sū in the lyrics of Zhōu Bāngyàn 周邦彥 (1056- Shì 蘇軾 (1037-1101) come to mind, each of 1121), and in the hands of Wú Wényīng 吳文 them credited with expansions of theme, form, 英 (1200-1260), transformed into linguistic ex- diction, and the subsequent elevation in the sta- ercises that challenge the boundaries of language tus of cí. The scholarship of cí in the past few and imagination. By taking up the issue of the decades pushed back its origins from Late Táng object of desire in cí, I will trace diachronically, to as early as Xuánzōng’s 玄宗 reign (712-756), through the aforementioned lyricists, the disap- and is wont to view Sū Shì as the poet par excel- pearance and displacement of women and flow- lence who raised the song lyric up to the level of ers as metonymical signifiers of desire. classical poetry as a formally recognized literary Before delving into the world of cí, I find genre.2 Consequently, in standard literary histo- a helpful frame of reference in Schopenhauer’s ry, cí is often seen as having reached its maturity theory of the aesthetic experience – stated briefly during the late Northern Sòng, when the appear- – as the subject’s temporary abandonment of will ance of cí literary criticism indicated approval of and interest toward the object.7 In other words, Summer 2010 8 Vivian D. She again in grossly simplified terms, we can speak of ory of the aesthetic experience is merely one of beauty in art only when we can view a desirable the many ways of interpreting the transforma- object not with desire, but with disinterested in- tion of the poet’s desire in cí. My references to tellect. This concept of pure mental engagement Schopenhauer, therefore, demonstrate not the with an object can be more easily understood in applicability of 19th-century German philosophy the context of art collection rather than cí writ- to cí, but rather the latter’s capacity for univer- ing in the late Northern Sòng, reflected in Sū sal aesthetic appreciation. The lyrics of Sū Shì, Shì’s attitude of “possession without possessive- Zhōu Bāngyàn, and Wú Wényīng will be treated ness” toward paintings.8 However, the develop- diachronically, with careful attention paid to the ment of cí, starting from the 35-year-old Sū Shì9, expression of desire of the poet through women also exhibits gradual transference and displace- and flowers. ment of desire of the poet not unlike the aes- thetic experiences of Schopenhauer, while the Sū Shì 1: resisting seeking a dream poetic language of cí evolved so that the linguis- The early cí can be seen as one of the most tic representation of an object and the object it- intimate and personal utterances in public. Of- self became confused. Subsequently, the relations ten written ad lib at banquets in mixed com- between the world represented poetically in the pany, cí resembles a speech act, performed from cí and the real world also became confused, so the mouths of women other than wives, who that a century and a half later, a cí poet like Wú temporarily personify both the object and the Wényīng was able to create a poetic world that host of desire. Their instantiations of the cí are retains only the immediate impressions of expe- much like the performances of a piece of music, riences, and leaves out the events in the empiri- with an added element of suggestion, request, or cal world that triggered these experiences. This promise. To say that desire is a main theme of cí is close to what Schopenhauer calls the “suspen- is perhaps an understatement. It hardly comes as sion of the laws of connection between represen- a surprise, therefore, that in Sū Shì’s conscious tations [… in a] state of being a ‘pure’, will-less break with the cí tradition we can detect a ban- subject [who] is not conscious of oneself at all, ishment of erotic desire along with the very ob- only of present experience as it flows in”10. ject of desire – the figure of the woman.