Another Confucian Headscratcher: Which Comes First?

First, Waley's translation of Analect 3:8:

Tzu-hsia asked, saying, What is the meaning of
Oh the sweet smile dimpling,
The lovely eyes so black and white!
Plain silk that you would take for coloured stuff.

The Master said, The painting comes after the plain groundwork. Tzu-hsia said, Then ritual comes afterwards? The Master said, Shang [Tzu-hsia's familiar name] it is who bears me up. At last I have someone with whom I can discuss the Songs!

The tricky line here is Confucius' comment "The painting comes after the plain groundwork." In Chinese that's 子曰繪事後素. Waley reads 後 as a verb, "to come after" but this could be (and has been) read as a preposition, giving us "After painting, the plain groundwork [white]." That would leave Tzu-hsia's last question as being something like "And after ritual?"

The question of whether ritual is part of the natural order of things or part of culture is again played out here in grammatical interpretation. Too bad the Chinese didn't develop a grammar for their own language--the commentaries rather re-phrase the sentences so it is clear which interpretation they use. (They never say explicitly "That's a verb here, not an preposition" or anything like that.)

Lost in Translation in Translation

The Analects of Confucius Book 3 number 5:
子曰：夷狄之有君，不如諸夏之亡也

D.C. Lau's translation:
"The Master said, 'Barbarian tribes with their rulers are inferior to Chinese states without them.'"

Arthur Waley's translation of the same passage:
"The Master said, 'The barbarians of the East and North have retained their princes. They are not in such a state of decay as we in China.'"

So which is it--is China better or are the barbarians? We don't need to feel bad. Looking at commentaries from the Han Dynasty onward, we can see Chinese people of different eras were just as lost as we are, and also needed a "translation." They had to explain the text in more understandable language.

Many commentators read 亡 (Waley's "decay") as being 無 (Lau's "without"), and then there's the matter of what you want to do with the 不如, "not like." Both Lau- and Waley-style interpretations can be found.

Many commentators also read the Analects not as isolated fragments of conversations, but almost as if there were a narrative running through each book. Book 3 is about sumptuary laws and conducting appropriate rituals (Confucius keeps harping about upper-class people putting on airs and doing stuff only the Emperor should be allowed to do), so people have raised the question why there'd be an empty potshot at the barbarians in the middle of all that. The context, they say, points to China's decline after all. Others say it means even if ritual was being misused, China was still the land of ritual and therefore still superior despite its lack of rulers.

I never realized the ways the Analects could be read (or, indeed, was read over history), and as a consequence I thought it was a pretty dull text. It's not--it's fascinating. It is too bad that the English translations leave out the good stuff that has arisen around the text over the years. It's clear the translators used it. What does the "original" text mean? Nobody's known that since Confucius' time, and it's a good thing, too. The openness of the text has created space for all sorts of readings.

Ian Buruma on Japanese Nationalism

I attended a lecture by writer/journalist Ian Buruma last week but haven't had time to write about it until now. His talk was ostensibly on nationalism in Asia, but the focus was really on Japan. There was a little bit about China, and a brief mention or two of Korea.

Buruma reiterated what is pretty much the standard story about Japan--Japanese identity was lost after World War II and during the American occupation. The Japanese left supported the pacifist constitution, he said, because they believed Japan was like an alcoholic who had to swear off drinking forever. The right, on the other hand, argued that Japan had done nothing to be ashamed of, and those who said otherwise were victims of occupation propaganda. History, the right said, was being (re-)written by the victors.

Buruma says that there's been a recent upswing of nationalism in Japan, which he evidences by Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Jinja, textbook reforms, and that other usual suspect, right-wing manga artist Kobayashi Yoshinori.

Like I said, pretty standard stuff so far, but what I thought was interesting was that he claimed nationalism has become mainstream due to a collapse of the left, which up until the 1980s kept the far right in check.

The part of the talk concerning China was mainly about the recent anti-Japan demonstrations there. While he admitted that the Chinese do have a legitimate grievance and the Japanese have not fully faced up to their actions during the war, neither is in the extreme the other makes it out to be. The Chinese know little about the various Japanese apologies for wartime conduct, and that the textbooks and the shrine visits are separate issues not worth the protests. The protests, he said, were "instrumentalized" by the government to deflect attention from homegrown problems.

I didn't have time to stick around and ask questions (hinshi bunkai awaited), but what I wanted to ask was, Why is it that both the Japanese left and the Japanese right agree that the soul of Japan is defined by its behavior during WWII? Important? Yes. 100%? No. Even if we take the war as the end of a process which began with the Meiji Restoration, isn't that still but a drop in the historical bucket? I know Japanese nationalists have created some kind of revisionist "Yamato spirit" and bushi propaganda during the war--hasn't anyone on the left or otherwise tried to rehabilitate those cultural images?

The other problem I had (have) is this view of China. It may be accurate to some extent, but I think it is perfectly plausible that a great number of Chinese like their system the way it is and like to see "troublemakers" (dissidents) get into trouble, etc. I mean, look at neocons in the States who would tell you anyone who criticizes the war or the president is unpatriotic. People like that would also certainly have strong anti-Japanese feelings but I wouldn't say they are only due to the fact that they've been manipulated. We can't assume that deep inside all Chinese wish they lived in the USA or the UK and would cherish "freedom" and "democracy." I don't think it's ncessarily the case that they were all stirred up to begin with and were "venting" by demonstrating against Japan.

As I have said, I am more of a Sinologist than Japanophile. I would like to hear opinions about the limited scope of Japanese debate on its own identity from people more informed than myself.

Japanese Listening Comprehension Practice

I just found out recently that Yomiuri Shimbun has a podcast. I have been listening to it to work on my listening comprehension for Japanese.

You can find the podcast on iTunes--just search for Yomiuri.

Shi shi shi shi-- Chinese Characters and Tones

This Thanksgiving, be thankful for tones and Chinese characters, because they make stuff like this cool poem possible:

《施氏食獅史》

石室詩士施氏, 嗜獅, 誓食十獅。

氏時時適市視獅。

十時, 適十獅適市。

是時, 適施氏適市。

氏視是十獅, 恃矢勢, 使是十獅逝世。

氏拾是十獅屍, 適石室。

石室濕, 氏使侍拭石室。

石室拭, 氏始試食是十獅。

食時, 始識是十獅, 實十石獅屍。

試釋是事。

Meaning in English:

In a stone den was a poet Shi Shi, who loved to eat lions, and decided to eat ten.

He often went to the market to look for lions.

One day at ten o'clock, ten lions just arrived at the market.

At that time, Shi Shi just arrived at the market too.

Seeing those ten lions, he killed them with arrows.

He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.

The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.

After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.

When he ate, he realized that those ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.

Try to explain this.

What's so cool about that? Check out the Pinyin for the pronunciation:

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.

Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.

Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.

Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.

Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.

Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.

Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.

Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.

Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.

Shì shì shì shì.

Of course I had heard the famous "44 Stone Lions" (or "dead lions" or whatever) tongue twister, but never this clever little poem until I chanced across it in Wikipedia here.

Another fun sentence you may know is this Chinese palindrome:
上海自來水來自海上
"The tap water in Shanghai comes from the ocean."

I guess this Japanese one is very famous, but it's new to me:
長き世の遠の眠りの皆目覚め波乗り舟の音の良きかな

It looks like fudging the tenten is allowed, or at least in classical Japanese (where they wouldn't have been written anyway, I believe).

I also like this one:
なつまでまつな "Don't wait until summer."

Monkey

According to online gossip rag Popbitch, a new version of Journey to the West (Saiyuuki, or Xiyou Ji) is being filmed in Australia starring SMAP member Katori Shingo as the Monkey King. It will supposedly air on Fuji TV in Japan starting in February.

I've never actually seen the version that's best known (to gaijin, at least)--Monkey Magic, though I have seen the low-rent Chinese version that is apparently played a lot in China during holidays, as well as a few cartoon versions. There's also a Hong Kong film starring Stephen Chow of Kung Fu Hustle fame, in which Monkey falls in love.

The latest cinematic version of the story to come out of the Chinese-speaking world is the Taiwanese animated film Fire Ball. It's the story of Monkey fighting Red Boy (translated as "Fire Ball" in promo materials for the film). Sinorama, the Taiwanese magazine I do some work for, has a story on the film here.

As a music fan I can hardly stomach SMAP, but I am looking forward to seeing the new Japanese version.

"Separated?"

While I'm complaining about the typical wire-story reporting on China and Taiwan, let me mention one more thing. There's often a tag line that says something like "Taiwan separated from the mainland amidst civil war in 1949." First, Taiwan is an island, and civil war doesn't affect tectonics! They mean, of course, that the governments separated--but that leaves out the fact that Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945. So it was a separation after domestic bliss of... four years?

When they say "mainland," they mean the People's Republic of China, which was founded in 1949. Taiwan's government is the Republic of China, which was founded in 1912. Now tell me again, who broke away from whom?

(By the way, another reason I love Taiwan is it's the only place I know that celebrates a National Day commemorating a revolution that happened in another country. In 1912, Taiwan was part of Japan.)

"Renegade Province?"

The media have been reporting that Bush mentioned Taiwan as a model of democracy for China to follow, and in just about every story there is something like "China considers Taiwan to be a renegade province."

Doesn't it beg the question, what does Taiwan consider itself to be? It is home to 28 milion people or so--how about some balanced reporting? Lazy journalism.