★ Professor Tsinghua's word-of-mouth work, the new history of East Asia after the fifteenth year of Wanli, a book to understand East Asia for 500 years
-- Taking a global historical perspective on East Asia and reconstructing the tortuous process of "why China became "China" and why China, Japan, and South Korea became "East Asia".
——Top 10 works of Wenjing Historical Writing Award, highly recommended by well-known scholars at home and abroad, such as Takeshi Hamashita, Li Bozhong, Lu Yang, Luo Xin, Sun Ge, Yang Nianqun, etc.!
★ Break down prejudices, subvert common sense, and rediscover the East Asian world we thought we were familiar with
- The Qing Dynasty did not "stagnate", and Japan did not "close the country"? "Asia" turned out to be an alternative tradition invented collectively by modern people? The concept of "China" was not finalized until the Qing Dynasty......
- East Asia and Western Europe, who represents civilization and victory, and who represents ignorance and defeat? Should we accuse the aggressor of injustice, or should the aggressor not be "advanced" enough? What we call "consensus" is really just prejudice, and behind it is the specter of Eurocentrism.
★ Respond to the mood of the times with history and trace the source of East Asia's modern dilemma
——"East Asia" on the cusp: educational involution, family trauma, gender dilemma, and spiritual internal friction...... The topic of public opinion surrounding "East Asia" is endless: Why are we "East Asia"? What does "East Asia" mean to us?
"To explore the 'what' of East Asia is to explore a representative collective memory of East Asian people." - Song Nianshen
★ The cover is refreshed, the preface and chapters are added, the text is completely revised, and 28 color illustrations are included
preface
The possibility of talking about "East Asia".
Let's explain the topic a little first. "The possibility of 'East Asia'" is a pun on the one hand, which asks: what kind of possibilities exist in "East Asia" as an object of thought? On the other hand, it also explores: What are the possible ways to talk about the object of thought?
Why should we think about "speaking"? Because in the process of teaching and research, I feel that there is an urgent need for a new narrative to reorganize the history of East Asia in the last few hundred years. This is also because the hegemonic way of discussion and discourse we are familiar with in the past is increasingly unable to encapsulate today's world, which is facing multiple crises and challenges, and historians must respond to the historical narrative.
Another key word in the title is "possible". "Potential" or "possibility" refers to a state of openness, indicating that it is not unique, certain, or inevitable. But at the same time, "possibility" is not purely imaginary. It points to new ways of knowing, and is always in the process of enrichment, transformation, and communication, so it is constantly changing, and it contains unknown potential.
Finally, East Asia in quotation marks. What exactly is "East Asia"? It is not a self-contained entity. Geographically, it is inexplicable to consider Asia as a separate continental plate. Asia and Europe belong to a continental plate, why should they be separated? It is very debatable where the borders of Asia are. Nor is Asia a clear entity in terms of country, ethnicity and population. Who counts Asia and who doesn't? Each has its own version of the story. But this ambiguity is the starting point for thinking. Precisely because Asia is not a free, well-defined entity, it is not entirely exclusive. Whether it is Asia or East Asia, it can only be said from the perspective of openness and mobility. In other words, "East Asia" cannot be understood as a single definite concept, but only by constantly denying a certain universality and certainty that we are familiar with.
In the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, the word "Asia" first appeared on a Chinese world map.
If that's a bit abstract, let me give you an example. On May 4, 2021 (the evening of May 3, U.S. time) during the epidemic, Professor Wang Dewei of Harvard University hosted an open online forum with the theme of "Thunder at Sea: May Fourth Discussion on Baoyu (1971-2021)" to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the "Baoyu" movement that emerged in 1971. The movement, which was initiated mainly by students studying in the United States in Taiwan, China, was first suppressed by the Kuomintang authorities for a long time and then ignored by the DPP authorities because of its outreach for opposing the US-manipulated East Asian security system. Speakers included several veteran fishermen (such as Liu Daren, Zhang Shiguo, etc.) who participated in the movement and are now in their old age, as well as some young and middle-aged scholars. Listening to the dialogue between these witnesses and future researchers, it is not difficult for us to find the thick and rich historical connotation of the "Baoyu" movement. The speakers did not talk about "protecting fishing" in terms of "protecting fishing", but placed it in a broader context of time and space. Specifically, it is understood in the context of the overall changes in China and East Asia from the May Fourth Movement to the present day. What impressed me most was what Mr. Liu Daren said: "Without the May Fourth Movement, there would be no Baoyu Movement." What he meant was that for that generation of Taiwanese youth, the "Baoyu" movement was a natural extension of the May Fourth Movement. The kind of sorrow for the family and country, the pursuit of democracy and science, and the rebellion against power inspired by the May Fourth Movement are the direct spiritual resources of the "Baoyu" movement.
This is a very revealing positioning. Because it reveals the extraordinary nodal significance of Diaoyu Dao, an uninhabited small island, in a grand time and space. In contrast to the monotonous analyses of resources, sea power, and hegemony in East Asia, the "Baoyu" campaign has spread over a wide range of areas: Taiwan, China, the Ryukyus (or Okinawa), Japan, and, most importantly, the United States. It also connects the interlaced times of the interlaced double line: tributary or commercial exchanges in the maritime world of early modern East Asia; the collapse of traditional political systems in East Asia and the plundering occupation of colonialism; the hegemony of the Cold War era and the resistance of the people of Taiwan, the Ryukyus and Japan to this hegemony and internal political oppression; unfinished decolonization; Great power politics in the post-Cold War era, and so on. In short, the Diaoyu Islands or the "Bao Diaoyu" movement is by no means an easy issue that can be articulated in a simple international relations framework. Because of this, rethinking "Baoyu" after 50 years has opened up the possibility of understanding the problem of multiple intersections.
In fact, isn't the Diaoyu Islands a miniature version of "East Asia", reflecting the modern predicament facing the East Asian world?
The problematic awareness of this little book, Discovering East Asia, is consistent with the post-war discussions on Asian issues that emerged among intellectuals in Japan, Korea, and China. One of the core of this is to find and establish the legitimate subjectivity of the concept of "Asia". Its theoretical framework, as many readers have clearly pointed out, is influenced by postmodern, postcolonial theory. But I also constantly reflect on the problems of this theory in my writing. Different from the intellectual history works that have inspired me greatly, I try to use a narrative that is partial to events, sort out the multi-line context of modern East Asian history, intervene in the thinking about East Asian modernity, and try to break away from the single-line logic stipulated by the European narrative of modernity, that is, Asia has moved from "closed", "conservative" and "closed to the country" to "civilization", "civilization" and "integration into the world".
Of course, breaking this Eurocentric logic is not to replace it with Sinocentrism, but to be decentralized. It cannot be said that linear logic is useless, and its disadvantage lies in the fact that it is only one of possibilities, and should not be the only one of monopolies. Therefore, this book attempts another possible narrative from the perspective of the endogeneity, pluralism and interaction of East Asian modernity.
The content of this book is mainly from teaching. In my teaching, I deliberately lead multiple critiques of universal knowledge, including the following layers: first, a linear view of history with teleology; the second is to seek a cognitive ethics of universality and particularity (i.e., to essentialize "Asia" or "East Asia" and distinguish it from other civilizations by establishing a certain commonality within it); Third, in the thinking of international relations, the tendency to project the concept of the nation-state into history has led to a static and one-dimensional understanding of the past.
The book begins with a reference to Yukichi Fukuzawa's "Theory of Detachment", which appears again and again after that, and can be regarded as a motif throughout the book. This article represents the first time that intellectuals in East Asian societies have taken the initiative to construct the concept of "Asia". But the way it is constructed is negative rather than definite. The eagerness for self-denial constitutes a metaphor: in the face of the sudden onslaught of colonial modernity, East Asian intellectuals invariably seek a new identity by denying themselves. That is, to say "I will be who I am" by saying "I am no longer me". Since the late 19th century, negative discourse has been a common way to interpret East Asian history, especially recent history.
The beginning of "On Leaving Asia" says that "the world's transportation is becoming more and more convenient, and the wind of Western civilization is spreading eastward, and everywhere it goes, it is all popular in every grass and tree." Then he used a metaphor to say that civilization is like a measles epidemic, and measles cannot be defended, so what to do? Fukuzawa said that we have nothing to do about a harmful epidemic, let alone a civilization that has equal and often more favorable interests? The sensible thing to do is to help it spread, so that the people can "bathe in the atmosphere" – in the words of the epidemic, "herd immunity".
"The Coming of the Black Ship" is the beginning of modern Japanese historiography in textbooks.
However, when reading "The Theory of Detachment from Asia", we cannot ignore the fact that Fukuzawa himself has a relativistic view of Western civilization. He emphasized that the goal of being in the company of Western Europe was to preserve and develop Japan's "national system," and this was made very clear in his "Outline of the Theory of Civilization." Western civilization is "a mixed bag of pros and cons, often favorable", and it is necessary to adopt a pragmatic attitude towards it, just as it treats measles as an epidemic. As the saying goes, "leaving Asia and joining Europe" is often heard, but in fact, Yukichi Fukuzawa himself has never said "joining Europe". He said that he wanted to be with Europe, but he was resolutely opposed to becoming a part of Europe. There is a twofold negation in this. The first is the negation of "Asia", which we have seen many times in recent history, such as China's May Fourth New Culture Movement and the rise of nationalist historiography in South Korea. The second negation criticizes and reflects on the coloniality of Western European civilization and emphasizes the main role of East Asia. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, representative intellectuals put forward a dualistic analysis of East and West, such as "Chinese style and Western use", "harmony and soul and foreign talent" or "East and Western instruments", which gradually led to the "Asianism" of Japan in the 20th century and the slogan of "modern Chaoke". Although this attitude is a critique of Western civilization, it is itself full of contradictions—the tool of its criticism comes precisely from the object of criticism, in order to become a colonial empire against a colonial empire.
The post-World War II decolonization movement emerged as a positive way of constructing "Asia". This is from the perspective of the Third World Revolution, placing "Asia" within the framework of "Asia, Africa and Latin America" as an integral part of the global anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movement. In the 90s of the 20th century, stimulated by the neoliberal concept of development, a new positive discourse emerged, the so-called "East Asian miracle" or "Asian values", which can also be seen as a certain effort to establish Asian subjectivity.
Taken separately, these sets of ideas are unsuccessful, but they are superimposed on each other, reflecting a complex and rich web of thinking, suggesting multiple historical practices in East Asian societies. In this process, the meaning of "Asia" has changed profoundly: from the symbol of ignorance, backwardness, closure and barbarism, to the mobilization of the yellow race against the white race in "Asianism", to the anti-colonial discourse of the Third World, and finally to the alternative model of developmentalism. All these ways of speaking, both negative and affirmative, point to critical thinking about "modernity".
In a way, the problems we face today are quite consistent with those faced by Fukuzawa Yukichi or the Asianists. The "de-Asianism" or "Asiatic" response was of course wrong in terms of methodology, because they tried to resist the European colonial empire with the Japanese colonial empire, and finally fell into a fascist struggle for hegemony, which cost a lot. But the problem they are aware of is not necessarily a false problem. The Third World discourse itself is very progressive, it tries to break away from the colonial framework, but in practice it is clinging to the nationalist ideas brought by the colonizers, and it is structurally difficult to break free.
So is there a way out? Neither going back to the "tradition" of invention nor clinging to today's hegemony will work. The search for alternative resources is not simply to replicate the discourse of colonial modernity and establish a new hierarchical and exclusive logic, but to re-recognize those experiences that have been obscured by vulgar theories of modernization, including: the existing global and open nature of East Asia as a historical space; the experience of modern colonization in East Asia; its role as part of the Third World; and the revolutionary, anti-imperialist and anti-colonial practices it has experienced...... Every resource should be valued in order to complete the pluralistic and multifaceted discourse.
Another important conceptual question arises here: how do you define "modern"? Needless to say, the term "modernity" (and the related terms "modernization" and "modernity") is a concept dominated and monopolized by European colonial logic, pointing to various indicators that suggest "human progress", such as industrialization, urbanization, nation-state, rationalization, scientificization, and the popularization of liberal and democratic values. But it is a dehistoricized expression of ideology.
I regard "modernity" as a historical situation with a specific time and space background, a situation in which most human societies have actively or passively participated in it since the Great Voyage communicated the world. The basic dynamics of "modernity" are the trinity of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. Neither of them can be divorced from the other two, otherwise it would be detached from its basic historical context. The endless accumulation of capital is the goal, colonial expansion is the form, and imperialism is the basic power structure in which the two realize each other.
"Modern" must be global, not just in the sense of European capitalism. In other words, since the 16th century, everyone has been embroiled in modern times. For the people of West Africa, the slave trade was their way of participating in "modernity", that is, their sacrifice to "modernity". For local societies in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, colonization is their way of intervening in "modernity". For Native Americans, losing their land and being slaughtered was their "modern" fate. "Modernity" is not necessarily pretty, and the "modernity" sketched by European thinkers after the 18th and 19th centuries is based on an ideal political and economic model, in which every achievement has been achieved at the expense of the misfortune of others. We cannot talk about the Industrial Revolution in isolation from the British occupation of South Asia and the suppression of local Indian industries, because without the cheap raw materials and huge markets obtained by the exploitation of India, the steam engine and the spinning machine would not have been used in large-scale cotton production, and Britain's international dominance, urbanization and working class would not have taken shape in the way we know it. In the same way, we cannot talk about the rise of the United States in the 19th century in isolation from slavery in North America. When we read Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others on liberty and democracy, we should also understand that they spent just as much (or more) as much (or more) energy to justify the imperial colonial cause. In other words, "modernity" is a global and comprehensive system, and it cannot only pick on local appearances without examining the internal texture and network.
So what is the modern experience of East Asia? That's exactly what this book wants to explore. Much has been written on this topic. I don't want to replace Western-centrism with "discovering history from China" or against historical inevitability with theories such as "the Great Divergence". Although these two lines of thought are highly speculative, the basic way of asking questions is why China has not developed a modernity like that of Europe. Whether the answer is "China actually has" or "China doesn't have it for such a fortuitous reason", it is still reinforcing the European modern frame of reference.
We should return to the level of historical reality to analyze the historical experiences that have shaped the role of China or East Asia today, and how our identity and way of thinking have unfolded in history. These include: subtle perceptions of identity and history in East Asia; From the 16th century to the 19th century, East Asia went from being at the center of the global trading system to gradually becoming marginalized; the rise and fall of cultural interactions between East Asia and Western Europe; The logic of double negation in East Asia since the 20th century...... To answer these questions, it seems that we cannot start with 1840, but must go back to the 16th century or even earlier. The starting point of my chosen narrative is the Imjin War and the rise of Manchuria. These two historical events are not isolated, but the larger temporal and spatial context is that with the great geographical discoveries of Europe, global exchanges accelerated, sea and trade routes were opened, and a busy and prosperous early trans-regional market system was constructed. The formation of the global capitalist network coincided with the Imjin War and the rise of Manchuria, and they were closely linked. This is the most important context and stimulus for modern East Asian identity.
All East Asian societies have been impacted by this series of changes, and they have all responded to each other, forming a common historical experience in the process of active exploration. Therefore, we must not adopt the method of "adding up the histories of different countries" – that is, telling the histories of China, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula separately – but must adopt the methods of regional and even global histories, and see East Asia as an interactive whole and an integral part of globalization.
When we examine the dimensions of the East Asian world's intervention in the modern age: politics, economics, culture, internal and external exchanges, etc., we will continue to return to the 16th century, when global networks were formed. At that time, Japan moved from chaos to unification; Korea experienced the devastation and reconstruction of the Great War; The rise of Manchuria and the rise of the Ming and Qing dynasties led to great changes in regional power relations. The Qing Dynasty inherited and expanded the regional center of the Ming Dynasty, not only following the Ming Dynasty's suzerain-vassal system with neighboring countries, but also strengthening the political and religious ties with the Inner Asian steppes through the newly established system of the Imperial Domain, laying the basic map of today's China.
However, the cultural marginality of the Manchurian regime brought about the loss of the self-identity of the traditional Confucian scholars. Confucianism urgently needed to reshape Taoism, which produced a deep sense of introspection and criticism. New ideas emerged within Confucianism and became an important resource for East Asians in the face of colonial onslaught two hundred years later. At the same time, Western studies came to East Asia with the help of the missionary activities of the Catholic Jesuits, and the blending and collision of Catholicism and local cultures initially laid the mode of communication between Europe and East Asia. The global flow of goods, affecting all regions, has helped to revolutionize ideas. The import of American silver into China accelerated the formation of the global trading system. Chinese tea spread to the Americas through Europe, which indirectly stimulated the independence movement of the thirteen colonies in North America. The influence is not one-way but interactive, and East Asia and Western Europe have borrowed and collided, and they have also become each other's reference for shaping themselves. Back in those days, when the global capitalist system was taking shape, East Asia was an active player and never alienated.
It is undeniable that East Asia was already on the periphery of this system in the mid-to-late 19th century – so the discourse of modernization often begins with the 19th century, especially 1840. This starting point has dominated our judgment of all history, including history before and after 1840, leading to a deep entanglement between the perception of East Asia and the modern logic of colonization in the 19th and 20th centuries. We have come all the way from the Opium War, the First Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, the Liberation War in the context of the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the post-Cold War era, but we have not been able to completely get rid of the discourse of colonial modernization, which has become a part of the discourse on East Asia.
Portrait of Lin Zexu in Jilin Square, New York (taken by the author in 2009)
If one were to find out the differences between the modern experience of East Asia and Africa and the Americas, it might be this: the East Asian experience is largely endogenous, but it is by no means isolated. The modern experience of East Asia is quite divided, with different encounters such as colonization, colonization and semi-colonization, revolution and reaction, oppression and resistance, dependence and de-dependence, and successes and failures. It is an important part of the overall modern context of humanity. The modernity of East Asia is the product of a combination of endogenous and external factors, and it is always constantly shaping, negating, and reshaping...... This is an unfinished process.
So, how can we speak of East Asia as a process? In Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Asia often appeared as an "anti-topic" and a mirror image. However, the search for the possibility of East Asia must not be based on the West, because Europe or the West has been completely internalized in the modern experience of East Asia, so there is no need to blindly reject it, nor do it need to be the only benchmark.
The next question is, since the "modernity" of East Asia has long been deeply embedded in the overall human experience, is it necessary to adopt East Asia as a unit? And why is it necessary to adopt the "modern" perspective? This is because there is a natural tension between the two. The European-dominated (colonial) modern narrative highlights a clear sense of boundaries at all levels, and "Europe" as an entity is relatively clear. However, when we talk about the history of East Asia, we must reject the overly clear division of time and space, the one-level and one-dimensional understanding, and the essential narrative of politics and people.
Colonial modern narratives create multiple cognitive constraints. For example, the definition of human beings: human beings have an absolute essence, and race determines the degree of "civilization" of a group of people - this discourse is "politically incorrect" in today's European and American intellectual circles, but in political practice, deep-rooted racism still plays a huge role, either explicitly or implicitly. One only has to look at the public opinion war between Europe and the United States against China since Trump took office, in which the media and politicians have repudiated "Asian" discrimination on the one hand, and have unscrupulously anti-China on the other hand, to understand this huge contradiction and irony.
In terms of understanding time and space, various linear "progressive historical concepts" define the starting point and common end point of history, and regard space as fixed and conquerable. Human space-time is conceived as homogeneous, because only in this way can space-time be measured, compared, studied, and discussed, and become the basis for the establishment of hierarchical order. East Asia is understood in such a homogeneous framework.
East Asia is certainly not a homogeneous entity, neither in time nor in space. A further question can be asked: if East Asia is not such a homogeneous entity, is the whole set of time and space created by colonial modernity valid? Therefore, taking East Asia as a starting point, we can deeply reflect on some of the basic assumptions and methodologies of the logic of European modernity, which are the basis on which the vast majority of social sciences are founded today.
With today's "scientific" narrative, we cannot imagine an object that has no boundaries, or that has blurred boundaries. We are too accustomed to defining an entity in terms of binary judgments such as "yes" or "no". In this way, however, the diversity of human experience is limited. We are no longer able to describe and understand the experiences of life in a different way, in a way that transcends boundaries and binories. So, China is either an empire or a nation-state; The people living in this country are either Han Chinese or ethnic minorities; He is either religious or religious; If he is religious, he must belong to only one religion or sect. We can no longer imagine a hybrid and cross-system world.
However, in terms of historical practice, the Confucian scholars of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam could despise the Qing Dynasty established by the Manchus, and at the same time strengthen the identity of China or the world; An ethnic group can have both a strong Chinese identity and a strong Korean identity. Many people may not know that "Manchu" is not an ethnic concept at its root. They cannot imagine an Islamic Confucian scholar, a non-Muslim Uyghur, or an act of borrowing Buddhist symbols to imply Christianity, nor can they describe the territorial nature of a historical space in terms other than sovereignty or international law. All of these phenomena, which arise naturally in historical contexts, have become "anomalies" that require special explanations in modern academic discourse and frameworks.
After the advent of European modernity, this pluralistic, multi-layered, and ambiguous state was forcibly transformed into a monistic, one-dimensional, and standardized. For example, the relationship between Korea and the Central Plains, as the most typical East Asian suzerain-vassal relationship, cannot be described in terms of sovereignty: Korea is neither "independent" nor vassal; It was completely autonomous in its internal affairs, but it also belonged to the status of a vassal state in the ceremonial system. European international law cannot explain it, but can only make it descriptive and clear by transforming this relationship. For example, Shinto and Buddhism were interconnected in Japan during the Edo period and before. The so-called "gods and Buddhas" and "local traces" refer to the fact that Buddhism and Shinto deities also have a corresponding position in each other's systems. However, during the Meiji Restoration, in order to create a "native" state religion according to European concepts, Buddhism had to be abolished, and Shinto was religiousized and nationalized, that is, a system of "Shintoism" was established with the emperor as the center, and religion and the state government were closely integrated.
However, this forcible transformation did not cut off the continuity of history, but collided with another way. Japan did not completely follow the intellectual veins of European countries and replicate Enlightenment or liberalism, and Japan during the Meiji Restoration and after seemed to be moving in the direction of Westernization, but its internal rationale drew a great deal of resources from the ideas and scholarship of the Edo period, such as the traditions of Mito studies, ancient studies, and kokugaku, as well as the townpeople ethics of Osaka Waitokudo, which made these once relatively marginal ideas suddenly shine. This is just like the Chinese reformers after the 19th century, who drew a lot of ideological resources from Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu, Wang Fuzhi, Chen Hongmou and others.
The pluralistic traditions of modern East Asian society have been superimposed, and some new academic trends have also gained new recognition. Typical example is the "New Qing History": whether or not they agree with its judgment that the Qing was an "Inner Asian dynasty", scholars of the New Qing Dynasty at least remind us that there were multiple roles in the Chinese emperor that merged with each other. Furthermore, this kind of multiple roles is by no means unique to the Qing Dynasty. From the Yuan dynasty (and even earlier), Tibetan Buddhism gave the ruler of the Central Plains the role of the wheel king. Going back further, during the Tang Dynasty and even the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Buddhism was prevalent and various ethnic groups merged and collided, and various manifestations of what are today called "Inner Asianness" appeared. On the other hand, this practice of giving rulers the status of specific godheads in different belief systems is not unique to China. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Edo shogunate in Japan, was given the Shinto title "Toshoku Daisenken", which is also the local authority of the Buddhist Chinese medicine master Nyorai. This did not prevent him from being an important sponsor of Confucianism in Edo, and established a system of official education with Fujiwara and Hayashi Luoshan as the pioneers. Therefore, the characteristics of the so-called "Bodhisattva Emperor" and "Almighty Co-master" of the Qing Dynasty are not so unique in time and space.
Therefore, the cultural pluralism of East Asia is very different from the "cultural pluralism" of modern countries in Europe and the United States. The practice of cultural pluralism in North America or Oceania is more like a mosaic collage, where everyone is better left in silos and with clear boundaries. Pluralism in East Asia, on the other hand, tends to blur boundaries.
In this sense, the experience of East Asia also reveals certain limitations of postcolonial discourse. Although postcolonial theory tries to break the colonial discourse, it does not really break out of the monolithic framework of colonialism, but only replaces power relations. It emphasizes the underlying perspective (indigenous peoples, marginalized groups, various minority groups, untouchables, etc.), but the opposing power structures are also solidified, removing specific historical contexts. If the East Asian discourse is introduced uncritically, it raises another layer of questions, such as whether the relationship between Manchu, Han, Mongolia, and Tibet in the Qing Dynasty was colonial. Is there a difference between historical population movements and modern colonialism? The important object of reflection in the writing of this book is, of course, the hegemonic discourse on modernization. However, since East Asia cannot be completely external to this set of discourses, and this set of discourses is not external to East Asia, we need to examine and criticize them in more detail. As for the construction of an East Asian subject with clear edges, this is neither the goal nor the direction to be pursued.
Good historical writing should respond to real-world issues. The reality of East Asian countries is that none of the modern states in the region – China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea – have achieved the territorial integrity and sovereign independence presupposedly by international politics. According to the logic of an American scholar who has said that China is a "civilization masquerading as a state," all East Asian countries are basically "disguised": neither the Korean Peninsula nor China has completed the declared reunification, and Japan does not have completely independent sovereignty (the impurity of this sovereignty is even more complicated if Japan is viewed from an Okinawa perspective). At present, the East Asian region is still in a state of overlapping historical contradictions, with imperialism, colonialism, the Cold War and the post-Cold War problems accumulating one after another. Therefore, not to mention the resolution of specific contradictions, even if we only recognize their historical roots, we must not adopt a single dimension, but must recognize the multiple intersections in it.
This interweaving is not only temporal, but also spatial, and is reflected in the ambiguity, polysemy and multiple discourse of the various "borders" of East Asia. In addition to the aforementioned Diaoyu Islands, there is also the four-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone between the two Koreas (what exactly is it?). Are they domestic borders, national borders, or international system borders? ), Dokdo (Takeshima) and the South Kuril Islands. Every country in East Asia has territorial disputes of varying degrees with its neighbors, and behind each dispute is an intricate historical statement. This area is in what the Okinawan historian Nakasato called a "critical" state. This "criticality" is both geographical and theoretical.
Can the misalignment of historical understanding be solved by communication? I'm afraid not. There is always a limit to communication, and it is not that the more information and the more you know, the more you can understand each other. Today, hegemonic ideology is increasingly invading the field of academic research, and even friends who have a balanced and in-depth understanding of history will create all kinds of communication barriers when it comes to realpolitik. This is because the historical depth and complexity of practical problems cannot be dealt with by simply invoking theoretical concepts. The sheer volume of information does not automatically translate into the thickness of understanding. There is not only the question of knowledge accumulation, but also the difference in life experience. In particular, China has undergone earth-shaking changes from colonization to liberation, from complete revolution to "farewell to revolution", and the actual experience is very different from the book knowledge. Practical experience is always based on multiple negations, and knowledge on paper tends to be binary either/or.
Returning to the modern experience of East Asia: a negation, criticality, and challenging of various theoretical models, East Asia offers the possibility of reimagining a world that is not monopolized by colonial modernity. As witnesses of today's great changes, we should embrace and explore this possibility.