OLD CHINA, NEW JAPAN In contrast to Kiyochika’s distinctive thematic compositions, many woodblock artists reveled in the tumult and chaos of the battlefield. They offered their audience riotous melees—congested spectacles that invite the viewer to scrutinize the scene, sort out the combatants, discover any number of intimate details. Sometimes the detail is so dense it is startling to be reminded that these popular artworks were usually tossed off in a matter of days. Still, predictable patterns give order to this chaos. Discipline (the Japanese side) prevails over disarray (the Chinese). The sword-wielding Japanese officer and bayonet-thrusting infantryman are invariably present—and easy to locate, since their black uniforms contrast sharply to the flamboyant clothing and paraphernalia of the Chinese. The enemy’s garments vary from battle to battle but are always colorful and frequently decorated with elaborate designs. Their headgear suggests that they employ many different haberdashers. In contrast to the ubiquitous rising-sun-with-rays military flag of the Japanese, Chinese banners and ensigns feature a range of designs. Sometimes the enemy employ archaic weapons such as a three-prong pike or trident. Here and there they carry old-fashioned round shields decorated with garish face-like designs. The braided queues worn by Chinese men often stretch out like ropes or snakes; sometimes they are coiled in a bun. In short, the Chinese are riotous in every way—disgracefully so in their behavior, and delightfully so in their accoutrements. “Great Attack in Snow at Fort of One-Hundred-Foot Cliff Near Weihaiwei: Illustration of Major General Odera’s Desperate Fight - Commander of the 11th Brigade?BR>by Utagawa Kokunimasa, February 1895 [2000_102] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Chinese and Japanese Troops: Picture of a Fierce Battle at Gaiping?by Nakagawa, February 1895 [21_1540] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Sino-Japanese War: The Fierce Battle on the Floating Bridge at Jiuliancheng?BR>by Kobayashi Toshimitsu, October 1894 [2000_023] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Heroic encounters between relative equals are not entirely absent from these depictions, however. A fairly typical rendering of a melee by Toshimitsu, for example, includes two swordsmen dueling to an uncertain finish. With comparable even-handedness, several quite spectacular prints by unidentified artists render individuals on both sides as almost mirror images of one another—faces frozen in Kabuki-like determination or similarly marked by rather individualized touches. “Picture of Our Forces Bringing About the Fall of Pyongyang?by Kobayashi Toshimitsu, September 1894 (with detail, right) [2000_380_03] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Great Rear Attack by Our Second Army at Weihaiwei,? artist unknown, February 1895 (with details of Chinese, left, and Japanese, right) [2000_113] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “The Japanese Second Army Battles at Jinzhou?by Shuko, November 1894 (with details of Chinese, left, and Japanese, right) [res_23_294] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Attacking Pyongyang, Our Troops Conquer the Enemy Fortress ?BR>by Mizuno Toshikata, September 1894 (with details of Chinese, left, and Japanese, right) [res_23_344], Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Such suggestions of relative equality emerge especially clearly in depictions of combat between mounted officers. These figures stand out from the tumult around them by virtue of their horses alone, but this is not the only source of shared identity. On both sides these combatants were men of comparable rank, accomplishment, and ability. Great Sino-Japanese Battle at Fenghuangcheng?BR>by Toyohara Kuniteru III, October 1894 (with details of Chinese officer, left, and Japanese officer, right) [2000_233] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston In one print by an unidentified artist, a clash between two cavalrymen is actually turned into a spectator sport. Fighting men pause to watch, and a few Chinese have even climbed a tree to get a better view. In the midst of battle a crowd has gathered to watch two cavalrymen in one-on-one combat. The Battle of Mukden?by Shunsai Toshimasa, 1894 [res_23_312] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston A few prints detach cavalry combat from the congestion of battlefield tumult and place it alone at stage center, occasionally even giving the names of Chinese generals involved. “A Great Victory at Port Arthur?by Adachi Ginkō, November 1894 [PMOA_055] “Sino-Japanese Pitched Battles: Two Generals Fighting at Fenghuangcheng?by Watanabe Nobukazu, November 1894 [2000_009] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Major Sakakibara Fights Fiercely to the South of Ximucheng?by Adachi Ginkō, January 1895 [21_1549] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The single most honorable Chinese singled out in the war prints, however, was not a mounted officer but an admiral—the venerable Ding Juchang, whose fleet was destroyed after hard fighting off Weihaiwei early in 1895. After surrendering in a courteous exchange of messages between the two sides, Admiral Ding Juchang committed suicide by taking poison. When the Chinese warship carrying his body left the harbor, the Japanese fleet dropped their flags to half-mast and fired a salute. Death by one’s own hand held an honorable place in Japan’s own warrior tradition, of course; be that as it may, several woodblock artists commemorated the admiral’s death with respectful renderings. One of the best of these, by Toshikata, imagines Admiral Ding Juchang seated in an elegant room holding a cup of poison in his hand. The most honorable Chinese opponent depicted in the Japanese war prints was Admiral Ding Juchang, who committed suicide after his fleet was destroyed in 1895. Here he is portrayed seated in an elegant room with a cup of poison in his hand. Admiral Ding Juchang of the Chinese Beiyang Fleet, Totally Destroyed at Weihaiwei, Commits Suicide at His Official Residence?by Mizuno Toshikata, February 1895 [IMP_44_74] In another well-known print, Toshikata pitted his Japanese hero, “Captain Awata,?against a Chinese antagonist of no status but undeniably formidable strength—in this case, a giant on Taiwan whose weapon of choice was a halberd. In his treatment of this celebrated encounter, Toshikata portrays the Chinese foe with respect. More typical, however, was Toshihide’s rendering of the same duel, in which Awata administers the coup de grâce to a twisted figure collapsing from a lethal blow to the head—his straw hat flying through the air, clearly torn where Awata’s sword blade sliced through. (This is the same Captain Awata whom Kiyochika lovingly portrayed cleaving the enemy’s skull.) These two prints of the same subject ?a powerful Chinese with a halberd fighting Captain Awata on Taiwan ?treat the enemy in completely different ways. In one (detail on right), he is a stalwart and heroic foe. In the other (detail on left), he collapses in grotesque defeat. Captain Awata?by Mizuno Toshikata, 1895 (top) [2000_440] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Picture of Captain Awata, Who Fights Furiously with His Celebrated Sword in the Assault on Magongcheng in the Pescadores?by Migita Toshihide, 1895 [2000_431] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston When all was said and done, denigration of the latter sort ruled the day when it came to portraying the Chinese foe. As the prints so graphically reveal, moreover, such disdain frequently carried both a harsh racist charge and an undisguised edge of pure sadism. The devil, as always, is in the details. The Chinese are slashed with swords; skewered with bayonets (often run through from behind, as in Kiyochika’s showing); shot at close range; beaten down with rifle butts; strangled; crushed with boulders; pounded with oars while floundering in the sea. They tumble off cliffs and warships like tiny rag dolls. In one print, a civilian caught in battle lies crumpled on the ground with a still open parasol on his corpse, conspicuous once again by his gaudy and (in Japanese eyes) outlandish clothing. It is particularly sobering to keep in mind that this was not on-the-scene “realism.?The woodblock artists worked largely out of their own imaginations, tailoring this to news reports from the front. They were commercial artists catering to a popular audience, and this was the war Japanese wished to see. Admiral Ding Juchang, the Chinese generals on their horses, the occasional battlefield enemies treated as just as human as the Japanese are exceptions that prove the rule. The prototypical Chinese is grotesque. His face is contorted, his body twisted and often turned topsy-turvy, his demeanor in most cases abject. Battlefield scenes routinely include cringing foe pleading for their lives—even while making clear that the emperor’s stalwart heroes should and would pay no heed to such cowardice. The braided queue becomes, in and of itself, a mark of backwardness and inferiority; in more than a few battle scenes, Japanese stalwarts grasp this while dispatching their victim. (Pulling Chinese men by their “pigtail?was also a favorite image among American and English cartoonists until the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911, after which this hairstyle was no longer mandatory for ethnic Chinese males.) The Devil in the Details Although woodblock artists did not personally visit the battle front, their war prints routinely ridiculed the Chinese and depicted Japanese fighting men commiting extraordinary acts of violence against them. Clearly this was the war Japanese at home wished to see. Chinese prisoners of war, usually bound with thick rope, also drew attention. Ōkura Kōtō imagined “Captain Higuchi?(lionized for picking up a Chinese child on the battlefield) confronting three such captured Chinese—a particularly suggestive scene, combining as it did denigration of the “old?China with chivalrously rescuing “young?(or future) China, and all this in front of a piece of heavy artillery. Toshihide and others similarly dwelled on Chinese officers kneeling in supplication before their captors. “Captain Higuchi, A Fierce Warrior, Ready to Lay Down His Life for Mercy’s Sake at Fort Motianling?by Ōkura Kōtō, January 1895 (detail) [2000_179] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Illustration of Chinese Generals from Pyongyang Captured Alive?by Migita Toshihide, October 1894 (detail) [2000_380_08] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Illustration of Our Righteous Army Capturing Money and Prisoners,?BR>artist unidentified (detail) [2000_380_05] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Kokunimasa offered a harsh “Illustration of the Decapitation of Violent Chinese Soldiers?that included a lengthy inscription. The benevolence and justice of the Japanese army, this text explained, equaled and even surpassed that of the civilized Western nations. By contrast, the barbarity of the Chinese was such that some prisoners attacked their guards. As a warning, the Japanese—as depicted in the print—had beheaded as many as thirty-eight rebellious prisoners in front of other captured Chinese. The Rising Sun military flag still fluttered in one panel of Kokunimasa’s print; the stalwart cavalry officer still surveyed the scene; the executioner still struck the familiar heroic pose with upraised sword. The subject itself, however, and severed heads on the ground, made this an unusually frightful scene. Illustration of the Decapitation of Violent Chinese Soldiers?BR>by Utagawa Kokunimasa, October 1894 (detail) [2000_380_07] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Orientalism?BR>A sample of Western racial stereotypes of the Sino-Japanese War, as seen in cartoons (and texts) from the famous British weekly magazine Punch. The derision of the Chinese that permeates these prints found expression in other sectors of popular Japanese culture. The scholar Donald Keene, for example, has documented how popular prose, poems, and songs of the war years took similar delight in lampooning the “pumpkin-headed?Chinese and making jokes about their slaughter. (It was around this time that the pejorative Japanese epithets chanchan and chankoro became popular, amounting to a counterpart to the English-language slur “Chink.? Even today, over a century later, this contempt remains shocking. Simply as racial stereotyping alone, it was as disdainful of the Chinese as anything that can be found in anti-“Oriental?racism in the United States and Europe at the time—as if the process of “Westernization?had entailed, for Japanese, adopting the white man’s imagery while excluding themselves from it. This poisonous seed, already planted in violence in 1894-95, would burst into full atrocious flower four decades later, when the emperor’s soldiers and sailors once again launched war against China. Ironically, the Japanese propaganda that accompanied that later war involved throwing off “the West?and embracing “Pan-Asianism”—but that is another story. Because racism in the age of imperialism is most commonly associated with “white supremacism?(and the smug rhetoric of a “white man’s burden?, this explosive outburst of Japanese condescension toward China and the Chinese seems all the more stunning. In the Western hierarchy of race, so-called Orientals or Asiatics or Mongoloids were lumped together—below the superior Caucasians and above the “Negroid.?In their inimitable way, the Japanese promoted these stereotypes where the Chinese were concerned, even while trying to demonstrate their own identity with the Caucasians. What made this even more disconcerting was the intimate overlay of race and culture in the case of Japan and China. No non-Chinese society was more indebted to China. Japan’s written language, its great traditions of Buddhism and Confucianism, vast portions of its finest achievements in art and architecture—all came from China. In an abrupt phrase familiar to all literate Japanese, even in the Meiji period, China and Japan were culturally as close as “lips and teeth.?BR> But that, of course, was the point—and what made this outburst of anti-Chinese sentiment a very peculiar sort of racism on the part of the Japanese. The Chinese were contemptible because they were deemed inept. At the same time, however, “China?was symbolic and self-referential. “China,?that is, stood for “Asia.?It stood for “the past.?It stood for outmoded “traditional values.?It stood for “weakness?vis-?vis the Western powers. It stood, coming even closer to home, for “evil customs of the past?that Japanese leaders ever since the Restoration argued had to be eradicated within Japan itself if their nation—and Asia as a whole—were to survive in a dog-eat-dog modern world. “Old?China was the Anti-West, the Anti-Modern (a notion China’s own Communist leaders would later embrace with a vengeance themselves). As a consequence, while the corpses were unmistakably and brutally Chinese, they stood for a great deal more as well. To return to Fukuzawa’s famous phrase, killing Chinese amounted to “throwing off Asia?in every conceivable way. This was seen to be essential to Japan’s security, its very survival. It was deemed progressive. It amounted, when all was said and done, to embracing a “modern?kind of hybridization. Where the old Japan had been distinguished by enormous indebtedness to traditional Chinese culture, the new Japan would be distinguished by wholesale borrowing from the modern West. At the same time, of course—as is true of nationalism everywhere—it was necessary to think oneself unique. In the Japanese case, this was accomplished by “reinventing?the mystique surrounding the throne and imperial family. It was not coincidental that the war against China coincided with the consolidation of a modern emperor system under the new constitution of 1890. From the Japanese perspective, the denigration of the Chinese that permeates the Sino-Japanese War prints was really secondary to the obverse side of this triumphal new nationalism. It was secondary, that is, to the story of the surpassing discipline and self-sacrifice of Japanese from every level of society. That is why many of the most memorable war prints do not depict the enemy at all, but rather focus on the Japanese alone. Sometimes they are simply battling raw nature (the fierce blizzards and turbulent seas), sometimes simply shown in control of the powerful machinery of modern warfare. Always there is a celebration of brave men engaged in a noble mission—throwing themselves against an ominous, threatening, but also thrillingly challenging and alluring world. Thus Gekkō, who often reveled in particularly grisly combat details, devoted one print to a serene depiction of “Officers and Men Worshipping the Rising Sun While Encamped in the Mountains of Port Arthur.?(That the sun rose in the east, the direction of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, intensified the ideological implications of such worship.) Another Gekkō offering focuses on the solitary figure of “Engineer Superior Private Onoguchi Tokuji, Defying Death,?and yet another on “the Famous Death-Defying Seven from the Warship 'Yaeyama'? rowing through high waves. “Officers and Men Worshipping the Rising Sun While Encamped in the Mountains of Port Arthur?by Ogata Gekkō, December 1894 [2000_154] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Picture of the Second Army’s Assault on Jinzhoucheng: Engineer Superior Private Onoguchi Tokuji, Defying Death, Places Explosives and Blasts the Gate of the Enemy Fort?by Ogata Gekkō, 1895 [2000_407] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Illustration of the Death-Defying Squad of Captain Osawa and Seven Others from the Crew of the Warship 'Yaeyama' Pushing Forward in Rongcheng Bay?by Ogata Gekkō, 1895 [2000_408] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Nobukazu’s most famous war print is probably his heroic close-up rendering of “General Nozu?leading his horse and three men across a deep river in the moonlight. Toshihide paid tribute to “Sergeant Miyake?and a sturdy subordinate, who stripped to the waist and braved the frigid waters of the Yalu River to carry out their mission. An indidentified artist went Toshihide one better by depicting a certain “Sergeant Kawasaki?swimming across a turbulent rain-swollen river with a sword clenched between his teeth. “Our Forces Crossing the Yalu River: In Honor of Lieutenant General Nozu?(detail) by Watanabe Nobukazu, October 1894 [2000_380_31] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Sergeant Miyake’s Courage at the Yalu River?by Watanabe Nobukazu, 1895 [2000_380_30] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Sergeant Kawasaki Crossing the Taidong River,?artist unknown, October 1894 [res_23_255] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Toshikata (the maestro of the predictable pose with whom this discussion began) also captured this spirit of valor transcending any specific battle or foe without necessarily explicitly flourishing a sword or unfurling a Rising Sun flag. One of his most effective war prints, for example, simply depicts sailors poised almost like a group statue as they man one of their warship’s big guns. Another of his well-known scenes portrays naval officers seated on deck calmly planning strategy. Toshikata’s remarkable “Picture of the Fearless Major General Tatsumi?portrays the general sleeping “peacefully under a pine tree, taking his own life lightly.?BR> “Japanese Warships Fire on the Enemy near Haiyang Island?BR>by Mizuno Toshikata, September 1894 [2000_380_13] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Picture of a Discussion by Naval Officers about the Battle Strategy against China?BR>by Mizuno Toshikata, September 1894 [2000_380_09] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston “Picture of the Fearless Major General Tatsumi?by Mizuno Toshikata, about 1895 [2000_437] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston This was precisely the sentiment the Meiji leaders had devoted themselves to inculcating ever since the emperor’s 1882 “Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors.?Duty was heavy as a mountain, death light as a feather. These were free-floating heroes, ready to sacrifice themselves for the nation whenever and wherever they were commanded to do so. The precise enemy was secondary. Among the last prints to come out of the Sino-Japanese War were depictions of the Chinese surrender in February 1895. All of the participating officials were rendered straightforwardly and reasonably realistically—and the impression that Japan had truly thrown off Asia could not have been conveyed more strongly. The Chinese envoys were garbed in traditional ceremonial gowns and caps; Japanese dignitaries wore formal Western dress; and both British and American diplomats were present, particularly to act as advisers to the Chinese side. There could be no doubt whatsoever concerning with which side the Japanese were identifying. This woodblock print is an almost perfect example of how the Japanese (left detail) saw themselves as totally different from the Chinese and fundamentally similar to the Westerners (seen here in the figures of Western advisors standing behind the Chinese, right detail). “After the Fall of Weihaiwei, the Commander of the Chinese Beiyang Fleet, Admiral Ding Juchang, Surrenders?by Mizuno Toshikata, November 1895 (with details). [2000_123] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Chinese are accompanied by two American advisors. The two Japanese officials, on the right, are Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi and Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu. “Japanese Representatives Meet with a Chinese Peace Mission?by Tsuchiya Kōitsu, February 1895. [res_27_160] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

以下引发MIT日本版画风波的原网页已被删除，下面是我从cache里调出的结果。说明部分为蓝色链接的大图可以打开。 另，"Throwing off asia"的pdf版可以在这里下载。