A Discussion of The Blind Spots in Historical Approaches in East Asian Studies

2022.11

There is no history without narrative, the problem of history itself is about the content of history and how it is recorded. As history can be interpreted as historiography and historicity, what we think of as historical facts is not an actual reflection of reality. Instead, our understanding of history and time depends entirely on our investigation approaches. In light of this, people interpret history with different methodologies resulting in the creation of new nodes to reveal the blind spot that we didn't see before. Additionally, the dependence on investigation approaches gives rise to the nonlinearity of time.

This paper will use Bruce Cuming, Takashi Fujitani, Andre Schmid, Karatani Kojin and Tsai Mingliang 's points of view to discuss the diversity of historical narratives and their relationship with power mechanisms. My point is that narratives of history will often be used by a variety of different powers to support their hegemonic domination. By unfolding different narratives of history, humans actually create a possibility of pivoting towards freedom from hegemony as well as exploring and creating a better future for humanity. I will first discuss that the Western historical narrative of the East is structured by the power of hegemony. Then, I will explain historical narrative is also used by the eastern ruling class to discipline the masses. Finally, the article takes Tsai Mingliang's movie "What Time Is It There?" as an example to illustrate what people are facing under the dismantling of the power mechanism and uses Karatani Kojin's The Discursive Space of Modern Japan as an example to demonstrate how scholars put forward new methodologies and perspectives to investigate the manipulations of history through different historical narrations.

Historical narratives are used by different powers to convey specific ideologies: horizontally, they are used to achieve cultural hegemony across different political and economic entities; and vertically, they are used to propagate the legitimacy of the regime and nationalism within the country. Both approaches achieve the natural recognition of the dominant party by directly or indirectly shaping society's perceptions and knowledge

structures. Educational historical knowledge implies political ideologies and leads to blind spots in perspective.

The Western historical narrative of the East based on an Orientalist power relationship leads to a convolution of fundamental issues of East Asia and East Asian studies blocking a systematic understanding. The Western world tends to see what's going on in the East with its own position. They contrasted and shaped the West by establishing the imaginary image of the East hence establishing authority over the orient to control and reconstruct subjective Eastern history. This teleological power relationship ignores the diversity in civilizations and unilaterally considers that time is linear: the West is advanced while the East is falling behind, distorting the Eastern civilization and placing it in a dominated position with hegemonic thinking. 1Such a superior egocentric attitude towards Oriental civilization prevents revealing the real East, instead, reflecting the Western understanding of Eurocentrism. 2Taking the Korean War as an example, most western scholars start with the thinking mode of the Cold War and use origin-base theory to attribute the cause of the Korean War to the influence of the confrontation between the two ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union, which both wanted to prove their strength, correctness and authority. This narrative, with its historical inevitability, takes only a single view and ignores the causes inside the Korean peninsula. When analyzing the origin of the Korean War, Bruce Cuming explained that he needed to understand the internal situation of the Korean peninsula, which had been under Japanese colonization for a long time. With the industrialization brought by the Japanese colonization, a large part of the Korean people became the working class.3 In 1945, Japan retreated from South Korea after WWII. However, South Korea was not prepared for independence, and the signs of civil war could be interpreted from internal chaos.

1 Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Spatial Constructs of Oriental and Occident East and West, 42.

2 Edward Said, Orientalism, 26. 3 Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 7.

Within the country, the historical narrative is also used by the power class to consolidate the national identity and legitimacy of the regime. Every country needs its unique and unified national identity and the internal public's sense of belonging. Searching for national and cultural identity through tracing history can provide legitimacy for the regime and gain obedience from the public. Moreover, the shaping of social lifestyle and specific historical narrative subtly made the public accept the values exported by the ruler. I'll take South Korea and Japan as examples, where the elites of both societies reinvented history and constructed nationalism by inventing tradition or falsifying history. This reshaping of history and tradition transforms the system of norms of behaviour imposed on social life by the ruling group into a spontaneous obedience from the people, and a means to support the strong foundation and distinctive modernization of both countries. After being a vassal state of China and colonized by Japan, South Korea had an urgent need to solve the contradiction of social transformation. The urgency of national independence formed by such historical reasons led them to forge Korean nationalism through historical and cultural reconstruction. The "History-making Movement" and "Theory of Korean National Superiority" were grasped by the ruling class, which provided support and cohesion for the social transformation and modernization process of the single nation-state Korea in terms of ideology. This is well proved by the view of Scamid. The ethnic concept of "minjok" liberates the definition of the peninsula and constructs both the nationalist history and the transcendental national concept through the connection with Manchurian.4 By resurrecting mythological ancestors saying Koreans are the descendants of gods, the authority has put new nationalistic ideas into ancient literature and mythology, reconstructing the narrative of the country's past to maintain loyalty. Another example is Japan whose authority relied on traditional customs to construct history and create the appeal and discourse power of the deified emperor in order to stabilize the society and establish order. It was only in the 1990s that Japan began to establish state Shinto, resurrect various sacrificial rituals, infiltrate the public with new religious worship and emperor worship, and build cultural consensuses such as the mikado and Amaterasu. Meanwhile, the Japanese government constructed imperial cults and holidays to maintain and shape Japan's own political system. As such, Japan achieved its unique modernization. Takashi Fujitani's Splendid Monarchy describes how Japanese national identity is shaped by two methods, physical and material sigh on the physical landscape. 5Customs such as national holidays and ceremonies such as royal travel ceremonies and national celebrations did not exist in ancient times but were created through specific historical narratives in the Meiji period and related to the national political community. Cities such as Kyoto are described as having a thousand-year imperial tradition, but these material carriers are not naturally developed but consciously invented. Shintoism also played an irreplaceable role in maintaining the ruling class during Japan's colonization period: Under the ideology of militarism, when Japan invaded other countries, Shinto shrines were built to promote Shinto belief. On the one hand, it could strengthen the Japanese army's loyalty and obedience to the emperor; on the other hand, it could destroy the traditional belief of the colonized countries and forcibly spread new values. Japan constructed this whole set of historical narratives about the emperor's centralized rule, which became the core of national cohesion and was used by the upper class to safeguard their own interests.

4 Andre Schmid, Rediscovering Manchuria: Sin Ch'aeho and the Politics of Territorial History in Korea, 13.

5 Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy, 42.

Under the dismantling by the power mechanism, human beings pay more attention to the time at this moment, because there is no progress and unified timeline. For example, in the movie, Xiaokang's insistence on time reflects his grasp of history and time based on his own sense of the moment. The three timelines of Xiaokang's mother, Xiaokang and the girl going to Paris are interlaced and reorganized. 6On the one hand, it proves that Paris is not more civilized than Taipei, so there is no unified timeline; on the other hand, it proves that as narratives are different, people's ways of expression and behaviour are also different. New methodologies and perspectives have been proposed by scholars to address the mentioned problem of historical narratives being exploited by power. One example is the record of the different chronologies of Japan. Through The Discursive Space of Modern Japan, we know that Japanese history is recorded by both Western and Eastern narrative modes leading people to have different understandings of history. 7While Western scholars use Western universal timelines, the Japanese use Eastern autonomous timelines, this "one regime one name" record will periodize the history of Japan avoiding the teleological arrangement. As recorded history inevitably becomes the construction of memory, literariness and authenticity are skewed by the authority, the history recorded for a specific purpose does not reveal the real situation, but conforms to the author's views according to his time, attitude and political position.

Overall, by deconstructing the objectivity and neutrality of traditional history and highlighting the narrative strategy and ideology of historical writing, we can jump out of the linear timeline, and transform the way of thinking and the subject of ontological position. Therefore, directly applying the logic of the self-creation of Western capital to study the East fails to capture the picture of the history, but reflects hegemonism and becomes unruly. We should avoid both orientalism and ethnocentrism, and the use of different historical approaches can help us understand and shape a new East Asia and East Asia research.

6 Tsai Mingliang, What Time is it There. 7 Karatani Kojin, The Discursive Space of Modern Japan,55.

Bibliography

Andre Schmid, Rediscovering Manchuria: Sin Ch'aeho and the Politics of Territorial History in Korea,13. BruceCumings, The Origins of the Korean War,7. Edward Said, Orientalism,26. Karatani Kojin, The Discursive Space of Modern Japan,55. Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy,42. Tsai Mingliang, What Time is it There. Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Spatial Constructs of Oriental and Occident East and West, 42.