Mary Louis Pratt’s work Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation explores the idea of contact zones which are ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power’ and the process of transculturation that can occur at these zones.[1] Transculturation refers to the process by which subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture.[2] Transculturation is also a selective process, as the subjugated can determine the varying extents to which they absorb aspects of alien cultures. However, in Pratt’s work Asia remains relatively unexplored, meaning that the majority of her discussions of the contact zone remain largely confined to the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. However, Japan arguably represents an interesting an unusual case for Pratt’s model of the contact zone; as a power that was not fully subjugated and was forced to resist imperial encroachment from the Western powers. One of the ways in which this process of encroachment was resisted was by modernisation which was accompanied by a degree of unwarranted transculturation. This process was not universally supported and debated amongst the ‘new men of Meiji Japan, who were concerned about the damage to Japanese culture caused by rapid westernisation.[3] However, Western encroachment was also resisted by the production works that publicised the modernity of the Japanese and their similarities to Western nations. A notable example of this can be seen in the association of popular western values within Japan’s past and the creation of literature designed to espouse the similarities between Japan and the West. These works were arguably auto-ethnographic in nature, by portraying themselves using the terms of the coloniser. Historians such as Karl Friday and Thomas Blackwood argued that the Bushidō that came to be popularised by government endorsement originated in the 1880s and 1890s. As Blackwood observes it has far more in common with Western ideas of gentlemanship, sportsmanship and ‘chivalrous masculinity’ than the medieval Japanese warrior ethos.[4] Nitobe’s work emphasised the importance of compassion, respect and honesty in Bushido to a far greater extent than older accounts.[5] It was not only written in English and but also explored numerous other indigenous traditions of Japan whilst citing European and American philosophers, including classics.[6] The writer of the introduction to its first edition, William Elliott Griffis, clearly identified the work as the solution of this century’s grandest problem – the reconciliation… of the East and the West’ clearly a recognition of the auto-ethnographic nature of the work.[7]

[1] Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, (London, 1992), p7.

[2] Ibid, p6.

[3] Kenneth Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan, (Stanford, 1969), p190.

[4] Karl Friday, ‘Bushido or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition’ in The History Teacher, Volume 27, Number 3, May 1994, pages 339-349; Thomas Blackwood, ‘Bushidō Baseball? Three ‘Fathers’ and the Invention of a tradition’, Social Science Japan Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Winter 2008), p229.

[5] Nitobe Inazo, Bushido: The Spirit of the Samurai, (New York, 1905).

[6] Ibid, p30.

[7] Ibid, p26.

Heidegger wrote Building Dwelling, Thinking in the wake of the housing crisis in Germany after World War Two. As an existentialist Hediegger’s primary focus was the study of being and more specifically in this work its relationship with building and dwelling, which he viewed as intrinsically linked. Using a brief lexicography into the gothic origins of the verb Bauen (to build), its relationship to Ich bin (I am – derived from the very sein: to be), and its origins as the gothic word for dwelling, Heidegger justifies his view that to dwell, is in essence to be or to exist.[1] Heidegger then continues to explain what is called the fourfold and its importance to the concept of dwelling as only by acknowledging this fourfold are humans capable of dwelling and only when capable of dwelling can we build.[2] He illustrates his point using the example of the black forest house to illustrate a building that was built with these ideas in mind. This is a nostalgic and arguably anachronistic view of both spaces and housing relies largely upon his own inherent belief in Gothic (and therefore Aryan) superiority as part of his background in the Nazi party.

 

In many ways the Heidegger’s work was similar to Bachelard’s phenomenological approach in the poetics of space. As Joan Ockman eloquently explained, ‘Bachelard’s evocation of the rustic abode in Champagne is almost exactly contemporary with Heidegger’s paean to the peasant hut in the Black Forest’.[3] Both Heidigger and Bachelard also disliked the ‘terrible urban reality that the twentieth century has instituted’.[4] However, unlike Heidegger, Bachelard’s dwelling is less about the space itself and the manner or reasons for which it was constructed, but a space that accommodates consciousness. The same was true of smaller objects within the house, like chests, drawers and cabinets.[5] Buildings and objects are thus shelters or dwellings for our thoughts.

 

The ideas of Phenomenology and existentialism in Heidegger and Bachelard’s work also have a number of parallels with east Asian philosophy, with Heidegger even being in dialogue with East Asian thinkers during his life.[6] Although these are sometimes assumed to be intrinsically different there are in fact numerous similarities with movements in East-Asia and ideas prominent in Bachelard and Heidegger’s phenomenology. The Mingei movement also celebrates the important of Zakki or miscellaneous things, such as ‘chests, plates and clothing’.[7] In his work, The Beauty of Everyday Things, Yanagi laments the ignorance to the importance of these everyday objects in modern Japanese society and the fact that, ‘their existence has been ignored in the flow of time’.[8] Through seeing beauty in the utilitarian nature of everyday objects, Yanagi evokes a similar feeling of importance in functionality that can be seen in Heidegger’s description of the Black-forest dwellings or bridges.

[1] Martin Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ from Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter, (New York, 1971)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Joan, Ockman, The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, (review) in Hardvard Design Magazine, No. 6 Representations/Misrepresentations and Revaluations of Classic Books.

[4] Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp120–121.

[5] Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space, (Boston, 1958), p74.

[6] Martin Heidegger, “A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer,” in On the Way to Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

[7] Yanagi Soetsu, The Beauty of Everyday Things, Trans Michael Brase, () p35.

[8] Ibid, p35.

Invisible cities was written in 1972, Italo Calvino’s work explores the themes of imagination and the imaginable through a dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. The work contains a description of around fifty cities which are explored in the form of prose poems which are interspersed with conversation between Polo and the Khan. Although the poems themselves are separated into separate groups relating to numerous themes, such as death, desire and memory. The book itself was both celebrated and critiqued upon its release, with some claiming that in the work, “Calvino the mature postmodernist became exactly what he feared as a young man, that is to say, a solipsistic thinker removed from the exigencies of history’.[1] The idea imagination of any city or space is ultimately and exercise in imagining oneself is both a profound and unsettling one, however not one as divorced from the exigencies of history as literary critics might assume. Einaudi’s invisible cities in fact reflects a number of key themes and ideas touched on in spatial history and historiography, albeit in a roundabout manner. Perhaps the most telling section of the work can be found in the conversation between Polo and Kublai in the opening of chapter 6:

 

Dawn had broken when he said: “Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.”


“There is still one of which you never speak.”


Marco Polo bowed his head.


“Venice,” the Khan said.


Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”
The emperor did not tum a hair. “And yet I have never heard you mention that name.

And Polo said: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”


“When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice.”

“To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice.”[2] 

 

Although it may not have been Einaudi’s intention, the idea that we ultimately remain grounded in our own imagination and ideas when describing new spaces is an important warning to the historian. The problem of anachronism within history is a longstanding issue and one that historical theorists have always attempted to tackle. The idea that a description of a time or space is ultimately a reflection of the context of the person imagining was one of the key criticisms of the Historist school of historical thought. Polo’s description of his fantastical cities is flavoured by the context in which he explains them, more particularly his venetian background, which influences his ideas about cities as he explains them. All of his cities are described based on their relationship to his understanding of Venice.

 

Aside from more obvious historiographical tropes, the work also suggests numerous aspects of spatial theories within the poems on cities. The idea that ‘The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things’ is certainly reminiscent of Lefebvre’s idea of representational spaces that have a system of signs and symbols that help conceptualise space.[3] Furthermore, in Cities and Signs 3, the idea that ‘In every city of the empire every building is different and set in a different order: but as soon as the stranger arrives at the unknown city and his eye penetrates the pine cone of pagodas and garrets and haymows’ has similarities to Lefebvre’s idea of representations of spaces, as spaces that can be conceptualised and that ‘the imagination seeks to change and appropriate’.[4]

 

Although these similarities and associations are merely speculative, the book was nonetheless an interesting reflective peace that raises important questions for the spatial historian and an important warning:

 

‘No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it’.[5]

[1] John Welsh, ‘Erasing the Invisible Cities: Italo Calvino and the Violence of Representation’ in Working papers in Romance Languages, Vol 1 Issue 2 Summer 2007, p1.

[2] Italo Calvino, invisible Cities, (London, 1972), p86.

[3] Calvino, Cities, p13; Henri, Lefebvre, The Production of Space, (Oxford, 1991), p38.

[4] Calvino, Cities, p34; Lefebvre, Space, p39.

[5] Calvino, Cities, p61.

In his work, ‘Sounds of the City: The Soundscapes of early modern European towns’, Garrioch examines the formation of a semiotic system in early modern towns, arguing that the system was useful for conveying news and ‘helping people to locate themselves in time and in space’.[1] Although this auditory system was gradually eclipsed by modern modes of information, it was nonetheless an important and underexplored historical phenomenon. Garrioch cites the noise of horses, street vendors and church bells as vital examples of the semiotic system that helped townsfolk in the Early modern period to locate themselves within a city. However, how would these soundscapes compare to that of an East Asian city like Tokyo?

 

Analysis of the soundscapes of East Asian cities has already been undertaken by a number of scholars many of which arguably point out a number of similarities between East Asian cities and those in the west.[2] In fact, a number of the points raised by Garrioch are equally applicable to the soundscapes of East Asian cities. In terms of the sounds of the street it is fair to argue that very little can be differentiated between the early modern East Asian city and that of its counterpart in Europe. In Europe market days were distinguished not by a single sound, but by a conjunction of noises indicating unusual levels of commercial activity. Examination of the Woodblock print, Night view of Saruwaka Street arguably indicates the noises and soundscape expected from a bustling street in historic Tokyo.[3] As in Europe it is likely that the vendors situated in the street selling food, had achieved a ‘high level of audibility’.[4] Furthermore, in European cities the lack of noise was equally informative as noise within the semiotic system. In Europe, silence was closely associated with both secular and religious power in the form of court rooms, which conveyed authority, or churches in which silence was expected as a matter of respect.[5] Like churches, temples in East Asia were often places of quiet for better facilitate reflection and meditation in a manner not dissimilar to churches. In this regards, the ability to produce or demand silence was a privilege of authority and another similarity in the soundscapes of both Europe and East Asia.

 

It is also likely that, with the rapid modernisation of Japan, this soundscape likely became eclipsed in a manner not dissimilar to in Western European cities. The short educational film Children of Japan from 1941 shows the extent to which the traditional Japanese soundscape had been largely eclipsed[6]. Bustling streets in the film show pedestrians, cars and cyclists in western attire as well as trams and trains in the new cityscape. Although the vendors still exist, it is clear that this semiotic system has been largely been replaced by modern technologies. Although it is not possible to find out exactly what an east Asian soundscape would be, it is likely that in many instances it shared key similarities with its western equivalents and was also eclipsed with the advent of new technology.

[1] David, Garrioch, ‘Sounds of the city: the soundscape of early modern European towns’ in Urban History, Volume 30, Issue 1, May 2003, p5.

[2] Freek, Colombijn, ‘Toooot! Vrooom! The Urban Soundscape of Indonesia’, Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 22, No. 2 (October 2007), p255.

[3] Utagawa Hiroshige, ‘The Night view of Saruwaka Street’ <https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/-THE-NIGHT-VIEW-OF-SARUKAWA-MACHI—FROM/8BDCCCABCF350172> [Accessed 11/12/19].

[4] Garrioch, ‘sounds of the city’, p8

[5] Ibid, p13.

[6] Children of Japan, ERPI Classroom Films, Inc.

< https://archive.org/details/Children1941> [Accessed 11/12/19].

 

Following the bubonic plague that struck Hanoi in 1903, the colonial administration was forced to recognise its failures to both destroy the rat problem endemic in Hanoi. Hanoi, expected to be the hygienic triumph of French colonialism was in fact a medical crisis. Furthermore, the Vietnamese had begun to ‘experiment with a form of collective labour action’ and by 1904 had quadrupled their pay. In addition to this Vietnamese residents not in the extermination teams were able to exploit the bounty system put in place by the colonial administration by cutting the tails off rats and allowing them to continue to breed. As Michael Vann concludes, it is ‘one of the rich ironies that characterize the history of French colonialism. However, similar ironies and resistance to colonial medicine were not limited to the history French colonialism.

In colonial Hong Kong, the Chinese residents of Hong Kong rioted when the British imposed house-to house inspections during plagues and over a third of the Chinese population left Hong Kong because of the anti-plague measures. Another notable example can be seen in the turmoil created in Korea following Japanese attempts to ‘sanitize’ Seoul whereby the Seoul Sanitation Association (SSA) attempted to monopolise the collection of night soil, garbage and took responsibility for the ‘overall salubriousness’ of the urban environment. However, despite the best intentions of the Japanese, the venture was a disaster. Koreans uprooted willow trees meant for sanitation due to their need for firewood, garbage and waste was not removed and the new sanitation system was so disruptive that by 1909 the SSA was forced to allow displaced Korean fertiliser merchants to use its equipment to help alleviate the massive shortage of night soil needed by farmers in the vicinity of Seoul. Despite the draconian measures such as harsh fines and imprisonments put in place to attempt to force Koreans to comply to the system of reform, the Japanese were unable to make the Koreans ever fully commit to their hygienic reforms and practices. The problem of epidemics remained an issue throughout the occupation, and arguably indicates another example of a failed attempt at sanitation that in face worsened the sanitation of Koreans in Seoul at the time.

However, the clash between predominantly Western notions of sanitation and health with traditional thought was not always resisted as was the case in the treaty port of Tianjin. Rogaski observes that with the arrival of imperialism Chinese notions of Weisheng or ‘hygiene’ shifted from ideas of diet, meditation and cosmology to encompass more ‘modern’ conceptions such as cleanliness of bodies, Western practices of hygiene and medicine. Although this is possibly due to the unique position of the treaty port as a space when compared to a colonised city, it is nonetheless a notable case in which Western ideals were largely accepted by the Chinese elites in the city.

Ultimately, if one were to examine additional colonial undertakings in order to improve the hygiene or sanitation of the colonial cities, it is likely that resistance and failure were the primary outcomes. However, in cases where Western interpretations of Hygiene are not imposed upon the colonised, the same strategies and developments can be seen as an important form of modernisation.

‘During 1937-1941, “island Shanghai,” momentarily neutral like wartime Casablanca or Lisbon, was a haven for spies, intelligence agents, and provocateurs.’[1]

 

In the book The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937-1941, Frederic Wakeman combines disparate narratives about crime and terrorism in Shanghai and attempts to present an account that not only demonstrates the ambiguity of Chinese resistance and collaboration, but that also helps to emphasise the chaotic nature of the Shanghai badlands and settlement from 1937 to 1941[2]. However, although a successful book, Wakeman’s work remains contained within its own body of sources and does not engage with any secondary works. Although this is unsurprising given the nature of Wakeman’s research, there are a number of other cities such as Casablanca and Lisbon that had similar wartime experiences to Shanghai that arguably warrant comparison. This has been studied in Neill Lochery’s Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, a work which in many ways is remarkably similar to Wakeman’s in its use of sources, anecdotal nature and in its demonstration of Lisbon as a fundamentally complex and chaotic space[3]. Like Wakeman, Lochery used a vast amount of primary sources when conducting his research, including António De Oliveira Salazar’s (The Portuguese dictator from 1932 to 1968) official correspondence and the PIDE (Portuguese Secret police) archives[4]. However, unlike Wakeman, Lochery also attempted to used additional sources from the external forces acting in Lisbon, including British Foreign office correspondences and documents on the various intelligence agencies operating in Lisbon, arguably giving a fuller perspective to the activities than Wakeman’s work[5].

 

During the Second world war, Lisbon was the only European city in which Allies and Axis openly operated simultaneously. However, unlike Shanghai, barely a shot was fired in Lisbon. The city itself remained a space in which Allies and Axis powers vied for control whilst Portugal itself strove to maintain its neutrality. Lisbon also had its fair share of unusual activities, including a foiled German plot to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor[6]. Both Allied and German operatives were dispersed throughout the city, including a young Ian Fleming[7]. However their activities were predominantly non-violent and these agents were in turn monitored by the PIDE. This three-way relationship over the contested space of Lisbon is arguably not dissimilar to the relationship between Chinese, Japanese and Westerners found in Shanghai[8]. Although both cities received a large contingent of refugees, the numbers heading to Lisbon were incredibly marginal in comparison to the volume who fled to Shanghai during the war[9]. Furthermore, as a result of the harsh dictatorship of Salazar Lisbon remained tightly controlled and thus crime remained largely at its usual levels during this period. Despite this resistance and collaboration was still prevalent in wartime Lisbon, with numerous officers on the Portuguese side repeatedly changing sides to help either the Axis or Allies based on offers from the respective sides[10].

 

Unlike Shanghai, Lisbon and Portugal ultimately emerged from the war much wealthier than it had been at the wars instigation. Despite this, the cities ultimately faced very similar problems. However, whereas in Shanghai, ‘[it became] increasingly difficult to distinguish crime from conspiracy as the two converged to pulverize whatever shreds remained of Shanghai’s civic society’, for the Portuguese the war of subterfuge ‘represented as great an existential challenge [to the Portuguese] as it was a literal battle for [what] their lives would be’[11]. This was a battle that the Portuguese were able to successfully navigate, through subterfuge, double-crossing and scheming[12]. The volume of refugees, relative power of each political force and the volume of crime and methods used undoubtedly played a large role in the differences between Shanghai and Lisbon; two neutral cities which operated under ostensibly similar circumstances. It is arguably Salazar’s control over the political situation and the city itself that enabled it to avoid a similar fate to Shanghai, although further research would undoubtedly reveal additional factors that would also have led to differences within the cities themselves.

 

 

[1] Frederic Wakeman, Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937-1941, First Edition (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p10.

[2] Ibid.  


[3] Neill Lochery’s Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, (New York, 2012), p.

[4] Ibid, pp237-238.

[5] Ibid, pp237-238.

[6] Ibid, pp54-59.

[7] Ibid, p137.

[8] Wakeman, Shanghai, p10.

[9] Lochery, Lisbon, p44; Wakeman, Shanghai, p7.

[10] Lochery, Lisbon, p44.

[11] Lochery, Lisbon, p4; Wakeman, Shanghai, p110.

[12] Lochery, Lisbon, p227-231.

In his work, ‘The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of Asia’,  Jeremy Taylor attempts to examine the bund as a generic spatial form; analysing its importance in both sustaining the lifestyle of European residents and its significance to the Western residents of the treaty ports as space with military, commercial and lastly recreational functions[1]. He concludes by hoping that his work will stimulate further debate surrounding the questions of space and power within the treaty ports. Outside of treaty ports, Taylor’s work is part of a burgeoning field of historical discourse examining the importance of European urban expansion on cityscapes across the world. This can be seen in works such as Antony King’s Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System. Interestingly the Shanghai Bund arguably demonstrates King’s thesis that these colonial spaces are eventually integrated into what he calls the single world economy, transitioning from a colonial space with primarily military and economic functions to one that is largely recreational in its nature and ultimately part of the broader world economy[2]. Although Taylor demonstrates its importance to Westerners, he does not explore Chinese understandings or conceptualisations of the Shanghai Bund as a space[3]. However, a comparison of the Shanghai Bund with colonial buildings and Korea and Taiwan demonstrate that, despite fulfilling similar functions, most colonial spaces found in treaty ports and colonial cities have in fact been treated differently to the bund, which has arguably endured as an important space after the colonial period.

In Korea, the construction of the Japanese Western style colonial building in front of the Kwanghwa palace disrupted and challenged the ancient geomancy calculation known as Pungsu, which sought to enhance the vital energies of the ruler[4]. The intentions of the Japanese in overturning the cognitive map of the Koreans by constructing a modern western-style government building on this site is clear. In Taiwan, the central government building and redevelopment of downtown Taipei was finalised by the completion of the Sōtokufu in 1919. Although nothing was demolished to construct this building, the Japanese did raise the Yamen in 1931 to build the Old City Hall[5]. As with the bund, the construction of these sites was both conscious and deliberate. They were centrally located, western style buildings designed to convey both the modern and civilising intentions of the colonists as well as establish their dominance in the spaces in which they were created. Parallels with this can arguably be seen with the bund which remained a space of power through its use as an economic center and space which military might could be demonstrated. As these building were ultimately used as spaces that convey power, it is unsurprising that in many cases these buildings continued to be used until the end of the 20^th century. In Taipei, the Chinese were quick to occupy many of the buildings that were part of the Japanese colonial occupation, occupying the central colonial buildings and only bothering to switch on Chinese character in the name[6]. However, although they remained politically significant in both Korea and Taiwan these spaces continue to be contentious. In Taiwan the city government challenged the nationalist government’s building by moving ‘away from the downtown and into a new spatiality’[7]. Even with the demolition of the government building, restoration of the Kwanghwa gate and creation of the Kwanghwa square in 2009, the spatial configuration of  downtown Seoul remains intrinsically linked to their identity and history[8]. Ultimately the importance of these buildings as spaces of empire is now lost and unlike the Shanghai Bund, many are beginning to lose their significance as nations begin to recognise the colonial origins of these space’s associations with power.

Returning to an examination of the Bund, it is clear that perhaps the Shanghai Bund’s association with finance and business within the Chinese identity that has perhaps ensured its continued importance as a centre in Shanghai. In order to fully understand the typology of the Shanghai Bund as a space of empire, it is perhaps important to consider its perception amongst the Chinese in Shanghai, who have arguably enabled its transition from a space of empire to a space of economic entrepreneurialism.

[1] Jeremy E. Taylor, ‘The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia’, Social History, Vol. 27, No. 2 (May, 2002), pp. 125-142

[2] Antony D. King, Urbanism, Colonialism, and The World Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System, (London, 1990), pp1-12.

[3] Talyor, ‘The Bund’, p128.

[4] Hong Kal, Aesthetic Construction of Korean nationalism: Spectacle, Politics and History, (Oxford, 2000), p45.

[5] Joseph R Allen, Taipei: City of Displacements, (Washington, 2012), p43.

[6] Allen, Taipei, p35.

[7] Ibid, p65.

[8] Kal, Aesthetic Construction of Korean nationalism, p1.