 Today in world literature, I attempt to give an overview of the history of Asia so that we can better read the writers of China, Japan, and India. Central in this discussion is the fact that it is important to be familiar with the context in which literature appears. That is, while it is important to know the formal elements of a work, its plot, theme, point of view, symbols, and allusions, it is also important to know something of the culture of the writer. In this way, we can better understand the position of a writer in a non-Western culture. Asia is the largest and most heavily populated of the world's continents. Containing about 60% of its people, China alone has 1.3 billion people. Asia was often under European control in the 20th century and is now largely free of that control. The cessation of European control was especially symbolic on June 30, 1997, when Great Britain returned Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, an act which leaves the West feeling, as Time Magazine reported it, guilty, ignoble, and very anxious. How to understand this immense land mass stretching from the eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean, halfway around the world to the western shores of the Pacific Ocean? To begin, it is important to understand something of Asia before the 19th century interactions with the West. The vast subcontinent of India witnessed the development of several early civilizations, and its enduring legacy is the three great religions that flourished in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C., Hinduism, Jinnism, and Buddhism. China witnessed the important teaching of Confucius and his teachings of orderly and stable human relationships, setting forth a family as the basic unit within society. In Japan, in the 11th century, witnessed such classics as the tale of the Genji, a classic story of court life. The values taught by the Buddha and Confucius endured to the present, and the order of culture exemplified in the word feudalism endured in Japan well into the 19th century. For Asia, the 20th century was marked by rapid, nearly uncontrollable change in their societies, briefly brought by the aggressive military, economic, and colonizing activities of Western culture. Countries such as Brazil, Holland, France, and the United States forced Asian citizens to accept unjust terms for trade. This kind of colonialism is well documented. In China's recently published Atlas of Shame, a catalog of its abasement set the hands of the colonial powers during the past 155 years. On the first on the list is the role of Britain, aided by American merchants in 1840, who turned battleship guns on Canton in order to ram opium down Chinese throats, and to open China to foreign exploitation. In Japan, colonialism is symbolized by Commodore Perry's 1953 arrival in Japan with his gunboat diplomacy. And the aggressive activities of England regarding India are explicit in a memorable quote from Lord Kitchener, a distinguished 19th century military commander there. He wrote, It is the consciousness of the inherent superiority of the European, which has won for us India. However well educated a native might be, and however brave he may prove himself, I believe there is no task we can bestow upon him, which would cause him to be considered an equal with a British officer. It is just such assumptions that caused Mahatma Gandhi to mobilize his nation towards independence. With the caveat to look to the cultural history of Asia before the 19th century in a realization that the dangers of colonialism in the 19th century were manifest, let's now turn ourselves to defining moments of Japan, India, China in the last two centuries. Commodore Perry's sudden invasive appearance humiliated and embarrassed the Japanese. When formed diplomats and merchants began to settle in Yokohama, a radical samurai, aristocratic knights of feudal Japan, reacted with a wave of anti-foreign terrorism and anti-government assassinations between 1858 and 1869. Then 1867, a coalition led by patriotic summarize seized control of the government. This was the Magi Restoration, a great turning point in Japanese development. At first the goal was to meet the foreign threat, then in about face the young reformers of the Magi Japan dropped their anti-form attacks and introduced a series of measures to reform Japan along modern Western lines. The samurai class was abolished and a strong central state government was formed. In time Japan successfully copied the imperialism of Western society, including its own expansionism. Japan defeated China in a war for Korea in 1894 and 1895. Japan collided with Russia in 1904 and emerged with victory. Japan indeed demonstrated that a modern Asian nation could defeat a Western nation. The effects of the Magi Restoration to build a powerful nationalistic state and resist Western imperialism was spectacularly successful and deeply impressive to Japan's fellow Asians. The First World War brought more triumph for Japan, which seized Germany's Asian holdings. The nation's economy expanded enormously. In the 1920s the nation made further progress. Japan became immersed in world trade and of course became vulnerable to economic international economy, thus reinforcing the belief that internationalism was an aspect of the nation that was a matter of life or death. Cohesive leadership, which had played such an important role in Japan's modernization by the major reformers, had ceased to exist. Fanatic nationalism emerged in Japan, just as it did in Europe. These ultra-nationalists were violently anti-Western. They rejected democracy, corporations, Marxist socialism, reviving Ole Miss. They stressed the emperor's godlike qualities and the Sumerai warrior's code of honor and obedience. They believed in Asia for the Asians. When the Great Depression hit the world in the 1930s, it also hit Japan as exports and wages faltered. The ultra-nationalists blamed the system and citizens listened. Engaged in an undeclared war against China since 1937, Japan's rulers had increasingly come into conflict with the Pacific Basin's other great power, the United States. Tension mounted on on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In the Battle of the Coral Sea in May of 1942, Allied naval and air power stopped the Japanese advance. The Battle of Midway Island established Allied naval superiority in the Pacific, and the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In Hiroshima, the casualties numbered nearly 130,000, and 99% of the city was leveled on August 14, 1945. Japan surrendered. After the surrender, American occupation forces landed in Tokyo and Yokohama areas. The American commander, Douglas MacArthur, led the occupation. Fundamental reforms were put into place to make Japan a democratic society along American's lines. A demilitarization and a systematic purge took place, and over 220,000 politicians and businessmen were declared ineligible for office. A Japanese armed force didn't exist, was abolished. Land reform also took place, and as a result, the small independent peasant became the supporter of post-war democracy. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States began to see Japan as a potential ally, especially when China turned decisively to communism. The United States ended its occupation in 1952. The Japanese applied their exceptional powers to rebuilding their country. Between 1950 and 1970, Japan's economy grew 10% per year. Almost three times that of the United States. In 1986, the average per capita income in Japan exceeded that of the United States. Yet it is important to realize that this astonishing economic surge had its own deep roots in Japanese culture. Recall, as I said earlier, that we must look at the past if we were to understand the present. A culturally homogeneous Japanese society put as it had traditionally the needs of the group before the individual. The tight-knit group-oriented society towards an economy that could efficiently compete in a world... Government and big business, often this alliance is referred to in a derogatory fashion as Japan Incorporated, shared roles and growth. As during the Meijai Restoration, government bureaucrats directed and fostered the efforts of business leaders. The government, for example, decided which loans were important and made loans to encourage the creation of powerful industries. Efficiency, quality and quantity were the watchwords. Business hired workers for life and placed the center of life around the corporation. Indeed, students interested in post-World War II restructuring in Japan in America's response to it should take time to read David Halberstam's The Reckoning, published in 1986. This non-fiction chronicle by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author sets forth Japan's Nissan and Detroit's Ford Motor Company as a clash that tells much about the end of the American century of dominance. If this is the context then in which literary works appear, what text may then shed further light on Japanese culture? To begin, I strongly recommend that students read Yukio Mishima's The Sea of Fertility, a cycle of four novels that include Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel. While Professor Kimmelman will have more to say about Mishima later in this series, especially about his short story, Patriotism, it is important to recognize that these novels are indispensable to understanding the subtleties of Japanese culture in its relation to the West. Hiyashi Fumiko's Late Chrysanthemums provides a stunning story that describes a woman in Japanese culture, winner of the Women's Prize for Literature in 1948. The story critiques women's roles and dependency. Significant also is a theme of aging that is portrayed in the main character, the Gisha Kim. And students will find complex Kim's reaction to World War II at a time. Fumiko writes, Kim had suffered at Hiroshima for some reason she thought it was always the most tempestuous times that made one feel nostalgic later. Now that she was over the wearied world seemed to be strangely quiet as if one were living in a vacuum. The story provides important insights into human expectations as they are played out in post-World War II Japan. Women's roles are also examined in the pan, the pot, the fire I have before me by Ishigaki Rin. Published in the 1950s, the poem can be viewed as an early statement of changing roles of Japanese women after the war. As the poet validates traditional work for women, cooking was mysteriously assigned to women as a role, but I don't think that was unfortunate with new work. Let us study government, economy, literature as sincerely as we cook potatoes and meat, not for vanity and promotion, so what everyone may serve, so everyone may work for love. Moriyoko's short story, Spring Storm, is a contemporary treatment of the intermixing of Western and Japanese cultures, an important characteristic of contemporary Japan. In this story we see two young actors whose romance is scripted by the relationship between European actress Ingrid Bergman and her husband, Roberto Rossellini. Students of contemporary Japanese culture will also want to read Kobo Abbi's one act play, The Man Who Turned Into a Stick. The play is actually an allegorical treatment of alienation by allegory, that is, we mean, that a play is intended to be read in a figurative or moral level. The setting of the play is especially unattractive urban landscape, suggesting that the change in Japanese culture from rural to an urban economy is often accompanied by unhappiness and alienation. Central to the story is The Stick Man. His existence is characterized by a lack of humankind so grave that he has been transformed into a stick, an inanimate object that is entirely passive. Students will no doubt watch the draw comparisons here between the character in this play and Gregor Zamsa in Czechoslovakia's short story, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. This play deserves careful attention that is a depiction of the dehumanizing aspects of modern life in contemporary Japan. If read with mission as patriotism, the comparison will reveal divergent views of moral life in Japan. Certainly the question of how life is to be lived is of paramount importance to the residents of Hong Kong as the Republic of China in 1997 welcomes the form of British colony back into the empire. How is it, it might be asked, that Great Britain considered Hong Kong its colony in the first place? The answer to that question reveals much about Asia in the 20th century. Just as there was anti-Foreign sentiment in Japan, so too was there such a sentiment in China. This anti-Foreign attitude is reflected by the boxer uprising in China between 1898 and 1900. By the end of the 19th century, both Japan and the West had interests in China. In June, some 140,000 rebels belonging to an anti-Foreign society called righteous harmonious fists or translated into English boxes occupied Beijing and attacked Westerners and Christians there. The siege was ended by an international force of British, French, U.S., German and Japanese troops. Foreign influence spread even more. Significantly in 1913 the Menchu dynasty was overthrown and a thousand years of emperors and empires ended. As would it should be noted, ancient Confucius ethics were subordinated to rulers. A coalition of revolutionaries proclaimed a Western-style republic. Although China proclaimed its neutrality during World War II, the Treaty of Versailles agreed to let Japan retain holdings of China's Shandong province. On May 14, 1919, which is now famously known as the May 4 movement, 3,000 students from Beijing universities protested the decision of the Versailles Peace Conference. The nationalist movement continued as a political force throughout the 20s and attempted to create a nationalist spirit with a program that would allow China to become an independent nation in the modern world. Recall that this was also the period of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. A political act that in its anti-imperialism was similar in many ways to the May 4th Revolution. Indeed, it may be said that the May 4th movement stimulated support for the nationalists who had marshal under Chiang Kai-shek and led to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese communists interpreted Marxist Leninism to appeal to the masses. Mao Zedong argued in 1927 as follows, the force of the peasantry is like that of the raging winds and driving rain. It is rapidly increasing in violence. No force can stand in its way. Peasantry will tear apart all nests which binded and hasten along the road to liberation. They will bury beneath them all forces of imperialism, militarism, corrupt officialdom, village bosses, and evil gentry. Every revolutionary party, every revolutionary comrade will be subjected to this scrutiny and be accepted or rejected by them. Under Mao Zedong, China transformed itself into a strong one-party communist state. In the 1950s, Mao and his party looked on the Soviet Union for inspiration as a result, temples and churches were closed, religion was prosecuted. In the 1960s, however, the former Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev split from China. In 1965, Mao moved his nation forward through what was called the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Its object was to purge the party of bureaucrats and to recapture the revolutionary spirit. Army and students reacted positively and formed themselves into radical caudras called red guards. As is the case in any purge, there were casualties, party officials, professors, intellectuals were placed and isolated in remote villages in order to purify themselves with heavy labor. In that, the Cultural Revolution created chaos, a shift back to more conservative government eventually occurred by 1972. China and the United States formed a limited reconciliation that endures today despite China's harsh treatments of its students on June 4th, 1989 when army tax crushed exuberant demonstrators advocating democracy and Tiananmen Square. Students interested in the shifting values in China will do well to re-lail Taitai's a daughter of Han. This autobiography of a Chinese woman provides insight into traditional Chinese family life and its transformation. Students will also want to read Su's Tong's wives and concubines, the novel upon which the 1991 film Raise the Red Lantern was based. Here students will find treatment of the role of women in China in the early 20th century. I note here, on the use of film in the study of world literature, as was the case in fiction, poetry, drama, film is an important part of cultural communication. As students of literature, we must move beyond the traditional view that film is something below literature, something inferior to the written word. Although much film and just as much fiction is the product of mass culture, film provides important insights into the ways that we are with each other. In addition to the use of film, you also may be able to put your critical of human to the test if you use film. What you may ask is the significance of the Chinese film The Opium War being released at the exact same time that Hong Kong has returned to the People's Republic. What you may ask is the difference between The Opium War, a film that the Chinese government is encouraging all to see, and Temptress Moon, a film that is presently banned in China. Regarding Chinese fiction, students will run to read Lu Sun's and Ding Ling, two authors treated by Diane Simmons, later in this series. For an allegorical treatment of China's social and political problems, students will also want to read Chan Yu's Hot on the Mountain, especially looking to the symbol of the scissors as the instrument of class division that led to communist revolution. And insights into the place of the individual of the Cultural Revolution can be found in examination in a poem entitled Dark Night on a Southbound Train. Perhaps the most diverse area in Asia is the Republic of India, home to the Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, unlike Japan and China, which had independence and unlike Africa, which were annexed by Europe only at the end of the 19th century, India was ruled by Britain for a very long time. Yet by 1907, the Indian National Conference was calling for complete independence. Drilling World War II, about 1.2 million Indian soldiers and laborers volunteered for duty degree Britain served in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. However, the war at England instituted repressive measures resulting in a wave of rioting across India. The tormented relationship between India and England was crystallized at the Amritsar Massacre in which an English commandeer fired into the crowd, a crowd of Hindus gathered for a religious festival, killing 379 Indians and wounding over 1,100 others. That India did not turn to violence as due to the influence of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi. A student of law educated in England, Gandhi saw inequality firsthand as a lawyer in South Africa. There he formulated his concept of nonviolent resistance, a tactic that would prove decisive in India's freedom. Returning to India in 1915, Gandhi launched a national campaign on nonviolent resistance to British rule. It was worthwhile to pause here to listen to Gandhi's words regarding the courage required by passive resistance. He writes, What do you think? Where is courage required? A blowing others to pieces from behind a cannon? Or with a smiling face to approach a cannon or be blown to pieces? Who is a true warrior? He who keeps death always as his bosom friend? Or he who controls the death of others? Believe me that a man devoid of courage and manhood can never be a passive resistance. Finally, in 1947, British India was divided into independent nations, India and Pakistan. Hoster relations between the two free nations, however, in what are called the Indian-Pakistan Wars of 1947, 48, 1965, and 1971 occurred. Internally, military political parties became a persistent problem. Despite ethnic tensions, however, Indian has remained committed to free elections and to a representative government. Modern concern for Indian writers includes such themes as critique of social problems. Among women writers is a special concern of the patriarchal structures that exploit and devalue women as exemplified and mahaswait the devas' breath giver. In this series, Dr. David Rothenberg gives special attention to devas' work. Two is among post-colonial nations. There is criticism of the society itself as seen in Ruth Chablava's The Interview. Most significantly, there is the work of Salman Rushdie and the controversy surrounding his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Born into a Muslim family in Bombay in 1947, Rushdie studied at Cambridge University. His first published novel appeared, A Revision of a Persian Altar Form, in 1975. In Midnight's Children, published in 1981, he traces the history of India before and after independence. But it was the Satanic Verses winner of Britain's prestigious Whitbread Award that brought controversy. In the novel, the author examines his Muslim faith through a dream sequence in which the Prophet Muhammad appears. This depiction of the Quran believed to be the sacred word of God caused outrage among Muslims. The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran announced a death sentence for Rushdie and promised a reward of $1 million for his death. He went into hiding. While he continues to publish, the January March 1989 events surrounding the publication of his book remind us of deeply felt religious convictions and how those intersect with the literary imagination. As a note, for an indication of the enormous significance of this controversy in the literary world, see Wards for Salman Rushdie in the New York Times Book Review for March 12, 1989. Here, 28 distinguished writers from 21 countries speak to him from a place of relative location, the nation of literature. Here are the words offered by Achebe. What does one say? I think probably all I can say is don't despair. The world has become a very dangerous place, but it is our responsibility to keep fighting for freedom of the human spirit. It's not just for writers that we must do this, but for everyone. If we secure this freedom, the whole world benefits. Japan, China, India. We speak of Asia, which Asia are we examining? In this brief lecture, we have not mentioned, for example, Malaysia or Singapore or Vietnam, although Dr. Robert Friedman, however, will discuss the work of the Indian-Asian writer Primojator. As you watch the following lectures in this segment on Asia, keep in mind the history of the region. Look for parallel treatments of themes such as the pressure to modernize and the dangers of modernization, the need to preserve community identity and the roles of certain groups, especially women. And as you identify and discuss these themes, realize that you are, in all likelihood, among the first generation of American students to study literature in a truly global context. Why so much history in a literature class? Stephen Greenblatt, who invented the term New Historicism, gives the reason. He reminds us that literature is interlocked with culture. Literature is a manifestation of the codes by which behavior is shaped, a reflection of the codes of the culture. As Greenblatt proposes, we should approach literature to discover its interconnectedness, the life and behavior of the author, and the belief systems of the cultures in which the work was written.