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Wednesday, March 15, 2023

破门前后:中日对照

欧洲人进入日本可以追溯到十六世纪后期,西班牙传教士在民间传教,与当地政治秩序产生一定摩擦。德川幕府建立后(1603),逐渐加强对外国人的限制,开放长崎和平户两个港口允许外国船只停靠和贸易。其中荷兰商人被允许的权利最大,也许因为荷兰船只一心经商,对传教不太热衷(西医药进入日本时被称为“兰学”)。

1633年幕府开始实施“锁国令”,原因或许政治经济都有。1637年爆发岛原之乱,起因是农民不堪压榨而反抗官府,但同时基督教也起到凝聚力和号召力的作用。

对比1840年代开始的太平天国运动,也是与基督教相关的反政府组织,虽然相隔两百年,二者近似之处无法否认。基督教在民间广为流传,给不满现状的下层人民提供了一个理论基础和传播途径。

天草四郎之后,德川幕府极度严密地执行锁国政策,以防重蹈覆辙,倒也相当有效,保持了两百年的稳定社会,并通过削藩集中政治权力。直到1853年美国军舰“黑船”驶入江户湾,在大炮的威胁下,幕府被迫向西方国家开放港口和通商活动。这一转变给日本政治带来前所未有的危机,国民对洋人的不满情绪日渐高涨,与洋人的暴力冲突也屡屡发生,当然一边讨厌洋人一边把矛头指向当政的幕府。倒幕派的萨摩藩与长洲藩发出“尊王攘夷”的口号,借着拥戴天皇的理由(天皇不掌实权已经一千年了)颠覆幕府统治。

这段历史与义和团(1899-1901)也颇有相似之处。鸦片战争和八国联军几次战争之后,在中国境内经商与传教的洋人增加,经常与普通民众接触,民间少不了产生摩擦和冲突无法避免。洋人抗议并要求当地政府保护自己,结果加剧了民间对政府的不满,这里有政治的原因,也有民族的动机。

倒幕运动于1868年成功推翻了集权稳定250年的德川幕府,明治天皇执掌大权。不过天皇并没有“攘夷”,而是更彻底地全面开放,加强工业与军事的进口贸易;同时积极向西方考察学习,以迅猛的速度进行政治改革,引进君主立宪的制度。事情的发展证明德川家康的锁国令是正确的——从家族的角度来看,因为开国就会带来自己的灭亡。

相比之下,清朝的闭关锁国政策在鸦片战争之后就破裂了,之后半个多世纪都夹在洋人与国内反对势力之间拼命维持。清朝皇室也并非没有试图进口武器与技术,建立北洋舰队,雇佣西洋船长,搞洋务运动,等等;但政治改革是绝对无法接受的——当然德川幕府也未曾接受政治改革。所以,辛亥革命与倒幕运动有一定的平行之处,虽然时间上晚了半个世纪,但彻底颠覆了皇权,也有其更进步的意义。

两国的平行甚至延续到开国与制度改革之后,政治权力在短期内被军阀掌握。虽然有很多呼声和努力想要推进民主制度,下放权力,但是架不住封建时代遗留的权力结构和资源分配。日本经历了短暂的大正时代的进步与繁荣,但迅速地被法西斯势力控制;而中国在苏联的幕后操纵下陷入内战状态。

所以,排除时间上的差别,中日的国门开放过程其实是颇为相似的,差别主要在于两国在战争中的胜负结果。清朝政府打了很多战争,对外战争几乎全部失败,严重动摇了军事实力,但正因为如此,辛亥革命才不需要旷日持久的战争就迅速胜利。日本则是一路凯歌,从1895年日俄战争开始逐步扩张殖民打算吞下整个亚洲,在50年内从底层迅速走向顶峰再跌落到二战战败。(Pacific Overtures 提出的理论是,日本的殖民主义风潮是跟着黑船学来,依葫芦画瓢,通过武力扩张就能把自己变成世界强国,这好像也有点道理。)

在列强敲开国门之前,日本与中国的社会都是看似集权稳定,但冲突的暗流汹涌。日本是各藩对幕府的不满逐渐积累,中国是满汉之争。清朝皇权掌握在满洲贵族手中,与人口占绝对多数的汉人一直存在冲突和压力。虽然清朝的很多军事和政治力量部分掌握在一些汉人将军和官员手中,例如曾国藩,李鸿章,但革命党也经常用满汉之分来支持自己的反清事业。(清朝皇权被灭之后,满洲人不得不退回东北原址,接受日本的扶植而建立满洲国,也并不能阻止本族湮灭在时代浪潮中的命运。)这些原本只是暗流的内部矛盾,然而外来压力让它们浮出水面,最终干掉了旧秩序。如果没有外界压力,中日两国想必会沿着当时的轨道继续一些年,直到另外什么事情发生。

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Banshees of Inisherin

 

For the first 15 to 30 minutes of this movie, I seriously thought it was a satire on modern Internet friendships. In the past couple of years, I have been the dumper and dumpee of several relationships, including being basically ghosted, all of which were equally depressing and traumatizing. So I can sympathize with both characters in their agony and annoyance. The end of friendships is an unavoidable reality throughout one's life, but past experience does not make this process any easier as one becomes older. 

Half way into it, however, things made a bizarre and bloody turn, and I had to admit that the strife between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson is not an allegory of friends breaking up in the Internet age. I dug up information on the Irish Civil War of early 1920s and began to understand the author's intent.

With its absurdist style, Martin McDonagh's movie contains a vague feeling that this deadly conflict between fellow Irishmen was senseless and pointless. Aside from the general principle that killing and war are fundamentally senseless, I don't quite agree, even though I am in no position to tell an Irishman anything about his own history. I can see why the conflict between the Free State and Republican factions broke out when the independence war with Britain came to a compromise instead of an outright victory. I have no particular urge to take sides, but each side did have their own reason and logic for the stand they took and felt they had to defend. And let's not pretend that there were only two sides to the conflict. There was an outside force not so subtly nudging them on.

The Irish history is by no means an outlier. The more I learn about it, the more it confirms my revised view of what war is. Conflicts and struggles in society do not have a discrete start and end date. War is just one of many continuous phases of these conflicts among people and factions. 

What I appreciate about McDonagh's treatment of war is the willingness to be kind to both sides and acknowledge their past friendship and continued ambiguity with each other. Nevertheless, I find it not completely satisfying as an allegory. 

Winding my way back to the issue of severed relationships and rejections, I have long realized that it always goes back to one's relationship with one's mother, that cliché of "attachment."

Saturday, March 11, 2023

Someone in the Tree (Pacific Overtures)

 


One of the least produced Sondheim musicals, Pacific Overtures is a show that I very much wanted but did not expect to see in my lifetime. And yet! Signature Theatre nearby produced it this year! So of course I have to go see it at least twice. 

Compared with the original Broadway version, which can be seen on YouTube, this production is necessarily smaller, shorter, and more modest, but immensely enjoyable nevertheless. 

The history around the opening of Japan to western countries is complex and fascinating. I somehow fell into it because of my interest in Japanese jidaigeki action cinema and the Nemuri Kyoshiro novels in the past few years. The period around the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate is a critical juncture in the history of modern Japan and continues to inspire much pulp fiction and genre movies in Japan. I know why I am interested in this part of history, but for the life of mine I cannot imagine how Sondheim got into it. 

The amount of effort he put into making Pacific Overtures must have been enormous. Of course it is not an accurate documentary of Japanese history, but the artistic rendition of it is consistent with my understanding. The music is obviously influenced by Japanese traditional theater, namely Noh and Kabuki, of which I am very ignorant. The original set and direction were also designed to evoke that feel, which suggests that Harold Prince was equally interested in this approach. 

It is extraordinary that the entire musical is presented from the Japanese point of view. There is zero white character inserted into the story to lead the audience into the unfamiliar setting and allow them to identify with. If it were a book, Pacific Overtures would be closer to a nonfiction book than a novel, with some humor and gag thrown in for effect. Sondheim and Prince never bothered to make it easier or "friendlier" for American audience, so the audience has to make an effort to imagine themselves in this unfamiliar historical place, with few conventional tools to latch onto. 

Although the show does not have a conventional protagonist and antagonist and has a generally detached narrative tone (not least through the use of a narrator as common in Japanese theater), one song stands out to counterbalance this impersonal tone. Someone in the Tree has three ordinary characters talk about an important historical moment, the negotiation and signing of the Kanagawa Treaty between Japan and the US. It reminds me of the song "Room Where it Happens" in Hamilton, which no doubt was influenced by "Someone in the Tree." Note that although two of the characters claim to be there in the room where it happened, they were of no importance and had no involvement. They were merely observers and entirely passive, even though their lives and fates were irrevocably altered by the treaty. 

In some sense, Someone in the Tree is about hyperobjects, average people living in a world too large and complex to be known or understood. We live through and witness history, but we cannot control or make history, or even begin to understand its mechanisms. 

In any story set in a background of changing times, there is always a tension between the small scale and big picture. To focus on the tides of time and grand scheme of things always runs the risk of losing sight of individual lives and tears, but individual lives are truly and tangibly affected by the invisible hand of historical events. It is a constant dilemma for storytelling, because it is also the unknowable reality of our daily lives. 

The Ending of Le Samourai (1967), Explained

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