MCLC: Tang-era stele

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Tang-era stele
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (8/21/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/chinese-group-calls-on-japan
-to-hand-over-tang-era-stele/

Chinese Group Calls on Japan to Hand Over Tang-Era Stele
By JANE PERLEZ AND BREE FENG

At some point between 1906 and 1908 — no one is sure precisely when — the
Japanese military removed a nine-ton Tang dynasty stele from Lushun, the
northeastern city also known then as Port Arthur, and shipped it to Tokyo,
a trophy of Japan’s victory over the Russians in 1905.

Imperial Palace records, uncovered by Japanese researchers, show that the
1,300-year-old Honglujing Stele was proudly received on April 30, 1908. It
has remained sequestered there ever since, available for the viewing
pleasure of only the emperor and his household. Photos provided by the
palace to a Japanese peace group a few years ago show what resembles a
large boulder nestled in the vast gardens of the palace, sheltered from
the weather by an elegant pavilion that was looted along with the stele.

Now a Chinese organization that campaigns for recompense from the Japanese
government for suffering inflicted on the Chinese during World War II
wants the stele back.

While hardly a thing of beauty, it carries considerable historical
significance, because it shows the northern reach of the Tang dynasty
(618-906), a period of Chinese military conquests from the Korean
Peninsula to Vietnam to Central Asia. The Tang boasted other achievements:
a rare female leader who ruled in her own name, the Empress Wu, and one of
China’s greatest poets, Li Bai.

Last week, the head of the China Federation of Demanding Compensation From
Japan, Tong Zeng, told the Chinese state news media that Japan should
return the stele. In an interview in Beijing, Mr. Tong insisted that his
organization was not affiliated with the Chinese government or acting on
its behalf, although it seems clear that if the authorities did not
approve his request, it could not proceed.

In contrast to some of the other disputes with Japan — including China’s
claims to Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea and its
declaration of an air defense zone over those waters, or visits by the
Japanese prime minister to the Yasukuni Shrine, which includes war
criminals among Japan’s honored war dead — the federation’s request for
the stele is polite in tone, though still politically charged.

Before Mr. Tong’s group had made a public issue of the stele, historians
from China and Japan had puzzled over its significance. An inscription
with 29 Chinese characters mentions a Tang emissary, Cui Xin, who gave
instructions for two wells to be dug.

A Chinese historian who has devoted 20 years to the study of the stele,
Wang Renfu, says the stele is important because it shows that Cui Xin had
gone to the region around Lushun, then known as Bohai (and Balhae in
Korean), to establish China’s sovereignty over the people there.

In August 2005 — months after anti-Japanese demonstrations erupted across
China, partly over historical issues — scholars from both countries met in
Dalian, the city that now encompasses Lushun, to exchange views on the
stele, Mr. Wang said. In the process, he said, he learned of the document
stored at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo that records the date of the
stele’s arrival.

But interpretations of the overlapping histories of China, Japan and Korea
are rarely simple: They are often at the root of emotional, and even
strategic, squabbles among the countries today.

In the case of the stele, the Koreans have an important role, said an
American scholar of Asian art, James C.Y. Watt, former chairman of the
department of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Modern-day Koreans say that the people of Bohai were successors to
Koguryo, one of the three ancient kingdoms of Korea, Mr. Watt said.
Japanese archaeologists excavated the Bohai sites in the 1930s, and many
of the artifacts they found are now in the National Museum of Korea in
Seoul. Korean scholars would probably not be happy if the stele ended up
in China, he said.

“Since the 13th century, the area has been part of China,” Mr. Watt said,
“but at the time of the stele, it was not.”

Jesse Sloane, assistant professor of East Asian studies at Yonsei
University in Seoul, agrees. “The Tang empire didn’t have effective
control that far north thanks to Bohai/Balhae/Parhae control of the
region,” he said. (Parhae is another name used by Koreans for the region.)
“This stele is one of very few, perhaps the only object found in the area
that contains text explicitly mentioning the Tang.”

But some Chinese academics have been waging a campaign to prove that the
ancient kingdoms of Korea were actually part of China. In 2002, the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences began a five-year “Northeast Project”
that sought to compile the historical evidence.

“Requesting the stele fits that initiative perfectly,” Mr. Sloane said.

Mr. Wang, the historian, said he recognized that the Chinese argument that
the stele rightfully belonged to China would run into objections in South
Korea. “Sovereignty issues are sensitive,” he said.

The demand for an object that is in Japanese hands but also of
significance to Koreans would appear in line with current efforts by
Beijing to stir antagonisms between Japan and South Korea on strategic
issues. Could there be a hidden hand of the Chinese government in pushing
for the stele’s return?

Mr. Tong, the head of the Chinese federation, said no. Mr. Wang also
denied such political motives.

Mr. Wang said he believed that eventually the stele would return to China
with the good will of the Japanese. As a start, he said, the Chinese
scholars meeting with their Japanese counterparts in 2005 had suggested
that the stele be removed from the Imperial Palace to a place where the
public could view it.

“Because it’s not only we Chinese who cannot see the stele,” he said, “but
the Japanese people as well.”