Session 4 - November 3

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

This is very cool! I have not seen this movie.

[Philip Bramble]

If you're interested in a discussion regarding whether a colonial building should be saved or destroyed, look up the "Japanese General Government Building, Seoul" on Wikipedia.  In short, it was a beautiful 1920s Japanese building in Seoul that a) was representative of the hated prewar Japanese colonization; b) was left largely derelict after the Korean War; and c) was situated in front of the Gyeonbokgung Palace.  By the 1990s, there were surprisingly voices on both sides of the preservation/demolition issue; though the latter group eventually won out, there were many people who argued in favor of moving on and saving the building for its intrinsic beauty.  I think that the subjective terrain of colonialism is a variation upon the old saw that old buildings are one of three things that become more respectable with age ...

[Philip Bramble]

Oh, do I remember those super-tall building cranes that were everywhere you looked around the city!  It was absolutely nuts.

Here's one more photo: Nanjing Dong Lu (Nanjing East Road) in 1995.  I wish I knew what it looks like now, but I think it's representative of what Dr. Bharne suggested was the difference between Pudong (the sterile financial center with all of its skyscrapers on the east bank of the Huangpu River) and Puxi (the area where this photo was taken.)  When a city is made at the intimate level, where it is accessible to foot traffic and shoppers, it cannot help but become the center of urban life, no matter how much of a showpiece another part of the city might appear to be.

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[Ping Pian]

Thank you for pointing this out, otherwise I would have not read about the "Japanese General Government Building, Seoul". Even for the preservation side of voices, I can see people wanted this building saved as a history lesson and to never forget the humiliation brought by the colonial era.

[Ping Pian]

Agree with you and Thomas. Now I see colonialism from two aspects, architecture/culture and human/social justice.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

As noted in my earlier reply to Thomas, I have pretty mixed feelings about this topic.  On the one hand, I find both visual culture clash and cultural mixing to be interesting.  As a teacher of World History, we have moved in recent years toward a much greater focus on cross-cultural contact and exchange throughout history- of ideas, religions, architecture, art, technology, food, disease, DNA... (OK, I don't dwell on DNA with middle schoolers, but I do mention it in terms of the huge percentage of people in Asia who have some remnants of DNA from Alexander the Great and/or Genghis Khan...)  We talk a LOT about influence of one culture on another, be it through conquest, colonization, trade, or a combination of the above.  I am especially fascinated by some Indian art I learned about last year commissioned by I think Akbar to depict Hindu and Christian stories.  I was equally intrigued by churches in Spain that had also been synogogues, but were built in an Islamic style, or Greek statues and columns on Samos that looked very Egyptian.  It is interesting.

But interesting doesn't mean it was fair or equal or not imperialistic.  I wonder about this long fascination with western styles in Europe. Wallach said he was not so interested in the cultural implications, but I am.  He also mentioned that the tradition of architectural preservation as being particularly European (or Western, I suppose) and that in Asia the tradition has been basically that tearing down something old to build something better, is always better.  The history teacher in me cringes, but the practical part of me agrees.  But what also strikes me about this is, does that imply that European/Western architecture continues to be considered better?  And if that is the case, why?  Is it more durable?  Safer?  More conducive to our rhythms of modern life?  Or do people just prefer it because it's what is familiar- like Neo-Classical styles or European Renaissance or Impressionist art?

[Ping Pian]

Beijing definitely faces some issues, housing, water, trafic, air polution, urban villages, etc. Take water resouces as an example, Beijing used to be a city with rich water resources. With fast growing, the balance of population and water resources is broken. thus the large South-to-North Water Division Project.

In the 50s, 2 Chinese architects had a proposal, a new city plan for Beijing, which had the capital placed to the west of the old city, but it was not adopted. I am wondering what Beijing would be like now if the capital, was planned according their way. At least, old city walls and gates would still be there.

 

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[Denis Vovchenko]

Is Taj Mahal or the Red Fort in India a “native” or a “colonial” monument? I wonder why Vin did not include Muslim architecture into his 10 types we looked at during week 1. Along with Buddhism, it is a culture that unites much of South-East Asia to India and West Asia.

From what I understand, the Indian nationalist discourse since the Partition criticized both Islamic Mughal and British domination but Muslim influence is much more demonized probably from the same time. There had been more efforts to erase and forget Afghan-Persian influences than British or Portuguese ones, right? Although Christians in India are not too comfortable in India, Muslims even before PM Modi’s tenure saw more of their culture and architecture “reclaimed” for Hindus, right?

 

[Jaclyn Pop]

Thank you for sharing these pictures, Philip!  I agree - it's so crazy to see the difference that a single year can make!  I also find it so interesting to see how certain buildings themselves have developed over that year's time. I have both pictures open in different tabs right next to each other, and I keep flipping back and forth between them.  If I had seen both pictures without being told they were the same location, I don't think I would have realized it on my own.  Do you mind if I share both of these pictures with my students?  I think they would really like seeing the "before and after" of the intersection.  

[Elizabeth Rosales]

That is an incredible transformation!

[Denis Vovchenko]

Wallach’s article can be used as a bridge between US and Asian history classes. I was struck by this point in Wallach P. 13 which reminded me of 5 Civilized Tribes in the US who like the Cherokees had tried to absorb all kinds of trappings of European lifestyle but were still excluded from the pale and sent on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. Even there in the “wilderness” they did not shed European culture but consciously made themselves into beacons of Western civilization as opposed to local tribes like Osage. Wallach p. 13, “What began as European buildings for Europeans in Asia has become European buildings for Asians in Asia. Yes, a case can be made that modern architecture is no longer European at all and that it long ago became, as it claimed to be, international, but whether in Dubai or Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai the proudest towers are still designed by foreigners. For people as proud as Asians and as sensitive to colonial wounds, this continuing reliance on outsiders is astonishing, as though the only difference between the architecture of the colonial era and the architecture of today is that today, unlike Scott and the University of Bombay's Rajabai Tower, architects at least fly in to inspect a site before the steel begins.” It seems that Wallach is saying that direct Western control of Asia had been but a brief moment (with the exceptions of places like Vin’s Goa) but indirectly the West is casting a huge shadow at least in 2013. Since then the US began to see East Asia (read, China) not as a dependency but as a rival.

 

[Jaclyn Pop]

Kimberly, I agree. I've never really thought of colonization being a two-sided thing, and when Vinayak explained how, in fact, it is a "complex process" in which "the language is foreign, but the materials, construction techniques, flora and fauna are of the native place," it made sense.  But I agree with you - it definitely seems like more of a one-way process that has a clear beneficiary (the colonists).  

[Jaclyn Pop]

Jennifer, I was thinking the exact same thing when reading and watching the lectures.  I teach 4th grade, and I kept thinking about the Spaniards colonizing the land of Alta California and all of the things that happened to the indigenous people who lived there.  It also made me think of Columbus "discovering" the Americas and what happened to those indigenous people as well. 

[Denis Vovchenko]

I was surprised by this example of such an early reaction against Westernism at the time of the famous article “On Leaving Asia” (1885) by Fukuzawa Yukichi https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/lesson-plan-on-leaving-asia-primary-source-document/- p. 179, “Another such effort of significance was the Diet building (Fig 9.2). From 1886- 87, two German architects, Wilhelm Böckmann and Hermann Ende were invited to Tokyo to draw up two plans for a Diet building. Böckmann’s initial plan was a masonry structure with a dome and flanking wings, which would form the center of a large government ring south of the Imperial Palace. However, there was public resistance in Japan to Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru’s internationalist policies, compelling the architects to also submit a more Japanese design that introduced traditional Japanese architectural features in many parts of the building. These designs were never built, but were used for the Tokyo District Court and Ministry of Justice buildings.”

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Another comment on Wallach – Preservation as imperialism in disguise?

The idea that architectural preservation in Asia is of Western provenance made on p. 15 in Wallach should be seen in the broader context of European imperialism. Benedict Anderson in “imagined Communities” mentioned that colonial era museums were not innocent humanitarian efforts to restore old grandeur in Asia as Wallach seems to imply. Such reconstructions like Taj Mahal and Borobodur were supposed to send a message that the locals were unworthy of their glorious ancestors.

P. 16, “Even in China, where the hand of development so often fills the glove of government, the tension between development and preservation is not only real but almost certain to grow stronger. The irony is that preservation itself is a European idea. Perhaps the story be- gins in 1590, when Sixtus V ordered the restoration of the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. The idea arrived in Asia about 1900 with the restoration of the monuments that fell within the colonial empires. It is, of course, one thing to restore a Taj Mahal, an Angkor Wat, and a Borobodur.”

 

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