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Molly raises a great question. With the strain on resources imposed by ever-increasing numbers of people who need food, water, clothing, shelter and space, perhaps slowing growth is the best news ever. The challenge, of course, is to find ways to meet the needs of an aging population, which likely has rising expectations for living standards and more. Getting the balance between producers and dependents just right is a challenge - for families and for societies. The magic weapon: increasing productivity while decreasing the number of workers needed and the resources consumed.

For the pre-modern period examined in this seminar, there are gains through applying more hands to the tasks and sometimes applying new techniques/materials to it. Trade facilitates some specialization which sometimes increases productivity. But even in the pre-modern period societies seem to hit limits to the carrying capacity of their land and other resources. One of the most interesting periods in Japan is the period from 1630 or so to 1800. Stay tuned for that discussion, but for now it does seem that Japanese families limited the size of their families in ways that ultimately led to greater sustainability and living standards.

Most of the time in the pre-modern era, population decline means something has gone badly wrong (devastation due to natural disasters, war, disease, crop failure are some of the possible factors). In the modern era, population decline also usually suggests a failure of one sort or another (war, disease, lowered life expectancy). Low population growth as we see in East Asia is generally because of increasing urbanization, higher education levels (especially for women), delayed marriage and reproductive choices. People in East Asia are living longer and better than ever. But planners worry that fewer working hands might end this positive trend. Finding routes to higher productivity, embracing lower resource demands or living standards are some solutions, some more acceptable than others.

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Hi Folks,
Here's the line up for our four sided debate. You can choose the "role" you play (scholar, official, merchant, soldier, farmer, carpenter), including your age, gender and family status. Try to make your comments as authentic as possible. That means as appropriate to the time period (so no phone references, etc.) and to your concerns and status in society as possible. No accents. Draw on the texts wherever it makes sense, including criticizing the ideas of opposing schools.

It's about 270 bce and there's disorder across the land. War and suffering are widespread. What is the source of the trouble? What should our government and society look like, what should it do? How do we get from where we are to where we want to be? What principles do we need to follow? What policies should we implement?

Confucian
Molly, Hannah, Jennifer M, Lingjing

Mohist
Heather, Angie, Brigette, Anatastia

Daoist
Yi, Langhong, Peggy, Xiaoyuan

Legalist
Jennifer K, Yan, Betsy, Ying

You can consult a variety of sources, but most of what you need is in Chinese philosophy unit.

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Prepare by reading your school's section of the Philosophy Unit carefully. You should also at least skim the sections on your competing schools of thought.

For the debate, you and your schoolmates (fellow Confucians, Mohists, Daoists or Legalists) will need to argue in support of "your" school of thought and against those of others. Here are some of the questions we'll look at:

1. What is the basic nature of human beings? 

2. Describe the organization and conduct of an ideal society. How is it organized? What are aims of the state and how do the people and the state interact? To whom do we owe loyalty?

3. What are the core components of education in that ideal society? How are people taught? What are they taught?

4. How can we move from the society we have to the ideal one? What is to be done? 

As you prepare, try to answer the questions on pages 46-47 of the philosophy teaching guide for each of the schools.

 

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You can use Zoom via a browser or you can download a Zoom client for your phone, tablet or computer for free at https://zoom.us .

For our discussion sessions, please use this link:
https://usc.zoom.us/j/4251138455
Meeting ID: 425 113 8455
Passcode: 113167

Please turn your camera on during the discussion session. Please mute your microphone if you are not speaking.

Do not share the link. Only enrolled participants may attend.

 

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For our second discussion session (Monday, April 4, 4 pm Pacific), we'll look at Chinese philosophy and the early Chinese empire. As part of our discussion session, we'll have a debate where four schools of early Chinese thought will contend. Each participant will be a member of a school and will need to prepare for the debate.
The materials and questions for the debate are in the session 2 thread. Will you be with the Confucian, Mohist, Daoist or Legalist school? We'll sign everyone up during today's discussion session.
Session 2 videos and readings: https://china.usc.edu/k12/forums/usc-spring-2022-east-asia-origins-1800/session-2-44-early-china-chinese-philosophy

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Thanks to Yan, Bridgette and Xiaoyuan and all others who work to help students learn Chinese and other Asian languages. It is hard and vital work.

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Hi Jennifer, have a great trip. We like the flexibility online courses allow. Watch the lectures anywhere at anytime and join the discussion session from anywhere. We look forward to seeing you and everyone at 4 pm Pacific time on Monday, March 28. Log on early if you can.

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Some of you may already be members of our Teaching about Asia Facebook group. It is a private group. If you use FB, you may wish to join. We share posts related to opportunities for teachers, news items that might be good hooks for students or particular topics. Only teachers may join. The sign up is simple. Please go to: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachingaboutasia to answer one question (where and what do you teach) to apply. The latest post is about the energy crunch that Japan faces. Building managers are trying to conserve by turning off the neon signs that are so much a part of Japanese cities.

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I love the images that Jennifer and Xingyang have posted. It's great that Jennifer is able to share her own art. Not many people can introduce themselves as XYZ.

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Hi Everyone - I'm looking forward to seeing everyone via Zoom on Monday, March 28 4-5 pm PDT. That's our first discussion session.

I work with Craig at the USC U.S.-China Institute. I first lived and worked in China 1982-85. It was early in China's reform period. Echoes of the Cultural Revolution weren't too distant and in 1982 China's first UN-assisted cenus counted 1 billion people. It's stunning to think that the country has added 400 million since then. In this class we'll look at how China became a large country. 

I enjoy travel, photography and films and books. In recent years, I've become a fan of historical travelogues. I am a product of great public schools and have tremendous respect for the work teachers do to equip students for what will almost certainly be a more interconnected future.

 

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I didn't know about Katsura Niyō (Japanese name order, surname first) or rakugo until today's New York Times article (click the link below to read a pdf version) about her and how she's broken barriers, but it turns out that Australian academic M.W. Shores wrote about her and about the cracking of the rakugo gender barrier a couple of weeks ago.

Here is a video of a rakugo performance in English (turn on CC subtitles, which aren't perfect). It isn't Katsura, but may give you a feel for the style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfOcN7C1p-A

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We hosted an event with the editor and translator of Iron Moon, a book of poetry from workers. I regret that we don't have video of it. But our students conducted an interview that you may find interesting:

https://uschinatoday.org/qa/2017/06/22/qa-with-xiaoyu-qin-on-iron-moon/

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Just wanted to share two articles published in December about Chinese and Japanese senior video gamers. I'm sure they exist in South Korea too - please do share if you find an article about them.

I'm not a gamer, but perhaps tomorrow....

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Hukou is much less important than it once was in China, but it is still very important in education and health care. Some cities are now striving to recruit college grads with an entrepreneurial bent to locate in their towns. They are hukou and sometimes start up capital and more. I've attached one good history of the institution. There were historical antecedents (registration systems in Ming and Qing China tied to security or tax collection) and movement restrictions in the Soviet Union. The big push was to avoid the rise of dislocated folks in urban centers. That was largely a fear of potential unrest.

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Yasukuni is a shrine to Japan's war dead from the Meiji to the Hirohito era. I've attached a 2003 article by John Nelson about the shrine and social memory and ritual. It was published by the Journal of Asian Studies, the journal of the leading Asian studies association in North America. A Japanese prime minister last visited in 2013. Today's LA Times carries an AP article about a group of lawmakers who visited in the past couple of days. I've attached it. I've also included links to news coverage 2013-2021 of visits and criticism of them. With Veteran's Day not long past and with the Biden's visiting the DC WW II monument this week, we know something of shared ritual and memory.

Nelson's article opens with a couple of excellent passages. I'll quote them here as part of an effort to encourage you to read further.

"For architects of citizenship and nationhood, there is no shortage of conflicts and wars from which to build modern myths about submerging individual suffering and loss to greater causes. The grief, anger, and despair of individuals can be integrated over time into collectively shared assumptions about the indebtedness of the living to their heroic compatriots and ancestors. To remember these conflicts and those who (depending on the political context) either "lost" or "gave" their lives has been throughout recent history a viral act of citizenship, both "affirming the community at large and asserting its moral character" (Winter 1995, 85). Certainly from an American perspective, national identity remains "inexorably intertwined with the commemoration and memory of past wars" (Piehler 1995, 3). This observation applies even more intensely elsewhere in the world (e.g., Russia, China, France, Japan) where the loss of combatant and civilian life has been far greater.

"Victory in a war makes one's personal loss resonate more easily with master narratives concerning patriotism, righteousness, and the value of sacrifice to the nation. What happens, however, to deeply instilled cultural epistemologies when the nation's noble cause-perhaps having claimed the life of one's own father, brother, or relative-goes down in defeat? Goals and policies that were once thought to be guided by destiny are revealed to be little more than resource-grabbing colonization wrought by rapacious military force and terror. Does this now mean the participants' suffering and death was for nothing or, according to postwar international tribunals, for a criminal cause? How are they, as well as the leaders, policies, laws, and cultural values responsible for their deaths and accompanying misery, to be remembered and reconciled?

"Enter social memory upon the floodlit stage of commemorative politics."

2013 Ariang : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYA1BU_H8d8
2013 Financial Times (Britain based private newspaper) includes video of Abe speaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVu8ayG-IIg
2020 CGTN (Chinese state television): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVjuYfb1Wv4
2021 Kyodo (private, Japan based news service): https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/12/5957c027ecc3-cross-party-group-of-japan-lawmakers-visits-war-linked-yasukuni.html
2021 Ariang (South Korean government funded): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYA1BU_H8d8
2021 South China Morning Post (Hong Kong-based, Alibaba owned): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5G9bqD9xPM
 

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