Wind is a familiar and unfamiliar concept in historical research. We can understand it as a certain conventional custom, or as a tacit tendency of the intellectual class to extract from it. Or is it the consensus and concept that everyone has silently condensed in society, politics and economy in the trend. Liu Xianqiao, a modern Sichuan historian, summed up the grasp of trends and trends in historical research as "the beginning and end of viewing facts, entering also; Observe the change of wind situation, out of also. And grasping this trend buried beneath the surface of history has also become an untiring effort for historians. Because in addition to our familiar political history and economic explanations as a superstructure, this grasp of "wind" can reflect the trend of transformation of the entire society and the choice to explain the collective psychology.
Customs and Historical View, by Mio Kishimoto, translated by Liang Minling and Mao Yike, Guangxi Normal University Press, June 2022.
Mio Kishimoto is a heavyweight scholar of Japanese Ming and Qing dynasty history. In her recently published book Customs and Historical View, she reflects her keen and precise understanding of the changes in customs and order in modern China. In this collection, although the themes are scattered among the various themes that Kishimoto has devoted herself to over the years, it is not difficult for the meticulous reader to find her consistent thinking: how to substitute the perspective of people in history to find the sound of the place and the transient? And how can the various changes and challenges that have occurred in modern China rethink their significance through the perspective of regional society, the East Asian world and world history? And how does this meaning radiate to the world we live in today? For Kishimoto's research, we can see the profound influence of the Annales School and Japanese postwar historiography, and more importantly, this extraterritorial and transcendent perspective of specific regions and countries often allows us to understand the continuity and change of history from a new perspective on the concept of taking it for granted and not thinking about it.
Written by | Xi Miu
Professor Mio Kishimoto is a representative figure in the field of Japanese Ming and Qing dynasty history, and a participant, leader and critic of the famous academic movement "Regional Sociology", focusing on the concept of order in regional society. At the same time, he also made pioneering contributions in the fields of price economy and information transmission in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and has compiled and authored dozens of books and dozens of papers.
Mio Kishimoto, born in 1952, is a native of Tokyo. Japanese historian, known for his research on the social and economic history of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Tokyo, taught at the University of Tokyo and Ochanomizu University, and is currently an Emeritus Professor at Ochanomizu University and a researcher at Toyo Bunko, a public foundation. His main works include "Price and Economic Fluctuations in Qing Dynasty China" (Japanese edition, 1997, Chinese edition 2010), "Basic Issues in the History of the Ming and Qing Dynasties" (co-author), "The Ming and Qing Dynasties and Jiangnan Society" (1999, the following are all Japanese editions), "China and the Modern East Asia in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties" (2021), "A Collection of Ming and Qing Dynasty History" (all 4 volumes, 2012-2021), etc.
For such an important and prolific scholar, there are not many systematic translations in China. If you do not count the suspension of translation of "The Ming and Qing Dynasties and Jiangnan Society", then this "Customs and Historical View" is only Professor Kishimoto's second monograph that has been systematically translated. It has been a full twelve years since the first translation, "Prices and Economic Fluctuations in Qing Dynasty China", which has set off a huge response in academic circles. This is a long-awaited expectation, and it is also an echo that will never be forgotten. For first-time readers, before reading this magnum opus, you may be able to do a brief understanding of the relevant academic background.
The wind started in the seventies
Professor Kishimoto spent more than 20 years of his academic career at the University of Tokyo. Tokyo University is an important center for the study of Chinese economic history, and economic history giants such as Shioya Wen and Kato Hiroshi were born here. Initially, however, there were no teachers of economic history at Tokyo University, until Mr. Masatoshi Tanaka was invited from Yokohama City University to begin this academic tradition. Under the influence of Professor Tanaka, many scholars of social and economic history have emerged, such as Takeshi Hamashita, who is known for his "Asian tributary system," Atsutoshi Hamajima, who focuses on grassroots social research, and Mio Kishimoto.
The influence of the campus on personal academic style is still relatively obvious among scholars in the last century. Another equally well-known scholar of Ming and Qing dynasty history, Professor Kazuko Ono, is quite different from Professor Kishimoto. Professor Ono came from Kyoto University, which attached great importance to ideological and political studies, and studied under Mr. Kenji Shimada, a master of intellectual history, and contributed seminal works on political ideology such as "Ming Season Party Social Examination".
If the campus is regarded as the "native family" of scholars, then the academic trend of the same era is the "growth environment" that affects scholars' research.
"Ming Season Party Social Examination", Kazuko Ono, translated by Li Qing and Zhang Rongmei, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, November 2013.
The seventies and eighties of the last century were the beginning of Professor Kishimoto's teaching, and it was also a critical period for the transformation of the academic paradigm of Japanese Ming and Qing dynasty history. At that time, the study of Japanese Ming and Qing dynasty history was facing the pressure of a difficult transition from the traditional Marxist historiography model to the study of "regional sociology".
Initially, in Japan's postwar history circles, Marxist historiography advocated by leftist scholars dominated the mainstream. At that time, the "five forms" theory advocated by Marx was applied to the study of Chinese history, mainly studying the relationship between productive forces or the evolution of national social forms. Marx's study of historical forms is based on Western Europe, and when borrowing paradigms, it brings with it the concept of "feudal hierarchy". To put it simply, it is mentioned in middle school textbooks that "my vassal's vassal, not my vassal." In the concept of hierarchical governance, the theory of separating the "state" as the upper class from the lower "society" is extended, which is the saying that most people now "the imperial power does not go down to the county". Since the "state" does not directly manage "society", then who does? The "squire"/"gentleman" who assumes the role of local grassroots social manager is highlighted. The "squire theory", which mainly studies how the squire controls the land and the local grassroots, has gradually become the mainstream paradigm in the context of leftist historiography. Therefore, scholars who studied squire/gentleman's topics earlier, such as Fei Xiaotong and Zhang Zhongli in China, or Japanese scholars Negishi and Sano Gaku, etc., have more or less academic backgrounds in Western scholarship or Marxist studies.
So why the academic transformation in the seventies? Obviously, this mode of thinking, which simply divides a single community into three levels, state-squire-society, is becoming more and more difficult to explain the many complex historical events that are constantly being uncovered. When Professor Kishimoto recalled that when he was studying, he had a vague feeling that "the state of research at that time seemed to have reached a dead end."
Ming Dynasty Songyang Stone Cang Contract.
If it is said that Japanese scholars introduced a large number of Marxist historiography after World War II, it brought a new wind of international perspective to the rightist historiography before the war. After an idea occupies the mainstream for a long time, it is bound to face new difficulties.
Just as games need to be iterative, games need to be updated with rules, academic research needs to introduce new paradigms. The new paradigm at that time was the "regional social theory" advocated by Mr. Mori, which is "a regional 'field' (place) integrated by the guidance of a common director (or guidance group) under the common social order."
Masao Mori moves his perspective from abstract class identities to living parts, individuals, and small groups. It brought a strong academic impact and attracted a large number of scholars, including Professor Kishimoto. This trend of being born from Marxist historiography also occurred in the domestic Ming and Qing dynasty historiography. Since the eighties, the research trend of social history or socio-economic history has been emphasized downward.
Masao Mori is a professor at Nagoya University and Aichi Prefectural University, and has served as Minister of Literature and Vice President of Nagoya University and President of Aichi Prefectural University. He is good at the study of social and economic history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially focusing on the land system and taxation system.
Almost simultaneously in the seventies and eighties, the two neighboring historical powers, China and Japan, carried out a downward academic transformation on the basis of Marxist historiography. (Using the "discourse" of modern Internet society to explain this academic history is to "review" the existing "ecology", carry out "decentralized" "methodological" changes, explore the "sinking" groups in society, strengthen "resource tilting" to the "underlying logic", and "re-empower" the "critical path".) ）
Walk among giant trees
The reason why it takes a lot of ink to describe these academic backgrounds. In order to make it easier to understand, Professor Kishimoto chose to write "Customs and Historical View".
From the perspective of new readers, this book with a broad perspective is too rich in elements. The title alone contains five key words: customs, historical views, the Ming and Qing dynasties, China and the world. Judging from the content of the whole book, it also includes more than a dozen research elements such as customs, identity, communication tools, characteristics of the times, etiquette, and chaos. Professor Kishimoto's unhurried tone makes the text less obscure and difficult to read, but such a large element can still weaken the relevance between different chapters. What really challenges readers is the author's broad vision and depth of topics, which requires readers to have strong reading ability, and even patience to read carefully for several days.
It's just that when you finish reading and close the book, every reader will be difficult to calm down, and these words have an impact on the depths of thought.
At the beginning of the book, Professor Kishimoto chooses two discussions about historical eras as a starting point.
The two sections are mutually expressive, discussing the role of Ming and Qing China in internal and external historical time, forming a clever intertext. The question presupposed in "Recent Situation of the "Theory of the Division of Eras" is whether historical China and other regions of the same era can outline similar characteristics of the era. And in "Development or Fluctuation? On the basis of not destroying linear time, the author hopes to reinterpret the traditional China since the Song and Yuan dynasties, and whether the relationship between modern China and modern China is interrupted or continued?
"Prices and Economic Fluctuations in Qing Dynasty China", by Mio Kishimoto, translated by Liu Dirui, Social Sciences Academic Press, April 2010.
In the first chapter, Professor Kishimoto proposed that the overall characteristic of the Ming and Qing dynasties was a "semi-open state," which he defined as "a world that is not completely self-contained, with looseness inside, multiplicity, and cracking that breeds when it comes into contact with the outside." This "semi-open" world concept cleverly reconciles the regional isolation of the traditional Wallerstein system with the open development model of the emerging Great Divergence. This concept continues to Chapter 2, using this state of commonality to examine China's own epochal distinction, and finally achieve the research purpose and practical concern, that is, the regional society represented by Ming and Qing China, "how to deal with civil disputes and religious disputes to create a stable and fair national order", and on this basis, "respond to the globalized economy to achieve economic prosperity".
The question of "order" raised in the first two chapters is the hidden theme in Professor Kishimoto's book, and through the discussion of "order", he enters the exploration of the "whole" of the era, which constitutes the ordering structure of the later chapters.
In the second part, three articles related to the order of social concepts are listed in succession, and the social style of the era is glimpsed: ""Customs" and Historical View", "The Utility of Business Cards" (referred to as "Business Cards"), and ""Old Master" and "Xianggong". The selection of these three articles is very interesting, because they all use history as a background stage to observe the personal conceptual order, which is summarized simply: How do people in history know themselves? How did people in history introduce themselves? How did people in history understand their place in society?
The reason why I want to say that the three chapters of the second part are the expansion of the two chapters of the first part is that the author discusses the order of social concepts, hoping to use the reproduction of the original social scene to strip away the position of the researcher, so that history can "speak" on its own.
This emphasis on the voice of history is more evident in Chapter 6, "The Rise of "China". Professor Kishimoto, through his reflections on the phenomenon of "raising heads" in the typesetting of ancient books, and through the subtle changes in the word "China" in the typesetting, he asked an interesting question, when did "China" become synonymous with the concept of "country" in Chinese minds. Through the establishment of the concept of the state, the next two chapters discuss the way of national identity in the face of violence and the ideal model of the state in multi-ethnic rule.
Similarly, the author's thesis paradigm in this chapter opens up new perspectives to discuss the commonalities of the times outside the traditional framework. For example, in the study of violence in Chapter 7, the traditional Marxist historiography focuses on the downward violence of state institutions and gentry groups to the scope of violence inflicted on the gentry by state institutions and gentry groups, hoping to elevate this contradiction of ethnic antagonism to social culture. The following eleventh chapter is actually a continuation of this discussion, replacing the perceivers of social stability and turmoil with those who participate in the essence of history with historians separated by time and space.
Chapter 8, on the historical status of the Qing state in the 18th century, abandons the previous perspective of comparing China and the West, and focuses on the world that Yongzheng hoped to build as a ruler and the sense of gap between the actual presentation effect. The discussion in the following chapter 12 is also an analysis of complex historical images. The "actuality" and "reality" discussed in Chapter 12 are, in layman's terms, the author asking what is the "should" and "for" of history, or "reality" and "origin." This means that the writer cites the gap between Yongzheng's self-pro-presentation and practice, which constitutes his shaping of the times and the final appearance of the times. It's just that these two are entangled in a limited historical time and space. Until new ideas and practices emerge, old contradictions and entanglements will gradually fade or merge into new relationships.
The four-year edict of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty.
Similarly, this social dilemma can also be used to understand that historians emerge in reality the need to perceive history, and in the process of restoring history, they have a desire to influence reality, and the entanglement of these two personal dilemmas also appears in the understanding of historians and academic thought.
After the reader gradually enters the overall atmosphere of the times, the author arranges the relatively difficult chapters of the ninth and eleventh chapters in the fourth part, discussing the ownership of the means of production and the standards of judicial adjudication respectively. It is the hardest because the authors challenge existing research traditions in both chapters. Chapter 9 is a study of land ownership, which includes personal ownership. This extensive discussion of ownership, in addition to the appropriation of the means of production, leads to an understanding of the dignity and freedom of the "human person" and explores the commonality of this concept of freedom in different cultural regions. Chapter 10 introduces the perspective of judicial discretion in the discussion of judicial provisions and jurisprudence. The "propriety", "contract" and "survival" proposed by the author correspond exactly to the "reason", "law" and "feeling" in the traditional understanding. The concept of "equity" proposed by the author is not esoteric, and is still discussing the relationship between fairness and the rule of law embodied in the right to adjudicate. It seems that the author is challenging the previous construction of the Chinese legal tradition, but in fact it is a powerful supplement from the internal substantive operating standards.
It can be seen that traditional Marxism and emerging regional studies are like two giant trees, intertwined with mottled shadows. The problem of order is that when Professor Kishimoto walked through the giant trees, he found his own unique research path.
Holism and mysticism
Reading through the book, in addition to admiring the author's great thoughts, I also gained a deeper understanding of Japan's close academic community through a large number of academic history discussions selected by the author. It is almost impossible to see a book in China that spends a lot of space discussing academic concepts common to the academic community, even the study of the history of history, it is difficult to present it so completely and intricately. Maybe everyone does not resist arguing, but resisting the presentation and face of the truth.
Of course, even the most perfect work will have some regrets. Just like Zhu Zi failed to revise "Family Rites", Tan Qian lost the original "Guoqiao", and Tian Yuqing did not make up "Wen Yu and Jiangzhou". The author's main theme is biased towards comparative history, focusing on the common characteristics of his contemporaries. Such a perspective setting will inevitably cause some deviations in the understanding of some regions that are at different stages of development although they are contemporaries.
《Daimyo Kaigen》.
For example, in the chapter "Business Cards", the author's practical concern is the very different attitude towards business cards between China and Japan: China has a long history of using business cards and rich styles, but it is not very popular in modern society. Although Japan has a short tradition, it is used in a huge way, and even has the mentality of giving it away as soon as it is printed. This phenomenon may not be a simple contemporaneous difference, but a result of complex social structural differences. For example, the difference in the proportion of users. The ancient Chinese warriors possessed the main resources in society, but they were not the main group. Taking the Ming Dynasty as an example, Gu Yanwu in the late Ming Dynasty once estimated that the number of students in the country reached 500,000 at most. Even if the number of families is added, these gentlemen are still an absolute minority compared with the 60 million people of the late Ming Dynasty. Such a population ratio is obviously not as high as the proportion of the population that Japan has continuously absorbed and created in the process of modernization in the past hundred years. From the perspective of the social functionality represented by business cards, there is often a tendency to modernize, or where commercialization is deeper. Japan's "Great Merger of Municipalities" and the establishment of metropolitan cities in recent years have led to an urbanization rate of a staggering 93%; After decades of rapid development, China's urbanization rate is still hovering around 560 percent. Differences in the foundation of urban development will also affect differences in social means. Another point is the difference between the individual and the social relationship. Even in the countryside and small cities of modern China, a certain clan size has always been maintained; In Japanese society, the degree of family atomization is even higher. Social interaction based on clans, relatives and friends, and social interaction based on strangers will also have different degrees of dependence on intuitive means such as business cards.
Gu Ting Lin Temple of Baoguo Temple, Beijing.
The reason for the deep and thoughtful demand for "Business Card" is also to explore a phenomenon, that is, when the role of the author appears in academic research, it will present a complex impact on thinking and writing. First of all, whether the historical time of a single line can be used as a measure of the scope of social development seems to still be considered, whether it is a multiple-line, multi-line or clumpy concept of time, it should be used as a reference frame. Second, when scholars try to make the source material "speak for itself," or "go back to the scene of history," is it an overly mystical depiction? After all, such narratives are somewhat reminiscent of stories such as the scholastic philosopher Aquinas' claim that he heard God's voice, or stories like Wang Xun of the Western Jin Dynasty dreaming of "a large pen like a rafter." Of course, most of the research begins, as Professor Kishimoto describes, "I don't know my awareness of the problem or position in advance, so it's the general situation." But when this mystical narrative rises, and some kind of self-suggestion emerges, it becomes doubtful whether history can still be called science. According to the law of realistic creation, among authors and readers, they can often only choose one identity role.
The history of the Ming and Qing dynasties towards consensus
On the whole, the author takes an all-encompassing posture of encompassing a large number of order phenomena in Ming and Qing dynasty societies, as well as historians' thinking on these orders. If you really want to say that there is something incomprehensible in the whole book, perhaps in the part of the historical view. Professor Kishimoto places the part of the academic community over the past few decades, the part of the theoretical debate that has been most intense, at the beginning of the work. This setting is basically consistent with Mr. Zengyuan Longfu's famous work "Society and State in Ancient China" that she admires. In addition to paying tribute, it may be a hope to continue the vitality of the debate.
The academic style of uniting the community through debate, which continues to be continued by Japanese scholars, is very different from that in China. In recent years, in the important works of the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, there are few fierce debates about the theoretical line.
"Ming Taizu Imperial System Commandment".
It is true that in recent years, domestic academia has placed more and more emphasis on "autonomy" and "uniqueness". This kind of autonomy and uniqueness may form a certain force to lift the historical writing of the past from the quagmire of "dyeing vat", "servility" and "insensitivity", so that the nation can restore self-confidence and stand proudly in the world. In addition to the prosperous and clean sound, there may still be a force to retain a certain "stubborn bass" and seek consensus with the academic bodies of various countries and regions. Just as everyone often mentions the word "harmony and difference" this year, then in addition to pursuing "difference", there should also be some strength to pursue "harmony" between different academic bodies.
The academic circles of China and Japan once condensed into similar academic bonds based on their common admiration for Marxist historiography; It is also because of the downward admiration of the perspective that a research paradigm of mutual understanding is derived. However, from the era of Mr. Masatoshi Tanaka to the era of Professor Mio Kishimoto, exchanges between Chinese and Japanese academia have become more and more frequent, but there have been more and more differences in academic forms. How to seek mutual "harmony" in the future academic development and let the academic body find new commonly recognized values still requires some kind of stubborn efforts.
This year is the life of Professor Kishimoto, but she has not stopped, and she has always maintained her curiosity and creativity, and pondered the issue of order in a broad perspective. This translation can be regarded as a tribute to the translator or the entire Chinese academic community. However, if readers can also make a wish, then I hope to urge the translation of "The Ming and Qing Dynasties and Jiangnan Society" to start again as soon as possible.
Written by/Xi Miu
Editor/Zhu Tianyuan
Proofreader/Xue Jingning