East Asia’s Cultural Image in a Comparative Frame
7.1 Theoretical Setting
7.1.1 Objective
Part I of this dissertation focuses on the formulation of Rabindranath Tagore’s East-West paradigm, which demonstrates both his resistance to ostensible Western superiority and his inheritance of Western imagination.
Parts II and III contextualize Tagore in modern intellectual histories of Japan and China, revealing how Tagore’s Asian project was received in the East per se.
This final part takes a broader view of how China, Japan, and India—three of the main Asian actors—have been characterized in modern world historical narratives. Chapter 7 starts with an analysis of the contrasting images of China and Japan in a theoretical framework of world history, that is, the “axial age theory.” Currently prevalent in academia, however, the theory presumes the supremacy of a Western mode of modernity, which leads to very different characterizations (and even evaluations) of China and Japan in the framework.
Following the highly theoretical exploration, Chapter 8 examines different kinds of world historical narratives during the modern era. As will be demonstrated, West-centricity poses as a paradigm to attach to or rebel against in those narratives.
With increased interaction between the East and West since the end of the 19th century, how to define and delineate “East Asia” on the cultural, political, and economic map of the world has become an imperative issue of mutual recognition and self-identity. This chapter focuses on the paradigm of “axial age civilizations” to examine an image of China that has been constructed on a theoretical level since the first half of the 20th century. This image is illustrative in two senses: first, it originated in a specific intellectual milieu and with concomitant motives; second, this cultural image of China appears biased when compared with that of Japan constructed within the same frame. The first purpose of this chapter is to examine the content and politics of the axial age theory to explicate this bias; the second purpose is to modify the model and adapt it to East Asia as a counterpart to an overarching West.
The term “axial age” was coined by Karl Jaspers in The Origin and Purpose of History published in 1949, which expounds that mutually independent spiritual breakthroughs occurred from 800 BCE to 200 BCE in China, India, Greece, Israel, and Persia. Such breakthroughs not only left an indelible impact on each civilization, but also, as some scholars argue, shaped each culture’s approach towards modernity.1 Simple as it seems, this statement is historically conditioned and theoretically premised. Before articulating the theory and its characterization of China and Japan, the notion of “East Asia” must be explored as its complexity defies any simplistic attempt to parallel great traditions or to generalize transnational cultures.
7.1.2 East Asia as a Research Paradigm
In the field of East Asian cultural interaction studies, the assumption is held that study of historical cultural exchange among East Asian members should not be confined to “regional studies” that became institutionalized in Western academia, especially in the second half of the 20th century. Rather, the new discipline emphasizes construction of a historically verifiable, geographically facilitated community that has been propelled by a momentum towards a common cultural manifestation with critical local differences. This construction of regional history provides a solid ground for the project of a new world history that is to be understood in the spirit of cultural dialogue and in the context of globalization. More importantly, as a paradigm for the study of regional history, the notion of East Asia assumes a special role in the task of de-Westernization, which is gradually gaining prevalence in contemporary academic circles. On the one hand, East Asian countries have developed sui generis traditions that are not necessarily compatible with Western historical experiences and the theories derived therefrom. On the other hand, from a more practical view, although the modern history of East Asia has been strongly shaped by Western impact, most of its domain was not subject to the colonial rule of Western powers, and the tenacity and flexibility of some of East Asia’s
1 Jaspers attributed the axial age breakthroughs occurring in many parts of the world to some central figures: in China, Confucius, Laozi, and all other philosophical schools; in India, interpreters of the Upanishads and Buddha; in Iran, Zoroaster; in Palestine, the prophets; in Greece, Homer, and the great philosophers, and the great tragedians. All of these figures emerged almost simultaneously in each region without knowledge of each other’s existence.
See Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, p.2. Jaspers’ list seems to be longer than what is widely acknowledged.
traditional thinking and behavioral modes are still visible today. This phenomenon facilitates the possibility of reinvigoration and the potential to transform long-dominant Western values.
However, there must be critical awareness that “East Asia” is a rather artificial notion. Whatever geographical or cultural bonds East Asian countries might share historically, it has been argued that the slogan of East Asia became coextensive with anti-Western rhetoric in China, Korea, and especially in Japan in the early 20th century, as Koyasu Nobukuni 子安宣邦 comments:
“East Asia” is by no means a self-evident geographical concept, but one which is endowed with strong historicity. It was constructed in the 1920s by imperial Japan as a cultural-geographical idea.2
In other words, the notion of East Asia, being an idea of space assuming some shared legacies among its members, also came to embody a strong sense of
“modernity,” which is a concept of time. It is this temporal dimension that complicates the question of legitimacy of East Asia as a entity, for history demonstrates that its two main actors, China and Japan, have had very different experiences in the pursuit of modernity despite the cultural bond between the two countries. Given the limited space, only China and Japan will be discussed in this chapter, with Korea and Vietnam being excluded.3 But later argument will justify that the idea of East Asia—conventionally called the Sinocentric world—becomes both prominent and problematic because of Japan’s continual emulation of and challenge to the Chinese axis. In view of the contrasting experiences of modernization between China and Japan, any assumption about East Asia is in need of fundamental examination, or it will merely include regional countries without synthesizing their context-specific dynamics in history. Nevertheless, any attempt at synthesis might also risk oversimplification when the focus is modernity, for this idea is extraneous to East Asian cultures but tends to constitute a teleological process in contemporary narratives.
2 Koyasu Nobukuni, “Ajia” wa dō katararetekita ka: kindai Nihon no orientarizumu 「アジ ア」はどう語られてきたか―近代日本のオリエンタリズム (How “Asia” has been Narrated:
Orientalism in Modern Japan) (Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2003), pp.177-178.
3 While India is not conventionally included in the discussions on East Asia, the importance of Indian civilization in the making of an “East Asian cultural circle” will be touched upon in the last section.
Critically, the spatial dimension of East Asia becomes prominent when its temporal dimension—expressed in terms of responses to Western modernity—is taken into consideration. Such intertwining of spatiality and temporality, however, is embedded and almost naturalized in much of the discourse on East Asia. For instance, in East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, the authors begin their narrative with the following statement:
Our story divides naturally into two major phases: the evolution of traditional East Asian civilization in relative isolation over three thousand years, and the upheavals and transformation of that civilization in recent times partly in response to contact with the modern Western world.4
To paraphrase this statement figuratively, while East Asia and the West can be generally considered as two separate spheres of culture and life, the boundaries of the former, an area remarkable for its illustrious tradition, became necessary when threatened by the latter, which has embodied the momentum of world history since the modern era. These seemingly unbridgeable dichotomies between tradition and modernity, and East and West, find clear expression in the axial age theory. This is not particularly surprising as both of the ideas—East Asia in the modern sense and the axial age—received conceptual forms roughly at the same time and were guided by similar considerations. Therefore, while this theory provides a comparative frame in which different civilizations can be characterized in terms of common criteria and evaluated in relation to each other, it shares some ideological assumptions with most discourses produced from the early 20th century, which have equated the idea of East Asia or the East with past glory vis-à-vis an evolving West.
7.1.3 China on the Axis versus Japan near the Axis
As mentioned above, “axial age” appeared as a theoretical term in 1949 in Karl Jaspers’ work. However, the importance of this historical period had already been recognized by Max Weber (1864-1920) in his comparative study of world religions (this lineage will be detailed later). Yu Ying-shih also points out
4 John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig, East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, Revised Edition, p.3.
that the Chinese scholar and poet, Wen Yiduo 聞一多 (1899-1946), had noted in a 1943 article the almost simultaneous awakening of literary creativity in China, India, Israel, and Greece.5
Whatever the origin of the notion, the theory of axial age civilizations has been discussed extensively and has undergone critical development in recent decades. Since China constitutes one of the axes, and has long been an enormous
“other” for neighboring East Asian countries even during the turbulent 20th century, this chapter will show the distinct features of Chinese civilization characterized by this model. Significantly, what will become manifest in the coming analysis is that different interpretations of the Chinese axis tend to unwittingly at times reinforce the premises of the axial age theory. Such arguments, in brief, hail West European modernity and pay merely passing attention to the traditional achievements of non-Western civilizations. This ideology is used to depict Japan as a brilliant latecomer on the stage of world history, in sharp contrast to the stereotype of a traditionally-bound China.
Despite Japan’s history of aggression in the modern era, there is no denying that it was an active and receptive member in the historical Sinocentric system. Japanese cultural assimilation, however, was eclectic; it is not typically labeled as Confucian or Buddhist, two of the pillars of Chinese civilization.
Instead, the combination of an eclectic spirit with indigenous elements often earns Japan an epithet of “unique.” Therefore, in view of the heterogeneity between Chinese and Japanese cultures, an inevitable question emerges as to
5 Yu Ying-shih, “Zhouxin tupo he liyue chuantong” 軸心突破和禮樂傳統 (Axial Breakthrough and the Tradition of Ritual and Music), in Twenty-First Century, No.58 (Apr, 2000), pp.18.
This article has a complex history. It was first written in 1999 in English as “Between the Heavenly and the Human: An Essay on Origins of the Chinese Mind in Classical Antiquity.”
This paper was later condensed and incorporated into a 2003 collection, Confucian Spirituality, and the title was shortened to “Between the Heavenly and the Human.” The second section of the 1999 article was translated into Chinese and included in the Hong Kong based journal Twenty-First Century (April, 2000), which was reproduced in a 2007 volume published in Taiwan. The English essay was translated in its entirety into Chinese around 2010, and this new Chinese version was revised and published in Taiwan in 2012 as “Tianren zhiji: Zhongguo gudaisixiang de qiyuan shitan” 天人之際―中國古代思想的起源試探 (Between the Heavenly and the Human: An Exploration of the Origins of Ancient Chinese Thought), in Chen Jo-shui 陳 弱 水 ed., Zhongguoshi xinlun: sixiangshi fence 中 國 史 新 論 ― 思 想 史 分 冊 (New Interpretations of Chinese History: The Intellectual History Volume) (Taipei: Linking Publishing, 2012), pp.11-93. Eventually, a monograph on this topic has come out in 2014. For the purpose of this chapter, the 2000 Hong Kong source is used since other articles contained in the same forum are also referenced. For the condensed version of Yu’s English article, see Tu Wei-ming and Mary Evelyn Tucker eds., Confucian Spirituality, Volume One (New York : The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003), pp.62-80. The Chinese version reproduced in 2007 is included in Zhishiren yu Zhongguo wenhua de jiazhi 知 識 人 與 中 國 文 化 的 價值 (Intellectuals and the Value of Chinese Culture) (Taipei: China Times Press, 2007), pp.69-95.
how their different paths towards modernity developed in their own historical contexts despite the geographical proximity, and how much each country’s tradition weighed in its approach towards modernity.
One of the most interesting and unconventional efforts to probe into Japan’s uniqueness was made by the late Israeli sociologist S. N. Eisenstadt, who depicts Japanese civilization in terms of the axial age breakthrough:
The distinctiveness of Japan lies in its being the only non-Axial civilization that maintained—throughout its history, up to the modern time—a history of its own, without becoming in some way marginalized by the Axial civilizations, China and Korea, Confucianism and Buddhism, with which it was in continuous contact.6
On the other hand, Japanese civilization also “did exhibit some of the structural characteristics…that can be found in Axial Age civilization.”7 While Eisenstadt’s theory will be elaborated later, here it is sufficient to point out that the distinctness of Japanese culture lies in its quick success in modernizing, a success that, in Eisenstadt’s view, can only be achieved in those societies deriving directly from the axial civilizations. That is to say, Eisenstadt held that the two epochal changes are structurally and ideologically bound together, and that Japan forms an extraordinary case for its independence from this bond.
Methodologically speaking, Eisenstadt studied Japan’s traditions to explain its successful modernization, and this problematique obliged him to conduct research in a comparative frame: the success of Japan to transform tradition into modernity versus the lack of success of many other axial and non-axial civilizations to “complete” the transformation.8 In the following sections the general idea of the axial age theory will be explored, as well as its application to China—one of the few axial civilizations—and Japan—the most renowned non-axial civilization of prominence in the modern world. By approaching the Chinese and Japanese cases thematically, two types of
6 S. N. Eisenstadt, Japanese Civilization: A Comparative View (Chicago and London: The U of Chicago P, 1996), p.14. Here Korean culture is simplified to being subordinate to Chinese civilization.
7 S. N. Eisenstadt, Power, Structure, and Meaning: Essays in Sociological Theory and Analysis (Chicago and London: The U of Chicago P, 1995), p.27.
8 S. N. Eisenstadt, Japanese Civilization: A Comparative View, p.15.
unevenness—ideological and structural—inherent in the axial age theory will become apparent, which prevent it from becoming an effective paradigm for the comparative study of civilizations, especially in terms of a synthetic description of non-Western cultural spheres such as East Asia.
7.2 The Axial Age Breakthrough and the Chinese Case
7.2.1 Basic Characteristics of the Axial Age
Karl Jaspers’ and Benjamin Schwartz’s (1916-1999) views are representative of the essence of the axial age theory: while the former proposed the theory, the latter contributed to its dissemination in the United States.9 Furthermore, Schwartz’s specialty, Chinese intellectual history, balances Jaspers’ proposition, which was formulated in the tradition of Western philosophy.
To begin with, although the axial age civilizations followed mutually independent paths towards spiritual breakthroughs during the period from 800 BCE to 200 BCE, there was indeed a common ground:
What is new about this age…is that man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations…By consciously recognizing his limits he sets himself the highest goals. He experiences absoluteness in the depths of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence.10
This process receives Schwartz’s critical elaboration in what is now considered a classic statement of the axial age:
If there is nevertheless some common underlying impulse in all these
“axial” movements, it might be called the strain toward transcendence…a kind of standing back and looking beyond – a kind of
9 The Spring, 1975 issue of Daedalus: The Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Science (Vol.104, No.2) is dedicated to a forum of “Wisdom, Revelation, and Doubt – Perspectives on the First Millennium B.C.” Schwartz is known to be the organizer of this discussion. As noted by Yu Ying-shih, this issue brought discussion of the axial age to public attention in American academia. See Yu Ying-shih, “Zhouxin tupo he liyue chuantong,” in Twenty-First Century (Apr, 2000), pp.17.
10 Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, p.2.
critical, reflective questioning of the actual and a new vision of what lies beyond.11
In Jasper’s own terms, with crystallization of human rationality, the axial age bid farewell to the “mythical age.”12 However, Schwartz was more reserved about usage of the term for fear that “more definite concepts such as
‘individualism’ or ‘freedom’ or ‘rationality’ might involve the hasty universalization of specifically Western concepts of transcendence.”13
As mentioned in the introduction, coinage of the “axial age” by Jaspers does not mean that he was the first person to perceive the significance of this historical period. Indeed, from his examination and criticism of many different explanations of the cause of these simultaneous breakthroughs in remotely separated areas, it is evident that this issue had been thoroughly discussed prior to Jaspers’ own research; he simply readdressed the problem with his own explication. Finding no obvious evidence of mutual influences among China, India, and West Asia in ancient times, Jaspers seemed satisfied merely with discovery of the mysterious simultaneity as long as it continued inspiring research.14 Schwartz expressed a similar opinion more forcefully:
The interest of these observations does not lie primarily in the very rough “contemporaneity” of these developments or in speculations about mutual influence....What one rather senses are areas of common concern and dissatisfaction with prevailing states of affairs. Yet the search for new meanings in all these civilizations continues to be refracted through preexistent cultural orientations.15
Jaspers himself was not unaware of the heritage passed down from the previous era to the axial age. However, for him the epochal breakthroughs were so profound and radical that anything surviving the transformation seemed to show more selectivity than continuity:
11 Benjamin Schwartz, “The Age of Transcendence,” in Daedalus, Vol.104, No.2 (Spring, 1975), pp.1-7.
12 Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, pp.2-3.
13 Benjamin Schwartz, “The Age of Transcendence,” in Daedalus, Vol.104, No.2 (Spring, 1975), p.3. Schwartz’s view of the pre-axial Chinese cosmology is described in 2.2.
14 Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, p.18.
15 Benjamin Schwartz, “The Age of Transcendence,” in Daedalus, Vol.104, No.2 (Spring, 1975), p.3.
The thousands of years of old ancient civilizations are everywhere brought to an end by the Axial Period…The ancient cultures only persist in those elements which enter into the Axial Period and become part of the beginning.16
Indeed, older traditions earned continued admiration but mainly as constitutive elements of the new spirit; for satisfying the needs of the latter, the meaning of the former was subject to transmutation. Most significantly, from a long-range perspective, the axial age does not exert one-way influence but extends its impact to both ends of the time line. Spiritual awakening towards the transcendental order and self-reflectivity eventually forms a so-called sense of history, by whose standards every development before or after this axial age is measured.17 Thus Jaspers asserts that “from it world history receives the only structure and unity that has endured—at least until our own time.”18 For all later generations, “return to this beginning is the ever-recurrent event in China, India and the West.”19 This primacy of the axial age does not, of course, preclude greatness or the novelty of later achievements. However, as Schwartz concludes: “The age of which we speak established a range of thought that was to shape all future developments without predetermining them.”20
The basic concepts of the axial age theory have been outlined by comparing Jaspers’ and Schwartz’s views. This broad description naturally engenders different degrees of elaboration in accordance with different perspectives and concerns, which can be further specified as follows:
1. Context-specific relationship between preceding cultures and the axial age civilizations.
2. Rise and gradual solidification of the stratum of intellectuals who were the carriers of the transcendental view, sometimes in various versions.
3. Crystallization of transcendent views and their institutionalization.
4. Influence of axial age civilization on modernity.
16 Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, pp.6-7.
17 Ibid., p.20.
18 Ibid., p.8.
19 Ibid., p.7.
20 Benjamin Schwartz, “Transcendence in Ancient China,” in Daedalus, Vol.104, No.2 (Spring, 1975), p.68.