Bruce Lee wearing his iconic yellow track suit in “Game of Death.”

 

Introduction

Welcome to our final discussion of the “History of East Asian Martial Arts.”  This series follows the readings being used in Prof. TJ Hinrichs’ undergraduate course of the same name at Cornell University.  This is a great opportunity for readers looking to upgrade their understanding of Martial Arts Studies.  We got a little distracted with our ongoing series of guest posts discussing the impact of COVID-19 on the martial arts community over the last few weeks. However, I am eager to return to this subject and provide some final thoughts on what we have learned, both about martial arts and online teaching, over the course of a semester.

While this series of posts has introduced the readings one week at a time, a number of you have expressed interest in seeing the original syllabus in its entirety.  Now that the class has finished I will share that at the end of this post.  Please note that I will be sharing the original syllabus rather than the more abbreviated readings and lecture list that was generated for the students who were working from home during the COVID-19 crisis.

While the readings to this point have really focused on the development of the modern martial arts in an East Asian context, the current unit shifts gears and instead asks about their reception in the West.  As Bowman and others have argued, it is impossible to plumb the depths of this topic without examining the ways that both print and visual media have translated and transformed these systems.  In some cases, this has resulted in the creation of hybrid global communities.  In others the end result has been more of a process of localization and appropriation resulting in a disjoint or break from the original network of practitioners. In all cases the transmission of these fighting arts reveals something important about the types of globalization that shaped the post-war 20th century and the struggles of Western citizens to find new ways to construct community and affirm their identities.

 

  1. MODERNIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE POLITICS OF FILM

 

Week 12: Wuxia Literature and Movies

What is modern about martial arts novels and movies? In what ways have they engaged with the particular problems of modernization of the Chinese and Sinophone worlds?

  • Petrus Liu, “The Vicissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism,” Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History, (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Program, 2011), 21-60.
  • ZHANG Zhen, “The Anarchic Body Language of the Martial Arts Film,” An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896-1937, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) 199-243.

 

*Movie night: “Seven Samurai”

 

Week 13: Jidai geki and Samurai Film      

In what ways did the films “Chūshingura” and “Seven Samurai” revise pre-1945 narratives of samurai and bushido? In what ways did these films speak to postwar sentiments?

  • Henry D. Smith, “The Capacity of Chūshingura: Three Hundred Years of Chūshingura,” Monumenta Nipponica1 (Spring 2003):1-8, 25-42.
  • Mitsuhiro YOSHIMOTO, “Seven Samurai,” Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 205-245.

 

* Movie night: “Fist of Fury” (Jingwumen)

 

Week 14: The Politics of Bruce Lee            

In what ways have kung fu films contributed to shaping the globalization of East Asian martial arts practice? What have been the significance of kung fu films in general, and of Bruce Lee’s films in particular, for global political movements of the 1960s-2010s?

  • T. Kato, “Kung Fu Cultural Revolution and Japanese Imperialism,” From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 9-38.
  • Vijay Prashad, “Bruce Lee and the Anti-imperialism of Kung Fu: A Polycultural Adventure,” positions: east asia cultures critique1 (Spring 2003):51-90.
  • Martha Burr and Mei-Juin Chen, “Black Kung Fu Experience,” San Francisco: Kanopy Streaming, 2014. http://www.kanopystreaming.com/node/122773 (approx. 57 minutes)
  • “Hong Kong protests embrace Bruce Lee but reject Jackie Chan in tale of two martial arts heroes,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), June 30, 2019: 4;  Accessed August 8, 2019.

 

 

Notes on the Readings (and Films)

As we think about possible readings for this unit, we are presented with an embarrassment of riches. Scholars in both cultural and film studies have been very active within Martial Arts Studies over the past several years. One suspects that it would be entirely possible to teach a class focusing solely of media representation of Asian martial arts over the decades and still not plumb the depths of this material.

Starting off with Wuxia, or swordsmen novels, makes sense as during the late 19th and early 20th century these books shaped the image of martial arts within the Chinese imagination. They had a huge impact on the production of the first radio dramas and later the development of the Hong Kong film industry.

Petrus Liu’s Stateless Subjects is a strong start, and given that he completed this work while a visiting scholar at Cornell, it pretty much has to be on our syllabus.  However, the first two chapters of Paper Swordsmen by John Christopher Hamm is also essential reading as it lays out the deep cultural foundations for the types of genre storytelling that would later shape China’s martial arts films. While a relatively quick read those chapters would make my short list of material to include in any discussion of Wuxia. Sadly, this week had to be dropped because of last minute changes to the schedule due to COVID-19. Yet both Liu and Hamm bring a lot to the table.

Next up is movie night!  This year the films were placed on electronic reserve at the library, but the standard operating procedure is to screen them for the group in-person on campus or in a local house.  It is typically one of the highlights of the semester and the two selections this year were Seven Samurai and Fists of Fury.  It goes without saying that both are classics and they were used to set up the concluding discussions of samurai and kung fu films in Western popular culture. I noted that the students did benefit, however, from a straightforward discussion of where these sorts of films were originally screened in the 1970s (art house versus grind theaters) and the way that this played into the social perception and adoption of newly globalizing arts such as Aikido and Hung Gar.

I have never really looked into the post-war Japanese film industry so I don’t have much to offer on either of the suggested readings.  However, when it came to the week on Bruce Lee I was struck with how dated Kato’s From Kung Fu to Hip Hop now seems.  I recall reading this book when I first became interested in the globalization of Chinese martial arts as it was then one of the first academic works that addresses that subject.  Still, the field has moved on and I am not sure I would use this book in an undergraduate course. Our understanding of the Chinese martial arts is vastly improved on a purely factual level from when this work was written, and authors like Paul Bowman and Luke White (to name just two examples) have advanced the state of the theoretical discussion of these films far beyond what it was in 2007.  While an important foundational text, any of Bowman or White’s chapters on Bruce Lee, or the reception of Chinese cinema more generally, might be more helpful for undergrads today.

In contrast, the students responded very positively to the piece by Vijay Prashad.  Finally, Martha Burr and Mei-Juin Chen’s documentary “Black Kung Fu Experience” proved to be the perfect note on which to end the class.  While speaking directly to the global spread of the Asian martial art, this film also addresses many of the core questions that were introduced in the opening weeks of the semester.  The students found it to be both eye-opening and surprisingly moving.

 

Discussion Questions

  1. What new geopolitical and social problems did twentieth and twenty-first century martial arts literature and film grapple with?
  2. What new historical dynamics did mass media and mass movements introduce to the practice of martial arts?
  3. Why (and how) did samurai and kung fu films often appeal to different viewers in the West?
  4. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are both notable for their surprising longevity as global superstars. What is similar and what is different about their representations of kung fu? In what way is the vision of China in Jackie Chan’s more recent films different from the classic troupes of Hong Kong kung fu filmmaking?

 

 

Virtual Instruction in Martial Arts Studies: Possibilities and Limitations

The final week of any course is a time of evaluation and taking stock.  For the students this comes in the form of a final exam, yet the process is equally important for the professors. As we grade examines, review various forms of student feedback and think back over the semester, most of us are already considering how we will present the material next time.

All in all, the History of East Asian Martial Arts proved to be a successful and popular class.  Yet it was also disrupted by the evacuation of the campus and the transition to a real-time online format.  While we could certainly address a range of overarching theoretical themes that ran throughout our readings, none of them will have impacted the lives of these students as much as this fundamental reordering of the educational process.

Over the course of the last two decades all sorts of departments in the humanities and the social sciences have been encouraged to move more of their learning and instruction online.  In some cases this has been very successful, allowing students from around the world to access professors and discussions that might otherwise remain closed.  Older and non-traditional students (and anyone who is doing course work while trying to hold down a full time job) have been some of the biggest winners of this trend as remote learning offers them the flexibility that they need to juggle the demands of work, family and school.

Other trends have been less encouraging. In many departments online courses are being offered by poorly paid adjunct professors or graduate students with minimal supervision. The quality of some of this instruction is uneven. It has also allowed University administrators to hire fewer tenure track, full-time, faculty members as they come to rely more and more on cheap part time instructors to provide a greater percentage of their student credit hours. One might actually make a convincing argument that the transition to the “gig economy” was pioneered on university campuses decades ago.

I don’t think that there is any doubt that we are going to see more online teaching in the future.  That trends was already clearly established before COVID-19.  The increased financial pressure being felt by both public and private universities will only accelerate what was already under way.  But what lessons should we take away from our recent, and radical, experiments in the virtual classroom?

Let’s start with the good. It turns out that our preexisting infrastructure and software was, in most cases, capable to handling an unexpected task.  While the move to virtual instruction was unsuccessful in rural areas without access to highspeed data networks, in general applications like Zoom were able to bear a burden that they clearly were not designed for.  Many of the more interactive trends in current classroom teaching (such as the extensive use of breakout groups, student voting and multi-media presentations) could also be replicated in the on-line class room.  In some cases (such as the creation of units for in-class group work) they seemed to function even better than in real life.  This technical flexibility provided a surprising degree of continuity in between the two halves of the semester for the students of the History of East Asian Martial Arts.

However, the move to a virtual environment was not without significant costs, and these grew greater as time wore on.  Highschool and university instructors across the country have reported startlingly high rates of absenteeism among their students.  Further, even when students are coming to virtual classes, the degree of morale being exhibited was often so low as to suggest serious depression.  None of this helps students to put in the time outside the classroom that is necessary for success.  Some students have weathered this storm better than others.  Indeed, it is not always the same group of people that will thrive in a virtual versus an in-person classroom.  Still, as the weeks wore on it was hard to escape the truth that the cameras were going dark as one student after another withdrew from the social aspect of learning.

The danger of the present moment is that administrators, eager to cut costs in the midsts of a historic budget crisis, will look at our recent experiments in virtual instruction and take away all of the wrong lessons.  While it may be possible to shift an ever-greater percentage of our student credit hours in this direction, and professors have shown a surprising degree of flexibility in accommodating the “new normal,” it is not at all clear that this would benefit most university students.

It is true that busy working students and those coming from non-traditional backgrounds have been thriving in on-line environments for decades.  But it is important to remember that these are individuals who have self-selected for this specific learning modality. They are often in a somewhat different stage of life than younger full-time undergraduates.  Working students might turn to their job as a major source of identity and validation that has nothing to do with the classroom. Older students might be able to rely on established social networks and their own families for emotional support. Yet in the case of full time undergraduate students, it is campus life, and the classroom itself, that provides a social context that makes learning possible.  While technology proved itself capable of providing all of the necessary information (at least for a class in the field of history), it was incapable of reproducing the sociality and community that students had experienced during the first half of the semester, and badly needed.  As educational psychologists would remind us, the “cohort effect” is a critical aspect of the proper socialization of students and that, in turn, is necessary for the achievement of good outcomes.

If we have learned anything from recent events it is that these things are not adjuncts or supplements.  They are actually essential to the educational process. Given the current configuration of job markets and educational institutions, there are going to be limits to what online instruction can do, and the types of students who can be reached.

None of this should come as a surprise to those of us in Martial Arts Studies.  We have seen first-hand how invented communities can become chosen families. We have felt the support of our fellow students, both inside and outside the classroom.  And we know the importance of developing a mentoring relationship with our role models.  These things are not secondary to learning as a transformational process. They are at its core. In time we may find better ways of replicating this in a distributed online environment. It may be that successful cohorts and communities can be virtually constructed.  Yet at the moment we are no-where close to being able to do so. Despite it’s costs and inefficiencies, for a large percentage of the young people out there, it is is quite difficult to replicate the type of social coherence that is lost when the classes go on-line.  The sorts of emergency plans that were put in place to mitigate a short term crisis probably should not be used to create future educational models.

 

oOo

 

HISTORY OF EAST ASIAN MARTIAL ARTS

 

HIST 2960/ASIAN 2290

Spring 2020

 

 TJ Hinrichs

Email: <th289@cornell.edu>

 

 

East Asian martial arts are often portrayed as ancient, timeless, and even mystical, but they have a history. In this course we explore how military techniques intended for use in war, policing, and banditry came to be practiced as methods of moral, spiritual, and physical self-cultivation. We examine the historical dynamics that shape martial arts transformation, transmission, and spread. All students conduct at least one field trip to a local martial arts demonstration or school, and consider the question: “What is East Asian about East Asian martial arts in Ithaca?”

Course Goals and Methods

To learn content, as outlined above and in the course schedule, and to develop skills such as analytic acuity and clear communication. This learning takes place through the processes of active reading and listening, articulate oral and written expression, creative brainstorming, and rigorous argument-building. (Consider: What are the differences between the types of learning that occur through reading, classroom discussion, and essay writing?)

Ways to see Professor Hinrichs in person at her office:

  • Drop-In Office Hours: Tu 1:15-2:15
  • Appointment Sign-Up: https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/djahg
  • If none of those times work for you, email with your available times to make an appointment.

Inclusivity

Cornell University (as an institution) and I (as a human being and instructor of this course) are committed to full inclusion in education for all persons. Cornell provides services and reasonable accommodations to students with temporary and permanent disabilities, to students with DACA or undocumented status, to students facing mental health issues, other personal situations, and to students with other kinds of learning needs. Feel free to let me know if there are circumstances affecting your ability to participate in class. Some resources that might be of use include:

I would be glad to help you identify other resources if needed.

Code of Conduct

Classroom and Electronics: All classroom behavior should be characterized by civility, attentiveness, and respect toward classmates and instructor. This includes not using electronic devices during class time, including computers for note-taking.[1] If you think you qualify for an exception to the computers rule, see Professor Hinrichs.

Communication: Be sure to check your Cornell email regularly in case of course-related announcements. Feel free to email me with course-related questions.

All coursework should be performed with integrity. Plagiarism or cheating will result in an F and will be reported to the dean. I expect you to know what plagiarism and cheating are, and how to avoid them <http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html&gt;.

Requirements

Preparation, Attendance, and Participation                                                                   25%
Students should come to class prepared to discuss the readings assigned for that week, as listed. Unless otherwise indicated, do all readings before the first class of the week (usually Tuesday). Preparation includes thinking about the study questions and taking notes. You will find general study guide questions on the syllabus, and more detailed questions on Canvas. Students can miss up to three unexcused classes without penalty, but are responsible for getting notes from missed classes.

Field Trip & Field Trip Essay*                                                                                            10%

I will organize at least two trips to local martial arts schools or clubs early in the course. You should take thorough notes based on observations during the field trip. In class we will discuss what you might want to look for and the types of questions you might want to ask.

Essay: 2-4 pages. Due one week after field trip, connecting field trip observations to the larger issues of the course. Rather than try to draw conclusions from such a small data set, your essays should discuss questions raised by your observations and informed by readings and class discussion. See Canvas for example.

Short Essays*                                                                                                                          45%
Þ Short Essay #1, 3-5 pages, due Friday, February 28

Þ Short Essay #2, 3-5 pages, due Friday, April 10

Þ Short Essay #3, 3-5 pages, due Tuesday, May 5

Final Essay* (5-7 pages, due May 13, 11:30am)                                                                       20%

Available at Cornell Bookstore and Uris Reserve

  • Cameron Hurst. Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
  • Miyamoto Musashi. The Book of Five Rings. Trans. Thomas Cleary. Boston: Shambhala, 2005.
  • Wile, Douglas. Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Other Useful Materials

  • Uris Reserve: Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia of History and Innovation, 2 vols. Eds., Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010.
  • Olin Reference: Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols. Ed. Thomas A. Green. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2001. + GV1101 .M29x 2001
  • Kroch Reference: The Original Martial Arts Encyclopedia: Tradition, History, Pioneers. Eds. John Corcoran, Emil Farkas, Stuart Sobel, and John Corcoran. Los Angeles: Pro-Action Pub, 1993. + GV1101 .C68 1993
  • Martial Arts Studies Journal https://masjournal.org.uk.
  • Online Resources (connect through Cornell Library Catalog): “Shichinin no samurai” (“Seven Samurai”). Screenplay Akira Kurosawa, et. al., dir. Akira Kurosawa. Irvington, N.Y.: Criterion Collection, (1954) 1998.

How to Learn Well (and Get a Good Grade) in This Course

  • Do not get so focused on deadlines that you forget what makes martial arts fun for you!
  • That said, do organize your time. Estimate how long it will take you to do the readings for each week, and make time for it in your schedule. When you have an essay assignment, begin thinking about it when the prompt comes out, and plan to produce a full, strong draft at least a day before the due date. Always come to back to your essay and revise after a night’s sleep.
  • Prepare thoroughly before class by reading actively (giving thought to your own questions and to the study guide questions), and taking notes on key points. Keep track of the page numbers where you find key points, and avoid copying or paraphrasing your readings. If you do copy or paraphrase, make sure that you mark all quoted phrases.
  • Come to class regularly, participate actively, and take notes on key points made in discussion by yourself and your classmates, and on key points made in lecture.
  • When you sit down to work out your essays, 1) review the prompt, 2) review your notes from class and from the readings, 3) review feedback received on previous papers, and 4) organize key evidence around ideas to build your argument. Bring ideas or a draft to Professor Hinrichs for feedback. Try brainstorming by hand on paper rather than on the computer.

I. MARTIAL ARTS IN PRACTICE

For the first two weeks, we will consider different ways in which martial arts practices generate embodied meanings or dispositions for practitioners, and the ways in which practitioners give meaning to martial arts practice. As you read: 1) Keep a list of observations you might make and questions you might ask in your field trip assignment. 2) Record key analytic concepts (e.g., “invented tradition,” habitus), their definitions, and the types of questions and observations that they lead ethnographers to ask in their fieldwork. 3) Pay attention to the ways in which the authors analyze the relationships between institutional structures (martial arts schools or lineages, hierarchies of practitioners, deity cults), practices (teaching/training, speaking/listening, etiquette/ritual), dispositions (humility, control), actor categories (civil/martial (wen/wu)), and larger contexts (urban vs. rural communities, government prohibition, tourism).

Week 1: Martial Arts as “Invented Tradition”

In what ways did the members of Green’s martial arts school consider history to be integral to their practice? By heading one of his sections “The System’s History:  One Construction,” Green treats the historical account(s) he describes not as a record of historical facts whose veracity needs to be checked, but as something else. What does he mean by “construction”? Why is the historical veracity of “The System’s” philosophy not relevant to Green’s argument?

  • For Thursday: Thomas A. Green, “Historical Narrative in the Martial Arts: A Case Study,” in Tad Tuleja, ed., Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North America, (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1997), 156-174.

Week 2: Violence

In what ways do the various practices (training, ritual, Han Tan Ie procession) described by Sánchez García, Bar-On Cohen, and Boretz inculcate or cultivate certain dispositions in relation to violence and do so differently?

Þ Do the 10-minute plagiarism exercise http://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/index.cfm and email the results to me. Make sure that you understand the practical cases in the tutorial. If the automatic send function does not work at the end, email me the screen with your results.

cont.

  • eBook: Raúl Sánchez García, “Taming the Habitus: The Gym and the Dojo as ‘Civilizing Workshops,’” Fighting Scholars: Habitus and Ethnographies of Martial Arts and Combat Sports, Raúl Sánchez García, and Dale C. Spencer, eds. (London: Anthem Press, 2013), 155-170.
  • Einat Bar-On Cohen, “Opening and Closing Ritual in ‘Aikidō’ and ‘Karate’ and the Dismantling of Violence,” Journal of Ritual Studies1 (2009):29-44.
  • For Thursday: Avron A. Boretz, “Martial Gods and Magic Swords: Identity, Myth, and Violence in Chinese Popular Religion,” Journal of Popular Culture1 (Summer 1995):93-109.
    Note: we will read more about Nazha (=Nezha, or Ne-zha) and The Investiture of the Gods (=Romance/Canonization of the Gods) in week 4. On April 9, 4:45pm Meir Shahar (Tel Aviv University) will give a talk on Nezha.

II. THE EMERGENCE OF MARTIAL ARTS: STATUS AND GENDER

In the second unit of the course, we will examine how, in late imperial China and in Edo Japan, combat arts detached from military training, and came to be practiced as religious/spiritual pursuits, as modes of self-cultivation, as markers of socio-cultural distinction, and as the core of new social formations (lineages and schools).

In Units II-V, be sure to keep track of at least rough dates for key historical transitions, people, and eras (e.g., Ming (roughly 14th-17th centuries), Muromachi (roughly 14th-16th centuries).

Week 3: Rise of the Bushi

What factors led to the rise of the bushi (the warrior status group) as the rulers of Kamakura-Tokugawa Japan? What led to the displacement of the bow and arrow with the sword as the preeminent weapon in the bushi’s repertoire? When and how did specialized weapons styles and lineages emerge? What common patterns do you see in the founding of swordsmanship schools in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries?

  • Hurst, Armed Martial Arts of Japan, 1-52.
    • “The Way of the Warrior,” Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600, William Theodore de Bary, et. al., eds., (New York : Columbia University Press, 2001), 265-291.
    • Elizabeth Oyler, Swords, Oaths, and Prophetic Visions: Authoring Warrior Rule in Medieval Japan, (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaiì Press, 2006).

Week 4: Rebels

We begin our readings for this week with excerpts from Ming period (1368-1644) novels. As you read, consider • the tone of the work (e.g., dramatic or comic), • the values portrayed in the work, positive ones often exemplified in heroic characters and negative in villainous ones, and • the form of martial accomplishment (strength, agility, technical subtlety).

cont.

  • “Shi Jin the Nine-Dragoned,” Ebrey, Patricia, ed., Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd. ed., (New York: The Free Press, 1993), 226-237.
  • “from The Romance of the Gods (Feng-shen yan-yi): Ne-zha and His Father,” An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911, Stephen Owen, trans., (New York: Norton, 1996), 771-806.

Ownby, Meulenbeld, and Cass introduce additional perspectives on the historical contexts that produced these novels, and in which these novels circulated in print and in performance. After reading these works, in what ways do you understand the Shi Jin and Nezha episodes differently?

  • David Ownby, “Approximations of Chinese Bandits: Perverse Rebels, Romantic Heroes, or Frustrated Bachelors?” in Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 226-250.
  • Mark Meulenbeld, “The Order of the Ming Novel: Hierarchies of Spirits and Gods,” Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), 191-199.
    Note: Meulenbeld’s book puts the Ming book, Canonization of the Gods (=The Romance [or Investiture] of the Gods) in historical context.
  • Victoria Cass, “Warriors and Mystics,” Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas of the Ming, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 65-85.

Week 5: Peacetime Bushi and Urban Gangsters

In what ways did the historical developments of the 17th-18th centuries — peace; Tokugawa’s institution of hereditary status hierarchies (bushi, peasant, craftsman, merchant); the growth of commerce and wealth, with the attendant spread of literacy and leisure pursuits; urbanization — generate new forms of and new roles for martial practice? In what ways did new structures such as the urban dojo and professional teaching produce new types of martial practice?

Common Readings:

  • Hurst, Armed Martial Arts of Japan, 53-60, 64-88, 92-100.
  • Thomas Clearly, “Preface,” Book of Five Rings, xiii-xix.

Readings (to be split):
As you read, note the following: 1) dates of author, events, publication; 2) relevant historical context; 3) the social positions of the authors (center or periphery of political power; bushi or townsman); 4) views of the role(s) of the samurai; 5) areas of agreement and disagreement between sources.

  • Book of Five Rings:
    • Miyamoto Musashi, “The Earth Scroll,” “The Wind Scroll,” 3-16, 49-58.
    • Yagyū Munenori, “The Killing Sword,” (from The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War) 65-85.

cont.

  • Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), “The Midō Drum is Beaten—So Too the Enemy,” Tales of Samurai Honor: Buke Giri Monogatari, Caryl Ann Callahan, trans., (Tokyo: Monumenta Nipponica, Sophia University, 1981), 51-61.
    First published 1688. Saikaku, the scion of a merchant family, wrote and published poetry and fiction, the latter notably popular, especially among townsmen. Saikaku payed homage to the Tokugawa regime (“this well-governed realm where the sword remains forever sheathed and peace reigns eternal,” Tales of Samurai Honor, p. 145), but also depicted contradictions between official values and actual behavior.
  • Ihara Saikaku, “A Sword His Only Memento,” The Great Mirror of Male Love, Paul Gordon Schalow, trans., (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 85-96.
    First published 1687, Great Mirror of Male Love features stories of male love among samurai and in the kabuki quarters. Norms governing sexual relationships between male samurai were adapted from those first developed among medieval Buddhist monks, a core principle dictating that relationships be between adults (19 and older) and youth (under 19). When men passed into adulthood, they were supposed to switch to the senior role. See Schalow, “Introduction,” Great Mirror, 1-5.
  • Gary Leupp “Five Men of Naniwa” in Wakita Osamu ed., Osaka (New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 125-157.
  • Inge Klompmakers, “The Development of Musha-e,” Of Brigands and Bravery: Kuniyoshi’s Heroes of the Suikoden, (Leiden: Hotei Pub., 1998), 14-17.

Notes:

  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1761)
  • Suikoden is the Japanese reading of 《水滸傳》 (Ch: Shuihuzhuan, Heroes of the Water Margin, the source for “Shi Jin the Nine-Dragoned”).
  • While there were six characters with tattoos in Heroes of the Water Margin, Kuniyoshi illustrated 15 of the heroes in his Heroes of the Suikoden series with tattoos. (See Klompmakers, Of Brigands and Bravery, 35.)
  • otokodate: see Leupp.
  • For Kuniyoshi Suikoden prints held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, see: https://collections.mfa.org/search/Objects/peopleSearch%3AUtagawa%20Kuniyoshi%3Btitle%3ASuikoden/*/images?page=2
    • Henry D. Smith, “The Capacity of Chūshingura: Three Hundred Years of Chūshingura,” Monumenta Nipponica1 (Spring 2003):1-25.
    • Edo writings on the Akō Vendetta: “The Way of the Warrior II,” Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2: 1600 to 2000, 2ndEdition, Wm. Theodore de Bary, et. al., eds., (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 437-473.

Week 6: Martial Literati

What did literati bring to martial arts practice? How did internal qi cultivation become entwined with martial arts practice?

Note that Wile uses Wade Giles rather than pinyin Romanization:

Huang Tsung-hsi=Huang Zongxi; ch’i=qi; Huang Pai-chia=Huang Baijia; Wang Cheng-nan=Wang Zhengnan; daoyin; “Internal” and “External” schools; Ch’ing=Qing (dynasty); hsia=xia (knight errant); t’ai-chi ch’üan=taiji quan; Chang San-feng=Zhang Sanfeng; Ch’ing=Qing

  • Douglas Wile, “Documents on the Internal School,” T’ai-chi’s Ancestors: The Making of an Internal Martial Art, (New York: Sweet Ch’i Press, 1999), 53-69.
  • Meir Shahar, “Gymnastics” The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 137-181.
  • Wile, Douglas, “Introduction,” “Yang Family Forty Chapters,” Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 3-20, 57-89.

Þ Short Essay #1, 3-5 pages, due Friday, February 28

III. COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES: BUDDHISM AND LINEAGE

For two weeks we focus on the ways in which Buddhist monasteries and martial arts lineages structured martial arts practice, transmission, and legitimation (or de-legitimation).

Week 7: Buddhism and Martial Arts

Buddhism prohibits the taking of any sentient life. How, then, did monks become involved in warfare, and come to practice martial arts? What did they bring to martial arts practice? In what ways did the historical dynamics behind monkly violence differ between the Ming and Japan?

  • William M. Bodiford, “Religion and Spiritual Development: Japan,” in Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, ed. Thomas A. Green, (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2001), [we will read 472-485 later] 485-497.
  • Mikael S. Adolphson, “Sōhei, Benkei, and Monastic Warriors—Historical Perspectives,” The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Monastic Warriors and Sōhei in Japanese History, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 157-162.
  • Meir Shahar, “Ming-Period Evidence of Shaolin Martial Practice,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (Dec. 2001), 61.2:359-415.
  • Chen Zongyou, “Exposition of the Original Shaolin Staff Method,” Hawai’i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture, Victor H. Mair, et. al., eds., (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 514-516.

Week 8: Lineage, Transmission, and Legitimacy

What factors led to the historical emergence of martial arts lineages? How do principles and practices of kinship translate to martial arts lineages? In what ways do lineages shape transmission (learning) of martial arts? In what ways do they shape legitimacy of transmission? In what ways do the structures of martial arts lineages differ between China and Japan?

  • Hurst, Armed Martial Arts of Japan, 177-196.
  • Jeff Takacs, “A Case of Contagious Legitimacy: Kinship, Ritual and Manipulation in Chinese Martial Arts Societies,” Modern Asian Studies4 (2003):885-917.
    • Benjamin N. Judkins and Jon Nielson, The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 83-105.

IV. MODERNIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION OF PRACTICE

In what ways do processes of modernization differ from the historical transformations that we examined for earlier periods? Until recently, globalization has usually been thought of in terms of the spread of European and American culture to other countries. East Asian martial arts, however, have a long history of migrating the other direction. What are the historical dynamics of the spread of East Asian martial arts to other parts of the world?

Week 9: Bushido as Japanese Spirit

In what ways did earlier reinventions of samurai traditions, such as in the transition to Edo peace, differ from the reinventions of Meiji and later? How did bushidō become the “soul” of Japan, as opposed a path for bushi, and how did that transformation impact the meaning and practice of martial arts? Key Terms: bushidō, budō

  • Hurst, Armed Martial Arts of Japan, 147-176.
  • William M. Bodiford, “Religion and Spiritual Development: Japan,” 472-485.
  • eBook: Oleg Benesch, “Essentials of Samurai Thought,” Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, James W. Heisig, et. al., eds., (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011), 1108-1112.

Week 10: Modernization of Chinese Martial Arts

How does Eichberg’s schema situate traditional, modern, and postmodern phases of “traditional games”? Are these schema useful for analyzing the development of Chinese (and Japanese) martial arts? How so?

In what ways did the processes of re-inventing Chinese martial arts traditions differ between the Ming/Qing and the twentieth centuries? Between the Boxers’ mass spirit possession, Guoshu, Wushu, and non-official public martial arts schools?

cont.

  • Henning Eichberg, “A Revolution of Body Culture? Traditional Games on the Way from Modernisation to ‘Postmodernity,’” Body Cultures: Essays on Sport, Space, and Identity, (London: Routledge, 1998), 128-148.
  • Paul A. Cohen, “Mass Spirit Possession,” History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 96-118.
  • Peter Lorge, “Post-Imperial China,” Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 222-247.
  • Susan Brownell, “Wushu and the Olympic Games: ‘Combination of East and West’ or Clash of Body Cultures?” Perfect Bodies: Sports, Medicine, and Immortality, Vivienne Lo, ed., (London: British Museum, 2012), 59-69.

 

Week 11: Reinventions of Jujutsu

Kanō Jigorō and Ueshiba Morihei (the latter referred to by aikidoists as “O Sensei” (“Great Teacher”)) both created new budo out of jujutsu; and both Kanō and aikido leaders actively promoted their new styles outside Japan. In what ways did their strategies of promotion differ? What is modern about both Kanō’s and Ueshiba’s reinventions of jujutsu?

  • INOUE Shun, “The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kanō Jigorō and Kōdōkan Judo,” in Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 163-173.
  • Geoffrey Wingard, “Sport, Industrialism, and The Japanese ‘Gentle Way’: Judo in Late Victorian England,” Journal of Asian Martial Arts (2003) 12.2:16-25.
  • Peter A Goldsbury, “Aikido,” Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia of History and Innovation, Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, eds., (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010), 132-139.
  • UESHIBA Kisshōmaru, “Divine Transformation,” A Life in Aikido: The Biography of Founder Morihei Ueshiba, (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2008), 174-180.
    This section of Ueshiba Morihei’s biography recounts a key episode in his martial and personal development. After the suppression of the Omoto religion, Deguchi Onisaburo, released from prison on bail, escaped Japan for an evangelical trip to Mongolia, taking Ueshiba Morihei with him. The “Divine Transformation” section opens with the Omoto group’s return to Japan.

Extra Credit: Seymour Sports History Lecture

Meir Shahar, “Violence in the Myth and Cult of the Chinese God Nezha”

Thursday, April 9, 4:45pm, Physical Sciences Building 120

 

V. MODERNIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE POLITICS OF FILM

In this unit we continue to explore the circulation of ideas, practices, and practitioner-performers between literature, theatrical performance (as film), and martial arts training. What new geopolitical and social problems did twentieth and twenty-first century martial arts literature and film grapple with? What new historical dynamics did mass media and mass movements introduce?

Week 12: Wuxia Literature and Movies

What is modern about martial arts novels and movies? In what ways have they engaged with the particular problems of modernization of the Chinese and Sinophone worlds?

  • Petrus Liu, “The Vicissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism,” Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History, (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Program, 2011), 21-60.
  • ZHANG Zhen, “The Anarchic Body Language of the Martial Arts Film,” An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896-1937, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) 199-243.

Movie night: “Seven Samurai”

Week 13: Jidai geki and Samurai Film                                                                  

In what ways did the films “Chūshingura” and “Seven Samurai” revise pre-1945 narratives of samurai and bushido? In what ways did these films speak to postwar sentiments?

  • Henry D. Smith, “The Capacity of Chūshingura: Three Hundred Years of Chūshingura,” Monumenta Nipponica1 (Spring 2003):1-8, 25-42.
  • Mitsuhiro YOSHIMOTO, “Seven Samurai,” Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 205-245.

Movie night: “Fist of Fury” (Jingwumen)

Week 14: The Politics of Bruce Lee                                                                        

In what ways have kung fu films contributed to shaping the globalization of East Asian martial arts practice? What have been the significance of kung fu films in general, and of Bruce Lee’s films in particular, for global political movements of the 1960s-2010s?

  • T. Kato, “Kung Fu Cultural Revolution and Japanese Imperialism,” From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 9-38.
  • Vijay Prashad, “Bruce Lee and the Anti-imperialism of Kung Fu: A Polycultural Adventure,” positions: east asia cultures critique1 (Spring 2003):51-90.
  • Martha Burr and Mei-Juin Chen, “Black Kung Fu Experience,” San Francisco: Kanopy Streaming, 2014. http://www.kanopystreaming.com/node/122773 (approx. 57 minutes)
  • “Hong Kong protests embrace Bruce Lee but reject Jackie Chan in tale of two martial arts heroes,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), June 30, 2019: 4; NewsBank: Access World News, https://infoweb-n com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=AWNB&docref=news/1746017F045BC0D0, Accessed August 8, 2019.