A War Over History?

by Derry Nairn

A congressional panel in the United States last week recognised the events of 1915 in eastern Anatolia as 'genocide'. This is not the first time that the issue has sparked tensions in the USA, both domestic and diplomatic. As recently as 2007, a similar decision was vetoed by the George W. Bush administration. Similar debates have been going on, virtually since the events themselves occurred.

Here is a selection of viewpoints on the matter, covering all spectrums:

Donald Bloxham on great power involvement.

CBS gives the issue historical context.

Global Voices offers ordinary Armenian opinion.

Hurriyet examines the Obama & Clinton positions.

Norman Stone considers geo-political fallout.

The Guardian's Marcel Berlins questions the whole process

Saving Haiti's Cultural Heritage

The Fight to Save Haiti’s Archives
Members of the International Council of Archives (ICA) in Haiti have formed a crisis cell entitled ‘Heritage in danger’ on the fringes of the official commission for the evaluation of buildings and reconstruction. They have recently issued a statement listing some of the most urgent requirements in order to save the country’s archives and cultural property. Wilfrid Bertrand is the National Archivist of Haiti and Jérémy Lachal is the Executive Director of Libraries Without Borders, who is currently on mission in Port-au-Prince. Both stressed the pressing need for tarpaulins in order to protect the records that are currently lying on the ground and risk being destroyed during the forthcoming rainy season.
ICA explained that it is urgently trying to get these materials out to Port-au-Prince. It is also working with the Blue Shield Network, the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross, which was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts. The two organisations are currently trying to collect hard information as the basis for an initial report on damage to cultural property in Haiti. The report is due to provide an indication of the resources that will be needed to safeguard the country’s cultural heritage.
For further information, visit the websites of the ICA (http://www.ica.org/) and Blue Shield (http://www.ancbs.org/).

Bhutan: An Eye to History
More than 80 photographs charting the history of Bhutan were on display until the end of last month at The National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. The images included photographs of Rinpung monastery in Paro taken in 1864 and of the King and Queen of Bhutan at the Red Fort during their first state visit to India in 1954. There is a slideshow of some of the photographs on the website of the BBC.

Hitler’s secret relationship with Eva Braun
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper concluded that Eva Braun was ‘uninteresting’. However, the first academic biography of Eva Braun: Life With Hitler by the Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker and published at the end of the month by CH Beck refutes traditional views of Braun and Hitler’s relationship.
In Der Spiegel Online Klaus Wiegrefe provides an insight into the realities of the couple’s secret relationship. The article also features a slideshow of images of Eva Braun and Hitler.
Kate Connolly also reports in The Guardian.

Light on Japan’s ‘Unit 731’ experiments
In 1989, a mass grave was discovered during construction work in Tokyo’s district of Shinjuku. The grave contained human remains which are believed to have come from ‘Unit 731’ where the medical research team of the Imperial Japanese Army carried out gruesome human ‘experiments’ on more than 10,000 people per year. Authorities in Tokyo recently announced plans to study the remains in an effort to address this dark, and previously ignored, page of Japanese history.
Julian Ryall reports in The Telegraph.

Ghurkhas Still Fighting

by Kathryn Hadley

On September 30th 2008, the London High Court ruled in favour of five Gurkha veterans and a Gurkha widow who had condemned the immigration law prohibiting UK residence to Gurkhas who had retired before July 1997, when the Brigade of Gurkhas base was moved from Hong Kong to the UK. An estimated remaining 2,000 veterans were still refused residence as a result of their retirement prior to 1997, and the judge, Mr Blake, set the Home Office a deadline of three months to review these specific immigration restrictions applicable to Gurkhas.

At the end of 2008, however, the government had made little progress and asked a tribunal for a three-month extension to produce proposals for new legislation and to review the remaining appeals. A couple of weeks ago, delays in government action led to protests and criticisms of the fact that the cases of more than 1,300 Gurkhas wanting to settle in Britain were still awaiting reviews.

Last week, however, the representative of the Gurkhas, Edward Fitzgerald QC, reportedly told Mr Justice Blake at the High Court that the new policies on the rights of Gurkhas to settle in the UK would be announced within the next month. Fitzgerald claimed that lawyers representing the Gurkhas and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, had agreed on most issues. Smith wished, however, to discuss the new proposals with Parliament first. Edward Fitzgerald reported that the Home Secretary had agreed to announce the new policy in parliament by 24 April and to reconsider the five leading Gurkha cases in the light of the announced policy before May 7th. Hundreds of other outstanding cases would also be reviewed by June 11th.

Many former servicemen have died whilst waiting for their cases to be resolved. Rifleman Prem Bahadur Pun notably died just two weeks ago, on March 15th.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said that anyone prepared to die for Britain should be allowed to live there. He criticised the government claiming that:

‘Ministers have dragged their heels and denied justice to these Gurkhas for too
long, and are only now agreeing a new policy because the courts have forced
them. The deliberate delay in making this decision is a gross insult to the
honour of these veterans.’

A battle which continues to be fought and a story to follow up… Updates on Jacqui Smith’s announcement of the new policy will follow in April…

Kuniyoshi: a window into the Edo period and Japanese art

by Kathryn Hadley

‘Kuniyoshi’ opened at the Royal Academy of Arts on Saturday. The exhibition features over 150 woodblock prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), who was one of the leaders of the school of ‘the floating world’, alongside Hokusai (1760-1849), Hiroshige (1797-1858) and Kunisada (1786-1864). The colour woodblock painting industry flourished in Edo (modern Tokyo) towards the middle of the 19th century, when colour prints were the most significant medium of communication in Japanese popular culture. Kuniyoshi specialised in depicting samurai warriors from the Japanese past, but also portrayed women, landscapes and actors. It is believed that he may have designed as many as 10,000 sheet prints; his most popular sheet print sold up to 8,000 impressions. The exhibition is divided into six sections, highlighting the range of his repertoire and revealing how his subjects changed in accordance with the political climate, censorship regulations and the social and cultural context of the time. The colours, detail and surprisingly modern appearance of his works as well as his depictions of fantastic creatures and of superhuman battles between giant creatures and warriors are beautiful and intriguing; most fascinating, however, is the insight which they provide into 19th-century Japanese history.

The samurai emerged as a ruling class of warriors during the feudal era and until the sixteenth century Japan was largely ruled by various competing factions and clans. During the sixteenth century, however, Jesuit missionaries from Portugal arrived in Japan, initiating trade and cultural exchange between Japan and the West for the first time. Partly as a result of these first contacts with the West, the nation became increasingly unified under Odo Nabunaga, who conquered various territories using European technology and firearms. Nabunaga was, however, assassinated 1582. He was succeeded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who united the nation in 1590.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) was regent for Hideyoshi’s son and following Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s death, he used his position to increase his political and military support. Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed shogun in 1603 and established the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo. In 1639, he instituted the sakoku (‘closed country’) policy and such isolationist policies dominated Japan until the end of the 19th century, during what is known as the Edo period. Limited contact with the West persisted, nevertheless, during this period through contacts with the Dutch enclave at Dejima in Nagasaki.

Kuniyoshi’s works reveal both the survival of this Dutch influence, as well as the political restrictions and censorship of the time implemented under the Tokugawa shogunate. The artist’s designs for his landscapes, in particular, with low horizons, ragged clouds, unusual viewpoints and shadows reflect an Europeanised style and it has recently been discovered that one of his scenes, entitled The Night Attack, was based on an illustration by a Dutch artist in an imported book.

Kuniyoshi was, moreover, forced to change the subjects of his prints and to increasingly resort to symbolism in order to counter the censorship of the time. Since the early 17th century, all popular printed works had notably been censored, rendering it on the whole illegal to depict any current event possessing political ramifications or to comment on ruling families and their antecedents. Censorship was tightened, in 1804, to include a ban on the depiction of warriors who lived later than 1573 and, in 1842, prints of courtesans and geisha entertainers were also banned. The Tokugawa family had eliminated many of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s descendants in order to consolidate their own power and was consequently particularly sensitive about any references to Hideyoshi. There remained, however, considerable popular interest in Hideyoshi and Kuniyoshi led the revival of Hideyoshi-related imagery. He was nevertheless careful to change the name of his warrior subjects and to locate them in a more distant past.

‘Kuniyoshi’ is a colourful and lively eye-opener to a form of art and a period of Japanese history which both remain relatively unexplored and unknown in Britain.

For more information on the arrival and reception of European influence in Japan in the 16th century, read our articles The Dutch in Japan and Southern Barbarians and Red-Hairs in Feudal Japan

Pictures: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, The Chinese warrior Zhang Heng, 1847-48;
Fishermen at Teppōzu, early 1830s; Hatsuhana prays under a waterfall, c. 1842 - American Friends of the British Museum (The Arthur R. Miller Collection)

Kuniyoshi
Until June 7th
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House, Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD
Telephone: 020 7300 8000
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

Chinese Treasures on Loan to Taiwan: a Sino-Taiwanese Rapprochement?

by Kathryn Hadley

Just before Christmas, China sent Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, two giant pandas, as a gift to Taiwan. The move was widely reported as sign of improving relations between the two countries. The name of the pandas, meaning ‘reunion’, angered Taiwanese separatists, however, thus questioning the success of Chinese ‘panda diplomacy’. Nevertheless, Sino-Taiwanese relations may still be improving...

On Sunday, following the first ever formal and high-level visit by a delegation from Taipei’s National Palace Museum to its counterpart from Beijing’s Palace Museum, China agreed to lend 29 of its national treasures to Taiwan. It is the first such cultural exchange in 60 years, since the end of the Chinese civil war. The artefacts, dating from the Qing Dynasty which ruled China from 1616 to 1911, are planned to be displayed for three months in a joint exhibition at the National Palace Museum in Taipei at the end of the year. The exhibition will focus on Emperor Yongzheng, who ruled China from 1722 to 1735, and will feature portraits of the emperor and his concubines from Beijing’s Museum.

Between them the museums are believed to hold the world’s most precious collection of Chinese relics. The collection in Taiwan was formed for the most part when the nationalist party retreated to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war. Seven other agreements were also signed last weekend, notably regarding personnel exchange and cooperation in academic research, exhibits and publishing. Chou Kung-shin, the director of Taipei's National Palace Museum, then travelled to Shanghai to discuss the possibility of holding a joint exhibition for the 2010 World Expo.

Nevertheless, despite the Chinese loan, Taiwan remains reluctant to lend pieces from its own collections to Beijing for fear that they may never be returned. Chou Kung-shin argued that the main obstacles to displaying relics from Taipei on the mainland were legal because the Chinese law does not contain a ‘free of capture and seizure’ clause. Taipei National Palace Museum allegedly has very strict rules on antiques. In 1996, however, it lent artefacts to the United States on a ‘free of capture and seizure’ condition and later did the same to France, Germany and Austria.

Are the obstacles merely legal, or are there further limits to the Sino-Taiwanese rapprochement over the last few months?

The visit was notably reported on by China Daily on Monday.

For more information on the relationship between Taiwan and China, in particular the Taiwan rebellion of February 28th, 1947, read our article Taiwan Confronts Its Past