Matthew Fraleigh

Japan's First War Reporter: Kishida Ginkō and the Taiwan Expedition

The 1874 Taiwan Expedition was a watershed event for early Meiji journalism, for it was during this conflict that Kishida Ginkō (1833–1905) became Japans first war reporter. At a time when newspapers had only started to become a feature of daily life in Japan, Ginkōs pioneering coverage of the Taiwan campaign was an important demonstration of the newspapers potential to the Meiji authorities, and his coverage likewise gave many readers their first concrete understandings of the reporter at work. This paper examines Ginkōs extensive writings on Taiwan with the goal of illuminating how the campaign, its setting, and the Taiwanese aborigines were understood by and represented to the Meiji reading public. It shows that more than simply conveying information about the Expedition to the reading public, Ginkōs reportage strove to situate the project as part of a broader colonial agenda that would impart ‘civilization’ to the indigenous population. In columns that stressed Japans long-term strategic interests in the area, Ginkō called upon his readers to imagine themselves as part of the enterprise.

A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan by Rebekah Clements (review)

Early modern Japanese read and wrote in a wide array of languages and registers: classical and contemporary Japanese, literary Sinitic, vernacular Chinese, and multiple European languages, among others. In a fine study that is rich in detail yet broad in scope, Rebekah Clements explores the range of practices employed in traversing the intralingual and interlingual borders of this textual terrain. With thoughtful analysis and clear prose, Clements analyzes the diverse ways in which various forms of linguistic difference were conceptualized during the early modern era, as well as how scholars understand them today. The book’s opening chapter explores the status of language within the cultural and social context of early modern Japan, a period that saw a marked rise in the awareness of diachronic language change. While such sinologists as Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 and Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁 斎 brought philological sensitivity to bear on classical Chinese texts, their work also stimulated “national learning” scholars to apply analogous approaches to texts from Japanese antiquity. Clements identifies historical shifts that prompted novel approaches to classic texts, stimulated new conceptualizations of language as an abstract category, and afforded a more prominent role to the act of translation. Two particularly notable and intertwined developments dramatically transformed the seventeenth-century intellectual landscape: the emergence of a commercially viable publishing industry and the spread of literacy far beyond court, monastic, and warrior elites. Texts of longstanding cultural significance to those groups began to reach a broader population of readers, and they were also subjected to new scholarly approaches, including translation. Suzuki Toshiyuki 鈴木俊幸 has shown that Japan, from the latter part of the early modern period, was swept by nothing less than a “reading fever,” as the publication of newly accessible editions of abstruse classical texts enabled eager readers to study those works on their own.1 Building on this and other work, Clements

ORPHANED DAUGHTERS: ON THE SO-CALLED PROPERTY RIGHTS OF DAUGHTERS IN THE SOUTHERN SONG PERIOD

A longstanding and contentious issue in Chinese legal history is whether women had the legal right to inherit and own property. During the Southern Song in particular, certain historical and legal sources have been interpreted by scholars in such a way as to propose that they did, at least to a limited extent, as reflected, for example, in the “daughters half-share law” (nuzi fenfa 女子分法), which stipulated that a daughter would receive half a sons portion upon the death of both parents. The current study, through an examination of documentary sources on the inheritance rights of daughters, clarifies the historical circumstances surrounding the phenomenon, and concludes that no fundamental legal right to inherit and own property such as that enjoyed by men was intended. Rather, laws specifying the inheritance rights of women were the result of legislative measures for the protection of orphaned daughters, out of a concern to ensure that they would not be deprived of property that they would have received (for example, as dowry) had their parents not died. The Songs uniqueness lay not in the elevation of womens property rights, but rather in the implementation of explicit policies for the social good. That similar laws were not continued in the Ming and Qing did not in itself mean that the principle of protecting orphaned daughters had been abandoned, but rather that this principle would be applied through the discretionary powers of magistrates, as records of actual legal judgments demonstrate.