Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia PDF
Preview Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia
Casting Faiths RUSSIA (SOVIET UNION) (MANCHUKUO) JAPAN Harbin s Vladivostok Changchun Jllin (Xinjing) " Tokyo Ulaan Baatujr Shenyang Kyoto MONGOLIA Beijing * Tianjin Yellow Sea Shanghai ' CHINA Huanglang Gorge -i Fuzhou" Taiwan Lhasa 'Chengdu PACIFIC OCEAN South China MYANMAR Sea PHILIPPINES [BURMA) , THAILAND VIETNAM <^> MALAYSIA • (Malaya) "- Johor SINGAfiDBE- Kalimantan^' Sulawesi \ Sumatra^ Nias' INDONESIA (Netherlands East Indies) ALJSTRAfcWC EastandSoutheastAsia.Historicalnamesareshowninparentheses. Casting Faiths Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia Edited by Thomas David DuBois AssociateProfessorofHistory,NationalUniversityofSingapore Editorialmatter,selection,introductionandchapter10 ©ThomasDavidDuBois2009 Allremainingchapters©theirrespectiveauthors2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22158-1 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission. Noportionofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmitted savewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordancewiththeprovisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicence permittinglimitedcopyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency, SaffronHouse,6-10KirbyStreet,LondonEC1N8TS. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorizedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorshaveassertedtheirrightstobeidentified astheauthorsofthisworkinaccordancewiththeCopyright, DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Firstpublished2009by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN PalgraveMacmillanintheUKisanimprintofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills,Basingstoke, HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanintheUSisadivisionofStMartin’sPressLLC, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,NY10010. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabovecompanies andhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnitedStates, theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-349-30709-8 ISBN 978-0-230-23545-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230235458 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefromfully managedandsustainedforestsources.Logging,pulpingandmanufacturing processesareexpectedtoconformtotheenvironmentalregulationsofthe countryoforigin. AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. AcatalogrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2014 Contents List of Figures vii Preface viii List of Contributors x 1 Introduction: The Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia—Paradigmatic Change in Regional Perspective 1 Thomas DuBois Part I Orientalism and the Western Recasting of Buddhism 2 From Thathanadaw to Therav¯ada Buddhism: Constructions of Religion and Religious Identity in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Myanmar 23 Alexey Kirichenko 3 Publishing Eastern Buddhism: D. T. Suzuki’s Journey to the West 46 Judith Snodgrass Part II Mission and Meaning in Christianity 4 The Education of Annie Howe: Missionary Transformations in late Meiji Japan 75 Roberta Wollons 5 Idols and Art: Missionary Attitudes toward Indigenous Worship and the Material Culture on Nias, Indonesia, 1904–1920 105 Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz 6 The Virgin Heads South: Northern Catholic Refugees and their Clergy in South Vietnam, 1954–1964 129 Peter Hansen Part III State and Religious Ethnicity 7 The Making of Islamic Law: Local Elites and Colonial Authority in British Malaya 155 Iza Hussin v vi Contents 8 Christian Conversion and Ethnic Identity in East Kalimantan 175 Jennifer Connolly 9 Recasting Religion and Ethnicity: Tourism and Socialism in Northern Sichuan, 1992–2005 190 Donald S. Sutton and Xiaofei Kang Part IV New Media and New Religion 10 Japanese Print Media and Manchurian Cultural Community: Religion in the Pages of the Shengjing Times, 1906–1944 217 Thomas DuBois 11 Showing Faith: Exhibiting O¯moto to Consumers in Early-Twentieth-Century Japan 239 Nancy Stalker Afterword: Questioning Faiths? Casting Doubts 257 Oscar Salemink Index 264 List of Figures Frontispiece EastandSoutheastAsia.Historicalnamesareshownin parentheses ii 4.1 Illustrations from Froebel’s Mother Play, in original and Howe’s Japanese translation 90 5.1 How the encounter of Eduard Fries and the Nias people was imagined 108 5.2 Missionary school on Nias 109 5.3 WoodenprotectingandancestorimagesdisplayedinaNiashouse of the early twentieth century 113 5.4 AnancestorfigureofstoneexemplifiesNiasartdrawnbyEduard Fries in 1906 116 5.5 Stone figure in front of a house in Hoeroena drawn by Eduard Fries in 1904 120 5.6 A Christian grave next to the megalith in front of a house in Soganwunasi, Central Nias 122 6.1 North and South Vietnam showing provincial boundaries and Catholic dioceses 130 9.1 Map of Huanglong Gorge 198 9.2 Monks at Rear Temple 201 vii Preface In June of 2005, Dr Maitrii Aung-Thwin and myself invited 18 scholars from four continents to the National University of Singapore to help us answer a deceptively simple question: what is “religion” in Asia? Like most of the other participants, Maitrii and I had read the works of scholars such as Talal Asad, who had shown how religion as a social institu- tion,asaunitofanalysis,andasubjectoflawandscholarshipwashistorically constituted, and moreover was biased towards Western, specifically Christian criteria.Wehadfoundtheseideascompellingenough,butashistoriansofSouth- eastandEastAsia,respectively,wealsofeltthattheypresentedtwoimportant weaknesses. First,muchofwhathadbeenwrittenabouttheideaofreligionwasconcerned primarily with discourse: the clash, manipulation, or accommodation of words and ideas. It is true that in the history of Asia, the study of discourse cannot be separated from the reality of Western imperialism, especially because many Western ideas (not just religious, but political and social as well) were intro- ducedtoAsiaatgunpoint.Yetjustasimportantaswordsaretheideasthatare inherent in practices, and many of these “social technologies” that continue to exert a tremendous influence on Asian societies—practices such as mass mar- keting, national education, and ethnic census taking—developed at precisely the same time that ideas of religion were taking on a global scale. Moreover, although many of these practices, and the ideologies they created, were initi- ated by Western imperialism, the techniques themselves long outlived it. If we focused on these practices as well as discourse, might we see native actors as agents of change rather than its victims? Could such a perspective allow us to link processes that were initiated by imperialism to the Asia we see today? Second, much of what has been written on the historical exchange of ideas hasfocusedexclusivelyonsinglerelationships,especiallyonebetweencolonizer andcolonized:BritainandIndia,FranceandtheLevant,theUnitedStatesand Philippines, etc. However, such a focus can cause us to overlook the web of lateral networks between colonies. What might we see if we instead focused on the regional context, juxtaposing the experiences of East and Southeast Asia? Notonlywouldthisperspectivedemonstratethedegreeofintegrationwithinthe region as a whole, it would also highlight the role of imperialism by comparing theformallycolonizedcountriesofSoutheastAsiatothefadingChineseempire and the short-lived Japanese one. We knew that we could not answer these questions alone. The scholars who joined us in Singapore included specialists in anthropology and literature, his- tory and art history, law and religion, with expertise spanning a region from JapantoTibettoIndonesia.Thisvolumerepresentssomeofthebestscholarship viii Preface ix from that very learned group, revised and expanded by the authors to incor- porate what we learned from each other in the course of our discussions. In addition to these authors, I would like to acknowledge the contribution made bytheotherparticipantsoftheworkshop,manyofwhomhavepublishedtheir papers elsewhere: Maitrii Aung-Thwin, Carolyn Brewer, Jan van der Puten, WebbKeane,Ya-peiKuo,RebeccaNedostup,ArskalSalim,MartinSlobodnik, and Timothy Tsu Yun Hui. I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to Maitriiforhelpingtocoordinatetheoriginalconference,totheNationalUniver- sity of Singapore for hosting it, and especially to the Asia Research Institute, who generously supported the event. Colleagues in the History Department, especially Bruce Lockhart and Yang Bin, have provided valuable advice and support.Inaddition,Iwouldliketoextendmythankstothebookcontributors for their patience with my numerous editorial demands, and for their moral support as we took the text to publication. As always, the last word of thanks is reserved for Misako Suzuki.
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