COMPETING NATIONALISMS, 1862 and 1944: TWO SEMINAL MOMENTS

"COMPETING NATIONALISMS, 1862 and 1944: TWO SEMINAL MOMENTS IN SINO-
JAPANESE RELATIONS FOLDED INTO ONE"

by Joshua Fogel

Monday 12 April, at 12:00

HSSB 4020

Abstract. "After three centuries of virtually no official contacts,
in 1862 the Japanese government dispatched a ship to Shanghai to
investigate international trade and commerce in China's largest port
city. Many of the Japanese left stirring accounts of their
experiences there. They also just happened to confront the Taiping
Rebellion, probably the largest peasant rebellion in history till
then, when Taiping forces attacked the Chinese city while the
Japanese were there.

Eighty-two years later, in 1944, the Japanese made a movie on
location in occupied Shanghai about that voyage of 1862. The film
was lost at war's end and only rediscovered in late 2001.

My presentation will look first at the initial voyage, then at the
movie and the message it sought to convey, and finally at why sixty
years since it was shot and 140 years since the mission took place,
the story retains such extraordinary poignancy today."