Maiden Voyage: The Senzaimaru and the Creation of Modern Sino-Japanese Relations

Joshua Fogel’s Maiden Voyage is a new story to me and looks fascinating….

After centuries of virtual isolation, during which time international sea travel was forbidden outside of Japan’s immediate fishing shores, Japanese shogunal authorities in 1862 made the unprecedented decision to launch an official delegation to China by sea. Concerned by the fast-changing global environment, they had witnessed the ever-increasing number of incursions into Asia by European powers – not the least of which was Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853-54 and the forced opening of a handful of Japanese ports at the end of the decade. The Japanese reasoned that it was only a matter of time before they too encountered the same unfortunate fate as China; their hope was to learn from the Chinese experience and to keep foreign powers at bay. They dispatched the Senzaimaru to Shanghai with the purpose of investigating contemporary conditions of trade and diplomacy in the international city. Japanese from varied domains, as well as shogunal officials, Nagasaki merchants, and an assortment of deck hands, made the voyage along with a British crew, spending a total of ten weeks observing and interacting with the Chinese and with a handful of Westerners. Roughly a dozen Japanese narratives of the voyage were produced at the time, recounting personal impressions and experiences in Shanghai. The Japanese emissaries had the distinct advantage of being able to communicate with their Chinese hosts by means of the “brush conversation” (written exchanges in literary Chinese). For their part, the Chinese authorities also created a paper trail of reports and memorials concerning the Japanese visitors, which worked its way up and down the bureaucratic chain of command. This was the first official meeting of Chinese and Japanese in several centuries. Although the Chinese authorities agreed to few of the Japanese requests for trade relations and a consulate, nine years later China and Japan would sign the first bilateral treaty of amity in their history, a completely equal treaty. East Asia – and the diplomatic and trade relations between the region’s two major players in the modern era – would never be the same.

Leo Itkis in Shanghai, 1941 – “A Particularly Good Musician”

Back in 2009 I posted an old advert from Shanghai’s Park Hotel (still there on Nanjing West Road) from 1941. Although it was late 1941, Shanghai was the “solitary island” and Pearl Harbor was but months away Shanghai still swung, with a tea dance from 5-7pm anyway. Providing the music was Leo Itkis and his orchestra. SAdly I knew nothing else about Mr Itkis. Well, now I know a little more courtesy of some of his descendents and a bit of research.

As best I can make out Leo Itkis was a White Russian who, as a young man, became a pianist. He appears in 1926 in Singapore at the Victoria Theatre accompanying a number of Russian ballet stars on tour – though they were also White Russians from Harbin, Shanghai and Europe. They performed straight ballet, comedy numbers and a demonstration of the seriously modern Charleston for the audience. The Singapore Straits Times described Leo Itkis as “a nineteen year old pianist said to be a particularly good musician.”

Later Itkis must have settled in Shanghai and formed his own orchestra that eventually played at the Park in 1941. According to his relatives, who’ve done some research into his life, he sadly died in 1942 of post-operative shock from an operation to repair nerve damage in his neck. He left a widow and son. She later remarried a US Army Captain and went to America with him at the end of the war.

That’s all I know so far….but if you want to know what JG Ballard thought of the Park Hotel, about the time Leo Itkis was performing there then I blogged that before here

The wonderful Park Hotel on Bubbling Well Road, towering over the old race course, now the dreary Renmin Square

England’s Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and the Great War: A China Penguin WW1 Special

Anne Witchard’s England’s Yellow Peril rounds out the Penguin China World War One Series – all available as e-books globally and as paperbacks in Asia/Australia. Anne’s is available here on Amazon UK and here on Amazon US.

As England suffered heavy casualties at the front during World War One, the nation closed ranks against outsiders at home. England sought to reaffirm its racial dominance at the heart of the empire, and the Chinese in London became the principal scapegoat for anti-foreign sentiment. A combination of propaganda and popular culture, from the daily paper to the latest theatre sensation, fanned the flames of national resentment into a raging Sinophobia. Opium smoking, gambling and interracial romance became synonymous with London’s Limehouse Chinatown, which was exoticised by Sax Rohmer’s evil mastermind Fu Manchu and Thomas Burke’s tales of lowlife love. England’s Yellow Peril exploded in the midst of a catastrophic war and defined the representation of Chinese abroad in the decades to come.

Ellen La Motte’s Peking Dust 1916-1917 Memoirs Republished

Ellen Newbold La Motte is one of the early twentieth century’s most interesting, and yet mostly forgotten, China sojourners. La Motte started out as a nurse in Baltimore and, at the outbreak of WW1, signed up to be a nurse in Europe before America joined the war. Her diary of her time in Belgium, The Backwash of War, is a bitter indictment of the trenches. After her time in Europe La Motte travelled on to Asia, wanting to observe the pernicious effects of opium addiction. A number of books came out of this time, all worth reading, including Peking Dust, which is the most interesting book to be written by a foreigner on the effects on, and thinking in, China of World War One.

And, good news, it’s just been reissued in an annotated edition as an ebook by Camphor Press (or Amazon)

Camphor Press have also put an old Peking quiz onine – one for all wannabe China Hands and Would-be Sinologists to try…..click here

Yan Fu and Chinese Imperial Students at the Royal Naval College – Greenwich

An ongoing exhibition at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich in London….on now and runs till end of January 2015

Yan Fu and Chinese Imperial Students at the Royal Naval College

Dates – Sun 16 Nov 2014 – Sat 31 Jan 2015

Details – click here for times etc

An exhibition on the celebrated thinker who was one of the first group of Chinese students to study in the UK (at the Royal Navy College now the ORNC), and who introduced western philosophy to China through translations of Thomas H. Huxley, Adam Smith, J.S. Mill.

More on Yan Fu here

Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity

Thanks to Sue Anne Tay’s Shanghai Street Stories blog for bringing this book to my attention, Qin Shao’s Shanghai Gone. The blurb (below) is a little overstated in terms of Shanghai “gleaming” and rivalling London and New York as a financial centre but it still raises important issues, not least the human tragedies behind the Xintiandi nonsense that set back the preservation and heritage debate several decades in Shanghai but being lauded by many who should know better….

Shanghai has been demolished and rebuilt into a gleaming megacity in recent decades, now ranking with New York and London as a hub of global finance. But that transformation has come at a grave human cost. This compelling book is the first to apply the concept of domicide—the eradication of a home against the will of its dwellers—to the sweeping destruction of neighborhoods, families, and life patterns to make way for the new Shanghai. Here we find the holdouts and protesters, men and women who have stubbornly resisted domicide and demanded justice. Qin Shao follows, among others, a reticent kindergarten teacher turned diehard petitioner; a descendant of gangsters and squatters who has become an amateur lawyer for evictees; and a Chinese Muslim who has struggled to recover his ancestral home in Xintiandi, an infamous site of gentrification dominated by a well-connected Hong Kong real estate tycoon. Highlighting the wrenching changes spawned by China’s reform era, Shao vividly portrays the relentless pursuit of growth and profit by the combined forces of corrupt power and money, the personal wreckage it has left behind, and the enduring human spirit it has unleashed.

Good Christmas Present Ideas for China Rhyming #3 – Lego’s Shanghai Gangster

I never realised Lego had done a Shanghai gangster figure – quite accurate too, given its pre-war and part of the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Shanghai Chase collection. The set recreates the great chase at the start of the movie through Shanghai when Indy, Willie and Short Round escape from a showdown with crime boss Lao Che and his goons at Club Obi Wan.

Good Christmas Present Ideas for China Rhyming #2 – Mysteries of Old Peking Detective Game

#2 -what a great game for Christmas!! Mysteries of Old Peking dates from only 1987 (personally I’m rather alarmed that many web sites refer to its a “vintage” 1987 game!!) and apparently….

As one of the best detectives in Chinatown, you’ll have to solve one of the mysteries in the casebook and reveal the criminal. To get clues, you must go to the different witnesses and interrogate them. You may move the dragons with the help of fortune cookies and prevent the other detectives from getting there before you. When you discover the culprit, you must go to the dragon he is hiding in.

The most important witnesses are the Spy and the Wise Man, so you must reach them as soon as possible in order to get vital information for the case. The Wise Man will tell you which of the witnesses is lying, and the Spy will tell you where the culprit is hiding. But you’ll have to visit the rest of the witnesses around the board to get the description of the culprit.. Does he have glasses, a scar, a mustache or a hat? But beware! Some witnesses will have nothing useful to tell you!

The game includes 3 decoders in order to decipher clues: a red filter to look at general clues, a mirror to look at the “wise man” clue, and a mask card to check the culprit in the casebook.