Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia

277 Pages·2009·9.317 MB·English

by  Thomas David DuBois (eds.)

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
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Fuzhou"
Taiwan
Lhasa 'Chengdu PACIFIC OCEAN
South China
MYANMAR Sea PHILIPPINES
[BURMA) ,
THAILAND
VIETNAM
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MALAYSIA
• (Malaya) "-
Johor
SINGAfiDBE- Kalimantan^' Sulawesi
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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
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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.