Introduction
During the last decade of Qing China, the North–South dichotomy emerged as a prevalent narrative structure shared by many academic and literary works. In an influential article serialized in 1905, Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1884–1919) provided an in-depth discussion of differences between northern China and southern China in academic traditions.Footnote 1 Some of Liu's contemporaries used a similar structure in their narratives of the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), depicting northern people and southern people as perpetrators and victims respectively.Footnote 2 The Nanshe 南社 (Southern Society), one of the largest literary societies based in southern China, also promoted a dichotomy between north and south: the former was portrayed as a decaying land whereas the latter was imagined as a civilized one.Footnote 3
Earlier scholars have explored the Chinese origins of the narrative of the North–South dichotomy in the late Qing period. The current article, however, explores Japan's lesser-known role in the dissemination of this narrative structure in early twentieth-century China. As existing studies have shown, leading intellectuals in Meiji Japan, such as Okakura Tenshin 岡倉 天心 (1863–1913), Naitō Konan 内藤 湖南 (1866–1934), and Shiratori Kurakichi 白鳥 庫吉 (1865–1942), developed an interest in relations between northern China and southern China.Footnote 4 Their shared interest, however, led to different conclusions. Shiratori interpreted China's past as a history of failed attempts to integrate northern people and southern people. Underlying his argument was the intent to prove the superiority of Japan, a country which, he believed, had succeeded in integrating northern culture and southern culture.Footnote 5 In contrast, Naitō, one of Shiratori's contemporaries, situated Japan and China in a shared cultural zone not bounded by national borders and acknowledged China's significant role in building Japanese culture. Despite that, as Masubuchi Tatsuo 増淵 龍夫 (1916–1983) pointed out, Naitō also constructed a hierarchy between Japan and China, though he had greater sympathy for China. Based on observation of the interaction between north and south, Naitō created a theory of the movement of the cultural center to explain historical changes in China. By restructuring China as a culture, rather than a nation or a state, he opened up the possibility that Japan could be a new “China” in the modern era when the Qing Empire was in decline.Footnote 6
Although Japanese intellectuals’ discourses consciously or unconsciously dwarfed China in relation to Japan, they aroused an interest in north–south relations among Chinese intellectuals and students in Japan, who later brought this discussion back to China. This article explores this circulation of knowledge. On the one hand, it examines how Japanese intellectuals interpreted north–south relations in China. While acknowledging the Chinese foundation of their interpretations, I treat Japanese discourses as a reconfiguration of Chinese discourses with a Western scientific formula. On the other hand, this study investigates how Chinese intellectuals and students in Japan understood and made use of Japanese intellectuals’ discourses. I do not presume that this process is a one-way flow of knowledge determined by Japan alone. I rather examine how Chinese intellectuals and students appropriated Japanese intellectuals’ discourses to fit their own agendas.
Chinese Discourses on the North–South Dichotomy Prior to the Twentieth Century
In pre-twentieth century China, “north” and “south” had long been used as two categories to discuss differences. First, they served as two geographical terms to denote regional differences in China as early as the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770–221 BCE). One early account can be found in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 (Annals of Master Yan), an ancient Chinese text compiled during the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE):
When an orange tree grows up to the south of the Huai River, it produces oranges; if it grows up to the north of the Huai River, it produces bitter oranges. Its leaves look similar but its fruits taste different. Why is it so? It is because the water and soil are different.Footnote 7
In the compiler's account, the Huai River served as a boundary to demarcate north and south, which were environmentally different. The Shang shu 尚書 (The Book of Documents), another ancient Chinese text compiled during the same period, drew a distinction between north and south in terms of the soil's fertility. Dividing China into nine regions characterized by three categories of soil, the compiler stated that the three regions south to the Huai River possessed the least fertile soil, while the six regions north of the Huai River possessed the most fertile and the second most fertile soils.Footnote 8
Second, north and south were also frequently used as notions to discuss cultural differences in China. The Shishuo xinyu 世說新語 (A New Account of the Tales of the World), a volume compiled by Liu Yiqing 劉義慶 (403–444), stated that northern scholarship was characterized by “yuanzong guangbo 淵綜廣博 (depth and broadness)” whereas southern scholarship was characterized by “qingtong jianyao 清通簡要 (clarity and conciseness).”Footnote 9 Wang Shizhen 王世貞 (1526–1590), a scholar of the mid-Ming dynasty, offered a detailed discussion of the differences between musical styles in northern and southern China. For him, the former had stronger beats than the latter.Footnote 10 Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636), a well-known literatus of the late Ming dynasty, uncovered a North–South dichotomy in painting style: the northern school was composed of professional artists and prioritized technical skill; the southern school was composed of literati and prioritized the expression of ideas through paintings.Footnote 11 Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764–1849), a leading scholar of the mid-Qing dynasty, pointed out that: the northern school usually used steles for calligraphic works while the southern school preferred paper.Footnote 12
In addition to denoting environmental and cultural differences within China, north and south had been used as terms to demarcate the Han population and barbarians since the Southern Song Dynasty. Due to the expansion of the Jurchens in the north in the twelfth century, the Song court had to be relocated from Kaifeng in the north to Hangzhou in the south. Those who remembered the loss of northern lands as a humiliation often tried to heal their mental injury through writing.Footnote 13 For instance, Xu Kangzong 許亢宗, a Southern Song envoy to the Jurchen Jin kingdom, wrote that:
In places south of (Yin) mountain (along which the Great Wall was built), crops, fruits, timber and woods were abundant; just ten Chinese miles beyond the gate (of the Great Wall), lands became barren and rivers became turbid… The boundary was set to separate the Han people and barbarians.Footnote 14
In Xu's imagination, the north became the barbarian land, while the south was civilized.
Although all these Chinese discourses were built on the dichotomy between north and south, they never constituted a systematic theory. First, north and south had different connotations in traditional discourses. In many cases, they were used as geographical terms to denote the spatial representation of regional differences. Nevertheless, the boundary between north and south was very fluid. For instance, the Shang shu and Yanzi chunqiu used the Huai River to demarcate north and south while Xu Kangzong considered the Great Wall as the boundary. In some cases, north and south were not even used as spatial terms. For instance, Dong Qichang stated that the North–South dichotomy in the painting styles did not reflect a difference in the native places of the artists. According to his account, Wang Wei 王維 (692–761), a leading scholar born in a northern province, was the founding father of the southern school; Zhao Gan 趙干, a professional artist in the Southern Tang Kingdom, was a representative figure in the northern school. For Dong, north and south merely represented two components of a dichotomy, rather than a spatial grouping of artists.Footnote 15
Second, these traditional discourses provided diverse explanations to address differences between northern China and southern China. Some considered environmental differences as the root of regional discrepancies. For instance, Yan Zhitui 顏之推 (531–591), a scholar in the Northern Qi Kingdom (550–577), associated linguistic differences with environmental conditions. In his view, “(As) water and land were mild in the south, the sounds of southern languages were crisp and fast … (as) the rivers were deep and lands were high in the north, the sounds of northern languages were creaking and gruff.”Footnote 16 In contrast, discourses that treated north and south as non-geographical terms often sought for non-environmental explanations for regional differences. For example, Ruan Yuan attributed differences in calligraphic styles between north and south to the partition of China during the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420) when the northern land was under barbarian control and the Jin court was relocated from Luoyang to Nanjing. Ruan believed that the 104-year divide caused the emergence of two different calligraphic styles: northern people inherited the tradition of writing on the stele; southern people started to use paper as the writing material because the Eastern Jin dynasty forbade the production of steles.Footnote 17
Meiji Japan's Renewed Interest in China
Chinese discourses on the North–South dichotomy captured Japanese intellectuals’ attention during the Meiji era. The direct drive behind their interest was a boom in traveling to China. The number of Japanese travelers remained small prior to the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), but increased rapidly during the post-war period. According to the Japanese immigration records, there were at least 34,988 Japanese citizens in China in 1907.Footnote 18 It is certainly bold to presume that Japanese visitors to China were all voluntary contributors to an imperialist enterprise, because they were characterized by extremely diverse backgrounds and agendas. These travelers included not only governmental officials and military officers, but also educators, journalists, Buddhist clerics, writers, and merchants.Footnote 19 It is nevertheless hard to claim that they were immune to the rising nationalism in Japan at the turn of the nineteenth century. As clearly revealed in Japanese visitors’ writings, the military victory fueled their arrogance toward China.
Among these Japanese travelers were intellectuals who opened the Japanese discussion of the North–South dichotomy, such as Okakura Tenshin (1863–1913), Shiga Shigetaka 志賀 重昂 (1863–1927), Shiratori Kurakichi (1865–1942), Naitō Konan (1868–1934), and Kuwabara Jitsuzō 桑原 隲蔵 (1871–1931). Despite their varied experiences, these intellectuals were dismayed by the enormous gap between the idealized image of China in the Confucian classics and the decaying Qing China of reality.Footnote 20 They were also shocked by the great regional discrepancies and started to question the idea of China as a state with internal coherence, an idea endorsed by Confucian classics. For instance, Okakura, one of the founding fathers of modern Japanese arts, was shocked by the geographical, racial, and cultural differences between northern China and southern China.Footnote 21 He then concluded that “China was not a single state, but a kind of Europe,” as it was composed of several races with no common quality.Footnote 22 Japanese intellectuals’ experiences in China formed a factual foundation for their theories of North–South dichotomy.
Despite this, Japanese travelers’ personal experiences were hardly sufficient to spur a lasting interest in the regional differences between northern China and southern China. Their intriguing passion for theorizing these differences was aroused by a new interest in the study of China. In the Edo era, as the Tokugawa shogunate adopted Confucianism as the official ideology, kangaku 漢学 (Chinese Study) was endorsed as the academic orthodoxy. For Japanese intellectuals at that time, China was less a state with fixed borders and more a boundless culture in which Japan was subsumed. The Meiji era, however, witnessed a transformation of the relative position between China and Japan: the former declined and became a target of Western imperialism; the latter emerged as an industrial and military power. This change eroded the orthodox status of kangaku, which was predicated on the assumption of China's cultural superiority. Instead, Western learning, which helped strengthen Japan, became the new orthodoxy.
The marginalization of kangaku did not lead to a loss of academic interest in China, but marked the commencement of generations of efforts to study China from new perspectives. As Joshua A. Fogel points out, Japan's self-definition had always been closely associated with its perception of China, as “China represented the homeland of that great culture from which Japan often borrowed to fit its needs.”Footnote 23 When Japan emerged as a regional power, it started to look for a new identity. This required Japan to reposition China within its intellectual sphere. The result was a gradual but permanent relocation of the study of China from kangaku to multiple disciplines, such as Chinese literature, Chinese history and Chinese philosophy. This replaced the “unscientific” and “biased” Confucian methodology with “scientific” and “objective” Western methodology.
The disciplinary change was not a nominal one, but a qualitative one that restructured basic assumptions in the study of China. On the one hand, many Japanese intellectuals started to view China as a state, rather than as an encompassing culture in which Japan grew. They stopped looking for universal truth in China, which their predecessors had done during the Edo era. Instead, they endeavored to uncover Japan's uniqueness in their study of China. They were driven by the goal of demonstrating that Japan, unlike China, could prosper in the modern era.Footnote 24 On the other hand, these newly established disciplines in the field of Chinese studies were also shaped by the lingering influence of the diminishing kangaku. Some intellectuals, such as Naitō, Kuwabara, and Kano Naoki 狩野 直喜 (1868–1947), acknowledged the cultural affinity between China and Japan, and considered China's decline to be temporary. They believed that China could be revitalized through a combination of Chinese culture and Western culture, just as Japan had been.Footnote 25 They saw it as Japan's duty to rescue China from Western imperialism. In the long run, this sense of duty encouraged Japan to invade China for the purposes of building a Japan-led union against the West.
The renewed interest in China motivated Japanese visitors to theorize their travel experience in China. Their interpretations were certainly based on personal experience, but were by no means a mirror reflection of reality. Instead, they made sense of their individual experiences through various predetermined assumptions. It is within this context that they started exploring differences between northern China and southern China.
Shiga Shigetaka and the Discourse on the North–South Dichotomy
Modern geography, which prospered in Meiji Japan, stimulated some Japanese intellectuals to look for universal truth. In this intellectual context, China, a neighboring country with vast lands and numerous unknown geographical attributes, immediately became a fascinating subject for Japanese geographers. Shiga Shigetaka was a key figure in contextualizing the discussion of regional differences in China in the modern discipline of geography. Shiga was a prominent geographer who taught at the Tokyo Semmon Gakkō 東京専門学校 (Tokyo Vocational College) from 1895. He was devoted to kokugaku 国学 (nativist studies), a school of thought that aimed to find the essence of a “pure” Japan before it was “contaminated” by Confucian and Buddhist ideas.Footnote 26 In a course taught at the Tokyo Senmmon Gakkō in 1897, Shiga offered a geographical analysis of a wide range of differences between northern and southern China. Environmentally, northern China had a drier climate and under-developed agriculture, whereas southern China was characterized by a humid climate and advanced agriculture. Politically, Chinese emperors preferred establishing capitals in the north. Biologically, northern people were muscular in contrast to slender and even emaciated southern people. Culturally, northern literati admired Zheng Xuan's 鄭玄 (127–200) ideas, whereas southern literati respected Wang Su's 王肅 (195–256) teachings during the post-Han period when China was split between northern and southern kingdoms.Footnote 27
Shiga's understanding of China was indebted to the kangaku he had studied earlier, but his narrative went beyond a mere synthesis of existing Chinese discourses. He attempted to find a geographical explanation for all the differences discovered by his predecessors. In his view,
Rivers flowing between north and south could combine regions with hot climate and those with cold climate, connect regions producing different products, and alleviate the conflict of interests (between these regions). Rivers flowing between west and east passed through regions with the same climate, products and interests. They thus could neither connect regions with different climates, nor alleviate conflicts of interest there. This is why China resembled Europe …Footnote 28
Applying a geographical framework to the study of China, Shiga identified the Yellow River and the Yangtze River – the two most important rivers in China – as the factors determining regional differences. According to him, as both rivers flowed from west to east, they could not bridge “hundreds of climatic and historical differences” between northern China and southern China.Footnote 29
Shiga's theory restructured Chinese discourses on differences between northern China and southern China. In traditional discourses, north and south were not always geographical terms denoting spatial relations. Neither was environment considered a central factor responsible for regional differences. In contrast, Shiga defined north and south as geographical terms representing the fixed spatial areas. He used the two terms to create a systematic analysis of North–South relations that attributed all the regional differences to environmental conditions.
The fixation of north and south as spatial terms generated new meanings for the Han population and barbarians. In traditional discourses, they were two cultural communities whose distinctions were determined by their acceptance of “Zhuxia zhidao 諸夏之道 (Chinese ways).” The Han people were considered the creators of the superior Chinese culture, whereas barbarians were considered culturally inferior. With an assumption of China's cultural supremacy, Han intellectuals promoted a theory of sinicization – the assimilation of barbarians through the Chinese way. As early as the Warring States Period, Mencius (372–289 BCE) described Emperor Shun and King Wen of Zhou (1152–1056 BCE) as Eastern and Western barbarians respectively. This seemingly bold statement emphasized that the acceptance of Chinese culture could even convert barbarians into sage kings.Footnote 30 In contrast, Shiga's theory reconstructed the Han population and barbarians as communities with irreversible distinctions. He stated that:
Mankind on earth originated from the central part of Eurasia. The Han people left their motherland and entered China, passing through the Kunlun Mountain. They could not pass the upper reaches of the Yangtze River which were filled with mountains. They instead followed the Yellow River, which had geographical advantages, to move eastward. This is why most dynasties established capitals in the Yellow River basin.Footnote 31
Shiga's discourses on the Han people and barbarians differed from traditional Chinese discourses in two respects. First, he believed that the Han people were foreign immigrants rather than aboriginals. Second, he viewed the Han people as a lineage with a shared ancestor. These two features transformed the Han population from a cultural entity into a biologically coherent community. They shared neither place of origin nor ancestors with people believed to originate from regions neighboring China proper, such as Tibetans and Manchus.
Shiga's new view of the Han population was shaped by the Social Darwinism prevailing in Meiji Japan, which tended to divide people into races based on physical distinctions. The direct influence on his theory of the Han origin possibly came from Terrien de Lacouperie (1844–1894), a French philologist specializing in Asian languages.Footnote 32 In a volume entitled Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, from 2300 B.C. to 200 A.D., Lacouperie proposed a provocative theory: the Han people were descendants of the Bak tribes who had migrated to China from West Asia; Huang Di 黃帝 (the Yellow Emperor), the legendary head of an ancient Chinese polity, was actually Nakhunte, the leader of the Bak tribes.Footnote 33 Lacouperie supported his assumption with a highly selective comparison between China and West Asia in terms of languages, customs, legends, and martial relics, construing a high degree of resemblance between the two. Today one can easily find that Lacouperie's theory is not substantiated by biological evidence. Nevertheless, the archeological and linguistic methodology he employed to formulate his argument appealed to Japanese scholars who, such as Shiga, were eager to learn Western science.
Underlying Shiga's restructured discourse on the North–South dichotomy were two desires. One desire was to discover a universal geographical principle governing the world. Shiga's intention was clearly revealed in his course which applied the North–South dichotomy not only to studies of China, but also those of Japan and other countries. The other was a desire to prove Japan's superiority over China. In his view, numerous unbridgeable differences between north and south were destined to produce constant competition between them, turning China's past into a history of discord between northerners and southerners.Footnote 34 He predicted that the divide between north and south would be broadened in the future, as the Yellow River and the Yangtze River were likely soon to be occupied by Russia and Britain respectively. He was, however, very optimistic about the integration of north and south in Meiji Japan. He believed that the expansion of modern technology would greatly improve transportation and communication to facilitate such integration.Footnote 35 The contrast between a bleak vision of China's fate and a bright vision of Japan's future constituted a hierarchy between the two countries.
Nowadays, students of geography would easily find flaws in Shiga's assumption: he seemed to see latitude as the decisive factor for climatic difference and disregarded other factors, such as altitude or topography. His theory was also marred by an ideology best described as environmental determinism, one that defined various regional differences as irreversible ones determined by the natural environment.Footnote 36
Despite its pseudoscientific nature, Shiga's theory was appealing to Chinese revolutionary students in Meiji Japan who endeavored to eliminate Manchu rule over China. First, the “scientific” methodology he employed to formulate his theory fascinated Chinese students who craved for modern knowledge. Second and more importantly, Shiga's discourse enhanced the function of the discourse on the North–South dichotomy to repudiate the political legitimacy of the Manchu rulers, though this was never his intention. The traditional discourse on the Han population and barbarians had been used by the former to denounce the Manchus as cultural inferiors. Nonetheless, the convertibility between the two groups in traditional discourse was also exploited by Manchu emperors to legitimize their rule over China. They recast themselves as sage kings according to Confucian ideology by adopting a Confucian way to rule China proper. As a result, after the Qing government restored economic and social stability in the High Qing period, the majority of the Han intellectuals stopped seeing the Manchus as barbarians and identified the Qing Empire as a Chinese dynasty. In contrast, Shiga's narrative eliminated the convertibility between barbarians and the Han population, as he turned the two concepts into biological categories. In his writings, the Manchus became a foreign lineage that could not be sinicized by the Han population. This implication undermined the image of Manchu emperors as sage kings and cast doubt on their legitimacy to rule China.
Naitō Konan and the Discourse on the North–South Dichotomy
Naitō Konan, one of Shiga's contemporaries, provided another discourse on the North–South dichotomy in China. Naitō was a leading Japanese intellectual specializing in Chinese history and was one of the founders of the Kyoto School of Sinology. In an article serialized in Osaka Asahi Shimbun on January 1 and January 2, 1894, Naitō offered a detailed discussion of the interaction between northern China and southern China. Unlike Shiga, who employed Western methodology to study China, Naitō situated his discussion in the Chinese academic tradition. Despite that, he did not follow the Chinese tradition to assign a fluid definition to “north” and “south”. Rather, he shared a similar orientation with Shiga, as he considered the two terms as geographical concepts representing spatial relations. The geographical rendering of north and south was important for Naitō, as it helped him to construct his theory on the movement of China's cultural center.
Naitō started his article with a long quote from the Nian'er Shi Zhaji 廿二史劄記 (Notes on the History of 22 Dynasties) by Zhao Yi 趙翼 (1727–1821), a prominent Confucian scholar of the mid-Qing era:
The prosperity and decadence of diqi (earthly ether) would rotate after a long period. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (713–756), there was a significant change – the movement of the earthly ether from the northwest to the northeast. Qinzhong (central Shaanxi) had long been a region where emperors resided. It contained the capital of the Western Zhou, Qin and Western Han dynasties, and was successively occupied by the Former Qin, Later Qin, Western Wei, and Later Zhou Kingdoms. Emperor Wen of Sui established a new capital in Chang'an under the foot of the Longshou Mountain, which was only approximately 20 li (Chinese miles) away from the old capitals and was in the middle of Shaanxi province. Since then, the tianxia (all under heaven) was unified. The Tang dynasty also established its capital in Chang'an. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the prosperity of Chang'an reached its peak. It is always true that a decline follows a pinnacle. During that period, the earthly ether moved from west towards northeast. Therefore, the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) occurred as a harbinger … [Emperor Zhaozong of Tang] relocated the capital to Luoyang. Since then, Chang'an became an ordinary city. At the same time, Abaoji (Emperor Taizu of Liao) emerged in the northeast … the earthly ether continued to accumulate and got solidified (in the northeast). Consequently, Later Jin Kingdom occupied half of the tianxia; the Yuan and Ming dynasties took over the whole tianxia. As for the Qing “dynasty”, it not only took over the tianxia, but also expanded more than ten thousand li beyond the northwest. The fact that the tianxia was controlled by dynasties with capitals in the northeast proved that wangqi (the imperial ether) accumulated in the northeast.Footnote 37
Zhao explained dynastic change with the northeastern movement of the earthly ether – a universal power imbedded in the earth. In his eyes, the locomotion of the earthly ether made the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang a watershed in Chinese history. Before that period, the earthly ether accumulated in the middle of Shaanxi province in the northwest, so various dynasties and larger kingdoms established their capitals in Chang'an in the province. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, as the earthly ether started to move toward the northeast, An Lushan 安祿山 (703–757) in the northeast rebelled. After the Tang dynasty, as the earthly either gradually consolidated in the northeast, the Later Jin kingdom, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties all established their capitals in Beijing in the northeast.
Zhao's ambition to create an ahistorical theory to explain history was marred by his manipulation and omission of historical facts. Naitō pointed out that the earthly ether was more likely to accumulate first in the east. The pre-Zhou dynasties established capitals in Shanxi and Henan provinces, which were east of Shaanxi province. The earthly ether attenuated later, so a few dynasties established capitals in Chang'an, a city in northwestern China. Despite that, the earthly ether did not stay in the west for long, as the Eastern Zhou, Eastern Han, Western Jin, and Song dynasties relocated capitals back to Henan province, to the east of Shaanxi province. Naitō also rejected Zhao's idea that the Later Jin kingdom, and the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties established capitals in the northeast as a result of the eastward movement of the earthly ether. Instead, he claimed that their choices were based on geopolitical considerations.Footnote 38
Naitō’s criticism was almost as problematic as Zhao's idea, as he applied a double standard when discussing different dynasties. In Naitō’s eyes, the earthly ether dictated the location of capitals in pre-Yuan dynasties, but had no significant influence on those in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. However, this logically unsound argument served an important role in his article. By rejecting the idea of the eastward movement of the earthly ether, Naitō opened the door for the exploration of the “real” direction of this movement.
What Naitō discovered was a southward movement of the earthly ether. He argued that in the Eastern Zhou dynasty, “culture” was already developed in Jiangnan. The Wu kingdom, and the Eastern Jin and Southern Song dynasties, which established capitals in Jiangnan, developed southern China by bringing “culture” from northern China. As a result, Jiangnan had enjoyed cultural prosperity during the early Ming dynasty.Footnote 39 Quoting Zhang Huang 章潢 (1527–1608), Ji Dong 計東 (1625–1676), and Gu Zuyu 顧祖禹 (1631–1692), Naitō argued that Jiangnan had military and financial advantages over northern China due to the southward movement of the earthly ether.Footnote 40 He then concluded that the power of China was divided into two: the north possessed the imperial ether and political power, while the south possessed the “wenwu 文物 (culture)” and cultural power.Footnote 41 He predicted that China's future would be decisively shaped by Sichuan and Yunan provinces in the southwest and Guangdong and Guangxi provinces in the south.Footnote 42
Although Naitō studied China's past, he had a pragmatic goal pointing to Japan's future. This implicit goal was revealed in an article entitled Nihon no tenshoku to gakusha 日本の天職と学者 (Japan's Duties and Scholars), published in Osaka Asahi Shimbun in November 1894, ten months after the publication of his article on the earthly ether. In the serialized article, Naitō applied his theory of the movement of the cultural center to other parts of the world. He argued that the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, such as Greece, Egypt, and Rome, were all a result of the movement of the cultural center.Footnote 43 He predicted that Japan would be the new cultural center of Asia.Footnote 44
Naitō’s theory was built on the assumption that Asia was a cultural totality. As Masubuchi Tatsuo points out, this idea was a variation of Chinese culturalism that treated China as a culture “transcending differences between individual states as well as their rise and fall.”Footnote 45 Borrowing the traditional Chinese ideology, Naitō created the possibility that the cultural center of Asia could move to Japan. Underlying this theory was an anxiety to reposition Japan on the international stage, which could also be found in Shiga's narrative. In other words, although Shiga and Naitō adopted different methodologies to study China, they arrived at the same place. Shiga proved Japan's superiority by “dwarfing” China; Naitō demonstrated that Japan superseded China due to the movement of the cultural center by acknowledging the cultural affinity between China and Japan.
Despite its implicit Japan-centered orientation, Naitō’s discourses on North–South interaction appealed to Chinese revolutionary students. On the one hand, Naitō, like Shiga, provided a “universal” pattern to explain China's development. Even though the pattern was discovered in Chinese academic traditions, it was no less attractive than Shiga's “scientific” theory. By synthesizing Zhao's discourse with other Chinese scholars’ ideas, Naitō produced a systematic theory that fascinated Chinese revolutionary students in Japan who were looking for a universal truth applicable to China. On the other hand, Naitō’s prediction about the emerging importance of southern China almost naturally appealed to revolutionaries as the majority of them came from southern provinces.Footnote 46
Liang Qichao and the Discourse on the North–South Dichotomy
Japanese intellectuals’ studies of North–South dichotomy soon captured the attention of Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929). Liang was a leading Chinese intellectual who fled to Japan to avoid the persecution of the Qing government after the failed 1898 Reform. He established Xinmin Congbao 新民叢報 (The New Citizen Journal) in Japan, which was one of the most widely read Chinese-language journals among Chinese students in Japan. In an article entitled Zhongguo dili dashi lun 中國地理大勢論 (An Overview of the Chinese Geography), which was serialized in Xinmin congbao between April and June 1902, Liang offered his view of the North–South dichotomy. He began his article with a discussion of the relations between rivers and civilization:
Rivers flowing between north and south could connect frigid, temperate, and torrid zones to coordinate various climates, products, and customs, and avoid the conflict of interests (between these regions). Rivers flowing between east and west were the opposite. They passed through regions with the same climate, products, and customs. Therefore, regions between different rivers (flowing between east and west) were often divergent. Consequently eastern America and western America were different (as rivers in America all flowed from north to south), but they could be coordinated; southern China and northern China were different (as rivers in China all flowed from west to east), and were often engaged in conflicts.Footnote 47
As this narrative shows, Liang shared the assumption with Shiga that environmental differences were determined by latitude. The former's idea was likely to have been shaped by the latter, as they exchanged thoughts in classical Chinese on October 26 and 27, 1898.Footnote 48 Liang pushed Shiga's argument further by using rivers to explain a wider range of political, literary, customary, and military differences between northern China and southern China.
Liang also embraced the myth of the foreign origin of the Han population. According to his account, huangzu 黃族 (the yellow race) entered China through the Pamir Mountains and settled in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, as they could not penetrate further into the Yangtze River valley. He believed that this was the reason why “the Yellow River was the starting point of Chinese civilization” and why most dynasties established capitals in the Yellow River basin.Footnote 49 Liang's narrative departed from the traditional notion of Han as a cultural category, as he imagined it as a biologically coherent community named huangzu.
It is important to note that Liang's idea of the Han population was not consistent. Although he stressed its physical dimension here, he rejected understanding it in purely biological terms in other writings. In an article on Chinese historiography, he classified the Chinese population into six categories – Miao, Han, Tibetan, Mongol, Xiongnu, and Tungus – and placed the Manchus in the last category. He argued that the distinction between different groups had been blurred by inter-group marriage. He also cast doubt on the assumption that the Han population descended from a common ancestor. Despite his awareness of historical assimilation between different groups, Liang nevertheless insisted that there remained distinctions between the six categories of the Chinese population.Footnote 50 Seen in this light, Liang's theory, like Shiga's, helped consolidate the boundary between the Han population and other peoples in China.
In spite of these similarities, Liang's theory was different from Shiga's in one important respect. He divided China into three parts with three rivers: the Yellow River in the north, the Yangtze River in the middle, and the Xi River (the Pearl River) in the south. He argued that these river-based regions could be easily distinguished from each other due to their unique features.Footnote 51 The intention behind Liang's appropriation of Shiga's theory was revealed in his synthesis of Naitō’s theory of the southward movement of the earthly ether.
Liang met Naitō several times after he came to Japan in 1898.Footnote 52 It was likely that Liang came to know Naitō’s idea of the movement of the earthly ether in these meetings. A close look at Liang's writings also reveals traces of Naitō’s influence. In several paragraphs, Liang discussed the reason why few southern kingdoms managed to unify a split China. He believed that the failure was not induced by southerners’ physical weakness, but by “diyun 地運 (earthly fortune),” an equivalent of the earthly ether. When the earthly fortune was in the north, all the southern kingdoms failed to defeat northern kingdoms; when it moved to the south, the Ming dynasty emerged in the south and expelled the northern Mongols.Footnote 53 It was clear that Liang did not agree with Zhao Yi, who postulated a northeastward movement of the earthly ether. Instead, he believed that the earthly ether moved southward, just as Naitō did.
Built on Naitō’s theory, Liang put forward a prophecy about China. He admitted that the “real” south of China – the Xi River basin – played a less important role in Chinese history than the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze River basin. However, he believed that the former's significance would soon ascend due to the southward movement of the earthly fortune. Consequently, “the great undertaking in the future would not emerge in regions between the Yellow River and Yangtze River, but would emerge in regions between the Yangtze River and the Xi River.”Footnote 54
Liang's narrative was shaped by a local consciousness brewing in late Qing China. The Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864), which swept across China proper, drained the Qing government's financial resources and paralyzed its control over most of the affected provinces. Local elites had to organize militias for self-protection and establish institutions to manage local affairs so as to compensate for the diminishment of state presence. The postwar restructuring of the localities never restored the Qing government's presence, but only enhanced the local elites’ power, as militias and other local institutions developed into semi-official organizations, which even outlasted the Qing Empire.Footnote 55 The militias led by local elites had an especially strong influence in Guangdong, Liang's native province. This type of organization flourished as early as in the late 1830s under Lin Zexu 林則徐 (1785–1850), a Chinese official well known for his role in the anti-opium campaign. After arriving in Guangdong with an imperial commission to deal with the opium trade in 1839, Lin started to exploit local militias to support his campaign. His successors continued the policy of hiring militias to defend Guangdong against the British in spite of their initial suspicion.Footnote 56 The militias further developed in the battles against the Taiping rebels and became a form of social control independent of bureaucratic institutions in post-rebellion Guangdong just as they did in other places.
The emerging local consciousness helped create cracks between the localities and state in the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), an uprising that mainly targeted foreigners and Christianity. The Manchu court wanted to exploit the xenophobic sentiment in the rebellion to drive foreigners out of China, so it decided to initiate a war against Western states. After being informed of the court's plan, many provincial governors and governors-general feared that the war would disintegrate the empire. They thus drew up an emergency plan to handle possible disaster, which was later termed “Dongnan hubao 東南互保 (The Southeast Autonomous Plan).” According to the plan, the committed provinces would reject the edict to fight against Western states; if the emperor or the dowager empress was seized or killed, they would detach southern provinces from the Manchu court, establish a new state, and elect Li Hongzhang (the then governor-general of Guangdong province) as president.Footnote 57 After the Manchu court declared war against eleven Western states on June 21, 1900, nine southern provinces and one northern province signed protocols with Western states and rejected supporting the court.Footnote 58
Although the war did not lead to the collapse of the empire, it made relations between the state and provinces deteriorate irreversibly. On the one hand, the Manchu court started to see provincial power as an acute challenge to its authority, as provincial governors and governors-general disobeyed its order on a vital issue. On the other hand, provincial governors and governors-general viewed the court as a threat that jeopardized the survival of their provinces. The escalating tension between state and provinces led to their alienation. As a result, the court was eager to restore its authority by restructuring provincial bureaucracy while provincial governors and governors-general tried hard to secure their power by resisting the reform.
The rising tension between state and locality established the backdrop for Liang's discourses on the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. During his stay in Japan, Liang became increasingly concerned about Western imperialism that carved out spheres of influence in China. Disappointed by the Qing government's capacity to resist the expansion of Western powers, he found it had become urgent to mobilize locals to defend their own lands, just as they did in the battles against the Taiping rebels. Meanwhile, he was worried about the possibility that the rise of local power might lead to the internal split of China.
Liang's solution to the dilemma was to create a dual identity for Chinese in the Xi River basin. On the one hand, he borrowed Shiga's theory to emphasize the internal coherence within the “south” by articulating inter-regional differences. In so doing, he assigned a shared regional identity to the Chinese population in the Xi River basin, binding them into a community with common interests. On the other hand, he exploited Naitō’s discourses to turn the Xi River basin into an essential component of China by emphasizing its importance to China's future. As a result, in his writing the Xi River basin became a region that significantly differed from others while sharing the same Chinese attributes with them.Footnote 59 This discourse created both a local and a national identity for southerners, which could mobilize them to prioritize local interest while not seeking a breakaway with the state.
Narratives of Rivers in Provincial Journals Produced by Revolutionary Students
Geography classes and Xinmin congbao directed the attention of revolutionary students in Japan to discourses on the North–South dichotomy. Their discussion of this topic first appeared in two articles published in the Hubei xueshengjie 湖北學生界 (Student Circle of Hubei). The journal was edited by revolutionary students from Hubei Province, of whom most were Han Chinese. In February 1903, the journal published an article titled “Huanghe” 黃河 (The Yellow River), aiming to mobilize locals to resist the expansion of Western imperialism along the Yellow River. The author, Li Buqing 李步青, devoted the major portion of the article to elaborating the importance of the river to China: historically, the excellent environmental conditions of the upper reaches of the Yellow River enabled the ancestors of the Han population to settle after migrating to China; politically, most capitals of Chinese dynasties were located in the Yellow River basin; racially, the tough environment of the Yellow River basin had forced the locals to work hard and had cultivated their character of diligence and frugality.Footnote 60 Li even claimed that “the history of China was almost entirely written by the Yellow River basin.”Footnote 61
The article on the Yellow River soon incurred opposition. In May 1903, the Hubei xueshengjie published an anonymous article titled “Yangzijiang” 揚子江 (The Yangtze River). This article had the same goal of uniting compatriots to resist the expansion of Western imperialism in China, but it intriguingly devoted many paragraphs to refuting the idea that the Yellow River basin was the core of China. First, while acknowledging the Yellow River basin as the base for the emergence of the Han people who migrated to China, the author argued that the Yangtze River basin was equally important in China's development. According to his account, since the Eastern Zhou dynasty, the continuous Han immigration from the north had contributed to civilizing the locals and eventually turned the Yangtze River basin into the center of the development of the Han population.Footnote 62 Second, the author claimed that the Yangtze River basin had economic advantages over the Yellow River basin: agriculturally, the Yangtze River basin enjoyed abundant produce, whereas agriculture was declining in the Yellow River basin due to frequent floods and the accumulation of sand in the river; commercially, the Yangtze River had a shipping route of more than one thousand Chinese miles, whereas many sections of the Yellow River were not suitable for shipping due to the shallow riverbed and floods.Footnote 63 Third, the author claimed that the Yangtze River had a positive influence on the locals, but the Yellow River had only a negative influence on locals. For him, the Yellow River basin was a region characterized by “zhuanzhi 專制 (despotism),” “nulizhi 奴隸制 (slavery),” and traitors who surrendered to Westerners during the Boxer Rebellion; the Yangtze River basin was a region which cultivated the “shangwu zhi jingshen 尚武之精神 (martial spirit)” and evoked the “guohun 國魂 (national soul).”Footnote 64 Based on a point-by-point refutation, the author claimed that the Yangtze River was the center from which the history of the Han population developed.Footnote 65
The dispute between the two articles published by the Hubei xueshengjie is intriguing in several respects. Chiefly, they had many commonalities that stemmed from the influence of Japanese intellectuals. They believed that the Han population migrated to China in ancient times; they employed modern geographical terms to discuss economic and agricultural difference between the river basins; underlying their assumption that rivers determined locals’ character was a sense of environmental determinism; and the narrative of the relocation of China's center to the Yangtze River basin accorded with the theory of the southward movement of the earthly ether.
Moreover, the authors of the two articles had similar agendas. Unlike Japanese intellectuals, who were interested in proving Japan's superiority over China through the discourses on rivers, the two authors shared an anxiety with Liang Qichao. On the one hand, as they grew up in the post-Taiping era, they were affected by the ascending local consciousness in China and were eager to rely on locals to protect local interests. On the other hand, like Liang, they were possibly alerted to the threat posed by local consciousness to the state. In the early 1900s, some Chinese students in Japan were deeply concerned about the centrifugal force of a pronounced provincial sentiment. For example, a contributor to the Zhejiang chao 浙江潮 (Tide of Zhejiang), a Chinese-language journal published by Chinese students in Japan, warned readers that the provincial distinction was undermining racial and national unity, and would incur internal splits and foreign invasion.Footnote 66 This concern about local sentiments among Chinese students in Japan motivated the two authors to create a shared identity to unite provincial people for the sake of the nation.
Despite sharing similar attributes, the two authors’ strategies of mobilizing locals divided them. They used the communal residential environment – river valleys – to create a regional identity that transcended provincial boundaries. Each author attempted to turn a specific regional identity into a national one by representing China as a corresponding region writ large. As their agendas required the establishment of a region's superiority over others, an acute dispute inevitably arose.
After the Hubei xueshengjie launched the discussion of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River in 1903, the Henan 河南 and the Jiangsu 江蘇 – two Chinese-language journals edited by Chinese students in Japan – also developed an interest in the two rivers. The Henan serialized an article on the management of the Yellow River in three issues in 1907. The author (writing under the pseudonym of Beigu 悲谷) devoted the long article to an in-depth discussion of the challenges to the management of the river and possible remedies.Footnote 67 The Jiangsu published two articles on the Yangtze River in 1904. One offered a detailed analysis of the British plan to conclude a treaty for the non-alienation of the Yangtze Region with the Qing government. The author warned readers that this treaty would violate China's sovereignty as it constrained China's power to manage its own territory.Footnote 68 The other article provided a comprehensive account of the British and German expansion in the Yangtze River valley. The author believed that this region would be “meat on others’ tables” very soon, and called for locals to resist imperialist expansion.Footnote 69
The three articles published in the Henan and the Jiangsu did not continue the dispute over the hierarchy between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River that emerged in the Hubei xueshengjie. Nevertheless, they inherited the agenda of building a supra-provincial identity for the Han population in southern China. One article on the Yangtze River stated that this was owned by the people living along it.Footnote 70 Another article on the same river created the notion of Jiangsu's duty for the protection of the Yangtze River basin by depicting the province as the core of the region.Footnote 71 Meanwhile, these articles tried to integrate the regional consciousness into a national consciousness. For example, the article on the Yellow River tried to establish Henan's responsibility for the whole of China by emphasizing the national influence of the river issue. The author claimed that if people in Henan managed the Yellow River well, the basin would turn into a key economic and military zone for all of China.Footnote 72
The Flow of the Discourses on the North–South Dichotomy Back to Qing China
After flowing back into China through the networks of journals in the early twentieth century, the restructured discourses on the North–South dichotomy were soon embraced by the Han intellectuals. Liu Shipei, a leading philologist, provided the most sophisticated discussion of the North–South dichotomy. Liu was born to a well-known scholarly family in Jiangsu, a southern province. He became a revolutionary in the early 1900s famous for his radical anti-Manchu writings. Before fleeing to Japan in 1907 to avoid the Qing government's persecution, Liu was already a friend of Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940). He worked as a major contributor to the Jingzhong ribao 警鐘日報 (the Alarm Bell Daily), a journal edited by Cai and published in Shanghai. As Cai had been an editor of the Zhejiang chao, Liu probably came to know of the Japanese discussion of the North–South dichotomy through him.
In 1905, Liu published a series of articles in the Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 (the Journal of National Essence) to discuss the differences between north and south in five academic fields, including Pre-Qin Philosophy, Confucian Classics, evidential scholarship, Neo-Confucianism, and literature. It is easy to trace the Japanese influence in his writings. First, he attributed differences between the northern school and southern school of learning to environmental conditions. According to his account, the mountainous feature of the north resulted in barren land and bad transportation, which nurtured pragmatic and persistent people. Their pragmatism and persistence led to the emergence of Confucianism and Mohism in the north. In contrast, numerous rivers in the south engendered fertile soil and good transportation, which nurtured people who favored detachment and led to the emergence of Daoism.Footnote 73 Second, Liu's articles shared an emphasis on the significance of the south with Naitō, Liang, and revolutionary students from southern China. According to Liu, as Chinese civilization emerged in the north, the northern school of learning was better than the southern school of learning in ancient times; however, after the Han population migrated to the south to escape the barbarian rule at the turn of the fourth century, southern China started to develop culture rapidly. The continuous Han immigration eventually enabled the southern school of learning to surpass the northern school of learning in recent dynasties.Footnote 74
Today's readers could easily criticize Liu's far-fetched hypothesis, which drew random connections between highly selective features of people, ideas, and environmental conditions. Nevertheless, Liu's contemporaries were fascinated by his systematic analysis, which integrated training in classics and western scientific methodology. Liu, along with other Han intellectuals, thus contributed to the spread of the discourses on the North–South dichotomy in China.
The restructured discourses on the North–South dichotomy were later transformed into a revolutionary tool. For example, the Nanshe 南社 (the Southern Society), one of the largest literary societies in early twentieth century, exploited the notion of the south to incite an anti-Manchu revolution. The society was established in Suzhou on November 13, 1909 by three natives of Jiangsu Province, including Gao Tianmei 高天梅 (1877–1925), Chen Qubing 陳去病 (1874–1933), and Liu Yazi 柳亞子 (1887–1958). It held regular gatherings and produced much poetry and prose to criticize the Manchu court and promote a revolution to overthrow the incumbent regime.Footnote 75 A few members of the society were active assassins and participants in uprisings in the late 1900s.
According to the three founders, the prototype of the Nanshe was the Fushe 復社 (the Society of Restoration), an influential literary society whose members included many anti-Manchu scholars during the Ming-Qing transition. They borrowed “she” from Fushe to name their organization.Footnote 76 Despite that, the Nanshe was not a mere reproduction of an old organization: the Fushe had been a national organization – a conglomerate of scholar societies in both southern China and northern China. In contrast, the Nanshe was primarily a southern organization, which established its headquarters in Shanghai and mainly recruited Han Chinese from the southern provinces. According to Sun Zhimei's survey, 1,031 of 1,170 members of the Nanshe came from six southern provinces, including Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, Anhui, and Fujian.Footnote 77 The organizational features of the Nanshe reveal an intention to exploit regional identity to fan an anti-Manchu revolution. This intention was confirmed by a founder of the society, Liu Yazi, who stated that “the principle (of the Nanshe) was to oppose the Manchu regime and that its name Nanshe was a symbol to confront the Qing government in the north.”Footnote 78
The Nanshe's strategy of using the notion of the south as a revolutionary tool was likely to derive from its members’ links with Meiji Japan. Of the three founders, Gao was a graduate of Hosei University, while Chen was one of the editors of the Jiangsu. Many earlier members of the society, such as Zhu Xiliang 朱錫良 (1873–1932), Chen Taoyi 陳陶遺 (1881–1946), Zhu Shaoping 朱少屏 (1882–1942), Jing Yaoyue 景耀月 (1881–1944), Su Manshu 蘇曼殊 (1884–1918), and Ma Junwu 馬君武 (1881–1940), also studied in Japan. Their experience in Japan could introduce them to the reconfigured discourses on the North–South dichotomy, which well served the anti-Manchu goal. On the one hand, by recreating the Han population as a lineage with a shared ancestry, these discourses produced a supra-provincial identity to bind local people. On the other hand, as these discourses rejected the possibility that the Manchus could be sinicized, they justified the mission of restoring a Han state. Seen in this light, the Nanshe's connection with Japan probably inspired its strategy of unifying southerners for an anti-Manchu revolution.
The spread of discourses on the North–South dichotomy ultimately left imprints on the 1911 Revolution. The revolution started with the Wuchang Uprising in Hubei province on October 10, 1911 and rapidly spread to other provinces. By November 11, 1911, all twelve southern provinces in China proper had achieved independence. In contrast, only three northern provinces (Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Shandong) had declared independence by then.Footnote 79 Seen in this light, the 1911 revolution was not only a series of bottom-up revolts but also a southern challenge to the northern Manchu court.
Conclusion
The spread of the North–South dichotomy as a narrative structure in early twentieth-century China has provided an excellent case for examining the circulation of knowledge between Japan and China. This narrative structure was rooted in discrete discourses in ancient China, restructured in Meiji Japan, and transferred back to China in the early twentieth century. Accompanying this process was a transformation of the concepts of “north” and “south.” In traditional discourses on the North–South dichotomy, the two terms had fluid meanings and were often used to denote non-spatial oppositional relations. In Meiji Japan, they were fixed as geographical terms. This shift enabled the creation of new meanings out of a traditional narrative structure. Japanese intellectuals restructured discourses on the North–South dichotomy as the vessel of a desire to grasp the universal truth transcending individual nations’ experiences and a desire to rebuild Japan's identity. Chinese intellectuals and students in Japan employed these discourses to build cross-provincial identities. Revolutionaries in southern China exploited their potential to incite an anti-Manchu revolution.
Behind the transnational flow of discourses on the North–South dichotomy was a power-knowledge configuration. In Michel Foucault's terms, knowledge is neither politically neutral nor ahistorical; it is rather produced and transmitted by a system of power, and in turn reproduces the power.Footnote 80 The international hierarchy of states set the framework of knowledge flow between Meiji Japan and Qing China. Between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries when China enjoyed superior status, kangaku was accepted in Japan as the academic orthodoxy. Through this discipline, the discourses on differences between northern China and southern China entered Japan. Since the mid-nineteenth century, due to the decline of China and the expansion of Western imperialism in Asia, Western sciences gradually replaced kangaku to supply universal truth for Japan. Meanwhile, the emergence of the global eminence of the West had a similar influence on China. When China was gradually organized into a hierarchy characterized by Western superiority since the late nineteenth century, an increasing number of Chinese intellectuals started to seek universal truth from Western sciences. The hierarchies between the West and China, and between the West and Japan, converged in 1895 when China was defeated by Japan. In the post-war international order, China submitted to Western and Japanese superiority. Within this context, Japanese discourses on the North–South dichotomy became appealing to Chinese intellectuals and students in Japan, as the subject provided both Western methodologies and Japanese knowledge of China.
More importantly, the flow of discourses on the North–South dichotomy reveals the complexity underlying the production of knowledge in the Age of Imperialism. The structural power of the West and Japan did not mean that they dictated the reconstruction of discourses on the North–South dichotomy. Naitō evoked Chinese academic tradition, rather than adopting Western methodology, to formulate his own theory of Chinese history; Chinese intellectuals and students did not replicate Japanese discourses, but appropriated them to suit their own agendas. The circulation of knowledge between China and Japan can therefore be better understood as a process in which different cultures constantly contacted and confronted each other. It is in this process, not dominated by either the guest culture or the host culture, that new meanings emerged.
