"Listen to What the Bandits Have to Say!": Voices from the Post-"Liberation" Suppression Campaign in Guangxi(Special Issue Dedicated to Professor HAYASHI Kousaku)

One of the principal claims to legitimacy of the post-1949 Communist Party of China (CPC) regime was its elimination of the country\u27s bandit gangs. More than three years passed before the CPC achieved unchallenged control over China, largely because of the continuing nuisance posed by "bandits", many of whom were being instigated by agents of the Nationalist government on Taiwan. "Bandit suppression" campaigns became a constant feature of the new regime\u27s early years, but the truth about these campaigns was swept under the carpet for more than 40 years. Since the mid-1990s, numerous volumes of reportage describing the post-1949 bandit suppression campaigns have appeared. While they provided details of the number of gangs suppressed, these reports gave no voice to the "bandits" themselves. We learn much about the regime\u27s anxieties, but no understanding of the "bandits\u27" reasons for existence. A new book has now appeared that throws a very different light on the post-1949 campaigns. Huang Jishu\u27s `Defeated Soldiers become Bandits: a History of the 1949_1952 Suppression Campaign\u27 (敗兵成匪: 1949到1952年的剿匪往事), about the "bandit suppression" campaign in Guangxi province, is based largely on interviews with former "bandits" or with their surviving family members. As well as describing the military campaigns, the book also tells the story through the eyes of the campaigns\u27 targets. This essay seeks to give a more accurate picture of the post-1949 situation in one part of China by focusing on Huang Jishu\u27s book

Liu Zhidan and his "Bro\u27s in the \u27Hood": Bandits and Communists in the Shaanbei Badlands (1)(岩津洋二教授追悼号)

Since the appearance of Edgar Snow\u27s Red Star Over China, the achievements of Liu Zhidan (劉志丹) in blending revolutionary ideals with the destructive energy of north Shaanxi\u27s bandit tradition have become well known. Through repeated failures and recoveries, Liu Zhidan perceived that 20th-century China\u27s ubiquitous violence left no alternative for the communists but to seek a military solution. The key to revolutionary success in China was an empowered peasantry fighting in the name of a shared ideal, and Liu Zhidan recognized that, in the remote areas in which the communists sought to "rest their buttocks", armed forces such as those of local bandits and brotherhoods could not be ignored. How to win those forces over to the revolutionary cause, or, failing that, how to nullify and eventually eliminate them became a major strategic problem for Liu and for other early communist militants. Regularly condemned for his attention to such irregular fighters, Liu Zhidan saw that, under the circumstances, they were all "Bro\u27s in the \u27Hood", and that the key to creating a successful revolutionary movement in China was to bring people together, not to isolate them. This paper will examine Liu Zhidan\u27s activities in "Shaanbei" from 1928 to 1932, particularly his contacts with bandits and other local power-holders. It will suggest, among other things, that Liu Zhidan\u27s policy of recruiting bandits to the revolutionary movement was anything but plain sailing. While some bandit chiefs were instinctively amenable to the revolutionary call, others became Liu Zhidan\u27s worst enemies. At the same time, the resistance Liu encountered from his fellow-revolutionaries was often fierce, leading to purges and, ultimately, to what deserves to be termed judicial murder

BAKUNIN\u27S SOJOURN IN JAPAN : NAILING DOWN AN ENIGMA (3)

It is not generally known that the Russian anarchist Bakunin\u27s successful escape from Siberian exile in 1861 was a side-result of the opening of Japan a few years before, and this series of articles has set out to throw light on that episode. Previous instalments have looked into the events that led to Bakunin\u27s exile, sketched his route from Siberia via Yokohama and San Francisco back to London, and revealed connections between French and Japanese intellectuals that led to his ideas having an influence on events in Japan long before he became known there as an anarchist. A separate section pointed out some unlikely coincidences linking Bakunin\u27s political education to that of the Meiji Emperor. In this third instalment, I first examine the mystery surrounding Bakunin\u27s flight to Japan, and set out a tentative theory to explain his subsequent silence regarding the affair. After that I fill in some of the details concerning his two weeks in Yokohama, explore the personal contacts he is likely to have made there, and trace the connections that perhaps made his transit of the United States of America so smooth. Finally, I attempt to put the whole episode of his successful escape into the context of Pacific Studies, suggesting not only that the affair owed its successful conclusion to certain epochal realignments taking place among the four major powers in the Pacific arena, but also that it deserves to be regarded as an early indication of the role that the Pacific Ocean was to come to play almost a century later

Internationalizing the Language-Learning Environment : A "Two-Way" Bilingual Programme for ESL & JSL Students

Since the summer of 1992, Momoyama Gakuin University and Douglas College have been operating regular 5-week Bilingual Language & Culture Institutes (BLCI). Taking place in both the spring and summer of each year, the programmes are participated in by Momoyama stu-dents studying English as a second language (ESLs), and Douglas College students studying Japanese as a second (or foreign) language (JSLs). The BLCI is based on a simple contract between the two groups of learners: "If you help me to learn your language, I\u27ll help you to learn mine". The programme provides them with both structured and non-structured opportunities to interact, by including things like Bilingual Workshops and Field-trips alongside classroom instruction. The aim is to create an enhanced learning environment in which both classroom and extra-classroom experiences play significant parts. The advantages of this approach are many: 1). It overcomes the passivity common in Japanese classrooms by eliminating the hard distinction between learner and teacher; 2). ESLs are incorporated into the host college\u27s schedule instead of being isolated in a separate language course; 3). Students spend the majority of their time with people of their own age group from the host culture, creating a more natural and spontaneous learning environment; 4). Students have the opportunity to generate friendships with young people from the host culture, transforming the language-learning experience from a narrow pedagogical one to one in which pedagogical and cultural lessons become intrinsically linked

Bakunin\u27s Sojourn in Japan : Nailing Down an Enigma (2)

It is not generally known that the Russian anarchist Bakunin\u27s successful escape from Siberia in 1861 was a side-result of the ending of Japan\u27s 250-year policy of exclusion. Part 1 of this article presented an overview of the events that brought Bakunin to Japan, set out the socio-political background of the times, and sketched the main events of his two-week stay in Hakodate and Yokohama and subsequent route back to England via America. The present paper delves into other aspects of the hardly-explored relationship between Bakunin and Japan. Beginning from an examination of his pre-anarchist activities following his successful return to Europe, I suggest that many of the decentralizing ideas he held even then had a certain degree of influence on Japan\u27s Popular Rights Movement. The medium for their transmission was furnished by the contacts forged between the liberal Japanese intellectuals Nakae Chomin and Saionji Kimmochi on the one hand, and the radical French jurist Emile Acollas, who was strongly influenced by Bakunin\u27s ideas, on the other. The paper investigates the nature of the relationships among these men, and makes some new suggestions concerning cultural contacts between Japan and Europe in the late 19th century. The second half of the paper looks into the unlikely coincidences linking certain facts of Bakunin\u27s life to the Meiji Constitution. These include the influence on his thinking of von Stein, one of the principal sources of inspiration for the constitution, and the process whereby Bluntschli, who signed the first arrest warrant ever issued for Bakunin, came to be the source of the Meiji Emperor\u27s political education