New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xii, 249 pp. (Tables, maps, B&W photos.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-16640-0.
In recent years, a growing number of historical studies have examined Manchuria (or China’s Northeast as it is called now) from a transnational perspective. This region’s rapid transformation, from being the Qing Empire’s sleepy frontier, then a warlord’s playground in the 1920s, and then the client state of Manzhouguo (1932–1945), was accompanied by international competition as well as unprecedented economic development and the movement of people, ideas, and goods within East Asia and to/from abroad. Empire and the Meaning of Religion in Northeast Asia brings the study of cosmopolitan Manchuria to new heights by treating religion as a prism for understanding complex social and political changes. Religion is defined here not only as a self-contained phenomenon, but also as a channel used by the state and social groups to disseminate ideas and to promote various agendas. Taking “transnational discourse communities as its basic unit of analysis” (14), this book describes how different institutions and specialized groups in Manchuria, such as commercial presses, Christian missions, social scientists, and lawyers, envisioned or used religion as a laboratory for social and spiritual engineering. Manchuria’s regional and global links facilitated the exchange of religious ideas and, at the same time, put new pressures on existing religious practices, as it happened in highly centralized Manzhouguo and in the rest of the Japanese empire.
This book covers the period from the late nineteenth century to 1945, when the Japanese regime in China collapsed. The book is organized thematically, with some chapters following a chronological narrative. Chapter 1 is a historical overview of Manchuria’s religious developments during the late Qing dynasty. The author discusses the emergence of multiple religious practices, such as Shamanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, which were shaped by the multicultural nature of the Qing state as well as by the frontier nature of Manchuria, where the population was diverse and mobile. Remaining chapters deal with themes revolving around separate institutes or specialized groups which developed their own understanding of religion (chapters 2 to 5), and specific historical incidents in which religion and society affected each other (chapters 6 to 8). Chapter 2 discusses how different Catholic and Protestant missions brought to Manchuria “a variety of new idioms, practices and resources that transformed the practice and conception of religion” (30). The author demonstrates how the experience of living in Manchuria, with its misery and violence, transformed the missionaries. The most dramatic change, however, occurred after the suppression of the Boxer Uprising (1900) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), when European missions increased their influence in Manchuria by expanding social services (medical and educational) and by becoming the agents of social change.
Chapter 3 discusses how Western social science inspired a new generation of Chinese and Japanese scholars to develop different approaches to the study of society and religion in Manchuria, and in the rest of East Asia. Japan’s growing influence in Manchuria resulted in the expansion of Japanese institutions, where Chinese and Japanese social scientists had to balance Western scientific methods (i.e., fact-based research) and the ideological needs of a growing Japanese empire. But even in the rigid intellectual conditions of Manzhouguo, some Japanese scholars, armed with Western-style training, argued against the imposition of one unified religion (political Shinto) on a non-Japanese population for the sake of preserving a multicultural spirit in Manzhouguo, and its religious diversity. Chapter 4 analyzes how the Japanese-owned Chinese-language daily Shengjing Times, published from 1906 to 1944, portrayed religion and reached out to its readers. As a commercial newspaper, it covered local religious “news” (i.e., mocking popular religious practices and praising monastic Buddhism). When ownership of the newspaper and the aims of Japan in this region changed, the newspaper’s portrayal of religion became more ideological, in tune with Japan’s civilizing mission in Manzhouguo. Chapter 5 examines the role of law in creating a state religion in Manzhouguo. According to the author, “law was a practical concern, but also a discursive sphere, one where debates around the fundamental issues and identity of state, and its place in the empire found expression” (115). The promotion of the Kingly Way as a revival of Confucian ideology, and of the Shinto-style ceremonies commemorating the war dead, became part of spiritual engineering. New regulations aimed at promoting new moral principles of the state, and at remolding the minds of its citizens.
Chapters 6 and 7 address different religious activities such as charity, as a new type of religious expression by various religious groups, as well as graveside piety, as part of a Confucian revival in Republican China and Manzhouguo. The state authority in both cases was determined to extend its control over the charitable sector and of the filial tombs in order to transform the minds of the people through rituals. Chapter 8 examines how the Catholic Church negotiated its status in China, Japan, and Manchuria. Diplomatic links between the Vatican and Xinjing during the controversy over international recognition of Manzhouguo speak to the political importance of religion in domestic and international politics.
This book’s strength lies in its strong grasp of different historical trajectories and religious practices in China, Japan, and Europe, backed up by the author’s command of several languages and his access to multilingual sources. Instead of one straightforward argument, this book introduces multiple religious ideas and practices, discussed by different professional groups and institutions. The ease with which the author addresses a range of linguistic and sociological concepts, combined with an engaging narrative, will make this book attractive to different audiences. The book invites further questions: How do we select and define discourse communities as units of analysis? What role did the Russian Orthodox Church play in Manzhouguo? How did militarization and wars affect religion in Manchuria? Overall, Empire and the Meaning of Religion in Northeast Asia engages in an excellent critical analysis of religious ideas and practices, moving away from Eurocentric assumptions about the development of religion in this region and in the world.
Victor Zatsepine
University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA
pp. 156-158