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Nnxi originated in the Jiangnan area and developed amidst economic booming of the region during the late Ming period. Widespread peasant rebellions during the 1630s to 1640s had devastated many local economies. Jiangnan, however, was not much influenced by these events and nanxi-style plays continued to flourish in the region until early Qing. Many of the famous and popular plays written during this period were concerned with contemporary political and social events. From the final years of Emperor Congzhen‘s reign up until the Southern Ming government, the most popular plays were about peasant rebellions and the Southern Ming government. Not unitl the late Shunzhi Reign did this type of plays gradually disappear as a result of the governmemt’s high-handed policy to suppress the Han culture.
Among the playwrights in Jiangnan, Li Yu was the most prolific and well-known. This paper shows how his more famous plays reflect political and social events of his times, popular opinion, and the different mentalities during the Ming and Qing periods.
Tsao Chen-yung(1755-1835) assumed a position of Grand Councilor for about fourteen years during the early years of Tao-Kuang. He was satirized as “mediocre” by his contemporaries, and blamed as “neither literary nor righteous” after his death, which was contrast to his posthumous name Wen-Cheng. However, according to my research based on such historical sources such as the Ch’ing Shih Lu and the Archives of the Palace Museum, this paper offers an attempt at proving his achievement in many respects during his official career as well as a reevaluation on him.
The Canton Electrical Power Company was one of the earlier and larger electricity companies in China. At the beginning, it was established by the British Russell Company, and then was sold to Chinese officials and merchants in 1909. Later, when the official shares were transferred to the merchants, it became a purely commercial corporation. In 1929, due to shortage of funds, the company fell into difficulties. The Canton Municipal Government took over the business. The shareholders protested, but in vain. Until 1936, when Kuangtung and Kuangsi provinces were controlled by the Central Government, the dispute of ownership was solved reasonably.
The significance of the above case is twofold:
1.After being taken over by the Municipal Government, business of the company was better than before. The fundamental cause was that the government, with its political power, raised funds by increasing electrical fees which had been refused before. Besides, the government did not play well to protect the commercial business.
Any kind of regulation system has its eufunction and dysfunction at the same time. These two functions exchange their relative proportions according to environment. At a time when private electricity corporations were in larger proportion, to protect their business was very important. It was not a matter of public or private ownership of the company.
2. The original regulations relating to the electricity company published by the Central Government intended to protect the electricity corporation. But they had to be carried out by the local government. If the local government disregarded them, the Central Government sometimes had no power to force the local government to obey them. This was the case of the Canton Municipal Government. When the Central Government controlled the province, the personnel relationship between the Municipal Government and the Central Government was in a harmonious condition, and Mayor Tsung Yang-fu believed in government control of the business as well as merchant’s fair share of the profits, therefore, the original shareholders were refunded their investment in a reasonable way. It shows that personnel relationships were more important than regulations. China was still a country ruled by person, not by law. The value of a jurisdiction system did not overwhelm the value of the social system.
Japan’s involvement in trafficking opium, morphine, heroin and other drugs in wartime occupied China had been duly verified and convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946-1948. Facts revealed that that businesses organized and managed by the Japanese authorities and semi-authorities in 1937-1945 were large-scale in character and extensive in geographical regions. This paper, however, is confined to a study of the Japanese-sponsored and indirectly controlled drug-trafficking in the Japanese-occupied regions in south China, centering at the Amoy (Fukien) and Canton (Kwangtung) areas. The essay is divided into four major parts: 1. The drug-trafficking operated by the Japanese in Fukien and Kwangtung prior to 1937; 2. The Japanese-sponsored drug-trafficking in the Amoy area in 1937-1941; 3. The Japanese-involved drug-trafficking in Canton and its adjacent regions in 1937-1941; 4. The Japanese-related drug businesses in Kwangtung and Fukien in 1941-1945.
In his concluding remarks, the author through analyzing various multi-language and multi-archival sources, considers that the wartime Japanese authorities set the production, transportation and sale of various drugs such as opium, morphine, heroin, etc. as a strategically important business similar to their control and procurement of key raw materials such as foodstuff, cotton and various basic metals. Legally, according to regulations, all the revenues from drug-trafficking were to be submitted to the Japanese government coffers. But actually, the Japanese bureaucrats of different levels had personally obtained a large amount of money through their corrupt management. Facts show that several highest level Japanese officials such as Mamoru Shigimitsu (the foreign minister in August 1945), Shiginori Togo (former foreign minister) and others had collected a huge amount of their respective “commissions” in August 15-29, 1945 from a bank-deposited ¥300,000,000 fund which was originally part of a downpayment for guaranteed money from a large number of authorized Chinese drug-dealers in Japanese-occupied China.
From its founding on April 19, 1941 to its dissolution on June 17, 1945, the Kominhokokai(皇民奉公會;literally “Public Service Association of Imperial Subjects”) had a significant impact on members of Taiwan’s upper classes. The objectives and activities of this organization differed from the better-known Kominka(皇民化,“Japanization”)movement, which had begun four to five years earlier. The Kominka was aimed at the island’s Taiwanese citizens, while the Kominhokokai encompassed both Taiwanese and Japanese living in Taiwan. In terms of its institutional operations, the Kominka was managed by a wide range of administrative bodies, while the Kominhokokai was an integral administrative entity with its own personnel. In terms of its objectives, the Kominka focused on cultural policies while the Kominhokokai attemped to achieve a wide range of goals through social mobilization.
This paper intends to employ relevant sources about the Kominhokokai to describe the factors underlying its establishment and organization, as well as its policies and their implementation. Moreover, by taking the case of the Taiwan nationalist leader Lin Hsien-t’ang as an example, this paper demonstrates that members of Taiwan’s elite were often obligated to join the Kominhokokai, regardless of whether or not they were imperially-appointed gentry. While Lin Hsien-t’ang unwillingly enlisted in the Kominhokokai under these circumstances, he managed to insist on upholding some key principles to distinguish himself from his overlords, including not changing his name or wearing Japanese clothes, as well as persisting in the use of the Chinese language. As a result, despite the fact that Lin was forced to cooperate with the Japanese colonial authorities, he and his family continued to be persecuted.
After the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan in 1945, it launched a campaign of reporting traitors and war criminals which included efforts to strip former members of the Kominhokokai of their civil rights. These actions had two purposes: to win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people, and to illustrate national justice. However, as Ch’iu Nien-t’ai pointed out, the end result of these actions would result in talented Taiwanese being unable to serve in government agencies, which would then be staffed solely by mainlanders. Just as Ch’en Yi was in the midst of explaining his actions to the Ministry of the Interior, the 2.28 Incident occurred. On a number of occasions Ch’en Yi claimed that former Konihokokai members had instigated the violence and expressed a desire to remove the legislative positions they held, but to no avail.
For more than two decades in the past, there have been divergent reports on the dates of Chang Tung-sun. This article is based on the most recent research of the past few years, through gathering and collating the results into a coherent way so as to point out precisely and accurately that Chang was born in 1886 and met his death in 1973 under most heart-rending circumstances. This conclusion on Chang’s dates has not been easy to come by, because though his date of birth has been purely a question of historical evidence and investigation─as long as there are enough relevant conditions, it can be solved relatively easily─, this has not been so with respect to the date of his death, for this had involved, and in fact still involves, various elements of political purges, political oppression, political scares, political taboos, as well as politically unsolved cases of persecution, etc. However, all this can not mean that more than one set of dates for Chang’s life exist, which is of course out of the question. This is an historical question between the relationship of the reality of an historical fact, its occurrence within the flow of time on the one hand, and the interpretation of such a fact on the other. Even if any attempts at clarifying this relationship will encounter many methodological and technical difficulties, the line between an historical fact and its interpretations is not to be confused and compromised. This article makes use of what should be the most indubitable, both in theory and fact, dates of Chang as a case in point, to emphasize that even if there have been many divergent reports on his dates, there can only be one correct set. In order to drive home this argument, a couple of readily available instances are employed. These include the use of the (mistaken) year of the birth of Jesus as the mark of the beginning of the Christian era (AD) which is now known as the Gregorian calendar, and some extremely confusing reigning dates found in China. The simple purpose here is to stress that an apparently simple task of the dating of a lifetime as I have found in the case of Chang is not as straightforward as one would generally imagine. Last but not least, the meaning of this article is to reiterate what ought ot be a truism for an historian, namely, that there is reality in historical fact.