主题：【文摘】Open Letter to Chinese Students at MIT (I) -- 浆糊

Open Letter to Chinese Students at MIT

Peter C. Perdue

April 28, 2006

Recently, a group of Chinese students at MIT have protested pictures of the Sino-Japanese war which were posted on the MIT web site as part of the research project “Visualizing Cultures” conducted by Professors John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa. The protest has included critical email messages addressed to Prof. Miyagawa, group discussion with the faculty and members of the MIT administration, and a list of demands passed out at a meeting on April 26. Even though the protests are so far only verbal, they include extremely abusive messages directed at distinguished scholars of the Institute and demands for the suppression of free academic research. I am writing to you collectively in response to these activities. I address my remarks primarily to the graduate students from the People’s Republic of China who have initiated these protests. I hasten to add that I am sure that not all the Chinese students at MIT approve of these activities, but I hope you will pay close attention to their implications.

You are some of the best and brightest young people of China, who have come to MIT in order to pursue education mainly in scientific and technological subjects with the leading researchers in the world. Many of you, I am sure, plan to return to China to use the skills you learn here to help China become a truly modern country. I respect your dedication to your studies and your deep concern for the honor of your country.

I have spent twenty-five years at MIT teaching East Asian history to Chinese and American students, trying to engage them in critical discussion of the complex relationships between China, Japan, and the world from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. I have dedicated my professional life to improving mutual understanding of what are often very painful subjects on which people hold passionate views. But even the most painful events deserve reasoned, careful, and open discussion if we are to prevent future tragedies. Therefore, I am deeply disturbed by these recent protests, because they threaten to destroy possibilities for productive dialogue.

Although some of you may find my views difficult to accept, I must present them honestly and directly. I will add that I write only for myself and do not claim to represent the opinions of Profs. Dower and Miyagawa or the MIT administration.

The images posted on the “Visualizing Cultures” website were not put there in order to offend. They are an integral part of an ongoing research and educational project which includes lengthy textual explanations that accompany each picture. John and Shigeru have put many hours of their time over the past two years into making the meaning of these materials as clear as possible. They have very graciously expressed regret over the misinterpretation of this images, but they did nothing wrong in the first place.

This is not a case of unintentional insensitivity, but of deliberate misrepresentation. In historical interpretation, context is everything. Some students ripped one picture alone out of hundreds of pictures and accompanying textual explanation and broadcast it on the internet. This highly irresponsible act is what caused the uproar in the first place. Those who perpetrated this act have not expressed any remorse for the pain they have caused, nor do they seem to recognize the implications of their acts.

The picture they took has the caption “Illustration of the Decapitation of Violent Chinese Soldiers.” John Dower’s textual explanation paraphrases the Japanese writing on the image and analyzes it as follows:

“The subject itself, however, and the severed heads on the ground, made this an unusually frightful scene…Even today, over a century later, this contempt remains shocking. Simply as racial stereotyping alone, it was as disdainful of the Chinese as anything that can be found in anti-Oriental racism in the United States and Europe at the time – as if the process of Westernization had entailed, for Japanese, adopting the white man’s imagery while excluding themselves from it. This poisonous seed, already planted in violence in 1894-95, would burst into full atrocious flower four decades later, when the emperor’s soldiers and sailors once again launched war against China.”

John Dower explains very clearly that this is a racist, shocking image, that it mirrors Western racism against all Asians, and that it sowed the “poisonous seed” which led to the atrocious Japanese war in China. Anyone who read these words could not possibly mistake the image for an endorsement of Japanese imperialism.