John Dower: Fucked Scholar

[Charles]

John Dower should be familiar to anyone who has studied Japan, he is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Embracing Defeat" and has released several fascinating websites under the MIT OpenCourseware project, such as "Black Ships and Samurai," previously linked on FG.

But now Dower's work has been censored by the administration at MIT. Some Chinese students finally noticed a website he created in 2003 for a course "Visualizing Culture" which posted images of Japanese propaganda against the Chinese. The students demanded it be removed from the web. Ironically, Dower's website was only discovered now because MIT spotlighted it as one of their best OpenCourseware projects. Currently ALL of Dower's MIT content has been removed from the web, the home pages remain but none of Dower's unique content is available. The section "Throwing Off Asia" was the section the Chinese objected to, but all of Dower's content, including the "Black Ships and Samurai" site, are currently offline, replaced by a disclaimer.

This is absolutely ridiculous. The whole point of the course was to study Japan's use of propaganda in support of its military goals, but now the Chinese students want to censor a famous scholar who exposes Japan's historical militarism against China. The students are demanding the offending pictures be accompanied by a "study guide" to explain the context of the anti-Chinese propaganda images. They obviously didn't bother to read the website, they just looked at the pictures, because the whole site is a study of Japanese propaganda that gives full historical context.

The full story from the Boston Globe:

[SIZE="3"]MIT shuts controversial website
Chinese students rap war image[/SIZE]

MIT pulled down a course website yesterday and apologized to members of the Chinese community after some students complained about a picture of Chinese prisoners being lined up by Japanese soldiers to be beheaded.
The image from the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, posted on a website for a course called "Visualizing Cultures," was intended as an example of how the Japanese used propaganda to advance political agendas, school officials said.
But students and other critics said that the explanation was not displayed prominently enough.
The MIT Chinese Student and Scholar Association, in a letter to MIT president Susan Hockfield, called for "proper historical context" at the top of the page and asked for a posted warning that the images are graphic and racist.
"We do understand the historical significance of these woodprints and respect the authors' academic freedom to pursue this study," the letter stated. "However, we are appalled at the lack of accessible explanations and the proper historical context that ought to accompany these images."
In a statement released yesterday, the university officials said they "deeply regret that a section of this website has caused distress and pain to members of the Chinese community."
At the same time, however, university officials also said that the course's instructors -- professor John Dower, a Pulitzer Prize-winning member of the history faculty, and professor Shigeru Miyagawa of linguistics and of foreign languages and literatures -- "have MIT's strongest support."
" 'Visualizing Cultures' is an important and pioneering undertaking by two esteemed members of our faculty," the statement said.
MIT officials said that the site was pulled only temporarily, and that the professors and the Chinese community at MIT are discussing ways to add more context to the images.
The undergraduate course is being taught this semester. Complaints began after MIT spotlighted the course on its "Opencourseware" website, which posts course materials as a free resource.
Dower and Miyagawa, a naturalized US citizen born in Japan, are tenured professors. Dower won the nonfiction Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his book "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II."

[jingai]

This censorship is an outrage. Dower's work and a talk I went to as a college freshman by Dower regarding War Without Mercy is one reason I decided to major in Japanese history. I hope the Chinese students complaining about this ugly history actually read one of his books or take his class.

[Charles]

Dower's websites are back online, with ridiculous disclaimers posted everywhere.

It appears that this is the page that caused the offense. The image of Chinese prisoners being decapitated is followed by a description of exactly how the images were used as propaganda, and are explicitly denounced by Dower's text.

This is fucking ridiculous. A scholarly website that explicitly denounces Japan's historical record of nationalistic propaganda is now cluttered with dozens of disclaimers everywhere you look. This actually dilutes the impact of the website and lessens the impact of Dower's condemnations.

And now that the image that offended the Chinese students is visible, it is clear that this incident is a case of manufactured outrage.

[kamome]

I agree that censorship is ridiculous, but after clicking around the site, I don't see anything that detracts much from the prints. The disclaimers are only visible if you click a link to them from a non-obtrusive message in the corner of the page.

[Charles]

I agree that censorship is ridiculous, but after clicking around the site, I don't see anything that detracts much from the prints. The disclaimers are only visible if you click a link to them from a non-obtrusive message in the corner of the page.

Perhaps you did not look at the artworks directly, or long enough. Look at one of the linked pages that just contains a large image of a single print, like for example, this page. You see that little warning in the corner, the red and pink legend that says "Please click here: image advisory"...? It's animated and pops in and out of the frame every 30 seconds or so. This sort of animated legend is extremely distracting and makes it difficult to examine the prints in detail.

[kamome]

Perhaps you did not look at the artworks directly, or long enough. Look at one of the linked pages that just contains a large image of a single print, like for example, this page. You see that little warning in the corner, the red and pink legend that says "Please click here: image advisory"...? It's animated and pops in and out of the frame every 30 seconds or so. This sort of animated legend is extremely distracting and makes it difficult to examine the prints in detail.

That's exactly what I described in my post above, and I don't think it's much of a distraction. Clearly, there is no censorship anymore.

But I agree that the images are important historical artifacts and should be online for everyone to see. I don't like the fact that MIT buckled as soon as there was a hint of controversy. The school should have stuck to its guns and left the images up as-is until the controversy subsided.

[jingai]

If any of you are in the area, I'm going to try to make this talk at my alma mater:

Wednesday, November 15, 4:30 p.m. Lecture
Cyber-History, Memory, and Violence at MIT
Peter Perdue, T. T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Professor of History, MIT
In the spring of this year, Chinese students at MIT protested an educational Web site on East Asian history developed by Professors John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa. The controversy developed into a storm on the Internet and exposed assumptions about Chinese history held by many young Chinese in the United States and China. Professor Perdue will discuss the implications of this incident for researching modern Chinese history.

Wesleyan University
The Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
343 Washington Terrace
Middletown, CT 06459-0435

[Charles]

If any of you are in the area, I'm going to try to make this talk at my alma mater:

I would be most grateful for your reports of this lecture, and any followup info, websites, etc.

[jingai]

I would be most grateful for your reports of this lecture, and any followup info, websites, etc.

Sure, I'm going to add it to my calendar and try to make it.