In the 1980s, in Beaumont, a young man named Sid Coser ate his hunger by stealing fruit from the vegetable basket. Louis Strade grew up in the slums of the historic city of Bath and was used to foraging in the gutter. Joseph Sharp of Derbyshire is so poor that he can only “barefoot” and live on “tea dregs and batter”. Coser, Slade and Sharp are just the tip of the iceberg of poor children in late Victorian England. The girls huddled together around scarves, and the boys’ wandering eyes were full of fatigue, showing the living conditions of the urban poor in Victorian times.
Why are these people so poor? Britain is already very rich. At the end of 19th century, great inventions such as asphalt road, harvester, toilet and telegraph completely changed every aspect of daily life. At that time, Britain was almost synonymous with progress and prosperity, but social observers such as Charles Booth and Henry Rowntree found that British workers’ families were increasingly trapped in Gothic nightmare poverty. What happened?
Emma Griffin’s new book Bread Winner aims to explore this issue, which is both meticulous and sincere. Instead of looking for answers from charts or histograms, she chose to directly ask people and “abnormal” people who live in poverty in the richest countries in the world for help. Her original data is 662 life histories, most of which were written in 1970s and 1980s, and kept in local archives or published by small socialist publishing houses. The reason for this choice is not that Griffin thinks that the authors of these memoirs can provide macroeconomic analysis in the late Victorian era, or even that they can hand over clear and complete family accounts. She asked about a series of feelings caused by the family’s economic situation and its composition: how did my father hide the money he earned in his socks; How distressed my mother is to receive a lot of mending work from others; How can a big sister who has just found a full-time job go home and praise her new clothes? All this is not a simple anecdote. Griffin believes that it is this kind of evidence that gives us a glimpse that “economic life has profound humanistic characteristics.”
A breadwinner At first glance, it is not clear how Griffin extracted a coherent pattern from this pile of noise. Each story seems to be independent: some mine in Lancashire, some farm in Cambridge, and some work as tailors in London-the conclusion shows that 20% of memoir writers say that their father’s salary actually started to increase during this period. However, instead of widely improving the family situation, the salary increase has become the first sound of burying family happiness. For example, john murphy recalled that the overtime pay my father received in the 1890s “didn’t bring much benefit to my family”. On the contrary, drinking on weekends and rushing to pay off old debts have become the norm. Joseph Sharp mentioned bitterly that his father’s new income was used to feed his pet dog, and the children didn’t get any benefit.
If the mother can control the situation and get her increasing share of national wealth, the irresponsible father will not completely screw things up. But Griffin has repeatedly found that women’s wages are only nine Niu Yi hairs of men. No matter how many clothes you mend and how many houses you clean, you can’t earn enough, let alone support your family. It is impossible to leave your husband, because it means that the children will be in a difficult situation and your support may be deprived.
Griffin’s point of view is not to demonize working-class men, but to show that the role of “breadwinner” can form a channel to oppress men in a sense, which is similar to those who rely on him. Many memoir writers say that when fathers are under great pressure-the death of their children, work accidents or local economic recession-they will become more and more addicted to alcohol. Griffin is also keenly aware that the memoirist may not care about mentioning his father’s drinking experience, but he will still be ashamed to talk about various changes in public. And those mothers who went to or were sent to shelters, or had illegitimate children with tenants, rarely had the opportunity to share their experiences, let alone the touching stories written by
People are used to sorting out the context of scholars’ academic thoughts from their special experiences. As far as Maruyama Sakurai Mako is concerned, his two military careers and the experience of atomic bombing can be regarded as the driving force for his criticism of supranationalism. However, it is the key to understand Maruyama’s ideological background to make a comprehensive investigation of Maruyama’s views in his works and speeches on different occasions and to clarify the concept of “in war”. It was his personal experience and witnessing the formation of Japanese fascism at home and abroad that made him have a deep understanding of Japan’s totalitarian state behavior, thus forming a “fifteen-year view of war” including the September 18th Incident, the war of aggression against China, the Great East Asia War and the Pacific War, which triggered his reflection on the imperial system and violence in the future.
In 1997, one year after Maruyama’s death, Ishida Xiong, who had academic exchanges with Maruyama for more than 30 years, regretted that he could not consciously talk to him that year, and edited and published Maruyama’s legacy, the war memorandum. In Commentary, Ishida tried to get a deeper understanding of the political scientist’s inner world and academic background through Maruyama’s memories of his special experience. Therefore, Ishida described Maruyama’s two military careers, that is, the military service process from 1944 to 1945. It is precisely because Maruyama had two life experiences: the ordinary housekeeper class and the headquarters intelligence class, that he could understand and master the overall structure of the imperial army from top to bottom. Because Maruyama claimed that his military experience was “irreplaceable and valuable experience”, Ishida concluded that after he retired, Maruyama made full use of his two military experiences, that is, six months later, when the outline of the new draft constitution was just published, he completed the article “The Logic and Psychology of Super Nationalism”. Ishida believes that this happened to be formed on the basis of his last experience in the military career; Through the statement that “war was originally a means, but it has lost its significance as a means”, Ishida further speculated that “when Maruyama wrote here, the scene of the original explosion in August 1945 undoubtedly came to mind.
In fact, Ishida only read a condensed version of a report with only 4,000 words (Japanese) [Twenty-four years’ eye language: Professor Masao Maruyama (then a first-class soldier) Thought and Action] However, when the prototype of the report, that is, the interviewer Lin’s oral interview with Maruyama was included in the 2008 edition of Maruyama Collection, people discovered that this Japanese manuscript with more than 17,000 words actually revealed so many previously unknown details [ On the afternoon of August 3, 1969, Lin came to a hospital in Tokyo and interviewed Maruyama, who was being treated for liver disease. At first, Maruyama was lying in a hospital bed. However, when the conversation reached a critical juncture, he suddenly sat up, especially when talking about the photos he had stayed with him since the original explosion. Maruyama stood up and the one-hour interview time prescribed by the doctor was postponed to two hours.
Relevant records show that Maruyama did talk about the relationship between the original explosion and academic research. He said clearly, “I talked about the war, but I didn’t talk about the initial explosion.” I saw the body lying in front of the headquarters and moaning sadly. Nevertheless, it may just be in my mind, or in my subconscious, and I don’t even understand why. In short, I didn’t think deeply about the original explosion until there was nuclear radiation in Bikini Island. This is what I need to confess. Lin’s interview also recorded the course and details of the incident: “Q: When will you stay in Hiroshima? Maruyama: In mid-September, or rather after mid-September. In a word, it was chaotic at that time, first the Soviet Union entered the war, and then on August 15th. There are also major events such as weapons extradition, and I am also very busy. That’s why I’m confessing. Why didn’t I think more deeply about the meaning of the explosion? Of course, there are various reasons, but one of them is related to a series of major events such as Japan’s defeat, the landing of American troops, and what Japan should do in the future. It is precisely because of these great events that my attention is completely distracted by them. For example, the original explosion is closely related to me personally … that is, on August 15, because of the end of the war, I felt saved. Of course, after the American troops landed, I also thought about fighting with them to the end, but after all, my feeling was saved. Another important reason is that on the third day after this, I received a telegram that read:’ My father was properly taken care of at the funeral of my mother’s death. My little post-war joy was blown away in an instant! Because it means that even if I go back to Tokyo, I can’t see my mother again. This is a veritable death. Now that I think about it, with this sadness, I naturally have no time to think about the original explosion itself. Not only that, Maruyama also talked about the so-called “amnesia” problem: “I almost lost my memory of what I did that day”, “Later, when I recalled what happened in the second week, what I did on August 6 was really completely out of my mind. It seems that the tragic square has been completely buried-this scene has become my last memory-and I have lost my memory. “
These are supplementary explanations for the reasons of “regret”, which makes him only give a dissatisfied answer to other questions: “Q: How do you feel now? What does the initial explosion experience mean to the formation of your thoughts? Maruyama: Well, some people insist on making a meaningful postscript or even fabricating facts, but I can’t help it, but they always hope that this statement can ferment in my place. But there is no real problem except fermenting these accumulated things. When asked about the following case, he could only answer vaguely: “Q: Did overseas friends know about Mr. Wang’s original explosion? It is mentioned in the introduction of the English version of the famous book Modern Political Thought and Action (Oxford University Press, 1963). Maruyama: From the cover of the book (added by the editorial department), it seems that they are all written. I didn’t expect to write on the cover of the book. However, the other party said that it was written by the minister in just a few lines of introduction, which specifically wrote my victim identity, which really surprised me after the book was published.
In fact, as early as four years before the original explosion in Hiroshima, Maruyama knew the result of the war through a report of the Soviet Union, and was convinced of it: “Pravda predicted that Japan would lose the war on December 8 (1941)!” Nevertheless, he didn’t expect Americans to end the war with such a deadly weapon. In the face of the first nuclear strike in Japanese history, which may also be the last nuclear strike of mankind, Maruyama was in a complicated mood and could not control himself. Although he rarely mentioned the experience of the original explosion, “but when I went to the United States to talk about the scene of the original explosion, I was very serious.” He said: “No matter how strongly Japan advocates the original explosion, no matter what we Japanese say, they will not refute it.” How many times have I tried? The Japanese made such a speech, and the audience also thought that what the Japanese said was right. So, at this point, I think our self-assertion is not enough. “The tragedy of war is not a simple page. If the tragedy of the war is really a simple page, there will be no new primary explosion patients and no long-term patients today, so that the second generation of victims will still die of leukemia today. Although the war ended 24 years ago, this “reality” still exists today. For Tokyo, the tragedy of war has become a thing of the past, but in Hiroshima, it happens every day and is being bombed every day. ” He hinted that it may be more humane to let Japanese militarism, which is actually a spent force, surrender in other ways than “indiscriminately killing” Americans.
Because Maruyama has a special and short military career, especially the initial explosion experience, when analyzing the background of his academic thought system, people like to stay on this point and pursue it, and think that this experience should contain the foothold of Maruyama’s future academic research. However, Maruyama’s embarrassing, vague and even openly negative attitude towards this question shows that Maruyama’s original experience of breaking the news has produced an invisible thrust on his later research. It is not difficult to see from his frequent overtime speech or even uncontrollable excitement or sadness when interviewed by reporters, but Maruyama still disagrees with the academic circles to speculate on the origin of his academic thoughts. The problem lies in two different eras.
Maruyama’s Ongoing War is a whole fifteen years from the September 18th Incident to the August 15th defeat, that is, the whole process of the Manchuria Incident, the Japan-China Incident, the Great East Asia War and the Pacific War initiated by Japanese militarism. Generally speaking, the “mid-war” is usually three or four years from the start of the war between Japan and the United States to the defeat of Japan, while Maruyama’s “military career” is only less than one year, or even the moment of the original explosion. Maruyama named his record of foreign information during the intelligence class of the General Staff as “Memo in War”, which may have caused some misunderstandings to his followers in form. The so-called “war” here is also called “wartime” in Japanese On December 12, 1941, Japan’s Cabinet Decision stated: “1. The wars accompanying the war between the United States and Britain and the future situation, including the zhina incident, are collectively called the Great East Asian War; Second, regarding the application of salary and criminal law, the demarcation time between peacetime and wartime should be divided into before 1: 30 noon on December 8, Showa, 16. Many people in Japanese political and academic circles have also inherited the second method for many years, that is, the so-called “war” in Japan, which generally refers to the Second World War (Pacific War), that is, from the Pearl Harbor attack on December 8, 1941 (December 7, local time in the United States) to the end of the war on August 15, 1945. Paradoxically, this concept, which only regards the “Pacific War” as “at war”, was later inseparable from the role of the United States. On December 15th, 1945, the Allied General Command (GHQ) issued the Shinto directive. In this order, the reference to “Great East Asian War” was banned, and the concept of “Pacific War” was pushed to the foreground. Moreover, even after GHQ completed its mission in April 1952, the concept of “Great East Asian War” never revived. Obviously, this has directly influenced scholars’ wording of war: the reason why Maruyama’s paper “The Logic and Psychology of Super Nationalism” published in May 1946 used “Pacific War” instead of “Great East Asia War” should be the result of fear of that “Shinto Instruction”; However, he still dared to use the word “Zhina incident” in his article, because this expression was not taboo by GHQ (Kenichi Matsumoto: Maruyama Mako: On the August 15 Revolution). The reason why Americans want to abolish the term “Great East Asian War” and replace it with “Pacific War” is because they not only hate the Asian colonial expansion that Japanese militarism is proud of, but also clearly emphasize the decisive significance of the United States’ declaration of war against Japan. However, the so-called “Great East Asian War” launched by Japan originally included aggression against Asia, but because of the change of its name, not only the time and space of the war were artificially shortened and narrowed, but also the war itself became a war aimed only at the United States. This means that the history of “hurting” Asia in the eyes of the Japanese is easily forgotten intentionally or unintentionally under such a design (Jiao Bing: Visiting Han Dongyu: Dispelling the Fog of Modern Japanese Foreign War).
In fact, Maruyama’s “fifteen-year war view” was formed in the domestic political changes accompanied by the ups and downs of Japan’s foreign aggression. In the rational generalization, it is in the conclusion of the judgment of public international law that the accumulation of evil deeds in fifteen years will inevitably lead to extinction. Some scholars pointed out: “(Maruyama) entered the old No.1 institution of higher learning in 1931, when the Manchuria Incident happened. After graduating in 1934, he went to the Faculty of Law of Imperial University in Tokyo. He graduated in 1937 at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War (then known as the “zhina Incident”) and became an assistant to the Law School. After finishing his assistant thesis, he was promoted to associate professor of law in 1940, the year before the Japanese-American War. This means that his academic latitude and longitude are almost the same as those of the Japanese war and subsequent domestic fascism, and it also shows that Maruyama’s learning environment is deteriorating. (Duzhumian: Maruyama Masao case) This passage restores Maruyama Masao’s whole shady study and early study of the September 18th Incident, the war of aggression against China, the Great East Asian War and the Pacific War at the peak of Japan’s military system. This actually implies that some Maruyama researchers, whose case inference and pure theoretical concept discussion may only add a few articles to “touching the elephant” because they ignore the background of their academic thoughts, especially his consistent starting point and conclusion point.
At the end of the second year of “No.1 High School” (April 1933), Maruyama was arrested by a special high school class while attending a lecture on materialism organized by his father’s good friend Hasegawa. In the detention center, he was not only humiliated and mentally destroyed, but even before the end of the war, the word “Maruyama Masao” was recorded in the blacklist of Gaute and the gendarmerie (Maruyama Masao: “A philosopher suffered”), which made him unforgettable. During this period, his painful experience in the “One High School” stage was actually interpreted as a national political purge movement. Maruyama once regarded the eighth year of Showa (1933) as an epoch-making year in multiple senses. This year, including him, the number of people purged according to the Law on Public Security Punishment was as high as 4,481! Among them, in January, proletarian writer Kobayashi Takiji was killed; In May, Gao Chuan Yukio, a liberal criminal scientist at the old Imperial University of Kyoto, who was called “Professor Chihuahua”, was suspended, and Maruyama’s brother Tiexiong, who was studying in the Economics Department of Kyoto University, was also involved in this large-scale protest movement. In June, imprisoned Sano and Koyama issued a declaration of “turning” … which means that an era of “great turning point” has begun (Maruyama Masao: “Mr. Nanyuan’s Private-Private Personal, Chinese, Later Studies” in universities, the reason why this movement can last for so long is that the government must clean up the academics and ideas in university teaching, including Marxism. Ironically, in this “most miserable era in history”, Imperial University of Tokyo, which has always been regarded by the government as “the gathering place of outstanding elements”, is also doomed (Maruyama Masao: “Teacher of Mr. Namara”). In 1935, Mino Dage, a law professor, said that the Emperor was only the highest ruling institution under the Constitution; In 1937, the Lugouqiao Incident broke out, and the Sino-Japanese War took a major turn. Yanaibara Tadao, a professor of economics, resigned. In the second year, Professor Wei Bing Ouchi, Professor Boze Yangwen and Professor Wakimura Yoshitaro of the classmate department were suspended after being reported. In 1939, when the general commander of Ambassador Hirakawa of Dongda issued the “Hirakawa Su Learning Order”, Maruyama experienced the suspension of his classmates and Heying Jiro, and the punishment of Tsuda Zuoyou, which came like an avalanche and was irresistible (Maruyama Masao: “Teacher of Mr. Namara”)
The evil deeds of “super-nationalism” under the totalitarian system with the emperor as the state body not only brought profound disasters to the invaded countries, but also caused “mental internal injuries” to Japanese nationals, especially intellectuals who pursued democracy and freedom.
