Japanese Asian: The Absence of China 1997 in Japan Times Reporting

Abstract

Granted that internal, subaltern responses to the rise of China are creative, uncertain, and divergent, their deconstructive effects are presumably not as clear as external responses. The rise of China is at the same time conducive to the deconstruction of China to the extent that the Chinas enacted at multiple sites outside territorial China do not coincide with one another and to the effect that no hegemonic discourse on China can monopolize debate or even gain respect any longer. This chapter presents the worlding and re-worlding of historical subjectivities in a Japanese site, hinting that China rising in the twenty-first century has no fixed destiny. For postsocialist, Asianist, religious (Christian, Islamic, Tibetan, or Indian) civilizational politics and international relations, this unusual Japanese practice is perplexing. By showing this particular possibility of remapping the past or the present China, the contending formulations of what China is in the mainstream English, Japanese, Russian, and Chinese literature can each find its own place in specific historical contexts, enabling China watchers to appreciate how their sites and China are mutually constituted.