MNZ 20 by HISSOC Publications

ISSUE

MNEMOZINE THE NUS HISTORY MAGAZINE A STUDENT PUBLICATION BY THE NUS HISTORY SOCIETY

FAMILY FEATURING: SLAVES OR SISTERS? MONGOLIAN FAMILY VALUES ANCESTOR WORSHIP IN JAPAN THE CHRYSANTHEMUM THRONE DURING THE MEĲI RESTORATION WHEN THE PRIVATE BECOMES POLITICAL

What were both of your childhoods like? I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney with a fairly large extended family living close by. A highlight was summertime holidays; Aussies have a joke that there are only two types of holidays: Either up the coast or down the coast. Unlike in Singapore, it wasn’t common to have domestic help. My mum was at home looking after us. In Australia, there’s a fair bit of mobility. I have a lot of friends whose parents might still live in the same hometown, but they have moved elsewhere, either to different states in Australia or overseas. It’s just the same as with Singapore, right? I grew up on Holland Drive, in a HDB. And I’ve moved very far indeed, I’m now in Clementi! How do modern notions of childhood compare with those of ancient societies? My impression is that there are two things that were very different: Childhood and 6

teenhood. Let’s talk about teenhood �irst. Teenhood can be viewed as a relatively new category in society. My guess is that most premodern societies didn’t have a category where you were neither a child nor an adult. In most ancient societies, you went straight from being a child to being an adult. This was at about the age of twelve for Roman women and fourteen for men. Childhood depends on your status. If you’re lucky enough to be in an elite household, which was roughly 30% of the Roman population, then you probably went to school. The Roman poet Horace described going to school, showing that there were more provincial local schools and more re�ined schools in Rome itself. However, if you were less lucky, then you probably would have worked, and if you were a slave, sadly you might have worked as young as the age of �ive or six. I think there are some points of similarity to the Victorian era. If we look at the start of the Victorian era, it would have seemed rather silly to Victorians to think about children

having rights or that the state needed to protect them. The early Victorian era was wellknown for, particularly if you were poor, making children work. Children as young as seven and eight would be working in factories, mines or mills in new industrial cities like Manchester. It’s only really in the 1830s that laws began to be put in place to regulate child labour by reining in the number of hours that children were working. The later Victorian era saw a rise in discussions about the importance that all children should have a fundamental level of education. Childhood was recognised as a distinct category (developmental stage) that should be protected and it was very much connected to the romantic notion that children are innocent. Victorians believed that this time of innocence before adulthood should be nurtured by allowing them to enjoy their childishness before they develop into adults, they also grew increasingly aware that childhood experiences could shape the adult mind.. These sensibilities about childhood developed along the lines of class over the span of the Victorian era. Similar to what Dr. Daniel was saying, if you’re from the working class, you would end up working when you were very young. If you were from the emerging middle class or upper class, then your life would be quite different: you would have what was considered an ideal childhood where you were allowed to play and to learn and you weren’t sent out to work. How did romantic notions of childhood and innocence develop? It’s more of the notion of children being born innocent, and this innocence is something to be protected. By the end of the Victorian era, you had narratives that talked about children as both innocent and wild: they needed to be tamed, shaped, and crafted. Those narratives were quite often used in the imperial context. This is why colonial subjects were then likened to children, because they’re innocent in some ways but they needed guidance. That’s where the idea of parents and the role of discipline comes in. It was sometimes contradictory to have the ideal of the innocent child but one that’s also prone to wildness or needed to be tamed, and to be shown what was appropriate behaviour for when they entered adulthood. I thought of Rousseau’s ‘Noble Savage’ as Dr. Donna was talking. In Rousseau, the savage needs to be civilised, but he’s also noble. This idea that the state of nature has a good, innocent side but also a bad, uncivilised side. There’s this whole discourse, it’s very complex, about the history of ideas, going back

to Thomas Hobbes and so on with the state of nature. This is not my area. Perhaps consulting Professor Borschberg might help? Maybe not our area, but it’s still quite fascinating when you start to read about it. Historians are generalists, right? Let’s face it. We know a little bit more about one area, but in another sense, we tend to also be generalists. I suppose none of us would want to be a child in those societies. I keep joking to my kids, “If only you were a little smaller we could send you up some chimneys.” These were the types of work that children would end up doing. If your family was poor, children would work as chimney sweeps, street sweepers, or even in factories, not necessarily operating machinery but to climb under machinery to untangle cables. Quite often children were put into dangerous workplaces and it’s quite harrowing actually when you read up on it. I think many of us feel fortunate that we weren’t born in that era, because for many children and families, life would have been very dif�icult. It is interesting that Dr. Donna talks about machines in the Industrial Revolution. PreIndustrial Revolution, one thing about the Greek and Roman economies was that laboursaving devices appeared quite late in history. All those basic functions of keeping alive and warm and sheltered, which includes the tasks of weaving, making clothes, growing and processing grain, would have taken up far more time then than they do today. What did marriage mean in ancient societies? How was it perceived or portrayed? I’m going to say something that sounds a bit sad and unfortunate - or at least deeply unromantic to modern sensibilities! Sociologically, a lot of the functions of Roman marriage had to do with keeping the aristocracy going by having legitimate children, especially sons. The Romans were a bit similar to traditional Chinese in that they were proud of their ancestral lines. They had a similar practice of praying to the ancestors through shrines. It was a great honour to be a successful Roman general and have a Roman triumph. And it was a very great honour to say that your grandfather or great-grandfather and family line had lots of generals with Roman triumphs. This was what gave male aristocrats political credibility to climb the 7

Roman of�ices to get money and power. A lot of the meaning of marriage is to maintain these power structures. However, obviously at the subaltern level, that would have been very different.

Finally, there was always a concern of a scandal or impropriety which might make it harder to �ind a suitable marriage partner. Therefore, the idea of chaperoning was extremely important -- contact between an eligible young woman and a young suitor was frowned upon if there was no chaperone present. Was Pride and Prejudice popular in the Victorian era? In its time, of course! It’s about the inner workings of families in the gentry (upper class). The main protagonist Elizabeth Bennet’s situation captures the predicament of a large family with many daughters. Since the family fortune travels along the male line,

Figure 1: Sculpture depicting a Roman Triumph.¹

In the present day, we tend to think of romance and passion driving modern conceptions of marriage. For the middle and upper class Victorians, married life and family life was idealised. Victorian marriage was driven by the idea of a companionate relationship that involved an enduring, mutual affection deeper than friendship. This was seen as the ideal, but in most cases, it seemed more of an arrangement than a romantic connection. The choice of marriage partners was not necessarily one of equals and it was usually dictated much more by the man because women were often much younger. Marriage sometimes meant a certain level of social mobility, but not very much. Being able to marry someone with suitable prospects was important, so marriage was generally within your own economic ‘brackets’ or social class. Larger gaps, such as a member of the working class marrying an elite, would be rare. However, if you’re fortunate, you might be able to marry into a good family that had fallen on harder times. Their impoverished circumstances would allow for a suitable match between someone of the middle class and someone of the upper class with less �inances. In that sense, marriage was a bit more pragmatic. There were discussions on family wealth and prospects. If you worked for the civil service, you might wait a number of years before getting married to ensure a suf�icient �inancial setting to support a wife and maintain a household in a means they were accustomed to.

if there are no sons, the fortune goes to the next male relative. So much of the storyline in Pride and Prejudice is about family wealth, marriage and social status. That’s basically the main dramatic impetus of all, or almost all of Jane Austen’s novels, right? The problem of daughters without suf�icient inheritance. The opening of Pride and Prejudice is “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”. Basically, this con�ident assertion unravels as the story unfolds. There are also quite a lot of expressions about where to go to �ind husbands and the idea of young women being introduced to society and the importance of having a chaperone so you are not put in a situation where you are somehow seen as compromised or exposed to scandal. I think Jane Austen's novels cover that idea of the scandal aspect very nicely. And one very nice place to meet the right match is the Roman town of Bath, which is a very nice connection to the Victorians. What were traditions associated with marriages? Do any of these traditions remain with us today? There would be an announcement of engagement, perhaps a party to celebrate that. I don't know if this is necessarily the case anymore. For many people, holding a marriage service or ceremony was probably not as elaborate as it is in the present day, if we think about the large-scale sort of dinners and events that are held. But there was a marriage service.

¹ Jean-Guillaume Moitte, Scene from the Arch of Titus, 1791, terracotta, 35.88x59.59x6.35cm, Los Angeles County Muesum of Art, Los Angeles, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Guillaume_Moitte__Scene_from_the_Arch_of_Titus.jpg.

In Roman society, marriage is an agreement between the two families. In upper classes, there would have been a betrothal of marriage by arrangement. Quite a few things survive in Western traditions of marriage, which I suspect can be traced back to Roman marriage. The �irst is that the bride's father throws a big old party in his house and pays for everything. This probably used to be the case in Australia, I'm gonna guess, Dr. Donna, up to your parents’ generation at least? It probably started to change in your generation, and probably is quite different now. But in English society, there was a strong expectation that the bride's family pays for everything and throws the party. The Romans would have also had a wedding cake, which is where I suspect our tradition comes from. Today, we have the idea that you cannot wear something that will outshine the bride. That would just be rude, right? You can never have a dress that’s more spectacular than the bride’s dress; she absolutely must have the most spectacular dress of the day. But in Roman society it was different. Everyone was trying to pretend to be a body double of the groom and the bride. And this was because the Romans believed there were evil spirits which were out to sabotage the marriage. They dressed up to confuse these spirits, so they wouldn’t know whom to target. We have this idea in the best man today. Why is the best man, the best man? That’s so weird, right? Shouldn’t the groom be the ‘best man’? Our idea of a best man is that you're tricking the evil spirits that this is the guy they should go after, to distract them from the groom. We still have this idea in our culture today: the best man will take the hit for the groom at the forfeits organised by the bridal party. And the best man will rush forward to do the tasks: I'll take the hit, I’ll do the push ups, I'll drink this horrible concoction of alcohol. Weddings in Victorian society also depend on your status. For the middle and upper class, weddings would be a bit more lavish in terms of being able to host some sort of dinner or celebration. One of the interesting things was about what you wore for weddings. I think this does come up in one of the royal weddings recently, that the bride and the bridesmaids would all wear white. Queen Victoria's choice of a white dress for her wedding to Albert set a trend for brides to wear white. Roman brides wore veils. I can’t con�irm whether the idea of wearing a veil came from them. Wearing �lowers was also quite common. The bride dressed up like a priestess. The Romans also had this weird ceremony of abduction. The marriage wasn't

considered a good one unless the bride was “unwilling”. The groom would go through a ritual of “abducting” the bride from her mother. The message conveyed through this ritual was that she's such a good and faithful daughter to her household that she didn't want to leave her own household unless forced to. But if you think about it, this has quite a disturbing element to it! It’s important as we study history that we don’t whitewash it - but not doing so doesn’t mean we excuse or justify past behaviours. We can acknowledge that past societies were what they were, which is precisely why studying them can be insightful, even if they sometimes feel strange, unfamiliar, or even repulsive. The other interesting thing is when we think of wedding dresses in the present day, quite often the dress is custom made for the event. Looking at the practicalities of the time, for most Victorians, it would be unthinkable to have a dress that you would only ever wear once. The dress would be made to suit whatever the fashions were at the time in terms of style. It was often dyed or decorated afterwards to be worn again in different ways. The Victorians would have found it absolutely too frivolous to make a dress for just one occasion. Also, the idea of going on a honeymoon -- so getting married, throwing a celebration, and then disappearing somewhere -- was a practice that was already starting to happen by the mid-1800s. The whole idea of the honeymoon was just to get away for some time after the wedding, even if it is just a couple of days. Quite often, Europe was the closest place to get away to. If you're wealthy, you might go on an extended tour of Europe. Even in the working classes there was the idea that perhaps you could have a day or two away from your usual routine and go somewhere, even if it's simply a seaside town. I suspect that this whole idea traces back to the non-marriage-related idea of the Grand Tour. In the 18th century, aristocrats like Lord Byron would travel to Greece and Rome to discover their classical roots. I suspect this eventually morphed into travel as we know it. Do you have a favorite ancient family? Favourite ancient family. Dr. Donna! Victoria and Albert! While not an ancient family, I’m fascinated by the royal family headed by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Victoria and Albert used Osborne House as the family home to retreat 9

from public life. They were highly respected and you can easily �ind artworks which really capture the many different idealised depictions of the family. Seeing that many Victorians looked to the royal family as their inspiration and ideal, this is a good family to highlight to you.

Figure 3: Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi.³

Would you have wanted to be part of these families? What might life be like if you were in these families? You would have been a princess! Figure 2: Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their children.²

I'll talk about Cornelia’s family. She was the mother of two Roman politicians known as the Gracchi, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. She is widely held up as the ideal Roman matron and woman, not just in her time, but also in Europe. After her time, there were many statues of Cornelia made by many different sculptors. She was also, interestingly, an aristocrat. She was the daughter of the famous Roman general Scipio Africanus who defeated Hanniball. She also received a marriage request from King Ptolemy of Ptolemaic Egypt after her husband died. She turned him down, by the way. Today most don't know her, but up until maybe the early 20th century, when Roman history was more widely studied, even in Europe, she was a well-known cultural �igure in Europe. She was a favourite subject of painters from the Renaissance; some paintings showed scenes of her with her children. The Victorians also had these chocolates with little collector’s cards of famous people. Cornelia appeared on many of these (try a Google search).

Victoria and Albert's family would certainly be an interesting family to be in. It would be a privileged life. Given that Victoria was a mother who had very strong ideas about what her children should and shouldn't be doing, if they went on royal tours, she always checked where the royal princes were going and how far away they would be from London. In 1867, Prince Alfred took quite a long tour of the empire. I'm not sure if tours would be for me, but I can see the appeal. You would love to be betrothed to the prince of Sweden? No, I think if I had a choice, I'd be one of the princes and I'd go on a ship and I'd be able to travel around the empire. That would be far more exciting than being one of the princesses since Victorian society was far more 'mobile' for men than women. As I said, Cornelia had two famous sons who were politicians, Tiberius and Gaius. I would have loved to have been one of them - not! - as the older one was beaten to death and the

second one was basically cornered and committed suicide before he could be killed. Perhaps today we’d call Cornelia a Tiger Mom. It may be apocryphal, but she famously, allegedly told Tiberius and Gaius that she didn't want to be known as the daughter of Scipio, her famous general father. Instead, she wanted to be known as the mother of the Gracchi, in other words she wanted her sons to have accomplishments such that she would be known as their mother. This actually turned out to be true, but only after they came to very unfortunate ends in their political careers.

What were Roman or Victorian family structures like? Can I go �irst, Donna? Yes, yes, because the British tend to follow the Romans, right? Logically, I believe. Most pre-modern societies at the time had a stronger idea of the extended family and households. One basic thing that we learnt in both HY2262 and HY2263 (Dr. Jew’s level 2000 modules) is that the Greeks and Romans thought more in the category of the household rather than what we think of as the nuclear family. But we still have this idea today. If I asked a random person, “Who is in your household?”, this person may answer differently from the question “Who is in your family?”. A domestic worker might be included in the �irst question. For the Victorians, the family was identi�ied very clearly as a much more nuclear structure. It’s very much idealised by Victoria and Albert; the Royal Family were basically seen as encapsulating the ideal family. The British family was idealised as orderly: The father was the authoritative head of the household, who dealt with the working world and the external dealings of the family, whereas the mother represented the domestic sphere, including nurturing and caring for the children. This is why there were many guides to good housekeeping and how to maintain a good household. These were published and

proliferated in the Victorian era because it’s an ideal to be working towards. The nuclear family was seen as a sanctuary from the working world, particularly for the middle and upper classes. I think that the ideas about gender roles in Victorian society can possibly be traced back to Rome. The Roman elite family was horribly patriarchal, with many of these kinds of domestic ideals that Dr Donna was talking about. The paterfamilias, the head of the household, had legal powers of life and death, in theory, over his family members. There was also the ideal of the matrona, the model Roman mother. Incidentally, just going to my generation, the girls I went to school with would have done home economics as one of their additional subjects in school. So this idea of women performing domestic duties was kept alive up till the 1980s. Oh yes, I agree with that. Food for thought, in Australia, we had home economics at my co-ed school, but we also had woodwork and metalwork. Although I do remember a teacher making comments to the girls taking woodwork about not being too concerned with the woodwork project as maybe we will be better as a housewife! Sometimes societal attitudes take a while to change. He hadn’t gotten the memo yet. No, no, obviously not, obviously not!

Did the Victorian era take ideas from Roman family structures? I actually don’t know if there was a conscious adopting of Roman ideals or it’s just something that developed partly with the emergence of a middle class. The middle classes tended to look to the upper classes to emulate their practices. The Royal Family, for example, is the ideal that we (middle classes) should strive to be like. I don’t know that there was so much of an in�luence in terms of looking directly back to the Romans, necessarily. I’m not sure, Dr. Daniel?

I can’t stress this enough. Victorian society took place within a legacy geographical region of the former Roman Empire, though something like 1500 years later. There was a lot of impact when the late Roman Empire was Christianised, so I don’t think we should see Christianity as a post-Roman in�luence. There was tremendous change and new ideas and so on, but often you can see some thread of evolution of an idea. For example, most of Europe’s legal systems can be traced back to the Romans. These included ideas about marriage, which were founded on legal structures. I mean, what is a marriage? It is a legally protected relationship. In many ways, European society would have inherited some of those systems. The Romans were monogamous, their marriages were legally monogamous, which was actually quite rare. The Greeks weren’t: A Greek man could have multiple wives. Even in our own society, if we go back to my grandfather’s generation, it was quite common for rich Chinese men in colonial Singapore, as Dr. Donna will tell you, to have several wives.

How were ideal family perpetuated in Rome?

That's a very deep question which I can't actually answer of�hand. I think it has something to do with the Roman sensibility around religion and family. Women in particular were expected to remain faithful to one man, certainly during marriage and sometimes to not remarry even if widowed, although many Romans did. Monogamy was built into the Roman virtue system. But it was a double standard since men weren’t expected to keep it. The parallel there would be that in the Victorian era, families were all about respectability and upholding Christian values. The whole idea of the nuclear unit was one that was very strong, so the idea of second wives or third wives would just not be acceptable at all. Yeah, in Roman society too, there was a religious element. Obviously, under different religions than the Victorians, until the late Roman empire.

structures

I want to talk about monogamy because that's the one that I did my homework on. You think that, “Oh, did the Romans do this because they were very moralistic?”. But actually there is a societal reason. The Emperor Augustus, who was a key �igure in Roman history, had famous laws against adultery. Was he being very moralistic? No, he was actually trying to prevent blood feuds from opening up within the aristocracy where, you know, where Party A had some relations with Party B, and this creates bad blood between the families. Interestingly, Augustus’ own daughter Julia rather blatantly violated these laws on adultery. She was almost challenging his authority so he had to exile his own daughter. The paterfamilias also had a say, not just in his daughter’s �irst betrothal, but also her second and third. It was quite common for Roman marriages to either end in divorce or for one party to die. Quite often there won't be remarriage - for women at least - especially among the aristocracy.

Would a polygamous relationship have worked in Roman and Victorian society?

What was life like for single mothers and orphans? Single motherhood is an important topic in our own society. However, I'm not so sure that the modern category translates particularly well back on to Greece and Rome. As I understand it, even today a single mother might quite often fall back on the resources of her parents. Given that there was much more of a sense of belonging to a clan or extended family, a single mother and her child may have been absorbed into an existing household in Roman society. Obviously births outside legal marriage went on all the time in Roman society at both the elite and subaltern level, and single motherhood caused by higher mortality (of a husband) would also have been common. Maybe from the Victorian perspective, there was a high mortality rate for both children and adults. It's not so surprising that parents died and children were orphaned. There was minimal social welfare, but poor houses and orphanages were created, although they were also subject to abuses. Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist was one of the classic tales of the fates of orphans, which shows societal concern about these children’s welfare. For widowed women, it would often be a matter of turning back to

family because women generally didn’t go out and work. Someone, maybe a brother or the father, would take the family in, or at least sponsor the children with education and care. This applied more to the middle and upper class. Abandonment was the societal mechanism in Greek and Roman society. If a family couldn’t support a child, sadly, a common practice was to bring the baby to a dung heap - where night soil was disposed of - and leave them there. Whoever found these children could legally raise them as slaves. Interestingly, we have a lot of Roman slave names that have dung as the root of the names. Scholars think it's because of this association with being left at the dung heap.

What happened if families were unable to have children? The Romans were very superstitious, believing that the divine and the mortal world intersected all the time. Most Romans, except the very philosophical minded, would have associated children with divine fortune. Children were a product of whether divinities were smiling on the couple. Consequently, several aspects of Roman marriage ceremonies were about fertility, which was often symbolised by grain. If the ideal was marriage and motherhood, women who weren't able to ful�il this special vocation were really to be pitied. While marriage was the signal that a woman had attained a certain respectability and maturity, motherhood showed that she had attained full maturity as a woman and ful�illed her role as a wife. Throughout the nineteenth century there were discussions, which were shaped by a strong sense of religious respect and social respectability, relating to fertility, infertility (and birth control, often in relation to marital fertility) but this was not for 'polite circles'. Coming back to mortality, roughly half of Roman children didn't survive to age ten. I wouldn't be surprised if, for Victorian Britain, the statistics would be very similar. Yes, mortality rates were also high in Victorian Britain and higher for the working classes. Women could lose children during childbirth or as infants. These experiences seemed to be a strong recurring idea in the Victorian era

because many women coped with their grief by producing very ornate embroideries or artworks and tributes to these lost children.

Were there male equivalents of spinsters? Remaining single as a man was seen as more acceptable. The Bachelor enjoyed a certain amount of freedom but according to Victorian ideals, he was meant to be thinking about married life. (There were famous bachelors in Victorian era �iction: think of Sherlock Holmes.) In contrast, marriage was seen as something much more pressing for women and something that they should be aspiring to. If unmarried, women were encouraged to become a governess or work in roles involving contact with children to ful�il the womanly aspect of your life. It’s not the same for men, who could become career soldiers or career diplomats. There was not as much pressure for them to marry young.

How have the ideas of childhood, marriage, and family changed since those eras? I'd say that you still see some elements in common. The nuclear family is quite often idealised still, although I think increasingly we realise that families don't always look like nuclear families and they don't necessarily need to. In the present day, families take different shapes and forms. There's been a bit of a shift in that sense. In some households, there is a change away from always seeing the husband or the father as the head of the family. That still holds in some cases, but in many, there is a much more equal relationship between husband and wife. Both will be involved in domestic tasks, for instance, in looking after children. I would say this is a really big shift. Previously, that was the mother's role and her sole responsibility. Discipline and being the breadwinner was the main aspect of the father's role. But I think in current times, you have more couples that are both working while having children. There are more shared responsibilities and a lot more discussion about equal relationships in raising children. I would say that is something that has shifted from Victorian times. I would say there's kind of two seismic background factors, which then caused a sea change in society as a whole. The �irst is the

Industrial Revolution. The second is the sexual revolution of the 1960s. I think those two moments in time fundamentally changed modern society. Even in the 1980s when Donna and I grew up, society was still changing quite a lot from the 1960s onwards. I'm going to use growing up today as an analogy. In many ways, we're de�initely more fortunate, materially. We're certainly more fortunate in terms of health outcomes than any generation that has lived before us. But all this freedom of choice can itself become a source of stress. (Sadly, we’re probably the generation with the worst mental health of all.) My own sense is it can feel like the onus is very much on us now to succeed in school and have a good future and earn whatever income we want. In contrast, in Victorian Britain and the Roman Empire, a lot of this was determined from the day you're born. Class in Victorian society, as I understand it, was about birth, not about wealth. You're of the working class because you're born into a working class family, and that is never going to change. You know that you’re going to do what your dad did, like work in a factory or become an apprentice. There were some possibilities to leave, but these were limited to, I'm guessing, things like joining the army and going off to the Far East or British India, or signing away to the Royal Navy. Now, everything seems like our own choice and an open book. That brings its own stresses.

letters, where do you appear? You may appear in employment records, factory records, or workhouse records, if your family becomes destitute. We might �ind traces in of�icial documents relating to the Workhouses or Welfare Acts. The census records is another place to get data on families from all different walks of life. We also do �ind records if they run into trouble with the law: legal reports can be found about children being arrested for stealing things. The court records provide details of their family, for instance, so you have a sense of whether this child had parents, where's their residence, who was their employer. Quite often, it's very dif�icult to �ind writings or traces of working class families unless through very of�icial channels. Even so, the actual voice of the individual is sometimes lost.

A shift away from the Victorian era is that people do travel more and are more cosmopolitan. The Victorian era was very much about marrying someone appropriate within your class and race. Victorians lived within a very Anglophone world. The idea of interracial marriages, while I think it did happen towards the late Victorian era, was not something that was very well accepted. Now, because there are more opportunities for people to move around the world, this whole idea of interracial or intercultural marriages and families is increasingly common. As Dr. Jew was saying, we have many more opportunities as the world is much more open.

There are two other things I’d like to think about. One is the use of travelogues, diaries, journals, which were in vogue in the Victorian era. The idea of journaling was seen as an ideal form of self discipline, of re�lection. Sometimes you see traces of the family and familial relationships within journals. If a woman travelled and accompanied her husband to India as part of the British Raj for instance, often there would be a discussion of children. She might have left children with relatives, and she would write about buying gifts for her children and feeling homesick and missing them. The other aspect would be thinking about ephemera like posters, toys, and collectibles. The Victorian era saw the proliferation of printing presses. Images of children tended to circulate, for instance, in Pears soap. Whether it's packets of biscuits or packets of soap, you see idealised images of children and children at play. The Victorian era also saw the advent of the production of a fair number of cheaply made toys and collectibles for children. So I think these are two different things. One, you could think about depictions

What dif�iculties do scholars face trying to study families of the past? One of the challenges might just be literacy and documentation. If you're from a working class family and you don’t write journals or

For Rome, it's the same thing, but multiplied by a hundred times because source survival was much harder across that time. One area of the Roman Empire where we do have good records is certain districts and villages in Roman Egypt. This is just because of the perfect weather conditions for the survival of papyri. The Romans actually kept very good records because they wanted money. They wanted to tax people. To tax people, you need to keep good records. But just as Dr. Donna says, to get at the voices of subaltern families is very dif�icult and for slaves, it's even harder.

of children through popular press, or two, through ephemera such as advertising.

It reveals racial attitudes but I think scholars of the Victorian era point out that, for the �irst time, you have idealised images of children to advertise products. Artworks of children became very popular in the Victorian era. And these are mass produced, which is why I was talking about ephemera. Children also had educational board games. Many games were tied with either military actions or in support of the imperial project. There is one that traced different battles that were occurring in the Cape Colony, and you could support your heroes by tracing and plotting out their movements. I think they’re meant to instil certain values in the child through fun.

Figure 4: A child at play in a Pears' Soap advert.⁴

The advertisements are quite revealing about racial attitudes. I remember from co-teaching with Dr. Donna, Pears soap was horribly racist. I'm thinking about that poster where you have an African child washed in a bath with Pears soap and he becomes a white child.

Figure 6: A board game about colonisation and exploration from the Victorian Era.

Figure 5: One of Pears' Soap racist adverts.⁵

Written �inds are hard to get as representative �inds about Roman society. Archaeological �inds are often of skeletons themselves. Skeletons can tell you things such as the incidence of certain diseases, mortality, lesions, that means traumas that this person received. And of course, this may not be

someone of the upper class, but a more modest person. Crepundia, which are religious charm bracelets, had little bells and other things on them. They're worn by the lower classes too. It's sort of a standard plot device in Roman comedy, where an heir or upper class child somehow goes missing. He or she is abandoned and becomes a slave but keeps the crepundia. And later the family is able to identify them because they can recognise that bracelet that they left with the child. Perhaps a bit like some plots in Kdrama, I'm guessing?

Figure 7: A bronze necklace with crepundia.⁷ To any students with a budding interest in the topic, what potential areas of research would you suggest to them? In my case, I would think about researching working lives and family. This would be where children appear in of�icial records or family. Early industrial cities would be a really great topic that you could explore. How education changed over the Victorian era would also be fascinating because there are a series of Acts put in place to implement elementary education. But what that looks like can be quite different from place to place in terms of

what and how it's being taught in schools. And as I previously mentioned, things like leisure and sports and games are a really fascinating aspect because children could collect cards, teaching them about the heroes of the Empire or great �igures. So there is this mixture of the educational but also mentally indulging the child and letting them play. I think just the concept of play and children would be really fascinating, because that shifts over time. This is where the Romans are jealous of the Victorians, because they just have much more source material so many more topics are viable. In Greek and Roman history, I'm constantly asking my honours students, is this topic viable? Do we have enough sources that tell us something so that we can make some kind of arguments about it? Having said that, almost all the lines of questioning that we've been asked today, you know, what was the signi�icance of marriage and Roman society, what were Roman childhoods like, what was the experience of being a girl or a woman in Roman society, all this can be answered from the evidence. The idea of children and youth is very much emerging as a �ield and other colleagues also work on this topic. It'd be really fascinating to look at, say, an East Asian perspective as well of how ideas of childhood develop as opposed to Roman ideas and Victorian era. It would be quite fascinating actually.

How might this topic be explored in the modules that you currently teach? I cover some of this material in my Modern Imperialism course (HY3242). I try to set the scene of what life was like in Victorian Britain to understand why they enacted certain policies in the colonies. We get a sense of what went on in their own backyard. What was

London like and how did that affect the Empire? I also cover aspects of why colonial administrators governing the Empire raised issues of anxieties relating to sexuality and race, particularly for the British. These anxieties really questioned the notion of what it meant to be British. This was why British families that moved to colonial territories were seen as a vanguard of British ideals and civilization. These are some of the ways that I explore families within my module. I think one of the frustrations of both teacher and student of the level 2000 Greek and Roman modules is that we can introduce or touch on topics, but we can't go very deep into them. In both modules, we have one week on the Greek or the Roman household, and another week on the Greek or Roman economy and slavery. Many of those will touch on the topics that we've covered today, and we will also incidentally touch on those topics as we talk about Roman politics and so on. We will naturally discuss Cornelia. But any one of our topics covered in the level 2000 module could be a lecture course on their own. I'm sure the Victorian family or the Roman household economy could easily be a whole module with thirteen lectures. I'm going to be naughty and say there are any number of topics where Dr. Donna and I could team up and really just have a lot of fun teaching together.

That’s why a session on the vile Victorians versus the rotten Romans always worked very nicely. Because there is that nice connection. The Greeks are groovy though. Oh, groovy Greeks. We should add those in. These are the Horrible Histories titles. We realised that the Victorians, as much as they don't want to admit it, do have a big connection to the Romans. There was always this Victorian arrogance that they'd like to say that, yes, you can thank us for actually bringing the Roman Empire to a higher level in terms of how it is developed and the geographical extent as well.

Rachel Chen Jia Wei | e0773326@u.nus.edu Rachel is a �irst year History and Political Science major. She likes potatoes a lot because they taste great in every shape and form. She believes that she will reincarnate as a potato given her weird obsession with the vegetable.

Often termed as the “Land for Nomads”, Mongolia has become one of the hottest tourist spots for people who wish to experience an authentic nomadic lifestyle. This fascination came even as the Mongolians’ nomadic heritage (a lifestyle with no limits or boundaries) shifted towards a more settled urban life during the twentieth century.¹ The introduction of land privatisation laws partially forced this transition, with the aim of transforming Mongolia into a modern society.² This urbanisation, combined with the tourismoriented romanticisation of many Mongolian customs, threatens the authenticity of the Mongolians’ nomadic liberty. The Mongolians’ nomadic liberty should not be seen as merely an ‘exotic’ way of life, but rather understood as something far deeper and more meaningful. The Mongolians’ nomadic culture, through elements such as architecture, folkdance and festivals, deeply anchors and informs Mongolian family

values.³

¹ Mashbat O Sarlagtay, “Mongolia: Managing transition from nomadic to settled culture,” The Asia-Paci�ic: A region in transition (2004): 323-334 ² Ibid. ³ Ibid.

⁴ Sherry Ott, "What is a Mongolian Ger and Traditions?" September 30, 2011, https://www.ottsworld.com/blogs/mongolian-gers/. ⁵ Ibid. ⁶ Sherry Ott, “What Is a Mongolian Ger and Traditions?,” 30 Sept 2011,

The Mongolian ‘Ger’ Today, many Mongolians still live in the traditional ‘Ger.’ With its distinctive round structure, intriguing layout, and orientation, the ‘Ger’ is a pivotal focal point for the propagation of Mongolian familial values. The ‘Ger’ is built with wooden spokes coming from the crown that rests on the circular lattice wall.⁴ The whole family conducts day-to-day activities, such as eating and sleeping, inside the tent section of the Ger. There is a distinct lack of privacy for the family sharing the Ger! There are no walls or places to escape to, a stark contrast to the welldivided rooms of modern homes we �ind solace in. The family and extended family often sleep with big blankets on the �loor at night and cook their meals in the same place.⁵ It is no wonder that Mongolian families are so tight knitted,

Fig. 1 and 2: Outside and inside views of the Ger⁶

given the amount of time and space shared together as a family. The interior design of the ‘Ger’ is not without intention: The organisation of designated spaces in the ‘Ger’ reinforces the traditional division of labour in the household, which is important in Mongolian family values.⁷ These

https://www.ottsworld.com/blogs/mongolian-gers/. ⁷ Sandrine Ruhlmann, Inviting Happiness: Food Sharing in Post-Communist Mongolia (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019): 21-29, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410633. ⁸ Ibid.

designated spaces create a daily routine for certain domestic chores. A good example would be the systematic nature of the cooking process in a Mongolian ‘Ger’. The southeast space of the ‘Ger’ is designated for the ‘daughter’, who is obligated to distribute meals for the family.⁸ When she is preparing food for the household, there is a one-way route for her to complete

⁹ Ibid.

every stage of the cooking process.⁹ In a typical day, the ‘daughter’ prepares the meal and serves it. She then collects animal harvests and slaughters farm animals for their meat.¹⁰ In the ‘Ger’, the preparation of food alludes to an ef�icient and neat rhythm to domestic life. This reinforces the strategic structure of the ‘Ger’ which emphasises allegiance to familial duties.¹¹ Therefore, the space in the ‘Ger’ can be seen as a system of governance, re�lecting gender, age, and status hierarchy in the Mongolian family. ¹² The orientation of the ‘Ger’ encourages respect for the elderly and senior members of the family, another Mongolian familial value. The graves of passed loved ones face south, and the doors of the miniature ‘Ger’ are placed on the grave are oriented like a family ‘Ger’.¹³ This way, families house the souls of the dead, an important form of respect to honour past generations. Children learn from young that the spaces within in the ‘Ger’ are determined by gender, age and status.¹⁴ The north side (hojno) of the ‘Ger’ is a “place of honor” for the master of the house, where elders and distinguished guests sit together.¹⁵ Framed photos of the deceased, coupled with good-luck charms and ceremonial butter lamps, stand on the altar in the ‘Ger’. Hence, children are taught from young, of their ancestors’ struggles and contribution to the household. Within this impression of their ancestors’ struggles, the children are ingrained to respect seniority in the family.¹⁶ Therefore, we can understand how the interior layout and structure of the ‘Ger’ further reinforces familial values surrounding gender roles and age hierarchy.

Shamanism and folkdance

shamanism is “an all-encompassing system of belief that includes medicine, religion, reverence of nature, and ancestor worship.”¹⁷ In Mongolian shamanism, the spirit constitutes a life in the body itself. Derived from this are the notions of invocation of spirit and exorcism of the evil spirit, which may torment the life in the body. Hence, rituals of incantations, invocations, and exorcism are imperative from the birth of one’s life and sought by family members to protect loved ones from evil spirits.

Fig. 3: Shamanistic ritual by shamans (bö ö ) and shamanesses (udgan).¹⁸

The signi�icance of shamanism is encapsulated through the Mongolian traditional folkdance, Andai, known as the “jumping white hawk”. It originated from the collective dance of the Kulun Qi in the south of the Horqin Grassland.¹⁹ This dance holds both religious and social signi�icance. Firstly, it was a religious dance used by the Mongolians to pray to the gods for blessings and good health. Secondly, owing to the special language system, local ecology, and historical background, the Andai is symbolic of the Mongolian people who embraced shamanism. There lives a shamanist legend associated with the origin of the Andai, which goes:

The in�luence of shamanism as a religious practice is an important family bonding mechanism for the Mongolian family. Mongolian

“It is said that a father and daughter once lived on the Horqin Grassland. One day, the daughter,

¹⁰ Ibid. ¹¹ Ibid. ¹¹ Ibid. ¹² Ibid. ¹³ Ibid. ¹⁴ Ibid. ¹⁵ Ibid. ¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ "Mongolian Shamanism | Traditions and Ceremonies," Mongulai, April 17, 2018, https://mongolianstore.com/mongolian-shamanism/. ¹⁸ Ibid. ¹⁹ Ibid. ²⁰ Ibid. ²¹ “Andai Dance,” China Daily, February 3, 2014, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/innermongolia/201402/03/content_17260449.htm.

suddenly struck by an unknown disease, lost her mind and began to behave strangely. She remained ill for a long time without any sign of recovery. One day, the father, burning with anxiety, carried his daughter on a herdsman's wooden cart to see a doctor. However, when they arrived at the town of Kulun, the axle of the cart broke. At the same time, the girl's condition worsened and her life was in danger. The anxious father had no idea what to do except wandering around the cart, singing a song to express his sorrow. The wailing song drew some people from nearby villages. They couldn't help but shed tears at this sight and joined the old man in swinging their arms and wailing around the cart. To everyone's surprise, the daughter quietly rose, got off the cart, and followed the people, swinging her arms and stamping her feet with them. When people saw her, she was sweating all over, and her disease had been miraculously cured.”²⁰

Fig. 4: Performance of the Andai dance.²¹

The good news spread, and the Mongolian people began to believe that the Andai dance bore miraculous, remedying qualities that would cure one’s illnesses. Believed to be the bringer of good luck, the local shaman would even dance the Andai to keep away disease and misfortune for women who had love and marital issues. With the power to keep families together, the combination of Andai and shamanistic practices is believed to ward off evil spirits that target children in the family. At the heart of the shamanist legend, we can see how the father-daughter familial dynamic

²² Huang Min-Hua and Chang Shu-Hsien, "Similarities and differences in East Asian Confucian Culture: A comparative analysis," Journal of Multicultural Society 7, no. 2 (2017): 1-40.

manifested itself in a heart-warming and touching manner. The father’s unrelenting search of a cure for his beloved daughter portrays the tender love a father is expected to have for his child. In his plight, when all hope seemed lost, the father’s sorrows portray the close-knitted quality of Mongolian families — no parent would want to even fathom the prospect of losing their own child. The Mongolians’ shamanistic practices, therefore, show the importance of loyalty in Mongolian family culture.

Family culture The concept of “traditionalism” best encapsulates Mongolian family culture.²² Like Confucianism, traditionalism re�lects the feudal hierarchies of traditional agricultural societies. The hierarchical relationships between individuals of the agriculture societies extend to Mongolian family dynamics. Core principles such as long-term relationships, patriarchal views, and an intrinsic belief that one’s fate is pre-determined, form the basis of the Mongolian family’s way of life. This is best seen through the traditionally de�ined gender roles in the Mongolian family – women oversee the “indoors” whereas men are in charge of the “outdoors”.²³ Women are required to keep the master spirit of the �ire (galyn ezen) alive. They are also required to caretake and cook meals, all in the southeast region of the ger.²⁴ However, their roles transcend gender boundaries as well, since they also collect “river water” (golyn us) for subsistence outside the ‘Ger’.²⁵ Conversely, men in the household are required to tend to farm animals, and store heavy amounts of coal in the courtyard, usually with the help of children in the family.²⁶ Here, the concept of family unity is reinforced – rather than conforming strictly to the gender roles of the family, women and children relieve the burden of paternal �igures as well. Traditions reinforce the notion of familial respect as well.²⁷ This is seen through the �ire (gal), symbolising the paternal line, which must be kept burning at all times.²⁸ It is believed that

²³ Ruhlmann, Inviting Happiness, 21-29. ²⁴ Ibid. ²⁵ Ibid. ²⁶ Ibid. ²⁷ Ibid

the master spirit (galyn ezen) lives in the �ire and protects the family’s prosperity. Hence, the symbolisation of the paternal line through the �ire reinforces the importance of generational respect and unity in the family. In a similar light, the analogy of “The Pot and the Ladle” shows how the girl’s family “pours melted butter over the pot so that they will have an abundant herd and that the new mistress of the house will be fertile.”²⁹ The importance of the woman in the Mongolian family is analogised not only by the blessing of good health, but also through “the look of the pot” — if the inside shines, the woman will make a good wife. ³⁰

Food and festivals

Fig. 5 Khadag, a traditional ceremonial scarf in Tengrisim³³

Through the celebration of joyous festivals, Mongolian families may bond with one another through shared happy experiences. Their calendar of cultural festivals include the Tsagaan Sar, Khovsgol Ice Festival, Gobi Camel Festival, Spring Festival, Naadam festival to The Golden Eagle Festival.³¹ For families, the most important festival is the Tsagaan Sar (White Month/Lunar New Year).³² In this festival, families reunite with one another for a formal occasion of celebration. Family members and close relatives visit one another, exchange popular gifts such as the khadag, and enjoy a sumptuous meal of buuz together as a family. During such festivals, folk dances such as the Andai are also performed to commemorate the joyous occasion.

Fig 6: Buuz, a type of Mongolian steamed dumpling �illed with meat, usually beef or mutton³⁴

²⁸ Ibid. ²⁹ Ibid. ³⁰ Ibid. ³¹ “The Cultural Festivals of Mongolia for the Family," Trip�ini, accessed October 5, 2021, https://www.trip�ini.com/mongolia/countryhighlights/cultural-festivals-mongolia-family.

³² "Festivals in Mongolia | Tsagaan Sar Lunar New Year," Mongolian Travel, accessed October 5, 2021, https://www.mongolianfestivals.com/tsagaan-sarlunar-new-year/. ³³ “Tibetan White Silk Khata/Khada Offering Scarf,” Spiritual Tibet, accessed December 15, 2021, https://spiritualtibet.com/tibetan-white-silk-khatakhada-offering-scarf/.

It is also noteworthy to examine how the concept of family unity extends to relatives as well. The “Mongolian family” is a large nuclear unit, and this is prevalent through the culture of ‘The Evening Meal’, which brings together all members of the household. ³⁵ Heartily prepared with various types of dishes, the most important dish is the meat-based soup. Meat is perceived as the food that enables Mongols to achieve personhood (i.e., “a young child becomes a social being the moment he or she eats meat on the bone”). Through the meal, the seniors in the family can show care and concern to the younger members. For example, as the child grows bigger, he is given [by an older man] a piece of the respected (hü ndet) part to eat.³⁶ Hence, family bonding through meals is especially crucial in reinforcing the familial values imperative to the Mongolian family. ³⁷ The importance of familial values is reinforced through the concept of a large family unit. Beyond their own bloodline, Inner Mongolian herdsmen extended the value of familial love to orphans as well. This is evident through the preface of the book “Ulanhu and the Three Thousand Orphans, and the documentary �ilm “Monument to a Mother”.³⁸ These stories are best encapsulated through the term “Eji”, meaning mother in Mongolian, the term which orphans used to address adoptive mothers who are native to Ulanhu (the grassland people).³⁹ As the reincarnation of love, the people of the grassland raised these orphans for over 30 years with unconditional love, debunking the myth that blood is truly thicker than water. Most importantly, the emphasis on familial values is reinforced through the large family unit, with orphans included in the family picture. ⁴⁰

³⁴ Darlene Longacre, “Mongolian Buuz(Steamed Dumplings),” last modi�ied April 13, 2017, https://www.internationalcuisine.com/mongolianbuuz/ ³⁵ Ruhlmann, Inviting Happiness, 21-29. ³⁶ Ibid. ³⁷ Ibid.

Conclusion In conclusion, we have observed how elements of Mongolian nomadic culture underpin the structures and traditions of the Mongolian family. The values that de�ine the Mongolian family are manifested through elements such as the ‘Ger’, folklore, and the celebration of joyous festivals. We also understood the relaxed and easy-going natures of the Mongolian lifestyle, living in ‘Gers’ and keeping their families close together throughout day-to-day living activities. It is truly heartening to see how the essence of the nomadic Mongolian culture persists despite the rise of urbanisation. Even through tourism, outsiders can gain further insights on the Mongolian nomadic life. While to a certain extent, the nomadic image of Mongolia is romanticised by mass media, the Mongolian family, continues to preserve its unique and meaningful way of life. Given all that we have learnt about what this nomadic lifestyle means for a Mongolian family, we can only hope that this remains the case for a long time to come.

³⁸ Uradyn E. Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism: The Politcs of Friendship on China’s Mongolian Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 230-233. ³⁹ Ibid. ⁴⁰ Ibid.

Adele Chin Shu Fern | e0421066@u.nus.edu Adele is a Year 3 History major who loves impulse buying second-hand books she won’t have the time to read. She can be quite directionally-challenged and gets lost in FASS till this day.

The Chinese mui tsai system in colonial Singapore was viewed by the British as the root of social problems surrounding child traf�icking and abuse, and was thus considered a menace to society.¹ The presence of many mui tsai prompted the decades-long process of creating and adapting laws to curb every possible facet of what the British thought was a confusing and controversial practice. Through trial and error, the British broadened the scope of each successive legislative effort and delved deeper to control the perceived root cause of the problem – the lack of child adoption laws. By tracking this long drawn process, I argue that the British’s attempts to abolish the mui tsai system in Singapore acted as a direct catalyst for the homogenization of the concept of child adoption in Singapore. These changes continue to in�luence Singapore’s child adoption laws even today.

¹ Note that the Cantonese term “mui tsai”, which the British used to describe young, adopted female bondservants in their colonies, was not used among other dialect groups. Each dialect group used their own vernacular term. For example, the Hokkien used “cha boh kan”, the Teochews “chan kwei”, and Mandarin-speakers “pei nui”. ² Maurice Freedman, “Colonial Law and Chinese Society,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 80, no. 1/2 (1950): 112, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2844491; Wei-An Yang, “Female Emancipation in a Colonial Context: the Chinese Community in Singapore 19001942,” PhD diss. (Shef�ield, United Kingdom: University

Confusion and Controversy: The British View of Singapore’s Mui Tsai Mui tsais, which translated from Cantonese literally means “little younger sister”, referred to young Chinese girls who were adopted into a family via either a direct transfer between two families in Singapore or a third-party traf�icker to work as domestic bondservants (or slaves, according to the British).² Their presence triggered much debate and controversy over child slavery and the illegal transfer of female bodies in Singapore. These girls, often barely twelve years of age, were tasked to do unpaid housework in exchange for food, clothes, and lodging.³ Regardless of the physical distance over which this “transfer of bodies” took place, the adoption process required no court mandate unlike modern adoption processes.

of Shef�ield, 2014), 213; “A Custom That Is Successful,” Malaya Tribune, March 16, 1937, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/maltribune19370316-1.2.6. ³ Freedman, “Colonial Law and Chinese Society,” 114; Yang, “Female Emancipation in a Colonial Context,” 30. ⁴ Freedman, “Colonial Law and Chinese Society,” 112. ⁵ Rachel Leow, “‘Do you own non-Chinese mui tsai?’ Reexamining Race and Female Servitude in Malaya and Hong Kong, 1919–1939*,” Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 6 (2012): 1749, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X1200011X. ⁶ Gayne Lim Mei Fu, “The Mui Tsai Issue in Singapore,

Instead, the process constituted an informal, private contract between the child’s typically poorer biological family and a richer adoptive one.⁴ A lump sum would then be paid by the adoptive family in exchange for the girl unless she was to be given as a gift.⁵ Once in their new household, a mui tsai’s role was not strictly dictated by Chinese customs but was up to each household’s private interpretation and practice, which placed the mui tsais on a “slavery-to-kinship continuum”.⁶ The treatment of mui tsais could vary greatly: if viewed as a worthless slave, she might be overworked and abused to the point of death; if thought of as a biological daughter, her wellbeing would be taken care of.⁷ Even after turning eighteen, which was when employers were obligated to release mui tsais from the household, the variety of experiences would continue: typically, employers would secure them a place of work or �ind them a marriage partner.⁸ However, it was not uncommon for mui tsais to remain in their adoptive families as a paid housekeeper (“ahma”), by marrying a male member of the family, or by becoming a concubine if she was considered pretty.⁹ Otherwise, some mui tsais were returned to their biological families. Clearly, the de�inition of a mui tsai varied, and her relationship to her adoptive family during and after her term as a mui tsai likewise differed. An adopted girl’s position as mui tsai was not necessarily a �ixed role throughout her stay in the adoptive household since adoptive families possessed a great deal of freedom over the function of the adopted girl in their household. In fact, being a mui tsai was just one of three roles given to adopted girls, the other two being adopted daughter and adopted daughterin-law.¹⁰ Over time, the adopted girl’s role could shift across these three broad 1920s to 1940s: Between the Lines of Welfare and Imperialism,” B.A. Hons. Thesis (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2011/2012), 3. ⁷ Ibid., 4. ⁸ Ibid.

categories, thus creating �luidity in the adopted girl’s role within the household. Interestingly, there was great �lexibility in the transfer of girls between households too. Daughters were viewed as liabilities since they were useless in ensuring the succession of the family “ancestral cult” and were seen as good for little more than doing housework and raising a family.¹¹ Consequently, large, poorer families would “often dispose fairly freely of their daughters to other Chinese, or even to non-Chinese” families who could afford to look after her.¹² This contributed to the frequent casual transfers (and sometimes, returns) of daughters between households, which was a clear re�lection of the Chinese belief of that time that a child’s belonging to a family was not based on blood but paternity. As long as a man staked paternal claim over a child, the child would be recognised as his own. Indeed, the Chinese adoption custom offered a more �luid interpretation of a child’s role in a family based on kinship compared to the de�initive British view that a man could only claim a child if they were born of his lawfully wedded wife.¹³ The mui tsai’s unde�ined role and the �luid adoption culture, which placed the mui tsai system in a liminal space, was likely confusing to a colonial government who had more rigid understandings of family roles. Amplifying this issue was the sheer number of mui tsai in Singapore – there were an estimated 7,000 mui tsai in Singapore by 1922 with sixty to seventy arriving from China each month.¹⁴ The scale of the mui tsai practice thus sparked great concern among colonial administrators. Without concrete de�initions on their role in the family, the adoption of mui tsais hindered the imposition of colonial control over a system which the British perceived to be notorious for causing countless abuse cases and

child welfare breaches throughout the British Empire.

Photo of ‘Ah Moy, a child slave of Hong Kong, photograph taken by Mrs Haslewood’, c.1930’ from: Lowrie, Claire. Masters and Servants: Cultures of Empire in the Tropics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. https://go.exlibris.link/pvhl1pml.

eyes of many Chinese, the adoption also secured a future for the girl. Nevertheless, the British were concerned over reports of the mistreatment of mui tsai by their adoptive households, such as through grooming and selling the girl off to brothels for pro�it. These cases of abuse in the mui tsai system, though few and far in between, were enough to pressure the British into believing that the system had to be clamped down on.¹⁶ A legislative trial and error would follow throughout the 1920-30s as the British tried to control the mui tsai system in Singapore via increasingly harsh adoption measures.

Photo of how the British used to document mui tsais in their colonies from: https://oforother.malaysiadesignarchive.org/TheMui-Tsai-Controversy.

The British concern over child welfare stemmed from their perception that most mui tsais were ill-treated slaves. Such perceptions were reinforced by the transactional nature of the system, which in their perspective, relegated the child to be a mere commodity for labour.¹⁵ While the British deemed this exchange problematic, most Chinese saw this “transaction” as mutually bene�icial – the poorer household received money while the richer family gained help around the house. In fact, in the

That said, neither the �luid characteristics of Chinese adoptive family structures nor the controversial mui tsai system exist in Singapore today; they were brought under control by the British-crafted Adoption of Children Act of 1939 on which current adoption laws are based.¹⁷ The confusing liminal space occupied by the mui tsai according to British standards and the controversies surrounding them pressured the colonial administration to act against this

⁹ H.M., “Mui Tsai Commission Arrives,” The Straits Times, May 10, 1936, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/straitstimes19360510-1.2.108. ¹⁰ Adopted daughters and daughter-in-laws had similar domestic roles involving housework. The only difference was that the adopted daughter would eventually be married off to another family and the daughter-in-law would likely marry one of their adopted parents’ sons. See: Freedman, “Colonial Law and Chinese Society,” 114. ¹¹ Ibid., 112.

¹² Ibid., 113. ¹³ Ibid., 112. ¹⁴ Yang, “Female Emancipation in a Colonial Context,” 171. ¹⁵ Rachel Leow, “Age as a Category of Gender Analysis: Servant Girls, Modern Girls, and Gender in Southeast Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies 71, no.4 (2012): 1749, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23357430. ¹⁶ While the abuse of the mui tsai system was not as high in Singapore due to the relatively higher standard of living, the mui tsai issue throughout Empire as a whole was causing much public outcry – especially

centuries-old Chinese tradition in favour of implementing their own concept of adoption, therefore resulting in the loss of Chinese family traditions and institutions.¹⁸

Attempts to Clamp Down on the Mui Tsai System The British’s struggle to abolish the mui tsai system began with much debate as the colonial administration pondered on curbing the abusive system while still aware of the importance of mui tsai in Chinese family customs. These long-drawn debates formed the backdrop of the Female Domestic Servants Ordinance and the Mui Tsai Ordinance.¹⁹ Furthermore, the British were cautious of disrupting their collaborative relationship with many wealthy Chinese since it was important to retain their support to generate revenue in the colony.²⁰ This accounted for the British hesitancy over disrupting Chinese customs, resulting in over a decade of hesitant legislative moves.

Female Domestic Servants Ordinance (1926) The �irst attempt at dealing with the mui tsai issue manifested in the Female Domestic Servants Ordinance which saw the Legislative Council attempt to de�ine the mui tsai for the �irst time: “A female domestic servant whose employer for the time being shall have made, directly or indirectly, within or without the Colony, any payment to any person for the purpose of securing the services of such female as a domestic servant or whose services have as a matter of fact been secured by the payment of money to any third person; or a female domestic servant whose employer for the time being shall, within or without the Colony, have

from human rights and feminist movements. Afraid that their perception as a world power was at stake should they continue allowing this “heinous incarnation of the dreaded “human merchandise” problem” to continue, the British felt much “moral pressure” to clamp down on the system. See: Ibid., 977. ¹⁷ “Adoption of Children Act”, Singapore Statutes Online, accessed October 30, 2021, https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/ACA1939. ¹⁸ Besides, since England had legalized adoption under their own Adoption of Children Act in 1926, it was questioned why the same strict standards and

acquired the custody, possession or control of such female, or upon the death of, any employer who made any such payment as aforesaid.”²¹ This de�inition was later criticized by the former Member of Parliament Edith PictonTubervill for being too narrow and thus dif�icult to enforce given the highly different conditions and treatments mui tsais found themselves in.²² For example, it failed to include mui tsais who were temporarily on “loan” to their adopted family for a set time period or those who were given as gifts rather than traded through a sale.²³ The Ordinance also prohibited the employment of female domestic servants under the age of ten and threatened a $200 �ine or six months in jail for any breaches.²⁴ However, this sanction was hardly effective as the girls’ age was the only proof demanded for charging someone for keeping illegal mui tsais under the Ordinance. However, the mui tsai’s exact age was hardly ever known to her employer, and the dif�iculty of obtaining her real age posed issues for prosecution.²⁵ Overall, there was a serious need for reform as the Ordinance turned out to be “practically useless”, with hardly anyone being charged for its violation.²⁶

Mui Tsai Ordinance (1932) Filling the gaps and replacing the Female Domestic Servants Ordinance was the Mui Tsai Ordinance (1932). Introduced with great con�idence, the new Ordinance sought to abolish the mui tsai system by enforcing the registration of all existing mui tsai in Singapore. Registration was open only from January to June 1933, after which keeping unregistered mui tsai would be deemed illegal.²⁷ The administration was hopeful that in about a decade, there would no longer be any mui tsai under the age of 12 in Singapore

de�initions for child adoption was not implemented in the colonies, especially when existing private, informal Chinese systems were dif�icult to keep track of. See: “Legislation That Is Much Overdue,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, December 22, 1932, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/singfreepressb19321222-1.2.67. ¹⁹ “The Straits Times FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30. CHILD ADOPTION BILL,” The Straits Times, September 30, 1927, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art

since they would be unregistered. Enforcement against breaches were also improved as potential offenders were made to furnish details of acquisition of mui tsai, which was easier to track, rather than proof of age.²⁸ On top of all this, the Ordinance improved the mui tsai’s legal rights - mui tsai were to be paid a salary and were assured that the Chinese Protectorate would patrol and act upon any complaints against abusive employers.²⁹ The Mui Tsai Ordinance took a stronger stance than its predecessor but unfortunately came with loopholes. Firstly, protection of mui tsais and monitoring of registration remained dif�icult due to the private nature of their work. Secondly, although mui tsai were empowered by the Ordinance to seek help from the Chinese Protectorate, most of them were uneducated and simply unaware of their legal status.³⁰ Thirdly, seeking help from their biological parents in the face of abuse was hardly an option as they had cut off ties with their parents (who were often overseas in China) to become part of a new family.³¹ One �inal misfortune was that it was easy for traf�ickers to get around the Ordinance without getting caught by abusing the many roles an adopted girl could take on under Chinese custom. All they had to do was register mui tsai as either adopted daughters or daughters-in-law to make the adoption legal. As such, although the British celebrated the registration of 3004 mui tsai in 1933 and the prosecution of 45 people under the Ordinance from 1933-36 as signs of the new legislation’s success, the system had not been eradicated. Instead, the situation was only dealt with at face value without consideration of the �luid Chinese understanding of adoption.³²

icle/straitstimes19270930-1.2.27. ²⁰ Yang, “Female Emancipation in a Colonial Context,” 30. ²¹ Ibid., 173. ²² Ibid., 217. ²³ Sarah Tan, “Mui Tsai In Strait Settlements (Malaya) 1920s-1950s: A Con�lict of Law and De�inition,” Sejarah 26, no. 26 (2017): 59-60, https://doi.org/10.22452/sejarah.vol26no1.4. ²⁴ Yang, “Female Emancipation in a Colonial Context,” 174. ²⁵ Lim, “The Mui Tsai Issue in Singapore, 1920s to

With the failure of these ordinances to get to the root of the mui tsai problem, frustration began to ensue, leading to the arrival of a Mui Tsai Commission (1936). The Commission was tasked to survey the conditions faced by Singapore’s mui tsai and analyse Chinese family and marriage structures before providing recommendations on how to curb the mui tsai practice. These outcomes took the form of a Minority Report presented by Edith Picton-Tubervill. Picton-Tubevill’s Minority Report was critical of the inef�iciency of the Mui Tsai Ordinance, noting that its loopholes made the abolishment of the mui tsai system “incredibly slow”, deviating from the “rosy” view of its counterpart Majority Report. The Majority Report was produced by Picton-Tubervill’s male colleagues Wilfred Woods and C.A. Willis. They found that “no abuse or maltreatment under the mui tsai or any other Chinese system which cannot be immediately put a stop to through the operations of the existing law” and were essentially satis�ied with current legislation. In fact, they felt that the system was not one of exploitation, holding the view that “schemes for the protection of women and children [were] both politically objectionable and administratively impracticable”.³³ Furthermore, she noted that the record of registered mui tsai under the Mui Tsai Ordinance was incomplete.³⁴ Most notably, though, she criticized the Ordinance for portraying the issue of child welfare as a Chinese one, when similar practices existed among other races.³⁵ As such, she proposed to “de-racialize” the mui tsai question by addressing the root cause of female child slavery and to rede�ine cultural adoption practices. Measures were suggested to protect all girls under twelve regardless of race. For the Chinese, the proposals meant that no child under any circumstance could

be legally recognized as an adopted mui tsai.³⁶ And to that end, she proposed the Children’s Charter as the best solution to impose controlled, standardized parameters surrounding an adopted child’s role and rights in the family.

Minority Report were accepted and acted upon in 1939 with the introduction of two parallel legislations – the Adoption of Children Bill and the Children’s Bill, both of which were read in court for the �irst time in April 1939. Both were passed in 1939 in hopes to “settle once and for all that there is no intention of tolerating any form of slavery or semi-slavery in this part of the British Empire”.³⁸

Adoption of Children Bill (1939)

Photo of young mui tsai from: H.M. “Mui Tsai Commission Arrives.” The Straits Times, May 10, 1936. http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/ Article/straitstimes19360510-1.2.108

Colonising Adoption The Minority Report should be credited as the catalyst towards legalizing adoption in Singapore. Picton-Tubervill’s proposal to increase the protection of all children in Singapore (especially transferred children like the mui tsai) successfully broke down a decade of repetitive debates about abolishing the mui tsai system due to British fears of disrupting traditional Chinese family culture. By changing the lens through which the Chinese mui tsai problem was perceived and situating it within a broader �ight against child labour, the British began to believe that legalizing adoption would ensure fundamental human rights. The concerns and recommendations in the

reaching the age of 18 could choose to marry or continue to work at their owner’s house as servants.” See: Yang, “Female Emancipation in a Colonial Context,” 217-218. ³⁰ Ibid., 220. ³¹ Ibid., 220. ³² CO825/23/2, “Annual Report of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, Malaya, For the Year 1936”. ³³ Leow, “Do you own non-Chinese mui tsai?” 1745; “Bigger Staff to Effect Mui-Tsai Abolition,” The Straits Times, March 1, 1937, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art

First, the Adoption of Children Bill stated that all adopted children within the colony, regardless of their race or religion, were to be treated as if they were the biological children of their adoptive parents. It was almost an exact replica of Britain’s Adoption Bill from 1926 and Singapore’s Adoption Bill of today continues to reference this 1939 bill as its base.³⁹ The Adoption of Children Bill resulted in the breakdown of the Chinese understanding that a child could have different functions within the family as dictated by the adoptive family. There was to be no differentiation between any child: it was now illegal to adopt a child and not treat them with the same care and privileges (e.g. property rights) as one’s own naturally-born child. Adoptive parents and traf�ickers could no longer hide behind different Chinese adoption labels. To regulate this, all adopted children were called to be registered and were granted protection and recognition under the law for the �irst time.⁴⁰

Children’s Bill (1939) Complementing this de�initional change was the Children’s Bill, which repealed the Mui Tsai Ordinance and focused on protecting the

icle/straitstimes19370301-1.2.86. ³⁴ Yang, “Female Emancipation in a Colonial Context,” 217-216. ³⁵ The Commission reported great similarities and overlaps between Chinese and Indian (which they equated to Hindu) adoption customs. Indians had a similar practice of adopting child brides and some Chinese mui tsai were even found working in Indian households. See: Lim, “The Mui Tsai Issue in Singapore, 1920s to 1940s,” 29 & 32. ³⁶ Leow, “Do you own non-Chinese mui tsai?” 1745. ³⁷ CO285/27/6, “Extract from Straits Settlements

“transferred child” or any female under fourteen no longer living with her biological parents. It dictated that every child transferred from overseas was to be registered, including the information on the reason and means of their transfer.⁴¹ No longer could slave traders use adoption as an excuse to bring young girls into Singapore to sell them to brothels. The whole process of a girl’s transfer and adoption was now tracked by of�icials, leaving few loopholes for abusing the system.⁴² Now, not only were the British’s standards of adoption introduced in the colony, but the Court also refused to recognize Chinese (and Hindu) informal adoption customs. This suggested a �irm, uncompromising law from the colonial government which no longer wanted to tolerate different cultures’ �luid adoption practices, if they compromised child welfare.⁴³ Together, these bills were seen as the best policy to move towards abolishing the pervasive mui tsai system once and for all. While the colony was still bogged down by manpower and funding shortages (especially with the increasing military pressures in the beginning of World War II), improvements were made to reduce the number of registered mui tsai from 706 (1933) to 153 (1939).⁴⁴ The British were able to exercise humanitarian intervention in the mui tsai problem which they deemed problematic and regressive, creating for themselves the image of a benevolent, imperial world power which brought their adoption legislation in to control to child slavery in their colony.

Rede�ining the Chinese Family

Legislative Council Proceedings pages 37 & 38 Singapore 24th April 1939” ³⁸ “Children’s Bill In Council,” Malaya Tribune, April 25, 1939, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/maltribune19390425-1.2.86. ³⁹ “Recognition of Adopted Children in Colony,” Malaya Tribune, June 13, 1939, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/maltribune19390613-1.2.134; “Chinese and Child Adoption,” The Straits Times, May 29, 1929, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/straitstimes19290529-1.2.74. ⁴⁰ Ibid; CO285/27/6, “Extract from Straits Settlements Legislative Council Proceedings pages 37 & 38 Singapore 24th April 1939”. ⁴¹ ““Children’s Charter” Before Council,” The Singapore

Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, February 28, 1939, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/singfreepressb19390228-1.2.97. ⁴² “The Singapore Free Press THURSDAY. MARCH 9, 1939. Children’s Charter – III,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, March 9, 1939, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Art icle/singfreepressb19390309-1.2.80. ⁴³ Unknown, “” Children’s Charter” Before Council”. ⁴⁴ Lim, “The Mui Tsai Issue in Singapore, 1920s to 1940s: Between the Lines of Welfare and Imperialism,” 30.

Singapore has since faced such homogenized family structures as propelled by the development of mui tsai/child protection laws from the 1920-30s. All adopted children are, today, treated as the legitimate children of their adoptive parents and the Chinese community no longer associates child adoption with constant change, transfer, and �luidity. Albeit to achieve immediate results for the noble (and imperialistic) end of curbing child slavery, the British presented a willingness to prescribe their own understandings of the role of adopted children onto the Singapore Chinese community, even if at the expense of deeply embedded Chinese family practices. It was the unde�ined, �luid nature of the mui tsai and adopted girls in Chinese custom that the British had trouble navigating and thus, made concrete legislation to control for abuse within the practice such a struggle. Perhaps, there seemed to be no other option but to target, rede�ine, and legalize the entire colony’s institution and concept of adoption at its root in British terms since allowing for any compromise would be a threat to child welfare. Thus, the whole of Singapore was left with family structures constructed on a sense of rigidity and permanence that adoption could and can no longer overcome.

Sarah Grace Lim Qin Hui | e0421607@u.nus.edu Sarah is a third year History and European Studies major. She reads in her downtime and regrets that her Book Depository wishlist is longer than her bookshelves have space for. She enjoys classical music but isn’t fussy about genre: yes, K-pop and Tchaikovsky can be in the same playlist.

Festival of Souls: Yesterday I hosted them Today I am a guest . . . Tamamatsuri Kintō wa aruji Kytō wa kyaku Sofu 素風¹

Life begins, and life ends – the ineluctable truth somewhat wittily encapsulated by this proverb attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”² The myriad of ways that different cultures across the world have approached death display a common concern with the gravity of it, in the rituals that send off, celebrate, remember, and commemorate the dead and the ancestors. For example, in Singapore we see the Chinese Buddhists and Taoists observing the Hungry Ghost Festival where it is believed that dead spirits return to roam the earth during the seventh month in the Lunar calendar.³ Offerings are thus made to appease the malevolent spirits, as well as honour one’s ancestral spirits.⁴ Similarly, on the other side of the world in Mexico, families make offerings at family altars to encourage visits from their departed family members during the Day of the Dead (Dı́a de los Muertos).⁵ We hold many beliefs about the signi�icance and implications of

¹ This is a jisei (death poem; farewell poem to life) written by a Japanese Haiku poet and compiled in an anthology. Tamamatsuri, the Festival of Souls, is another name for the Bon Festival that takes place in summer. Yoel Hoffmann, ed., Japanese Death Poems (Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle Publishing, 1986), 301. ²“Benjamin Franklin’s Last Great Quote and the

Constitution,” National Constitution Center, accessed October 4, 2021, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/benjaminfranklins-last-great-quote-and-the-constitution. ³ “Zhong Yuan Jie (Hungry Ghost Festival),” Intangible Cultural Heritage, Roots, accessed October 4, 2021, https://www.roots.gov.sg/ich-landing/ich/zhong-

death on the individual, their families, and their community, and thus perpetuate the practices that have stemmed from such beliefs. In this article, I will introduce some of the funerary rituals and ancestor worship practices commonly seen in Japan. Practices are rarely uniform: even in the same period, there may be many regional variations. Thus, this article explores some of these rituals and the beliefs underpinning them, and how their ideas of family play into the way Japanese society approaches death and remembrance, over a thin spread of time from premodernity to the contemporary period.

development: as such, in the Shintō worldview death is seen as ‘polluting’ and funerals in the Shintō -style are few and far between, adopted only by the imperial family and exclusively Shintō families.⁹ In death, therefore, most Japanese would turn towards Buddhist practices.¹⁰ Robert J. Smith, a scholar on Japanese anthropology, notes that for the most part, Japanese Buddhism is ancestor worship.¹¹ Thus, this gave rise to the term “funerary Buddhism” to mark it as a religion dealing with funerals and ancestor worships, linking Japanese understandings of death with it.

Beginnings of ‘Funerary Buddhism’

By the mid-ninth century, Japanese elites had started to adopt both Buddhist rites for the deceased and a Buddhist outlook on the afterlife.¹² Previously, they would simply bury or expose dead bodies to the elements, with little focus on memorialising.¹³ By the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), funerary Buddhism had spread even further among the commoners. Contemporaneous to that era was the crackdowns against Christians in the country and the corresponding emphasis on Buddhist institutions throughout the country.¹⁴ The establishment of the “danka system” mandated that each family be af�iliated with a Buddhist temple, so everyone had to be Buddhist, die a Buddhist, be given a Buddhist funeral and receive recurring ancestral rites under the temple their family was af�iliated to.¹⁵ Buddhist funerary rites and ancestor worship hence came to be entrenched in Japanese society more �irmly than ever before. Many of the practices mentioned in this article are not clearly Buddhist or indigenous, precisely because of the commingling and syncretisation that went on – making them rather distinctly Japanese.

In Japan, its unique religious syncretism produces remarkably �luid perceptions of death and the afterlife. They are largely grounded in Buddhist beliefs, mixed with indigenous and folk in�luences over time to become a rather unique form of Japanese ‘Funerary Buddhism’. The practice of Shintō , referring collectively to the indigenous elements that encompasses Japanese folk religions, precedes the practice of Buddhism in Japan. Buddhism was imported into Japan from the sixth century AD, bringing in ideas from the Korean and Chinese cultural spheres that in�luenced Japanese religious beliefs and praxis greatly.⁶ Over time, the different sects of Buddhism have been enmeshed with the worship of indigenous deities (kami) and Daoist and Confucian ideas and practices to make a syncretic religious tapestry.⁷ As such, most Japanese hold beliefs from both Shintō and Buddhist traditions and practice them without con�lict.⁸ Shintō ism is commonly associated with celebrations of life and its

yuan-jie-hungry-ghost-festival. ⁴ Ibid. ⁵ “Day of the Dead Dia de los Muertos,” Day of the Dead, accessed October 4, 2021, https://dayofthedead.holiday/. ⁶ Heather Blair, “Buddhism in Japanese History,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian

Buddhism, ed. Mario Poceski (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2014), 85. ⁷ Ibid, 84; Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019), 177. ⁸ Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, 177. ⁹ Ibid, 162; Gordon Mathews, “Death and the Afterlife in Japan,” in Death across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures vol. 9, ed. Helaine Selin and Robert M. Rakoff (Cham: Springer International

Rites and Remembrance Kin relations are extremely important to the Japanese and they consider its maintenance of utmost importance even beyond the grave. Those that have passed and those who are still living are part of the same family, but both have the same purpose in serving the good of the family. The signi�icance of such a view would come to in�luence the way they bereave and commemorate their dead. In the Meiji period (1868-1912), the Civil code of 1898 codi�ied a Japanese family system into what is called the ie; it is not just a family unit, but it also conveys the meaning of ancestry and continuity.¹⁶ The membership of each ie comprises not just the living, but also the ancestors and the recently dead, whose remembrance the living members are responsible for as well as for the continuity of their house by producing descendants.¹⁷ The family head, usually the oldest son by primogeniture, is responsible for the affairs of the ie, including the dead. ¹⁸

Therefore, the living members of the ie must take responsibility for their dead members through ancestor worship, which expresses one’s appreciation for their ancestors and their efforts in making the household of the present, and to ensure that the newlydeceased can safely pass over to the world beyond.¹⁹ Without regular care through worship, it is believed that the newlydeceased would turn into malevolent spirits or ghosts that haunt the living.²⁰ Moreover, worshipping them is believed to make them benevolent ancestors that would bless and protect their descendants.²¹ The ie thus sought harmony between their living and the dead as one family through ancestor worship: the ancestors, being at peace, would watch over and maintain the peace of their living descendants. Regardless of mortality, all members worked towards the good of the collective ie in their current capacity. After the funeral, annual ancestral rites must be conducted to deify the deceased’s spirit into a hotoke (Buddha) and eventually into kami (Shintō gods).²² According to Japanese mythology, the �irst 49 days of the deceased’s voyage across the Sanzu River to the afterlife

Publishing, 2019), 44.

Buddhism,” 254.

¹⁰ Ibid.

²² Ibid, 44; Mathews, “Death and the Afterlife in Japan,” 44.

¹¹ Robert John Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), viii. ¹² Jacqueline Ilyse Stone and Mariko Namba Walters, Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), 6. ¹³ Mark Michael Rowe, “Death by Association: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2006), 25-26. ¹⁴ Nam-lin Hur, “Funerary Rituals in Japanese Buddhism,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to East and Inner Asian Buddhism, ed. Mario Poceski (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2014), 239-240. ¹⁵ Ibid. ¹⁶ Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, 33. ¹⁷ Ibid. ¹⁸ Ibid., 34 ¹⁹ Mathews, “Death and the Afterlife in Japan,” 44. ²⁰ Ibid ²¹ Nam-lin Hur, “Funerary Rituals in Japanese

²³ Mathews, “Death and the Afterlife in Japan,” 44. ²⁴ Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, 147. ²⁵ Ibid; Mathews, “Death and the Afterlife in Japan,” 44. ²⁶ Motoo Ishii, “Cherry Blossoms and Lilies: Comparing the Understanding of Death and Resurrection in the Traditional Japanese View and Christian Teaching” (PhD diss., Luther Seminary, St Paul, Minnesota, 2002), 8-9. ²⁷ Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan, 956. ²⁸ Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, 163. ²⁹ Ishii, “Cherry Blossoms and Lilies,” 22. ³⁰ “butsudan no heigankuyō to kaigenkuyō,” kimamana neko oyaji no tsuitachi, accessed November 22, 2021, http://toraneko686916.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry114.html. ³¹ Obon, or Tamamatsuri. See footnote 1. ³² Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, 163. ³³ Choshu Takeda, ‘Family Religion’ in Japan: Ie and Its Religious Faith,” in Ancestors, ed. William H. Newell,

is the most perilous.²³ To ensure the deceased’s safe passage through this especially dif�icult part of the journey, the living family must hold rites for the soul of the dead every seven days up till the 49th day, where it fully enters the afterlife; further rites are given after 100 days, one year, and again after 3, 7, 13, 25, 33 and 50 or 60 years, which varies depending on which Buddhist sect and region the household belongs to.²⁴ The deceased are remembered as individuals, up till the 33rd to 50th year of their deaths, after which their individual ancestral tablets are destroyed and they are remembered more generally as ancestors of the household.²⁵ The funerary rites are primarily Buddhist in origin, but distinctly Japanese: Buddhist doctrine states that only those who attain enlightenment could be called Buddha, yet the general population confers this title to their dead, while also believing that their ancestors would become Shintō kamis after that.²⁶ Moreover, the structure of the rites are a composite of different beliefs. Holding a rite on the 49th day is a Buddhist belief, whereas holding a rite on the �irst and third anniversaries are inspired by Confucianism; the other anniversaries are thought to have been chosen due to Japanese preference for the lucky numbers three, �ive and seven and in�luenced by Taoism. ²⁷

Fig. 1: A Buddhist ancestral altar (Butsudan) in a home.³⁰

However, on certain occasions like Obon and the equinoxes, family members would visit the family grave.³¹ The family graveyard, usually in a temple the family is af�iliated to, houses the remains of the deceased and ancestors.³² As Choshu Takeda puts it, “the family tomb is the symbol of ie and marks the eternal presence of the spirits of the ancestors.”³³ Both the butsudan and the family grave, tended to by living descendants, show the ties between the dead and the living of the same ie, and powerfully conceptualise the continuity that it stands for and works towards. It is the responsibility of the living to remember their ancestors and deceased and guide them to a peaceful afterlife, and when one passes, their descendants will do the same for them.

At home, the Japanese would also have a Buddhist ancestral altar (butsudan) prominently displayed.²⁸ It is where the individual tablets of the recently dead are held, and one can talk to their ancestors and lay out food offerings regularly.²⁹ The special rites and memorial services at different years after death would also be performed in front of the butsudan.

Fig. 2: A graveyard in Japan.³⁴

(The Hague: Mouton, 1976) 124. ³⁴ Chris 73, “A graveyard in Tokyo,” Wikipedia, accessed November 22, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral#/med ia/File:JapaneseGraveyardTokyo.jpg. ³⁵ Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, 36. ³⁶ Ibid, 37.

³⁷ “Civil Code (Part IV and Part V (Tentative Translation))”, Japanese Law Translation, accessed October 21, 2021, http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/ ?id=2252&vm=2&re=02. ³⁸ Mathews, “Death and the Afterlife in Japan,” 50 ³⁹ Ibid. ⁴⁰ Ibid.

Shifting Contemporary Times However, under the new Constitution of 1947 the ie is no longer recognised as a legal unit and all nuclear families are formed and registered by marriage.³⁵ Despite this, the notion of ie still continues in some form as the new Civil Code maintains that one member of the family needs to be chosen to be responsible for keeping the genealogical records and religious rites.³⁶ As stated by Article 897: rights to ownership of a genealogy, equipment used in rituals, and any grave, shall be succeeded by the person who custom dictates shall preside over rituals for ancestors.³⁷ The shift in legal conceptualisation of the family is accompanied over the years by the shifting demographics and urbanisation of modern Japanese society. The family structure that encourages the continuation of a structure akin to ie is also gradually eroding and this does not bode well for the continuation of family-centric ancestral worship. Many families no longer live in the three-generation household structure that the ie had encouraged.³⁸ Rather, many choose to live as conjugal families in small apartments and may not be able to accommodate a large butsudan.³⁹ When they move away from their rural homes to urban areas, they also move away from their ancestral family’s temple and family graves, discouraging them from regularly tending to their ancestral grave.⁴⁰ In the long-term, the decreasing birth rate also leaves many families without descendants to inherit the family grave, which means that no one can tend to the grave, cleaning it and carrying out memorial rites.⁴¹ Such reasons discourage the older generation from wanting their children to inherit the grave and altar, fearing that it would only cause trouble and inconvenience them.⁴² They may also be unwilling to purchase a family grave in an urban area, since it is a costly investment that may not be used by many generations if no one inherits them. The ie, which had once encouraged ancestor worship, is falling away, and with it, possibly the upkeep of such traditional practices. However, they have not entirely relinquished the beliefs about death that underpin ancestor worship – for one, due to the fear of becoming wandering ghosts. This will therefore encourage the evolution of newer ways to meet their

perceived needs in the afterlife. Some options that are becoming popular in recent years circumvent the need for the family’s regular maintenance, while still allowing the individual the comfort in choosing how they want to meet their end. The eternal memorial grave, or eitai kuyōbo, is a model that surfaced in the late 1980s and 1990s which allows one to be buried in a grave without the need for it to belong to a speci�ic temple or to have the grave maintained by one’s descendants.⁴³ Even though they would have to share their grave with non-family members, by making prior arrangements and payment, individuals can be assured that they would receive memorial services and grave maintenance by caretakers.⁴⁴ The increasing accessibility of such services help to absolve their worries of becoming malevolent spirits or being lost on the way to the afterlife.

Fig. 3: An eternal memorial grave. There are no individual tombstones.⁴⁵

Some also choose to have their ashes scattered at sea or on a mountain in a “return to nature”, which is termed a “natural mortuary practice” (shizensō).⁴⁶ Another option would be burial in the woods (jumokusō), where the deceased’s remains are buried in the mountains with a planted tree in place of a stone monument.⁴⁷ The two latter options do not require any maintenance, and thus do away with the need for successors to maintain their graves, while they could have their family members conduct the memorial rituals at butsudans if they still have one. Hence, the changes in how Japanese people choose to deal with death also re�lects the changing structure of society and families, as they become increasingly individuated rather than contingent on the household.⁴⁸ The new burial methods also pinpoint more

exactly the fundamental anxieties of death: the lack of human connection and remembrance. In the past, the ie system enabled the family to be the source of such kinship and connection. Today, even if not the family, human connection remains key: some of the newer practices still focus on having someone, even if not the family, take care of their graves in the afterlife. It might also suggest that the contemporary family is not about maintaining its continuity and lineage, but about living meaningfully and purposefully as one desires even in death – to be scattered, free in the mountains and seas. While the traditional ie may not exist strongly anymore, the preoccupation and preparation for one’s soul remains. This is not to say that the signi�icance of ancestor worship has disappeared entirely from modern Japan. Even though the burial alternatives are gaining popularity, the traditional family grave remains the most common resting place for the deceased.⁴⁹ Many Japanese still maintain their family graves and offer the associated prayers and rites, especially on special occasions annually. Remembering their ancestors is integral to their lived experiences, through the annual Obon festival which is a big event in the Japanese calendar. It is a relatively colourful and joyous occasion celebrating the return of ancestors’ souls to the living world and their achievement of a higher state of being.⁵⁰ Families reunite, visiting the family graves and making food offerings at altars and temples.⁵¹

⁴¹ Yohko Tsuji, “Evolving Mortuary Rituals in Contemporary Japan,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Death, ed. Antonius C. G. M. Robben (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2018), 56. ⁴² Ibid, 54. ⁴³ Mark Michael Rowe, “Death by Association,” 5. ⁴⁴ Ibid; Tsuji, “Evolving Mortuary Rituals in Contemporary Japan,” 57. ⁴⁵ “eitaikuyōbo,” A-tie, accessed November 22, 2021, https://eitaikuyou.net/eitaikuyo. ⁴⁶ Tsuji, “Evolving Mortuary Rituals in Contemporary Japan,” 56. ⁴⁷ Ibid, 57. ⁴⁸ Mathews, “Death and the Afterlife in Japan,” 50. ⁴⁹ Ibid, 57. ⁵⁰ Deborah Wong, “Dancing the Body Politic: Obon and Bon-odori,” in Louder and Faster: Pain, Joy and the Body Politic in Asian-American Taiko (California:

Fig. 4: The lanterns released at the end of Obon.⁵²

However, it is a spectacle of beauty as well, when they hang lighted paper lanterns (chochin) and light �ires to guide the spirits back to the living and perform the traditional folk dance of bon-odori to welcome them back.⁵³ At the end of the festival, the paper lanterns are released into the nearest water body, as it is believed that this would guide the spirits back to their realm.⁵⁴ Ohigan (the spring and autumn equinoxes) are also two other public holidays where the Japanese go to visit their family graves to pay their respects to their ancestors.⁵⁵ These are also days for maintaining the graves, cleaning them, and setting out fresh offerings, incense, and �lowers. ⁵⁶ Despite the changes to the family structure of Japanese lives over the years, posing new challenges to long-established practices and long-held beliefs, we cannot entirely dispense with dealing with death altogether.

University of California Press, 2019), 76. ⁵¹ “Guide to the Obon Festival 2021 in Japan,” Japan Rail Pass, accessed October 3, 2021, https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/obon-festival-injapan. ⁵² Guide to the Obon Festival 2021 in Japan,” Japan Rail Pass, accessed October 3, 2021, https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/obon-festival-injapan; “A Brief History of Obon Festival,” Culture Trip, accessed October 21, 2021, https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/abrief-history-of-obon-festival/. ⁵³ Guide to the Obon Festival 2021 in Japan,” Japan Rail Pass, accessed October 3, 2021, https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/obon-festival-injapan; “A Brief History of Obon Festival,” Culture Trip, accessed October 21, 2021, https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/abrief-history-of-obon-festival/. ⁵⁴ “A Brief History of Obon Festival,” Culture Trip, accessed October 21, 2021,

There is something primal, essential even, about conducting one’s destiny in death through these customs, and a signi�icance that continues to be commemorated through festivals and celebrations. Recently, the disruptions caused by COVID-19 – travel restrictions in 2020 preventing visits to the grave have caused the Japanese to get creative in honouring their ancestors during Obon, such as by paying for proxies to livestream the cleaning of their family grave and making the offerings of incense, food and �lowers Ancestor worship is not obsolete, despite the rapid changing circumstances. For the Japanese, for now, such customs remain at the forefront of their lives, a practice that has not been made redundant or forgotten just yet. In death, one’s greatest fear is to not be remembered. The closest to the individual may not be family, but ultimately, rites exist in recognition of the oblivion, or uncertainty of the afterlife. Family may play a big or small role in this process, but nonetheless a crucial one today still. I draw to a close with a reference to the epigraph. Written by a Japanese Haiku poet, Sofu, in his death poem (jisei), he comments poignantly on his impending death. Living, he hosts the returning spirits during Obon (or the Festival of Souls; tamamatsuri), and dying, he will become the spirit being hosted, and so soon after he plays host too! The nearness of life and death for him is clear, and inescapable. Yet, there is comfort in this circularity: so long as the festival continues to be celebrated by the living, his spirit will never truly be forgotten.

https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles /a-brief-history-of-obon-festival/. ⁵⁵ “Ohigan,” Tricycle, accessed October 3, 2021, https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/ohiga n/. ⁵⁶ Ibid. ⁵⁷ Johannes Schonherr, “Higanbana,” Japan Visitor, accessed October 21, 2021, https://www.japanvisitor.com/japaneseculture/seasons/higanbana. ⁵⁸ “Japan: Virtual Respect for the Dead,” The Economist, August 22, 2020, 42.

Iyan Danial | e0725076@u.nus.edu Iyan is a Year 1 CNM major and is planning to double minor in History and Interactive Media Development. He loves learning and getting to know people. He also often spends his time either working, listening to music, playing sports or reading. He hopes to travel the world one day and… perhaps participate in a wildlife documentary.

Chrysanthemums are considered to be one of the most popular �lowers in Japan. The Japanese had started cultivating the chrysanthemum �lower during the Nara and Heian periods (710AD – 1185AD).¹ Japan’s Imperial Family was said to have liked the �lower so much that they adopted it as their symbol. Till today, the �lower continues to be strongly associated with the Imperial Family of Japan and the Japanese emperor.² Hence, the name: Chrysanthemum throne. The Imperial Family of Japan (henceforth referred to as koshitsu) to whom the Chrysanthemum throne belongs has been recorded as having ruled for 1,500 years (539AD till present) with 97 of�icially veri�iable monarchs.³ Few other institutions in the world have shown such a great capacity for survival. This longevity has incited much discussion amongst scholars regarding its causes. The debate rose to the forefront during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The Meiji Restoration marked the transition from the previous Tokugawa shogunate dynasty to the new Meiji era. During the Meiji restoration, the incumbent shogunate government (military dictators) was overthrown, with the coup being instigated by the domains of Choshu and Satsuma, and imperial rule was restored.

¹ “The Na�onal Flower of Japan | Culture Guide,” Japan City Tour, accessed October 27, 2021, www.japancitytour.com/info/na�onal-flower-japanchrysanthemum.html. ² Caren White, “How Did the Chrysanthemum Become the Symbol of the Japanese Emperor?” Owlca�on, accessed October 26, 2021, h�ps://owlca�on.com/humani�es/How-Did-the-

But why were the koshitsu restored as rulers in the �irst place? In spite of the opportunity offered by The Meiji restoration for ambitious individuals to begin a new Imperial dynasty of their own, the koshitsu were reinstated. A popular argument explaining the restoration is that the koshitsu could be used as “mere robots” and were only there to serve as �igureheads.⁴ Others proposed that the koshitsu had a strong cultural in�luence on the Japanese people and were restored as rulers to help guide the country to greater heights. The two arguments are not necessarily mutually exclusive and could simultaneously account for the koshitsu’s survival, and arguably their growth, during the Meiji Era. This essay will attempt to synthesise both claims by examining the role of three factors in ensuring the preservation of the koshitsu, namely their divine heritage, exclusion from politics, and their position as a tool of political legitimacy by the incumbent government. While the koshitsu have had 97 of�icially veri�iable emperors (starting from Emperor Kimmei), the family line allegedly stretches all the way back to 600 BC – for a total of 126 emperors.

Chrysanthemum-Become-the-Symbol-of-the-JapaneseEmperor. ³ Jackie Ricciardi, “How the Japanese Imperial Family, the World's Oldest Royal Line, Transcends Time,” Boston University, accessed October 7, 2021, www.bu.edu/ar�cles/2019/how-the-japanese-imperialfamily-the-worlds-oldest-royal-line-transcends-�me/. ⁴ Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japan and Her Des�ny: My Struggle for Peace (New York: Du�on, 1958).

‘kami’, the emperor had “the obligation of carrying out certain rituals and devotions in order to ensure that the kami looked after Japan properly and ensured its prosperity”.⁹ Traditional beliefs often attributed natural disasters to divine matters. The following paragraph in the Kojiki is a record of one such instance:

Figure 1⁵

“The Kojiki, which was completed at the beginning of the eighth century, records the case of a major epidemic during the reign of Emperor Sujin 崇神 [said to have reigned between 97 BCE and 30 BCE], which brought the people close to extinction. When Sujin, who was at a loss for a solution, prayed to the kami, the deity Ōmononushi no kami appeared to him in a dream, telling him that the epidemic had been caused by the punitive powers (tatari) of the deity and that the land could be paci�ied if the deity received worship from a person called Ōtataneko. When these instructions were folled, the epidemic subsided and people were able to return to a peaceful life.”⁹

According to ancient Japanese history, the �irst Japanese Emperor, Emperor Jimmu, was a descendant of the Sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami.⁶ Emperor Jimmu was said to have been given regalia: a sword, a mirror and a curved jewel to symbolize the legitimacy and authority of his position.⁷ Later on, these mythical items would form the foundations of the indigenous Shinto faith. Henceforth, the koshitsu would largely be tied to the Shinto religion as an “intermediary between the divine imperial ancestors and the people”.⁸ As beings descended from Gods known as

Given the perceived divine nature of the koshitsu and their deeply-rooted ties to Japanese culture, it was considered unwise for anyone to threaten them. As Article III of the Meiji Constitution prescribed, the emperor was “sacred and inviolable”.¹¹ Hence, the possibility of eradicating the koshitsu was likely close to none. Moreover, in the aftermath of the war during the Meiji restoration, the Japanese people needed stability and guidance. There were probably few better ways to unite the people than to retain the leadership of beings allegedly

⁵ Keizu, “Genealogy of the Emperors of Japan,” accessed November 20, 2021, www.kunaicho.go.jp/eabout/genealogy/pdf/keizu-e.pdf. ⁶ T. W. Eckersley, “The Imperial Ins�tu�on in Japan,” India Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1961): 162. ⁷ “Japan's Emperor and Imperial Family,” Nippon.com, accessed October 7, 2021, www.nippon.com/en/features/jg00108/japan’semperor-and-imperial-family.html.

⁸ H. Carroll Parish, “The Role of the Imperial Family in Modern Japan,” Social Science 49, no. 2 (1974): 75. ⁹ “Shinto: Divinity of the Emperor,” BBC, accessed October 7, 2021, www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/shinto/history/emper or_1.shtml. ¹⁰ no Yasumaro Õ, The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Ma�ers, trans. Gustav Heldt (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

descended from the gods. Shintoism is argued to be the “cultural will and energy of the Japanese people, embodied in conventions which precede or transcend religion”.¹² As the individuals most associated with Shintoism, the koshitsu therefore were the panacea for the psychological aftereffects of the war. The koshitsu’s divine heritage ensured that they would be restored as rulers, preserving the longevity of their line. The koshitsu were often excluded from politics throughout their history. They were ignored by most of the Japanese nobles as they had largely no political power for most of their reign. ¹³ Up till the Meiji Restoration, the koshitsu were often treated as “virtual prisoners of the government of the military chiefs of the country known as shogun”.¹⁴ Without support from the population, the koshitsu could not participate in ruling the country, especially in traditional political matters such as foreign relations and military defence.¹⁵ In addition, given their divine heritage, the koshitsu were also considered to be above politics, which prevented them from dabbling in the political affairs of the country even if they wanted to. However, the exclusion from politics did not mean that the koshitsu were insigni�icant. On the contrary, their divinity meant that there were roles only the koshitsu could carry out. They served state functions such as inter alia, appointing individuals to important positions, receiving foreign delegations and performing court rituals to pray for the wellbeing of Japan. These activities were independent of the political machinations of the shoguns. Instead, the koshitsu carried out their duties in the name of the country. They

¹¹ “The Cons�tu�on of the Empire of Japan,” accessed November 30, 2021, h�ps://www.ndl.go.jp/cons�tu�on/e/etc/c02.html. ¹² Kuroda Toshio, James C. Dobbins, and Suzanne Gay, “Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion,” Journal of Japanese Studies 7, no. 1 (1981): 1–21. ¹³ Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, “In Name Only: Imperial Sovereignty in Early Modern Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies 17, no. 1 (1991): 25–57.

were still essential to Japan while being free of the burden of politics which gave the koshitsu an advantage when it came to ruling the country. During the Meiji era, however, this trend of generally being excluded from politics was broken, which eventually resulted in the diminishing of the koshitsu’s role as rulers post World War II. The Meiji Constitution initially gave the emperor “extraordinary powers” and he became the “supreme commander of the army and navy”.¹⁶ The Emperor was consulted on all major issues and became an essential part of the government. The increased political presence of the koshitsu continued until post-war when, upon Japan’s surrender to the Allies, the power of the Imperial Family was forcefully diminished. The size of the imperial family was reduced, the Shinto religion de-established and the emperor forced to renounce his own divinity.¹⁷ The Emperor was now a “state symbol” and the koshitsu a constitutional monarchy. The 1947 constitution directly stated that the emperor “has no powers related to the government” and that “his responsibilities are limited to those speci�ically enumerated in the Constitution”.¹⁸ In short, by increasingly involving themselves in politics, the koshitsu ironically lost what made them special in the �irst place – their divine heritage. The �igurehead status that the koshitsu were reduced to made them viable tools as a means to gain political legitimacy. While the koshitsu themselves did not rule, they had the support of the people who believed in their sacred prestige. As mentioned before, there were functions essential to the well-

¹⁴ H. Carroll Parish, “The Role of the Imperial Family in Modern Japan,” Social Science 49, no. 2 (1974): 75. ¹⁵ Wakabayashi, “In Name Only,” 27. ¹⁶ Parish, “The Role of the Imperial Family in Modern Japan,” 77. ¹⁷ Ibid., 82. ¹⁸ Ibid., 82.

being of the country that only the koshitsu could perform because of their divine legitimacy. However, as the koshitsu could not participate in politics themselves, more effective powers were needed which is where the shoguns often came in. Although the shoguns did the actual ruling of the country, the koshitsu still faced the brunt of the consequences should any tragedies occur (as seen in the example of Emperor Sujin earlier). For the shoguns, this scenario was perfect for them; they had all the bene�its yet suffered no consequences. In the previous era (Tokugawa Shogunate), the country was run as a feudal system as pictured below:

Figure 2¹⁹

The feudal system was seen as problematic as it inherently discriminated against certain groups. For example, shoguns had a higher status than the daimyos, who in turn had a higher status than the samurais and so on

¹⁹ “Medieval Japan: Feudal System of Japan During the Time of the Tokugawa Shoguns,” accessed November 20, 2021, www.kunaicho.go.jp/eabout/genealogy/pdf/keizu-e.pdf. ²⁰ Wakabayashi, “In Name Only,” 38-42.

and so forth. Naturally, as with most discriminatory policies, the groups with higher statuses ended up with more wealth and authority. These discriminatory policies were often politically motivated as well. For example, the Tokugawa shogunate often promoted their closest allies to higher statuses while demoting their rivals to lower statuses.²⁰ The Meiji restoration put an end to this discriminatory policy and distributed power amongst all the classes.²¹ In order to continue with the idea of a uni�ied empire, the country needed a ruler whom all the classes trusted would rule justly and ably. The answer was for the leaders of the restoration, mostly young samurai who were discontent with Tokugawa rule, to form a new government while offering the koshitsu a chance to resume a position of authority: the emperor was given power as it was “hoped that his support for the new government would ensure the support of the neutral ‘feudatories’.²² The nobles had already shown their inability to rule and so the only way forward was to let the koshitsu try to rule. After all, the koshitsu already had the key essential of a ruler: the support of the people. Moreover, the fact that the koshitsu were “above politics” meant that they could not discriminate against the classes as the previous shoguns had, since the koshitsu had no reasons to do so. The mistake the nobles had made would not be repeated. In addition, unlike the shoguns, the titles handed out by the koshitsu were seen as sacred. Rather than division, classi�ication by the koshitsu was more likely to be seen as a reward and an attempt at unity instead. The receiving clan would be considered as a direct vassal of the emperor and by extension, the gods. These titles were a proof of the divinity of the

²¹ Eijiro Honjo, “From the Tokugawa Period to the Meiji Restora�on,” Kyoto University Economic Review 7, no. 1 (13) (1932), 32-51, h�p://www.jstor.org/stable/43217270.

houses and were therefore highly sought after.²³ The koshitsu have naturally been tools of political legitimacy in their history. PostWorld War II, their line could have been abolished, largely due to their support for Japanese aggression during the war. However, General MacArthur perceived the usefulness of the emperor in insuring the country’s peaceful surrender and apparent cooperation in efforts to ‘democratize Japan’ and decided to keep the koshitsu alive, though their power was considerably reduced.²⁴ Though they no longer had the status of being divine beings at this time, the koshitsu still had something similar: their status as the symbol of Japan. In ancient Japan, the koshitsu’s divine heritage gave the incumbent government political legitimacy if he chose to support them by virtue of the status of the koshitsu. In any era, the koshitsu had this de�ining characteristic that allowed them to win the favour of the people and remain relevant to Japan.

Conclusion In conclusion, the koshitsu were restored as rulers in the Meiji Era largely because of their divine heritage and fortuitous circumstances. The divinity of the koshitsu was a doubleedged sword as it prevented them from directly involving themselves in the affairs of their country which meant that they often had to work hand in hand with others. Thus, nobles often ruled in place of the koshitsu. In return, however, the koshitsu’s divine status gave them special rights which allowed them to be highly respected and remain relevant

throughout the ages. The nobles had ruined their chance at ruling during the later stages of the Tokugawa Era, which provided an opportunity for the koshitsu to take over as rulers. The koshitsu are unique compared to other imperial families such as the European monarchs or the Roman Emperors. Although the koshitsu did not directly rule their country except for from the Meiji Era onwards, the family wields the same in�luence as other royal families do. The koshitsu have also largely ruled and survived as a result of the faith of their nation rather than by their own ability. For example, in the history of British monarchy, oftentimes con�lict occurs as soon as a ruler shows their weakness or �laws which then leads to dethronement. In Japan, even if such a con�lict arises, the emperors are almost untouchable due to their sacred, divine nature. The Japanese see the koshitsu as a symbol rather than individual, powerful rulers. That is perhaps why they trust their emperors – even if an individual emperor is weak, they trust that the imperial system will adjust and the situation will be righted eventually. Rather than being the rulers of Japan, a fairer way to view the koshitsu would be to see them as an extension of the country itself. The Japanese Imperial Family arguably re�lects the state of Japan itself; when Japan was modernizing in the Meiji Era, so too was the Japanese Imperial Family, growing in their role as rulers of Japan.

²² Parish, “The Role of the Imperial Family in Modern Japan,” 77. ²³ Wakabayashi, “In Name Only,” 52 - 55. ²⁴ Parish, “The Role of the Imperial Family in Modern Japan,” 82.

40 Thina Dhyalini D/O Rajendran | e0559147@u.nus.edu Thina is a second year History major who really likes to read about politics and policy in her spare time. Issues of the world just really excite her, so be sure to be entertained by her ideas about it!

Introduction Modern Singapore’s beginnings as a colonial port city is a common narrative largely accepted by most Singaporeans. Ever since Sir Stamford Raf�les established modern Singapore, migrants were lured in by the economic opportunities.¹ Most of them were Indian, Malay or Chinese in ethnicity, with the Chinese accounting for the lion’s share of migrants. By 1895, the annual intake of Chinese immigrants to Singapore was 190,901.² Ethnic revolt, oppression from the Qing government, and poverty led to the in�lux of Chinese migrants into colonial Singapore.³ Though the British-led colonial administration promised economic prosperity⁴, they also practised racial segregation simultaneously, for better or worse.⁵

¹ Joyce Ee, “Chinese Migration to Singapore, 1896-1941,” Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, no. 1 (1961): 33, https://doi.org/10.2307/20067318. ² Ee,”Chinese Migration to Singapore,” 33. ³ Ibid. ⁴ Ibid., 35. ⁵ Marc Rerceretnam, “Intermarriage in Colonial Malaya and Singapore: A Case Study of Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Roman Catholic and Methodist Asian Communities,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 43, no. 2 (2012): 302–23, https://doi.org/10.2307/41490326. ⁶ Ee, “Chinese Migration to Singapore,” 49.

As Singapore strives towards a more cohesive society, let’s take a step back to examine how Singapore’s different races have coexisted through the ages. In doing so, our passive but persistent subscription towards racial biases will surface. It may seem that these racial biases are all but con�ined to a distant colonial past, yet they continue to manifest even today. If Singapore is to achieve the aspiration of becoming one big happy “family”, racial biases that impede Singaporeans from treating each other like family need to be eradicated. For familial bonds to be forged across racial lines, every Singaporean has to understand why these racial biases exist and how baseless they are in Singapore today. Naysayers may claim that such goals are too idealistic. However, I believe that understanding how baseless and reductive these racial biases are is the �irst step for Singapore to evolve into a home where every Singaporean can feel that they belong and will be treated fairly by others.

Racial Segregation in Colonial Singapore The racial-economic segregation of early Singapore has led some historians like Joyce Ee to boldly assert that “modern Singapore is very largely the creation of the Chinese”.⁶ Such a view may seem reductive in light of the contributions made by pioneering Malays and Indians, and even the British. However, it is useful to understand that these historians arrived at such conclusions because of the racial lens through which colonial Singapore was administered.

⁷ Ee, “Chinese Migration to Singapore,” 35. ⁸ Ee, “Chinese Migration to Singapore,” 49. ⁹ Lian Kwen Fee, “Review: In Search of a History of Singapore,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 20, no. 1 (1992): 97–98.

Early colonial records indicate that the Chinese and Indians of Singapore were seen as fundamental to the essential work force needed to fuel British capital expansion, since the Malays were perceived as unwilling to take part in the kinds of labour demanded.⁷ Thus, economic stereotypes about the different races were cultivated: the Chinese were “always” shopkeepers, contractors or capitalists, frequently associated with business ventures and successful businessmen like Mr Tan Kah Kee and Mr Loke Yew⁸; the Tamils were “always” plantation labourers, cattle keepers or washermen; while the Malays were considered a peasant society with little economic value to the British.⁹

As a result of Malay reluctance, the British therefore equated indigenous Malays as being incapable of competing against the Chinese on an economic scale.¹⁰ Malays were therefore stereotypically con�ined to menial jobs, often as �ishermen, wood-cutters, smallscale cultivators, tiny shopkeepers or boatmen.¹¹ Meanwhile, the Indians were stereotyped as close competitors to the Chinese in terms of economic utility, serving as capital for the growth of the colonial economy.¹² Consequently, this may have in�luenced the locations of the various ethnic enclaves in the initial plans for Singapore: the living spaces of the Chinese and Indians were situated near the mercantile zone of the Singapore River, while Malays were relegated nearer to the coasts.¹³

¹⁰ Lian, “Review: In Search for a History of Singapore,” 97. ¹¹ Ibid. ¹² Ibid. ¹³ Ibid.

Careful examination of the economic reality of colonial Singapore however, debunks the delineation of such ethnic economic stereotypes. Apart from being “just” capitalist entrepreneurs, the Chinese also worked as coolies, construction workers (for instance, the samsui women), and rickshawpullers.¹⁴ Similarly, Indians were not just moneylenders and accountants but also labourers and snake charmers.¹⁵ It was also not unheard of for migrants from the Malay Archipelago to work as merchants and traders.¹⁶ Contrary to colonial British stereotypes, all racial groups played diverse roles in the economic growth of colonial Singapore, which de�ies easy delineation that would otherwise give rise to reductive and unfair racial stereotypes.

British to keep the population divided using these racial biases. By facilitating racial ambivalence or animosity between competing ethnic communities, the British strove to quell the possibility of any resistance threatening their rule.¹⁸ Keeping Singapore as peaceful and docile as possible would bode well for the growth of Singapore’s economy and therefore maximize whatever economic gains the British could extract.

This raises the question: What motivated the British to segregate the different races and ethnic groups in the �irst place? Such a divide-and-conquer strategy to govern Singapore was deliberate. Since each race was judged solely by their economic usefulness, it did not matter to the British if harmful racial stereotypes were perpetuated amongst the populace.¹⁷ On the contrary, it would serve the vested interests of the

The occurrence of the Anti-Catholic Riots of 1851 and Hokkien-Teochew Riots of 1854 proved that the occurrence of ethnic strife was a very real possibility that had to be dealt with at all costs.¹⁹ Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the British colonists had varying degrees of prejudice towards different ethnic groups, contributing to the ethnic segregation of early settlers in Singapore.²⁰ Ethnic segregation did however have an unexpected side effect: it led to the formation of ethnic enclaves that encouraged the immigration of more migrant labour into Singapore. Ethnic communities centralised within certain areas provided a familiar and comfortable space for new and potential migrants to Singapore. For instance, the

¹⁴ Ibid., 91-98; James Francis Warren, Rickshaw Coolie: A People’s History of Singapore, 1880-1940 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003), 15. ¹⁵ “The Chettiars: Singapore’s First Financiers,” Roots, accessed November 21, 2021, h t t p s : / / w w w. r o o t s . g o v. s g / s t o r i e s landing/stories/singapores-�irst-�inanciers/story; Lian, “Review: In Search of a History of Singapore,” 97–98; Naidu Ratnala Thulaja, “Snake Charmers,” National Library Board Singapore, December 18, 2 0 0 2 , https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 601_2004-12-23.html. ¹⁶ The Bugis and Javanese, considered to fall under the Malay racial group, were prominent merchants and maritime traders. For more information, see Stephanie Ho, “Bugis Community,” National Library Board Singapore, August 12, 2013, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 2013-08-12_113516.html.; Stephanie Ho, “Javanese

Community,” National Library Board Singapore, August 5, 2013, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 2013-08-06_115832.html. ¹⁷ Lian, “In Search for a History of Singapore,” 98. ¹⁸ Rerceretnam, “Intermarriage,” 305. ¹⁹ Yong Chun Yuan, “Anti-Catholic Riots (1851),” National Library Board Singapore, June 16, 2011, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 100_2005-01-24.html; Yong Chun Yuan, “HokkienTeochew Riots (1854),” National Library Board Singapore, June 16, 2011, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 104_2005-01-25.html. ²⁰ Alan F.C. Choe, “The Early Years of Nation-Building: Re�lections of Singapore’s Urban History,” in 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore, ed. Chye Kiang Heng (Singapore: World Scienti�ic, 2016), 5. ²¹ Jaime Koh, “Hokkien Huay Kuan,” National Library Board Singapore, March 31, 2016,

Chinese community had numerous clan associations in Chinatown.²¹ The Malays had Arab Street and Kampong Glam while the Indians had Little India and Serangoon Road. These enclaves ensured that Singapore positioned itself as a migrant-friendly place, spurring economic development through the massive in�lux of capital and manpower, which in turn propelled the economic growth of the British Colony of Singapore.²²

The lack of unity between these migrants ensured that any challenges to colonial rule were doomed to remain weak and fragmented for quite some time.²³ But at the same time, we must acknowledge there were at least some glimpses into the potential of racial harmony. Between the foundation of colonial Singapore and self-governance in 1959, only three out of the eight notable riots that occurred during this period were motivated by ethnic tensions between the migrants.²⁴ Most of the time, different ethnic groups were at least able to coexist tolerantly. For instance, Tamil congregations shared the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul with the Teochew congregation that outnumbered them.²⁵ Hence, even during colonial times, there were already encouraging signs of early settlers overcoming racial barriers, in the

https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 2016-04-07_163620.html; Chun Yuan Yong, “Ngee Ann Kongsi,” National Library Board Singapore, March 29, 2012, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 1877_2012-03-29.html; Peck Ngiam Seow, “Singapore Hainan Hwee Kuan,” Infopedia, accessed November 21, 2021, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 2020-08-19_214703.html. This list is not exhaustive. ²² Choe, “The Early Years of Nation Building,” 5. ²³ Ibid. ²⁴ The four identi�ied riots were the Anti Catholic Riots of 1851, the Hokkien-Teochew Riots of 1854

name of peaceful co-existence with one another. Some of these settlers even took it one step further by marrying outside of their racial groups, evident through the establishment of the Peranakan and Jawi Pekan communities.²⁶ However, we should also note that this was largely done out of sheer pragmatism since the male immigrant population was disproportionately higher than females within individual ethnic communities.²⁷

The subsequent presence of more interracial families decreased cultural distinction between ethnic groups.²⁸ Hence, this suggests that despite top-down efforts to foster racial disunity and ambivalence, some early settlers of Singapore nonetheless successfully traversed these barriers, motivated by a desire to make Singapore a home for themselves and their families. This demonstrates that against all the odds imposed by the colonial structures, it was still possible for the races to live in harmony with one another, especially if they were motivated by the desire to cultivate Singapore as a home for their families. So what did the colonial era leave behind in terms of racial relations for the present day?

and the Maria Hertogh Riots of 1950. See Yong, “AntiCatholic Riots (1851)”; Yong, “Hokkien-Teochew Riots (1854)”; Singapore Infopedia, “Maria Hertogh Riots,” National Library Board Singapore, September 29, 2014, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 83_2005-02-02.html. ²⁵ Rerceretnam, “Intermarriage,” 305. ²⁶ Ibid., 309. ²⁷ Ibid., 307. ²⁸ Ibid., 306. ²⁹ Lian, “Review: In Search for a History of Singapore,” 104. ³⁰ Ibid., 98.

Lian Kwen Fee argues that Social Darwinist ideas of racial segregation fostered during the colonial era may have been unconsiously carried over into parts of Singapore society today.²⁹ For instance, the British’s ChineseMalay-Indian-Other (CMIO) racial classi�ication model remains in use, which only serves to needlessly prolong colonialera racial biases. Furthemore, it carries the idea that ethnic identity is assigned at birth and not malleable.³⁰ This model is increasingly problematic as Singapore becomes more racially diverse, with an increase in interracial marriages and immigration from non-traditional places, such as other Southeast Asian countries and Western countries.³¹ Hence, mixed children from these marriages are left out of the national framework, and can be viewed as ‘culturally homeless’. When it comes to learning their mother tongue in school, it may be confusing for them to choose one language over the other because of its impact on their own cultural perception. They may feel left out of the national narratives and in turn, have reduced feelings of kinship with their fellow Singaporeans. As a result, the continuance of colonial-era racial biases are an impediment to true racial harmony. Instead of viewing one another as family, Singaporeans may merely aim for an uneasy coexistence with one another.

Racial Tensions in Singapore (1963-1965)

³¹ R. Hirschmann, “Singapore: Share of Inter-Ethnic Marriages 2020,” Statista, accessed November 17, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/995734/singap ore-proportion-inter-ethnic-marriages/; R. Hirschmann, “Singapore: Number of Immigrants,” Statista, accessed November 17, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/698035/singap ore-number-of-immigrants/. ³² Lily Zubaidah Rahim, Singapore in the Malay World: Building and Breaching Regional Bridges (New York: Routledge, 2010), 26.

³³ Han, “Communal Riots of 1964,” National Library Board Singapore, September 19, 2014, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 45_2005-01-06.html; Rahim, Singapore in the Malay World, 26. ³⁴ Kwa Chong Guan, Derek Thiam Soon Heng, and Tan Tai Yong, Singapore, a 700-Year History: From Early Emporium to World City (Singapore: National Archives of Singapore, 2009). ³⁵ Han, “Communal Riots of 1964.” ³⁶ Rahim, Singapore in the Malay World, 27.

When Singapore subsequently joined Malaysia, racial tensions quickly reached boiling point between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. This tumultuous episode in Singapore history was politically de�ining in shaping the People’s Action Party’s (PAP’s) leadership today, and how it shapes ethnic policies.³² Singapore’s of�icial history claims that the Communal Riots of 1964 were the result of a deliberate stoking of ethnic tensions by United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) leaders to punish the PAP for its political transgressions.³³ As UMNO’s manifesto promised special privileges exclusively for the Malays, Malay activists led by then UMNO Secretary General Syed Ja’far Albar accused the predominantly Chinese PAP government of suppressing the rights of Singapore Malays, with the intent to gain Singaporean-Malay support for UMNO.³⁴ These political moves therefore contributed to animosity between the Malays and Chinese in Singapore, and the violence from these racial riots signalled to the PAP government the potential instability that Singapore might face if it failed to adopt a robust multiracial policy.

The ruling PAP perceived the destruction to lives and property from the 1964 Communal Riots as justi�ication for the need for policies that ensured Singaporeans would remain united despite racial differences.³⁵ Otherwise, Singapore would become unsafe for those who regarded it as their home. Furthermore, the Riots emphasised that politics in Singapore could not be organised along communal lines, as race was a major faultline of society. Hence, the PAP believed that an egalitarian approach to racial relations was necessary.

Figure 1: 1969 Racial Riots³⁷

On the �lip side, Malaysian Historian Dr. Lily Rahim argues that political incompatibility between the PAP and UMNO could be partially attributed to founding father Lee Kuan Yew’s lack of knowledge or tact regarding Malaysia's political culture.³⁶ Lee adopted a more confrontational brand of politics that was alien in the context of Malaysian politics, which operated in sensitivity.³⁸ He openly challenged UMNO’s communal politics, such as by advocating for a Malaysian Malaysia via the formation of the Malaysian Solidarity Convention in May 1965.³⁹ In The Singapore Story, Lee mentioned the Malay students in Raf�les College as being fearful of what they perceived as the cultural and biological superiority of their Chinese counterparts.⁴⁰ This suggests that the Malay students may have been negatively in�luenced by

³⁷ Remember Singapore, “A Forgotten Past – Two Decades of Chaos”, Remember Singapore, accessed March 16, 2022, https://remembersingapore.org/2013/12/09/twodecades-of-chaos/ ³⁸ Ibid. ³⁹ History SG, “Malaysian Solidarity Convention Is Formed,” Singapore History, accessed November 25,

2021, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/history/events/86267 d39-af24-45be-a49d-3c7e2906d61d. ⁴⁰ Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 1998). ⁴¹ Steven Tan Kwang San and Goh Chor Boon, eds., Securing our Future: Sourcebook for Infusing

colonial-era Social Darwinism into downplaying their presence. Therefore, perceptions of the different races in Singapore are arguably rooted in the colonial segregation of races, fostering prejudice and distrust. Consequently, these negative sentiments have impeded the fostering of unity between the Malays and Chinese in Singapore. As such, these racial groups were more susceptible to political propaganda that pitted them against one another. It is useful to reiterate that colonial-era racial policies were not made with the aim to foster racial unity: rather its aim was the exact opposite. The racial policies we have at present could thus be considered a major step forward, which while imperfect, have fostered a greater degree of racial understanding and unity.

From 1965, Singapore saw several tweaks to its multiracial policy in the effort to foster peace and stability in society. This provided the political stability needed for exponential economic growth. The most prominent examples include the National Education Programme (NEP), an educational policy aimed at reminding younger generations of the existence of racial fault lines and the need to not disturb such boundaries.⁴¹ For instance, as part of the NEP, Racial Harmony Day, which is commemorated annually on the 21st of July (the same day as the 1964 Riots), immortalizes the important role all

Furthermore, in 1989, the government implemented the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) to prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves within public housing to foster greater racial intermingling.⁴³ These policies ensure a basic level of racial tolerance between different races that prevent the outbreak of racial strife. However, there still remain persistent shortfalls in government policies dealing with the forging of racial harmony. The EIP for one does not extend to the ownership of private property in Singapore. Hence, racial enclaves that are elitist and ethnically homogenous in nature might continue to exist in these private property neighbourhoods. The continued existence of Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools, where English and Mandarin are taught as �irst languages, is counterintuitive to the fostering of a racially-harmonious society.⁴⁴ SAP schools produce Chinese cultural elite who are expected to be the “movers and shakers” of Singapore.⁴⁵ The lack of similar policies for Malays and Indians (which at that time was justi�ied by insuf�icient student numbers⁴⁶) as well as their near-absence in Chinese SAP schools, may create the unhelpful perception that there is some special consideration given to the cultivation of a Chinese elite. Though Madrasahs also focus on a religious, Malay-

National Education into the Primary School Curriculum (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2003). ⁴² Loh Pei Ying and Jamie Han, “Racial Harmony Day,” Singapore Infopedia, accessed November 17, 2021, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_ 965_2004-12-31.html. ⁴³ “Ethnic Integration Policy Is Implemented,” Singapore History, accessed November 17, 2021, https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/history/events/d8fea6 56-d86e-4658-9509-974225951607. ⁴⁴ Rahim, Singapore in the Malay World, 55.

⁴⁵ Ibid. ⁴⁶ Peter Wang B.X., “Room at the Top? Examining and Reimagining Singapore’s SAP Schools Model,” Social Space, August 21, 2019, https://socialspacemag.org/room-at-the-topexamining-and-reimagining-singapores-sap-schoolsmodel. ⁴⁷ “Penal Code,” Singapore Statutes Online, accessed November 17, 2021, https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/PC1871?ProvIds=pr298A.

Singapore Post-Independence

Singaporeans have in maintaining Singapore’s racial and religious harmony.⁴² The day suggests the need for interracial mingling and a sense of understanding between races to foster social cohesion to avoid future racial con�licts.

centric education, there is no cultivation of a secular Malay elite comparable to that of the Chinese. Hence, the privileged position of the Chinese may be an impediment towards a truly equal treatment of all the races in Singapore.

These incidents suggest that a racially prejudicial lens in viewing the different races in Singapore is very much alive and well, rooted in colonial history, where the roles and occupations of the different races were “pre-assigned” by the British.⁵⁰

Nonetheless, Singapore’s policies on a whole serve to protect the fundamental racial and religious rights of all the races. For instance, the Penal Code ensures that anyone who attacks another on the basis of race, whether verbally or physically, insidiously or openly, will be harshly dealt with by the law.⁴⁷ It trawls Singapore, like a ‘safety net’, to catch potential disruptors racial harmony before they can disrupt Singapore’s faultlines. In other words, when efforts to foster racial harmony fail to resonate with some, they are ‘�ished out’ of the mainstream and punished. Indeed the post-independence Singaporean government has taken a proactive role in fostering racial harmony, which is a marked contrast from the laissez-faire approach of the colonial era. However, there will always be occasional casual incidents of racism popping up. An entrenched perception also remains in some quarters that the Malays are lazy and unwilling to improve themselves.⁴⁸ Such prejudice stems from the lens of colonial racial segregation, where as mentioned previously, Malays were already seen as backward for their reluctance to participate in economic development.⁴⁹

Conclusion

⁴⁸ Joseph Stimp�l, “Growing Up Malay in Singapore,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 25, no. 2 (1997): 117–38, https://doi.org/10.2307/24492400. ⁴⁹ Stimp�l, “Growing Up Malay in Singapore,” 125. ⁵⁰ Ibid., 123. ⁵¹ “Former Lecturer Apologises to IndianSingaporean Man for His Racist Remarks,” India Today, July 9, 2021, https://www.indiatoday.in/world/indiansabroad/story/lecturer-apologises-indiansingaporean-racist-remarks-1826129-2021-07-09.

⁵² Lian, “Review: In Search of a History of Singapore,” 97–98.

It is frustratingly disappointing to still see instances of racism in this day and age in a developed nation like Singapore. The beration of an interracial couple by a former Ngee Ann Polytechnic lecturer suggests that some still believe in a pseudo-racial hierarchy.⁵¹ This hierarchy may not be that far off from what was established in the British colonial era.⁵² Hence, it would be useful for Singaporeans to strive to forgo the mindset of racial classi�ication that was prevalent in the colonial times, so that we can establish a more equal and racially harmonious society as one big imaginary family. Colonial-era racial perceptions are baseless and irrelevant, especially in Singapore society today where all races are given the chance to actively participate in Singapore’s economy and reap its rewards. Current policies in place ensure racial tolerance, where there is no outright ethnic con�lict that will disrupt Singapore society. However, if Singaporeans were to view each other more as family and less so by race, it would further strengthen Singapore as a home rather than simply a country to live in.

Gerald Koh Zhen Yuan | e0315850@u.nus.edu Gerald is a �inal year history major trying to enjoy himself as much as possible before entering potential wage serfdom. Among the things he enjoys are reading, writing, going into Internet rabbit holes and contemplating the big issues in life.

Historians often write and construct narratives, with the necessary evidence to persuade the reader to become a believer in that narrative. Yet in this process of weaving together these narratives, it can be easy for historians to forget that the subjects of their analysis are in fact, human. The presidency of Harry S. Truman is associated with events such as the end of World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War. The focus on such ‘macro’ events ignores the valuable lessons that seemingly small-scale events could provide us. This essay aims to elevate one incident in 1950, namely one of Margaret Truman’s singing performances, an unsavoury review from a critic, and Truman’s perhaps disproportionately aggressive reaction. This incident showed how despite the institutional and societal expectations of presidential decorum and conduct, Truman could not always turn the other cheek: He was, after all, a human, and especially in this case, a father.

Background: The Truman Presidency

ascended to the Oval Of�ice. He was not elected to the presidency: The role was thrust upon him following the sudden death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on April 12, 1945. Truman’s �irst reaction upon being summoned to the White House was to ask Eleanor Roosevelt if there was anything he could do for her. Eleanor replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now!” Truman moved into the White House with his wife, Bess (whom he married in 1919) and his daughter Margaret (born in 1924). Truman led the United States through the �inal months of World War II, the immediate post-war period and the emergence of the Cold War showdown against the Soviet Union. Against all odds, Truman won the presidency in his own right in 1948, defeating the Republican candidate, Thomas Dewey, in one of the great upsets in American political history. Key to his comeback victory was his use of the ‘whistle-stop tour’, where Truman would often campaign with his wife and daughter.¹

Harry Truman was someone who could be described as an ‘accidental president’, in terms of the manner through which he

¹ Boris Heersink, Brenton D. Peterson, “Truman defeats Dewey: The effect of campaign views on election outcomes,” Electoral Studies 49 (2017): 52-53.

The incident

Image 1: Harry Truman on the ‘whistle-stop’ tour during his 1948 presidential campaign. His daughter Margaret can be seen standing next to him.²

By 1950, the Cold War had truly begun. On June 25, the North Koreans launched an invasion across the 38th Parallel into South Korea, heralding the start of the Korean War. Truman nervously watched on as the North Koreans made signi�icant progress in the early stages of the war. While the United Nations forces managed to turn the tide, the intervention of the People’s Republic of China in November 1950 signi�icantly complicated the war situation.³ The Korean War would persist even after Truman left the White House in 1953. This sets the stage for the central incident of this article.

² “Truman on a 30,000-mile whistle-stop tour during his 1948 re-election campaign with Mrs. Truman and daughter Margaret Truman,” Cruise Line History, accessed December 27, 2021, https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/wpcontent/uploads/2012/11/truman-campaigntrain.jpg. ³ Alex Robert Hybel, “arry Truman and the Decisions to Intervene in the Korean War and to Cross the 38th Parallel,” in US Foreign Policy Decision-Making from Truman to Kennedy (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 55.

Image 2: Margaret Truman performing on stage at Constitution Hall, during a concert with the National Symphony Orchestra, November 25, 1949.⁴

Margaret Truman graduated from George Washington University in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. However, she decided to pursue her passion in another area: Singing. At 16 years of age, Margaret had begun taking vocal lessons in her home state of Missouri from a Truman family friend, Mrs. Thomas J. Strickler. Now, at the age of 23, she made her singing debut on a nationwide radio hookup with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on March 16, 1947. She would soon progress to live singing performances at physical venues.⁵

⁴ “Margaret Truman (on stage) at Constitution Hall performing in a concert with the National Symphony Orchestra. Others are unidenti�ied,” Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, accessed December 30, 2021, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/photographrecords/73-3116. ⁵ “Biographical Sketch: Margaret Truman Daniel,” Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, accessed December 31, 2021, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/mar garet-truman-daniel. ⁶ David McCullough, Truman (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1993), 823.

On December 6, 1950, Margaret Truman performed at Washington D.C.’s Constitution Hall, in front of an audience of 3,500. President Truman, and First Lady Bess Truman were also in attendance. Margaret’s program consisted of a Mozart aria from the famed ‘The Marriage of Figaro’, along with selections from previous composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. After the performance, there was a stream of praise that came Margaret’s way, including from her father, who apparently hugged her afterwards while asserting that he had never heard her sing better.⁶ There was, however, some dissenting opinion. Paul Hume, a critic writing for the Washington Post, provided a scathing review: “Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality – (she) cannot sing very well – is �lat a good deal of the time – more last night than at any time we have heard her in past years – has not improved in the years we have heard her – (and) still cannot sing with anything approaching professional �inish.”⁷ Truman was incensed. He certainly pulled no punches in his response to Hume, which was sent the same day the review came out: “Mr Hume: I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.” It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work. Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below! Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a re�lection on your ancestry. H.S.T.” ⁸

⁷ “Is the letter on display that Truman wrote in defense of his daughter’s singing?” Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, accessed December 27, 2021, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/letter-truman-defends-daughtersinging. ⁸ Ibid.

Analysis Truman’s response was ‘unpresidential’ on many levels. This was the President of the United States unleashing personal insults that did not make sense (Truman referred to the 34-year-old Hume as “old”), and threatening to physically assault Hume. When observed in isolation, one would be tempted to laugh and impugn Truman for his disproportionate response. It is instead far more insightful to examine why Truman made this response, and what this could potentially review about his state of mind at this stage of his presidency. I have already shown that Truman’s response was ‘unpresidential’, but more interestingly, it was also in line with his character and beliefs. Truman was long-sceptical about the press, with the historian Donald R. McCoy opining that “no foreigner, no Republican, no recalcitrant Democrat, no labour leader, no industrialist, not even insubordinate Generals and Admirals could vex him more than members of the press.”⁹ In other words, Truman was always likely to respond aggressively to reporters who had the gall, in his opinion, to attack members of the First Family. It is likely that the overly paranoid Truman saw this attack to be not simply an attack on his daughter, but a larger, more implicit criticism of the Truman administration. This incident, therefore, should not be seen so much as an isolated incident, but rather part of a larger pattern of

⁹ Donald R. McCoy, “Harry S. Truman: Personality, Politics and Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 12, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 221.

Truman attacking the press. It is also possible that Hume was ‘�ishing’ for a response, deliberately writing an aggressive review in the hopes that Truman would react. Truman’s hatred of the Fourth Estate was merely one aggravating factor. Truman was taking hits for his foreign policy. On the war front, General Douglas MacArthur, a decorated war hero, was more successful with attacking the President than the combined ChineseNorth Korean force. The popular MacArthur’s criticisms of the President had the effect of swaying public opinion against Truman.¹⁰ This was highlighted by one particular letter that Truman received from Mr. and Mrs. William Banning from New Canaan, Connecticut. In that letter, Mr. and Mrs. Banning accused Truman of being “directly responsible for the loss of (their) son’s life in Korea,”, while sniping that “one major regret at this time is that (Truman’s) daughter was not there to receive the same treatment as (their) son received in Korea.”¹¹ This letter etched itself in Truman’s memory. This contextual analysis shows that Truman was under a signi�icant amount of pressure. There was mounting domestic and foreign pressures that dogged every single day of his presidency. In the public eye, at least, Truman simply made wrong decision after wrong decision. He would

¹⁰ Halford Ross Ryan, “Harry S. Truman: A Misdirected Defense for MacArthur’s Dismissal,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 11, no. 4 (Fall 1981): 576. ¹¹ McCullough, ‘Truman’, 831.

eventually sack MacArthur, and drop his plans to run for re-election. By February 1952, his approval rating, as measured by Gallup, had dipped to 22%, a record low that stands till this day.¹² It seems likely, therefore, that Truman’s response was seen not so much at the time as the response of a defensive father, but that of a President who had lost the plot. Modern historians have been far kinder to the Truman presidency, with historians ranking him as one of the top 10 Presidents in American history.¹³ I am personally inclined to agree with them. We should regard Truman’s behaviour in this incident with greater understanding, and not let this unsavoury moment de�ine his overall �ine legacy.

Conclusion My conclusion is that President Truman was in an unenviable situation. A Republican Congress stymied his domestic agenda, while he dealt with the tensions of the Korean War and the larger Cold War on the world stage. The duties and responsibilities of President of the United States are taxing even at the most peaceful of times, and it seems likely that the combination of all these stresses pushed Truman to lash out in the manner that he did. For Margaret, it was a stark reminder that being the First Daughter was a

¹² Jeffrey M. Jones, “Who Had the Lowest Gallup Presidential Job Approval Rating?” Gallup, accessed December 30, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/272765/lowest-galluppresidential-job-approval-rating.aspx.

blessing as much as it was a curse. The scrutiny placed on her performances was a double-edged sword. While the saying may go, ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity,’ Margaret must have hated that attention was drawn to the war of words in the press, rather than her actual talent. Of course, we should not be so quick to judge Truman for his response. Any parent would react with disgust and anger towards what they felt to be an inappropriate critique of their child’s performance. Truman’s being the most powerful man in the free world did not exempt him from exercising raw paternal instincts. A man who must have felt that the whole world was against him, Truman also saw this attack on his daughter’s performance as an indirect attack on himself. This bears signi�icant similarities to how the then-ongoing Korean War could be perceived as a proxy war, part of the greater con�lict between the Soviet Union and United States in the Cold War. In that sense, Margaret Truman may have been a chess piece in a larger game, but not one that her father would sacri�ice at any cost.

¹³ “Presidential Historians Survey 2021 – Historians Survey Results Category,” C-SPAN, accessed December 31, 2021, https://www.cspan.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

Chew Fangying Lynn | e0325460@u.nus.edu Lynn is pursuing a major in History with a minor in Political Science. She wears clothes with strands of cat fur to school and is often trying to satisfy her sweet tooth cravings.

I can hear you. Walls are not the only thing that have ears. Since my creation in 1939, I have been listening to the conversations of the Fong family. When I was �irst brought back from the workshop, I wore a dark brown coat with smooth texture and bore intricate carvings on my sturdy legs. Mr. Fong’s three children, Wah Cheong, Teng Fei and Wah Tuck, were so excited to see me, and they crowded around me. That night, I had the honour of carrying the weight of dinner; soup, rice, and dishes were placed on me. Oh, what a nice �irst day at home! As the only table in the house, my other roles included becoming a study or reading desk and a kitchen “island” for food preparation. Life at that time was one of the happiest I have been – I felt I had lived up to the expectations of being a useful table.

However, one day in January 1942, Mr. Fong talked about a ‘war’ that was responsible for in�lation and the need for food rationing. The usual heavy pot of rice and many dishes were replaced by yellow and purple potatoes and tapioca.¹ The children often complained about not having enough to eat during mealtimes. Anyone with even the tiniest amount of common sense would tell you that half a sweet potato per person is not enough. To make matters worse, the usual sweet vegetables were replaced with bitter papaya leaves which everyone, not just the children, loathed. I could sense both Mr. Fong and his wife’s desire to feed the family and their sadness at their inability to do so. I could also sense the fear the family had of being seized by the enemy. Their days were spent in caution to not attract attention. The atmosphere at that time felt tense and suffocating.

After the war, dinners were not as tense as before, but money was still tight. I could tell from the weight of the food placed on me – there was more food, but not as much as the pre-war days. To ease some of Mr. Fong’s �inancial burdens, Mrs. Fong woke up at 4.30am every day, whether rain or shine, to make an assortment of kuehs to sell on the streets.² Thankfully, the hard and painful immediate post-war days gradually came to an end. Life slowly returned to some degree of normalcy and the Fong family, along with many other families, had better standards of living. We had eggs for the �irst time in a long while! One by one, the Fong children gradually married. Wah Cheong, the eldest son, married �irst and had a daughter soon after. The Fong grandparents were quite dismayed as they had longed for a grandson. Despite repeated tries, Wah Cheong and his wife were largely unsuccessful in producing a male heir. After bearing three girls, they �inally rejoiced at having a son. Mr. and Mrs. Fong’s only daughter, Teng Fei, was lucky enough to have a �irstborn son. Her second child was a girl. However, she and her husband did not try for another boy. I suspect this is so because the government began to introduce the ‘Stop at Two’ programme which encouraged families to have at most two children in order to reverse the baby boom that happened post-war.³ The introduction of birth control pills along with the incessant radio cries and poster reminders were probably also the main reason why Wah Tuck and his wife were able to (grudgingly) accept their fate as parents of two daughters.⁴

¹ Wong Hong Suen, Wartime kitchen: food and eating in Singapore, 1942-1950 (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet and National Museum of Singapore, 209), 58. ² Ibid., 41-43. ³ Kho Ee Moi, Construction of Femininity in a Postcolonial State: Girls' Education in Singapore (New York: Cambria Press, 2013), 52. ⁴ Ibid. ⁵ Joshua Lee, “S'poreans to 'Stop at Two' children was easy. Have more children? That's tough” Mothership, March 30 2018, https://mothership.sg/2018/05/singapore-stop-at-two-children-campaign-successful/ ⁶ Ibid., 56. ⁷ Ibid., 54. ⁸ Fan Shuh Ching et al., A report of the survey of 126 vegetable farms in Singapore, 1968 (Singapore: University of Singapore, 1969), 12. ⁹ Janet W. Salaff, State and Family in Singapore: Restructuring a Developing Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 30.

Working in tandem with ‘Stop at Two’ was the Singapore government’s focus on providing all citizens, both girls and boys, with an education that would mutually bene�it the individual and the wider society. The grandchildren of the Fong family had the privilege of attending school, no matter their biological sex. This was a relief for their parents, who were worried that the girls would not be able to provide for themselves. Wan Teng and Wan Mui bene�itted the most from the education system. Most of their older cousins had not done well in school because the lessons and examinations in the 1960s to 1970s were rather rigid and adopted the one-size�its-all approach.

Figure 1: Stop at Two Posters⁵

However, by the time the youngest of the bunch were in school in the 1980s, they bene�itted from the streaming programme. Wan Teng was academically gifted and was selected to join the Gifted Education Programme in secondary school. (She eventually chose to further her studies at a local university, and on a scholarship, I must add). In contrast, Wan Mui did not enjoy technical subjects like Mathematics and Science. However, Wan Mui was still able to to learn life skills and English to an appropriate level. Thankfully, Wan Mui was suf�iciently engaged in school. She loved talking about what she learnt in school with her mother: “Ma! Today my teacher told us that we should be ‘robust’ and take up technical jobs”.⁶ “Ma! Mrs. Tan told us that school is very important, and we must all speak English at home.⁷ Come, let me teach you some English”. Fortunately, most of the grandchildren of the Fong family could graduate from secondary school and went on to work. In 1976, the government resettled our kampung and vegetable farms in Potong Pasir. ⁸ Mr. and Mrs. Fong were extremely sad as they had to leave behind old friends and familiar places. In contrast, their children and grandchildren were generally excited with what the future would look like with the move. We moved to different housing units in Block 220 Clementi Avenue 2.⁹ While each of the Fong children and their families had their own homes, they were always still close by to Mr. and Mrs. Fong. I moved in together with Mr and Mrs. Fong. The new �lat had four rooms, which gave everyone suf�icient privacy that the old kampung house lacked. There was even a colour television! However, Mrs. Fong lamented that she could no longer buy vegetables from nearby farms at a wholesale price. During an extended family dinner on a �ine day in 1984, Kar Yin came back with news that she was pregnant with her third child. Although the government had reversed its ‘Stop at Two’

¹⁰ Chua Mui Hoong and Rachel Chang, “Did Mr Lee Kuan Yew create a Singapore in his own image?” Straits Times, March 24, 2015, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/did-mr-lee-kuan-yew-create-a-singapore-in-his-ownimage. ¹¹ Ibid. ¹² Chua Mui Hoong and Rachel Chang, “Did Mr Lee Kuan Yew create a Singapore in his own image?” The Straits Times, March 24, 2015, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/did-mr-lee-kuan-yew-create-a-singapore-in-hisown-image

policy to increase the rapidly declining birth rate, Kar Yin’s family knew that it was disadvantageous for her to keep the baby. Kar Yin and her husband were hawkers at a nearby food court. Both of them only had secondary school certi�icates. The current government policy, the Graduate Mothers’ Scheme, favoured families where parents had higher education. In fact, would you believe that less educated females such as Kar Yin could get $10,000 from the government if they went for sterilisation?¹⁰ The family kept pushing for her to abort the baby, which Kar Yin was resolutely against. Dinner that night would have been a total disaster if not for Chan Fong who suddenly announced the long-awaited news that he would be marrying his girlfriend whom he met while studying at the National University of Singapore. In that year, Chan Fong and his �iancé e got married. Teng Fei incessantly nagged at her son to move on to the next ‘milestone’ of having a child. All week, Teng Fei would listen to the news, collating information about the Graduate Mothers’ Scheme. This became a source of tension in the Fong family. This scheme included incentives such as tax breaks of up to 15% of earned income, if the mother was a graduate.¹¹ This was a sticking point for the other married female family members, especially Kar Yin. Kar Yin resented the discrimination of the scheme and often went on about it, claiming that she could have gone to university if only she were born a few years later. Fortunately, this scheme was scrapped one year after it was announced. In 1987, the government evicted Mrs. Fong’s roadside stall.¹³ Mrs. Fong did not put up a fuss as she was already 73 by then, and her children had been nagging at her to retire. Being constantly at home, she always found something to nag or worry about. One of her worries was that Sum Poh, who had graduated from university and was about to start work, had yet to �ind a suitable marriage partner. Whenever Sum Poh visited her grandmother, she would be nagged at to join the Social Development Unit (SDU), a government agency set up to promote marriage among graduates.¹⁴ It really seemed like the government was going all out on encouraging married couples to make babies, as ‘Have Three or More if you can afford it’ was their new mantra.¹⁵ Sum Poh refused to go to the SDU, insisting that she would become a self-made woman, which was quite a radical decision at the time. Wah Tuck and Bee Choo were entrepreneurs who spent long hours trying to build a frozen food empire. Returning home exhausted, they had no will to ‘tapau’ food, let alone cook meals for themselves. Their house was often a mess and household chores were always a point of contention. Even though Wah Tuck mentioned nothing of this to his mother, Mrs. Fong was able to sense that something was wrong. Mothers really do know best. She would always offer to go to his �lat to do their chores. Wah Tuck vehemently refused. After all, Mrs. Fong was not as nimble as she used to be, and simple chores like mopping the �loor were dangerous for her. Eventually, Wah Tuck and Bee Choo decided to hire a domestic helper. At that time, hiring a domestic helper was becoming in trend.¹⁶ I must say though, it was a good decision. Many of their worries were now relieved, and both husband and wife seemed a lot happier with each other. A few years later, Mr. and Mrs. Fong passed away peacefully. Their children sold their parents’ �lat and I was sent to be a part of Wah Cheong’s home. As a family heirloom, I look forward to telling the tales of future generations and how the government’s biopolitics in�luence and impact the structure and dynamics of Singaporean Chinese families.

¹³ Joyceline Tully and Christopher Tan, Heritage Feasts: A Collection of Singapore Family Recipes (Singapore: Miele Pte Ltd, 2010), 10-11. ¹⁴ Kelvin Cheng, “Government matchmaking programmes need a rethink to get singles to mingle,” Channel News Asia, October 20, 2018, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/sdu-singles-singapore-dating-total-fertilityrate-marriage-791931. ¹⁵ Salaff, State and Family in Singapore, 52. ¹⁶ May C. Wang et al., “The Role of Women in Food Provision and Food Choice Decision-Making in Singapore: A Case Study,” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 53, no. 6 (2014): 660, https://doi.org/10.1080/03670244.2014.911178.

Lois Kok Yu Qin | lois_kok_yu_qin@u.nus.edu

Lois is a Year 3 History and Political Science major. started keeping track of words she cannot pronoun can change the subject if they ever come up in conv

major. She has recently nounce so that she conversation.

Tan Jia Wei Alicia | e0772614@u.nus.edu Alicia is a Year 1 Political Science and History major who is a huge history junkie - she loves following instagram accounts about the histories of different cultures globally. She currently stays in Raf�les Hall and like to play badminton and squash in her free time. She’s also a cat person and love to pet the cats around NUS. Fun fact about her: She cannot snap her �ingers!