^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^9 TRANSLATION OF CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE SCHOLARSHIP ON SOUTHEAST ASIA READING SOUTHEAST ASIA VOLUME I SEAPJ Southeast Asia Program 120 Uris Hall Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853-7601 Project Leader George Kahin Participating Researcher Takashi Shiraishi Assistant Researchers Jose Cruz Saya Shiraishi Sadako Taylor Translation EDS (Tokyo) Editing and Production Audrey Kahin Roberta Ludgate Dolina Millar Published under the auspices of the Toyota Foundation © 1990 Cornell Southeast Asia Program ISBN 0-87727-400-2 CONTENTS Introduction 5 1. Patjar Merah Indonesia and Tan Malaka: A Popular Novel 9 and a Revolutionary Legend Noriaki Oshikawa 2. A Study of Bustanu’s-Salatin (The Garden of the Kings) 41 Saya Shiraishi 3. State Ritual and the Village: An Indonesian Case Study 57 Teruo Sekimoto 4. Javanology and the Age of Ranggawarsita: An Introduction 75 to Nineteenth-Century Javanese Culture Kenji Tsuchiya 5. Popular Catholicism in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines: 109 The Case of the Cofradía de San José Setsuho Ikehata This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION Born as "Southern Studies'' (Nampo Kenkyu) in the late 1930s and early 1940s, South- east Asian studies in Japan is now passing from the second to the third generation, while the fourth generation of scholars in their twenties and early thirties is now emerging on the horizon. The preceding generations have produced excellent works, only some of which are available in English. Tatsuro Yamamoto's classic, Recherches sur I'histoire de I'Annarn, and the "Overseas Chinese" studies by scholars affiliated with the East Asia Economic Research Bureau of the Manchurian Railway are among the best works of the first generation, while the writings of such scholars of the sec- ond generation as Akira Nagazumi, Yoneo Ishii, and Toru Yano represent Japanese scholarship on Southeast Asia at its best.1 These and other studies, cross-bred with non-Japanese language works on Southeast Asia, have formed a beautifully mestizo scholarly tradition of Japanese research on Southeast Asia, now rebaptized as Tonan Ajia Kenkyu (Southeast Asian Studies), in which the succeeding generation of Japanese Southeast Asianists, among whom I belong, have worked over the last twenty years. Yet each generation of Japanese scholars working on Southeast Asia carries its own historical birth marks. Many members of the first generation entered "Southern Studies" in the 1930s when Japan was starting its fatal southward expansion. No wonder, then, that one of the major contributions of these scholars lay in their work on the "Overseas Chinese" and on the anti-Japanese Chinese national salvation movement in Southeast Asia.2 Members of the second generation started to study Southeast Asia in the 1950s and early 1960s when Japan was notable by its absence from the region and when American scholarship was fast replacing the old colonial studies of Southeast Asia. Akira Nagazumi, the first Japanese to obtain a PhD in - Tatsuro Yamamoto, Recherches sur I'histoire de I'Annam (Tokyo: Yamakawa, 1950); Mantetsu Toa Keizai Chosakyoku, Tai-koku ni okeru Kakyo [Chinese in Thailand] (Tokyo, 1939); Firipin ni okeru Kakyo [Chinese in the Philippines] (Tokyo, 1939); Ranryo Indo ni okeru Kakyo [Chinese in the Dutch Indies] (Tokyo, 1940); Eiryo Marat, Biruma oyobi Goshu ni okeru Kakyo [Chinese in British Malaya, Burma and Australia] (Tokyo, 1941); Futsuryo Indo-shina ni okeru Kakyo [Chinese in French Indochina] (Tokyo, 1943); Akira Nagazumi, The Dawn of Indonesian Nationalism: The early years of the Budi Utomo, 1908-1918 (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1972); Yoneo Ishii Jozaha Bukkyo no Seiji-Syakai-gaku: Kokkyo no Kozo (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1975) Translated by Peter Hawkes, under the title Sangha, State, and Society: Thai Buddhism in History (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986); Toru Yano, Tai Biruma Gendai Seijishi Kenkyu [A study of Thai and Burmese political history] (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1968) and "Nanshin" no Keifu [The lineage of "southward expansion"] (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1975). 2 A side from the works on "Overseas Chinese" cited in fn. 1, see also Toa Kenkyu jo, Dai 3 Chosa linkai, Nan'yo Kakyo Konichi Kyukoku Undo no Kenkyu [A Study on the Nanyang Chinese Anti-Japanese National Salvation Movement] (Tokyo: Toakenkyujo, 1944). 6 Reading Southeast Asia Southeast Asian history at an American university, thus clearly marked the coming- of-age of the second generation. The third generation of Japanese Southeast Asianists, some of whose works ap- pear in this and future volumes of this series, also display special characteristics. In terms of age they are now in their forties, and they entered Southeast Asian studies in the mid-1960s to early 1970s, when Japan was fast returning to Southeast Asia, and there were expanding opportunities for conducting research in the region and/or graduate studies abroad. Many of this generation spent one or more of their forma- tive years outside Japan—in Southeast Asia, in the United States, in Australia, and in Europe. They viewed a knowledge of all the languages needed for their studies as a self-evident requirement, "translation works" (those based on non-Japanese works) were no longer acceptable, and many were well aware of most recent research by non-Japanese Southeast Asianists. Yet when they first entered Southeast Asian stud- ies Southeast Asia was still remote and it remained so for some time. Scholars of this generation felt themselves fortunate to visit the region once in five years; library col- lections on Southeast Asia were poor, a book or a journal article had to be pursued from one library to another. Besides, there were few places where one could learn Southeast Asian languages. At the same time, events were moving swiftly in South- east Asia: the killings and the establishment of the New Order in Indonesia in 1965- 1966, the American war in Vietnam, the 1969 riot in Malaysia, the anti-Japanese movement and the revolution in Thailand in the early 1970s, the anti-Japanese riot in Jakarta in 1974. Since then things have changed very much. But scholars of the third generation have not forgotten this past and the contrast it presents with the way things now are. And this memory still leaves its marks on many of their studies—on the questions they ask, on the approaches they take, and on the sources they use. The essays included in the four volumes of the present series, Contemporary Japanese Scholarship on Southeast Asia, are chosen to illuminate the scholarship of this third generation, especially in fields where few Japanese works are available in English. The studies included in the first volume, Reading Southeast Asia, are attempts to read Southeast Asian "texts" in the broader sense: Noriaki Oshikawa has written on Indonesia's "Scarlet Pimpernel" popular novels of the 1930s; Saya Shiraishi on Acehnese historical texts; Teruo Sekimoto on the huge signs which appear on the roofs of village houses commemorating August 17, Indonesia's independence day; Kenji Tsuchiya on Dutch Javanology; and Setsuho Ikehata on a nineteenth century Tagalog religious text. All the essays are undoubtedly inspired in one way or another by the kind of textual reading exemplified by scholars such as Ben Anderson, Rey- naldo Ileto, and James Siegel, but they also represent an attempt to go beyond the scholarly tradition created by the preceding generations. The essays to be included in the second volume of the series will explore Japanese language sources on Vietnam in the 1940s, and the articles based on these sources represent an effort by the Japanese authors to make their own contributions to Vietnamese history. Most of the works in the third volume were originally written by the research group led by Hajime Shimizu at the Institute of Developing Economies. Building on Toru Yano's pioneering work on Japan's southward expan- sion they investigate the origins of the Japanese presence in Southeast Asia. And, finally, the fourth volume will include works on Suharto's New Order in Indonesia, the country where since the late 1960s the Japanese presence in the form of aid, in- vestment, and trade has been the most pronounced in Southeast Asia. Introduction 7 This project to make Japanese works on Southeast Asia available to English read- ers has been carried out by a team at Cornell, headed by Professor George McT. Kahin and funded by the Toyota Foundation. All the draft translations were done by EDS (Editorial and Design Services) in Tokyo with great care. For all this, I would like to thank Ms. Kazue Iwamoto of the Toyota Foundation who first brought up the idea; Ms. Yoshiko Wakayama who patiently saw the project through to completion; Ms. Suzanne Trumbull and her colleagues at EDS who put so much work into the translation effort; Dr. Audrey Kahin, without whose effort this project would have never got off the ground; and Jose Cruz, Roberta Ludgate, Dolina Millar, Saya Shiraishi, and Sadako Taylor who contributed to the project in many and valuable ways. Finally, many Japanese scholars of the third generation owe an enormous intel- lectual debt to the late Prof. Akira Nagazumi in whose seminar some of us, including myself, were initiated into Southeast Asian studies and whose works set a standard to which all of us have had to aspire. His untimely death in 1988 was an enormous loss for us all. But his works are still with us, and his soft voice, his gentle and quiet manner, and his rigorous scholarship are still in our memory. To his memory we would like to dedicate this book. Takashi Shiraishi Ithaca February 1990. This page intentionally left blank 1 PATJAR MERAH INDONESIA AND TAN MALAKA: A POPULAR NOVEL AND A REVOLUTIONARY LEGEND Noriaki Oshikawa INTRODUCTION Patjar Merah Indonesia [The Scarlet Pimpernel of Indonesia] is a five-volume popular novel published in Medan, East Sumatra, between 1938 and 1940. As the title sug- gests, the work is inspired by The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy's famous 1905 novel about the French Revolution and a secret society led by Sir Percy Blakeney (the Scarlet Pimpernel) that rescues French monarchists from the guillotine and smuggles them to England.1 Patjar Merah Indonesia is a similar tale of adventure with political overtones on an international scale about Indonesian nationalists of the 1930s who pursued an underground struggle against the oppressive power of the Dutch colonial government, namely imperialism, and against Stalinism. The Patjar Merah, or Scarlet Pimpernel, is the nationalists' exiled leader, an elusive and protean hero.^ Swinging back and forth between historical fact and incredible fantasy, the story is peopled with characters who are for the most part readily identifiable historical figures whose names are only thinly disguised. Some of the leading figures in the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia; Indonesian Communist Party) of the 1920s—Semaun (1899-1971), Alimin (1889-1964), Musso (1897-1948), and Darsono (1897-?)—appear in supportive roles under the Russian-style names Semounov, Alminsky, Mussotte, and Darsonov, respectively. The Scarlet Pimpernel himself uses a variety of aliases, depending on where he happens to be: Vichitra in Thailand, Tan Min Kha in China, Ibrahim el Molqa in Palestine. These names are on file in intelligence agencies around the world, but his true identity is never revealed. Nevertheless, through his actions, * There is a Japanese version, Benihakobe [The Scarlet Pimpernel], translated by Nishimura Kpji (Tokyo: Sogen Suiri Bunko, 1970), that is a translation of the 1950 popular edition published by Hodder & Stoughton, London. There is also an Indonesian version, Patjar Merah, translated by R. Poeradiredja and published as Balai Pustaka Serie 746 (Weltevreden: Balai Pustaka, 1930). However, this is the second edition; the publication date of the first edition is unknown. ^1 first learned of the existence of this novel from Anas Ma'ruf (1922-1980) when he was a vis- iting professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in the 1960s. A native of West Suma- tra like Tan Malaka, he belonged to the generation that fought for Indonesia's independence and was an admirer of Patjar Merah Indonesia in his youth. The novel is also discussed in Harry A. Poeze, Tan Malaka: Strijder voor Indonesia's Vrijheid, Levensloop van 1897 tot 1945 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), pp. 482-90.