Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Carolyn Brown: Well, good afternoon. It's wonderful to see all of you here, and on behalf of the Librarian, James Billington, it's my pleasure to welcome you for a wonderful lecture by Professor Ohnuki-Tierney, the Chair of Modern Culture in the John W. Kluge Center. And I am Carolyn Brown, I direct the Office of Scholarly Programs and the Kluge Center here at the Library. Before we begin, if you would please, turn off any electronic devices that buzz and bong and carry on and can interfere with the sound system as well. Let me just say a word about the Kluge Center. For those of you who don't know, the Center promotes advanced research in the collections of the Library of Congress. It was established by an endowment from John W. Kluge in the year 2000 -- sounds like a long time ago. It provides financial support for the world's most accomplished senior scholars and our most promising rising junior scholars as well. We also support intellectual life through lectures such as this one, and seminars, and occasionally small conferences. If you don't know about the Center, I suggest you give yourself a treat. You can sign up for e-mail notification of events, going to the front page of the Library's page, www.LOC.gov. You can sign up for e-mail alerts. If you want to know more about the Kluge Center, you can also find more about the Center also from the front page. Today's speaker, Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney, is the William F. Vilas Professor at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney has had, and continues to have -- and I can testify, she's a very hard worker -- a very productive scholarly career marked by 14 single-authored books in English, five in Japanese, in addition to several co-authored books or edited books, and innumerable journal articles in English and Japanese, and of course, invited lectures. She's won a number of very prestigious awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship, and has had visiting professorships at some of the most prestigious universities across the world. Among her early books are three concerning the Ainu Sakhalin, and one called "Illness in Culture of Contemporary Japan." One of her most important contributions has been to historicize anthropology, the use of anthropology for studying issues related to Japan and seeing the necessity of looking at culture through time, not just thinking of culture as if it was always there and unchanged. She's also focused on symbols of Japanese identities within broader socio-political context and comparative prospectives, and has a number of books that look at that issue. Among these are the "Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History," and "Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time." Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney has also been extremely generous and gracious in numerable ways while she's been at the Center. One of these is to offer to do more work for us, and many of you, I think, had the opportunity to hear the lecture she gave on the symbolism of the cherry blossom through time, which she timed to coincide very nicely with the full blooming of the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin, and that was a wonderful lecture, just beautifully illustrated. So we know we have another treat today. Some of the same issues, but drawing on a much larger canvas, as she explores the complexity and the use of symbols that may appear similar -- flowers; you may think a flower is a flower, but it's not necessarily -- but looking at the way such symbols can be similar, appear to be similar but also quite different in different cultures as they're used through -- at a particular point in time. As in her previous lecture she brings us wonderful illustrations to help us understand what she's really trying to get at, and in this case a most marvelously provocative title, "How Do Flowers Kill? The Japanese Emperor and Modern Dictators." So please welcome Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney. [applause] Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: Well, thank you so very much for your generous introduction. I must first say that when I arrived here, I thought, "What, six months in D.C.?" Now it's almost all gone and I -- it has been a marvelous place to be a worse workaholic than I ever was. [laughs] This is a place you can really focus on your work, and I really appreciate the appointment on the day-to-day basis, and Dr. Carolyn Brown has been marvelous, and we had wonderful intellectual discussions. And also, the Library, of course, has been very helpful and I, in particular, would like to thank Eiichi Ito, who has been marvelous in helping me to locate the sources in Japanese. Patricia Villamil has been wonderful in offering technical helps and beyond. And today's talk, I see some Fellows here, and you are gluttonous for punishment to come again at this time, when the time is running out and there are so many talks going on. What I am doing, I have been doing here is to try to tease out the complexities of so-called symbolic communication, communication via words and objectified symbols. And today's talk is part of it. I think in every culture we struggle with the question, what is humanity? And then in science, of course, the theory and how the Australopithecus became omnivorous, and then acquired bipedal posture, freed the hands and therefore started to use tools. But language is supposed to be the whole mark of uniqueness of humanity. Therefore, primatologists started to experiment on chimpanzees, and they focused on language. Could they also use language, because by language we can communicate, and therefore, sociality or the forming of social groups becomes possible. And therefore, the Tower of Babel, it's a story that we find in so many place; they all want to see, how can we communicate? Well, I am going around by saying that there are a lot of loopholes, and there are many ways that we do not communicate, and we should understand why we don't communicate, and that is my -- the focus of my research. Baudelaire already used the term [French], to point out that we do not always communicate. Now, today's talk is very convoluted. First of all, I am going to introduce the Japanese emperor system, which is one of the most misunderstood institutions; both the kamikaze, about which I talk last time, and then the Japanese emperor, two most misunderstood Japanese institutions. And I would like to talk about that, and then go on to comparison of the representation of the emperor; how did they try to represent to the people? And then compare that with the modern dictators, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, and then at the very end, I would like to compare Japanese cherry blossoms with roses deployed by Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. And then, how did people understood or misunderstood these flowers that kill people. Now, although the Japanese imperial system started, of course, at the time wet rice agriculture came to Japan and the ancient imperial system was the most powerful one. However, there was a very long period, medieval period, from the end -- late medieval through the end of the 18th century, when the emperor was in the background, and it was the period of the Shoguns. To give you how powerful or powerless the emperor was, Hideyoshi conquered Japan for the first time, ordered the emperor to deify him, told him to make him a God. And then when he passed away his rival, Ieyasu, ordered the emperor to tell -- to get rid of the divinity from this Hideyoshi, and give Ieyasu himself the divinity. So you can see the inversion of hierarchies between the humans, mere humans who were Shoguns, and then the emperor, and all the way. And then only towards the end of the 19th century, when the Shoguns were starting to sleep and not realizing what was going on, the lower-class samurais became very anxious about Japan, because that's a time British could seize Hong Kong through the Opium War without any trouble. Japan was the only country that was not colonized by Western colonialism. So -- and then Commodore Perry came in 1853, and again in 1854, and tried to knock on the door so that Japan would open up. At the time the Japanese government was so outdated that they paraded sumo wrestlers carrying huge sacks of rice, and that was the way the government thought that they could demonstrate the power, Japanese power. So you can see how the country was quite outdated by that time. Now, skip everything, and then, therefore, the lower-class samurai took over and used the name of restoration of the emperor, which really was nonexistent, and then went all over the world -- France, England, U.S., and all of that -- and then latched on to the Prussian constitution and many of -- several German legal scholars were invited to Japan, and I compared their drafts of the major constitution of 1889 with the ultimate imperial constitution of Japan, and it's very, very similar, except the Article 1. And so, I distributed the chronology, and just to give you some idea of which -- there must be a lot of remaining somewhere, where? [low audio] And there is none? Is there any -- ? Anyway, I also copy some of the most important articles in the imperial constitution of Japan. The articles, "the emperor belongs to one line for eternity, and he governs imperial Japan," is the Article 1. And this is the article that was not in the drafts of German legal scholars, and they all opposed inclusion of this Article 1. And then the second one is "the emperor is sacred and inviolable". Now, this term inviolable is the term which, according to the scholars, got rid of all the political power from the emperor. So in other words, he was sacred, but without any political power. And then, Article 4 is "emperor is head of the nation, holding the right of sovereignty, and exercises them according to their provisions of the constitution." And the -- there are 5 and 6, but then very importantly, Article 11 said "the emperor shall command the Army and the Navy." Now, that meant not really command, but the Navy and Army could go directly to the emperor without consulting other governmental organs. So what happened here is this is a seed of World War II, or even all other wars, because the Navy and Army officials could go directly to the emperor and the others could not intervene. Now, what is very interesting is that the Article 1, that says the imperial system was "one line for eternity," [Japanese]. Well, there was no such thing prior to the Meiji constitution. And so, what happened was that at that time, the complete definition of a new emperor system was constructed. And incidentally, I must tell you that it is only in this imperial constitution of Japan in 1889 that emperor was codified to be male. There were at least 12 empresses, some of whom were very, very powerful, and even legendary -- a female emperor is the first one to think about conquering Korea. And -- but in 1889, from then on, the emperors had to be male. Now, the restored emperor system was an empty vessel, which the officials, the oligarchs fill with their strategic plans. And in fact, the oligarchs talked about the emperor as the "crystal ball in the palm." They can just manipulate the emperor according to the way they wished. Now, so what happened, these elevate -- religiously elevated emperor, and what was the view of the common people? Of course, for centuries, emperor was nonexistent for the common people. Before the Meiji there was not even a unified state, because Japan was divided into some 260 han that the regional -- regions controlled by lords. And therefore, the emperor was nonexistent to the common people, and people knew that the prince becomes an emperor, and the prince is a human being. And for example, the 18th century emperor, Go-Sakuramachi, when he was a prince, he enjoyed buckwheat noodles and then [Japanese], you know, those herbs that you put and burn on your body, but then when he became emperor he could not use, because his body became crystal body. And therefore, he was very happy to resign, and then became a human being. Now, also the -- at the time of Meiji, although he did not appear to the people, he was enormously popular and his Kaiser mustache -- this, particular, was first photo. He changed his attire, he got rid of topknot and featured Kaiser mustache, and major men wanted to feature a Kaiser mustache. And then people gossiped about how he liked women of all ages. And he did have five, what they called side rooms -- [Japanese], which means woman who would bear children for him. And in fact, his wife did not have any child, but he had 15 children. Ten of them died from birth to age two. And it was a very vicious way, perhaps manipulated by some of the officials, that Emperor Taisho started to lose his brain capacity. And so there was a gossip that he rolled up the documents that was handed over from the -- by the officials, and started to look to the people like this, and therefore, they had to remove him from the official duties and make Showa emperor to take over the official roles. Now, this particular gossip was quite often, even after the war, used by the common people without any political persuasions. In other words, it was not the liberals who wanted to get rid of the emperor system, but the people started to talk, anybody who was a half -- didn't have all together, they would say, "Oh, he's a Taisho emperor." So this you can -- I think he was victimized perhaps, but you can tell that the people did not believe the emperors as all mighty God as some of the photos in "New York Times Magazine" and other places have featured. So this is how the imperial constitution of 1889 reconstructed the emperor. Now, the reconstructed identities of the emperor is somewhat difficult to objectify. And so we have this -- two folders that were not allowed to circulate. This and this one. And it would be interesting to note that since the emperor was -- it's difficult to objectify Japanese deities that I will elaborate later, to put him in a Western uniform was the easiest thing to do for the major oligarchs, because that was not the role that he carried before. Now, the portrait of emperor became an enormously difficult task for the state. And after these two, many of them, Kinder [spelled phonetically] said that European monarchs, all this have the faces on the bills and all of that, and therefore, the Japanese government also should have the emperor's face. And there was enormous opposition to having portraits of the Japanese emperor. Finally, they asked Kiasoni [spelled phonetically] from Italy, to the right, to construct a portrait or photo. What he did was he took himself, the photo, and then put emperor's face -- exchanged the emperor's face, so everybody said that, "Oh, how Western he looks in posture and other ways." But this became the official portrait of the emperor. And then it was given to those schools and government officials which petitioned to have the emperor's pictures. And some scholars interpret as if this is the time the images of the -- image of the emperor became very familiar, but I don't think that was the case because, these -- the photo with his wife were enshrined in wooden shrine. And then it was opened -- the doors were opened only at the time of rituals, and then whole thing was situated at the very end, for example, in a schoolyard. And then the children would bow when the doors were opened. And so there was no way that his portrait became very familiar to the people. And his appearance to the people were very restricted. Sometimes he was on -- [unintelligible] but never -- himself never to be shown. There were times when they were quite anxious to have him become familiar to the people, because of the unrest of attacks and all of that, but he remained very remote to the people. Now, what -- I would like to go back to the interpretation later, but what is more important here is that not only was he not very visible to the people, but at the same time, there was absolutely no word uttered by any of the emperors, including Meiji, Taisho and Showa, so the people heard the emperor's voice only by Showa when he said that we have to accept the defeat in 1945. And let me go back to the interpretations later. Now, what is interesting is that: so how did they try to represent the emperor? This is, again, the fake photo. Now, the Article 1 said that imperial system has been in eternity. So instead having individual emperor's face or image, what they did was they tried to represent the imperial system by the rising sun, and then Mount Fuji, and then cherry blossoms. And then the one below is the Yasukuni Shrine where phoenix is flying into. And phoenix has been the symbol of imperial carriage that came from China, originally. So, it's a very different kind. This is a bill; again, the sun, and then Mount Fuji, cherry blossoms, with 16th petal chrysanthemum at the top. These are all the same. These also, the stamps, were with the Mount Fuji, cherry blossoms and chrysanthemum. Now, these is going to be very, very different from the German representation of modern Germany, identity, and they did also go back to the primordiality of the "Ring Cycle" of Wagner, but at the same time, they were blatantly -- Hitler was all over. Just was -- I don't have -- I have many images of Lenin and Stalin, but I will just confine to Hitler. But Hitler was on stamps, posters, everywhere. And then he also wanted to tell the people that "I am the one who brought modern to Germany." This is automobile. In other words, individual Germans can have the freedom of movement via Autobahn. Of course, this was used to mobilize the military equipment, but this was the way that Hitler talked about, and this is the Soviet Union, and also tried to juxtapose the wheat primordiality of the agrarian state with modern modernity. And this is how the planes juxtaposed with Stalin. However, in the case of Japan, all the modernity came from the outside, and therefore it was very difficult for them to say that we brought modernity. And therefore, that's the reason, I think, that they confined the representation of the emperor with the primordiality of the ancient imperial system. Now, how do we try to understand this situation? And -- oh, I forget to say that, as we know that modern dictators were enormously rhetorical. Any of the -- the film called "Nuremberg," "The Triumph of the Will," demonstrate so powerfully how Hitler was rhetorical. And Joseph Goebbels once said they fear Hitler as an orator. Well, this is a tremendous difference from the way that Japanese emperors never uttered a single word to the people. So what -- how do we interpret this? Now, there is this interesting parallel across so-called great religions: an all mighty God recedes, and representations becomes very much of -- they no longer become represented. For example, Martin Jay talks about the -- in terms of Christianity, has a long visionary tradition which stressed the importance of an unmediated vision of the divine, without interference of textuality. [unintelligible] ocular centrism [spelled phonetically] dominated medieval Christianity, elevating vision to be the novelist of the senses. Reformation was, in part, a struggle against the vision, and we see a virulent hostility in John Calvin, who urged the return to the -- literally -- "word" of scripture. The iconophobic impulse of the reformation continued in the English reformation. Now, however, in Christianity, God also remained beyond the ocular space. You have the Christ and Jesus but God himself seems to be not represented in terms of vision or word. And when the camera was invented, famously Walter Benjamin said fleeting mirror images was not only impossible but the very wish to do such a thing is blasphemous. Man is made in the image of God, and God's image cannot be captured by any machine of human devising. In other words, in Christianity, still the God remained beyond ocular space. In Judaism, Jacobson talks about the plenitude of [unintelligible] place, the memory of the divine presence, when God was replaced by text. The history of the Holy of Holies is a history of an accretion of absence. And he talked about the vague and magnetic invisibility of imageness existence of the Yahweh. Then further insight about Judaism is provided by [unintelligible] Vervoski [spelled phonetically] who talked about how it was a theological philosophers who sought possible solution in a theologian [unintelligible] or even in mythical, mystical idioms in which absolute being is equated with absolute nothingness and God is the great nothing. In Islam, according to Graham, through all the historical changes Islam has undergone, Islam is characterized by, on one hand, one God and on the other, by an iconic character with a spartan austerity in its symbolic economy. So we have this interesting contrast of religious figures. When they are all-mighty they recede from the vision and from auditory sphere, but political leaders all blatantly represented in stamps and banners and all of that. So how do we interpret the Japanese, the nonexistence of Japanese emperor? First of all, we can say that the Oligarchs elevated emperor to all mighty God when the Japanese have never embraced all mighty God, and therefore they had difficulty trying to visualize or represent through his images. On the other hand, there are Japanese traditions, there were cultural resistances, for example, for the visualization and there are various ways of thinking about it. At the bottom of the Japanese religiosity, at the base of Japanese religiosity is a belief in soul, S-O-U-L. And at the time of the 1889 constitution, for the first time they codified the emperor in terms of the imperial soul but the soul in Japanese religiosity is invisible. It's not objectified. It will perch on something, even a rock, and then the rock becomes sacred, but the soul can depart from the rock. And therefore, objectification is not part of the Japanese religiosity. Then we have the -- even when there are pantheons and no all-mighty God, in Kojiki and Nihongi -- those are the two 18th century myth histories of Japan -- there is very interesting description of three deities, where the one in the center starts to disappear and the one that disappears is the most sacred. And we have this very interesting episode about the sun goddess, who was the ancestor of the imperial household. And when she hid herself in the cave and deprived light from the universe, then people realized the power of her. In other words, the power of the sun was revealed when she hid herself and then the universe -- darkness covered the universe. And therefore, it is very -- many traditions of representations in Japanese art that avoided the direct representation. For example, portraits; the notion of portraits were introduced from China in 8th century and that was completely rejected at that time. And by the 11th century they started to do some -- use some portrait, but they always have to be after death, and very often several decades after death. It was blasphemous to have a portrait of a living person or even somebody who just died that would incur the enormous wrath. Then often these portraits, early portraits, deliberately try not to resemble the real person. And so they avoided a direct representation, and there was also a very famous technique of representation in art called the [unintelligible], which means that somebody is all. For example, the emperor, nine-year-old prince is represented by 95-year-old man, and the people are supposed to know who the -- was prince because of the scene. In other words, there was enormous ways to avoid the direct representation. Now, so I went through these comparisons, which makes how symbolic communication is enormously difficult, and there are many cultural reasons why the direct representation was not done in Japan, including for the emperor. Now, I would like to talk to -- turn to another difficulty of symbolic communication, and this is to juxtapose cherry blossoms in Japan, and then compare with roses. And for this one, I am using the concept of what I call polyvocalic [spelled phonetically], in other words, symbols that have very many meanings. And I have done with cherry blossoms, but one of the highlight of my stay at the Kluge Center is to read Dr. Billington's "The Icon and the Axe." And it is a huge book, a very long cultural history, in which he examines the meanings of axe and icon and then also remind us that images are not visual. But one image can be -- you can read music out of image and all of that. So what I'm presenting here is far poorer than what Dr. Billington did in that book. But we saw that cherry blossoms in the bills and stamps, right? But then you need to understand that the cherry blossom was the spring counterpart of rice, and therefore, you can see at the time of cherry blossoms the rice was planted. And the deity of the mountains, which was the most powerful deity in Japanese pantheon, came down to the paddy field on the cherry petals. And cherry blossom blooming, with the Mount Fuji symbolizing the stableness, eternity of Japan, whereas the organization is forcing the travelers to go to -- from country side to Edo, or to Tokyo, so the eternity of Japan and urbanization is juxtaposed. The cherry blossoms were believed to cleanse the water and, so they planted along the river. And cherry blossom was the -- white eerie cherry blossom was a symbol of geisha, and so every spring they planted cherry blossoms in the middle of the geisha quarters, and the high-ranking geisha would parade under the cherry blossoms. And this is a famous [unintelligible] 58 geisha, who really are not prostitutes but entertainers. They are dancing and playing music. This is the -- when you break the law and overstay -- you're not supposed to overstay in geisha quarters, but if you did, you cover your face and come out of there. And then this is a young geisha, young maiko, who are to be geisha. It's against a blue sky, very bright cherry blossoms, as opposed to this white eerie cherry blossom that you saw earlier. But then I think there was -- excuse me. Oh, there was one slide that was missing. Sorry. There was a slide of cherry blossoms with a warrior, and there is a saying that the cherry blossom is flower among flowers, and warriors human among humans, and so they were at the top of each category. And then, here came the military period. And then cherry blossom from the end of the 19th century, the government started to tell young people, thou shall fall like beautiful cherry petals. So, the Yasukuni National Shrine, which had thousands of cherry trees, in order to console the soldiers who fall -- who fell at the time of the restoration, participated very strongly in militarizing cherry blossoms and so there are ten cherry petals in this five-volume history of the Shrine. And then students from the top universities were drafted, and they did not have a choice but to become so-called pilots, tokkotai pilots, and this is one of them. And they were placed in the plane with one single petal. So, in many of the tokkotai, or the kamikaze corps, were named after various designations for cherry petal -- cherry blossoms. Now, how, with all of these layers and layers meaning, when the military started to put these cherry petals, then how do you read these cherry blossoms in the bills and the stamps? Now, when you look at this, this is a very brutal cherry blossom. In other words, emperor could not be represented, so emperor was represented by cherry blossoms, which were, in fact, the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the emperor. So it is a very indirect and very complicated way to represent the emperor, right? And so without going any -- this I said last time, let me contrast this with the -- some of the uses of flowers by the dictators. This started with Lenin, who started the cult of personality, but this is a Stalin, being given a bouquet, and these are famous slides of Stalin. His birthday, Olympics, stamps, against the Alps, he was given roses. And here the school textbook says, "He is the father of the children." And he's given roses. Now, when we look at this, it's a very complicated symbolism, and I'm not going to go through the rose -- love is a red, red rose, and all the other symbolism in religion and others -- but let me just point out that rose, red rose especially, in fact, has been the symbol of anti-establishment. In middle ages, in Europe, these symbols, this is Crane's depiction of the Maypoles, and they always have roses. And May, first of all, which was adopted by the socialist international later on, in fact, was the way to express the protests. So this is all the May flowers. And then Socialist International, you can see the goddess is throwing the roses, and then below the workers are receiving the roses. And this is a time when that famous Russian Jewish prisoner got out of the prison in a sauerkraut barrel, and eventually landed in New York and gave a tremendously influential talk. And I didn't realize why he could give such a rhetorical speech in Russian. No, it was given in Yiddish, and most of the workers at that time were of Jewish descent. But anyway, this is a time, and the bread and roses started. And so every -- almost every emblem of the Socialist party in the world has the rose with a clenched fist. So what I'm trying to say here is that every symbol has a long history, and then layers and layers of meanings, and it is awfully difficult, looking at a particular objectified symbol, to say that everybody understands the meaning of that particular symbol. And therefore, sometimes even the dictators or the major Oligarchs did not know that what they intended to do were not necessarily what the people read. So what -- I will conclude by saying that symbols can be zero signifiers -- that is absent, it's physicality is absent, but it's power is very great. Or sometimes polyvocal symbols, in which case there are so many meanings that it becomes very difficult to assume that there is communication. So what Baudelaire said, [French] -- that is to say, we do not always communicate with each other -- is important, and it's okay just to say that in Paris, when peaceful time, but when it is done during the military period, just like in Japan, or under the dictatorship in Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, it could be fairly dangerous, the the sense you do not confront the government intention. And in fact, some of the intellectuals in Japan said that they always misunderstood the government usage. When they said the "general will," they just thought that that was that of the [unintelligible] rather than that of Hitler. And so there is all kind of misunderstanding, and then during the military period it could be very dangerous. I think the time is up, so I will stop here. I didn't go over -- I'm sorry that the chapter is about 120 pages, and then I tried to go over it too quickly, but I will be very happy to explicate what I did not say in the talk. Thank you very much. [applause] Yes. Yes. Male Speaker: [inaudible] Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: And chrysanthemum came from China and was adopted by aristocrats and they had a beautiful ritual of putting chrysanthemum petals on to the stream of running and all of that. And it was never become cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms were in the mountains, and then later they transplanted also to the gardens. And in fact, there is a long history of people embracing cherry blossoms as their flower, and then the government wanted cherry blossoms to be unique to Japan, when it isn't. I think it is all over the world, including Africa, but during the Edo period the government sent the most famous botanist to interview a Chinese from Sichuan Province and he asked, well, don't you think that the cherry blossom is unique to Japan? You don't have it. And he agreed that he didn't have it. He didn't have it in Sichuan Province, but the rest of China had. But the chrysanthemum, they were, as I said, at the time of the Meiji restoration, was really very chaotic, and 260 regional lord had to be united under one emperor. And amazingly, they didn't have a Japanese anthem, and so the British bandleader said that "You people don't have even an anthem," and so they started one. The rising sun flag was used but not as the national flag. And at that time, for the first time, 16-petal chrysanthemum was adopted was the crest of the royal family. But it remained more as the insignia of the imperial family rather, than representing Japan or the Japanese. Yes? Male Speaker: How does the concept of the emperor's descent from the sun goddess get into the picture? When did it start and how long did it last? Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: I can't -- I can't hear you. Male Speaker: Yes, I was getting feedback. I'll try again. How does the concept of the emperor's direct descent from the sun goddess fit into the overall picture? When did this start and how long did it last? Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: The -- could you tell me the latter part? Male Speaker: When did it start? Did they hold that notion from antiquity? Or when did they start it and when did they drop the concept? Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: Could you maybe -- Carolyn, could you paraphrase? Male Speaker: The emperor's direct descent from the sun goddess. Whether it's [inaudible] Carolyn Brown: Right. The question is at what time did the notion of the emperors being descended from the sun god, the sun, come into the -- Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: Yes, I think that's a very good question, because the [unintelligible] or the sun goddess was not the ancestress of the imperial family, first. The deity of the food was. And then only later, when the imperial system became more established, so that's the time they adopted the sun goddess. Male Speaker: At the Meiji time? Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: Pardon me? Male Speaker: At the Meiji time? Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: Oh, no, no, no, long time ago, when the [Japanese], the ancient imperial system started during the 3rd and 4th century. Female Speaker: I was very interested in your idea that misunderstandings are as important to how cultures work as well as understandings, and I'm wondering how you think the idea of appropriation fits into that. Is that a kind of misunderstanding as well? And I was thinking particularly with regard to roses, because it seems that in some of these kinds of connections, particularly with socialism, that roses were used to symbolize kind of the good things, the kind of -- the pleasant things of life that workers should also have a right to claim, and that therefore, when it was used in -- by these -- by dictators as well, and they received them as presents of children, that was a way of talking about kind of, you know, the connection of this regime to the good things and the pleasant things of life. So in other words, kind of adding meaning onto a shared understanding rather than coming up with a separate meaning for the symbol. And so I was wondering kind of how you would see the appropriation within your, within your discussion of understanding and misunderstanding. Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: Appropriation by? Female Speaker: Well, in this case I guess it would be by the state, by the dictators, by the propaganda machine, but it could be in other cases. It could be -- appropriation could happen in all kinds of ways, but I guess in that example, appropriating the symbol of the rose to -- and weaving it into their portrayal of their regime as a good thing. Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: I think it's a very -- the question, that's very difficult to answer, because appropriation, for example, the roses, all the Lenin, Stalin and Hitler wanted the people to thank their father, and then the rose is the expression of children's love of the father, right? And that is a way that they wanted in propaganda and all of that. My point is, yes, I'm sure that there were some people who thought of it, but then the rose is such a complicated symbol that it's never univocal, or the one meaning, and so there must have been many other ways that people reacted to it. Did I answer your question? Carolyn Brown: Well, maybe since I have the microphone maybe I can sort of ask a question then. I had been thinking about, we talked about it a little bit but I'm not entirely clear. There's the power of presence which you demonstrated very clearly in the way the Western dictators were having their faces all over the -- you showed stamps, but there were stamps and there were posters and pictures and houses, and all of that. And there's also a power and kind of mystery and an absence. And as you said, symbols are very, very unclear, but I wondered if there was a certain power in the emperor symbol, or maybe just before the Tokugawa -- I'm sorry, before the Meiji period, if there was a certain power in having the emperor mysterious. Now, you said that sometimes people joked about the Taisho Emperor, but that was later. So I'm wondering if there's power in the hiddenness of the emperor that people manipulated as well. Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: I think that what happened -- this is my guess, actually -- is that Oligarchs manipulate the power and aura of the emperor, but that does not necessarily fool the folk during the Meiji period. And for example, my grandmother is a Meiji woman, and then when they get together they really identify themselves as Meiji Japanese, and then they are fairly fond of Meiji emperor without really ever seeing him. And I don't know how these gossip trickles down, but I think the Oligarchs were able to use the emperor's aura and the power and then use the way that he was defined in the constitution while they were the one who really used the political power. Did I answer your question? Carolyn Brown: Yes. Are there other questions? Dr. Ohnuki-Tierny: Yes? Female Speaker: Thank you. I wanted -- I was wondering if one can reverse something. In other words, a rose is a rose, by any other name it's still a rose. And therefore, it's not so much the symbol, but what is attributed to it. And it is, therefore, the power of the words of the attribution. You know, like a flag could be something. So it's not really the symbol, but really the words that are attached to it. And I was thinking that in different societies the same, the rose, we have different meanings. So the rose really is a sort of summary of words, of concepts, don't you think? I mean, in a way, we can start with the words, and even if the rose was not there, love of the fatherland would still exist. The monarchy, symbolically, would still exist. Why, therefore, is there a need for the flower, or is it the summary of the concept? I mean, the rose will be a rose for everyone to understand, but these words that are attributed to the rose -- the concept, love of the fatherland or romantic love, or symbol for -- of goodness or whatever. So, is the rose, therefore, a summary of an idea? Dr. Ohnuki-Tierney: That's a very interesting question, because what anthropologists have been kind of doing is try to kind of tease out summary into different meanings or different dimensions. But in fact, how the people perceive a rose may not be as analytically distinct. There may be -- and that's why I was trying to look at cherry blossoms, all of that, is that all these layers of meaning are more or less in the mind of the people, when you look at a symbol, and therefore, it is never a very simple meaning, which sometimes the propaganda agent would like to have them see. But I think it's an interesting concept that I should think about it more. Female Speaker: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov. [end of transcript]