Asia
or explicit causalities. [I' you want to build your own
argument about Taiwan's remarkable experience, how-
ever, it is an excellent place to begin.
Hili GIlTS
SWllfiml University
G. CAMERON HLRSI III. Armed Murtial Ans O(.IUpUII:
Swordsmanship atu! Archei)', New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press. 1991\. Pro x, 243. $30.00.
This volume breaks new ground. G. Cameron Hurst. a
long-time student of unarmed martial arts. writes as a
historian. He applies his understanding of martial arts
training without turning his hook into a treatise on
technique. aesthetics. or spiritual refinement, yet he
treats each of these issues for armed m.m iul arts. This
makes his hook different from other works on Japa-
nese martial arts. Hurst illustrates the transformation
of archery and swordsmanship from military tech-
niques into modern sports. All students 01 premodern
Japanese history should be grateful lor his accomplish-
ment.
Hurst begins with a short chapter on "Martial Arts
and Japanese Culture." Part one. "Swordsmanship."
includes three chapters: "The Early Tradition." "From
Self-Protection to Self-Perfection in the Early and
Mid-Tokugawa." and "The Sporting Element in the
Late Tokugawa." Part two. "Archery:' includes two
chapters: "The Way of the Bow and Arrow." and "The
Ouest for Records in the Tokuuuwa." Here Hurst
makes an important point: "Archery was ... the
primary bushi lighting skill lor most 01 premodern
history"; "Not until the Tokugawa period did bushi
come to venerate the sword more than the bow" (p.
un )
Part three, "Armed Martial Arts Today." completes
Hurst's narrative. Chapters on "Swordsmanship and
Archery: The Modern Transformation" and "The
Martial and Other Japanese Arts" illu-ar.ue how both
combat techniques evolved into competitive sports-
archery and kcndo (fencing). Hurst shows how martial
arts share features with other forms (11' organized
cultural expression in Japan. The various schools
(1}'IIIIlI) "were corporate groups controlling a particu-
lar asset ... mastery of specialized cultural forms" (p.
177). Although an icmoto pattern of transmission was
characteristic of tea ceremony. flower arranging and
other arts. it was less common among the martial arts.
Here, the leader was the shilian or teacher. and
students who mastered the art could become autho-
rized teachers of subgroups operating independently
from their former teacher. Thus. for martial arts
schools "discontinuity in headship" was common (p,
17K). The Tokugawa bakufu and domain governments
discouraged association among warriors across domain
boundaries. In the late Tokugawa era. it would be at
urban fencing schouls that samurai from various do-
mains mel. improved their technique. and plotted
against the Tokugawa house. Hurst illustrates how
martial arts schools were arenas of social mobility as
AWRIC\\ HISTORIC\\. Rr.vn.w
1651
ability replaced ascnpuon as the basis for advance-
ment. Many of the best swordsmen or archers were
lower-ranking samurai who achieved status through
their martial accomplishments.
The secrets of each ryiiha were transmitted from
master to disciple. While there were standard patterns
(kata) that needed to be mastered. there were also
written texts for most schools by the Tokugawa era.
Yet a "non-verbal understanding" was also important
as a reflection of the mastery of an art, martial or
otherwise (p. IK4). Once a student had demonstrated
mastery in a rvitlia, a certificate of mastery was usually
conferred. authorizing the recipient to teach and re-
produce the art. This encouraged the proliferation of
martial arts schools as each licensee was taught every-
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thing and was allowed to function on his own. In
contrast, under the iemoto system. special techniques
were often held back and passed on only to the
master's designated successor. Hurst goes into detail
about various styles of transmission. the oaths signed
by students promising to protect the secrets of the
school. and even the type of paper on which the oaths
were written. It is at this level of detail where we sec
the skills of the institutional and cultural historian
blended with the experience of the martial artist to
provide a lucid and erudite discussion of archery and
fencing in Japan.
A major contribution of this study is Hurst's discus-
sion of how training had religious features but was not
tied to Zen Buddhism or any other religion. He
challenges the claims of others that Zen formed the
spiritual base of archery or swordsmanship. "Martial
arts texts advocate not the simple mind-body unity of
Zen Buddhists ... but a mind-body unity in which the
two are in reverse correspondence with one another.
That is, if the body is at rest, the mind should he active,
if the body is active, the mind should be motionless. If
the mind is in a defensive mode, the body is in attack
posture. and vice versa" (p. 193). This final point caps
this most informative study of the armed martial arts in
Japan. This is the first of two volumes; one can hope
that the second will he as valuable and as useful as the
first.
WILLIAYl B. HAUSER
Universitv 01' Rochester
BENEDICT A:-JDERSON. The Spectre or Comparisons: Na-
tionalism, Southeast Asia, and the World. New York:
Verso. 199K. Pp. x, 374. $19.00.
Since the publication of his Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread 01' Nationalism
(19R3). Benedict Anderson has become one of the
treasured icons of postmodernisi social science, almost
if not quite as frequently cited as Edward Said. The apt
phrase. that nations are "imagined." caught the atten-
tion of all scholars interested in the phenomenon of
nationalism because it is at once true and also sarcas-
tically debunking, After all, what nationalist would
really want to admit that his nation is less than real? If
DECEMBER 1999
1652 Reviews of Books
nationalist passion has any basis, its proponents have
to believe that the generations of mythmakers who
created its heroic imagery must have been revealing
the truth, not just imagining it. It was surely an
accident, but a revealing one when the New York Times
some years ago referred to the Cornell scholar, "Bene-
dict Arnold," who wrote that nations are imagined;
after all, in ordinary language, to say that implies that
the nation is in some sense a fraud.
In these collected essays, which cover many different
topics, Anderson somewhat corrects that impression.
He does really admire some forms of nationalism, as
long as they arc revolutionary and anti-imperialist. The
essays were written from the late 1970s to the late
1990s and range from brilliant Marxist interpretations
of class-based politics in Southeast Asia (Anderson's
own scholarly preserve) to intriguing essays of literary
analysis.
"Cacique Democracy in the Philippines" concisely
tells how that country's Spanish colonial, Catholic,
Chinese, mestizo land-owning elite thrived under
American colonial rule and emerged stronger than
ever with independence. It still rules. This explains why
the Philippines sometimes seem to resemble Latin
America more than any part of Asia. It also explains
why the Philippines have experienced relatively slow
economic growth in the past decades, and why so many
of its most dynamic people have emigrated. "Elections
in Southeast Asia" offers a similar analysis of the class
basis of politics in Thailand and Indonesia and also up
to the mid-1990s for the Philippines.
There is. however, the other Anderson, whose Marx-
ism is more literary than economic and whose dccon-
struction of high literary texts can be breathtaking.
"Hard to Imagine" compares the seminal Philippine
nationalist colonial novel, Noli Me Tangere (I RR7) by
Jose Rind. to its major English translation published
under the title The Lost Eden, by the translator Leon
Guerrero. a twentieth-century Filipino diplomat. Rind
was shot by the Spaniards in their desperate bid to stop
rising anticolonial nationalism and so became a na-
tionalist hero. But he wrote in Spanish, which hardly
anyonc in his country still reads. Anderson shows us
that the Guerrero translation seriously altered the
original by leaving out many old Tagalog expressions
and much of the populist. realistic, irreligious crudity
in the original. The translation misses the flavor of the
old society by modernizing and Americanizing it. To
give but one example, "mestizo" is translated as the
contemptuous American word "half-breed," Anderson
is hardly a defender of corrupt, cruel Spanish colonial
rule. but in this essay he manages to suggest slyly that
American cultural influence was even worse, cheapen-
ing and simplifying a previously morc subtle cultural
tradition.
In "Radicalism After Communism," there is a loving
analysis of the works of Indonesia's great novelist,
Pramocdya Ananta Tocr, as well as those of some Thai
leftists. I Icrc, as in many other references to Indone-
sia, Anderson rarely misses an opportunity to lambaste
A\lI.RICAN HISTORtCAI. REVIEW
the murderous Suharto regime that finally collapsed in
ruins in 199R, after thirty-two corrupt years in power.
Yet, there is no mention of the brutal class war that
was gradually engulfing the Indonesian countryside in
the years before the mass murders of 1965-66. The
Communists and their cultural allies. such as
Pramoedya, emerge as immaculate heroes, and the
killings. tortures, and years of jail they suffered make
them Christlike.
Nor can one look to Anderson for any analysis of the
parts of Southeast Asia misruled during all these years
by Communists. Pol Pot, the embodiment of ultrana-
tionalist extremism, makes a cameo appearance as a
tool of the Thai-U.S.-Chinese anti-Vietnamese coali-
tion after 1979, not as the perpetrator of genocide.
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Even Burma, misruled for decades by "Burmese so-
cialism," gets off lightly. Not being an imperialist 1001
mitigates many sins.
No one is free of biases, and if we accept his,
Anderson is a wonderful guide through modern South-
east Asian history and literature. His scholarship is
impeccable, and unlike many who cite him and throw
around the words "imagined this and that," he writes
beautifully. His readers will take great pleasure in
reading this new book.
D,\:-';IEI. OfIROT
Univcrsitv of' Washington
NA:-';IJI~1 SC:-';IJAR. Subalterns and Sovereigns: All An-
thropological History of Bastar. 1854-1996. New York:
Oxford University Press. 1997. Pp. xxiv, 296. $21\.95.
The mountain forests of Bastar are well travelled by
anthropologists and folklorists. Thus it is fitting that
the history of this vast region in the southeastern
corner of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has
begun to emerge from ethnographic efforts to piece
together remnants of the past that will be useful for
people in the present. Nandini Sundar did two years'
fieldwork in villages populated primarily by people
categorized officially as "tribals.' and she combined
this work with deep archival research and with a broad
interest in current political issues to produce an im-
pressive monograph that addresses many important
themes in the modern history of subaltern groups in
the hills of Asia. Her central theme is the changing
political interaction of cultural authority with local
struggles over legitimate control of material resourccs,
particularly forests. Throughout the book. she bal-
ances archival accounts with oral histories. official
texts with local memories.
The first chapter presents a tantalizing account of
the older history of village settlement, shifting cultiva-
tion, and political culture. upon which colonial powcr
would be established. But the history effectively begins
with the "watershed" of colonialism. when the British
established indirect rule in Bastar in the late nine-
teenth century, relying on the intermediary authority
of a lineage of Kakatiya kings whose ancestors had first
come to rule the region ill the thirteenth century.
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