一、事情简单经过 南方周末原文地址：http://www.nanfangdaily.com.cn/zm/20060525/xw/sd/200605250024.asp 该项目官方主页：http://web.mit.edu/history/www/ 关于此事件MIT官方声明：http://web.mit.edu/history/Open%20Letter%20to%20Chinese%20Students%20at%20MIT.pdf http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/chinese.pdf Open Letter to Chinese Students at MIT
美国麻省理工学院(MIT)的道尔教授和日裔美籍的川茂教授主持“视觉文化”课题，该大学网站为介绍他们的工作，在主页上建立了一个“链接”。链接本身是一个图像标志。读者通过点击，即可进入“视觉文化”的网页查看图像。其中一部分图像，是描绘甲午战争中日军屠杀中国军民的木版画。
中文媒体报道，“
美国和国内的报纸上开始广泛报道这一事件。随后，麻省理工的网站，有关道尔教授的“视觉文化”专题的链接，统统链接到了麻省理工首席执行官克雷先生作出的正式声明，就日本版画“对中国朋友们造成的伤害表达深切的歉意”。道尔教授和川茂教授也发表声明表达“深切的歉意和真诚的道歉”。两份声明都有中英文版本，引起争议的日本版画，从网站暂时撤除。
一些中国学生和麻省理工的中国校友，再向校方提出一系列要求，包括改写解说词，取消有关的学术活动，甚至解雇两位教授等等。
Peter C. Perdue
April 28, 2006
Recently, a group of Chinese students at MIT have protested pictures of the Sino-
Japanese war which were posted on the MIT web site as part of the research project
“Visualizing Cultures” conducted by Professors John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa. The
protest has included critical email messages addressed to Prof. Miyagawa, group
discussion with the faculty and members of the MIT administration, and a list of demands
passed out at a meeting on April 26. Even though the protests are so far only verbal, they
include extremely abusive messages directed at distinguished scholars of the Institute and
demands for the suppression of free academic research. I am writing to you collectively
in response to these activities. I address my remarks primarily to the graduate students
from the People’s Republic of China who have initiated these protests. I hasten to add
that I am sure that not all the Chinese students at MIT approve of these activities, but I
hope you will pay close attention to their implications.
You are some of the best and brightest young people of China, who have come to
MIT in order to pursue education mainly in scientific and technological subjects with the
leading researchers in the world. Many of you, I am sure, plan to return to China to use
the skills you learn here to help China become a truly modern country. I respect your
dedication to your studies and your deep concern for the honor of your country.
I have spent twenty-five years at MIT teaching East Asian history to Chinese and
American students, trying to engage them in critical discussion of the complex
relationships between China, Japan, and the world from the sixteenth to twentieth
centuries. I have dedicated my professional life to improving mutual understanding of
what are often very painful subjects on which people hold passionate views. But even the
most painful events deserve reasoned, careful, and open discussion if we are to prevent
future tragedies. Therefore, I am deeply disturbed by these recent protests, because they
threaten to destroy possibilities for productive dialogue.
Although some of you may find my views difficult to accept, I must present them
honestly and directly. I will add that I write only for myself and do not claim to represent
the opinions of Profs. Dower and Miyagawa or the MIT administration.
The images posted on the “Visualizing Cultures” website were not put there in
order to offend. They are an integral part of an ongoing research and educational project
which includes lengthy textual explanations that accompany each picture. John and
Shigeru have put many hours of their time over the past two years into making the
meaning of these materials as clear as possible. They have very graciously expressed
regret over the misinterpretation of this images, but they did nothing wrong in the first
place.
This is not a case of unintentional insensitivity, but of deliberate
misrepresentation. In historical interpretation, context is everything. Some students
ripped one picture alone out of hundreds of pictures and accompanying textual
explanation and broadcast it on the internet. This highly irresponsible act is what caused
the uproar in the first place. Those who perpetrated this act have not expressed any
remorse for the pain they have caused, nor do they seem to recognize the implications of
their acts.
The picture they took has the caption “Illustration of the Decapitation of Violent
Chinese Soldiers.” John Dower’s textual explanation paraphrases the Japanese writing on
the image and analyzes it as follows:
“The subject itself, however, and the severed heads on the ground, made this an
unusually frightful scene…Even today, over a century later, this contempt remains
shocking. Simply as racial stereotyping alone, it was as disdainful of the Chinese as
anything that can be found in anti-Oriental racism in the United States and Europe at the
time – as if the process of Westernization had entailed, for Japanese, adopting the white
man’s imagery while excluding themselves from it. This poisonous seed, already planted
in violence in 1894-95, would burst into full atrocious flower four decades later, when the
emperor’s soldiers and sailors once again launched war against China.”
John Dower explains very clearly that this is a racist, shocking image, that it
mirrors Western racism against all Asians, and that it sowed the “poisonous seed” which
led to the atrocious Japanese war in China. Anyone who read these words could not
possibly mistake the image for an endorsement of Japanese imperialism.
Therefore I conclude that those who broadcast the image without its context had
malicious motives. They intended to whip up anti-Japanese hatred in order to promote a
political agenda. Since John Dower has been the most sensitive of all scholars of Asia to
the pain of racism, the fact that they took his work as the tool of their project is especially
despicable. There is no excuse for it.
Some of the students presented demands presented at the meeting on April 26
which are simply unacceptable by the ordinary standards of American academic life.
They include: removing the website on Visualizing Cultures, apologizing to the Chinese
community, canceling academic workshops scheduled as part of this research project, and
revising the text and images to accord with the preferences of the students. Email
messages from some MIT alumni have even called for Professors Dower and Miyagawa
to be fired. In order to calm the situation, the MIT administration and Professors Dower
and Shigeru have conceded some of these demands, while insisting on their own integrity.
I respect their decision, but let me explain why, even though I understand your anger, I
find these demands unacceptable.
MIT hires to its faculty only scholars of the highest caliber. When I was the head
of the History Faculty, we hired John Dower after a national search indicated that he was
the most outstanding scholar of Japanese history in the country. He has won many prizes
to confirm that judgment. No one I know is more deeply committed to the empathetic
understanding of the peoples of Asia than John Dower. Professor Miyagawa deserves
equal respect.
You, despite your passion, are not specialists in East Asian history. Like any field
in the sciences or engineering, historical study requires intensive concentration,
acquisition of essential research skills, careful study of documents, and thoughtful, clear,
writing. Those of you who think that you know the history of East Asian better than these
distinguished scholars lack the authority to make this claim. No one so far has presented
any evidence that the materials presented on the Visualizing Cultures are mistaken or
biased. It is disrespectful of the dedication of serious scholars to make such emotional
charges based on no evidence.
Contrary to the accusations of the protesters, the materials on “Visualizing
Cultures” do not glorify Japanese imperialism. The visual images and the textual
explanation describe and analyze the power of Japanese propaganda about the war. But to
describe is not to condone. The text by John Dower makes it very clear that these images
are shocking, racist, and sadistic. They did, however, have a powerful impact on the
Japanese public at the time. We cannot ignore their power, but we must explain it.
Suppression will not help us to understand them.
The American university is based on the fundamental principle of academic
freedom. Scholars must be allowed to engage in whatever research activities they find
most challenging in their professional fields. Their work is subject to the judgment of
their peers in their discipline, and they must respond to careful, reasoned criticism from
professional colleagues. Scholars also engage in open dialogue with students and the
general public in order to promote public awareness of their research. But ultimately, no
one can tell them what to study, or demand that their work be suppressed.
The Sino-Japanese war indeed raises many crucial issues about East Asian history,
and I would encourage you to explore them further. Consider the following paradox, for
example: after its defeat by Japan, the Qing government of China sent thousands of
Chinese students to Japan for advanced study, to the very country that had committed
atrocities against it. In fact, the Qing began the foreign study program that has brought
you students to the U.S. today. Why did it do so? Because the Qing rulers realized that
China was backward and weak in the face of Western imperialism, and Japan had
mastered crucial aspects of industrial production, military organization, and technological
skill. Japan was much less alien to the Chinese than were the United States and Europe.
Japan had borrowed the Chinese writing system for its own language, and both countries
shared the common cultural heritages of Confucianism and Buddhism. The Chinese
students in Japan picked up many of the key concepts of Western industrial nations
through Japanese. Many of the most common Chinese modern political terms, like
“minzhuzhuyi,” (democracy), come from Japanese (minshushugi). But Japan had created
the term “minshu” from the classical Chinese terms for “people” (min) and “master
(zhu).” This is just one illustration to show that the Chinese and Japanese peoples have
been closely tied to each other for many centuries. The history of their relations cannot be
reduced simply to a story of atrocities. To do so violates the historian’s responsibility to
describe the entire truth of a complex relationship as best she can.
Ironically, Lu Xun, China’s greatest modern writer, faced a situation very similar
to ours. While in Japan 1905 to study medicine, he saw a lantern slide depicting a
Japanese soldier executing a Chinese “traitor.” Shocked by this brutality and by the
failure of his fellow Chinese to respond to it, he resolved to become a writer in order to
arouse his countrymen to resist oppression. His brilliant short stories and essays are not
melodramatic expressions of anti-Japanese hatred. They are deeply insightful, biting
comments on the character of the Chinese people themselves. Lu Xun turned his anger to
productive purposes, for which he deserves honor.
You have a great responsibility as leading participants in China’s future. China
faces huge challenges in its effort to become a wealthy, strong, democratic, and open
nation. You should study not only technical subjects but also the crucial questions of
social and historical change that will determine China’s future. There are many
outstanding faculty at MIT and other universities who will gladly support your goals.
Please open your minds to critical awareness of these most difficult questions in a spirit
of reasoned, open intellectual discourse, not one of narrow, self-centered indignation.
I wish you well,
Sincerely,
Peter C. Perdue
T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations
Professor of History
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