60ty's strolling

## Prologue — A 25-Year-Old at Chengde In the summer of 1861, the Xianfeng Emperor died at the imperial Mountain Resort at Chengde — the hunting retreat beyond the Great Wall, then called Rehe (Jehol), where the court had fled. He was thirty. He left behind a five-year-old heir and a single Noble Consort, twenty-five years old: the woman remembered as Cixi. Within a few months she had helped engineer a palace coup, swept aside the regents her dying husband…

Wanrong — The Last Empress of China, Part II *From the Flower of Tianjin to the Deposed Empress of Manchukuo — The Cage Called “Empress”* by Satoe | 還暦散歩 (Kanreki Sanpo) — Late Qing Dynasty Series *This article is a continuation of “Wanrong — The Last Empress of China, Part I: From the Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan to the Forbidden City.”* I. Wandering — From the Royal Mansion to the German Legation, and On to Japan After Leaving the…

A Bodhisattva from the Northern Qi Dynasty Visiting the Tokyo National Museum — Oriental Gallery, Room 1 I recently visited the Oriental Gallery at the Tokyo National Museum — and it was wonderful! The moment I stepped into Room 1 on the first floor, a single statue caught my eye: a Standing Bodhisattva, created in Shanxi Province, China, in 552 CE during the Northern Qi dynasty. That predates even the beginning of Japan’s Asuka period. It is a piece from…

HOW TO READ BUDDHIST STATUES IN JAPAN  |  Part 1 What Are All These Buddhist Statues Doing? A Beginner’s Guide for Travelers to Japan You may have seen it already — perhaps in a photo before your trip, or on a postcard at the airport: the Great Buddha of Kamakura, sitting serenely in the open air, one hand raised with the palm facing outward. It is one of the most iconic images in Japan. But what is that hand gesture…

Introduction: A System Without a Face A puppet emperor is easy to blame. But what if there was no one pulling the strings? Manchukuo was not simply controlled. It was designed so that control itself could not be traced. There is a Japanese saying: “The lighter the portable shrine, the better.” A mikoshi is meant to be carried — and, if necessary, abandoned. The carriers disappear into the crowd. This was not just a metaphor. It was a governing logic.…

Late Qing Dynasty Series | Emperors The Daoguang Emperor The Opium War and the Fatal Succession Decision How Choosing an Heir for “Virtue and Filial Piety” — Not Ability — Sealed the Qing Dynasty’s Fate Reign: 1820–1850 (30 years)  |  Born: 1782  |  Died: 1850 (age 68) The Daoguang Emperor inherited from his father, the Jiaqing Emperor, a deep commitment to preserving the old ways. But he compounded that inheritance with one fatally consequential decision of his own: he chose…

The Shadows of Manchukuo: What Really Happened Behind the Puppet Emperor Puyi “A Mikoshi Should Be Light” — The Hidden Architecture of Manchukuo’s Founding Introduction — A Structure of Power Unique to Japan There is a Japanese saying: “A mikoshi should be light.” A mikoshi is the portable Shinto shrine that crowds hoist onto their shoulders and carry through the streets during a festival. A light one is easy to carry — and if something goes wrong, you can simply…

Consort Wenxiu: The Woman the Last Emperor Chose—and Was Forced to Give Up Aisin-Gioro Puyi Series | Late Qing Dynasty Erdet Wenxiu (December 20, 1909 – September 17, 1953) From the blog 還暦散歩 (Kanreki Sanpo) by Saorin The 1987 film The Last Emperor is widely celebrated as a masterpiece—but it left out one remarkable story. Puyi, China’s last emperor, actually chose his own empress. And the people around him refused to let that choice stand. Wenxiu was the woman Puyi…

Wei Liao: The Strategist Behind China’s First Emperor Covert Operations, Economic Power, and the Unification of China — 2,300 Years Ago Most Americans who know Chinese strategic thought have heard of Sun Tzu. His Art of War sits on bookshelves from military academies to corporate boardrooms. But there is another strategist from the same era who deserves far more attention in the West — a man named Wei Liao (尉纐, pronounced roughly “Way Leo”), who served Qin Shi Huang, China’s…

Wanrong — The Last Empress of China, Part I From the Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan to the Forbidden City by Satoe  |  還暦散歩 (Kanreki Sanpo) — Late Qing Dynasty Series I. The Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan A Family Among the Eight Banners The Gūwalgiya clan — the family into which Wanrong was born — was a distinguished Manchu family that had earned its place among the Eight Banners through military service during the Qing conquest of China. The…

Late Qing Dynasty Series  |  The Prince Su Family Prince Su Shanqi A Qing Prince, a Japanese Samurai’s Son, and the Dream That Outlasted an Empire In 1900, as allied Western forces threatened to shell the Forbidden City, a single Japanese man talked them out of it — in Chinese. His name was Kawashima Naniwa, and he was the son of a former samurai from a small Japanese castle town called Matsumoto. A year later, that same man became the…

The Fengshan Ritual: China’s Supreme Ceremony of Heaven and Earth Only the Son of Heaven Could Perform It — From the First Emperor to the Song Dynasty A Hierarchy of the Sacred: Who Could Worship What To a reader shaped by Christianity or other Western religious traditions, this may seem deeply strange. In those traditions, prayer is available to everyone — the poorest farmer and the most powerful king kneel before the same God, and no earthly rank determines one’s…