Late Qing & The Last Emperor

> A note on what this is: an essay built on a single idea — that calligraphy is a portrait of the person who holds the brush — traced across the emperors and princes of the Qing dynasty. It begins with a scroll I saw in Shimonoseki, Japan, and ends with Kawashima Yoshiko’s father. Related pieces: [Li Hongzhang — The Scroll at Shimonoseki], [Prince Su (Shanqi) — The Qing Royal Who Chose Japan], [Kawashima Yoshiko], [Pujie and Saga Hiro —…

  This is a companion to [The tiny gold seal Japan nearly died to fetch], where we watched a “Son-of-Heaven system” hand out recognition at the edge of the world and let the periphery sort itself into a hierarchy for free. Here we watch the same machine run inside the palace walls. A hereditary slave could rise to become the mother of an emperor — the woman the drama Story of Yanxi Palace renders as Wei Yingluo was exactly such…

  **A note before we begin.** This is not a defense, and it is not an indictment. The Manchu–Mongol Independence Movement was inseparable from Japan’s expansion onto the Asian mainland; from China’s point of view, it was part of an invasion. I do not erase that context. What I want to do here is set the labels down for a moment — “traitor,” “spy,” “puppet” — and return four caricatures to being human beings caught in the collapse of an…

If you know Yoshiko Kawashima at all, you probably know her from Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor — the flamboyant “Eastern Jewel,” a spy in men’s clothing who supplies Empress Wanrong with opium. It is one of cinema’s most memorable villains. I was born in Matsumoto, in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. In Matsumoto, Yoshiko Kawashima is not a movie villain. She is a former local schoolgirl whose grave stands in a quiet temple on the edge of town, and whose memory…

> Late Qing Dynasty Series｜Emperors　The Xianfeng Emperor > Reigned 1851–1861 (10 years) · Born 1831 · Died 1861, age 31 > > ※ This article focuses on the financial and structural collapse of the Qing under the Xianfeng Emperor. For the emperor as a man — the rigged succession, his dependence on the future Cixi — see the companion piece [The Rise of Cixi: How a 25-Year-Old Concubine Came to Rule the Qing]. — “Income could no longer cover expenditure”…

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 had…

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…

> Part of the Late-Qing series. Reign 1820–1850. To most Western readers the Opium War is the story; this is the man inside it—the most legitimate emperor the Qing ever had, undone by the two virtues that no longer fit his age. — The Daoguang Emperor (1782–1850) was diligent, frugal, and a genuine reformer. He was also the only emperor in the entire Qing dynasty to inherit the throne as the legitimate firstborn son of the principal empress. And it…

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…

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…