Art Metropole

#16165

百姓 A HUNDRED SURNAMES: On reading Amino Yoshihiko and Marxist historical praxis

Writer

Steff Hui Ci Ling

Date

0000

Publisher

Hildegard Press

Format

Zines

Size

13 × 18 cm

Genre

Politics, Canadian, Asian Art & Artists

While learning Japanese, Steff Huì Cí Ling was advised to read about subjects she was already interested in. While doing this, she found a list of Japanese Marxists on Wikipedia and began with Amino Yoshihiko and his book Rethinking Japanese History.

Amino’s book, and Ling’s subsequent concerns, hinges around the translation of the term hyakushō from its Chinese characters: 百姓. While the term literally means “a hundred surnames,” it has commonly been translated as “farmers,” and in the context of Japan, refers to the (seemingly) fundamental practice of farming rice. Ling walks us through Amino’s idea that this mistranslation has reinforced a feudal, hierarchical structure to Japanese society, rather than show a Japan that has always been populated by the hyakushō as “common people,” representing a broad spectrum of jobs across social classes, who “were and are doing a lot of different things in order to get by.”

In 百姓 A HUNDRED SURNAMES, Steff Huì Cí Ling explores translation, Marxism, film and poetry, and the discipline and pitfalls of learning another language.