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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

God's-eye and Person's-eye Views

For the most part, I present the information in this module, both the narrative and spatial material, from a god’s-eye perspective that is typical of most historical writing. Historians wade through copious amounts of material, much of it first or second-hand in its origin, in order to understand the past, but when they construct their narratives, they step back and observe from a considerable height, or distance, in order to put all of the pieces together. Although historians do not make claims of omniscience, they are external to the events that they study and are able to encompass a broader contextual range, although less immediate detail, than a participant could see. Readers should be aware that I have combined, condensed, and otherwise interpreted my sources in order to provide a cohesive, although not seamless, explanation of historical change. These points are true of the narrative pages as well as the maps contained therein, which invariably display a god’s-eye view that sees all but does so at a high degree of simplification that obscures—perhaps intentionally—the texture of the everyday, or the person’s-eye view.

The person’s-eye view is not completely absent from these pages, because it is the perspective of the everyday. It exists in the images of temples, in the descriptions of festivals, and in the actions of people and groups as they linked sacred and physical geographies in these spaces and celebrations. Readers are encouraged to not be limited by the god’s-eye view I have imposed upon the material, but to experience the content of this module more as the historical actors would have engaged with the city and its important sites. Walk from one temple to another, as one might do on a tour of Jilong in the past or present; visit only Buddhist temples, or only Taiwanese temples; observe only the festivals and follow the deities as they were carried through the city, to see the extent of their territorial cults. The person’s-eye view is fundamentally a part of the multiple pathways through this module.

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Sacred Geography: Constructions and Representations We cannot map sacred geography, nor can we see it from the god’s-eye view, bound as we are to the person’s-eye view, but there is no shortage of descriptions and representations of what it looks like and how it is organized. According to K.E. Brashier, late imperial Chinese constructed one zone of sacred geography—hell—as "a spectacle, as a display intended for public consumption.” The hell scrolls in this collection vividly depict the punishments meted out on those who misbehaved in their lives on earth, indicating that Chinese representations of sacred geography existed in part to encourage particular forms of behavior among the living. The scrolls also express a key feature of Chinese conceptions of sacred geography: it is a bureaucratic realm, in which deities hold hierarchically-arranged ranks and perform specific functions, like magistrates within the imperial bureaucracy. The paintings show deities as judges reviewing cases, and lesser divinities as functionaries carrying out punishments, mirroring the judicial system of imperial China. Japanese representations of hell, such as this scroll of the realm of the hungry ghosts, also depict an area of sacred geography as a place of suffering from which liberation through proper action is possible.

In both Chinese and Japanese conceptions of sacred geography, divine beings dwelt everywhere. For Japanese, kami imbued all elements of the natural, physical world, whereas for Chinese, certain ancestors retained a sort of numinous presence in the lives of their descendants. Both sets of divinities observed and influenced the day-to-day activities of human beings. Yet many had limited ranges of movement and activity. Kami also had specific links to particular physical locales, ancestral spirits paid attention only to their descendants, and the bureaucratic Chinese deities had specific functions and posts. Therefore, Chinese and Japanese placed boundaries upon sacred geography, and especially around its inhabitants.