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Poetry, History, Memory: Wang Jingwei and China in Dark Times
Wang Jingwei, poet and politician, patriot and traitor, has always been a figure of major academic and popular interest. Until now, his story has never been properly told, let alone critically investigated. The significance of his biography is evident from an ongoing war on cultural modern mainland China prohibits serious academic research on wartime collaboration in general, and on Wang Jingwei in particular. At this critical juncture, when the recollection of World War II is fading from living memory and transforming into historical memory, this knowledge embargo will undoubtedly affect how China remembers its anti-fascist role in WWII. In Poetry, History, Wang Jingwei and China in Dark Times , Zhiyi Yang brings us a long overdue reexamination of Wang’s impact on cultural memory of WWII in China.
In this book, Yang brings disparate methodologies into a fruitful dialogue, including sophisticated methods of poetic interpretation. The author argues that Wang’s lyric poetry, as the public performance of a private voice, played a central role in constructing his political identity and heavily influenced the public’s posthumous memory of him. Drawing on archives (in the PRC, Taiwan, Japan, the USA, France, and Germany), memoires, historical journals, newspapers, interviews, and other scholarly works, this book offers the first biography of Wang that addresses his political, literary, and personal life in a critical light and with sympathetic impartiality.
In this book, Yang brings disparate methodologies into a fruitful dialogue, including sophisticated methods of poetic interpretation. The author argues that Wang’s lyric poetry, as the public performance of a private voice, played a central role in constructing his political identity and heavily influenced the public’s posthumous memory of him. Drawing on archives (in the PRC, Taiwan, Japan, the USA, France, and Germany), memoires, historical journals, newspapers, interviews, and other scholarly works, this book offers the first biography of Wang that addresses his political, literary, and personal life in a critical light and with sympathetic impartiality.
350 pages, Hardcover
Published November 2, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 15, 2024
國慶假期期間，每逢深夜，便窩在書桌前閱讀楊治宜教授的新作《汪精衛與中國的黑暗時代》。今日凌晨五點，當我讀完這本著作，合上這本書，在昏暗的燈光下，不免哀嘆文人政客的天真無邪。抗戰勝利後，汪病逝後在梅花山的墳墓被蔣炸毀，其遺體遭挫骨揚灰，不知其所蹤。歷史以「懲罰性遺忘」之罪罰審判其「大逆不道」的「叛國惡行」，誰都一口咬定他是不可饒恕的惡人，誰都不願相信他與日本以「和平運動」為名的戰時合作運動是為了反抗蔣的「焦土」政策⋯葉嘉瑩先生回憶，如果沒有汪在南京組建合作政府，沒有人會為遭遇大屠殺劫難後的南京人民說話，淪陷區的人民將處於危在旦夕的境地。戰勝者擁有書寫歷史的權力，是「愛國者」抑或是「叛國者」，這皆取決於勝利者如何定義。汪的老夥伴、南京政府重組時委託其代理「宣傳部長」的「同志」不會贊同他的所作所為，故他被歷史塵封，成為不能談及的禁忌。
January 11, 2026
‘No tragic figure is a simple hero or villain’, which holds very true for Wang Jingwei. This book provides a much needed nuanced perspective on Wang and collaboration with the enemy, done through a very interesting analysis of his poetry. Especially in chapter 6, where building on iris chang’s ‘the rape of Nanking’, Yang adds a very relevant and often overlooked perspective to this piece of history
December 29, 2025
意猶未盡，齒頰生香。
January 30, 2025
Fascinating discourse on a controversial historical figure and his (excellent) poetry. As food for thought, this is a 5/5.
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For nearly every form of expression, whether political (speeches, debates, op-eds) or artistic (novels, plays, documentaries etc), we have learnt to be cautious of underlying agendas and intended effects. And yet classical Chinese poetry largely escapes this skepticism, thanks to the deep tradition of 诗言志, where the poet and the lyric “I” portrayed in their poetry are seen as one and the same.
Sympathizers and critics of Wang both use their existing judgment of the person to interpret his writing. The very same poem can be read as evidence for martyrdom or treachery, respectively, and taken as self-evident either way. Such circular reasoning is blindingly obvious, now that Yang laoshi has pointed it out. “A poem is a palimpsest, painstakingly written and rewritten, and a composite text of various forms of memory.” Yang ls draws attention to the performative aspect of WJW’s poetry. For eg,《舟夜》was dated differently in publications for a Chinese and for a Japanese audience. Sincere or otherwise, his poems were meant to portray a subjective image and deliver a message.
————————————————
All that aside, reading his beautiful, consistently idealistic poetry*, I couldn’t help sighing at Wang Jingwei’s Luciferian fall from grace.
生慚鄭國延韓命
死羨汪錡作魯殤
“Had he died in 1910, he would have already gone down in history as another Jing Ke. Instead, he is alive, graying, and the object of patriotic anger. For him, life and death are equally unenviable.”
In recent years, I’ve developed a fascination with China’s Republican era. So much turbulence -- best of times, worst of times, age of wisdom, age of foolishness. People experimented with and moved fluidly between ideologies. Friends could hold starkly different views and, well, remained friends all the way to the very end, after their paths had diverged so much. People glorified by the official historical narrative wrote grief-stricken eulogies for those subject to damnatio memoriae. People championing language reform, to whom “不用典” was rule #1, had endearing exchanges with their friends, who were very into the 典s. Hu Shih crossed path with Wu Chien-Shiung extensively (the random things I learned from 话剧九人).
100 years later, how will the tides of history churn this time?
————————————————
This is the best thing I’ve read recently. Still, I have some minor-ish gripes:
- The English translation for the poems can be better (granted, translating this stuff is very hard).
- The sections on history are at once too verbose and not clear enough. I enjoyed the sections on literature analysis quite a bit more.
- The language is a tad stilted and academese at times.
- The sections of the book can feel a little disjointed, like a collection of academic papers on Wang Jingwei as opposed to a coherent whole (I didn’t mind, though). The epilogue on damnatio memoriae deserves its own section.
————————————————
(*) Also looking at his sad, expressive eyes. “Superficial charm charms just as well.” Amen.
————————————————
For nearly every form of expression, whether political (speeches, debates, op-eds) or artistic (novels, plays, documentaries etc), we have learnt to be cautious of underlying agendas and intended effects. And yet classical Chinese poetry largely escapes this skepticism, thanks to the deep tradition of 诗言志, where the poet and the lyric “I” portrayed in their poetry are seen as one and the same.
Sympathizers and critics of Wang both use their existing judgment of the person to interpret his writing. The very same poem can be read as evidence for martyrdom or treachery, respectively, and taken as self-evident either way. Such circular reasoning is blindingly obvious, now that Yang laoshi has pointed it out. “A poem is a palimpsest, painstakingly written and rewritten, and a composite text of various forms of memory.” Yang ls draws attention to the performative aspect of WJW’s poetry. For eg,《舟夜》was dated differently in publications for a Chinese and for a Japanese audience. Sincere or otherwise, his poems were meant to portray a subjective image and deliver a message.
————————————————
All that aside, reading his beautiful, consistently idealistic poetry*, I couldn’t help sighing at Wang Jingwei’s Luciferian fall from grace.
生慚鄭國延韓命
死羨汪錡作魯殤
“Had he died in 1910, he would have already gone down in history as another Jing Ke. Instead, he is alive, graying, and the object of patriotic anger. For him, life and death are equally unenviable.”
In recent years, I’ve developed a fascination with China’s Republican era. So much turbulence -- best of times, worst of times, age of wisdom, age of foolishness. People experimented with and moved fluidly between ideologies. Friends could hold starkly different views and, well, remained friends all the way to the very end, after their paths had diverged so much. People glorified by the official historical narrative wrote grief-stricken eulogies for those subject to damnatio memoriae. People championing language reform, to whom “不用典” was rule #1, had endearing exchanges with their friends, who were very into the 典s. Hu Shih crossed path with Wu Chien-Shiung extensively (the random things I learned from 话剧九人).
100 years later, how will the tides of history churn this time?
————————————————
This is the best thing I’ve read recently. Still, I have some minor-ish gripes:
- The English translation for the poems can be better (granted, translating this stuff is very hard).
- The sections on history are at once too verbose and not clear enough. I enjoyed the sections on literature analysis quite a bit more.
- The language is a tad stilted and academese at times.
- The sections of the book can feel a little disjointed, like a collection of academic papers on Wang Jingwei as opposed to a coherent whole (I didn’t mind, though). The epilogue on damnatio memoriae deserves its own section.
————————————————
(*) Also looking at his sad, expressive eyes. “Superficial charm charms just as well.” Amen.
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October 29, 2025Pure fascination beyond words. Thank you Prof. Yang for shedding lights on one of the most intriguing figures in modern Chinese history, and for taking great personal risks while doing so.
This is the story about how one man went from one of the youngest accomplished revolutionary, a "co-founder" of the modern Chinese Republic, a man with pristine moral ideal
to head of a collaboration regime with war-time Japanese government,
and now with his name engraved with worst possible connotations in both China mainland and Taiwan.
Life is higher than drama.
This is the story about how one man went from one of the youngest accomplished revolutionary, a "co-founder" of the modern Chinese Republic, a man with pristine moral ideal
to head of a collaboration regime with war-time Japanese government,
and now with his name engraved with worst possible connotations in both China mainland and Taiwan.
Life is higher than drama.
February 23, 2024
This is excellent - great survey, historically and regarding literature - of a fascinating historical figure.
August 18, 2025
这种书真是大开眼界。强烈推荐。25-44
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews