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Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics
BOOK
- GenresChinaHistoryNonfiction
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 31, 2013
Chinese Eunuchs by Taisuke Mitamura. Here, I have read another book which looks really interesting, and it turns out to be poorly written, poorly compiled and boring. Not a footnote to be seen so no idea where any of the information came from and no way to get more details. In one paragraph the author will be talking about the T'ang Dynasty and then suddenly leap to the Ching Dynasty. An emperor or empress may be referred to by their pre- royal name, their royal name or their placement in the lineage of royals- all within a couple of paragraphs. Broad, sweeping statements like: "'(Buddhists) claim that life and death, ...crime and punishment, happiness and virtue....are all in the hands of the Buddha.' This shows that (Buddhists) were not concerned with what might happen to them after death; life for them was an endless series of earthly pleasures. ...So people of T'ang indulged in worldly pleasures with religious fervor." There are so many questionable conclusions there that I don't even know where to start. Nothing is elaborated on. Even the topics of how eunuchs consummated marriages or had children, which are brought up, are not detailed. Did they really "pleasure" all the ladies of the Emperor's court? Or not? Who knows. You certainly won't find out from this book.
January 28, 2008
Here's what I took away from this book--
Stay far away from Hung pills!!!
The Way of Hung consisted of a secret formula for producing Hung pills, which were also known by a more euphemistic name (Hsien T'ien Tan Ch'ion). The menstrual discharges of beautiful maidens, thirteen or fourteen years old, were gathered in gold and silver vessels and transferred to a mortar, where wu mei shuei, a compote of smoked-half-ripe plums, was added. In such cases, maidens with course hair or throaty masculine voices or those who had been sick were carefully avoided. The strange concoction was then dried seven times and finally heated after adding powdered milk, cinnabar, imported pine resin, and dried and powdered human waste....
[T]he Emperor's addiction to Hung pills had ill and far-reaching effects. For instance, Emperor Mu Tsung, his successor, became a regular user of the pills at the advice of the eunuchs and, as a result, let his genius run to waste. Emperor T'ai Ch'ang, in whom the people placed great hope, died the same night he took these pills during an illness.
--Chinese Eunuchs by Taisuke Mitamura, pp. 120-122
Stay far away from Hung pills!!!
The Way of Hung consisted of a secret formula for producing Hung pills, which were also known by a more euphemistic name (Hsien T'ien Tan Ch'ion). The menstrual discharges of beautiful maidens, thirteen or fourteen years old, were gathered in gold and silver vessels and transferred to a mortar, where wu mei shuei, a compote of smoked-half-ripe plums, was added. In such cases, maidens with course hair or throaty masculine voices or those who had been sick were carefully avoided. The strange concoction was then dried seven times and finally heated after adding powdered milk, cinnabar, imported pine resin, and dried and powdered human waste....
[T]he Emperor's addiction to Hung pills had ill and far-reaching effects. For instance, Emperor Mu Tsung, his successor, became a regular user of the pills at the advice of the eunuchs and, as a result, let his genius run to waste. Emperor T'ai Ch'ang, in whom the people placed great hope, died the same night he took these pills during an illness.
--Chinese Eunuchs by Taisuke Mitamura, pp. 120-122
July 23, 2016
The book provides an insight to a community where 'the third gender' had more than a passing influence. While it cited examples of influential eunuchs, more often than not, these people are the instigator of important conflicts in the Chinese dynasty.
(On a separate note, when I brought the topic of eunuchs to some of the older Chinese generation for discussion purpose, it seems that the common view is that they are an unsavory group responsible over the dirty politics in the Chinese court of old. This book reflects that view.)
The author described the eunuchs' motivations, their struggle to get the position, the sacrifices, and the fact that not everyone succeeded. He elaborated the different level in the eunuch's community itself, close-knit as it might be. He brought forward the close relationship the royal families had with the eunuchs, just because of who they are, and subsequently, their rise to power as well as their decline.
The book explains the eunuch's community as a whole, but with more focus on the ones living in the castle. Corruption was rampant, though there are also anecdotes of the eunuch supporting the country in its time of needs.
As an introduction to the eunuch system, it's a nice book to read. To get more than a mere overview, I think more resources will be needed, particularly one that is written more recently and free from personal bias.
(On a separate note, when I brought the topic of eunuchs to some of the older Chinese generation for discussion purpose, it seems that the common view is that they are an unsavory group responsible over the dirty politics in the Chinese court of old. This book reflects that view.)
The author described the eunuchs' motivations, their struggle to get the position, the sacrifices, and the fact that not everyone succeeded. He elaborated the different level in the eunuch's community itself, close-knit as it might be. He brought forward the close relationship the royal families had with the eunuchs, just because of who they are, and subsequently, their rise to power as well as their decline.
The book explains the eunuch's community as a whole, but with more focus on the ones living in the castle. Corruption was rampant, though there are also anecdotes of the eunuch supporting the country in its time of needs.
As an introduction to the eunuch system, it's a nice book to read. To get more than a mere overview, I think more resources will be needed, particularly one that is written more recently and free from personal bias.
November 1, 2019
As others have mentioned, this book is rather poorly written. I understand it is a book about Chinese Eunuchs, written in Japanese and then translated into English, but that has little to do with it. First of all, many things are asserted (including that genitals can grow back on eunuchs once they've been cut off) without sources or footnotes of any kind. The spelling of Chinese names and words is a hodgepodge (Guangdong, or 廣東, is spelled as Kuang tung, Kwangtung, Canton or Kwangung, although I'm pretty sure the last one was a typo. Also, T'ien An Gate rather than Tiananmen seems odd, although I guess it was written before Tiananmen became well-known). I feel like the translator should have been able to standardize these, preferably to Pinyin (most spellings are Wade-Giles, or variations thereof. none are pinyin).
And, once again as other commenters have mentioned, it jumps around, often hitting on subjects that have nothing to do with eunuchs, without ever really tying these subjects together.
Also, he claims that Japan never had eunuchs because they didn't conquer any other countries (uhm...). However, Korea had eunuchs, so there goes that argument.
2 stars, because there were some interesting tidbits interspersed throughout.
And, once again as other commenters have mentioned, it jumps around, often hitting on subjects that have nothing to do with eunuchs, without ever really tying these subjects together.
Also, he claims that Japan never had eunuchs because they didn't conquer any other countries (uhm...). However, Korea had eunuchs, so there goes that argument.
2 stars, because there were some interesting tidbits interspersed throughout.
August 20, 2012
I worked in Kepler's Bookstore when I bought this book in 1988. It was hardcover, bound with real boards and beautiful real purple silk fabric with lovely end papers and sold for $3.75. It was published in 1970 and I figured had been sitting in the store all that time with such a low price on it. It was lonely and a work of art in it's manufacture so I scooped it up.
The story itself is rather shocking and inhumane but not unreadable.
It simply tells how things were in a barbaric time. I hope we never see the likes of it again.
The story itself is rather shocking and inhumane but not unreadable.
It simply tells how things were in a barbaric time. I hope we never see the likes of it again.
May 22, 2009
Very interesting. It is amazing to learn about the extremes people go to for the chance of power and influence.
January 27, 2014
Badly written, and of devastating quality that I was on the verge of sending this book flying. The bitter taste of burning my money to ashes for this.
Taisuke Mitamura seemed like forgetting that he was actually writing about eunuchs, and kept on rambling off topic: dispensable topics on 122 wives, the marriage system, fearsome wives, women jealousy, foot-binding practice— exemption to this since I was actually feeling enlightened by the origin of this particular diabolic, inhumane custom. I read Lisa See's 'Moon Flower and the Secret Fan' chiefly because it centred on this practice, or so they called the dwarfed feet as the 'golden lilies'. Perhaps Mitamura had also been henpecked by his wife that he felt the need to vent his anger through his book, by venturing out aforementioned topics, sensing the peculiar similarity the ancient emperors had on regards of fearing their wives? Who knows. Mitamura might also have wrongly assumed that the readers must have attained some prior knowledge on China dynasties, which resulted in the random mentioning of different dynasties in one topic to another without being explained of its chronological order first. I was extremely confused that I needed to google and study them.
It still is funny though, to think of how the Emperors kept thousands concubines in his seraglio and had to make up his mind which woman to devour every night. Statistically put, one concubine—if Heaven's generous enough— is able to share the bed with the mighty Emperor once in every 3 years time, given the seraglio has 1000 inhabitants. Granted more than that, misery shall be the concubine's greatest company. And it is even way funnier that one of the eunuch's duty was to stay outside the Emperor's chamber during his supposedly intimate night with his chosen woman, and shouted , "Time's up!", 3 times max, and then this bad-assed eunuch would just stormed into the chamber and took the poor concubine out. Damn this timekeeper, this duty of his made me rolling, bursting my lung out with hardcore laughs.
The barbaric practice of castrating and emasculating the entire penis evoked some gruesome images, which reminded me of the similarly and equally savage, yet still is practiced in modern day context: female genital mutilation. I do not get why did these people think chopping the entire reproductive organs as an acceptable practice. I tried to imagine how did the eunuchs pee, but my imaginations took me to some wild, incomprehensible lands. Oft times, I pictured the eunuchs running, while the yellowish liquid streamed down their pants involuntarily, like untapped water. Tsk.
And of course the fun parts did not only stop there. The eunuchs kept their chomped penis! What a revelation! It was named as 'pao', or treasure—if severed penis is called treasure, the still intact penis must have been called as the divine gift from Heaven, pun intended— and 'pao' was then placed on a high shelf, or 'kao sheng'. 'Kao sheng' was symbolic of attaining a high position, particularly due to the primary reason of becoming an eunuch was as to achieve upward mobility in economic, political and social ladder. Usually 'pao' would be needed as a castration proof before an eunuch was granted a rank. If he did not have his own, he could either buy it from the specialist who performed the process, borrow from friends (yes, friends), or rent it (yes, rent).
"Hey, do you have a penis I could possibly borrow or rent?"
Just when I thought that life could not be more amusing, I was proven gravely wrong.
Taisuke Mitamura seemed like forgetting that he was actually writing about eunuchs, and kept on rambling off topic: dispensable topics on 122 wives, the marriage system, fearsome wives, women jealousy, foot-binding practice— exemption to this since I was actually feeling enlightened by the origin of this particular diabolic, inhumane custom. I read Lisa See's 'Moon Flower and the Secret Fan' chiefly because it centred on this practice, or so they called the dwarfed feet as the 'golden lilies'. Perhaps Mitamura had also been henpecked by his wife that he felt the need to vent his anger through his book, by venturing out aforementioned topics, sensing the peculiar similarity the ancient emperors had on regards of fearing their wives? Who knows. Mitamura might also have wrongly assumed that the readers must have attained some prior knowledge on China dynasties, which resulted in the random mentioning of different dynasties in one topic to another without being explained of its chronological order first. I was extremely confused that I needed to google and study them.
It still is funny though, to think of how the Emperors kept thousands concubines in his seraglio and had to make up his mind which woman to devour every night. Statistically put, one concubine—if Heaven's generous enough— is able to share the bed with the mighty Emperor once in every 3 years time, given the seraglio has 1000 inhabitants. Granted more than that, misery shall be the concubine's greatest company. And it is even way funnier that one of the eunuch's duty was to stay outside the Emperor's chamber during his supposedly intimate night with his chosen woman, and shouted , "Time's up!", 3 times max, and then this bad-assed eunuch would just stormed into the chamber and took the poor concubine out. Damn this timekeeper, this duty of his made me rolling, bursting my lung out with hardcore laughs.
The barbaric practice of castrating and emasculating the entire penis evoked some gruesome images, which reminded me of the similarly and equally savage, yet still is practiced in modern day context: female genital mutilation. I do not get why did these people think chopping the entire reproductive organs as an acceptable practice. I tried to imagine how did the eunuchs pee, but my imaginations took me to some wild, incomprehensible lands. Oft times, I pictured the eunuchs running, while the yellowish liquid streamed down their pants involuntarily, like untapped water. Tsk.
And of course the fun parts did not only stop there. The eunuchs kept their chomped penis! What a revelation! It was named as 'pao', or treasure—if severed penis is called treasure, the still intact penis must have been called as the divine gift from Heaven, pun intended— and 'pao' was then placed on a high shelf, or 'kao sheng'. 'Kao sheng' was symbolic of attaining a high position, particularly due to the primary reason of becoming an eunuch was as to achieve upward mobility in economic, political and social ladder. Usually 'pao' would be needed as a castration proof before an eunuch was granted a rank. If he did not have his own, he could either buy it from the specialist who performed the process, borrow from friends (yes, friends), or rent it (yes, rent).
"Hey, do you have a penis I could possibly borrow or rent?"
Just when I thought that life could not be more amusing, I was proven gravely wrong.
July 28, 2014
This book provides some interesting insight into the political motivations of becoming a eunuch, explaining how this mystifying concept came to play a major role in Chinese history. Still the book is poorly written. The author, Mitamura, makes odd pronouncements, clearly related to his own personal opinion, yet he doesn't explain why he said it (I.e., "... trusted men often turn out to be villains") almost assuming we, as the readers, already know the "common knowledge" to which he refers, which we don't. His views of the world are also influenced his era (1970) so his less than enlightened view about homosexuality, for example, was expressed very offensively, by today's standards. He often rambled on about issues that were totally unrelated to eunuchs, and often threw out factoids, as if he wanted to share something "interesting" and even though this book didn't fit that fact, so we were going to read about it anyway. This book provided some knowledge to help explain this bizarre phenomena, but really wasn't well written. Read it if you want to learn about the subject, but don't expect to be impressed with the book's style or historiography.
August 10, 2016
I rather enjoyed reading this book as I don't have a clue about eunuch or Chinese history in general. But there were many flaws with this book.
One big thing was that the writer so often talked about other things besides eunuch. The title was grossly misleading. Secondly, the writer wrote this book mainly for Japanese readers, so there were many comparison with Japanese culture and knowledge, which didn't make any sense for people without Japanese culture background. And thirdly, there are many pinyin that were not translated (I guess they were originally written in Kanji, which the Japanese reader would recognized the meaning straight away), but they were just blabbers for me (I also suspected that the pinyin was not standard).
One big thing was that the writer so often talked about other things besides eunuch. The title was grossly misleading. Secondly, the writer wrote this book mainly for Japanese readers, so there were many comparison with Japanese culture and knowledge, which didn't make any sense for people without Japanese culture background. And thirdly, there are many pinyin that were not translated (I guess they were originally written in Kanji, which the Japanese reader would recognized the meaning straight away), but they were just blabbers for me (I also suspected that the pinyin was not standard).
August 24, 2013
Possibly the most hateful eunuch book ever. Author has some interesting thoughts on why Japan (unlike her neighbors Korea and China) did not have a eunuch tradition, but as this takes up less than a page it comes nowhere near validating the book.
April 3, 2016
1 1/2 stars.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews