Rewriting East Asia: No Victors, No Vanquished

Summary

During the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Göring wrote in the margins of his indictment “Der Sieger wird immer der Richter und der Besiegte stets der Angeklagte sein,” which roughly translates to “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.” Göring was found guilty of war crimes and would die in April 1946 from an apparent suicide by cyanide poisoning the very night he was scheduled for execution. In line with his observation that history is written by winners, Göring would go down as the overweight, evil Nazi leader who died a mysterious death. In an interview conducted sixty-seven years after Göring's death, his great-niece would give a different picture: that on the other side of the murderer, his great-uncle resembled “a big child” and was “a family person” who was “nice, and charming, and incredibly caretaking.” Certainly, this does not erase the brutal crimes Göring committed but it sheds light on a small square that nonetheless completes the tapestry of his life. It further evidences, in a way, that history does not necessarily have to be a narrative of victors – if we look beyond general accounts and consider alternative accounts supported by non-official sources. This is exhibited by the pursuits of the Confucian scholars, Japanese Buddhist monks, Eastern Han local governors, Chinese coolies, Shanghainese tailors, Macau joss-stick makers, Hong Kong locals, and Cantonese working-class musician featured in this edited volume. With the idea that history can be retold in multiple ways from varying perspectives depending on the sources selected, approaches adopted, arguments shaped, and unique circumstances authors and historians face, this collection demonstrates from an East Asian context that regardless of time period, alternative narratives can be boundlessly constructed and marginal voices recovered when we journey beyond official archives. Some have left subtle and ambiguous marks in misplaced texts or stele while others, specks in archival documents and census data, are absent in general narratives. This edited volume carves space for voices and experiences recovered from the margins that make us think twice about historical events and developments we thought we knew all too well about early China's networks, medieval Japanese interactions with Chinese culture, Western encounters in British Hong Kong, postwar Chinese diaspora, and heritage preservation in contemporary Macau.