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authority in 1949). 76 This clash was clearly one of two autocratic personalities, and Wilson’s impatience with the pettifogging of the chapter was probably exacerbated by his own imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Japanese in Changi prison in Singapore a few years before. As a former bishop, he was also unused to being trammelled by a chapter. The impasse was only really eased by his departure to be Bishop of Birmingham in 1953, and his replacement by Herbert Arthur Jones. Under Jones, some aspects of
Singapore is a collective historic memory, namely, of the perpetration of massacres by the Japanese military police ( kempeitai ) in their ‘purge through purification’ ( suqing / 肃清 4 ) during the 1941–1945 occupation. In the popular consciousness this contributed to the perception of an overabundance of wandering and malevolent spirits that needed to be controlled. Thus, early in the Underworld tradition’s development, historical memory and fear of wandering spirits became a common, though perhaps subliminal, contributing factor behind the gradual rise to dominance of
point, in Chapter 2 I noted that the Japanese ‘purge through purification’ (1941–1945), where “Japanese massacres left the whole island 8 [and peninsular Malaysia] 9 littered, in the imagination of many Chinese, with countless unsatisfied ghosts” (Elliott, 1990 : 18), had the causative effect of creating a deep-rooted fear of ghosts, albeit subliminal, and a perceived need to control them. With Tua Di Ya Pek’s responsibilities including the capture and return of ghosts to the Underworld, I suggested that a collective historic memory of the massacres facilitated
Moving south to Johor State during Ghost Month, Chapter 8 focuses on the comparative importance of City God temples in Malaysia and the active role played by Anxi Chenghuangmiao in promoting the contemporary tradition. The first ethnography follows an elaborate salvation ritual at Muar City God temple, with particular attention paid to the influence of Mahayana Buddhism and Thai vernacular religion. The latter manifests in the use of Thai luk thep dolls appropriated to accommodate the souls of malicious foetus ghosts enlisted into the temple’s Underworld spirit army. As the Malaysian malicious foetus ghost is a reinvention both of vulnerable foetus spirits in Singapore and of foetus ghosts appropriated into Taiwan’s vernacular tradition from Japan, transnational cultural flows and the socio-political catalysts affecting them are introduced. Returning to community creation, the second ethnography focuses on an event titled ‘Anxi City God’s cultural exchange’. Bringing together ten pairs of Tua Di Ya Pek, one pair channelled from each Underworld court, discussions with them reveal perceptions of post-mortal cosmology in conflict with that of their Singaporean counterparts. The analysis therefore compares societal catalysts triggered by Singapore and Malaysia’s competing post-1965 political agendas to account for the divergences between the two Underworld traditions’ cosmological interpretations.
. The gentleman deified as the Fourth Court Pai Gu Pek was channelled for over thirty years by Lee Huck Chye at Tiandeyuan Xunyin Fu and has been channelled by him in Farlim’s Xunyin Miao since 2010. Prior to his death and deification in the Underworld, the gentleman lived in Penang but, as he looked and spoke Japanese, he was detained by police on suspicion of spying. Mistreated and underfed, he lost weight rapidly, his rib cage becoming clearly visible under his skin. Not long before Tua Ya Pek’s first exploits at the City God temple he was reported as missing from
branch of the LNU with 100 members; at the time of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 many boys were said to have been allowed to wear bomb-shaped badges inscribed ‘Refuse to Buy Japanese Goods’; collections were authorised by the Governors for the victims of the Sino-Japanese and the Spanish Civil wars.20 A teacher appointed to the school in 1934, J.E. De Courcey Ireland, a graduate of New College, Oxford, who became joint chair of the school’s LNU branch, was prominent in Manchester as a supporter (with his wife, Betty) of the victims of international events. In
Passions plunges directly into allusive poetry and images, leaving the reader to find her own bearings. However, in a Preface written for the Japanese edition in 1988, Irigaray offers some clues: Elemental Passions offers some fragments from a woman’s voyage as she goes in quest of her identity in love. It is no longer a man in quest of his Grail, his God, his path, his identity through the vicissitudes of his life’s journey, it is a woman. Between nature and culture, between night and day, between sun and stars, between vegetable and mineral, amongst men, amongst women
.31 During April 1937 its fifteen founder members were busy with open-air meetings, the canvassing of signatories and street sales of the PPU’s journal, Peace News.32 In November 1937 Cowan represented the group at a mass meeting in Stevenson Square organised by the Manchester Anti-War Council, the peace arm of the CPGB in Manchester, to protest against Japanese aggression in China, to press the government to adopt a less ‘accommodating’ attitude and to orchestrate a boycott of Japanese goods.33 By May 1938 an average of fifty copies of Peace News were being sold
temple’s destruction in 1560 as a part of a wider trade war waged by Sino-Japanese pirates ( wokou / 倭寇 ), and neither the temple nor its latter sixteenth-century statues came under threat again until the Second World War. Throughout its early history, as new administrative districts expanded from Fengcheng to encompass all of present-day Anxi County, the temple’s location remained consistent in the heart of Fengcheng’s administrative district on what is now Fumin Street. The temple contained ten City God statues, these being primary and vice statues for each
salvation ritual at Muar City God Temple, with particular attention paid to the influence of Mahayana Buddhism and Thai vernacular religion on Malaysia’s ritual and material culture. The latter manifests in the use of Thai luk thep dolls, appropriated to accommodate the souls of malicious foetus ghosts enlisted into the temple’s Underworld spirit army during Ghost Month. As the Malaysian malicious foetus ghost is a reinvention both of vulnerable foetus spirits described in Chapter 5 and of foetus ghosts appropriated into Taiwan’s vernacular tradition from Japan