Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

The peasant’s view of military life is far more interesting to me than the cultured opining of the old Zhou Chinese elite. The abstract philosophy of war may be appealing to certain philosophers, but to get a thorough understanding of how war was waged one must look to the common warriors’ accounts. The last poem from the Book of Songs presented on page 13 of the sourcebook asks a series of rhetorical questions whose implied answers flesh out the nature of ancient war in China. I will present an annotated parallel version of the poem which presents the rhetorical answers:

Which plant is not yellow?
All plants are green.
Which day don’t we match?
We march every day.
Which man does not go
We have all been conscripted
to bring peace to the 4 quarters.
to conquer and enslave our neighbors.

Which plant is not brown?
All plants are green.
Which man is not sad?
We are all sad.
Have pity on us soldiers,
treated as though we were not men.

One could also look a little beyond the literal responses and note the apparent progression through the summer to the end of the hot dry season. Imagine looking out over the fields and asking yourself about the color of plants. At the start of war, the plants are yellowed but still alive, indicating that the common soldiers are not entirely happy with their forced service, but tolerating it. Then the plants, and the men, wither and sustain losses. The soldiers are sad, and want to return home, but they are only treated as so many little grasslings herded en masse to their deaths.

The last stanza seems to reflect fatalism on the part of the men:

A thick-furred fox
scurries through the dark grass.
Our loaded carts
proceed along the Zhou road.

There is a contrast between the fox that lurks and slinks through the grass along the road, and their heavily loaded caravan. Tied to the official army, these common men are unable to range freely and engage the enemy at will. They are vulnerable to surprise attacks from hidden positions and other unknown evils. Above all, the agrarian imagery and metaphor indicates their desire to return home, to symbols and habits that are familiar, and throw off the chains of war.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 11:09 pm and is tagged with chinese elite, dark grass, abstract philosophy, war in china, ancient war, parallel version, ancient china, rhetorical questions, military life, sourcebook, stanza, peasant, philosophers, caravan, warriors, flesh, poem, quarters, neighbors, deaths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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