The massacres are rarely mentioned at any length in most modern books I read recounting the origins of the Second World War,
... it is common to hear that by 1941 the U.S. had backed Japan into a corner leaving Japan no choice but humiliation or war ...
or by my students, when they enumerate the causes of American entry into the Second World War, but rising American determination to stop Japanese aggression in Chine spiked sharply when news of the massacres reached the United States. It is more common than it used to be to hear that by 1941 the U.S. had backed Japan into a corner, leaving Japan no choice but humiliation or war, and it’s much less common than it used to be to hear about what moved American opinion to push Japan so hard. Japanese rightists explain government-backed Chinese interest in the Rape of Nanking as a cynical excuse for mobilizing nationalist sentiment. This may be true, but Japanese inability to face the fairly recent past is at least as remarkable as widespread Chinese interest in a crime of such magnitude. What is more remarkable yet is that although the numbers murdered in Nanking may be the equivalent of three or four Hiroshima bombings, no phrasemakers describe the horrors of the twentieth century as those of “the age of Auschwitz and Nanking.” “Auschwitz and Hiroshima,” however, has become a familiar yoking of crimes. The politics of historical memory has in recent decades been a popular topic in my profession. Oddly enough, the people who profess the greatest interest in it seem likeliest to have the most imprecise and wispy memories of the Rape of Nanking.
I see Cate Blanchett will be playing Elizabeth I again in the upcoming Elizabeth, The Golden Age. This comes on the heels of Helen Mirren's HBO series and Showtime's series, "The Tudors," which is actually about Henry VIII, Elizabeth's father.
I haven't seen either of those shows, but will probably do so eventually--though I've got to say that the guy playing Henry VIII looks a little too lean and dark for the part. (This review says the actor is better suited to play "a scheming courtier or pining poet than an extroverted royal peacock.") But I do like me some Tudors, especially Elizabeth.
I saw Blanchett's first Elizabeth film and liked it very much. It wasn't exactly historically accurate, but that doesn't bother me overmuch. Elizabeth was such a fascinating character that I always find it interesting to see how others view her. Though I hold no truck with those who sympathize with Mary, Queen of Scotts. Mary Stuart was a royal pain in the ass and Elizabeth allowed her to stick around for far too long. The new movie, I see, will touch on that. Here's the trailer:
And here, just for kicks, is a rundown of movies about Elizabeth with pictures.
As it happens, I'm enjoying an Elizabethan renaissance myself. I've been watching "Elizabeth R," the BBC series starring Glenda Jackson, who really embodies Elizabeth--in my humble opinion. I first watched the series a gazillion years ago when it first aired on "Masterpiece Theater." I loved it then and kind of wondered how it held up. It did. Jackson is superb, as is the supporting cast, the costumes are terrific and the makeup is great. Here are some photos of Jackson being made up as Elizabeth.
I'm also reading Paul Johnson's book, Elizabeth I: A Study in Power and Intellect, which was published in 1974 before, I think, Johnson became famous over here. It's not really an authoritative biography-Johnson skips around a lot, which can get kind of confusing--but I'm enjoying it. I like Johnson's brisk style. And I like that he quotes a lot from primary sources. He portrays Elizabeth as a conservative who, though desperate for cash, was reluctant to raise money through taxes.
It was not a method of raising money she exploited but rather, to her mind, a monarchical privilege which was to be used sparingly. Direct taxation cost her popularity, and employing it had therefore to be balanced against the necessity to furnish the Exchequer. She was as reluctant to raise money as to spend it. Whenever possible, she turned to other methods. ... In 1591 there was a more bizarre effort: negotiations with Edward Kelly, a medium ... [who] had been experimenting in the transmutation of base metal into gold ... ELizabeth was skepical of Kelly's powers, but determined, if they existed, that they should be used in the service of England ...
If sometimes, as Ralegh complained, she underfinanced her war policies, she maintained political solidarity and economic expansion by keeping the English the lowest-taxed nation in Europe, a fact to which Bacon paid tribute: 'He that shall look into other countries and consider the taxes, and tallages, and impositions, and assizes and the like that are everywhere in use, will find that the Englishman is most master of his own valuation and the least bitten in purse of any nation in Europe.'
But Elizabeth was no neocon; she didn't seek out war, but was forced into it by circumstances, as when she--after much prodding by her advisors--sent then-favorite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester to the low countries to defend Protestant interests. War could be very expensive.
Even by the somewhat bizarre standards of sixteenth-century warfare, Leicester's personal entourage gave his army a top-heavy appearance. We possess a list of over 1,100 persons forming what was called his 'train'. ... Moreover, Leicester himself was surrounded by a household a monarch might have envied: his personal suite comprised 99 gentlemen-officers, yeomen and their servants and over 70 lords, knights and gentlemen; he had a steward, 4 secretaries, 2 engineers, pages, grooms, trumpeters, footmen, chaplains, physicians and a whole company of actors. The vast quantities of baggage included no less than 44 beds for the kitchen staff alone.
The enamoured pair often wrote to each other several times a day. They systematically numbered their love letters, signing off with the phrase: "With you always".
The letters were in French. But some sexual references were jotted down in Russian.
In 1871 Katia writes: "I saw in your eyes that you wanted to throw yourself at me to forget everything and enjoy our bingerle."
In another 28-page missive she reminds the Tsar that she is pregnant and urges him: "not to dare have any bad ideas and to remain untainted ... for I know you are capable in one moment when you want to make it (bingerle), to forget that you desire only me, and to go and make it (bingerle) with another woman."
On the Ides of March, the senate was to meet in the Curia Pompeii, an annex of the colonnaded Porticus adjacent to the stage of the Theater of Pompeii, which had been built by Pompey (Pompeius) just a decade or so before. Caesar was late. As Brutus and Cassius anxiously waited for him to arrive, one of the senators confided that his prayers were with them. "May your plan succeed," relates Plutarch, "but whatever you do, make haste. Everyone is talking about it by now." But there was nothing the conspirators could do except grasp their daggers and prepare to use them on themselves, if need be. Porcia, the daughter of Cato, whom Brutus had married within a year of her father's death, had insisted that she be told of the plan. The day of the assassination, her anxiety was so great that she became hysterical and fainted from apprehension.
Suetonius relates that a soothsayer had warned Caesar that he was in grave danger, which would not pass until the Ides had ended. Entering the building, Caesar now chided him that the day had arrived. "Yes," he replied, "but they have not yet gone." As Caesar took his seat, the conspirators gathered around him on the pretext of presenting a petition. One then took hold of his purple toga and ripped it away from his neck. A dagger was thrust at Caesar's throat but missed and only wounded him. Another assassin then drove a dagger into his chest as he twisted away from the first assailant. Brutus struck Caesar in the groin (a telling blow, perhaps, given that his mother Servilia once had been Caesar's mistress). Hemmed in, "Caesar kept turning," writes Appian, "from one to another of them with furious cries like a wild beast." When he saw that Brutus, too, had drawn his dagger, Plutarch relates that Caesar covered his head with his toga and sank to the ground, reproaching him in Greek, says Suetonius, with the words "You, too, my child?"
Even after he had fallen, the conspirators continued to strike, at times cutting one another with their own daggers, until they, too, were covered in blood. (Having recently sworn to defend the person of Caesar, which was sacred and inviolate, the assassins must have paused at enormity of their deed; only the second wound later was thought to have been fatal.) Slumped against the pedestal of Pompey's statue, Caesar died, having been stabbed twenty-three times. "The pedestal was drenched with blood," writes Plutarch, "so that one might have thought that Pompey himself was presiding over this act of vengeance against his enemy, who lay there at his feet struggling convulsively under so many wounds."
You can read Plutarch on Caesar here. You can read Shakespeare's Julius Caesarhere.
More than 2,000 years after his death Caesar continues to fascinate artists and writers. Here's a brief overview of historical fiction set in ancient Rome. One of my favorite novels about Caesar is Thornton Wilder's Ides of March.Here's a 1948 review from Time.
Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States, dies at age 93. His most controversial act as president, pardoning Richard Nixon, likely cost him the election though it's now seen as the right decision.
Most early artificial trees used feathers. The 1913 Sears, Roebuck catalogue offered feather trees ranging in size from 17 to 55 inches. Stores also sold trees with needles made of raffia, a fiber derived from the leaves of a tropical palm. According to The Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest artificial Christmas tree still on active duty is a small raffia tree from the 1830s owned by a family in Wiltshire, England. Small, conical “bottle brush” trees used materials such as boar bristles or horsehair and typically came with built-in ornaments and a factory-applied coat of simulated snow. In the 1930s manufacturers of Christmastree lights (themselves an artificial substitute for the traditional candles) sold pre-lit tabletop trees made with cellophane and, later, Visca, a type of rayon fiber. Around the same time, the Addis Brush Company, which manufactured toilet brushes (and is still in the brush business), began making large artificial trees using its toilet-brush equipment.
