[KS] pigtails

[Kirk W. Larsen]

Kirk Larsen
The George Washington University 

Venturing on a pig-tail tangent, what is the conventional wisdom (both during the Choson period and today) concerning the relationship between the Manchu queue and the Korean top-knot? 

Along similar lines, Chinese revolutionaries such as Zou Rong were critical of not only the queue but other Manchu accoutrements of office such as: "these peacock feathers, these red hat buttons, these Necklaces" (Ed Rhoads, Manchus and Han, 15). Does anyone have a sense of the relationship between traditional Korean court dress and, more particularly military officers' uniforms and their Manchu/Jurchen/barbarian counterparts?

Cheers,

Kirk W. Larsen
Department of History and
Elliott School of International Affairs
The George Washington University
kwlarsen at gwu.edu
(202) 994-8115
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Miller" <rcmiller at students.wisc.edu>
To: <Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 10:55 AM
Subject: RE: [KS] pigtails


> Koen De Ceuster queries:
> >
> > My question in fact is related to the specific use of 'pigtails.' Does
> anybody on the list know where the term originated, whether it was used in
> Japan (and by whom), or was it a Western term, that seeped into his
> vocabulary through his contact with American diplomats and missionaries?
> 
> The term certainly exists in Japanese (tombi) and Chinese, for that matter,
> although in Chinese as far as I know it occurs only with reference to
> animals like the "pig-tailed macaque" (tunweihou). With reference to Chinese
> people, the term seems to pop up in Japanese discourse by the Meiji period,
> and probably within that period. (In the Tokugawa period, although Chinese
> could be objects of fun through "tojin" impersonation, they were not
> generally treated with contempt). A famous example is Fukuzawa Yukichi's
> memoirs (1899), in which he exults over Japan's vitory in the Sino-Japanese
> war--but as I remember Shiga Shigetaka (1863-1927) supposedly used the
> phrase (in English) during a visit to Australia in 1886. That would have
> been eight years before the Sino-Japanese war. I'm sure that the term is
> older than that in English--Jack Chen's book on the Chinese in America has
> examples from the 1870s anti-Chinese polemics in California, for example.
> One Asian-American friend of mine says that Darwin mentions "pigtailed
> Chinese" in his Origin of Species (1859), but I haven't attempted to verify
> that.
> 
> If I had to lay money on the question, I would guess that the term is of
> English or American origin, picked up by the Japanese and anyone else who
> came in contact with them, and spread from there. Yun Ch'iho may well have
> picked up the term on his own from contact with the English in Shanghai.
> 
> Richard
> 
> Richard Miller
> UW-Madison School of Music
> http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~rcmiller/
> 
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20020617/87c2751b/attachment.html>