The Shadow in Harbin: How Three Nations Remember the Death of Itō Hirobumi

On 26 October 1909, at the Harbin railway station, the first Prime Minister of Japan, Itō Hirobumi, was shot and killed by the Korean independence activist An Jung-geun.
The assassination became one of the most symbolically charged events in modern East Asian history—not merely because a statesman died, but because three civilizations recorded the same moment with three very different hearts.

Japan’s Record: A Fallen Elder Statesman

In Japan, Itō Hirobumi was remembered as a genrō—an elder statesman who helped modernize Japan and shape the Meiji Constitution.
Japanese accounts of the time framed his death as:

• A national tragedy,

• A murder of a respected diplomat,

• A disruption of Japan’s role in “stabilizing” the Korean Peninsula.

Newspapers portrayed Itō as a peace-seeking figure who opposed the harshest forms of colonial rule—though historians still debate the accuracy of this portrayal. Nevertheless, in the Japanese memory, Itō’s death symbolized an attack not only on a statesman, but on Japan’s rising international prestige.

Korea’s Record: A Martyrdom of Resistance

In Korea, the same event is remembered in an opposite light.
To Koreans, An Jung-geun is not merely an assassin, but:

• A patriot,

• A freedom fighter,

• A man who sacrificed himself to resist Japanese encroachment.

Korean history textbooks record his act as righteous resistance against Japan’s tightening colonial grip, especially after the 1905 Protectorate Treaty. An’s writings in prison—arguing that Itō was responsible for Korea’s suffering—became part of Korea’s national consciousness. The Harbin gunshot was, in Korean telling, the strike of a nation refusing to die quietly.

China’s Record: A Stage for Foreign Powers

China, where the assassination occurred, had a more detached but symbolically significant perspective.
Harbin at the time was a frontier city entangled with:

• Russian influence through the Chinese Eastern Railway,

• Japanese expansion in Manchuria,

• Qing decline.

To Chinese observers, the event revealed:

• The weakness of the late Qing,

• The intrusion of foreign powers on Chinese soil,

• The turbulence of East Asia on the eve of revolution.

While China had no direct stake in the Itō–An confrontation, the assassination highlighted how Chinese territory had become a battleground for the struggles of others.

Why the Differences Matter

The death of Itō Hirobumi demonstrates how history is never a single story.
It is a national mirror.

• Japan saw a fallen architect of the Meiji state.

• Korea saw a spark of liberation.

• China saw a symptom of imperial intrusion and national weakness.

These divergent memories reveal deeper questions:

• Who has the right to define justice?

• How do nations turn trauma into identity?

• How do shared events become unshared histories?

The assassination in Harbin is not simply an old event—it is a reminder that East Asia’s present is built on the layered memories of its past. And until these memories are understood, reconciled, or at least acknowledged, the shadows of Harbin will linger.

夢境與工廠：維多利亞英倫所生之〈愛麗絲〉與〈資本論〉

 《夢境與工廠：維多利亞英倫所生之〈愛麗絲〉與〈資本論〉》

觀〈愛麗絲遊仙境〉與〈資本論〉，若雲壤之異：前者以奇想娛童心，貓可隱形，茶會無終；後者剖析工商之機制，言利潤、勞力、交換之理，深峻若嶽。然而二書皆出於維多利亞英倫同一時世，相距不過二年，皆受其經濟風潮、社會變易所鑄成，蓋非偶然，乃同源異流也。

一、英倫既夢且算

十九世紀中葉，英倫為工業革命之極點。蒸汽日鳴，廠屋林立，童工辛苦，鐵路貫通四方。美國南北戰爭方作，棉價暴騰，人心浮動；富貴若朝露，工人之生計如塵埃。

卡羅爾與馬克思，同踐斯地、同吸其霧；然所見同而所應各異：
卡羅爾以奇想逃世；
馬克思以論著破世。

二、仙境亦映經濟

仙境雖若荒唐，然維多利亞時人視之，處處寓諷：

• 紅心之后之專斷，如有司之橫暴。

• 發條帽客之永無止境茶會，似工人日復一日之勞作。

• 愛麗絲忽長忽短，如社會浮沉之身世。

彼時人心，正處於舊習崩壞、新制未立之際，市場瞬息、房貸暴長、技藝被機器所奪。仙境之不定，正寫時代之不安。

三、馬氏亦於同塵中觀大機

馬克思於大英博物館書室著〈資本論〉，以英倫為天下工業之所徵驗：
有交易之所、工廠之巨構、殖民之財源、巷陌之窮民、貧富之懸隔。

卡羅爾視其荒誕；
馬克思究其矛盾。
然兩者之眼光，俱出於同一壓力：舊理之崩、機械之興、人心之迷。

四、二書之奇緣

雖文體殊異，然有若干相通：

• 皆示世界之不定。

愛麗絲身長短異；商品價值忽高忽下。

• 皆露理性之背後乃不理性。

卡氏以無稽顯其真；
馬氏以嚴論揭其虛。

• 皆論權勢之形跡。

后之欲斬首，如資本家之壓工。

• 皆問「我為誰？」

愛麗絲迷其身分；
工人失其本我，化為「勞力」。

• 皆具政治之意。

卡氏以遊戲映世；馬氏以學術破制。

五、同為大英帝國之兩鏡

維多利亞之世，乃理性之國而多癲狂；工業騰達而貧者如故；童書蓬勃而童工遍地。

於是，一鏡為〈愛麗絲〉之夢境；
一鏡為〈資本論〉之深論。
同照一世之矛盾，同映一國之靈魂。

Tea Parties and Factories: How Victorian England Gave Birth to Both Wonderland and Capital

 “Tea Parties and Factories: How Victorian England Gave Birth to Both Wonderland and Capital”

At first glance, nothing seems further apart than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Das Kapital. One is a whimsical children’s fantasy about vanishing cats, impossible tea parties, and logic turned upside-down. The other is a dense, weapon-forged critique of industrial capitalism, written in exile by a restless revolutionary. Yet both books emerged from the same England, within two years of each other, and both were shaped by the same swirling forces of Victorian economics, technology, and social tension.

This is not coincidence — it is convergence.

1. The England that Dreamed and Calculated

The 1860s were the high noon of the Industrial Revolution. London had become the beating, coughing heart of global finance and manufacturing. Steam engines roared; textile mills swallowed child labor; the railways stitched the country together with iron thread. Cotton prices spiked during the American Civil War, fortunes rose and collapsed overnight, and the new urban working masses lived in conditions unimaginable to earlier generations.

In the midst of this, two very different writers — Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Karl Marx — walked the same London streets, breathed the same factory soot, and watched the same transformations.

Carroll, a mathematician at Christ Church, Oxford, responded by escaping into absurdity — a world where the rules of logic could be broken, rearranged, and played with. Marx, observing the same society, responded by dissecting it — exposing the invisible machinery of profit, labor, and exploitation.

2. Wonderland as an Economic Parable

Wonderland seems nonsensical, but Victorian readers recognized the satire:

• The Queen of Hearts is an autocrat of arbitrary authority.

• The Mad Hatter’s endless tea party resembles the endless cycles of Victorian labor — stuck in ritual, never advancing.

• Alice grows and shrinks like the social mobility of the age: expanding with aspiration, shrinking under pressure.

Victorians lived in a world where rules changed overnight — markets crashed, mortgages ballooned, and factory machines transformed skills into irrelevance. Wonderland was not fantasy; it was the psychology of industrial modernity.

3. Marx’s London: The Same Stage, Different Spotlight

Marx wrote Das Kapital in the British Museum Reading Room, surrounded by the statistics, parliamentary reports, and economic data of the very system Carroll gently mocked. Britain was the ideal laboratory:

• The first stock exchanges

• Large-scale factories

• Global colonial trade

• Crowded slums of laborers

• Enormous inequalities

Where Carroll saw absurdity, Marx saw contradiction.
Where Carroll turned to whimsy, Marx turned to critique.

But their perceptions originated from the same pressures: the collapse of old certainties, the rise of machine logic, and the growing sense that society was slipping through the fingers of those who once controlled it.

4. The Hidden Similarities

Despite their differences, the two books share surprising traits:

• Both explore unstable worlds.

Alice’s body changes size; commodities in Marx’s world change value. Nothing is fixed.

• Both expose the irrationality beneath Victorian rationalism.

Carroll uses nonsense to reveal truth; Marx uses analysis to show that “rational markets” are built upon irrational exploitation.

• Both deal with power and control.

Queens shouting for beheadings mirror industrial magnates dictating wages.

• Both question identity.

Alice constantly asks “Who am I?”
Marx shows how capitalism fractures the worker’s identity into mere “labor power.”

• Both books are political, just in different dialects.

Carroll’s politics are playful and psychological; Marx’s are structural and revolutionary.

5. Two Mirrors Held to the Same Empire

Victorian England was a paradox: it was the empire of reason, yet governed by financial panic; a society of progress, yet riddled with poverty; the nation that adored children’s literature while relying on child labor.

Out of this contradiction came two books that reflected the same world:

• One through a looking-glass,

• One through a microscope.

Both remain enduring because both capture the surreal logic of a society simultaneously rising and unraveling.

細偽成災：政者自飾之心理與信任之墜

 

細偽成災：政者自飾之心理與信任之墜

政人好自飾其身，古今皆然。心理家言，名位之士多有「自增」之行：小飾其履歷，微加其功績，以求形象之完美。此等誇飾，雖非必本於惡意，然若習以為常，則為害甚深，蓋能損其誠信，敗其名節，並壞公論。

英國政壇近有瑞芙斯之事，正為此例。其所述昔年於英格蘭銀行任職之久短，與其少時稱為棋壇之冠，皆與實錄稍異。此非大政之欺，乃細微之飾，而細飾亦可見其心路之趨向。

心理學謂此「細偽」之成，有三端：

一、求形象之壓也。
居官者常欲以完美之身示人，故輕增其功，以自成可敬之象。

二、細語漸積之勢也。
微偽起初或無深意，然久而重言之，乃自誤其真，終使虛實互換。

三、護其名號之故也。
既以某事自名，若承認誇飾，則其身分之敘事受傷，故反更執之以固其名。

然此等細偽之害，於民心尤大。民若察政者連細事亦不實，則其信任頓失，視大政更不敢委之。蓋民心所思簡易：
「小事尚虛，大事何可任乎？」

瑞芙斯之爭，只見其行之例，非指其人之本性。然其所示者，全乃政界常見之心理：以小偽護形象，以形象求權勢，而終致誠信之蝕、制度之弱。

民主之本，不唯在法度，更在領袖之誠。若從政者習於飾己，則政治之明光受其障翳。欲保公信，須以真言、謙德、實錄為本。蓋細偽亦能傷大義，小欺足以蔽國心。

Small Lies, Big Shadows: A Psychological Analysis of Political Self-Decoration

 Small Lies, Big Shadows: A Psychological Analysis of Political Self-Decoration”

Psychologists have long observed that political figures, like many public personalities, often engage in self-enhancement— the subtle inflation of credentials, achievements, or personal history. While not always malicious, this tendency can become dangerous when a leader’s self-presentation repeatedly departs from fact. Even small inaccuracies, if habitual, can suggest a deeper pattern of impression-management that damages public trust.

The recent controversies surrounding UK politician Rachel Reeves illustrate this dynamic. Reeves has faced criticism for inflating aspects of her biography — including portraying her time at the Bank of England as the work of a long-tenured economist, and describing herself as a youth chess champion when the formal national records grant that title to another competitor. These are not grand policy lies, but subtle, image-shaping claims.

Psychologists point out that such “minute-scale” embellishments arise from three well-documented cognitive tendencies:

1. Self-presentation pressure.
Public figures often feel compelled to present an idealised professional identity — one that appears exceptional, authoritative, and polished. By amplifying achievements, a leader attempts to craft a narrative of competence.

2. The escalation of small untruths.
Minor embellishments rarely start as deliberate deception. They often begin as small narrative shortcuts, later repeated until they gain the weight of “truth” in the speaker’s own memory. The danger is cumulative: repeated slight distortions gradually erode an individual’s relationship with accuracy.

3. Identity maintenance.
Once a politician has built a public persona around certain achievements, admitting exaggeration threatens the coherence of that identity. Thus, the individual may cling to earlier claims even when challenged.

The public impact of these behaviours, however, is anything but small. Research shows that when citizens detect falsities — especially unnecessary ones — they experience a sharper drop in trust than when confronted with policy disagreements. A politician who misstates trivial biographical details can appear less honest than one who openly defends a controversial ideology.

For voters, the logic is simple:
If a leader distorts small truths, what might they distort in matters of national consequence?

These controversies surrounding Reeves exemplify a psychological pattern rather than a diagnosis. They illuminate how political incentives, personal ambition, and impression management can intersect in ways that corrode credibility. The damage extends beyond the individual: public faith in institutions weakens, cynicism rises, and engagement declines.

A democracy relies not only on policies but on the perceived integrity of those who govern. When leaders reshape their histories to appear more impressive, they inadvertently cast shadows over the political system itself. Transparency, humility, and factual precision remain essential — for without them, even small lies can dim the light of public trust.

誠信之喪與政治之殞：一心理由政客欺誑之觀

 《誠信之喪與政治之殞：一心理由政客欺誑之觀》

政治之欺，非徒失德，蓋心性之裂與社會之衰也。心理家觀察，治國者若常以虛文自飾，則民眾視誠信如虛影，真偽之分遂變。當此等謗語，不僅出自一隅，而自朝廷之巔者亦然，其害遠甚於私語也。 SpringerLink

近者英國大臣瑞芙斯，因誇飾往昔經歷，而成議論之中心。彼曾稱於英格蘭銀行服務十載為經濟學者，然實際履歷及其LinkedIn所示，工齡不足十年，未必如是。又言幼時為英國女子十四歲棋王，然史籍所見，冠軍另有其人，其冠乃他項賽會之別稱耳。 The Times+1

若以小戲視之，其實質甚重。心理之研究示，長時聞政客所言不實，則民眾漸以謗語為常態，真言與巧辯之界日益模糊，人心生疑，政事為戲。蓋此乃所謂“首領啟發效應”，令人以為言不由衷可行。 SpringerLink

其不利，有三：

其一，誠信之損也。信任者，社稷之本也。若公卿言行為虛誕，則庶民不復信朝廷、法度及典章，追念真實者如雲煙，信心之基土崩瓦解。

其二，漠然與疏離也。民見政客自利而欺言，多不以義憤應之，反致漠不關心，不從時議，罷參政事。此則民主體制之責問削弱，誠信之檢驗亦隨之衰。

其三，治道之壞也。若政事以誤志為基，則決策必偏離正道。領袖誇其學識，或以偽證證成策，則國策失衡、民生困頓，禍生無窮。

心理學者又言，此為循環之勢：信任既失，疑心更深，人心以謗語為常，從而尋求自辯之理，謂“有其理由”、“諸人皆然”，如是者使欺語似無罪。久之，不誠之風蔓延而不可止。 SpringerLink

其害甚巨。盛世賴明君誠言，眾心可共事於真理。然當世見政客誇飾其往昔或偽其行狀，或強或弱，其舉皆損政治之常信，令公論動盪不安。

欲挽此頹勢，非唯逐一核實，尤須領袖以透明與問責為重，不以浮名為念。若不然，惡果愈深：疑心、疏離、及民主之衰，繫此而長。

Why Political Falsehoods Fracture Trust: A Psychologist’s View on Deception and Democratic Decline”

 “Why Political Falsehoods Fracture Trust: A Psychologist’s View on Deception and Democratic Decline”

Political lying is not merely an ethical lapse — it is a psychological and social rupture. As psychologists have observed, once leaders become habitual in presenting themselves in misleading ways, the symbolic cues they send about honesty and credibility begin to reshape how citizens perceive politics itself. When lies come not only from anonymous elites but from those at the heart of government, the consequences reverberate far beyond the individuals involved. SpringerLink

A recent case in point is the controversy around the UK’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Over time, Reeves has been accused of overstating aspects of her professional history — such as claiming she spent “a decade” working as an economist at the Bank of England when records and her LinkedIn profile suggest a shorter tenure, and asserting that she was the British girls’ under-14 chess champion when the historical championship record identifies another winner and the title she held was from a separate event. The Times+1

At first glance, embellishing a CV might seem like small political theatre. But psychological research shows that repeated exposure to leaders’ dishonesty creates what scholars call a priming effect: when citizens are regularly confronted with falsehoods from politicians, the boundary between truth and spin blurs, and cynicism becomes normalized. People begin to expect dishonesty not as an aberration but as an accepted feature of political life. SpringerLink

This normalization has three harmful effects:

First, it erodes trust. Trust is the cement of democratic society; when citizens perceive leaders to be untruthful, their faith in institutions — parliaments, administrations, the civil service — deteriorates. A political culture where leaders are seen as manipulating facts reinforces the notion that the game is rigged and the public cannot rely on official narratives.

Second, it breeds disinterest and disengagement. When political actors appear self-serving and untruthful, many citizens respond not with outrage but with apathy. They withdraw from debate, avoid voting, or conclude that participation is futile. This disengagement weakens democratic accountability and allows less trustworthy actors to rise unchallenged.

Third, pervasive political dishonesty leads to worse governance. Decisions made on distorted premises — whether about economic competence or fiscal credibility — tend to produce poor outcomes. When leaders misrepresent their qualifications or the evidence they use to justify policy, the likelihood of ill-advised strategies increases, exacerbating social and economic problems.

Psychologists also warn of a feedback loop: as trust erodes, public cynicism grows and the threshold for demanding honesty rises. Politicians may further adapt by using rationalizations — “I had good reasons,” “everyone does it” — that make lying seem less blameworthy. Over time, such rationalizations embed a culture of dishonesty that is harder to dismantle. SpringerLink

The stakes are enormous. Democracies depend on leaders who can speak truth to facts and who model integrity. When the public sees political figures embellishing their histories or bending facts to suit their ambitions — whether about economic expertise or youthful achievements — it chips away at the very idea that politics can be a domain of shared, verifiable reality.

Rebuilding trust requires more than fact-checking; it requires leaders who prize transparency and accountability over image. Without that, the negative psychological consequences — distrust, disengagement, and democratic decline — continue to deepen.