Intervention: Fresh Perspectives After 50 years

November 12, 2021 – February 6, 2022

As USC PAM celebrates our 50th anniversary, we look to the future by asking questions and reflecting on our past as it is embodied in the museum’s collection and display of Asian and Pacific Island art. For whom was this collection created and how does its meaning change when seen through the eyes of our diverse communities? Intervention: Fresh Perspectives after 50 Years finds new ways to view the USC PAM permanent collection through the work of seven contemporary Asian diasporic artists: Antonius Bui, Audrey Chan, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Amir Fallah, Akiko Jackson, Alan Nakagawa, and kate-hers RHEE. By creating original artworks in response to PAM’s collection, these artists will remind visitors that USC PAM’s history is complex, and our public has many ways to consider this story beyond how it is presented in our galleries, website, and printed materials.

Jennifer Ling Datchuck

On Knowing the Debt of Gratitude One Owes to One’s Parents

Page One:

The Buddha warned of the karmic punishments that await any monk who assaults a woman. Confucius was even more strict, advising against even sitting together with a woman. Confucianism in particular was so stubborn on the matter that it is said that in the Song Dynasty, had the sheer beauty of women not proven so alluring, the world might have turned entirely to love between men. But no one holds such stubborn beliefs in our present, enlightened age. Now then, as for our Japan [the ancient chronicles tell us] that when the male deity and female deity of the Land of the Reed Plains looked at each other and compared themselves, the male deity said, “Between your legs there is a place that is recessed, whereas there my body is formed to excess. How would it be for us to join these parts together?” “It would be good,” she replied, and so they joined their bodies together. But because they did not know how to move and thrust, they were not able to achieve pleasure. Then a wagtail bird flew to them and modeled the motions and the two deities learned from it and [successfully mated] This was the beginning of sexual intercourse between men and women, a legacy to humans from the gods. Someone has asked whether it’s believable that they needed a bird to teach them. Indeed, since this is the proper way of heaven, earth, and nature, no teacher is needed.

Page Two:

But the intercourse between men and women is not for the purpose of [amusement]. It is for the purpose of producing a child so that one’s descendants may flourish. In general, even if one has filled their storehouses with precious treasures, to whom will they leave it all if they have no child? Among the writings of old, there is a poem that says, “In this world of ours, the one who is rich but lacks a child feels like one who undertakes a journey alone.” Truly, the person without a child takes no delight in wealth. They will have no one to rely upon in old age. For this reason, it is [the custom] that when men and women reach a certain age, they settle their marriage and set about producing children so as to have peace of mind when they grow old in later years. Be that as it may, do not have sex with abandon. It is said that couples should have sex three times a month in spring and six times a month in summer. In autumn and winter, the human womb loses its vital spirit, just like the grasses and tress, and so during these six months it is best to abstain. So when two people become husband and wife and want to create a child, during the spring and summer months, when the woman’s period does not interfere, they go into the bedroom and let themselves give in to their affections. Then the man’s testicles will expel a liquid called spermatozoa, and the woman will find it difficult to control her feelings of pleasure, and the ball called the ovary will open and take in the man’s sperm. This is how the root and base of humans is formed. Once the woman realizes she is pregnant, she should not look upon anything unpleasant. Once her body begins [to show], she should only gaze at all sorts of flowers. This will naturally help to produce a lovely child, boy or girl. When the pregnancy begins, with the ovary accepting the man’s sperm, the [size of the fetus] is just like an ant.

Page Three:

In the second month, it is like a bee. In the third month, it sprouts arms, which grow straight out from its shoulders. Later the child will hold them together in front of its chest. In the fourth month, its head and body are about the same size. The thighs and feet become visible, but the fingers are not separated, like the webbed hands of a frog. In the fifth month, the eyelids form, the mouth gradually becomes prominent, and the ears and nose appear. The heart is completely formed, but the blood is not yet flowing. In the sixth month, the pulse begins to move the blood and send it to the heart. In the seventh month, the fingers can be seen and threadlike hairs begin to grow on the head. It is possible to differentiate the sex, and the bones and muscles begin to firm up. As a result, the womb drops into the lower part of the woman’s belly, but [the fetus] is not yet conscious. In the eighth and ninth months, the fetus primarily just grows larger. In these illustrations, the illustrator has simply used his brush to indicate the changes in size and position of the fetus across the ten months of the pregnancy. Now then, when the time comes for the child to be born from the womb, there is nothing to which to compare the suffering the woman must endure to give birth. By this, one should know the debt of gratitude (on) one owes to one’s parent. As the child grows, it will aspire to learning and grow in culture, become skilled in gunnery and strengthen our honorable nation, and devote its loyalty to our empire. The child will serve its father and mother and take filial piety as its guiding principle. The child should know that to go against the words of one’s parent is deeply unfilial. The debt one owes to one’s parents is not an easy one to fulfill, and children should never forget the two virtues, “loyalty” and “filial piety.” Thinking that these things will make a good teaching for boys and girls, I have written them up in this way.

Translation generously provided by Dr. David Atherton