/
Theories and evidences of 物化 (wù huà: Transformation of things)
In Republic of China Year 9 (1920), 25 years after the First Sino-Japanese War and henceforce the Japanese occupation of Korean peninsula and Taiwan islands, Zenichiro Kotobe obtained a travel permit from the Heilongjiang Military Governor’s Office to tour and investigate historical sites in the Han, Manchu, and Mongol regions of Northeast China (as well as the Siberian region of northern Heilongjiang / Amur river, then annexed by Russia for half a century).
In Taisho Year 13 (1924), Kotobe published Genghis Khan Was Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a work based on historical research and fieldwork conducted in Hokkaido, Kuye (Karafuto / Sakhalin), and mainland Northeast Asia. Written in a tone that oscillates between that of a hot-headed military youth (Young Turks) and a supposedly rigorous, cautious historian he articulated a theory that had long been popular among the Japanese people and had gained increasing traction at the turn of the 20th century: Yoshitsune—the legendary warrior and tragic hero of the late Heian period’s Minamoto-Taira war, younger brother of the first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate Minamoto no Yoritomo—did not commit seppuku at Takadate, but instead fled north in secret. He crossed the sea from Hokkaido, traveled westward into the Northeast Asian mainland, and ultimately became Genghis Khan, who swept across the Eurasian continent.
His arguments include:
The Sino-Japanese reading of Minamoto no Yoshitsune’s name 源義經, “Gen-gi-kei,” is similar to the pronunciation of Genghis Khan, as are other phonetic similarities;
The emblem of the Mongol tribes bears a resemblance to the Minamoto clan’s crest, the “Sasa-ryūten”;
Yoshitsune’s severed head, transported from Hiraizumi to Kamakura over forty days in the sweltering summer heat, would have rotted beyond recognition, making it impossible to verify its authenticity;
The primitive and dull-witted Mongol people, who “live in a drunken stupor and die in a dream,” could not have produced a peerless hero like Genghis Khan;
…
After World War II, due to its fanciful interpretations and overt racism, Genghis Khan was Minamoto no Yoshitsune and many other related theory works quickly faded into obscurity.
At least sometimes, for some people, history is memory, memory is history, memory is dream, dream is memory. Zhuang Zhou might in his dreams transform into a butterfly, or into Genghis Khan, or into Alexandre Dumas, or into some man; and upon waking, he might find himself to be Laozi, to be Pushkin, to be Minamoto no Yoshitsune, or to be a woman.
And it’s not difficult to understand that truly to most japanese soldiers rotten in manchuria; to certain eastern Jìn dynasty Taoists; to a few Three Musketeers loving Russian old ladies:
