Tattooing Ink: the Order of Military Rule in the Song Dynasty Written on the Bodies of Soldiers
About This Novel
Starting from the small and subtle "tattoo", this book mainly discusses the military punishment system and its operating mode of the Song Dynasty hidden behind the explicit cultural symbol and identity mark of tattoo, as well as the social life of ordinary soldiers in the Song Dynasty that was deeply affected by it. As the military service system in the Tang Dynasty gradually changed from the government army system to the recruitment system, professional soldiers emerged as an emerging social class. Tattoos in the Tang Dynasty were punishments and humiliations for those who committed crimes. By the Song Dynasty, with the rapid growth of the population and the expansion of the military system, professional soldiers had become an extremely large social group. The size of the army in the Song Dynasty made military tattoos a huge social phenomenon. At this stage, the peak of criminal punishment and military tattoos was formed. Tattoos were widely used in the army and became a universal symbol of the status of soldiers. This book selects sailor groups, military families, tattooed generals, and military groups composed of marginalized groups such as refugees, criminals, poor people, and homeless people as narrative objects. It tells the rise and decline of the tattoo era, and analyzes the expansion of the army under the consensus of "emphasis on culture over military affairs" in the Song Dynasty and the discrimination and shortcomings suffered by military personnel. Transformation and isolation, the contradiction between the imperial elites (scholars and officials) who came from the imperial examination and the tattooed soldiers - the emerging lower class, as well as the antagonism and conflict between the Song Empire and surrounding ethnic groups, it can be concluded that "the new social class with the tattooed soldiers as the pillar was formed through the exploitation of the Song Dynasty state's punitive military complex."
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