At a telling moment in the development of American East Asia policy, the dream of a Christian China, made vivid by the utterances of returned missionaries, fired the imagination of the general public,
As the Ch'ing government's Inspector General of the Maritime Customs Service, Robert Hart was the most influential Westerner in China for half a century. These journal entries continue the sequence be
Fifty years ago, the economic historian Harold Innis pointed out that the geographical limits of empires were determined by communications and that advances in the technologies of transport and commun
In the years of rapid economic growth following the protest movements of the 1960s, artists and intellectuals in Japan searched for a means of direct impact on the whirlwind of historical and cultura
In Seeing Stars, Dennis J. Frost traces the emergence and evolution of sports celebrity in Japan from the seventeenth through the twenty-first centuries. Frost explores how various constituencies hav
The image of Japanese childhood today-with its carefully packed school lunchboxes, daily anxiety over grades and examination scores, and an eye-popping array of goods and services-originated at the t
Following the end of World War II in Asia, the Allied powers repatriated over six million Japanese nationals from colonies and battlefields throughout Asia and deported more than a million colonial s
This book addresses how gender became a defining category in the political and social modernization of Japan. During the early decades of the Meiji period (1868-1912), the Japanese encountered an idea
Emperor Taizong (r. 626-49) of the Tang is remembered as an exemplary ruler. This study addresses that aura of virtuous sovereignty and Taizong's construction of a reputation for moral rulership throu
Here is the first full-length biography in English of the most important political figure in premodern Japan.Hideyoshi—peasant turned general, military genius, and imperial regent of Japan&mdas
Mr. Palais theorizes in his important book on Korea that the remarkable longevity of the Yi dynasty (1392-1910) was related to the difficulties the country experienced in adapting to the modern world
Written Chinese served as a prestigious, cosmopolitan script across medieval East Asia, from as far west as the Tarim Basin to the eastern kingdom of Heian period Japan (794–1185). In this book, Brian
This study of modern Japan engages the fields of art history, literature, and cultural studies, seeking to understand how the “beautiful woman” (bijin) emerged as a symbol of Japanese culture during t
Bannermen Tales is the first book in English to offer a comprehensive study of zidishu (bannermen tales)—a popular storytelling genre created by the Manchus in early eighteenth-century Beijing. Contex
This book, the first of its kind in English, examines the reinvention of loyalism in colonial Taiwan through the lens of literature. It analyzes the ways in which writers from colonial Taiwan—includin
The brutality and racial hatred exhibited by Japan’s military during the Pacific War piqued outrage in the West and fanned resentments throughout Asia. Public understanding of Japan’s wartime atrociti
This study addresses the relationship between the veneration of Buddha relics and the appropriation of power in early medieval Japan. Focusing on the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, it analyzes the
The British opium trade along China's seacoast has come to symbolize China's century-long descent into political and social chaos. In the standard historical narrative, opium is the primary medium thr