The "Global" and the "Local" in Early Modern and Modern East Asia


Book Description

The “Global” and the “Local” in Early Modern and Modern East Asia presents a unique set of historical perspectives by scholars from two important universities in the East Asian region—The University of Tokyo (Tōdai) and Fudan University, along with East Asian Studies scholars from Princeton University. Two of the essays address the international leanings in the histories of their respective departments in Todai and Fudan. The rest of the essays showcase how such thinking about the global and local histories have borne fruit, as the scholars of the three institutions contributed essays, arguing about the philosophies, methodologies, and/or perspectives of global history and how it relates to local stories. Authors include Benjamin Elman, Haneda Masashi, and Ge Zhaoguang.




A History of Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1400-1830


Book Description

Written by two expert and highly esteemed authors, this is the much-anticipated textbook on the early modern history of Southeast Asia.




Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan


Book Description

This volume explores early-modern formations of economic thought and policy in a country widely regarded as having followed a unique, non-Western path to capitalism. In discussing such topics as money and the state, freedom and control, national interest ideology, shogunal politics and networks, case studies of the Saga Domain and Ryukyu Kingdom, Confucian banking, early Meiji entrepreneurship, and relationships between macroeconomic fluctuations and policy, the essays here deepen and revise our understanding of early-modern Japan. They also enlarge and refine the analytical vocabulary for describing early-modern economic thought and policy, thereby raising issues of interest to scholars of world history and economic thought outside of Japan or East Asia.




The Flaming Womb


Book Description

The Princess of the Flaming Womb, the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet, despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male-female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women's roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500-1800) - the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, changing patterns of state control, the impact of elite lifestyles and behaviors - drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and citing numerous examples from Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Philippine, and Malay societies.




Reinventing Licentiousness


Book Description

Reinventing Licentiousness navigates an overlooked history of representation during the transition from the Qing Empire to the Chinese Republic—a time when older, hierarchical notions of licentiousness were overlaid by a new, pornographic regime. Y. Yvon Wang draws on previously untapped archives—ranging from police archives and surveys to ephemeral texts and pictures—to argue that pornography in China represents a unique configuration of power and desire that both reflects and shapes historical processes. On the one hand, since the late imperial period, pornography has democratized pleasure in China and opened up new possibilities of imagining desire. On the other, ongoing controversies over its definition and control show how the regulatory ideas of premodern cultural politics and the popular products of early modern cultural markets have contoured the globalized world. Reinventing Licentiousness emphasizes the material factors, particularly at the grassroots level of consumption and trade, that governed "proper" sexual desire and led to ideological shifts around the definition of pornography. By linking the past to the present and beyond, Wang's social and intellectual history showcases circulated pornographic material as a motor for cultural change. The result is an astonishing foray into what historicizing pornography can mean for our understandings of desire, legitimacy, capitalism, and culture.




The Formation of Regional Religious Systems in Greater China


Book Description

The rise of Spatial Humanities has spurred a digital revolution in the field of Chinese studies, especially in the study of religion. Based on years of data compilation and analysis of religious sites, this book explores the formation of Regional Religious Systems (RRS) in Greater China in unprecedented scope and depth. It addresses quantitatively the enduring historical and contemporary issues of China’s deep-rooted regionalism and spatially variegated cultural and religious landscape. A range of topics are explored: theoretical discussions of the concept of RRS; case studies of regional and local religious institutions; the formation of local cults and pilgrimage network; and the spread of religious networks to overseas Chinese communities and the Bon religion in Tibet. The book also considers long-standing challenges of researching with spatial data for humanities and social science research, such as data collection, integration, spatial analysis, and map creation. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, Chinese Studies, Digital Humanities, Human Geography and Sociology.




Making Borders in Modern East Asia


Book Description

Song examines the transformation of East Asia through Tumen River border disputes in a period of disaster, turbulence, and war.




Imagined Neighbors


Book Description

Welches Bild von China hatten japanische Künstler vom späten 17. Jahrhundert, als ihr Land sich gegen die Welt abschottete, bis zur Öffnung im Zuge der Modernisierung ab der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts? Der Band untersucht vorrangig Darstellungen in der japanischen Malerei vom späten 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, die China als realen Ort ebenso wie als imaginäres gelobtes Land zeigen. In drei Essays renommierter japanischer Kunsthistoriker*innen und über fünfzig Katalogeinträgen zu außergewöhnlichen Werken werden die komplexen Reaktionen der Kunst Japans auf die chinesische Kunst, Geschichte und Kultur offenbar. Eine Handvoll wissenschaftlicher Studien hinterfragt in jüngerer Zeit das etablierte Narrativ, das moderne Japan habe sich allein am Westen orientiert. Diese verbreitete Vorstellung von einem ausschließlich westlich inspirierten heutigen Japan thematisiert "Imagined Neighbors". Mit einem nuancierteren Ansatz bemüht sich der Band, die schwierige Aussöhnung zwischen Alt und Neu im Zuge der Neuerfindung des modernen Nationalstaats Japan zu verstehen.




Living with the Vinaya


Book Description

Around the first century BCE, Buddhist monks formed monasteries and established relationships with kings and lay people. The rules monks live by, the Vinaya, are a pivotal source of meaning for them and their dealings with society and form the basis of multiple monasticisms across geographical regions and throughout history. The ways in which the Vinaya is understood and practiced, therefore, must take into account the kind of monasticism that emerges from it. In Living with the Vinaya, Ryosuke Kuramoto examines the process of creating monasticism in contemporary Myanmar by focusing on how monks acquire, possess, and consume material goods. To live as a monk means to obtain resources from society and to own and use these according to monastic rules. Over the centuries, as monks interacted more with the world beyond the monastery, the question of what a monk “should be” became a concern for not only monks, but also government authorities and lay people. How monks interpreted and observed the Vinaya became a question of legitimacy and power. Kuramoto’s ethnographic analysis reveals the constant (re)creation of monasticism in Myanmar resulting from the interactions between monks and these groups in response to this question. He identifies some of the key mechanisms by which monasticism and broader Buddhist institutions are created and transformed and concludes that monastic governance is inseparable from the Buddhist state and the society that surrounds it.




A Tale of Two Stūpas


Book Description

Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, and the surrounding environs have one of the richest Buddhist cultures in China. In A Tale of Two Stupas, Albert Welter tells the story of Hangzhou Buddhism through the conceptions, erections, and resurrections of Yongming Stupa, dedicated to the memory of one of Hangzhou's leading Buddhist figures, and Leifeng Pagoda, built to house stupa relics of the historical Buddha. Welter delves into the intricacies of these two sites and pays particular attention to their origins and rebirths. These sites have suffered devastation and endured long periods of neglect, yet both have been resurrected and re-resurrected during their histories and have resumed meaningful places in the contemporary Hangzhou landscape, a mark of their power and endurance. A Tale of Two Stupas adopts a site-specific, regional approach in order to show how the dynamics of initial conception, resurrection, and re-resurrection work, and what that might tell us about the nature of Hangzhou and Chinese Buddhism.