Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan focuses on women’s activities in the new public spaces of Meiji Japan. With chapters on public, private, and missionary schools for girls, their students, and teachers, on social and political groups women created, on female employment, and on women’s participation in print media, this book offers a new perspective on nineteenth- and early twentiet…
Mori Ogai (1862–1922), one of the giants of modern Japanese literature, wrote The Wild Goose at the turn of the century. Set in the early 1880s, it was, for contemporary readers, a nostalgic return to a time when the nation was embarking on an era of dramatic change. Ogai’s narrator is a middle-aged man reminiscing about an unconsummated affair, dating to his student days, between his class…
Two Twelfth-Century Texts on Chinese Painting presents two texts in translation that provide dual insight into the Painting Academy of Emperor Hui-tsung and the literati school of painting.The Shan-shui ch’un-ch’uan chi is a treatise for beginning landscape painters dated to the Hsüan-ho era. The treatise was written by Han Cho, a reputed member of the Academy, but the text was not specifi…
Water transport is a major feature of the traditional Chinese economy because of its magnitude and comparative efficiency. Yet this feature has all too often been ignored by scholars, with the notable exception of Japanese scholars. We cannot hope to gain any real conception of how the Chinese economy worked in the past, or works now, until we have a clearer picture of the circulation of men an…
During the Spring-Autumn period (722–420 BCE) and the time of the Warring States (480–222 CE), China was in great turmoil. Intellectuals and social reformers sifted through their wisdom and knowledge of China’s experiences up to then, attempting to find a solution to their situation.The Tao Te Ching, one of the foremost products of the era, is a metaphysical book, a source of the highest …
This volume presents 18 eighteen essays, written by scholars from six countries, on Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (1886–1965), one of the great writers of the 20th century. The essays were originally prepared for a landmark international symposium in Venice in 1995, at which 22 speakers addressed an audience of about two hundred students and scholars in the Aula Magna of the University of Venice. Top…
Fujiwara Teika is known as the premier poet and literary scholar of the early 13th century. It is not so widely known that he also tried his hand at fiction: Mumyozoshi (Untitled Leaves; ca. 1201) refers to “several works” by Teika and then names Matsura no miya monogatari (The Tale of Matsura; ca. 1190) as the only one that can be considered successful. The work is here translated in full,…
As the twentieth century draws to a close, it is time to look back on an epoch of widespread turmoil, including two world wars, the end of the colonial era in world history, and a large number of international crises and conflicts. This book is designed to shed light on the causes and consequences of military-security crises since the end of World War I, in every region, across diverse economic…
Bridging the collapse of the Confucian state and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the period 1911–49 is particularly fascinating to historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists. Unfortunately, it is also a very confusing period, full of shifts and changes in economic, social, and political organizations. The social implications of these changes, and…
The book argues that the frontier, usually associated with the era of colonial conquest, has great, continuing and under explored relevance to the Caribbean region. Identifying the frontier as a moral, ideational and physical boundary between what is imagined as civilization and wilderness, the book seeks to extend frontier analysis by focusing on the Eastern Caribbean multi island state of St.…