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 …
In May 2000 I was fired from my job as a reporter on a finance newsletter because of an obsession with a videogame. It was the best thing that ever happened to me." So begins this story of personal redemption through the unlikely medium of electronic games. Quake, World of Warcraft, Eve Online and other online games not only offered author Jim Rossignol an excellent escape from the tedium of…
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.…
Silent Hill: The Terror Engine, the second of the two inaugural studies in the Landmark Video Games series from series editors Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, is both a close analysis of the first three Silent Hill games and a general look at the whole series. Silent Hill, with its first title released in 1999, is one of the most influential of the horror video game series. Perron situates …