Showing papers in "Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in 2017"
TL;DR: The tributary system became a professional and canonical object of enquiry through Fairbank's work during the mid-twentieth century, but it has older origins as discussed by the authors, as an aspirational “Chinese world order,” this hierarchical system cohered around the premise that China represented the apical center of civilization.
Abstract: A a half century has passed since the publication of John King Fairbank’s edited volume, The Chinese World Order.1 Since then, the tributary system has come to serve as something of a synecdoche for pre-1900 East Asian international relations. Briefly, the “institutional and textual complex” known as the tributary system describes the practices, norms, and structures of East Asian foreign relations.2 As an aspirational “Chinese world order,” this hierarchical system cohered around the premise that China represented the apical center of civilization. The tributary system became a professional and canonical object of enquiry through Fairbank’s work during the mid-twentieth century, but it has older origins.3 The tributary
19 citations
TL;DR: Examining the salience of cultural factors for international order requires a different research design that incorporates greater variation across history and regions and that recognizes the multivocality of imperial claims to authority.
Abstract: abstract: A large body of scholarship in Political Science suggests that the material power of a dominant state is critical for the stabilization of international order. Consequently, the relative decline of the United States and the ascendance of China raise concerns regarding the stability of the current international system. By contrast, culturalist accounts such as David Kang’s East Asia before the West submit that a stable order can be based on a shared cultural framework rather than material force. Despite their many contributions, the methodological design of such analyses—Kang’s included—do not allow us to attribute Chinese hegemony in the tributary system primarily to cultural factors. Examining the salience of cultural factors for international order requires a different research design that incorporates greater variation across history and regions and that recognizes the multivocality of imperial claims to authority. 摘要: 物质力量对于国际秩序所起的重要作用引发人们对中国崛起的关注。康灿 雄等的文化主义论述则认为秩序可建基于共享的文化观，但其研究方法却无法解 释朝贡体系里文化因素的作用。因此，探讨文化对国际秩序的影响时，既要作跨 历史、跨区域的比较研究，又要考察帝国权威的多义性。
18 citations
TL;DR: David Kang’s explanation for the peace and stability in East Asia that continued from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries positions itself against mainstream understandings of world order in the field of International Relations, which derive exclusively from the experience of the West.
Abstract: abstract: David Kang’s explanation for the peace and stability in East Asia that continued from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries positions itself against mainstream understandings of world order in the field of International Relations, which derive exclusively from the experience of the West. However, Kang’s own explanations and theories remain worryingly Eurocentric and are profoundly mimetic of the very approaches he seeks to go beyond. The implications of this Eurocentrism for epistemic and physical violence against ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and various others in border-zone areas—in both the West and the East—are dire and merit explicit attention 摘要: 康灿雄对 14 世纪至 19 世纪东亚的和平与稳定所作的阐释对国际关系学中有关世界秩序的主流认识提出了挑战，但是，深入分析可以看出，康灿雄的解释和理论仍摆脱不了他试图超越的欧洲中心论。这种欧洲中心论意味着对少数族裔、 土著民和边疆地区不同人种的侵犯。这种可悲的现象值得关注。
15 citations
11 citations
TL;DR: Park et al. as mentioned in this paper pointed out that the current manifestation of the tributary system is not an innovation but rather a return to an older school of nineteenth-century China-watching.
Abstract: In his 1968 edited volume, The Chinese World Order, John K. Fairbank famously presents his “preliminary framework” for a Ming–Qing tributary system. The recent rehabilitation of the tributary system in International Relations scholarship is surprising because debates over the concept ultimately judged a tributary-system model deeply problematic. I therefore ask: (1) Can we speak of states as ontologically stable entities over centuries? (2) How might we distinguish a totalizing tributary system from tributary practice in order to allow for a diversity of context? (3) If we return to the tributary system as the lens through which we understand “China,” what elisions must we thus tolerate? Ultimately, the current manifestation of the tributary system is not an innovation but rather a return to an older school of nineteenth-century China-watching. 초록: 본문은 최근 조공체제의 재조명이 19 세기 중국을 관찰하는 옛 방식으로 회 귀한다고 주장하고 세가지 의문을 제시한다. 국가를 수세기에 걸친 불변의 존 재로 볼 수 있는가? 조공체제와 조공 관례를 어떻게 구분할 것인가? 조공체제를 중국을 이해하는 렌즈로 삼으면 무엇을 간과하게 될 것인가? Acknowledgments: I wish to express my appreciation to Saeyoung Park, Sankaran Krishna, Bradley C. Davis, the students of the fall 2015 China Seminar at LaGrange College, and Constance Q. Umberger. All faults and shortcomings in this article are, of course, my own. 1 Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932), p. 47.
8 citations
TL;DR: Zhao et al. as discussed by the authors investigated the key conditions that made it possible for its author, Zhao Xuemin (fl. 1753-1803), to access the textual, empirical, and material resources necessary to accomplish such a feat.
Abstract: Bencao gangmu shiyi (Supplement to Systematic Materia Medica ) has been recognized as the most outstanding sequel to the sixteenth-century encyclopedia Bencao gangmu , adding over nine hundred drugs to Li Shizhen’s magnum opus. In this article, I investigate the key conditions that rendered it possible for its author, Zhao Xuemin (fl. 1753–1803), to access the textual, empirical, and material resources necessary to accomplish such a feat. I argue that despite Zhao’s efforts to frame his work in a classical light, his humble status as a sojourning private secretary in fact enabled him to derive new knowledge from both elite and lowbrow circles. Zhao and his interlocutors represent an expanding, if oft-neglected community of knowledge, who embraced literary documentation of contemporary experience as a way of transcending the accomplishments of previous authorities. Their existence signifies the beginning of a transition from a literati-dominated culture toward mass society. 摘要：: 本文探讨清代赵学敏著《本草纲目拾遗》成书的历史条件。作为流寓幕客的赵学敏在交游中接触到多样的文献与实物资料，不断修订自己的手稿。这部本草书凭记载当下经验而超越前人经典，亦预示着由士人主导的中国传统文化在十八世纪向近代大众社会的转型。
7 citations
TL;DR: The authors showed that the balance between Manchu and Mandarin changed as Korean and Japanese scholars reworked lexicographic books from Beijing and found that the international languages of pre-twentieth-century East Asia included both Mandarin and Manchu as well as literary Chinese.
Abstract: The Manchu language studies of the Qing empire emerged in Beijing during the late seventeenth century and spread to Chosŏn Korea and Tokugawa Japan during the eighteenth century. The Qing court sponsored the compilation of multilingual thesauri and thereby created an imperial linguistic order with Manchu at the center and vernacular Chinese, or Mandarin, in a subordinate position. Chosŏn and Tokugawa scholars, by contrast, usually placed Mandarin—not Manchu, Korean, or Japanese—as the leading language in the new multilingual thesauri they compiled on the basis of Qing works. I show how the balance between Manchu and Mandarin changed as Korean and Japanese scholars reworked lexicographic books from Beijing. The lexicographic evidence demonstrates that the international languages of pre-twentieth-century East Asia included Manchu and vernacular Mandarin as well as literary Chinese. 摘要: 本文以乾隆『御製增訂清文鑑』為例，探討清朝構造的以滿文為中心的多 語言制度及其在朝鮮和日本的傳播和轉變。日本和朝鮮學者利用滿語辭書所載的 漢語白話譯文與官話注音來學習漢語。漢語對學習滿文必不可少，於是日朝學者 往往把辭書中的漢語白話部分作為研究的對象。
5 citations
4 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that Chinese participation in the tributary system engendered domestic legitimacy and that coherence, not coercion, characterized a more flexible East Asian system of international relations, which is difficult to see from a modern international relations (IR) perspective.
Abstract: abstract: This article explores a puzzle at the heart of the tributary system, an early modern East Asian system of international relations: What exactly did China get out of it? I argue that Chinese participation in the tributary system engendered domestic legitimacy. The tributary system produced substantive benefits domestically for China but little power internationally. In fact, the assumption that the tributary system functioned primarily as a vehicle for Chinese regional domination is a modernist artifact. That coherence, not coercion, characterized a more flexible East Asian tributary system is difficult to see from a modern international relations (IR) perspective. Within Westphalian IR, the arc of hegemony bends toward domination because sovereignty requires egalitarian relations; conversely, hierarchical relations diminish autonomy and self-determination. This article offers a different East Asian genealogy of hegemony. 초록: 이른바 中華世界秩序의 構築과 强制를 동아시아에서 共有하는 漢字儒教 文化에서 찾는 기존연구와 달리, 본문은 中國의 觀點에서 朝貢體制의 이점을 檢 討하고 朝貢體制를 통해 얻을 수 있는 國際的 利益은 미미하였으나, 國內的으로 正當性을 强化시킬 수 있는 기제가 되었다고 주장한다.
4 citations
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that Arendt would have approved of the executions of those ruled culpable for the Rape of Nanjing while contesting much of the moral and legal thinking that led to them.
Abstract: Political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) wrote little on Asia, but her 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil suggests how she might have evaluated responsibility for and judgment of war crimes in East Asia. I speculate first about how she might have regarded the 1946–1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and I argue that she would have approved of the executions of those ruled culpable for the Rape of Nanjing while contesting much of the moral and legal thinking that led to them. Second, Arendt’s endorsement of the literary imagination as a tool for judgment allows us to read Hotta Yoshie’s 1963 A-bomb novel Judgment to explore how justice might have been served in the wake of the wartime use of nuclear weapons. 摘要: ナチス·ドイツによるユダヤ人虐殺の犯罪責任を再考察した「イエルサレム のアイヒマン」著者のハンナ·アーレント氏ならば、南京虐殺及び原爆投下をいか に裁いたであろう？東京裁判の記録や堀田善衛の小説「審判」にアーレント思想 を適用し、その法律的、倫理的な諸問題を解いてみる。
TL;DR: Clements as discussed by the authors explores the range of practices employed in traversing the intralingual and interlingual borders of this textual terrain, and analyzes the diverse ways in which various forms of linguistic difference were conceptualized during the early modern era, as well as how scholars understand them today.
Abstract: Early modern Japanese read and wrote in a wide array of languages and registers: classical and contemporary Japanese, literary Sinitic, vernacular Chinese, and multiple European languages, among others. In a fine study that is rich in detail yet broad in scope, Rebekah Clements explores the range of practices employed in traversing the intralingual and interlingual borders of this textual terrain. With thoughtful analysis and clear prose, Clements analyzes the diverse ways in which various forms of linguistic difference were conceptualized during the early modern era, as well as how scholars understand them today. The book’s opening chapter explores the status of language within the cultural and social context of early modern Japan, a period that saw a marked rise in the awareness of diachronic language change. While such sinologists as Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 and Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁 斎 brought philological sensitivity to bear on classical Chinese texts, their work also stimulated “national learning” scholars to apply analogous approaches to texts from Japanese antiquity. Clements identifies historical shifts that prompted novel approaches to classic texts, stimulated new conceptualizations of language as an abstract category, and afforded a more prominent role to the act of translation. Two particularly notable and intertwined developments dramatically transformed the seventeenth-century intellectual landscape: the emergence of a commercially viable publishing industry and the spread of literacy far beyond court, monastic, and warrior elites. Texts of longstanding cultural significance to those groups began to reach a broader population of readers, and they were also subjected to new scholarly approaches, including translation. Suzuki Toshiyuki 鈴木俊幸 has shown that Japan, from the latter part of the early modern period, was swept by nothing less than a “reading fever,” as the publication of newly accessible editions of abstruse classical texts enabled eager readers to study those works on their own.1 Building on this and other work, Clements
TL;DR: In this paper, a comprehensive overview of the colonial state's ideologies, its institutional development, and its multifaceted practices of rationalizing Korean society and molding Koreans as the state's "citizens" or subjects is presented.
Abstract: Recent works on colonial Korea have illuminated important aspects of the colonial state, such as its industrial and financial policies for promoting wartime capitalism,1 the role of Japanese settlers in mediating between the colonial government and Korean elites,2 and the state’s spatial transformation of Seoul into a colonial city.3 However, the colonial state itself has not been a main focus of investigation in these studies. Rationalizing Korea aims at filling this gap in the historiography and offers a comprehensive overview of the colonial state’s ideologies, its institutional development, and its multifaceted practices of “rationalizing” Korean society and molding Koreans as the state’s “citizens” or subjects. Through this overview, Kyung Moon Hwang sets forth several meaningful hypotheses that deserve further debate vis-àvis the rise of a modern state in Korea. According to Rationalizing Korea, the rise of a modern state experienced a burst of speed during the late nineteenth century and arrived in mature form at the end of the colonial period. In this chronology, the colonial state is not characterized as a rupture from the late Chosŏn state but rather as something that was built accumulatively based on the latter’s practices of rationalizing the Confucian bureaucracy and society, especially during the Kabo Reform (1894– 95) and the Korean Empire (1897–1910). Hwang analyzes the colonial government as a modern phenomenon without emphasizing the specificity of governing in a colonial situation. In other words, Hwang considers the rationalizing trend of Korean governance as transcending the transfer of sovereignty from Koreans to Japanese, partially due
TL;DR: The Confucian idea that men took responsibility for affairs outside the home, whereas women focused on internal matters could be justified in traditional culture, but it did not work as well in an industrializing and modernizing world as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: As one learns from both monographs and general histories, the encounter between East Asia and the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries prompted numerous conversations about selfstrengthening in China, Japan, and Korea. One area of concern was the position of women. The Confucian idea that men took responsibility for affairs outside the home, whereas women focused on internal matters could be justified in traditional culture,1 but it did not work as well in an industrializing and modernizing world. When it meant that
TL;DR: The history of medicine as mentioned in this paper is an excellent and extremely interesting piece of work, and it is hard to read Miranda Brown's book without feeling that such questions may turn out to have intriguing, even disturbing answers.
Abstract: Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 77.2 (2017): 528–536 of simply being told what a third party is said to have “shown” or “demonstrated”—two words which in my view are best avoided in cultural history as opposed to geometry. Instead, she follows the excellent practice of putting the evidence on the page whenever possible, so that the reader can see why she draws the conclusions that she does. That makes a good book even more useful than it otherwise would be. And like all good historical studies, this book points to larger questions than the ones it sets out to answer. How did we come to have this research field called (in English) “the history of medicine”? When and why was it created? What functions has it been made to serve, both inside and outside academic life? How do we decide what kind of questions and evidence are relevant to it? It is hard to read Miranda Brown’s book without feeling that such questions may turn out to have intriguing, even disturbing answers. All students and scholars in the relevant fields have reason to be grateful to her for giving us an excellent and extremely interesting piece of work.
TL;DR: Lee et al. as discussed by the authors present Court and Family in Sung China, a book on the Shi family in Ningbo, which examines the crème of the region's political crop, a lineage that produced three generations of chief councilors, five generations of assistant councilors and hundreds of lesser officials.
Abstract: For four decades, historians of China’s middle period have tried to run before they walked, ruminating on the evolution of the country’s political and social elites at a macro level before building the necessary foundation in empirical research, especially in the realm of local history. Sukhee Lee’s impeccably researched and deftly executed book delivers a major salvo to prevailing assumptions in the field, while providing alternative ways of reading some of the same texts that informed earlier scholarship. This is the rare book where the footnotes are nearly as meaty as the text itself, due to the author’s tendency to consign his most biting criticism to the notes. Lee addresses elite development at Mingzhou 明州, modern Ningbo 寧波, from the Southern Song (1127–1279) through the Yuan (1271–1368), when the fortunes of Mingzhou’s elite families soared to dizzying heights, in pace with Ningbo’s growing economic and cultural development. This is terrain familiar to me as a political historian of the Southern Song. Court and Family in Sung China, my 1986 book on the Shi of Yin county 鄞縣史氏, examines the crème of the region’s political crop—a lineage that produced three generations of chief councilors, five generations of assistant councilors, and hundreds of lesser officials in the course of two centuries.1 I knew that my limited focus on the political story would prompt later writers to take up the many social history issues not addressed there, such as kinship organization, marriage strategies, and community leadership. Since then, new primary sources have come to light and archeological discoveries made, including a cluster of several dozen tombs dating from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries in the Ningbo suburbs.2 At the same time, interest in the wider history of China’s coastal development has been on the rise at home and abroad, especially in Japan.
TL;DR: In this paper, Foxwell weaves close analyses of individual artworks into a consideration of larger theoretical and art historical concerns in the process sparking further questions in the reader's mind.
Abstract: Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 77.2 (2017): 561–570 (the right two panels should be at the left), which disrupts the relationship of the two adult birds.12 And on page 117, it appears that the wrong side of the standing screen is reproduced, as the description does not fit the image. These remarks by no means detract from the tremendous achievement of this rich and rewarding read. Making Modern Japanese-Style Painting constitutes a major contribution to the field. It is suitable for any student or scholar wishing to understand more fully the practical, political, and aesthetic driving forces of the period. Foxwell weaves close analyses of individual artworks into a consideration of larger theoretical and art historical concerns in the process sparking further questions in the reader’s mind—the hallmark of a genuinely stimulating read.
TL;DR: Clements as discussed by the authors provides a coherent and focused account of translation in Japan prior to Meiji, focusing on Japanese literature and culture prior to the Meiji edict of the Kansei edict.
Abstract: Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 77.1 (2017): 190–195 page 138 should be 1721, and the reference to the “Kansei edict” on page 145 should be to the “Kan’ei edict.” The topic of translation in nineteenthand twentieth-century Japan has been the subject of several recent studies, but Clements’s book is the first in English to provide such a coherent and focused account of translation in Japan prior to Meiji.6 She has succeeded in writing a well-researched and informative study that will be essential reading for specialists of early modern Japan; it should also be welcomed by those working on any period of Japanese literature and culture as well as by scholars of translation studies more generally.
TL;DR: Kyoto's urban landscape was transformed during the late fourteenth century through the ambitious building projects of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358-1408).
Abstract: Kyoto’s urban landscape was transformed during the late fourteenth century through the ambitious building projects of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408). By examining these projects, I identify a grand urban vision indicative of monumental aspirations. The creation of palaces and temples helped Yoshimitsu infiltrate and eventually dominate warrior, imperial, and religious spheres of influence in Kyoto. More important, the findings suggest the shogun leveraged the allusive power of architecture and urban planning to forge an anthropocosmic connection between himself and the divine. I suggest that Yoshimitsu—like his counterparts in the premodern Buddhist centers of Angkor, Bagan, and Borobudur—sought to transform Japan’s medieval capital into an expression of sacred geography, thereby legitimizing the Kyoto court at a time of imperial schism and advancing his own aim of attaining a status synonymous with dharma king. 摘要: 中世京都における足利義満の大規模な建造プロジェクトを検討し、建築と王権、および新たな都市構想を分析する。更に、東南アジアの仏教王国との比較を通じ、義満が法皇を目指し、仏教的コスモロジーに基づいて京都の都市計画を行った可能性を提案する。
TL;DR: Benn et al. as discussed by the authors argue that literati manhood was defined first and foremost by accomplishments in learning, and that connoisseurship of tea and excelling in related contests could certainly play a role in demonstrating one's manhood, but so too could poetry contests, excellence in painting and calligraphy, and actions in the public sphere.
Abstract: Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 77.2 (2017): 502–511 Once accepted, one could engage in tea preparation contests that “made it a way to publicly prove superior manhood” (p. 131). What is missing from Hinsch’s formulation is any recognition of the role that learning played in literati life, particularly as it related to success in the civil service examinations, a topic that Hinsch never mentions. I would argue that literati manhood was defined first and foremost by accomplishments in learning. Within the literati milieu, connoisseurship of tea and excelling in related contests could certainly play a role in demonstrating one’s manhood, but so too could poetry contests, excellence in painting and calligraphy, and actions in the public sphere (whether acting as an official or a critic). Taken together, Benn’s Tea in China and Hinsch’s Rise of Tea Culture in China provide two useful lenses for viewing the early history of tea. Tea in China, with its rich detail and judicious use of primary sources, provides a wonderful introduction to the subject, and one that should spur further research. However, its emphasis on religion and the Buddhist role in the development of tea is such that elements of the more secular story of the state, the market, and the literati are relatively neglected. By contrast, The Rise of Tea Culture in China, despite the qualifications that I have expressed, tells that secular story well and provides a nuanced account of how tea and its practices came to be absorbed into literati culture and thought.
TL;DR: Brindley et al. as mentioned in this paper explored the history of the Yue, paying specific attention to the larger context of relations between Yue societies and those of the Central States in ancient China.
Abstract: In this pioneering study, Erica Fox Brindley addresses the complex and fascinating history of the “Yue” 越 (or Việt), a label ascribed to a kaleidoscope of communities that millennia ago inhabited regions of what are today the southern provinces of China and the northern parts of Vietnam. While these areas now straddle modern national boundaries, a diverse collection of peoples, languages, ethnicities, and cultural practices dotted these landscapes during the second half of the first century BCE. These communities were engaged in cultural exchanges and movements that connected them to one another and to other communities much farther afield. Brindley explores the history of the Yue, paying specific attention to the larger context of relations between Yue societies and those of the Central States in ancient China. As the book demonstrates, any understanding of a coalescing imperial Chinese identity and civilization necessitates an understanding of the relations between the Central Plains and this important frontier. This is precisely what Brindley sets out to do with this volume—to show how the history of the Yue is intimately tied to the history of relations with their neighbors. Brindley’s ambitious engagement with different bodies of data and information is impressive. Her far-reaching research demonstrates how the various peoples known as the Yue—part of a category of “other” that was decentered by ancient Chinese chroniclers—adopted variable strategies to negotiate or reject appellations and overtures made by their neighbors in the Central States. These complex strategies are manifest in the available evidence, including literary accounts, artifacts, landscapes, linguistic reconstructions, and even genetic data. In several important publications prior to this volume, Brindley explores the identities and ethnicities of these southern frontier societies.1 This volume represents a synthesis of her ongoing research efforts and pro-
TL;DR: For example, Japan's modern engagement with other sovereign states began in the late nineteenth century and encompassed diplomacy, trade, education, cultural encounters, empire building, and warfare, in addition to the exchange of persons and knowledge with other nations as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Japan’s modern engagement with other sovereign states began in the late nineteenth century and encompassed diplomacy, trade, education, cultural encounters, empire building, and warfare, in addition to the exchange of persons and knowledge with other nations. Isolated by geography and self-awareness as an island country (shimaguni ishiki 島国意識), Japan’s involvement with its East Asian neighbors before 1870 is best described as premodern interculturalism. After 1870, Japan deliberately joined boundary-crossing networks of interaction that formed the basis of a new internationalism. As Akira Iriye has pointed out, “internationalism is built upon the existence of sovereign states and would never displace nations.”1 No longer encumbered by unequal treaties first imposed in 1858, Japan during the early twentieth century allied itself with Great Britain, joined the victors at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, and three years later in Washington signed both a five-power naval treaty and a nine-power commercial treaty (for trade with China), thus providing a degree of stability in its external relations for the next fifteen years. After 1900, numerous well-born undergraduates from Japan, mainly males, enrolled at elite universities in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere, while at the same time hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese flocked to Japan for study and technical knowledge. Meanwhile, international organizations—such as the Red Cross, Boy and Girl Scouts,
TL;DR: In this article, Federico Marcon argues that the history of science in Japan did not disappear but was basically renamed as botany, zoology, or biology, and he argues that in essence, Honzōgaku did not vanish but was renamed as a botany or zoology.
Abstract: Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 77.1 (2017): 245–251 new political leadership. Marcon argues that in essence honzōgaku did not disappear but was basically renamed as botany, zoology, or biology. Over sixty years ago, Joseph Needham began to publish his monumental Science and Civilisation in China,3 and one of its typifying features is a series of explicit claims that Chinese scholars had preceded certain European discoveries and an implicit evaluation of the same Chinese science by modern European criteria. Formally trained as a biochemist but self-trained as an historian of science, Needham was committed to comparison in order to justify his work and attract attention to the subject. His strategy worked in at least two ways: Needham himself gained an extraordinary reputation and the history of Chinese science expanded as a research specialty, producing major works of impressive sophistication. The downside of Needham’s work was an occasional tendency toward anachronism or dubious comparison. The history of science in Japan has been a considerably smaller enterprise. Our most important contributor was Nakayama Shigeru 中 山茂, who passed away in 2014. More recently, we have received important work by Brett L. Walker, Gregory Clancey, Julia Adeney Thomas, Shigehisa Kuriyama, Ian Miller, and several other scholars. The present work by Federico Marcon is one of the most important of these contributions. It is based on prodigious research, careful evaluation, balanced judgment, and philosophical literacy. Marcon’s book stands as a landmark achievement.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors discusses the problem of translating the blank space between the passive-voice marker and the rest of the phrase in a common phrase like "receiving an order from on high".
Abstract: ture a common phrase like ōsetsukeraresōrō 被 仰付候 (receiving an order from on high): How does one translate the blank space between the passive-voice marker 被 (-rare) and the rest of the phrase? Rendering into English the expressed if formulaic respect for the usually unspecified authority behind the order is important but hard to carry off in idiomatic, twenty-first-century English. This issue, like every other issue, of HJAS is full of translations of words, phrases, and concepts. Each of our contributors, in her or his way, has wrestled with many problems no less vexing than “Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure,” and often more fraught than my mostly stylistic contortions over words like zaizai. To take just one example from each article: Chelsea Foxwell examines the character of early Meiji shinbun 新聞, “newspapers” that look like anything but. John Herman acknowledges the pejorative “raw” (sheng 生) and “cooked” (shu 熟) connotations of terms informing whether Miao people were “unincorporated” or “incorporated” (respectively) under direct Qing administrative rule. Michael Hunter inquires into the relationships suggested by the term “disciples” (dizi 弟子) in early China. For his part, Nathan Vedal invites us to wonder how to render a title like Huangji jingshi shu 皇極經世書. In an early draft of his article he used the relatively literal “Book of the august ultimate traversing the ages,” but in the end he settled on the more readily comprehensible “Supreme principles governing the world.” DLH