Showing papers in "Modern Asian Studies in 1976"

Kataki-uchi: The Practice of Blood-Revenge in Pre-Modern Japan

Abstract: Five years after the Meiji Restoration, on the seventh of the second month of 1873, the Japanese Government issued the following decree:The taking of human life is strictly prohibited by the law of the land, and the right to punish a murderer lies with the Government. However, since ancient times it has been customarily regarded as the duty of a son or younger brother to avenge the murder of his father or elder brother. While this is a natural expression of the deepest human feelings, it is ultimately a serious breach of the law on account of private enmity, a usurpation for private purposes of public authority, and cannot be treated as other than the crime of wilful slaughter. Furthermore, in extreme cases the undesirable situation often arises that one person wantonly and deliberately kills anothe in the name of revenge without regard for the rights and wrongs of the case or the justification for his act. This is to be deplored, and it is therefore decreed that vengeance shall be strictly prohibited. In future, should some close relative unfortunately be killed, the facts should be set out clearly an a complaint be laid before the authorities. Let it be plainly understood that anyone who ignores this injunction and adheres to the old customs, taking the law into his own hands to kill for revenge, will be subject to a penalty appropriate to his offence.

Chinese Nationalism and the Anti-Christian Campaigns of the 1920s

Abstract: The definition of China as a nation has often been contrasted with the definition of China as a culture. The modern Chinese state, it is said, has to displace the Middle Kingdom concept of the Great Tradition. The culturalism of dynastic China had to be transmuted into nationalism as China accepted the challenge of modernization. Truly, China has experienced revolution in the twentieth century; the political and cultural definition of China in the 1970s does differ from that of the 1870s. But perhaps our concentration on Chinese tradition as a deterrent to modernization has obscured the continuities of Chinese history. Though certain aspects of the Great Tradition hindered change in China, others contributed to it. The Chinese heritage provided the framework and orientation as Chinese selected elements from Western civilization, and while transforming their own tradition they also translated and transformed those importations designed to bring wealth and power. Reinterpretations of the importations were informed by Chinese perceptions of the past as well as of the present.

Foreign-Training and China's Self-Strengthening: The Case of Feng-huang-shan, 1864–1873

Abstract: One of the principal concerns of China's ‘self-strengthening movement’ in the T'ung-chih period (1862–1874) was the question of military reform. Organizational change was not a central issue, for the Ch'ing dynasty had already found in the innovative armies known as yung-ying (lit., ‘brave battalions’) a comparatively effective military system compatible with existing economic and administrative institutions. But changes in training methods—especially officer training—and weapons came to be viewed as essential to the self-strengthening effort. Experience in the huge and devastating Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), together with the repeated humiliations suffered by China at the hands of foreigners in the two decades following the Opium War of 1839–1842, had brought the Ch'ing government to a greater awareness of the need for introducing Western-style weapons and training in Chinese armies. Particularly convincing was the effective use of foreign troops and foreign-officered contingents (such as the vaunted Ever-Victorious Army) against the Taipings in the area of Shanghai during 1862. But in Chinese eyes, the employment of foreign troops and officers could never be anything more than a temporary expedient. Ch'ing policy-makers aimed at eliminating dependence on foreigners as soon as possible, while building China's own military capabilities in order to contend with both internal and external challenges. These twin goals lay at the heart of self-strengthening.

Socioeconomic Change in Villages of Manchuria During the Ch'ing and Republican Periods: Some Preliminary Findings

Abstract: A Great deal has been written about the Chinese state, but we still know very little about the common people, particularly peasants. How did they live? How did they found their communities? How did their socioeconomic status and property rights change over time. During the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s, China's rural society and economy became the object of intense investigation by Chinese and foreign researchers. From this period dates our present, conventional wisdom of how rural communities were structured and had evolved since the nineteenth century.

Great Britain, China and the Status of Tibet, 1914–21

Abstract: The decade preceding the First World War, with the Younghusband expedition, the Chinese forward movement in Tibet of 1909–11, and the Simla Conference of 1913–14, is naturally the period of Anglo-Tibetan relations that has been most thoroughly covered by historians. It could indeed be argued that, on the surface at least, the relationship forged between British India and Tibet by the conclusion of the Simla Conference remained unchanged and largely unchallenged until the transfer of power to an independent Indian Government. This seeming stability, however, masks a debate over Tibetan policy within the British and Indian Governments that was particularly intense during the years 1919–21, and which reflected Britain's nervousness over the political instability of north Asia as a whole during and after the First World War. Before the First World War, the ‘problem’ of Tibet was largely a parochial issue for the British Indian Government, but at the conclusion of the First World War this ‘problem’ had become an important ingredient of a much wider debate on the overall direction of post-war British policy in Asia.

The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform

Abstract: The temperance/prohibition agitation represents a fascinating chapter in the social and political history of India which has been largely ignored. If any notice is taken of this movement, it is generally dismissed (or elevated) as an example of the uniquely Indian process of ‘sanskritization’ or as an equally unique component of ‘Gandhianism’—in spite of the fact that the liquor question has not been without political importance in the history either of England or of the United States. And in spite of the fact that the temperance agitation in India in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century was intimately connected with temperance agitation in England. Indeed the temperance movement in India was organized, patronized, and instructed by English temperance agitators.

Politics in Late Colonial Burma: The Case of U Saw

Abstract: It has been assumed that the politicians and political organizations of late colonial Burma were mere shams behind which the real affairs of government were conducted by British governors and civil servants. It also has been assumed that what mass politics there was among the Burmese in the 1930s was dominated by nationalist youth, especially the Thakins, and monks who were untainted by contact and collaboration with the British and those Burmese who associated with them. Those members of the Burmese political elite who attempted to work in government and party politics during the last pre-war years, therefore, have been seen at best as mere reformers and at worst as callous opportunists.

Malay Reservations and Malay Land Ownership in Semenyih and Ulu Semenyih Mukims Selangor

Abstract: S CANT attention has been paid to the study of ownership of agricultural land in Peninsular Malaysia, and the dearth of research on this important topic is largely due to the lack of source materials and the difficulty of collecting such materials.l A major source of information on land ownership is the land titles which are filed in the Registration of Titles Office (for lots of land exceeding 4 ha.) in the State capitals, and in the Land Office (for lots below 4 ha.) in the district capitals, and the potentiality of these records for geographic investigation has barely been tapped. The registration of land ownership in Peninsular Malaysia is based on the Torrens System which represents 'a system of registration of transactions with interests in land whose declared object is, under Government authority, to establish and certify to the ownership of an absolute and indefeasible title to land and to simplify its transfer'.2 Under this system, land alienation involves cadastral surveys to delineate the boundaries of individual parcels of land, to each of which a non-recurring identification number is assigned. All details relating to the size, date of registration, land-use conditions, and transactions for each parcel of land are entered in the land registers. This study is based on data derived from land titles in the Malay Reservations in the nzakinzs3 of Semenyih and Ulu Semenyih in the

The Congress at the 1937 Elections in Madras

Abstract: In February 1937, the Congress party in the Madras Presidency won 159 of 215 seats in the provincial Legislative Assembly at the first elections under provincial autonomy It was the most convincing victory for the Congress in any province of British India, and neither the Madras Government nor the Congress leaders had expected it In the two and a half years Congress rule that followed, their ministers made adept use of their powers They cut land revenue and dismantled the procedure for revising the land revenue demand, thus appealing to the pocket of every landholder They re-instated all the village officers who had been dismissed for aiding the Congress during Civil Disobedience, thus instructing the leaders of rural society where the source of power and influence now lay They passed two measures to alleviate the burden of agricultural debt, and threatened to legislate in favour of the tenants inside the major landed estates Meanwhile, for the first time, the Cogress established a network of committees throughout the province, and by 1939 this new machine had placed virtually every local government board under a Congress regime The number of Congerss members in the Tamil and Andhra areas rose from 115,971 on the eve of the 1937 elections to 594,397 in 1938

Hindu Traditionalism and Nationalist Ideologies in Nineteenth-Century Maharashtra

Abstract: Historians of modern India have recently been paying increased attention to the founders of nationalist politics in the provinces, in growing recognition that the heredity of the Indian National Congress was influenced by complex institutional patterns going back some decades before its birth in 1885. These patterns were rooted in widely varying local and regional conditions. To the extent that the local political associations were designed by a Western-educated professional class with the common purpose of influencing policy decisions of the British Raj, they can all be understood within the context of British imperial politics. But the associations' leaders, the spokesmen of Indian nationalism in its early forms, had to confront a second audience as well as the British: the largely traditional society of their birth. Their relationship to that society was probably the most controversial and misunderstood dimension of their lives, yet it was crucial to the growth of regionally distinctive variations of later mass nationalism.

The First Moplah Rebellion against British Rule in Malabar

Abstract: The rebellion of the Muslim community of Malabar, the Moplahs, in 1921–22 is well known to scholars of Indian history. The violent but small-scale Moplah disturbances which were a recurring feature of the south Malabar interior between 1836 and 1919 have also received attention. The present writer has argued elsewhere that these ‘out breaks’ were attempts by rural Moplahs in the south Malabar taluks of Ernad and Walluvanad to curb the British-fortified power of the high-caste (mainly Brahmin and Nair) Hindu jenmis or ‘landlords’ by means of what were, in effect, ritual challenges to British rule. What is little realized is that defiance of British power by the Moplah agricultural population of interior south Malabar dates from the earliest period of the rule of the East India Company, the decade after the Muslim ruler of Mysore, Tippu Sultan, ceded the province in 1792.

Lyonnais Imperialism in the Far East 1900–1938

Abstract: Influential citizens of the French city of Lyon embraced the cause of expansion during the nineteenth century. Religious zeal led to the founding of the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi during the Restoration, and local Catholics continued to lend fervent support to overseas missionary endeavors. But even when the religious impulse towards expansion stood at its zenith, the Lyonnais did not overlook the more concrete advantages to be secured through the acquisition of Algeria and the opening of China to Western trade. Economic motivation took on far more importance during the second half of the century when the devastation of French sericulture by pebrine forced the magnates of the silk industry, the most important local industry and the only French industry dominant in the international market, to look elsewhere for new supplies of raw silk. The Far East, the world's greatest silk-producing region, became the focus of attention, and the Lyon Chamber of Commerce, the most effective local organization devoted to the cause of imperialism, supported the opening of Japan, called for the wringing of new concessions from China, and backed the acquisition and development of Indochina. Just as within the larger pattern of French municipal imperialism the business communities of Bordeaux and Marseille acquired vital stakes in West Africa and North Africa, so also Lyon's business community came to play a pivotal role in French undertakings in Eastern Asia where the Lyonnais soon pushed their activities beyond the confines of the all-important silk trade.

The Canton Rising of 1902—1903: Reformers, Revolutionaries, and the Second Taiping

Abstract: It has frequently been asserted that the Chinese revolutionaries and the 1898 reformers, after making several unsuccessful attempts at cooperation, divided into enemy camps after the failure of their respective risings in 1900. This would suggest that by 1901, the lines between reform and revolution were clearly drawn. It has further been assumed that the decision not to cooperate was a result of the reformers' permanent rejection of the principle of seizing power in China through means of an armed uprising, and that all vestiges of sympathy for republicanism had by 1900 or soon afterwards been replaced by a decisive commitment to constitutional monarchy on the part of even the most radical reformers. Furthermore, although some evidence to the contrary has been pointed out, it has often been said that the reformers, both before and after 1900, looked down on Sun Yat-sen's well-known contacts with Christians, and his close association with secret societies. This implies that the reformers, themselves, were not interested in actively soliciting the support of Chinese Christians, and that apart from T'ang Ts'ai-ch'ang's 1900 involvement with the Ko-lao Hui, of which K'ang and Liang presumably either disapproved at the time, or came to oppose immediately after T'ang's failure, the reformers kept themselves free of secret society entanglements and operated on a higher plane. Finally, it has frequently been assumed that the secret societies themselves were practically devoid of any true, revolutionary spirit, and while at times anti-Manchu, were still ‘primitive rebels.’

Japanese Aggression and the Emperor, 1931–1941, from Contemporary Diaries

Abstract: In 1971, David Bergamini, a journalist, published a very large book, Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, which sought to prove that the Emperor was virtually the sole cause and instigator of Japanese aggression in the 1930s and 1940s. Bergamini even believes the Emperor planned, among other skullduggeries, several political assassinations. The book is a polemic which, to our knowledge, contradicts all previous scholarly work, whether in English or in Japanese. It also contradicts the facts upon which this previous scholarship rested. Specialists on Japan have unanimously demolished Bergamini's thesis and his pretensions to careful scholarship.

Trade Unionism and Caste in South India

Abstract: Studies of Indian organized labour have followed the beaten track for three decades. In their obsessive concern with the political links of trade unions and their control by middle-class intellectuals and professionals, the students of Indian labour have barely paused to consider the social consequences of unionization. The origin of the labour movement in India goes back to the turn of the century, and over five million workers are now unionzed. A movement of this proportion cannot be without consequence for the attitudes and behaviour of workers. In the specifically Indian context the crucial question is how a trade union movement whose very cornerstone, at least ideally, is a sense of camaraderie among a socially diverse workforce interacts with a traditional society whose foundation is the caste system.

The Government of India and Annie Besant

Abstract: THE British government in India had two replies to Indian political activity. One was repression; the other was conciliation. There were also two faces to British rule: one of a permanent autocracy, and the other of an agency preparing Indians for future self-government under British suzerainty. It would be possible to argue that repression was the weapon of autocracy, and conciliation a necessary corollary to the approval of future self-government. The later history of the British period would then be seen as a struggle between two opposed goals, two different paternalisms. These polarities are useful as a framework, but otherwise are too facile. They would encourage a tendency to divide viceroys and their councillors into heroes and rogues, or statesmen and bigots. Yet governments with very different policies or reputations often had personnel and principles in common. There was never a simple division and conflict between repression preserving autocracy and conciliation leading to the transfer of power. Always both elements coexisted in the same administration. If repression sometimes found a place alongside the promise of self-government, the reason was not necessarily that the promise was false, held out by cynical bureaucrats who had no intention of relinquishing power. Even the most ardent official advocate of self-government insisted that progress must be gradual, and that in the

In the Wake of the Taipings: Some Patterns of Local Revolt in Kwangsi Province, 1850—1875

Abstract: The peasant unrest which marked the period 1850–1875 in China was not solely a matter of major risings such as the Taiping or Nien rebellions. These posed the most serious threat to the Ch'ing dynasty and received accordingly the lion's share of the government's attention, but the period saw an increase in more localized disturbances as well. Sometimes the harbinger of larger rebellions, sometimes their result, most often in response to purely local miseries and opportunities, local and regional unrest ranged from banditry and smash-and-grab raids on market towns to large outbreaks such as the Red Turban revolt which threatened Canton in the summer of 1854. Although there was the constant possibility that their sparks might ignite a more massive conflagration, much of this unrest was sporadic and confined, as the horizons of peasant life were confined, to a single district or to even smaller areas—market towns which lay on the outskirts of a district, particularly if the district boundary ran through hilly country, were standing invitations and encouragements to bandit gangs. Some parts of the country—the relatively prosperous, the relatively homogeneous, or those under the eyes and guns of major concentrations of governmental power—were relatively tranquil. In other areas, disorder became endemic.

Electoral Imperatives in the Indian Communist Party Split

Abstract: At the moment, India, with two Congress Parties, two Jana Sanghs, two Socialist Parties, two D.M.K.s, two Akali Dals and two Communist Parties (the third Communist Party—the C.P.M.L.—has been declared illegal after the present emergency), presents a picture with ‘splitism’ as the common denominator. The split in the Communist Party of India occurred at a time when the Communist movement all over the world was in disarray, showing polycentric trends on account of Sino-Soviet polemics. In addition to this, the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 also put serious strain on the party unity. Therefore, most of the studies that were undertaken on the C.P.I, split ascribed it either to the Sino-Soviet schism or to the Sino-Indian border war, or to both. However, an analysis of the authoritative pronouncements of two factions and an examination of their political resolutions indicate sharp differences on such issues as the character of the Congress Party, the nature of its government and the progressive and reactionary contents of its economic, home and foreign policy. The rightsts in the C.P.I, considered the national bourgeoisie Congress Party and its government as a progressive force and consequently advocated a policy of ‘Unity’ with it, in its fight against the parties of the Right reaction, such as the Jana Sangh, the Swatantra and the two variants of the Socialist Party.

Buddhist Studies Monks, Priests and Peasants: A Study of Buddhism and Social Structure in Central Ceylon. By Hans-Dieter Evers. (Monographs in Social Anthropology and Theoretical Studies in Honour of Nels Anderson, Publication 1.) E. J. Brill: Leiden, 1972. Pp. xii, 136, 8 pl.

Abstract: background.-He lived in an atmosphere surcharged with suspicion of everyone who differed from him. Gandhi could, of course, never say or do anything that was right. Even Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, widely respected by friend and critic alike for his integrity and a constructive outlook, was for Wavell 'always something of a fraud'. As a contribution to the history of an important period immediately preceding Britain's final withdrawal from India, one must read this volume with a good deal of caution, bearing in mind that Wavell's conclusions on many issues were often one-sided and his judgment was warped by deep prejudices.

The Lion's Roar of Queen Śrīmālā . Translated by Alex Wayman and Hideko Wayman. Columbia University Press: New York and London, 1974. Pp. xv, 142. No price given.

Abstract: The Sri-Mdld-sutra (= SMS) has suffered the fate of many Buddhist Sanskrit texts in that the original version, apart from a few quotations, has disappeared, and our knowledge of it is dependent upon translations into Chinese, Tibetan, and subsequently Japanese. Despite the shortness of the text (the translation takes up merely 65 pages of this volume), it had a considerable influence in its time because it became the most authoritative text in India for the Tathagatagarbha theory, the idea that all sentient beings have within themselves the embryo of the Tathagata, i.e. the potentiality of Buddhahood. The translation (pp. 59-113), which is in very readable English, is based largely upon the third and last Chinese translation, with which the Tibetan translation closely agrees, but in footnotes throughout the translation the translators state when they are deviating from this. The footnotes, which are very extensive, frequently taking up more than half the page, are a wealth of information on technical terms, and whenever possible the (probable) original Sanskrit terminology is given. In the Introduction (pp. 1-55) the authors discuss the literary history of the text, the classification of persons, i.e. the relationship between the Buddha and bodhisattvas, etc., as set out in it, and the doctrine of the text, i.e. the theory of 'One vehicle' [eka-ydna = mahd-ydna) and the developing relationship between samsdra and nirvana, and the Tathagatagarbha theory. The discussion of the last of these, the focal point of the SMS, is particularly valuable as it includes a succinct account of the development of the theory from earlier ideas. All of this is excellent, but doubts must be registered about the authors' conclusions concerning the date and provenance of §MS, said on the dustcover to 'cast new light on Buddhism in South India during the third century A.D.'. They reason as follows: SMS is cited in the Lankdvatdra (fourth century A.D.) so it is pre-fourth century. It is approximately soon after the Prajndpdramitd-sutras (c. 100 B.C.-A.D. 200). It has parallels with the Mahdvastu (the product of the Lokottaravadin subsect of the Mahasarighikas) so it is a Mahasaiighika text. It contains a glorification of the Buddhist queen Srimala, so it must have been produced at a period when there was extensive patronage of Buddhism by queens and women of high rank. The only known area that could apply is South India after the fall of the Satavahana empire, when 'almost all the royal ladies were Buddhists' (although Rowland is quoted on p. 2 as stating that the Amaravati stupa was improved during the first and second centuries of our era when 'the Buddhist establishments were supported by the queens of the ruling house'). Bareau cites evidence that in Andhra in the third century A.D. Buddhism was principally of two late Mahasaiighika subsects. Therefore the §MS is a Mahayana outgrowth of the later Mahasaiighika, and was composed in Andhra in the third century A.D.

The Mongolian Revolution of 1921

Abstract: Most historians agree that the Mongolian revolution of 1921 was initiated by Soviet Russia and was imposed on the Mongols, who were nothing more than their passive tools. This must be at least partly due to the fact that so far, works on this subject have almost exclusively been based on materials of Russian and Chinese origin. Materials published in the Mongolian People's Republic, however, provide ample evidence that the Mongolian revolution originated in a purely Mongolian situation, though the Mongols could never have succeeded in their revolution without Soviet support.

Mapping China - The Times Atlas of China . Edited by P. J. M. Geelan and D. C. Twitchett. Times Books: London, 1974. Pp. 211. £25.00.

Abstract: The Times Atlas of China is a handsomely produced book, well printed on stout, white paper; and though it does not quite reach the standard set by other Times atlases, it is a work that will be frequently and profitably consulted. Although it is a newly published work, it contains largely familiar maps that vary in quality with the originals from which they are derived or reprinted. The clearest and most stylish maps are the thematic ones from the excellent, low-priced popular atlas of the People's Republic of China published by the Central Intelligence Agency, and the physical plates by Bartholomew of Edinburgh. The worst are the city plans, nearly all of which are crude. The largest section of the atlas covers the whole of China, province by province. These, like most of the city plans, appear to have been adapted with changes—notably new railway lines and the addition of light contour shading—from several maps and atlases published in China, particularly the 1966 or 1967 J?ho/igguo dituce. They are splendidly clear, thanks to good typography and their large size; and when used with the full index they make the locations of places far more convenient than with any other atlas of China. Their limitations are those of the originals from which they are translated and adapted: paucity of detail, and the unfortunate convention of mapping the country province by province, each province fitted into the same size of map irrespective of its actual size or population. This is almost as irrational as would be an atlas of the U.S.A. in which each state were given the same space on the page. Now although the variations in size between provinces are not as great as those between American states, it is still a little odd to show Taiwan at 1:970,000 and populous Szechuan at 1:2,600,000. Most provinces are shown on a scale of between 1:1,300,000 to 1:1,600,000, which is generally satisfactory; but the use of many different scales, dictated primarily by the problems of how irregularly-shaped provinces are to be fitted into a standard format makes it difficult for the user to compare different parts of the country. It would have been more satisfactory if this obsolete convention had been discarded and replaced by a system showing the whole country on a fairly small scale (say 1:2,000,000) with the most populous regions on a larger scale (say 1:1,000,000) and the cities on a larger scale still. This is a counsel of perfection, and the cost of doing this properly would probably be much too high for a commercial publisher until better maps are openly available from China.

The Manchuria Bridgehead: Anglo-Russian Rivalry and the Imperial Railways of North China, 1897—1902

Abstract: The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 committed Great Britain to the defense of Manchuria, an area of the Chinese Empire which the Foreign Office and Cabinet never had considered to be vital to Britain's strategic or commercial interests. In the years preceding the alliance, British policy in Manchuria was weak and indecisive. The government consistently refused to run the risk of war and was genuinely concerned about the unacceptable level of tension generated by half-hearted attempts to maintain some semblance of the open door. Successive attempts to negotiate a diplomatic settlement that would provide a degree of protection for British trade while acknowledging Russia's special political and economic rights were wrecked by the uncompromising views of Sergie Witte. Under these circumstances, it was only natural that Britain should give serious thought to abandoning Manchuria.

Mishima: A Biography . By John Nathan. Hamish Hamilton: London, 1975. Pp. xx, 300. £4.50. Accomplices of Silence: The Modern Japanese Novel . By Masao Miyoshi. University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1974. Pp. xx, 194. $7.95.

Abstract: Long before his sensational ritual suicide in November 1970, Mishima Yukio had established himself as probably the most talented post-war Japanese writer by virtue of his masterly novels, plays and stories. Why, then, was he driven to suicide in his prime? One popular reaction to the incident was to explain it away by saying that he went out of his mind. An alternative view took it to be the logical consequence of the right-wing patriotism with which he became involved during his later years. There was yet another standpoint—the cult of Mishima worship, which canonized him as a devotee of beauty. None of these views, however, seems in itself adequate. The assumption that Mishima was insane would contradict the extraordinary intellectual power that he commanded in creating his work. The view that Mishima was a right-wing patriot takes it for granted that his political remarks and behaviour were intended to lead to practical results; this, however, is far from certain. The cult of Mishima worship, on the other hand, tends to regard the artificially constructed world of his works as having a reality of its own, without considering its relation to external reality. Responsible for these opposing views are Mishima's own puzzling complexities: how, for instance, could one reconcile the picture of a frail effeminate youth devoted to literature and that of a mature masculine figure with enormous muscles cultivated through various kinds of physical exercises? Mishima's complexities link up with the ultimate paradox that underlay his career—the tension between art and life, word and action, phantasy and reality, and so on. To give an adequate account of Mishima, then, one needs to look at his career in its entirety and relate his life to his art. Such an account is now available, in Mishima: A Biography by John Nathan, Associate Professor of Japanese at Princeton.

South India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; Mysore Villages Revisited . By T. Scarlett Epstein. Macmillan: London, 1973. Pp. xviii, 273. £5.95, $15.00.

Abstract: despite the severe limitations imposed by his materials. If it is not quite as fascinatingly informative as his Practice of Chinese Buddhism or as zestfully narrated as The Buddhist Revival in China, it is probably the most thoughtprovoking and immediately relevant member of this trilogy, which, now complete, will surely stand for many years to come as a monument to Mr Welch's unique brand of dedicated, conscientious scholarship.

The Catalpa Bow, A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan. By Carmen Blacker. George Allen and Unwin: London, 1975. Pp. 376. £8.75.

Abstract: Shamanism is remote from modern western experience. There is something doubly fascinating about it in the context of Japan, which is at once culturally near and distant for European observers. Moreover, the subject is a manysided one, and in this very unusual book Carmen Blacker has brought together several different approaches into an indissoluble synthesis. Perhaps the most striking single feature is the welding together of historical, literary and folklorist allusions with a substantial element of participant observation of a more or less anthropological kind. The reader is helped by a generous view of the subject-matter which is allowed to include more or less introductory chapters on supernatural beings, cosmology ('the other world') and ascesis. There are many points in the book at which the phenomena described are not specifically shamanistic in any precise sense, but in so far as there is a Japanese shamanism it is certainly to be delineated within the overall field presented. It might, indeed, be more accurate to describe the work as an introduction to Japanese folk religion. However, the writer is absolutely correct in making the definitions serve the phenomena and not vice versa. The main thrust of the book characterizes two complementary types of religious specialist. The first is the receptive shamaness type, including the ancient and traditional miko, the possessed foundresses of new cults in modern times, and the rather pathetic, blind itako, pushed into a now quite artificial routine of mediumship for mere social convenience. These are indeed disparate figures, but each is evidence of an archaic tradition of specialist communication with 'the other world', and, moreover, a tradition which has many points in common with the wider North Asian shamanism. Although the evidence is rather fragmentary, it does seem to indicate a coherent pattern of religious activity. Without being offered a pedantic framework, the reader is suggestively introduced to that world of semi-articulate communication through images and rituals, which allows such archaic religious patterns to resurface, as if spontaneously. The second type is the spiritual pilgrim who wrests his or her special powers of healing, prediction or exorcism, by sheer ascetic endurance, from the mysterious world of spiritual power. The features of initiation and spiritual journey, whether purely visionary or physically enacted on the sacred mountains, are important links with the wider phenomenon of shamanism. At the same time, these practices are partly inspired and regulated by Buddhism, mainly in terms of the highly symbolic Shingon form which had such an influence on popular Japanese religion.

Congressional Legitimation of Municipal Reform in the Philippines, 1954–1960

Abstract: Filipino political leaders have been addressing themselves to the issue of municipal reform since the dawn of the twentieth century, but discussion of the issue never reached a high intensity until the then Institute of Public Administration of the University of the Philippines (established in 1954 under the aegis of American technical assistance) defined the issues more clearly. The thrust of this renewed enthusiasm in local government reform included greater local powers, lesser national supervision over local administrative activities, and lesser legislative meddling in municipal affairs. Being a highly centralized political system under which local and national officials (both elected and appointed) have created a civic culture consisting of national review of some local administrative decisions and local dependence upon congressional pork barrels for the financing of municipal projects, any advocacy of local autonomy had to come from the top of the Philippine political totem pole and any legitimation of municipal reform policy must take place in Congress.

Annals of Rural Punjab Vilyatpur 1848–1968. Social and Economic Change in a North Indian Village . By Tom G. Kessinger. University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1974. Pp. xiii, 227. $12.00.

Abstract: Few works of Indian economic history have been quite so eagerly awaited as Professor Kessinger's. Long before its actual publication, news of Vilyatpur trickled through the international academic grapevine until this study of social and economic change in a single Punjab village became the book on every Indian economic historian's lips. Only works of scholarship which are historiographically opportune—which realize the collective aspirations of a large number of historians—achieve this kind of instant succes d'estime; and in the market for Indian economic history—a small and intimate bazaar— Vilyatpur satisfied two hitherto frustrated demands. The desirability of the interdisciplinary approach is a commonplace of our times, and historians have perhaps been specially conscious of the possibility of learning from other disciplines. The 'methodology' of the historian is acquired intuitively, through practice, rather than through formal training; and it consists, very largely, of an insatiable appetite for original sources, a catholic choice of issues to discuss, a certain capacity for historical empathy properly inhibited by a due sense of the standard of proof appropriate in any given situation, and the still prevalent conviction that the results of historical research should be presented in language comprehensible to the wellinformed layman. The historian, in short, acquires instincts rather than any very obvious 'mystery'; and the result of his methodological informality is that history easily absorbs theories and techniques devised by practitioners of other mysteries. This process of borrowing is not new. The 'new' econometric history, to cite one example, is only the most recent wave in a recurrent cycle of borrowing from economics. The process, however, has usually been comparatively unselfconscious; and now that the demand for interdisciplinary history is so strident, the borrowed theories and techniques are proportionately worse absorbed, the great Hegelian synthesis which is history threatens to fragment, and the separate strains—like so many infertile mules—cease to inseminate each other.