East Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Finding The Right Partner: Japan And Netherlands’ Relationship In The Edo Period, Sarah Weeks '24

Senior Research Symposium

This thesis paper seeks to enhance the understanding of the Japanese-Dutch relationship during the Edo Period. Despite Japan being a closed country during the Tokugawa Shogunate, it uniquely permitted the Netherlands as the only Western country to have access to trade. This decision was challenging to make due to Japan’s previous failed experiences with the West, such as the Portuguese, whose spread of the Christian religion led to major conflict. When Japan expelled out all Western foreigners, they allowed the Dutch to remain. The Netherlands then became the exclusive Western country allowed in Japan for over 200 years. This relationship …

Challenges Facing The Reunification Of Korea, Patricia Cazeau

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

After the Second World War, the once-unified northern and southern halves of the nation of Korea had been under immense external pressure from the American-Soviet Cold War. As a result, the northern side had sided with the Russian communists, while the southern side had leaned into the United States’ style of democracy over time. Despite multiple proposed ideas for unification, the increasing tensions between Russia and the United States discouraged reunification, despite the Cold War’s eventual end. Thus, various social, religious, economic, and military crises multiplied within each country’s borders. This paper will assess the challenges surrounding the reunification of …

Conscription In South Korea, Jennifer Rhee

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

South Korea has had a mandatory military service requirement for male South Korean citizens from the ages 18-28 since the 1950's- the government's response to accelerate the establishment of a stronger defense force during post cold-war times. The disposition of conscription has been changed multiple times since it's implementation and continues to be reexamined as South Korea progresses, but it still faces scrutiny and controversies as forced labor conventions are challenged and many young men will try to find exemptions from the obligation to serve their country for several years. This presentation will observe the history, reasoning, and future of …

North Korea: How Fear Is Used To Control A Nation, Ashley Clisby

Capstone Showcase

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, more commonly known as North Korea, is most commonly known for its possession and testing of nuclear weapons and threatening to use these weapons of mass destruction. Less commonly talked about are the human rights violations that are being experienced by the citizens of North Korea. Most, if not all, of the information regarding North Korean human rights that have been reported on comes from individuals who have escaped the Kim regime. There is very limited information traveling in and out of North Korea that is not heavily monitored by the government. These individuals …

Du Fu And Chinese Poetic Expression: How Politics, Nature, And Self Become One, Binhnam Nguyen

Young Historians Conference

The Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu introduced a new style of writing to Chinese poetry with his new interpretation of how to write poetry and for what purpose it can serve. Living in the midst of political turmoil, Du drew inspiration from the instability and used poetry as a means of expressing his anguish, but nationalist sentiments that wished for the prosperity of China. His different stylistic approach to poetry personalized the art of poetic writing and changed its language to express something more lyrical and with feeling. Du’s role in changing the course of Chinese poetic expression can be …

Chinese Arts: Visualizing The World Through The Taoist Eye, Harrison Nickels

Student Symposium

Over the centuries of Chinese tradition, abundant art works were created as expressions of people’s views of life and as indications of the way they observed and understood the natural and human world around them. These works, therefore, are of grand importance for scholars today to glean information on the social, cultural, political, and economic environments of the time. Among the schools of the arts, quite a few had been under the influence of the Taoist philosophy. Specifically, the Taoist inherent concern with the passivity of life found its way in the works of artists, which, in a variety of …

Text Mining In Chinese Ancient Attires, Lu Wang

Western Research Forum

Starting from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE) when writing system appeared in China, clothing was recorded as symbols to denote social statuses. The hierarchical signification of clothing remained in the following dynasties until the end of imperial China in 1911. The imperial period produced twenty-five official dynastic histories with rich corpuses on the subject of attire, documenting regulations and prohibitions of detailed dress code, a subject being scarcely studied and treated with assumptions today. This research will use text mining tools to identify descriptive words of clothing that reflect Chinese hierarchal ideology from the twenty-five histories. The method is to …

The Life Of The Factory? Or The Life Of The Farm? That Is The Question., Adam C. Mcelwain, Bethany Lutwin

Migration in Global Context Symposium

Abstract: The focus of this lesson on Global Migration is the emotion behind young women’s decision to leave for the city and work in the factory, or stay in their hometown. Both have an opportunity cost for a life that may be better. The essential question is “Is it better to be a factory girl who has emigrated to the city or a country girl living and working on a farm?” Students will examine the motivation behind leaving the country for a factory job in the city or staying behind and working in a rural setting like a farm. They …

Maneuvering Modernity: Family Law As A Battle Field In Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945), Yun-Ru Chen

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Twenty five years after launching its own legal modernization in response to Western imperialism, Japan imposed a modern legal system upon its first colony, Taiwan. In accordance with the “respecting old custom” colonial policy, the Japanese created a system called Taiwanese customary law, a mixture of imperial Chinese laws, local customs and European legal concepts, and gradually implemented its newly adopted European-style Meiji Civil Code (1898). However, even since the late 1910s when the colonial policy changed into “full-flag assimilation,” family law remained an exception to the transplantation of Japanese laws. That did not, however, mean that family law was …

Absent Presence: Li Yu’S Drama Wanli Yuan And Early Qing Sartorial Politics, Guojun Wang

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Li Yu’s 李玉 Wanli yuan 萬里圓 (Thousand-li Reunion) is one of the few dramas in the early Qing period that directly addresses the topic of the Ming-Qing transition. Although Wanli yuan was never published in its entirety during the Qing Dynasty, its popular scenes circulated widely on stage, resulting in a series of “performance editions.” Oriented toward stage performance, most of Li Yu’s plays include detailed costume instruction. By contrast, almost none of the extant editions of Wanli yuan includes any costume instruction. Despite this absence, the dialogues and stage directions of the extant performance editions show that different scenes …

Searching In The Dark - Han Learning And The Controversy Of 1799 Metropolitan Exam, Shiu On Chu

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

This paper investigates the introduction of Han Learning (hanxue 漢學) in Qing civil examinations from an institutional perspective. Focusing on the controversy over the 1799 metropolitan examination, I argue that hanxue was resisted not only by the intellectual orthodoxy Cheng-Zhu learning, but also a concept of “proper advancement” (zhengtu 正途) from examination.

The 1799 metropolitan examination was often seen as a triumph of Han Learning because the chief examiners Zhu Gui (朱珪1731-1806) and Ruan Yuan (阮元1764-1849), who were famous patrons of Han scholarship, awarded degrees to a number of established Han scholars. Contemporaries attributed this high rate of …

The Emergence Of Singlehood In The 20th And Early 21st Century: Hong Kong, Japan, And Taiwan, Joanna Kang

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

In East Asia, Confucian philosophy is the dominant value system, especially its prominent doctrine of filial piety. Filial piety is a requirement of life, and being filial is an essential approach to acquire public recognition as an individual with integrity. The most unfilial and unforgivable behavior is being unmarried or sonless.[1] However, there are more and more Asian women who are immersed in this social milieu yet are choosing to embrace their singlehood. The liberation of Asian women is one of the momentous outcomes of Western modernization. This is also a trans-cultural trend that spans nations, societies, and ideologies. What …

The Human Flesh Search Engine: Democracy, Censorship, And Political Participation In Twenty-First Century China, Vincent Capone

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The Human Flesh Search Engine is a recent, unique phenomenon on the Chinese internet. Comprising of thousands of forum, micro-blog, and entertainment websites and mobilizing the overwhelming number of Chinese internet users, or netizens, the search engine is able to quickly find obscure information and identify seemingly anonymous internet personalities. These websites allow netizens to have their voices heard in an otherwise restrictive government, however these websites also become a hotbed for dissent, with web users highlighting stories and figures which they deem harmful to society. Through clever investigative work, netizens hunt down an individual's identity with the goal of …