Asian History Commons^™

Abetting Assimilation: Competing Narratives In Sister Inez Hilger’S Together With The Ainu: A Vanishing People, Mark Spangler

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

No abstract provided.

Comic Legacies Of The Japanese Silver Screen, Aaron Gerow, Xavi Sawada, David Baasch, Eugene Kwon, Adam Silverman, Anna Tropnikova, Chloe Yan

Film Series Commentaries

Pamphlet created for the film series “Comic Legacies of the Japanese Silver Screen” presented at Yale University from February to April, 2024. Starting with an introduction outlining the history of Japanese film comedy, the pamphlet contains plot summaries and commentaries on the following films:

Buddhist Mass for Goemon Ishikawa (1930, Saitō Torajirō) Fighting Friends (1929, Ozu Yasujirō) Romantic and Crazy (1934, Yamamoto Kajirō) Singing Lovebirds (1939, Makino Masahiro) Akanishi Kakita (1936, Itami Mansaku) Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryō (1935, Yamanaka Sadao) Room for Rent (1959, Kawashima Yūzō) Doctor’s Day Off (1952, Shibuya Minoru) Oh, My Bomb! …

Ontological Complexity Of Interpolity Orders: The Encounter Between Chosŏn And Tibet In Qing, Inho Choi, Minju Kwon

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines the ontological complexity of interpolity orders with a focus on peripheral polities in the Qing order. Existing multiculturalist studies of the Qing order emphasized diverse cultural representations of a single imperial reality, lacking an understanding of multiple realities experienced by peripheral participants. Our analysis reveals the ontological complexity—rather than cultural diversity—of the Qing order, in which multiple ontological agents experienced different lived worlds, from the encounter between Chosŏn Korean envoys and the Tibetan Panchen Lama at Emperor Qianlong’s birthday ceremony. By analyzing the Chosŏn envoy member Pak Chiwŏn’s travelog and Tibetan records, we argue that the Chosŏn …

The Philippine Economy During The Japanese Occupation, Jasper Lem

Asian Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The economy of the Philippines was derailed by the Japanese occupation during World War II. As an American colony before World War II, the Philippines had close amicable ties with the United States highlighted by promises of independence on July 4th, 1946. The Philippines also maintained a beneficial economic relationship with the States at this time through extensive foreign trade. However, because of the Japanese invasion, the Philippine economy was robbed of this profitable foreign trade and the promise of independence, severely crippling the island nation and her morale. The first policies implemented by Japan were designed to control the …

Face And Its Effect On Modern Historical Memory: Nanjing, China’S Massacre And Japan’S Incident, Channing A. Baker

Student Scholarship

Rising tensions and an increased number of incidents between China and Japan in the current century show that the Nanjing Massacre has had an indisputable effect on modern Sino-Japanese relations politically and socially. Iris Chang’s book of popular history, The Rape of Nanking (1997), both renewed scholarly research and moved the debate into the public eye. This shift in the debate has led to continuing tensions between the two societies even as their governments officially maintain a peaceful relationship. The culture of “face” has made these Sino-Japanese tensions consistently intractable in the 21st century and sparked a number of anti-Japan …

A Friend Who Does Me No Good: Aphorism In Matteo Ricci’S On Friendship, Maximilian Chan Weiher

Asian Languages and Cultures Honors Projects

This paper argues that Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) designed his aphoristic compilation, Jiaoyou Lun 交友論–On Friendship (1595)–to serve the Jesuit mission of converting the Chinese to Catholicism and express the conflict he may have felt exploiting friends to forward the Jesuit mission. Utilizing friendships to allow for greater social influence was central to the Jesuit proselytization strategy in China. However, Ricci’s moral education from youth taught him to judge utilitarian friendships as immoral. The extant scholarship regarding Ricci’s On Friendship fails to acknowledge the significance of the aphoristic form to this work. To illuminate the value of aphorism …

Patterns Of Integration: A Network Perspective On Popular Religious Connections In China’S Lower Yangzi, 1150–1350, Song Chen

Faculty Journal Articles

The spread of cults from their original homelands in the Song dynasty (960–1279) created crisscrossing ties between local communities and fostered social and cultural integration in Chinese society that transcended class and geographic boundaries. Scholars have produced numerous case studies on these translocal cults and their implications, but the pattern of connections across space created by these cults is yet to be explored. Using the data collected from local gazetteers that have survived from the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties, this article takes a bird’s‑eye view of the spatial distribution of popular cults in China’s Lower Yangzi region between 1150 …

A Century Of Critical Buddhism In Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

This chapter introduces the central arguments of Critical Buddhism as a lens by which to view the course of “modern” Buddhism in Japan, particularly as it relates to politics. It traces philosophical and political precedents for Critical Buddhism in the context of Japanese modernity, by focusing on several progressive Buddhist figures movements from mid-Meiji through early Shōwa, including the New Buddhist Fellowship and the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. I argue that previous attempts to centralize criticism as a basic Buddhist precept were unsuccessful in part do to an inability to distinguish the Buddhistic components of their thought and practice, …

Cultural And Philosophical Beliefs In Tea Poetry, Julia M. Minor

CAFE Symposium 2023

Tea is a commodity that has greatly changed the course of history. One example of the influence of tea is in poetry. This project analyzes some examples of tea poetry from China and Japan to understand how tea in poetry conveys cultural and philosophical beliefs of given time periods. China and Japan are looked at collectively because their histories are very entwined. In the two Chinese poems, tea is tied to hierarchical relations and the importance of Taoism. In the Japanese poems, tea is greatly related to nature and appreciating simplicity. Three of the four poems are a reaction to …

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China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

No abstract provided.

The Personality Profile Of China’S Empress Wu Zetian, Ruoyue Wang, Yunyiye Chen, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of Empress Wu Zetian, de facto ruler of China from 665 to 705, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data about Empress Wu were collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed in accordance with interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of …

Zen Internationalism, Zen Revolution: Inoue Shūten, Uchiyama Gudō And The Crisis Of (Zen) Buddhist Modernity In Late Meiji Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In addition to the birth and development of “Imperial Way Zen,” late Meiji Japan witnessed the emergence of a number of young lay Buddhist scholars, priests and activists who attempted, with varying success, to reframe Buddhism along progressive and occasionally radical political lines. While it is true that groups such as the New Buddhist Fellowship (Shin Bukkyō Dōshikai, 1899–1915) were made up mainly of young men associated with the two branches of the Shin (True Pure Land) sect, several of its members did affiliate themselves with Zen, such as Suzuki Daisetsu (1870–1966) and Inoue Shūten (1880–1945). While the former’s work …

From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …

Buddhist Socialism In China, 1900–1930: A History And Appraisal, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

Although it is only in recent decades that scholars have begun to reconsider and problematize Buddhist conceptions of “freedom” and “agency,” the various thought traditions of Asian Buddhism have for some centuries struggled with questions related to the issue of “liberation,” along with its fundamental ontological, epistemological and ethical—if not economic and political—implications. With the development of Marxist thought in the mid to late nineteenth century, a new paradigm for thinking about freedom in relation to economics, history, identity and socio-political transformation found its way to Asia, where it soon confronted traditional religious interpretations of freedom as well as competing …

Total Prevention: A History Of Schistosomiasis In Japan, Alexander Bay

History Faculty Articles and Research

In Japan, schistosomiasis was endemic in Yamanashi Prefecture and a few other hotspot areas where the Miya’iri snail lived. The parasite’s lifecycle relied on the intermediary Miya’iri snail as well as the human host. Parasite eggs passed into the agrarian environment through untreated night soil used as fertiliser or through the culture of open defecation in rural Japan. Manmade rice fields and irrigation ditches, night soil covered paddies and highly refined growing seasons put people in flooded rice paddies to intensively work the land in the spring and summer. The disease was equally dependent on human intervention in the natural …

A Phoenix From The Ashes: Jackson Park’S Japanese Garden, Cultural Exchange, And The Endurance Of Japanese Sites After Pearl Harbor, Brittany Murphy

Asian Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Japanese gardens in the United States have a history that dates back to the World’s Fairs of the late 19th century, when Japan used the World’s Stage to project an image of itself as a powerful nation founded on both modern industrial techniques and traditional culture to compete with dominating Euro-American powers. The history of the Japanese garden in Chicago’s Jackson Park, gifted to Chicago by the Japanese government for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, tells the story of Midwesterners’ love and appreciation for the gardens while also demonstrating the implicit legacies of Executive Order 9066. The garden remained a crucial …

Hall Family Collection - Index To Appendix 1, "Letters From The Attic" And Appendix 2, Postcards, Kyle Ainsworth

Librarian and Staff Presentations

The Hall Family Collection can generally be described in two parts. The first part is Letters from the Attic, which are more than 5,000 documents that Andrena Hall Brunotte transcribed into 16 volumes. Brunotte’s transcription project established an “original order” to this part of the collection that the processing archivist does their best to adhere to. All of these materials were found in one large steamer trunk and organized by Brunotte in chronological order. Boxes 1 to 4 of the collection house the paper transcriptions (3,330 pages). Boxes 5 to 13 contain the documents, which are in chronological order. The …

What China’S Infrastructure Development Abroad Reveals About Its International Goals, Gillian Hodge

Senior Honors Projects

China’s Belt and Road Initiative has resulted in a variety of investment and infrastructure projects around the world, especially in developing countries. This initiative is unique in its implementation strategy, particularly the hands-on approach China takes to each infrastructure development project. Projects are financed by Chinese national banks and built by Chinese corporations utilizing majority-Chinese labor. These projects are seen by many countries as mutually beneficial; China is able to provide gainful employment and business to its national corporations in exchange for lucrative infrastructure for the host countries in the form of advanced roads, rails, ports, etc. Other countries, especially …

The Influence Of The Thirty-Six Stratagems On Chinese Strategy In The Diaoyu Islands, Brent Schuliger

Senior Honors Theses

The Diaoyu Islands are a small, uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea which has begun increasing in strategic significance due to its advantageous location near Taiwan and along the First Island Chain. The islands are currently under Japanese administration, but the People’s Republic of China considers them historically Chinese and contests Japan’s claim to the islands. A careful examination of China’s actions in challenging Japan’s rule over the Diaoyus reveals the influence of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, a tome of ancient Chinese military wisdom which provides a framework onto which China’s current strategy corresponds. This thesis examines the historical …

Japanese-English Translation: Katayama Hiroko—Fifty-Dollar Coffee (June 1953), Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Revised translation of「コーヒー五千円」、片山廣子著、底本「燈火節」暮しの手帖社、昭和２８年

Source, Aozora Bunko (a digital archive of public-domain Japanese-language works):

General website: https://www.aozora.gr.jp

Current text: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001346/files/49517_35999.html

Music And Sound In Weihsien Internment Camp In Japanese-Occupied China, Zhihui Sophia Geng

Asian Studies Faculty Publications

From the chapter's Introduction:
On 7 July 1937, Japanese forces based in Manchuria charged southward towards Beijing, invading north China and hence starting the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, transforming the Second Sino-Japanese War into the Pacific War. As a result of Pearl Harbor, the status of Allied citizens living in China at the time changed from neutral to ‘enemy aliens’. These Allied citizens included individuals and their families who worked in China as government officials, executives, engineers and Christian missionaries. They were forced into internment camps under the watchful eyes of the …

Psychoactive Revolution And Transnational Networks, Menglu Gao

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

The connection and clash between Asia and the Anglophone world were, in part, facilitated by what David T. Courtwright calls the “psychoactive revolution,” a process in which hunger, the need for food, was replaced by desire and addiction in the modern world. Networks between these regions deepened and proliferated as stimulants and sedatives such as tea, opium, and coffee became increasingly accessible and popular around the globe.

Transimperial Networks And East Asia: Timeline, Menglu Gao, Sophia Hsu, Waiyee Loh, Hyungji Park, Jessica R. Valdez, Adrian S. Wisnicki, Rae X. Yan

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

To help instructors and students who may be unfamiliar with the history of East Asia and its transimperial exchanges with the Anglophone world, the creators of the “Transimperial Networks and East Asia” lesson plan cluster built this timeline, which includes some major historical events from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. This timeline comes out of our many discussions about the methodological issues that arise when the field of Victorian Studies seeks to expand its traditional geographical scope. As we quickly realized in the process of creating our cluster, the usual boundaries of the long nineteenth century (the French Revolution …

Transimperial Networks: East Asia And The ‘Victorian’ World: Introduction, Sophia Hsu, Menglu Gao, Waiyee Loh, Hyungji Park, Jessica R. Valdez, Rae X. Yan

English and Literary Arts: Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, East Asia has been on the margins of Victorian Studies, eclipsed by sites of formal imperialism such as South Asia. However, the region was deeply intertwined with the “Victorian” world through transimperial networks of trade, migration, and geopolitical competition. Rather than locating East Asia at the margins, this cluster of lesson plans explores the figurative and historical centrality of East Asia to Victorian Studies.

Friendship In The Confucian Tradition, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

An overview of how friendship has been represented and assessed in the Confucian tradition, and particularly in classical Confucian texts such as the Analects and the Mencius. Themes covered include the relationship between the family and friendship, the ambivalence towards friendship in imperial China, and the connection between friendship and the Confucian ideal of personal cultivation. The chapter finishes by exploring novel conceptions of friendship and human relatedness suggested by the Confucian tradition.

The Fall Of The Ikko Ikki: The Demise Of The Honganji In The Late Sengoku Period, Alexander M. Remington

Student Publications

During the late Sengoku Period Japan witnessed the fall of the Honganji, a sect of Pure Land Buddhism. The Honganji was a significant military, political, and economic power and commanded armies of commoners known as Ikko Ikki. The Honganji fell because it challenged the traditional social order of Japan, lacked unity, and stood against warlord Oda Nobunaga during his bid for hegemony. The fall of the Honganji resulted in consequential policies and impacted Japanese society going into the Tokugawa period.

Case Study: Religion, Socialism And Secularization In Modern Japan: The New Buddhist Fellowship, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

An Umbrella Of Autonomy: The Validity Of The Hong Kong Protests, Ciera Lehmann

Senior Honors Theses

Hong Kong has been fighting for democracy and to retain its autonomy from China, and the world has been watching. Over time, Hong Kongers have seen Beijing blatantly tighten its grip before time was up for the fifty-year agreement since the handover in 1997. In 2014, and again in 2019, hundreds of thousands of citizens filled the streets to participate in pro-democracy demonstrations with the protests only gaining momentum and influence. While there has mostly been support for Hong Kong’s independence movement, there has been argument that Beijing’s actions are completely justified. Should Hong Kong remain autonomous from China, and …

Writing For Local Government Schools: Authors And Themes In Song-Dynasty School Inscriptions, Song Chen

Faculty Journal Articles

A hallmark of the Song dynasty's achievements was the creation of a national network of state-sponsored local schools. This engendered an exponential growth of commemorative inscriptions dedicated to local government schools. Many authors used these inscriptions as an avenue to expound and disseminate their visions of schools and education. Using the methods of network analysis and document clustering, this article analyzes all the inscriptions extant from Song times for local government schools. It reveals a structural schism in the diffusion of ideas between the Upper Yangzi and other regions of the Song. It also demonstrates the growing intellectual influence of …

Before “Fire And Fury”: The Role Of Anger And Fear In U.S.–North Korea Relations, 1968–1994, Benjamin Young

Research & Publications

Since the beginning of the Korean War, the North Korean and U.S. governments have been involved in emotional warfare. From North Korea’s stated “eternal hatred” of the U.S. imperialists to Washington’s demonization of Pyongyang as an insidious Soviet pawn, emotions have been at the heart of this hostile bilateral relationship. Using three case studies (the 1968 Pueblo incident, the 1976 axe murder incident, and the 1994 nuclear crisis), I examine the ways in which the two sides have elicited emotional responses from their populations for their respective political goals. By portraying the U.S. as the source of all evilness in …