Asian History Commons^™

Zen And The Art Of Treason: Radical Buddhism In Meiji Era (1868–1912) Japan, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

In the early decades of the twentieth century, as Japanese society became engulfed in war and increasing nationalism, the majority of Buddhist leaders and institutions capitulated to the status quo. At the same time, there was a stream of ‘resistance’ among a few Buddhist figures, both priests and laity. These instances of progressive and ‘radical Buddhism’ had roots in late Edo-period peasant revolts, the lingering discourse of early Meiji period liberalism, trends within Buddhist reform and modernisation and the emergence in the first decade of the twentieth century of radical political thought, including various forms of socialism and anarchism. This …

When To “Open It” Only Meant Untying The Pyjama Strings: Partition And Narrativity Gone Astray, Sarbani Banerjee

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

My paper studies how brevity manifested itself through a complete breakdown of language system in reaction to the animosity circumscribing the Partition of India. I look into Sadaat Hasan Manto’s selected Urdu short stories to demonstrate how the pared off pattern of writing coupled with creation of specific information lapses helps to project hostility in its denuded form. The dark side of language emerges through minimum clarification, where the unedited picture of gruesome carnage becomes the lone guarantor of informal accounts, generating perspectives that had hitherto been rebuffed by the selective versions of mainstream history.

Through his economization of words, …

Japanese American Internment: A Historiographical Analysis And Evaluation Of Identity, Megan Nicole Manning

History

No abstract provided.

Hiroshima. At The Intersection Of Sciences, History, And Personal Narratives. A Personal Reflection., Gloria R. Montebruno Saller

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

In the city of Hiroshima, Japan, sciences, history, and personal narratives meet. Atomic bomb survivors became the keepers of this town’s history and one of the most tragic chapters in the history of humankind; and as their voices fade to old age and death, there is a sense of urgency to keep their narratives alive. These are my personal reflections.

Eastern Orthodox Martyrs Of China: Accounts & Images (Boxer Uprising & Beyond), Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

Orthodox in China -- Whitworth University 2014

A Cross-Boundary People: The Commercial Activities, Social Networks, And Travel Writings Of Japanese And Taiwanese Sekimin In The Shantou Treaty Port (1895-1937), Lin-Yi Tseng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Japanese imperial history in East Asia and focuses on a group of "cross-boundary people"--Taiwanese sekimin (Taiwanese who registered as Japanese subjects) and Japanese--who went to the treaty port of Shantou in southern China during the period between 1895 and 1937. The starting time point (i.e., 1895) corresponds to the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, by which Japan acquired Taiwan as a colony and informal privileges in Chinese treaty ports. The ending time point (i.e., 1937) corresponds to the decline that Shantou's Japanese community experienced owing to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War on July 7, …

Westmoreland’S War: Reassessing American Strategy In Vietnam, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

An original and major reinterpretation of American strategy during the Vietnam War which totally reconsiders the generalship of William Westmoreland and offers a more balanced picture of the US Army in Vietnam. The book's thesis that US strategy was more than just 'attrition' confronts decades' worth of historical narratives which argue we lost in Vietnam due to bad leadership and an incorrect strategy

Collaboration And Resistance On The Southwest Frontier: Early Eighteenth-Century Qing Expansion On Two Fronts, John Herman

History Publications

In 1715 two unrelated international events, the emergence of the Zunghar Mongols in Central Eurasia and Japan’s decision to restrict copper exports to China triggered a burst in Qing expansion into two different regions over the next fifteen years (1715-30), the Kham territory of Eastern Tibet and tusi-controlled territories in neighboring Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. As this article will show, Qing officials posted to Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou during this fifteen-year period were in a very peculiar position. On the one hand, they were authorized to negotiate alliances and grant tusi offices to the local Kham elite in order to …

The Weaknesses Of Song China And The Legacy Of Mongol Conquest, Emily N. Potts

The Student Researcher: A Phi Alpha Theta Publication

No abstract provided.

Forecast Of Chinese Investment In Us Shale Gas, Zhizhou Zhu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will make a forecast of the future growth of Chinese investment in the US shale gas industry in the short term (within the next 5 years) and in the long term (in more than 10 years). The thesis's purpose is to study the purpose, trend as well as the impact on China itself in China's recent asset acquisition activities in the US shale gas. Following an introduction to the shale gas development in the US and China, this thesis will make a forecast with the methodology including extrapolation, qualitative analysis, political risk analysis and scenario analysis. The conclusion …

Clues From Early Spanish Chronicles: Reconstructing Marriage And Family In The Pre-Hispanic Philippines, Olivia Anne Habana

History Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Shibusawa Eiichi, Dai Ichi Bank, And The Spirit Of Japanese Capitalism, 1860-1930, John Sagers

Faculty Publications

Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931) has been called the “father of Japanese capitalism” and was associated with nearly five hundred business enterprises in his lifetime. From his main position as head of Dai Ichi Bank, Shibusawa was a strong advocate for business interests when the Japanese government was generally preoccupied with military concerns. He also consistently argued that business leaders should look to Confucian principle for moral guidance if they were to maintain the public's trust. Through an analysis of Shibusawa's public statements and his legacy in subsequent historical scholarship, particularly Dai Ichi Bank's 1957 official company history, we see that appeals …

The Political Aesthetics Of Global Protest : The Arab Spring And Beyond, Pnina Werbner, Martin Webb, Kathryn Spellman-Poots

Independent Volumes

A remarkable feature of the Arab Spring and other protests that followed in Egypt, India, Botswana and the UK, among other places, has been the salience of images, songs, videos, humour, satire and dramatic performances.

This book explores the central role the aesthetic played in energising the mass mobilisations of young people, the disaffected, the middle classes, the apolitical silent majority, as well as enabling solidarities and alliances among democrats, workers, trade unions, civil rights activists and opposition parties.

Comparing the North African and Middle Eastern uprisings with protest movements such as Occupy, the authors bring to bear an anthropological …

Modern Japanese Literature And Visual Culture: Constructions Of Religious And Historical Identity, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This course is a survey of modern Japanese literature and visual culture since the Meiji Restoration (1868). It focuses on constructions of identities within historical contexts. Our objective is to analyze ways in which writers and artists have positioned their subjects and re-imagined culture to create particular portrayals. The class examines a selection of shōsetsu (the Japanese novel) of Natsume Soseki, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Murakami Haruki, and Ogawa Yōko, films of Miyazaki Hayao, and important anime. The course promotes critical methodologies and interdisciplinary or comparative studies, combining, for example, literature with film, visual culture, gender studies, cultural history, Buddhist …

Xuanzang’S Manual For Conferring The Bodhisattva Precepts, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This is a translation of the Manual on the Procedures for Conferring the Bodhisattva Precepts (T.24.1499.1104c19- 1106b27) by Xuanzang (602-664) and the preface to it written by the monk Jingmai (T.24.1499.1106c3-29). Xuanzang was a Chinese monk and a translator of Buddhist scriptures. Although it is recorded that Xuanzang translated this manual in 649, he may have written it himself based on the Yoga-ca-- s rabhu-mi-s´astra in 100 fascicles. After travel through Central Asia and India from 629 (or 627?) to 645, he translated 75 Buddhist scriptures in 1,335 fascicles into Chinese, including a number of major Yoga-ca-ra Buddhist texts. He …

Social Hierarchies And The Formation Of Customary Property Law In Pre-Industrial China And England, Taisu Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

Comparative lawyers and economists have often assumed that traditional Chinese laws and customs reinforced the economic and political dominance of elites and, therefore, were unusually “despotic” towards the poor. Such assumptions are highly questionable: Quite the opposite, one of the most striking characteristics of Qing and Republican property institutions is that they often gave significantly greater economic protection to the poorer segments of society than comparable institutions in early modern England. In particular, Chinese property customs afforded much stronger powers of redemption to landowners who had pawned their land. In both societies, land-pawning occurred far more frequently among poorer households …

Oro?: Word Choice, Character, And Translation In Rurouni Kenshin, Tasha Layton

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Anime is one of the most common forms of entertainment in the United States. Its ubiquitous presence causes some Western viewers to forget that anime is, in fact, foreign film. One of the only things that reminds us of this fact is the strangeness of the scripts, particularly the grammar—a quirky grammar that is often a target for anime critics and comedic imitators. While it is true that the Japanese language used in anime is quite stylized, there are more important explanations for why the English versions sound unnatural. Audiences often think only of the denotations and semantic functions of …

On The Fringe: China's Disability Laws Through The Lens Of The Traditional Culture, Brandon Christensen

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Explosive economic growth over the last two decades has dramatically increased China’s standard of living and given rise to a rapidly growing middle class. Political reform, however, has been slow to follow with decades-old legal restrictions on civil liberties still firmly in place. Among China’s underdeveloped civil protections is the right for people with disabilities to enjoy freedom from popular and institutional prejudice in language or action, especially when seeking employment. Recent revisions of China’s disability laws provide increased employment protections, but latent prejudicial language and traditional stereotypes in the law suggest these revisions may not reach the core objective …

Modified Motorcycles: Stories From Chiang Mai, Thailand, Erin Meyers

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Motorcycles in Southeast Asia

Over the last two decades, a revolution has taken place on the streets of Asia. The ubiquity of motorcycles as a primary form of transportation has increased substantially. Since 1990, motorcycle ownership rates in Indonesia and Vietnam have increased by over 300 and 1,000 percent respectively (Muir and Brown 2011). Similarly, the number of motorcycles registered in Thailand has grown by over 280 percent, from 4,778, 220 vehicles in 1990 to 18,451, 518 in 2012 (Number). Asia has the highest level of motorcycle ownership in the world now (Barter 1999).

China's Use Of Economic Hard Power In The 21st Century, Taylor Shippen

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

China’s growing willingness to project military power may make the nightly news, but military power is not China’s greatest tool in achieving political ends. Since Deng Xiaoping began his reforms in 1978, economic influence has been the source of many of China’s diplomatic breakthroughs with the West. Although there is some dispute among scholars about what to call China’s growing influence (Klein 1994: 39; Huang 2013), for the purposes of this paper, China’s growing persuasiveness will be based on Joseph Nye’s definition of hard power, which he defines as “the ability to use the carrots and sticks of economic and …

The Changkufeng And Nomonhan Incidents - The Undeclared Border War And Its Impact On World War Ii, Tobias Block

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nomonhan and Changkufeng

Immediately following the Mukden Incident in 1931 and the founding of Manchukuo, the Japanese supported puppet state in northeastern China, the Imperial Japanese Army found itself again face to face with their old enemy Russia, now the Soviet Union. The border disputes between these two countries would soon become armed conflicts. The Japanese Korea Army as well as the Kwantung Army, stationed in Manchuria, would soon follow a policy of limited war against the Soviet Red Army, here in particular during the battles of Changkufeng, in 1938, and Nomonhan in 1939.

These two battles proved to be …

Research And Documentation In The 21st Century: Oral History And Genealogy Of The Yuan Shikai Family, Sheau-Yueh J. Chao

Publications and Research

The oral histories and genealogies have long been used by historians, archaeologists, sociologists, ethnologists, and demographers in their investigation of past human behavior on social and historical evidences relating to a lineage organization or a clan. Chinese genealogical records has been used for thousands of years to record the genealogical history of a family, including a family’s origin, its subordinate lines, names and ages of the members, records of marriages, births and deaths, merits and deeds, and in early days brief biographical information of solely the male family members. This paper will examine the history of Chinese names and the …

China In Transition: Jesuit Encounters With The Dying Qing Empire, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

When four French Jesuits first encountered China in the late 1800s, they were unexpectedly swept into the turbulence of a dying empire. In this lecture, Dr. Anthony Clark, considers what it was like to be a Jesuit missionary in China as the Qing empire erupted into the violent Boxer Uprising of 1900. Living in what is today called Hebei, these missionaries struggled to learn Chinese and adjust to Chinese culture, while also maintaining their relationships with their families back in Europe. Dr. Clark will also discuss his recent travels to where these Jesuits lived and died in 1900. When Sts. …

American Military Strategy In The Vietnam War, 1965– 1973, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

For nearly a decade, American combat soldiers fought in South Vietnam to help sustain an independent, noncommunist nation in Southeast Asia. After U.S. troops departed in 1973, the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 prompted a lasting search to explain the United States’ first lost war. Historians of the conflict and participants alike have since critiqued the ways in which civilian policymakers and uniformed leaders applied—some argued misapplied—military power that led to such an undesirable political outcome. While some claimed U.S. politicians failed to commit their nation’s full military might to a limited war, others contended that most officers fundamentally …

Full Issue

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

No abstract provided.

Preserving Imperial Sovereignty In The Changing Political Order Of Prewar Japan, Shane Vrabel

History Theses

During the nineteenth century, several Western powers began to establish a presence in East Asia through the use of gunboat diplomacy. In 1853, United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived on Japanese shores intent on forcing the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate to end its policy of sakoku (seclusion) and interact with the West through trade. Angered over the policies of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the han (domains) of Chōshū and Satsuma decided to launch the Boshin Civil War by instigating rebellion against the shogun. The military forces of Chōshū and Satsuma eventually captured the imperial capital of Kyoto and the young Prince …

Indira Gandhi: India’S Destined Leader, Josclyn C. Green

History Theses

This thesis explores the life and political career of Indira Nehru Gandhi and analyzes how the historical circumstances of her era shaped her character in a manner that made her uniquely prepared to confront the numerous political challenges that she faced during her tenure as India’s Prime Minister. Indira Nehru Gandhi was Prime Minister of India from 1966 until 1977, and again in 1980 up until her assassination in 1984. Indira Gandhi was seemingly destined to rule over India. She was born into a prominent family who led the way to Indian independence from Great Britain. She was also born …

Recruiting The All-Female Rani Of Jhansi Regiment: Subhas Chandra Bose And Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan, Tobias Frederik Rettig

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The recruitment of the all-female Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army in Japanese-controlled Singapore and Malaya, with a particular focus on the period between the first female guard of honour on 12 July 1943 through to the opening of the regiment's main camp in Singapore on 22 October 1943, has to date been insufficiently studied. Starting with the conception of the Regiment in an Axis submarine by the Indian nationalist leader Subhas CHANdra Bose (1897–1945), this paper examines the ideas and figures that inspired the regiment and the role of Bose and Dr Lakshmi Swaminadhan (1914–2012) in …

A Tangled Hope: America, China, And Human Rights At The End Of The Cold War, 1976-2000, Jared Michael Phillips

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A Tangled Hope: America, China, and Human Rights at the End of the Cold War, 1976-2000, discusses the evolution of both the international and American understanding of human rights. Beginning with a discussion of the philosophical and cultural frameworks concerning "rights" that developed in Europe and the Americas throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, this work moves into the post-World War II climate that shaped Jimmy Carter and his unique understanding of human rights and America's role in the Cold War world. In particular, I argue that the existing narrative concerning Carter's foreign policy is lacking in a nuanced understanding …

Negotiating Colonialism And Chineseness: Museums, Tours, And Heritage Preservation In Pearl River Delta, Macau, And Hong Kong, Wing-Kai To

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

The history of Hong Kong, Macau, and the Pearl River Delta in connecting China with the world through European colonialism and globalization is a well-documented story. Yet the recent designations of the Historic Centre of Macau in 2005 and the Kaiping "diaolou" (fortified watched towers and mansions) in 2007 as World Cultural Heritage sites have further placed two Chinese outposts of western influence and overseas emigration into sharper focus. With the return of Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese sovereignty at the turn of the last century along with cultural change in the Pearl River Delta, museums, tourism, and heritage …