The Life and thoughts of every subject of the Emperor of Japan have been guided at every point by an incredibly meticulous officialdom. Accepted as a truism in Occidental discussions, this miracle has escaped critical analysis. That aspect of Japanese governance which through sumptuary laws and minatory regulations grinds so exceedingly small that everything in the life of the individual conforms to authoritative patterns merits detailed analysis.

During the war of 1941–1945, with a minimum transfer of effective authority to local governments, the Imperial Government was able so completely to control its subjects that the pull of a string in Tokyo produced a response from any one or all of the 73 million rippana nihonjin from Hokkaido to Kyushu. The degree to which the wartime controls of the Japanese Government were efficient and effective was due in part to the psychological homogeneity of the Japanese people. To no lesser extent was it due to the centralized nature of Japanese government, to those institutions and techniques peculiar to Japanese life which have tended to concentrate authority in the central government.

In any anthology of Chinese politicalor Kuan Chung or Kuan Tzu scattered in the works of most,writing, one is likely to find the namesif not all, periods fromKuan the Spring and Autumn to the present. According to a widely accepted tradition, it was due to Kuan Chung's political and financial policies when he was prime minister that Duke Huan of Ch'i was able to seize the leadership of the Chinese states in the seventh century B.C. Duke Huan thus became the first of a series of hegemons who dominated the Eastern Chou empire.

This article suggests that two distinct modes of text-building constraints co-incide in the Indonesian novel “Surabaya.” The first set of constraints consists of narrative functions that shape sentence-level grammar within the story; the second level of text-building constraints shapes the thematic structure of the story. The author argues that, unlike its narrative structure, which is bound by the linearity of time, the thematic structure, of “Surabaya” is denned by a hierarchy of “heavier” and “lighter” themes, the “heavier” themes being evoked more often than are the “lighter” themes. He suggests that heaviness of theme is a strategy of text building found in classical Malaysian (Hikayat) texts, gamelan orchestra musical organization, and in calendric reckoning in much of Indonesia. He argues, in sum, for a method of writing that encourages grammatical description from two or more perspectives. “Binocular vision,” to use Gregory Bateson's words, is necessary in writing to provide a more honest, richer description of a text than a single mode of grammatical description can provide; it makes available to readers more than one means of access to the text.

At the time of the Revolution of 1911, as many as ten million Chinese lived abroad. The great majority were poor coolies but a minority had already moved into the business pursuits for which they are well known today. Within this group, particularly in Southeast Asia, could be found a stratum of very wealthy merchants. Because few individuals viewed their expatriation as permanent but rather sought to identify with the homeland and its culture, there had been considerable interest in the events of the late Ch'ing period. It is widely assumed that the multitude actively opposed the Manchu regime and gave its support to the reform and revolutionary movements encouraged by K'ang Yu-wei and Sun Yat-sen. This traditional conclusion is, however, unfounded. Although most overseas Chinese had lost faith in Manchu leadership by 1909, only a small percentage took political action. In fact there was a time, forgotten by some historians, when prosperous merchants abroad wanted closer relations with the Ch'ing dynasty.

This study starts with three assumptions. First, inasmuch as the concept “absolutism” which is often used in writing about premodern Chinese history needs clarification, it will be helpful to study imperial power at the level of actual administrative operations. Second, within the framework of general political and ideological institutions, administrative operations have dynamics of their own. Finally, a new understanding of these dynamics as a contributing factor will add to our knowledge of the working of the dynastic cycle in Chinese history.

It is widely believed that the Allahabad Kumbh Mela is an ancient religious festival or that it is “ageless”, that its roots lie obscured in time immemorial. Editorials and articles in the press at mela time (every twelve years) lyrically emphasize the continuity of the pilgrimage throughout India's past, find inspiration in its durability and changeless character, and marvel at the anachronism of an ancient festival thriving in the modern world (“The Kumbh Mela”, Pioneer, 17 February 1918; “Editorial”, Leader, 16 January 1942; “Pilgrim's Process”, Times of India, 24 January 2001). There is no better example of this than the oft-quoted section of Jawaharlal Nehru's will and testament, in which the avowedly secular modernist explains his desire to have a portion of his ashes scattered at the triveni sangam, the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers and the site of the Kumbh in Allahabad:

I have been attached to the Ganga and the Jumna rivers ever since my childhood and, as I have grown older, this attachment has also grown. The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people. … She has been a symbol of India's age-long culture and civilization, ever-changing, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. … And though I have discarded much of past tradition and custom, and am anxious that India should rid herself of all shackles that bind and constrain her and divide her people, and suppress vast numbers of them, and prevent the free development of the body and the spirit; though I seek all this, yet I do not wish to cut myself off from that past completely. I am proud of that great inheritance that it has been, and is, ours, and I am conscious that I too, like all of us, am a link in that unbroken chain which goes back to the dawn of history in the immemorial past of India. That chain I would not break, for I treasure it and seek inspiration from it.

(2000, 612–13)

Gulbuddin hekmatyar made the above statement in a speech to Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan, in the early 1980s. As the leader (amīr) of Hizb-i Islami Afghanistan (the Islamic Party of Afghanistan), one of the principal Islamic parties then fighting to overthrow the Marxist regime in Afghanistan, Hekmatyar was primarily concerned in this speech with condemning the leftist leadership in Kabul and its Soviet sponsors. However, the head of the most radical of the Afghan resistance parties also took time to inform his audience about the origins of his party as a student group at Kabul University in the late 1960s. This reminiscence of student days was not a digression or flight of fancy. To the contrary, Hekmatyar's historical reflections have major significance in the context of Afghan national politics, for it is through history that Hizb-i Islami Afghanistan has staked its claim to rule Afghanistan.

Contemporary concerns about the difficulties faced by the Japanese economy following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 soon appeared to be unfounded as the economy recovered relatively quickly. This paper suggests that despite its limited impact on Japan's longer-term economic trajectory this disaster can tell us a great deal about the ways in which individuals, organizations, and officialdom respond to a devastating event, and help us better understand the process of transition from immediate relief to longer-term recovery, not just in Japan, but more broadly. It analyzes the impact of the disaster on market transactions, showing that the scale and nature of market disruption went far beyond direct physical destruction; that the collective and individual responses of government, producers, traders, and consumers had the potential to make matters worse, rather than better; and that the existence of integrated markets spread the effects of the disaster across the Japanese archipelago. It also suggests that reestablishing market stability following the crisis was one of the keys to longer-term recovery, and that further research will help us understand the causal factors in that process.

We have heard much about the Sung archaeologists' mistakes but little about their important work, upon which much of our work in some fields is based today. They did not make spectacular discoveries of buried cities through the use of classical sources as did Heinrich Schliemann less than one hundred years ago. But they did use the early literature, together with a critical sense of judgment, some eight or nine centuries ago to discover much truth about the remote past and to dispel misinformation which had accumulated in the ensuing centuries. Many of the Sung scholars had a most enlightened and what might even be called a modern approach in their attitude towards this work. They had progressed far beyond the “cabinet of curiosities” stage, still current in Europe at a much later date, and were engaged in intelligent research concerned with identification, etymology, dating, and interpretation. Moreover, they practiced, within the limitations imposed upon them by the advancement of science at that time, most of the critical methods and devices used in modern archaeological work.

In 1927, Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei, one of China's eminent intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century, initiated a program to reform Chinese education. In June of that year, the leaders of the Kuomintang government in Nanking approved Ts'ai's recommendation that they establish a new organization, a University Council [ta-hsüeh yüan], in place of a Ministry of Education to direct educational affairs. A month later they appointed Ts'ai to the post of Chancellor of the University Council. In the first issue of the Bulletin of the University Council, Ts'ai accounted for the change. He stated: “Looking back over the past decade, one can see that the Ministry of Education, situated in the midst of the corrupt atmosphere of Peking, was infected by the government agencies around it. There were times when those who headed the Ministry knew nothing about scholarship and education. Those ministers took advantage of their position and put members of their personal cliques into office. Word of this has spread so that the title Ministry of Education is synonomous with corrupt officialdom. It is for this reason that the Nationalist Government has decided to abolish the title ‘Ministry of Education’ and adopted the title ‘University Council’ for the body which supervises scholarship and education.”

From the 1920s to the late 1960s, Tamil nationalism in India was characterized by elements of radical innovation which made the Dravidian movement a mobilization for cultural revolution, in Tamil terms, as well as for the defense of Tamil interests vis-à-vis the central government. In the last twenty years concern for the ordinary person has manifested itself in extravagant displays of state largess and the encouragement of personality cults directed toward Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu. I delineate below major ideological themes of the nationalist cultural revolution and argue that these ideological elements, while representing change in Tamil political culture, were in many ways deeply anchored in prerevolutionary political concerns supported by institutions and symbolic systems with precolonial antecedents. I link these ideological elements to the dissolution of radicalism in Tamil nationalism and to the emergence of a style of governance which has undermined standards of public administration.

At noon on december 3, 1937, a Japanese military parade—perhaps in ironic imitation of other processions by foreigners in Shanghai—began marching down Nanjing Road through the foreign concessions in Shanghai and along the Bund. In the lead was a military police (kenpeitai) car escorted by mounted troops bearing sabers at the hilt. They were followed by a large infantry detachment, machine-gunners, and finally by artillerymen. Japanese aircraft flew by overhead, and Japanese civilians lined the route along the way and shouted out choruses of banzai. When they arrived at Jessfield Park, they were met by a contingent of Italian ladies—allies in the anti-Comintern pact—waving Japanese flags. The event lasted until 3 p.m. and involved all 6000 Japanese troops stationed in the city. The next day a smaller contingent of troops marched in orderly fashion from Garden Bridge south to the Bund and through the concessions (Tokyo asahi shinbun, December 4, 1937, and December 5, 1937; cited in Muramatsu 1991, 308–9). Lest there be any doubt about it, this was clearly intended as a victory march, an effort to demonstrate the new reality of Japan's preeminence in Shanghai. However much this display may have been directed at the Chinese, with whom Japan had now been at war for five months, the Western residents of the concessions—with whom the resident Japanese had been at loggerheads for many years—were the primary targets. No such event ever took place in any of the other centers of Japanese residence in China, only in Shanghai, where all the Western powers were present in full force.

Peasants have confused us. We have in our discussions of them, imposed a structure on their lives, defined their behavior and denied their consciousness. We believe their actions to be predictable, but their irruptions and the extent of their violence inexplicable. Bound by tradition, tied to their village, loyal to their lords, they seem to us simultaneously irreverent, rude, ribald and lacking in respect. We find them shrewd in their economic judgments, but incapable of knowing their own real interests. Though they appear responsive to social and economic change, they also seem bound by symbols and ideologies that tie them to the past. They are never at home no matter where they move. Committed to their own interests, they are nevertheless tricked and cheated by city slickers, seigneurs and nobles.

Although Manchukuo is easily dismissed as a puppet of Japan, at the time of its founding, it was one of many examples of a partially sovereign state. Specific compromises of Manchukuo's sovereignty shaped the formation of its domestic institutions, such as the legal sphere, in tangible ways. Manchukuo handed over to Japan the power to staff and ideologically mold its judiciary, while the tutelary attitude that Japan took toward the state was concretely manifested in aspects of Manchukuo penal and civil law, and a surprisingly contentious path to the abrogation of Japanese extraterritoriality. With the outbreak of war, Manchukuo effectively surrendered its national sovereignty to the needs of the Japanese empire, sacrificing its jurisdictional integrity as well. While not denying the deliberate attempt made by Japan to misrepresent the independence of Manchukuo, this article also seeks to understand more precisely how Manchukuo's architects assumed certain limits to state sovereignty, and how this understanding systematically crippled the new state's legal institutions.

While Japanese historians have characterized the period from the 1720's to the mid-nineteenth century one of a “stagnant” population due to depressed economic conditions, recent economic evidence suggests that peasants were enjoying a higher standard of living. By making use of demographic data obtained from the shūmon-aratame-chō (religious investigation registers), the hypotheses that the standard of living was rising and that the Japanese were controlling population were tested for Fujito village of Okayama. The population increased from 596 to 694 between 1775–1863. In the 1820's, with rapid economic growth in the form of land reclamation and the increased adoption of farm by-employments, principally weaving, the natural growth rate of the population was rejected through an analysis of the effects of the Temmei famine (1780's) and the Tempō famine (1830's). Rather, the slow rate of growth was due to the smallest number of children ever born to women in the village (mean of just over three), resulting from a high age at first birth (24.6 years) and a relatively low age at last birth (35–37 years). The low age at last birth, added to a statistically biased sex ratio of last-born children (favoring males), indicate that abortion and infanticide were probably practiced to some degree. This fact, combined with the economic development of the nineteenth century, suggest that in Japan, as in England, premodern population was kept at closer to an optimum rather than a maximum level, making possible rapid industrialization.

The Kiangsi Soviet marked the first systematic attempt by the Chinese Communist party to use existing peasant models of collective action for purposes of building an independent military apparatus. The history of that attempt is here examined against the background of the moral economy school's claim that revolutionary movements in twentieth-century Asia have successfully wedded themselves to such traditional patterns of action in order to achieve larger political purposes. This analysis of the politics of mobilization inside the soviet area finds that peasant society was traditionally too stratified and too divided against itself to offer unified resistance to threatening external forces, and emphasizes that mobilization tended to engage collective competitive instincts, setting groups of peasants against each other, rather than against hated representatives of post-traditional authority in the countryside. This finding is in turn used as a point of departure for raising some larger questions about the model of revolutionary legitimacy postulated by James C. Scott and the moral economists.

At the tip of southeastern Sri Lanka is the shrine of Kataragama, sacred to Skanda, the son of Śiva. There, every year in the Sinhala month äsala (July/August), devotees walk the length of a pit containing a thick layer of red-hot coals. Many Buddhists and Hindus, the fire-walkers as well as ordinary devotees, believe that this custom of the annual fire-walking ritual comes from mythic times and commemorates Skanda's victory over the asuras (titans). In fact, the present form of fire-walking in Buddhist Sri Lanka dates not from the asura war, but from World War II. Furthermore, those who walk the fire are not members of a hoary ancient ritual lineage; rather, they are modern urban people, uprooted from traditional Sinhala Buddhist peasant culture. Fire-walking is a new phenomenon, and it is a product of recent social change.

This essay is an exploration of one aspect of the politics of gender representation in Thailand, namely, how the portrayals of Siamese women in Thai popular histories form part of the present-day shaping of gender relations. I argue that moving in tandem with developments in academic historiography, popular history since the 1980s has become a battleground for cultural hegemony.

Hitherto the preserve of antiquarians, popular history has caught the interest of the emergent middle class, who are intent on inscribing their reading of the past on the Thai cultural landscape. Where gender relations are concerned, the middle class has worked out a modern rationale for the traditional view that women are subordinate to men. However, critical scholars, alert to what they see as the perpetuation of the historical subordination of women through the medium of popular history, have sought to stem the tide by addressing their critiques of the middle-class interpretations to a popular audience.

Few notions are so widely held among students of Japanese economic history as the view that the land tax during the Tokugawa period was cruelly oppressive. It is thought to have left the peasantry no significant surplus after production costs, and moreover to have become heavier as time passed. I propose in this paper to examine certain evidence bearing on this view, which strongly influences the interpretation of modern Japanese history.