Most of the discussion regarding the language issue in India so far has revolved about two problems. One of these concerns the spread of Hindi knowledge in those areas or fields of endeavor where other regional languages or English are now used; the other, the enrichment of Hindi vocabulary (or, as is usually stated, the development of the Hindi language), so as to make it possible to use it for dealing with topics related to modern science and technology. The Central Government and several of the state governments have devoted much effort towards the solution of these problems by setting up special departments for the creation of vocabulary lists to deal with new subjects, encouraging attempts to introduce Hindi in universities and legislative bodies, and fostering the growth of societies for the propagation of Hindi learning. These activities have aroused a great deal of controversy, and so much has been written about the pros and cons of the issues involved that the above two problems seem to be the only ones associated with language in the public mind.

On March 15, 2011, late at night at the Osaka train station, I met the first refugees from the earthquake that I would come to know. The family of four did not look like what I thought that people who were fleeing the horrendous images on television would. The mother, father, and two young daughters were neatly dressed, and their yellow lab was obediently packed into a crate that stood in the middle of their matching suitcases. Each wore a crisp, white mask. Much as I wanted to hear stories of what they had seen, I imagined that they did not want to talk. My son, however, zoomed a toy train over to their youngest girl, who was about six or seven; she happily raced it back. I motioned for him to stop and smiled at the mother, who acknowledged me from behind her mask as she brushed a hand across her forehead in exhaustion. “Are you OK?” I asked, not knowing how to avoid noticing that something appeared wrong. “Mmmm-hmmm.” “Are you traveling further tonight?” “Kanazawa.” “How terrible it all must be.” “We're from Fukushima,” she said. “We're fine. Our house is fine. It all looks fine, but we don't know what will happen, and the girls are so young.”

Hilistorians seeking the stirrings of urban social and political consciousness in China usually have turned to the convulsive century between 1550 and 1650, when the rapid pace of commercial growth and urbanization began to generate new economic tensions fraught with political implications. This period witnessed an unprecedented series of urban protests in the commercial and industrial centers of China, in Jiangnan in particular. Some scholars have viewed these protests as evidence of a nascent urban consciousness which united “bourgeois” intellectuals and urban workers against the panoply of feudal obligations imposed by the Ming state (Fu Yiling 1957:109–21; Tanaka 1984:189–91; Yuan 1979:296, 310). Others have stressed the accelerating trend toward absolutism in the late Ming and the emergence of a cross-class alliance opposed to the arbitrary exercise of state power (Miyazaki 1957:351–56). Common to both of these interpretations is a blurring of class lines and a polarization between state and society—or, more precisely, between the state and urban communities—which fostered urban political solidarity.

Postcolonial states responded differently to the group-specific personal laws that were recognized in many colonial societies. While some retained most colonial personal laws (e.g., Lebanon) and others introduced major changes (e.g., Tunisia), most introduced modest yet significant changes (e.g., Egypt, India, Indonesia). Indian policy makers retained personal laws specific to religious groups, and did not change the minority laws, although minority recognition did not rule out culturally grounded reform. They changed Hindu law alone based on their values, as they saw Hindu social reform as the key to making nation and citizen. Reform proposals drew from the modern Western valuation of the nuclear family, and from Hindu traditions that were reformed to meet standards of modernity. As Hindu nationalists and other conservatives defended lineage authority, legislators retained much of the lineage control over ancestral property. But they provided limited divorce rights, reduced restrictions on mate choice, and banned bigamy. The visions driving the initial proposals influenced many later changes in India's family laws.

It is a fact of singular note that in nineteenth century China the vast majority of the educated classes either passively or actively rejected Christianity. Passively, they did so by remaining coldly indifferent to Christianity's message; the percentage of officials and literati who embraced the foreign religion was infinitesimally small. Actively, they expressed their hostility by writing and disseminating inflammatory anti-Christian literature; creating countless stumbling blocks for the Christian missionary; issuing threats of retaliation against any who dared enter the religion or have dealings with its foreign transmitters; and by the direct instigation of, and participation in, anti-Christian riots.

Indonesia stands out as one of the most successful cases of democratic transformation in Asia, a continent that has been, with several notable exceptions, generally resistant to democratic change over the last three decades. Taking its cue from other Asian democracies, this article considers the degree to which economic modernization and ethnic factors might account for Indonesia's relative democratic success. With regard to both, it is proposed that a key factor has been the failure of Indonesia's political cleavage structure to express social conflicts that might undermine democracy. Instead, Indonesia's democratic model has been based on an inclusionary elite settlement in which powerful political and economic actors have gained a stake in the system, largely through access to patronage. This settlement has consolidated Indonesian democracy, but it has also generated costs that have been borne by relatively disempowered groups, reflected in continuing economic and gender inequality.

Any historian approaching the subject of traditional Chinese biography may be confident of at least one fact: he will be overwhelmed. The sheer volume of this material available in the Chinese sources is exceedingly large.

In discussing Chinese historical writing, it is customary to point first to the chengshih, the so-called “standard histories,” dealing with all of Chinese history down to 1644. There are twenty-five histories, all bulky, in this “official” group. All contain large collections of biographies, elaborately sorted out: loyal officials, villainous officials, imperial concubines, writers, hermits, virtuous wives, and filial sons. In the History of the Ming Dynasty, that portion which is biographical in nature runs to 197 out of a total of 332 chapters–in actual pages about sixty percent of the whole. We encounter the same phenomenon outside of the “standard histories”–in local histories, for example, of which there may be several for one small district. All of this material I shall call “historical biography.”

In recent years the glitter of modern economic growth has been dulled, as more attention has been focused upon the attendant dislocations and negative aspects that have accompanied it. One area that has received little attention, especially from economists, is crime. Many writings of criminologists suggest that crime is a negative attribute that accompanies economic growth, for levels of affluence and crime seem to move upward together. A pattern similar to that observed in other modern countries was reported for Japan in 1966 by Professors DeVos and Mizushima.

What relationship should be expected between growth and crime? The usual economic theories of criminal behavior, with crime a declining function of an individual's ability to obtain legal income, would seem to argue for a negative relationship. However, crime is also related to the potential for ill-gotten gains; thus, it might be expected to at least keep pace with levels of income, or perhaps surpass them. This paper represents an attempt to provide some answers to these issues by explaining some of the complex interplay between factors involved in labor market improvement and the degree of criminal activity in Japan.

Four Factors will influence British colonial policy in Burma: (1) public opinion in various countries of the world; (2) liberal thought in England itself; (3) Japan's occupation of Burma; and (4) the growth of nationalism within Burma.

Though all these factors are important, this discussion will be concerned with only the last, namely, Burmese nationalism and its development. Burmese nationalism is of fairly recent origin. After the annexation of Burma by the British in 1886, there was no nationalistic movement revolving about the dethroned Burmese king or the royal family. It was not until after the first World War that the Burmans showed any marked interest in national politics. In 1923,after certain reforms had been introduced organizations of a nationalist character known as wunthanu were formed. The avowed purpose of these groups was to obtain a larger voice in local administration.

One year has passed since the earthquake and tsunami in Tōhoku. How should we as scholars approach, think about, and teach about the disaster? In generations hence, will 2011 be treated as a historical turning point on a par with 1945? Will it appear more significant than the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, despite the far greater loss of life in that event? We have a long process of analysis and contextualization ahead before the traumatic events of March 2011 have sedimented into history. Meanwhile, the nuclear disaster continues. When the Japanese government announced in December that complete decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors would take forty years, it became clear that even in the most optimistic scenario the world would be living with this disaster for a long time to come.

Ramon myers recently reviewed in this journal four books analyzing China's prewar economy and Philip Huang added a reply to some of Myers's criticisms. They clearly disagree about how best to characterize China's Republican-period economy. Myers suggests that books by Loren Brandt, David Faure, and Thomas Rawski collectively reveal different aspects of modern economic development, while Huang presents the concept of “involutionary growth” as a means of understanding the economic situation. In response, Philip Huang corrects what he takes as misrepresentations of his argument by Myers through a restatement of his major themes.

Economists and political scientists have become increasingly interested in the political economy of India during the past decade and particularly during the past three or four years. The titles under review will be valuable not only to India specialists but also to comparative scholars because of the intriguing mix of conditions found in India. More like a continent than a country in its diversity, India is in some ways very similar to densely populated, predominantly rural and agricultural China, differing most perhaps in the obstinacy and depth of its poverty. In the predominant role played by the state within an essentially capitalist economy, it is closer to the model of Western social democracies than it is to either prominently ideological capitalist or socialist nation-states; like other countries in the “third world,” the state in India plays a highly interventionist developmental role. Finally, since Independence it has pursued, more successfully than most nation-states in Latin America and Asia, policies of importsubstituting industrialization and relative autarchy. In terms of its political structures, India differs from most newly industrialized countries (NICs) in that it generally continues to function as a parliamentary democracy. The federal political system creates an intriguing balance of forces between central and the regional state governments, which are often ruled by opposition parties with agendas, ideologies, and organizational structures quite different from those of the central government.

The Chinese Teahouse was one of a few traditional institutions of sociability whose wider social and cultural appeal overshadowed its primary business. Historically, it was closely woven into the fabric of Chinese life. In many communities the teahouse served as a center of information, a locus of leisure and social gatherings, an occasional office and marketplace for many practitioners, and an arena where various social forces competed for status and influence. Urbanization in the late Qing dynasty further contributed to the growth of teahouses, especially in the Yangzi River region (Suzuki 1982; Yan 1997, 17). However, while teahouses continued to flourish in the early Republic, teahouse culture became a target—a constant target in some areas— of social critics. Why this tempest over teapots?

These words were expressed by Gangzhen and Cizhu, two peasant women born in the early twentieth century who lived in two villages in Jiangyong County of Hunan Province in southern China. When confronted with the loss of their husbands, these women relied on local tools familiar to women in this area—nüge and nüshu—to articulate their thoughts and emotions. Nüge (literally, “female song”), which includes bridal laments and folk narratives, was widely practiced among peasant women in southern China, especially prior to the Liberation of 1949. Nüshu (“female writing”), in contrast, was used extensively by peasant women in Jiangyong. Moreover, it is one of the very few writing systems in the world that is mostly illegible to men. This male-illegible script,3 which is semiphonetic compared to the ideographs of Chinese hanzi,4 was used for centuries among hanzi-illitetate women, but it remained basically undocumented and unknown to the outside world until the 1980s, just as it was becoming extinct. Prior to Liberation, Jiangyong women had used nüshu to write sisterhood letters, biographic laments, wedding literature, folk stories, and other narratives in verse form. Combined with nüge, they documented peasant women's experiences and gave voices to their existence.

As key components of the “peculiar metaphysic of modernity,” geographers in nineteenth-century Japan began to remap the world in the name of science and “civilization” (Mitchell 1991, xii). What is often overlooked in this equation of the map with modernity, however, is Japan's history of mapmaking before the modern period. Although the earliest imperial governments in Japan practiced administrative mapmaking on a limited scale beginning in the seventh century, it was only during the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868) that comprehensive land surveying and mapmaking by the state were standardized and regularized. The Tokugawa ordered all daimyo to map their landholdings in 1605; these edicts were repeated numerous times, such that by the early nineteenth century the bakufu had organized five countrywide mapmaking and surveying projects, and produced from those surveys four comprehensive maps of Japan.

Ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, when the native movement in the East Indies got its start, the more extreme elements among Indonesian nationalist groups have looked to the figure of Prince Diponegoro, the early nineteenth-century mystic and leader of the native rebellion against the Dutch known as the Java War (1825–30), as a source of inspiration in their struggle for independence. Members of the nationalist movement still commemorate his death and are hailing him today as “the hero of liberty of the Indonesian people.” Many are also sympathetic to Diponegoro's old program of national purification with its emphasis upon the distinctive Hindu-Mohammedan antecedents of the Indonesian, as opposed to the “contamination” of Western civilization brought in the wake of more than three centuries of Dutch rule over the East Indian Archipelago.

The data of village and farm business surveys in India are too inaccurate to be of use in the analysis of the rural economy or the changes therein. This unsatisfactory nature of the data stems from the difference in outlook and interests of the cultivator and the investigator, the problem of memory, the problem of indifference in a context of hierarchical loyalties and conflicts, and the problem of motivation toward accurate replies on the part of the respondent when he has many reasons to mislead in many directions and few, if any, reasons to be conscientiously helpful. Some data, those which can be gathered by counting or by limited observation, are usable, but the gathering of quantitative data on farm operations will require a great effort over an extended period of time on a village at a time. Otherwise, the foreign scholar or visiting expert must restrict himself to employing the small amount of the bench-mark data as a base from which to work in constructing a description of the structure of aspects of the rural economy without hope of being able to employ quantitative methods on any but the most limited scale.

As happened in Tokugawa Japan and British India, China under die Ching witnessed a relative decline in fiscal importance of die land tax although its absolute amount increased substantially. Between 1753 and 1908 China's annual land tax revenue grew from 74 million to 102 million taels but its percentage contribution in die total tax revenue decreased from 73.5 to 35 percent. The reasons for its relatively lessened importance in die Ch'ing tax structure are the creation of new taxes such as die maritime customs and die likin, die lack of income- and price-elasticity in die land tax system, the defects of die fiscal administration, and a strong tradition against land tax increase. Since the same period saw a rise in general prices by 150 percent, obviously die Manchu government had not even raised enough taxes from land to offset price inflations, leaving a 40 percent increase in land acreage and a moderate improvement in land yields totally untouched. Hence, die land tax burden was not, as some asserted, oppressive in die last decades of the Ching dynasty.