The popularization of Japanese Buddhism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is generally equated with the development of independent religious movements such as the Pure Land and Lotus schools, which emphasized salvation by faith and simple invocations. Although these movements were indeed at the heart of Buddhism's transformation from an aristocratic to a popular religion, there are problems with an approach that focuses on them alone. To begin with, such an approach ignores the considerable contribution of the older schools—Tendai, Shingon, and those centered in Nara—to the popularization of Buddhism. In addition, it becomes tempting to see the spread of Buddhism as only the result of innovations in doctrine and religious practice, the most obvious differences between new schools and old, and to ignore the role played by monasteries as social and economic institutions.

This article examines why the “history issue” continues to hinder Japanese-Korean relations after nominally successful negotiations such as the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea and the 2015 comfort women agreement. It contends that leaders put off and quite possibly sacrificed reconciliation in order to achieve treaties and agreements that addressed more immediate security, economic, and political needs. However, because agreements were not transparently negotiated, partly due to the lack of a neutral third-party mediator, Koreans believe the treaties were not fair nor final settlements. Additionally, the reconciliation process has been flawed because it haphazardly tackles disagreements and does not consider time. A third-party such as the United States should mediate a settlement between Japan and South Korea to ensure adequate confidence building measures. Such measures will lower the costs of giving and accepting an apology, increasing the chances of an enduring and legitimate treaty.

This article introduces the 1952–56 hiropon crisis, Japan's sole major domestic experience with illegal drugs, and the world's first methamphetamine “epidemic.” In the early postwar years, hiropon addiction came to symbolize the dependent, traumatized state of a defeated Japan. This ideological significance made the eradication of hiropon a leading public issue, mobilizing the Japanese government, medical establishment, and social actors such as educators, parents, neighborhood associations, the media, and others. The process of eliminating methamphetamine restored public confidence and agency, and created a new identity for Japan as a cosmopolitan, independent nation. Unlike drugs in other contexts, hiropon was not embedded in the postwar political economy or culture, making possible its swift suppression. However, resolution of the methamphetamine crisis also sowed the seeds of its recrudescence in the 1970s. The ongoing “second stimulants epidemic,” reflecting consumption patterns typical of developed nations, has proven resistant to solution.

This article focuses on the 1935 discovery of what is now believed to be a selenium deficiency disorder in the Japanese client state of Manchukuo. The epicenter of this disease had served as pasture for Oirat Mongols until the late nineteenth century. Opening up the land for reclamation by Chinese migrants put greater pressure on each acre to produce food. With a limited supply of selenium in the soil, the intake of this mineral by crops decreased over time, especially under the extractive conditions of the soybean industry during the Japanese occupation. Japanese theories on climate and hygiene made legible the consequences of transforming this nomadic borderland into an agrarian heartland on colonized bodies. By bringing attention to the understudied Mongol territories in Manchukuo, this essay goes beyond environmental histories bound by the nation-state to reveal the corporeal costs of settler colonialism and ecological imperialism.

The diplomats, business men and publicists who were actively engaged in the penetration and exploitation of China during the latter part of the nineteenth century most frequently offered economic explanations for their actions. References to the commercial opportunities to be found in China appear with almost wearisome repetition in diplomatic correspondence, in treaties and conventions and in the press. Armed with a more complete knowledge of the situation, recent commentators upon European imperialism in China have been prone to discount this interest, and it is true that the China trade did receive notice that was out of proportion to its importance. However, the wisdom of hindsight may sometimes be misleading and unless we know the general opinion of the China market as it was expressed in the eighteen-eighties and eighteen-nineties the strong interest displayed both by governments and individuals in tapping that market is largely incomprehensible to us.

Structural upgrading and industrial dynamism in Pacific Asia—initially Japan, then the Asian NIEs (Newly Industrializing Economies: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) following closely behind, and most recently, ASEAN 4 (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines)—have been unprecedentedly phenomenal. This regional supergrowth in industrial activities has become the center of attention, but the evolving changes in the political systems and societal structures of the Pacific Asian nations have been, no doubt, equally important, although rather subtle and not so dramatic in appearance.

Between 1950 and 1953, the United Nations (UN) undertook two related tasks in Korea: the first was to assist the Republic of Korea in achieving military victory in its conflict with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea; the second was to support postcolonial economic and political reconstruction on the peninsula. In both, the UN promoted the implementation of modern agricultural and resource management practices, directly tying increased domestic farm and forestry productivity to military success. Through the lens of UN development projects, the Korean War, often characterized as a point of rupture, represented less a moment of disjuncture than it did a period of accelerated continuity. This article interweaves environmental, military, and development history to analyze several UN programs in the Republic of Korea between 1950 and 1953, demonstrating that the UN viewed resource development as among the most effective ways to wage and win a war.

French Indochina presents a veritable mosaic of languages, among which are representatives of all the major language families of Southeast Asia. This country has long served as a geographical cul-desac for the continental mass of Asia and thus has received a variety of cultural and linguistic influences, producing one of the most complex ethnological pictures to be found anywhere in the world. Within its confines may be found languages belonging to the Mon-Khmer, Malayo-Polynesian, Annamese-Müöng, Thai, Kadai, Miao-Yao, Tibeto-Burman, and Chinese stocks. Generally the centers of distribution for these language stocks lie outside Indochina, which has received only a trickle of speakers from linguistic spillage across its borders; only one of these stocks (Annamese-Müöng) is an exclusively native product of Indochina. Little is known of most of these languages, and even the more important among them (Annamese, Khmer, Lao) have not yet received adequate modern linguistic treatment. The main outlines are sufficiently clear, however, and afford us data on the cultural history of the country.

As historians of Southeast Asia turn to the study of rural history, they will have to resort increasingly to theoretical aids as an answer to the paucity of written records. Such theory, drawn from the other social sciences, must be shaped and tested to fit the needs of the historical discipline. For example, the work of Ester Boserup and Clifford Geertz on the relationship among population density, land usage, and socioeconomic behavior has applicability to problems of the evolution of Southeast Asian rural society under colonial impact. A comparison of Geertz' study of agricultural involution in nineteenth century Java with my own work on Pampanga Province, Philippines, provides some first steps towards a theory of rural change. Specifically, a modern cash crop economy produces more sophisticated contractual relations between tenants and landowners regardless of changes in population density per agricultural hectare. And, in the face of a scarcity of resources (e.g., land, cash, machinery, etc.) needed for modern agriculture, a given society will evolve highly complex institutions in order to share as far as possible those commodities in short supply. Specific types of institutions may develop to meet given needs, and the greater the number of shortages, the more involuted the society will become.

The success of the Chinese Communists in defeating their adversaries and consolidating their power is in large measure attributable to their capture of the sympathy and support of students and intelligentsia. This was the culmination of a long historical development. Repeated Kuomintang failures, social, economic, and political, drove more and more of the literate class into the Communist camp. This group now comprises some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the new regime, and they have been given the task of consolidating the Communist position among workers, peasants, and businessmen. There are dissenters, but few will risk open criticism of Marxist theory, Russian orientation, or party policy. This paper deals with the pronouncements and actions of a group of scholars and educators in the field of sociology who have been particularly prominent in their support and implementation of the policies of the new regime.

This article examines the cultural logic of mobilization in postcolonial South Korea, promoted through American cinematic representations. In early 1946, the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea started importing and distributing American propaganda films. These audiovisual textbooks for “free people” praised private car ownership and self-determined mobility, attracting audiences with scenes of automobiles and expressways. This might have encouraged audiences to imagine a self-regulating and untrammeled unit where they could choose their own destination, speed, and companions, symbolized in the ideal type of car-owning nuclear family. Such representational expressions of “maik'a” (my car) were closely linked with the global transition after World War II, such as the nuclearization of the family, the rise of the automobile industry, and the emergence of small screens at home. This shows how South Koreans were exposed to a new, liberal technology of government under U.S. hegemony, after the cessation of Japanese railway imperialism.

The new Chinese constitution which was almost unanimously adopted by the National Assembly and presented to Chiang K'ai-shek on Christmas Day 1946 gives conclusive proof that the Chinese plan to maintain their ancient Censoral system, now the Control Yüan of the Chinese government. A clue to the importance which the Chinese attach to this body is found in the fact that although the new constitution has abandoned the complete separation and independence of the five powers (legislative, executive, judicial, examination, and control) as visualized by Sun Yat-sen, the Control Yüan remains as one of the completely independent and elected bodies in the future Chinese government.

Theravāda Buddhism has during the past century been an annoyance to scholars who tried to find a general and crossculturally valid definition of religion. Durkheim refuted Frazer's minimal definition of religion being “the belief in Spiritual Beings” solely on the grounds of the notable exception of Theravāda Buddhism. He based his argument that “the idea of gods is absent, or at least, … plays only a secondary and minor role” mainly on the now classic work of Oldenberg, “Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine, his Community,” published originally in 1881. The same book was also used extensively by Max Weber who asked himself whether a system of “ethics without God” and “with absolute indifference towards the question whether gods do exist or not and how they exist” could be called a “religion.”

While Russian and Chinese wage and distribution policies in general differ from each other in terms of specific provisions and regulations, they are also generically very similar, if not identical. To provide some insight into the nature of this unity and diversity of policy, it seems best to discuss first the distributive implications of their common ideological reference, i.e. Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

Distributive Strategy and Tactics

Both the Russians and the Chinese deal with any human action as a process of material transformation, and consequently view the totality of man's actions as a chain of material transformation processes, conditioned by the distribution of ownership of the means of production as the determinant of social relations of production. Both hold that while human action is governed objectively by material and social nature and its laws, it is determined subjectively by man's technical and social awareness and thus by man's technical and social experiences. Both assert that man's increasing comprehension of nature and its laws manifests itself in increasing accumulation and in enlarged reproduction, i.e., in economic growth. Both aim for the unity of objectivity and subjectivity, i.e., for the complete reproduction of nature by man at the earliest possible moment, and both strive therefore for the most rapidly enlarging accumulation over time.

This article examines the rise of the chastity cult—the quintessential symbol of patriarchal suppression of female agency for modern reformers—during the sixteenth century. Despite the resultant stricter control over female sexuality, the growing dominance of the chastity cult cannot be simply construed as a product of top-down imposition. What made possible the penetrative power of chastity practice, this article argues, was a state indoctrination working in reverse. That is, the fast ascendance of the chastity cult in the late Ming was powered by various strains of activism that sought to protest and repair the failing system of chastity awards. The activist impetus greatly enhanced the centrality and influence of chastity practice in social life and, in doing so, opened the notion of chastity to contentious and sometimes subversive negotiations.

When Hoàng Ngọc Phàch, a young Vietnamese living in Hanoi, published Tô' Tâm (Pure heart) in 1925, his book immediately became a cause célèbre. The first three thousand copies sold out in two weeks. The publisher printed another two thousand copies, and they too quickly disappeared from the bookstores (Phan Cự Dệ 1974:21). Girls disappointed in love succumbed to the influence of the work and committed suicide by jumping into Lake Tây or Lake Trùe Bạch. The work provoked a debate concerning what was proper reading for young women that continued into the 1930s.

Richard A. Solomon's book, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), suffers especially from a faulty approach to the political culture of traditional China. Neglecting documentary sources, Solomon fails to understand the role of legitimated protest in traditional China, and this failure in turn limits his understanding of how values have changed in China under Mao. His book, however, contains much interesting factual material about Chinese attitudes toward authority and about politics in the CPR.

This article examines the development of the Chinese discourse on consumption and standards of living from the early twentieth century to the implementation of the New Life Movement in the mid-1930s. During this period, the idea that China's economy was characterized by scarcity rather than growth—and thus was experiencing a different level of development from the industrialized West—caused Chinese intellectuals and officials to question the wisdom of adopting Western-style consumerist habits and “extravagant” standard of living. In this context, they struggled to find a balance between a supposedly universal model of economic modernization and China's particular nation-building and developmental needs. This early twentieth-century debate illustrates how nationalist and developmental perspectives hindered the adoption of liberal models of consumerist economy, marking the beginning of China's uneasy relationship with a free-market economy as well as a growing tension between urban consumerist trends and central planning. It also helped bring about new forms of frugal modernity that were to culminate in the New Life Movement.