This article surveys the available English translations of contemporary Chinese literature from the People's Republic. In view of the post-Mao Party policy of relative freedom for creative writing, more works are pouring out of China than ever before. Of the most recent translations, the largest share belongs to Panda Books, a publishing subunit of the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. Under the leadership of the Yangs (Xianyi and Gladys), a husband-and-wife team of great renown, this new Panda series has published more than a dozen titles as of 1984, and new ones continue to be received.

Despite its voluminous production, the editors of the Panda series have made certain choices that are of dubious value. Especially weak is the representation of traditional literary works, which are often drastically abridged or collected in slender anthologies. In comparison, coverage of modern and contemporary works is more exciting. The translations are generally correct, the most felicitous from the hands of Gladys Yang. However, the translations suffer from a certain uniformity of style and sometimes from severe cuts. Volumes in the series are nevertheless a useful addition to the increasing library of English translations of contemporary Chinese literature, now more than adequate for an undergraduate course.

Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the study of Eastern Asia occupied a marginal position in American education. Each crisis in the Far East, such as the Manchurian “incident” of 1931 and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese conflict in 1937, had increased interest in China and Japan in American schools and among Americans at large, but even so the development of Far Eastern studies in the United States had been unimpressive. In general, the higher one rose in the school system of the United States the better chance one had of learning something about the peoples and cultures of Eastern Asia. In elementary and secondary schools the Far East was almost entirely overlooked; at the undergraduate level in colleges and universities there were a relatively few courses offered; in a few graduate schools it was possible to secure the M.A. or the Ph.D. with emphasis on some phase of Far Eastern studies.

In the Indian Hindu society of today voluntary associations form for the purpose of sponsoring annual religious ceremonies or pūjās. These associations are organized by young men who collect funds from their neighbors and friends, install images for worship in temporary shelters on open land on the ceremonial days, and employ priests to perform the religious rituals. Such associations may be composed of men of any caste, and although they observe religious ceremonies, they also provide many secular diversions. These associations devoted to religious ceremonies have proliferated since India gained her Independence. They seem to exemplify the changes that have come into Hindu society with the assurance of the preservation of the traditional culture by the new government. They also indicate the greater awareness of the larger community beyond the range of the family, due to enhanced mobility of the population and the trend toward urban dwelling.

The non-cooperation movement of 1920–1922 was a significant landmark in the development of nation-wide political activities by the Indian National Congress. At the same time, because it took place within very different regional contexts, the nature of the movement and the response which it provoked derived a good deal from regional ingredients. In the United Provinces (the present day Uttar Pradesh), an agricultural region with a largely rural population, it was the agrarian system which molded the character of the non-cooperation and “anti-non-cooperation” movements. Non-cooperation there coincided with unrest among the peasantry and, for a time at least, it assumed the appearance of a revolutionary upsurge. The British Government of the province, therefore, had to meet this revolutionary movement as well as the Congress-led political movement. The Government turned to the landed aristocracy, whose influence in the countryside it had depended upon in the past, to provide the basis for an anti-revolutionary front. Initially, then, the non-cooperation movement served to refurbish the province's traditional landlord-based political system. It went further, however; and at one stage it appeared likely that the moderate-nationalist politicians, usually critical of the government, would be prepared to ally themselves with both the government and the landlords because of their concern over the dangers of revolution within the province. “Anti-non-cooperation,” it seemed, might create a new use for traditional methods of political control, as well as the source of important new lines of political development in the province. It is the creation of this situation, and its working out within the framework of the Government's efforts to counter both revolution and disorder, which is traced here.

One of the perquisites of age is reminiscence. It is the function of the historian to recount the past. As one of the elders of our fellowship and as a historian it would seem to be both my privilege and my duty on this occasion to trace the course of Far Eastern studies in the United States since I first became familiar with them. We are told on the authority of an ancient book which has come to us from the Orient that “your old men shall dream dreams.” It may not be amiss, therefore, not only to survey the past, but also to attempt, in the light of that past to look into the future and to formulate such dreams for it as that past and the prospect for the future inspire.

French Indochina is a union not only of different states bur of geographically diverse areas. Both the physical and cultural-geographic elements have variety in their distribution on the land. This lack of uniformity presents problems for those attempting to create national unity within Indochina. The present brief review can mention only some of the more important contrasts; thoughtful persons will wish to bear in mind these physical and the equally complex cultural-geographic elements in considering those economic and political situations that have arisen in Indochina in modern times.

In January 1941 Guomindang forces crushed a New Fourth Army (NFA) column under Xiang Ying and Ye Ting, which had just missed a deadline to get north of the Yangzi River. The Guomindang and the Communist center in Yan'an both wanted Xiang in the north, each for its own reasons. However, Xiang put off leaving until the last moment for he was loath to give up his independent base in south Anhui. Xiang favored closer cooperation with the Guomindang than did Communists elsewhere in China. Ironically, Xiang's resistance to Yan'an's pressure to cross the river brought him into conflict with Chiang Kai-shek. Loyalist NFA units that did go north routed Guomindang armies there, and partly in retaliation, Chiang Kai-shek suppressed Xiang as a “mutineer.” Yan'an leaders called the Incident an act of fratricide, and afterward they radicalized their idea of the united front—always wider than one of mere collaboration with the Guomindang—still further. In Yan'an, Xiang was blamed for hesitating to expand northward and for entering a trap when he eventually did leave. However, Yan'an bore some responsibility, never acknowledged, for choosing Xiang's route to disaster.

The peoples of Indonesia differ widely in culture. All stages of social JL development are represented among them, from the nomad life of the Orang Laut, who wander in their praus upon the sea, and the Orang Kubu, who were, until recently, nomads of the forests in South Sumatra, up to the high forms of social and cultural attainment on the island of Bali, where the arts of the dance, of music, of sculpture, of temple architecture have reached a high peak and people live their lives in a harmoniously organized social order.

My country “is now wholly given over to a d—d mob of scribbling women,” goes one of the most frequently quoted gender-related adages. Japanologists might be tempted to attribute this uncourtly utterance to a learned nobleman of Heian Japan (794–1185) embittered by the outpouring of vernacular narratives from women's writing brushes that were eclipsing male endeavors to emulate Chinese classics, or to an exasperated modern Japanese novelist in reference to the neo-Heian phenomenon, namely, the renaissance of women's literature in postwar Japan. Actually it was Nathaniel Hawthorne (1855:141) who made the now infamous sexist remark in chagrin at American women who were churning out best-sellers in force. Thereafter, this phenomenon abated for a full century, but since the 1960s, Western women writers have made a glorious resurgence, marked by unprecedented degrees of output and worldwide market domination in a genre known as the romance fiction. The title of the first romance series and the name of its publisher, Harlequin, has become something like a generic term with multiple signification.

Drawing on archival sources in Britain, Singapore, Malaysia, and the United States, this article explores late-colonial anxieties about the influence of Chinese nationalism in Malaya (and especially among students in Chinese-medium schools) in the lead up to self-government in 1957. It demonstrates that the colonial fear of communism in Malaya was not always synonymous with the fear of cultural influence from “new China” and that the “rise of China” in the mid-1950s was viewed as a challenge to colonially sanctioned programs for “Malayanization.” More importantly, in exploring some of the ways in which the colonial state mobilized anti-communist cultural workers from Hong Kong to help counter the perceived threat from China, the article argues that more focus should be placed on the role of colonial agency in shaping “Sinophone” cultural expression in Southeast Asia during this period.

In a long series of important and stimulating publications Georges Dumézil has for almost half a century not only re-established a complex of theories with regard to the comparative study of ancient Indo-European mythology, but also applied a modernized comparative method. In investigating the foundations of the Indo-European socio-religious conceptions he bases his arguments and conclusions, it is true, to a certain extent on linguistic data, but these are always amplified and corroborated by a thorough consideration of the social structure, religious beliefs and ritual institutions of the ancient Indians, Romans, Germans, Celts and Greeks. Especially these last thirty-five years his work is of great originality in that he has founded and developed the theory of the trois fonctions, of the “three fundamental activities which the groups of priests, warriors and producers must fulfil and assure in order to maintain their community”. In this theory it is not the tripartite social organization of the prehistoric Indo-Europeans that is emphasized, but the principle of classification, the ideology to which, in Dumézil's opinion, this organization has given rise. Being reflected in the groupings of, and mutual relations between, the divine powers and in the very structure of Indo-European mythology and view of the world it is here again the ideological rather than the strictly sociological aspects that invite the reader's attention.

Japan's actions during the Boxer crisis which resulted in the siege of. The foreign legations in Peking from June 20 to August 14, 1900, are the subject of debate among historians. Some argue that Japan's actions were “generally sound in dealing with the difficult international circumstances of the time; considering Japan's mission today as a bridge between east and west, they may be regarded as a historical fact of which the Japanese can be very proud.” Those who take this view would claim that Japan tried to balance her sympathy with China with her responsibilities to the powers and that she generally succeeded. On the other hand, others hold that while “Japan played a singularly conscientious role in the allied relief expedition to Peking to rescue the legation staffs in the summer of 1900, … the Tokyo cabinet was certainly not indifferent to its opportunities.” They would argue that, while Japan did not acquire territory in China during the Boxer disturbances, she thought of doing so and took steps to that end. The published archives of the Japanese ministry of foreign affairs show the extent to which she acted in line with the expansive temper of the powers in China at the time. This paper will consider the projects which were undertaken by the Japanese, the motives for them, and the reasons why they were not followed through.

The 1857 uprising, by shattering many of Britain's most cherished beliefs about India, introduced a decade of controversy and reappraisal in many fields. At the center of this controversy stood land policy, for the land revenue was the heart of the administrative system, and the form through which outside events made their influence felt most strongly upon the structure of society. In collecting the land revenue, the Government had of necessity to settle responsibility for its payment on some person, and in so doing to define the rights in land of the various classes of society. This had a profound effect on the distribution of power within Indian society. Whichever class obtained the land settlement, and the rights and privileges it entailed, was in effect proprietor of the land, able to reduce all others to dependence upon its generosity. The British could insure the dominance of either peasant or landlord simply by manipulating the Record of Rights and assessment rolls.

From a purely objective point of view, the study of the political novel in any period of history is useful because of the inherent value of that particular type of novel – portrayal of the political ideology of its time and presentation of its authors' political opinions. This is especially true with reference to the political novel in Japan's Meiji era. The Restoration had shifted the balance of power; Western influence was strong; Japan was emerging from her self-imposed seclusion. In the first flush of her breakaway from previous restraints – and before new ones could be devised and stringently enforced – Japan's political thought as expressed in the literary vehicle specifically designed for it presents perhaps a truer index of the feelings of the literate classes than does the governmental mechanism which was evolved at that time, inasmuch as one of the avowed purposes of a novel is to appeal to its audience, a point not included in Japanese governmental tradition. This being the general trend in the Far East, the most important medium – even the only medium – through which the articulate could register their objections and their own thoughts has been literature. Certainly one of the most important causes for the Western belief that the Oriental is phlegmatic and mysterious is that so little study has been made of his writings, the only possible channel for his outpourings.