Put simply, hair and clothing make a difference. To phrase the matter another way, the presence of these material and visual forms, or alternatively their absence from the human body, embodies potent cultural meanings and has concrete effects in the social world. To be sure, more-hidden body parts may lurk below the surface that signal our membership in certain social categories—gender, to give a prime example. In practical terms, however, when we see strangers walking toward us from a distance, we are in the habit of assuming they are a man or a woman not because we have observed their genitalia (it would be strange indeed if that were the case) but rather because we recognize and extract meaning from a more readily visible set of identity markers—primarily clothing-related (sartorial) and hair-related (tonsorial)—whose semiotic rules must be learned culturally and which vary across space and time.

One of the first and most pressing problems to confront Qubilai, after his election as khan in 1260, was the problem of food supply for the military and civilian population of the imperial capital. This was a problem which had plagued rulers of China long before the coming of the Mongols, ever since the rise of the lower Yangtze area as the economic center of China. During the Sui, T'ang and Northern Sung periods, a fairly adequate solution had been found in a system of waterways which, running in a northwesterly direction, carried food supplies to the nation's capitals, located far inland. This system of waterways became the lifeline of China for over five centuries. But, when Qubilai Qaqan established his administrative headquarters at the northern corner of the great Yellow Plain close by the sea, food supply again became an urgent problem and new solutions had to be found.

In his provocative essay, Prasenjit Duara argues that prior to the nineteenth century, the web of maritime trade networks infused the ill-defined area we call “Asia” with a genuine coherence, providing a conduit for cultural flows that readily permitted interactive relationships and the mutual adoption of new beliefs and practices. By the late nineteenth century, however, the imperial powers sought to ensure their global dominance by creating regional blocs consisting of territories that were economically subservient to the metropole. The consequent focus on the establishment of territorial boundaries encouraged a “nationalist congruence between state and culture” that gathered pace over the next hundred years. Only now are we beginning to see an Asia where interdependence and increasing cultural contact, carrying echoes of past connectivities, have opened up new opportunities by which a “transnational consciousness” can and should be encouraged.

There has always been a sizeable gap between public and national interests and needs and the capacities of a society's educational system to respond adequately thereto. Both teaching and scholarship are by their very nature conserving disciplines heavily involved with the preservation, elaboration, and passing on of a heritage of experience and knowledge acquired over great lengths of time. When one considers the degree to which our own national intellectual heritage is derived from the classical and Judaeo-Christian traditions, therefore, it is not at all surprising that our educational system should be profoundly Eurocentric in both form and content. But if it should persist in so confining a bias at a time when the central tendencies of the major technological, economic, and political developments of the past several centuries have been the compacting of global space, the convergence of cultures, and the emergence to positions of increasing salience and importance of an ever-expanding array of non-Western people, states, and interests, is this not cause for serious national concern?

Editor's Introduction: This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II, an event that had profound implications for many Asian countries. This “Asia Beyond the Headlines” feature focuses on the impact that the Japanese surrender, which came several months after the German one, had across East Asia. I put a series of questions to three scholars—modern Japan historian Carol Gluck, China specialist Rana Mitter, and Koreanist Charles Armstrong—who have thought deeply about 1945 and its aftermath. Contacting them initially before the seventieth anniversary of VE Day had come and gone in early May, and then following up after that first big commemorative date had passed but well before the mid-August and early September dates associated with Japan's surrender, I invited them to reflect on the following issues: (1) how discussions associated with this year's anniversary have been and are likely to carry forward or break from those of one, two, three, or four decades ago; (2) what we should expect from the statements and other activities to come in mid-August and in early September; and (3) the varying ways that 1945 can be understood, depending on the part of the region in question, as bringing one era to a close, beginning another, or doing both of these things. Their responses, which engage to greater or lesser degrees with the three themes flagged in my initial questions, can be read as standalone short essays. They also fit together neatly to offer a collective window onto the varied meanings of the war and the wide-ranging debates that continue to swirl around how it should be understood, remembered, and commemorated.

Liu Zihua arrived in France in 1919 as part of the Sino-French Work-Study Movement. In 1940, he completed a PhD thesis in which he combined modern astronomy and the Yijing through “analogical reasoning” to discover a planet. After Liu went back to China in 1945, his efforts to win recognition came up against nationalist and communist anti-traditionalism but were eventually integrated into the intellectual revival of the 1980s. This study relies on historical sources and anthropological fieldwork to show that Liu is an emblematic figure of the cultural upheaval caused by the introduction of modern Western categories of science, religion, and superstition at the beginning of the twentieth century. Liu's example reveals the changing status of the Yijing in Chinese society, the cross-cultural understanding of science and sacred literature as embodied in this classic, and the role of analogy in cultural assimilation. It also sheds light on the shaping of academic standards in China and on the connection between traditional literary scholars and contemporary “amateur scientists.”

In a democratic country with a single dominant party the distribution of power within the party is of critical importance to the maintenance of democratic processes and political responsibility. The implications of such a system are particularly acute in the new nations of Asia and Africa where the dominant party has grown out of a nationalist movement and where problems of national unity have resulted frequendy in a tendency to view the party and the state as synonymous. In such cases, opposition to the policy objectives of the party, when it is in power, is often looked upon as criticism of the state itself. As a result legitimate partisan criticism may be regarded as anti-nationalist or subversive.

Bureaucrats have historically dominated many Asian polities, and Japan is no exception. Ever since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, public servants in national ministries have enjoyed special privileges and powers. They shaped Japan's emergence as an industrial state, they collaborated with militarists to govern during the wartime era, and they presided over Japan's postwar economic ascent. Only in recent decades has a bureaucratically dominant polity in Japan come under challenge. A more organized, affluent, and demanding populace has been one force encroaching on bureaucratic influence. The other has been a long-standing, increasingly experienced, and cautiously pragmatic contingent of Liberal Democratic party (LDP) leaders and legislators.

The scholarly narrative of spoken Chinese studies in Tokugawa Japan is dominated by Ogyū Sorai, who founded a translation society in 1711 and urged Japanese intellectuals to learn contemporary spoken Chinese in order to draw closer to the language of the Chinese classics. This article explores the decades prior to this, when Sorai served the powerful daimyo Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu. By investigating Yoshiyasu's contact with Chinese monks and the surprising but previously untested claim that he could understand spoken Chinese, I explore the cultivation of spoken Chinese learning and the patronage of Chinese émigrés by members of Japan’s warrior elite in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Prior to the scholarly interest in vernacular Chinese and the popularity of Ming and Qing literature in Japan from the Kyōhō period (1716–35) onwards, Chinese orality served as a tangible link to the Chinese tradition for Yoshiyasu and other powerful daimyo, functioning as a sign of their fitness for power in East Asia.

In order to understand the current crisis in native affairs on Guam we need some knowledge of the changes that have taken place on the island since its discovery by Magellan in 1521. In the four centuries which have elapsed since discovery this small island of only 225 square miles has been the meeting place of many diverse influences from the Old World, the Americas, the Orient and the Pacific. It became a port of call for early European trans-Pacific voyagers, for the Manila galleon, and for whalers in the nineteenth century. Thus, due to certain accidents of history, we have been able to assemble a documented account of culture history and change on Guam across several hundred years, and this record is fraught with meaning as regards current problems on the island.

When, in 1926, N. J. Krom published his standard study of the Hindu-Javanese period in Indonesian history, a major gap in the historiography of the Archipelago seemed to have been filled. Krom's later publications enlarged expertly upon the major themes of his great work. He seemed content to catalogue and analyze the many Indonesia inscriptions, statues, and temples, dating from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries A.D. which he regarded as the fruit of the Hinduization of Java and Sumatra. In his earlier study of Hindu-Javanese art, he brilliantly revealed the mingling of indigenous traditions with the technique of Hindu and Hinduized artisans in the Sumatran and Javanese kingdoms. The dominant note in all his writings was the great civilizing influence which he claimed had been exerted by Hindu traders and colonists over the supposedly untutored indigenous population of the Greater Sunda islands. Though willing to admit that the inhabitants of Java and Sumatra before the coming of the Hindus were not “savages” and that they possessed a certain knowledge of political organization, and agricultural and metallurgical technique, Krom emphasized that the high civilization reached by the kingdoms of Java and Sumatra between the ninth and thirteenth centuries was largely due to the infiltration of Hindu culture.

Despite the existence of an enormous literature dealing with the Meiji Restoration and its origins, it is still surprisingly difficult to acquire precise information about some aspects of Japanese society in the middle of the nineteenth century. One such difficulty is that of obtaining general quantitative data about the great feudal domains (han) which constituted the major political and economic units of the country. This is not to say that details concerning the domains are impossible to find. Many records are readily available, even in print, and some have been used by scholars to support or illustrate general statements. It is commonly accepted, for example, that agrarian productivity increased greatly in Japan between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and that land dues were extremely high, especially at the end of the period. It is possible to cite domains as examples for each of these generalisations. On the other hand, it is never very clear whether the examples themselves are typical or merely random, how far they approximate to or differ from the norm. Nor has there been much attempt to discover whether the wide differences which existed between one domain and another in these matters followed any identifiable pattern. It is with these problems that the present article will deal.

In the Japanese empire in 1938, an imperial-language theatrical adaptation of a folktale from colonial Korea, The Tale of Spring Fragrance (Ch'unhyang chŏn) opened to rave reviews in major metropolitan cities throughout Japan. The performance's popularity ignited an encore run later the same year throughout colonial Korea. The play was commissioned by Murayama Tomoyoshi and his Shinkyō Theater Troupe in Japan. The script was penned in Japanese by Chang Hyǒkchu, a bilingual writer from the colony. This article examines a forgotten moment of colonial “collaboration” between Korea and Japan when the two countries’ literary histories converged in a widely publicized performance across the empire. By reading the tensions between parallel yet unbridgeable nostalgic desires between Japan and Korea, and measuring the gap between the consumption of the tale as trendy “colonial kitsch” and timeless “national tradition,” the performance can be read not as the embodiment of harmonious imperial assimilation as touted at the time, but as performing its anxieties and breakdown. This article further considers the significance of the failed collaboration and translation across colonial divides for postcolonial relations.

This article examines the writings of the nineteenth-century Indian essayist Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay. Locating the writer within the history of colonial Bengal and a wider world of racial anxieties, it excavates the foundations of Indian conservatism outside the familiar terrain of anti-Muslim ressentiment. It argues that “traditionalist” conservatism in India was a transformative project that sought to intervene in the racial nature of a colonized people, focusing on the reordering of familiality, education, and health. Simultaneously liberating and constraining the individual subject, the interventions were expected to produce a population that, through engaging in a tense dialogue with Europe, could redefine its distinctive body of custom and also repair its perceived degenerative condition.