From our present-day vantage point, the founding era of South Asian studies at Chicago looks like an age of unalloyed conceptual and political innocence. Area identities were given, disciplinary formations were unquestioned, the purposes of scholarship were self-evident, and the future was roseate. Half a century later, common sense on all these questions has vanished, and where we go from here is an entirely open question, requiring open and sustained discussion.

Through the reading of two plays written by Kaneko Shigeri, this article examines the way in which Japanese suffragist women, who actively participated in the local governance of Tokyo in prewar Japan, joined in the production of two mutually related sets of discourses on democracy and waste control. Relying on the idea of “purity” (jôka), these women gendered the discourse of democracy along the divide of “pure” women and “impure” men, and succeeded, to a certain extent, in eliminating corrupt officials from the Tokyo prefectural and city assemblies. Yet their efforts to control waste, which was dumped on the residents of Fukagawa Ward in lowland Tokyo, largely failed, for suffragist women hardly paid attention to the intricate relationships among gender, class, and space in Greater Tokyo. This article aims to reveal the limit of the ideas of democracy and environment shared among the suffragist women in prewar Japan.

The main contention of this essay is that railways in Malaya were constructed specifically to serve the tin and rubber industries which were dominated by Western capitalist enterprise. The railroads were concentrated in the west coast states, reinforcing the trend toward economic specialization that had already begun. The pattern of subsequent capital investment which was related to railroad development produced wide regional inequalities. It gave rise to a spatial dualism that was most evident in the emergence of export-oriented enclaves and the associated infrastructure in the western states, leaving the eastern states outside the mainstream of capitalist development. The railways did not stimulate well-rounded economic development in the country because they had little or no multiplier effect on the local economy. The benefits of railroad construction accrued largely to the British economy. I seek to make clear the links between railway development in Malaya, the emergence of an extractive-colonial economy heavily specialized in tin and rubber, and the incorporation of the country into the international capitalist system.

To make a global survey of the study of Chinese literature today would hardly be possible within the space of a single article; apart from the sheer amount of material to be covered and the linguistic competence required, it would be very difficult to discuss—in the same breath—works carried out in radically different social and cultural environments and under radically different assumptions about the nature and purpose of literary scholarship. This survey, therefore, will be limited to the study of Chinese literature in the Western world, which, however, is not to be understood in a strictly geographical sense but rather in a cultural-linguistic one. Thus, works written in or translated into a Western language, and with a predominantly “Western” orientation, may be included irrespective of the author's nationality or the place of publication—whereas works by Chinese, Japanese, Soviet, and Eastern European scholars in their own languages will not be discussed. It should also be made clear—obvious though it may be—that this survey, not being a bibliography, cannot be exhaustive; it can only concentrate on works that appear to represent significant trends. Failure to mention a work, therefore, does not necessarily imply lack of esteem, nor does mention of a work necessarily imply unreserved agreement. Chronologically, this survey will cover works completed since i960, as well as a few works in progress and planned works. Finally, we may venture to take a glance at future possibilities and problems.

In September 1965, there occurred between the armies of India and Pakistan a fierce clash which each side attributed to the aggressive designs of the other. This undeclared war lasted only a short time; first a ceasefire ordered by the United Nations, and later the pact signed at Tashkent, brought the hostilities to a formal close. It was by no means a spontaneous or unexpected flareup, the hatred and antagonism that caused it had been festering for a long time. Similarly, its effects have not been short-lived; neither have they been restricted to the area of military logistics and high diplomacy. In this paper I intend to review the consequences of that conflict for Urdu language and literature. I shall proceed by showing why it was necessary for Urdu writers, especially the poets, to respond to this war, and what sort of attitudes were displayed in the poetry written exclusively in response to it. I shall then discuss certain subsequent developments in the general area of Urdu language and literature and end by presenting my own conclusions with regard to the future.

Vietnamese historians in North and South Vietnam have, in writings since 1954, given considerable attention to the problem of reassessing and interpreting developments during the nineteenth century. For historians in Hanoi the test of Vietnamese nationalism has been whether or not an individual resisted the French. Saigon historians have not applied such a restrictive standard of judgement. The approach of the two schools of history is exemplified in dieir respective treatment of two notable nineteenth century figures; the linguist and journalist Truong Vinh Ky, and the mandarin Phan Thanh Gian. Both these men are condemned by Hanoi historians for their failure to work against the French. Saigon historians are more ready to consider sympathetically the factors which led to these men acting as they did. Resistance-oriented scholarship along the Hanoi model presents a grave risk of distortion. In the case of Truong Vinh Ky it tends to disguise the extent to which his views on Vietnam's future development were echoed in the twentieth century. For Phan Thanh Gian condemnation of his failure to fight to the death against the French diverts attention from the extent to which his decision represented an important reflection of a widespread attitude among many members of the mandarinate.

It is difficult to expound in any pithy fashion on the imprint that James C. Scott's work has had on writing history in the orbit of Asia. Where to start? From The Moral Economy of the Peasant all the way to Against the Grain, Scott's work has found receptive and fertile ground among his peers in Asian studies, who have often proudly pointed out to their non-Asianist colleagues that Scott is “one of their own.” This has certainly been true “internally” as well, in the ways that Southeast Asianists have spoken to their fellow professionals in the larger, allied subdisciplines of South and East Asian studies. It does not matter that Scott's books have touched on a wide variety of subjects: the central concerns with power, agency, space, and the essence of a shared humanity have all resonated with his professional interlocutors.

At age 47, Ishida Haruo is at the point of no return. A Shinto priest for seventeen years, he knows that at this stage there will be no career change, no drastic improvement in his life-style, and certainly no promotion to head or even associate head priest. And yet, when listening to him discuss his work and career, one does not hear complaints. “When I come to the shrine in the mornings, I have a secure feeling. I know what I am supposed to do and I know how to do it with a minimum of effort and stress. Not too many Japanese can say that about their jobs! I certainly won't die of overwork (karōshi)!” he says with a laugh. He parks his aging Toyota in the same spot as always, enters the shrine's back door by the kitchen, and goes into a four-mat tatami room to change into the white samue-style work garments if office work or grounds maintenance is scheduled, or pale blue hakama bloomers if dealing with the public or participating in a ritual is on the agenda.

This article revisits our understanding of corvée labor regimes and their role and impact in the early expansion of colonialism and capitalism. Rather than remnants of feudal pasts, or in-kind taxation or revenue instruments of weak colonial powers, corvée regimes should be viewed as refined methods of colonial exploitation that provided colonial actors with more direct access to and control over the production of commercially interesting global commodities. This article explores and compares the corvée labor regimes employed and shaped by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Moluccas, Sri Lanka, and Java. The article first addresses how to understand corvée and tributary relations as labor, production, and (political-)social regimes. Second, it explores and compares the organization and development of corvée labor relations in the context of the VOC in South and Southeast Asia. These corvée labor regimes reappear as crucial instruments in the expansion of (early) modern colonialism and capitalism, which could explain their widespread recurrence across the globe in the last few centuries.

During the years 1895 to 1898 the Chinese reform movement was a remarkable success and then a conclusive failure in Hunan. For the first time, ideas emanating from the intellectual ferment in the treaty ports were actively implemented in the conservative provinces. Members of the Hunanese elite joined with government officials in a broad program of modernization. But in late 1897 and early 1898, as foreign powers pressed for concessions in China, a new leadership gradually took control of the Hunan reforms. Led by Liang Chʻi-chʻao, this group was intensely influenced by the teachings of Kʻang Yu-wei. By March it had broadened the scope of institutional change and had widely popularized Kʻang's ideas. Members of the elite, who at first had supported reform, became alarmed as the movement became more radical. They disagreed sharply with the Kʻang Yu-wei group over reform objectives, and after a bitter controversy during the spring of 1898, they suppressed Kʻang's teachings and ostracized his followers. By the summer of 1898 they had reasserted their domination over provincial affairs.

In April of 1748 the Xiaoxian empress, first wife of Qianlong, died of a malarial fever. In the months that followed, a scandal erupted that shook the bureaucracy and left several officials dead. Their crime was shaving themselves before the expiration of the hundred days of declared state mourning. The case was an important moment in Qing rule, showing a very saddened and still-learning emperor grappling with different methods and models of governing, questioning his role as a specifically Manchu leader, and struggling with the place that law would occupy in his reign. He emerges from mourning his wife, and from the scandals that ensued, with a changed sense of how to govern that would have long-term consequences for the Qing government. Before turning to our story, it is best to begin with a context for the issues.

As part of this year's anniversary of the October 6, 1976, massacre at Thammasat University, an outdoor exhibit of photographs of the violence and the three preceding years of student and other social movements was displayed upon the very soccer field in the center of campus where students were beaten, shot, lynched, and murdered forty years prior. Several of the photographs were printed on large sheets of acrylic and positioned such that the images of the buildings in the photographs were aligned with the actual buildings, which remain largely unchanged. The most striking of these was a photograph of hundreds of students stripped to the waist who were lying face down on the soccer field prior to being arrested and taken away. At the edge of the image was the top of the university's iconic dome building, which lined up with the existing building. The organizers explained that their intention was “to reflect a perspective on the past through the eyes of people in the present in order to show the cruelty of humans to one another.” The proximity generated by the image was underlined by the fact that the fortieth anniversary of the massacre and coup in 1976 that led to twelve years of dictatorship was taking place under yet another dictatorship, that of a military junta calling itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), which seized power on May 22, 2014, in the twelfth coup since the end of the absolute monarchy on June 24, 1932. Suchada Chakphisut, founding editor of Sarakadee magazine and Thai Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism, who was a first-year Thammasat student during the massacre, began her autobiographical account of the day, written for the anniversary this year, by writing: “We meet every year when 6 October comes around, and with it an inexplicable sadness always takes hold of my psyche. It has grown even more devastating since the 22 May 2014 coup, in which we must face the news of the arrest and detention of activists and those who oppose dictatorship.” This was not a commemoration after dictatorship such as those of the same era held in Argentina or Chile during recent years of democratization, but memories of dictatorship in situ.

In Japan between 1770 and 1790, the craze for witty, comic verse forms such as kyōka and senryū, infected the ancient and noble tradition of poetry written in Chinese to produce kyōshi, “wild Chinese poetry.” Written in both Edo and Kyoto by poets of the lower samurai and educated townsmen classes, kyōshi ranged from silly puns and parodies of long-petrified Chinese verse forms to serious poems that used new subjects, language, and perceptions to revive the old genre, kanshi. Of the major poets, Ōta Nampo (Shokusanjin) of Edo, well-known as a master of kyōka, was equally famous for collections of witty kyōshi, while Hatanaka Tanomo (Dōmyaku Sensii) revived the Chinese “folk song style ballad” as a vehicle for descriptions of daily life in and around Kyoto. Because kyōshi was the product of a unique conjunction of literary, social, and political factors, it was almost forgotten by the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The military victories of the Northern Expedition (1926–28) ended nearly two decades of political fragmentation and ushered in a new era of centralized government in China. A key concern of the Nationalist government, based in Nanjing, was bringing the haphazard array of private schools that had emerged since the republic's founding in 1911 in line with the Nationalists’ political agenda. The Nationalist leadership also hoped to use their educational reforms to bring the frontier regions, many of which were only tenuously allied with Nanjing, more formally under their control. Thus, the new regime set out to achieve the twin goals of regulating private schools and cultivating ties among the frontier region's population. These two goals became entangled in an unexpected manner at the private Muslim Chengda Teachers School. Although the Nationalists banned private teachers schools in 1933, they deliberately exempted Chengda from such regulations to further their frontier agenda. Later, when the central government's frontier political calculations changed, the Nationalists rescinded such protection and forced Chengda to abide by the original regulations.