For over a century, voting has been a surprisingly common political activity in China. Voting as a Rite examines China’s experiments with elections from the perspective of intellectual and cultural hi
Savage Exchange explores the politics of representation during the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) at a pivotal moment when China was asserting imperialist power on the Eurasian continent and expanding i
Telling stories: that sounds innocuous enough. But for the first chronicle in the Japanese vernacular, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga monogatari), there was more to worry about than a good yarn. T
In Seeing Stars, Dennis J. Frost traces the emergence and evolution of sports celebrity in Japan from the seventeenth through the twenty-first centuries. Frost explores how various constituencies hav
In the years of rapid economic growth following the protest movements of the 1960s, artists and intellectuals in Japan searched for a means of direct impact on the whirlwind of historical and cultura
Fifty years ago, the economic historian Harold Innis pointed out that the geographical limits of empires were determined by communications and that advances in the technologies of transport and commun
During the Manchu conquest of China (1640s-1680s), the Qing government mandated that male subjects shave their hair following the Manchu style. It was a directive that brought the physical body front
The question of truth has never been more urgent than today, when the distortion of facts and the imposition of pseudo-realities in the service of the powerful have become the order of the day. In The
By exhaustively analyzing Lao She's literary writings, Vohra traces the development of his political consciousness and convictions. Answers are sought for crucial questions: Why did Lao She drift to a
This pioneering study of United States direct investment in Japan will interest academic specialists, business managers, and government policymakers in America, Japan, and elsewhere. Drawing on rich h
During the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries, several precursors of what is now commonly known as Shinto came together for the first time. By focusing on Mt. Miwa in present-day Nara Prefecture and
Building for Oil is a historical account of the development of the oil town of Daqing in northeastern China during the formative years of the People’s Republic, describing Daqing’s rise and fall as a
In a formative period of Chinese culture, early medieval writers made extensive use of a diverse set of resources, in which such major philosophical classics as Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Classic of Changes
Give and Take offers a new history of government in Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868), one that focuses on ordinary subjects: merchants, artisans, villagers, and people at the margins of society such as outc
Bannermen Tales is the first book in English to offer a comprehensive study of zidishu (bannermen tales)—a popular storytelling genre created by the Manchus in early eighteenth-century Beijing. Contex
This study of modern Japan engages the fields of art history, literature, and cultural studies, seeking to understand how the “beautiful woman” (bijin) emerged as a symbol of Japanese culture during t
Written Chinese served as a prestigious, cosmopolitan script across medieval East Asia, from as far west as the Tarim Basin to the eastern kingdom of Heian period Japan (794–1185). In this book, Brian
A grandson’s photo album. Old postcards. English porcelain. A granite headstone. These are just a few of the material objects that help reconstruct the histories of colonial people who lived during Ja
Since the reversion of Okinawa from American occupation to Japanese sovereignty in 1972, these subtropical islands have become the site of a complex colonial and postcolonial relationship of resistan
