Asian history Books
Harvard University, Asia Center In Pursuit of Status
Book SynopsisIn this ethnography of the everyday life of contemporary Korea, Denise Lett argues that South Korea’s contemporary urban middle class not only exhibits upper-class characteristics but also that this reflects a culturally inherited disposition of Koreans to seek high status.Trade ReviewIn Pursuit of Status is an important contribution to the ethnography of Korea and anthropological studies of social stratification. It is perhaps the best introduction to contemporary Korea’s social stratification and urban life that has been published in English. * American Ethnologist *Denise Lett’s study of South Korea’s urban middle class…highlights the powerful role culture has played in South Korea’s emergence as a global economic power. Lett’s core argument is that South Koreans possess an ‘underlying drive’ to attain social status, and that this has been a ‘force behind the development of South Korea’s human resources in general, of its new middle class in particular, and ultimately of South Korea itself’ …She backs her argument by analyzing South Korea’s urban middle class in the areas of occupation, family, lifestyle, education, and marriage, and comparing her findings with practices in the yangban era. -- James Adam * Japan Times *
£16.10
Harvard University, Asia Center A Patterned Past
Book SynopsisIn this comprehensive study of the rhetoric, narrative patterns, and intellectual content of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, David Schaberg reads these two collections of historical anecdotes as traces of a historiographical practice that flourished around the fourth century BCE among the followers of Confucius.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center The Peoples Emperor
Book SynopsisFew institutions are as well suited as the monarchy to provide a window on postwar Japan. The monarchy, which is also a family, has been significant both as a political and as a cultural institution. Ruoff analyzes numerous issues, stressing the monarchy's postwarness rather than its traditionality.Trade ReviewRuoff is a clear-eyed observer of the post-occupation battle for Japan’s soul that pitted left against right over issues such as constitutional revision, the reign-names system and the authenticity of the national foundation myth. In doing so, he breaks down the all-too-prevalent tendency to view Japanese politics, of the immediate postwar and present, as monolithic and staunchly conservative. -- Victoria James * New Statesman *The People’s Emperor is certain to be one of the most-discussed books of the coming year. * International Herald Tribune/Asahi News Service *This intriguing and rewarding monograph examines the manner in which the Emperor system has been reinvented in postwar Japan to reflect and reinforce democratic values. Kenneth Ruoff successfully challenges some prevailing myths and stereotypes about modern Japan and helpfully unravels distorting monolithic images about right-wing politics. His interesting discussion of constitutional controversies and key issues that expose cross-cutting political cleavages provocatively recasts the political landscape, clarifies some of the paradoxes of the polity and demonstrates that civil society is neither as anemic or stagnant as some writers suggest. -- Jeff Kingston * Japan Times *A stimulating analysis of the contemporary Japanese monarchy. -- Philippe Pons * Le Monde *Kenneth J. Ruoff’s scholarly yet lucid account of the emperor’s role in post-war Japanese society is a timely addition to the literature on this intriguing institution. It also provides a fascinating insight into post-war Japan’s political struggles… This is an excellent work of accessible history. Sensitive to the nuances of an enigmatic political culture, it is perhaps best recommended for those already with an interest in Japan. -- Ed Wright * South China Morning Post *[A] remarkable book… An even-handed, astute and often entertaining account of the Japanese monarchy in the latter half of the 20th century. -- Velisarios Kattoulas * Far Eastern Economic Review *Ruoff’s book is a fine study with appeal well beyond academe. -- Richard Read * Oregonian *Ruoff argues that the myth of the Japanese monarch was invented to preserve the imperial system in the postwar era after the WWII defeat… Ruoff argues that Hirohito was more actively involved in the decision making in the wartime military government than has been thought. What is new is that Ruoff describes the evolution of the monarch in the postwar period—the monarchy’s efforts to transform itself from a once-sacrosanct throne into a ‘monarchy of the masses,’ especially by Hirohito’s son, Emperor Akihito… [This is] a fine study of the Japanese postwar imperial system. -- M. Itoh * Choice *
£18.86
Harvard University, Asia Center Burning and Building
Book SynopsisAmong the most radical of the Meiji reforms was a plan for a centralized, compulsory educational system modeled after those in Europe and America. But with almost no support from the government, local officials, teachers, and citizens pursued alternative visions. Their efforts led to the growth and consolidation of a new educational system.Trade ReviewThis fascinating chronicle of the development of mass education in Japan before and after the watershed Meiji restoration of 1868 brings to life the complexity of educational development there. Japan was one of the first countries to develop a mass education system in the latter 18th-century, mostly as the result of local initiatives...This volume provides an excellent analysis of a central period of Japan's educational change and development, focusing on both policy shifts and local initiatives and reactions. -- P. G. Altbach * Choice *Through a keen and lucid analysis, Platt shows the modern school system to have emerged in a complex negotiation among teachers, school administrators, local notables, and national bureaucrats. * Journal of Asian History *
£32.26
Harvard University, Asia Center Building Local States
Book SynopsisThis book examines the Nanjing decade of Guomindang rule (19271937) and the early post-Mao reform era (19801992) of Chinese history that have commonly been viewed as periods of state disintegration or retreat. And they wereat the central level. When reexamined at the local level, however, both are revealed as periods of state building.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center The Dao of Muhammad
Book SynopsisThis book documents an Islamic–Confucian school of scholarship that flourished—mostly in the Yangzi Delta—in the 17th and 18th centuries. Drawing on previously unstudied sources, it reconstructs the network of Muslim scholars responsible for the creation and circulation of a large corpus of Chinese Islamic written material—the so-called Han Kitab.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center The Age of Visions and Arguments
Book SynopsisThe Meiji Restoration of 1868 inaugurated a period of great change in Japan; it is seldom associated, however, with advances in civil and political rights. By studying parliamentarianismthe theories, arguments, and polemics marshaled in support of a representative system of governmentKim uncovers a much more complicated picture of this era.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Dynastic Crisis and Cultural Innovation
Book SynopsisFocusing on themes of crisis and innovation, this book illuminates the late Ming and late Qing as eras of literary-cultural innovation during periods of imperial disintegration; analyzes links between the two periods and the radical heritage they bequeathed to the modern imagination; and rethinks the premodernity of the eras.
£43.31
Harvard University, Asia Center Localities at the Center
Book SynopsisNative-place lodges are often cited as an example of the particularistic ties that hindered the emergence of a modern state based on loyalty to the nation. The author argues that by fostering awareness of membership in an elite group, native-place lodges fostered a sense of belonging to a nation that furthered the reforms in the early 20th century.Trade ReviewThe book [is]...a true monograph based on dense research, but framed by a clear and fair discussion of existing scholarship, comparative issues and a conclusion suggesting the significance of the subject. Mr. Belsky's study manages, in the best traditions of the series, to use an engaging case study to illuminate varieties of socially generated forms of management and political action in modern China, as well as to better document the sources of modern China arising from Chinese society. -- Pamela Crossley * Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) *This is the first detailed study of “native-place lodges”... Belsky’s study will benefit not only scholars of Chinese religion, but all who study diaspora religion and how people construct and use “sacred space.” -- Russell Kirkland * Religious Studies Review *
£32.26
Harvard University, Asia Center Taiwans Imagined Geography
Book SynopsisThe incorporation of Taiwan into the Qing empire in the 17th century and its evolution into a province by the late 19th century involved not only a reconsideration of imperial geography but also a reconceptualization of the Chinese domain. Here, Teng takes the view of Taiwan-China relations as a product of the history of Qing expansionism.Trade ReviewRefreshingly, Teng divorces the relationship of the island and the mainland from the now stale arguments over reunification, or whether or not Taiwan is part of China, and grounds it in the tantalizing history of Chinese imperialism. She draws on Qing dynasty (1644–1911) travel writing and paintings to argue that China effectively colonized the island… Teng makes adroit use of a growing body of literature stigmatizing China as a colonial conqueror—rather than a victim of European colonialism—and incorporates the importance of Taiwan into the debate on Chinese expansionism. -- Macabe Keliher * Far Eastern Economic Review *Teng paints an intriguing picture of the debates that emerged concerning the colonization of Taiwan and official Qing policy towards the island’s indigenous peoples… Teng is making a significant contribution to the study of imperialism overall, and is suggesting that it is time to move beyond the confines by which colonialism is seen as the exclusive practice of Western men. -- Jeremy E. Taylor * Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History *Thoroughly examining Qing dynastic travel accounts and maps of Taiwan, Teng has written a splendid analysis of changing Chinese perceptions of Taiwan and its indigenous peoples from the late 17th century on, culminating in Taiwan’s becoming a province of China in 1887… This book should be read by anyone interested in early Taiwanese history or in better understanding the current views about Taiwan held by Chinese in both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. Those interested in discourses about the nature of imperialism or in how depictions of indigenous native peoples are manipulated to suit colonizers’ needs will also find this book worthwhile. -- V. J. Symons * Choice *
£18.86
Harvard University, Asia Center Useless to the State
Book SynopsisUnderlying Nanjing’s 1930s policies was a concern for the capital’s image—offensive people were allowed to exist as long as they remained invisible. Lipkin exposes the process of social engineering and the ways in which the suppressed reacted to their abuse; he puts the poor at the center of the picture, defying efforts to make them invisible.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Out of the Cloister
Book SynopsisThis book demonstrates that representations of Buddhism by lay people underwent a major change during the T'angSung transition. These changes built on basic transformations within the Buddhist and classicist traditions and sometimes resulted in the use of Buddhism and Buddhist temples as frames of reference to evaluate aspects of lay society.Trade ReviewIn this interesting and well-written study Mark Halperin paints a multi-faceted and complex picture of how members of the Song-dynasty educated elite viewed Buddhism and Buddhist institutions, and how in writing about them literati were able to express a range of opinions and critiques that went far beyond the Buddhist cloister. It is a welcome addition to a number of recent studies on the social history of the Song literati class and on elite Buddhism in the Song, but at the same time it offers an approach not attempted in any previous work. -- Morten Schlutter * Chinese Historical Review *
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center A Court on Horseback
Book SynopsisBetween 1751 and 1784, the Qianlong emperor embarked upon six southern tours—largely exercises in political theater—traveling from Beijing to Jiangnan and back. This study elucidates the tensions and negotiations characterizing the relationship between the imperial center and Jiangnan, which straddled the two key provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Gendering Modern Japanese History
Book SynopsisThe sixteen chapters in this volume treat men as well as women, theories of sexuality as well as gender prescriptions, and same-sex as well as heterosexual relations in the period from 1868 to the present. Separately, each chapter examines how Japanese have (en)gendered their ideas, institutions, and society.
£26.96
Harvard University, Asia Center Culture Courtiers and Competition
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays reveals the Ming court as an arena of competition and negotiation, where a large cast of actors pursued individual and corporate ends, personal agency shaped protocol and style, and diverse people, goods, and tastes converged.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Men of Letters within the Passes
Book SynopsisThis book explores the interaction between two places, China and Guanzhong, the capital area of several dynasties, examining how Guanzhong literati conceptualized three sets of relations: central/regional, official/unofficial, and national/local. It further traces the formation of a critical communal self-consciousness.
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center When Empire Comes Home
Book SynopsisFollowing the end of World War II in Asia, the Allied powers repatriated over six million Japanese nationals and deported more than a million colonial subjects from Japan. Watt analyzes how the human remnants of empire served as sites of negotiation in the process of jettisoning the colonial project and in the creation of new national identities.
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center Wretched Rebels
Book SynopsisBianco focuses on spontaneous rural unrest, uninfluenced by revolutionary intellectuals. The author shows that predominant forms of protest were directed not against the landowning class but against state agents, and suggests that 20th-century Chinese peasants were less different from 17th- or 18th-century French peasants than might be imagined.Table of ContentsBoxes, Maps, and Tables Conventions Preface 1. Typology I: Movements Opposed to the Administration 2. Typology II: Movements Within Society 3. Repertoire of Action 4. Exploitation or Oppression? 5. Taxation 6. Reforms 7. Conscription 8. Permanencies Appendix: The Various Categories of Rural Disturbances Notes Works Cited Index
£32.26
Harvard University, Asia Center Defining Engagement
Book SynopsisPresenting fresh insights on the internal dynamics and global contexts that shaped foreign relations in early modern Japan, Robert I. Hellyer challenges the still largely accepted wisdom that the Tokugawa shogunate, guided by an ideology of seclusion, stifled intercourse with the outside world, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Table of ContentsFigures, Maps, and Tables Conventions Introduction 1. Interdependent Partners: The Shogunate, Satsuma, and Tsushima 2. The Reaction against Globalization 3. Guarded Engagement 4. Domestic Demand and Foreign Trade 5. Local Japan Encounters the West 6. The Transition in Foreign Trade 7. Defending the Domain and the Realm Conclusion: The End of Domain Agency and the Adoption of International Relations Works Cited Index
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center Empires Twilight
Book SynopsisFour themes dominate this study of the late Mongol empire in Northeast Asia: the need for an all-inclusive regional perspective; pan-Asian integration under the Mongols; the tendency for individual and family interests to trump those of dynasty, country, or linguistic affiliation; and the need to see Koryŏ Korea as part of the wider Mongol empire.Table of ContentsKory Kings During the Mongol Period Mongolian Rulers Introduction 1. Northeast Asia and the Mongol Empire 2. A Precarious Restoration 3. Kory in the Great Yuan Ulus 4. The Red Turban Wars 5. Buffeted in the Storm 6. In the Wake of the Invasions 7. A New King of Kory 8. Wider Perspectives Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Empire of Texts in Motion
Book SynopsisThe constant movement of peoples, ideas, and texts in the Japanese empire at the turn of the twentieth century created numerous literary contact nebulae. This book analyzes three of them: semicolonial Chinese, occupied Manchurian, and colonial Korean and Taiwanese transculturations of Japanese literature.Trade Review[An] extraordinary encyclopedic enterprise. -- T. S. Yamada * Choice *Table of ContentsConventions Introduction: Empire, Transculturation, and Literary Contact Nebulae 1. Travel, Readerly Contact, and Writerly Contact in the Japanese Empire Part I: Interpretive and Interlingual Transculturation 2. Transcultural Literary Criticism in the Japanese Empire 3. Multiple Vectors and Early Interlingual Transculturations of Japanese Literature 4. From Cultural Innovation to Total War Part II: Intertextual Transculturation 5. Intertextuality, Empire, and East Asia 6. Spotlight on Suffering 7. Reconceptualizing Relationships: Individuals, Families, Nations 8. Questions of Agency: Raising Responsibility, Parodying Persistence, and Rethinking Reform Epilogue: Postwar Intra-East Asian Dialogues and the Future of Negotiating Transculturally Notes Works Cited Index
£42.46
Harvard University Press One Country Two Societies
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£28.76
Harvard University Press Jesus in Asia
Book SynopsisReconstructions of Jesus occurred in Asia long before the Western search for the historical Jesus began in earnest. Asians remade Jesus at times appreciatively and at other times critically. R. S. Sugirtharajah situates the historical Jesus beyond the narrow confines of the West and offers an eye-opening chapter in the story of global Christianity.Trade ReviewA stimulating and provocative book that shows how Asians—like people around the world—have been trying for centuries to make the man from Galilee one of their own. -- Ian Johnson * New York Review of Books *Splendid…A fascinating, half-forgotten intellectual journey which is brought fully to life by Sugirtharajah’s painstaking ‘excavations of Asian resources.’ -- Jonathan Wright * Catholic Herald *[An] excellent book…Sugirtharajah brings together some fascinating parts of the global and perpetually expanding biography of Jesus…Jesus in Asia deserves to be read widely. -- Chad M. Bauman * Christian Century *Sugirtharajah’s detailed examination of…Asian treatments of Jesus reveals a startling variety among them…[He] has admirably filled a gap that most readers, including scholars specializing in the study of Jesus, are not even aware of. -- Luke Timothy Johnson * Commonweal *Sugirtharajah…opens up Jesus to an Asian outlook…His book will constitute a revelation for most Christian readers…His book is a pleasure to read. -- Robert A. Segal * Times Higher Education *[Sugirtharajah] has distilled his wide-ranging research and thinking into an impressive volume. -- Philip Jenkins * Christian Century *Jesus in Asia is a marvelous achievement… Sugirtharajah presents an equally elegant and unexpected portrait of a number of Jesuses according to Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Jain, and Christian traditions… Succeeds in correcting common misconceptions by highlighting the important and overlooked contributions of Asian writers on the historical Jesus. -- Wongi Park * Horizons in Biblical Theology *Makes for interesting and even provocative reading. Sugirtharajah brings to light a number of marginalized biographies of Jesus—works largely forgotten in both the East and the West. -- W. J. Pankey * Choice *Sugirtharajah maintains that Western scholars’ ‘quest for the historical Jesus,’ has wrongly dismissed Eastern reconstructions as parochial and lacking scientific objectivity. Sugirtharajah counters with systematic and critical evaluations of Eastern contributions to the life of Jesus that span from the seventh century CE to the present day…A necessary corrective. -- James Wetherbee * Library Journal *Sugirtharajah’s trenchant book will be useful to anyone looking for an introduction to some of the many Asian representations of Christ. * Publishers Weekly *Written by a distinguished scholar of Christianity and postcolonial studies, Jesus in Asia broadens our historical memory and enlivens our religious imagination. This book sharply contests the historical quest of Jesus in the West, and is remarkable in its broad historical and cultural reach—an invaluable recovery of Asian representations of Jesus. -- Kwok Pui-lan, author of Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist TheologyJesus in Asia is an extraordinary gift. With great erudition, Sugirtharajah illuminates a broad history of previously neglected writings on Jesus, across many centuries and from diverse parts of Asia, by Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, and Jain scholars. By placing Jesus within Asian cultures and religions, this book offers a necessary challenge to the isolationism of Western Jesus studies. -- Halvor Moxnes, author of Jesus and the Rise of Nationalism: A New Quest for the Nineteenth-Century Historical Jesus
£22.46
Harvard University, Asia Center Children as Treasures
Book SynopsisMark Jones examines the making of a new child's world in Japan, 18901930, and focuses on the institutions, groups, and individuals that reshaped both the idea of childhood and the daily life of children. He also places the story of modern childhood within a broader social contextthe emergence of a middle class in early twentieth century Japan.Trade ReviewThis extremely well researched historical study of the intersection of ideology, politics, and family in modern Japan explores the emergence of a political discourse that supported the construction of a middle class in early-20th-century Japan and details the centrality of child rearing in that discourse...Throughout the book, readers get a clear sense that the Japanese family system is not simply a product of random social forces but was consciously invented to achieve specific political and ideological aims. An excellent work of interest to scholars of Japan, gender studies, and child development. -- J. W. Traphagan * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Childhood, the Middle Class, and Modern Japan Part I: The Emergence of a Late Meiji Middle Class 1. The Moral and the Material: The Family Reformer and the Promotion of a Middle Class 2. The Public Professional and the Middle Class: The Scientific Expert's Quest for Social Influence 3. The Wise Mother and the Little Citizen: Building a Middle Class Part II: Remaking the Middle Class in Taisho Japan: Education, Play, and New Visions of Childhood 4. The Self-Made Woman and the Superior Student: Transgressive Femininity, Educational Achievement, and Meritocratic Modernity 5. The Childlike Child: Play and the Importance of Leisure Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index
£32.26
Harvard University, Asia Center Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern
Book SynopsisThis book uses Song China to explain how a pre-industrial regime organized itself spatially in order to exercise authority. By detailing the relationship between the court and local administration, Mostern complicates the received paradigm of Song centralization and decentralization.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center The Peoples Republic of China at 60
Book SynopsisTo mark the sixtieth anniversary of the PRC, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies convened a conference to consider this question: After three decades of internal strife, followed by reform, entrepreneurialism, and internationalization, is the PRC here for the dynastic long haul? This volume presents an energetic exchange of views on the topic.Trade ReviewThese impressive conference papers by China specialists from across the world offer instructive views on the 60-year history of the People's Republic of China (PRC). From varied angles and in different tongues, the contributors discuss in fine interdisciplinary fashion important political, social, and cultural aspects of the PRC from 1949 to 2009...For a balanced, realistic understanding of China's past, present, and future, this assemblage of academic musings calls for a new paradigm to substitute for the conventionally Western-centered way of looking at China. -- G. Zheng * Choice *
£22.46
Harvard University, Asia Center Coins Trade and the State Economic Growth in
Book SynopsisThe political fragmentation and constant warfare of medieval Japan did not necessarily inhibit economic growth. Rather, as this book shows, these conditions created opportunities for a wider spectrum of society to participate in trade, markets, and monetization, laying the groundwork for Japan’s transformation into an early modern society.Trade ReviewSegal’s book is a highly readable, lively analysis of money, trade, and the economy in pre-1600 Japan, with emphasis on the first half (late Heian through Kamakura periods) of the medieval age… Given its readability and substantive coverage, Coins, Trade, and the State could be used in Japanese history courses at all levels, surveys through graduate seminars… [Segal] richly illustrates how various members of society participated in a complex economy, including those with estate affiliations as well as those in warrior domains. This approach to history could put an end to the still-common notion that Japan before the early modern (Tokugawa) period was an economically primitive place, a sea of self-sufficiency. -- Suzanne Gay * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *Segal breaks new ground in Japanese history by focusing on economic developments in the 12th–13th centuries that laid the groundwork for the economic growth Japan experienced during the period of political decentralization and civil war in the 14th–16th centuries. In doing so, Segal fills a gap in knowledge of the economic history of Japan before the Edo period. Using evidence coaxed from a wide range of original Japanese sources and writing in an accessible style, he shows how the circulation of copper coins and the expansion of trade led to the emergence of a market-centered economy. A key part of this story is how the peripheral elites such as merchants, warriors, estate managers, and religious leaders devised new ways to circumvent the traditional center-controlled forms of commodity taxes and exchange by importing Chinese coinage, trading in local markets, and devising an effective system of long-distance money remittance. The author’s fresh analysis of the Kamakura bakufu’s late-13th-century ‘virtuous government’ (tokusei) decrees is particularly noteworthy. -- M. D. Erickson * Choice *
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center Tradition Treaties and Trade
Book SynopsisRelations between the Choson and Qing states are often cited as the prime example of the operation of the traditional Chinese tribute system. In contrast, this work contends that the motivations, tactics, and successes (and failures) of the late Qing Empire in Choson Korea mirrored those of other nineteenth-century imperialists.Trade ReviewAn important addition to the body of literature on the period of Korea’s opening. -- J. E. Hoare * Asian Affairs *This is an important and stimulating work, and it deserves to be widely read. -- Richard S. Horowitz * Journal of Asian Studies *Its rich analysis of the Qing’s interventionism sheds fresh and more varied light on interpreting Qing China’s imperialism into Choson Korea at the turn of the twentieth century, not only in the history of Sino–Korean relation but in the larger historical and regional context of imperialism of the world. -- Jungwon Kim * Korean Studies *This is a fine piece of diplomatic and political history that should become standard reading for anyone interested in the process of imperialism in late nineteenth-century East Asia. -- Kenneth M. Swope * Pacific Affairs *Table of Contents* Conventions and Abbreviations * Introduction * Pre-Nineteenth-Century Sino-Korean Relations * Nineteenth-Century Challenges and Changes * Treaties and Troops: Bringing Multilateral Imperialism to Korea * Soldiers, Diplomats, and Merchants: Establishing a Qing Presence in Korea * the Residency of Yuan Shikai * Suzerainty, Sovereignty, and Ritual * Yuan Shikai and "Commercial Warfare" in Korea * Defending Multilateral Privilege at Suzerainty's End: The Sino-Japanese War and Its Aftermath * Endings, Echoes, and Legacies * Works Cited * Index
£21.56
Harvard University, Asia Center Reading North Korea
Book SynopsisSonia Ryang casts new light on the study of North Korean culture and society by reading literary texts as sources of ethnographic data. Ryang focuses critical attention on three central themeslove, war, and selfthat reflect the nearly complete overlap of the personal, social, and political realms in North Korean society.
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center The Money Doctors from Japan
Book SynopsisThis study investigates the Japanese experiment with financial imperialism—or “yen diplomacy”—at several key moments between the acquisition of Taiwan in 1895 and the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War in 1937, and how these practices impacted the development of receiving nations and defined their geopolitical position in the postcolonial world.
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center Visionary Journeys
Book SynopsisThis book explores two important moments of dislocation in Chinese history, the early medieval period (317–589 CE) and the nineteenth century. Tian juxtaposes a rich array of materials from these two periods in comparative study, linking these historical moments in their unprecedented interactions, and intense fascination, with foreign cultures.Trade ReviewThe heaven–hell framework for understanding the world away from home—either as a perfect realm or its opposite—had a stunning hold on Chinese travel writing from early on, and Tian demonstrates how it continued to do so well into the nineteenth century…Her book is splendid. -- Joshua Fogel * American Historical Review *A supreme achievement in literary studies. -- Marion Eggert * Journal of Asian Studies *
£30.56
Harvard University Press The Bathgymnasium Complex at Sardis
Book SynopsisThe Bath-Gymnasium at Sardis is the most important known example of a complex that combines the gymnasium, a Greek institution, with the Roman bath, a unique architectural and cultural embodiment comparable in size and organization to the great Imperial thermae of Rome. The restoration by the Harvard-Cornell Expedition of the Marble Court or Imperial cult hall provides a rare opportunity to appreciate firsthand the scale and elegance of the major Imperial monuments. In this fully illustrated volume Fikret Yegül describes the complex from the palaestra of the east through the richly decorated Marble Court to the vast swimming pool, lofty halls, and hot baths, including analysis of the excavation, evidence for structural systems, roofing, vaulting, and decoration, and the significance of building inscriptions. The author traces the building history from its completion in the second century through five centuries of renovation and redecoration. Mehmet Bolgil, a practicing architect who
£60.31
Harvard University, Asia Center An Imperial Path to Modernity
Book SynopsisJung-Sun N. Han examines the role of liberal intellectuals in reshaping transnational ideas and internationalist aspirations into national values and imperial ambitions in early twentieth-century Japan. Han’s focus is on the ideas and activities of Yoshino Sakuzo (1878–1933), who was a champion of prewar Japanese liberalism and Taisho democracy.
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center A Continuous Revolution
Book SynopsisCultural Revolution Culture, often denigrated as pure propaganda, was liked not only in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. Considering this artmusic, stage works, posters, comics, literaturein its longue durée, Barbara Mittler suggests it builds on a tradition of earlier works, allowing for proliferation in contemporary China.Trade ReviewMittler’s groundbreaking study assesses Cultural Revolution arts—music, drama, opera, painting, comics, and literature—as more than propaganda, demonstrating that they were paradigm-shifting works that left indelible impacts on China’s artistic culture… Magisterial in scope, this book proves that art of the Cultural Revolution period was not an aberration but rather the most complete expression of trends that had begun in the early 20th century, when yearnings for a great hero first entered popular discourse. As the apotheosis of mass culture, the Cultural Revolution produced truly popular art that spoke to uneducated farmers and urbane intellectuals alike and was experienced in multiple ways that belie claims of hegemony. Accompanied by a website that includes further text, images, music, and video clips, this will serve as the definitive study of its genre for years to come. -- N. E. Barnes * Choice *
£42.46
Harvard University Press The Gandhian Moment
Book SynopsisThe father of Indian independence, Gandhi was also a political theorist who challenged mainstream ideas. Sovereignty, he said, depends on the consent of citizens willing to challenge the state nonviolently when it acts immorally. The culmination of the inner struggle to recognize one's duty to act is the ultimate Gandhian moment.Trade Review[Jahanbegloo’s] elaborations on Gandhian thinking are nuanced and engaging, and serve as important responses to the political dilemmas posed by the struggles over democracy in the Middle East today… Directing Gandhi’s thinking toward contemporary concerns in this manner is a fruitful line of inquiry, and Jahanbegloo’s considerations are insightful. -- Karuna Mantena * Los Angeles Review of Books *More than ever, the world needs Gandhi today. Especially, in the face of Islam and Muslims being portrayed as synonymous with terrorism populist ideological responses of political Islam to Western hegemony have proved counterproductive. [Jahanbegloo] exhorts Muslim leaders to draw upon not only Gandhi but upon the non-violent contributions of people like [Abdul] Ghaffar Khan and [Maulana] Azad. For [Jahanbegloo], Gandhi’s formulations of self-examination, self-criticism and self-purification and their adaptations by leaders like Ghaffar Khan and Azad provide useful tools for taking Western models of conflict resolution towards more nuanced models of non-violence and peace. -- Swaran Singh * The Hindu *Jahanbegloo offers a stimulating account of the theory and practice of Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance to injustice. In this short work, the author not only follows Gandhi’s Indian campaigns but also takes readers on brief excursions of Gandhian resistance to injustice elsewhere, particularly in the U.S. and South Africa. Especially welcome is his discussion of Maulana Azad and Ghaffar Khan, two Muslim advocates of communal harmony and Indian independence who were associates of Gandhi. Jahanbegloo pits a Hobbesian theory of the sovereignty of an omnipotent state that claims legitimacy for itself against Gandhi’s theory of the individual’s duty to resist injustice. He sees Gandhi’s arguments negating Hobbesian claims to legitimacy and leading to larger claims to nonviolent civil resistance. The Gandhian Moment is a solid, clearly written addition to the Gandhian literature. -- R. J. Terchek * Choice *Jahanbegloo has written a tightly focused examination of Gandhi’s philosophy and politics, emphasizing his central reliance in advocating nonviolence to challenge injustice and tyranny. Motivated by the need to end colonial rule in India, Gandhi drew on Hindu thought to assert the primacy of moral duty over individual rights. Yet he rejected Hindu chauvinism and promoted pluralism and inclusion to reach out to other communities in India, especially Muslims. As well as carefully analyzing Gandhi’s shaping of separate principles into a coherent view, Jahanbegloo demonstrates the continuing impact of Gandhian thought outside India, particularly upon Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights leadership, Nelson Mandela’s successful challenge to apartheid, and the spread of nonviolent demonstrations against repressive regions throughout the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Perhaps surprising to American readers, Jahanbegloo highlights Muslim leaders in the Indian independence movement who integrated Gandhian nonviolence into Islamic thought, contrary to recent claims that Islam is inherently violent or terrorist… This complex and serious analysis will interest readers willing to think rigorously about political philosophy and options for change in today’s world. -- Elizabeth Hayford * Library Journal *A stimulating and imaginative exploration of Gandhi’s nonviolence both as a method of resistance and as the basis of a new kind of national and global political order. It demolishes many a myth about Muslim societies and insightfully shows Gandhi’s relevance to them. -- Professor Lord Bhikhu ParekhJahanbegloo’s rediscovery of Gandhi makes a compelling case for the power of love to transform collective action against injustice and oppression. An eloquent and highly original contribution to Gandhi’s political philosophy that is becoming increasingly relevant in struggles against autocratic regimes around the world. A required reading for thinkers and activists alike. -- Sudhir KakarStraddling political philosophy and activism, Jahanbegloo’s work situates Gandhi in today’s global political arena, where many of the Mahatma’s ideas and practices have assumed a fresh new meaning. There have been one or two books that have tried to place Gandhi in such a global context, but Jahanbegloo is, to my knowledge, unique in focusing on Gandhianism as a critique of modern, state-centered sovereignty. This represents an extraordinarily fruitful line of inquiry. -- Dr. Faisal Devji, University of Oxford
£999.99
Harvard University, Asia Center On the Margins of Empire
Book SynopsisKoreans and Burakumin, two of the largest minority groups in modern Japan, share a history of discrimination that spans the decades of Japan’s modernization and imperial expansion. Bayliss explores the historical processes that cast them as “others” on the margins of the Japanese empire and that also influenced their views of themselves.
£32.26
Harvard University, Asia Center Courtesans Concubines and the Cult of Female
Book SynopsisCourtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity traces changing gender relations in China from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. By taking womenand men's relationships with womenseriously, this book makes a case for the centrality of gender relations in the social, political, and intellectual life of the Song and Yuan dynasties.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Government by Mourning
Book SynopsisStrict decrees on the observance of death were part of the myriad laws enacted under the Tokugawa shogunate to control nearly every aspect of Japanese life. Hirai explores how this class of legislation played an integrative part in Japanese society by codifying religious beliefs and customs the Japanese people had cherished for generations.
£35.66
Harvard University Press Courtly Encounters
Book SynopsisIn the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the court was the crucial site where expanding Eurasian states and empires met and made sense of one another. Richly illustrated, Courtly Encounters provides a fresh cross-cultural perspective on early modern Islam, Counter-Reformation Catholicism, Protestantism, and a newly emergent Hindu sphere.Trade ReviewEvery page of this book is like a voyage of discovery. Subrahmanyam illustrates how encounters between peoples did not just take place 'out there' in the peripheries of imperial systems, but also in the very nerve centers of power, the imperial courts of Eurasia. From Persia to Aceh, royal households were settings for the making of mutual perceptions of Muslims, Christians and Hindus—with powerful visual and textual accounts of sharing, killing, and martyrdom. While so much of world history accents the strangeness of global encounters, Subrahmanyam brilliantly illuminates how much intimacy was laced into the intrigue and violence of courtly systems. -- Jeremy Adelman, Princeton UniversityNo historian paints on a broader canvas, or with more pointillist precision, than Sanjay Subrahmanyam. His account of courtly cultural interaction ranges across centuries and continents, helping us understand encounters as divers as those of Moctezuma and Cortés, Timur the Great and the ambassadors of the Emperor Hung Wu. His theoretical acumen gives us new tools with which to think about the translation, transmission, and transformation of cultures. And his seemingly endless knowledge of sources in countless languages and artistic genres teaches us about the history of nearly everything, from the uses of gunpowder to the iconography of halos. Like a great museum, Courtly Encounters is a book to be visited again and again. -- David Nirenberg, University of ChicagoThrough an intriguing set of early modern events and the texts and images that emerged from them, Courtly Encounters considers the commensurability of cultures, memory and forgetting, imperial court violence and intimacy, the language of martyrdom, and the ebb and flow of images, ideas, and texts back and forth across Eurasia. After a scholarly lifetime of seeking out connected histories, Sanjay Subrahmanyam is alive to the lived experience of the past and its capacity to upend historical accounts narrowed by visions of 'Europe' and 'Asia' as separate spheres with separated histories. All historians should pay attention to his conclusion that encounters between societies don't just happen, but are made, and they are made, not between whole societies, but in fragments and fractions, including at the individual level. -- Pamela H. Smith, Columbia UniversitySubrahmanyam is a master historian to whom we owe yet another dazzling and penetrating account of how Europe and Asia interacted before modern colonialism. He unravels the creative and often idiosyncratic mix of emulation, coercion, and sheer improvisation that allowed people of disparate backgrounds to absorb and make sense of each other's traditions. Both the skeptics and the romantics in matters of cross-cultural encounters will find Courtly Encounters a rewarding and provocative read. -- Francesca Trivellato, Yale UniversityA splendid book of felicitous erudition and critical inquiry, which should make the readers think afresh...Courtly Encounters does not give a naïve picture of cultural assimilation. Nor does it suggest that cultural encounters and transactions should only be located in courtly high culture. Instead, it provides certain historical contexts, in which cultures meet, collide, coalesce, growl at each other and negotiate with one another at the same time, and with easy conscience...History playfully provides many instances of cultural encounters and dialogues. That history defies a single, simple narrative indeed constitutes its richness. This book decants it in full measure. -- B. Surendra Rao * The Hindu *
£32.36
Harvard University, Asia Center The Real Modern
Book SynopsisThe Real Modern examines three Korean authors of the 1930s—Pak T’aewon, Kim Yujong, and Yi T’aejun—whose works critique competing modes of literary representation in the period of Japanese colonial rule. A re-reading of modernist fiction within the imperial context, it sheds new light on the relationship between political discourse and aesthetics.Trade ReviewThe Real Modern will have a profound impact not only on the ways in which we understand global modernisms, but on our understanding of colonial cultural production in general and 1930s colonial Korea in particular. Meticulously researched and developing a series of highly nuanced, original analyses of three major 1930s modernist Korean writers, The Real Modern [is] a most welcome addition to existing studies on Korean, Asian, and Western modernisms. Hanscom’s sophisticated approach to theories of language in 1930s colonial Korea offers, for the first time in English-language scholarship, a much-needed situating of the richness and complexity of colonial Korean modernism within the broader crisis of representation confronted not just by the modernists but, in varying degrees, by all colonial Korean writers and intellectuals in this period. [This is] a path-breaking [book that] completely revises our thinking about modern Korean literary history and the relations among politics, aesthetics, and modernism in colonial Korea. -- Theodore Hughes, Columbia University
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center Anarchist Modernity
Book SynopsisSho Konishi traces the emergence from 1860 to 1930 of transnational networks of Russian and Japanese cooperatist anarchists devoted to creating a state-free society. Arguing that this radical movement forms one of the intellectual foundations of modern Japan, Konishi offers a new approach to Japanese history that challenges Western narratives.Trade ReviewFrom Bakunin and Kropotkin to Esperanto and dung beetles, Sho Konishi’s compelling exploration of the transnational intellectual networks linking anarchists in Russia and Japan and the larger meanings of their encounters transforms our understanding of Japan’s global past. In its capacious breadth, theoretical sophistication, and empirical rigor, Anarchist Modernity offers a new model for the writing of East Asian international history. -- Mark Bradley, University of ChicagoAnarchist Modernity makes us rethink what we thought we knew about Japanese history. Konishi spotlights the little-known, yet consequential, interactions between Russian and Japanese thinkers in the making of modern Japan. The book connects all sorts of Japanese developments: the cult of Tolstoy, anarchism and socialism, the ‘Nonwar Movement,’ and the striking popularity of Esperanto. We grasp the richness of the struggle by influential Japanese to create a people-centered polity and world order, in contrast to the vision of a powerful European-style state promoted by Japanese leaders. Transnational history at its best, the book reveals how Russo–Japanese discourses on ‘cooperatist anarchist modernity’ shaped thought and behavior in both countries. -- Sheldon Garon, Princeton UniversityThis book offers an outstanding study of ‘transnational imagination.’ By tracing the close intellectual ties among Russian and Japanese anarchists, Esperantists, and others at the turn of the twentieth century, Konishi shows that there was an alternative world that was being imagined by these men and women, as well as by people (heimin) who sought to go beyond the nation state as the framework for their lives. They were anarchists in that they did not believe in the finality of the state apparatus, but they were, in Konishi’s words, ‘cooperative anarchists’ because they firmly believed in personal and community-level cooperation. They were imagining an alternative world from the one that would come to confirm its nation-centric orientation—and to bring so much tragedy to all people. A superb and even sensational reinterpretation, not just of Japanese history, but also of modern world history. -- Akira Iriye, Harvard University
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Traces of Grand Peace
Book SynopsisIn Northern Song China, reform-minded statesmen sought to remove the tension between the Confucian Classics and statist ideals of “big government.” Jaeyoon Song illuminates the interplay between classics, thinkers, and government in statist reform, and explains why the uneasy marriage of classics and state activism had to fail in imperial China.
£42.46
Harvard University, Asia Center Runaway Wives Urban Crimes and Survival Tactics
Book SynopsisZhao Ma explores lower-class women's struggles with poverty, deprivation, and marital strife in Beijing from 1937 to 1949. He shows how the everyday survival tactics they devised allowed them to subtly deflect, subvert, and escape without leaving powerful forces such as the surveillance state, reformist discourse, and revolutionary politics.
£35.66
Harvard University, Asia Center Voice Silence and Self
Book SynopsisStigmatized throughout Japanese history as outcastes, the burakumin are contemporary Japan’s largest minority. In this study of youths from two different communities, Christopher Bondy explores how individuals navigate their social world, demonstrating the ways in which people make conscious decisions about disclosing a stigmatized identity.
£30.56
Harvard University, Asia Center GeoNarratives of a Filial Son
Book SynopsisElizabeth Kindall’s definitive study elucidates the context for the paintings of Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673) and identifies geo-narrative as a distinct landscape-painting tradition lauded for its naturalistic immediacy, experiential topography, and dramatic narratives of moral persuasion, class identification, and biographical commemoration.
£63.71
Harvard University Press The Compelling Image
Book SynopsisJames Cahill explores the radiant painting of that tumultuous era when the collapse of the Ming Dynasty and the Manchu conquest of China dramatically changed the lives and thinking of artists and intellectuals. Over 250 illustrations, including 12 color plates, are drawn from collections in the United States, Europe, Japan, and China.Trade ReviewA book of immense breadth… With its profundity and richness…this book is one no serious student of Chinese art can afford to be without. -- Ellen Johnston Laing * Ars Orientalis *A generously illustrated book, extraordinarily rich in insights, ideas, and information… Cahill throws light on individuals and specific issues, bringing out the diversity of what he portrays as an intensely experimental, ‘self-conscious’ age of Chinese painting… Perhaps the single most important contribution to the book is Cahill’s demonstration of western influence on Chinese painting from the beginning of the seventeenth century… His analysis of this question, and of many others, opens new doors for the field, which will never truly be the same. -- Susan E. Nelson * Journal of Asian History *Among the most important works on later Chinese painting to appear in any Western language. -- Thomas Lawton, Director, Freer GalleryThe book gives compelling lessons on what to see, where to look, and how to infer ideas and meaning through pictorial form and techniques… For breaking new grounds in the study of Chinese paintings, for teaching us how to look, and for bringing issues of Chinese art into the wider perspective of art history, we award the 1982 Charles Rufus Morey Award for the best art history book of the year to James Cahill’s The Compelling Image. -- Citation presented by the College Art Association of America
£149.56
Harvard University Press Dominance without Hegemony
Book SynopsisWhat is colonialism and what is a colonial state? In exploring these questions, Ranajit Guha points out that the South Asian colonial state was a historical paradox. Britain may have ruled India as a colony, but it never achieved hegemony over most of the population, collaborating with the nationalist elite but never persuading the masses.Trade ReviewRanajit Guha is, arguably, the most creative Indian historian of this century. His works have deeply influenced not only the writing of subcontinental history, but also historical investigations elsewhere, as well as cultural studies, literary theories, and social analyses across the world. -- Amartya SenAside from its obvious relevance to Indian history, Guha's book is a brilliant example of revolutionary historical method, new perspectives on nationalist history, and theoretical inventiveness in the procedures of historical research. -- Edward W. SaidOver the years, the result of this endeavor has been the production of an eclectic brand of ideological theories, an incisive critique of the existing Indian historiography, and a renewed theoretical fervor, as this book itself epitomizes, for retrieving the history of the "subaltern" past – their revolutionary political moments and cultural class consciousness. -- Amalendu K. Chakraborty * Journal of World History *Table of ContentsPreface Note on Transliteration PART 1: Colonialism in South Asia: A Dominance without Hegemony and Its Historiography I. Conditions for a Critique of Historiography Dominance and Its Historiographies Containment of Historiography in a Dominant Culture Where Does Historical Criticism Come From? The Universalizing Tendency of Capital and Its Limitations The General Configuration of Power in Colonial India II. Paradoxes of Power Idioms of Dominance and Subordination Order and Danda Improvement and Dharma Obedience and Bhakti Rightful Dissent and Dharmic Protest III. Dominance without Hegemony: The Colonialist Moment Overdeterminations Colonialism as the Failure of a Universalist Project The Fabrication of a Spurious Hegemony The Bad Faith of Historiography IV. Preamble to an Autocritique PART 2: Discipline and Mobilize: Hegemony and Elite Control in Nationalist Campaigns I. Mobilization and Hegemony Anticipation of Power by Mobilization A Fight for Prestige II. Swadeshi Mobilization Poor Nikhilesh Caste Sanctions Social Boycott Liberal Politics, Traditional Bans Swadeshi by Coercion or Consent? III. Mobilization For Non-cooperation Social Boycott in Non-cooperation Gandhi's Opposition to Social Boycott Hegemonic Claims Contested IV. Gandhian Discipline Discipline versus Persuasion Two Disciplines- Elite and Subaltern Crowd Control and Soul Control V. Conclusion PART 3: An Indian Historiography of India: Hegemonic Implications of a Nineteenth-Century Agenda I. Calling on Indians to Write Their Own History II. Historiography and the Formation of a Colonial State Early Colonial Historiography Three Types of Narratives Education as an Instrument of Colonialism The Importance of English III. Colonialism and the Languages of the Colonized Indigenous Languages Harnessed to the Raj Novels and Histories Beginnings of an Indigenous Rationalist Historiography An Ideology of Matribhasha IV. Historiography and the Question of Power An Appropriated Past The Theme of Kalamka Bahubol and Its Objects V. A Failed Agenda Notes Glossary Index
£31.41
Harvard University Press Democracy in China
Book SynopsisFour decades of reform fostered a democratic mentality in China. Now citizens are waiting for the government to catch up. Jiwei Ci argues that the tensions between a largely democratic society and an undemocratic political system will trigger a crisis of legitimacy, compelling the Communist Party to become agents of democratic change—or collapse.Trade ReviewCi offers shrewd insights into the contradictions in the party’s ideology, the mentality of China’s middle class, and the various ways the party sustains its legitimacy. -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *An elaborate but cogent argument about how the CCP will only overcome its illegitimacy, along with other tears in the national fabric, by choosing to usher in political democracy. -- Martin Witte * Asian Review of Books *A remarkably consistent, multifaceted, and evenhanded analysis of China’s socioeconomic, cultural, and political changes affecting its democratic future with a good combination of rigorous reasoning and brilliant speculation…It will surely stimulate our further deliberation and reflection on this important subject and enrich our understanding of China’s democratic development and its significance to the world. -- Gang Lin * China Review International *A strong argument to let China democratize for its own reasons and at its own chosen pace…Offers a new angle to observe China’s way to democratization and assures us all that China’s democratization will reflect its own characteristics. -- Xiaoxiao Li * Chinese Historical Studies *[A] tour de force on democracy and political order…A fantastically engaging read…[An] impressive book…Ci’s intellectual contributions are of great value to our understandings of China’s political development. -- Robert Dayley * Pacific Affairs *Ci furnishes a punctilious demolition of the notion that Chinese citizens neither need nor desire democracy…Just as he is even-handed in his political criticisms of both East and West, he appears equally fluent in each tradition of political philosophy, on which he draws freely and eclectically to guide his reflections. -- Johannes Hoerning * New Left Review *Jiwei Ci’s account of the prospects of Chinese democracy is stimulating, deeply researched, and humanely argued. A passionate argument in favor of a more democratic China, it engages seriously with the question of what a Chinese, rather than abstract, democracy might look like, making original and nuanced arguments about how a party-state might genuinely pluralize. His reflections on Hong Kong are particularly thoughtful in light of the current turmoil. A powerful contribution to one of the most acute debates in geopolitics today. -- Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten AllyA complex, fascinating book that will have a major impact not only for readers interested in China, but also for anyone working on authoritarian transitions and democratic theory. I find Ci’s prudential rather than normative argument on the need for democracy in China persuasive, if one thinks in terms of the Chinese Communist Party moving in a more democratic direction. -- Tony Saich, author of Governance and Politics of ChinaJiwei Ci’s ambitious book is intended as a practical political argument, addressed as a citizen of China to the incumbent leadership of its governing Communist Party. It is a work of intense seriousness, real intellectual scruple, and, under current circumstances, great political courage. -- John Dunn, author of Breaking Democracy’s Spell
£34.81
