Introduction: 1911 Revolution at the Boundaries

Abstract

The year 2011 was the centennial of the 1911 Revolution. There have been many memorial symposia, seminars, and other events in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan celebrating this historical turning point. Also, many Chinese Studies scholars in Japan have organized and attended related international conferences in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, and Fukuoka. This special issue is a translated volume of the five papers submitted to “The 1911 Revolution in Global History,” a symposium held by the “Organizing Committee for the Conference Commemorating the Anniversary of the 1911 Revolution” in Tokyo and Kobe. The papers in this volume, however, were not initially prepared and drafted for this issue. Rather, they were collected by the editor under the theme, “1911 Revolution at the boundaries.” As the editor of this special issue, I alone am responsible for the selection and arrangement of these works. “Boundaries,” as mentioned here, refers to social and cultural boundaries during the 1911 Revolution. These specifically include secret societies at the social periphery (Sun, Yamada), Christianity as a foreign civilization (Doi), and ethnic differences (Tachibana, Kobayashi). Needless to say, this volume does not intend to exhaustively cover every scope regarding social and cultural boundaries during the Revolution. Gender, class, regional diversity, and urban-rural relationships are all meaningful topics of discussion on the Revolution and its boundaries. Indeed, some presentations at the Tokyo and Kobe conferences covered these aspects. Therefore, this issue represents only one perspective of recent research on the