Asian Studies Association Research Articles

Ogyū Sorai’s Philosophical Masterworks: The Bendō and Benmei (review)

Reviewed by: Ogyū Sorai’s Philosophical Masterworks: The Bendō and Benmei Samuel Yamashita Ogyū Sorai’s Philosophical Masterworks: The Bendō and Benmei. By John A. Tucker. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and the University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006. Pp. 496. Hardcover $56.00. John Tucker’s Ogyū Sorai’s Philosophical Masterworks: The Bendō and Benmei is an important contribution to the field of Japanese philosophy. Not only does it offer readers a complete and annotated translation of this leading Japanese Confucian’s two most important works, the Bendō (Distinguishing the way) and the Benmei (Distinguishing names); it also includes a lengthy introduction presenting Tucker’s own interpretation of these two works, summarizing their content and reviewing the history of Sorai’s philosophy in the Tokugawa period and the pertinent Japanese and English-language scholarship. Specialists will find the introduction useful, and first-time readers of the Bendō and Benmei will learn what they need to know to make their way through these difficult works. Tucker’s interpretation of the Bendō and Benmei is both original and provocative. He begins with the bold assertion that the “conceptual analysis” in these works is comparable to that found in three other philosophical traditions: the Western tradition, beginning with Plato and Aristotle and continuing through Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle, Leibniz, Diderot, and Voltaire; the Confucian tradition, starting with the Analects and continuing up through Neo-Confucianism; and the Buddhist tradition after Nāgārjuna. Even though this comparative point seems obvious, no one has put it quite this way. Tucker argues, too, that the Bendō and Benmei were modeled on the Xingli ziyi (The meaning of Chinese terms), a philosophical dictionary written by the Song Neo-Confucian Chen Beixi (1159–1223). Apparently a 1552 Korean edition of Chen’s [End Page 567] Ziyi was transmitted to Japan in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century and inspired the pioneering Japanese Confucian Hayashi Razan (1583–1657) to write Seiri jigi genkai (Vernacular explication of Beixi’s Ziyi ), which was published in 1659. Tucker points out that Hayashi often differed with Chen, as did others, such as Itō Jinsai (1627–1705), who wrote their own philosophical dictionaries. Writing about this new genre’s significance in the Tokugawa context, Tucker observes that “it served as an open medium, structurally and methodologically, for contesting philosophical terrain wherein increasingly diverse semasiologies of the Confucian way vied for patrons and authority” (p. 6). Tucker is the first Western scholar to highlight the importance of Chen’s Xingli ziyi for Tokugawa Confucian philosophers and to explain why this mattered. Tucker’s third argument is that Ogyū Sorai’s Bendō and Benmei—long seen as a critique of the philosophy of Zhu Xi (1130–1200), who is conventionally regarded as the father of Neo-Confucianism—can be read as “outgrowths of the invitation to doubt, encouraged among those pursuing Neo-Confucian learning” (p. 9). That is, the Bendō and Benmei were not a destructive attack on Neo-Confucianism but an attempt to reconceptualize it. Here Tucker follows his mentor William Theodore de Bary, as he admits: This study, in emphasizing that Sorai’s two Ben, in form, method, and significant content, issued from a genre defined by a late-Song Neo-Confucian text, Beixi’s Ziyi, extends de Bary’s line of analysis in particular by showing that, at the very least, those aspects of Sorai’s masterpiece were not generated simply by a return to the Six Classics, or kobunjigaku, the supposed “study of ancient words and literature.” (p. 12) Reading Sorai’s writings as an outgrowth of Neo-Confucianism is Tucker’s signature interpretation, and although he makes a strong and persuasive case, this view has not been well received by scholars familiar with Sorai. Finally, Tucker contends that the Bendō and Benmei are fundamentally political works and that this political dimension was implicit in the philosophical dictionary genre. Those who wrote such works, he explains, “were not defining terms simply out of their academic passion for philology, textual exegesis, or lexicographic clarity. Rather they were engaging as well in an essentially political activity, one that must be construed as directly addressing the existing polity or, more seriously, potentially subverting...

G. William Skinner, 1925–2008

Part I: A Professional Appreciation George William Skinner^ the most important American anthropologist to study China in the 20th century and a towering figure worldwide in China studies and spatially oriented social science, died of cancer on 26 October 2008. With his boots on. Bill Skinner was born in Oakland, California in 1925, the son of a druggist and a music teacher, and attended Berkeley High School and Deep Springs College, a tiny, two-year, all-male institution in the California desert. He then entered the US Navy, where he was trained at the Navy Oriental Language School, continu ing an interest in Asia that had begun at least as early as Deep Springs. After the War he attended Cornell University, where he earned his BA in Asian studies in 1947 and his PhD in anthropology in 1954. He was field director of the Cornell Southeast Asia Project from 1951 to 1955, and research associate in East Asian Studies from 1956 to 1958. After a brief stint as assistant professor of sociology at Columbia from 1958 to 1960, he returned to Cornell as associate professor of anthropology from 1960 to 1965. He was professor of anthropology at Stanford University from 1965 to 1989, and at the University of California, Davis, from 1990 until his formal retirement at age 80 in 2005. He continued active research until shortly before his death. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980, and was President of the Association for Asian Studies in 1983.

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note Christopher A. Reed I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Twentieth-Century China’s new coeditor James (“Jay”) Carter of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Jay and I are co-editing volume 34 (2008–09) of the journal; Jay will assume full responsibility for editorship of the November 2009 (35:1) issue. In addition to being a historian of the Republican period, Jay is the incoming president of the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China (HSTCC, see below). In a related vein, Twentieth-Century China has been privileged to have several new members join our Editorial Board since November 2004 (30:1), my first issue as editor. The board has grown in number (from fifteen editors to seventeen) but also in intellectual and geographic range. This expansion reflects the deepening and broadening of historical scholarship on twentieth-century Chinese history as well as the maturation of this journal. Nearly half (eight) of our current editors have joined since 2005: Geremie R. Barmé, Morris L. Bian, John Fitzgerald, Bryna Goodman, Christian Henriot, Kubo Toru, Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, and Peter Zarrow. Each brings new scholarly specialties to the efforts of our long-time members to embrace the full range of scholarship on China in the twentieth-century. It is clear from the board’s composition that English-language, Chinese-documentbased scholarship on twentieth-century China must no longer be limited to the native-speaking Anglophone world. With members now hailing from Australia, Austria, France, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan in addition to the USA, our new board reflects the globalization of modern China historiography as well as the broad range of countries from which the journal typically receives submissions. Readers who are involved with the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China (HSTCC) already know that, at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, TCC and HSTCC affiliated with each other. Two years ago, I opened discussions with Keith Schoppa, head of TCC’s Editorial Board and, coincidentally, president of HSTCC’s executive board, about this project. In Atlanta, the HSTCC board voted unanimously to accept my proposal. Both partners are pleased with the outcome of this vote and look forward to future collaborations between TCC and HSTCC. The overlap in the two entities’ names suggests that this pairing might be destiny playing itself out, but to make everything more concrete, HSTCC members are now being offered preferential TCC subscription rates when they renew their membership. See page 111 in this issue and the HSTCC website ( www.towson.edu/hstcc ) for further details. In the current issue, we present three articles and one research note. In “Teaching Baihua: Textbook Publishing and the Production of Vernacular Language and a New Literary Canon in Early Twentieth-Century China,” Robert Culp explores three ways in which textbook publishing influenced the production and spread of China’s modern vernacular language. The article also demonstrates that commercial publishing houses enabled several different types of modern intellectual to play [End Page 2] active roles in producing China’s modern vernacular language. Through their activities, these intellectuals transformed China’s linguistic and print cultures while also creating new identities for themselves in the post-imperial socio-cultural order. Chieko Nakajima’s “Health and Hygiene in Mass Mobilization: Hygiene Campaigns in Shanghai, 1920–1945” examines Shanghai’s hygiene campaigns over a multi-decade period. The author argues that the campaigns connected personal hygiene practices with the larger goal of achieving national strength, and in the end, helped to strengthen the state’s authority, whether Nationalist or Japanese-Occupationist. This study demonstrates that through educational programs as well as various forms of political symbolism, the Nationalist and Japanese-Occupationist states penetrated residents’ everyday lives. Next, Lee S. Zhu’s “Communist Cadres on the Higher Education Front, 1955–1962” argues that Communist cadres in higher education played an important role in fomenting conflict between the Communist Party and academics. Because of their common prejudice against professors, these cadres responded with great reservations to the party center’s first attempts of 1955 and 1956 to integrate the high-level intellectuals into the new political system. From 1958 to 1960, encouraged by the general political environment...

Tim Allender.Ruling through Education: The Politics of Schooling in the Colonial Punjab.:Ruling through Education: The Politics of Schooling in the Colonial Punjab.(Asian Studies Association of Australia, South Asian Publications Series, number 14.)

Tim Allender's focus on British educational policy in Punjab is a shift from nationalist historiography on the Raj, and also from postmodern discourse on non-elite, subaltern resistance movements. At first glance, the author seems to evoke nostalgia for imperialist history through the use of colonial spellings for Indian terms, and in a reference to British subjugation of Ranjit Singh's “lawless successors” in “two bloody wars” before annexation in 1849 (p. 7). Yet, Allender's work is informed by nationalist and liberal Western scholarship, and it criticizes the Raj for not facilitating a dialogue between rulers and subjects, and for its failed educational policies. Allender calls his work a revision of subaltern history, which he dismisses summarily for having taken the focus away from critical studies of imperialism. The author reiterates that the initial British autocrats valued Punjab's rich farmlands so highly that they subsidized this province to make it an imperial showcase, thus ensuring Sikh loyalty during the 1857 Revolt. Punjab's privileged position was ensured by other devices such as lower revenue demands for the imperial exchequer until 1870, and the racial rhetoric contrasting Sikh military “masculinity” favorably to Bengal's “effeminacy.” This was unusual, since Bengal was the capital, and provided a greater percentage of its revenues to the imperial budget (p. 224).

Chinese Conceptions of “Rights”: From Mencius to Mao—and Now

The recent explosion of popular protest in China, often framed as a demand for the fulfillment of “rights,” has captured widespread attention. Some observers interpret the protests as signs of a “moral vacuum.” Others see the unrest as signaling a powerful new “rights consciousness.” In either case, the protests are often regarded as a major challenge to the stability of the political system. In this article, an examination of Chinese conceptions of “rights,” as reflected in the ethical discourses of philosophers, political leaders, and protesters (and as contrasted with American understandings of rights), provides the basis for questioning prevailing assumptions about the fragility of the Chinese political order. For over two millennia, Chinese political thought, policy, and protest have assigned central priority to the attainment of socioeconomic security. As a result, the meaning of “rights” in Chinese political discourse differs significantly from the Anglo-American tradition. Viewed in historical context, China's contemporary “rights” protests seem less politically threatening. The Chinese polity appears neither as vacuous nor as vulnerable as it is sometimes assumed to be.Elizabeth J. Perry is Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and is the current President of the Association for Asian Studies (eperry@latte.harvard.edu). A preliminary draft of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the conference on Socioeconomic Rights and Justice in China held at Dickinson College in April 2004. The author is grateful to the conference organizer, Neil Diamant, for the invitation to consider these issues and to the other conference participants (especially David Strand and Jerome Cohen) for their challenging comments and questions. A substantially revised version was presented at the conference in memory of Benjamin Schwartz, held in Shanghai at East China Normal University in December 2006. Thanks are due to the conference organizers and participants (particularly Zhu Zhenghui, Xu Jilin, Zhang Jishun, Tong Shijun, and Roderick MacFarquhar) for their stimulating suggestions. Appreciation is also extended to Stephen Angle, Nara Dillon, Mary Gallagher, and Kevin O'Brien for their critical reading of an earlier draft.

Bridging the Pacific: Three Generations of Chinese Historians in the United States, 1945-2008

In the United States the study of modern Chinese history is a relatively young academic field. Prior to World War II, China studies or Sinology was for the most part centered in Europe and focused on the pre-Qing period, with emphasis on dynasty history, classic literature, linguistics, and philosophy. Modern China as a field of historical study mainly developed after World War II. The American involvement in the Pacific War, the emergence of postwar China as a nominal world power, America's “loss of China” to communism, the Korean War, and the mystery of Mao's China all contributed to increasing American interest in China, particularly in recent Chinese history. Such interest arose not just out of curiosity, but was also derived from the practical need to understand China and comprehend the essence of the “who lost China” debate in the early 1950s. Thus despite the attack on America's “China hands” in the McCarthy era, modern China as a field in history was established in the immediate postwar era, and it has developed robustly ever since. Today, one can get a sense of the status of the field by glancing over the annual conference programs of the Association for Asian Studies. Panels on modern China at the annual meetings have been described by some Asianists as “dominating” and “disproportional.”

EXERCIZING IJTIHAD Fatwa and Ifta in Indonesia Today

Book Review Book title: Indonesian Islam: Social Change Through Contemporary Fata wa Author: M.B. Hooker No. of Pages: X + 310 Year: 2003 Publisher: Asian Studies Association of Australia, Allen and Unwin, and University of Hawaii Press Honolulu

Modernity and the Mobile Phone

Modernity and the Mobile Phone

NEWS NOTES

2007 Annual Meeting of the Society for Ming Studies The annual meeting of the Society for Ming Studies took place on Friday evening, March 23, 2007, at the Boston Marriott Copley Place Hotel during the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. Past-president Martin Heijdra, acting on behalf of outgoing president Sarah Schneewind, introduced the new president of the Society, Jenny Purtle, who then presided over the meeting. Jiang Yonglin was voted president-elect of the Society and Maram Epstein and Roland Higgins were elected as new members of the board. Katie Ryor, whose work as editor of Ming Studies extends to the contents of Number 56 (Fall 2007), announced that she was stepping down as of May 1, 2007. Ken Hammond is to be the new editor of the journal.

Editor's welcome, PORTAL Vol. 3, No. 2, July 2006

The second issue of PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies for 2006 features a special selection of essays grouped under the title ‘Women in Asia’ and guest-edited by Devleena Ghosh and Barbara Leigh, both from the University of Technology Sydney. The essays in this special issue had their first incarnations at the Eighth Women in Asia Conference, ‘Shadow Lines’, organised by the Women’s Caucus of the Asian Studies Association of Australia and the University of Technology Sydney (convened by Ghosh and Leigh), and held at the University of Technology Sydney from 26 to the 28 September 2005. Aiming self-consciously and tacitly to toy with, and dispute, the historical and discursive valencies accruing to the key, twined terms ‘women’ and ‘Asia’, the ten essays grouped here combine to form a rich repository of contemporary research about the status of women in many parts of that vast, arguably incoherent, geocultural space called Asia. All of the contributing authors thus ‘attempt to unsettle discourses about limits,’ to cite from co-editor Devleena Ghosh’s opening paper. That attempt is far from straightforward, as Ghosh elaborates: ‘That lines, borders and boundaries exist, whether of prejudice, politics, economics, or culture, is undeniable. But how do we analyse these issues without ossifying them, creating implacable alterities that refuse the liminal spaces that people occupy?’ Multivalent solutions are called for, Ghosh suggests, and these are to be found not simply in ‘counter-politics and interventions’, but also through the excavation and recognition of multiple subjectivities from/in ‘a thousand plateaus, [and] felt and experienced through the body, historical landscapes, domestic spaces, through performance as well as through the realm of the imaginary, in the impact of ideals and the weight of history’.
 
 In addition to the special section on ‘Women in Asia’, this edition of PORTAL contains two essays in its general academic section. François Provenzano’s ‘Francophonie et études francophones: considérations historiques et métacritiques sur quelques concepts majeurs’ offers a sustained meditation and critique of the discourse of Francophonic unity, and suggests a range of possible critical directions for future research into the study of French-speaking zones, peoples and cultures. Barbara Elizabeth Hanna and Juliana de Nooy’s ‘The Seduction of Sarah: Travel Memoirs and Intercultural Learning’, focuses on a big-selling memoir that was also something of a media-sensation on its publication in Australia in 2002, expatriate Australian journalist Sarah Turnbull’s account of her ambivalent ‘new life’ in Paris, France, after her marriage to a local: Almost French: A New Life in Paris. Interested in Turnbull’s autobiography as a potentially useful and productive classroom text for demonstrating, and enabling discussion of, intercultural difference, the authors’ rich analysis demonstrates that such texts present a host of problems to the teacher keen to work with students’ self-critical capacities to locate themselves in international and transcultural frameworks. 
 
 We are delighted, as well, to present three cultural works in this issue: Katherine Elizabeth Clay’s evocative ‘comic’ narrative of study abroad, ‘From Penrith to Paris,’ itself a lively visual-textual antidote to Turnbull’s ambivalently romanticized view of (not-quite)-belonging in Paris (as discussed by Hanna and de Nooy in this issue); a typically idiosyncratic satire about the current German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, from Anthony Stephens, expertly deploying an ancient Celtic narrative verse form; and California-based Chicana writer Susana Chávez-Silverman’s code-switching chronicle/crónica, ‘Oda a la ambigüedad Crónica,’ a beautifully concise exploration of loss and the sensory regime of memorialisation.
 
 
 Paul Allatson, Chair, PORTAL Editorial Commitee

Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship C. Michele Thompson (bio) Liam C. Kelley . Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship. Asian Interactions and Comparisons. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. xiii, 267 pp. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 0-8248-2847-x. In Beyond the Bronze Pillars: Envoy Poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese Relationship, Liam C. Kelley provides a close examination of poems written by Vietnamese envoys to the Chinese court, focusing on the late sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. However, interesting as this work is for its presentation of the genre of envoy poetry and envoy poetry's place in what is usually referred to as the tribute system, this is not Kelley's main theme. Kelley uses the poems, and their authors, to boldly and bluntly reexamine the ever vexatious question-for scholars who work on pre-twentieth-century Vietnam-of the depth, breadth, and qualitative and quantitative impact of Chinese/Sinitic culture on Vietnamese culture. Kelley begins by discussing the "possibly mythical" bronze pillars of Ma Yuan that perhaps at one time marked the border between Vietnam and China (pp. 5-9). He then notes that the ambiguity of the evidence for the existence and location of these pillars is symbolic of a corresponding ambiguity regarding cultural and intellectual boundaries between China and Vietnam. Kelley then moves into a discussion and critique of previous scholarship on this subject. Kelley demonstrates that early Western scholarship on Vietnam, primarily French, presented Vietnam as basically a "Little China" (p. 9). He then argues that Western scholarship on Vietnam after World War II was dominated by a desire to critique the 'Little China' theory and by "nationalist inventions of a Vietnamese past that were then emanating from Vietnam itself, both South and North" (p. 10). According to Kelley, this resulted in what can be called the 'not China' or the 'not Chinese' theory. Kelley clearly feels that scholars have gone too far in this direction and that the existence of polities and cultures known as China/Chinese and Vietnam/ Vietnamese has been essentialized and projected backward in time. Kelley proceeds to charge that scholars have misrepresented certain documents considered to be part of a literature of resistance to domination, political and cultural, of Vietnam by China. He argues that these documents are instead connected to internal Vietnamese hostilities. Specifically, that Nguyễn Trãi's famous proclamation of victory over Ming forces the Bình Ngô Đại Cáo (Kelley translates this title as Great Announcement on Pacifying the Ngo/Wu) was directed at those Vietnamese "who had collaborated with the occupying Ming forces" rather than at the Chinese themselves. Kelley further argues that the Bình Ngô Đại Cáo was inspired by a poem in China's Shangshu (pp. 19-20). This is an interesting [End Page 427] and thought-provoking reinterpretation of the Bình Ngô Đại Cáo, and I would very much have liked to see further discussion of this point in terms of the poem itself-the language/terminology in it, and the intellectual and emotional context in which Nguyễn Trãi wrote it. After all, Nguyễn Trãi's father, Nguyễn Phi Khanh, had been forcibly taken to China some years previously, so there is reason to think that Nguyễn Trãi felt personal animosity toward the Ming.1 Kelley moves immediately into an argument that is inspired by "sympathy with modern Vietnamese nationalist views" that Western scholars have "tended to avoid"; the subject is Vietnam's many and varied internal struggles. He further charges that scholars have ignored poetry and pronouncements that welcomed Chinese (Kelley's specific example comes from the Qing dynasty) troops who were expected to assist one side or another in internecine warfare within Vietnam (pp. 20-21). Kelley offers a compelling argument: only when the texts left by those Vietnamese who wholeheartedly embraced the Chinese intellectual heritage and who affirmed the world order of the tribute system are fully examined by scholars and compared with the "literature of resistance" will any deep understanding of the Sino-Vietnamese cultural...

WANG ZHENPING: Ambassadors from the Islands of the Immortals: China–Japan Relations in the Han–Tang Period. (Asian Interaction and Comparisons.) xvi, 387 pp. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawaii Press, 2005. $53.

WANG ZHENPING: Ambassadors from the Islands of the Immortals: China–Japan Relations in the Han–Tang Period. (Asian Interaction and Comparisons.) xvi, 387 pp. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawaii Press, 2005. $53. - Volume 69 Issue 2

Vietnam. Beyond the bronze pillars: Envoy poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. By LIAM C. KELLEY. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press and Association for Asian Studies, 2005. Pp. xiii, 267. Notes, Glossary, Works Cited, Index.

Vietnam. Beyond the bronze pillars: Envoy poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. By LIAM C. KELLEY. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press and Association for Asian Studies, 2005. Pp. xiii, 267. Notes, Glossary, Works Cited, Index. - Volume 37 Issue 2

Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period (review)

Reviewed by: Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period Bruce L. Batten (bio) Wang Zhenping . Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period. Asian Interactions and Comparisons. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. xiii, 387 pp. Hardcover $53.00, ISBN 0-8248-2871-2. Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals is a gem of good, old-fashioned historical scholarship: somewhat narrow in scope; exhaustive in its use of primary sources; well-grounded in previous studies; balanced in its conclusions; and beautifully written. In his preface to the book, series editor Joshua A. Fogel notes that studies of premodern Sino-Japanese relations have been few and far between for the past half-century, adding his hope that it will not be "another fifty years...before other works on this topic appear in English" (p. x). I share Fogel's hope, but predict that even should further studies appear, Wang's book will more than hold its own against the competition. Ambassadors is simply one of the best monographs I have read in years. As the subtitle indicates, Wang's book is a study of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations from the (later) Han to Tang dynasties, specifically from the first through early tenth centuries C.E. Although loosely based on the author's 1989 Princeton dissertation, the present work contains much new material and has been entirely rewritten. Before going on to a discussion of the book's (many) strengths and (relatively few) weaknesses, let me attempt to summarize its content. Ambassadors' brief but cogent introduction is followed by a two-chapter overview of pre-Tang relations between China and Japan (strictly speaking, Wo). Chapter 1, "The Islands of Immortals," describes the earliest historical contacts, borrowing heavily from the Weizhi's famous account of Queen Himiko and the land of Yamatai. Chapter 2, "Chinese Insignia in East Asia Politics," is an analysis of the "investiture system" as it applied to Wo in the early centuries C.E. It shows how Japanese rulers sought Chinese titles and prestige goods in support of their claims to legitimacy, both within the islands themselves and vis-à-vis peer polities in Korea. The next few chapters provide a fascinatingly detailed account of the organization and function of Japanese tributary missions to China during the Tang period. Chapter 3, "The Messenger of the Emperor," presents a general discussion of the "tasks, qualities, and criteria for selecting ambassadors" (p. 33), going on to provide specifics about one particularly well-documented Japanese mission to China (that of 834) as well as biographical details regarding several virtuous, amorous, or otherwise accomplished Japanese ambassadors. Chapter 4, "The Voyage to China," focuses on details of shipbuilding and navigation and paints a rather bleak picture (evidenced by frequent shipwrecks) of Japanese skills, or [End Page 278] lack thereof, in these areas. Chapter 5, "The Journey to Changan," provides useful information about Tang's overland relay and transportation systems, while chapter 6, "Diplomacy in the Tang Capital," is on court ceremonial, specifically the "Tang Guest Protocol" that governed the reception of foreign envoys. Among other things, we learn in chapter 6 how ceremonial arrangements reflected the perceived status of visiting envoys (or, more precisely, their countries); how Japanese and Chinese perceptions of diplomatic relationships might sometimes differ; and how adjustments to protocol were made (or not) in such difficult cases. The next group of chapters focuses in turn on diplomatic communications, information gathering, and the recruitment of Chinese "talent." Chapter 7, "Weight and Nuance in State Letters," argues that, contrary to the received academic wisdom, Japanese ambassadors did in fact carry state letters on their missions to Tang. Wang also presents a convincing (if hypothetical) reconstruction of such a communication, showing how by an ingenious trick of wording the Japanese authors were able to make their letter mean two mutually exclusive things: both an acknowledgment of Tang's sinocentric world view (when read in Chinese), and an assertion of the Japanese ruler's divine, imperial status (when read by the kundoku method in Japanese). Chapter 8, "Information Gathering", provides an introduction to "intelligence work" (broadly defined...

Vietnam. Beyond the bronze pillars: Envoy poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. By LIAM C. KELLEY. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press and Association for Asian Studies, 2005. Pp. xiii, 267. Notes, Glossary, Works Cited, Index.

Vietnam. <i>Beyond the bronze pillars: Envoy poetry and the Sino-Vietnamese relationship</i>. By LIAM C. KELLEY. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press and Association for Asian Studies, 2005. Pp. xiii, 267. Notes, Glossary, Works Cited, Index.

Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood. Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787. London: Routledge, 2003. xi + 194 pp. Index. $28.95. Paper.

Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood. History: Political Figures from and the Diaspora since 1787. London: Routledge, 2003. xi + 194 pp. Index. $28.95. Paper. Profiles of political and cultural leaders from and the are still a largely undeveloped genre. The best examples so far are Robert A. Hill's Biography (California, 1987), Norbert C. Brockman's An African Biographical Dictionary (ABC-CLIO, 1994), and Ralph Uwechue's Makers of Modern Africa: Profites in History (Africa Books, 1996). Volume 3 of the ten-volume Encyclopedia Africana project, initiated in 1961 in Ghana under the editorial directorship of W.E.B. Du Bois, was to comprise biographies written by W. Alphaeus Hunton. Unfortunately, that project did not survive the death of its initiators. It eventually was revived by the Harvard University team of Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, in a much watered-down and truncated version; the result, the one-volume Encyclopedia Africana (Basic Civitas Books, 1999), generally reflects a woeful ignorance of all things African and hardly does justice to the memory of its illustrious initiators. In these circumstances, History could even be viewed as some sort of rescue operation. Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood, two British-based academics associated with the Black and Asian Studies Association, provide in condensed fashion the profiles of forty major political figures in the history of panAfricanism, by which they mean women and men of African descent whose lives and work have been concerned, in some way, with the social and political emancipation of African peoples and those of the African diaspora (vii). According to them, Pan-African history... includes chronicling a variety of ideas, activities and movements that celebrated Africanness, resisted the exploitation and oppression of those of African descent, and opposed the ideologies of racism (vii). The earliest entries are devoted to three antislavery and antiracism activists of the eighteenth century: Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader in St. Domingue of the only successful slave revolution in history; and two British-based abolitionist activists and pioneers of the slave narrative, Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano. In the nineteenth century, pan-African history was characterized by the need to refute the pseudoscientific racist ideologies of social Darwinism and to vindicate the race. Some, like Martin R. Delany and Edward W. Blyden, called for an actual return to Africa, while others, such as Frederick Douglass, were determined to struggle to end slavery and achieve their human and civil rights in the country of their former enslavement, the United States. At the turn of the century, a number of prominent West African intellectuals-among them, Blyden, Joseph E. casely Hayford, and James Africanus Horton-began to promote African nationalism and to advocate African self-government with the motto Africa for the Africans. The authors trace the birth of the organized pan-African movement to the founding of the African Association in London in 1897 and the convening, in the same city, of the first pan-African conference three years later. They note that during the 1930s pan-Africanism was strongly influenced by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and socialism as a model of development. This was reflected in the life and work of such scholars and activists as Du Bois, Hunton, C. L. R. James, George Padmore, and Paul Robeson. As the authors rightly observe, while Europe was the center of the pan-African world before 1945, the focus of pan-African activity switched to after that date. Stimulated by the independence of Ghana (1957) and the dynamic leadership of its first president, Kwame Nkrumah, a new type of pan-Africanism emerged, aimed at the total liberation of from colonial and white minority rule and culminating in the founding of the Organization of African Unity in May 1963. …

A Response to Reviews by Frederick Dickinson and Joshua Hotaka Roth

Volumes 28-29 carried reviews by Frederick Dickinson and Joshua Hotaka Roth respectively of my most recent books, Army, Empire and Politics in Meiji Japan and The Japanese Community in Brazil 1908-1940. These two reviews demand a response. The comments by Dickinson are heavily characterized by indolence. With blithe indifference, he dismisses out of hand each of the principal sec tions of the study. For example, on my analysis of late Meiji policy toward Korea, his sole comment is to insist that Hilary Conroy over four decades ago proved there was no long-term plan to annex the peninsula. The theme of this section of my book is to show how Japan attempted, and failed, to ap ply the informal model of control then being used by Britain in Egypt. This is a theme entirely ignored by Conroy, whose merits lie elsewhere, and by Dickinson, whose merits remain invisible to me. Dickinson is equally dismissive of my interpretation of the Meiji army. He ignores, for example, my presentation of the events and arguments sur rounding the Getsuy?kai affair of the 1880s and, instead, cites a 1978 work by Kitaoka Shin'ichi to denigrate as outdated my statement that the Meiji army was never a monolith. In this, Dickinson seems to have trouble with the meaning of the word never. Kitaoka's study, as Dickinson notes and as any serious student of Japanese military history well knows, commences from 1906. This, one might aver, is a somewhat late date from which to un derstand an army created more than three decades earlier. Dickinson condemns my presentation of General Katsura Tar? as vir tual hagiography. The three examiners of the thesis on which this book is based are some of the most eminent historians of modern Japan, including one former president of the Association for Asian Studies and one past pres ident of the American Historical Association. They clearly did not share Dickinson's view on this or any other of his criticisms. Perhaps, however, he knows better than all of us. What I do find distasteful is that Dickinson

Political leadership and legitimacy among the urban elite in Bangladesh

This article was published in the Journal of South Asian Studies [© 2004 Published by South Asian Studies Association of Australia] and the definite version is available at: http://doi.org/ 10.1080/1479027042000186432 The Journal's website is at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1479027042000186432

Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. By Tansen Sen. Asian Interactions and Comparisons: Published with the Association for Asian Studies. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003. xvi, 388 pp. $55.00 (cloth).

Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. By Tansen Sen. Asian Interactions and Comparisons: Published withthe Association for Asian Studies. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003. xvi, 388 pp. $55.00 (cloth). - Volume 63 Issue 1

Power and Prowess: The Origin of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak. By J. H. Walker. Asian Studies Association of Australia Publication Series. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen and Unwin; Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. xx, 300 pp. $36.00 (cloth).

Power and Prowess: The Origin of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak. By J. H. Walker. Asian Studies Association of Australia Publication Series. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen and Unwin; Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. xx, 300 pp. $36.00 (cloth).