MEARC Publications and Downloads
By means of publications and Events, MEARC aims to disseminate the insights gained from its research programmes and projects.
By means of publications and Events, MEARC aims to disseminate the insights gained from its research programmes and projects.
Editor: Christopher Goto-Jones
Contributors: Bart Barendregt
Young Sook Choi
Jens Damm
Christopher Goto-Jones
Jeroen de Kloet
Thomas Lamarre
Yoko Ono
Fabian Schäfer
Cobus van Straden
ISSN Asiascape Occasional Paper Series: 1875-2241
The Asiascape Collection brings together the first 5 Asiascape Ops as well as additional essays drawn from a special Asiascape issue of the newsletter of the International Institute for Asian Studies themed on CyberAsia. It can be downloaded as a PDF, or you can request a beautiful, bound copy for your collection and/or library.
Download The Asiascape Collection v. 1 (PDF)
Request hardcopy version of The Asiascape Collection v. 1 (all images printed in full colour)
Author: Urs Matthias Zachmann
Publisher: Routledge, 17-04-2009
Series: Routledge/Leiden Series in Modern East Asian History and Politics
ISBN13: 978-0-415-48191-5
This book can be ordered at:
www.routledge.com
The first war between China and Japan in 1894/95 was one of the most fateful events, not only in modern Japanese and Chinese history, but in international history as well. The war and subsequent events catapulted Japan on its trajectory toward temporary hegemony in East Asia, whereas China entered a long period of domestic unrest and foreign intervention. Repercussions of these developments can be still felt, especially in the mutual perceptions of Chinese and Japanese people today. However, despite considerable scholarship on Sino-Japanese relations, the perplexing question remains how the Japanese attitude exactly changed after the triumphant victory in 1895 over its former role model and competitor. This book examines the transformation of Japan’s attitude toward China up to the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904/5), when the psychological framework within which future Chinese-Japanese relations worked reached its erstwhile completion. It shows the transformation process through a close reading of sources, a large number of which is introduced to the scholarly discussion for the first time. Zachmann demonstrates how modern Sino-Japanese attitudes were shaped by a multitude of factors, domestic and international, and, in turn, informed Japan’s course in international politics.
Urs Matthias Zachmann is Assistant Professor at the Japan Center of the University of Munich. He has written his doctoral thesis on China's role in late Meiji geopolitical and geocultural discourse and has published a number of articles on late Tokugawa and Meiji diplomatic and intellectual history.
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Author: Christopher Goto-Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009
Series: Very Short Introductions
ISBN13: 978-0-19-923569-8
This book can be ordered at:
www.oup.com
Japan is an icon of the modern world, yet to many it remains an enigma. Popular images of Japan conjure a mixture of the old and the new: from ancient customs to the height of technology, from sumo tournaments to Playstation online. For some, Japan seems to exist as a montage of geisha, cherry blossoms and crowded, neon-lit megacities: it is a world that seems to float between traditions and modernity. Focussing on the historical, political, and cultural development of Japan from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, Christopher Goto-Jones explains how Japanese society has developed its own complicated and creative engagement with the imperatives of modernity, forging a society that both exemplifies and challenges many assumptions about what it means to be modern.
Christopher Goto-Jones is Professor of Modern Japan Studies and Director of the Modern East Asia Research Centre at Leiden University. His publications include Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co- Prosperity and Re-Politicising the Kyoto School as Philosophy.
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Author: Kiri Paramore
Publisher: Routledge, 2008
Series: Leiden Series in Modern East Asian History and Politics
ISBN: 978-0-415-44356-2
This book can be ordered at:
www.routledge.com
Ideology and Christianity in Japan shows the major role played by Christian-related discourse in the formation of early-modern and modern Japanese political ideology.
The book traces a history development of anti-Christian ideas in Japan from the banning of Christianity by the Tokugawa shogunate in the early 1600s, to the use of Christian and anti-Christian ideology in the construction of modern Japanese state institutions at the end of the 1800s. Kiri Paramore recasts the history of Christian-related discourse in Japan in a new paradigm showing its influence on modern thought and politics and demonstrates the direct links between the development of ideology in the modern Japanese state, and the construction of political thought in the early Tokugawa shogunate.
Kiri Paramore is Assistant Professor in Japanese History at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD in 2006 from the University of Tokyo.
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Author: Howard Yuen Fung Choy
Publisher: Brill, 2008
Series: Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography, 3
ISBN: 978 90 04 16704 9
This book can be ordered at:
www.brill.nl
The most prominent literary phenomenon in the 1980s and 1990s in China, historical fiction, has never been systematically surveyed in Anglophone scholarship. This is the first investigation into how, by rewriting the past, writers of Deng Xiaoping’s reform era undermined the grand narrative of official history. It showcases fictions of history by eleven native Chinese, Muslim and Tibetan authors. The four chapters are organized in terms of spatial schemes of fictional historiography, namely, regional histories and family romances, discourses on diaspora and myths of minorities, nostalgia for the hometown in the country and the city, as well as the bodily text and the textual body, thus broadly covering the eternal themes of memory, language, food, sex, and violence in historical writing.
Howard Y. F. Choy is assistant professor at Wittenberg University. He received his PhD. in comparative literature and humanities from the University of Colorado (2004) and is assistant author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism (New York: Rosen, 2005).
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Author: Tze-ki Hon, Robert Culp
Publisher: Brill, 2007
Series: Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography, 2
ISBN: 978 9004160 23 1
This book can be ordered at:
www.brill.nl
This book examines forms of Chinese historical production happening outside the mainstream of academic history, through such new measures as the publication of textbooks, the writing of local history, the preservation of archival materials, and government attempts to establish orthodox historical accounts. The book does so in order to broaden the scope of modern Chinese historiography, when it focuses primarily on a small group of writers such as Liang Qichao, Gu Jiegang, and Fu Sinian. Directly linking historical writings to the formation of the nation, the justification of elite authority, and the cultivation of active citizenry, this book shows that historiography is essential to understanding the uniqueness of Chinese modernity.
Tze-ki Hon, Ph.D. (1992) in History, University of Chicago, is Associate Professor of
at State University of New York-Geneseo. His research interests cover both pre-modern and modern China. His book, Yijing and the Chinese Politics (SUNY Press, 2005) examines
Yijing commentaries of the Northern Song period. He is an editor of a volume on the
Fourth New Culture paradigm. Currently, he is completing a book on the Guocui xuebao
1905-1912).
Robert J. Culp, Ph.D. (1999) in History, Cornell University, is Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at Bard College. His first book is Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education
Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1940 (Cambridge, forthcoming 2007). His current work focuses on publishing and cultural production in early 20th-century China.
Editor: Christopher Goto-Jones
Contributors: Matteo Cestari,
Kevin M. Doak
Bret W. Davis
Christopher S. Goto-Jones
Harry D. Harootunian
James W. Heisig
Yumiko Iida
Reinhard May
Graham Parkes
Naoki Sakai
Christian Uhl
Publisher: Routledge, 2007
Series: Routledge/Leiden Series in Modern East Asian History and Politics
ISBN13: 978-0-415-37237-4 (Hardback, 224 pages)
This book can be ordered at:
www.routledge.com
In Re-Politicising the Kyoto School as Philosophy Christopher Goto-Jones contends that existing approaches to the controversial Kyoto School fail to take it seriously as a school of philosophy, instead focussing on historical debates about the alleged complicity of the School’s members with the imperialist regime in Japan.
The essays in this book take a new approach to the subject, engaging substantially with the philosophical texts of members of the Kyoto School, and demonstrating that the school developed serious and sophisticated positions on many of the perennial questions that lie at the heart of political philosophy. These positions are innovative and fresh, and are of value to political philosophy today, as well as to intellectual historians of Japan. In particular, the book is structured around the various ways in which we might locate the Kyoto School in mainstream traditions of political thought, and the insights offered by the School about the core concepts in political philosophy. In this way the book re-politicises the Kyoto School.
With chapters written by many leading scholars in the field, and representing a contribution to political thought as well as the intellectual history of Japan, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese studies, philosophy and political thought.
Christopher Goto-Jones is Professor of Modern Japan Studies and Director of the Modern East Asia Research Centre at Leiden University. His publications include Political Philosophy in Japan: Nishida, the Kyoto School, and Co- Prosperity and Re-Politicising the Kyoto School as Philosophy.
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Author: Prof. Kevin Doak
Publisher: Brill, 2007
ISBN-10: 90-04-15598-8 (hardback, pp. 292+xii)
This volume provides a systematic overview of the debates over Japanese national identity and nationalism from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. It presumes that nationalism is a particular form of identity-politics and as such it foregrounds national identity as it has been articulated by influential Japanese intellectuals. Building on theories that situate nationalism as a mode of politicizing the people, this study presents Japanese nationalism as a contestory practice that positions “the people” as what the nation is and what nationalism seeks to achieve. The body of the text is composed of chapters that explore key sites where this practice has been particularly intense and influential (kokumin, minzoku, shakai, tenno).
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Author: Dr. Kasia Cwiertka
Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2006
ISBN-10: 1-86189-298-5 (hardback, pp.240)
Over the past two decades, the popularity of Japanese food in the West has increased immeasurably—a major contribution to the evolution of Western eating habits. But Japanese cuisine itself has changed significantly since pre-modern times, and the food we eat at trendy Japanese restaurants, from tempura to sashimi, is vastly different from earlier Japanese fare. Modern Japanese Cuisine examines the origins of Japanese food from the late nineteenth century to unabashedly adulterated American favorites like today’s California roll.
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka demonstrates that key shifts in the Japanese diet were, in many cases, a consequence of modern imperialism. Exploring reforms in military catering and home cooking, wartime food management and the rise of urban gastronomy, Cwiertka shows how Japan’s numerous regional cuisines were eventually replaced by a set of foods and practices with which the majority of Japanese today ardently identify.
The result of over a decade of research, Modern Japanese Cuisine is a fascinating look at the historical roots of some of the world’s best cooking and will provide appetizing reading for scholars of Japanese culture and foodies alike.
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ISBN: 0-415-33434-9 (Hb) and 0-415-33435-7 (Pb)
This book can be ordered at:Political Philosophy in Japan focuses on the politics of Japan's pre-eminent philosophical school - the Kyoto School - and particularly that of its founder, Nishida Kitarô (1870-1945). Existing literature on Nishida is dismissive of there being serious political content in his work, and of the political stance of the wider school. Goto-Jones contends that, far from being apolitical, Nishida's philosophy was explicitly and intentionally political, and that a proper political reading of Nishida sheds new light on the controversies surrounding the alleged complicity of the Kyoto School in Japanese ultra-nationalism. This book offers a unique and potentially controversial view of the subject of Nishida and the Kyoto School.
'Dissatisfied both with the arguments and the material on which the competing positions have been based, Christopher Goto-Jones has set out to redefine the question from the ground up. The results are so impressive that it will be hard to think about the debate from now on without taking into account the wider perspective he has opened up for us … The University of Leiden is to be congratulated for launching its new series on Modern East Asian Politics and History with a book of this calibre.' - Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
'Imagine a surfer trying to ride a tsunami. Then imagine the same daring sportsman trying to negotiate two such mountain waves in succession. In research terms, this is what Christopher Goto-Jones has attempted to do.' - Asian Affairs
“In ‘Political Philosophy in Japan’, Christopher Goto-Jones offers a subtle, historically-grounded, and persuasive argument that Nishida’s philosophy was inherently political, and that a properly political not merely ideological reading of his work leads us to a better, more effectual understanding of Nishida: as a thinker who fought the good fight against intellectual coercion and imperialism with the best means he had, but was defeated. The value of Goto-Jones’ account lies in showing that it may have been Nishida’s means his philosophical system as such that undermined the end he sought to serve. This is an intellectually exciting and most welcome study.” - Andrew Barshay (University of California, Berkeley)
‘Goto-Jones provides radical and fresh, telling and brilliant insights on the relevance of Nishida’s ideas for contemporary Japan and political thought more widely.’ Rana Mitter (University of Oxford)
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ISBN: 0-415-33434-9 (Hb) and 0-415-33435-7 (Pb)
This book can be ordered at:Leftist thought and activism stands as a defining force in the articulation of political culture and policy in modern Japan. Operating from the periphery of formal political power for the most part, the Japanese Left has had an impact that extends far beyond their limited success at the ballot box. This book focuses attention on the influence exerted by the Left on the political landscape of Japan in the modern era, and assesses the reasons for its successes and failures in terms of its impact on enduring dimensions of Japanese political thought, activism and policy.
This is the first book of its kind to engage in the deeper issues of pacifist idealism, the dynamics of opposition politics in Japan, and distinguishing features of Japanese Leftist policy such as opposition to liberalisation of agricultural trade and positive relations with North Korea. With essays from an international team of contributors, this text will provide a fresh and much-needed interpretation of the modern sweep of Japanese politics.
A Tribute to Arthur Stockwin Rikki Kersten An Oxford Festschrift: The Book in Brief David Williams Acknowledgments Japanese Usage and Style Part 1: Left-wing Thought from the Russian Revolution to the War on Terrorism 1. The Left Hand of Darkness: Forging a Political Left in Interwar Japan Christopher Goto-Jones 2. Painting the Emperor Red: The Emperor and the Socialists in the 1930s Rikki Kersten 3. The Japanese Evasion of Sovereignty Article 9 and the European Canon: Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and Foucault David Williams Part Two: The Metamorphosis of the Left in Postwar Japan 4. The Rise and Fall of Nikkyo-so: Classroom Idealism, Union Power and the Three Phases of Japanese Politics since 1955 Robert W. Aspinall 6. ‘Democratic Government’ and the Left Koichi Nakano 7. The End Game of Socialism: From the JSP to the DJP Sarah Hyde Part Three: Settling Accounts: Globalization, American Empire and History’s Judgment 8. Neo-liberal Economic Policy Preferences of the ‘New Left’: Home-grown or an Anglo-American Import? Leonard J. Schoppa 9. After Abu Ghraib: American Empire, the Left-wing Intellectual and Japan Studies David Williams 10. The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy: Historical Overview Junichi Banno
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ISBN: 90 04 14237 1
Extent: 489 + 23 pages
Volume 1 of the Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography edited by Axel Schneider and Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik
This volume can be ordered at:Taking as a point of departure the workings of these concepts in Chinese historical thinking, the volume carefully draws comparisons with similar topics in the Western tradition. It thus advocates and shows a truly comparative approach that sets the stage for an intercultural dialogue on this important subject.
The first comprehensive work on the political and cognitive dimensions of Chinese historical consciousness set against its Western counterpart.
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