Bøker utgitt av Harvard University, Asia Center

During the Heian period, the sacred mountain Kinpusen came to cultural prominence as a pilgrimage site for the most powerful men in Japan, but these journeys also had political implications. Using a myriad of sources, Heather Blair sheds new light on Kinpusen, positioning it within the broader religious and political history of the Heian period.

Satoru Saito examines the similarities between detective fiction and the novel in prewar Japan. Arguing that interactions between the genres were critical moments of literary engagement, Saito demonstrates how detective fiction provided a framework through which to examine and critique Japan's literary formations and its modernizing society.

Cultural Revolution Culture, often denigrated as mere propaganda, not only was liked in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. Considering Cultural Revolution propaganda art from the point of view of its longue duree, Mittler suggests that it built on a tradition of earlier art works, which allowed for its sedimentation in cultural memory.

Kim explores the dynamic relationship between Korean and Japanese Buddhists in the years leading up to the Japanese annexation of Korea. Conventional narratives portray Korean Buddhists as complicit in the religious annexation of the peninsula, but this view fails to account for the diverse visions, interests, and strategies that drove both sides.

Jung-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.

Examining the transnational film star system and the formations of historically important stars, Making Personas casts new light on Japanese modernity from the 1910s to 1930s. The book shows how film stardom began and evolved, looking at the production, representation, circulation, and reception of performers' images in film and other media.

Based on an extensive study of Jianyang imprints, genealogies of the leading families of printers, local histories, documents, and annotated catalogs and bibliographies, Printing for Profit is not only a history of commercial printing but also a wide-ranging study of the culture of the book in traditional China.

This 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.

This 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.

Sonia 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 themes-love, war, and self-that reflect the nearly complete overlap of the personal, social, and political realms in North Korean society.

Maclachlan analyzes the institutions, interest groups, and leaders involved in the evolution of Japan's postal system from the early Meiji period until 2010. At the crux of her analysis is Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro's crusade to privatize Japan's postal services, one of the most astonishing political achievements in postwar Japanese history.

In this first systematic study in English of the highly influential yet overlooked thinker Xue Xuan (1389-1464), author Khee Heong Koh seeks to redress Xue's marginalization while showing how a study interested mainly in "ideas" can integrate social and intellectual history to offer a broader picture of history.

The 16 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.

Murakami Haruki is perhaps the best-known and most widely translated Japanese author of his time. Bringing a comparative perspective to the study of Murakami's fiction, Suter complicates our understanding of the author's oeuvre and highlights his contributions not only as a popular writer but also as a cultural critic on both sides of the Pacific.

Kitasono Katue was a leading avant-garde literary figure, first in Japan and then throughout the world, from the 1920s to the 1970s. He was instrumental in creating Japanese-language work influenced by futurism, dadaism, and surrealism. This critical biography examines the life, poetry, and poetics of this controversial and flamboyant figure.

Relations 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.

To 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.

Drawing on varied archaeological and archival sources, David B. Lurie highlights the diverse modes and uses of writing that coexisted in Japan between the first and eighth centuries. This book illuminates not only the textual practices of early Japanese civilization but also the comparative history of writing and literacy in the ancient world.

Observers have been predicting the demise of China's Communist state since Mao's death. Yet policymakers have managed the fastest sustained economic expansion in world history. This book shows that many contemporary techniques of governance have their roots in experimental policy generation and implementation dating to the revolution and early PRC.

For the writers and poets of early-20th-century Japan, literary modernism was a crisis of perception before it was a crisis of representation. When Our Eyes No Longer See portrays an extraordinary moment in the history of this perceptual crisis and in Japanese literature during the 1920s and 1930s.

Under the Ancestors' Eyes elucidates the role of Neo-Confucianism as an ideological and political device by which the elite in Korea regained and maintained dominance during the Choson period. Using historical and social anthropological methodology, Martina Deuchler highlights Korea's distinctive elevation of the social over the political.

P'ansori, the traditional oral narrative of Korea, is sung by a highly trained soloist to the accompaniment of complex drumming. In the first book-length treatment in English of this art form, Pihl traces its history from roots in shamanism and folktales through its 19th-century heyday and discusses its evolution in the 20th century.

In the years of rapid economic growth following the protest movements of the 1960s, artists and intellectuals in Japan searched for a means of direct impact on the whirlwind of historical and cultural transformations of their time. This book explores the theoretical and cultural implications of experimental arts in a range of media.

Mark Jones examines the making of a new child's world in Japan, 1890-1930, 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 context-the emergence of a middle class in early twentieth century Japan.

A study that investigates the poetics and thematics of the Silla sequence, uncovering what is known about the actual historical event and the assumptions and concerns that guided its re-creation as a literary artifact and then helped shape its reception among contemporary readers.

Where does Neo-Confucianism fit into the story of China's history? This book argues that as Neo-Confucians put their philosophy of learning into practice in local society, they justified a social ideal in which society at the local level was led by the literati with state recognition and support.

For centuries, readers of Tao Qian have felt directly addressed by his poetic voice. This book revisits Tao's approach to his readers by attempting to situate it within the particular poetics of address that characterized the Six Dynasties classicist tradition.

Offering the first systematic examination of five modern Japanese fictional narratives, all of them available in English translations, Atsuko Sakaki explores Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and The Three-Cornered World; Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain; Mori Ogai's Wild Geese; and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's Quicksand.

Assesses the historical significance of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) - commonly called the Tokyo trial - established as the eastern counterpart of the Nuremberg trial in the immediate aftermath of World War II. This title explores some of the central misunderstandings and historiographical distortions.

Mountains have always been integral components of China's religious landscape. Early in Chinese history five mountains were co-opted into the imperial cult and declared sacred peaks-yue-demarcating and protecting the imperium's boundaries. Here, Robson demonstrates the value of local and Buddho-Daoist studies in research on Chinese religion.