Books in the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute series

Before Western clocks came to Japan, hours shifted in length with the length of the day through the seasons; this book looks at how standard hours arrived and how Japanese life adapted to them.

Tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China's exploration of its own modernity half a century later.

The field of natural history in Japan separated itself from the discipline of medicine, produced knowledge that questioned the traditional and philosophical understandings of the world. The author recounts how Japanese scholars developed a discipline of natural history analogous to Europe's but created independently, without direct influence.