Books published by Harvard University, Asia Center

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.

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.

Owen analyzes the redirection of poetry following the deaths of the major poets of the High and Mid-Tang and the rejection of their poetic styles. In the Late Tang, the poetic past was beginning to assume the form it would have for the next millennium-a repertoire of styles, genres, and the voices of past poets.

This book describes the ritual world of a group of rural settlements in Shanxi province in pre-1949 North China. The great festivals were their supreme collective achievements, carried out virtually without aid from local officials or educated elites. Newly discovered manuscripts allow Johnson to reconstruct the festivals in unprecedented detail.

The narrative is framed around the terms identity, community, and masculinity. As the author shows, the Uyghurs of Yining, a city in the Xinjiang region of China, express a set of individual and collective identities organized around place, gender, family relations, friendships, occupation, and religious practice.

From his birth in the lowest stratum of the samurai class to his assassination at the hands of right-wing militarists, Takahashi Korekiyo (1854-1936) lived through tumultuous times that shaped the course of modern Japanese history. This biography underscores the profound influence of Korekiyo on the political and economic development of Japan.

The Great Depression was a global phenomenon: every economy linked to international financial and commodity markets suffered. The aim of this book is not merely to show that China could not escape the consequences of drastic declines in financial flows and trade but also to offer a new perspective for understanding modern Chinese history.

Four themes dominate this study of the late Mongol empire in Northeast Asia: the need for an all-inclusive regional perspective; pan-Asian integration under the Mongols; the tendency for individual and family interests to trump those of dynasty, country, or linguistic affiliation; and the need to see Koryo Korea as part of the wider Mongol empire.

We live in a world shaped by secularism-the separation of numinous power from political authority and religion from public political, social, and economic realms. This book explores the modern recategorization of religious practices and people and examines how state power affected the religious lives and physical order of local communities.

This work explores interactions between society and environment in China's most important marine fishery, the Zhoushan Archipelago off the coast of Zhejiang and Jiangsu, from its nineteenth-century expansion to the exhaustion of the most important fish species in the 1970s.

Presenting fresh insights on the internal dynamics and global contexts that shaped foreign relations in early modern Japan, Robert I. Hellyer challenges the still largely accepted wisdom that the Tokugawa shogunate, guided by an ideology of seclusion, stifled intercourse with the outside world, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Urbanization was central to development in late imperial China. Yet scholars agree it triggered neither Weberian urban autonomy nor Habermasian civil society. Using Nanjing as a central case, the author shows that, prompted by this contradiction, the actions and creations of urban residents transformed the city on multiple levels.