This article provides an in-depth analysis of the reasons for which insane individuals who had committed patricide were systematically sentenced to dismemberment (lingchi 凌遲) under the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the most severe form of capital punishment that could be called for in the state's administrative and penal Code. This extreme harshness ran contrary to several “theoretical” foundations of Chinese traditional law, first and foremost the principle of criminal intent. Through the study of such criminal cases, and others legally affiliated to patricide, spanning the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, it underlines the importance of the relationship between a parent and his child, which was prominent in China's moral and cultural context at the time. It also stresses the role of political issues related to the legitimacy of the imperial state and to the upholding of the legality of its judicial process. Even though legal tools existed in the Qing Code, which would have allowed for a more lenient approach, and notwithstanding the Qing authorities' ongoing effort at defining specific legal procedures for insane homicides, lingchi was systematically applied to insane patricides until the early twentieth century, when the far-reaching legal reforms implemented during the last years of the imperial regime progressively opened the way for the recognition of the legal irresponsibility of insane individuals.

The present article explores health as a factor in the understanding of Edo-period male sexuality. This notion was systematically propagated by a genre of health guides on ‘Nurturing Life’, which came to circulate widely at the time. Sexuality was seen as an integral element of a healthy life-style in these didactic texts, which aimed to instruct people on how to live a long life unharmed by disease. In order to achieve this goal, the health-seeker was to strictly control his everyday activities, including eating, drinking alcohol, sleeping – or sexual intercourse. By consequence, a certain kind of sexual behaviour emerged from these works as ‘healthy’, while deviations from the prescribed standards are medicalized away as harmful to the body, in extreme cases even fatal. At the same time, bodily health is presented as inextricably bound up with moral ‘health’. Thus, the rhetoric of control imposed on the body was extended from the purely medical to the moral, making the health-seeking individual at the same time a good (male) subject and model head of household within an ideal Confucian-inspired society. The ‘healthy’ sexuality of writings on Nurturing Life therefore has to be situated at the crossroads of medical beliefs and moral parameters.

This article explores the role of Pan-Asian ideology in Japanese imperialism and how it is reflected in literary texts produced in Manchukuo. Through the analysis of Chinese and Japanese literary works this study examines the construction of ethnic identities and difference which was central to both Pan-Asian discourse and Manchukuo national identity. In both types of works the Japanese and Chinese characters use the concept of ethnicity or culture to reveal different realities of Manchukuo's ethnic politics. While the insoluble separation between the Japanese and the Chinese in Ushijima Haruko's “A Man Called Shuku” betrays the ethnic harmony proclaimed by the Manchukuo regime, Gu Ding's “A New Life” suggests a possibility of true harmony between the two ethnicities. Where the Japanese vice governor's distrust of his Chinese subordinate in Ushijima's story reflects the author's own fear and guilt about her privileged social position, the Chinese protagonist in Gu's story emphasizes the importance of Japanese modern medicine during a plague outbreak as well as his importance as a mediator between the colonizer and his countrymen in order to justify the author's association with Japanese imperialism.

Upon arriving at Denpasar airport in June 2000, I was greeted by an Australian friend who had recently married a Balinese man. The latter, within moments of our meeting for the first time, challenged me about my having been a UN accredited observer of the independence plebiscite in East Timor some ten months earlier. His was an impassioned if, in my view, not terribly well informed view of the torturous relationship between the former Portuguese colony and the Jakarta-based Indonesian government. My interlocutor insisted that East Timor's future ought to have remained an entirely Indonesian matter and that foreign involvement simply demonstrated the determination of the international community to break up Indonesia. The discussion proceeded as we made our way across the airport car park, and became even more heated when I suggested that it was important not just to consider former President Habibie's motivations for offering a plebiscite but also the record of Suharto's government in laying the ground for an East Timorese departure. Perhaps rather tactlessly, I suggested to my new acquaintance that he reflect upon the dreadful human rights record of the Indonesian military in East Timor. If a response was what I was seeking, I certainly found one. Wayan flashed back at me that he knew with certainty tales of human rights abuses were a lie concocted by hostile countries because the East Timorese had made clear their wish to remain part of Indonesia. Upon further pressing, he argued that the fact East Timorese school children sang the same songs as children from all over the archipelago was evidence of their love for Indonesia and their desire to remain integrated. I was somewhat nonplussed with this turn in discussion and rather unsure as to how to proceed. Could he, I wondered, really believe something that seemed so palpably absurd?