The link between global sports brands and the violation of workers' rights in Asia has been a mainstream issue for many years. A ceaseless flow of news reports on the infringement of workers' rights in Asia suggests that neocolonialist dependencies and the ruthless exploitation of sweatshop labor are endemic in the industry. However, Asian corporations standing in the shadow of global brands have recently taken the lead in coordinating global sports commodity chains. Asia's rise within the industry is having manifold impacts on development opportunities for workers, companies, and countries, first of all in the Asian region, but also beyond. Putting these transformations into the historical perspective of industrialization, this essay questions the taken-for-granted assumption about agency and compliance behind the new international division of labor.

Religious conversions by Dalits in colonial India have largely been examined as mass movements to Christianity, with an implicit focus on men. However, why did Dalit women convert? Were they just guided by their men, family, and community? This paper explores the interrelationship between caste and gender in Dalit conversions afresh through the use of popular print culture, vernacular missionary literature, writings of Hindu publicists and caste ideologues, cartoons, and police reports from colonial north India. It particularly looks at the two sites of clothing and romance to mark representations of mass and individual conversions to Christianity and Islam. Through them, it reads conversions by Dalit women as acts that embodied a language of intimate rights, and were accounts of resistant materialities. These simultaneously produced deep anxieties and everyday violence among ideologues of the Arya Samaj and other such groups, where there was both an erasure and a representational heightening of Dalit female desire. However, they also provide one with avenues to recover in part Dalit women's aspirations in this period.

This article critically examines the assumptions and processes involved in identifying historically distinctive plant identities by their Latin botanical names. By following late-colonial efforts to identify a medicinal herb mentioned in some versions of the Ramayana, this paper argues for a historicist analysis of the process of “retro-botanizing.” In so doing, it also distinguishes between two different forms of “tradition,” the “factualized” and “embedded.” Finally, it blurs the allegedly watertight distinction between historical and mythic pasts. Instead of trying to distinguish these pasts ontologically, I argue that it is more productive to see specific pasts in relation to the sorts of futures they produce, that is, their respective historicities.

Editor's Note: The essay that follows is based on a conference paper by Dilip K. Basu that has long circulated informally, in the process exercising an unusually high degree of influence for an unpublished commentary. Most notably, some ideas embedded in it have been spread via literary scholar Lydia Liu's engagement with and quoting of the paper in The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making (Liu 2006), a provocative and much-cited book that calls for a radical rethinking of some of the standard terms and concepts used in the past to refer to the Qing Empire's ties to and conflicts with other political and territorial units. Those familiar with Liu's work will find here an essay that complements some arguments in her book; those who have not read it will be introduced to those ideas for the first time. Beyond this, though, all readers will find a discussion of various ideas and events—visions of China's place in the world, how the story of the Opium War is thought about in different settings, the history of Sinology—shaped by personal as well as scholarly concerns.

The essay's ties to the author's life and associations, which come into play more as the essay proceeds, make it a good fit with the goals of our recently introduced and still evolving “Reflections” genre. In addition, since it revisits critically ideas about China associated with the work of John K. Fairbank, it can be placed well beside some of the essays published in the “Legacies” series launched by Kenneth George, in his time as editor of the journal. And regular attendees of the Association for Asian Studies annual meetings may notice that much that follows resonates with the keynote address by Amitav Ghosh, one of those familiar with Basu's essay in draft form, when that conference was held in Toronto in 2012. The pages that follow are tightly focused on China, but Basu's discussion of “xenology” (a term for the ways that cultures think about those deemed “others,” which has, of course, the same root as the more familiar term “xenophobia”) clearly has implications for widely varied times and places, just as the handling of Fairbank's distinctive role in Chinese studies may bring to mind parallels to the influence that other prominent Western academics from the last century once shaped and via their legacies can continue to shape academic work on other parts of Asia. While focused tightly on China, in other words, it has much to offer readers whose primary interest is not in that country.

This article takes issue with recent accounts of the evolution of Gandhian ideas that have stressed his importance as a global theorist of principled nonviolence. It suggests that throughout his life Gandhi's writings display a preoccupation with ideas of martial courage and fearlessness; his stance might best be defined as one of nonviolent “martiality” rather than nonviolence per se. His overriding goal was not to proselytize for global “ahimsa” (nonviolence) but to shape the Indian people into a nonviolent army that could wrest freedom from the colonizers. It explains this concern for both nonviolence and martial attitudes by arguing that Gandhi's thought has to be reassessed and placed within several important contexts: the widespread global popularity of militarism before 1914; an influential intellectual critique of Western “materialist” values; Asian nationalist efforts to develop “indigenous” forms of mobilizational politics in their struggles against imperialism; and Indian thinking about caste (varna), which was central to Gandhi's thought and has generally been neglected in the literature. These contexts help us to understand Gandhi's complex and sometimes contradictory thinking on the issue of violence.

Science fiction narratives appeared in the North Korean children's magazine Adong munhak between 1956 and 1965, and they bear witness to the significant Soviet influence in this formative period of the DPRK. Moving beyond questions of authenticity and imitation, however, this article locates the science fiction narrative within North Korean discourses on children's literature preoccupied with the role of fiction as both a reflection of the real and a projection of the imminent, utopian future. Through a close reading of science fiction narratives from this period, this article underscores the way in which science, technology, and the environment are implicated in North Korean political discourses of development, and points to the way in which these works resolve the inherent tension between the desirable and seemingly contradictory qualities of the ideal scientist—obedient servant of the collective and indefatigable questioner—to establish the child-scientist as the new protagonist of the DPRK.

Through a study of over 1,300 previously unanalyzed Malay Islamic manuscripts, this article examines the role of the Patani community in the construction of transoceanic knowledge networks between Mecca and Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century. Set against the backdrop of the destruction of prevailing symbols of authority, as well as the displacement and scattering of the community after 1200/1786, the present study investigates the manner by which scholars established new cultural unities for the community and addressed social concerns by translating and spreading Islamic writings, teachings, and schools. With its spiritual leadership centered now in Mecca, influential members of the community began producing works that were contingent upon political circumstances, but also directed at the problems facing the refugee community. Of foremost importance were the place and definition of the family, and related issues such as inheritance, divorce, and visible social actions, including ritual purity, fasting, almsgiving, and criminal punishments.

In the nineteenth century, the Mekong, Red, and Chao Phraya river deltas in Southeast Asia underwent a massive expansion in agricultural settlement and engineering (Dao and Molle 2000). Contending with crocodiles and herds of wild elephants in addition to more prosaic insect and bird pests (Terwiel 1989), settlers struggled successfully to make these deltas highly productive centers of rice and other agriculture. Such struggles, which were until very recently confidently labeled as “Man's Conquest of Nature,” used to be seen as representing Progress with a capital P. Historically, few men or women had doubts about the real struggle involved in making a living from Nature. In a lecture given in 1877, William Morris explained that “the race of man must either labour or perish. Nature does not give us our livelihood gratis; we must win it by toil of some sort or degree” (W. Morris 2008, 1). Human evolution could thus be summarized as a story in which “Man struggled with nature, and he is conquering it gradually through his intelligence, inventiveness, and skill” (Sigerist 1936, 597). Progress was the process by which Man Makes Himself, to cite the title of Gordon Childe's influential 1936 book on archaeology. By the nineteenth century, the problem for socialists such as Morris was that “the fruits of our victory over Nature [have] been stolen from us” (W. Morris 2008, 10); the basic necessity of “conquering” Nature was not disputed.

A growing body of scholarship on Buddhism is exploring the historical role of warfare and militarism. Buddhist polities have generally exempted monastic communities from military conscription and taxation. Although the monk Khruubaa Srivichai (1878–1938) is revered as a saint in northern Thailand today, during his lifetime he was detained under temple arrest on multiple occasions. He was sent to Bangkok in 1920 and 1935 to face charges that ranged from conducting unauthorized ordinations to treason. For the controversies he generated, the media of the day called him “that puzzling monk.” Prevailing scholarship has explained the controversies as the result of conflicts internal to the Thai monastic order. In this essay, I argue that the puzzle posed by Srivichai is solved by recognizing the importance of changing policies regarding military conscription, changes which sought to restrict the traditional rights of the northern population to ordain and expanded state access to manpower.

Things were getting busy on the major flight corridors between the Earth and Mars, or so the casual observer of socialist bloc science fiction from the 1950s might come to believe. While there are no reports of intergalactic traffic jams, Mars was becoming a destination of choice in science fiction from both sides of the Iron Curtain. In her fascinating article, Dafna Zur details the exploits of an international exploratory mission to the red planet, consisting of children from a dozen nations, including North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union. It remains unknown whether the explorers from Kim Tong Sŏp's serialized novel Youth Space Expedition Team met any other socialist space travelers on their way to Mars. But they could have very well run into spaceship #1, commanded by Zhenzhen, the protagonist of Zheng Wenguang's (1929–2003) “Cong diqiu dao huoxing” (From the Earth to Mars) (Zheng 1954a).

In his Jungian-inspired utopianism, Joseph Campbell (1988, 32) once declared that the famous “Blue Marble” shot of earth from space (see figure 1) could potentially become a symbol of a new mythology that celebrated our common humanity. Of course, much as Jung and other universalizing theorists have been laid to rest over the last quarter-century by poststructural, postmodern, and postcolonial thought, so too apparently has any new mythology of our common humanity (much less its actualization). Nevertheless, one can certainly wonder whether Campbell would not have interpreted the Anthropocene as the perfect myth for forging a new vision of our shared humanity.

In the Japanese empire in 1938, an imperial-language theatrical adaptation of a folktale from colonial Korea, The Tale of Spring Fragrance (Ch'unhyang chŏn) opened to rave reviews in major metropolitan cities throughout Japan. The performance's popularity ignited an encore run later the same year throughout colonial Korea. The play was commissioned by Murayama Tomoyoshi and his Shinkyō Theater Troupe in Japan. The script was penned in Japanese by Chang Hyǒkchu, a bilingual writer from the colony. This article examines a forgotten moment of colonial “collaboration” between Korea and Japan when the two countries’ literary histories converged in a widely publicized performance across the empire. By reading the tensions between parallel yet unbridgeable nostalgic desires between Japan and Korea, and measuring the gap between the consumption of the tale as trendy “colonial kitsch” and timeless “national tradition,” the performance can be read not as the embodiment of harmonious imperial assimilation as touted at the time, but as performing its anxieties and breakdown. This article further considers the significance of the failed collaboration and translation across colonial divides for postcolonial relations.

In Bangalore, late in the summer of 2014, I listened to many animated conversations. There were political debates: the right-wing Hindu nationalist party had, earlier that summer, won national as well as state elections, evoking disparate reactions across society, sowing dissension even among the technological elite. There were technological arguments: should Bangalore continue to be an outsourcing haven for software services, or did India need a new model of development? Technology itself no longer seemed to unite people and offer exciting futures, as it had a decade ago. In Basavanagudi, a neighborhood named after twelfth-century social reformer Basavanna, part of the South Bangalore constituency where Tom Friedman's friend Nandan Nilekani had just lost the local election to the Hindu nationalist BJP candidate, I noticed a growing buzz around a social media campaign for a new documentary on climate change. Facebook, Twitter, and chats excitedly shared news of the upcoming global release of a film seeking to unite the globe in a social movement to stop climate change. Software engineers and social justice activists might, it seemed, be able to come together on this topic, if not any other.

The magical girl, a popular genre of Japanese television animation, has provided female ideals for young girls since the 1960s. Three waves in the genre history are outlined, with a focus on how female hero figures reflect the shifting ideas of gender roles in society. It is argued that the genre developed in close connection to the culture of shōjo (female adolescence) as an antithesis to adulthood, in which women are expected to undertake domestic duties. The paper then incorporates contexts for male-oriented fan culture of shōjo and anime aesthetics that emerged in the 1980s. The recent tendencies for gender bending and genre crossing raise critical questions about the spread of the magical girl trope as cute power. It is concluded that the magical girl genre encompasses contesting values of gender, and thus the genre's empowerment fantasy has developed symbiotically with traditional gender norms in society.

Liu Zihua arrived in France in 1919 as part of the Sino-French Work-Study Movement. In 1940, he completed a PhD thesis in which he combined modern astronomy and the Yijing through “analogical reasoning” to discover a planet. After Liu went back to China in 1945, his efforts to win recognition came up against nationalist and communist anti-traditionalism but were eventually integrated into the intellectual revival of the 1980s. This study relies on historical sources and anthropological fieldwork to show that Liu is an emblematic figure of the cultural upheaval caused by the introduction of modern Western categories of science, religion, and superstition at the beginning of the twentieth century. Liu's example reveals the changing status of the Yijing in Chinese society, the cross-cultural understanding of science and sacred literature as embodied in this classic, and the role of analogy in cultural assimilation. It also sheds light on the shaping of academic standards in China and on the connection between traditional literary scholars and contemporary “amateur scientists.”

A cursory examination of the Thai press reveals two things: A history of censorship, at times violently repressive, and sensational content centered on crime news. Reporters, editors, and publishers have been threatened, intimidated, and murdered in an effort to control the print media while front pages are filled with stories of violent crime and gory photographs. This paper explores both these forms of violence, censorship and crime news, to understand the relationship between the two. It argues that the prevalence of the latter—sensationalism—has resulted in part from the former, a historical process of increasingly murderous repression. So while the form and content of the print media in Thailand, as elsewhere, follow the financial imperatives of the market and reflect trends in current events, they do so within a framework of legal, professional, and informal relationships established over time with seemingly unrelated institutions, including the police.

The term “Anthropocene,” coined in the 1980s by the ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer and popularized at the turn of the twenty-first century by the atmospheric chemist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, has been used increasingly in the past decade to highlight human activity as a geological force and to underscore the rapidly escalating impacts of human behaviors on the planet—sufficient, many have argued, to launch a new geological age. While geologists and environmentalists continue to debate the validity of Anthropocene as a formal designation, climate change; mass extinctions of plant and animal species; and widespread pollution of sky, sea, and land make clear the extent to which humans have shaped global ecologies. An understanding of Asia—home to more than half the world's population, an increasingly significant contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions, the site of the Third Pole, and an area acutely vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels—is vital to an understanding of the physical, chemical, biological, and cultural processes that comprise the Anthropocene.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Japan experienced a surge in the evocation of the word “mottainai,” most simply translated as “wasteful.” Children's literature, mass-market nonfiction, magazines, newspapers, songs, government ministries, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations deliberately used and defined the term as they took up the question of what was to be deemed wasteful. This essay examines how discourses that were ostensibly about wastefulness constituted an articulation of values, a search for meaning and identity, and a certain conception of affluence in millennial Japan. It suggests that this idea of mottainai reflected wide-ranging principles and beliefs that were thought to define what it meant to be Japanese in the twenty-first century, at a time when there settled in an uneasy acceptance of economic stagnation and a desire to find meaning in an economically anemic, yet still affluent, Japan.

Among the eclecticism and diversity of the intellectual marketplace in 1960s Saigon, frequent discussions of existentialism stand out. In popular scholarly journals and literary reviews, such as Bách khoa and Đại học, intellectuals, such as Nguyễn Văn Trung and Trần Thái Đỉnh, analyzed the relevance of the works of Malraux, Camus, and Sartre to Buddhism and to the situation of war-torn Vietnam. This article considers two possible reasons why existentialism appealed to intellectuals in South Du's Vietnam. First, it examines whether Vietnamese existentialists were searching for equivalency with Western nations. Second, it discusses how these authors saw existentialism as a useful way to refuse both capitalist and communist political positions.

Contemporary concerns about the difficulties faced by the Japanese economy following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 soon appeared to be unfounded as the economy recovered relatively quickly. This paper suggests that despite its limited impact on Japan's longer-term economic trajectory this disaster can tell us a great deal about the ways in which individuals, organizations, and officialdom respond to a devastating event, and help us better understand the process of transition from immediate relief to longer-term recovery, not just in Japan, but more broadly. It analyzes the impact of the disaster on market transactions, showing that the scale and nature of market disruption went far beyond direct physical destruction; that the collective and individual responses of government, producers, traders, and consumers had the potential to make matters worse, rather than better; and that the existence of integrated markets spread the effects of the disaster across the Japanese archipelago. It also suggests that reestablishing market stability following the crisis was one of the keys to longer-term recovery, and that further research will help us understand the causal factors in that process.