Sweeping and remoulding Europe in the 19th Century, nationalism has swept on in equally revolutionary guise to remould Asia in the 20th, and is now penetrating Africa. In the study of its impact and development almost every aspect of human society is involved, positively or negatively, and at least every social science discipline has its part to contribute to the analysis of an exceedingly complex whole. In the Asia of today and of the recent past we have a whole series of new nations coining forward to assert their claims in the world. A laboratory has been made available in which we can observe and analyze the growth of nationalism, catch it in its earliest stages and trace it through to its maturity, as well as at least noting in passing the countervailing forces of the past and present. The raw material, vibrant with a new and dynamic life, is there for our taking, and it would be tragic if we were to let it slip through our fingers without gathering it and subjecting it to the closest possible investigation.

In the years following the Manchurian adventure, literature in Japan became more and more nationalistic; it fell into a “dark ravine.” Proletarian literature, which had seen a spectacular rise after World War I, declined rapidly after the death of the leftist writer, Kobayashi Takiji, in a police station at Tsukiji, Tokyo, on February 20, 1933. Writers previously devoted to liberal, progressive, and radical ideas were converted to orthodox thinking. In the late thirties and during World War II the few authors who still nurtured leftist ideas were completely silenced. Some, like Hirabayashi Taiko, went to jail. It was only in the first post-war years, with the release of political prisoners and encouragement given to freedom of expression, that literature once more began to show its former diversity and vitality. As the Occupation continued, various limitations were placed on the activities of the Communist Party, but, as we shall see, leftist authors still have their following.

Among the sins of scholarly translators from the Chinese, there is one which is so prevalent as to remain unchallenged generation after generation, possibly because no one is free from its taint. I refer to the practice of leaving uncooked and indigestible lumps in the sinological puddings served up to a tolerant public. This custom, against which I wish to make the strongest possible protest, has not yet been justified or even defended by any wellargued theory, but has become widely accepted usage in the absence of overt opposition. Specifically I challenge the common treatment of a large and poorly defined body of Chinese “names and titles” either by transliteration (an extreme kind of under-translation), or by what is sometimes known as “functional translation” (a species of paraphrase lacking consistent methodology). An obvious instance of the former would be the rendering of by “he styled himself T' ai-shang-huang,” and of the latter, the rendering of by “he was made Chancellor.” I oppose such procedures on the general grounds that the chief if not the sole responsibility of the scholarly translator is fidelity to his text. In other words it is to convey, as precisely as he may in a different tongue, the sense of the language of the original.

One of the first and most pressing problems to confront Qubilai, after his election as khan in 1260, was the problem of food supply for the military and civilian population of the imperial capital. This was a problem which had plagued rulers of China long before the coming of the Mongols, ever since the rise of the lower Yangtze area as the economic center of China. During the Sui, T'ang and Northern Sung periods, a fairly adequate solution had been found in a system of waterways which, running in a northwesterly direction, carried food supplies to the nation's capitals, located far inland. This system of waterways became the lifeline of China for over five centuries. But, when Qubilai Qaqan established his administrative headquarters at the northern corner of the great Yellow Plain close by the sea, food supply again became an urgent problem and new solutions had to be found.

Karl Marx is responsible for the famous if inaccurate dictum that while previous philosophers had been interested in explaining the world, he was interested in changing it. Yet the fact remains that Marx was passionately interested in explaining the world. The drive to explain is presumably intimately bound up with the drive to change and yet one cannot help but feel that as Marx becomes involved in some of the more complex problems of social history the desire to explain often becomes for a time at least the overriding end.

In the intellectual ferment which defeat and occupation brought to Japan the social sciences underwent a particular upheaval. The decade before the war had seen their development stultified by the officially enforced atmosphere of dogmatic moralism and irrational metaphysics which was actively inimical to any positivistic and scientific study of life in society. The end of the war opened the flood-gates to the works of American and European writers of the previous two decades. It also gave courage and opportunity to the intellectuals who had received their academic training in the more liberal period of the twenties or in foreign universities but had since preserved silence or lost their way.

This article, like Marius Jansen's “Notes on Japanese Universities” (FEQ 12.2), has been prepared to acquaint Western scholars with significant developments in Japanese studies during the postwar period. It is organized on a different basis from Jansen's article, however, and is limited to studies of China (especially North China), Manchuria, Mongolia, Central Asia and Korea. Since complete coverage is out of the question in an article of this length, we concentrate on historical studies but also include significant advances in the humanities and to a certain extent in the social sciences.

In Sung and Ming intellectual life, idealist philosophies came to the fore. Later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to a number of Chinese thinkers, that predominance of idealism seemed a disaster, and they formally disavowed it. Is there an indication, perhaps, in the early existence of this group of materialists, that the seemingly stable, traditionalistic Chinese society had the capacity to develop under its own power, without a catalytic intrusion of Western industrialism, into a society with a scientific temper?

The evolution of China into a modern nation-state has seen few episodes more meaningful than the Taiping Rebellion occurring in the latter half of the last century. In the leader of this rebellion, Hung Hsiu-ch'üan, there is much that is of special interest to the sociologist and the psychiatrist. In the origin of this vast movement can be seen the great importance of individualpsychological factors which elevate a leader and help to precipitate a revolutionary social transformation—for Hung is known to have suffered an acute mental disturbance which undoubtedly moulded his destiny.

The rebellion has been interpreted variously as a peasant uprising against official corruption, a protest against intolerable economic distress, or simply a nationalistic revolt against the Manchu dynasty. Be that as it may, there is general agreement that it was a movement unique in Chinese history because it instituted a radical change in the political system which existed for more than two thousand years, and brought about economic, social, cultural, and religious reforms over the greater part of Central and South China between 1851 and 1864.

The Chinese literary renaissance has produced in the past few decades many distinctly new results. The universal acceptance of the vernacular as a literary medium by a whole generation of writers, the absorption of modern western ideas, and the transvaluation of all traditional values brought about radical changes in creative literature. New theories were studied and practised, new forms and genres developed, and an appreciable number of distinguished works of poetry, fiction and essays created during this period can be assured of a permanent place in the history of Chinese literature. Yet one ancient literary genre, biography, seems to have benefited little by the new movement. It is this fact that makes the excellent work now under review deserve more than usual attention.

Translation is not only a science or an art, but also a practical tool of international communication in the world-wide exchange of ideas. The importance of translation has been heightened by the increasing contacts among nations of widely divergent cultures. In the Western world, translation is considered more frequently from the linguistic than the cultural point of view, for the West has a common pattern of culture underlying its linguistic variety. The problem of communication between the East and the West is more difficult in that there are not only language barriers but also divergent cultural patterns.

The translation of Western works into Chinese began near the end of the sixteenth century. Moved by religious enthusiasm, the Jesuits initiated the process and the Protestant missionaries followed. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, translation programs have been a characteristic part of Chinese governmental activity directed toward modernization and, consequently, both the subject matter translated and the languages from which they were translated indicate trends in modern Chinese thought as well as changing governmental policies. Moreover, the motivation of translation and the shifts in intellectual interests are reflected in the character and quantity of translations produced at different times.

It is said that the best European scholars are after their deaths given chairs at American universities. The saying holds true, at any rate, for Max Weber: many of his most important writings have been translated into English only in recent years, making it possible for his theories to gain a broader acceptance in English-speaking countries.

It would probably be an exaggeration to mention the young Dutchman Jacob Cornelis van Leur among the best European scholars. Killed in the battle of the Java Sea in 1942 at the age of 34 after having worked as a civil servant in the Netherlands East Indies, Dr. van Leur was not in his lifetime to hold a university post in either the Netherlands or the Indies, let alone the United States.

The basic unit for economic and social activities in rural Japan is the buraku, a cluster of houses, surrounding rice fields, and, very often, a small acreage of forest land. Although the buraku has had no legal status, since the war, it remains as the focus of loyalty and in-group feeling beyond the level of the household. It is within the buraku that the Japanese farmers cooperate with each other to meet and to solve their immediate problem. The lowest level of formal government in the farming countryside is the mura or son (village). It is at this point of contact that the Japanese farmer as a buraku inhabitant meets government in the actual administration of law. The Japanese farmer regards village administration in two ways. On the one hand, it provides him with formal machinery for the solution of the immediate and personal problems he faces in his community.