The range of articles submitted to the JAS is extraordinary. Methodologically, theoretically, empirically, and thematically, the articles open new directions within Asian studies. When authors locate their respective articles at the intersection of Asian studies and another field of study—such as Asian American studies, world history, religious studies, or gender studies—the possibilities for rethinking the epistemological borders can be intellectually productive for both. As a dialectical process, such intersections can lead to an unintended outcome that not only opens new insights and directions but also encourages further research. This is certainly an exciting prospect for researchers, readers, and editors. Moreover, the commitment to multiple intersections within Asian studies has certainly helped to explain the dynamism of the research that continues to enter the pages of the JAS. The articles in this issue illustrate some of these intersections.
Nira Wickramasinghe and Alicia Schrikker's article on slavery and abolition in Sri Lanka in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provides new directions for the nexus between Asian studies and slavery studies by examining the impact of British and Dutch colonial policies on the history of bonded labor. Sidney Xu Lu's work sits between Asian studies and Asian American studies—an intersection that has a long history in this journal. It provides new ways of thinking about the connections between Japanese colonial migrations and Japanese settler colonialism to interpret the place of Japanese migrations to the American West in the late nineteenth century. By examining the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, Michael Hutt considers the importance of the emergent field of disaster studies for the study of Asia by interpreting the political and cultural aftermath of the natural disaster. Arik Moran focuses on borderland studies and religious studies in his article on the development of composite political cultures in the western Himalaya. Hieyoon Kim provides a new interpretation of a seminal historiographical text in Korean film studies in order to rethink the relationship between Korean nationalism, Japanese colonialism, and the postcolonial present. Tom Phuong Le's article on the Japan–South Korea reconciliation process places arguments about transitional justice and human rights at the center of his analysis within the borders of political science, legal studies, and Asian studies.
The issue concludes with a robust book review section. Readers will notice that the section headings for the book reviews in this volume now reflect the names of the Councils of the Association for Asian Studies: China and Inner Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. (The only exception is the Transnational/Comparative section.) In the history of the journal, the book review section has included several different headings. This reclassification was made to ensure some consistency, especially as some books were classified under national categories, while others were regional, transregional, or subcontinental. For future volumes, we are certainly open to rethinking the headings to reflect the changing nature of research on Asia.
—Vinayak Chaturvedi
