A new fruticulose species, Polycauliona comandorica, is described from the supralittoral zone of the Commander Islands in the Russian Far East. This growth form is very rare in the family Teloschistaceae where the new species belongs. It is the only fruticulose species of the family that forms vegetative propagules (soredia and blastidia). Polycauliona comandorica is similar to the North American P. thamnodes but differs in having a lighter yellow to grey thallus, longer and thicker branches with a rough surface, soredia and blastidia, and in lacking apothecia. Two fruticulose-lobate pairs of species in Polycauliona are briefly discussed: P. comandorica-P. verruculifera and P. thamnodes-P. brattiae.

Umbilicaria orientalis Davydov sp. nov. is described and phylogenetic analysis (ITS, mtLSU and RPB2) confirmed its distinctness and indicated a sister relationship with U. trabeculata within the U. vellea group. The species is morphologically similar to U. vellea but differs by simple, cylindrical or strap-like rhizinomorphs and by thalloconidia, developing both on the lower surface and on rhizinomorphs, that are 1–2 (rarely 4)–celled or in aggregates of up to 5–6 cells. Umbilicaria orientalis is described from the Russian Far East and is currently known from a wide range of localities in East Asia, from the Far East to South Siberia and Mongolia in the north, to Hebei and Tibet in the south. New sequences of U. americana were obtained; the species represents an independent phylogenetic lineage within Umbilicaria subg. Papillophora. Diagnostic traits and variability of different developmental stages of U. orientalis, as well as its East Asian distribution pattern, are discussed.

This article establishes the normative connection between Japan’s responses to regional hegemonic order prior to the nineteenth century and its subsequent engagement with the European standard of civilization. I argue that the Japanese understanding of the ‘standard of civilization’ in the nineteenth century was informed by the historical pattern of its responses to hegemony and the discourse on cultural superiority in the Far East that shifted from Sinocentrism to the unbroken Imperial lineage to the national-spirit. Although Japanese scholars accepted and engaged with the European standard of civilization after the forced opening up of Japan to the Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, they did so for instrumental purposes and soon translated ‘civilization’ into a language of imperialism to reassert supremacy in the region. Through intellectual historiography, this narrative contextualizes Japan’s engagement with the European standard of civilization, and offers an analytical framework not only to go beyond Eurocentrism but also to identify various other loci of hegemony, which are connected through the same language of power.

Lumbriculus illex sp.n. is described from the Komarovka Stream, north of Vladivostok. It differs from all other congeners in having single-pointed setae and very long spermathecal ampullae. L. sachalinicus Sokolskaya, 1967 is regarded as its closest relative.