Lexington Books Sino-Japanese Transculturation: Late Nineteenth Century to the End of the Pacific War

This is a multi-author work which examines the cultural dimensions of the relations between East Asia's two great powers, China and Japan, in a period of change and turmoil, from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War. This period saw Japanese invasion of China, the occupation of China's North-east (Manchuria) and Taiwan, and war between the two nations from 1937-1945; the scars of that war are still evident in relations between the two countries today. In their quest for modernity, the rulers and leading thinkers of China and Japan defined themselves in contradisctinction to the other, influenced both by traditional bonds of classical culture and by the influx of new Western ideas that flowed through Japan to China. The experiences of intellectual and cultural awakening in the two countries were inextricably linked, as our studies of poetry, fiction, philosophy, theatre, and popular culture demonstrate. The chapters explore this process of "transculturation" - the sharing and exchange of ideas and artistic expression - not only in Japan and China, but in the larger region which Joshua Fogel has called the "Sinosphere," an area including Korea and parts of Southeast Asia with a shared heritage of Confucian statecraft and values underpinned by the classical Chinese language. The authors of the chapters, who include established senior academics and younger scholars, and employ a range of disciplines and methodologies, were selected by the editors for their expertise in particular aspects of this rich and complex cultural relationship. As for the editors: Richard King and Cody Poulton are scholars and translators of Chinese literature and Japanese theatre respectively, each taking a historical and comparative perspective to the study of their subject; Katsuhiko Endo is an intellectual historian dealing with both Japan and China. Review Sino-Japanese Transculturation sums up distinctive new research on China-Japan relations in multiple registers, bringing depth and nuance to the familiar topics of shared heritage and common modernity while confronting imperial violence and its aftermath. Cumulatively, the essays afford a compelling vision of historical transformation and interaction beyond limited economies of exchange and narrow communication models, gesturing toward the work of transculturation prior to and implicit in the fixing of national traditions and boundaries.--Thomas Lamarre, University of Chicago This book takes the old--one might even say, old-fashioned--topic of Sino-Japanese cultural relations and gives it an entirely new spin. Departing from but remembering the accustomed paradigms that center diplomatic relations, wartime violence, or shared Confucian cultural heritages, the contributors to this book explore the many facets of modern Japanese and Chinese transculturations: their symmetries and contradictions; their exchanges and tensions. With the tragic historical backdrop of the first half of the twentieth century fully in view, the authors and editors argue, each in their own way, that this half century was the high tide of transcultural learning between the two countries. The range of essays provides a welcome addition to studies of the cultural history of pre-war and wartime Sino-Japanese exchanges.--Rebecca E. Karl, New York University About the Author Richard King is professor of Chinese at the University of Victoria, specializing in modern and contemporary Chinese fiction and popular culture. He is the editor of Art in Turmoil: the Chinese Cultural Revolution 1966-76 (2010) and co-editor of Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia (2002), the translator of Liu Sola's novel Chaos and All That (1994), and Zhu Lin's Snake's Pillow and Other Stories (1998), editor and co-translator of Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward (2010), and the editor and co-translator of Living with Their Past: Post-Urban Youth Fiction by Zhang Kangkang (2003). Katsuhiko Endo i