The Rape of Nanjing was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II. On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army captured the city of Nanjing, then the capital of wartime China. According to the International Military Tribunal, during the ensuing massacre 20,000 Chinese men of military age were killed and approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred; in all, the total number of people killed in and around the city of Nanjing was about 200,000. This carefully researched, intelligent collection of original essays considers the post-World War II treatment in China of the Nanjing Massacre and Japan. The book examines how the issue has developed as a political and diplomatic controversy in the five decades since World War II. In his introduction, Joshua A. Fogel raises the significant moral and historiographical issues that frame the other essays. Mark Eykholt then provides an account of postwar Chinese responses to the massacre. Takashi Yoshida assesses the attempts to downplay the incident and its effects, providing a revealing analysis of Japanese debates over Japan's role in the world and the continuing ambivalence of many Japanese toward their defeat in World War II. In the concluding essay, Daqing Yang widens the scope of the discussion by comparing the Nanjing historiographic debates to similar debates in Germany over the nature of the Holocaust.

The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes) (Volume 2)

History

Maier, Charles S.

Fogel, Joshua A.

Asia

University of California Press

After centuries of virtual isolation, during which time international sea travel was forbidden outside of Japan’s immediate fishing shores, Japanese shogunal authorities in 1862 made the unprecedented decision to launch an official delegation to China by sea. Concerned by the fast-changing global environment, they had witnessed the ever-increasing number of incursions into Asia by European powers―not the least of which was Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853–54 and the forced opening of a handful of Japanese ports at the end of the decade. The Japanese reasoned that it was only a matter of time before they too encountered the same unfortunate fate as China; their hope was to learn from the Chinese experience and to keep foreign powers at bay. They dispatched the Senzaimaru to Shanghai with the purpose of investigating contemporary conditions of trade and diplomacy in the international city. Japanese from varied domains, as well as shogunal officials, Nagasaki merchants, and an assortment of deck hands, made the voyage along with a British crew, spending a total of ten weeks observing and interacting with the Chinese and with a handful of Westerners. Roughly a dozen Japanese narratives of the voyage were produced at the time, recounting personal impressions and experiences in Shanghai. The Japanese emissaries had the distinct advantage of being able to communicate with their Chinese hosts by means of the “brush conversation” (written exchanges in literary Chinese). For their part, the Chinese authorities also created a paper trail of reports and memorials concerning the Japanese visitors, which worked its way up and down the bureaucratic chain of command. This was the first official meeting of Chinese and Japanese in several centuries. Although the Chinese authorities agreed to few of the Japanese requests for trade relations and a consulate, nine years later China and Japan would sign the first bilateral treaty of amity in their history, a completely equal treaty. East Asia―and the diplomatic and trade relations between the region’s two major players in the modern era―would never be the same.

Maiden Voyage: The Senzaimaru and the Creation of Modern Sino-Japanese Relations (Philip E. Lilienthal Asian Studies Imprint)

Business & Money

International

Japanese for Sinologists: A Reading Primer with Glossaries and Translations

For many years it has been known that scholars of Chinese history and culture must keep abreast of scholarship in Japan, but the great majority have found that to be difficult. Japanese for Sinologists is the first textbook dedicated to helping Sinologists learn to read scholarly Japanese writing on China. It includes essays by eminent scholars, vocabulary lists with romanizations, English translations, grammar notes, and a wealth of general information not easily available anywhere. The reader will be introduced to a wide panoply of famed Sinologists and their writing styles. The first chapters introduce some basic information on dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other resources for research on China in Japanese materials, including a list of names and terms from Chinese political, historical, and cultural events. The chapters cover a range of topics and time periods and highlight authors, all well-known Japanese scholars, with an appendix of English translations of all the articles. After completing this book, the user will be able to begin his or her own reading in Japanese Sinology without the extensive apparatus this volume supplies.

Before the Cultural Revolution, Ai Ssu-ch'i (1910-1966) was one of Communist China's foremost Marxist philosophers, second only to Chairman Mao himself. Ai was attracted to Marxism-Leninism as a young student in China and Japan, and wrote numerous books and articles seeking to explain the complexities of the philosophy in language everyone could understand. His writings were enormously popular during the 1930s and 1940s, and went through many printings despite continuous harassment from Kuomintang censors.
This volume is the first full-length study of Ai Ssu-ch'i. In spite of his popularity, Ai has largely been ignored in recent histories of the Chinese Communist movement, because his importance lies in his function as a popularizer rather than as an original thinker. However, it can be shown that Mao and other leaders of the movement were influenced by him, and his writings and translations certainly helped to attract many young Chinese intellectuals to the Communist cause.
The recent flood of reminiscence literature in China has reserved a special place of prominence for Ai Ssu-ch'i. This is not only because he was so admired by Mao, but also because he devoted his life so enthusiastically and wholeheartedly to the Party. Joshua Fogel traces the pattern of this devotion via Ai's crucial role in spreading Marxist-Leninist thought among Chinese intellectuals.

Ai Ssu-ch’i’s Contribution to the Development of Chinese Marxism (Harvard Contemporary China Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Harvard University Asia Center

Joshua Fogel offers an incisive historical look at Sino-Japanese relations from three different perspectives. Using first a wide lens, he suggests a new way to capture the relationship between China and Japan by characterizing the nature of their contact. From the first century CE, the primary reasons for contact moved from political and ceremonial to cultural, and on to commercial ties. This period ends at the dawn of the modern age, when contacts involved treaties, consulates, and international law.Switching to a microhistorical view, Fogel examines several important behind-the-scenes players in the launching of the countries’ modern diplomatic relations. He focuses on the voyage of the Senzaimaru from Nagasaki to Shanghai in 1862―the first official meeting of Chinese and Japanese in the modern era―and the Dutchman who played an important intermediary role. Finally, he examines the first expatriate Japanese community in the modern era, in Shanghai from the 1860s to the mid-1890s, when the first Sino-Japanese War erupted.Introducing the concept of “Sinosphere” to capture the nature of Sino-foreign relations both spatially and temporally, Fogel presents an original and thought-provoking study on the long, complex relationship between China and Japan.

Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures)

Harvard University Press

In 1914, Nakeae Ushikichi (1889-1942), gifted son of the famous Nakae Chōmin (1847-1901) and graduate ofTokyo University's Faculty of Law,left behind the opportunities opento him in Japan and went to China.He worked briefly for the SouthManchurian Railway and then inthe Yüan Shih-k'ai government,but a personal crisis in 1919 turnedhim suddenly to a life of rigorousscholarship and social criticism. Hespent most of his adult life in Peking, published little, deeply influenced a few key compatriots,and became a posthumous hero toa generation of postwar Japaneseintellectuals.
In the first full-length study inEnglish of the life and thought ofNakae Ushikichi, Joshua A. Fogeltells the strange story of this cocky,indolent carouser who became adisciplined scholar and passionateadvocate of the worth of all humanity. Fogel examines Nakae's Sinological work in the context of hiswide reading in German philosophy, Western historiography, andclassical Chinese sources. He alsotranslates Nakae's wartime diary.

Nakae Ushikichi in China: The Mourning of Spirit (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Naito Konan's periodization of Chinese history is responsible for shaping the twentieth-century Western view of China. Naito was a journalist in the vibrant Meiji press for twenty years, during which he became recognized as Japan's leading Sinologist. He then assumed a chair in China Studies at Kyoto University, where he taught for twenty years, remaining all the while a prolific writer on public affairs. Joshua Fogel's biography treats Naito holistically, pointing up the intricate connections between his Sinological and political interests. 
 As a part of an ongoing tradition based in jitsugaku (concern with the practical applications of knowledge), Naito focused on what he took to be Japan's mission, after its own Meiji reforms, to help China implement comparable reforms. His emphasis on Chinese history and culture as the central influence in East Asia strengthened his Pan-Asian political convictions. 
 Fogel's study offers a penetrating look at a scholar-journalist whose influence, fifty years after his death, is still powerful.

Politics and Sinology: The Case of Naito Konan, 1866-1934 (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

This volume looks at Avodah Zarah, a tractate of the Talmud concerning idolatry, page by page. Daily Reflections on Idolatry offers a modern commentary with doses of humor and comparative examples in an effort to both explain and humanize the text and make it even more accessible to contemporary readers.

Daily Reflections on Idolatry: Reading Tractate Avodah Zarah of the Babylonian Talmud

World

Hamilton Books

The Babylonian Talmud is a product of late antique rabbinical discourse and debate. It is an immense, complex, multi-volume work divided by topics into tractates which are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. Tractate Nazir deals with a person (male or female) who basically assumes three abstentions for a defined period of time: no wine or product of the grapevine, no cutting of bodily hair, and no contact with a human corpse. The practice itself is controversial within Judaism. Nonetheless, virtually every conceivable factor involved in a vow to be a nazir is debated by the rabbis in this tractate and in great detail. This volume is arranged by Talmudic folio pages and is aimed at explaining the intricacies of the original text. It may be read on its own and in conjunction with the tractate itself as an aid to understanding.

Abstinence and Holiness, Embracing Self-Deprivation: Reading Tractate Nazir in the Babylonian Talmud

Religion & Spirituality

Judaism

While much attention has been focused on the rise of the modern Chinese nation, little or none has been directed at the emergence of citizenry. This book examines thinkers from the period 1890-1920 in modern China, and shows how China might forge a modern society with a political citizenry.

Imagining the People (Studies on Modern China)

Zarrow, Peter G.

Routledge

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