Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Just a Scholar: The Memoirs of Zhou Yiliang (1913–2001) 畢竟是書生:周一良回憶錄

Translator:
Joshua A. Fogel 

Publisher:
Brill

Publication year:
2013

Abstract: 

One of China's premier historians of the twentieth century, Zhou Yiliang (1913-2001) experienced many of the tumultuous events of that century. Born into a wealthy family, his father saw to his pre-college education through a range of tutors which afforded him not only a profound traditional Chinese education but a modern one as well--including virtually native fluency in English and Japanese. He later earned degrees in Beijing before leaving to study and earn a Ph.D. at Harvard during the years of World War II. Given the dearth of Americans who knew Japanese, he was called up in the 1940s to help teach Americans that language. He returned to China after the war, took up academic positions, and found himself the object of severe controversy as the events of post-1949 China unfolded, especially those of the Cultural Revolution. These are his memoirs of his extraordinary life and work.




Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Facing the Monarch: Modes of Advice in the Early Chinese Court

Editor:
Garret P. S. Olberding

Publisher:
Harvard University Press

Publication Year:
2013



Abstract:
In the popular consciousness, manipulative speech pervades politicized discourse, and the eloquence of politicians is seen as invariably rooted in cunning and prevarication. Rhetorical flourishes are thus judged corruptive of the substance of political discourse because they lead to distortion and confusion. Yet the papers in Facing the Monarch suggest that separating style from content is practically impossible. Focused on the era between the Spring and Autumn period and the later Han dynasty, this volume examines the dynamic between early Chinese ministers and monarchs at a time when ministers employed manifold innovative rhetorical tactics. The contributors analyze discrete excerpts from classical Chinese works and explore topics of censorship, irony, and dissidence highly relevant for a climate in which ruse and misinformation were the norm. What emerges are original and illuminating perspectives on how the early Chinese political circumstance shaped and phrased—and prohibited—modes of expression.



Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Exemplary Figures (Fayan 法言)

Author:
Yang Xiong (Translated and introduced by Michael Nylan)

Publication Year: 

2013

Publisher: 

University of Washington Press

Abstract:


Exemplary Figures (sometimes translated as Model Sayings) is an unabridged, annotated translation of Fayan, one of three major works by the Chinese court poet-philosopher Yang Xiong (53 BCE-18 CE). Yang sought to "renew the old" by patterning these works on earlier classics, drawing inspiration from the Confucian Analects for Exemplary Figures. In this philosophical masterwork, constructed as a dialogue, Yang poses and then answers questions on philosophical, political, ethical, and literary matters. Michael Nylan's rendering of this text, which is laden with word play and is extraordinarily difficult to translate, is a joy to read-at turns wise, cautionary, and playful. 


Exemplary Figures is a core text that will be relied upon by scholars of Chinese history and philosophy and will be of interest to comparativists as well. 


Table of Contents:


Acknowledgments 

Chronology of Dynasties 
Introduction 

Exemplary Figures / Fayan


1. Learning and Practicing 

2. Our Masters 
3. Cultivating One’s Person 
4. Asking about the Way 
5. Asking about Divine Insight 
6. Asking about Illumination 
7. Things Rarely Seen 
8. Every Five Hundred Years 
9. Foresight
10. Chong and Li 
11. Yan Yuan and Min Ziqian 
12. The Noble Man 
13. Honoring the Ancestors, the Ultimate Duty

Glossary of Names, Legendary and Historical 

Abbreviations 
Bibliography 
Index 

Sunday, November 3, 2013

西魏・北周政権史の研究 Research on the Political History of the Western Wei and Northern Zhou

Author: 
前島佳孝

Publisher:
汲古書院

Publication Year:
2013

Table of Contents:

序 
第1部 官制より見た政権構造 
第1章:西魏宇文泰政権の官制構造について 
第2章:西魏行台考 
第3章:いわゆる西魏八柱国の序列について 
第4章:柱国と国公 

第2部 対梁関係の展開と四川獲得 
第1章:西魏・簫梁通交の成立 
第2章:西魏前半期の対梁関係の展開と賀抜勝 
第3章:梁武帝死後の西魏・梁関係の展開 
第4章:西魏の漢川進出と梁の内訌 
第5章:西魏の四川進攻と梁の帝位闘争 
第6章:東魏・北斉等の情勢と西魏の南進戦略総括 
第7章:西魏・北周の四川支配の確立とその経営 

第3部 人物研究 
第1章:李虎の事跡とその史料 
第2章:北周徒何綸墓誌銘と隋李椿墓誌銘 
第3章:〔補論〕隋末李密の東都受官に関する一試論 
総括