I have added a few articles to Claire’s history blog Time travel is easy: Interdisciplinary history for generation next. Discovering History Magical Musicians in China When Disaster Strikes Choice in History History and Tourism Looking back at these articles, I guess they make me seem like I’m a bit of a grouchy anti-mainstream activist historian. [...]
My last day in Mie last Saturday was partly spent in the town of Ueno, part of the old Iga area. I have uploaded some pictures here. The town’s tourism board has maximized on Iga’s reputation for being the home of one of Japan’s famous ninja clans. Various city officials are dressed in black or [...]
In his posting on the Jizo Bodhisattva statues, Aaron at Kikuchiyo explains why fetuses go to hell, and thus answers the big question that many of us have been asking recently, “Why should the hostages feel guilty for being kidnapped in Iraq?” Read more about their recent trials in the New York Times article about [...]
I’m close to finishing up Baudolino by Umberto Eco. The book is fantastic and the fourth I have enjoyed by him. Some people find it hard to get through anything he writes but I savor every page, often forgetting that I am reading him in translation. He plays with words, he plays with our minds, [...]
My friend Derek has just started a new blog which already looks multilingual (he is putting me to shame for not daring to post here in my bad written Japanese and Chinese). I love one of his lines, “Even if I posted a comment on slashdot, it would only be drowned and unnoticed among the [...]
Last Saturday (I’m getting caught up on lots of things I wanted to blog here about) the COE-CAS at Waseda, where I’m currently a research assistant, gave three of its graduate students one of many opportunities to present on their research in front of other students and professors connected to the center. While all three [...]
I recently enjoyed reading an essay by Ming-ke Wang of Academia Sinica in a collection of essays called Imagining China: Regional Division and National Unity on the development of the ethnic identity of the Qiang 羌 people. In the essay, “From the Qiang Barbarians to the Qiang Nationality: The Making of a New Chinese Boundary” [...]
I spent my first day here in Mie prefecture on a fun and fairly random bike ride with Hiroshi (I uploaded some pictures). It was a wonderful experience through some beautiful countryside. Lots of charming little villages, quiet and cool mountain roads, and vast dark green tea fields. Things didn’t wrap up quite the way [...]
Ok, there was this guy on the trains from 静岡 to 名古屋. He was a westerner, white, and had a big camping backpack like me. He was dressed to travel, like me. Yes, we were the only two westerners either of us had seen all afternoon. Yes, we were probably both too cheap to buy [...]
On Monday I joined my friend Jaehwan to hear a presentation by Daqing Yang, a professor of George Washington University whose work I’m very fond of. His presentation, on Japan’s early postwar relations with China through the perspective of reconciliation studies started with two questions: Did the “history problem” between Japan and China exist before [...]