Volume 7, Issue 1

Previous studies of the sources of thought in Yan Fu’s Tianyan lun have failed to give suffi cient attention to Francis Bacon. The source of Yan Fu’s ideal of a strong and prosperous China is, I think, none other than Bacon. This paper discusses Bacon as he appeared in Yan Fu’s Tianyan lun and political essays written at the time of Tianyan lun, and Bacon’s infl uence on Yan Fu.

The fact that much of what the Japanese regard as part of their culture originally came to Japan from the Asian continent in ancient and medieval times is well known and has been extensively researched. For the period after 1868, however, the attention of scholars has tended to concentrate on Japan’s comprehensive importation of Western civilization. This exploratory article suggests a different perspective. Taking music in modern Japan as an example and based in part on the author’s research for her recent book Not by Love Alone: The Violin in Japan, 1850-2010, the author will argue that music is a particularly rewarding fi eld for examining transnational fl ows. Research on music in modern Japan has tended to privilege the introduction of European art music from the West and this was undoubtedly one of the most important developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are, however, aspects to this development that merit more attention than they have received so far, including the relationship between Western music and other musics practised in Japan in the nineteenth century and the interactions between Japan and non-Western countries and in particular its East Asian neighbours. In this article, four general themes for further enquiry are introduced: 1. The possible relation between Meiji statesmen’s and intellectuals’ kangaku education and their views on the role of music in the modern state. 2. The Chinese origins and the place of minshingaku (Ming and Qing music) in the musical culture of nineteenthcentury Japan. 3. Japan’s role in the dissemination of Western Music in East Asia. 4. The role of the East Asian continent (particularly the cities of Shanghai and Harbin) as a place of encounter between Asia and Europe.

Many historians have examined why Singapore failed to be a major trading center before the nineteenth century. This paper revisits the current scholarly literature on the founding of Singapore to make two arguments. First, I argue that we cannot understand the founding of Singapore and its role in the British Second Empire without delineating Singapore’s role as a forest- and marine-goods metropolis in the precolonial Chinese trading networks of Southeast Asia. Second, I try to show how the Chinese kongsis 公司 of West Borneo turned Singapore into a forest- and marine-goods metropolis, formed their own political and social institutions, and collectively functioned as a third autonomous pseudostate power alongside the British and the Dutch. This reconceptualization enables us to see the founding of Singapore as a joint enterprise, and not a solely British achievement.

China studies in Germany has undergone great changes since the 1960s. Influenced by burgeoning area studies in the United States, German scholarship shifted from traditional philological studies focused on translating and interpreting Chinese classics to practical studies of modern Chinese politics, economy, law, etc. Hence, there was also a shift in research methodologies to those of the social sciences. However, this shift, significant as it is, can never replace traditional Sinological studies aimed at Chinese history and classics. This paper uses Chinese history as an example to explore the development of German academic Sinology. It points out that research in traditional Sinology, as well as in modern China studies, no longer focuses on a particular discipline, but rather follows the trend toward interdisciplinary, comprehensive research. Hence we can expect that China studies will become increasingly decentralized and interactive in the future development of the field.