East Asian Cartographic Print Culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Akin

Alexander Akin examines how the expansion of publishing in the late Ming dynasty prompted changes in the nature and circulation of cartographic materials in East Asia. Focusing on mass-produced printed maps, this book investigates a series of path-breaking late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century works in genres including geographical education, military affairs, and history, analysing how maps achieved unprecedented penetration among published materials, even in the absence of major theoretical or technological changes like those that transformed contemporary European cartography. By examining contemporaneous developments in neighboring Choson Korea and Japan, the study demonstrates the crucial importance of considering the broader East Asian sphere in this period as a network of communication and publication, rather than as discrete units with separate cartographic histories. It also reexamines the place of the Jesuits in this context, arguing that in printing maps on Ming soil they should be seen as participants in the local cartographic publishing boom and its trans-regional repercussions.

Author(s):  
Mamoru Akamine

The author summarizes Ryukyu’s historical position in East Asia, noting how its own changes reflected the broader changes East Asian was going through. He argues that, though part of Japan today, Okinawa is still different, and he calls that difference the “its heritage from the Ryukyu Kingdom and its ‘Asian experience.’” Chinese elements in Okinawan culture, for example, are not just the result of centuries of trade and diplomatic contact, but also come from the Kingdom’s conscious effort to “sinify” in the seventeenth century. As for Okinawan’s status today, the author notes that Okinawa’s sovereignty is still seen as an open question by China.


Itinerario ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-91
Author(s):  
Mihoko Oka ◽  
François Gipouloux

Foreign/long-distance trade has been one of the most popular themes in socio-economic history. However, the perceptions that we have of the role played by international trade in economic development is highly dependent on the actors we are focussing on. The universal actors of trade include ship owners, captains, crews, cargo owners, investors, mediators, agents, dealers, and so on. These actors, however, tend to be treated much like “merchants.” In this study, we focus particularly on capital investors to clarify the practical institutions of foreign trade that came to be organised in pre-modern maritime East Asia.In Japan, the pooling of capital seems to have started in the early stages of foreign trade, although it can be clearly observed only in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the advent of Sino–Japan trade on the ships authorised by the Ming dynasty. In this trade, merchants from Hakata and Sakai were particularly active in making investments, even though the nominal ship owners were the central government and/or powerful lords like the Ōuchi () and Hosokawa () family. This fact ensured that these two port cities emerged as the centres of capital pooling in Japan, and remained so till the beginning of the seventeenth century.The form of investment, which is mainly associated with a particular part of Japan and which we try to clarify in this paper, has been called nagegane () in previous studies. The term nagegane usually refers to a type of investment wherein the payments are exempt in the case of a shipwreck; nagegane was utilised in the trades through Nagasaki during the seventeenth century. This exemption is very similar to cambio maritimo (bottomry), which was used in the medieval and pre-modern Mediterranean trade and transformed into prestamo à la gruesa (Spanish) or emprestimo ao risco (Portuguese), which was used in transoceanic Iberian trades.


2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-136
Author(s):  
Xing Hang

During the seventeenth century, an alliance took shape between Japan's Tokugawabakufuand the Zheng organization of southeastern China and Taiwan. The Zheng, especially under the half-Japanese Koxinga in the 1650s, were ideal partners because of their domination of maritime East Asian trade, privileged access to much-coveted Chinese goods, and commitment to Ming restoration against the Manchu Qing, a popular stance in Japan. The organization jointly administered the Chinese community at Nagasaki with thebakufu, and received aid in Japanese armaments and probably mercenaries. Starting in the 1660s, the alliance unraveled amid the depletion of silver to purchase Chinese goods, the rise of a robust domestic market in Japan, and the destruction of the Zheng by the Qing. This article portrays Japan's “isolation policy” (sakoku) as a dynamic process, from active involvement overseas to withdrawal, based upon rational assessments of the international climate and subject to contestation from local and foreign players.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
David C. S. Li ◽  
Reijiro Aoyama ◽  
Tak-sum Wong

AbstractLiterary Sinitic (written Chinese, hereafter Sinitic) functioned as a ‘scripta franca’ in sinographic East Asia, which broadly comprises China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, and Vietnam today. It was widely used by East Asian literati to facilitate cross-border communication interactively face-to-face. This lingua-cultural practice is generally known as bĭtán 筆談, literally ‘brushtalk’ or ‘brush conversation’. While brushtalk as a substitute for speech to conduct ‘silent conversation’ has been reported since the Sui dynasty (581–619), in this paper brushtalk data will be drawn from sources involving transcultural, cross-border communication from late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) until the 1900s. Brushtalk occurred in four recurrent contexts, comprising both interactional and transactional communication: official brushtalk (公務筆談), poetic brushtalk (詩文筆談), travelogue brushtalk (遊歷筆談), and drifting brushtalk (漂流筆談). For want of space, we will exemplify brushtalk using selected examples drawn from the first three contexts. The use of Sinitic as a ‘scripta franca’ seems to be sui generis and under-researched linguistically and sociolinguistically. More research is needed to unveil the script-specific characteristics of Sinitic in cross-border communication.


Itinerario ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ts'ao Yung-Ho

Taiwan is strategically situated within East Asia, but little is known of it until the sixteenth century. The Chinese spread far and wide throughout Asia even before the Christian era, but allowed this large and fertile island lying so close to the Mainland to remain in relative obscurity until the middle of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The cause of this isolation is that Taiwan had no large quantities of marketable products to attract traders and that the island still lay outside the network of Asian trade routes of the time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-233
Author(s):  
David C. S. Li

Abstract In Western societies, speaking is construed as an interactive social activity while writing is widely perceived as a solo or private endeavor. Such a functional dichotomy did not apply to the “Sinographic Cosmopolis” in premodern East Asia, however. Based on selected documented examples of writing-mediated cross-border communication spanning over a thousand years from the Sui dynasty to the late Ming dynasty, this paper demonstrates that Hanzi 漢字, a morphographic, non-phonographic script, was commonly used by literati of classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic to engage in “silent conversation” as a substitute for speech. Except for a “drifting” record co-constructed by Korean maritime officials and Chinese “boat people,” all the other examples featured Chinese–Japanese interaction. While synchronous cross-border communication in written Chinese has been reported in scholarly works in East Asian studies (published more commonly in East Asian languages than in English or other Western languages), to our knowledge no attempt has been made to examine such writing-mediated interaction from a linguistic or discourse-pragmatic point of view. Writing-mediated interaction enacted through Sinitic brushtalk (漢文筆談) is compatible with transactional and interactional language functions as in speech. In premodern and early modern East Asia, it was most commonly conducted using brush, ink, and paper, but it could also take place using a pointed object and a flat surface covered with a fluid substance like sand, finger-drawing using water or tea on a table, and so forth. Such an interactional pattern appears to be unparalleled in other regional lingua francas written with a phonographic script such as Latin and Arabic. To facilitate research into the extent to which this interactional pattern is script-specific to morphographic sinograms, a “morphographic hypothesis” is proposed. The theoretical significance of writing-mediated interaction as a third or even fourth known modality of synchronous communication—after speech and (tactile) sign language—will be briefly discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (35) ◽  
pp. 189-208
Author(s):  
藍日昌 藍日昌

<p>近代所謂漢字文化圈者,意謂在東亞區域之內諸國受中國文化之影響,舉凡儒學、佛教及技術等,皆由中國而向外傳至日、韓、琉及越南等,東亞諸國的文化交流的媒介自然是以漢字為主。</p> <p>東亞交流雖自六朝開始,但當時並無官方語音的觀念,因此交流之時自以當時主流發音為主,而主流發音則隨政治、經濟形勢而變。六朝時以南方吳音為主流,唐時以河洛及西北方音為主流,南宋時則以蘇杭音為主流。</p> <p>書寫文字雖同,但音調則有差異,這對其他諸國而言,也是有所困擾,音調雖有變化,但書寫則不變,筆談即是東亞交流中溝通的媒介。</p> <p>明太祖所建立起朝貢制度,政治及經濟來往熱絡,朝鮮作為明朝與日本的紐帶,明、朝之間的燕行使與朝、日之間的通信使,交往之時大體透過筆談溝通。甚至越南與琉球、日本交往之時亦復透過筆談溝通。</p> <p>筆談之事,少見於唐宋,入明則筆談的記錄頻率轉增,然則筆談出現的頻率則證諸東亞交流的狀況及文化交流的盛景,其事雖簡,其義則甚重大。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>The so-called Chinese cultural circle in modern times means that all countries in the East Asian region are influenced by Chinese culture, and all Confucianism, Buddhism, and technology have been spread from China to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Vietnam, and other countries in East Asia. The medium of cultural exchange is naturally based on Chinese characters.</p> <p>Although the East Asia exchange started from the Six Dynasties, there was no concept of official speech at that time. Therefore, the main stream of pronunciation was mainly from the time when the exchange was made, and the mainstream pronunciation changed with the political and economic situation. At the time of the Six Dynasties, Wu Yin was the mainstream in the South. In the Tang Dynasty, Heluo and Northwestern were the mainstream. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the Su Hang sound was the mainstream.</p> <p>Although the written words are the same, but the tones are different, this is also a nuisance to other countries. Although the tone changes, the writing remains the same. The pen talk is the medium of communication in East Asian communication.</p> <p>Ming Taizu established the tributary system, political and economic exchanges, North Korea as the ties between the Ming Dynasty and Japan, the Yan Dynasty between the Ming Dynasty and the DPRK to exercise communication with the DPRK and Japan, when the exchanges are generally communicated through the pen. Even when Vietnam communicates with Ryukyu and Japan, it communicates through pen talks.</p> <p>The things in pen talk are rare in the Tang and Song dynasties. The frequency of writing records in Ming Ming&rsquo;s writings has increased. However, the frequency of conversations in writing has confirmed the status of exchanges in East Asia and the grand scene of cultural exchanges. Although the matter is simple, its significance is very significant.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>


Buddhism ◽  
2021 ◽  

Xuanzang玄奘, the peripatetic Chinese Buddhist scholar-monk of the Tang dynasty (618-907 ce), was born into a literati family in Henan province in 600 or 602 ce. He is known by the sobriquet “Master of the Three Baskets [comprising the Buddhist Canon] .” (Skt.: Trepiṭaka; Ch.: Sanzang三藏) Xuanzang is regarded as the most prolific translator of Indic Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Chinese—as well as the most historically significant, given that his comprehensive translations of Indic abhidharma and Yogācāra sutras and treatises (śāstras) revolutionized the study of Buddhism in East Asia. Attesting to his lasting influence on the tradition of East Asian Buddhism, all Buddhist Indic texts translated prior to Xuanzang are known as either the “ancient translations” (guyi古譯) or “the old translations” (jiuyi舊譯), while Xuanzang’s translations are termed “the new translations” (xinyi新譯). By retrieving the unalloyed teachings of abhidharma and Yogācāra Buddhist traditions from India and rendering them into fluid and readable classical Chinese, Xuanzang has left a legacy in the study of Buddhism in East Asia. Many of Xuanzang’s translations, such as the Heart Sūtra (Xinjing心經), remain the most widely used and circulated versions of these texts. Xuanzang’s long and arduous trek across the Silk Road to India is famously recorded in his travelogue entitled the Da Tang Xiyu ji (Great Tang records of the western regions). During his fourteen years in India (629–643 ce), Xuanzang collected Indic Buddhist texts hitherto not translated, studied with Buddhist masters, engaged in various religious debates, and acquired and mastered a vast and comprehensive knowledge of the Indic Buddhist texts in their original Sanskrit forms. Xuanzang returned to his native China in 645 ce to much acclaim and fanfare. Turning down a prestigious civil service appointment offered by Emperor Taizong, Xuanzang engaged in massive translation projects to render the texts he had gathered during his travels in India into Chinese. Under the lavish patronage of the second and third Tang emperors, Taizong and Gaozong, Xuanzang rose in status to become the preeminent East Asian Buddhist scholar and translator of his generation. Attracting students from Korea, Japan, and China, Xuanzang engaged the finest minds of East Asia in his translation and exegetical projects. Xuanzang has lived on in Chinese popular literary imaginary as the basis for the character Tang Sanzang 唐三藏 (Trepiṭaka of the Tang Dynasty) in the Xiyou ji西游記 (Journey to the west), one of the four great novels of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).


Writing from a wide range of historical perspectives, contributors to the anthology shed new light on historical, theoretical and empirical issues pertaining to the documentary film, in order to better comprehend the significant transformations of the form in colonial, late colonial and immediate post-colonial and postcolonial times in South and South-East Asia. In doing so, this anthology addresses an important gap in the global understanding of documentary discourses, practices, uses and styles. Based upon in-depth essays written by international authorities in the field and cutting-edge doctoral projects, this anthology is the first to encompass different periods, national contexts, subject matter and style in order to address important and also relatively little-known issues in colonial documentary film in the South and South-East Asian regions. This anthology is divided into three main thematic sections, each of which crosses national or geographical boundaries. The first section addresses issues of colonialism, late colonialism and independence. The second section looks at the use of the documentary film by missionaries and Christian evangelists, whilst the third explores the relation between documentary film, nationalism and representation.


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