This paper explores a specific mode of illustrations to accompany the most popular dramatic publication in late Ming, The Story of the Western Wing. The visual interpretations of the play will be discussed side by side with the commentaries attributed to contemporary eminent literary figures, in order to examine the common change in reading mentality. Analysis of the image–text relationship for each of the pictures in those editions under discussion reveals that they all relate to the script with the caption taken from the text. Unlike the previous illustrated editions in a narrative mode, the pictures represent the fragmented poetic sentences instead of the narrative text of the play. The caption, a fragmented segment of the text, therefore becomes the key element that relates the image to the text. For the illustrator, it was probably more important to find a key line and a matching scene from the visual repertoire than it was to expound the essence of the script. The emerging mode of “poetic pictures” not only emphasized the poetic quality of the text, but also incorporated visual elements learned from traditional brush painting. The sophisticated integration of poetry and painting into the comparatively popular form of prints attested to the publishers' pursuit of artistic prestige, and the shift in illustrations for narratives during this period.

The cults and ritual practices of the Sino-Thai communities of southern Thailand are a distinctive aspect of a region in which Chinese heritage has a high degree of social significance. Chinese came to the Malay Peninsula in several waves; many settlers arrived as early as the sixteenth century, and others flooded into the region to work in tin-mines and rubber plantations in the nineteenth century. Although now “Thai” in many respects, the descendants of Chinese immigrants in the south retain a distinctive identity, visibly expressed in the annual ritual cycle focused on specific rites and temples. These events provide a sense of connection to ancestral origins, but also make important statements about the contemporary position of Chinese descendants in a complex multiracial context. Tourism, both national and transnational, has played an important role in the expansion of ritual performance. During the capitalist boom years of the 1990s, elements of Chinese identity became a valued social marker in Thailand and some aspects of the southern cultural and ritual practices were adopted more widely, although most of the Sino-Thai descendants outside the south had little or no understanding of the origins or meaning of the practices. This paper examines rites performed annually in two southern Thai towns, investigating how they reflect complex negotiations of ethnic identity vis-à-vis national and regional contexts.

The 1950s in Japan are usually considered to be marked by pacifism or a “victim consciousness” related to World War II, together with a rejection of war and of the military. Yet attention to the popular press and other sources designed to reflect and appeal to a mass audience, rather than magazines carrying debates among intellectuals, shows that throughout the 1950s the recent war was a much more dynamic issue than typically has been recognized, and that former soldiers were far from universally reviled. Connections with the war, in turn, remained an integral part of the evolving sense of nation in Japan. This article examines the vitality of the war as a major and direct theme in political, social and cultural discourse in the 1950s, focusing on soldiers' involvement in politics, issues relating to Class B and C war criminals, films about the war, and the emergence of a new cultural hero in the form of Kaji, the soldier who is the central figure in the novel and film The Human Condition.

In contrast to the currency issued for use in ancient and early modern Japan, a feature of the currency of that country's medieval period was that the Japanese state did not mint its own coinage but rather imported the entirety of its supply of copper coins from China. An economy based on Chinese coins therefore lasted for 650 years, from the middle of the twelfth century, through the upheavals of the sixteenth century, down to the seventeenth century when the Tokugawa Bakufu once again minted coins. This article outlines the situation of currency and its specific features during this period, paying particular attention to the trend towards the use of credit, in such forms as bills of exchange and promissory notes. In addition, it points out that the medieval Japanese state had absolutely no motivation, either financially or geopolitically, to issue its own currency.

The International Journal of Asian Studies has published four seminal articles by Japanese scholars of the history of Chinese law (2004–2007). In the first part of his review and analysis of the series (see IJAS 4:2, 2007), Jérôme Bourgon dealt in the main with the work of Shigeo Nakamura and Osamu Takamizawa. In the present part he concludes his discussion with an examination of the remaining articles, “The Nature of Social Agreements (yue) in the Legal Order of Ming and Qing China” by Hiroaki Terada and “Litigation Masters and the Litigation System of Ming and Qing China” by Susumu Fuma.

The discovery in 1526 of the Iwami Ōmori silver deposits enabled Japan to become, by the 1540s, China's largest supplier of silver. This status was surpassed only in the 1570s, when large amounts of South American silver began to be delivered to southeast China via Manila. Despite the popularity of silver in the conduct of foreign trade, until the end of the sixteenth century it rarely played a part in Japanese domestic transactions. Even in Kyoto, capital of medieval Japan, it was gold, not silver, that was used for gifts and remittances. When for political reasons the Mōri clan donated the Ōmori silver mine to the court and Muromachi Bakufu, the flow of silver into Kyoto commenced in earnest. During the late 1560s gold assumed the characteristics of a fully functional currency, a development that paved the way for silver too, by the end of that decade, to become a major form of currency for domestic transactions involving imported items. During the 1570s usage of silver expanded to include other types of transactions. The 1580s and 1590s witnessed its firm establishment as currency, thus laying the foundation for the role of Kyoto in the early modern sphere of silver currency usage.

Wakita Haruko. Women in Medieval Japan: Motherhood, Household Management and Sexuality. Translated by Alison Tokita. Clayton, Australia: Monash Asia Institute and Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2006.

Hsieh Ming-liang. Maoyi taoci yu wenhuashi 貿易陶瓷與文化史 (Trade Ceramics and Cultural History). Taipei: Yunchen Wenhua, 2005. Pp. 399 + 9 colour plates.