Between 2012 and 2014 we posted a number of articles on contemporary affairs without giving them volume and issue numbers or dates. Often the date can be determined from internal evidence in the article, but sometimes not. We have decided retrospectively to list all of them as Volume 10, Issue 54 with a date of 2012 with the understanding that all were published between 2012 and 2014.

スティーブン・ローチ（Stephen Roach）は、日本で起きた3月11日の地震が世界経済に与える影響について、のんびり構えていてはいけないと警告する。彼が批判する視点、つまり世界経済における近年の日本経済の地位低下――世界における輸出とGDPで日本がシェアを落としていることや中国の台頭、そして成長が見込まれる重要な工業製品のなかで日本でしか生産できないものが少ない――にもとづく「狭い視点」の概要を説明したのち、ローチはこの観点から導かれる次のような「表面的な」結論を受け入れるべきでないとする。彼が批判する結論とは、日本は「すでに重要な役割を果たさなくなっており」、東日本大震災とその余波が世界経済にもたらす混乱は「一時的なもの」で「小さい」というものだ。

Zhou Fengwu, renowned scholar and Taiwan's foremost paleographer, passed away at the age of sixty-nine.

This article argues that the core value of “humanity” (ren 仁) in the Confucian tradition may serve as a resource for global ethics in the 21st century. After presenting three major questions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, it proposes a “reconciliation” between Confucian and Western traditions for a solution to the challenges of the pandemic. Confucian “humanity”, based on the idea of interpenetration between what is inside and what is outside, may pave the way to a true “reconciliation” in our era.

Various problems can be found in the article by J. Mark Ramseyer (hereinafter, the article) to the extent that its content is hardly worthy of a serious refutation from an academic point of view. Although it is not clear whether it is intentional or simply a matter of negligence, there are many misrepresentations of facts. We should not underestimate the significance of the fact that such papers are being accepted in the academic world. Bearing this in mind, I will discuss the following three points related to modern Japanese history, my field of specialization:

1. 1) errors concerning the formation of modern Buraku,

2. 2) errors in the prejudicial equating of Buraku people with criminals, and

3. 3) errors concerning the Levelers' movement.

The recently published Tsinghua University bamboo manuscript *Wu ji 五紀 presents a manuscript copy that is riddled with curious irregularities, omissions, and mistakes in its text, punctuation, and the preparation of the slips. Only some of these mistakes were corrected by a proofreader, others reveal errors of misunderstanding by the scribe and/or punctuator. Furthermore, paratext that was included in a previous instantiation of the text was only preserved in paratextual notes in the present copy. An analysis of these aspects of the manuscript helps shed light on its potential status as a source and raises questions about the relationship between unearthed and transmitted texts more generally.

This article inquires into the ideological circumstances behind Wang Mang's 王莽 seizure of power, to examine how he built legitimacy at every stage of his career, by establishing a political and symbolic continuum between the role of the minister and that of the sovereign, rather than suddenly wresting power from the Liu clan. His classical learning in general and his references to Zhougong 周公 in particular were fundamental to the success of the process, which took place in three important stages: first, the offering of a white pheasant to the court; second, the bestowal of “Nine Conferrals” 九錫, and third, the composition of “Wang Mang's declaration” 莽誥. However, although the Classics constituted common references for Wang Mang and the scholars supporting him, the Classics were also used by some opponents objecting to the concentration of power in the hands of Wang Mang.

With the establishment of the treaty ports in 1842, contact between China and the Western world intensified. In Shanghai, the most extensive exchange of knowledge and ideas took place between the missionaries of the London Missionary Society and their Chinese assistants. By working and translating for the missionaries, these traditionally educated men gained intimate insights into the West and Western learning and established close personal relationships with the missionaries. But in the process, they also became outcasts, as working for Westerners was viewed critically by their contemporaries. This article sets out to analyse the way in which Jiang Dunfu 蔣敦復 (1808–1867) and Wang Tao 王韜 (1828–1897) processed and accommodated these cosmopolitan experiences in Shanghai in their prose autobiographies.

This study traces the origins and development of the concept of Li 理 (Pattern) in early Chinese Cosmology, locating its foundation in the root metaphor derived from the natural lines or veins along which a block of jade can be split by a skilled artisan. From this relatively concrete image, li comes to eventually represent in Daoist cosmology the more abstract quality of the natural patterns or structures within the universe along which all phenomena move and interact with one another without the interference of human beings. After examining how early Confucian works emphasize the more abstract and derivative qualities of order and structure, we see that the likely Yangist authors in the Lüshi chunqiu return to the original metaphor of veins in jade but, instead, apply this to the veins through which the qi circulates through the human body.

We then see how this metaphor is expanded beyond the human body in the classical Daoist texts to come to represent the natural guidelines both within all phenomena and those that guide their movements within the cosmos. Within phenomena these include such varied things as the structures for the generation and expression of emotions within human beings as well as the natural lines along which the butcher's chopper passes in order to cleave oxen. In Daoist inner cultivation literature it is these patterns with which sages accord so that their spontaneous actions are completely in harmony with the greater forces of the cosmos. Only after long practice of the apophatic contemplative methods that include concentrating on one breathing and emptying out the normal contents of consciousness can the sage be able to accomplish this goal of “taking no action yet leaving nothing undone.” Thus the concept of li as these natural guidelines comes to serve as an explanation for why this classical Daoist dictum is effective in the world.

Finally, the Huainanzi contains the most sophisticated and sustained usages of the concept of li as the natural patterns and guidelines in the cosmos arguing that complying with them is the key to a genuinely contented life.

The English language freely borrows words from many languages; this is a process which has been well documented by several studies, particularly in the field of contact linguistics. However, an investigation into the massive influence that the widespread, popular, and global use of the Internet has had on the development of language calls for consistent and frequent empirical enquiry. The rapid growth in the number and diversity of Internet users from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and the increasing popularity and influence of Asian cultures and languages on the English language, is currently occurring at an unprecedented level. This study employs several data collection methods to demonstrate the arbitrary transnational journey of a few selected culinary terms that showcase the flexible adaptation and creation processes through which these new additions to the English language have passed. We do this by using two common culinary terms, both of which have been adapted to describe Asian dishes, as an example.

The Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project was a five-year state-sponsored project, carried out between 1995–2000, to determine an absolute chronology of the Western Zhou dynasty and approximate chronologies of the Xia and Shang dynasties. At the end of the five years, the Project issued a provisional report entitled Report on the 1996–2000 Provisional Results of the Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project: Brief Edition detailing its results. A promised full report was finally published in 2022: Report on the Xia-Shang Zhou Chronology Project. Although numerous discoveries in the more than twenty years between the publications of the Brief Edition and the Report have revealed that the Project's absolute chronology of the Western Zhou is fundamentally flawed, and some of the problems are acknowledged by the Report, still the Report maintains the Project's chronology without any correction. In the review, I present four of these discoveries, from four different periods of the Western Zhou, discussing their implications for the Project's chronology. I conclude with a call for some sort of authoritative statement acknowledging the errors in the report.