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too much uniformity in the cultural traditions we study and the need to take into fuller account differences in class, locality, ethnicity, and language. Focusing on China itself, she examines an early Qing-dynasty collection of folksongs from the southwest, titled Yuefeng xujiu 粵風續九 (Airs from the Yue Region, in continuation of the Chu Verses). This work represents an effort by Han literati to transcribe non-Han (Miao-Yao or Tai-Kadai) sounds by borrowing the Sinitic script as phonetic signs and then translating the meaning using the Sinitic script as logographs. In the process, they discovered that non-Han indigenous scripts often borrowed, varied, or simplified the Sinitic script. What are the implications of this development for Sinosphere studies?
Modernization and Knowledge Exchange
Richard John Lynn’s “Thought, Literature, and the Arts in Huang Zunxian’s 黃遵憲 Riben zashi shi 日本雜事詩 (Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects about Japan)” shows how Huang’s wide-ranging poems, which were composed between 1872 and 1890, together with paragraph-length prose notes appended to them, shed valuable light on Japan’s intellectual, religious, and cultural traditions, both popular and elite, during the Meiji period (1868–1912). Intimately acquainted with a number of highly educated Japanese bunjin 文人 (literati), who served as his informants, Huang had full access to the thought, literature, and arts of the early Meiji era by virtue of the ubiquitous kanji (Chinese character) culture prevailing at the time; consequently, he produced far more sophisticated analyses and critiques of Meiji culture than any Western observer could. Indeed, his perspectives and insights were unique for a non-Japanese visitor at that time. Huang did not flaunt any sense of Chinese cultural superiority but, on the contrary, found much in Japan to admire. In fact, he soon came to view the Meiji experiment as the best model for China to follow: modernization but with firm roots in traditional culture.
Joan Judge’s “Myriad Treasures and One Hundred Sciences: Vernacular Chinese and Encyclopedic Japanese Knowledge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” explores the role of popular (民間) encyclopedias in Sino-Japanese