This is a multi-author paintings which examines the cultural dimensions of the kinfolk among East Asia’s nice powers, China and Japan, in a interval of switch and turmoil, from the past due 19th century to the top of the second one international conflict. this era observed jap invasion of China, the career of China’s North-east (Manchuria) and Taiwan, and conflict among the 2 countries from 1937-1945; the scars of that conflict are nonetheless glaring in relatives among the 2 international locations today.

In their quest for modernity, the rulers and major thinkers of China and Japan outlined themselves in contradisctinction to the opposite, inspired either via conventional bonds of classical tradition and by way of the inflow of latest Western rules that flowed via Japan to China. The stories of highbrow and cultural awakening within the international locations have been inextricably associated, as our experiences of poetry, fiction, philosophy, theatre, and pop culture show. The chapters discover this technique of “transculturation” – the sharing and trade of rules and inventive expression – not just in Japan and China, yet within the higher area which Joshua Fogel has known as the “Sinosphere,” a space together with Korea and elements of Southeast Asia with a shared historical past of Confucian statecraft and values underpinned by way of the classical chinese language language.

The authors of the chapters, who contain proven senior teachers and more youthful students, and hire more than a few disciplines and methodologies, have been chosen by means of the editors for his or her services specifically points of this wealthy and intricate cultural dating. As for the editors: Richard King and Cody Poulton are students and translators of chinese language literature and jap theatre respectively, every one taking a ancient and comparative viewpoint to the research in their topic; Katsuhiko Endo is an highbrow historian facing either Japan and China.