We talked about James Cahill’s. The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China. . New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 in class recently. You might be under the impression that Chinese artists (calligraphers, painters) lived only for Art and Truth, and disdained the material world. There was indeed a cult of the amateur artist that you can read about in the works of, well, James Cahill. He also wrote this book. Here is a quote from a friend on Zheng Min 鄭旼 The master immerses himself in old books, not caring whether it is cold or hot, living tranquilly, utterin ..read more

On 12 December, 1930,  in Shanghai’s International Settelement, a police officer C.D.S. (Chinese Detective Superintendent?) by the name of Wong requested permission to hold a birthday party for his 70 year old mother at a restaurant on Canton road (today Guangdong road) and send out some 70 invitations. Finding this in a police file in the fascinating collection of the Shanghai Munipal Police records (see this wiki on the SMP archive, with an index), my first thought was how sad it is that even police officers had to request permission to host a birthday party for one’s aging mother. How ..read more

Another book I got for the holidays is Tim Brook. The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age  and the Fall of Ming China. Princeton, 2023. Oddly enough, I read the whole thing from cover to cover, which is not always how I read academic books. The thing that makes this one such a joy is that it is both a collection of interesting stories and facts about the economic and ecological history of Ming China, and a discussion of price history and the role of the Little Ice Age in the fall of the Ming. The price history stuff is rather fragmentary, which makes sense since there are really no ser ..read more

In May, 1939, while the Japanese military controlled the Chinese parts of the city, an “urgent report” was sent to the Louza Police Station (Laozha 老閘) in the International Settlement: “An appeal for your searching investigation of ‘Electric Projecting Killing Machine’”. Supposed location of the said machine: It is said that in your Foreign Staff quarters of your Police Station. And it is further stated that the location of the said machine lies in the upper story east and north corner of the foreign staff square. Moreover it is heard that there are voices of more than eight or nine Chinese ..read more

At long last an issue is solved! Did an engraver creating banknotes for a Japanese puppet bank in the 1940s slip in a picture of Confucius making an obscene gesture to the Japanese? I  have asked this question before, and never gotten an answer. I still don’t have an answer, but it turns out that I do have a locus classicus. Paul Linebarger  (a.k.a. Cordwainer Smith) included this story and the picture of the note in his Psychological Warfare pg 141. Given his history in the Office of War Information, I would assume that this at least a period myth.   ..read more

I’ve been working on a website to help collect information related to documents in the (International Settlement’s) Shanghai Municipal police (SMP) materials. Since they are mostly in English, they are a wonderful collection for students to explore. This project builds on a resource page I have created here on Frog in a Well related to primary sources on Shanghai history, also with mostly students in mind. There are so many fascinating, puzzling, and tragic stories in the SMP collections. One I found while browsing today is N-1416, a February, 1942 document “British Subject Arrested By Japanes ..read more

Chen Hongshou 陳洪綬, 1599–1652 Great Ford on the Yellow River So, if the class makes1 I will be doing Late Imperial China in Spring. I was going to do a few weeks of basic stuff, do some Sanyan Stories, set up their research projects, and at the end do the Glory of The Qing and have them read Soulstealers.  This is a pretty social and cultural and economic class, and there are a lot of things I could put in between. What I was thinking of doing was picking a dozen or so possible topics and then letting them vote for the 6 or so they like best. Here are some early thoughts. Any other ideas ..read more

If you are looking for something fun and useful to teach in a Tokugawa class, I recommend Santo Kyoden  Playboy Grilled Edo Style from Kern, Adam L. Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyoshi of Edo Japan 2d Edition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019. This is actually a piece that has been anthologized a lot.  There is a version in Sumie Jones and Kenji Watanabe. An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750-1850. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013. (translation by Sumie Jones) and one in Shirane, Haruo. Early Modern Japanese Litera ..read more

In keeping with tradition, here is the Tokugawa group project for this semester. I probably could have made more categories, but this should be enough. The rest of the class is pretty traditional.Any advice welcome! Tokugawa-Project-.f23 ..read more

Major and Cook’s Ancient China: A history is now available as open access  via Routledge. This is good news, and got me to thinking about teaching and textbooks, a perennial topic. What is workable for assigning to students has evolved a lot over time. When I was an undergraduate (Gil-galad ruled in Gondolin, Elizabeth II was Queen of England etc. etc.) teachers had to have students buy books. Even things like packets of photocopies were a bit of a hassle, even before the copyright mess. Textbook publishers helped out by not “revising” their books every 15 minutes to kill the used book ma ..read more