This article provides an in-depth analysis of the reasons for which insane individuals who had committed patricide were systematically sentenced to dismemberment (lingchi 凌遲) under the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the most severe form of capital punishment that could be called for in the state's administrative and penal Code. This extreme harshness ran contrary to several “theoretical” foundations of Chinese traditional law, first and foremost the principle of criminal intent. Through the study of such criminal cases, and others legally affiliated to patricide, spanning the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, it underlines the importance of the relationship between a parent and his child, which was prominent in China's moral and cultural context at the time. It also stresses the role of political issues related to the legitimacy of the imperial state and to the upholding of the legality of its judicial process. Even though legal tools existed in the Qing Code, which would have allowed for a more lenient approach, and notwithstanding the Qing authorities' ongoing effort at defining specific legal procedures for insane homicides, lingchi was systematically applied to insane patricides until the early twentieth century, when the far-reaching legal reforms implemented during the last years of the imperial regime progressively opened the way for the recognition of the legal irresponsibility of insane individuals.

2010 saw the millennial celebration of Thăng Long/Hà Nội as capital of an independent Vietnam, and archaeology has tended to confirm this strong sense of continuity. Yet study of written texts shows us how political power, administrative style, and religious belief have shaped the city and how a cyclical pattern in this history has appeared twice and may be in its third time. In this pattern, each cycle saw the city begin as the provincial capital of an external power before becoming capital of an independent Vietnamese state. Then a local base draws power to itself and displaces Thăng Long, eventually dismantling it, before a new external power enters and begins the cycle anew. In this way the Tang and Ming dynasties of China and the French made the site their local administrative center. Lý Công Uẩn, Lê Lợi, and Hồ Chí Minh in succession drove them out and established Thăng Long/Hà Nội as their capital, bringing Buddhism, Confucianism, and Socialism to it. But first the Trần and Hồ, then the Mạc, Trịnh, and Nguyễn, shared power with, and eventually displaced, the Royal City. Will it happen again?

Based on published sources as well as information gathered through observations and interviews, this article intends to provide a general account of the adaptation of the Vietnamese refugees in China since the late 1970s. The description and analysis are focused on three aspects of the social-political life of this community, namely, its initial resettlement, its subsequent division, dispersion and stratification, and the process, problems and prospects of its assimilation. The article argues that whereas Western countries adopted the International Refugee Regime – primarily a European product – in resettling the Vietnamese refugees, China's resettlement policies reflected her experience in handling the returned overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. Although the relocation temporarily reduced all migrants to refugees, the diverse nature of the migrant community, the different local conditions in China, as well as China's official policies contributed to the reemergence of social-economic stratification among the migrants, and this was accompanied by their geographic dispersion. Though assimilation has been going on ever since they entered China, the migrants have managed to maintain their group identity, which, however, is not sustainable.

The present article explores health as a factor in the understanding of Edo-period male sexuality. This notion was systematically propagated by a genre of health guides on ‘Nurturing Life’, which came to circulate widely at the time. Sexuality was seen as an integral element of a healthy life-style in these didactic texts, which aimed to instruct people on how to live a long life unharmed by disease. In order to achieve this goal, the health-seeker was to strictly control his everyday activities, including eating, drinking alcohol, sleeping – or sexual intercourse. By consequence, a certain kind of sexual behaviour emerged from these works as ‘healthy’, while deviations from the prescribed standards are medicalized away as harmful to the body, in extreme cases even fatal. At the same time, bodily health is presented as inextricably bound up with moral ‘health’. Thus, the rhetoric of control imposed on the body was extended from the purely medical to the moral, making the health-seeking individual at the same time a good (male) subject and model head of household within an ideal Confucian-inspired society. The ‘healthy’ sexuality of writings on Nurturing Life therefore has to be situated at the crossroads of medical beliefs and moral parameters.

This article explores the role of Pan-Asian ideology in Japanese imperialism and how it is reflected in literary texts produced in Manchukuo. Through the analysis of Chinese and Japanese literary works this study examines the construction of ethnic identities and difference which was central to both Pan-Asian discourse and Manchukuo national identity. In both types of works the Japanese and Chinese characters use the concept of ethnicity or culture to reveal different realities of Manchukuo's ethnic politics. While the insoluble separation between the Japanese and the Chinese in Ushijima Haruko's “A Man Called Shuku” betrays the ethnic harmony proclaimed by the Manchukuo regime, Gu Ding's “A New Life” suggests a possibility of true harmony between the two ethnicities. Where the Japanese vice governor's distrust of his Chinese subordinate in Ushijima's story reflects the author's own fear and guilt about her privileged social position, the Chinese protagonist in Gu's story emphasizes the importance of Japanese modern medicine during a plague outbreak as well as his importance as a mediator between the colonizer and his countrymen in order to justify the author's association with Japanese imperialism.

After the Kuomintang of China (KMT) succeeded the Japanese government in Taiwan in 1945, officials continued to apply the then current method of categorizing Taiwanese aborigines into nine groups. However, since the 1980s, many aboriginal groups have launched Name Rectification Campaigns calling for “independence” from their originally designated groups.

Dutch records in the seventeenth century identify the Sakizaya as a distinct people, different from the Amis. The decline of the Sakizaya was initiated in 1878 by the Jia-Li-Wan event. After defeat by Qing soldiers, the Sakizayas obscured their identities by mixing themselves among the Amis. By the time that the Japanese began their ethnographic research in the early twentieth century, the Sakizayas had become relatively “Amis-ized,” and were regarded as a sub-branch of the Amis for both academic and official purposes. The Sakizaya's new ethnic group movement was initiated in 1990. Seventeen years later, on January 17, 2007, the Sakizaya gained official recognition as an independent aboriginal group.

This article intends to investigate the strategies of movement activists. It not only examines the concept of cultural construction, but also explains why this concept is so important in understanding the case of the Sakizaya.

Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, a distinguished economic historian, and R. Bin Wong, an eminent world historian and specialist on imperial China, have collaborated in this effort to shed light on the causes of the eighteenth-century economic divergence of China and Europe. This book has many of the virtues one would expect from such a collaboration – keen insights into comparative history, explicit models of economic relationships, and novel ideas regarding causation. Yet it also has some defects that reflect this combination: at some points in their argument, the logic of models seems to outweigh historical facts. At other points, details of history that don't fit the models, such as the history of productivity gains in agriculture in imperial China, are neglected. I shall start with the virtues of their arguments, and then discuss some particulars that lead me to question their view.

Upon arriving at Denpasar airport in June 2000, I was greeted by an Australian friend who had recently married a Balinese man. The latter, within moments of our meeting for the first time, challenged me about my having been a UN accredited observer of the independence plebiscite in East Timor some ten months earlier. His was an impassioned if, in my view, not terribly well informed view of the torturous relationship between the former Portuguese colony and the Jakarta-based Indonesian government. My interlocutor insisted that East Timor's future ought to have remained an entirely Indonesian matter and that foreign involvement simply demonstrated the determination of the international community to break up Indonesia. The discussion proceeded as we made our way across the airport car park, and became even more heated when I suggested that it was important not just to consider former President Habibie's motivations for offering a plebiscite but also the record of Suharto's government in laying the ground for an East Timorese departure. Perhaps rather tactlessly, I suggested to my new acquaintance that he reflect upon the dreadful human rights record of the Indonesian military in East Timor. If a response was what I was seeking, I certainly found one. Wayan flashed back at me that he knew with certainty tales of human rights abuses were a lie concocted by hostile countries because the East Timorese had made clear their wish to remain part of Indonesia. Upon further pressing, he argued that the fact East Timorese school children sang the same songs as children from all over the archipelago was evidence of their love for Indonesia and their desire to remain integrated. I was somewhat nonplussed with this turn in discussion and rather unsure as to how to proceed. Could he, I wondered, really believe something that seemed so palpably absurd?