The Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) claimed credit for bringing democracy to Japan during the Occupation. With some exceptions, the predominant result of SCAP's activities in economic (as distinguished from political) affairs, was just the opposite. SCAP imposed comprehensive economic controls on Japan and suppressed the free market system. Its intervention was especially repressive on the international plane.

Prior to mobilization for the Pacific War, Japan had never had a planned or controlled economy. As the occupation drew to a close, SCAP authorized the Diet to pass legislation for international economic controls to be employed by successor peacetime governments. An extensive Japanese government bureaucracy with a vested interest in the perpetuation of economic controls took charge of their implementation. The economic control laws, and the bureaucracy to which they gave rise, constituted an important part of SCAP's legacy to postwar Japan. This legacy became a primary conditioning factor in Japan's subsequent resistance to economic liberalization—a source of continuing friction in relations between the United States and Japan.

While all variants of Chinese religion assume the existence of one or more “souls” (ling-hun), very little has been said about what these “souls” are or how the concept varies from one religious tradition to another. This article explores the “soul” in the folk variant of Chinese religion, arguing that while the “soul” may be conceived as multiple in abstract, theoretical discussions, people actually behave as if the “soul” were a single entity. To show what this entity is, the contexts in which the “soul” can be described clearly, i.e., those contexts in which it is separated from the body, are enumerated. The image that emerges of the “soul” indicates that the Chinese concept ling-hun has a dual nature that incorporates the cultural aspect of being human and the individual personality.

The anthropologist Victor Turner has proposed a new theory of religious pilgrimage, holding that people on pilgrimage have entered into a social modality that contrasts sharply with the one they ordinarily experience at home; roles, ranks, and social hierarchy have all been left behind, and what Turner calls communitas has come into being en route. Studies in Japanese by Eiki Hoshino confirm the cross-cultural applicability of Turner's theory, and show that it most adequately explains an ancient and famous pilgrimage tradition in Japan, that to the eighty-eight sites on Shikoku. It especially helps us account for the unusual tensions between pilgrims and government during the Tokugawa era. These materials and analyses are used, then, to suggest that in his study of the Kataragama pilgrimage, Bryan Pfaffenberger has misinterpreted Turner's theory and has overlooked ways in which it does, in fact, explain the materials from Sri Lanka.

Why has communism flourished in some parts of Asia and not in others? Examining the case of Kerala, this paper argues that, in India at least, social dislocation is the crucial ingredient when added to poverty, landlessness, and literacy. In Kerala, the matrilineal family system of caste-Hindus and the attendant system of extreme disabilities enforced against the low castes collapsed in the early twentieth century. The social upheaval was greater than anywhere else in India. A déraciné generation of caste-Hindus was forced to seek remedies for-the disruption and misery that daily confronted it, while increasing numbers of low castes refused to submit to the restrictions that traditional society sought to impose. This situation of social turmoil, similar in some ways to that prevailing in China and Vietnam, contributed crucially to the establishment of Kerala's vigorous, broad-based Communist party in the late 1930s.

Ted Robert Gurr's hypotheses on political violence and James C. Scott's on patron-client relations are used to explain why modernizing policies of the Siamese government provoked rebellions in Chiang Mai in 1889 and in Phrae in 1902. The article suggests that the rebellions resulted from Siamese government attempts to increase its revenues and control in the North. In Chiang Mai and Phrae these attempts simultaneously threatened the livelihood and security of ordinary peasants, who formed the base of the rebellions, and groups outside the ranks of ordinary peasants, who provided leadership. Modifications of Gurr's and Scott's work are suggested which can be tested and further refined, or rejected, in the study of other rebellions.

The philosophical reflections on literary art produced in traditional China cannot be accurately described as literary criticism or literary theory. A scholar or writer set forth his ideas about the nature of literature in general, the value and function of imaginative writing in different genres, or the merits and flaws of specific works, but did not really criticize literature in the sense we do today, to evaluate it for those not trained to judge it. He did not claim such authority, and seldom supported his opinions with solid proofs or reasoned arguments, as literary critics are now expected to do. Having read through Ts'ao Chih's poetry, for example, Chung Hung could judge that it originated in the Kuo-feng, a class of Shih Ching poetry, and exclaim: “Alas, the status of Ts'ao Chih in literature is comparable to that of the Duke of Chou and Confucius in ethics!” but he could not expect his audience to agree with him automatically. He expressed his knowledge and taste, in other words, and the way of expressing them was so uniquely his own, so difficult for others to share, that it was what we may call a private revelation of his ideas. Chung Hung was, therefore, not offering any critical or theoretical defense of Ts'ao Chih's poetry, which does not need any promotion among the learned and does not mean anything to the uncultured. He expressed his personal enthusiasm for Ts'ao Chih's poetry, and so defined his taste and knowledge. He had added another dimension to his own personality, the dimension reflected in Ts'ao Chih's great poetry. He had, in other words, moved a step further toward the definition of his philosophy of life, which he could express in his comments and judgments on nature, on political and ethical institutions, and on literature as artistic rendition of life. What Chung Hung formulated was a private philosophy of literature; it was not literary criticism or theory in the modern sense.

This comment on Leon Hollerman's stimulating article on international economic controls adopted during the Occupation of Japan focuses on his thesis that a contradiction existed between SCAP's professed policy and its actions. After a brief discussion of some problems of Occupation research and the need to integrate the period more fully into Japanese and American history, the comment attempts not to challenge Hollerman's thesis but to explore it in other spheres of SCAP's activities. It is argued that the inconsistency noted by Hollerman ran through many Occupation reform policies, and that its origins are to be found in the sharp divergence of views among American policy makers in the summer of 1945 concerning pre-war Japan and Japanese militarism, and different assumptions about the extent of change necessary to achieve American objectives in the postwar period.

This paper, a study of the career of Yii Chi (1272–1348), explores the nature of Chinese literati support of Mongol rulers during the Yiian period. Yii Chi served as the leading apologist for the usurper Tugh Temiir (Wen-tsung, r. 1328 and 1329–1332). The most prominent court scholar of his time, Yii Chi devoted himself to the enhancement of Tugh Temiir's prestige, authority, and legitimacy. The paper explores Yii's activities in detail and speculates on his motivations in serving his Mongol emperor. In particular, it suggests that Yii Chi's ultimate aim in bolstering the usurper's claims to the throne, as well as in encouraging imperial support of Chinese cultural symbols and values, was to make Mongol rule more predictable and stable and thus to benefit the Mongols' Chinese subjects.

Since well before the symposium on Sinology and the Social Sciences, carried in this journal more than a decade ago, modernization theory has provided a key theoretical orientation for many Western students of China. Immanuel Wallerstein has launched a major frontal attack on modernization theory and has proposed an alternative of considerable interest to those of us studying late imperial and modern China. Indeed, “Wallersteinism” is becoming something of a major academic growth industry. Wallerstein's perspective is not without problems, but his views deserve fuller exposure in the China field because of their implications for the study of change in Chinese society.

With rare exceptions, Asian historians in the United States are practicing teachers. Through grim necessity, many of us teach courses in fields other than Asia. Most of us teach survey courses in Asian history, usually to large enrollments. Some of us teach advanced undergraduate courses, usually to smaller enrollments.

As researchers, we are a highly trained and professionally self-conscious group; but as teachers? When did we last examine carefully our own aims and methods? When did we last examine carefully a colleague's syllabus? When did we last alter drastically our own syllabuses? The following essay is an attempt to stimulate discussion of the role of advanced courses in Asian history at the undergraduate level.

A number of English-language scholarly studies of medieval Japanese institutional history have appeared in print in the past few years. This seems a fitting time to appraise their contribution to our understanding of Japanese history from late Heian through the Muromachi period, ca. A.D. 1100 to 1600. I do not intend to evaluate the works as individual monographs, but rather to consider their larger cumulative historiographical significance. After summarizing the main interpretive constructs used by scholars writing in English I will discuss ways in which the recent works have and have not enriched these constructs or suggested helpful new ones.