The current translation project has sprung forth from an enduring fascination with the Vocabulario da lingoa de Iapam, the monumental Japanese-Portuguese dictionary produced by the Jesuit mission in Nagasaki in 1603 and 1604. The Vocabulario is the oldest and first dictionary of the Japanese classical language, written by people who lived there. My hope for this dictionary is to achieve, especially outside Japan and a small circle of linguistic experts, a broader recognition and wider usage as an unparalleled, lexicographical tool for the study of the Japanese language of the late

For a short bio of Professor Mote, see https://eas.princeton.edu/people/frederick-mote. Lecture abstract: The story of the swordsmith couple Ganjiang 干將 and Moye 莫耶 from the late Warring States period (fifth-century BCE) is so enduring that school children in the Chinese-speaking world can still recite its plot: Charged by the king to cast the deadliest sword, the couple became desperate when the metal would neither melt nor flow. They completed their task only when Moye leaped into the furnace and immolate herself. In this talk, we revisit this classic lore of

The Japan Foundation New York and the East Asian Studies Program at Princeton will cohost a bilingual roundtable featuring an acclaimed Korean-Japanese author and playwriter, Miri Yu. She will be in conversation with Ryo Morimoto at the Department of Anthropology and Atsuko Ueda at the Department of East Asian Studies. Yu will talk about and offer a short reading of the 2020 U.S. Book Award-winning novel “Tokyo Ueno Station” and her newest Korean-Japanese bilingual book, “The End of August,” while elaborating on the genesis of these novels and what it means to be a

This talk will introduce the provincial urban city of Ichijōdani, which peaked in the sixteenth century, a period usually associated primarily with political incohesion and endemic warfare. The archaeological evidence from Ichijōdani, particularly when put into conversation with excavated materials from other urban sites in Japan, illuminates the rhythms and logic of daily life for the many medieval Japanese who lived in urban agglomerates other than the capital city of Kyoto. I will also consider the destruction of this provincial city in 1573 and the meaning of that erasure for our

The Zuo zhuan is at once our most important source of textual knowledge about pre-imperial China and yet one whose level of factual historicity is most notoriously difficult to assess. On the one hand, it provides us with a vast array of internally coherent facts concerning the dates, locations, and other details of major events of the Chunqiu period, while, on the other, it is rife with elaborate speeches and narrative details that betray unmistakable signs of literary embellishment, coupled with moralizing assessments that show greater concern with the lessons to be drawn from

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This talk, based on the first chapter of my forthcoming book, focuses on how Yu Zhi (1809-1874), a firm believer in the socio-moral harm caused by vernacular literature, also built a strong case for how vernacular literature was also the most powerful tool available to further the Confucian civilizing mission of jiaohua 教化 (teaching and transformation) in the midst of empire-shattering crisis. In attempting to convince his peers and superiors of this radical claim, Yu drew attention to the historical failures of jiaohua, especially due to its

Reading a pre-modern concept into the modern era rather than reading modern notions back into the past, “China: From a Nationless State to a Nation Defined by State” explores how China and Chinese nationalism have been shaped by the multifaceted concept “guo.” A word for dynastic state in classical Chinese, this term came to be used for the modern nation-state since the 19th century through translation of international law and introduction of nationalism to China as mediated by Chinese overseas and transnational intellectuals. But “guo’s” lingering meaning of “regime”—or political dynasty

This talk explores how the entrance of women into the Shinto priesthood in 1946 precipitated the formation of a gendered priesthood.  While Jinja Honchō (the Association of Shinto Shrines) espouses women's essential difference from men and restricts women's participation in the priesthood through gender-segregated regulations and hiring practices to dissuade “improper” gender expression, female priests do not accept their rhetoric unconditionally.  Instead, female priests’ experience of gender is much more intersectional and contextually grounded, leading to them