Few notions are so widely held among students of Japanese economic history as the view that the land tax during the Tokugawa period was cruelly oppressive. It is thought to have left the peasantry no significant surplus after production costs, and moreover to have become heavier as time passed. I propose in this paper to examine certain evidence bearing on this view, which strongly influences the interpretation of modern Japanese history.

Early discussions of the process of industrialization in underdeveloped countries were frequently concerned with what was called “impact,” presumably viewing the intrusion of the factory into a non-industrial society as a sort of shock or disruptive influence which tended to break down the older social system. Moreover, the nature of the shock and some of its necessary consequences were generally conceived in the Western model. To be sure, allowances were made for some features of the indigenous society such as the lack of skill and education of the labor force, entrenched stratification systems, the extended family, and, in general, the village nexus. This approach focuses upon the surrounding society in which the factory is an irresistible catalyst and is either concerned with transitional social problems or with long-term changes such as declining fertility, increasing standards of living, and the displacement of traditional social organization. Most of the data for the “impact” approach have been drawn from cases where the greatest contrasts occur–the most rural elements of the population caught up in large extractive industries or repetitive machine operations; they have confounded the effects of rapid, slum-producing urbanization with the factory situation itself; they have dealt with relatively new factories that have not as yet had time to become imbedded in the local institutional framework; and finally, they have selected situations in which the area was eidier exclusively or predominantly industrial.

The fourth of January 1958 was significant in Burma for two reasons; it marked the tenth anniversary of the nation's independence and it also denoted the end of the constitutional limitation on the right of a state to secede from the Union. While the anniversary of independence caused rejoicing throughout the country, the right of secession caused many of the leaders to worry and wonder whether or not this date would become significant as the beginning of the breakup of the Union. Since the right of secession is a unique right, not found in any other modern federal constitution save that of the U.S.S.R., it is useful to examine the background and the contemporary situation in order to see what opportunities there are for a state to secede from the Union of Burma, and what limitations exist to keep it from exercising its right.

On the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Association for Asian Studies, it is appropriate that we should pause to analyze both the role which Asian studies should play in our institutions of higher learning and also the responsibilities which we as individuals and as a learned society have in the challenge which confronts contemporary American education. On April 2, 1948, about two hundred specialists on Asia gathered at Columbia University to complete the organization of a new scholarly, non-political, non-profit, professional association and to elect Dr. Arthur W. Hummel as the first President of the Far Eastern Association. In this decade, we have been singularly fortunate in the widespread interest and support which we have received. Fortunately, other newly established groups having scholarly interest in Asia have joined us, and last year the name was officially changed to signify better the area of our interest. As the Association of Asian Studies, we have a bright future ahead if we are willing to rise to the challenge that is before us.

Though relatively less known in the West than his contemporary, T'ao Yüan-ming, Hsieh Ling-yüna (385–433) was in his own generation and for some centuries thereafter the most popular poet of the age. Thirty-two of his shorter poems were included in the Wen-hsüan (compiled about 530), while T'ao is represented there by only eight pieces and Yen Yen-chihb, another contemporary whose name is often coupled with Hsieh's, by nineteen. His fame seems to have rested largely on his ability to depict the natural beauties of the Chekiang mountains which he loved, and to evoke in his readers the moods which they inspired in him. In fact he is counted by some to be the originator of the type of “landscape poetry” which was later so successfully exemplified by poets like Wang Wei (699–759) and Liu Tsung-yüan (773–819). There can be no doubt also that the art of landscape painting, which likewise reached its first flowering with Wang Wei, had its roots in the same soil that produced the landscape poetry of Hsieh Ling-yün.

The Confucian system of thought, society, and government has a long JL history in Korea. Knowledge of some of its forms can be traced in the earliest days of our real knowledge of the peninsula. For many centuries, its influence on Korea was continuous but not pervasive. With the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, its influence on government and society began to be decisive and, especially from the sixteenth century on, it dominated almost completely the thought and philosophy of the peninsula, continuing to do so until the opening of the present century. So closely were Confucianism and Korea intertwined during this latter long period, that Korean history cannot be understood without Confucianism while the study of Confucianism itself will be greatly enriched by resort to its Korean experience.

The historian and the philologist who study the written record of China's past in different ways and to different ends both face the problem of intractable Chinese texts. The mutual sympathy that this engenders is not unmixed with complacent condescension on the part of each toward the way the other goes about solving questions that are the concern of both, especially in the realm of translation. The historian's habit of translating the names of offices functionally (Imperial Chancery rather than Sanctum of Penetralian Scriptures for chung-shu sheng) and of simply not translating such terms as era names (nien-hao) outrages spirited philologues, who declare that the characters of which these era names are composed are words with “very transparent meanings” which can and should be captured in translation. Some years ago, having been impressed with this argument, I decided to try to translate the name of an era I was studying. What happened was that my search led me to a philologically sound, but, as it turned out, entirely erroneous interpretation.