The immediate purpose of this study is to describe an interesting and rather bizarre episode in nineteenth century Chinese-British relations. It concerns the so-called “Canton City Question” of the 1840's, and I hope to show that the traditional accounts of this incident may have been misleading and, in some cases, inaccurate.

The editor of Das Leben Buddhas: Ein Chinesisches Holzschnitt Fragment [Book Reviews, JAS, XXVIII/4 (August 1969) 839–40] should have been Martin Gimm, not Grimm, on page 839 and on page 664 of the Contents.

The author of Bibliographie du Shintō et des sectes Shintōïstes [Book Reviews, JAS, XXIX/1 (November 1969) 171] should have been listed in the Contents (p. 2) as Herbert, not Hebert.

Kuga Katsunan, regarded by his contemporaries as one of the three leading publicists of the eighteen nineties, was something of a hero to many young intellectuals who were attracted by his synthesis of liberalism and nationalism in the concept known as kokumin. This effort to construct a theoretical justification for fusing the two predominant forces of modern Japan in a union in which the individual and the state would be balanced in a condition of interdependence was Katsunan's contribution to Japan's early liberal tradition. Rejecting for himself the label “liberal” in its orthodox sense of advocacy of doctrinaire individualism, Kuga was no more willing to regard himself as a “nationalist” unless that term were so defined as to include a positive affirmation of the value of the individual. He sought to develop instead a theory within which liberalism and nationalism could coexist in almost perfect balance.

The economic relationship between East Asia and the European Union (EU) has been the subject of increasing academic attention. This has been heightened by politico-institutional endeavors to strengthen the weak link in the “Triad” (Europe, East Asia, North America—the world's dominant economic regions) since the early 1990s, including various bilateral initiatives such as the 1991 Japan–EU Declaration and the 1996 Korea–EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement, as well as the new interregional “dialogue framework” provided by the Asia–Europe Meetings (ASEM). The ASEM has wider geoeconomic significance in that it constitutes the last interregional Triadic arrangement to fall into place, the others being the Asia–Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum (augmenting the transpacific axis) and the New Transatlantic Agenda (transatlantic axis).