Compared with the other countries of Southeast Asia, the Western-language historiography of Thailand is meagre indeed. Western sources have furthered scholarship considerably, but historical writing on Thailand will remain unbalanced until Thai materials have been fully exploited. Some beginning has been made on this work by both Thai and Western scholars, but as yet this is only a beginning.

Editor's Note

The following five papers, presented as a panel on March 22,1964, at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington, D. C., are reproduced here at slightly greater length than in their original versions. The panel was organized by G. W. Skinner with the prior understanding that these somewhat longer versions would be prepared for publication in the Journal. The papers were, however, written independently of one another and have not been modified as a result of the discussion. It is clear that several of them use the term Sinology somewhat differently, but that in balance there is more agreement among the authors than might ideally have been planned in order to stimulate the kind of discussion and exchange which a panel implies. There was, however, vigorous discussion from the floor, of which the comments by Benjamin Schwartz, printed immediately following the papers in this issue, are a sample. We will publish in the November issue comments from two others, who will be able to base their remarks on the present printed papers. Others who may wish to send in comments for publication are invited to address them to the Editor.

Kōtoku Shūsui is generally known as a socialist and anarchist who participated in the plot against the life of the Meiji emperor in 1910 and was executed for the crime of “high treason” the following year. Such an individual hardly strikes one as a nationalist. Why deal with him on a panel that proposes to address itself to the question of nationalism? And yet, contrary to surface appearance, Kōtoku was and remained a nationalist. But his image of nationalism, and the role that this force should play in the lives of the Japanese people differed considerably from that of the Meiji leadership. It is to this image, to how it was derived, and to how it was sustained that this paper is addressed.

Japanese complicity in the death of Marshal Chang Tso-lin on June 4, 1928, by an explosion under his railway car on the Peiplng-Mukden Railway, has long been taken for granted. In the absence of a full explanation of what happened near Mukden as well as what happened, in consequence, in political circles in Japan, myth and conjecture have obscured the real significance of the episode. An examination of the record makes it possible to show that it was not another manifestation of the positive policy of the Tanaka cabinet but that it was the first successful test of strength between the radical wing centered in young officers in the Kwantung Army, with civilian sympathizers in Japan, and the more responsible elements of the Japanese government, both civilian and military. Strong disciplinary action by the latter group at this point, perhaps, could have checked a chain of events that eventually led to the ascendency to power of the radical faction and the realization of some of its foreign and domestic programs. The failure to punish by established disciplinary procedures may well have been a fateful decision in Japanese history.