In the summer of 1921, the Communist world was preparing for the first major conference of Far Eastern peoples. This conference was originally scheduled for Irkutsk in the late summer or early fall of that year. It was intended as a sequel to the Baku Conference of September 1920, which had been attended mainly by delegates from the Middle East. But it was also planned as the Soviet answer to the Washington Conference, as is well known. Competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for the support of the Asian people can be dated from this time, although initially Moscow was much more aware of this fact than Washington.

Dr. Hermann Lautensach has made an outstanding contribution to the study of Korea. Since his publications are mainly in German geographical periodicals, they may have escaped the attention of many Korean and American scholars.

Dr. Lautensach is one of the best trained German geographers. His reputation was established by his classic work on Portugal. He became closely associated with German geopoliticians and wrote articles for the Zeitschrift für geopolitik. He was one of the authors with Haushofer, Obst and Maull of the Bausteine zar geopolitik (Berlin: Kurt Vonwinckel Vertag., 1928).

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.

The year 1964 marked the centenary of the suppression of the Taiping Revolution, China's largest-scale revolution up to that time, and of the death of one of its greatest heroes, the Taiping's Loyal Prince, Li Hsiu-chʻeng. The Taiping movement has ever since been held in respectful esteem by Chinese revolutionaries. Sun Yat-sen considered himself the “spiritual” successor to the leader of the defeated movement. The Communists too maintain a respectful sympathy for die Taipings, whom they regard more or less as important forerunners of their own revolution. This does not mean that Communist historians, when writing from a Marxist-disciplined perspective, fail to point out the revolutionary shortcomings of the Taipings. But, everything considered, the movement and its principal leaders remain objects of considerable historical respect.

I am honored to comment on Engseng Ho's provocative essay through the lens of my own research on inter-Asian connections and mobilities in and beyond Asia. The abstract for the panel, entitled “The Flow of Migration beyond the State,” stated that “much scholarship on Asia is framed by organizational schemes that engage in spatial relationships and contrasts” (e.g., cores and peripheries, uplands and lowlands, mainland and islands) and that the idea of the “nation as a bordered entity” cross-cuts and transforms such common binaries. The panel's abstract also stated that the panel's goal was to “interrogate these borders” and to “rethink these schemes” and forge new understandings about nations, regions, and Asia by addressing questions such as: What happens when we decenter the state? What concepts of society capture external relations and engagements? What concepts apart from class, status, race, and gender will help us get a better understanding of transregional phenomena?