This study presents a transcultural mapping of department stores in modern East Asia from a socio-political perspective centered on colonialism and nationalism. Department stores in the region exhibited a coeval culture, as suggested by the common use of the term “hyakka/baihuo/baekhwa.” While focusing on the common impact of Japanese colonialism, this study examines mainly Mitsukoshi in Tokyo; Wing On and Sincere in Shanghai; and Mitsukoshi, Minakai, and Hwashin in Seoul. It consists of four parts. The first part traces the translingual-scape of “hyakka” and shows how the modern universalism celebrated in the term, in reality, contributed to shaping an exclusive social group. The second part expands the etymological survey of “hyakka” into the physical dimension and analyzes items for sale at department stores, select lifestyles, and social group formations. The third part illuminates the patriarchal, militaristic managerial styles that developed under the influence of Japanese imperialism. The last part delves into Japanese department stores' colonial expansion within East Asia. This study employs a transcultural methodology to highlight multidimensional connections and coeval localities as well as differences, though it is often differences that are highlighted by research that involves straightforward country comparisons.

Using both long forgotten and newly available steles from North China, this article looks at these ancient monuments to explore the rise and evolution of an epigraphic practice under Jurchen and Mongol rules (1127–1368). In particular it looks at steles erected to record genealogical information (called xianyingbei in general) in north China during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, which was a new usage for the stele in the area. The article's main aim is to demonstrate how cultural integration among different social strata was triggered by the invasions of the Jurchen and Mongol conquerors, which in turn led to the formation of a new and legitimate way to compile family genealogies in north China.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, people in north China took advantage of a Mongol policy that gave Buddhist officials a status equivalent to what civil officials enjoyed, as a strategy for family advancement. Monk Zhang Zhiyu and his family provide a case study of an emerging influential Buddhist order based at Mount Wutai that connected the Yuan regime with local communities through the kinship ties of prominent monks. Within this Buddhist order, powerful monks like Zhiyu used their prestigious positions in the clerical world to help the upward social mobility of their lay families, displaying a distinctive pattern of interpenetration between Buddhism and family. This new pattern also fit the way that northern Chinese families used Buddhist structures such as Zunsheng Dhāranῑ pillars and private Buddhist chapels to record their genealogies and consolidate kinship ties.

One early spring afternoon in 1982 I happened to find myself ambling along Fuzhou Road in Shanghai and coming by chance upon a small unattractive bookstore. The brown paint on its outer doors was peeling, the stucco surface of its exterior needed a good scrubbing, and more than a few tiles on its floor were broken. If then no different in appearance from the other bookstores I had earlier visited along this famous Shanghai book street, this store nonetheless boasted a strikingly different kind of stock: it specialized in selling second-hand Western books. While novels abounded on its shelves, the pre-war variety in hardback and the more recent in paperback, one thick non-fiction volume caught my eye. Entitled Domesday Book and Beyond, this classic 1887 treatment of early English history by the great English legal historian Frederic W. Maitland had long been on my reading list. Somehow a copy of it had ended up in this unpromising bookshop. When I opened the virtually virgin pages of this copy and noticed that it could be bought for a proverbial song, I readily leapt to the temptation and acquired it with delight.