A cutting-edge collection exploring identity-making in East Asia
This is an interdisciplinary study of the cultural politics of nationalism and national identities in modern East Asia. Combining theoretical insights with empirical research, it explores the cultural dimensions of nationhood and identity-making in China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The essays address issues ranging from the complex relations between popular culture and national consciousness to the representation of ethnic/racial identity and gendered discourse on nationalism. The cutting-edge research on the...

"A very useful book on a topic of growing importance and interest. Brokaw's introduction is one of the most valuable and best-written prefaces to an edited volume that I have encountered in some time."--Kent Guy, author of "The Emperor's Four Treasures

This path-breaking book argues that printing-both with woodblocks and with movable type-exerted a profound influence on Chinese society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

When did China make the decisive turn from tradition to modernity? For decades, the received wisdom would have pointed to the May Fourth movement, with its titanic battles between the champions of iconoclasm and the traditionalists, and its shift to more populist forms of politics. A growing body of recent research has, however, called into question how decisive the turn was, when it happened, and what relation the resulting modernity bore to the agendas of people who might have considered themselves representatives of such an iconoclastic movement. Having thus explicitly or implicitly...