Tracing and evaluating the development in the history of Japanese culture and society that permits Japan's rapid and continuing modernization, Professor Yoda provides a new and original approach to the modernization of Japan. He starts from the assumption that Japan was better equipped for modernization because pre-modern Japan had already started to abandon Confucian influences. In his account of modernization during the Meiji-period he focuses on general patterns inherent in Japanese culture and society enabling Japan to integrate foreign elements without having to follow foreign models...

The Sino-Japanese war is one of the most important links in the development of the modern Far East. A Dutch Spy in China offers a selection from the reports written by a Dutch colonel at the request of the General Staff of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. After his retirement colonel De Fremery joined the group of Western military specialists who were helping Chiang Kai Shek in his efforts to modernize the Nationalist Chinese armed forces. Having acted in an advisory capacity for several years, De Fremery resigned but continued to live in China. Mounting anxiety in the East-Indies...

Around 1720 in Fez Aḥmad b. al-Mubārak al-Lamaṭī, a religious scholar, wrote down the words and teachings of the Sufi master ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh. Al-Dabbāgh shunned religious studies but, having reached illumination and met with the Prophet Muḥammad, he was able to explain any obscurities in the Qurʾān, ḥadīths and sayings of earlier Sufis. The resulting book, known as the Ibrīz, describes how al-Dabbāgh attained illumination and access to the Prophet, as well as his teachings about the...

Arabic texts dating from the 3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries by the following five authors are here presented: Abū Shaykh al-Burjulānī, Ibrāhīm al-Khuttalī, Ibn al-Naḥḥās, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rūdhabārī and Ibn Ḥamakān. The texts appear in transliteration along with a German translation. Their chains of transmission (isnāds) are analyzed and parallels with other authors are noted. The subject dealt with throughout is mystical piety. These highly interesting materials throw light on Islamic mysticism's early...