READING QUESTIONS FOR EAST 333 WINTER 2014
1. According to Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (p. 1-17, 19-23):
a. What influence has the sea had on Japan?
b. What is distinctive about Japanese mythology?
c. What were Japan’s racial and linguistic origins?
d. Describe the state formation of early Japan.
2. According to Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (p. 25-43):
a. What influence did the writing system and Confucian values imported from
China have on early Japan?
b. What motivated the Taika Reforms and what were their main components?
c. Describe the presence of Buddhism in Nara during this period.
d. Describe the historical reliability and manifestation of contemporary (i.e., of the
period the literature was produced) Japanese attitudes of early native Japanese
literature Kojiki, Nihongi, and Man'yōshū.
3. According to Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (p. 17-19 [Shinto],
27-28, 35-38, 52-54, 74-82, 183-84 [Buddhism])
a. What is the religious and moral significance of purity in Shinto beliefs?
b. How was the concept of Japan as a nation promoted in Buddhism?
c. In what ways did Pure Land Buddhism appeal to the ordinary Japanese?
d. In Zen Buddhism, what is enlightenment and how is it achieved?
4. According to Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (p. 54-59, 61-74,
92-96, 97-98,143-144)
a. What were the shoen? How did their existence demonstrate the weakness of
the central government?
b. How did local military forces come to dominate Japan's central government?
c. Describe the contradictions in the ethos of the warriors.
d. Why and how did the image of the samurai shift in the Tokugawa period?
5. According to Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (p. 46-52, 82-84,
102-07, 120-122, 171-82)
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a. Why is The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki considered to be one of the great
works of world literature?
b. How did the art of the Kamakura period reflect the realistic outlook of the
samurai?
c. Why does the author say that Zen influence on the art of the Ashikaga period
"moulded the aesthetic taste of the Japanese and established standards of excellence
for later generations to emulate" (102)? Give two examples.
d. What accounts for the highly creative artistic activities of Tokugawa townsmen?
6. According to Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (p. 136-143, 144-53,
157-71, 182-83)
a. What means did the Tokugawa Shogunate employ to ensure that no other
samurai could challenge them?
b. Describe the difficulty of peasant life in the Tokugawa.
c. What needs did Confucianism, particularly the Chu Hsi school, meet in
Tokugawa Japan?
d. What was National Learning and how did it contribute to Japanese
nationalism?
7. According to Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey (p. 122-29, 189-193,
202-208, 209-14)
a. Describe the early history of Christianity in Japan.
b. What economic problems confronted the daimyō and the samurai in the late
Tokugawa and how did they deal with them?
c. Characterize the schools of heterodox thought that were popular in the late
Tokugawa.
d. What were the immediate effects of Japan having to submit to Commodore
Perry's demands to open the country to trade and diplomatic relations?
8. According to Edwin Reischauer, "Early Korea: The Emergence of a Chinese Type
State," East Asia: Tradition and Transformation (p. 277-99, on Blackboard)
a. Describe the borrowing from China that took place in early Korea.
b. Why wasn't a unified and autonomous state formed in Korea until 668?
c. Describe the Koryŏ state that existed on the Korean peninsula from 918 to
1392.
d. What invasions did early Korea suffer?
9. According to Edwin Reischauer, "Yi Dynasty: A Model Confucian Society," East Asia:
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Tradition and Transformation (p. 300-323, on Blackboard)
a. Who were the yangban? How did they come to hold power in Korea?
b. What was Han'gul? Why was it not extensively utilized until after 1945?
c. In what ways did Korea remain a very different country from China despite its
Confucian scholarship and Chinese political institutions?
d. Why did a comparable stability of institutions produce a much higher degree of
cultural stagnation and political immobility in Korea than it did in China?
10. According to John K. Fairbank, "Vietnam: A Variant of the Chinese Pattern," East
Asia: Tradition and Transformation, (p. 258-76, on Blackboard)
a. Describe what Fairbank means when he writes "There could be no more
striking demonstration of the Chinese impulse to stay at home at the center of civilization
in the Middle Kingdom." (p. 259)
b. What two important results did the Chinese conquest of North Vietnam in the
second century B.C.E. have?
c. What important differences in substance existed between China and Vietnam
behind the official façade of Chinese structures and terminology?
d. Describe the events that Fairbank refers to when he writes "The Chinese
Pattern Challenged and Reaffirmed." (p. 270)
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