ABSTRACT. The Russian military full scale aggression in February 2022 disrupted social, economic and environmental progress of Ukraine on the way to development and sustainable path. The biggest implications are the lives forever lost of both adults and children, studies and research interrupted, destroyed infrastructure, and environmental disasters; it is without doubt the biggest obstacle to the development of Ukraine for many years. The long-term sustainable vision for Ukraine's recovery, with the support of international donors, calls for a comprehensive approach and a far-reaching vision. Rebuilding the country's economy, society, and environment will necessitate an open and inclusive international dialogue about political vulnerabilities and post-war recovery. The important role here plays post-war reconstruction based on principles of Circular Economy in order to attract investors, build back stronger and boost sustainable economic development while opening up new opportunities for business and society. The roadmap for sustainable development rooted in 5 P’s as defined by United Nations 2030 Agenda regards: People, Planet, Prosperity, Partnership and Peace in 2015, calls for an extensive set of global indicators: 17 Goals and 169 Targets (UN, 2015). Before the Russian military aggression in February 2024, Ukraine was advancing steadily towards the Agenda 2030.

ABSTRACT. Over the last three years after the Russian full-scale aggression on Ukraine Japan has steadily increased its support for the war-torn country through new rounds of fiscal, (emergency) humanitarian and development aid. Regular participation in international recovery conferences, the events such as the Japan-Ukraine Conference for Promotion of Economic Reconstruction (February 2024) and the signing of an accord on the further backing for Ukraine during the last G7 summit (June 2024) have confirmed Japan’s commitment to actively participating in recovery&reconstruction of Ukraine. In the light of the above developments, the presented paper explores Japanese official discourse on recovery&reconstruction of Ukraine with the focus on issues of fostering resilience and sustainability featuring in governmental communication, in the first instance. Second, it considers selected challenges to the process of operationalising these principles in practice, including the engagement of Japanese public and private actors seeking to participate in recovery and reconstruction initiatives under the conditions of ongoing conflict. Finally, the paper offers some preliminary thoughts on future-proofing recovery and reconstruction for the benefit of both Japan and Ukraine.

ABSTRACT. This paper is going to analyse the participation of selected formal, informal networks and actors - both Polish and Japanese - in recovery and reconstruction of Ukraine. The author will focus on formal and informal networks, showing serious interest and activity in the recovery and reconstruction of Ukraine, taking into consideration governmental and non-governmental, formal and informal, business and civil society actors. The study will discuss the role of Polish officials and Solidarity Fund in their cooperation with Japanese Partners, Japanese-Polish civilians cooperation in providing direct aid as well as cooperation of Japanese NGOs, Municipality of Cracow, Manggha Museum and Japanese Embassy to provide the programme to support Ukrainian Refugees.

ABSTRACT. On an analytical level, warfare shares many characteristics with other types of disasters: the overwhelming impact on livelihoods, as well as social and economic infrastructure; need of resource-intensive assistance during both the mitigation and reconstruction phases; and, importantly, the necessity of incorporating resilience building into the recovery & reconstruction process. Community-based recovery has been stressed as a useful way for rehabilitating disrupted societies in the long-term. So called “self-reliant recovery” (自立復興) lessons can be learnt from Japan when considering a sustainable recovery process where various actors cooperate in order to reconstruct livelihoods and infrastructure on social, economic or environmental levels. Japan has already shown a willingness to share experience about public & private sector cooperation. Learning from its growing experience in elevating actors from the civil society might provide us with another level of voices and expertise necessary for a sustainable recovery & reconstruction process.

ABSTRACT. Kampung Rajawali, located on the coast of Makassar facing the Jeneberang Delta, once drew its livelihood from the delta’s resources. Community members collected green mussels from the fishery, cultivated the shifting “growing land”, and bought and sold fish at the Rajawali Fish Market. During this time, the community frequently engaged in small-scale reclamation, or timbunan, by dumping sand and shells into foreshore areas to extend the beach and build new houses. In the 1990s, however, the City of Makassar began to permit large-scale reclamation, or reklamasi, allowing developers to reclaim massive areas of the delta for the construction of luxury housing estates, five-star hotels, and sprawling shopping malls. In the process, Kampung Rajawali was relocated to public housing, the mussel fishery was destroyed, and the fish market was sealed off from the sea. In this paper, I trace the transition from timbunan to reklamasi as perceived by residents of Kampung Rajawali. I construct this local history by combining newspaper reports with transcripts of interviews with twenty residents of Kampung Rajawali. The interviews were conducted by Tanahindie, an urban research institute in Makassar, for a community-based research project funded by the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative at Santa Clara University. The transcripts document residents’ nuanced attitudes toward reclamation, even as reklamasi has completely transformed their community.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the tension and contradictions between the ephemerality of urban plans produced for the Penang South Island Reclamation (PSR) project and their sustainability narratives. In 2020, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), an internationally renowned architect, won the PSR master plan design competition with their BiodiverCity proposal featuring renderings of 3 reclaimed islands fashioned as urban lilypads inspired by the same flora found on Penang island. The write up of the proposal was laden with sustainability keywords, which was then cascaded and carefully mapped onto press releases and advertorials of the project. Despite the potential negative impacts of the reclamation works, the newly reclaimed islands would celebrate and enhance local biodiversity and incorporate smart mobility systems among other environmental sustainability endeavours. However, the original plans and renderings produced by BIG have over the time been replaced with other renderings, even before the proposal was finally reduced from three islands to only one. Silicon Island, as that one island is now known, bears no resemblance to the architectural renderings produced by BIG, and yet, the sustainability narratives remains a constant. Based on interviews and analysis of grey literature such as urban plans and promotional literature of the PSR, this paper unpacks the ephemeral qualities of conceptual design produced by offices such as BIG and the utility of sustainability narratives as a legitimisation tool for speculative projects such as this one.

ABSTRACT. ‘Danger zone’ evictions in Metro Manila emerged as a systematic response to the Ondoy flood disaster that devastated the metropolitan region of the Philippines in 2009. This response developed in the time of ‘climate emergency’ which placed mitigation, adaptation, and resilience as development agendas, and inaugurated a revanchist form of climate urbanism that produces peripheralisation and facilitates speculation in the urban frontier. It also unfolded amidst the proliferation of proposed terraforming projects along the metropolitan coast. My paper examines this contradiction to demonstrate the paradox of resilient city making in Metro Manila through a critical discourse analysis of three sets of texts. I begin with disaster- and climate change- related plans to trace calls for eviction and resettlement, to demonstrate the centrality of riparian slum demolition to Manila’s adaptation strategy. Then, I probe a coastal sustainable development master plan and an environmental impact statement report for a large-scale terraforming project to juxtapose urban poor retreat with speculative capital’s march towards the sea. Finally, I unpack urban development plans to illuminate how the simultaneous movement away from and towards the water aligns with Manila’s current urban strategy of expanding northward and southward of the metropolis and towards its frontiers. Using the lens of urban agnotology, I elaborate how ignorance was willfully produced by expertise around terraforming, flooding, and sustainability to legitimise the embrace of the sea amidst pleas to retreat. In closing, I reflect on how the politics of the temporalities of ‘climate emergency’ generated this paradox.

ABSTRACT. The works for the creation of Silicon Island began in September 2023 as a joint venture between the Penang State Government and a Malaysian corporation. Penang South Reclamation, the original project envisioned in 2015 to fund an ambitious transport master plan, proposed the creation of three artificial islands spanning over 4,000 acres off the southern coast of Penang Island. Land reclamation is not new to Penang or Malaysia. As a small state facing land scarcity and geographical limitations, Penang has been one of the most active states in Malaysia in coastal land reclamation since independence. However, this project has faced unprecedented opposition from an alliance of NGOs and fishing communities known as Penang Tolak Tambak (“Penang Rejects Reclamation”). Currently, the original project has been "downsized" from three islands to one. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and the analysis of grey literature and news media, this paper explores the temporal implications of this land reclamation project. It examines the conflicting temporalities at play among different actors: the "time pressure" faced by the state-corporate joint venture and the anti-land reclamation movement’s tactics of “buying time.” Additionally, the paper delves into the uncertainty and impermanence of the promises of developmental time around the area most affected by the land reclamation project.

ABSTRACT. This paper questions the purported universality of modern historiographical discourses grounded on the notion of linear time, progressivism, and evolutionary theory by bringing these discourses into a conversation with the Buddhist tradition of Late Qing and Republican China. An especially salient case can be found in Taixu 太虛 (1890-1947) and his corpus on Buddhist history and history writing. In his effort to spearhead the ‘doctrinal reform’ of Buddhism in China vis-à-vis modern historiographical discourses, Taixu sought to establish a pragmatic, critical, and structured Buddhist history with an emphasis on change, continuity, and relationship. What is particularly noteworthy about Taixu’s effort is his conscious utilization of various temporalities taken not only from Buddhism but also from Confucianism and Western theories. This consolidation of multiple temporalities was instrumental for Buddhist scholars in negotiating their cosmology with the modern worldview and in curving out a location for the Buddhist tradition within the world marked by a modern, linear, progressive temporality.

ABSTRACT. The theoretical and the empirical are often incongruous. This paper addresses the (in)adequacy of analytical categories of (non-)time, such as ‘the horizon of expectation’ (Koselleck) and the concept of ‘utopia’ (Mannheim, Ricoeur, and Jameson). In these conceptualizations, the future is defined as that which exists within the condition of the present, while the utopia occupies a non-place-non-time that functions as a diagnostic of the present. When applied to an analysis of imperial and colonial discourses of the Japanese Empire (1868-1947), however, these analytical categories become increasingly inadequate. As this paper points out, the utopian imagery of the Japanese empire, envisioned with slogans such as ‘hakkō ichiu’ (八紘一宇 Unify the eight corners of the world) and ‘daitōa kyōeiken’ (大東亜共栄圏 Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere), was not a diagnostic of the present but promoted instead by the political and intellectual centers as a legitimate expectation of the future. This transgression from a utopia to a legitimate expectation indicates a discursive restructuring of temporality went into Japan’s imperial and colonial project, which in turn necessitates a reconsideration of the (in)adequacy of available analytical categories of time.

ABSTRACT. Artistic practices have long been an important realm for exploring the conception of time and temporality. By focusing on a contemporary art project by Cao Fei 曹斐 (1978-), entitled ‘HX – Hongxia’ (2020), this paper examines the ways in which artistic practices challenge linear authoritative history and blur the lines between preconceived temporal registers. The Hongxia project is a multimedia, multi-temporal network of historical research, stories, and fabulations rooted in Chinese history of the late 1950s and early 1960s. But its storytelling through historical artifacts, photography, a documentary film, a catalog, a novelette, a retro-sci-fi movie, and virtual reality installation reaches into the now and beyond, forming a mesmerizing wormhole into history, the present, and the future. What is at play is multiple entangled temporalities. Such entangled temporalities are further emphasized through the theatricality of an art exhibition, which involves the presence of the audience, and which, therefore, adds ‘contemporaneity through exhibitionism,’ that is, another temporal layer, to the already multiple and heterogeneous temporalities of the Hongxia project.

ABSTRACT. It is often assumed that western methods and standards in science have surpassed the rest of the world since the Scientific Revolution. However, East Asia has a longer history of astronomical observation, which was incorporated into the calendar itself. Designed to create predictive snapshots of heavenly movement, the ultimate objective of Sinitic calendrical procedures is eclipse prediction. Under the direction of the newly established Tokugawa government, Shibukawa Harumi (渋川春海 1639-1715) was tasked with creating Japan's first ever local calendar. Due to exclusionary policies, only Chinese and Korean resources are available to Harumi, though the influence of Western astronomers in the Chinese court circa the year 1600 allowed for the diffusion of ideas relating to geographical space and time. These may have provided inspiration for an improved eclipse prediction model, but provided no concrete methods or instruction on how to do so. In his work Jōkyō reki (貞享暦, The Jōkyō Calendar 1685), Harumi calculates the timing of 190 eclipses found in historic records across East Asia to validate the accuracy of his new method. Utilizing a data set of solar eclipses from Jōkyō reki with known geographic coordinates, this study analyzes solar eclipse timing as predicted by Harumi, comparing the dates and times he provided to those calculated using the planetarium simulation software Stellarium 2. Reconciling the different time systems utilized by Edo Japan and the modern world, as well as the lack of uniformity in Harumi’s records provide obstacles in analyzing the accuracy of the data. Creating a functional time conversion system with acknowledged flaws and establishing standards in data evaluation, the accuracy of Harumi’s solar eclipse timing in Japan is estimated to be within 22 minutes over 1,053 years. However, by contextualizing Harumi’s project in the history of world science we find that he is the first to develop and use an eclipse prediction model with geographic modularity, and the first to attempt to calculate eclipse timing on this scale – spanning over a millennia in time and 3,000 km in space – a feat that is not surpassed in the western world until 1887.

ABSTRACT. The proposed paper examines the historical development of Japanese algebra, with a particular focus on the origin and early evolution of tenzan jutsu, a mathematical method for solving equations with multiple variables developed in the second half of the 17th century. Utilising Ladislav Kvasz's theory of potentialities of the language of mathematics, this study first analyses tenzan jutsu and compares it to Western algebra from the perspective of six aspects: logical power, expressive power, methodical power, integrative power, explanatory power and constitutive power.

The findings indicate that, from this perspective, the language of tenzan jutsu shares many similarities with Western algebra and is functionally comparable. However, significant differences exist in their historical development. In contrast to Western algebra, which was constrained by a cultural emphasis on geometrical interpretation of exponents and a reluctance to accept negative terms in equations, Japanese mathematics—free from such restrictions—evolved more dynamically.

Second, it identifies several differences outside of Kvasz's framework. In those cases, the differences appear to be of a more formal, stylistic nature. I discuss their importance both for mathematics itself as well as for application of algebra in different fields.

ABSTRACT. The year 1940 entails some important numbers in the history of Imperial Japan. It was the year of the nationwide celebration of the 2600th anniversary of the first Tenno’s enthronement, the third year of Japan’s war with China, and a year before the outbreak of the Pacific War. Considering the tense geopolitical condition and the militaristic climate inside and outside of Japan, it might be counterintuitive to notice that 1940 was also the peak of inbound tourism in prewar Japan.

More than a fun and relaxing experience for foreign tourists, travel in Japan was expected to be a means to showcase the modern yet unique image of Japan to the international community or even educate foreigners about the proud history and mission of the empire. Such an intention was well illustrated in the official guidebooks published in the late 1930s.

This paper explores the texts and images in the 1939 version of Pocket Guide to Japan and the trilingual Japan Pictorial published in 1940, a brochure on the never-held 1940 Japan EXPO. The guidebooks trace the empire's founding back to the year when the mythical Jimmu-Tenno established his country, conforming to the popular state discourse at the time. With the help of this discourse, the official placed the origin of Japanese civilization even further back than the beginning of the Western Christian era. As the guidebooks imply, Japanese spirituality has its roots in the country’s 2600 years of imperial history, which allows foreign tourists to travel in modern Japan and its past simultaneously. This paper intends to argue that imperial tourism in the late 1930s served to brand Japan as a peace-loving ancient empire that shared the modernity of the West but maintained its Japanese temporality, facilitated by the seemingly impersonal yet politically informed language of official guidebooks.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the Boys’ Love (BL) genre, originating from Japan and featuring romantic relationships between male characters, has seen a surge in popularity beyond its native cultural boundaries, resonating with diverse audiences worldwide. This genre not only challenges traditional narratives of gender and sexuality but also serves as lens through which fans can explore and negotiate their own identities. While fans and fan communities of this genre have been extensively studied in Asia and the West, its impact on Czech and Slovak fans remains unexplored. In this paper, I will present the results of my research on Czech and Slovak fans of the BL genre, which was carried out through a mixed-methods approach combining a questionnaire survey, virtual ethnography, and autoethnography. The research delved into fan demographics, media consumption habits, fan practices, and motivations for engaging with this genre. This paper focuses particularly on Czech and Slovak fan communities and their consumption habits, situating these findings within a global context and comparing them with existing research on BL fan communities worldwide. By shedding light on this unstudied fan demographic, this paper contributes original insights and highlights both the unique and common aspects of Czech and Slovak BL fans compared to their international counterparts.

ABSTRACT. Originating from Hadramaut, now part of Yemen, the Hadrami diaspora community in Indone- sia is often described as having lost its ancestral language, lacking distinctive linguistic features, or as speaking Indonesian with an ‘Arabic touch’ (Jacobsen, 2009). However, community members cultivate a sense of belonging to a unified group through linguistic ‘acts of identity’ within the Arabic socio-cultural realm, displaying diverse desires for symbolic inclusion and exclusion (Walker & Slama, 2021). Prominent motivations include exhibiting ethnic affiliation or adopting an in- ternational style that diverges from the prevalent English-led global culture. I argue that these acts of identity, based on the perception of Arabic as the in-group’s ‘diaspora language’, arise as a site of ideological contestation. Through analyzing interviews with community members in Jakarta, Surabaya, and Surakarta, my aim is to delineate two contrasting ideas: the loss of Arabic as the ancestral language versus its continuity with tradition. Employing Babcock’s concept of the ‘image of standard’, understood as a perceived sense of standard-likeness emerging through discourse (Babcock, 2022), I argue that these divergent views and the stances between them re- sult from comparing the community’s language practices with a general idea of Arabic, creating what I term an ‘image of diaspora language standard’. Adherence to this image reflects, to some extent, the recognition or not of the diaspora language as a legitimate variety in its own right. Finally, I suggest that this dichotomy reflects the Hadrami community’s composition in Indonesia, which revolves around regional and local mobility rather than a static idea of geographical origin, although partially based on the feeling of having a common ancestry. In the first section of I build on the theoretical presemesis that see ethnolects as part of language ideologies (Jaspers, 2008) and I will give a brief outline of the main theoretical framework that have been applied in the study of diaspora language practices stressing the ideological construction. Following on that, I will frame the historical and contextual information about the community under study, stressing the different lines through which the socio-cultural world related to Arabic is constructed. I will focus mainly to the opposition between ‘language structure-centered’ studies that use concepts as ethnolect, her- itage language (Muysken, 2013) and variety of language and a more ‘language practice-oriented’ approach which focuses on style, repertoire, and registers (Auer & Dirim, 2003). I will argue that given the complex relation between the diglossia socio-linguistic context of the Arabic language, Arabic as an ethnicity marker and Arabic as the language of the Islamic revelation that have cir- culated throughout the India ocean at least since the spreading of Islam, an holistic approach that takes into consideration structural approaches to language studies, ideological conceptualization of language and mobility are necessary. following on that, I will report and discuss interviews that I carried out and interactions that I participated in during my field work to highlight how the language practices of this community are ideologically described as improper, wrong, abused, or inexistent, opposed to explanations that make the language arise as a variety of Arabic with its own right. In conclusion, I will suggest that this set of ideas on the one hand reflects the ways the community understands itself as part of a dynamic socio-cultural space shaped by mobility across the India Ocean, Indonesia and the Middle East, and that dialogically, these ideas are tangible in language practices.

References Auer, P., & Dirim, ̇I. (2003). Socio-cultural orientation, urban youth styles and the spontaneous ac- quisition of Turkish by non-Turkish adolescents in Germany. In J. K. Androutsopoulos & A. Georgakopoulou (Eds.), Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (pp. 223–246, Vol. 110). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Babcock, J. (2022). Postracial Policing, “Mother Tongue” Sourcing, and Images of Singlish Standard. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 32 (2), 326–344. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12354

Jacobsen, F. F. (2009). Hadrami Arabs in Present-day Indonesia An Indonesia-oriented group with an Arab signature [OCLC: 7385586502]. Routledge.

Jaspers, J. (2008). Problematizing ethnolects: Naming linguistic practices in an Antwerp secondary school. International Journal of Bilingualism, 12 (1-2), 85–103. https : / / doi . org / 10 . 1177 / 13670069080120010601

Muysken, P. (2013, November). 39. Ethnolects of Dutch. In F. Hinskens & J. Taeldeman (Eds.), Dutch (pp. 739–761). DE GRUYTER. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110261332.739

Walker, I., & Slama, M. (2021). The Indian Ocean as Diasporic Space: A conceptual introduction. The Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, 4 (2), 76–90. https://doi.org/10.26443/jiows.v4i2.78

ABSTRACT. Branching time and temporal succession in Abui

Abui (Papuan, Timor-Alor-Pantar family, abui1241) predicates combine with suffixes marking the difference between actualised and non-actualised situations (Mauri and Sansò 2012, 147), akin to various Papuan languages (Foley 1986, 158-161). In Abui the marking of actualisation is non-binary and not bound to any other grammatical category (non-joint). Compared to the similar system described for Sawila in Kratochvíl (2014, 421–26), the Abui system is more elaborate. We divide the markers according to their actualisation status (realis vs. irrealis). The first type are the sequential realis affixes that mark the temporal arrangement of two events. Sequential realis affixes occur primarily in medial clauses (i.e. clauses in the clause chain that are not final and not nominalised) and distinguish various sequential arrangements including: (i) simultaneous (-ba), (ii) anterior (-mai~-mi), (iii) close or causal sequence (-ma), (iv) loose sequence (-ya), as exemplified below. Insubordinate uses of realis and irrealis marking on final clauses are also attested (cf. Evans 2007; Kratochvíl 2014: 422-423; Evans and Watanabe 2016).

(1) Lakingtei he-moqu nuku me-maa, hedo mia-ba moqu place 3.AL-child one come:IPFV-CSEQ 3.FOC be.in-SIM child hoo-q=mit-i 3.GOAL-THROW=sit-PFV ‘a child from Lakingtei came and stayed there looking after the children’ [Lateitu.56]

(2) sei-mi, di diyeng do maar-i-ya, he-haai come.down:IPFV-ANTE 3.AGT pot PROX cook:PFV-PFV-SEQ 3.INAL-wife di=fal nee 3.AGT=together eat ‘after he came down, he cooked and ate with his wife’ [FuMunuma.24]

Irrealis markers occur in both final and non-final clauses (declarative and directive uses) and include the alternative and hortative -re, priorative -se~-te (PRIOR), exhortative -rei (EXHORT), prohibitive -he (PROH), and conditionals: maiye (simple, COND), -si~-ti (counterfactual, CNFT).

(3) a kawaaisa h-oomi mia-ti a noo-tawaang-re 2SG.AGT be.rich 3.INAL-inside be.in-CNFT 2SG.AGT 1SG.GOAL-greet:IPFV-ALT naha-e? not-PROG ‘if you were now rich, would you greet me or not’ [EVY.1368]

Irrealis suffixes appear in non-final clauses in declaratives, but in directive clauses may occur sentence-finally, as in (4). The irrealis exhortative suffix -rei softens the command usually expressed just by the irrealis priorative suffix -te.

(4) kawen ba topa nu ong-bul-ri-te-rei! machete REL be.blunt SPC CAUS-sharp-INCH-PRIOR-EXHORT ‘sharpen up finally that blunt machete!’ [EVY.1026]

Besides the verbal suffixes, the actualisation status of an event is also encoded by preverbal adverbials such as ko ‘IRR’ and kaal ‘IRR’ which mark future events, or fi (dubitative, DUB); these are discussed further in (Kratochvíl 2007, §6.3). For our analysis we use the branching time framework (von Prince 2019; von Prince et al. 2022) who argue for a three-way distinction in branching time which is useful for the study of realis and irrealis because it proposes sets of simultaneous moments which can be ordered within the tree-like frame of branching time. We map the temporal reference of the Abui actualisation markers onto the tree-like branching time frame, showing how the future and contrafactual reference is expressed, giving rather precise definitions and delineations of the scope of realis and irrealis markers in Abui and the associated functions in discourse (cf. von Prince et al. 2022: 244).  

References Evans, Nicholas. 2007. Insubordination and Its Uses. In Irina Nikolaeva (ed) Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations, 366–431. New York: Oxford University Press. Evans, Nicholas, and Honoré Watanabe (eds.). 2016. Insubordination. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Foley, William A. 1986. The Papuan Languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kratochvíl, František. 2007. A Grammar of Abui: A Papuan Language of Alor. Utrecht: LOT. Kratochvíl, František. 2014. Sawila. In The Papuan Languages of Timor, Alor and Pantar: Volume 1 Sketch Grammars, edited by Antoinette Schapper, 1:351–438. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Mauri, Caterina, and Andrea Sansò. 2012. The Reality Status of Directives and Its Coding across Languages. Language Sciences 34(2): 147–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2011.08.002. von Prince, Kilu. 2019. Counterfactuality and Past. Linguistics and Philosophy 42(6): 577–615. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-019-09259-6. von Prince, Kilu, Ana Krajinović, and Manfred Krifka. 2022. Irrealis is real. Language 98(2): 221-249. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2022.0009.

ABSTRACT. To date, one of the most challenging linguistic issues remains the aspectual-temporal frameworks of natural languages, which reflect the cultural and cognitive characteristics of the respective communities, as well as the accurate translation between them. In this respect, the East Asian isolating languages represent a clear contrast to the languages of Europe. First, there is no specific category of tense within the respective grammar systems. The time of an action or event is expressed solely through lexical means. The second and most striking feature is the optionality in expressing even the aspectual categories within the isolating languages of East Asia. This circumstance makes it crucial to rely on the context when determining the exact meaning of an utterance. The Tangut language has a slightly lower degree of isolation compared to its Chinese counterpart. However, the same principles also apply to it. The degree to which the aspectual category is expressed varies significantly depending on the type and genre of a text, whether it be narrative, translated, discursive, poetic, or a collection of proverbs and aphorisms, etc. Generally speaking, the expression of the aspectual category (or perfective aspect) in the Tangut language is associated with the expression of spatial direction — a feature common to many East Asian languages. However, in certain instances, the grammaticalization of the relevant markers allows us to consider them specifically as aspect markers. In our study, we will concentrate on the Tangut proverbs from the 12th-century collection titled "The Newly Collected Precious Paired Sayings" 新集锦合諺語 (published in 1176), and compare them with contemporary Chinese proverbs from the medieval period. We will also examine some translated Buddhist narrative fragments in Tangut in order to explore the expression of the aspectual category.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the writings of Qing travelers on Europe during the latter half of the 19th century. It examines how Confucian concepts of gender transcended linguistic and cultural boundaries, yet underwent reinterpretation in the face of new encounters.

As Qing travelers navigated different cultural contexts, their Confucian ideals of masculinity, femininity, propriety, and impropriety faced challenges. Their early encounters with Europeans were often marked by perplexity and tension as both sides struggled to identify and understand gender and gender roles in each other's cultures.

Drawing upon established principles in gender studies, such as the social construction and performative nature of gender, this paper analyzes specific moments where these complexities arose, leading to the findings of contrasting gender ideologies inherent in both language and societal constructs. These findings highlight how temporal and spatial shifts in gender concepts were crucial in shaping cross-cultural interactions and perceptions within Qing travel literature.

ABSTRACT. Mirrors for princes literature refers to a variety of texts compiled for the function of advising members of the ruling elite, including both incumbent and incoming rulers. Recent decades have seen increasing research on mirror texts from the Latin West, Byzantium and the medieval Islamic world. A tension between invariability and movement of time has been observed in such mirror texts. This paper argues that the tension between timelessness and reference to the past is a crucial tool employed by an early Tang dynasty mirror – the Qunshu zhiyao 群書治要 (Essentials for bringing about order from assembled texts). Compiled in 631, the Essentials for Bringing about Order from Assembled Texts is one of the earliest extant Chinese anthologies designed to educate a ruler in cultivating an ethical character and achieving sociopolitical order. Commissioned by Emperor Taizong (r. 624–649) of the Tang dynasty (618–907) for his reference, the Essentials includes excerpts from sixty-eight pre-existing sources that is divided into the categories of canonical, historical, and masters writings. The nuance between the importance of history and the timelessness of historical lesson is explored through the excerpted nature and selection of texts from various sources and their reconfiguration within the anthology. Moreover, the content is analysed through narrative tropes from sources of different intellectual and ideological orientations that are tailored to complement Confucian concerns. The ruler’s self-reflection is thus facilitated through the creative harnessing of the place of time in both structure and content of the Essentials.

ABSTRACT. The "I Ching" (易經, The Book of Changes) is a cornerstone of Chinese classical literature, renowned for its rich and expansive wisdom. It embodies the space-time perspectives of ancient Chinese culture, with its core content using a set of symbols to represent the states of all things in the universe. The familiar concepts of Yin (陰) and Yang (陽) lines, forming 64 hexagrams (卦), illustrate the perpetual and cyclical phenomena of nature and human life. In the "I Ching," all transformations are driven by time, making time mastery essential. It emphasizes that people are always immersed in time's flow, and in Eastern thought, understanding this flow is key to seeking fortune and avoiding misfortune by seizing opportunities at the right moment. Moreover, in Eastern thought, time is intertwined with content, making it challenging to perceive time abstractly. This study aims to combine the "I Ching" with gaming to develop an educational and entertaining board game specifically designed for Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners. Through gameplay, learners can explore the content of the "I Ching" and experience its unique concept of time. The research goals are: 1. To design and develop the "I Ching" board game; 2. To evaluate the effectiveness of the game in helping learners understand the "I Ching"; and 3. To examine how the game aids learners in experiencing the Eastern concept of time. The research follows the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) model and incorporates the MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) framework to design the game's content. A conceptual design for learners of different levels has been completed, with a prototype developed for advanced CFL learners (C1 and above). The ultimate goal is to create versions of the game adaptable to various proficiency levels.

ABSTRACT. Measuring time and dividing the day into working periods has always been a part of human life and was based on activities that were typical for a given time period. It may have been related to religion, work activities, or based on nature. According to the Nihon-shoki chronicle, the first clock, the water clock, was used as early as the 7th century. In the early 17th century, European clocks were introduced to Japan by Jesuits or Dutch traders. It was during the Edo period that clocks, inspired by Western mechanical machines but measuring time in the Japanese manner were produced in Japan, and which we now know as wadokei. The Meiji Restoration marked Japan's path to modernization and westernization, affecting industry, transportation, and society. In November 1872, the measurement of time was changed. Although the most significant is considered to be the abandonment of the traditional lunisolar calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar, the change also affected smaller units of time, namely the measurement of the time of day, which had a much greater impact on daily life and was also an essential part of the modernisation process. This paper will focus on the perception of timekeeping during the Edo period, with an emphasis on the distinction between "temporal" and "fixed" time, using the example of the Japanese wadokei clock, as well as attempts at horology-related reforms such as first the Tenpo reform (1842) and later the switch to Western timekeeping in 1872.

ABSTRACT. This work interrogates the possibility of filling in the blanks of history through experimental ethnography. It looks at Asian temporal traces in European museums, in particular, missionary collections from the second half of the 19th to the first half of the 20th century. These collections tell about the politics of time, silenced fragments of artefacts’ biography, such as the circumstances of their collecting and the relationship with their previous owners, as well as the endurance of the past as a material trace to interpret in the present. These temporal dynamics occur within two missionary collections, one assembled by Xaverian missionaries in Parma (Italy), who were based in Honan province, and the other gathered by the Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay (1844-1901) while in Taiwan. This presentation offers the angle of decay as a vantage point for understanding the temporal fluxes and affordances embedded within the two collections, elaborating on a specific methodology. DeSilvey (2017) argued that decay is a processual dynamic in which past traces morph in the present and show future directions of their metamorphosis. As such, decay can reveal the past and its absence; otherwise, our relationship with it and future projections. This study engages with Chinese religious statues within the two aforementioned collections through a combination of museum ethnography, archival analysis and photo-elicitation. What can their disrupted, consumed, emptied bodies tell missionary collecting and their “space in between” (Brevaglieri 2022) otherwise? Understanding missionary collecting through the angle of decay is also a further contribution to provenance research methods, urging scholars to rethink different ways to engage with silenced archives and museum collections.

References

DeSilvey, Caitlin (2017). Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Savings. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Brevaglieri, Sabina (2022). “Missionary Collecting Between Object Eradications and Re-Sedimentations. An Introduction,” Quaderni storici, 169(1): 3-20.

ABSTRACT. The unstoppable wave of dewesternizing Asian thought has now extended to the concept of temporality. Temporality refers to the experience of time. By using the term "temporalities," the conference organizers highlight the existence of diverse experiences of time across Asia. This paper explores the category of temporality from a historical viewpoint and poses the following question: How can we study Asian temporalities in a distinctly Asian, or non-Western, manner? Is it enough to simply be Asian or focus on Asian subjects? Or is there something more required to break free from the Western framework in the study of temporality? In this paper, I offer a preliminary response to these questions. In summary, I propose that only a reflection on both the theory of historiography (what constitutes history) and historiographical practice (the methods by which historians approach history) from an Asian perspective can engage Asian temporalities in a truly non-Western way. In other words, I examine the study of Asian temporalities through the lens of the relationship between theory and practice within the field of history.

ABSTRACT. In Korean history, the Koryŏ period (918-1392) is usually described as more inclusive and free regarding women's social status, with them being able to divorce, remarry, or equally inherit with other siblings. Much research has been done on social norms, behaviour, or perception based on the essential records of Koryŏsa 高麗史 and Koryŏsa chŏryo 高麗史節要 chronicles, epitaphs, etc., usually showing the normative side of the society or in the case of high-class men, also their negative side. However, as there is no separate part of the chronicles concerning women deviating from the norms, it is hard to find any research focusing on this topic.

Thus, this study aims to focus on women who could be called anormative in the way they are recorded in the two chronicles. These women are often from high-class or royal families, but examples of low-born women can also be found. Although most of them have their own (at least) family names, I understand them as representatives of different types of anormative behaviour and attributes. Therefore, in my presentation, I will explain what the word anormative means from the Koryŏ period point of view and examine what types of such behaviour were found in the chronicles, to which group of women it was connected, and whether there are types that have a connection to Chinese treatises for women such as Lienü Zhuan 列女傳 or part of Nü Sishu 女四書 that were well known in Koryŏ, or whether there are types more suitable for this period of Korean history.

ABSTRACT. Following the cessation of hostilities with its northern neighbor in 1953, South Korea experienced significant economic growth, becoming one of the largest economies in Asia and globally. However, the Korean population, which has been the driving force behind the nation, has now become an area of concern. The birth and fertility rates have declined for decades, but only recently have they become the lowest in the world. The fertility rate has fallen from an average of six children per woman in 1960 to 0.72 children per woman in 2023. That means it is now more likely that a South Korean woman will not have a child in her lifetime than that she will have one. Though most developed countries have observed a decline in fertility over the past few decades, South Korea stands out as an extreme case of ultra-low fertility. The persistently low birth and fertility rates, a result of a complex array of factors, transform Korean society and contribute to the most rapid population aging among OECD member countries. This demographic transition has significant implications for social and economic development. Therefore, it has become a frequent topic of discussion in Korean society, politics, and media. This paper examines the discourse surrounding the causes of low birthrates in contemporary South Korea as presented in newspapers. It analyses 78 Korean-language articles from the four most widely read Korean newspapers published between 2018-2023. Building on previous research on this topic, it extends the existing body of knowledge on low birth rate newspaper discourse by providing insight into a period not yet researched. In contrast to related articles, this study focuses solely on the causes of the low birth rate, allowing for a more in-depth understanding of the issue. The paper identifies and presents three categories of causes: economic, socio-cultural, and socio-demographic.

ABSTRACT. Kang Kyŏngae (April 20, 1906 – April 26, 1944) is considered one of the most renowned Korean feminist authors of the colonial era. In her works, she presents a realistic picture of the everyday lives of the lower class, particularly focusing on the impact of patriarchy on the lives of working-class women in Manchuria. Unlike other authors of the era, Kang Kyŏngae concentrated exclusively on literature and did not extend her activities to other art forms. The proposed article focuses on one of her literary works Moja (모자 / 母子) and its translation into the Slovak language - practical issues arising during the translation process and discussing the plethora of problems in view of relevant translation theory while also introducing the hermeneutical background, providing an insight into historical and literary contexts. Various literary works by Kang Kyŏngae, including Moja, have been translated into English, but none into Slovak or Czech. Translation to the Slovak language involves a set of problems that significantly differ from those during translation to the English language. This essay explores possible approaches to manage pragmatic issues, nuances, particles and honorifics combined with syntax and sequence, all which present a unique challenge for a translator.

ABSTRACT. The influential Kyrgyz environmentalist Emil Shukurov urged his countrymen and indeed the world to learn lessons from the legend of Kojojash, a mythical hunter and hero whose arrogance and exploitative attitudes led to his own destruction. Although the myth of Kojojash is one of the ancient minor epics of the Kyrgyz people, Shukurov considered its wisdom highly relevant for the present environmental and climate crisis. Like other ancient myths, it involves men and women of extraordinary prowess and the intervention and involvement of animals. This study looks first at the appeal to the Kojojash legend in Shukurov’s original writing. The second and main section is a detailed examination of the Kojojash text, identifying principal themes and correspondences between the myth and the present day. This makes use of accepted English and Russian versions of the text of the myth as well as secondary literature discussing the legend. The final part of the paper uses theories of myth and the relationship between nature and myth in an attempt to understand the paradox that myth is relevant and timeless precisely because it is locked in a time distant from our own. [189 words]

ABSTRACT. Different versions of the periodization of regional history reflect specific cultural, religious or historical traditions. They are also closely linked to specific power relations. As part of the clash between the Russian Empire and Muslim societies in Central Asia, new discourses on periodization of the region's history began to emerge. Periodization schemes modeled on Russian historical events were used and applied as models to the history of Central Asia. The past of Central Asia was conceptualized and presented to Russian orientalists in accordance with the history of the Russian Empire and the political goals of capturing the region and integrating it into the empire. Meanwhile, the societies of Central Asia had their own traditions of periodization of history, influenced by various factors: Islam, Islamization, the past of the region, the role of nomads, the legacy of the Mongol Empire, the legacy of the empire of Timur and the Timurids, the legitimization of the reigning dynasties, etc. The purpose of the paper is to reveal different cultural and historical schemes of periodization and concepts for organizing the past in the societies of Central Asia. Various discourses of Russian intellectuals on the periodization of the history of Central Asia and their interaction and possible influence on the formation of new conceptualizations and periodization of the history of the region by Muslim historians will be analyzed. Special attention will be paid to anti-colonial discourses among local historians. The main sources of the study were periodicals, unpublished archival materials, works of Russian orientalists and local intellectuals of Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent. The paper will help to understand the importance of temporality in the formation of different discourses on the periodization of the history of Central Asia in the colonial period.

ABSTRACT. The perception of the past, its reportage and representation in the literary genres has been a subject of critical scrutiny by scholars. Literary styles often determine the nature of histories that are written and how they engage with the collective memory of the past. My research focuses on the historical imagination underlined in sufi literature produced in the fourteenth century. The sufi texts engage with both individual life histories of sufi teachers as well as collective memory of a sufi order (silsila) and the precepts and practices. In popular memory, the Chishti Sufis are well known on account of the memory associated with their tomb shrines and the easy availability of their teachings in popular sufi literature. Very often, academics intending to unravel the sufi precepts and practices are largely reliant on the tazkirat (biographical) literature produced in the fourteenth century. They underline a definitive sufi praxis based on hagiographies that was largely unchanging across time and more often than not was derivative in nature as the origins of the order are traced to the sufi masters of Herat. These tazkirats were written in the mid-fourteenth century when the sufi order was definitive and precepts well laid out. I wish to study the early history of sufism and critical role of memory in shaping historical discourse regarding sufism as well as Muslim community. In this paper, I focus on the narrative structure of early fourteenth century malfuzat (table talks), the Fawa’id al-Fu’ad to underline the role of individual and collective memory in shaping the religious precepts of Sufism as well as history of Muslim community in the fourteenth century. The Fawa’id al-Fu’ad is one of the earliest sufi text that had a dialogical flavour and reports the practices and precepts of Shaykh Nizam al-Din Awliya as he discoursed on varied themes in his hospice. The text was compiled by his lay disciple Amir Hasan Sijzi who cogently contextualized the sufi precepts with the practices and material milieu of the hospice. The discourses are narrated by the Shaykh with a didactic tone and lay down certain sufi precepts in anecdotal mode. While most of the isharat literature was monotonous, Nizam al-Din Awliya was different as he chose to narrate, illustrate and substantiate sufi tents with anecdotes. In addition, Shaykh Nizam al-Din reported the events that delineated the historical memory of several personages from the past in a temporally fragmented manner. These personages included sufis who were contemporaries of Shaykh Nizam al-Din, his preceptor Baba Farid as well several other mystically oriented past heroes. I discuss in this paper how in reporting the sufi precepts in the malfuzat the Shaykh used memory of the past to defend Sufism from its detractors and present a nuanced and lucid understanding of the precepts that were easily comprehensible to the audience. By delineating the narrative style and usage of history and memory in shaping sufi precepts, I intend to highlight how Nizam al-Din Awliya tried to draw upon the memories and lessons from the past and unfolded its relevance for the present and hence, unravelled multi-layered perception of sufi ideals and constructed a history of the Muslims that was distinct from the chronicles.

ABSTRACT. Since the latest military coup in Thailand, 22 May 2014, new patters of dissent and repression have occurred, and the government, the legal system and armed forces have expanded state repression in the digital spaces and to neighboring Southeast Asian countries. This paper identifies two trends in the Thai state’s targeted repression of political dissent in the past two decades and investigates their different historical paths. The empirical data from national and international human rights NGOs and the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms points towards the Thai government’s balancing of accommodation and repression to meet political and social dissent in historically comparative new ways.

The two main forms of transnational repression practiced by the Thai state are direct violent attacks and digital repression to intimidate and silence political dissidents. The state violence materializes on different levels, from official legal decrees to more clandestine operations.

Following the general global trend of autocracies, the Thai state increasingly suppresses digital spaces. The growing usage of internet and new social media for political opposition and mobilization incentivized the state to extend control and repression through and in digital spaces in the latter half of the 2000s (Sinpeng, 2013; Soombatponsiri & Kri-aksorn, 2021). With the amendments of the Computer Related Crimes Act in 2016 by the then military led government, the Cyber Security Act of 2019, and the anti-fake news regulations in 2022, Thailand has moved in the same direction as other autocratic states in the region (Sombatpoonsiri & Luong, 2022). These changes led to heightened censorship, increased surveillance, and greater control over digital expression, raising serious human rights concerns regarding freedom of speech, privacy, and access to information.

Critics argue that the amendments facilitate state repression and undermine democratic principles by targeting political opponents, activists, and journalists under broad and vaguely defined provisions. The online and offline activities by the state and non-state actors share many traits, they are both lenient and harsh, and the state relies on vigilante groups for mass intimidation and harassment (Sinpeng, 2013; Schaffar, 2016)). The online intimidation and attacks are not limited to Thailand with several of the targeted dissidents residing abroad. Especially around the time of the late king Bhumibol’s passing there was a spike in the online-offline harassment of perceived threats to the Thai nation – and also among Thai’s living in places like Europe and Japan – but the digital control has since become an intertwined part of government control.

Persecution of political dissidents, summary trials and executions, became the modus operandi of the Thai state during the cold war authoritarian rule (Chaloemtiarana, 2007; Haberkorn, 2018). In the recent past the Thai state has been openly and performatively exercising its power through direct, arbitrary and extra-judicial violence. While forced disappearances and targeted killings are covertly performed and facts obscured, a central aspect to the Thai state’s repression is the routine production of impunity for illegitimate violence – by the police, the military and in courts (Haberkorn, 2018).

Following the coup in 2014, murder and forced disappearances of dissidents in exile became a new part of the Thai state’s repressive repertoire. All the so far nine documented cases between 2026 and 2020, were strong voices for the republican movement during the transition between two reigns. The killing and disappearances of them point directly at the monarchy, rather than the military, as the nexus of Thai political conflict (Haberkorn, 2021). These forms of transnational direct attacks mark also a shift in the form of collaboration between the Southeast Asian states supporting each others authoritarian practices.

The questions posed by this paper relates to historical changes in Thai modern political history. First, if the digital control and repression, in tandem with increased judicialization of political repression in Thailand (McCargo, 2019; Haberkorn, 2018), is decisively also the end of the hundred years of struggle for democracy in Thailand. Second, if the transnational direct attacks of political dissidents 2016–2020, should be considered an interlude – a forceful attempt to stifle republicanism in the inter regnum – or as a new repertoire of the Thai state’s repression.

References Haberkorn, T. (2018). In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand. University of Wisconsin Press. Haberkorn, T. (2021, 2021/09/01). Under and beyond the Law: Monarchy, Violence, and History in Thailand. Politics & Society, 49(3), 311-336. McCargo, D. (2019). Fighting for Virtue: Justice and Politics in Thailand. Cornell University Press. Schaffar, W. (2016). New social media and politics in Thailand: The emergence of fascist vigilante groups on Facebook. ASEAS – Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 9(2), 215-234. Sinpeng, A. (2013). State Repression in Cyberspace: The Case of Thailand. Asian Politics & Policy, 5(3), 421–440. Sombatpoonsiri, J., & Kri-aksorn, T. (2021, 17 Nov. 2021). Taking Back Civic Space: Nonviolent Protests and Pushbacks against Autocratic Restrictions in Thailand. Protest, 1(1), 80-108. Sombatpoonsiri, J., & Luong, D. N. A. (2022). Justifying Digital Repression via 'Fighting Fake News': A Study of Four Southeast Asian Autocracies. Cambridge University Press.

ABSTRACT. In October 2023, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrated the 10th anniversary of the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) at the 3rd BRI Forum in Beijing. However, despite aiming to showcase the global appeal of the BRI, the Forum was primarily attended by state leaders from developing countries. One of the attendees was the Sri Lankan President, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who emphasized that cooperating with China under the BRI is in Sri Lanka’s best interest. Wickremesinghe also expressed that unilateralism and containment by the West should not be tolerated, hinting at the initiative’s success in winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of people in the Global South.

Based on official documents, news articles, and fieldwork interviews, this paper provides an overview of the BRI’s status and how Western initiatives have contested it over the past decade. Sri Lanka is used as a case study to exemplify the initiative’s progress and challenges in developing countries in the Global South. This paper examines the BRI’s physical impact in Sri Lanka, focusing on two major projects: the Hambantota International Port and the Colombo Port City. It then analyzes the normative impact of the initiative, emphasizing China’s increasing influence on Sri Lanka’s adoption of authoritarian practices and its effects on the country’s ethnic minorities. Finally, it discusses the growing geopolitical competition between China and the West in the Indo-Pacific and addresses some of the BRI’s key challenges.

ABSTRACT. Indonesia’s New Order (1966-1998), a major Cold War dictatorship, has received extensive scholarly attention in terms of its political architecture and repression mechanisms (Anderson 2001; Reeve 1987), economic development and contradictions (Robison 1986), mythmaking (McGregor 2007), and socio-cultural life (Karsono 2013). With the exception of several key works on its intellectual foundations (Bourchier 2015; Nitisastro 2011), the more philosophical aspects of the dictatorship tend to be discussed at a surface level, since it is often seen as just another right-wing authoritarian regime. This tendency undervalues the complexity of New Order’s authoritarian conservatism and its broader analytical resonance.

By examining the lives and thoughts of three leading anti-Communist, conservative intellectuals behind the New Order – the Chinese Catholic Jusuf Wanandi and Harry Tjan Silalahi and the intelligence czar Ali Moertopo – this preliminary study highlights an overlooked dimension of their conservative philosophy: its temporal aspects.

The temporal dimensions of the trio’s philosophy cover the following. First, in response to the perceived socialist underdevelopment under the left-wing government of the independence leader Sukarno (1959-1965), they saw the need for accelerated (capitalist) modernization. In this regard, they anticipated (parts of) right-wing accelerationist arguments for pushing progress and the maturing of capitalism by limiting democracy propagated by Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin.

Second, their claim to rescue the legacy of Indonesia’s anti-colonial movement by deposing Sukarno suggests their politicization of the past, especially the early independence years (1945-1959). Though mostly instrumental, this politicization was also tinged with a sense of romanticism and survivalist ethos, an aspiration to redeem the “lost years” for bourgeois democracy under Sukarno’s socialist experiment.

Lastly, Sukarno’s “statism” was the momentous singularity for their political vision. This was the starting point of their politics of fear, which drove them to embrace a bastardized version of “anti-totalitarianism” through the formation of New Order authoritarianism.

ABSTRACT. Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier aimed to enter China but died on Sancian Island in 1552. Seventy years later, after his canonization, his story was brought into China. Xavier’s two entries had different outcomes: his initial attempt failed, but as a saint, his name, story, and feast were introduced. Why could his second entry into China be successful?

Investigating the case of Xavier, this article elucidates the role of temporality in Jesuit mission. It first examines how the hagiography of Francis Xavier was translated and introduced into China, focusing on its use of Chinese historical chronology system. Subsequently, after analyzing Catholic calendars, prayer books, and account books, it notes that Xavier’s feast day held particular significance in China. It then attempts to reconstruct how Chinese Catholics observed this feast day. Paying attention to sermons and eating habits, this article stresses how Chinese converts internalized Catholic time and incorporated the religiosity into their daily lives.

European Catholic chronology permeated the cyclical rhythm of calendar in Chinese converts’ daily life. Two forms of time are the foci: linear time and cyclical time. Linear time helped missionaries align saints’ life with the Chinese calendar. Cyclical time, through feast days, continuously brought up the actions of saints, thus repeatedly promoting and practicing Catholic teachings. In the Sino-European encounters, the combination of these two forms triggered the intertwined timing systems of Europe and China, through which the second entry of Xavier was achieved. His mission and martyrdom transformed dates from mere numbers into symbols of early missionary efforts in China. Meanwhile, it was the observation of feast days by the converts that fulfilled Xavier’s initial missionary aspirations.

ABSTRACT. What is revolutionary time? Can liberation be an ongoing experiment where victories do not lead to utopia but the discovery and creation of new social power dynamics that must in turn be addressed? This paper addresses these questions by identifying how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mass line functioned as a mechanism to produce a shared temporality, bringing people together to promote revolutionary social justice. The research presented is based on nine months of ethnographic research in Heyang village located in the mountains of China’s southeastern Zhejiang province. The historic experiences of research participants provide thick explanatory details linking the material infrastructure of their media infrastructures and the Chinese Communist Party’s governance to their negotiated realizations of political agency. Highlighted in these accounts is the popular dissemination of wired radio loudspeakers, which represents China’s first national initiative to spread daily timekeeping across its countryside. The use of these loudspeakers helped to affect the shared time of the mass line. Ultimately this paper contributes to debates on socialist temporality and theories of temporal synchronization. It shows how the mass line affects a focus on the present moment as a lived time requiring the praxis of reflective action. The synchronization affected by the mass line is shown to promote comradery as a form of political belonging. In documenting the success of the lived experience of socialist revolution this paper aims to contribute to wider critiques of social injustice by showing how alternatives to capitalist realism are practical and possible.

ABSTRACT. The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is the most visible marker of Korea’s division, symbolizing Korea’s arrestedness. Building on ethnographic fieldwork examining speculative land ownership in the South Korean DMZ, this talk reveals that the DMZ is also loaded with potentiality, fostering and localizing diverse visions for a post-division peninsula. Aspirational engagement in/with the DMZ, in its various forms, represent modes of “preparing” for a possible end to the division regime. Grounding aspirations in the DMZ landscape problematizes recent developments in the anthropology of the future, which have increasingly shifted from focusing on historical causality to teleo-affects (future orientations) in describing socio-cultural phenomena. Attuned to the affective dimension of the DMZ, this talk contends instead that the palimpsestic quality of the DMZ demands a multi-temporal approach that examines how past, present, and future engage in a process of co-constitution.

ABSTRACT. This is an investigation into the Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s “Momotarō,” as published in a Japanese magazine, Sunday Mainichi on July 1, 1924, with special reference to two different types of time expressed in the text.

Akutagawa’s “Momotarō” is a rewriting of the Japanese folk tale “Momotarō.” The folk tale “Momotarō” is a story about the protagonist Momotarō’s journey to Ogre Island and his success against the ogres, which was created around the 16th or 17th century (Muromachi era). This story was adopted in Japanese elementary school textbooks from 1888 to 1945, so that even today, almost all Japanese people know this story. Especially in the early 20th century, the story was used as propaganda, and the protagonist, Momotarō, was portrayed as a savior of Asia.

Akutagawa changed two aspects of the folk tale “Momotarō” to create his own story “Momotarō.” The first element Akutagawa changed is the figure of the protagonist Momotarō. In Akutagawa’s text, Momotarō is portrayed as a cruel invader plundering the island. Therefore, this text has been studied in the context of the relationship between China and Japan in the early 20th century. Additionally, Tuchiya Shinobu and Robert Tierney interpreted this text in terms of Japan’s advance toward the South Seas in the early 20th century.

The second change Akutagawa introduced in the folk tale is the setting of two different worlds where entirely different times exist. In Akutagawa’s text, the indeliberate intersection of these two worlds is crucial to demonstrating the protagonist's character.

I analyze these different perceptions of time in the text to clarify how the multilayered perspectives of Japan toward the South Seas in the early 20th century are expressed.

ABSTRACT. What do the national epic Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du, the romantic novels written by the Tu Luc Van Doan Literary Group, the revolutionary novels of An Khe, Doan Vu, and Doan Gioi, and modern Vietnamese novels have in common? This conference paper examines 40 iconic texts from pre-colonial, colonial, revolutionary, and post-revolutionary times to argue that the common theme in these literary works is the concept of sacrifice, albeit with different meanings and manifestations over time. While these works may serve various purposes, they usually critically approach the position of the individual within broader society and delineate the individuals’ duties toward that society. Through the lens of self-sacrifice, this paper will demonstrate how fundamental socio-cultural values have always been in tension or direct conflict with other socio-cultural values, duties, and mores. It will show how new literary works have re-articulated old socio-cultural values, mores, and duties. The paper contends that the required self-sacrifice of young people for their parents, state, and the King in the pre-colonial system was re-articulated during the colonial period, when especially women were seen as those who had to sacrifice for a broader family, but arguably should not. The concept of self-sacrifice took a significant turn during the socialist revolution, as young men and women were expected to offer their lives for the success of the revolution. In the post-revolutionary era, roughly associated with the post-Doi Moi period, individuals are once again subjected to familial obligations.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the role of children's literature in post-one-child policy China, emphasizing its engagement with contemporary social discourse to support policy agendas, particularly the overnight transition to a universal two-child policy since 2016. The focus is on "second child literature," which aims to normalize multi-child families and reshape public perceptions, in response to current demographic changes.

Methodologically, this study employs a comparative content analysis of narratives on siblings in children before and after the one child policy. This approach reveals unique didactic strategies designed to alleviate the anxieties of the one-child generation and promote sibling relationships. The theoretical framework is grounded in Althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatuses, examining how literature functions as a tool for cultural and ideological transformation.

The research scrutinizes the rapid shift in Chinese children’s literature production in accordance with changes in birth control policy. It particularly investigates the evolving gender dynamics within families, particularly whether the hypothesis of empowerment of urban daughters during the one-child policy era still persists in multi-child households. By analyzing texts produced post-policy change, the paper demonstrates how children's literature addresses pressing contemporary issues, engaging both child and adult readers.

Ultimately, this paper underscores the significance of children's literature in reflecting and shaping societal attitudes toward policy shifts. It positions the genre as a critical medium for educational and social development amid changing demographic landscapes. Through its real-time engagement with contemporary themes, children's literature in China emerges as an essential platform for addressing the pressing challenges and opportunities of our time.

ABSTRACT. The atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945), most notably the infamous Nanjing Massacre of December 1937, have become focal points of historical inquiry. Scholars have struggled to reconcile these widespread war crimes with the arguably more restrained conduct of the Imperial Japanese Army during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and World War I (1914-1918). Some, however, suggest that patterns of atrocities witnessed during the Nanjing Massacre had already emerged during these earlier conflicts, albeit on a much smaller scale and moderated by various influences. This observation raises critical questions about the evolution, change, and continuity in the history of Japanese military ethics and, conversely, war atrocities.

This paper aims to reexamine a lesser-known yet significant event: the massacre by the Imperial Japanese Army in Port Arthur on November 21, 1894. This incident challenges the established view that the Imperial Army's conduct during the Meiji period consistently adhered to international law. By delving into this case study, we intend to explore how ambiguous orders may have acted as catalysts for war crimes, and to develop analytical frameworks centered on military hermeneutics—the interpretation of orders and commands in a military context.

Employing this framework allows us to investigate the historical trajectory of Japanese war atrocities from a longue durée perspective. Looking towards the Nanjing massacre, four decades after Port Arthur, We will carefully consider the unique contexts of each incident and the historical connections between them, thereby enhancing our understanding of the complexities and continuities in Japanese military behavior over time.

ABSTRACT. After liberation, the North Korean government had to set up a new state, and making a new athletics policy was an important part of that process. The introduction of Communist thought had a huge influence on the society and was a key inspiration for the new nation’s athletic policy. However, there was a pre-existing conception of modern athletics on the Korean peninsula that had developed over the previous sixty years. Accordingly, the experience of athletics during the period of Japanese rule influenced the government’s athletics policy strategy and the people’s willingness to accept that new policy. With that in mind, this paper will examine athletics during the following three eras; Before the March 1st Movement (1885-1919), Between the March 1st Movement and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1919-1937), and Wartime (1937-1945). Each era saw the Japanese colonial government flip from a policy of control to a policy of appeasement and back to a policy of control, respectively. Within this context, after examining each era, this paper will identify key similarities and differences between the examined era and early North Korean athletic policy. By gaining a greater grasp of the athletic situation during different periods of the Japanese occupation, this paper hopes to gain a greater understanding of the appeal and context of early North Korean athletic policy. Additionally, this paper hopes to draw parallels between both eras that do not split the overall history of the northern part of Korea too abruptly into entirely separate colonial and post-colonial spaces. Overall, this paper will have implications for viewing early North Korean government policy from a variety of indirect angles, rather than simply viewing it’s most direct and powerful influence on its' own.

ABSTRACT. In December 2022 Japan adopted the so-called Three Security Documents that were hailed as major shift in Japan’s foreign and defense policies. The presentation will examine the Three Documents in the context of Japan’s security policy changes since the end of the Cold War focusing on main reforms and their temporal aspect, namely incrementalism. The main question is, whether the new Security Documents constitute a fundamental change or rather a continuity. Methodologically, the presentation adopts the neoclassical realist approach that emphasizes on one hand, the importance of international/ systemic factors in shaping foreign policy, and on the other hand, the significance of domestic factors that determine the final policy output. And furthermore, to access the policy change, the article employs the concept of a critical juncture borrowed from historical institutionalism as defined by John Hogan (2006) and the idea of incrementalism. The main argument at this stage of the research is that, first, Japan’s security policy has been changing incrementally since the end of the Cold War with the tactics of “the salami slicing” despite strong pressure of international factors, due to domestic constrains of the pacifist sentiments. And second, under Prime Minister Abe the accumulation of these changes and the newly introduced ones reached a critical juncture that moved the foreign policy in fact away from the post-war Yoshida doctrine towards a policy that could be labeled as “Abe Line.” The Three Security Documents of 2022 constitute thus a continuation of the policy shift that occurred during Prime Minister Abe.

ABSTRACT. A tour of ruins, as Svetlana Boym (2008) suggested, leads us into a labyrinth of ambivalent temporalities. This paper embarks on a tour of the art village of Songzhuang, on the outskirts of Beijing, exploring its history which is – not unlike much of the history of contemporary Chinese art – a history of ruins. More precisely, the paper collocates this exploration in relation to the theme of the ruins of art in contemporary Chinese art.

The transformation of Songzhuang from an impoverished rural village into an “art village” begun in the mid-1990s with the demolition of a painters’ village near the ruins of the Yuanmingyuan. Artists moved to Songzhuang and converted rural homes and abandoned township factories into studios and galleries. Starting in 2004, local party leadership begun supporting the fashioning of Songzhuang as an art village, attracting thousands of artists, curators, and art traders. In recent years, however, new local leadership has forcibly evicted many artists and demolished their studios. Songzhuang's new art organisations have since suffered from lack of funding and their stylish new buildings are gradually turning into new ruins.

This paper draws on Sinophone art discourse, the author’s field work including interviews with local artists and curators, and the analysis of ruin art from Songzhuang to show how its history and present problematise official temporalities of “transition” and “rejuvenation”. By discussing artworks and writings of people who have inhabited the ruins-in-the-making of Songzhuang and experienced its “ruination” (Mukherjee 2017), the paper sheds light on the three temporalities of “ruin” – as “an act perpetrated, a condition to which one is subject, and a cause of loss” (Stoler 2008, 195) – in contemporary Chinese art.

References:

Boym, Svetlana (2008). Architecture of The Off-Modern. Princeton, NY: Architectural Press.

Mukherjee, Rahul. (2017). “Anticipating Ruinations: Ecologies of ‘Make Do’ and ‘Left With’”. Journal of Visual Culture 16(3): 287–309.

Stoler, Ann Laura (2008) “Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination”. Cultural Anthropology 23(2): 191–219.

ABSTRACT. Along with transitioning toward neoliberal forms of autocratic governance, Chinese peri-urban waterscapes have entered the local government discourse of ecological civilisation. The rapid re-evaluation of invisible territories was determined by forcing the social imaginary of ecological societal relations into the materiality of place branding, giving rise to new authoritarian spatialities. This poster is designed as a performative exercise of feminist peri-urban mapping in the Chinese southwestern periphery. It uses a reflexive approach to disentangle some aspects of power geometries spatialised through vignettes of ephemeral ecology whose temporal existence and decline relate to local political conjunctures and (trans-)national economic demands of urban aggrandisement. The poster considers the local turn to ecological urbanism as a conceptual tool to legitimise disciplinary practices of access to, mobility in and spatial usage of peri-urban greenery, questioning paradigms of displaying and practising care towards the nonhuman by critically discussing the ephemerality of top-down ecological discourses and the (in)visible spatial inequalities they produce.

ABSTRACT. “China in Africa” has become a hotly debated issue together with the rapidly growing Chinese presence in the continent. The nature of the discussion, however, is remarkably different depending on where one sits. Western media take decisively negative positions, ringing the alarm bell about China’s rising geopolitical influence while also highlighting the detrimental impact on the natural environment or standards of democracy. In turn, Chinese media are virtually without exception painting a picture of positive “win-win” cooperation under which both China and Africa profit. However, what is often missing is the African voice.

This paper focuses on the African perspectives towards China. We take Kenya as the single case study. Kenya is one of the main partners of China in the continent. It is also a relatively open society, thus creating an opportunity to study multiple voices in a relatively free context.

The analysis relies chiefly on qualitative media discourse and quantitative public opinion survey. The Nation and The Star were selected as the representatives of media discourse, and the selected period spans from 2019 to 2022. A public opinion survey was conducted in 2022 on a sample of 1200 respondents representing the general population based on gender, age, and region within the country.

Overall, the study found no significant bias towards either Western or Chinese discourses in Kenyan media, instead reflecting a diverse range of sentiments. This finding suggests that African voices are at least to some extent capable of assessing the positives and negatives of China’s impacts on the continent independently.

ABSTRACT. In the 1890s, most probably influenced by Japan’s victory at the First Sino-Japanese war, Armenian newspapers started publishing articles about Japan and its successful modernization project. At the beginning of the 20th century, such articles became more frequent and included travel articles, such as K. Hunuttsyan’s “Letter from Japan” (1901), analyses of Russo-Japanese war, which was compared to confrontation of David and Goliath, and even mentions about the disease beri-beri, which was prevalent among the Japanese troops. Most Armenian accounts on Japan were sympathetic and often expressed admiration towards this country, something that would somewhat change in the 1920s and 30s. The aim of this presentation is to introduce and analyze Armenian perceptions of Japan from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. The first part of the presentation will be dedicated to Japanese-Armenian connections of that period. The second part will analyze the newspaper articles and travelogues, demonstrating the changing images of Japan.

ABSTRACT. Every year, society tends to forget the contributions of individuals who significantly impacted culture, history, and politics. My research aims to preserve the memory of Stefan Romanek, born in 1904 in Biała Podlaska, the first Polish scholar recognized by the Japanese government. It is high time to remind people of his remarkable accomplishments. Through my research, which has taken me to numerous churches, archives, and conversations with enthusiasts of Japanese and Biała Podlaska history, I strive to remind everyone of this forgotten hero. Stefan Romanek's efforts not only built Polish-Japanese relations but also, during the war, helped many Polish Jews who came to Japan with "Sugihara visas" to escape danger. His legacy and his big heart deserve to be remembered.

ABSTRACT. Several traditions of Chinese thought see time as essentially cyclical (Liu 1974): nature itself, and therefore all historical events, are governed by a cyclical succession (Granet 2019). Such a view of temporality also features in the poetry of Yan Li 严力(Beijing 1954), a poet and artist who rose to the stage as a member of both the Obscure Poets and the Stars group. His verse, right from the early stages, is filled with images of the changing of the seasons, of things dying and being reborn in a cyclical fashion. Such a view of time, which ‘naturalises’ death as simply a part of the cycle of life, informs Yan Li’s attitude towards human experience: somewhat like the shepherd in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, who bursts into laughter after figuring out the enigma of the eternal return (Nietzsche 2006, 127), Yan Li develops a distinctively ironic and playful attitude in his poetry. At first, Yan’s irony and humour are coupled with the emphasis on basic, almost primal aspects of human life as constitutive of how we experience the world. At a later stage of his poetics, however, Yan’s playful attitude feeds into the programmatically unsystematic, aphorism-like critique of global consumerism – which Yan got plenty of while living in New York between 1985 and 1995 – carried out in Rotating Polyhedral Mirror (1999). Moving from Yan’s cyclical view of time, then, I try and reconstruct his genesis as a ‘playful critic of global consumerism’ through the close reading of his poetry, while also trying to highlight the main features of the critique he performs – for which I also draw on Adorno’s thoughts on the fake, alienated experience of modern man in the era of globalised capitalism, as they provide an adequate framework to situate Yan’s own endeavour.

REFERENCES

Adorno, Theodor W. (2015). Minima moralia. Meditazioni della vita offesa [Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben], translated by Renato Solmi, Turin: Einaudi. Granet, Marcel. (2019). Il pensiero cinese [La pensée chinoise], translated by Giorgio R. Cadorna, Milan: Adelphi. Liu Shu-hsien. (1974). “Time and Temporality: The Chinese Perspective”, Philosophy East and West 24 (2), 145-153. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (2006).Thus Spoke Zarathustra [Also sprach Zarathustra], translated by Adrian Del Caro, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ABSTRACT. Zheng Xiaoqiong 郑小琼 (b. 1980 in Sichuan) is a contemporary poet and her name is linked to dagong (migrant workers’) poetry, often studied as an (im)possible discourse of “the subaltern”, and/or as literature passible of ecocritical analysis. But Zheng's poetry, going beyond the particular experience of the migrant and the very category of dagong poetry, also elicits a reflection on time that is very contemporary and universal in its value. Unlike the eschatological and progressive time that still underlies the dominant narratives, Zheng's time is the body language of the human being: cyclical, but consciously limited; an individual illusion, or an interpretative device for living a (human) life. It is a time that goes nowhere, thus reflecting the paradoxical experience of the migrant herself, whose body shifts and changes, but whose "love" belongs to the fixity of eternity. Showing how this idea of time emerges from the author's poems, the contribution also suggests a dialogue with the literature of other contemporary Sinophone authors, and investigates the assumptions and potentialities from and towards which such an idea of time possibly moves.

ABSTRACT. "This is the time to make a choice," declares Ji Xian 紀弦 (1913-2013) at the end of Shihou pian (Time), one of his earliest free verse poems. Ji, a mainland Chinese writer who relocated to Taiwan in 1948, uses this 1934 poem to assert his identity as a modern poet, urging his contemporaries to “make a choice” by embracing a new literary epoch and overcoming classical poetry. In Ji’s work, time often equates to contemporariness —modernity— becoming a progressive, concrete, and dynamic force, as well as a “pressure” that mirrors the frenzy of the 20th century and the need for change. Concurrently, Ji also contemplates time as an abstract and elusive entity, often anthropomorphized as superior beings whose relentless and impetuous progression seems to heighten the rush and pressure of modern times. Through an analysis of time occurrences, representations, and personifications in Ji Xian’s poetry, the contribution aims to explore his dual perception of time —as a reflection on modernity and as an abstract entity — to investigate the interplay between these dimensions while addressing the sense of urgency felt by early 20th-century literati during the rise of Modern Literature in China.