Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West: Essays Commemorating 25 years of East Asian Studies at the University of Aarhus (review)

38o China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 S0ren Clausen et al., editors. Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West: Essays Commemorating 25 years ofEastAsian Studies at the University of Aarhus. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1995. 496 pp. Hardcover $40.00, ISBN 87-7288-497-5. As the subtide of Cultural Encounters suggests, this rather handsomely produced book celebrates a quarter-century of East Asian Studies at the University of Aarhus. Unfortunately, the contents are not as impressive as the cover and print; I suspect that the East Asian Studies program at Aarhus is better than the articles in this volume would indicate. Although some pieces are interesting and provocative , most read like preliminary conference papers. A number are written by graduate students who do not seem to be at a particularly advanced stage of their research. And even the contributions of some well-established scholars, including Harumi Befu (whose work I normally admire), are radier disappointing. Perhaps these are matters of scholarly taste; some more sinologically inclined readers may find the contents of this volume absolutely riveting. But to me the articles are either too broad or too narrow. Often they focus on relatively isolated textual problems without adequate attention to larger cultural questions. Most do not display a high degree of analytical rigor, although the problem is certainly not one oflanguage. Indeed, all the authors seem to be fluentìy multilingual, and their English-language contributions to the volume are quite well written on the whole. The essays included in Cultural Encounters range broadly, and are roughly organized into four main groups: (1) premodern studies, (2) artistic themes, (3) social encounters, and (4) political interactions. Recurrent ideas include the relationship between foreign and "native" cultures; the contact between different Asian peoples; and the interplay between various cultural traditions (elite and popular, oral and written, etc.) within a single Asian country. The most prominent themes in die volume are those of ethnic identity, cultural contact between "East" and "West," and the tensions of cultural change in such diverse realms as politics, art, literature, film, scholarship, education, child-rearing, and marriage. Knud Lunbaek's "The Establishment of European Sinology 1801-1815" focuses briefly on the lives and most important works of five major sinologists: Joseph Hager, Antonio Montucci, Chrétien Louis Joseph de Guignes, Julius Klaproth, and Abel Rémusat. It is almost entirely descriptive, with virtually nothing to say about the politics of early nineteenth-century scholarship or the larger intellectual© 1996 by University stagg on whkh these five individuals acted. Susanne Juhl's article on "Cultural Exchange in Northern Liang" examines the interaction between the foreign-dominated Northern Liang dynasty (397-439) and various small, non-Chinese kingdoms in the fifth century. On the basis ofher Reviews 381 examination ofartistic evidence, she concludes that both the Northern Liang and the smaller kingdoms "were in varying degrees influenced by traditional Chinese culture as well as Buddhism." Gunner B. Mikkelson's "Skillfully Planting the Trees ofLight" describes the process bywhich Manichaean ideas were "translated" into Chinabymeans ofBuddhist images and terminology. Although this article stands solidly on its own, one might well wonder what the result would have been ifthe author had compared this process oftransmission with the way Buddhist ideas were initially introduced into China—at least in part through the use ofDaoist concepts and imagery. In Bjarke Frellesvig's "A Cultural Encounter: Dr. Thunberg meets Mr. Matsuhiru," the author uses a 1792 text on Japanese grammar by a Swedish botanist to illustrate a certain kind ofdiscourse within which "the European image of Japan was formed in the late 18th century." His main point is that the particular kind ofinterpersonal (as opposed to intercultural) dialogue inventedby Thunberg should be viewed as "an encounter between equals" (emphasis in the original). Vibeke Bordahl's "Three Bowls and You Cannot Cross the Ridge: Orality and Literacy in Yangzhou Storytelling" is based on an examination ofthe composition and transmission of Yangzhou pinghua. Bordahl explores the interplay between "high" and "low" storytelling styles, using a universally known paradigmatic tale ("Wu Song Fights the Tiger"), and argues that the art of storytelling in China was probably never considered merely "as a substitute for...