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Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japanese "nationalism" (if such a term is even applicable) depended less on imagined similarities among Japanese than it did on their contrived customary differences from foreign peoples such as the Ainu. The boundaries of the early modern Japanese realm were ethno-geographical, and Ainu identity and difference was critical in constructing the borders of Japan.

After 1799, the Tokugawa shogunate and, later, the Meiji state, undertook policies of deculturation and assimilation toward the Ainu, because the Meiji strategy toward state building relied less on difference than on myths of internal homogeneity. The Meiji state conscripted Ainu into the myth of Japanese homogeneity through assimilation; but earlier forms of Ainu autonomy and difference first had to be destroyed.

Interestingly, wolf eradication offers one vantage point from which to view the process of Ainu deculturation and assimilation in the context of the colonization of Hokkaido and the creation of the modern myths that provided the foundation for Japan's ethnic nationalism. Ainu origin mythology held that the Ainu people were born from a union of a wolf and a goddess, and so when Ainu tracked and killed wolves and wild dogs under state bounty programs legitimized as "imperial grants," they committed mythological patricide, replacing their origin myths with Japanese ones that, over the course of the late Meiji period, served as the foundation of Japan's modern nation.

Japan Brown Bag Series

Co-hosted with the Center for East Asian Studies

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Brett Walker Professor of History Montana State University
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Gi-Wook Shin
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Director, Gi-Wook Shin welcomes the new members to the Korean Studies Program at the beginning of 2004-2005 academic year.

Dear members of the Korean Studies community,

I trust that all of you have had a great summer and are now ready for the beginning of a new academic year. I welcome all of you back to campus and to another exciting year for the Korean Studies Program (KSP) at Stanford University.

First of all, I welcome the new members to our program this year. Philip Yun and John Feffer are our inaugural Pantech Fellows and will conduct research related to Korea, both North and South. Both Philip and John have distinguished careers and will be great assets to all of us at KSP. Philip has held high-level positions at the State Department and worked closely with former Secretary of Defense, Dr. William Perry, in addition to practicing law in both Korea and the U.S. John is an accomplished writer and editor, and his most recent publication is North Korea/South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis. I would also like to welcome Jasmin Ha, who will serve as our new Program Coordinator and assistant to me. She worked previously at The Korea Society in New York City and brings to us both her experience and vision for Korean studies at Stanford. Soyoung Kwon, a North Korean expert, will also be staying at APARC as a Shorenstein Fellow for the coming year.

Hong Kal and Chiho Sawada, post-doctoral research fellows, will remain with us for another year. Hong has accepted a tenure-track assistant professorship at York University, but will not start her appointment until the 2005-06 year. Rakhi Patel, our student assistant, will continue to work part-time to assist Jasmin and myself.

We will resume our popular luncheon seminars on October 15 with a presentation by Eric Larson of the Rand Corporation on his project on South Korean attitudes towards the United States. There will also be numerous other exciting events and programs on Korea-related issues throughout the coming year. Please visit our website for more detailed and continuously updated information.

KSP is also now home to the Journal of Korean Studies for which Chiho and I serve as associate editor and co-editor, respectively, of the journal. In addition, we have been engaged in a number of exciting projects. I have just finished my overdue book on Korean ethnic nationalism and am currently working with Kyu Sup Hahn, a doctoral student in Communications, on a project on U.S. media coverage of Korea and South Korean media coverage of the U.S. from 1992-2004. We will also continue on-going projects such as "Globalization in Korea" and "Historical Injustice, Reconciliation, and Cooperation." I appreciate the assistance of the many students and researchers who have been working with me on these projects over the years.

This year we will do an international search to fill the William Perry Chair in contemporary Korea. This is an extremely important appointment for the Korean Studies Program at Stanford, and you will have the opportunity to meet candidates throughout the year.

Thanks again for your continued support of the Korean Studies Program at Stanford. I look forward to seeing you at the various KSP events and programs throughout the year.

Cordially,

Gi-Wook Shin,

Director

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A lecture by Timothy Garton Ash to mark the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the election of the 44th President of the United States.

Timothy Garton Ash's new book Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West will be published in the United States on November 9, the day the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989. He is a Professor of European Studies at Oxford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His previous books include The Magic Lantern, his eyewitness account of the velvet revolutions of 1989, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, The File: A Personal History, In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent" and "History of the Present.

Oak Lounge

Timothy Garton Ash Professor St. Antony's College, Oxford University
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Between 1979 and 1992, the JKS became a leading academic forum for the publication of innovative in-depth research on Korea. Now under the editorial guidance of Gi-Wook Shin and John Duncan, this journal continues to be dedicated to quality articles, in all disciplines, on a broad range of topics concerning Korea, both historical and contemporary.

This edition's contents:

Articles

  1. Literary Production, Circulating Libraries and Private Publishing: The Popular Reception of Vernacular Fiction Texts in the Late Chosun Dynasty - Michael Kim
  2. The Uses and Abuses of Wonhyo and the "Tong Pulkyo" Narrative - Eunsu Cho
  3. National History and Domestic Spaces: Secret Lives of Girls and Women in 1950s South Korea in O Chong-hui's "The Garden of Childhood"and "The Chinese Street" - Jin-Kyung Lee
  4. Disturbing Images: Rebellion, Usurpation, and Rulership in Early Sixteenth Century East Asia-Korean Writings on Emperor Wuzong - David M. Robinson
  5. Sugi's Collation Notes to the Koryo Buddhist Canon and Their Significance for Buddhist Textual Criticism - Robert E. Buswell, Jr.

Book Reviews

  1. The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk, and Class in Contemporary South Korea by Nancy Abelmann. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. xviii, 325 pp. $27.00 (paper). Reviewed by Michael E. Robinson
  2. The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 by Charles K. Armstrong. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. xv, 265 pp. $39.95 (Cloth). Reviewed by Frank Hoffmann
  3. Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age by Jae-eui Lee. Trans. by Kap Su Seol and Nick Mamatas. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 1999. 172 pp.
  4. Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising by Linda S. Lewis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. xxi, 189 pp.
  5. Contentious Kwangju: The May 18 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present edited by Gi-Wook Shin and Kyung Moon Hwang. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. xxxi, 159 pp. Reviewed by Hong Kal
  6. Hanguk hyondae minjok undong yongu-haebang hu minjok kukka konssol undong kwa tongil chonson by So Chung-sok, Seoul: Yoksa pipyongsa, 1991. 678 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Won 14,000. Reviewed by Kyung Moon Hwang
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Gi-Wook Shin
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During the Choson period, ojin or portraits of kings were regarded as the most important of all figural images. From the beginning of the Choson dynasty, many ojin were produced and housed in chinjon or portrait halls. King T'aejo (r. 1392-1398), the founder of the Choson dynasty, enshrined one of his ojin at the Chunwon Hall in Yonghung, where he was born, and another in a chinjon in Kyongju, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla. The third king T'aejong (r. 1400-1398), who was the fifth son of King T'aejo, established two more chinjon: Munso Hall in the capital city Hanyang and Kyemyong Hall in Kaesong, the capital of the previous Koryo dynasty. He also enshrined two additional portraits of King T'aejo in Pyongyang, the old capital of Kokuryo, and in Chonju, the royal family's ancestral home. As a result, there were altogether six chinjon in the early Choson period.

In contrast to the Koryo dynasty when chinjon were often established at Buddhist temples, most Choson royal chinjon had no relation to Buddhism. Instead, they were built in a Confucian architectural style and were used for the observance of ancestor worship ceremonies based on Confucian rites.

Choson ojin and chinjon often manifested the king's authority and power. Due to his usurpation of the throne by killing his brother, King T'aejong struggled to maintain his legitimacy throughout his reign. He used ojin and chinjon to consolidate his kingship and to suppress challenges posed by high officials. Therefore, ojin in the early Choson dynasty was a very political art form, and most recorded discussions on ojin were based on political context with little or no regard for artistic agendas.

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Insoo Cho Assistant Professor, Art History University of Southern California
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Philip Zelikow is the Executive Director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the "9/11 Commission." He will speak about his work with the Commission.

Dr. Zelikow is also the Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. After serving in government with the Navy, the State Department, and the National Security Council, he taught at Harvard before assuming his present post in Virginia to direct the nation's largest research center on the American presidency. He was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served as executive director of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford, as well as the executive director of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.

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Stanford University

Philip Zelikow Executive Director National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
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In an Oct. 20 talk co-sponsored by SIIS and the World Affairs Council of Northern California, Philip Zelikow, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- better known as the 9/11 Commission -- discussed the United States' continued vulnerability to terrorist attacks; the intelligence reforms that are needed to better protect the country; the attacks and accusations he has endured as head of the controversial commission; and his satisfaction that the body's final report has been widely disseminated to the American public, in a book that has become a best-seller. Zelikow's talk was held at Kresge Auditorium on the Stanford campus.

Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and is director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs (also at the University of Virginia), the nation's largest research center on the American presidency. Before assuming his present positions in Virginia, he served in government with the Navy, the State Department and the National Security Council, and then taught at Harvard University. He was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served as executive director of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford. He was also the executive director of the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.

Zelikow's books include The Kennedy Tapes (with Ernest May), Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Condoleezza Rice), and the rewritten Essence of Decision (with Graham Allison). He has also been the director of the Aspen Strategy Group, a policy program of the Aspen Institute.

Zelikow's talk was covered by the Stanford Daily and Stanford Report.

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Michael A. McFaul
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CDDRL director Michael A. McFaul weighs in on the mass murderers who seized the school in Beslan, Russia, this month committed one of the most heinous acts of terrorism in world history. Other murderers have killed children, and other terrorists have slaughtered more people, but it is hard to imagine anyone purposely killing this many innocent children in one attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin is most certainly right when he declares that he will not give in to the demands of these killers. Citizens deserve protection, and their killers deserve unflinching justice.
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