Customs and Historical Perspectives: China and the World in the Ming and Qing Dynasties

The essays collected in this book are divided into five parts. The first concerns theories of periodization; the second selects everyday customs; the third focuses on the turbulent period from the late Ming to the early Qing and discusses questions of national consciousness and order; the fourth consists of legal history papers related to property rights and trials; and the fifth presents methodological essays centered on the study of Chinese history in Japan. These essays may seem scattered, but viewed through the author’s scholarly life, they are like branches and leaves growing from the same trunk, united by a shared set of concerns: understanding the social phenomena of the Ming and Qing eras through the ways of thinking of people at the time, and examining changes in these phenomena from a broad perspective through comparative history.