The presenter used his Japanese literacy and knowledge of social media at an early stage to enhance the integrative motivation of students toward English as a Foreign Language by engaging them in their Japanese-language-only social network Mixi.

A Noh play and temple chronicle, thought to have prehistoric origins in one of the oldest professions, was translated for the Shikoku Bilingual Guidebook by Akiko Takemoto and Steve McCarty. The co-author narrates this podcast, telling the heart-wrenching story of a woman’s ultimate sacrifice, with an overlay of Buddhism and archetypal symbolism.…[Read more]

Handouts the author developed for classes in Japan requiring papers in English, from regular undergraduate EFL classes to graduate school international classes. Page 1 A) Outline of an Academic Paper: necessary elements, color-coded to show connections between parts of a paper; and B) Abstracts: often confused with introductions, need to stand…[Read more]

Short audio to download, introduces Keisei Awa no Naruto, a Bunraku puppet play, followed by discussion questions for educational use. This 18th Century Chikamatsu play plumbs the depths of pathos with Sophoclean fatalism, leaving the listener wondering, among other things, why such a drama of ‘mono no aware’ is still performed as a puppet play.…[Read more]

Handout for the 2005 Conference on Pedagogies and Learning: Meanings under the Microscope, held at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. A framework was sought for understanding concepts in new disciplines in their full dimensionality. Citing Plato’s Socrates, the nature of knowledge was examined, locating it not in information…[Read more]

A report published by the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission this week, ‘Elitist Britain’, found that two fifths (39%) of Britain’s ‘leading people’ were educated privately, more than five times as many as in the population as a whole, with almost one quarter (24%) graduating from Oxbridge. I therefore thought it would be timely to publis…[Read more]

A gripping legend about the origin of the Pilgrimage of Shikoku seems to prove reincarnation. This five-minute podcast recounts the miracle story, then poses discussion questions that could, and have been, used educationally with groups to get at the underlying motive and purpose of the legend.

Three parts of a 2014 presentation at the National Museum of Ethnology Linguistics Circle in Osaka are compiled in this PDF file. 1st page: Abstract of the presentation “A Multidimensional Approach to Definitions, Applied to e-Learning in Language Education”; 2nd page: Chart “Contextualizing fields and terms in their fuller dimensionality: Example…[Read more]

A literary and historical introduction to the printed and manuscript materials composing the Great Peace (Taiping 太平) textual corpus, with a critical assessment of several modern Chinese editions thereof, followed by a revised review of THE SCRIPTURE ON GREAT PEACE: THE TAIPING JING AND THE BEGINNINGS OF DAOISM, translated by Barbara Hen…[Read more]

Review of “L’itinéraire de Marco Polo dans sa traversée de la Chine”, by Philippe Ménard (MEDIOEVO ROMANZO, vol. 26 [3rd Series, vol. 7], fasc. 3 [2002]: 321–360).

Historiography, morphological analysis, textual study and full translation into French of Chinese manuscript Stein no. 4226 from Dunhuang in the British Library (Or.8210/S.4226/R.1).

A state-of-the-art study of popular movements and religiosity in Late Antiquity China (1st–2nd cent. CE), focused on issues of theology, practice, sources and terminology, and including a critical assessment of received scholarship.

Review of MAKING TRANSCENDENTS: ASCETICS AND SOCIAL MEMORY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA. By Robert Ford Campany. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Pp. xviii + 300.

Review of THE CHENWEI RIDDLE: TIME, STARS, AND HEROES IN THE APOCRYPHA. By Licia Di Giacinto. (Deutsche Ostasienstudien, vol. 13). Gossenberg: Ostasien Verlag, 2013. Pp. xi + 332. 25 Figures, 40 Tables, 4 Appendices, List of Illustrations, Bibliography.

Review of AFFILIATION AND TRANSMISSION IN DAOISM: A BERLIN SYMPOSIUM. Edited by Florian C. Reiter. (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 78). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. viii + 300 pages.

Review of THE EMERGENCE OF DAOISM: CREATION OF TRADITION. By Gil Raz. (Routledge Studies in Taoism). Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2012. Pp. 292.

Review of CELESTIAL MASTERS: HISTORY AND RITUAL IN EARLY DAOIST COMMUNITIES. By Terry F. Kleeman. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 102). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiii + 425. Maps, illustrations.

A review of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS: DAOISM. Edited by James Robson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. Pp. xxxii + 754 + A29. Map, illustrations.

Gabor Lukacs’ 2008 book on “Kaitai Shinsho: The Single Most Famous Japanese Book of Medicine & Geka Sōden: An Early Very Important Manuscript on Surgery” is a bibliographical contribution to the comparative history of the introduction of Western science in East Asia. It focuses on two illustrated manuals of anatomy and surgery in Japanese, adap…[Read more]

In ancient China, portentology was a “science” in its own right, a specialised field of knowledge developed by rational individuals who endeavoured to fathom the concealed mechanisms at work beneath the spectacles of history and the world at large. This paper focuses on the nomenclature of portents (observed phenomena interpreted as auspicious or…[Read more]