The New Japan: Government and Politics . By Harold S. Quigley and John E. Turner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956. viii, 456. Appendices, Index. $5.00.

Abstract

for example, the Jehol "T'ang" painting is an early Sung copy (Sire"n says, Sung. Early Chinese Painting, I [1933], 66. Bachhofer, eighth century. Burlington Magazine [Nov. 1935], 189-191. Sullivan, possibly Ming. Artibus Asiae XVII [1954], 94); or that of two "Five Dynasties" Deer are "perhaps" Yuan; or why and how a short bamboo handscroll by Kuan Tao-sheng was "probably improved by" her husband, Chao Meng-fu. Umehara's is a direct report on a bit of Japanese wartime archaeology. This, along with a recent article on a Manchurian find at Laio-yang (Fairbank and Kitano, Artibus Asiae XVII [1954], 238-264) does much to illuminate Han discoveries at that time. The two tombs described here—212 excavated as early as 1934, and 219 excavated in 1942—are of a well-known Lolang type, but made remarkable by a woman's coiffure, a still-tied silk sash, and for the first time a cross-bow complete with bow. From a mirror, dating in the first century B.C. seems likely. In such a complicated area as nomadic art, it is valuable to have Max Loehr's scholarly concentration on a single motif. By following out the stag form the author concludes that the Transcaucasian stag motif "originated in the setting of the Tagar-Maiemir phase" in the Minusinsk (Siberia) and Altai regions. Most interesting to the Far Eastern scholar is the obvious conclusion that China could have no significant part in this (contrary to Karlgren's and Ghirshman's inference from analysis of dagger material). China's indifference to the animal is animal in Shang and Chou art precludes such origins. The Ordos is not an outpost of China but an outpost of the Steppe. Schuyler Cammann's article is a wide and careful summary of past research with the addition of latest findings. No one is better qualified to tell us of these matters, and in effect we are given a view of China's expanding world concretely and enduringly portrayed in bronze, from the early (Chou) circles of heaven, that only open a small center for communication to the earth below, through the more elaborate concepts of heaven and earth that are Han and T'ang, Taoist and Confucian, or even Buddhist and Manichaean. But the line is continuous, all examples presenting ideas of enduring cosmic harmony. Soame Jenyns' work on late Ming and early Ch'ing ceramics is a lively and convincing bit of historical writing. For the general historian it is of special interest for his outline of trade with Europe at this time; and, to return to painting, it is a reminder that this was exactly the time when some of the great "retired" artists were working. Interestingly, according to the author, these wares "abound in some of the most spirited and sensitive drawing in the whole field of Chinese ceramics."