Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia

Supervisor: Dr. Bruce Rusk

I study the cultural history of late imperial China (1368-1911), focusing on topics such as migration, place identity, and commemoration. My dissertation deals with the case of Li Dongyang (1447-1516) during the mid-Ming Dynasty to explore how he perceived his place identity and also how the later people thought of him as a person of where. In modern scholarship, Li has been attributed mainly as a person of Chaling in modern-day Hunan province whence his ancestors came. However, he was born and spent almost his entire life in the capital Beijing. My research intends to shed light on the neglected aspect of his being a local of Beijing. I also trace a history of commemoration of him by the later literati and intellectuals up to the Republic of China. My study finds out that Li was commemorated mainly in Beijing by the locals as well as Hunan officials. It eventually concludes that a place associated with a person could vary depending on who defines whom for what purposes.

https://ubc.academia.edu/MinoruTakano

Research Interests:

• Cultural/Intellectual History and Literature of Late Imperial China (1368–1911)
• Early Modern Japanese Intellectual History (1603–1868)
• Inter-regional Cultural Exchanges in premodern East Asian Area/Sinographic Sphere
• Methodologies: Migration Studies; Relationships between Place and Identity; Commemoration