Sino-Japanese Reflections offers ten richly detailed case studies that examine various forms of
cultural and literary interaction between Japanese and Chinese intellectuals from the late Ming
to the early twentieth century. The authors consider efforts by early modern scholars on each
side of the Yellow Sea to understand the language and culture of the other to draw upon
received texts and forms and to contribute to shared literary practices. Whereas literary and
cultural flow within the Sinosphere is sometimes imagined to be an entirely unidirectional
process of textual dissemination from China to the periphery the contributions to this volume
reveal a more complex picture: highlighting how literary and cultural engagement was always an
opportunity for creative adaptation and negotiation. Examining materials such as Chinese
translations of Japanese vernacular poetry Japanese engagements with Chinese supernatural
stories adaptations of Japanese historical tales into vernacular Chinese Sinitic poetry
composed in Japan and Japanese Sinology the volume brings together recent work by literary
scholars and intellectual historians of multiple generations all of whom have a strong
comparative interest in Sino-Japanese studies.
