East Asian studies

Sinology

The sub-field dedicated to China, Chinese history, Chinese culture, Chinese literature, and the Chinese language. In the context of the Republic of China also specified as Taiwan studies (Academia Sinica).

Japanology

The sub-field dedicated to Japan, Japanese culture, Japanese history, Japanese literature, and the Japanese language. The foundation of the Asiatic Society of Japan at Yokohama in 1872 by men such as Ernest Satow and Frederick Victor Dickins was an important event in the development of Japanese studies as an academic discipline.

Koreanology

The sub-field dedicated to Korea, Korean culture, Korean history, Korean literature, and the Korean language. The term Korean studies first began to be used in the 1940s, but did not attain widespread currency until South Korea rose to economic prominence in the 1970s. In 1991, the South Korean government established the Korea Foundation to promote Korean studies.

Mongolian studies

The sub-field dedicated to Mongolia, Mongolian culture, Mongolian literature and the Mongolian language. Mongolian studies are also presented as a sub-field of the study of Inner Asia (as opposed to East Asia). The American Center for Mongolian Studies was founded in 2002.

In universities across the United States, as part of the opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, younger faculty and graduate students criticized the field for complicity in what they saw as American imperialism. In particular, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars debated and published alternative approaches not centered in the United States or funded, as many American programs were, by the American government or major foundations. They charged that Japan was held up as a model of non-revolutionary modernization and the field focused on modernization theory in order to fend off revolution.

In the following decades, many critics were inspired by Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism, while others, writing from the point of view of the quantitative or theoretical social sciences, saw area studies in general and East Asian studies in particular, as amorphous and lacking in rigor.[1]

Critiques were also mounted from other points in the political spectrum. Ramon H. Myers and Thomas A. Metzger, two scholars based at the generally conservative Hoover Institution, charged that "the 'revolution' paradigm increasingly overshadowed the 'modernization' paradigm" and "this fallacy has become integral to much of the writing on modern Chinese history", discrediting or ignoring other factors in the history of modern China.[2]

In Europe, notable scholars of East Asian studies have long occupied professorships at prominent universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy, while recent publications also suggest that the “Nordic countries offer some unique contributions in the field of East Asian studies.”[3]

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• Nordic Association of Japanese and Korean Studies