Navigating Identity in Medieval East Asia

The historical and cultural record of medieval Japan projects competing visions of maritime Asia, the archipelago’s place in it, and the status of seafarers. Inhabitants of medieval Japan developed and depended on an array of maritime connections to bind the archipelago together and join it with the rest of the world. Highly mobile traffickers in goods, violence, technologies, ideas and peoples mastered skills in oceanic and cross-cultural navigation generating wealth, prestige, and anxiety for landbound patrons and officials. Networks of trade and travel provided the context for the imagination (and policing) of identities, which institutions and individuals both navigated and contested.

Peter Shapinsky, University of Illinois Springfield, “Hmm, Japanese Pirate or Korean Official Today? A Borderlander’s Wardrobe and Identity Shifting in the Fifteenth-Century Straits of Tsushima”

Michael Bathgate, Saint Xavier University, “Travelers in Space and Time: Imagining India and China in a Medieval Japanese Tale Collection”