This paper examines the evolution of literary historiography in East Asia, focusing on how early textual traditions shaped historical narratives. By analyzing key works from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean traditions, it explores how these cultures adapted historiographical models over time, influenced by indigenous practices and external forces, particularly from China. The article calls for a regionally comparative and globally aware approach to East Asian Studies, arguing that traditional European Sinology/Japanology and North American area studies remain constrained by nation-centered methodologies. These limitations obscure East Asia’s shared cultural history and its relevance today. Through a comparative lens, this study highlights the processes of cultural exchange and adaptation that shaped literary historiography. Ultimately, it contends that revisiting these historiographical traditions offers deeper insights into the intellectual history of the region.

The utilization and evolution of classical Chinese writing on the Korean Peninsula exhibit distinctive characteristics within the broader East Asian cultural sphere. In ancient Korea, despite the existence of multiple competing states, a shared cultural civilization emerged wherein Classical Chinese writing played a pivotal role. Subsequently, Korean intellectuals actively assimilated and reinterpreted Classical Chinese texts, significantly contributing to developments in literature, history, law, politics, economics, and various scholarly disciplines. Classical Chinese served not only as a medium for intellectual discourse but also facilitated the dissemination and exchange of shared knowledge. Even after the invention of Han’gŭl in the 15th century, Han’gŭl documents primarily remained restricted to personal correspondence, translations of royal protocols, women's writings, and fictional works. This paper provides an overview of the historical development of classical Chinese literature on the Korean Peninsula, categorizing its progression into three distinct stages: the formative period of classical Chinese textual conventions, the period of expansion, the era of transformation and diversification. During each period, state authorities rigorously upheld established literary genres and hierarchical writing practices, while simultaneously non-political and popular literary traditions emerged and evolved in opposition to state influence. This complex interplay led to a multilayered literary culture in pre-modern Korea. The classical Chinese literary tradition, forged through the interactions and tensions among state power, non-political literary hierarchies, and popular literary movements, generated an extensive corpus that includes fictional literature reflecting national sentiments or reality, scholarly treatises, historical documentation, and rhetorical documents employed in diplomatic exchanges and both public and private contexts.

This paper focuses on the theoretical and methodological issues in the study of East Asian Sinographic texts. Previous research has generally followed four basic models: the “Sinocentric perspective,” “influence studies,” the “challenge-response theory,” and the “internal development theory.” These models reflect nineteenth- and twentieth-century modes of thought, but their limitations have become increasingly evident today. In response, the author proposes the concept of the “Sinographic Cultural Sphere as Method,” which emphasizes viewing East Asian Sinographic texts as an integrated whole while recognizing both differences within similarities and similarities within differences. This approach seeks to move beyond the dichotomy of center and periphery, advocating for multidirectional book circulation and mutual interaction. In the era of globalization, research on East Asian Sinographic texts should focus on identifying commonalities through particularities, thereby contributing to cultural exchange, integration, and the development of East Asian scholarship in the 21st century.

Kaifūsō 懷風藻 from the Nara period is the oldest surviving collection of Japanese kanshi 漢詩. Its poems were in a formative stage, imitating the poetry of the Six Dynasties and early Tang periods. However, after the middle and later Heian period, distinctly Japanese forms of kanshi such as the seven-character regulated verse and kudaishi句題詩 began to emerge amidst the popularity of Bai Juyi’s poetry. During the Kamakura period, the practitioners of kanshi starkly shifted from aristocrats to Zen monks, marking the beginning of what is called gozan bungaku 五山文學, which continued into the Muromachi period. During this time, the literature of the Song and Yuan dynasties—especially Su Shi and Huang Tingjian’s poetry from the Northern Song—was held in high regard, as well as the poetry of Du Fu, who greatly influenced them. Influenced by these three figures, Zen monks of the Muromachi period not only composed kanshi, but also gave lectures on their poetry and preserved their teachings in shōmono. These shōmono hold unique significance in the history of Japanese kanshi studies as the first interpretive works. This paper outlines the reception of Du Fu’s poetry up until the early era of Gozan Bungaku and then introduces four shōmono on Du Fu’s poetry from the middle period and beyond.

This paper examines the Tonkin Free School (Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục) as a key site for the transmission and adaptation of East Asian reformist thought in early 20th-century Vietnam. Through an analysis of Văn Minh Tân Học Sách (New Learning Strategies for the Advancement of Civilization), it highlights how Vietnamese intellectuals engaged with and reconfigured ideas from Kang Youwei 康有爲 (1858-1927), Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (1873-1929), Fukuzawa Yukichi 福澤諭吉(1835-1901), and Zheng Guanying 鄭觀應 (1842–1922) within a localized vision of modernization. The study underscores that texts composed in Classical Chinese within the East Asian Sinosphere must be read in their original written language to fully reveal their intertextual references. Translating such texts into a non-Chinese language requires direct engagement with the original rather than reliance on intermediary versions, ensuring the preservation of intertextual richness. Without this process, translations risk distorting a text’s intellectual and cultural dimensions. By reassessing the textual strategies of the Tonkin Free School and subsequent translations of Văn Minh Tân Học Sách, this paper highlights Vietnam’s modernization as an active intellectual negotiation rather than a passive reception of foreign ideas.

The controversy regarding the late-compiled Ancient-Scrip Shangshu extended over several centuries. It was initially instigated by Song宋 and Yuan元 scholars, including Wu Yu吳棫 , Zhu Xi 朱熹, and Wu Cheng 吳澄, who introduced a skeptical approach toward the classic. Subsequently, during the Ming period, scholars such as Mei Zhuo梅鷟 and Hao Jing郝敬 conducted textual investigations that revealed significant doubts regarding the work. Amid this fervent debate, neighboring Korea and Japan—through diplomatic book acquisitions and cultural exchanges—gradually became attentive to the issues of authenticity associated with the late-compiled Ancient-Script Shangshu古文尙書, influenced by the scholarly debates of the Ming 明 and Qing 淸periods. A survey of Chinese texts in both countries, however, indicates that the debate resonated more profoundly in Korea than in Japan. This discrepancy can be attributed to the fact that Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism served as the foundational norm for all ritual practices during the formation of the Korean state. Zhu Xi regarded the sixteen-character method for cultivating the mind—“人心惟危，道心惟微。惟精惟一，允執厥中”—as the self-cultivation technique practiced by the ancient sage-kings of the Three Dynasties. Notably, the chapter Dayu Mo, which records this method, is included in the late-compiled Ancient-Script Shangshu. Accordingly, this paper focuses on seventeenth-century Korea, investigating how Korean Confucian scholars of that era perceived the authenticity issues related to the late-compiled Ancient-Script Shangshu.

In the aftermath of World War II, Hong Kong emerged as a prominent refuge for Chinese intellectuals fleeing the political upheaval in mainland China. Notable scholars such as Jao Tsung-I (饒宗頤, 1917-2018), Lo Hsiang-lin (羅香林, 1906-1978), and Qian Mu (錢穆, 1895-1980) engaged deeply with Korean historical studies, perceiving Korea as a critical case for examining the dynamics of Chinese cultural transmission abroad. This article employs textual analysis of their contributions to Korean historical discourse to elucidate how these scholars conceptualized cultural inheritance within the distinctive colonial context of Hong Kong. Their investigations, which underscored the Korean adaptations and preservation of Chinese traditions, reflected their own concerns regarding cultural continuity amidst the challenges of modernity and Western influence. By situating their scholarship within the broader academic and cultural landscape of Hong Kong, this study highlights the importance of Korea-focused research in shaping the intellectual milieu of post-war Hong Kong. It posits that their contributions to Korean studies not only significantly advanced global Korean scholarship but also enriched the discourse surrounding modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history, particularly in relation to the preservation and transformation of cultural identity within diaspora contexts.