The Twelfth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 12)

The paper discusses the spatial and textual organization of the inscriptions on poetic features called Khlong Konlabot at Wat Pho monastery and of the inscriptions narrating the tales of Ramakian at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha—both in the heart of Old Bangkok—by employing traditional manuscripts as a source for comparison and investigation. The inscriptions are arguably unique among the epigraphic corpora of Thailand because they are closely related to the visual elements surrounding the written texts. The Khlong Konlabot inscriptions of Wat Pho consist of graphics and diagrams, while the inscriptions at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha narrate mural paintings of the Ramakian along the Gallery of the Temple. The textual and spatial organization of both groups of inscriptions, therefore, is more complex than other inscriptions which consist merely of written prose texts. In order to organize the inscriptions, traditional khoi-paper manuscripts were used to plan how the textual elements would correspond with the visual elements, to draft the inscription texts, and sometimes to record which poets and royal scribes were to compose which inscriptions. These manuscripts reveal the process of preparing and producing the inscriptions along with determining how the texts and visual elements were arranged in the inscription space. This paper, therefore, aims to demonstrate the complicated relationship between these two different media in traditional Siamese writing culture: inscriptions and manuscripts.

The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) recommendations adopted by UNESCO in 2011 serve as an instrument to respond to challenges to cultural heritage in urban environments faced by rapid urbanization, climate change, and urban conflict. It outlines the knowledge and planning tool emphasizing on the documentation and mapping of landscape characteristics to facilitate decision-making processes within a framework of sustainable development. Mapping typically precedes planning and design processes and methods of visually representing risks and vulnerabilities of the territory and formulating them in light of sustainable development of the area, can offer different perspectives to stakeholders and institutions albeit is practiced in limited capacities and innovation. The article explores eidetic mapping as a tool for visually representing diachronicity and socio-spatial configurations HULs to aid the decision-making process. The case study of the ancient port town of Jaffa, Israel serves as a testing ground for the proposed method, documenting the diachronous evolution, spatial and socio-economic attributes, and testing its relevance for a new sustainable urban design approach to complex historic urban environments. As this research is based on historical information, the article is categorized as qualitative research with a descriptive-analytic approach while the combination with digital tools takes a heuristic approach. The paper will discuss how the research processed data from primary sources of old maps, photographs, and other information and explorations through visualizations. The above experiment using archival records and integrating them with GIS tools as an integral part of the HUL approach, reveals the potential of what can be termed as eidetic mapping method in the process of sustainable and resilient urban design and planning for historic urban environments. The potential of this hybrid form of geo-spatial analysis of a historic urban landscape, documenting and reconstructing its palimpsest of information, of spatial configurations and their diachronic social and cultural evolution is presented.

This study focuses on two interrelated issues for “rediscovering” Bengali felons’ quotidian life in Malaysia and Singapore during the colonial period. First, it narrates the colonial policies regarding convicts’ labourers and their categorical ambiguities in the Straits Settlements. The second set of issues illustrates the transportation and governing system of the convicts and their integration process with mainstream society. By examining a range of archival and non-archival records, this study shows the inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility of convict labourers and the making of cosmopolitan society in British Malaya. Furthermore, it suggests that the Bengali convicts were significant among other South Asians, and this study opens up a new avenue of mobility and subaltern studies on Asia.

While China may be geographically distant from continental Africa, there is evidence that contact between the two originated millennia ago, although the Silk Road only found its way to sub-Saharan Africa during the Sung Dynasty of 960-1279AD, thanks to Chinese Shipbuilding. Subsequent dynasties saw the contact fizzle out, and it was only in 1956 that diplomatic relations were rekindled with Egypt, followed by other African countries emerging from colonialization. Since the late 1990s the relationship escalated rapidly, and in 2013, China became sub-Saharan Africa’s largest export and development partner supported by initiatives such as FOCAC and BRICS. The relationship remains fragmented though, dependent on bilateral relations between China and individual African nations – the 54 countries are vastly different in their colonial histories, cultures, socio-economic development and geopolitical attributes. While the Silk Road holds enormous potential for Africa, yet Africa itself is the constraint to this potential. The lack of integration within Africa, and the complexity of trade due to infrastructural bottlenecks and the institutional dysfunction of many countries, serves to limit the potential of the Silk Road in Africa. This paper argues that bilateral relations continue to characterise the relationship between China and Africa, and that the Silk Road aspirations in Africa are simply an afterthought based on China’s existing relationships with individual nations. The silk road in sub-Saharan Africa lacks strategic orientation and coordinated effort, a function of Africa’s dichotomous environment. For the silk road to truly complement Africa’s hunger for integration in the global arena, Africa needs to change the status quo and remove the intra-African significant barriers to trade, in order to facilitate the silk road’s potential in Africa. The paper considers the responsibilities of African nations in this regard, with specific reference to the proposed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Years ago, while on fieldwork for my Master’s thesis to interview Sindhi merchants in Japan, I found myself an unwitting accomplice to the routines of the women of this community. In their day to day running of the household, the Sindhi women’s interactivity webbed intricate networks. They would regularly engage in cross-cultural negotiations with the Japanese housekeeper, vendors at the wet market and neighbourhood co-op. They took charge of cultural events at the community’s social hub and through the rigorous structure of women’s groups they fuelled the grapevine with fellow housewives within the diaspora. Fluid sites of exchange emerged as I realized a world of movement in the mundane everyday; routes of gendered mobility paved in practice yet unrecognized – neither in scholarship on the Sindhi diaspora nor by the community, and therefore unarticulated. In this paper, I reflect on the ‘left-behind’ as bodies – and stories – in motion who could come to light when analyzed at the intersection of gender and mobility, where mobility is relational and multi-scalar in dimension. To explore the worlds of women as ‘left-behind housewives’, I consider the approach of mobile ethnography for both its theoretically expansive potential and its value as method. The latter I believe, would allow me to move in tandem with the women even as they appear stationary – immobile (?) – in the supposed humdrum of their everyday existence. My discussion here informs my research design for fieldwork in the near future as I seek to understand the lives and roles of women in Japan’s Sindhi merchant diaspora for my PhD thesis.

In this presentation, I wish to describe the spatial politics of Yangon (before 1989 officially known as Rangoon), Myanmar’s largest city, focusing on the relatively short period of “Transition” from rule by the Army-State to a hybrid military-civilian government as defined by the 2008 Constitution. This period ended suddenly on February 1, 2021, when Senior General Min Aung Hlaing carried out a coup d’état and established a new martial law regime, the State Administration Council (SAC). The Transition – ending with a reverse course back to military rule – lasted a little less than ten years (March 2011 – February 2021); but even before the Army-State took back power, the direction this “hybrid democracy” was taking was ambiguous and problematic.

As China has increased its presence and cooperation on multiple fronts under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this paper proposes a multidimensional concept of ‘Chinese Linkage’ to understand various layers and levels of engagement under BRI. I conceptualize the Chinese Linkage in Asia based on the seminal work of Levitsky and Way’s (Western) Linkage along five dimensions, namely, economic, social, cultural, communication, and intergovernmental ties for 32 countries in Asia for the period 2000-2020, with 2013 as a benchmark year for the BRI launch. By analyzing diverse cases in Asia including sub-regions such as South, Southeast, and Central Asia, I examine the cross-national variation in the degree of Chinese linkage in the BRI partner countries and their patterns of engagement. This region-wide analysis allows understanding of various mechanisms of exchanges and public diplomacy in a systematic manner under China’s BRI in Asia.

This paper examines the significant impacts of the colonial ethnographic film and travelogue on the construction of Indonesia's visual culture and its reconstruction in the contemporary. The colonial scenes have become inseparable components of cinematic experience in contemporary Indonesian films' mise en scène and are viewed as visual elements of progress. The scenes where the camera is attached to the front of the slow-moving vehicles as it travels into the thick jungles, cruises along the untamed streams and glances into the development stages of the wilderness into an industrial society are familiar. The amalgamation of the colonial scenes relates to how Indonesian sees themselves as postcolonial being in the tension of becoming a modern subject in a globalised world and as ecological agents in the rich biodiversity in the landscape they inhabit. Cinema, in this regard, opens the path to normalising the unequal conditions, justifies the colonial act, and presents it as a spectacle. We can easily find similar kinds of images in movie theatres or web-based and social-digital media. The images which problematised the questions of identity, representation, postcoloniality, and modernity in contemporary Indonesia, an oblique position of moving forward with the notion of progress, but never entirely eschewing the domain of the Others. Understanding this complexity is pertinent to open the dialogue concerning Indonesia's position as one of the richest biodiversity landscapes and one of the most populated in the world. The crucial stage that can shape Indonesia's ecological policies and its cultural outputs, where humans are valued as pertinent key players.

The International Military Tribunal of the Far East (IMTFE), otherwise known as the Tokyo Trial, has received new scholarly attention in Japan since the early 2000s after previously sealed archives were made public. The trial has also received renewed attention in literature and film. Journalist Yamasaki Toyoko’s best-selling novel Futatsu no sokoku (Two Homelands, 1983) is loosely based on David Akira Itami’s work as a Nisei monitor at the trial. In 1984 NHK released a film version of the novel titled Sanga moyu (The Mountains and rivers are burning). Other recent media depictions of the trial include Tokyo saiban (Tokyo trial, 1983) by Kobayashi Masaki and the recent 2016 Netflix mini-series The Tokyo Trial directed by Pieter Verhoeff and Rob W. King. Twenty-eight defendants, including military leaders, diplomats, and civilians were accused of war crimes. There have been many criticisms of the trial’s lack of impartiality. One major reason is the conviction of diplomat Shigemitsu Mamoru, who was an advocate of peace. Although he received the lightest sentence of Class A War Criminals, many critics say he should not have spent a single day in prison, much less in the courtroom. While there are brief references to him in Yamasaki’s novel and the various film versions of the trial, to date there has been no translation of his prison diary. Shigemitsu never took the witness stand so there is no official record of his point of view in the trial transcript. It is through his prison diary that one can hear the voice of this stoic figure of Japanese wartime diplomacy.

Since the 2nd Belt and Road Forum (BRF) held in 2019, a ‘Green and Sustainable Silk Road’ (GSSR) has become a major narrative promoted by the Chinese government. Broadly speaking, the GSSR agenda involves development projects aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in areas such as renewable energy, resource efficiency, climate resilience and adaptation, green infrastructure, and environmental governance. In a narrow sense, however, ‘greening’ of the Silk Road refers to Chinese lenders and investors’ green practices throughout the roll-out of the project. The overall aim of this study is to examine China’s overseas lending and investment practices within the wider context of the GSSR agenda. The investigation takes the form of a case-study, setting out to assess China’s lending and investment in Uzbekistan’s renewable energy sector (including hydro, solar, and wind power projects). Section 2 discusses the Chinese government’s efforts to unlock and promote green finance cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Section 3 offers a brief overview of Uzbekistan’s transition to clean energy, with a particular focus on the regulatory framework, energy development strategy, and procurement process. Section 4 analyses in detail Chinese lenders and investors’ involvement in hydro, solar, and wind power projects across the country. The purpose of the conclusion is twofold: 1) to assess Chinese lending and investment practices in Uzbekistan’s renewable energy sector, and 2) to elucidate the role of the host country in shaping the GSSR agenda.