Korean History Studies in Japan: The 1999 Shigaku Zasshi Review of Historiography

Shigaku zasshi, the leading history journal in Japan, devotes its fifth issue every year to reviews of historical scholarship published in Japan during the previous year. The reviews for Korean history are written by specialists and introduce and direct readers to publications in many fields, including archaeology, economic history, and social history. Information inside parentheses was parenthetical in the original Japanese. Information inside square brackets has been supplied by the translators. Antiquity A topic of current concern to historians is the reexamination of the nation-state historical framework, a framework constructed in the modern period. Yi So ˘ ngsi’s book, Ethnic Groups and States in Ancient East Asia, in which Yi consciously pursues this issue, is the most important publication of the past year.1 The book’s detailed contents I will leave to reviews, but, in short, Yi argues that the founding of the Lelang Commandery is the origin of the ‘‘civilizing’’ of the so-called eastern barbarians and that