ABSTRACT
First of all, there is no equivalent of China Quarterly in Japan. There are some journals which exclusively publish articles on contemporary China but they are hardly representative of Japanese scholarship on the subject. For example, there is the Chugoku Kenkyu Geppo (Monthly Review of China Studies) published by the Institute for Chinese Studies, a private research institute which was established by former staff of the research department of the famous Southern Manchurian Railroad Company. But its circulation is limited to a small number of China scholars and is far from a “compulsory” reading for the specialists in the fi eld. The Gendai Chugoku Kenkyuu (Studies on Contemporary China) is the journal published by the Association for Contemporary China Studies but membership of this association is rather limited. Many major scholars on contemporary China are not members. The Mondai to Kenkyu (Issues and Studies) is the Japanese language version of the Wenti yu Yanjiu and Issues and Studies published in Taiwan and authors used to be ideologically limited to anti-communist and pro-Guomindang intellectuals. With progress in democratization in Taiwan it increasingly published articles by mainstream China scholars but is still far from being the major journal on contemporary China. In 1997 the Association of Contemporary China of Aichi University started the journal called Chugoku 21 (China 21) with the ambitious goal of making it a medium for the intellectual exchanges with China on a broad range of issues. Because of its broad coverage of issues it rarely carries articles on foreign and security policies of China.
