ABSTRACT
East Asia, which generally refers to China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Mongolia, is a region of contrasts. While traveling through China and Japan, it is difficult not to be struck by juxtaposition of the ancient and modern. One of the most enduring myths about Chinese language is that it is pictographic. Buddhism exists in hundreds of different forms around the world, and has a handful of prominent forms within China. Twentieth-century Chinese literature bears the mark of intense censorship – a censorship that was enforced on the bodies and the texts of authors. In both China and Japan, there have been periods during which writers and philosophers of all types were explicitly concerned with the idea of the modern. In China, the New Culture movement was committed to figuring out what style of literary writing was most appropriate for modernizing China. Both Japan and China have made active attempts to incorporate Western-style literary traditions into their novels, theatre, and poetry.
