A Lady's Historical Comment across the Sea: The Printing and Transmission of Li Wanfang's Dushi guanjian in Nineteenth-century Japan

The transmission of Chinese books to Japan played an important role in the formation of book culture in the Edo period of Japan. Much research has been done by Oba Osamu (1927-2002) on this subject. But relevant topic on the late nineteenth century is still little has been known, especially on how a specific book has been circulated between China and Japan.
This article traces Dushi guanjian (My Humble Opinions on "Records of the Grand Historian"), which was written by a talented lady Li Wanfang (1692-1767) in eighteenth-century Guangdong and was reprinted (Kabusebori) by Ikeuchi Tosho (1814-1863) in 1856, Osaka. The author takes this case study as an example to investigate book as a medium in the history of Sino-Japanese culture encounter in the nineteenth century.
Through this study, the author found that the study of cultural exchange and that of history of books should be merged together tightly so that they will not only be considered a matter of trading. Last, we may reconsider if it is possible to build up a special field for doing research on the history of books in East Asia.