A central problem faced by instructors attempting to deal with the long pageant of Chinese, Japanese or Korean history revolves around how to impose a narrative order -- and what, exactly, that narrative organization implies about East Asian societies and civilizations from a gesellschaft / gemeinschaft perspective (either ours or theirs).

The following quotation, from an article by Lawrence Weschler appearing in the January 31, 2000, issue of The New Yorker on the artist David Hockney entitled "Onward and Upward with the Arts: The Looking Glass", indirectly addresses the same issue. Consider the implications contained in the quote as you, too, contemplate the consequences of imposing "historical arcs" on the East Asian past.

[John Walsh:] "Oh, I don't know about past historical arcs. ... maybe there is such a thing. But it seems to me history is far more circuitious, filled with starts, stops, backsliding, lurches forward. In the end, though, none of that really matters. ... What one awaits [from artist David Hockney's investigations of past artistic techniques], with ever mounting anticipation, is how he's going to interweave all these fresh insights into his own ongoing work -- what fresh new art all this is going to provoke."

What is gained by imposing "historical arcs" on the past? What is lost or compromised as a result? Towards what end do we impose historical schema on the past? Are the resulting distortions problematic or not? What difference do these "historical arcs" make to our students' attempts to make sense of the past, to use history as a means of forging ahead? How necessary are they to our presentation of East Asian history in a more global context? Can they be avoided? If not, how should they be dealt with in the classroom setting?