Professor Lai Ming Chiu is the Senior Research Fellow (Honorary) in CUHK-CCK Foundation Asia-Pacific Centre for Chinese Studies, Institute of Chinese Studies and the Adjunct Professor in the History Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Professor Lai focuses on the institution and social history of Qin-Han China (221B.C.-A.D.220) with special interest in the unearthed documents, such as the bamboo and wooden manuscripts of Qin-Han period. He has published his research in a variety of journals including 中國史研究 (Journal of Chinese Historical Studi es); 中國文化研究所學報 (Journal of Chinese Studies); 簡帛（Jianbo）; 簡帛研究 (Jianbo Yanjiu) and 東西人文 동서인문 (Journal of East-West Humanities). Professor Lai is the author of 輻輳與秩序：漢帝國地方社會研究 Power Convergence and Social Order: The Study of Local Society of the Han Empire and co-author of 漢越和集：漢唐嶺南文化與生活 Cultural Interaction Between Han and Yue: Culture and Life in Han-Tang Lingnan Region. He is currently working on the social life and local community of the Linxiang County 臨湘縣 during Eastern Han Period by the exploration of the evidence of the wooden manuscripts from Wuyi Square of the Changsha Province.

Ever since letters appear in human history, recording by letters is not only a crucial factor for the prosperity of human societies built on information production, processing, distribution, but also it works as a mean of transmission of human experience and history. Throughout the history of recording, paper has been an icon for creativity and innovation. However, considering that paper only became popular 1500 years ago in the history of man, the researches on the era before paper depends on some excavated non-paper recording materials; before invention of paper, wooden wooden tablets had been an important mean of writing and recording. Therefore, about a million wooden tablets excavated from Korea, China and Japan are crucial data for research on history of ancient East Asia. In session 1, we will inspect the previous researches on restoration of East Asian history based on the wooden tablets excavated from Korea, China and Japan. we will also talk about the true nature of the cultural and political network to open a new horizon of understanding of East Asian history.

Keum Jae Won is currently a HK Research Professor at the Institute of Humanities Studies, Kyungpook National University. He specializes in ancient Chinese history (Qin-Han period), historical geography and paleography, the bamboo and wooden manuscripts. After obtaining his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Oriental History from the Department of History at Kyungpook National University in 2000-2009, he worked as a visiting researcher at the Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He obtained his doctorate in History from Peking University, specializing in ancient Chinese history, from 2011-2015. From 2015-2021, he worked as an associate professor at the School of History, Northwest University, China.

The HK+ Project Team at the Institute of Humanities Studies in Kyungpook National University is conducting research on the origins of record culture by tracing the roots of record culture focusing on the ‘木簡(Wooden Tablet)’, a record medium, which can be considered a East Asian humanities platform that records Chinese characters. The main purpose is to cover the roots of East Asian record culture that were connected under mutual influence through a comparison of excavated wooden records from Korea, China, and Japan. The research project has already completed the first stage (2019-2021) with the theme “Basic Research for Exploring the Origins of East Asian Record Culture”, and is currently conducting the second stage (2022-2026) with the theme “In-depth Research on the Origins of East Asian Record Culture and Intellectual Network”. Various research achievements, including the publication of the “Comprehensive Compilation of East Asian Wooden Tablet” (six volumes), were released to the academic community based on previous research. In addition, in preparation for the production of the East Asian wooden Tablet database and search platform, approximately 1 million Korean, Chinese, and Japanese wooden tablet materials have been sorted and classified, and the website ‘East Asian Wooden Tablet Dictionary’(eawd.knu.ac.kr) is currently being operated. This will be utilized as an open platform in the future, and the “East Asian Wooden Tablet Dictionary” will be published after content selection and editing. In the future, the team plans to continue to pursue activities such as producing research results related to the agenda, hosting domestic and international academic conferences, promoting interpersonal exchanges among researchers, and offering courses to foster the next generation of scholars. Through these efforts, the team hopes to overcome borders and contribute to leading East Asian regional research, complementing the bias of national history and leading Korea as the core base of East Asian cultural research.

Wu Wen Ling is Professor at Ancient History Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and at University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts Studies. She is currently studying the history and bamboo and wooden documents of Qin-Han China, especially deciphering unearthed bamboo and wooden manuscripts. As an important member, she participated in deciphering bamboo and wooden manuscripts from Liye, Juyan, Tianchang and Changsha, and co-published the relevant deciphering books such as Baboo Documents of Wu Kingdom of Three Kingdoms from Zoumalou, Changsha. She has published dozens of research papers on bamboo and wooden manuscripts and Qin-han history.

It is evident that there has been a long history of using bamboo and wooden slips as usual medium of writing in China. it seems likely that it was not until the middle of the third, or even the end of the fourth, century that paper had taken a predominant place over bamboo and wood, and become the principal medium of writing. According to historical records, material remains of bamboo and wooden documents used for administrative purposes extend to the Jin periods, but these material objects hardly survived. Discovery of bamboo and wooden manuscripts is really a major archaeological event of China in 20th century. Since the early 20th century, more than 400,000 pieces of inscribed bamboo and wooden slips, which date from the period of Warring States to the Wei-Jin Dynasties, have been found in various parts of China. Most of these can be dated to the Qin and Han Dynasties. The huge number of inscribed bamboo and wooden slips from northwest frontier beacon, post sites, tombs and ancient wells are valuable first-hand information of ancient people, Which helps to confirm the reliability of historical records, correct historical records error, supplement historical records and expand the field of history study, enabling us to constantly approach the real historical world. Bamboo and wooden manuscripts are usually classified into two categories: books and documents. Among them, the bamboo documents accounted for about eighty percent that date from the Warring States, Qin, Western Han, Eastern Han, Three Kingdoms, Wei and Jin period, includes official documents such as the government administrative archives, law, registers, accounts, case records, judicial documents, certificates and passports, seals and labels; and private documents such as letters, wills and funerary objects lists. Official and private bamboo documents played an important role in the national administrative activities and people’s daily life at that time, and most of them has not been found in the literature handed down from ancient times, is no substitute for first-hand information. Their unique historical value lies in supplementing and providing rich information regarding administrative procedures, official document system, land system, tax system, household registration system, official system, title system, law and justice, garrison system, weaponry and military facilities, hotel and post house, accounting and financial system, historical geography, etc.. The objects of unearthed bamboo and silk books are of great significance to study the system of ancient Chinese books, which make us have a more in-depth understanding of creation, form, reading, interpretation, selection and elimination, propagation and preservation, classification of ancient books. Extensive contents of bamboo and silk books cover Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, Yi-ology, Yin-Yang School, Military Strategist, Poetry, Philology, Arithmetic, Divination, Natural Science, Medicine, and other fields, which are of great significance to the intellectual history studies, contribute to the reconstruction and recovery the structure and system of knowledge in ancient times. Promoting research on philology, detection of forgeries and collation of ancient books, history, literature, medicine, mathematics, early Confucian history, Taoism and divination, reconstruction of the academic history of Pre-Qin and Qin-Han, the intellectual history of ancient China will be rewritten in a large extent. Overall, the unearthed bamboo and wooden slips reveal the strict legal system, efficient document administration, trustworthy contract society, colorful daily life, devout belief world, developed academic culture, and historical features different from those recorded in historical books in ancient China.

Kim Chang Seok is a professor of Dept. of History Education at Kangwon Nat’l University. He has served as an executive of the Society for Ancient Korean History and the Korean Society for the Study of Wooden Documents. His books include Kingship and Law: Formation and Development of Law System in Ancient Korea (2020), Formation and Development of Foreign Trade in Ancient Korea (2013), and A Study on the Material Flow System of Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla : Focusing on the Commerce and Finances (2004). Recently, he is studying on the perception of the body in ancient society and its change.

A mokkan is a wooden slip on which characters are inscribed after it has been trimmed. In ancient times, Koreans communicated with others by leaving notes or their thoughts on such mokkan (wooden slips). Contrary to China where slips are divided into zhujian (竹簡, bamboo slips) and mudu (木牘, wooden tablets), bamboo slips were rare in Korea. Korean mokkan are rectangular in shape which is in keeping with that of Japanese wooden slips. However, while multi-sided wooden slips have been discovered in Korea, very less ones have been unearthed in Japan. This was designed to heighten convenience when studying scriptures or preparing documents. The characteristics of Korean wooden slips can be attributed to the traditional method of communication that existed even before the introduction of Chinese characters. The mokkan culture of ancient Korea was as such a combination of the conventional communication method using pieces of wood and the Chinese character system. Approximately 700 mokkan have been discovered to date. These were used as scriptures, documents, tags, rituals, memos, and for practice purposes. In keeping with this wide range of uses, various types of Korean mokkan were produced. Although the mokkan discovered to date were produced solely within the borders of Lelang Commandery of the Han dynasty, Baekje, and Silla, the possibility of mokkan produced in Koguryeo, Gaya, and Parhae being discovered in the future cannot be ruled out altogether. Interest in ancient Korean mokkan has increased and a significant number of studies have also accumulated. There are differing opinions regarding the wooden slips found at Seongsan Mt. Fortress in Haman, and more specifically in terms of the word noin (奴人) recorded on the mokkan and the tax burden of nobi (奴婢). Meanwhile, mokkan discovered in Bogam-ri, Naju, shed some light on the nature of the ruling system of Baekje in local areas during the early seventh century. The human-shaped one found in the reservoir complex at Hwawang Fortress in Changnyeong, was used to conduct a ritual ceremony for the dragon king (yongwang). However, different opinions have emerged as to whether the purpose of the ritual ceremony was to pray for rain or to cure diseases. Rather than being compiled by later generations, Korean ancient mokkan are historical materials that were prepared by people who lived during the actual period being depicted. Furthermore, the contents of these mokkan help to shed some light on the state of affairs at the time and the intentions of the composer. A more profound understanding of ancient society in Korea can be secured when more materials are accumulated and classified by type and purposes of use, an endeavor that will be made possible by a perspective embracing all of East Asian mokkan, and interdisciplinary studies in related fields are developed and implemented.

Marjorie Burge is Assistant Professor of Japanese in the Department of Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on the writing and literature of early Korea and Japan. She is currently working on her first book, titled Unearthing the Written Cultures of Early Korea and Japan.

Wooden strips with ink writing known as mokkan have been recovered in the hundreds of thousands from sites around Japan dating to the so-called ancient period, roughly equivalent to the seventh and eighth centuries. Of these, however, only about 10% date to the period prior to the establishment of the Nara capital in 710. The pace with which writing as a technology spread during the eighth century can be easily grasped through the distribution of mokkan sites throughout the archipelago that date to that time, but the picture is less clear for the seventh century. This presentation highlights seventh-century mokkan, beginning with the earliest mokkan associated with capitals in Naniwa, Asuka, and Ōmi, and then focusing on those mokkan recovered from sites far outside the capital region. Despite vast distances and some localization, important shared features of mokkan usage and inscriptive practice suggest sustained connections between center and peripheries, as well as among “peripheral” literate communities throughout Japan. In this presentation, I argue that seventhcentury mokkan, when compared to those of the eighth century, attest to the importance of peninsular migrants as both scribes and teachers in the earliest manifestation of written culture in Japan. Through a focus on document mokkan, I show how certain features of the “vernacularization” of document forms are shared among mokkan from early Korea and Japan, and in this context, I emphasize that the beginnings of written culture in Japan must be understood in connection with the fall of Paekche and the unification of the southern part of the Korean peninsula under Silla rule in the 670s.