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Short abstract:

It reveals transnational communications of Shinjo Shinzo and Tsinghua scholars. They inspired each other on Chinese history of astronomy. It shows a face of a common pursuit of China and Japan in the inter-war period, which aims to seek local modernity by tracing back to East Asian tradition.

Long abstract:

Shinjo Shinzo is a pioneer historian of science in Japan and he has influenced his successors as "Shinjo School" in Kyoto University through the 20th century. Previous study has revealed his essential efforts of setting up modern astronomy and inheriting traditional Chinese history of astronomy in Japan. Most of these scholars rely on Japanese materials but few of them notice Shinjo's transnational communications with Chinese scholars, which this study will attach importance to. In this study, the part of the background will give a brief introduction about the traditional studies of the Chinese and Japanese scientific community in the inter-war period. Then it will describe the history research contexts of Shinjo from 1910 to 1920s and focus on Wang Guo-wei's inspiration to Shinjo in 1926. Thirdly, it will show 3 Tsinghua scholars' reviews for Shinjo, who are Chen Yin-ke, Dai Jia-xiang and Wu Qi-chang, all of whom are influential historians in China. Finally the conclusion will analyze the cultural factors in these transnational communications. The most important factor is their common pursuit for seeking the local modernity by tracing back to East Asian tradition. Such a modernity includes both East Asian civilization and academic knowledge, by which they aims to have an equal status with the West. But in these conversations they still have potential divergence especially in national politics, which predicts the frailty of such a transnational "common ideal".