During the anti-Japanese war, the matters of ethnicity, territory, and border were brought up for the link to grasp the relationship between the Chinese history academia and the nationalism. This peper, focussing on Yugong which was the Yugong School’s periodical during the anti-Japanese war, pays attention to the Yugong School that led the researches on ancient historical geography, frontier historical geography, the ethenic matters, and so on.
The motivation to start publication of Yugong strongly reflected Gu Jiegang’s will, and the research focusses were shifted depending on social changes. The Yugong School’s research trend was shifted from the ancient historical geography through tgeographic-chronological verification to frontier historic geography and the ethenic matters. Yugong in its early ages claimed its researches on historical-georeaphy and took verificational research methodology; and then responded to the contempral request for anti-Japanese national saving and with the frontier historial-geographical researches. For the reason, It is common that the Chinese academia perceives the academic character of Yugong was nationalist in accordance with the saving the nation through scholarship. However, there is a critique that it was not merely derived from the external factor that was the Japanese empire’s invasion. It is because the Yugong school’s academic direction was understood to have inherited the Gushibian School’s tradition of the imitation of ancient style. Gu Jiegang became interested in the frontier matter since 1920’s, emphasized the verifiable researches on ancient hostorical geography, and such a trend was reflected in Yugong. Indeed, there is a perspective seeing that the Yugong School suceeded the Northwestern Historical Geography School’s academic trend. The assertions meanwhile proposed generally interpret Yugong’s academic trend shifted from historical geography to frontier historical geography and ethenic matters was nationalist.
Originally, as the historical geography in Chinese historical studies was intimately related with temporal changes, it could respond to social trends. It can be understood that Yugong’s researches on geographical chronology, frontier historical geography, and ethenic history in 1930’s responded to social trends related with the contemporary national crisis, and mutually accelerated each other. Yugong School introduced Japanese scholars’ researches on China to accelarate the researches on the frontier of their own nation, and attempted to resolve the national crisis. Such a trend was well revealed through the fact that the ancient historical geography was shifted and expanded to the researches on frontier historical geography and ethenicities since the mid-1930’s, so maintained the academic substantiality but responded to the contemorary social issues. Yet, because Yudong’s researches on frontier historical geography got understood not as objective interpretations based on empirical examinations and diverse analysis but as respondences to social demands, it got processed to become the representation of nationalist historical reseaches in the late 20th century.