Author: stephchun

The Art and Identity Crisis of Yasuo Kuniyoshi

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Becoming American
On December 8, 1941, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889-1953) awoke to find himself branded an “enemy alien” by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The historical crisis forced Kuniyoshi, an émigré Japanese with a distinguished career in American art, to rethink his pictorial strategies and to confront questions of loyalty, assimilation, national and racial identity that he had carefully avoided in his prewar art. As an immigrant who had proclaimed himself to be as “American as the next fellow,” the realization of his now fractured and precarious status catalyzed the development of an emphatic and conscious identity construct that would underlie Kuniyoshi’s art and public image for the remainder of his life.

Drawing on previously unexamined primary sources, Becoming American? The Art and Identity Crisis of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, by ShiPu Wang, is the first scholarly book in over two decades to offer an in-depth and critical analysis of Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s pivotal works, including his “anti-Japan” posters and radio broadcasts for U.S. propaganda, and his coded and increasingly enigmatic paintings, within their historical contexts.

May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3418-0 / $56.00 (CLOTH)

New in the Dimensions of Asian Spirituality Series

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Neo-Confucian Self-CultivationApproximately fifteen hundred years after Confucius, his ideas reasserted themselves in the formulation of a sophisticated program of personal self-cultivation. Neo-Confucians argued that humans are endowed with empathy and goodness at birth, an assumption now confirmed by evolutionary biologists. By following the Great Learning—eight steps in the process of personal development—Neo-Confucians showed how this innate endowment could provide the foundation for living morally. Neo-Confucian students did not follow a single manual elaborating each step of the Great Learning; instead they were exposed to age-appropriate texts, commentaries, and anthologies of Neo-Confucian thinkers, which gradually made clear the sequential process of personal development and its connection to social order. Neo-Confucian Self-Cultivation, by Barry C. Keenan, opens up in accessible prose the content of the eight-step process for today’s reader as it examines the source of mainstream Neo-Confucian self-cultivation and its major crosscurrents from 1000 to 1900.

Dimensions of Asian Spirituality
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3548-4 / $17.00 (PAPER)

English Translation of Landmark Zen Text

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Purifying Zen
In 1223 the monk Dogen Kigen (1200–1253) came to the audacious conclusion that Japanese Buddhism had become hopelessly corrupt. He undertook a dangerous pilgrimage to China to bring back a purer form of Buddhism and went on to become one of the founders of Soto Zen, still the largest Zen sect in Japan. Seven hundred years later, the philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro (1889–1960) also saw corruption in the Buddhism of his day. Watsuji’s efforts to purify the religion sent him not across the seas but searching Japan’s intellectual past, where he discovered writings by Dogen that had been hidden away by the monk’s own sect. Watsuji later penned Shamon Dogen (Dogen the monk), which single-handedly rescued Dogen from the brink of obscurity, reintroducing Japan to its first great philosophical mind. Purifying Zen, a translation of the Shamon Dogen by Steve Bein, makes this work available in English for the first time.

“Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Shamon Dogen makes available in a clear and fluid translation an early classic in modern Japanese philosophy. Steve Bein’s annotations, footnotes, introduction, and commentary bridge the gap separating not only the languages but also the cultures of its original readers and its new Western audience.” —from the Foreword by Thomas P. Kasulis

May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3556-9 / $24.00 (PAPER)

How to Behave Now Available in Paperback

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How to Behave

““In lucid prose accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike, [How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860–1930, by Anne Ruth Hansen,] provides a sophisticated and multifaceted account of the early twentieth-century transformation of Buddhist discourse and pedagogical practices that should be of interest to any scholar or student of religious modernism.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“Remarkable. . . . [Hansen’s] refreshing and provocative approach to the study of ethics in history will surely change the field in general. . . . As readers, we can only look forward to future studies that, if anything like this book, will change the way we understand ethics and its place in national memory and political and social reform.” —Journal of Religion


Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory
April 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3600-9 / $27.00 (PAPER)

The Buddhist Dead Now in Paperback

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The Buddhist Dead

“[The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations, edited by Bryan J. Cuevas and Jacqueline I. Stone, is] the first full-length volume to investigate the place of death in Buddhism in a pan-Asian context. For that reason alone, it is a much-needed and welcome addition to the scholarly literature. That it is such a well-integrated, tightly argued, and beautifully crafted volume should make it the standard bearer for some time to come. . . . A thought-provoking and sophisticated volume, which challenges and advances the ways we think about death in Buddhism, and should serve as the foundation for future inquiries. The Buddhist Dead should be read by all Buddhist specialists and graduate students, and those interested in conceptions of and practices related to death and the afterlife. I moreover can recommend assigning select chapters for use in the undergraduate classroom, having successfully done so.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“This volume presents research of the highest class by a set of the best scholars working in English in Buddhist studies. . . . Scholars of both Buddhism in general and of regional/national practices will need to turn to this collection for its up-to-date findings about the variety and importance of this fatally essential dimension of the religion.” —Japanese Religions

Studies in East Asian Buddhism, No. 19
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3599-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)
Published in association with the Kuroda Institute

Updated Edition of Popular Japanese Language Text Now Available

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Remembering Kanji 1
Updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the Japanese government in 2010 as “general-use” kanji, the sixth edition of Remembering the Kanji 1, by James W. Heisig, aims to provide students with a simple method for correlating the writing and the meaning of Japanese characters in such a way as to make them both easy to remember. It is intended not only for the beginner, but also for the more advanced student looking for some relief from the constant frustration of forgetting how to write the kanji, or for a way to systematize what he or she already knows.

April 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3592-7 / $44.00 (PAPER)

Hawaiian Surfing: Traditions from the Past

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Hawaiian Surfing

“John Clark, a Hawaiian surfer, lifeguard, firefighter, and historian, has studied Hawaiian, read Hawaiian sources on surfing, and built up a massive file of these texts for analysis and translation. More recently, he has tapped into the growing online database of Hawaiian-language articles on native history and culture that were published from the 1830s to the 1940s. By searching out practically every known reference to Hawaiian surfing, Clark has produced an amazing study of the sport, one that far surpasses any previous work. Furthermore, because he has included so much rich source material here, presented in both Hawaiian and English translation, this compilation will long serve as a treasury of traditional surfing lore—one that allows readers to delve deep and come up with their own understanding of Hawaiian surfing.” —Ben Finney, emeritus professor of anthropology, University of Hawai‘i

Hawaiian Surfing: Traditions from the Past is a history of the traditional sport narrated primarily by native Hawaiians who wrote for the Hawaiian-language newspapers of the 1800s. An introductory section covers traditional surfing, including descriptions of the six Hawaiian surf-riding sports (surfing, bodysurfing, canoe surfing, body boarding, skimming, and river surfing). This is followed by an exhaustive Hawaiian-English dictionary of surfing terms and references from Hawaiian-language publications and a special section of Waikiki place names related to traditional surfing. The information in each of these sections is supported by passages in Hawaiian, followed by English translations. The work concludes with a glossary of English-Hawaiian surfing terms and an index of proper names, place names, and surf spots.

May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3414-2 / $24.00 (PAPER)

The Day the Sun Rose in the West

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The Day the Sun Rose in the West

The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I is a compelling account of an incident that few of us remember today, but which had an impact far beyond the few fishermen on the Lucky Dragon #5 who were irradiated in the Bravo test sixty-some years ago. It is a glimpse of the world situation at the time through the lens of the unfortunate fate of the ship and its crew. The author captures the tension between Japan and the U.S. over the incident, which occurred soon after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the anti-nuclear testing crusade that was beginning even back then, the self-righteous insistence of a nuclear power on continuing nuclear tests even while asserting limited responsibility for damages, and so much more” -—Francis X. Hezel, S.J., director of Micronesian Seminar

On March 1, 1954, the U.S. exploded a hydrogen bomb at Bikini in the South Pacific. The fifteen-megaton bomb was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and its fallout spread far beyond the official “no-sail” zone the U.S. had designated. Fishing just outside the zone at the time of the blast, the Lucky Dragon #5 was showered with radioactive ash. Making the difficult voyage back to their homeport of Yaizu, twenty-year-old Oishi Matashichi and his shipmates became ill from maladies they could not comprehend. They were all hospitalized with radiation sickness, and one man died within a few months. The Lucky Dragon #5 became the focus of a major international incident, but many years passed before the truth behind U.S. nuclear testing in the Pacific emerged. Late in his life, overcoming social and political pressures to remain silent, Oishi began to speak about his experience and what he had since learned about Bikini. This is his story.

A Latitude 20 Book
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3557-6 / $18.00 (PAPER)

Joint Ownership of Arable Land in Early Modern Japan

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Cultivating Commons
Cultivating Commons: Joint Ownership of Arable Land in Early Modern Japan, by Philip C. Brown, challenges the common understanding of Japanese economic and social history by uncovering diverse landholding practices from the late sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. In this first extended treatment of multiple systems of farmland ownership, Brown argues that it was joint landownership of arable land, not virtually private landownership, that characterized a few large areas of Japan in the early modern period and even survived in some places down to the late twentieth century. The practice adapted to changing political and economic circumstances and was compatible with increasing farm involvement in the market. Brown shows that land rights were the product of villages and, to some degree, daimyo policies and not the outcome of hegemons’ and shoguns’ cadastral surveys. Joint ownership exhibited none of the “tragedy of the commons” predicted by much social science theory and in fact explicitly structured a number of practices compatible with longer-term investment in and maintenance of arable land.

“Property rights can ignite social conflict and trigger economic growth, and they are far more complicated than most social scientists have imagined. In Cultivating Commons, Philip Brown analyzes the joint ownership rights that were created by early modern Japanese villagers and survived well into the modern period. In part, the joint ownerships rights reduced the risks posed by flooding, landslides, and other environmental dangers, but that was not their sole purpose, for they also helped preserve equity and coordinate efforts of land reclamation. The book combines careful historical research with imaginative use of geographical data, and it will be essential reading for historians and social scientists who work on Japan, on rural society, on property rights and the environment, and on the political economy of development.” —Philip Hoffman, Rea A. and Lela G. Axline Professor of Business Economics and Professor of History, California Institute of Technology

April 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3392-3 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands

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Cultures of CommemorationIn 1941 the Japanese military attacked the US naval base Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of O‘ahu. Although much has been debated about this event and the wider American and Japanese involvement in the war, few scholars have explored the Pacific War’s impact on Pacific Islanders.Cultures of Commemoration: The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands, by Keith L. Camacho, fills this crucial gap in the historiography by advancing scholarly understanding of Pacific Islander relations with and knowledge of American and Japanese colonialisms in the twentieth century.

“Cultures of Commemoration performs a unique intervention into existing studies of the memory of the Pacific War in its astute analysis of the complex intersections of commemoration, colonialism, tourism, and indigenous memory at work in the Marianas Islands. In Guam, commemoration that is shaped by narratives of loyalty and liberation are shown by Keith Camacho to be layered with postcolonial ambivalence and contestation. Camacho’s study shows us that the study of indigenous memory is not only crucial to the field of memory studies but a key framework through which the politics of memory will be rethought.” —Marita Sturken, New York University, author of Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero

Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 25
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3546-0 / $52.00 (CLOTH)
Published in association with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai‘i

UH Press Recognized at Ka Palapala Awards

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University of Hawai‘i Press was highlighted at the annual Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards gala on May 6, when its director, William Hamilton, was honored with the John Dominis Holt Award for Excellence in Publishing. Hamilton is the Press’ longest serving director and only the third in its 64-year history.

In addition to the Holt Award, books published by the Press receiving accolades this year included:
A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Hawai‘i: The Main Islands and Offshore Waters (Jim Denny) — Award of Excellence in Natural Science
Hawaiian Birds of the Sea: Nā Manu Kai (Robert J. Shallenberger) — Honorable Mention, Excellence in Natural Science
Regulating Paradise: Land Use Controls in Hawai‘i (David L. Callies) — Honorable Mention, Excellence in Text or Reference Books
The Value of Hawaiʻi: Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future (Craig Howes & Jonathan Osorio) — Honorable Mention, Excellence in Nonfiction

Winner of the Samuel M. Kamakau Award for Hawai‘i Book of the Year went to Polynesia: The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art (Adrienne L. Kaeppler), distributed for the Blackburns by UH Press. The stunning book also won the Award of Excellence in the category of Illustrative or Photographic Books and its designer, Barbara Pope Book Design, was the winner in the Design category.

Read the Hawai‘i Book Blog post of the award ceremony at: http://www.hawaiibookblog.com/articles/2011-ka-palapala-pookela-winners/.
View photos of the event from the May 11, 2011, PULSE post: http://www.honolulupulse.com/events/books-2011-ka-palapala-po%e2%80%98okela-awards-winners.

UH Press Exhibiting at the East-West Philosophers’ Conference

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During May 16-24, University of Hawai‘i Press will be exhibiting at the Tenth East-West Philosophers’ Conference, held at the East-West Center’s Imin Center on the University of Hawai‘i campus. The conference’s theme, “Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence,” brings together philosophers from different cultures and with different perspectives to reflect upon a productive and sustainable relationship between economics and ethics.

The conference is free and open to the public.

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