Author: stephchun

New Translation of Ise monogatari

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The Ise StoriesIse monogatari is one of classical Japan’s most important texts. It influenced other literary court romances like The Tale of Genji and inspired artists, playwrights, and poets throughout Japanese history and to the present day. In a series of 125 loosely connected episodes, the Ise tells the story of a famous lover, Captain Ariwara no Narihira (825–880), and his romantic encounters with women throughout Japan. Each episode centers on an exchange of love poems designed to demonstrate wit, sensitivity, and “courtliness.”

In The Ise Stories, Joshua Mostow and Royall Tyler present a fresh, contemporary translation of this classic work, together with a substantial commentary for each episode.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3451-7 / $19.00 (PAPER)

New in the Pacific Islands Monograph Series

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Repositioning the MissionaryIn the vein of an emergent Native Pacific brand of cultural studies, Repositioning the Missionary: Rewriting the Histories of Colonialism, Native Catholicism, and Indigeneity in Guam, by Vicente M. Diaz, examines the cultural and political stakes of the historic and present-day movement to canonize Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores (1627–1672), the Spanish Jesuit missionary who was martyred by Mata’pang of Guam while establishing the Catholic mission among the Chamorros in the Mariana Islands. The work juxtaposes official, popular, and critical perspectives of the movement to complicate prevailing ideas about colonialism, historiography, and indigenous culture and identity in the Pacific.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3435-7 / $24.00 (PAPER)
Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 24
Published in association with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai‘i

New in the Hawaii Studies on Korea Series

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Soldiers on the Cultural Front
Soldiers on the Cultural Front: Developments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary Policy, by Tatiana Gabroussenko, presents the first consistent research on the early history of North Korea’s literature and literary policy in Western scholarship. It traces the introduction and development of Soviet-organized conventions in North Korean literary propaganda and investigates why the “romance with Moscow” was destined to be short lived. It reconstructs the biographies and worldviews of major personalities who shaped North Korean literature and teases these historical figures out of popular scholarly myth and misconception. The book also investigates the specific forms of control over intellectuals and literary matters in North Korea.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3396-1 / $49.00 (CLOTH)
Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
Published in association with the Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i

New in the Dimensions of Asian Spirituality Series

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Dharma
Dharma, by Alf Hiltebeitel, proposes a fresh take on the ancient Indian concept dharma. By unfolding how, even in its developments as “law” and custom, dharma participates in nuanced and multifarious understandings of the term that play out in India’s great spiritual traditions, the book offers insights into the innovative character of both Hindu and Buddhist usages of the concept.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3486-9 / $17.00 (PAPER)
Dimensions of Asian Spirituality

Media in Reform-Era China

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Mainstream Culture RefocusedSerialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect “refocusing” mainstream Chinese culture.

“This is a very timely and original work that fills a significant gap in studies on contemporary Chinese culture. It does a compelling job in showing how and why these dramas on the small screen both dramatize and mediate the social and political transformations taking place in China today. The book will contribute significantly to Chinese media studies and cultural studies and, because many TV dramas are adapted from literary works, to debates on the changing status of Chinese literature and literary studies in an era infused with commercialism and visuality. This will be a path-breaking study.” —Zhen Zhang, New York University

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3469-2 / $27.00 (PAPER)

Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future

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The Value of Hawaii
How did we get here? Three-and-a-half-day school weeks. Prisoners farmed out to the mainland. Tent camps for the migratory homeless. A blinkered dependence on tourism and the military for virtually all economic activity. The steady degradation of already degraded land. Contempt for anyone employed in education, health, and social service. An almost theological belief in the evil of taxes.

At a time when new leaders will be elected, and new solutions need to be found, the contributors to The Value of Hawai‘i: Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future, edited by Craig Howes and Jon Osorio, outline the causes of our current state and offer points of departure for a Hawai‘i-wide debate on our future.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3529-3 / $19.99 (PAPER)
A Biography Monograph
Published in association with the Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai‘i

A New Edition of Regulating Paradise

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Regulating ParadisePraise for the revised edition of David L. Callies’ Regulating Paradise: Land Use Controls in Hawaii:

“A masterful analysis of [Hawai‘i’s] land use laws.” —Daniel R. Mandelker, Stamper Professor of Law, Washington University, St. Louis

“Essential reading for all who seek to understand how land use is regulated in Hawai‘i or to apply the lessons learned there to other states.” —Dan Tarlock, Distinguished Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law

“Callies has vibrantly depicted the complexity, conflicts, and conundrums of navigating land use laws and regulations in Hawai‘i in a clear and entertaining manner.” —Lea Hong, Hawaiian Islands Program Director, The Trust for Public Land

“A clear and comprehensive review of Hawai‘i’s land use regulatory systems. The book effectively covers the broad sweep of State and County laws, ordinances, and processes, and how they interrelate.” —Dan Davidson, land use administrator

“A must-read for both neophyte and veteran legal practitioners. Callies’ in-depth and insightful explanations and commentaries on Hawai‘i’s complex land use and planning laws provide a road map for understanding the state’s multi-layered regulatory scheme.” —Benjamin A. Kudo, Ph.D.

“Callies has a gift of weaving together what on the surface appear to be unrelated laws and court decisions into broader underlying currents in Hawai‘i’s evolving history.” —Melvin Y. Kaneshige, Executive Vice President of Real Estate and Development, Outrigger Enterprises Group.

“An excellent treatise on the thorny issues of unique land tenure, land rights, and land control in Hawai‘i.” —Henry Eng, FAICP

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3475-3 / $22.00 (PAPER)

Zen Sand Now Available in Paperback

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Zen Sand

“[Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice, by Victor Sogen Hori,] is a thorough and excellent piece of scholarship that will, I suspect, be the standard English-language work on jakugo for many decades to come. No serious student or practitioner of Zen will want to be without a copy.” —Religious Studies Review

“The best scholarly book on actual Zen practice in Japan to appear in recent decades.” —Journal of Chinese Religions

“Not only a well-documented and meticulously researched, comprehensive sourcebook. . . . It also succeeds superbly in setting the record straight and clarifies some widespread but misguided notions about Zen.” —Japanese Journal of Religious Studies

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3507-1 / $32.00 (PAPER)
Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture

New Title in the Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication Series

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A Dictionary of Mah MeriMah Meri is an Aslian (Austroasiatic: Mon-Khmer) language spoken in scattered settlements along a section of the southwest coast of Selangor in Peninsular Malaysia. The Mah Meri are the only Aslian speakers who live in a coastal environment. Their language, which may have about 2,000 speakers, has no written language and is highly endangered.

A Dictionary of Mah Meri as Spoken at Bukit Bangkong, by Nicole Kruspe, is the first comprehensive dictionary of the language and is based on the author’s extensive field research and consultation with members of the community over the last ten years. The dialect presented here is spoken by about 600 people at Bukit Bangkong, the most southerly Mah Meri settlement. The dictionary contains around 4,000 entries, each with a phonetic transcription and translations in both English and Malay.

July 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3493-7 / $40.00 (PAPER)
Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication #36

Talking Hawai‘i’s Story at Pohai Nani Auditorium

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Talking Hawaii's StoryTalking Hawaiʻi’s Story: Oral Histories of an Island People editors Michi Kodama-Nishimoto and Warren Nishimoto of the University of Hawai‘i’s Center for Oral History will speak at the Pohai Nani Auditorium (45-090 Namoku Street, Kaneohe) on Tuesday, July 6, from 7 to 8 pm.

The program will include book readings, presented by storyteller Nyla Fujii-Babb and UH English professor Craig Howes, followed by a question-and-answer session. Fujii-Babb will read Edith Anzai Yonenaka’s narrative, “Recollections from the Windward Side,” and Howes will read Alfred Preis’ compelling chapter, ‘Interned: Experiences of an ‘Enemy Alien.’”

The talk and reading is the third event in the Pohai Nani Retirement Community’s Yamashita Lecture Series on Hawaiʻi. The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase from UH Press.

For more information on the event, contact Carolyn Nakamura, Pohai Nani’s resident services coordinator, at (808) 236-7805.

Readings from Andha Yug

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Andha YugA readers theatre production of excerpts from Andha Yug, Dharamvir Bharati’s critically acclaimed play taken from the Indian epic Mahabharata, will be held on Saturday, June 26, at 7:30pm at Orvis Auditorium. For more information on this free event call 808-956-8246 or click here.

The reading will be accompanied by visual images from the Mahabharata and Gamelan music. Translator Alok Bhalla will introduce the performance and play a role as well. A question and answer session will follow the performance.

Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama

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A Beggar’s Art
In the opening decades of the twentieth century in Japan, practically every major author wrote plays that were published and performed. The plays were seen not simply as the emergence of a new literary form but as a manifestation of modernity itself, transforming the stage into a site for the exploration of new ideas and ways of being. A Beggar’s Art: Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama, 1900-1930, is the first book in English to examine the full range of early twentieth-century Japanese drama. Accompanying his study, M. Cody Poulton provides his translations of representative one-act plays. Poulton looks at the emergence of drama as a modern literary and artistic form and chronicles the creation of modern Japanese drama as a reaction to both traditional (particularly kabuki) dramaturgy and European drama. Translations and productions of the latter became the model for the so-called New Theater (shingeki), where the question of how to be both modern and Japanese at the same time was hotly contested.

June 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3452-4 / $29.00 (PAPER)

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