Author: stephchun

Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009 Announced

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Each year Choice Magazine, the official publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, compiles a distinguished list of Outstanding Academic Titles. The following two UH Press books were recognized for 2009. A complete list of titles will be available in Choice’s January 2010 issue.

Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan
by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis

“Vaporis has written a magnificent book on the sankin kotai, or alternate attendance system. . . . Long considered the central political control mechanism of the Tokugawa period, the system has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until now. Filling a major gap in the understanding of Japanese history, the author provides a detailed account of the mechanics of the system and demands placed on daimyo and retainers on tours of duty in Edo. Exploiting the latest archaeological and archival sources, Vaporis makes clear the economic burden of the system on the daimyo, as well as its role as an engine of cultural, intellectual, and material exchange, from the center in Edo and between regions. The author also provides intimate details of the lives of samurai, both on the road to and from Edo and while serving their time in Edo. For all interested in early modern history. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice (July 2009)

Kabuki’s Forgotten War: 1931-1945 by James R. Brandon

“Brandon offers new and intriguing research on the development of Kabuki through the turbulent 1930s and into the 1940s. . . . A vital addition to existing literature on what one thinks of as ‘traditional’ Kabuki, this book will be fascinating reading for those interested in Japanese theater, history, or politics. . . . Essential.” —Choice (April 2009)

Evangelicalism in Korea

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Born AgainKnown as Asia’s “evangelical superpower,” South Korea today has some of the largest and most dynamic churches in the world and is second only to the United States in the number of missionaries it dispatches abroad. Understanding its evangelicalism is crucial to grasping the course of its modernization, the rise of nationalism and anticommunism, and the relationship between Christians and other religionists within the country. Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea, by Timothy S. Lee, is the first book in a Western language to consider the introduction, development, and character of evangelicalism in Korea—from its humble beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century to claiming one out of every five South Koreans as an adherent at the end of the twentieth.

“This book is important because Christianity in Korea is important. Korea is the most Protestant nation in Asia; Korean Christians are behind only Americans in the number of missionaries they dispatch abroad; and the number of Korean Christian churches established in North America has grown large enough to begin to influence Christianity on this side of the Pacific. In this accessible and clearly argued study of evangelical Christianity in Korea, Timothy Lee provides an explanation both of why Christianity has been successful in Korea and why evangelical Christianity has been more successful than other forms. He has mined materials in Korean and English that no one else has used in the same way and presents his findings in a manner that will appeal to scholars of Korean studies and religious studies as well as to laypeople seeking to understand a phenomenon that has grown so visible on the world stage.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3375-6 / $40.00 (CLOTH)

Green Days/Holiday Schedule

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University of Hawai‘i Press is a member of the UH-Mānoa campus Green Days initiative, established to promote sustainability and energy conservation. Most Press offices will be closed December 19, 2009-January 3, 2010, with the exception of our business office and warehouse, which will be open for customer orders and shipping December 21-23 and December 28-30. All offices will reopen on January 4, 2010.

Talking Hawaii’s Story Signings in December

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On Friday, December 11, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., Michi Kodama-Nishimoto, Warren S. Nishimoto, and Cynthia A. Oshiro, coeditors of Talking Hawai‘i’s Story: Oral Histories of an Island People, will sign books at Barnes & Noble-Kāhala Mall. (For store information, call 737-3323.) Talking Hawai‘i’s Story presents a rich sampling of the landmark work done by the Center for Oral History by making available 29 first-person narratives that until now only appeared in the COH’s semi-annual newsletter.

The editors will also participate in the Saturday, December 12 Holiday Book Fair at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i, 2454 So. Beretania Street, that will take place from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. in the Community Gallery & Gift Shop. This event is free and open to the public.

Talking Hawai‘i’s Story is published by University of Hawai‘i Press for the Center for Oral History and the Center for Biographical Research. The softcover book retails for $19.00 and is generally available at island bookstores or can be ordered from UH Press by phone: 956-8255, toll free: 1-888-847-7377; email: uhpbooks@hawaii.edu; or online: www.uhpress.hawaii.edu. For event information, call 956-8697.

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton to Speak at Center for Korean Studies, UHM

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On Thursday, December 10, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Center for Korean Studies, UH-Mānoa (1881 East-West Road), award-winning translators Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton will give a talk on their new work, The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea. The two are visiting from western Canada, where Bruce Fulton is associate professor in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia. The Red Room brings together stories by three canonical Korean writers who examine trauma as a simple fact of life. Copies of The Red Room will be available for purchase, as will MĀNOA journal’s Enduring War: Stories of What We’ve Learned, which includes a translation by Fulton. Light refreshments will be provided and the event is free and open to the public.

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are the translators of numerous volumes of contemporary Korean fiction, including Trees on a Slope by Hwang Sun-won and The Dwarf by Cho Se-hui, both also published by University of Hawai‘i Press. The Red Room retails for $15.00 and can be ordered from UH Press by phone: 956-8255, toll free: 1-888-847-7377; email: uhpbooks@hawaii.edu; or online: www.uhpress.hawaii.edu. For event information, call 956-8697.

Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations

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Cries of JoySince the mid-1990s, Taiwan’s unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese–language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations, by Marc L. Moskowitz, explores Mandopop’s surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC, where it has established new gender roles, created a vocabulary to express individualism, and introduced transnational culture to a country that had closed its doors to the world for twenty years.

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3369-5 / $40.00 (CLOTH)

Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity

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Polygamy and Sublime PassionFor centuries of Chinese history, polygamy and prostitution were closely linked practices that legitimized the “polygynous male,” the man with multiple sexual partners. Despite their strict hierarchies, these practices also addressed fundamental antagonisms in sexual relations in serious and constructive ways. Qing fiction abounds in stories of female resistance and superiority. Women—main wives, concubines, and prostitutes—were adept at exerting control and gaining status for themselves, while men indulged in elaborate fantasies about female power. In Polygamy and Sublime Passion: Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity, Keith McMahon introduces a new concept, “passive polygamy,” to explain the unusual number of Qing stories in which women take charge of a man’s desires, turning him into an instrument of female will. To this he adds a story that haunted the institutions of polygamy and prostitution: the tale of “sublime passion,” in which the main characters are a “remarkable” woman and her male lover.

“This book is a tour de force, the first in English to discuss Chinese fiction from the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twentieth within a comprehensive thematic frame. McMahon’s familiarity with Chinese fiction of the period covered is extremely impressive, as is his command of the secondary sources, both English and Chinese.” —Theodore Huters, UCLA

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3376-3 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward

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Heroes of China's Great LeapHeroes of China’s Great Leap Forward: Two Stories, edited by Richard King, presents contrasting narratives of the most ambitious and disastrous mass movement in modern Chinese history. The objective of the Great Leap, when it was launched in the late 1950s, was to catapult China into the ranks of the great military and industrial powers with no assistance from the outside world; it resulted in a famine that killed tens of millions of the nation’s peasants.

Li Zhun’s “A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang,” written while the movement was underway, celebrates the Great Leap as it was supposed to be: a time of optimism, dynamism, and shared purpose. In contrast, Zhang Yigong’s short novel The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, written two decades later, was one of the first works published in China to suggest a much darker side to the Great Leap. Although Zhang stopped short of portraying the horrors of famine, his tone of moral outrage provides a rejoinder to the triumphalism of “Li Shuangshuang.”

“The careful, accurate, and lucid rendition of these two stories allows scholars and students to mine the mentalities and conceptual worlds of the cataclysmic Great Leap Forward campaign. Together they provide a very useful window into China’s greatest self-made disaster in the 20th century and the sense made of it at the time and immediately after.” —Timothy Cheek, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3436-4 / $15.00 (PAPER)

Manoa Honored in The Best American Essays 2009

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Gates of ReconciliationGates of Reconciliation: Literature and the Ethical Imagination (issue 20:1 of Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing) has been named a Notable Special Issue in The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver. The 2009 edition of the anthology series, which selects outstanding nonfiction published in the country’s most prestigious magazine and literary journals, also includes two selections from Gates of Reconciliation: “Pollen: An Ode” by Christopher Cokinos and “One Story House” by Rebecca Solnit.

This is the seventh time Manoa has been recognized nationally for excellence. It has been honored in the annuals The Best American Poetry, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The O. Henry Awards: Best Stories of the Year. Manoa is published by University of Hawai‘i Press and sponsored by the University of Hawai‘i’s Department of English.

The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma Honored

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The Spectacle of Japanese American TraumaThe Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma: Racial Performativity and World War II, by Emily Roxworthy, garnered an Honorable Mention for Outstanding Research in Theatre History from the Barnard Hewitt Award committee, American Society for Theatre Research. The award is presented each year to the best book in “theatre history or cognate disciplines” published during the previous calendar year.

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