Author: stephchun

Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan

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Japanese film crews were shooting feature-length movies in China nearly three decades before Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) reputedly put Japan on the international film map. Although few would readily associate Japan’s film industry with either imperialism or the domination of world markets, the country’s film culture developed in lock step with its empire, which, at its peak in 1943, included territories from the Aleutians to Australia and from Midway Island to India. With each military victory, Japanese film culture’s sphere of influence expanded deeper into Asia, first clashing with and ultimately replacing Hollywood as the main source of news, education, and entertainment for millions. The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan, by Michael Baskett, is the first comprehensive examination of the attitudes, ideals, and myths of Japanese imperialism as represented in its film culture.

“Because imperialism has had such an appalling ideological reputation, we’ve lost sight of its excitement, the breathless anticipation of adventures in far-off lands. The Attractive Empire is a tour de force of enthralling historical scholarship that puts the appeal, and seductions, of imperialism on display, without underestimating its ugly consequences. Like its chosen subject, the book covers an astonishing array of texts, events, people, and issues. The clarity and vividness of the writing make it work effortlessly. Baskett’s organizational skills, narrative, and rhetoric deftly orchestrate a complex subject.” —Darrell William Davis, University of New South Wales

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3163-9 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

New in Paperback in March

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The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia, by Barbara Watson Andaya

“The definitive volume on women in Southeast Asia history. . . . [Anadaya’s] book is encyclopedic in its inclusiveness yet it does not force a homogenizing or uniform interpretation upon the material. Instead, Andaya brings symphonic order to the cacophony of beliefs and practices. . . . The examples are detailed, specific, precise and attentive. This is the hallmark of her work. . . . Masterfully composed.” —Pacific Affairs

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3288-9 / $21.00 (PAPER)

Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema, by Shuqin Cui

“Stands out for its ambition and breadth. . . . Women Through the Lens not only lays a foundation and road map for other scholars but it should be used as a reference book by anyone interested in Chinese film.” —Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3296-4 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice, by Ian Harris

“A fascinating book that contains a wealth of material that would require a series of reviews to discuss fully. It is a resource on Cambodia that adds enormously to the literature of Southeast Asian Buddhism. . . . It will become a pivotal work on the subject.” —Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3298-8 / $25.00 (PAPER)

The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania, by Paul D’Arcy

“This well-researched and beautifully written monograph opens a window in time and space. Its emphasis on the dynamics [of marine ecosystems] is convincing and serves to falsify the notion of a frozen ‘tradition’ as well as of a predictable maritime environment.” —Anthropological Quarterly

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3297-1 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Na Kua‘aina Wins History Prize

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Na Kua‘aina: Living Hawaiian Culture, by Davianna Pomaika‘i McGregor (professor of ethnic studies, University of Hawai‘i), recently received the Kenneth W. Baldridge Prize for best history book written by a Hawai‘i resident. The prize is awarded by the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society.

Na Kua‘aina has also been selected as a finalist for the National Council on Public History Book Award. Winners will be announced at the NCPH Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 11, 2008.

Tourism and Tourism Policy Planning in Hawaii

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Developing a Dream Destination: Tourism and Tourism Policy Planning in Hawai‘i, by James Mak, is an interpretive history of tourism and tourism policy development in Hawai‘i from the 1960s to the twenty-first century. Part 1 looks at the many changes in tourism since statehood (1959) and tourism’s imprint on Hawai‘i. Part 2 reviews the development of public policy toward tourism, beginning with a story of the planning process that started around 1970—a full decade before the first comprehensive State Tourism Plan was crafted and implemented.

“I consider this to be ‘hands down’ the best book that I’ve read on the policy process of tourism development. It will become mandatory reading for any serious student of tourism and tourism development. It should be mandatory reading for planners and policy makers in areas developing their tourism industry. My congratulations to Professor Mak both for the level and quality of research and for the insights into the processes of tourism development.” —Richard R. Perdue, editor, Journal of Travel Research, and board chair of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3243-8 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Save 25% on Two Modern Classics of Philippine Literature

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Click here and save 25% when you order this specially priced set of the paperback editions of José Rizal’s classic novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

In Noli Me Tangere (“touch me not”), José Rizal (1861–1896) exposes “matters . . . so delicate that they cannot be touched by anybody,” unfolding an epic history of the Philippines that has made it that country’s most influential political novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rizal, national hero of the Philippines, completed Noli Me Tangere in Spanish in 1887 while he was studying in Europe. He was executed by firing squad in 1896. Since then, Noli Me Tangere has appeared in French, Chinese, German and Philippine languages.

“A huge advance over previous translations, handsomely laid out and with enough footnotes to be helpful without being pettifogging. . . . There are few prophets who are honoured in their own country, and José Rizal is among them. But the condition of this honour has for decades been his unavailability. Mrs. Lacson-Locsin has changed this by giving the great man back his sad and seditious laughter. And it is badly needed.” —London Review of Books

Like its predecessor, Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo (The Subversive) was written in Castilian while Rizal was traveling and studying in Europe. It was published in Ghent in 1891 and later translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilonggo, and other languages. A nationalist novel by an author who has been called “the first Filipino,” its nature as a social document of the late-nineteenth-century Philippines is often emphasized. For many years copies of the Fili were smuggled into the Philippines after it was condemned as subversive by the Spanish authorities.

Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes

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The Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara was a handsome prince when he entered China. As Guanyin, the bodhisattva was venerated from the eleventh century onward in the shape of a beautiful woman who became a universal savior. Throughout the last millennium, the female Guanyin has enjoyed wide and fervid veneration throughout East Asia and has appeared as a major character in literature and legend. In one tale, Guanyin (as the princess Miaoshan) returns from the dead after being executed by the king, her father, for refusing to marry. The most popular version of this legend is The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain (Xiangshan baojuan). In Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes, Wilt L. Idema offers a complete and fully annotated translation of The Precious Scroll, based on a nineteenth-century edition.

This is the latest volume in the series Classics in East Asian Buddhism, published in association with the Kuroda Institute.

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3215-5 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

Margaret Mead and the Emergence of American Cosmopolitanism

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Margaret Mead’s career took off in 1928 with the publication of Coming of Age in Samoa. Within ten years, she was the best-known academic in the United States, a role she enjoyed all of her life. In On Creating a Usable Culture: Margaret Mead and the Emergence of American Cosmopolitanism, Maureen A. Molloy explores how Mead was influenced by, and influenced, the meanings of American culture and secured for herself a unique and enduring place in the American popular imagination. She considers this in relation to Mead’s four popular ethnographies written between the wars (Coming of Age in Samoa, Growing Up in New Guinea, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe, and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies) and the academic, middle-brow, and popular responses to them.

“On Creating a Usable Culture presents a lucid and intriguing analysis of Margaret Mead’s place in U.S. culture in the 1920s and 1930s. By focusing on Mead’s early work at this important moment in the search for the meanings of ‘American,’ Maureen Molloy reveals both the relevance of that society to the genesis of Mead’s career as a public intellectual and why Americans were so receptive to her studies of Samoa, New Guinea, and Native America. Malloy also skillfully situates Mead, the anthropologist, within the intellectual world of the ‘arbiters of American culture’ who both criticized U.S. society and hoped to redefine it.”—Julia E. Liss, Scripps College

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3116-5 / $39.00 (CLOTH)

The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity

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The Chinese essay is arguably China’s most distinctive contribution to modern world literature, and the period of its greatest influence and popularity—the mid-1930s—is the central concern of this book. What Charles A. Laughlin terms “the literature of leisure” is a modern literary response to the cultural past that manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of short, informal essay writing (xiaopin wen). In The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity, Laughlin examines the essay both as a widely practiced and influential genre of literary expression and as an important counter-discourse to the revolutionary tradition of New Literature (especially realistic fiction), often viewed as the dominant mode of literature at the time.

“More than any scholar in the field, Charles Laughlin has placed the prose essay at the heart of modern Chinese literary production and reception—where it rightly belongs. As a whole, his work demonstrates both the variety of approaches modern Chinese writers have taken to the prose genre and the essential interconnectedness of political literature and the literature of leisure. With this volume, the field seems to have matured to the point that we no longer need to obsess about ‘alternative modernities’ as counterweights to the ‘hegemony’ of the May Fourth mainstream. Since xiaopin wen (little prose pieces) were explicitly associated with the prose writing of late imperial China, Laughlin’s book also shows us how the rigid dichotomy between tradition and modernity has been a false construct in the scholarship on modern Chinese literature. Finally, organized around schools of prose—Yusi, White Horse Lake, Analects, and Crescent Moon—the book contributes greatly to our understanding of prose’s critical place in the shaping of a Republican-era literary field. Important on so many levels, The Literature of Leisure and Chinese Modernity is a must-read.” —Kirk A. Denton, The Ohio State University

March 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3125-7 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Guardian of the Sea Event

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John Clark, author of Guardian of the Sea: Jizo in Hawai‘i, will be signing his book at Akiko’s Buddhist Bed and Breakfast in Wailea on Saturday, March 1, following a performance by shakuhachi grandmaster Riley Lee and a dramatic reading of a Peter Charlot script inspired by Clark’s book. Admission for the evening program (7-8:30 p.m.) is $10 ($8 for children under 12). Parking is available at Hakalau Baseball Park. For reservations and more information, please contact Akiko at 808-963-6422 or email msakiko@hawaii.rr.com.

The Sociology of Southeast Asia

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One of the main problems faced by teachers and students who have a scholarly interest in Southeast Asia is the lack of general, user-friendly texts in the social sciences. The absence of an introduction to the sociology of Southeast Asia is especially unfortunate. The Sociology of Southeast Asia: Transformations in a Developing Region, by Victor T. King, attempts to meet these needs. This is, then, the first sole-authored introductory sociology text on Southeast Asia that focuses on change and development in the region, provides an overview of the important sociological and political economy writings, and considers the key concepts and themes in the field since 1945.

“Victor King has produced a lucid, comprehensive, and challenging analysis of the state-of-the-art of Southeast Asian sociology. The book is not only an excellent textbook for courses on Southeast Asia or development sociology, but also ‘required reading’ for all social scientists embarking on research on the area. I am certain that it will become a long-lasting addition to the standard literature on Asia.” —Hans-Dieter Evers, University of Bonn

January 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3229-2 / $26.00 (PAPER)

Myths and Music of Futuna, Vanuatu

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Nokonofo Kitea (We Keep on Living This Way): Myths and Music of Futuna, Vanuatu, by Janet Dixon Keller and Takaronga Kuautonga, is centered on stories and songs from the Polynesian outlier West Futuna, Vanuatu. It aims to accomplish three goals: found a secular literature, celebrate and interpret the verbal arts, and connect ancestral discourses with the complex fabric of present-day lives. In the narratives islanders past and present enunciate personal and social struggles, articulate power dynamics, and proclaim the cultural geography and cosmology that promote community. History emerges through their perspectives. Gender, marriage, residence, exchange, and alliance are interrogated; gluttony and conservation juxtaposed.

“This volume is a superb example of the kind of quality that a collaborative project, between expatriate academics and Pacific Islanders, can produce. The collaborative strategy has major implications for the discipline of anthropology in general.” —Kirk Huffman, honorary curator, Vanuatu Cultural Center

February 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3113-4 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

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