Author: stephchun

Four Plays from the Bunraku Puppet Theater

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The Bunraku Puppet Theatre of JapanThe plays presented in The Bunraku Puppet Theatre of Japan: Honor, Vengeance, and Love in Four Plays of the 18th and 19th Centuries, translated and annotated by Stanleigh H. Jones, were first performed between 1769 and 1832, a time when the Japanese puppet theatre known as Bunraku was beginning to lose its pre-eminence to Kabuki. During this period, however, several important puppet plays were created that went on to become standards in both the Bunraku and Kabuki repertoires; three of the plays in this volume achieved this level of importance. This span of some sixty-odd years was also a formative one in the development of how plays were presented, an important feature in the modern staging of works from the traditional plebeian theatre. Only a handful of complete and uncut plays—often as much as ten hours long—are produced in Bunraku or Kabuki nowadays; included here is one of these. Two among the four plays contained in this volume are examples of the much more common practice of staging a single popular act or scene from a much longer drama that itself is seldom, if ever, performed in its entirety today.

Newly translated and illustrated for the general reader and the specialist, the plays are accompanied by informative introductions, extensive notes on stage action, and discussions of the various changes that Bunraku underwent, particularly in the latter half of the eighteenth century, its golden age.

December 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3680-1 / $29.00 (PAPER)

New Edition of a Classic Cookbook

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Mary Sia's Classic Chinese CookbookMary Sia’s Chinese Cookbook has been a classic of Chinese cookery since it was first published in 1956. This fourth edition features all 300 of the original recipes, ranging from simple, everyday fare to more elaborate dishes for entertaining, as well as essays by Mary Sia. An all-new food glossary provides up-to-date names for ingredients along with advice on appropriate substitutions and sources for 21st-century cooks. The work also includes an introduction by Rachel Laudan, renowned food historian and author of The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawai‘i’s Culinary Heritage.

December 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3738-9 / $16.99 (PAPER)

Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot

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Buddhism in a Dark AgeBuddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot, by Ian Harris, a pioneering study of the fate of Buddhism during the communist period in Cambodia, puts a human face on a dark period in Cambodia’s history. It is the first sustained analysis of the widely held assumption that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot had a centralized plan to liquidate the entire monastic order. Based on a thorough analysis of interview transcripts and a large body of contemporary manuscript material, it offers a nuanced view that attempts to move beyond the horrific monastic death toll and fully evaluate the damage to the Buddhist sangha under Democratic Kampuchea.

December 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3561-3 / $22.00 (PAPER)

Press Director William Hamilton to Retire

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billHamiltonRetirement2012Our director of twenty-five years, William Hamilton, will be retiring at the end of December. Bill came to UH Press in 1987 from Addison-Wesley in Boston, with twenty years of experience in educational publishing. He is the longest-serving and only the third director the Press has had during its sixty-five years of existence. In 2011, Bill received the John Dominis Holt Award for Excellence in Publishing, which recognized his contribution to publishing in Hawai‘i.

Under Bill’s direction, the Press’ title output and sales saw dramatic increases, and it has truly established itself as the premier publisher on Pacific subjects and one of the most respected presses of East Asian and Southeast Asian studies in the world. Bill’s commitment to publishing significant works on Hawai‘i also resulted in some of the Press’ best-selling books, including Plants in Hawaiian Culture, Ka Lei Ha‘aheo: Beginning Hawaiian, Na Lei Makamae: The Treasured Lei, and Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, and Political Manipulation at America’s Largest Charitable Trust.

We thank Bill for his years of leadership and guidance and wish him (and his beloved Red Sox!) all the best.

Green Days/Holiday Schedule 2012

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As part of the University of Hawai‘i’s Green Days initiative, University of Hawai‘i Press will be closed Monday, December 17, 2012, through Tuesday, January 1, 2013, with the exception of our order department and warehouse, which will be open December 17–21. (Orders for Hawai‘i customers should be received no later than noon, December 20; all other orders should be received no later than noon, December 21.) Regular Press hours will resume on Wednesday, January 2, 2013. Mahalo for your support and happy holidays!

Reading the World, One Book at a Time: Han Dong’s Banished

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9780824833404PLate in 2011, the world was gearing up for the Olympics in London and Ann Morgan was planning to meet it more than halfway by reading “as many of the globe’s 196 independent countries . . . one book from every nation.” Her blog “A year of reading the world” tracks her progress and is filled with thoughtful commentary on not only what Morgan is reading (she’s not done yet) and her thoughts on the work, but also how she got there: the recommendations she received, the reasons behind her decision to read one book over another (e.g., for Bulgaria, Georgi Gospodinov over Elias Canetti: She discovered Gospodinov’s Natural Novel in a NYC bookstore “and it sounded so intriguing that I had to buy it and read it then and there”).

Morgan’s November 29, 2012 entry, “China: one in 1.3 billion,”details her discovery of Han Dong’s Banished!, published by UH Press in 2008. Forgoing this year’s Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, Morgan decided on Han Dong after a meeting with translator, Nicky Harman:

“I couldn’t help being intrigued by [Harman’s] description of the book, which, by the sound of it, provided an unusual—even quirky—perspective on the events of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. My interest was also piqued by the translator’s comment that the structure of the book, which reads like a memoir, with each chapter devoted to a different character in the village, reflected a popular tradition in Chinese fiction. I decided it would be the book for me.”

Last year Morgan blogged “A year of reading women,” an equally insightful and entertaining trip through books, this time by women writers (largely British and North American) through the centuries.

Founder of Mauna Loa Observatory Celebrates His 100th Birthday

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Dr. Robert Simpson, who founded the Mauna Loa Observatory, the world’s best-known atmospheric monitoring station, recently celebrated his 100th birthday in Washington, D.C. He also served as the first director of the National Hurricane Center.

In 1948 Simpson supervised the construction of an unmanned weather station atop Mauna Loa. The station began collecting data in 1951 but was abandoned a few years later because maintaining the road to the summit proved too difficult. Later, a chance meeting with Ralph Stair, a scientist who was attempting to measure the intensity of light from the sun, would lead directly to Simpson’s founding Mauna Loa Observatory.

Simpson wrote the Foreword to Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory: Fifty Years of Monitoring the Atmosphere, by Forrest M. Mims III, published by UH Press in 2011.

Foreign Policy Article on China’s Copycat Cities

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boskerEiffelTower

Last week Foreign Policy posted an article, China’s Copycat Cities, written by Jack Carlson, on China’s recent re-creation of some of the West’s most iconic, historical attractions in its own backyard: Replicas of British towns complete with Tudor, Georgian, and Victorian buildings can now be found near Shanghai and Chengdu, in addition to at least two large-scale replicas of the Eiffel Tower and a highly accurate, full-scale White House outside Hangzhou, to name a few. Carlson mentions the reasons offered by European and American commentators for the presence of Bauhaus towns and a Sydney Opera House in China—the country’s “copycat syndrome,” “self-colonization”—but he also finds a fascinating parallel in Chinese history during the Qing with the Qianlong Emperor’s construction of the Western Palaces, which were closely based on the Trianon in Versailles. An excellent slide show accompanies the article.

UH Press’ forthcoming Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China, by Bianca Bosker, is the first definitive chronicle of this remarkable phenomenon in which entire buildings and towns appear to have been airlifted from their historic and geographic foundations in Europe and the Americas and spot-welded to Chinese cities. The latest book in the series Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia’s Architecture, Original Copies will be available in January 2013.

Albert Wendt Receives New Zealand’s Highest Literary Award

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Yesterday Albert Wendt (shown with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key) was presented with this year’s Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Fiction in Wellington. The Samoan-born writer’s previous awards include the Wattie Book of the Year, the Montana Book Award, and two Commonwealth Book Prizes. He is acknowledged as one of the Pacific’s major novelists and poets and an important influence in the development of indigenous writing around the world.

Wendt is the author or editor of numerous books published by University of Hawai‘i Press, including Leaves of the Banyan Tree, Pouliuli, The Adventures of Vela, Sons for the Return Home, Black Rainbow, and Ola. His most recent book, Ancestry, is published by Huia Publishers and will be distributed in the U.S. and Canada by UH Press later this year.

Moving Images Wins Award from the Society for Visual Anthropology

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Moving Images
Moving Images: John Layard, Fieldwork, and Photography on Malakula since 1914, by Haidy Geismar and Anita Herle, is the most recent recipient of the John Collier Jr., Award for Still Photography from the Society for Visual Anthropology. The award is made periodically for work that exemplifies the use of still photography, both historical and contemporary, for research and communication of anthropological knowledge, and for excellence in visual anthropology.

The Collier Committee members were impressed with the authors’ contribution:

“and in particular with the presentation of unpublished archival materials, John Layard’s story, and historical photos supplemented with his contextual field notes integrated in such an engaging format with contemporary visual research and literature, essays, text, and the reintroduction of historical and contemporary photos into the culture today.”

The official presentation of the award was made last week during the 2012 American Anthropology Association annual meeting in San Francisco.

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