Category: Okinawa

30% OFF OKINAWA LANGUAGE AND HISTORY

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ICHARIBA CHOODEE!

Meet Niko, an exchange student, and his Okinawan host family. Together they provide a friendly introduction to Okinawan culture and language through conversations about everyday life and their adventures around Okinawa.

LOOK INSIDE

Learn Okinawan through engaging dialogues incorporating vocabulary, exercises, applications, grammar lessons, and review exercises. Cultural notes touch on history, geography, religion and pop culture.

FREE ONLINE ACCESS TO AUDIO RECORDINGS AND ANSWER KEYS

QR codes throughout the text instantly link to recordings of the dialogues, so learners can hear the language spoken by Okinawans. The website also contains the answers to the exercises.

NEWS ABOUT THE BOOK

UH Mānoa alums help to revive Okinawan language . . . “In a story of both serendipity and shared passion, two University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni, Shoichi Iwasaki and Rumiko Shinzato, reunited after more than thirty years to co-author Basic Okinawan: From Conversation to Grammar, the first textbook of its kind for English speakers.”

LOOKING FOR MORE OKINAWA LANGUAGE AND HISTORY?

OKINAWAN-ENGLISH WORDBOOK

The Okinawan-English Wordbook, written by the late Mitsugu Sakihara, historian and native speaker of the Naha dialect of Okinawa, is a concise dictionary of the modern Okinawan language with definitions and explanations in English. The first substantive Okinawan-English lexicon in more than a century, it represents a much-needed addition to the library of reference materials on the language.

EARLY RYUKYUAN HISTORY: A NEW MODEL

The Ryukyu islands have been inhabited by humans for over 30,000 years. Their modern population, however, did not come from stone-age ancestors, nor did distinctive forms of Ryukyuan culture, such as sacred groves or stone-walled castles, emerge from within the islands. Instead, different groups of people lived in the Ryukyu islands at various points in history. Starting with the earliest extant human remains and ending with the formation of a centralized state in the early 1500s, Early Ryukyuan History traces the people, culture, technologies, goods, and networks that entered different parts of Ryukyu over time. In the process, it synthesizes decades of research in archaeology and anthropology, recent advances in genetic evidence, and conventional documentary sources to advance a new model for the early development of the Ryukyu islands, thoroughly rewriting early Ryukyuan history.

UH Press at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, March 27-30, Philadelphia

Posted on by UH Press Marketing

AAS-2014-meetingUniversity of Hawai‘i Press is exhibiting at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, March 27-30, held this year at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown hotel.

We have a larger than usual contingent attending: UHP director Michael Duckworth; editors Patricia Crosby, Pamela Kelley, and Stephanie Chun; marketing director Colins Kawai; and sales manager Royden Muranaka. Please visit us at booths 110-116 to see our latest titles and take advantage of the conference offer of a 20% discount and free shipping in the U.S. (Free shipping applies only to orders received or placed at the conference.) Our new Asian Studies print catalog will also be distributed.

Exhibiting across the aisle from us are publishing partners: Cornell University East Asia Program (booth 111), MerwinAsia and Seoul Selection (booth 113), NIAS Press-Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (booth 117), and NUS Press-Singapore (booth 115).

See you in Philly!

Ancient Ryukyu: An Archaeological Study of Island Communities

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Ancient Ryukyu explores 30,000 years of human occupation in the Ryukyu Islands, from the earliest human presence in the region up to A.D. 1609 and the emergence of the Ryukyu Kingdom. It focuses on the unique geopolitical position of the islands, their environment, and the many human communities whose historical activities can be discerned. Drawing on the impressive work of dozens of local archaeologists who have brought the islands’ early history to life, Richard Pearson describes explorers and sojourners and colonists who arrived thousands of years ago, and their ancient trade links to Japan, Korea, and China.

Through analysis of work completed at about 120 sites described in dozens of rare Japanese government reports with limited circulation, Pearson is able to show that many modern features of the culture, politics, and economy of the Ryukyu Islands have very deep roots.

“This extremely important study in Pacific and island archaeology makes use of the huge database generated by Okinawan archaeology in the postwar era and places the Okinawan islands in the context of current theoretical debates within island archaeology in the Pacific and beyond. It is also a major study of premodern Okinawa. With its many valuable overviews and discussions, as well as its original analyses and interpretations, it will undoubtedly become the definitive text in English.” —Mark Hudson, Nishikyushu University

November 2013 | 432 pages | 36 illustrations | 20 maps
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3712-9 | $55.00 | Cloth

UH Press at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, March 21-24, San Diego

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AAS Annual ConferenceUniversity of Hawai‘i Press will be exhibiting at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, March 21-24, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.

Editors Patricia Crosby and Pamela Kelley will be attending, together with marketing director Colins Kawai and Asia studies product manager Steve Hirashima. Please visit us at booths 307, 309, and 311, where we will be offering a 20% discount and free shipping in the U.S. (Free shipping applies only to orders received or placed at the conference.)

Our publishing partners will be exhibiting nearby: Ateneo de Manila University Press/University of the Philippines Press (booth 313), Cornell University East Asia Program (booth 308), MerwinAsia/Seoul Selection/Shanghai Press and Publishing Development (booth 314), NIAS Press-Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (booth 312), and NUS Press-Singapore (booth 310). See you in San Diego!

New Catalog Available: Asian Studies 2013

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Asian Studies 2013
The UH Press Asian Studies 2013 catalog is now available! The catalog has been redesigned to showcase our new and forthcoming Asian studies titles. (All books published prior to late 2012 and currently in print can be found at our website.) To view the PDF, click on the catalog cover image to the left.

Highlights include:

* An illustrated anthology of well-known masterpieces and unusual writing from 18th-century Edo’s counterculture — An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750–1850

*Four new titles in the Spatial Habitus series — The Hermit’s Hut: Asceticism and Architecutre in India, China’s Contested Capital: Architecture, Ritual, and Response in Nanjing, Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea, and Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China

* Short fiction from Japan’s foremost Marxist writer, Kobayashi Takiji, including a new translation of an anticapitalist classic that became a runaway bestseller in Japan in 2008, nearly eight decades after its publication — The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle

* A timely collection of essays exploring Japan’s role in global environmental transformation and how Japanese ideas have shaped bodies and landscapes over the centuries — Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power

* An expansive new study on the varied roles Southeast Asia’s monumental remains (Angkor, Pagan, Borobudur, and Ayutthaya, among others) have played in the histories of its modern nations — A Heritage of Ruins: The Ancient Sites of Southeast Asia and Their Conservation

* Close description and analysis of the history, geographical whereabouts, and doctrinal positions of early schools of Buddhism by André Bareau, one of the foremost scholars of Buddhism of his generation — The Buddhist Schools of the Small Vehicle

* Two volumes in the new series Korean Classics Library — Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea and Imperatives of Culture: Selected Essays on Korean History, Literature, and Society

UH Press at Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting This Month

Posted on by stephchun

Holiday Web Sale 2011

The Association for Asian Studies annual meeting is UH Press’ biggest scholarly exhibit/conference: 300 new and recent Asia books and journals will be on display and editorial and marketing staff will be attending. The Press’ publishing partners Ateneo de Manila University Press, Cornell University East Asia Program, KITLV Press, NIAS Press, NUS Press (Singapore), and University of the Philippines Press will be exhibiting in neighboring booths, in addition to newcomer MerwinAsia. See you in Toronto!

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan

Posted on by stephchun

The Okinawan DiasporaAlthough much has been written on Okinawan emigration abroad, The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within, by Steve Rabson, is the first book in English to consider the topic in Japan. It is based on a wide variety of secondary and primary sources, including interviews conducted by the author in the greater Osaka area over a two-year period. The work begins with the experiences of women who worked in Osaka’s spinning factories in the early twentieth century, covers the years of the Pacific War and the prolonged U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, and finally treats the period following Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. Throughout, it examines the impact of government and corporate policies, along with popular attitudes, for a compelling account of the Okinawan diaspora in the context of contemporary Japan’s struggle to acknowledge its multiethnic society.

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3534-7 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

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