Category: Asia

New Edition of Integrated Korean: Intermediate 1 Available

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Intermediate Second EditionThis is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Intermediate 1, the third volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. All series’ volumes have been developed in accordance with performance-based principles and methodology—contextualization, learner-centeredness, use of authentic materials, usage-orientedness, balance between skill getting and skill using, and integration of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. Grammar points are systematically introduced in simple but adequate explanations and abundant examples and exercises.

An accompanying workbook (forthcoming, April 2012), newly written, provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.

KLEAR Textbooks in Korean Language
January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3650-4 / $31.00 (PAPER)
Published with the support of the Korea Foundation

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan

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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)

Second Volume of Remembering Traditional Hanzi Now Available

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Remembering Traditional Hanzi 2Remembering Traditional Hanzi 2, by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson, is the second of two volumes designed to help students learn the meaning and writing of the 3,000 most frequently used traditional Chinese characters. (A parallel set of volumes has been prepared for simplified characters.) The 1,500 characters introduced in Book 1 include the top 1,000 by frequency, plus another 500 best learned at an early stage. Book 2 adds the remaining 1,500 characters to complete the set.

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3656-6 / $29.00 (PAPER)

Yoga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912-1955

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Maximum EmbodimentMaximum Embodiment: Yoga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912–1955, by Bert Winther-Tamaki, presents a compelling thesis articulating the historical character of Yoga, literally the “Western painting” of Japan. The term designates what was arguably the most important movement in modern Japanese art from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Perhaps the most critical marker of Yoga was its association with the medium of oil-on-canvas, which differed greatly from the water-based pigments and inks of earlier Japanese painting. Yoga encompassed both establishment fine art and avant-gardist insurgencies, but in both cases, as the term suggests, it was typically focused on techniques, motifs, canons, or iconographies that were obtained in Europe and deployed by Japanese artists.

Balancing critique and sympathy for the twelve Yoga painters who are its principal protagonists, Maximum Embodiment investigates the quest for embodiment in some of the most compelling images of modern Japanese art.

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3537-8 / $32.00 (CLOTH)

Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism

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The Face of JizoStone images of the Buddhist deity Jizo—bedecked in a red cloth bib and presiding over offerings of flowers, coins, candles, and incense—are a familiar sight throughout Japan. Known in China as a savior from hell’s torment, Jizo in Japan came to be utterly transformed through fusion with the local tradition of kami worship and ancient fertility cults. In particular, the Jizo cult became associated with gods of borders or transitions: the stone gods known as dosojin. Although the study of Jizo is often relegated to the folkloric, The Face of Jizo: Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, a highly original and readable book by Hank Glassman, demonstrates that the bodhisattva’s cult was promoted and embraced at the most elite levels of society.

“By wrapping the Japanese images of the bodhisattva Jizō in their intriguing individual and collective stories, The Face of Jizō emphasizes the movement of this deity, who not only protects travellers but also treks between hell and paradise in his quest to save sentient beings. Professor Glassman has created a major contribution to studies of cult images that extends well beyond art historical analyses to delve into other fascinating areas of inquiry. The author’s thorough research, lively writing style, and deft exposition of exciting tales guide readers on a magnificent journey through the history, literature, performance, and visual culture related to Jizō in Japan from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. From lavishly colored paintings and sculptures to simple stones, beloved images of Jizō are brought to life in the pages of this book.” —Sherry Fowler, University of Kansas

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3581-1 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2011 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 UH Press book was recognized for 2011. A complete list of titles will be available in Choice’s January 2012 issue.

Soldiers on the Cultural Front: Developments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary Policy by Tatiana Gabroussenko

“[A] superbly researched, readable study. . . . Gabroussenko’s account of writers in the last ‘socialist paradise’ is invaluable, if tragic, reading. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice (February 2011)

Sitting in Oblivion: The Heart of Daoist Meditation, by Livia Kohn and distributed by UH Press for Three Pines Press, was also recognized as a 2011 Outstanding Academic Title.

New in the Critical Interventions Series

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Uneven ModernityPostsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Uneven Modernity: Literature, Film, and Intellectual Discourse in Postsocialist China, Haomin Gong’s dynamic study of these paradoxes, or “unevenness,” provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production.

Critical Interventions
December 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3531-6 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

New in the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monograph Series

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One and ManyIs the world one or many? In One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong, Ji Zhang revisits this ancient philosophical question from the modern perspective of comparative studies. His investigation stages an intellectual exchange between Plato, founder of the Academy, and Ge Hong, who systematized Daoist belief and praxis. Zhang not only captures the tension between rational Platonism and abstruse Daoism, but also creates a bridge between the two.

“This is a work of great intellectual daring, requiring immense erudition and impressive power of synthesis. The topic, comparing the ontological ideas of Plato and Ge Hong with special reference to their implications for the one-many problem, is unique, stimulating and highly important, identifying a crucial area for cross-cultural and comparative research and producing a creative, informed, thoughtful, incisive and skillful response to the considerable challenge of making such an ambitious project bear fruit.” —Dr. Brook Ziporyn, Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University

Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs, No. 22
December 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3554-5 / $27.00 (PAPER)

New Volume in Collected Works of Wonhyo

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Wonhyo's Philosophy of MindWonhyo’s Philosophy of Mind, edited by A. Charles Muller and Cuong T. Nguyen, includes four of the great Silla scholiast’s (617–686) works that are especially revelatory of his treatment of the complex flow of ideas in his generation: System of the Two Hindrances (Yijang ui), Treatise on the Ten Ways of Resolving Controversies (Simmun hwajaeng non), Commentary on the Discrimination between the Middle and the Extremes (Chungbyon punbyollon so), and the Critical Discussion on Inference (P’an piryang non).

November 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3573-6 / $45.00 (CLOTH)
The International Association of Wonhyo Studies’ Collected Works of Wonhyo, Volume 2

In Memoriam — John R. McRae

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Buddhist scholar John R. McRae passed away last month. In an announcement for H-Buddhism (the Buddhist Scholars Information Network), A. Charles Muller wrote: “It is with heavy heart that I pass on to you the sad news [of John McRae’s] passing away in Bangkok Hospital at 12:30 pm on October 22, 2011, at the age of 64, after a 16-month bout with pancreatic cancer.”

The Press extends its sincere condolences to John’s wife, Jan Nattier, and their family.

A memorial event will be held on Sunday, November 20, 7-8:30 pm, at the Parc 55 hotel in San Francisco.

Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000

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Since MeijiResearch outside Japan on the history and significance of the Japanese visual arts since the beginning of the Meiji period (1868) has been, with the exception of writings on modern and contemporary woodblock prints, a relatively unexplored area of inquiry. In recent years, however, the subject has begun to attract wide interest. As is evident from this volume, this period of roughly a century and a half produced an outpouring of art created in a bewildering number of genres and spanning a wide range of aims and accomplishments. Since Meiji: Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000, edited by J. Thomas Rimer, is the first sustained effort in English to discuss in any depth a time when Japan, eager to join in the larger cultural developments in Europe and the U.S., went through a visual revolution. Indeed, this study of the visual arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggests a fresh history of modern Japanese culture—one that until now has not been widely visible or thoroughly analyzed outside that country.

October 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3582-8 / $28.00 (PAPER)

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