Asia – Page 12 – UH Press

Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000

Posted on October 19, 2011 by stephchun

Research 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)

The Living World of Ainu Shinyoshu

Posted on October 12, 2011 by stephchun

Indigenous peoples throughout the globe are custodians of a unique, priceless, and increasingly imperiled legacy of oral lore. Among them the Ainu, a people native to northeastern Asia, stand out for the exceptional scope and richness of their oral performance traditions. Yet despite this cultural wealth, nothing has appeared in English on the subject in over thirty years. Sarah Strong’s Ainu Spirits Singing: The Living World of Chiri Yukie’s Ainu Shin’yoshu breaks this decades-long silence with a nuanced study and English translation of the Ainu Shin’yoshu, the first written transcription of Ainu oral narratives by an ethnic Ainu.

“Ainu Spirits Singing is a unique fusion of geography and literature that offers a contextual grounding and engaging translation of Ainu oral stories passed down from ancient times. The author devotes several chapters to a detailed description and evocation of the physical and spiritual geography and cultural landscape that form the horizon of the tales themselves. The book, particularly helpful for readers unfamiliar with Ainu lore, offers a rich and nuanced reading of the tales.” —J. Scott Miller, Brigham Young University

October 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3512-5 / $58.00 (CLOTH)

The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld

Posted on September 30, 2011 by stephchun

For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things—most often money—for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of demons and divinities. Although frequently denigrated as wasteful and vulgar and at times prohibited by governing elites, today this venerable custom is as popular as ever. Burning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld, by C. Fred Blake, explores the cultural logic of this common practice while addressing larger anthropological questions concerning the nature of value. The heart of the work integrates Chinese and Western thought and analytics to develop a theoretical framework that the author calls a “materialist aesthetics.” This includes consideration of how the burning of paper money meshes with other customs in China and around the world.

“Although focused on the topic of paper money, this study is in fact a much more ambitious consideration of Chinese life and civilization. Employing a distinctive mix of philosophical meditation, ethnographic vignette, historical narrative, folk tales, and more conventional anthropological analysis, Blake has constructed an impressively literate picture of what he clearly and persuasively views as the elusive ‘spirit’ of Chinese culture. This is a unique, highly original, and wide-ranging book.” —P. Steven Sangren, Cornell University

September 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3532-3 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

Oshiro Tatsuhiro’s The Cocktail Party

Posted on September 20, 2011 by stephchun

The Cocktail Party, a play by Oshiro Tatsuhiro based on his Akutagawa Prize–winning book, will have its world premiere in Hawai‘i next month.

The first performance is on Wednesday, October 26, at 7 pm at the Hawai‘i Okinawa Center (in Waipio). Regular admission is $15; admission for seniors (65 or over) and students is $10. For ticket information, call 676-5400 or e-mail [email protected]. The second performance is on Thursday, October 27, at 7:30 pm at Orvis Auditorium (University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa campus). Admission is free. For ticket information, call 956-8246. Copies of Living Spirit: Literature and Resurgence in Okinawa and Voices from Okinawa will be available for purchase at $20 each at both performances. The Cocktail Party was published in Living Spirit, and Mr. Oshiro will be on hand to sign copies of the book.

The Orvis event will include a panel discussion of the humanities issues in the play. This portion of the project is sponsored by the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities with support from the “We the People” initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mr. Oshiro will be participating, along with Frank Stewart and Katsunori Yamazato, the editors of Living Spirit.

This is the third in a series of events MANOA Journal has produced with the Manoa Readers/Theatre Ensemble and UHM Outreach College. Other sponsors include the UHM Center for Okinawan Studies, the University of Hawai‘i Japan Studies Endowment, the Manoa Foundation, and the UHM College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature. Cosponsor of the HOC performance is the Hawai‘i United Okinawan Association.

For information about Mr. Oshiro, Living Spirit, or Voices from Okinawa, please contact Frank Stewart at 956-3070 or write to [email protected]. See http://manoaokinawaissue.wordpress.com/ for further information.

UH Press Adds 3 New Publishers to Its Distribution Program

Posted on September 15, 2011 by stephchun

UH Press now distributes these fine publishers of Asia books: Seoul Selection, MerwinAsia, and iPRECIATION.

The Making of Burakumin in Modern Japan

Posted on September 12, 2011 by stephchun

The burakumin, Japan’s largest minority group, have been the focus of an extensive yet strikingly homogenous body of Japanese language research. The master narrative in much of this work typically links burakumin to premodern occupational groups which engaged in a number of socially polluting tasks like tanning and leatherwork. This master narrative, however, when subjected to close scrutiny, tends to raise more questions than it answers, particularly for the historian. Is there really firm historical continuity between premodern outcaste and modern burakumin communities? Is the discrimination experienced by historic and contemporary outcaste communities actually the same? Does the way burakumin frame their own experience significantly affect mainstream understandings of their plight? Embodying Difference: The Making of Burakumin in Modern Japan, by Timothy D. Amos, is the result of a decade-and-a-half-long search for answers to these questions.

September 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3579-8 / $33.00 (PAPER)

Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War

Posted on September 8, 2011 by stephchun

Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan: Buddhist Healing, Chinese Knowledge, Islamic Formulas, and Wounds of War, by Andrew Edmund Goble, is the first book-length exploration in English of issues of medicine and society in premodern Japan. This multifaceted study weaves a rich tapestry of Buddhist healing practices, Chinese medical knowledge, Asian pharmaceuticals, and Islamic formulas as it elucidates their appropriation and integration into medieval Japanese medicine. It expands the parameters of the study of medicine in East Asia, which to date has focused on the subject in individual countries, and introduces the dynamics of interaction and exchange that coursed through the East Asian macro-culture.

September 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3500-2 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals

Posted on September 8, 2011 by stephchun

Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals, by Paula Arai, brings a fresh perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation, to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals include chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen and figures prominently in Arai’s analyses.

September 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3535-4 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

New in the Dimensions of Asian Spirituality Series

Posted on August 31, 2011 by stephchun

Karma has become a household word in the modern world, where it is associated with the belief in rebirth determined by one’s deeds in earlier lives. This belief was and is widespread in the Indian subcontinent as is the word “karma” itself. In lucid and accessible prose, this book, by Johannes Bronkhorst, presents karma in its historical, cultural, and religious context.

Dimensions in Asian Spirituality
August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3591-0 / $17.00 (PAPER)

From Art and Antiquarianism to Modern Chinese Historiography

Posted on August 31, 2011 by stephchun

Pastimes: From Art and Antiquarianism to Modern Chinese Historiography, by Shana J. Brown, is the first book in English on Chinese jinshi, or antiquarianism, the pinnacle of traditional connoisseurship of ancient artifacts and inscriptions. As a scholarly field, jinshi was inaugurated in the Northern Song (960–1127) and remained popular until the early twentieth century. Literally the study of inscriptions on bronze vessels and stone steles, jinshi combined calligraphy and painting, the collection of artifacts, and philological and historical research. For aficionados of Chinese art, the practices of jinshi offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of traditional Chinese scholars and artists, who spent their days roaming the sometimes seamy world of the commercial art market before attending elegant antiquarian parties, where they composed poetic tributes to their ancient objects of obsession. And during times of political upheaval, such as the nineteenth century, the art and artifact studies of jinshi legitimatized reform and contributed to a dynamic and progressive field of learning.

The history of jinshi offers insights that are relevant to Chinese cultural and intellectual history, art history, and politics. Scholars of the modern period will find the resiliency and continuing influence of jinshi to be an important counterpoint to received views on the trajectory of Chinese cultural and intellectual change.

“Shana Brown’s new study represents the first serious examination in any Western language of the phenomenon of what we have (somewhat disparagingly) called antiquarianism in modern Chinese culture. To her great credit, she not only accords her many subjects the respect they deserve, but she puts meat on the bones of what many have dismissed as hopelessly outdated, conservative culturalism. Many of the finest minds in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century China fall under the rubric of antiquarianism, and we have ignored their work at our peril.” —Joshua Fogel, York University

August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3498-2 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

New in The World of East Asia Series

Posted on August 15, 2011 by stephchun

Remote Homeland, Recovered Borderland: Manchus, Manchoukuo, and Manchuria, 1907-1985, by Shao Dan, addresses a long-ignored issue in the existing studies of community construction: How does the past failure of an ethnic people to maintain sovereignty over their homeland influence their contemporary reconfigurations of ethnic and national identities? To answer this question, Shao focuses on the Manzus, the second largest non-Han group in contemporary China, whose cultural and historical ancestors, the Manchus, ruled China from 1644 to 1912. Based on deep and rigorous empirical research, Shao analyzes the major forces responsible for the transformation of Manchu identity from the ruling group of the Qing empire to the minority of minorities in China today: the de-territorialization and provincialization of Manchuria in the late Qing, the remaking of national borders and ethnic boundaries during the Sino-Japanese contestation over Manchuria, and the power of the state to re-categorize borderland populations and ascribe ethnic identity in post-Qing republican states.

“This is a valuable study of a little known and important subject. Theauthor analyzes the changes in ethnic identity of the peoples ofManchuria during the early twentieth century, focusing on the way thatexternal interventions and political changes reconfigured classifications of this territory and its inhabitants. Using abundantprimary source materials and judicious reference to leading theorists ofnationalism and ethnicity, the author makes an important contributionto studies of ethnicity, imperialism, national identity, and stateformation in Modern China.” —Rana Mitter, Institute for Chinese Studies,University of Oxford

The World of East Asia
August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3445-6 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Remembering the Kanji App Now at iTunes

Posted on August 11, 2011 by stephchun

Remembering the Kanji, a new flashcard and review app, complements the bestselling kanji texts Remembering the Kanji 1 and Remembering the Kanji 2, by James W. Heisig. Review more than 2,000 kanji anytime, anywhere on your mobile device. The customizable, easy-to-use app is $9.99 at the iTunes Store.

Here are a few of the app’s noteworthy features:
—Create your own study lists and generate flashcards for review;
—Save notes on your own imaginative mnemonic stories for each kanji;
—Learn the stroke order of each kanji with animated diagrams;
—Learn the pronunciations of each kanji in Remembering the Kanji 1 and 2 and learn the readings of kanji combination words (jukugo);
—Look up the meaning of primitive elements quickly;
—Look up kanji by stroke number;
—Search for key words and find the kanji you want in an instant.