Category: Asia

Japan’s Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites

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Nature's EmbraceBased on extensive fieldwork, Nature’s Embrace: Japan’s Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites, by Satsuki Kawano, reveals the emerging pluralization of death rites in postindustrial Japan. Low birth rates and high numbers of people remaining permanently single have led to a shortage of ceremonial caregivers (most commonly married sons and their wives) to ensure the transformation of the dead into ancestors resting in peace. Consequently, older adults are increasingly uncertain about who will perform memorial rites for them and maintain their graves. In this study, anthropologist Kawano examines Japan’s changing death rites from the perspective of those who elect to have their cremated remains scattered and celebrate their return to nature.

March 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3372-5 / $47.00 (PAPER)

UH Press Distributing the Cornell East Asia Series and KITLV Press

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University of Hawai‘i Press is pleased to announce it is now a distributor for the Cornell East Asia Series (excluding North America) and KITLV Press (North America only).

The Cornell East Asia Series is produced by the Cornell University East Asia Program and publishes a wide range of genres on subjects relative to the cultures of China, Japan, and Korea. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

KITLV Press is the publishing department of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies and is the publisher of the longest-running anthropological and linguistic journal in the world (since 1851), Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania. For the complete list of titles distributed by UH Press, click here.

The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysantheme

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The Chrysantheme PapersPierre Loti’s novel Madame Chrysanthème (1888) enjoyed great popularity during the author’s lifetime, served as a source of Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly, and remains in print to this day as a classic in Western literature. Loti’s story, cast in the form of his fictionalized diary, describes the affair between a French naval officer and Chrysanthème, a temporary “bride” purchased in Nagasaki. More broadly, Loti’s novel helped define the terms in which Occidentals perceived Japan as delicate, feminine, and, to use one of Loti’s favorite words, “preposterous”—in short, ripe for exploitation.

The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanthème (1893) sought, according to a newspaper reviewer at the time, “to avenge Japan for the adjectives that Pierre Loti has inflicted on it.” Written by Félix Régamey, a talented illustrator with firsthand knowledge of Japan, The Pink Notebook retells Loti’s story but this time as the diary of Chrysanthème. The book, presented here in English for the first time and together with the original French text and illustrations by Régamey and others, is certainly surprising in its late nineteenth-century context. Its retelling of a classic tale from the position of a character marginalized by her sex and race provocatively anticipates certain aspects of postmodern literature. Translator Christopher Reed’s rich and satisfying introduction compares Loti and Régamey in relation to attitudes toward Japan held by notable Japonistes Vincent van Gogh, Lafcadio Hearn, Edmond de Goncourt, and Philippe Burty. February 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3437-1 / $14.00 (PAPER)

Livia Kohn Leads Daoist Immersion Workshop

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Livia Kohn, author of Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin, will lead “Daoist Immersion,” a week-long workshop that explores how living a Daoist life can make a difference in the world today. The workshop will be held in Bear Mountain Range, Cibola National Forest, near Albuquerque, New Mexico, September 11-18, 2010. For more information and to register email liviakohn@gmail.com or call 727-501-6915.

Professor Kohn is the author of many books on Taoism and Chinese religion and philosophy published by Three Pines Press, which is distributed by University of Hawai‘i Press.

Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009 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 two UH Press books were recognized for 2009. A complete list of titles will be available in Choice’s January 2010 issue.

Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan
by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis

“Vaporis has written a magnificent book on the sankin kotai, or alternate attendance system. . . . Long considered the central political control mechanism of the Tokugawa period, the system has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until now. Filling a major gap in the understanding of Japanese history, the author provides a detailed account of the mechanics of the system and demands placed on daimyo and retainers on tours of duty in Edo. Exploiting the latest archaeological and archival sources, Vaporis makes clear the economic burden of the system on the daimyo, as well as its role as an engine of cultural, intellectual, and material exchange, from the center in Edo and between regions. The author also provides intimate details of the lives of samurai, both on the road to and from Edo and while serving their time in Edo. For all interested in early modern history. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice (July 2009)

Kabuki’s Forgotten War: 1931-1945 by James R. Brandon

“Brandon offers new and intriguing research on the development of Kabuki through the turbulent 1930s and into the 1940s. . . . A vital addition to existing literature on what one thinks of as ‘traditional’ Kabuki, this book will be fascinating reading for those interested in Japanese theater, history, or politics. . . . Essential.” —Choice (April 2009)

Evangelicalism in Korea

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Born AgainKnown as Asia’s “evangelical superpower,” South Korea today has some of the largest and most dynamic churches in the world and is second only to the United States in the number of missionaries it dispatches abroad. Understanding its evangelicalism is crucial to grasping the course of its modernization, the rise of nationalism and anticommunism, and the relationship between Christians and other religionists within the country. Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea, by Timothy S. Lee, is the first book in a Western language to consider the introduction, development, and character of evangelicalism in Korea—from its humble beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century to claiming one out of every five South Koreans as an adherent at the end of the twentieth.

“This book is important because Christianity in Korea is important. Korea is the most Protestant nation in Asia; Korean Christians are behind only Americans in the number of missionaries they dispatch abroad; and the number of Korean Christian churches established in North America has grown large enough to begin to influence Christianity on this side of the Pacific. In this accessible and clearly argued study of evangelical Christianity in Korea, Timothy Lee provides an explanation both of why Christianity has been successful in Korea and why evangelical Christianity has been more successful than other forms. He has mined materials in Korean and English that no one else has used in the same way and presents his findings in a manner that will appeal to scholars of Korean studies and religious studies as well as to laypeople seeking to understand a phenomenon that has grown so visible on the world stage.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3375-6 / $40.00 (CLOTH)

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton to Speak at Center for Korean Studies, UHM

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On Thursday, December 10, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Center for Korean Studies, UH-Mānoa (1881 East-West Road), award-winning translators Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton will give a talk on their new work, The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea. The two are visiting from western Canada, where Bruce Fulton is associate professor in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia. The Red Room brings together stories by three canonical Korean writers who examine trauma as a simple fact of life. Copies of The Red Room will be available for purchase, as will MĀNOA journal’s Enduring War: Stories of What We’ve Learned, which includes a translation by Fulton. Light refreshments will be provided and the event is free and open to the public.

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are the translators of numerous volumes of contemporary Korean fiction, including Trees on a Slope by Hwang Sun-won and The Dwarf by Cho Se-hui, both also published by University of Hawai‘i Press. The Red Room retails for $15.00 and can be ordered from UH Press by phone: 956-8255, toll free: 1-888-847-7377; email: uhpbooks@hawaii.edu; or online: www.uhpress.hawaii.edu. For event information, call 956-8697.

Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations

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Cries of JoySince the mid-1990s, Taiwan’s unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese–language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations, by Marc L. Moskowitz, explores Mandopop’s surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC, where it has established new gender roles, created a vocabulary to express individualism, and introduced transnational culture to a country that had closed its doors to the world for twenty years.

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3369-5 / $40.00 (CLOTH)

Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity

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Polygamy and Sublime PassionFor centuries of Chinese history, polygamy and prostitution were closely linked practices that legitimized the “polygynous male,” the man with multiple sexual partners. Despite their strict hierarchies, these practices also addressed fundamental antagonisms in sexual relations in serious and constructive ways. Qing fiction abounds in stories of female resistance and superiority. Women—main wives, concubines, and prostitutes—were adept at exerting control and gaining status for themselves, while men indulged in elaborate fantasies about female power. In Polygamy and Sublime Passion: Sexuality in China on the Verge of Modernity, Keith McMahon introduces a new concept, “passive polygamy,” to explain the unusual number of Qing stories in which women take charge of a man’s desires, turning him into an instrument of female will. To this he adds a story that haunted the institutions of polygamy and prostitution: the tale of “sublime passion,” in which the main characters are a “remarkable” woman and her male lover.

“This book is a tour de force, the first in English to discuss Chinese fiction from the nineteenth century through the first decade of the twentieth within a comprehensive thematic frame. McMahon’s familiarity with Chinese fiction of the period covered is extremely impressive, as is his command of the secondary sources, both English and Chinese.” —Theodore Huters, UCLA

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3376-3 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward

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Heroes of China's Great LeapHeroes of China’s Great Leap Forward: Two Stories, edited by Richard King, presents contrasting narratives of the most ambitious and disastrous mass movement in modern Chinese history. The objective of the Great Leap, when it was launched in the late 1950s, was to catapult China into the ranks of the great military and industrial powers with no assistance from the outside world; it resulted in a famine that killed tens of millions of the nation’s peasants.

Li Zhun’s “A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang,” written while the movement was underway, celebrates the Great Leap as it was supposed to be: a time of optimism, dynamism, and shared purpose. In contrast, Zhang Yigong’s short novel The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, written two decades later, was one of the first works published in China to suggest a much darker side to the Great Leap. Although Zhang stopped short of portraying the horrors of famine, his tone of moral outrage provides a rejoinder to the triumphalism of “Li Shuangshuang.”

“The careful, accurate, and lucid rendition of these two stories allows scholars and students to mine the mentalities and conceptual worlds of the cataclysmic Great Leap Forward campaign. Together they provide a very useful window into China’s greatest self-made disaster in the 20th century and the sense made of it at the time and immediately after.” —Timothy Cheek, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3436-4 / $15.00 (PAPER)

Tour of Duty Now Available in Paperback

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Tour of Duty

“[Constantine] Vaporis has written a magnificent book on the sankai kotai, or alternate attendance system. . . . Long considered the central political control mechanism of the Tokugawa period, the system has received surprisingly little scholarly attention until now. Filling a major gap in the understanding of Japanese history, the author provides a detailed account of the mechanics of the system and demands placed on daimyo and retainers on tours of duty in Edo. Exploiting the latest archaeological and archival sources, Vaporis makes clear the economic burden of the system on the daimyo, as well as its role as an engine of cultural, intellectual, and material exchange, from the center in Edo and between regions. The author also provides intimate details of the lives of samurai, both on the road to and from Edo and while serving their time in Edo. For all interested in early modern history. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3470-8 / $23.00 (PAPER)

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