Category: Asia

New Edition of Integrated Korean Beginning 1

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KLEAR Beginning 1 TextThis is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, the first volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. In response to comments from hundreds of students and instructors of the first edition, the new edition features a more attractive two-color design with all new photos and drawings and an additional lesson and vocabulary exercises. Lessons are now organized into two main sections, each containing a conversational text (with its own vocabulary list) and a reading passage. The accompanying workbook, newly written, provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.

Integrated Korean series
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3440-1 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Audio files for both the textbook and workbook may be downloaded in RealAudio or MP3 format at http://www.kleartextbook.com.

The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition

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The Chinese Aesthetic TraditionLi Zezhou (b. 1930) has been an influential thinker in China since the 1950s. Before moving to the U.S. in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li published works on Kant and traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophy. The present volume, a translation of his Huaxia meixue (1989), is considered among Li’s most significant works. Apart from its value as an introduction to the philosophy of one of contemporary China’s foremost intellectuals, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition fills an important gap in the literature of Chinese aesthetics in English. It presents Li’s synthesis of the entire trajectory of Chinese aesthetic thought, from ancient times to the early modern period, incorporating pre-Confucian and Confucian ideas, Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and the influence of Western philosophy during the late-imperial period. As one of China’s As one of China’s major contemporary philosophers and preeminent authority on Kant, Li is uniquely positioned to observe this trajectory and make it intelligible to today’s readers.

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3307-7 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan

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Making a Moral SocietyMaking a Moral Society: Ethics and the State in Meiji Japan, an innovative study of ethics in Meiji Japan (1868–1912), explores the intense struggle to define a common morality for the emerging nation-state.

“Richard Reitan argues that modern Japanese ethics—and particularly the creation of an ethics of a ‘Japanese spirit’ or ‘Japanese national character’—arose in the context of the Meiji movement for civilization, as Japan attempted to become more like Europe in order to recover its sovereignty and equality with western states. His is a thoughtful and original contribution to the historiography of Japan and valuable account of the rise of ‘national morality.’ The book demonstrates an admirable command of the material, great clarity with which Japanese concepts are explained, and an argument of nuance and subtlety. Making a Moral Society will not only be of interest to scholars of Japanese history, religion, and culture, and scholars of ethics, nationalism, and modernization generally, but will also be useful in graduate seminars and advanced undergraduate courses.” —Douglas Howland, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3294-0 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers

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Questioning MindsAvailable for the first time in English, the ten short stories by modern Korean women collected in Questioning Minds: Short Stories by Modern Korean Women, translated by Yung-Hee Kim, touch in one way or another on issues related to gender and kinship politics. All of the protagonists are women who face personal crises or defining moments in their lives as gender-marked beings in a Confucian, patriarchal Korean society. Their personal dreams and values have been compromised by gender expectations or their own illusions about female existence. They are compelled to ask themselves “Who am I?” “Where am I going?” “What are my choices?” Each story bears colorful and compelling testimony to the life of the heroine. Some of the stories celebrate the central character’s breakaway from the patriarchal order; others expose sexual inequality and highlight the struggle for personal autonomy and dignity. Still others reveal the abrupt awakening to mid-life crises and the seasoned wisdom that comes with accepting the limits of old age.

Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3409-8 / $24.00 (PAPER)

UH Press Now Distributing Shanghai Press

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University of Hawai`i Press is pleased to announce it is now a North American distributor for Shanghai Press and Publishing Development Company, a mainland China publisher of fine books in English for general readers. Highlights include:

–full-color photo essays on Tibet, the Great Wall, the Yangtze, Shaoxing (hometown of Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature), the legendary 20th-century Beijing opera star Mei Lanfang;

–full-color guides to Shanghai’s colonial Western architecture, Qufu (Confucius’ birthplace), China’s most famous cultural and natural sites;

–full-color introductions to Chinese civilization, tea, popular customs, classical furniture and home decor, architecture, calligraphy, brush painting, Beijing opera;

–the Cultural China Chinese-English Reader series, featuring abridged, bilingual editions of Chinese fiction and nonfiction for language students;

–colorful children’s books illustrating Chinese fables and idioms.

For a complete list of titles, please click here.

Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema

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Children of Marx and Coca-Cola
Children of Marx and Coca-Cola: Chinese Avant-garde Art and Independent Cinema, by Xiaping Lin, affords a deep study of Chinese avant-garde art and independent cinema from the mid-1990s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Informed by the author’s experience in Beijing and New York—global cities with extensive access to an emergent transnational Chinese visual culture—this work situates selected artworks and films in the context of Chinese nationalism and post-socialism and against the background of the capitalist globalization that has so radically affected contemporary China. It juxtaposes and compares artists and independent filmmakers from a number of intertwined perspectives, particularly in their shared avant-garde postures and perceptions.

This book is the second volume in the Critical Interventions series.

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3336-7 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

Koreo-Japonica

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Koreo-Japonica
The Japonic (Japanese and Ryukyuan) portmanteau language family and the Korean language have long been considered isolates on the fringe of northeast Asia. Although in the last fifty years many specialists in Japonic and Korean historical linguistics have voiced their support for a genetic relationship between the two, this concept has not been endorsed by general historical linguists and no significant attempts have been made to advance beyond the status quo. Alexander Vovin, a longtime advocate of the genetic relationship view, engaged in a reanalysis of the known data in the hope of finding evidence in support of this position. In the process of his work, however, he became convinced that the multiple similarities between Japonic and Korean are the result of several centuries of contact and do not descend from a hypothetical common ancestor.

Hawai‘i Studies on Korea
November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3278-0 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Polylocality in Contemporary Chinese Cinema

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Cinema, Space, and Polylocality
In Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China, prominent China film scholar Yingjin Zhang proposes “polylocality” as a new conceptual framework for investigating the shifting spaces of contemporary Chinese cinema in the age of globalization. Questioning the national cinema paradigm, Zhang calls for comparative studies of underdeveloped areas beyond the imperative of transnationalism.

This book is the inaugural volume in the Critical Interventions series.

October 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3337-4 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan

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The Ideology of Kokugo
Available for the first time in English, The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language in Modern Japan, translated by Maki Hirano Hubbard, is Lee Yeounsuk’s award-winning look at the history and ideology behind the construction of kokugo (national language). Prior to the Meiji Period (1868–1912), the idea of a single, unified Japanese language did not exist. Only as Japan was establishing itself as a modern nation-state and an empire with expanding colonies did there arise the need for a national language to construct and sustain its national identity.

Re-examining debates and controversies over genbun itchi (unification of written and spoken languages) and other language reform movements, Lee discusses the contributions of Ueda Kazutoshi (1867–1937) and Hoshina Koichi (1872–1955) in the creation of kokugo and moves us one step closer to understanding how the ideology of kokugo cast a spell over linguistic identity in modern Japan. She examines the notion of the unshakable homogeneity of the Japanese language—a belief born of the political climate of early-twentieth-century Japan and its colonization of other East Asian countries—urging us to pay attention to the linguistic consciousness that underlies “scientific” scholarship and language policies. Her critical discussion of the construction of kokugo uncovers a strain of cultural nationalism that has been long nurtured in Japan’s education system and academic traditions. The ideology of kokugo, argues Lee, must be recognized both as an academic apparatus and a political concept

October 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3305-3 / $58.00 (CLOTH)

South Korean Popular Religion in Motion

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Shamans, Nostalgias
Thirty years ago, anthropologist Laurel Kendall did intensive fieldwork among South Korea’s (mostly female) shamans and their clients as a reflection of village women’s lives. In the intervening decades, South Korea experienced an unprecedented economic, social, political, and material transformation and Korean villages all but disappeared. And the shamans? Kendall attests that they not only persist but are very much a part of South Korean modernity. Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion, an enlightening and entertaining study of contemporary Korean shamanism, makes the case for the dynamism of popular religious practice, the creativity of those we call shamans, and the necessity of writing about them in the present tense. Shamans thrive in South Korea’s high-rise cities, working with clients who are largely middle class and technologically sophisticated. Emphasizing the shaman’s work as open and mutable, Kendall describes how gods and ancestors articulate the changing concerns of clients and how the ritual fame of these transactions has itself been transformed by urban sprawl, private cars, and zealous Christian proselytizing.

“Laurel Kendall has written a study of contemporary Korean shamans that is both entertaining and enlightening. Most studies of the topic treat shamans as an anachronistic remnant of the past. Kendall challenges that approach, drawing on several decades of close observation of shamans in action to reveal how shamanism is constantly evolving. It is an important work that will appeal to a wide audience.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

September 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3343-5 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan

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Weaving and Binding
Among the most exciting developments in the study of Japanese religion over the past two decades has been the discovery of tens of thousands of ritual vessels, implements, and scapegoat dolls (hitogata) from the Nara (710-784) and early Heian (794-1185) periods. Because inscriptions on many of the items are clearly derived from Chinese rites of spirit pacification, it is now evident that previous scholarship has mischaracterized the role of Buddhism in early Japanese religion. Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan, by Michael Como, makes a compelling argument that both the Japanese royal system and the Japanese Buddhist tradition owe much to continental rituals centered on the manipulation of yin and yang, animal sacrifice, and spirit quelling. Building on these recent archaeological discoveries, Como charts an epochal transformation in the religious culture of the Japanese islands, tracing the transmission and development of fundamental paradigms of religious practice to immigrant lineages and deities from the Korean peninsula.

September 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-2957-5 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

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