Category: Asia

Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea

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The Red Room
Modern Korean fiction is to a large extent a literature of witness to the historic upheavals of twentieth-century Korea. Often inspired by their own experiences, contemporary writers continue to show us how individual Koreans have been traumatized by wartime violence—whether the uprooting of whole families from the ancestral home, life on the road as war refugees, or the violent deaths of loved ones. The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea, translated by Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton, brings together stories by three canonical Korean writers who examine trauma as a simple fact of life. In Pak Wan-so’s “In the Realm of the Buddha,” trauma manifests itself as an undigested lump inside the narrator, a mass needing to be purged before it consumes her. The protagonist of O Chong-hui’s “Spirit on the Wind” suffers from an incomprehensible wanderlust—the result of trauma that has escaped her conscious memory. In the title story by Im Ch’or-u, trauma is recycled from torturer to victim when a teacher is arbitrarily detained by unnamed officials. Western readers may find these stories bleak, even chilling, yet they offer restorative truths when viewed in light of the suffering experienced by all victims of war and political violence regardless of place and time.

“The characters, and the settings, in these stories are Korean. However, thanks to superb translations by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton, the stories themselves are universal. They expose the devastating impact traumatic experiences have on an individual’s judgment, moral compass, and self-image long after the traumatic episodes themselves (in these stories, during the Korean War and Kwangju massacre) have faded into history. Historians often are so captivated by the Big Picture that they forget the impact of historic events on the individuals who were caught up in them. The Red Room takes us inside the heads of the traumatized, reminding us that traumatic events such as civil war damage even innocent bystanders for decades afterwards.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3397-8 / $15.00 (PAPER)

Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan

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The Growth IdeaWinner of the 2007–2008 First Book Award of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Our narratives of postwar Japan have long been cast in terms almost synonymous with the story of rapid economic growth. In The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan, by Scott O’Bryan, this seemingly familiar history is reinterpreted through an innovative exploration, not of the anatomy of growth itself, but of the history of growth as a set of discourses by which Japanese “growth performance” as “economic miracle” came to be articulated. The premise of O’Bryan‘s work is simple: To our understandings of the material changes that took place in Japan during the second half of the twentieth century we must also add perspectives that account for growth as a new idea around the world, one that emerged alongside rapid economic expansion in postwar Japan and underwrote the modes by which it was imagined, forecast, pursued, and regulated. In an accessible, lively style, O’Bryan traces the history of growth as an object of social scientific knowledge and as a new analytical paradigm that came to govern the terms by which Japanese understood their national purposes and imagined a newly materialist vision of social and individual prosperity.

“The Growth Idea represents a significant contribution to the emerging field of postwar Japanese history and an important step forward in the historicization of Japan’s high-speed growth of the 1950s and 1960s. It is the first and fullest treatment of the ideology of postwar growthism, of Keynesian thought in Japan, and of the development of postwar statistical practice. Well written, original, and based on first-rate scholarship, The Growth Idea approaches its subject in a fresh way that will interest specialists in Japanese history as well as others interested in Japan from a comparative perspective.” —Mark Metzler, University of Texas

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3282-7 / $40.00 (CLOTH)

The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China Now Available in Paperback

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The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Chanyuan qinggui, by Yifa, contains the first complete translation of China’s earliest and most influential monastic code. The twelfth-century text Chanyuan qinggui (Rules of Purity for the Chan Monastery) provides a wealth of detail on all aspects of life in public Buddhist monasteries during the Sung (960–1279).

“Absolutely essential for anyone who wishes to gain an accurate understanding of the actual day-to-day life of the Chan community. . . . [T]his book represents a real advance in our understanding of Chinese Chan and should be on the bookshelf of every scholar of Chinese Buddhism.” —Journal of Chinese Religions

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3425-8 / $28.00 (PAPER)>

Japan’s Medieval Population Now Available in Paperback

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Japan’s Medieval Population: Famine, Fertility, and Warfare in a Transformative Age, by William Wayne Farris, charts a course through never-before-surveyed historical territory: Japan’s medieval population, a topic so challenging that neither Japanese nor foreign scholars have investigated it in a comprehensive way. And yet, demography is an invaluable approach to the past because it provides a way—often the only way—to study the mass of people who did not belong to the political or religious elite. By synthesizing a vast cache of primary and secondary sources, Farris constructs an important analysis of Japan’s population from 1150 to 1600 and considers social and economic developments that were life and death issues for ordinary Japanese.

“In Japan’s Medieval Population, Farris, true to form, asks questions that are relevant and essential for a broader understanding of Japanese society but also extremely challenging to answer. . . . There can be little doubt that [this] study fills an important void in English-language scholarship on pre-Tokugawa Japan. . . . Farris deserves accolades for taking on what is possibly the most challenging task for historians: asking the broader synthesizing questions for which the sources do not provide any readily available answers.” —Journal of Japanese Studies

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3424-1 / $25.00 (PAPER)

The Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan

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Material Culture of DeathThe Material Culture of Death in Medieval Japan, by Karen M. Gerhart, is the first in the English language to explore the ways medieval Japanese sought to overcome their sense of powerlessness over death. By attending to both religious practice and ritual objects used in funerals in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it seeks to provide a new understanding of the relationship between the two. Gerhart looks at how these special objects and rituals functioned by analyzing case studies culled from written records, diaries, and illustrated handscrolls, and by examining surviving funerary structures and painted and sculpted images.

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3261-2 / $39.00 (CLOTH)

Poetry and the Auditory Imagination in Modern China

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VoicesChina’s century of revolutionary change has been heard as much as seen, and nowhere is this more evident than in an auditory history of the modern Chinese poem. From Lu Xun’s seminal writings on literature to a recitation renaissance in urban centers today, poetics meets politics in the sounding voice of poetry. Supported throughout by vivid narration and accessible analysis, Voices in Revolution: Poetry and the Auditory Imagination in Modern China, by John A. Crespi, offers a literary history of modern China that makes the case for the importance of the auditory dimension of poetry in national, revolutionary, and postsocialist culture.

“This is an important and exciting monograph for the field of modern Chinese literature. It sheds unprecedented light on poetic composition and does much more than previous studies to flesh out the living practice of poetry circulation and reception in modern China.” —Charles Laughlin, Tsinghua University, Beijing

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3365-7 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

MP3 Files Now Available for Gagana Samoa and Fundamental Written Chinese

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Accompanying MP3 audio files are now available for download:

Gagana Samoa: A Samoan Language Coursebook, Revised Edition, by Galumalemana Afeleti Hunkin at http://www.hawaii.edu/uhpress/mp3/gagana/;

Fundamental Written Chinese, by Nora Yao, Margaret Lee, and Robert Sanders, at http://www.hawaii.edu/uhpress/mp3/fwc/.

Streaming RealAudio files for both books will be available shortly.

The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion

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The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion, by Yucheng Qin, is a striking, original portrait of the Chinese Six Companies (Zhonghua huiguan), or Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the most prominent support organization for Chinese immigrants in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century. As a federation of “native-place associations” (huiguan) in California, the Six Companies responded to racist acts and legislation by organizing immigrant communities and employing effective diplomatic strategies against exclusion. Yucheng Qin substantiates recent arguments that Chinese immigrants were resourceful in fighting for their rights and, more importantly, he argues that through the Six Companies they created a political rhetoric and civic agenda that were then officially adopted by Qing court officials, who at first were unprepared for modern diplomacy.

July 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3274-2 / $51.00 (CLOTH)

Memory and Melancholy in the Personal Writings of Natsume Soseki

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Much has been written about Natsume Soseki (1867–1916), one of Japan’s most celebrated writers. Known primarily for his novels, he also published a large and diverse body of short personal writings (shohin) that have long lived in the shadow of his fictional works. The essays, which appeared in the Asahi shinbun between 1907 and 1915, comprise a fascinating autobiographical mosaic, while capturing the spirit of the Meiji era and the birth of modern Japan. In Reflections in a Glass Door: Memory and Melancholy in the Personal Writings of Natsume Soseki, by Marvin Marcus, readers are introduced to a rich sampling of Soseki’s shohin. The writer revisits his Tokyo childhood, recalling family, friends, and colleagues and musing wistfully on the transformation of his city and its old neighborhoods. He painfully recounts his two years in London, where he immersed himself in literary research even as he struggled with severe depression. A chronic stomach ailment causes Soseki to reflect on his own mortality and what he saw as the spiritual afflictions of modern Japanese: rampant egocentrism and materialism. Throughout he adopts a number of narrative voices and poses: the peevish husband, the harried novelist, the convalescent, the seeker of wisdom.

“Author of a marvelously readable study of Mori Ogai, modern Japan’s other immovable mountain, Marcus here combines translation, biography, history, criticism, and analysis to guide the reader gracefully through the best of Soseki’s non-fictional (and semi-fictional) writing, illuminating both the major novels and the idiosyncratic mind that created them. An impressive work.” —Jay Rubin, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

July 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3306-0 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics

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During the first half of the twentieth century, Zen Buddhist leaders contributed actively to Japanese imperialism, giving rise to what has been termed “Imperial-Way Zen” (Kodo Zen). Its foremost critic was priest, professor, and activist Ichikawa Hakugen (1902–1986), who spent the decades following Japan’s surrender almost single-handedly chronicling Zen’s support of Japan’s imperialist regime and pressing the issue of Buddhist war responsibility. Ichikawa focused his critique on the Zen approach to religious liberation, the political ramifications of Buddhist metaphysical constructs, the traditional collaboration between Buddhism and governments in East Asia, the philosophical system of Nishida Kitaro (1876–1945), and the vestiges of State Shinto in postwar Japan.

Despite the importance of Ichikawa’s writings, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics, by Christopher Ives, is the first book by any scholar to outline his critique. In addition to detailing the actions and ideology of Imperial-Way Zen and Ichikawa’s ripostes to them, Ives offers his own reflections on Buddhist ethics in light of the phenomenon. He devotes chapters to outlining Buddhist nationalism from the 1868 Meiji Restoration to 1945 and summarizing Ichikawa’s arguments about the causes of Imperial-Way Zen.

July 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3331-2 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

Fundamental Written Chinese

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Fundamental Written Chinese, by Nora Yao, Margaret Lee, and Robert Sanders, teaches both mastery of individual characters and reading comprehension. It introduces characters gradually, moving from simple independent characters to more complex compound ones. How characters are organized and constructed is taught through the liberal use of charts that display the structural and organizational regularities of each character, that is, its radical, phonetic component, shared graphic components, stroke order, and principles of proportion. This knowledge is then reinforced by exercises at the end of each chapter that require students to draw on the compositional information presented in the charts.

“The course set out in Fundamental Spoken Chinese and Fundamental Written Chinese provides a thorough training in all the skills that a learner needs to reach a basic level of proficiency in Mandarin Chinese as well as a solid foundation for more advanced study. Fundamental Spoken Chinese is marvelously executed. The explanations of grammar and usage are exceptionally clear, the best I’ve ever seen in a textbook. The charts used to illustrate grammatical constructions are easy to follow, and the examples are well chosen for maximal clarity. The dialogues are naturalistic and well keyed to everyday situations, as is the vocabulary. Fundamental Written Chinese has many of the same virtues as its companion volume. Like Fundamental Spoken Chinese, Fundamental Written Chinese not only teaches the content of the lesson but also inculcates habits essential for further learning. The emphasis on explaining characters explicitly in terms of radicals and phonetics is an example of the kind of approach that makes for successful advanced learners. The two books are designed to be flexible so that teachers of various approaches can use them either to introduce the spoken and written skills simultaneously or to introduce writing after the spoken language has progressed to a certain level. Teachers and learners are provided with all the basic tools needed in one well-designed package.” —Mark Hansell, Carleton College

June 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3157-8 / $39.00 (PAPER)

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