Category: Japan

Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions

Posted on by stephchun

From the 1910s to the mid-1930s, the flamboyant and gifted spiritualist Deguchi Onisaburô (1871–1948) transformed his mother-in-law’s small, rural religious following into a massive movement, eclectic in content and international in scope. Through a potent blend of traditional folk beliefs and practices like divination, exorcism, and millenarianism, an ambitious political agenda, and skillful use of new forms of visual and mass media, he attracted millions to Oomoto, his Shintoist new religion. Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburô, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan, by Nancy K. Stalker, not only gives us the first full account in English of the rise of a heterodox movement in imperial Japan, but also provides new perspectives on the importance of “charismatic entrepreneurship” in the success of new religions around the world.

November 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3172-1 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

“A tour de force of scholarship, this compelling work raises the bar for works on religion, history and modernity and should be standard reading for years to come.”—James Ketelaar, University of Chicago

Toyoko Yamasaki Novel Now Available in English

Posted on by stephchun

Toyoko Yamasaki’s novel Two Homelands (Futatsu no sokoku) tells the powerful story of three brothers during the years surrounding World War II. From the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Pacific War, relocation to Manzanar, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the Tokyo war crimes trials, we follow the lives of Kenji, Tadashi, and Isamu Amo, the California-born sons of Japanese immigrants. The eldest, Kenji, must grapple with what it means to belong to two nations at war with one another and to face betrayal by both. Tadashi, in school in Japan when war breaks out, is drafted into the Japanese army and renounces his U.S. citizenship. Later Kenji and Tadashi find themselves on opposite sides of a battlefield in the Philippines; although they both survive the conflict, their relationship is destroyed by the war. Isamu, the youngest and the most thoroughly American of the brothers, loves John Wayne movies and gives his life to rescue the lost Texas battalion fighting in France.

Popular Japanese novelist Toyoko Yamasaki spent five years interviewing Japanese-Americans and researching documentary sources to assemble the raw material for her book. Through the story of the Amo family, she forces readers to confront the meaning of “love of country” as her characters encounter prejudice and suspicion on both sides of the Pacific. Almost a quarter century after its Japanese publication, this English-language translation affords a valuable opportunity to understand the postwar reassessment of what it means to be Japanese in the modern world.

Translated by V. Dixon Morris

November 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-2944-5 / $36.00 (PAPER)
Order here and receive a 20% discount for November 2007!

The WWII Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei

Posted on by stephchun

Yasutaro Soga’s Life behind Barbed Wire (Tessaku seikatsu) is an exceptional firsthand account of the incarceration of a Hawai‘i Japanese during World War II. On the evening of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Soga, the editor of a Japanese-language newspaper, was arrested along with several hundred other prominent Issei (Japanese immigrants) in Hawai‘i. After being held for six months on Sand Island, Soga was transferred to an Army camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and later to a Justice Department camp in Santa Fe. He would spend just under four years in custody before returning to Hawai‘i in the months following the end of the war.

Most of what has been written about the detention of Japanese Americans focuses on the Nisei experience of mass internment on the West Coast—largely because of the language barrier immigrant writers faced. This translation, therefore, presents us with a rare Issei voice on internment, and Soga’s opinions challenge many commonly held assumptions about Japanese Americans during the war regarding race relations, patriotism, and loyalty.

October 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-2033-6 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art

Posted on by stephchun

Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600–2005, by Patricia J. Graham, explores the transformation of Buddhism from the premodern to the contemporary era in Japan and the central role its visual culture has played in this transformation. Although Buddhism is generally regarded as peripheral to modern Japanese society, this book demonstrates otherwise. Its chapters elucidate the thread of change over time in the practice of Buddhism as revealed in temple worship halls and other sites of devotion and in imagery representing the religion’s most popular deities and religious practices. It also introduces the work of modern and contemporary artists who are not generally associated with institutional Buddhism and its canonical visual requirements but whose faith inspires their art.
157 illustrations, 46 in color

October 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3126-4 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Patricia J. Graham is the author of Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha, also published by University of Hawai‘i Press. 

Popular Literacy in Early Modern Japan Now in Paperback

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Popular Literacy in Early Modern Japan, by Richard Rubinger, is now available in paperback. The focus of Rubinger’s study of Japanese literacy is the least-studied (yet overwhelming majority) of the premodern population: the rural farming class. In this book-length historical exploration of the topic, the first in any language, Rubinger dispels the misconception that there are few materials available for the study of popular literacy in Japan. He analyzes a rich variety of untapped sources from the sixteenth century onward, drawing for the first time on material that allows him to measure literacy: signatures on apostasy oaths, diaries, agricultural manuals, home encyclopedias, rural poetry-contest entries, village election ballots, literacy surveys, and family account books.

August 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3124-0 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Economic and Social Development in East and Southeast Asia

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It is well known that Taiwan and South Korea, both former Japanese colonies, achieved rapid growth and industrialization after 1960. The performance of former European and American colonies (Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) has been less impressive. Some scholars have attributed the difference to better infrastructure and greater access to education in Japan’s colonies. Colonial Legacies: Economic and Social Development in East and Southeast Asia, by Anne E. Booth, examines and critiques such arguments in this ambitious comparative study of economic development in East and Southeast Asia from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1960s.

August 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3161-5 / $60.00 (CLOTH)

Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan

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Since the mid-1990s Taiwanese artists have been responsible for shaping much of the international contemporary art scene, yet studies on modern Taiwanese art published outside of Taiwan are scarce. The nine essays collected in Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan, edited by Yuko Kikuchi, present different perspectives on Taiwanese visual culture and landscape during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), focusing variously on travel writings, Western and Japanese/Oriental-style paintings, architecture, aboriginal material culture, and crafts.

August 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3050-2 / $60.00 (CLOTH)

3 UHP Titles Longlisted for the ICAS Book Prize

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The International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Book Prize is a global competition that provides an international focus for publications on Asia while at the same time increasing their visibility worldwide. The coveted book prizes are awarded for best studies in the humanities and the social sciences.

Three University of Hawai‘i Press titles have been longlisted for this year’s prize: The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Early Modern Southeast Asia, by Barbara Watson Andaya (humanities category); Selfless Offspring: Filial Children and Social Order in Medieval China, by Keith N. Knapp (humanities category); and Final Days: Japanese Culture and Choice at the End of Life, by Susan Orpett Long (social sciences category). Winners will be announced at ICAS 5, which will be held in August 2007 in Kuala Lumpur.

Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937, by Christopher A. Reed, also published by University of Hawai‘i Press, won the prize in the humanities category in 2005.

Selling Songs and Smiles Now in Paperback

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Selling Songs and Smiles: The Sex Trade in Heian and Kamakura Japan, by Janet R. Goodwin, is now available in paperback.

June 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3097-7 / $24.00 (PAPER)

“Goodwin offers an erudite account that acknowledges all prior scholarly work on the subject. . . . The book is packed with juicy details, historically necessary and judiciously picked from sources not usually encountered. Of major interest, however, is Goodwin’s ability to see behind the self-serving screens of political history, to divine the true intentions of this demonization of one of the few professions then open to women, and to present her facts in the fairest possible manner.” —Japan Times (read the full text of Donald Richie’s review here)

Janet R. Goodwin is the author of Alms and Vagabonds: Buddhist Temples and Popular Patronage in Medieval Japan, published by University of Hawai‘i Press.

Significant University Press Titles for Undergraduates

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In the May 2007 issue of the American Library Association’s Choice magazine, the premier source for reviews of academic books of interest to those in higher education, three recently published University of Hawai‘i Press titles are included in a list of “most significant university press titles for undergraduates”:

Displacing Desire: Travel and Popular Culture in China, by Beth E. Notar (now available in paperback)

Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards, by Rebecca Salter

Sherlock in Shanghai: Stories of Crime and Detection by Cheng Xiaoqing, translated by Timothy C. Wong

If you are an instructor interested in adopting these or other University of Hawai‘i Press books for classroom use, you may request an examination copy. For more information, please click here.

The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha Now in Paperback

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The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History, by Mikael S. Adolphson, is now available in paperback.

May 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3123-3 / $24.00 (PAPER)

“Mikael Adolphson has presented the first cogent explanation of the role of violence in Japanese monasteries, interrogating the much-misunderstood role of the so-called warrior monks. Based on a wide and deep knowledge of primary sources, Adolphson has both advanced the scholarly understanding of the broader configurations of the samurai and has also done a fine job of dispelling many myths that persist in Japanese and Western popular culture. This is our first true picture of the various types of men who wielded arms on behalf of religious institutions—few of whom were actually monks.” —G. Cameron Hurst, University of Pennsylvania

The Casebook of Old Edo’s Sherlock Holmes Reviewed

Posted on by UH Press

Tom Baker in the April 21, 2007 edition of The Daily Yomiuri had this to say about Okamoto Kido’s The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo, recently published by University of Hawai‘i Press:

“An entertaining collection of detective stories. . . . The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi offers a special pleasure for readers familiar with the Tokyo area, where well-known place names appear on every page, but with startling different details.”

A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author Okamoto Kido examines the seamy underside of life in Edo (Tokyo) through his fictional detective, the street-smart Hanshichi. Modeled after Doyle’s tales about his own Sherlock Holmes, these fourteen stories, translated by Ian MacDonald, offer entertaining insights into the development of the modern Japanese crime novel.

Read the full text of Tom Baker’s review here.

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