Category: Japan

Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan

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Performing the Great PeacePerforming the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan, by Luke S. Roberts, offers a cultural approach to understanding the politics of the Tokugawa period, at the same time deconstructing some of the assumptions of modern national historiographies. Deploying the political terms uchi (inside), omote (ritual interface), and naisho (informal negotiation)—all commonly used in the Tokugawa period—the author explores how daimyo and the Tokugawa government understood political relations and managed politics in terms of spatial autonomy, ritual submission, and informal negotiation.

February 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3513-2 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Second Volume of Remembering Simplified Hanzi Now Available

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Remembering Simplified Hanzi 2Remembering Simplified Hanzi 2, by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson, is the second of two volumes designed to help students learn the meaning and writing of the 3,000 most frequently used simplified Chinese characters. (A parallel set of volumes has been prepared for traditional characters.) The 1,500 characters introduced in Book 1 include the top 1,000 by frequency, plus another 500 best learned at an early stage. Book 2 adds the remaining 1,500 characters to complete the set.

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3655-9 / $29.00 (PAPER)

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan

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The Okinawan DiasporaAlthough much has been written on Okinawan emigration abroad, The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within, by Steve Rabson, is the first book in English to consider the topic in Japan. It is based on a wide variety of secondary and primary sources, including interviews conducted by the author in the greater Osaka area over a two-year period. The work begins with the experiences of women who worked in Osaka’s spinning factories in the early twentieth century, covers the years of the Pacific War and the prolonged U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, and finally treats the period following Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. Throughout, it examines the impact of government and corporate policies, along with popular attitudes, for a compelling account of the Okinawan diaspora in the context of contemporary Japan’s struggle to acknowledge its multiethnic society.

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3534-7 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Yoga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912-1955

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Maximum EmbodimentMaximum Embodiment: Yoga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912–1955, by Bert Winther-Tamaki, presents a compelling thesis articulating the historical character of Yoga, literally the “Western painting” of Japan. The term designates what was arguably the most important movement in modern Japanese art from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Perhaps the most critical marker of Yoga was its association with the medium of oil-on-canvas, which differed greatly from the water-based pigments and inks of earlier Japanese painting. Yoga encompassed both establishment fine art and avant-gardist insurgencies, but in both cases, as the term suggests, it was typically focused on techniques, motifs, canons, or iconographies that were obtained in Europe and deployed by Japanese artists.

Balancing critique and sympathy for the twelve Yoga painters who are its principal protagonists, Maximum Embodiment investigates the quest for embodiment in some of the most compelling images of modern Japanese art.

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3537-8 / $32.00 (CLOTH)

Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism

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The Face of JizoStone images of the Buddhist deity Jizo—bedecked in a red cloth bib and presiding over offerings of flowers, coins, candles, and incense—are a familiar sight throughout Japan. Known in China as a savior from hell’s torment, Jizo in Japan came to be utterly transformed through fusion with the local tradition of kami worship and ancient fertility cults. In particular, the Jizo cult became associated with gods of borders or transitions: the stone gods known as dosojin. Although the study of Jizo is often relegated to the folkloric, The Face of Jizo: Image and Cult in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, a highly original and readable book by Hank Glassman, demonstrates that the bodhisattva’s cult was promoted and embraced at the most elite levels of society.

“By wrapping the Japanese images of the bodhisattva Jizō in their intriguing individual and collective stories, The Face of Jizō emphasizes the movement of this deity, who not only protects travellers but also treks between hell and paradise in his quest to save sentient beings. Professor Glassman has created a major contribution to studies of cult images that extends well beyond art historical analyses to delve into other fascinating areas of inquiry. The author’s thorough research, lively writing style, and deft exposition of exciting tales guide readers on a magnificent journey through the history, literature, performance, and visual culture related to Jizō in Japan from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. From lavishly colored paintings and sculptures to simple stones, beloved images of Jizō are brought to life in the pages of this book.” —Sherry Fowler, University of Kansas

January 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3581-1 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868-2000

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Since MeijiResearch 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

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Ainu Spirits SingingIndigenous 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)

Oshiro Tatsuhiro’s The Cocktail Party

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Oshiro TatsuhiroThe 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 info@huoa.org. 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 mjournal-l@lists.hawaii.edu. See http://manoaokinawaissue.wordpress.com/ for further information.

The Making of Burakumin in Modern Japan

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Embodying DifferenceThe 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

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Confluences of MedicineConfluences 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)

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