Category: Japan

The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals

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Bringing Zen HomeBringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals, by Paula Arai, brings a fresh perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation, to gain a sense of wholeness and balance in the midst of illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals include chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen and figures prominently in Arai’s analyses.

September 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3535-4 / $52.00 (CLOTH)

Remembering the Kanji App Now at iTunes

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KLEAR AppRemembering the Kanji, a new flashcard and review app, complements the bestselling kanji texts Remembering the Kanji 1 and Remembering the Kanji 2, by James W. Heisig. Review more than 2,000 kanji anytime, anywhere on your mobile device. The customizable, easy-to-use app is $9.99 at the iTunes Store.

Here are a few of the app’s noteworthy features:
—Create your own study lists and generate flashcards for review;
—Save notes on your own imaginative mnemonic stories for each kanji;
—Learn the stroke order of each kanji with animated diagrams;
—Learn the pronunciations of each kanji in Remembering the Kanji 1 and 2 and learn the readings of kanji combination words (jukugo);
—Look up the meaning of primitive elements quickly;
—Look up kanji by stroke number;
—Search for key words and find the kanji you want in an instant.

Matashichi Oishi Featured on NHK

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Last weekend Matashichi Oishi, author of The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I, attended a conference of the Japan Congress against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Fukushima, where the Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant is located. Oishi talked with residents and shared his experiences as a survivor of the U.S.’ 1954 nuclear tests in the Pacific. NHK news program “Japan 7 Days” coverage of Oishi’s Fukushima visit will be broadcast this weekend on NHK World TV and BS1 in Japan and will stream live at the NHK World TV website. After August 10, the program will be uploaded and viewable under “Recent Stories.” Visit http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/tv/japan7/index.html for program times and details.

Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook Now Available in Paperback

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Japanese Philosophy
Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, is now available in paperback.

From a July 2011 blog post: In 1980 Thomas Kasulis (then assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i) dreamed of putting together an anthology focused directly on Japanese philosophical thought. Thirty-one years later, Kasulis and fellow editors James Heisig and John Maraldo have produced what will be an essential reference for English readers interested in traditional or contemporary Japanese culture and the way it has shaped and been shaped by its great thinkers over the centuries. The story behind the Sourcebook’s development, which involved dozens of scholars from around the world, can be found in the Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture Bulletin 35 (2011).

August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3618-4 / $35.00 (PAPER)

Literature and Resurgence in Okinawa

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Living SpiritThroughout its difficult history, Okinawa has remained strong, and today its spirit is more vibrant and dynamic than ever. Celebrating the cultural resurgence that began in the 1960s, Living Spirit: Literature and Resurgence in Okinawa, edited by Frank Stewart and Katsunori Yamazato, presents acclaimed contemporary fiction and poetry, as well as drama, song, and essay. Also included are Higa Yasuo’s remarkable photographs capturing the timeless world of the islands’ maternal deities.

Manoa 23:1
July 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3617-7 / $20.00 (PAPER)

Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook

Posted on by stephchun

Japanese Philosophy
The idea for Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook can be traced back to 1980, when Thomas Kasulis (then assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i) dreamed of putting together an anthology focused directly on Japanese philosophical thought. Thirty-one years later, Kasulis and his fellow editors James Heisig and John Maraldo have produced what will be an essential reference for English readers interested in traditional or contemporary Japanese culture and the way it has shaped and been shaped by its great thinkers over the centuries. The story behind the Sourcebook’s development, which involved dozens of scholars from around the world, can be found in the Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture Bulletin 35 (2011).

July 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3552-1 / $70.00 (CLOTH)

Nuclear Power in Japan

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In recent months UH Press author Martin Dusinberre has written online editorial pieces on the history and future of Japan’s nuclear program for Reuters, the History Workshop, and The Guardian.

Dusinberre is lecturer in modern Japanese history at Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of the forthcoming Hard Times in the Hometown: A History of Community Survival in Modern Japan, available March 2012.

Hard Times in the Hometown tells the story of Kaminoseki, a small town on Japan’s Inland Sea. Once one of the most prosperous ports in the country, Kaminoseki fell into profound economic decline following Japan’s reengagement with the West in the late nineteenth century. Using a recently discovered archive and oral histories collected during his years of research in Kaminoseki, Martin Dusinberre reconstructs the lives of households and townspeople as they tried to make sense of their changing place in the world. In challenging the familiar story of modern Japanese growth, Dusinberre provides important new insights into how ordinary people shaped the development of the modern state. His account comes to a climax when, in the 1980s, the town’s councillors request the construction of a nuclear power station, unleashing a storm of protests from within the community. This ongoing nuclear dispute has particular resonance in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima crisis.

June Sale on Cornell East Asia Series Titles

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Cornell logoUniversity of Hawai‘i Press is a worldwide distributor of the Cornell East Asia Series (CEAS), published by the Cornell East Asia Program. For the entire month of June, order a CEAS book at full price and receive a second CEAS book (excluding series volumes 144-158) of equal or lesser value free!

Click here to view all CEAS titles distributed by UH Press.

**We are not accepting CEAS sale orders at our website, so please email, call (toll-free 1-888-847-7377), or fax (toll-free 1-800-650-7811) the UH Press Business Department with your order.

E-Books from Three Pines Press

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Three Pines Press logoUniversity of Hawai‘i Press is a worldwide distributor for Three Pines Press, a publisher of Daoist studies headed by Dr. Livia Kohn. Digital editions of select Three Pines Press titles are now available for purchase through Tao Library: http://tao-library.com/store/

The site is currently offering visitors a free e-book valued at $12.00; go to Tao Library to claim your gift.

English Translation of Landmark Zen Text

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Purifying Zen
In 1223 the monk Dogen Kigen (1200–1253) came to the audacious conclusion that Japanese Buddhism had become hopelessly corrupt. He undertook a dangerous pilgrimage to China to bring back a purer form of Buddhism and went on to become one of the founders of Soto Zen, still the largest Zen sect in Japan. Seven hundred years later, the philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro (1889–1960) also saw corruption in the Buddhism of his day. Watsuji’s efforts to purify the religion sent him not across the seas but searching Japan’s intellectual past, where he discovered writings by Dogen that had been hidden away by the monk’s own sect. Watsuji later penned Shamon Dogen (Dogen the monk), which single-handedly rescued Dogen from the brink of obscurity, reintroducing Japan to its first great philosophical mind. Purifying Zen, a translation of the Shamon Dogen by Steve Bein, makes this work available in English for the first time.

“Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Shamon Dogen makes available in a clear and fluid translation an early classic in modern Japanese philosophy. Steve Bein’s annotations, footnotes, introduction, and commentary bridge the gap separating not only the languages but also the cultures of its original readers and its new Western audience.” —from the Foreword by Thomas P. Kasulis

May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3556-9 / $24.00 (PAPER)

The Buddhist Dead Now in Paperback

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The Buddhist Dead

“[The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations, edited by Bryan J. Cuevas and Jacqueline I. Stone, is] the first full-length volume to investigate the place of death in Buddhism in a pan-Asian context. For that reason alone, it is a much-needed and welcome addition to the scholarly literature. That it is such a well-integrated, tightly argued, and beautifully crafted volume should make it the standard bearer for some time to come. . . . A thought-provoking and sophisticated volume, which challenges and advances the ways we think about death in Buddhism, and should serve as the foundation for future inquiries. The Buddhist Dead should be read by all Buddhist specialists and graduate students, and those interested in conceptions of and practices related to death and the afterlife. I moreover can recommend assigning select chapters for use in the undergraduate classroom, having successfully done so.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“This volume presents research of the highest class by a set of the best scholars working in English in Buddhist studies. . . . Scholars of both Buddhism in general and of regional/national practices will need to turn to this collection for its up-to-date findings about the variety and importance of this fatally essential dimension of the religion.” —Japanese Religions

Studies in East Asian Buddhism, No. 19
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3599-6 / $28.00 (PAPER)
Published in association with the Kuroda Institute

Updated Edition of Popular Japanese Language Text Now Available

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Remembering Kanji 1
Updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the Japanese government in 2010 as “general-use” kanji, the sixth edition of Remembering the Kanji 1, by James W. Heisig, aims to provide students with a simple method for correlating the writing and the meaning of Japanese characters in such a way as to make them both easy to remember. It is intended not only for the beginner, but also for the more advanced student looking for some relief from the constant frustration of forgetting how to write the kanji, or for a way to systematize what he or she already knows.

April 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3592-7 / $44.00 (PAPER)

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