Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, Bernard Faure’s Gods of Medieval Japan series stands as a milestone in our understanding of the mythico-ritual system of esoteric Buddhism, specifically the nature and roles of deities within the religious landscape of medieval Japan and beyond.
For a limited time, enjoy 30% off with the discount code MEDIEVAL30 through July 31, 2026. Valid for online orders only.
New Release: The fifth and final volume in the series, Lords of Life, explores the concept of surveillance in Daoism and Buddhism, the significance of the gods of destiny, and how they transform the official Buddhist doctrine of karma.
Also Recently Published: Published in February, From Stars to Stones examines how mythological notions influenced—and were transformed by—medieval Japanese religion and the performing arts.
November is our busiest month for conference exhibits and this year is no exception. Find our staff at these in-person events from Boston to New Orleans to San Juan!
A century’s worth of change looks quite remarkable in Korean literature. Today’s young Koreans cannot read the same newspapers read by their grandparents’ generation. In less than a hundred years, the national written language has shifted from Chinese characters to Korean hangul, then briefly to Japanese as enforced under colonial rule, and then to the modern Korean language that we know today. During this process, remarkable sociocultural transformations dominated daily life. Over the first half of the 20th century, Koreans endured enormous political shifts most notably marked by colonization, the Korean War, and the ensuing divide of the country into separate political nations. Along the way, Korean literature registered these upheavals and fluctuations.
Notably, the literature of totalizing grand narrative, which concerned itself with the trajectory of nation-building, persisted in Korea until the 1980s. Ever since the end of the military dictatorship and the establishment of a civil government in the 1990s, however, that literature began to shift its focus to the lives of women. Now, those long ignored and marginalized—including queer women, as well as other queer people such as those who are non-binary— have also begun to emerge more strongly as published authors, even as they have been increasingly centered as subjects of literary narratives. The ongoing impact of this inclusive, expansionary shift can be seen directly in AZALEA’s decision to focus on LGBTQ+ literature for its fifteenth issue.
Find more poetry, fiction, graphic shorts, and images at Project MUSE.
Editor Craig Howes embraces this volume as he explains: “The latest issue of Biography qualifies as special because of its ordinariness. After a four-installment run featuring two special issues, an inaugural Forum, and the Annual Bibliography and International Year in Review, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Articles and book reviews—that’s all! But the table of contents for this issue speaks to what has distinguished Biography for decades as a quarterly. First, the articles. Their geographic, historic, linguistic, and generic range is in keeping with our international and interdisciplinary profile. American celebrity biographies and philosophy, twentieth-century Indian regional autobiography, modernist Austrian psychoanalytic biography, post-WWII German-Romanian autofiction, contemporary Palestinian auto/biographical texts—our pages map out and tell the stories of the field.”
Missionary efforts are usually enacted on a global scale and have been an important force within world history. This special collection of articles seeks to enhance our understanding of missionaries and conversion and their place in the discourse on religion in world history. Some of the articles in this special collection focus on the religious beliefs of the missionaries and converts, and how those beliefs adapted to the cultures of parties. Other contributors analyze the political ramifications of missionary undertakings, while still others explore the varied cultural exchanges and entanglements which result from these encounters, many of which extended beyond the religious.
This special issue provides accessible resources for scholars and teachers worldwide and features Guest Editor Stephen S. Francis, who discusses the issue below.
Stephen S. Francis, guest editor for this Special Edition of “Missions & Conversions in World History” for Journal of World History (Photo courtesy of Stephen S. Francis)
University of Hawai‘i Press: Tell us how this special issue came together.
Stephen S. Francis: My personal area of research is the history of religion and society, and also family relations and material culture, so I was drawn to these articles that not only dealt with the personal ideological conversion of peoples, but also how missionaries and religion affected other aspects of society and culture beyond the intended reasons for proselyting.
UHP: Why is this issue important now?
SSF: Since the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, religion throughout the world has undergone radical change, but perhaps no more so than in the past. So, I think it is beneficial for us to look at the impact and effects of past encounters to place the current developments in context.
UHP: How do you hope people will use this issue?
SSF: One of the goals of Journal of World History is to show broader interconnections of ideas that go beyond nations and regions, and in editing this volume, I gained greater insight into my own localized study by seeing the similarities and how my own work fits into this larger discourse. I hope that other scholars will do the same, and that it will enhance their own research and world view.
UHP: How are things changing as the world has reopened slowly? Are there many ways the pandemic has affected your own research and teaching?
SSF: Specifically regarding the topic of this issue, I know that several churches have altered the way they have proselyted during the pandemic, and I am eager to see how some of those changes will be kept and what ones will be discarded as the world reopens, which in several years will be fascinating to research. I, like many, had to cancel research trips due to the pandemic, but it also gave me time to reflect and focus on ideas that I may have ignored if life had continued as “normal.”
The new issue features the following introduction by Trang Phan, John Phan, and Mark J. Alves
The current issue is the result of a workshop held at the Harvard Yenching Institute in April of 2021, entitled Vietnamese Linguistics, Typology and Language Universals, and which featured nineteen linguists working on diverse aspects of the Vietnamese language, ranging from semantics to historical phonology. Our purpose in gathering was to take stock of the great leaps in Vietnamese linguistic research that have occurred over the past few decades, to bring together cutting-edge research from each subdiscipline, and to begin a new collaborative dialogue on Vietnamese linguistics, typology, and language universals. Most of all, it was our belief that the time had come to reconsider Vietnamese linguistics as a unified field of inquiry. As a result, a new academic organization was founded: the International Society of Vietnamese Linguistics. In the past twenty years, research into the Vietnamese language has advanced exponentially, in tandem with developments in our understanding of syntax, semantics, phonetics, and phonology—both on the synchronic and diachronic levels. Specific work on the Vietnamese language now informs and even leads broader linguistic inquiry in a number of unprecedented ways. These new developments invite a concentration of state-the-field research into a single volume, one that will serve not only to summarize current issues in each subdiscipline of Vietnamese linguistics, but also to initiate a longer, more collaborative conversation about the Vietnamese language. Our goals in this special issue are thus twofold: first, we seek to provide a snapshot of current research into Vietnamese syntax, semantics, phonology, and phonetics, from both the historical and synchronic points of view, that may serve as a resource for linguists interested in exploring our current understanding of the Vietnamese language. Second, we hope that this issue will also serve as an invitation to all linguists working on the Vietnamese language or related languages to contribute to a broader, more cosmopolitan discussion—one in which discoveries of one subdiscipline may serve to inform or enlighten another.
Special Feature: Korean Genre Fiction; O Chang-hwan; and Gender Trouble In Korean Literature
From the Editor Young Jung-Lee:
One of the most important recent shifts in Korean literature is found in gender conflict. This “Special Feature: Gender Trouble in Korean Literature and Society,” guest-edited by Hye-Ryoung Lee, shows a fundamentally new perspective through six scholars reading Korean Literature and Society. Over the past decade, the #MeToo Movement has shaken the world, and Korean society has been no exception, as can be seen in Choi Young-mi’s poem “En,” introduced here with six critical essays. Even before its publication, “En” was the focus of media attention, and it remained a hot topic in Korean society for years due to Choi’s high-profile court battles.
Special Feature: A Forum on Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains
From Coeditor Anna Poletti:
With this forum, we, the editors of Biography, inaugurate a new feature of the journal that aims to respond to and amplify specific examples of the power of life writing as a cultural, political, and social practice, and which document key moments in the evolution of that practice. In this forum, No Friend but the Mountains is discussed as both a profoundly localized text responding to, making knowledge about, and exposing a highly specific and complex set of conditions, and as a uniquely transnational text that speaks to and about a global phenomenon. Its highly innovative use of life writing as a narrative technique and epistemological practice warranted, in our minds, a concentrated response from the journal. Commissioning and editing this response has renewed my appreciation for the primary concerns of lifewriting scholarship: tracking the mercurial power of personal storytelling to crystalize the contemporary moment in such a way that new knowledge emerges from the entanglements it depicts, and the entanglements it drags its readers into.
Special Section: Unsettling Korean Migration: Multiple Trajectories and Experiences
From the Editor Cheehyun Harrison Kim:
This analytic potency of migration is superbly demonstrated in this volume’s Special Section Unsettling Korean Migration: Multiple Trajectories and Experiences, guest edited by Sunhee Koo (The University of Auckland) and Jihye Kim (The University of Central Lancashire). Sunhee Koo and Jihye Kim have brought together papers on labor (Yonson Ahn and Jihye Kim), ritual life (Marcus Bell), cultural identity (Sunhee Koo), and artistic production (Hee-seung Irene Lee and Soojin Kim). The six engrossing articles deal with how the Korean diaspora—in Argentina, Germany, Japan, China, and the United States—have shaped and represented their particular situations through negotiation, resilience, and creativity. The authors are highly critical of any national framework, and they see diasporic life as contexts of not only sorrow and sacrifice but also innovation and regeneration. Sunhee Koo and Jihye Kim offer a detailed explanation in their Introduction.
The annual American Academy of Religion meeting (held jointly with the Society of Biblical Literature) continues through Tuesday, November 23. If you’re attending in person, be sure to pick up the Publishers Weekly “Religion & Spirituality” supplement and check out our ad on page 15, shown below. Even if you’re not in San Antonio, use the conference discount code AAR2021 to order recent religion titles, those in our religion-related book series, and titles such as Places by the late Buddhist nun, Setouchi Jakuchō. (Coupon code good through December 31, 2021.)
Click image to open the PW ad as a PDF; then click on each book cover to link to its web page.
The Art of Dying is the Art of Living: Rationality in Theravada Buddhism
Susan E. Babbitt
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0040
The Wisdom of Insight
Ondřej Beran
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0041
Wisdom, Deep Deference, and the Problem of Autonomy: Engaging with Being Cheng
Philippe Brunozzi
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0042
Philosophers, Mystics, and Other Sages: Wisdom in Early Islamic Thought
Nadja Germann
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0043
Wisdom in Individual, Political, and Cultural Transformations: Brecht, Nietzsche, and the Limits of Academic Philosophy
Michael Hampe, Karsten Schoellner
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0044
Wisdom: A Murdochian Perspective
Kai Marchal
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0045
Who Is a Wise Person? Zhuangzi and Epistemological Discussions of Wisdom
Shane Ryan, Karyn Lai
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0046
Birds of Wisdom
Mario Wenning
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0047
Mulla Sadra’s Practical Philosophy: A Return to Platonic Phronesis
Sahar Kavandi, Maryam Ahmadi, Ahmad Hosseini
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0048
Putting Ruist and Hegelian Social Thought in Dialogue
Andrew James Komasinski
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0049
Ming 名 in the Laozi Daodejing 老子道德經: Interpretations and Translations of the Opening Verse
Yumi Suzuki
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0050
An Islamic Account of Reformed Epistemology
Jamie B. Turner
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0051
Discussion
Wilhelm Halbfass and the Purposes of Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Dimitry Shevchenko
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0052
After Comparative Philosophy: A Discussion of “Wilhelm Halbfass and the Purposes of Cross-Cultural Dialogue,” by Dimitry Shevchenko
Purushottama Bilimoria
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0053
Online Book Reviews
The Non-Existence of the Real World by Jan Westerhoff (review)
Ricki Bliss
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0054
Ratnakīrti’s Proof of Exclusion by Patrick McAllister (review)
Joel Feldman
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0055
Human Being, Bodily Being: Phenomenology from Classical India by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (review)
Sonam Kachru
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0056
Classical Indian Philosophy: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps by Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri (review)
Joerg Tuske
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2021.0057
Dr. George Tanabe (left, wearing medal) accepts the commendation from Consul General Toyoei Shigeeda.
On January 24 at a ceremony at the Honolulu Consulate General of Japan, University of Hawai‘i professor emeritus George J. Tanabe, Jr. was conferred with the Government of Japan’s Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, in honor of his contributions toward the strengthening of academic and cultural exchanges between the United States and Japan. The award recognizes his work in promoting Japanese culture and values through research and studies in Japanese religions.
Although architecture continually responds to ascetic compulsions, as in its frequent encounter with the question of excess and less, it is typically considered separate from asceticism. In contrast, The Hermit’s Hutoffers original insight and explores the rich and mutual ways in which asceticism and architecture are played out in each other’s practices. Relying primarily on Buddhist materials, author Kazi K. Ashraf provides a complex narrative that stems from the simple structure of the hermit’s hut, showing how the significance of the hut resonates widely and how the question of dwelling is central to ascetic imagination. In exploring the conjunctions of architecture and asceticism, he breaks new ground by presenting ascetic practice as fundamentally an architectural project, namely the fabrication of a “last” hut.
This innovative book weaves together the fields of architecture, anthropology, religion, and philosophy to offer multidisciplinary and historical insights. It will appeal to readers with diverse interests and in a variety of disciplines—whether one is interested in the history of ascetic architecture in India, the concept of “home” in ancient India, or the theme of the body as building.
Experimental Buddhism highlights the complex and often wrenching interactions between long-established religious traditions and rapid social, cultural, and economic change. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, it is one of the first studies to give readers a sense of what is happening on the front lines as progressive Buddhist priests try to reboot their roles and traditions to gain greater significance in Japanese society. The book profiles innovative as well as controversial responses to the challenges facing Buddhist priests.
The work’s central theme of experimental Buddhism provides a fresh perspective to understand how priests and other individuals employ Buddhist traditions in selective and pragmatic ways, frequently risking criticism from their peers, constituents, and high-ranking religious authorities. Using these inventive approaches during a time of crisis and transition for Japanese temple Buddhism, priests and practitioners from all denominations seek solutions that not only can transform their religious traditions but also influence society and their fellow citizens in positive ways.
November 2013, 11 illustrations
$60.00 ISBN: 978-0-8248-3833-1, Cloth
$32.00 ISBN: 978-0-8248-3898-0, Paper Topics in Contemporary Buddhism
