UH Press

New Fiction from Japan’s Most Important Proletarian Author

Posted on January 28, 2013 by stephchun

This collection, translated by Zeljko Cipris, introduces the work of Japan’s foremost Marxist writer, Kobayashi Takiji (1903–1933), to an English-speaking audience, providing access to a vibrant, dramatic, politically engaged side of Japanese literature that is seldom seen outside Japan. The volume presents a new translation of Takiji’s fiercely anticapitalist Kani kosen—a classic that became a runaway bestseller in Japan in 2008, nearly eight decades after its 1929 publication. It also offers the first-ever translations of Yasuko and Life of a Party Member, two outstanding works that unforgettably explore both the costs and fulfillments of revolutionary activism for men and women. The book features a comprehensive introduction by Komori Yoichi, a prominent Takiji scholar and professor of Japanese literature at Tokyo University.

“A miracle happened in the world of Japanese letters in 2008: an eighty-year-old masterwork of Japanese proletarian literature appeared on best-seller lists. Embraced and reviled in its own day, dismissed and forgotten once revolution was declared both impossible and unnecessary, Kobayashi Takiji’s The Crab Cannery Ship, reborn here in zeljko Cipris’s fresh translation, stirred in Japanese a forgotten hunger for a literature that answers to bleak times with an incandescent anger and life-giving solidarity. This volume, which includes two novels never before translated, Yasuko and the Life of a Party Member, gives us a trio of works that speak to readers with prescient urgency.” —Norma Field, Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Japanese Studies, University of Chicago

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3742-6 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Philosophy East and West, vol. 63, no. 1 (2013)

Posted on January 25, 2013 by alphabex

Special Issue: 2010 International Conference on East-West Comparative Philosophy at Seoul National University

Guest Editor Introduction: Determinism, Responsibility, and Asian Philosophy
Mark Siderits, 1

ARTICLES

Moral Luck, Self-Cultivation, and Responsibility: The Confucian Conception of Free Will and Determinism
Kyung-Sig Hwang, 4

In this essay it is argued that the conception of free will and determinism implied by Confucianism (of Confucius and Mencius) takes a compatibilist form. On one hand, it is argued that it is difficult to see libertarian free will in Confucianism. Confucianism’s virtue ethics, with its emphasis on human character formation, cannot avoid the influence of internal factors and external circumstances on one’s character that are beyond one’s control. On the other hand, Confucianism espouses voluntary character formation and self-cultivation through human choice. This attitude likewise renders a hard determinist view untenable. With hard determinism and absolute free will both difficult to accept, the Confucian ethicists, beginning with Confucius and Mencius, seem to have been unable to avoid swinging between two extremes. However, as ethicists who exhort voluntary moral effort, they place autonomous action in the forefront of their compatibilism over inborn luck or fated events. Although this compatibilism may be valid from the standpoint of a practical philosophy that supports existing moral practices and responsibility, I examine whether it is truly tenable from a theoretical perspective.
Continue reading “Philosophy East and West, vol. 63, no. 1 (2013)”

JANM’S “Discover Nikkei” Interviews Amy Sueyoshi

Posted on January 17, 2013 by UH Press Marketing

On Saturday, January 19, 2:00 p.m., SFSU associate dean Amy Sueyoshi will appear at the Japanese American National Museum for a reading, discussion, and signing of her book, Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi. In advance of her talk, JANM’s Discover Nikkei online network has published an in-depth interview by Andrew Way Leong (Northwestern University), posted in two parts.

Click here to read part 1, then link to part 2 from there (or simply click here).

Dr. Sueyoshi will also give a talk at the San Francisco Public Library on Tuesday, February 26. For more details, see the SFPL calendar.

A review of Queer Compulsions published in this month’s The Gay & Lesbian Review, which calls the book “…an important study. It is also worthwhile as a fascinating portrait of biracial and same-sex relationships at a pivotal time in American history.” An equally positive review appeared earlier in Nichi Bei Weekly.

Pacific Science, vol. 67, no. 1 (2013)

Posted on January 16, 2013 by alphabex

Consuming Diversity: Analysis of Seasonal Catch Patterns in Multispecies Artisanal Reef Fisheries in North Sulawesi, Eastern Indonesia
M. Tokeshi, S. Arakaki, and J. R. P. Daud, 1–13

Despite the socioeconomic as well as ecological importance of smallscale fisheries in developing countries, there is a dearth of information on the state of artisanal fisheries in different regions of the tropical Indo-Pacific. Continue reading “Pacific Science, vol. 67, no. 1 (2013)”

Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii

Posted on January 15, 2013 by stephchun

Mai Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii, by Kerri A. Inglis, attempts to recover Hawaiian voices at a significant moment in Hawai‘i’s history. It takes an unprecedented look at the Hansen’s disease outbreak (1865–1900) almost exclusively from the perspective of “patients,” ninety percent of whom were Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). Using traditional and nontraditional sources, published and unpublished, it tells the story of a disease, a society’s reaction to it, and the consequences of the experience for Hawai‘i and its people.

February 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3635-1 / $24.00 (PAPER)

“Who are the Sikhs and why are they so involved in politics?”

Posted on January 10, 2013 by stephchun

Mark Brosens, in his article “Sikh Canadians: A Political Success Story,” poses the above question after noting that “despite their ‘quiet’ influence, Sikhs are surprisingly well represented in Canadian politics, given their population in Canada.”

For some answers Brosens looks to Doris Jakobsh, who teaches at the University of Waterloo and is the author of Sikhism, which Brosens calls “an accessible introduction to the faith”:

“[Jakobsh] is not Sikh, but Sikhs and Sikhism have been the subject of her research. [She] described Sikhism saying, ‘The Sikh gurus stood for every individual being able to achieve enlightenment, whether high or low. That was the bottom line for them. . . . There’s a real emphasis on service [among Sikhs]. The emphasis for the most part tends to be service to the gurdwara (a Sikh house of worship) . . . but it is expanding,’ Jakobsh says, noting that many gurdwaras host blood drives and contribute to food banks. . . . Furthermore, Jakobsh notes that every gurdwara is run by a democratically-elected council. Although there are devotional readers, a kind of clergy, all the practical decisions are made by the elected council. ‘There is a sort of inbuilt democracy,’ Jakobsh says.”

Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China

Posted on January 10, 2013 by stephchun

A 108-meter high Eiffel Tower rises above Champs Elysées Square in Hangzhou. A Chengdu residential complex for 200,000 recreates Dorchester, England. An ersatz Queen’s Guard patrols Shanghai’s Thames Town, where pubs and statues of Winston Churchill abound. Gleaming replicas of the White House dot Chinese cities from Fuyang to Shenzhen. These examples are but a sampling of China’s most popular and startling architectural movement: the construction of monumental themed communities that replicate towns and cities in the West.

Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China, by Bianca Bosker, presents the first definitive chronicle of this remarkable phenomenon in which entire townships appear to have been airlifted from their historic and geographic foundations in Europe and the Americas, and spot-welded to Chinese cities. These copycat constructions are not theme parks but thriving communities where Chinese families raise children, cook dinners, and simulate the experiences of a pseudo-Orange County or Oxford. In recounting the untold and evolving story of China’s predilection for replicating the greatest architectural hits of the West, Bosker explores what this unprecedented experiment in “duplitecture” implies for the social, political, architectural, and commercial landscape of contemporary China.

“The postmodern predilection for ‘themed’ environments and simulacra has generally been interpreted, in a line that stretches from the Frankfurt School to Baudrillard and Eco, in terms of loss—loss of originality and loss of authenticity. Bianca Bosker turns this line of cultural criticism in a very different direction in a perceptive analysis of architectural mimicry in the cultural context of the ‘new China.’ Through significant and original research, including personal interviews and photographs, Bosker draws a vivid picture of a rapidly changing society in a moment in the self-definition of its wealthier elements. Original Copies will appeal both to specialists in contemporary Chinese studies and to a wider public curious about these arresting images of a consumer society in formation.” —Christian Hubert, Parsons The New School for Design

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3606-1 / $30.00 (PAPER)
Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia’s Architecture
Published in association with Hong Kong University Press

For more on China’s architectural mimicry:
Copycat Architects in China Take Aim at the Stars: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/pirated-copy-of-design-by-star-architect-hadid-being-built-in-china-a-874390.html
China’s Copycat Cities: http://uhpress.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/foreign-policy-article-on-chinas-copycat-cities/

Language Documentation & Conservation, Special Publication No. 5

Posted on January 7, 2013 by alphabex

Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century
Edited by Nicholas Evans & Marian Klamer

The Journal of Language Documentation & Conservation announces its fifth Special Publication, now available for free download. As can be seen from the fact that almost every paper in this collection is an early step in a new research path, the study of Melanesia’s languages offers abundant opportunities to make new discoveries. We hope that in the collection of papers gathered here you will find material that invites you into an engaged and diverse international community of scholars dedicated to advancing our understanding of a linguistic territory that is arguably the least charted on earth.

Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (2012)

Posted on January 7, 2013 by alphabex

Mediating Chineseness in Cambodia

ARTICLES

Editor’s Introduction
Guest Co-Editors Lorraine Paterson (Cornell University) and Penny Edwards (University of California, Berkeley), 267

In 1981, social anthropologist William Willmott declared, “Today, no-one identifies themselves as Chinese in Kampuchea [Cambodia]” (1981:45). He certainly had the authority to publish such a statement. Having conducted sustained fieldwork on Chinese community formation in Cambodia from 1962 to 1963, Willmott offered an unprecedented examination of social structures, political organization, and patterns of identification among urban Chinese in his monographs, The Chinese in Cambodia (1967) and The Political Structure of the Chinese Community in Cambodia (1970). However, subsequent to his research, Chinese communities suffered terribly during the repression of the Lon Nol government between 1970 and 1975 and the atrocities of the Democratic Kampuchea regime. Willmott thus declared Chinese communities—and a willingness to identify as Chinese—destroyed. This understandably pessimistic vision turned out to be unfounded; the next extensive research done on Chinese in Cambodia by Penny Edwards and Chan Sambath in 1995 showed Chinese communities rebuilding. However, the descriptions of these communities showed a complexity of identity formation—from recent immigrants, “the raw Chinese,” to the five “traditional” Chinese dialect groups—that differed markedly from the indexes of identity applied by Willmott in his initial analysis. Academic ideas of how Chineseness should be configured had shifted and complicated; ascribing identity had become increasingly problematic….
Continue reading “Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (2012)”

Biography, vol. 35, no. 3 (2012)

Posted on January 7, 2013 by alphabex

EDITORS’ NOTE

ARTICLES

Documenting the Undocumented: Life Narratives of Undocumented Immigrants
Marta Caminero-Santangelo, 449

This essay argues that Underground America, a collection of first-person narratives of undocumented immigrants, advances the premise that the immigrants it represents are already part of the US “nation,” and that their claim to human rights ought therefore to be recognized on the grounds of national belonging.
Continue reading “Biography, vol. 35, no. 3 (2012)”

Spirit Possession and Its Provocation of the Modern

Posted on January 3, 2013 by stephchun

In her innovative new book, Fertile Disorder: Spirit Possession and Its Provocation of the Modern, Kalpana Ram reflects on the way spirit possession unsettles some of the foundational assumptions of modernity. What is a human subject under the varied conditions commonly associated with possession? What kind of subjectivity must already be in place to allow such a transformation to occur? How does it alter our understanding of memory and emotion if these assail us in the form of ghosts rather than as attributes of subjective experience? What does it mean to worship deities who are afflictive and capricious, yet bear an intimate relationship to justice? What is a “human” body if it can be taken over by a whole array of entities? What is agency if people can be “claimed” in this manner? What is gender if, while possessed, a woman is a woman no longer?

Drawing on spirit possession among women and the rich traditions of subaltern religion in Tamil Nadu, South India, Ram concludes that the basis for constructing an alternative understanding of human agency need not rest on the usual requirements of a fully present consciousness or on the exercise of choice and planning. Instead of relegating possession, ghosts, and demons to the domain of the exotic, Ram uses spirit possession to illuminate ordinary experiences and relationships.

“Ram’s extraordinary capacity to combine meticulous ethnography of spirit possession and other expressions of ‘female disorder’ in Tamil Nadu with deep and provocative reflections on the history of modernity in the subcontinent is what gives this book its freshness and originality. Scholars in diverse fields, from South Asian feminist and subaltern studies to those constituted by anthropological and postcolonial critiques of contemporary forms of modernization, should find this book to be of absorbing interest.” —Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3630-6 / $57.00 (CLOTH)

The First English Translation of Ranpo’s Strange Tale of Panorama Island

Posted on January 3, 2013 by stephchun

Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965) was a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe and like Poe drew on his penchant for the grotesque and the bizarre to explore the boundaries of conventional thought. Best known as the founder of the modern Japanese detective novel, Ranpo wrote for a youthful audience, and a taste for playacting and theatre animates his stories. His writing is often associated with the era of ero guro nansense (erotic grotesque nonsense), which accompanied the rise of mass culture and mass media in urban Japan in the 1920s. Characterized by an almost lurid fascination with simulacra and illusion, the era’s sensibility permeates Ranpo’s first major work and one of his finest achievements, Strange Tale of Panorama Island (Panoramato kidan), published in 1926.

This first English translation of Panoramato kidan by Elaine Kazu Gerbert includes a critical introduction and notes and uncovers for English-language readers an important new dimension of an ever stimulating, provocative talent.

“Ranpo is already a hot commodity on the international literary and cultural scene, and Strange Tale of Panorama Island should find its way onto many a ‘modern Japan’ or ‘modern East Asia’ syllabus. Gerbert, one of the really gifted translators of her generation, provides a graceful, seductive rendering of a landscape that incubates horror, and a superb introduction to this metaphysical thriller—one of Ranpo’’s most significant works.” —Paul Anderer, Columbia University

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3703-7 / $17.00 (PAPER)

Books

Journals

New Fiction from Japan’s Most Important Proletarian Author

Philosophy East and West, vol. 63, no. 1 (2013)

Special Issue: 2010 International Conference on East-West Comparative Philosophy at Seoul National University

ARTICLES

JANM’S “Discover Nikkei” Interviews Amy Sueyoshi

Pacific Science, vol. 67, no. 1 (2013)

Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii

“Who are the Sikhs and why are they so involved in politics?”

Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China

Language Documentation & Conservation, Special Publication No. 5

Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (2012)

Mediating Chineseness in Cambodia

ARTICLES

Biography, vol. 35, no. 3 (2012)

Spirit Possession and Its Provocation of the Modern

The First English Translation of Ranpo’s Strange Tale of Panorama Island