UH Press

Family Torn Apart Roundtable Discussion

Posted on June 21, 2012 by stephchun

Join Lily Ozaki Arasato for a roundtable discussion of Family Torn Apart: The Internment Story of the Otokichi Muin Ozaki Family on Saturday, June 23, 10:30-11:30 am, at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i’s Community Gallery. Ms. Arasato is the daughter of Otokichi Ozaki, who was a Japanese language school teacher and tanka poet in Hilo. Family Torn Apart traces Ozaki’s WWII incarceration at eight different camps, his family’s life in Hawai‘i without him, and later their move to join Ozaki in the camps.

Family Torn Apart is distributed by UH Press for the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i.

Uke Hunt Reviews The ‘Ukulele

Posted on June 20, 2012 by stephchun

Al Wood’s Uke Hunt review of The ‘Ukulele: A History, by Jim Tranquada and John King, is full of praise:

“Context Finally! . . . Thought Provoking . . . Great Pictures . . . Well Researched. . . If you care about the history of the ukulele you have to buy [this book]. It’s the definitive book on the subject. There’s no other book that comes close to it.”

For the complete review, go to: http://ukulelehunt.com/2012/06/20/the-ukulele-a-history-by-jim-tranquada-and-john-king-review/.

Live Ukulele at Book Expo America!

Posted on June 19, 2012 by stephchun

A big mahalo to Markie, Nicky, and Sean (a.k.a. Ikeda Katsu), who drove all the way from Boston to NYC to perform at UH Press’ booth at Book Expo America! The guys played two songs, “Over the Rainbow” and “Higher and Higher,” to promote Jim Tranquada and John King’s The ‘Ukulele: A History.

Mahalo also to Sue Wilhite of East West Bookshop for the video!

UPDATE: Another video of Ikeda Katsu at BEA performing “Higher and Higher” but this time . . . the guys are sitting down! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6445ONInMpk

China Review International, vol. 17, no. 3 (2010)

Posted on June 18, 2012 by UH Press

FEATURES

James Cahill, Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China
Reviewed by Michael G. Chang, 299

Ralph Sawyer, Ancient Chinese Warfare
Reviewed by Peter Lorge, 303

Yunnan: Periphery or Center of an International Network? (reviewing Bin Yang, Between Winds and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan [Second Century BCE to Twentieth Century CE])
Reviewed by Michael C. Brose, 305
Continue reading “China Review International, vol. 17, no. 3 (2010)”

Journal of World History, vol. 23, no. 1 (2012)

Posted on June 18, 2012 by alphabex

SPECIAL ISSUE: GLOBAL CHINA

ARTICLES

Global China: Material Culture and Connections in World History
Anne Gerritsen and Stephen McDowall, 3

The multidisciplinary articles in this special issue were developed in conjunction with a research project on the cultures of porcelain in global history, hosted by the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick. These articles all situate porcelain within wider contexts of material and visual culture. This approach reveals the complexities of the processes involved in the appropriation of Chinese ceramics in England and Iran and in the diffusion of Chinese-style ceramics in the western Indian Ocean, and explores the ways in which ideas about Chineseness were formed, and a global visual culture on the theme of porcelain production emerged.

Continue reading “Journal of World History, vol. 23, no. 1 (2012)”

In Memoriam – Helen Geracimos Chapin

Posted on June 14, 2012 by stephchun

Journalist, educator, and author Helen Geracimos Chapin passed away on June 9 in Honolulu. Chapin worked as a news writer at the Honolulu Advertiser and Hilo Herald-Tribune and served as past president of the Honolulu Community-Media Council and the Hawaiian Historical Society. Most recently, she was a professor and vice president at Hawaii Pacific University.

Contemporary Southeast Asian Theatres

Posted on June 13, 2012 by stephchun

Asian theatre is usually studied from the perspective of the major traditions of China, Japan, India, and Indonesia. Now, in Communities of Imagination: Contemporary Southeast Asian Theatres, a wide-ranging look at the contemporary theatre scene in Southeast Asia, Catherine Diamond shows that performance in some of the lesser known theatre traditions offers a vivid and fascinating picture of the rapidly changing societies in the region. Diamond examines how traditional, modern, and contemporary dramatic works, with their interconnected styles, stories, and ideas, are being presented for local audiences. She not only places performances in their historical and cultural contexts but also connects them to the social, political, linguistic, and religious movements of the last two decades.

“Covering the multifaceted, multicultural, multination swathe of Southeast Asia, Communities of Imagination brings to light changes and theatre innovations over the last twenty-five years by focusing on issues of gender, censorship, and national identity. The book gains its strength by diving into actual productions the author has seen in major urban hubs. Diamond places the work in an informed frame, interviewing major theatre makers. Those interested in Southeast Asia will encounter the themes, innovations, and heated debates that theatre is uniquely suited to amplify, making this book an important contribution.” —Kathy Foley, editor, Asian Theatre Journal

June 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3584-2 / $56.00 (CLOTH)

Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 2, no. 2 (2011): Korean Religions in Inter-Cultural Contexts

Posted on June 12, 2012 by UH Press

Editors’ Preface
Don Baker & Seong-nae Kim, 5

In this second issue in volume two of the Journal of Korean Religions, we continue our exploration of Korea’s complex religious culture while continuing to interrogate the meaning of “religion” in a Korean cultural context.
…
The five articles in this issue, dealing as they do with Confucians, Christians, Buddhists, and mudang, reflect the diversity of religious life on the peninsula. Moreover, they challenge attempts to impose a simplified definition of religion on Korea’s religious complexity, to dig unbridgeable trenches separating Korea’s various religious communities from one another, or even to distinguish between real religions and pseudo-religions in Korea. We hope this issue will stimulate further scholarly discussion of how the term “religion” has been used in a Korean context as well as of how best to represent and analyze the complex phenomena that form Korea’s religious culture.
Continue reading “Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 2, no. 2 (2011): Korean Religions in Inter-Cultural Contexts”

Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 2, no. 1 (2011)

Posted on June 7, 2012 by UH Press

RESEARCH ARTICLES

In Search of “Korean-ness” in Korean Religions through Border-crossing: A Comparative Approach
Nam-lin Hur, 5

What elements make Korean religions distinctive? This is an issue that has attracted a lot of attention from many scholars in the field. What would be an effective avenue to approach the ways in which external religions are adapted or transformed to Korean society and culture? In this article, Hur suggests that the task of tackling this question can benefit from a border-crossing approach, particularly through comparison with Japanese religions that offer a range of contrasting features. In order to illustrate this, Hur offers two examples that sharply distinguished Korean religions from Japanese religions in early modern times. One is the value of filial piety which dominated Korean Confucianism but was almost invisible in Japanese Confucianism. The other is Buddhism’s role in funerary rituals and ancestor worship: Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea was kept at bay from the dominant ritual arena of ancestor-related rituals; in contrast, Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan was the central agent of funerary rites and ancestor worship rituals. Hur suggests that border-crossing, comparative approaches that involve Japanese cases can contribute to de-localizing Korean religions and, at the same time, to localizing Korean-ness found in Korean religions in the context of society and culture.
Keywords: filial piety, ancestor worship, funerary rituals, Confucianism, Buddhism
Continue reading “Journal of Korean Religions, vol. 2, no. 1 (2011)”

UH Press Titles Available from iTunes

Posted on June 1, 2012 by stephchun

These and other select UH Press books are also available as eBooks from Amazon’s Kindle Store and Google Play.

Song Culture in the Yingzao Fashi Building Manual

Posted on June 1, 2012 by stephchun

Chinese Architecture and Metaphor: Song Culture in the Yingzao Fashi Building Manual, by Jiren Feng, reveals significant and fascinating social and cultural phenomena in the most important primary text for the study of the Chinese building tradition. Unlike previous scholarship, which has reviewed this imperially commissioned architectural manual largely as a technical work, this volume considers the Yingzao Fashi’s unique literary value and explores the rich cultural implications in and behind its technical content.

“This fascinating and erudite study takes a fresh and original approach to the most significant document in Chinese architectural history. Taking the terminology and textual strategies of the Yingzao fashi as his starting point, and drawing both on literature and on the structures and aesthetics of surviving buildings, Jiren Feng develops a complex and sophisticated cultural analysis of the text and of Chinese historical traditions of architectural writing more broadly, demonstrating that matter and metaphor cannot be disentangled in Chinese architectural thinking and practice. As well as being an argument about architecture, this is a study of poetics and of sensibilities, and a history of the meaning of grand buildings in Chinese cosmology and politics.” —Francesca Bray, University of Edinburgh

June 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3363-3 / $53.00 (CLOTH)
Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia’s Architecture
Published in association with Hong Kong University Press

Biography of Edward Nakamura

Posted on June 1, 2012 by stephchun

I Respectfully Dissent, Tom Coffman’s portrait of Edward Nakamura, is both insightful biography and engrossing political history. The arc of the story may sound familiar (the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the GI Bill, Statehood), but it is strewn with surprise, resulting from Nakamura’s unshakable creed and unique angle of vision. Translating the political gains of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Nakamura played a central role—unpublicized—in devising arguably the most progressive program of legislation in an American state: universal health care, temporary disability insurance, collective bargaining rights for public workers, and more—all of which forever changed the Hawai‘i worker’s landscape.

“Rarely do we encounter someone who not only touches our daily lives but also shapes society for the better. Ed Nakamura was such a person, a visionary who lived simply, who was gentle in manner yet fierce in his life-long devotion to justice.” —Lowell Chun-Hoon, labor lawyer

May 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3572-9 / $14.99 (PAPER)