Journals: Kapaemahu, Remembering Miriam Fuchs, Burmese Literature + Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan

Biography

Volume 45, Number 2 (2022)

The new issue contains the following articles as a remembrance for Miriam Fuchs who was an active contributor to the journal. It also contains the annual bibliography:

Miriam Fuchs, Life Writing, and Life
Craig Howes

A Voyage Beyond the Text as Self: Remembering Miriam Fuchs Holzman
Cynthia G. Franklin

Miriam, The Bookies, and I
Joseph H. O’Mealy

In the Warm Waters of Lanikai: Paddling with Miria
Leinaala Davis

A Tribute to Miriam Fuchs: With Love from Her Student
Amy Calrson

Find more articles at Project MUSE.

Front cover of Manoa 34-2

Mānoa

Volume 34, Number 2 (2022)
In the Silence

The new Mānoa issue features a special section on the literature of Burma/Myanmar. In the introduction, “To Write a History,” guest editors Penny Edwards, ko ko thett, and Kenneth Wong begin:

“‘How to write history / in a language / that has no past tense’ asks co-editor ko ko thett in his poetry collection The Burden of Being Burmese. How to publish literature under a military regime with no future tense?

“In Myanmar today, the simplest utterance is punishable as the defamation of the state. A song, a poem, a music video, an elegy are all open invitations to a cowardly regime to pursue their authors with impunity.”

Find literature from Burma/Myanmar, South Asia and more at Project MUSE.

Review of Japan Culture and Society

Volume 32 (2020)

The new issue includes the special section, “Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan” guest edited by Álex Bueno and Yasutaka Tsuji, and “Japan in Los Angeles” edited by Rika Hiro. Selections include:

Design as Cultural Representation: Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan
Yasutaka Tsuji (Translated by Álex Bueno)

Japan’s Postwar Building: Japanese Architecture and the West
Ryuichi Hamaguchi

Nature and Thought in Japanese Design
Teiji Itoh

Yamashiro: Imagined Home and the Aesthetics of Hollywood Japanism
Dianne Lee Shen

Bruce Yonemoto: Made in Occupied Japan
Rika Hiro

Find more articles, an interview with Manika Nagare, and literature in translation at Project MUSE.

Mountain/Home: New Translations from Japan (MĀNOA 29:2)

"Mount Fuji in the Spring." Norikane Hiroto. Etching, 1997.
“Mount Fuji in the Spring.” Norikane Hiroto. Etching, 1997. Gift of Philip H. Roach Jr., 2010 (31780). Courtesy of Honolulu Museum of Art.

The new issue of MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, volume 29 number 2, is a collection of Japanese literature in translation edited by Leza Lowitz and Frank Stewart.

From the editors:

Mountain/Home presents new translations of selected Japanese works from the medieval period to the present. The volume opens with traditional folktales, court poetry, Edo Period poetry, and contemporary fiction—all from “One Hundred Literary Views of Mount Fuji,” a collection of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction related to Japan’s national symbol. The works reveal how Japanese attitudes toward Mount Fuji have changed over time, particularly after the country was opened to the West in the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

One Hundred Literary Views of Mount Fuji: Mount Fuji has been celebrated by poets, novelists, and playwrights for almost 1,500 years, from Japan’s earliest literary works to the present. Peter MacMillan provides these translations and introductions.

  • The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter: Taketori Monogataria tenth-century tale, recounts the origin of Mount Fuji’s name and is one of the earliest examples of Japanese literary fiction.
  • Love Song and Reply: These poems are from the Gosen Wakashū, a major tenth-century anthology of Japanese poetry. Many of the waka in the collection are “dialogue poems,” written in pairs by men and women of the court, speaking the cloaked language of secret love affairs, seductions, and laments.
  • from The Confessions of Lady Nijo: Lost for over six hundred years, Lady Nijo’s manuscript was discovered by a Japanese scholar in the Imperial Library in 1940.
  • A Tale of a Mount Fuji Cave: This story from the Kamakura Period tells of a journey to the mouth of hell and back.
  • Two Haiku by Matsuo Bashō: His poetry broke from the decadent style of the time, finding instead a resonance with nature, simplicity, spontaneity, and originality.
  • Sanshirō: In this excerpt from Natsume Soseki’s 1908 coming-of-age novel, the protagonist, Ogawa Sanshiro, is twenty-three years old.

Continue reading “Mountain/Home: New Translations from Japan (MĀNOA 29:2)”

Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 27 (2015)

Distributed for Jōsai International Center for the Promotion of Art and Science, Jōsai University

SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE IN HONOR OF KYOKO SELDEN

The Review of Japanese Culture and Society, volume 27 is a special issue to honor the memory and contributions of Kyoko Selden.

Flute Boy, watercolor by Kyoko Selden.
From the family’s personal collection.

This special issue edited by Alisa Freedman includes many of Kyoko Selden’s finest translations, including some not previously published. They reveal the range and depth of Kyoko’s interests and knowledge. Her interpretations of modern literature, of writings about the atomic bomb, and of fiction and poetry by women writers, are well known—but her translations of the fourteenth-century Taiheiki: The Chronicle of Great Peace and the Tokugawa era Hinin Taiheiki: The Paupers’ Chronicle of Peace, published for the first time in this issue, reveal her sure grasp of the classical canon as well. The power of Kyoko’s translation work, her ability to bring a new text into being, and the subtle creativity of her expression, are hallmarks of her achievements.

1 In Remembrance of Kyoko Selden
Mizuta Noriko, 1

2 Remembering Kyoko Selden
Brett de Bary, 3

3 Introduction to the Special Issue in Honor of Kyoko Selden
Alisa Freedman, 6

Continue reading “Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 27 (2015)”