Search results for ""university of hawai'i press""

Here Was Once the Sea features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction guest edited by Rina Garcia Chua, Esther Vincent Xueming, and Ann Ang. While many of these works are comprised mostly of anglophone texts, which reflects the aspirations of regional writers to speak across borders and to the globe at large, several native languages appear on these pages. Here, Southeast Asia refers to the constituent nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), namely, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as their associated diasporas. The writers and the peoples of the region live and remember more profoundly than we know. Their work explores the ecological across a multiscalar spectrum, featuring both geological landscapes and visceral botanical or animal entanglements, inheriting histories and spiritualities that defy and disrupt modern epistemologies. Together they represent a chorus of offerings, first and foremost to the land and the sea; and secondly to you, our readers, as an invitation to attend to the urgencies and travails of our homes. These are the stories we share and the stories we carry in our pasiking (basket) as we follow movements towards our destinies. These are the stories that sing of hope—for ourselves and for our world; ones that we whisper silently to ourselves as we touch our lips to the familiar earth and wait for the incoming monsoon rain to fall gently on our backs, our fields, our rivers.

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A rich collection focusing on the nexus between Buddhism and healing in the modern and contemporary world. Highlights the many ways Buddhists have adapted in response to and in dialogue with modern science, biomedicine, and other facets of modernity from the nineteenth century to today.

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In Japan the number of Special Permanent Residentsmost of whom are of Korean descentis declining. Does this mean Koreans living in Japan are becoming Japanese? This volume presents a compelling sociological analysis of Korean colonial migrants' and their descendants' politics of self-identification and their struggle for social justice.

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In Graphic Medicine, comics artists and scholars of life writing, literature, and comics explore the lived experience of illness and disability through original texts, images, and the dynamic interplay between the two. The essays and autobiographical comics in this collection respond to the medical humanities’ call for different perceptions and representations of illness and disability than those found in conventional medical discourse.The collection expands and troubles our understanding of the relationships between patients and doctors, nurses, social workers, caregivers, and family members, considering such encounters in terms of cultural context, language, gender, class, and ethnicity. By treating illness and disability as an experience of fundamentally changed living, rather than a separate narrative episode organized by treatment, recovery, and a return to "normal life," Graphic Medicine asks what it means to give and receive care.Comics by Safdar Ahmed, John Miers, and Suzy Becker, and illustrated essays by Nancy K. Miller and Jared Gardner show how life writing about illness and disability in comics offers new ways of perceiving the temporality of caring and living. Crystal Yin Lie and Julia Watson demonstrate how use of the page through panels, collages, and borderless images can draw the reader, as a "mute witness," into contact with the body as a site where intergenerational trauma is registered and expressed. Kiene Brillenburg Wurth examines how microscripts productively extend graphic medicine beyond comics to "outsider art." JoAnn Purcell and Susan Squier display how comics artists respond to and reflect upon their caring relationship with those diagnosed with an intellectual disability. And Erin La Cour interrogates especially difficult representations of relationality and care.During the past decade, graphic medicine comics have proliferated—an outpouring accelerated recently by the greatest health crisis in a century. Edited by Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti, Graphic Medicine helps us recognize that however unpleasant or complicated it may be, interacting with such stories offers fresh insights, suggests new forms of acceptance, and enhances our abilities to speak to others about the experience of illness and disability.

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What does it take for ordinary citizens to risk everything to protest living under a repressive government? What takes them beyond the brink, to the "boiling point"? In his graphic novel 100°C, celebrated webtoon and comics artist Choi Kyu-sok sheds a light on these questions by examining the lives of one family caught up in the great social unrest that developed under Chun Doo-hwan’s regime and culminated in the June 1987 Uprising. Crucial to understanding the events of the summer of 1987 is the recognition of both the political context and the dynamics of the nationwide effort that included students, office workers, and religious and labor groups—all of whom came together to demand a new constitution and free elections. Choi’s is a measured yet powerful representation of a pivotal moment in Korean history, when individuals questioned the status quo, when parents joined their children to express their grievances and agitate for democratic reforms, when an entire nation chose to move in a new direction.

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Conflict in a Buddhist Society presents a new way of looking at Tibet under the rule of the Dalai Lamas (1642-1959). Although this era can be clearly delineated as a distinct period in the history of Tibet, many questions remain concerning the specific form of rule established. Author Peter Schwieger attempts to make transparent the complexity and dynamics of the Dalai Lamas' domination using the work of sociologist Niklas Luhman (1927-1998) as his theoretical starting point. Luhman's systems theory allows Schwieger to approach Tibetan history and culture as a remarkable effort to create-under times of great conflict and stress and using uncommon means-a stable social and political order. Such a methodology provides the distance needed to move beyond event-based narrative history and understand the structures that made social action possible in Tibet and the operations by which its society as a whole distinguished itself from its environment.Schwieger begins by asking the crucial question of how Tibet's society dealt with conflict. The chapters that follow answer this question from various perspectives: history and memory; domination; hierarchy; center and periphery; semantics; morality and ethics; ritual; law; and war. Each reveals a different avenue for cross-cutting discourses in the historical and social sciences. Together, they provide a comprehensive picture of how conflicts were portrayed in Tibet society and how the manner in which they were handled stabilized the country for a considerable time but were ultimately unsuccessful in the face of radical upheavals in its environment. Situated at the intersection of systems theory, conflict theory, and Tibetan/Inner Asian history and society, Conflict in a Buddhist Society will be of considerable interest to students and scholars in these areas. Its theoretical rather than narrative-descriptive approach to the history of the three centuries of Dalai Lama rule will be welcomed as wide-ranging and insightful.

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This is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Intermediate 2, the fourth volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. All the series' volumes have been developed in accordance with performance-based principles and methodology-contextualization, learner-centeredness, use of authentic materials, usage-orientedness, balance between skill getting and skill using, and integration of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. Grammar points are systematically introduced in simple but adequate explanations and abundant examples and exercises.Each situation/topic-based lesson of the main texts consists of model dialogues, narration, new words and expressions, vocabulary notes, culture, grammar, usage, and English translation of dialogues. In response to comments from hundreds of students and instructors of the second edition, this new third edition features an attractive color design with new photos and drawings and lesson and vocabulary exercises that have been fully reorganized. Each lesson contains a conversational text (with its own vocabulary list) and a reading passage. The accompanying workbook provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.Integrated Korean is a project of the Korean Language Education and Research Center (KLEAR) with the support of the Korea Foundation. In addition to the five-level Integrated Korean textbooks and workbooks, volumes include Korean Composition, Korean Language in Culture and Society, Korean Reader for Chinese Characters, Readings in Modern Korean Literature, A Resource for Korean Grammar Instruction, and Selected Readings in Korean.

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In Everything Ancient Was Once New, Emalani Case explores Indigenous persistence through the concept of Kahiki, a term that is at once both an ancestral homeland for Kānaka Maoli (Hawaiians) and the knowledge that there is life to be found beyond Hawaiʻi's shores. It is therefore both a symbol of ancestral connection and the potential that comes with remembering and acting upon that connection.Tracing physical, historical, intellectual, and spiritual journeys to and from Kahiki, Emalani frames it as a place of refuge and sanctuary, a place where ancient knowledge can constantly be made anew. It is in Kahiki, she argues, and in the sanctuary it creates, that today's Kānaka Maoli can find safety and reprieve from the continued onslaught of settler colonial violence, while also confronting some of the often uncomfortable and challenging realities of being Indigenous in Hawaiʻi, in the Pacific, and in the world.Each chapter of the book engages with Kahiki as a shifting term, employed by Kānaka Maoli to explain their lives and experiences to themselves at different points in history. In doing so, Everything Ancient Was Once New proposes and argues for reactivated and reinvigorated engagements with Kahiki, each supporting ongoing work aimed at decolonizing physical and ideological spaces, and reconnecting Kānaka Maoli to other peoples and places in the Pacific region and beyond in ways that are both purposeful and meaningful. In the book, Kahiki is therefore traced through pivotal moments in history and critical moments in contemporary times, explaining that while not always mentioned by name, the idea of Kahiki was, and is, always full of potential. In writing that is both personal and theoretical, Emalani weaves the past and the present together, reflecting on ancient concepts and their continued relevance in movements to protect lands, waters, and oceans; to fight for social justice; to reexamine our responsibilities and obligations to each other across the Pacific region; and to open space for continued dialogue on what it means to be Indigenous both when at home and when away. Combining personal narrative and reflection with research and critical analysis, Everything Ancient Was Once New journeys to and from Kahiki, the sanctuary for reflection, deep learning, and continued dreaming with the past, in the present, and far into the future.

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Hawaii’s 100th Infantry Battalion Separa​​​te was the first U.S. Army combat unit​ composed of Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJAs). Its original members had been inducted into the Army before Japanese planes swept down on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. How the loyalty of these soldiers was questioned by other Americans, then put to the test, and finally proved beyond doubt on the battlefields of Europe is the subject of this book.Sometimes called the Purple Heart Battalion because of its casualty lists, the 100th established a record in Italy and France which made it one of the most decorated units in the history of the U.S. Army. Describing the Italian campaign General Mark W. Clark wrote: "I should mention here that a bright spot in this period was the performance of the 100th Battalion...it fought magnificently...These Nisei troops seemed to be very conscious of the fact that they had an opportunity to prove the loyalty of many thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry and they willingly paid a high price to achieve that goal. I was proud to have them in the Fifth Army."While the book is primarily about the young AJAs, there is another group of men who should be remembered. After Pearl Harbor, when thousands were clamoring for wholesale evacuation and internment of all Japanese Americans, a few individuals refused to doubt "because it would belittle the value of our American institutions." Speaking of one of these men of faith, the editor of a Honolulu newspaper wrote, "We were at the crossroads in that terrible December and it was largely due to (his) courage and influence that Hawaii took the right turn instead of the wrong. . . . The entire community and the nation owe him a debt of gratitude for his part in persuading us that we were justified in trying out the democratic ideals we had professed."Ambassadors in Arms, then, is a story not only of loyalty and courage but of faith.

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This book introduces contemporary Buddhists from across Asia and from various walks of life. Eschewing traditional hagiographies, the editors have collected sixty-six profiles of individuals who would be excluded from most Buddhist histories and ethnographies. In addition to monks and nuns, readers will encounter artists, psychologists, social workers, part-time priests, healers, and librarians as well as charlatans, hucksters, profiteers, and rabble-rousers—all whose lives reflect changes in modern Buddhism even as they themselves shape the course of these changes. The editors and contributors are fundamentally concerned with how individual Buddhists make meaning and display this understanding to others. Some practitioners profiled look to the past, lamenting the transformations Buddhism has undergone in recent times, while others embrace these. Some have adopted a “new asceticism,” while others are eager to explore different religious traditions as they think about their own ways of being Buddhist. Arranging the profiles according to these themes—looking backward, forward, inward, and outward—reveals the value of studying individual Buddhists and their idiosyncratic religious backgrounds and attitudes, thus highlighting the diversity of approaches to the practice and study of Buddhism in Asia today. Students and teachers will welcome sections on further readings and additional tables of contents that organize the profiles thematically, as well as by tradition (Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), region, and country.

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During the 1885 to 1924 immigration period of sugar plantation laborers from Japan to Hawaii, more than 200,000 Japanese, mostly single men, made the long journey by ship to Hawaii. As it became apparent that they would never return to Japan, many of the men sent for brides to join them in their adopted home. More than 20,000 of these ""picture brides"" immigrated from Japan and Okinawa to Hawaii to marry husbands whom they knew only through photographs exchanged between them or their families.Based on Barbara Kawakami's first-hand interviews with sixteen of these women, Picture Bride Stories is a poignant collection that recounts the diverse circumstances that led them to marry strangers, their voyages to Hawaii, the surprises and trials that they encountered upon arriving, and the lives they led upon settling in a strange new land. Many found hardship, yet persevered and endured the difficult working and living conditions of the sugarcane plantations for the sake of their children. As they acclimated to a foreign place and forged new relationships, they overcame challenges and eventually prospered in a better life. The stories of the issei women exemplify the importance of friendships and familial networks in coping with poverty and economic security. Although these remarkable women are gone, their legacy lives on in their children, grandchildren, and succeeding generations.In addition to the oral histories—the result of forty years of interviews—the author provides substantial background on marriage customs and labor practices on the plantations.

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The aim of this book is to provide the student of Japanese 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.The author begins with writing the kanji because—contrary to first impressions—it is in fact simpler than learning how to the pronounce them. By ordering the kanji according to their component parts or “primitive elements,” and then assigning each of these parts a distinct meaning with its own distinct image, the student is led to harness the powers of “imaginative memory” to learn the various combinations that make up the kanji. In addition, each kanji is given its own key word to represent the meaning, or one of the principal meanings, of that character. These key words provide the setting for a particular kanji’s “story,” whose protagonists are the primitive elements.In this way, one is able to complete in a few short months a task that would otherwise take years. Armed with the same skills as Chinese or Korean students, who know the meaning and writing of the kanji but not their Japanese pronunciations, one is then in a much better position to learn the readings (which are treated in a separate volume).Remembering the Kanji has helped tens of thousands of students advance towards literacy at their own pace, and to acquire a facility that traditional methods have long since given up on as all but impossible for those not raised with the kanji from childhood. The 6th edition has been updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010 as “general-use” kanji.

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A Far Away Familiar Place: An Anthropologist Returns to Papua New Guinea is for readers seeking an excursion deep into little-known terrain but allergic to the wide-eyed superfi ciality of ordinary travel literature. Author Michael French Smith savors the sometimes gritty romance of his travels to an island village far from roads, electricity, telephone service, and the Internet, but puts to rest the cliché of “Stone Age” Papua New Guinea. He also gives the lie to stereotypes of anthropologists as either machete-wielding swashbucklers or detached observers turning real people into abstractions. Smith uses his anthropological expertise subtly, to illuminate Papua New Guinean lives, to nudge readers to look more closely at ideas they take for granted, and to take a wry look at his own experiences as an anthropologist.

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This book is the second of two volumes designed to help students learn the meaning and writing of the 3,000 most frequently used traditional Chinese characters. (A parallel set of volumes has been prepared for simplified characters.) The 1,500 characters introduced in Book 1 include the top 1,000 by frequency, plus another 500 best learned at an early stage. Book 2 adds the remaining 1,500 characters to complete the set.The lessons of Book 2 have been arranged in such a way that they may be studied either after those of Book 1 or simultaneously with them. Students who wish to focus initially on the 1,000 most frequently used characters in the language can do so by studying Book 1 before moving on to Book 2. Many, if not most, learners will find this preferable. Students who wish to apply the logical ordering found in these pages to the entire list of 3,000 characters from the very beginning can take the more exacting, but also more rationally satisfying, approach of studying the parallel lessons of the two volumes together.The lessons in this book are followed by two short, additional sections, one that introduces a number of “compounds,” or characters that are best learned in pairs, and another that adds two “postscripts.” The book also includes a number of comprehensive indexes that are designed to facilitate work with both volumes. Of central importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memory. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters. These characters, in turn, can serve as parts of more complicated characters, and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process.Guidance and detailed instructions are provided all along the way. Students are taught to employ “imaginative memory” to associate each character’s component parts or “primitive elements” with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through creation of a “story” that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable ways, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping prevent characters from slipping out of memory.

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Experienced and novice hikers alike will benefit from the information in this updated and expanded edition of the best-selling The Hikers Guide to O‘ahu. The author describes in detail 52 trails that will take you to O‘ahu’s lush valleys, cascading waterfalls, windswept ridges, and remote seacoasts. Although 8 trails from the previous edition are no longer open to the public, 10 new hikes have been added. Included for each hike are directions for reaching the trailhead, a detailed route description, and information on the length of the hike, degree of difficulty, and trail conditions.For GPS users, UTM coordinates have been added for the midpoint or endpoint of each route. An expanded notes section will help readers identify geological features, historical points of interest, and commonly encountered plants and birds along the trail.

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Demon warrior puppets, sword-wielding Taoist priests, spirit mediums lacerating their bodies with spikes and blades―these are among the most dramatic images in Chinese religion. Usually linked to the propitiation of plague gods and the worship of popular military deities, such ritual practices have an obvious but previously unexamined kinship with the traditional Chinese martial arts.The long and durable history of martial arts iconography and ritual in Chinese religion suggests something far deeper than mere historical coincidence. Avron Boretz argues that martial arts gestures and movements are so deeply embedded in the ritual repertoire in part because they iconify masculine qualities of violence, aggressivity, and physical prowess, the implicit core of Chinese patriliny and patriarchy. At the same time, for actors and audience alike, martial arts gestures evoke the mythos of the jianghu, a shadowy, often violent realm of vagabonds, outlaws, and masters of martial and magic arts. Through the direct bodily practice of martial arts movement and creative rendering of jianghu narratives, martial ritual practitioners are able to identify and represent themselves, however briefly and incompletely, as men of prowess, a reward otherwise denied those confined to the lower limits of this deeply patriarchal society.Based on fieldwork in China and Taiwan spanning nearly two decades, Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters offers a thorough and original account of violent ritual and ritual violence in Chinese religion and society. Close-up, sensitive portrayals and the voices of ritual actors themselves―mostly working-class men, many of them members of sworn brotherhoods and gangs―convincingly link martial ritual practice to the lives and desires of men on the margins of Chinese society. This work is a significant contribution to the study of Chinese ritual and religion, the history and sociology of Chinese underworld, the history and anthropology of the martial arts, and the anthropology of masculinity.

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Pierre Loti's novel ""Madame Chrysantheme"" (1888) enjoyed great popularity during the author's lifetime, served as a source of Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, and remains in print to this day as a classic in Western literature. Loti's story describes the affair between a French naval officer and Chrysantheme, a temporary 'bride' purchased in Nagasaki. More broadly, Loti's novel helped define the terms in which Occidentals perceived Japan as delicate, feminine, and, to use one of Loti's favorite words, 'preposterous' - in short, ripe for exploitation. Written by Felix Regamey, a talented illustrator with firsthand knowledge of Japan, ""The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysantheme"" (1893) retells Loti's story but this time as the diary of Chrysantheme. The book, presented here in English for the first time and together with the original French text and illustrations by Regamey and others, is certainly surprising in its late nineteenth-century context. Its retelling of a classic tale from the position of a character marginalized by her sex and race provocatively anticipates certain aspects of postmodern literature. Translator Christopher Reed, whose rich and satisfying introduction provides intellectual context, includes new translations of excerpts from Loti's novel as well as a portion of the travel journal of Regamey's travel companion, the renowned collector Emile Guimet.

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In this suspenseful tale of seduction and deception, a wealthy banker is smitten by an alluring young woman while traveling aboard the express train from Beijing to Shanghai. A consummate storyteller and one of the most popular novelists of his day, Zhang Henshui sweeps us on board with them and takes us through train stations and back and forth between first, second, and third class cars, evoking the smells of this microcosm of the urban world. We see what various travelers wear; we hear their conversations; we feel the chill or the warmth of each car; we detect a trace of perfume in one, pickled vegetables and greasy meats in another. Here is popular Chinese fiction at its best.Shanghai Express was considered “entertainment” fiction and was enormously popular in the 1930s. William Lyell’s sparkling translation at last allows an English-reading audience to share in the fun.

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This collection of seventeen essays situates modern Shin Buddhist thinker Kiyozawa Manshi (1863–1903) and his new form of spirituality, Seishinshugi, in the broader context of Buddhism and religious thought in modern Japan. The work highlights several factors that led to the development of Kiyozawa’s ideas and demonstrates the broad influence that he and his disciples had, putting in relief both the events that led Kiyozawa to set forth his unique formulation of a modern Shin Buddhist religiosity in Seishinshugi and the ways in which those ideas became a force that shaped a large part of Japan’s religious landscape well past the middle of the twentieth century.The book is made up of historical studies that explore the significance of Seishinshugi from a variety of perspectives and chapters that attempt to introduce some of the original ideas of Seishinshugi thinkers and other modern Shin proponents such as Sasaki Gesshō (1875–1926) and Yasuda Rijin (1900–1982). The inclusion of several translations of recent Japanese scholarship on Kiyozawa and Seishinshugi provides a snapshot of the state of the field for Kiyozawa studies today in Japan.Several early chapters present issues that Kiyozawa addressed in his formulations of Seishinshugi. His relationship with Inoue Enryō (1858–1919) is discussed in depth, as is his understanding of the Tannishō and new research indicating that Seishinshugi might more closely represent the thought of Kiyozawa’s disciples than his own. This portion ends with a consideration of the reinvention of Kiyozawa’s historical image by his followers after his death. Later chapters bring together research into the specific ways in which Kiyozawa’s legacy shaped the Japanese religious and philosophical environment in the last century, including contributions on female spirituality as expressed in the Seishinshugi movement and the influence of Kiyozawa and Soga Ryōjin (1875–1971) on the Kyoto School and its implications. Other essays highlight approaches to finding meaning in Shin doctrines by Sasaki, Soga, and Yasuda, and how D. T. Suzuki, an Ōtani University colleague, fits into the movement as a whole.

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In Unpredictable Agents, twelve Japanese scholars of American studies tell their stories of how they encountered "America" and came to dedicate their careers to studying it. People in postwar Japan have experienced "America" in a number of ways—through literature, material goods, popular culture, foodways, GIs, missionaries, art, political figures, celebrities, and business. As the Japanese public wrestled with a complex mixture of admiration and confusion, yearning and repulsion, closeness and alienation toward the US, Japanese scholars specializing in American studies have become interlocutors in helping their compatriots understand the country. In scholarly literature, these intellectuals are often understood as complicit agents in US Cold War liberalism. By focusing on the human dimensions of the intellectuals’ lives and careers, Unpredictable Agents resists such a deterministic account of complicity while recognizing the relationship between power and knowledge and the historical and structural conditions in which these scholars and their work emerged. How did these scholars encounter "America" in the first place, and what exactly constitutes the "America" they have experienced? How did they come to be Americanists, and what does being Americanists mean for them? In short, what are the actual experiences of Japan’s Americanists, and what are their relationships to "America"? Reflecting both the interlocked web of politics, economics, and academics, as well as the evolving contours of Japan’s Americanists, the essays highlight the diverse paths through which these individuals have come to be "Americanists" and the complex meanings that identity carries for them. The stories reveal the obvious yet often neglected fact that Japanese scholars neither come from the same backgrounds nor occupy similar identities solely because of their shared ethnicity and citizenship. The authors were born in the period ranging from the 1940s to the 1980s in different parts of Japan—from Hokkaido to Okinawa—and raised in diverse familial and cultural environments, which shaped their identities as "Japanese" and their encounters with "America" in quite different ways. Together, the essays illustrate the complex positionalities, fluid identities, ambivalent embrace, and unpredictable agency of Japan’s Americanists who continue to chart their own course in and across the Pacific.

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Hawaiian: Past, Present, Future presents aspects of Hawaiian and its history that are rarely treated in language classes. The major characters in this book make up a diverse cast: Dutch merchants, Captain Cook’s naturalist and philologist William Anderson, ‘Ōpūkaha‘ia (the inspiration for the Hawaiian Mission), the American lexicographer Noah Webster, philologists in New England, missionary-linguists and their Hawaiian consultants, and many minor players.The account begins in prehistory, placing the probable origins of the ancestor of Polynesian languages in Mainland Asia. An evolving family tree reflects the linguistic changes that took place as these people moved east. The current versions are examined from a Hawaiian-centered point of view, comparing the sound system of the language with those of its major relatives in the Polynesian triangle. More recent historical topics begin with the first written samples of a Polynesian language in 1616, which led to the birth of the idea of a widespread language family. The next topic is how the Hawaiian alphabet was developed. The first efforts suffered from having too many letters, a problem that was solved in 1826 through brilliant reasoning by its framers and their Hawaiian consultants. The opposite problem was that the alphabet didn’t have enough letters: analysts either couldn’t hear or misinterpreted the glottal stop and long vowels. The end product of the development of the alphabet—literacy—is more complicated than some statistics would have us believe. As for its success or failure, both points of view, from contemporary observers, are presented. Still, it cannot be denied that literacy had a tremendous and lasting effect on Hawaiian culture.The last part of the book concentrates on the most-used Hawaiian reference works—dictionaries. It describes current projects that combine print and manuscript collections on a searchable website. These projects can include the growing body of manuscript and print material that is being made available through recent and on-going research. As for the future, a proposed monolingual dictionary would allow users to avoid an English bridge to understanding, and move directly to a definition that includes Hawaiian cultural features and a Hawaiian world view.

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This title gives us the many captivating stories behind the hundreds of Hawai'i place names associated with the ocean - the names of shores, beaches, and other sites where people fish, swim, dive, surf, and paddle. Significant features and landmarks on or near shores, such as fishponds, monuments, shrines, reefs, and small islands, are also included. The names of surfing sites are the most numerous and among the most colourful: from the purely descriptive (Black Rock, Blue Hole) to the humorous (No Can Tell, Pray for Sex).

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This is a thoroughly revised edition of Integrated Korean: Intermediate 1, the third volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. All the series' volumes have been developed in accordance with performance-based principles and methodology - contextualization, learner-centeredness, use of authentic materials, usage-orientedness, balance between skill getting and skill using, and integration of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. Grammar points are systematically introduced in simple but adequate explanations and abundant examples and exercises.Each situation/topic-based lesson of the main texts consists of model dialogues, narration, new words and expressions, vocabulary notes, culture, grammar, usage, and English translation of dialogues. In response to comments from hundreds of students and instructors of the second edition, this new third edition features an attractive color design with new photos and drawings and lesson and vocabulary exercises that have been fully reorganized. Each lesson contains a conversational text (with its own vocabulary list) and a reading passage. The accompanying workbook provides students with extensive skill-using activities based on the skills learned in the main text.Integrated Korean is a project of the Korean Language Education and Research Center (KLEAR) with the support of the Korean Foundation. In addition to the five-level Integrated Korean textbooks and workbooks, volumes include Korean Composition, Korean Language in Culture and Society, Korean Reader for Chinese Characters, Readings in Modern Korean Literature, A Resource for Korean Grammar Instruction, and Selected Readings in Korean.

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This workbook accompanies Integrated Korean: High Intermediate 1, the fifth volume of the best-selling series developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean. All volumes are developed according to performance-based methodology and principles: contextualization, learner-centeredness, use of authentic materials, function/task-orientedness, balance between skill-getting and skill-using, and integration of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. Grammar points are systematically introduced with simple but adequate explanations and abundant examples and exercises.Each situation/topic-based lesson consists of objectives, pre-lesson topics, and conversation, reading, further reading, and culture sections. Conversation and reading sections contain comprehension questions, grammar and usage, activities, and English translations. Integrated Korean is a project of the Korean Language Education and Research Center (KLEAR) with the support of the Korea Foundation. In addition to the five-level Integrated Korean textbooks and workbooks, volumes include Korean Composition, Korean Language in Culture and Society, Korean Reader for Chinese Characters, Readings in Modern Korean Literature, A Resource for Korean Grammar Instruction, and Selected Readings in Korean.Audio files for this volume may be downloaded in MP3 format

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In medieval Japan (14th–16th centuries), it was customary for elite families to entrust their young sons to the care of renowned Buddhist priests from whom they received a premier education in Buddhist scriptures, poetry, music, and dance. When the boys reached adolescence, some underwent coming-of-age rites, others entered the priesthood, and several extended their education, becoming chigo, or Buddhist acolytes. Chigo served their masters as personal attendants and as sexual partners. During religious ceremonies—adorned in colorful robes, their faces made up and hair styled in long ponytails—they entertained local donors and pilgrims with music and dance. Stories of acolytes (chigo monogatari) from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries form the basis of the present volume, an original and detailed literary analysis of six tales coupled with a thorough examination of the sociopolitical, religious, and cultural matrices that produced these texts.Sachi Schmidt-Hori begins by delineating various dimensions of chigo (the chigo "title," personal names, gender, sexuality, class, politics, and religiosity) to show the complexity of this cultural construct—the chigo as a triply liminal figure who is neither male nor female, child nor adult, human nor deity. A modern reception history of chigo monogatari follows, revealing, not surprisingly, that the tales have often been interpreted through cultural paradigms rooted in historical moments and worldviews far removed from the original. From the 1950s to 1980s, research on chigo was hindered by widespread homophobic prejudice. More recently, aversion to the age gap in historical master-acolyte relations has prevented scholars from analyzing the religious and political messages underlying the genre. Schmidt-Hori’s work calls for a shift in the hermeneutic strategies applied to chigo and chigo monogatari and puts forth both a nuanced historicization of social constructs such as gender, sexuality, age, and agency, and a mode of reading propelled by curiosity and introspection.

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Mata Austronesia is a collection of illustrated stories told by Austronesians past and present—an (ethno)graphic novel. Mata, the word for "eye" in numerous Austronesian languages, represents the common origin of the many distinctive Austronesian peoples spread throughout their vast oceanic realm. The tales in this book immerse us in the beauty of this shared heritage, ancestral memory, and cultural legacy.Millennia before the first Europeans ventured into the Pacific, Austronesian explorers sailing aboard their outrigger and double-hulled voyaging canoes had already found, settled, and succeeded in thriving on thousands of islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. From Madagascar to Rapa Nui, Austronesia is a diverse, complex, and extensive ethnolinguistic region stretching across more than half of the Earth’s saltwater expanse.This work showcases the abundance of unique identities, histories, ethnicities, cultures, languages, and storytelling traditions among people of Austronesian descent. Modern-day storytellers weave the past and present into a tapestry of tales passed down orally through generations and contextualize the staggering immensity of the cosmos, imparting meaning to visible and invisible realms. Formed over thousands of years, the wisdom of Indigenous Austronesians teaches us vital and contemporarily applicable lessons on living in harmony with each other and our planet.Mata Austronesia opens fresh avenues of connection and conversation between Austronesian peoples who live on their native islands and in diaspora, who are both unified and long-separated by oceans of time, space, and Western colonial and cartographic impositions. It includes stories from Ka Pae ‘Aina o Hawai‘i, Rapa Nui, Tahiti, Taha‘a, Kanaky (New Caledonia), Guåhan (Guam), Aotearoa (New Zealand), Viti (Fiji), Bali, Sulawesi (Celebes), Bohol (Visayas), Tutuila (American Samoa), Kiritimati (Christmas Island), Banaba (Ocean Island), and Madagasikara (Madagascar). With each hand-painted watercolor brushstroke, Tuki Drake invites friends and family of all heritages to fall in love with our shared ocean world.

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Developed collaboratively by leading classroom teachers and linguists of Korean, High Intermediate replaces Advanced Intermediate as the third-year textbook in the popular Korean language-learning series Integrated Korean. All volumes are developed according to performance-based methodology and principles: contextualization, learner-centeredness, use of authentic materials, function/task-orientedness, balance between skill-getting and skill-using, and integration of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and culture. Grammar points are systematically introduced with simple but adequate explanations and abundant examples and exercises.Each situation/topic-based lesson consists of objectives, pre-lesson topics, and conversation reading, further reading, and culture sections. Conversation and reading sections contain comprehension questions, grammar and usage, activities, and English translations. Vocabulary for each lesson appears conveniently at the bottom of the page.Integrated Korean is a project of the Korean Language Education and Research Center (KLEAR) with the support of the Korea Foundation. In addition to the five-level Integrated Korean textbooks and workbooks, volumes include Korean Reader for Chinese Characters, Korean Composition, Selected Readings in Korean, Readings in Modern Korean Literature, Korean Language in Culture and Society, and A Resource for Korean Grammar Instruction. A dictionary of Korean grammar and usage is forthcoming.

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Long Strange Journey presents the first critical analysis of visual objects and discourses that animate Zen art modernism and its legacies, with particular emphasis on the postwar “Zen boom.” Since the late nineteenth century, Zen and Zen art have emerged as globally familiar terms associated with a spectrum of practices, beliefs, works of visual art, aesthetic concepts, commercial products, and modes of self-fashioning. They have also been at the center of fiery public disputes that have erupted along national, denominational, racial-ethnic, class, and intellectual lines. Neither stable nor strictly a matter of euphoric religious or intercultural exchange, Zen and Zen art are best approached as productive predicaments in the study of religion, spirituality, art, and consumer culture, especially within the frame of Buddhist modernism. Long Strange Journey's modern-contemporary emphasis sets it off from most writing on Zen art, which focuses on masterworks by premodern Chinese and Japanese artists, gushes over “timeless” visual qualities as indicative of metaphysical states, or promotes with ahistorical, trend-spotting flair Zen art’s design appeal and therapeutic values. In contrast, the present work plots a methodological through line distinguished by “discourse analysis,” moving from the first contacts between Europe and Japanese Zen in the sixteenth century to late nineteenth–early twentieth-century transnational exchanges driven by Japanese Buddhists and intellectuals and the formation of a Zen art canon; to postwar Zen transformations of practice and avant-garde expressions; to popular embodiments of our “Zenny zeitgeist,” such as Zen cartoons. The book presents an alternative history of modern-contemporary Zen and Zen art that emphasizes their unruly and polythetic-prototypical natures, taking into consideration serious religious practice and spiritual and creative discovery as well as conflicts over Zen’s value amid the convolutions of global modernity, squabbles over authenticity, resistance against the notion of “Zen influence,” and competing claims to speak for Zen art made by monastics, lay advocates, artists, and others.

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Watching movies every night at home with his cats, film scholar and cat lover Daisuke Miyao noticed how frequently cats turned up on screen. They made brief appearances (think of Mafia boss Marlon Brando gently stroking a cat in a scene from The Godfather); their looks provided inspiration to film creators (Avatar); they even held major roles (The Lion King). In Cinema Is a Cat, Miyao uses the fascinating relationship between cats and cinema to offer a uniquely appealing introduction to film studies.Cats are representational subjects in the nine films explored in this book, and each chapter juxtaposes a feline characteristic—their love of dark places, their "star" quality—with discussion of the theories and histories of cinema. The opening chapters explore three basic elements of the language of cinema: framing, lighting, and editing. Subsequent chapters examine the contexts in which films are made, exhibited, and viewed. Miyao covers the major theoretical and methodological concepts of film studies—auteurism, realism, genre, feminist film theory, stardom, national cinema, and modernity theory—exploring fundamental questions. Who is the author of a film? How does a film connect to reality? What connections does one film have to other films? Who is represented in a film and how? How is a film viewed differently by people of different cultural and social backgrounds? How is a film located in history? His focus on the innate qualities of cats—acting like prima donnas, born of mixed blood, devoted to the chase—offers a memorable and appealing approach to the study of film.How to read audio-visual materials aesthetically and culturally is of limitless value in a world where we are constantly surrounded by moving images—television, video, YouTube, streaming, GPS, and virtual reality. Cinema Is a Cat offers an accessible, user-friendly approach that will deepen viewers’ appreciation of movies, from Hollywood classics like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and To Catch a Thief, to Japanese period dramas like Samurai Cat. The book will be attractive to a wide audience of students and scholars, movie devotees, and cat lovers.

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White Terns are native throughout the world’s tropics and subtropics, where they breed almost exclusively on remote islands that are free of predators like cats, dogs, rats, and mongooses. Historically, this was also true in Hawai‘i, but in 1961 a pair of White Terns laid an egg and raised a chick near Hanauma Bay. Since then their numbers in the city of Honolulu have steadily increased, and in 2007 the White Tern, also known by its Hawaiian name, Manu-o-Ku, was designated the official bird of the City and County of Honolulu.Other native seabirds nest on O‘ahu and its nearby islands, but the graceful White Tern is the only species known to lay its eggs in the city’s nonnative trees, on window ledges, and on other man-made structures, making Honolulu unique among world cities. People who live in apartment buildings and work in office towers can watch parents brooding eggs and feeding chicks. An energetic fishing bird, the Manu-o-Ku can fly far from land in its search for fish and squid. Sailors on traditional voyaging canoes keep a close eye on them: as the sun starts to go down, the birds head home, effectively providing the bearing of nearby islands.Today, White Terns are a common sight in Honolulu, from downtown parks to Nu‘uanu and Manoa valleys to bustling Waikiki, and the photogenic birds are gaining in popularity as their range increases. In bringing together data about White Terns from here and abroad, marine biologist Susan Scott has crafted a reliable, informative resource filled with remarkable photographs for anyone curious about Manu-o-Ku, Honolulu’s official bird.

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Philosophy challenges our assumptions—especially when it comes to us from another culture. In exploring Japanese philosophy, a dependable guide is essential. The present volume, written by a renowned authority on the subject, offers readers a historical survey of Japanese thought that is both comprehensive and comprehensible.Adhering to the Japanese philosophical tradition of highlighting engagement over detachment, Thomas Kasulis invites us to think with, as well as about, the Japanese masters by offering ample examples, innovative analogies, thought experiments, and jargon-free explanations. He assumes little previous knowledge and addresses themes—aesthetics, ethics, the samurai code, politics, among others—not in a vacuum but within the conditions of Japan’s cultural and intellectual history. For readers new to Japanese studies, he provides a simplified guide to pronouncing Japanese and a separate discussion of the language and how its syntax, orthography, and linguistic layers can serve the philosophical purposes of a skilled writer and subtle thinker. For those familiar with the Japanese cultural tradition but less so with philosophy, Kasulis clarifies philosophical expressions and problems, Western as well as Japanese, as they arise.Half of the book’s chapters are devoted to seven major thinkers who collectively represent the full range of Japan’s historical epochs and philosophical traditions: Kukai, Shinran, Dogen, Ogyu Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, Nishida Kitaro, and Watsuji Tetsuro. Nuanced details and analyses enable an engaged understanding of Japanese Buddhism, Confucianism, Shinto, and modern academic philosophy. Other chapters supply social and cultural background, including brief discussions of nearly a hundred other philosophical writers. (For additional information, cross references to material in the companion volume Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook are included.) In his closing chapter Kasulis reflects on lessons from Japanese philosophy that enhance our understanding of philosophy itself. He reminds us that philosophy in its original sense means loving wisdom, not studying ideas. In that regard, a renewed appreciation of engaged knowing can play a critical role in the revitalization of philosophy in the West as well as the East.

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China's role in the history of world animation has been trivialized or largely forgotten. In Animated Encounters Daisy Yan Du addresses this omission in her study of Chinese animation and its engagement with international forces during its formative period, the 1940s-1970s. She introduces readers to transnational movements in early Chinese animation, tracing the involvement of Japanese, Soviet, American, Taiwanese, and China's ethnic minorities, at socio-historical or representational levels, in animated filmmaking in China. Du argues that Chinese animation was international almost from its inception and that such border-crossing exchanges helped make it ""Chinese"" and subsequently transform the history of world animation. She highlights animated encounters and entanglements to provide an alternative to current studies of the subject characterized by a preoccupation with essentialist ideas of ""Chineseness"" and further questions the long-held belief that the forty-year-period in question was a time of cultural isolationism for China due to constant wars and revolutions.China's socialist era, known for the pervasiveness of its political propaganda and suppression of the arts, unexpectedly witnessed a golden age of animation. Socialist collectivism, reinforced by totalitarian politics and centralized state control, allowed Chinese animation to prosper and flourish artistically. In addition, the double marginality of animation—a minor art form for children—coupled with its disarming qualities and intrinsic malleability and mobility, granted animators and producers the double power to play with politics and transgress ideological and geographical borders while surviving censorship, both at home and abroad.A fascinating and enlightening history, Animated Encounters will attract scholars and students of world film and animation studies, children's culture, and modern Chinese history.

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Written by scholars of various disciplines, the essays in this volume dig beneath the veneer of Hawai‘i’s myth as a melting pot paradise to uncover historical and complicated cross-racial dynamics. Race is not the primary paradigm through which Hawai‘i is understood. Instead, ethnic difference is celebrated as a sign of multicultural globalism that designates Hawai‘i as the crossroads of the Pacific. Racial inequality is disruptive to the tourist image of the islands. It ruptures the image of tolerance, diversity, and happiness upon which tourism, business, and so many other vested transnational interests in the islands are based. The contributors of this interdisciplinary volume reconsider Hawai‘i as a model of ethnic and multiracial harmony through the lens of race in their analysis of historical events, group relations and individual experiences, and humor, among other focal points. Beyond Ethnicity examines the dynamics between race, ethnicity, and indigeneity to challenge the primacy of ethnicity and cultural practices for examining difference in the islands while recognizing the significant role of settler colonialism in the islands. This original and thought-provoking volume reveals what a racial analysis illuminates about the current political configuration of the islands and in so doing, challenges how we conceptualize race on the continent.Recognizing the ways that Native Hawaiians or Kanaka Maoli are impacted by shifting, violent, and hierarchical colonial structures that include racial inequalities, the editors and contributors explore questions of personhood and citizenship through language, land, labor, and embodiment. By admitting to these tensions and ambivalences, the editors set the pace and tempo of powerfully argued essays that engage with the various ways that Kanaka Maoli and the influx of differentially racialized settlers continue to shift the social, political, and cultural terrains of the Hawaiian Islands over time.

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Davida Malo’s Moʻolelo Hawaiʻi is the single most important description of pre-Christian Hawaiian culture. Malo, born in 1795, twenty-five years before the coming of Christianity to Hawaiʻi, wrote about everything from traditional cosmology and accounts of ancestral chiefs to religion and government to traditional amusements. The heart of this two-volume work is a new, critically edited text of Malo’s original Hawaiian, including the manuscript known as the "Carter copy," handwritten by him and two helpers in the decade before his death in 1853. Volume 1 provides images of the original text, side by side with the new edited text. Volume 2 presents the edited Hawaiian text side by side with a new annotated English translation. Malo’s text has been edited at two levels. First, the Hawaiian has been edited through a careful comparison of all the extant manuscripts, attempting to restore Malo’s original text, with explanations of the editing choices given in the footnotes. Second, the orthography of the Hawaiian text has been modernized to help today’s readers of Hawaiian by adding diacritical marks (‘okina and kahakō, or glottal stop and macron, respectively) and the punctuation has been revised to signal the end of clauses and sentences. The new English translation attempts to remain faithful to the edited Hawaiian text while avoiding awkwardness in the English.Both volumes contain substantial introductions. The introduction to Volume 1 (in Hawaiian) discusses the manuscripts of Malo’s text and their history. The introduction to Volume 2 contains two essays that provide context to help the reader understand Malo’s Moolelo Hawaii. "Understanding Malo’s Moolelo Hawaii" describes the nature of Malo’s work, showing that it is the result of his dual Hawaiian and Western education. "The Writing of the Moolelo Hawaii" discusses how the Carter copy was written and preserved, its relationship to other versions of the text, and Malo’s plan for the work as a whole. The introduction is followed by a new biography of Malo by Kanaka Maoli historian Noelani Arista, "Davida Malo, a Hawaiian Life," describing his life as a chiefly counselor and Hawaiian intellectual.

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Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. This book explores the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam.

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Intermediate Tagalog is a pioneering language text that gives students a grasp of the social rules of the language as well as the linguistic rules. Designed for students who have learned the basic skills and mastered a vocabulary of frequently used words, Intermediate Tagalog goes beyond language learning to genuine communication.The lessons use culture-loaded exchanges as well as everyday conversation to give insight into Filipino thought and behavior. For example. the student learns not to acknowledge a compliment with the standard American "thank you," but rather to downgrade what is being complimented and then to return the compliment. Each dialog is followed by cultural notes that supply possible alternate responses as well as offer comparisons with the way a similar conversation might take place between Americans.For Filipino-Americans who want to learn about their cultural heritage and for Americans who want to learn about Filipinos, Intermediate Tagalog explores value concepts while developing linguistic and sociolinguistic skills. Written in a clear and readable style, this book is a significant contribution to the teaching of Tagalog and Filipino culture.

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He mea hoomanao no na hana oia au i hala, a he mea hoi e poina ole ai i na mamo o keia la a mau aku." A memorial for the events of the past, and something to ensure that the children of today and forever more will never forget.—Kaʻohuhaʻaheoinākuahiwiʻekolu, Ka Hoku o HawaiiNā Hoʻonanea o ka Manawa, translated as Pleasurable Pastimes, is a delightful collection of tales and descriptions of life in the northern region of Kona on the island of Hawaiʻi. These moʻolelo (stories) from the arid land known as Kekaha WaiʻOle ONā Kona contain the name, location, and nature of hundreds of wahi pana (storied sites) and extensive listings of moon phases, calendrics, counting methods, and plant names—all of which make this assembly a treasury of local knowledge and cultural traditions that extend far beyond the region. Beginning on September 13, 1923, a series of articles titled Na Hoonanea o ka Manawa appeared weekly in Ka Hoku o Hawaii, a Hilo-based Hawaiian-language newspaper of Hawaiʻi’s territorial period, until its closure on August 28, 1924.The author of the series, J. W. H. Isaac Kihe, writing under the name Ka ʻOhu Haʻaheo I Nā Kuahiwi ʻEkolu, was a knowledgeable and prolific contributor to Ka Hoku o Hawaii. Proud of his heritage and concerned about the possible erasure of the cultural knowledge and practices of his homeland, Kihe believed that by documenting and disseminating this information through the press, he could help circumvent its loss and provide an invaluable resource for the people of his time and for generations to come. One hundred years later, this book presents the complete collection of scanned articles alongside thoughtful English translations by Kilika Bennett and Puakea Nogelmeier, as well as indexes of the named places, people, winds, rains, plants, and animals. In a time when many are looking to remember, relearn, revive, and reintegrate Native Hawaiian knowledge, traditions, and resource management practices, this republication of Kihe’s work is a much-needed contribution.

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In this anthology of contemporary eco-literature, the editors have gathered an ensemble of a hundred emerging, mid-career, and established Indigenous writers from Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and the global Pacific diaspora. This book itself is an ecological form with rhizomatic roots and blossoming branches. Within these pages, the reader will encounter a wild garden of genres, including poetry, chant, short fiction, novel excerpts, creative nonfiction, visual texts, and even a dramatic play—all written in multilingual offerings of English, Pacific languages, pidgin, and translation. Seven main themes emerge: "Creation Stories and Genealogies," "Ocean and Waterscapes," "Land and Islands," "Flowers, Plants, and Trees," "Animals and More-than-Human Species," "Climate Change," and "Environmental Justice." This aesthetic diversity embodies the beautiful bio-diversity of the Pacific itself.The urgent voices in this book call us to attention—to action!—at a time of great need. Pacific ecologies and the lives of Pacific Islanders are currently under existential threat due to the legacy of environmental imperialism and the ongoing impacts of climate change. While Pacific writers celebrate the beauty and cultural symbolism of the ocean, islands, trees, and flowers, they also bravely address the frightening realities of rising sea levels, animal extinction, nuclear radiation, military contamination, and pandemics.Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures reminds us that we are not alone; we are always in relation and always ecological. Humans, other species, and nature are interrelated; land and water are central concepts of identity and genealogy; and Earth is the sacred source of all life, and thus should be treated with love and care. With this book as a trusted companion, we are inspired and empowered to reconnect with the world as we navigate towards a precarious yet hopeful future.

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Reframing Disability in Manga analyzes popular Japanese manga published from the 1990s to the present that portray the everyday lives of adults and children with disabilities in an ableist society. It focuses on five representative conditions currently classified as shōgai (disabilities) in Japan - deafness, blindness, paraplegia, autism, and gender identity disorder - and explores the complexities and sociocultural issues surrounding each. Author Yoshiko Okuyama begins by looking at preindustrial understandings of difference in Japanese myths and legends before moving on to an overview of contemporary representations of disability in popular culture, uncovering sociohistorical attitudes toward the physically, neurologically, or intellectually marked Other. She critiques how characters with disabilities have been represented in mass media, which has reinforced ableism in society and negatively influenced our understanding of human diversity in the past. Okuyama then presents fifteen case studies, each centered on a manga or manga series, that showcase how careful depictions of such characters as differently abled, rather than disabled or impaired, can influence cultural constructions of shōgai and promote social change. Informed by numerous interviews with manga authors and disability activists, Okuyama reveals positive messages of diversity embedded in manga and argues that greater awareness of disability in Japan in the last two decades is due in part to the popularity of these works, the accessibility of the medium, and the authentic stories they tell. Scholars and students in disability studies will find this book an invaluable resource as well as those with interests in Japanese cultural and media studies in general and manga and queer narrative and anti-normative discourse in Japan in particular.

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What are the foundational scriptures and major schools for Chinese Buddhists? What divinities do they worship? What festivals do they celebrate? These are some of the basic questions addressed in this book, the first introduction to Chinese Buddhism written expressly for students and those interested in an accessible yet authoritative overview of the subject based on current scholarship.After presenting the basic tenets of the Buddha's teachings and the Chinese religious traditions, the book focuses on topics essential for understanding Chinese Buddhism: major scriptures, worship of buddhas and bodhisattvas, rituals and festivals, the monastic order, Buddhist schools such as Tiantai and Chan, Buddhism and gender, and current trends - notably humanistic Buddhism in Taiwan and the resurgence of Buddhism in post-Mao China. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and suggestions for further reading. A convenient glossary of common terms, titles, and names is included.

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Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair explores the possibilities and limits of terms such as ""body,"" ""woman,"" ""gender,"" and ""agency""—categories that emerged within the context of western philosophical, religious, and feminist debates—to analyze texts that come out of altogether different temporal and cultural contexts. Through close textual readings of a wide range of classical and medieval narratives, from well-known works such as the Tale of Genji to popular Buddhist tales, Rajyashree Pandey offers new ways of understanding such terms within the context of medieval Buddhist knowledge. Pandey suggests that ""woman"" in medieval Japanese narratives does not constitute a self-evident and distinct category, and that there is little in these works to indicate that the sexed body was the single most important and overarching site of difference between men and women. She argues that the body in classical and medieval texts is not understood as something constituted through flesh, blood, and bones, or as divorced from the mind, and that in the Tale of Genji it becomes intelligible not as an anatomical entity but rather as something apprehended through robes and hair. Pandey provocatively claims that ""woman"" is a fluid and malleable category, one that often functions as a topos or figural site for staging debates not about real life women, but rather about delusion, attachment, and enlightenment, issues of the utmost importance to the Buddhist medieval world.Pandey's book challenges many of the assumptions that have become commonplace in academic writings on women and Buddhism in medieval Japan. She questions the validity of speaking of Buddhism's misogyny, women's oppression, passivity, or proto-feminism, and points to the anachronistic readings that result when fundamentally modern questions and concerns are transposed unreflexively onto medieval Japanese texts. Taking a broad, interdisciplinary approach, and engaging widely with literature, religious studies, and feminism, while paying close attention to medieval texts and genres, Pandey boldly throws down the gauntlet, challenging some of the sacred cows of contemporary scholarship on medieval Japanese women and Buddhism.

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