Books published by University of Hawai'i Press

How can the art of healing ally itself with the art of killing? ""Watching Your Back"" applies Daoist notions of wellness and survival to reconcile these apparent paradoxes and unveil the origins and rationale of the unexplored symbiosis of Chinese medicine and the martial arts.

This is a complete examination of the tsunami phenomenon in Hawaii. It includes eyewitness accounts of the 1946 and 1960 tsunamis, our scientific understanding of tsunamis, the tsunami warning system and other major tsunamis from Japan to the Caribbean.

"Lords of Things" offers an interpretation of modernity in late 19th and early 20th century Siam by focusing on the novel material possessions and social practices adopted by the royal elite to refashion itself and its public image in the early stages of globalization.

Turning to three sources - historical, archaeological, and mythological, this title provides a multifaceted study of Himiko and ancient Japanese society.

The stories of Kaua'i's ruling chiefs were passed from generation to generation in songs and narratives recited by trained storytellers. Genealogical references to the chiefs are interspersed with legends of sea voyages, wars, heroes and romances in this resource book.

New York City, one of the world's most vibrant and creative cities, is also home to one of the largest overseas Japanese populations in the world. Among them are artists and designers who produce cutting-edge work in fields such as design, fashion, music, and art. Japanese New York offers an intimate, ethnographic portrait of these Japanese creative migrants living and working in NYC.

This book explores the tenacity of truth in the wake of historical trauma in a wide variety of cultural and linguistic settings.

Karma has become a household word in the modern world, where it is associated with the belief in rebirth determined by one's deeds in earlier lives. This belief was and is widespread in the Indian subcontinent as is the word "karma" itself. In lucid and accessible prose, this book presents karma in its historical, cultural, and religious context.

Powerful labour movements played a critical role in shaping modern Hawaii. Based on exhaustive archival research in Hawaii, California, Washington, and elsewhere, Gerald Horne's gripping story of Hawaii workers' struggle to unionize reads like a suspense novel as it details for the first time how radicalism and racism helped shape Hawaii in the twentieth century.

Twentieth-century America reduced Vietnam to "'Nam" the surreal site of a military nightmare. The early twenty-first century has seen the revision of this image to recognize the people and culture of Vietnam itself. Vietnamese Americans, both immigrants and the American children of immigrants, have participated in changing this perception, consistently presenting their side of the story in memoirs published since the 1960s. My Viet is the first anthology to provide a comprehensive overview of these memoirs and the historical picture they offer and to includeVietnamese writing that goes beyond memoir, revealing a new generation of Vietnamese American poetry, fiction, and drama.My Viet presents a rich, varied, and provocative collection of literary work that explores Vietnam from many Vietnamese points of view, sees America through a specifically Vietnamese American lens, and broadens the scope of Vietnamese American literature to its fullest extent.

Pastimes is the first book in English on Chinese jinshi, or antiquarianism, the pinnacle of traditional connoisseurship of ancient artifacts and inscriptions. As a scholarly field, jinshi was inaugurated in the Northern Song (960-1127) and remained popular until the early twentieth century. Literally the study of inscriptions on bronze vessels and stone steles, jinshi combined calligraphy and painting, the collection of artifacts, and philological and historical research. For aficionados of Chinese art, the practices of jinshi offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of traditional Chinese scholars and artists, who spent their days roaming the sometimes seamy world of the commercial art market before attending elegant antiquarian parties, where they composed poetic tributes to their ancient objects of obsession. And during times of political upheaval, such as the nineteenth century, the art and artifact studies of jinshi legitimatized reform and contributed to a dynamic and progressive field of learning. Indeed, the paradox of jinshi is that it was nearly as venerable as the ancient artifacts themselves, and yet it was also subject to continual change. This was particularly true in the last decades of the Qing (1644-1911) and the first decades of the twentieth century, when a diverse group of cosmopolitan and science-minded scholars contributed to what was considered at the time to be a "revolution in traditional linguistics." These antiquarians transformed how historians used literary sources and material artifacts from the ancient past and set the stage for a new understanding of the longevity and cohesiveness of Chinese history. The history of jinshi offers insights that are relevant to Chinese cultural and intellectual history, art history, and politics. Scholars of the modern period will find the resiliency and continuing influence of jinshi to be an important counterpoint to received views on the trajectory of Chinese cultural and intellectual change. We are accustomed to think that Chinese modernity originated in the great tumult of the turn-of-the-century encounter with foreign learning. The example of jinshi reveals the significance of local transformations that occurred much earlier in the nineteenth century. Its combination of art and historiography reveals the full range of scholarly appreciation for the past and its artifacts and provides a unique perspective from which to define "modern China" and illuminate its indigenous origins.

Jonathan Osorio investigates the effects of Western law on the national identity of Native Hawaiians in this political history of the Kingdom of Hawai'i from the onset of constitutional government in 1840 to the Bayonet Constitution of 1887.

This title examines in a comprehensive way the critically formative period when a culturally coherent geopolitical region identifiable as East Asia first took shape. By sifting through an array of both primary material and modern interpretations, it unravels what ""East Asia"" means, and why.

China: Understanding Its Past aims to fill a conspicuous gap in conventional world history texts, which are often Eurocentric and give scant attention to Asia. Using role-playing, simulations, debates, primary documents, first person accounts, excerpts from literary works, and cooperative learning activities, this text will help students explore many key aspects of China's history and culture. The teacher's manual includes a synopsis of each chapter and section, learner outcomes, definitions of key concepts, directions for student activities, and possible responses to questions posed in the student text. The CD contains selections of Chinese music from different time periods and locales. Liner notes include English translations of lyrics as well as historical information about each selection.

Contemporary Chinese films are popular with audiences worldwide, but a key reason for their success has gone unnoticed: many of the films are adapted from brilliant literary works. This book puts these landmark films in the context of their literary origins and explores how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives and styles for film.

Nearly two million people died in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 as a result of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime. Cambodians who were educated, teachers, artists, and authors were among the first to be killed. One generation later, literature is re-emerging from the ashes.

In this analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, Francois Jullien delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy.

This title provides a portrait of South Koreans in the 1990s - a decade that saw a return to civilian rule, and a loosening of social control. It shows how these changes impacted the lives of Korean men and women and the very definition of what it means to be ""male"" and ""female"" in Korea.

This study of the dramatic economic transformation of the Japanese village of Tanohata explores how the isolated fishing community has entered the mainstream of Japanese culture since the 1950s. It documents how the traditional role of the rural household has acted as a basis for innovation.

An attempt to understand Shinto's continuing relevance to the cultural identity of contemporary Japanese. Through an investigation of one of Japan's venerated Shinto shrines, it addresses what appears to western eyes to be an exotic and incongruous blend of superstition and reason.

Brings together the fieldwork of over eighty scholars and covers the nine major countries of the region: Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Each section begins with an introduction by a country editor followed by short essays offering vivid and intimate portraits set against the background of contemporary Southeast Asia.