Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Revising The Past, Complicating The Future: The Yushukan War Museum In Modern Japanese History, Takashi Yoshida

History Faculty Publications

In this three part series, we introduce historical museums in Japan and their role in public education. Following this introduction to peace museums, Ms. Nishino Rumiko, a founder of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM), introduces WAM’s activities and the 2000 Citizens Tribunal on the ‘comfort women’. The final article is by Mr. Kim Yeonghwan, the former associate director of Grassroots House Peace Museum who describes the peace and reconciliation programs that the Museum sponsors.

June Watanabe's Translation/Transformatin Of Japanese Nō In Contemporary Practice, Judy Halebsky

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper considers a 2004 performance of Nö Project II ‘Can’t’ is ‘Night,’ a collaboration of Japanese American dancer June Watanabe, Japanese nö master and Intangible Cultural Treasure of Japan Uchida Anshin, composer Pauline Oliveros, and poet Leslie Scalapino. The project, spearheaded by Watanabe, translated nö for a contemporary San Francisco audience, imbuing it with social and political meaning for California viewers. Watanabe translated nö’s internal concentration into a collaborative process she calls “being in the moment.” The performance became a way for collaborators and audience to examine values in art making and sociopolitical practice.

Review Of "Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact Of Culture, Power, And Migration On Changing Identities", Su-Mei Ooi

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The article reviews the book Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities by Melissa J. Brown.

Review Of: Aspect In Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus-Based Study, Edward J. Vajda

Modern & Classical Languages

The authors of this study pursue two goals. Citing examples from a large corpus of texts rather than relying primarily on native-speaker intuitions, they provide a fine-grained account of how aspect operates on both the lexical and sentential levels in contemporary Mandarin Chinese. Based on this description, they propose a number of refinements to currently existing general theories of aspect. The accompanying discussion revisits such important issues as the difference between aspect and Aktionsart, situation aspect vs. viewpoint aspect, contextual levels of analysis, and the notion of time vs. space in definitions of event boundedness.

Review Of China’S American Daughter: Ida Pruitt (1888-1985) By Marjorie King, Gregory Rohlf

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Transformation Of Japan’S Civil Society Landscape, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

Japan’s civil society is being transformed as more people volunteer for advocacy and professional nonprofit organizations. In the American context, this trend has been accompanied by a decline in participation in traditional organizations. Does the rise in new types of nonprofit groups herald a decline of traditional volunteering in Japan? This article argues that while changes in civil rights, political opportunity structure, and technology have also taken place in Japan, they have contributed to the rise of new groups without causing traditional organizations to decline, because Japanese attitudes about civic responsibility have continued to support traditional volunteering.

Japanese Video Art, Micol Hebron

Art Faculty Articles and Research

A review of the "Radical Communication, Japanese Video Art, 1968-1988" exhibition, curated by Glenn Phillips, at the Getty Museum.

“‘The Struggle Is Over, The Wounds Are Open’: Cinematic Tropes, History, And The Raf In Recent German Film.”, Jamie Trnka

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Parameters Of Reform And Unification In Modern Japanese Buddhist Thought: Murakami Senshō And Critical Buddhism, James Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

Reform is a word that, one might easily say, characterizes more than any other the history and development of Buddhism. Yet, it must also be said that reform movements in East Asian Buddhism have often taken on another goal—harmony or unification; that is, a desire not only to reconstruct a more worthy form of Buddhism, but to simultaneously bring together all existing forms under a single banner, in theory if not in practice. This paper explores some of the tensions between the desire for reform and the quest for harmony in modern Japanese Buddhism thought, by comparing two developments: the …

English Only At Work, Por Favor, Natalie Prescott

Natalie Prescott

Whether or not employees can be required to speak only English at work is a very delicate question. This issue has caused considerable disagreement among courts and legal scholars and gained greater prominence in 2006, when the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals created a circuit split by allowing for the possibility that an English-only rule may violate Title VII. Some scholars have attempted to address the legality of an English-only rule, mostly arguing that the rule violates Title VII. This Article, however, explains why Title VII does not apply to an English-only rule. The Article addresses a wide range of …

Hao Bu Hao: A Survival Guide For Zhejiang University, Jenna N. D’Amico

Senior Honors Projects

In an ever-expanding global society, we must learn to embrace other cultures much different from our own. The University of Rhode Island’s International Engineering Program has opened several opportunities for students to work and live in an environment much different from that in Kingston, the most recent one being at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. The first group was sent to Hangzhou during the summer of 2006 for seven weeks to learn Mandarin and learn about the Far East. The fourteen of us lived in a dorm, studied Mandarin Chinese, visited cultural and historical sites, and took in all …

Policing Chinese Politics: A History, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Dutton, Michael. Policing Chinese Politics: A History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

ISBN 9780822334774

Some Thoughts On China's Sexual Revolution: Sexuality And Social Change In Contemporary China, Sun Zhongxin

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The last two years saw several changes in the public discourse around sex and sexuality in China. So what are some of the most controversial sex-related topics to be raised in China recently?

Full Issue

BYU Asian Studies Journal

No abstract provided.

Confucian Creatures, Sarah Cutler

BYU Asian Studies Journal

From the tortoise shells used in ancient divination to the colorful camels of Tang tombs and from companionable oxen of the rice fields to singing birds in their cages, animals have been a significant part of Chinese culture. Perhaps most intriguing to the Western mind are the fanciful mythological animals of China adorning temple roofs, tomb walls, and traditional stories. Study of these creatures reveals a deep insight into Chinese culture for not only do the traditions about them indicate the ideas humans have about the animal world, but also the animals themselves are symbolic of various ideas maintained by …

This Time He Moves! The Deeper Significance Of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Radical Break In Good Men, Good Women, James N. Udden

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

Following the recent success of Taiwanese film directors, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Ang Lee and Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwanese film is raising its profile in contemporary cinema. This collection presents an exciting and ambitious foray into the cultural politics of contemporary Taiwan film that goes beyond the auterist mode, the nation-state argument and vestiges of the New Cinema.

Cinema Taiwan considers the complex problems of popularity, conflicts between transnational capital and local practice, non-fiction and independent filmmaking as emerging modes of address, and new possibilities of forging vibrant film cultures embedded in national (identity) politics, gender/sexuality and community activism. …

姉崎とイタリア　Anesaki And Italy, Susanna Fessler Phd

East Asian Studies Faculty Scholarship

The Japanese scholar of religion Anesaki Masaharu's travelogue of Italy in 1908. A focus on the comparison of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Japanese priest Honen.

Book Review: Strangers In The City: The Atlanta Chinese, And Their Community And Stories Of Their Lives By Jianli Zhao, Tim Engles

Tim Engles

No abstract provided.

Valmiki And Hesse: Maya Through The Ages, Kevin Blankinship

BYU Asian Studies Journal

The Vedic poet Valmiki could hardly have imagined that, with his discovery of shloka, or poetic meter, and the subsequent advent of literature as a separate aesthetic genre, Hindu notions of reality would lend expression of outrage to war-weary Germans thousands of years later. Or perhaps he did: Brahma’s benediction provided that, “so long as the mountains and rivers . . . stay on the face of the earth / So long will the story of Rama endure / So long will your fame remain.”1

Saikaku's Tales From Various Provinces, Josh Dalton

BYU Asian Studies Journal

n 1685, Ihara Saikaku published his Tales from Various Provinces, a five-volume collection consisting of thirty-five short stories. Saikaku explained: “I went throughout the provinces in search of subject matter for my writings.” The result was a compilation of humorous and bizarre local legends. “Reflecting on the experience,” Saikaku wrote, “I can only conclude that people are all spooks.” By interweaving his own wit and imagination into the tales he gathered, Saikaku closed the gap separating fantasy from reality. As a result, he simultaneously emphasized both the unique nature of the human experience and the universal aspects that everyone can …

Kim Chi-Ha's Poetry Of Yesterday And Today, Gerrit Van Dyk

BYU Asian Studies Journal

I n the 1970s, the Korean poet Kim Chi-ha was perhaps the most internationally well known Korean artist. During this time, Kim wrote many poems speaking out against the Park Chung Hee regime which began with Park’s coup in 1961. One of Kim’s most famous works, “The Five Bandits” (The Golden-Crowned Jesus and Other Writings) was so politically charged that it began a series of incarcerations of the poet on allegations of communist sympathies. Many international organizations and dignitaries defended Kim and called on Park to release the poet from prison. After Park’s death, Kim was released, and …

Exploration Of Japanese Gothicism In Izumi Kyoka's World, Emily Mitarai

BYU Asian Studies Journal

Kyoka draws upon his inspiration of the past and seeks, in his own words, “not to portray reality as reality, but to seek beyond reality for some more powerful truth” (Carpenter 154). Izumi Kyoka (1873–1939) was a prolific writer in the Meiji Era of Japan who depicted the literature of his past from the kusazoshi (illustrated fiction of the Edo Era), the ghostliness of Ueda Akinari, and the supernatural of the No Theater (Carpenter 154). Although a prolific writer, few of Kyoka’s works have been translated into English. His works are rich with imagery, yet the scenes are not in …

Liu Na'ou And The May Fourth Tradition, Katie Stirling

BYU Asian Studies Journal

According to Leo Ou-fan Lee, the city was, for Liu Na’ou, “the only world of [his] existence and the key source of [his] creative imagination” (191). Liu Na’ou stands among Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying as writers preoccupied with the fast-paced life and materiality of the city of Shanghai in the 1930s. Considered to be one of the leaders of the Japanese-inspired neo-sensationist school in China, Liu pioneered the use of descriptions of sensory experiences and experimentations with time in narrative in order to create his cityscapes and develop the tension between fascination and repulsion with the city that characterizes …

This Sporting Life: Sports And Body Culture In Modern Japan, William W. Kelly, Atsuo Sugimoto

CEAS Occasional Publication Series

Yale CEAS Occasional Publication Series - Volume 1

Sports in Japan have long been embedded in community life, the educational system, the mass media, the corporate structures, and the nationalist sentiments of modern Japan. For over a century, they have been a crucial intersection of school pedagogy, corporate aims, media constructions, gender relations, and patriotic feelings. The chapters in this book highlight a wide range of sports, and together, they offer a significant window on to the ways that the sporting life animates the institutions of modern Japan.

Constructing Indigenousness In The Late Modern World, Robert Cribb, Li Narangoa

Robert Cribb

Examines changing meanings of the term 'indigenous" in relation to other ideas that have been valued in various (mainly Western) philosophical system, such as priority, attachment to the land, and technical knowledge.

評陳佳宏著《台灣獨立運動史》, Weider Shu

Weider Shu

No abstract provided.

An Introduction To Chinese Philosophy, Chenyang Li

Chenyang Li

No abstract provided.

Li As Cultural Grammar, Chenyang Li

Chenyang Li

No abstract provided.

Interrupting Ethnographic Spectacles In Eric Valli's Himalaya, Puspa Damai

English Faculty Research

How can we talk about "postcoloniality" in relation to Nepal, which, even though it has never been foreign to Western fantasies about the exotic, was never formally colonized? One of the ways could be to create narratives and deploy images - as has been done by Eric Valli in his popular film Himalaya- that foreground geographically remote and ethnically and politically marginalized people of the nation. And yet, this article argues, such an attempt as Himalaya could easily fall into the same trap as grips orientalist ethnography that seeks to generate spectacles of the other for its own pleasure. …

Oko Sako (Oka And Sako): Wawashii Woman In The Kyōgen Oko And Sako, Minae Yamamoto Savas

Minae Yamamoto Savas

In this play, a peasant called Oko accuses Sako, another farmer, of letting his cow graze on Oko's grass. While Oko's wawashii (bold) wife offers to help him rehearse his lawsuit, she secretly hopes to dissuade her husband from bringing it to the local steward. The rehearsal satirizes the oppressive feudal justice system as the domineering wife and steward role overlap.