East Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

A Study Of Small Talk Among Males: Comparing The U.S. And Japan, Chie Furukawa

Dissertations and Theses

This study seeks to understand the social interaction of small talk in two different countries. Defining small talk as 'phatic communion' and 'social talk' as contrasted to 'core business talk' and 'work-related talk,' Holmes (2000) claims that small talk in the workplace is intertwined with main work-talk. Small talk can help build solidarity and rapport, as well as maintain good relationships between workers. Much of the research on small talk has been focused on institutional settings such as business and service interactions; thus, there is a need for research on non-institutional small talk between participants without established relationships.

This study …

Hoisan-Wa In Jest: Humor, Laughter, And The Construction Of Counter-Hegemonic Affect In Contemporary Chinese American Language Maintenance, Genevieve Leung

Rhetoric and Language Faculty Publications and Research

This research examines the language and cultural maintenance of Chinese Americans of a specific heritage: Hoisan-wa people. Hoisan-wa is one of the languages linking nearly all early Chinese immigrants in the U.S., but this language background has been pushed aside by the presence of other Chinese languages in America, such as Standard Cantonese and Mandarin. It has also been perpetually omitted from research for the last 150 years.

Drawing from 93 sociolinguistic interviews with Hoisan-wa heritage people, I explore instances of humor and laughter as these participants talk about their cultural and linguistic heritage. Home and family remain two of …

Haiku In West Coast Poetics: What Kigo?, Judy Halebsky

Faculty Authored Books and Book Contributions

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When I attended the Meguro International Haiku Circle last year, I asked for ideas for presentation topics. Someone suggested that I explain why poets in the U.S. are not overly concerned with kigo. Coming from a lineage of California poets influenced by haiku and Japanese poetry, I am not sure if I understand the subtleties of this challenge. However, the question of kigo brings up a larger issue: the cultural translation of haiku in the work of English language poets. Today, I would like to touch on the issues that have shaped how free verse poets in California translate …

A Fragmented Treasure On Display: The Turfan Textile Collection And The Humboldt Forum, Mariachiara Gasparini

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the summer 2012, thanks to the Department of Central Asian Art of the museum and the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) at the British Library in London, UK, the so-called Turfan textile collection--gathered during the last century Prussian Turfan Royal Expeditions in the Tarim Basin--held in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, Germany, was finally microscopically analyzed and digitized. Except for a couple of pieces taken into account in previous studies as examples of comparison, the collection as a whole (ca. 350 pieces) has not enjoyed particular attention from scholars in the fields of Chinese or Central Asian art …

Mark Twain In China By Selina Lai-Henderson (Review), Shiamin Kwa

East Asian Languages and Cultures Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On The Dimension Of Narrative: Zhang Ailing’S Self Translation Of Her Novel, Spring-Sprout Song, Xiaoqing Liu

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Zhang Ailing, in her self-translation of The Rice-Sprout Song from English to Chinese, made a special effort to adopt a Chinese narrative style. This style includes the Chinese way of depicting events, an emphasis on the narration of non-events, the addition and highlighting of the technique of irony, a strong lyrical tone, a simple and straightforward way of portraying characters, and the tailoring of narrative structure. Nevertheless, Zhang did not make her Chinese translation depart significantly from her "original" English writing, except for the last chapter, which was changed for other reasons. Rather, she made the changes in a subtle …

Modern Japanese Literature And Visual Culture: Constructions Of Religious And Historical Identity, Ronald S. Green

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This course is a survey of modern Japanese literature and visual culture since the Meiji Restoration (1868). It focuses on constructions of identities within historical contexts. Our objective is to analyze ways in which writers and artists have positioned their subjects and re-imagined culture to create particular portrayals. The class examines a selection of shōsetsu (the Japanese novel) of Natsume Soseki, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Murakami Haruki, and Ogawa Yōko, films of Miyazaki Hayao, and important anime. The course promotes critical methodologies and interdisciplinary or comparative studies, combining, for example, literature with film, visual culture, gender studies, cultural history, Buddhist …

Xuanzang’S Manual For Conferring The Bodhisattva Precepts, Ronald S. Green, Chanju Mun

Philosophy and Religious Studies

This is a translation of the Manual on the Procedures for Conferring the Bodhisattva Precepts (T.24.1499.1104c19- 1106b27) by Xuanzang (602-664) and the preface to it written by the monk Jingmai (T.24.1499.1106c3-29). Xuanzang was a Chinese monk and a translator of Buddhist scriptures. Although it is recorded that Xuanzang translated this manual in 649, he may have written it himself based on the Yoga-ca-- s rabhu-mi-s´astra in 100 fascicles. After travel through Central Asia and India from 629 (or 627?) to 645, he translated 75 Buddhist scriptures in 1,335 fascicles into Chinese, including a number of major Yoga-ca-ra Buddhist texts. He …

Oro?: Word Choice, Character, And Translation In Rurouni Kenshin, Tasha Layton

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Anime is one of the most common forms of entertainment in the United States. Its ubiquitous presence causes some Western viewers to forget that anime is, in fact, foreign film. One of the only things that reminds us of this fact is the strangeness of the scripts, particularly the grammar—a quirky grammar that is often a target for anime critics and comedic imitators. While it is true that the Japanese language used in anime is quite stylized, there are more important explanations for why the English versions sound unnatural. Audiences often think only of the denotations and semantic functions of …

On The Fringe: China's Disability Laws Through The Lens Of The Traditional Culture, Brandon Christensen

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Explosive economic growth over the last two decades has dramatically increased China’s standard of living and given rise to a rapidly growing middle class. Political reform, however, has been slow to follow with decades-old legal restrictions on civil liberties still firmly in place. Among China’s underdeveloped civil protections is the right for people with disabilities to enjoy freedom from popular and institutional prejudice in language or action, especially when seeking employment. Recent revisions of China’s disability laws provide increased employment protections, but latent prejudicial language and traditional stereotypes in the law suggest these revisions may not reach the core objective …

Modified Motorcycles: Stories From Chiang Mai, Thailand, Erin Meyers

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Motorcycles in Southeast Asia

Over the last two decades, a revolution has taken place on the streets of Asia. The ubiquity of motorcycles as a primary form of transportation has increased substantially. Since 1990, motorcycle ownership rates in Indonesia and Vietnam have increased by over 300 and 1,000 percent respectively (Muir and Brown 2011). Similarly, the number of motorcycles registered in Thailand has grown by over 280 percent, from 4,778, 220 vehicles in 1990 to 18,451, 518 in 2012 (Number). Asia has the highest level of motorcycle ownership in the world now (Barter 1999).

China's Use Of Economic Hard Power In The 21st Century, Taylor Shippen

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

China’s growing willingness to project military power may make the nightly news, but military power is not China’s greatest tool in achieving political ends. Since Deng Xiaoping began his reforms in 1978, economic influence has been the source of many of China’s diplomatic breakthroughs with the West. Although there is some dispute among scholars about what to call China’s growing influence (Klein 1994: 39; Huang 2013), for the purposes of this paper, China’s growing persuasiveness will be based on Joseph Nye’s definition of hard power, which he defines as “the ability to use the carrots and sticks of economic and …

Struktur Dan Makna Pariwara : Analisis Wacana Dalam Akhbar Bahasa Cina Di Malaysia, Yee Piyan Chang

Student Works (2010-2019)

Pariwara (Advertorial) ialah sejenis iklan yang terbentuk daripada gabungan “iklan” dan “rencana”. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meninjau struktur dan pengolahan makna untuk menghasilkan wacana pariwara (advertorial). Kajian analisis wacana (Discourse Analysis) ini menggunakan metodologi kualitatif secara deskriptif. Kerangka konsepsi kajian ini didirikan daripada gabungan Teori Linguistik Sistemik-Fungsional (Systemic-Functional Linguistic Theory) dan Teori Genre (Genre Theory). Konteks kajian ditetapkan di Malaysia dan sampel merupakan pariwara (advertorial) dalam akhbar Bahasa Cina. Sebanyak 32 pariwara (advertorial) daripada empat akhbar Bahasa Cina antara 1 Oktober 2012 hingga 31 Januari 2013 dipilih sebagai sampel kajian. Kaedah pemilihan sampel bertujuan digunakan. Satu senarai semak penilaian dirangka …

Sexuality And Textuality (Fall 2014), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

"Sexuality and Textuality" serves as an introduction to gay and lesbian literary studies and queer theory. It looks at questions of sexuality and literature in ancient and early modern texts (from the Hebrew, Greek and English traditions), as well as in modern texts (from German, French, Spanish, Japanese, and English traditions). In addition to literary texts, students will work with a number of cinematic representations of queer sexuality. Besides these primary texts, students will work with important secondary literature about sexuality."

A photo of this Fall 2014 class was taken as part of Professor Bob Tobin's ongoing class photo tradition.

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 12 No. 2, Spring/Summer 2014, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

What's in a Game? Transmedia Storytelling and the Web-Game Genre of Online Chinese Popular Fiction by Heather Inwood

This paper uses a genre of online Chinese popular fiction known as Web-Game fiction as an entry point for exploring the influence of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) on linear narrative fiction. By offering a thick description of MMORPG gameplay and of gamers’ movements between online and offline worlds, Web-Game fiction narrates and “deinteractivates” the subjective experiences of players as they progress through the levels of online role-playing games. This essay proposes that the genre offers an alternative perspective …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 12 No. 1 Fall/Winter 2013-2014, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Editor's Introduction by Melissa Dale

Empress Meisho (1623-96) and Cultural Pursuits at the Japanese Imperial Court by Elizabeth Lillehoj

In 1629, a seven-year-old girl was selected as Japan’s Empress Regnant. Known as Empress Meishō, she was the daughter of the current emperor and, on her mother’s side, she was the great-granddaughter of the founder of the Tokugawa warrior government. Although scant scholarly attention has been paid to Meishō, surviving documents and artifacts reveal that she participated in a rich material culture at the Japanese imperial court. Extant sources tell of her engagement with art works, entertainments and diversions, particularly …

In A Senchimentaru Mood: Japanese Sentimentalism In Modern Poetry And Art, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sentimentalism (senchimentarizumu) for Meiji poet Takamura Kōtarō 高 村光太郎, and others of his generation, was not a practice to be cultivated—not in one’s personal life, where it connoted emotional weakness, and certainly not in one’s artistic creations, where the concept suggested a sycophantic appropriation of Western trends. By the Taishō period (1912–1926), however, the term senchimentarizumu appeared with greater and greater regularity in the works of such luminaries as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Hagiwara Sakutarō. What did they mean by it? And why had the term taken on such noticeable cachet? In the article that follows I trace the formation and …

Ticket To Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism In Miyazawa Kenji’S Ginga Tetsudō No Yoru, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Miyazawa Kenji’s Ginga tetsudō no yoru is a children’s story that explores what heaven is like with very visible Christian themes and images, but the logic and vision underneath is more Buddhist than Christian. In Kenji’s prose masterpiece, the author ultimately subsumed Christianity and science into a greater spiritual cosmic vision—Nichiren’s all-encompassing principle of three-thousand-realms-in-a-single-thought (ichinen sanzen). Among the possible interpretations of Ginga tetsudō no yoru, one must consider that it is an expression of the author’s Nichiren Buddhist beliefs, which he long held and explicitly articulated elsewhere in other works and correspondence. Reframing both the scholarship on Kenji’s ties …

From Heresy To Policy: My Prescription For China's Population Policy 25 Years Ago, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

Recently scholars have been calling for the loosening up of China's one-child policy, and even the Chinese government has begun to show some willingness to do so. The call is not new. In my doctoral dissertation 25 years ago I first showed that China should allow couples to have two children and could still achieve the same population control goal as the one-child policy. I am glad to see that what I proposed 25 years ago is repeated by many scholars and even acceptable to the Chinese government.

The Inevitable And Difficult Transition From Relation-Based To Rule-Based Governance In China, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

China has benefited tremendously from replying on the relation-based way of doing business and governance, as evidenced in its rapid economic growth up to now. However, further relying on the relation-based governance may eventually hinder China's economic growth and exacerbate inequality, resulting in political instability. On the other hand, given China's cultural heritage and powerful vested interest groups, can China shed its relation-based way? This article argues from logical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives the inevitability and difficulty of China's transition from relations to rules, and discuss the implications of the transition or the lack of it for China.

China In Transition: Jesuit Encounters With The Dying Qing Empire, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

When four French Jesuits first encountered China in the late 1800s, they were unexpectedly swept into the turbulence of a dying empire. In this lecture, Dr. Anthony Clark, considers what it was like to be a Jesuit missionary in China as the Qing empire erupted into the violent Boxer Uprising of 1900. Living in what is today called Hebei, these missionaries struggled to learn Chinese and adjust to Chinese culture, while also maintaining their relationships with their families back in Europe. Dr. Clark will also discuss his recent travels to where these Jesuits lived and died in 1900. When Sts. …

An Analysis Of The Impact Of Housing Policies On Housing Prices In South Korea, Daeil Kwon

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The South Korean government has been intervening in the housing market for a long time to either activate or stabilize housing prices. However, there is a controversy about the effect of housing policy in South Korea. I analyzed the effect of housing policies as well as other factor s (interest rate, cost of renting, inflation, stock price, unemployment rate, exchange rate) on housing prices nationally as well as in northern Seoul and in southern Seoul, from January 2000 to January 2015 (181 months of data).

According to the results of my regression analysis to test the effect of housing policies, …

Science-Fictional North Korea: A Defective History, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity; an ominous mystique – that many writers and artists have exploited to generate striking science-fictional effects in texts with little or no connection to North Korean reality. (The 2002 Bond film Die another Day, for example, draws from North Korea’s science-fictional aura to animate North Korean super-villains who …

Incongruent Premodern And Modern Beauty Ideals: A Case Study Of South Korea And India's Reconciliation Of Current Beauty Trends With Foundational Religious Ideals, Minger Bropleh

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis is an in-depth analysis of beauty ideals in South Korea and India. These two countries have recently turned to skin lightening and cosmetic surgery in order to achieve their new beauty standards. Not only do these two countries share a propensity for those two trends, but they also have an overwhelming majority of the population that identifies with a specific religion; Hinduism in the case of India and Confucianism in the case of South Korea. However, it is not clear that the current beauty ideal in each country aligns with the beauty ideal set out in the respective …

The Living Torrents: Hokusai's "Journey Around The Waterfalls Of Various Provinces" (2014), Theory & History Of Art & Design Department, Elena Varshavskaya (H791 Instructor)

Ukiyo-e Prints Course | Exhibition Catalogs

"This book invites its readers to join RISD WS 2014 Japanese Prints class for an edifying expedition to Japan’s eight waterfalls portrayed by Katsushika Hokusai, an ukiyo-e preeminent artist, in his masterpiece print series “A Journey to the Waterfalls of Various Provinces.” In fact, this expedition is an academic endeavor undertaken by a collective of students who tried their hand at curating a museum exhibition as their art history course project. ..." -- Foreword, The Living Torrents: Hokusai's " Journey Around the Waterfalls of Various Provinces"

Contributing Authors

Jane Bak, Graham Bessellieu, Amy Chen, Julie Chon, Sofia Diaz de la …

Tang Junyi’S Comparative Philosophy And The Spiritual Value Of Chinese Culture, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Tang Junyi (1909-1978) engaged in philosophical comparisons very early in his career. He always philosophized from a cultural perspective in his subsequent philosophical reflection on the development of the mind, the philosophy of life, the relation between culture and moral reason, and the spiritual value of Chinese culture.

Full Issue

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

No abstract provided.

Bringing Anime To Academic Libraries: A Recommended Core Collection, Laura Pope Robbins

Publications

The author discusses Japanese anime and manga in the context of academic libraries. She notes that, while collections support the study of popular culture and give students access to materials that will engage them...they fail to include amime.

To rectify this, the author discusses a core list of anime titles for academic library collection development. This list was assembled based upon the author’s twenty-plus years of viewing anime and is the culmination of a sabbatical in which the author studied the history of Japanese animation and read extensively from acknowledged experts in the field. The films included here have stood …