In Transit: The Formation of a Colonial East Asian Cultural Sphere

Posted on 30 April 2014 by UH Press Marketing

This work examines the creation of an East Asian cultural sphere by the Japanese imperial project in the first half of the twentieth century. It seeks to re-read the “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere” not as a mere political and ideological concept but as the potential site of a vibrant and productive space that accommodated transcultural interaction and transformation. By reorienting the focus of (post) colonial studies from the macro-narrative of political economy, military institutions, and socio-political dynamics, it uncovers a cultural and personal understanding of life within the Japanese imperial enterprise.

The negative impact of Japanese imperialism on both nations and societies has been amply demonstrated and cannot be denied, but In Transit focuses on the opportunities and unique experiences it afforded a number of extraordinary individuals to provide a fuller picture of Japanese colonial culture. By observing the empire—from Tokyo to remote Mongolia and colonial Taiwan, from the turn of the twentieth century to the postwar era—through the diverse perspectives of gender, the arts, and popular culture, it explores an area of colonial experience that straddles the public and the private, the national and the personal, thereby revealing a new aspect of the colonial condition and its postcolonial implications.

Written by Faye Yuan Kleeman

2014 | 320 pages | 10 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3860-7 | $52.00 | Cloth

The World of East Asia Series

2014 Hawaii Book & Music Festival: UH Press Tent & Author Events

Posted on 30 April 2014 by UH Press Marketing

University of Hawai‘i Press will once again be among the local publishers and vendors exhibiting at the Hawai‘i Book and Music Festival taking place this weekend, May 3–4 on the Frank F. Fasi Civic Grounds next to Honolulu Hale. Admission and parking are free. Go to the festival website to download a detailed schedule of events and PDF of the map shown here, as well as the HBMF app.

Presentations with UH Press authors and events to look for:

• A series of panels with the editors and contributors to The Value of Hawai‘i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions (Saturday, 10am to 2pm)
• UC-Berkeley professor Patrick Kirch on his newest title, Kua‘āina Kahiko: Life and Land in Ancient Kahikinui, Maui (Saturday, 2pm). Dr. Kirch will also speak on his archaeological work at Kahikinui at Bishop Museum’s “Traditions of the Pacific” lecture series on Friday, May 2, 6:00–7:30pm.
• Anthropologist Carol MacLennan shares her book, Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai‘i (Saturday, 2pm)
• Australians Andrew Warren and Chris Gibson launch their book, Surfing Places, Surfboard Makers, with a panel of board shapers (Saturday, 3pm). On Tuesday, May 6, noon to 1pm, they’ll be at UHM Saunders Hall 443 to present as part of the Spring Geography Lecture series.
• Maenette Ah Nee-Benham, Puakea Nogelmeier, and Jon Osorio from Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge talk about the Hawai‘inuiākea series of books (Saturday, 3pm)
• Selected readings from MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary (Sunday, 1 pm)
• UHM English professor Gary Pak discusses and reads from his latest novel, Brothers under a Same Sky (Sunday 3pm)
• UHM history professor John Rosa examines the social issues in his book, Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History (Sunday, 4pm)
• Award-winning writer Tom Coffman (I Respectfully Dissent; The Island Edge of America) speaks on the panel, “How Hawai‘i Changed America” (Sunday, 3pm).

Featured distributed titles:

• North Kohala resident William S. Chillingworth presents his book of awe-inspiring photographs, ‘Io Lani: The Hawaiian Hawk, accompanied by chant by Nathan Napoka, whose essays appear in the book (Saturday, 12 noon). A book launch celebration takes place Thursday, May 1, 6:00–8:30pm at Native Books/Nā Mea Hawai‘i—everyone welcome.
• Veteran journalist Denby Fawcett unveils the story of an iconic landmark in Secrets of Diamond Head: A History and Trail Guide (Sunday, 12 noon). This is the first time copies of this hot-off-the-press book will be available for sale.
• Three Hawaiian culture kūpuna, Corinne Chun, Manu Boyd, and Thomas Boyd, will share appreciation of the newly annotated edition of Queen Lili‘uokalani‘s classic memoir, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen (Sunday, 1pm).
• A distinguished panel will discuss the themes in volume three of Japanese Eyes, American Heart (Sunday 4pm).

Authors will stop by after their presentations throughout the day, so follow them to the UH Press tent, located in the row of publishers along Honolulu Hale (left side of the map). We’ll have event-only discounts and will offer free shipping on orders placed at the booth for titles not available onsite.

See you there!

Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and Other Pacific Islanders

Posted on 29 April 2014 by UH Press Marketing

Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the local.

Particularly intriguing is the fact that gender and sexual diversity appear to be more prevalent in some regions of the world than in others. Gender on the Edge is an exploration of the ways in which non-normative gendering and sexuality in one such region, the Pacific Islands, are implicated in a wide range of socio-cultural dynamics that are at once local and global, historical, and contemporary. The authors recognize that different social configurations, cultural contexts, and historical trajectories generate diverse ways of being transgender across the societies of the region, but they also acknowledge that these differences are overlaid with commonalities and predictabilities.

Edited by Niko Besnier and Kalissa Alexeyeff

Not for sale in East and Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand

Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawaii

Posted on 28 April 2014 by UH Press Marketing

Although little remains of Hawai`i’s plantation economy, the sugar industry’s past dominance has created the Hawai`i we see today. Many of the most pressing and controversial issues—urban and resort development, water rights, expansion of suburbs into agriculturally rich lands, pollution from herbicides, invasive species in native forests, an unsustainable economy—can be tied to Hawai`i’s industrial sugar history.

In Sovereign Sugar, Carol MacLennan unravels the tangled relationship between the sugar industry and Hawai`i’s cultural and natural landscapes. It is the first work to fully examine the complex tapestry of socioeconomic, political, and environmental forces that shaped sugar’s role in Hawai`i. While early Polynesian and European influences on island ecosystems started the process of biological change, plantation agriculture, with its voracious need for land and water, profoundly altered Hawai`i’s landscape.

Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America

Posted on 23 April 2014 by UH Press Marketing

The story of Catholicism and Protestantism in China, Japan, and Korea has been told in great detail. The existing literature is especially rich in documenting church and missionary activities as well as how varied regions and cultures have translated Christian ideas and practices. Less evident, however, are studies that contextualize Christianity within the larger economic, political, social, and cultural developments in each of the three countries and its diasporas.

The contributors to Encountering Modernity address such concerns and collectively provide insights into Christianity’s role in the development of East Asia and as it took shape among East Asians in the United States. The work brings together studies of Christianity in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan and its diasporas to expand the field through new angles of vision and interpretation. By moving beyond issues of missiology and church history, it asks how Christianity represented an encounter with modernity that set into motion tremendous changes throughout East Asia and in transnational diasporic communities in the United States.

Edited by Albert L. Park and David K. Yoo

2014 | 264 pages | 7 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3947-5 | $42.00s | Cloth
Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies

Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History

Posted on 22 April 2014 by UH Press Marketing

The Massie-Kahahawai case of 1931–1932 shook the Territory of Hawai‘i to its very core. Thalia Massie, a young Navy wife, alleged that she had been kidnapped and raped by “some Hawaiian boys” in Waikīkī. A few days later, five young men stood accused of her rape. Mishandling of evidence and contradictory testimony led to a mistrial, but before a second trial could be convened, one of the accused, Horace Ida, was kidnapped and beaten by a group of Navy men and a second, Joseph Kahahawai, lay dead from a gunshot wound. Thalia’s husband, Thomas Massie; her mother, Grace Fortescue; and two Navy men were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, despite witnesses who saw them kidnap Kahahawai and the later discovery of his body in Massie’s car. Under pressure from Congress and the Navy, territorial governor Lawrence McCully Judd commuted their sentences. After spending only an hour in the governor’s office at ‘Iolani Palace, the four were set free.

Local Story is a close examination of how Native Hawaiians, Asian immigrants, and others responded to challenges posed by the military and federal government during the case’s investigation and aftermath. In addition to providing a concise account of events as they unfolded, the book shows how this historical narrative has been told and retold in later decades to affirm a local identity among descendants of working-class Native Hawaiians, Asians, and others—in fact, this understanding of the term “local” in the islands dates from the Massie-Kahahawai case. It looks at the racial and sexual tensions in pre–World War II Hawai‘i that kept local men and white women apart and at the uneasy relationship between federal and military officials and territorial administrators. Lastly, it examines the revival of interest in the case in the last few decades: true crime accounts, a fictionalized TV mini-series, and, most recently, a play and a documentary—all spurring the formation of new collective memories about the Massie-Kahahawai case.