No comments about Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics.

5 comments about The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family.

1. If one wants to understand Vietnam it is always important to read books with a Vietnamese viewpoint rather than those written through Western eyes. The author covers a wide time span in Vietnam's history and she presents it accurately while also dealing with the personal side of historical events. For anyone interested in understanding Vietnam this has to be added to one's must read list.



2. This is a great story of Vietnam and its evolution as a state. I found the author's detail and historical knowledge very rewarding. Anyone interested in the people culture of indochina should read this book.
   
   rlk



3. Excellent book for history buffs or Viet Nam veterans or anyone who knows someone who was in Viet Nam. This book explains a lot about the culture and people of Viet Nam. I highly recommend it.



4. Mai's book is an excellent way for American readers to understand the Vietnam war as well as Vietnamese culture, especially how they have reacted to French colonization, the American war period and the difficult choices that had to made about who to side with. It's a unique and important book that's gripping and important.



5. I bought this book prior to a vacation in Vietnam. This is painless history! Although the book is long (nearly 500 pages) and very heavy to carry on an airplane, it was worth it. I learned so much about the historical differences that led to the Vietnam war and the succeeding political situations. I feel really prepared now for this trip in terms of understanding the context for my travels both to Hanoi and to Saigon.
   If you want to get an understanding of the history of this country from prior to the French occupancy to the Communist era, I would recommend this book.

No comments about Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950.

1 comments about Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism.

1. This book will appeal to anyone who is interested in cutting edge scholarship on the history of modern South Korea and more broadly, on Nationalism and Nation-building. Jager succinctly and brilliantly pulls together the dispersed and disparate strands of how a nation develops a modern conception of its identity. In the case of South Korea the focus is on the gendered aspect of that identity, which is not only rooted in tradition but also in new narrative conceptions of that tradition. By taking a long and broad view of the dispersed development of these parallel and gendered narratives of modern identity (long because Jager's account covers the whole of the 20th century, and broad because she delves into literature, politics, historiography, economic development, and monuments and museums), Jager is able to show why South Koreans are who they are today with the kind of social structure that comprises its modern nation. Although this book is invaluable in the insights it provides to South Korean national identity, the true value of the book lies in providing a new approach to the study of national identity that can be applied to just about any other modern nation. This book is a must for the specialist and the generalist, the particularist and the theorist, in all fields of the humanities and the social sciences.

5 comments about Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism (Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies).

1. I didn't get too far into this book before getting pissed off. And that's a GOOD thing! John McRae , as a zen student, has taken on the task of looking at the history and hagiography of zen and tried to sort out fact from fiction, uses of the fiction, implications for practice, and much more. As you read this book, if you are a zen student like I am, you will find some of your most cherished beliefs challenged in regard to zen. I find this a refreshing book. The early part on lineage is particularly interesting as most zen groups I am aware of place heavy emphasis on lineage and "proving" how they are descendant from Shakyamuni himself. This was a very rewarding read and I look forward to reading more by this author on Northern school of Zen.



2. Separating fact from fiction in history is problematic at best. Religious history is especially difficult as there are many stakeholders propogating certain lines of belief and practice. McRae's book strips away much of the mythology of the development of Chan/Zen from the time of Bodhidharma through to the Song Dynasty (ca. 950-1300) in China. This demythologizing is sure to upset some Zen practioners and teachers whose faith in Zen Buddhism is intimately tied to an idealised version of Zen's history.
   McRae not only presents a refreshing view of the Chan lineage charts and their role in the development of Zen's history, but also gives a detailed analysis of the Northern/Southern Schools split and the development of "encounter dialogues", which laid the foundation for koans. Along the way, he takes a swipe at Heinrich Dumoulin's interpretation of Zen history, the Platform Sutra as history (it never happened), and even the idea that Chan was a distinct and separate Buddhist school in ancient China. For those whose faith is based on these colourful but historically inaccurate myths, this book will be troubling and thought-provoking.
   McRae and other academics in the field are providing a valuable service to Buddhism's migration from the East to the West and books such as this one should be required reading in Zen centres around the world. McRae tackles the issues with a light touch and even non-experts in the field should have little difficulty in reading this. I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in Zen's true history.
   (...)



3. Studies of this type were perhaps inevitable. Following in the footsteps of Dr.Hu Shih, John McRae questions the 'orthodox' in-terpretation of Ch'an (Zen) history. Like many others, however, I feel that he has made too much of certain arguments. Some things may be less than clear, about the early Ch'an tradition and its geneologies etc. However, the primary sources which shaped the Ch'an tradition - the T'ang masters, were very real people - and, for the most part - what has come down to us today - in their records, is a faithful reflection of what they had to teach.
   
   John McRae makes much of 'sectarian' identities - but, did the T'ang masters encourage people to cling to such things? Masters like Ma-tsu and Shih-t'ou used to send their disciples back and forth, between each other's temples. Like Hu-shih, John McRae is keen to make it known that figures such as Hui-neng were made to bolster an 'ideological' position but, in actual fact, Hui-neng's Altar Sutra includes the story of his encounter with Yung-chia, a joint T'ien-tai/Ch'an master. Given John McRae's position, we should expect to find a 'triumphalist' account of Ch'an here - but, it actually acknowledges that Yung-chia was enlightened - and that he could hold his own - with Hui-neng. So - where's the obsession with 'sectarian' identities? The Ch'uan Teng Lu (Transmission of the Lamp) - technically a 'Ch'an-school' document, contains the records of several T'ien-tai masters.
   
   John McRae dismisses almost everything about Hui-neng as a fiction- but, if he cares to visit to Pao-lin temple one day, not far from Canton, he will find Hui-neng's body, seated in the meditation posture. It has been there since 713, interestingly enough - in proximity to the body of an Indian master, who had predicted Hui-neng's birth and future career. Are the Buddhists who venerate this place - misguided fools? When it comes to it, the Ch'an school has not occupied the narrow horizons suggested in John McRae's account. You will find people practicing 'Pure Land meditation in Ch'an temples - and Master Yung-Ming wrote his monumental 'Tsung Ching Lu' (Record of the Source-Mirror), helping to explicate how all Buddhist teachings - as 'upaya' can be harmonised in the 'One Mind.' This affords a perspective quite different to that presented in John McRae's account. By default, perhaps, people now discriminate - and cling to sectarian identities. But is there a single T'ang master - on record, telling us to 'cling' to anything?



4. McRae is truly an engaging scholar. Not only are his topics intriguing, but his writing style is smooth, accessible, and clear. Seeing Though Zen was a solid treatment of commonly misunderstood aspects of Chan (chinese zen). He fills the reader in on important aspects of the development of Chan without an over-burdening assessment the factors involved (that's what the bibliography is for), but he also treats the major 20th-century scholarship on Zen which accounts for these misunderstandings. I would have liked more of a "step into the beyond" in the conclusion, but I guess I'll have to wait for the Shen-hui work.



5. As a Zen priest who is also an academic, I am frequently frustrated both by scholarly books on religion that dismiss practitioners' perspectives, and by religiously oriented books that accept religious claims uncritically. In Seeing Through Zen, John McRae synthesizes a great deal of recent scholarship on Ch'an (Zen) and shows that many of its central claims -- an unbroken lineage of patriarchs, the biographies of key figures such as Bodhidharma and the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, a "golden age" of iconoclastic masters during the Tang Dynasty -- are not "true" in the modern historical sense. At the same time, McRae's first rule of Zen studies is: "It's not true, therefore it's more important." His careful scholarship is balanced by sensitivity to the religious meanings and the institutional value of these myths for Ch'an/Zen practitioners. I highly recommend this book to academic students and religious practitioners of Zen.
   The book opens with four axioms for Zen studies that can be applied usefully to almost any historical study. The subsequent analysis focuses on the Ch'an lineage and the literature of "encounter dialogue" (koans). McRae helps readers to understand the content of Ch'an myth and doctrine, the process by which it developed, and the ways it shaped the religious identities of institutions and individual practitioners.
   He cautions readers not to accept portrayals of heroes or villains at face value, but to look beneath the rhetoric to what's at stake in their portrayals: whose interests are being served, and how? He also cautions against assuming that the more precise a Zen story is, in details of place and time, the earlier it is likely be. In fact, the opposite is more likely. The details of Bodhidharma's life, for example, accumulated gradually over a thousand years. His identity was continually reinvented by successive generations of practitioners, according to their religious identities and ideals. Likewise, the teachings of many great Tang Dynasty masters were attributed to them retrospectively by later generations of students. This does not mean, however, that the mytho-poetic accounts are worthless. They tell us about the concerns and aspirations of the people who developed them, and help us to think more carefully about the religious claims of our own era and institutions.
   Western Zen is often built on misunderstandings of the tradition, in part because of the vast divide between our culture and that of Song Dynasty China, when many elements of Zen tradition took shape. For modern practitioners, it is not possible to do a careful and thoughtful job of interpreting Zen tradition for our own circumstances if we accept traditional stories unquestioningly in a literal, fundamentalist way. McRae offers helpful resources for re-thinking the tradition.
   The book does have some limitations: it pays almost no attention to gender; and it focuses almost entirely on texts, rather than on, say, archaeology, religious objects, or art, all of which tell us something about how religious traditions were actually lived. The focus on texts is a bias of western Buddhist studies that has been critiqued in recent decades, because religious literature may tell us more about what elites thought practitioners should do and believe, than about what practitioners actually did. McRae also might have drawn more connections between Indian and Chinese traditions: the question-and-answer format of koan literature, for example, seems reminiscent of The Questions of King Milinda.
   Despite these constraints, Seeing Through Zen is an engaging, accessible, highly informative book that demonstrates both rigorous scholarship and sympathy for the people he studies. This is a difficult balance, and McRae accomplishes it with flair.

No comments about Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad.

1 comments about Isami's House: Three Centuries of a Japanese Family.

1. Isami's House is a fascinating book that provides a view of general Japanese history through the history of one family. As the back cover tease promises, this is an entirely new approach to history, one that presents the drama of modern Japanese history through the gripping ordeal of a single family. In this sense, Isami's House is a fascinating, gripping and original approach to Japanese history.
   
   Nevertheless, I found myself put off greatly by Bernstein's uneven writing style and odd organization. Bernstein's paragraphs are haphazardly organized, and her sentences are riddled with clause after clause. Often, it is difficult to tell exactly where the story is going, and sentences are so dominated by detail that the point behind each story is nearly impossible to decipher.
   
   Take, for example, this selection from page 60: "A ten-day spree of rioting by three thousand farmers in the Asakawa area in January 1798 - nine years after the French Revolution - brought a crowd to the Matsuura family's door on the morning of January 26. The fifth-generation patriarch, also called Yuemon (though his name was not written with the same characters as his deceased father's), had left with his wife and mother several days before; only family servants and a "young couple" remained at home. Rampaging peasants spilled out large amounts of the sake manufactured on the grounds of the family's compound and damaged other property as well." Did the ten-day spree of rioting begin on the 26th, or end then? Why does it matter that this happened 9 years after the French Revolution? Each sentence has a different subject, and little is done to link each separate idea together. Overall, this flaw in Bernstein's style leads to very bad, almost unreadable, prose.
   
   Bernstein's organization is also rather odd. The first half of the book seems to be organized topic by topic, and parallels are directly made between the family's exploits around the Meiji years and earlier family experiences. The second half, however, deals exclusively with the family's experiences during and after World War II. This leads to discontinuity: the first half seems to contain no narrative, and the second half seems to completely abandon the lessons learned in the first. I would have been much happier had Bernstein stuck with one style throughout.
   
   Nevertheless, it is a noble concept, and still a good book to read.

No comments about The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean (California World History Library).

1 comments about Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, And Legacy (Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center) (Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asi).

1. Ethnic Nationalism: Genealogy, Politics, And Legacy by Gi-Wook Shin (Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center) explores the roots, politics, and legacy of Korean ethnic nationalism. Descriptively analyzing the separation and differences in the communist north and democratic south of the Korean peninsula, Ethnic Nationalism addresses the general identity formation of the two Koreas. A core addition to academic library International Studies reference collections, Ethnic Nationalism is strongly recommended to the attention of political science, sociology, and cultural anthropology students studying the contrasts and similarities of North and South Korea through their collective history of anti-colonialism, civil war, authoritarian politics, democratization, territorial division, and globalization.

5 comments about Elements Of Japanese Design: Handbook Of Family Crests, Heraldry & Symbolism.

1. A great book for someone who wants information on Kamon. In the first few pages there is a history of Mon. The Mon are separated by type and a short description is given of each. This is an excellent reference book.



2. John Dower's study of Japanese crests and heraldry benefits from the same lucid writing and impeccable research that this MIT historian has brought to all of his work, including his recent National Book Award study of postwar Japan. The illustrations are excellent and the introduction, in particular, should be required reading for all those interested in Japanese history, heraldry, and samurai practices. It is just as valuable for those with a more generic interest in how heraldry has been used over time and across cultures.



3. I didn't realize the true value of this book until a year after I had initially read it.

   It's a great book about Japanese crests. The pictures are clear and very sharp. There are a lot of kamon in the book, but not as many as others, so I put the book down...my mistake!

   The book is filled with descriptions of the meanings and significance of each kamon! Mr. Dower writes of where the crest orginated when it is used, what season it is associated with, what meaning it has if associated with other motifs, etc. With the text and pictures one can actually recognize and understand the symbolism in Japanese art, kimono, etc. I can now tell what season it is in Japan by just looking at the kimono people wear or the tapestry hung on the wall (if the people who wear the kimono, hung the tapestry, etc. understand the symbolism...which many now don't :(...)!

   There is also a short history of the kamon in the beginning :) The story of how the author came upon the illustrations for the crests is very interesting, too!

   But...this book will not tell you the surnames that go with the crest. Granted, it will tell you of some of the really famous names that go with some of famous kamon, but not all of them.

   I think this book is a must for anyone who is really interested in Japanese culture. (The other books on kamon I have are just for people interested in kamon.) I have loved it so much that the binding is coming apart...




4. Thank You, for such a great book it has helped my research and photography tremendously. The information given is quite helpful. Thank You Again, E.Ortiz



5. Incredibly indepth coverage of Japanese family crests; a wealth of information on the subject. Detailed designs give rise to much inspiration to artists and crafters who enjoy Japanese history and culture.