Translator: John R. Bentley

Kokugaku (national study) is an academic field of study that spans a number of disciplines, including philology, poetry, literature, linguistics, history, religion, and philosophy. It began as a movement to recapture a sense of Japanese uniqueness, by focusing on Japanese poetic and linguistic elements found in the earliest surviving texts.

A cultural history of writer and literary critic Hayashi Fusa's (1903–75) tenkō experience, Stories from the Samurai Fringe examines Hayashi's tenkō (ideological conversion) through a close reading of his proletarian short stories. Tracing Hayashi's move from "romanticizing"to "defining"to "remembering" the proletarian literature movement and its participants in his proletarian fiction, this study argues for a far more personal and political rationale for Hayashi's subsequent turn to ultranationalism.

The chapters in this ground-breaking volume examine the complex practices of biographical writing in Ming and Qing China. The authors draw on a rich variety of sources to answer some basic questions: Who were the writers of these texts and the subjects of their biographical constructions? What motivated these textual productions and sustained the routes from (re)creations to (re)publications? The informed and fascinating readings illuminate the enduring appeal of representing and represented lives in Chinese history.

Translator: Masako Inamoto

T his volume introduces short stories and essays by Kita Morio (1927-2011), one of the most significant, prolific, and beloved postwar writers in Japan. Also known by his literary persona, Dokutoru Manbō (Doctor Manbō), Kita was a remarkably versatile writer who produced both serious and comical works in a wide variety of genres. 

Editor: Michael J. Pettid

A new collection of translations of Korean fiction from the colonial period of the early twentieth century. The contents will introduce readers to works written from a variety of viewpoints, including those that advocate pro-Japanese stands, to anarchy, and to socialist narratives.

Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings is the first complete translation of the well-known document produced at the court of Emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1125). Dated to 1120, the Catalogue is divided into ten categories of subject matter. Under “Daoist and Buddhist Subjects,” “Figural Subjects,” “Architecture,” “Barbarian Tribes,” “Dragons and Fish,” “Landscape,” “Domestic and Wild Animals,” “Flowers and Birds,” “Ink Bamboo” and “Vegetables and Fruit” are biographies of 231 painters, ranging from famous early masters, such as Wu Daozi (ca.

Translator: Britten Dean

The Wasteland explores the psychology of the modern Japanese woman and her urge to realize an inner self of latent sexuality, long suppressed in Japan’s male-dominated society. Nobe Michiko, the novel’s narcissistic protagonist, leaves ruined lives in her wake as she pursues her lustful goals.

Jooyeon Rhee provides an innovative and compelling analysis of gendered representations of nation and modernity in early twentieth-century Korean novels. By investigating the transformation of the novel genre in relation to transnational literary forces and print capitalism, this book illuminates the ways in which gender became an important epistemological ground on which writers and translators constructed their imaginations of Korean society and history under colonial rule. 

Editor and Translator: Takako Lento 

Labor Activism and Colonial Governance in Hong Kong chronicles a long neglected yet formative social and political movement in Hong Kong between the 1930s and 1950s.