The Dialectics of Absolute Nothingness investigates the appropriations, critiques, and innovative interpretations of German philosophy by the Kyoto School, showing how central concepts of German philosophical traditions found a place within non-Western frameworks such as Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, thereby transcending the original Western context.

Kyoto School philosophers critically engaged with their own tradition and grappled with classical German philosophy from Kant to German Idealism and from Neo-Kantianism to German phenomenology. Far from mimicking the Western tradition, Nishida, Tanabe, Nishitani and other Japanese philosophers overcame their sense of alienation from European philosophy by making its concepts their own and advancing their ideas as a hybrid of European and Japanese philosophy through which they developed their own world historical perspective.

Showcasing the ways that Kyoto School philosophers internalized German philosophy and generated their own original perspectives, The Dialectics of Absolute Nothingness demonstrates the Kyoto School's potential for culturally diversifying the study of German philosophy and paves the way for the comprehensive study of Asian philosophy in European and global contexts.

Worm-Time challenges conventional narratives of the Cold War and its end, presenting an alternative cultural history based on evolving South Korean aesthetics about enduring national division. From novels of dissent during the authoritarian era to films and webtoons in the new millennium, We Jung Yi's transmedia analyses unearth people's experiences of wormification--traumatic survival, deferred justice, and warped capitalist growth in the wake of the Korean War.

Whether embodied as refugees, leftists, or broken families, Yi's wormified protagonists transcend their positions as displaced victims of polarized politics and unequal development. Through metamorphoses into border riders who fly over or crawl through the world's dividing lines, they reclaim postcolonial memories buried in the pursuit of modernization under US hegemony and cultivate a desire for social transformation. Connecting colonial legacies, Cold War ideologies, and neoliberal economics, Worm-Time dares us to rethink the post-WWII consensus on freedom, peace, and prosperity.

This extensive selection of Tanikawa Shuntaro's poetry reflects the full depth and breadth of his work, from his appearance as a fresh new voice to the mastery of his later poetry. It traces his artistic development and his shift in focus from man's cosmic destiny to the pathos of everyday life and a more internalized struggle with the nature of human expression. Lovers of poetry will find the experience exhilarating.

The only such collection in English, this volume will prove indispensable to students and scholars of Japanese literature, as it opens a valuable new perspective on postware Japanese literature.

The Introduction clarifies the social and artistic background of Tanikawa's extraordinary work and career, illuminating major themes as his poetry evolves over time.

The Kitchen God and His Wives is a modern folk epic on the origin of the Stove God, widely venerated across China. In this tale, the Stove God (or Kitchen God) begins as a mortal man who owes his wealth and success to his loyal wife, the long-suffering Guo Dingxiang. Guo's ungrateful husband divorces her, losing his fortune and eventually becoming a beggar. When he receives charity from his former wife, he is filled with remorse and kills himself by jumping into the stove. This act elevates both the man and his wife to godhood.

Set in China's countryside and ranging from heaven to hell, this tale provides a look at traditional marriage customs and the uses and abuses of fortune telling in southeastern Henan. This volume contains Wilt L. Idema's full and annotated translation of the Guo Dingxiang epic together with an extensive study of the textualization of this work in the years following the Cultural Revolution. The Kitchen God and His Wives offers a valuable look at Chinese folk culture and traditional storytelling.

The Kitchen God and His Wives is a modern folk epic on the origin of the Stove God, widely venerated across China. In this tale, the Stove God (or Kitchen God) begins as a mortal man who owes his wealth and success to his loyal wife, the long-suffering Guo Dingxiang. Guo's ungrateful husband divorces her, losing his fortune and eventually becoming a beggar. When he receives charity from his former wife, he is filled with remorse and kills himself by jumping into the stove. This act elevates both the man and his wife to godhood.

Set in China's countryside and ranging from heaven to hell, this tale provides a look at traditional marriage customs and the uses and abuses of fortune telling in southeastern Henan. This volume contains Wilt L. Idema's full and annotated translation of the Guo Dingxiang epic together with an extensive study of the textualization of this work in the years following the Cultural Revolution. The Kitchen God and His Wives offers a valuable look at Chinese folk culture and traditional storytelling.

Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi Hakkenden is one of the monuments of Japanese literature. This multigenerational samurai saga was one of the most popular and influential books of the nineteenth century and has been adapted many times into film, television, fiction, and comics.

His Master's Blade, the second part of Hakkenden, begins the story of the eight Dog Warriors created from the mystic union between Princess Fuse and the dog Yatsufusa and born into eight different samurai families in fifteenth-century Japan. The first is Inuzuka Shino, orphaned descendent of proud warriors. Left with nothing save a magical sword and the bead that marks him as a Dog Warrior, young Shino escapes his evil aunt and uncle and sets out to restore his family name. Unaware of their karmic bond, Shino and the other Dog Warriors are drawn into a world of vendettas and quests, gallants, and rogues, as each strives to learn his true nature and find his place in the eight-man fraternity.

Yi Kwang-su (1892-1950) was one of the pioneers of modern Korean literature. When the serialization of Mujông (The Heartless) began in 1917, it was an immediate sensation, and it occupies a prominent place in the Korean literary canon. The Heartless is the story of a love triangle among three youths during the Japanese occupation. Yi Hyông-sik is a young man in his mid-twenties who is teaching English at a middle school in Seoul. Brilliant but also shy and indecisive, he is torn between two women. Kim Sôn-hyông is from a wealthy Christian family; she has just graduated from a modern, Western-style school and is planning on continuing her studies in the United States. Pak Yông-ch'ae is a musically gifted young woman who was raised in a traditional Confucian manner; due to family misfortune, she has become a kisaeng but remains devoted to Hyông-sik whom she knew as a child. The Heartless goes beyond the level of romantic melodrama and uses these characters to depict Korea's struggles with modern culture and national identity.A long critical introduction discusses Yi Kwang-su's life and work from his birth in 1892 to the publication of his first novel The Heartless in 1917. It contains in-depth analyses of the novel, Yi Kwang-su's literary theory, and early short stories.

Denationalizing Identities explores the relationship between performance and ideology in the global Sinosphere. Wah Guan Lim's study of four important diasporic director-playwrights--Gao Xingjian, Stan Lai Sheng-chuan, Danny Yung Ning Tsun, and Kuo Pao Kun--shows the impact of theater on ideas of Chineseness across China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

At the height of the Cold War, the Bamboo Curtain divided the two Chinas across the Taiwan Strait. Meanwhile, Hong Kong prepared for its handover to the People's Republic of China and Singapore rethought Chinese education. As geopolitical tensions imposed ethno-nationalist identities across the region, these four dramatists wove together local, foreign, and Chinese elements in their art, challenging mainland China's narrative of an inevitable communist outcome. By performing cultural identities alternative to the ones sanctioned by their own states, they debunked notions of a unified Chineseness. Denationalizing Identities highlights the key role theater and performance played in circulating people and ideas across the Chinese-speaking world, well before cross-strait relations began to thaw.

Denationalizing Identities explores the relationship between performance and ideology in the global Sinosphere. Wah Guan Lim's study of four important diasporic director-playwrights--Gao Xingjian, Stan Lai Sheng-chuan, Danny Yung Ning Tsun, and Kuo Pao Kun--shows the impact of theater on ideas of Chineseness across China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

At the height of the Cold War, the Bamboo Curtain divided the two Chinas across the Taiwan Strait. Meanwhile, Hong Kong prepared for its handover to the People's Republic of China and Singapore rethought Chinese education. As geopolitical tensions imposed ethno-nationalist identities across the region, these four dramatists wove together local, foreign, and Chinese elements in their art, challenging mainland China's narrative of an inevitable communist outcome. By performing cultural identities alternative to the ones sanctioned by their own states, they debunked notions of a unified Chineseness. Denationalizing Identities highlights the key role theater and performance played in circulating people and ideas across the Chinese-speaking world, well before cross-strait relations began to thaw.

In Fuzzy Traumas, Tyran Grillo critically examines the portrayal of companion animals in Japanese literature in the wake of the 1990s pet boom. Blurring the binary between human and nonhuman, Grillo draws on Japanese science fiction, horror, guide-dog stories, and a notorious essay on euthanasia, treating each work as a case study of human-animal relationships gone somehow awry. He makes an unprecedented case for Japan's pet boom and how the country's sudden interest in companion animals points to watershed examples of productive errors that provide necessary catalysts for change.

Examining symbiotic concepts of humanity and animality, Grillo challenges negative views of anthropomorphism as something unethical, redefining it as a necessary rupture in, not a bandage on, the thick skin of the human ego. Fuzzy Traumas concludes by introducing the paradigm shift of postanimalism as a detour from the current traffic jam of animal-centered philosophies, arguing that humanity cannot move past anthropocentricism until we reflect honestly on what it means for the human condition.

In Fuzzy Traumas, Tyran Grillo critically examines the portrayal of companion animals in Japanese literature in the wake of the 1990s pet boom. Blurring the binary between human and nonhuman, Grillo draws on Japanese science fiction, horror, guide-dog stories, and a notorious essay on euthanasia, treating each work as a case study of human-animal relationships gone somehow awry. He makes an unprecedented case for Japan's pet boom and how the country's sudden interest in companion animals points to watershed examples of productive errors that provide necessary catalysts for change.

Examining symbiotic concepts of humanity and animality, Grillo challenges negative views of anthropomorphism as something unethical, redefining it as a necessary rupture in, not a bandage on, the thick skin of the human ego. Fuzzy Traumas concludes by introducing the paradigm shift of postanimalism as a detour from the current traffic jam of animal-centered philosophies, arguing that humanity cannot move past anthropocentricism until we reflect honestly on what it means for the human condition.

In Little Need of Divine Intervention presents a fundamental revision of the thirteenth-century Mongol Invasions of Japan by revealing that the warriors of medieval Japan were capable of fighting the Mongols to a standstill without the aid of any divine winds or kamikaze. Conlan's interpretation of the invasions is supplemented with translations of the picture scrolls commissioned by Takezaki Suenaga, a warrior who fought against the Mongols. In addition, translations of nearly seventy administrative documents are provided, thereby enabling students of Japanese history reconstruct the invasions using contemporary sources. A rare copy of Takezaki Suenaga's Scrolls, reproduced in full, reveals hitherto unknown missing scenes. Furthermore, the scrolls' images can be now read in tandem with its narrative passages, translated in English for the first time. Please note that the entire book was intentionally printed from back to front, so that the reproduced scrolls unfold in Japanese order, from right to left. Thus the book's spine is on the right. This monograph will prove to be of great interest for students and scholars of medieval Japanese history, warrior culture, and the nature of Japan in an East Asian context.

Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how Buddhist poet-monks, who first appeared in the latter half of Tang-dynasty China, asserted a bold new vision of poetry that proclaimed the union of classical verse with Buddhist practices of repetition, incantation, and meditation.

Mazanec traces the historical development of the poet-monk as a distinct actor in the Chinese literary world, arguing for the importance of religious practice in medieval literature. As they witnessed the collapse of the world around them, these monks wove together the frayed threads of their traditions to establish an elite-style Chinese Buddhist poetry. Poet-Monks shows that during the transformative period of the Tang-Song transition, Buddhist monks were at the forefront of poetic innovation.

This volume is a translation of Choi Seung-ja's 1991 anthology titled Portrait of a Suburbanite. Published in the series of 100 Prominent Korean Poets by Mirae Press, the poems in this volume were selected from four of Choi's previous works titled, Love of This Age (1981), Merry Diary (1984), House of Memory (1989), and the subsequently published My Tomb, Green (1993). Speaking with a fierce sense of equality and independence, Choi Seung-ja's poetry battled ossified forms of language not only on the political but also the personal front. Like her male colleagues, Choi parodied and critiqued the idol of the father, but even further, she insightfully explored irreverent content to reveal the gendered constraints of the lyric form. In particular, Choi exposed the idolatrous power of the lover, the basis of exploitation and injustice at the most intimate level. On top of their political disempowerment as citizens, the private and domestic alienation of women as daughters, lovers, and wives form a deep stratum of repression. When Choi's women personae broke this long silence of compliance nurtured by the traditional lyric and voiced themselves as exploited and traumatized, yet fearless and tenacious human beings, the shock of this transgression shook the nation. In turn it demonstrate how long and how powerfully the gender constrictions had been imposed on Korean women.

Indian Summer (Koharu biyori) is the title of a relatively short novel by Kanai Mieko (b. 1947), recognized by critics both inside and outside Japan as one of the most important Japanese writers of recent decades. The work brilliantly demonstrates Kanai's light-hearted wit in addition to her penchant for biting commentary on conservative elements in Japanese society. Kanai is also an acclaimed essayist, film critic, literary critic, and poet, and has produced a steady output of high-quality material since making her literary debut in her teens.

First published in 1981, Japan's Renaissance is a detailed and exhaustively researched account of the regime of Japan's second shogunate, and also an agile comparative analysis of the political economy of the period with other Renaissance systems. The book argues that the development of shogunal power in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Japan was similar to the evolution of monarchic power in France and England during the same period. Contrary to the received wisdom that the government of the Ashikaga shoguns was the low point of premodern Japan, this book demonstrates that it was the incubator for many developments and the administrative technology which reached their maturity in the Tokugawa period. Applying the ideas of political economy to medieval Japanese history makes this book an essential companion for all Japan and East Asia specialists, students of comparative feudalism and monarchical development, as well as educated generalists who are interested in premodern Japan. The book is illustrated with antique maps and Japanese paintings of the period which add to the reader's understanding of this dramatic age in Japan's history.

This is the second volume of Annotated Japanese Literary Gems, which makes available representative examples of Japanese short stories and novellas from Meiji to the present. This multi-volume set of books--six volumes are planned--provides rubi for nearly all kanji at first use. Each story is also included in a plain-text version. Along with the extensive annotations provided, the collection serves as a resource for students of modern Japanese literature and can also be used as an intermediate to advanced language text. The volume is printed Japanese-style, with pages ordered from right to left. The present volume introduces stories by three distinguished authors. Natsume Soseki, considered the greatest Meiji author along with Mori Ogai, is well known for his Botchan and I Am a Cat. Tomioka Taeko, an Osaka-born contemporary author, favors writing about nameless or marginal, yet unusual, individuals with their distinctive fears and desires. Inoue Yasushi is acclaimed for historical narrative and autobiographical fiction.

This bilingual book presents a generous selection of work by four distinguished twentieth-century poets who made significant contributions to the development of modern Japanese poetry. A general introduction provides the literary and historical context for their achievement, while each poet's work is prefaced with notes on his/her life and career.

Emerging from materials the author developed while teaching, A Handbook to Classical Japanese draws on twenty-five years of experience in addressing problem areas for those learning the language. The work deals with the central issue of classical language, namely, 'verb'-endings: specifically, the endings of verbs, verbal adjectives, pseudo-adjectives, and verb-suffixes. The Handbook treats the issue systematically, presenting 670 real-language examples, nearly 400 of which are discretely different quotations. The work's extensive Introduction walks the reader through key problem areas, with sections on Which Verbs Belong to Which Conjugation? How to 'Unpack' Bungo Verbs, Nari Headaches, Namu/nan Trouble, Items Easily Confused: Apparent Ambiguity, Respect Language, and the like. The body of the Handbook, with its hundreds of examples, serves as a kind of reader; thirty-two verb-suffixes are illustrated in all of their forms or functions (with at least two examples of each). The book's seven appendices introduce a wide range of Western-language material, including comprehensive information about other translations into English, French, German, and Spanish of all texts cited--especially helpful for potential comparative translation study. For those unfamiliar with the topic, the section on Orthography is a model of clarity. Throughout the Handbook, highlighted items in Japanese are printed in bright red and their romanization in dark-black small capitals, to repeat and reinforce material at both conscious and unconscious levels via complementary graphic features. The volume can be used as an introduction to classical Japanese, an initial textbook, a companion text, a review text, and/or a reference work.

The cases in Korean adoption and inheritance reveal steps in the transition called Confucianization that took place mostly in the seventeenth century. The transition from partible inheritance, equally divided between sons and daughters, to primogeniture; the attempt to use soja as heirs; the movement toward agnatic adoption as the way to provide an heir when there were no children, or when there were only daughters born into the household are all covered in numerous cases from the official history, from government records, and from private documents.