A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from deep in the countryside of eastern Japan to the capital. Forty years later, with the long account of that journey as a foundation, the mature woman skillfully created an autobiography that incorporates many moments of heightened awareness from her long life. Married at age thirty-three, she identified herself as a reader and writer more than as a wife and mother; enthralled by fiction, she bore witness to the dangers of romantic fantasy as well as the enduring consolation of self-expression. This reader’s edition streamlines Sonja Arntzen and Moriyuki Itō’s acclaimed translation of the Sarashina Diary for general readers and classroom use. This translation captures the lyrical richness of the original text while revealing its subtle structure and ironic meaning, highlighting the author’s deep concern for Buddhist belief and practice and the juxtaposition of poetic passages and narrative prose. The translators’ commentary offers insight into the author’s family and world, as well as the style, structure, and textual history of her work.

Early in the seventeenth century, Northeast Asian politics hung in a delicate balance among the Chosŏn dynasty in Korea, the Ming in China, and the Manchu. When a Chosŏn faction realigned Korea with the Ming, the Manchu attacked in 1627 and again a decade later, shattering the Chosŏn-Ming alliance and forcing Korea to support the newly founded Qing dynasty. The Korean scholar-official Na Man’gap (1592–1642) recorded the second Manchu invasion in his Diary of 1636, the only first-person account chronicling the dramatic Korean resistance to the attack. Partly composed as a narrative of quotidian events during the siege of Namhan Mountain Fortress, where Na sought refuge with the king and other officials, the diary recounts Korean opposition to Manchu and Mongol forces and the eventual surrender. Na describes military campaigns along the northern and western regions of the country, the capture of the royal family, and the Manchu treatment of prisoners, offering insights into debates about Confucian loyalty and the conduct of women that took place in the war’s aftermath. His work sheds light on such issues as Confucian statecraft, military decision making, and ethnic interpretations of identity in the seventeenth century. Translated from literary Chinese into English for the first time, the diary illuminates a traumatic moment for early modern Korean politics and society. George Kallander’s critical introduction and extensive annotations place The Diary of 1636 in its historical, political, and military context, highlighting the importance of this text for students and scholars of Chinese and East Asian as well as Korean history.

A diary recording the authors' extended tour of the Far East. It focuses on their impressions as the ancient civilizations of Japan, China and India, each in their separate ways, came to terms with the modern world.

The first publication of Albert Einstein’s travel diary to the Far East and Middle East In the fall of 1922, Albert Einstein, along with his then-wife, Elsa Einstein, embarked on a five-and-a-half-month voyage to the Far East and Middle East, regions that the renowned physicist had never visited before. Einstein's lengthy itinerary consisted of stops in Hong Kong and Singapore, two brief stays in China, a six-week whirlwind lecture tour of Japan, a twelve-day tour of Palestine, and a three-week visit to Spain. This handsome edition makes available, for the first time, the complete journal that Einstein kept on this momentous journey. The telegraphic-style diary entries--quirky, succinct, and at times irreverent—record Einstein's musings on science, philosophy, art, and politics, as well as his immediate impressions and broader thoughts on such events as his inaugural lecture at the future site of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a garden party hosted by the Japanese Empress, an audience with the King of Spain, and meetings with other prominent colleagues and statesmen. Entries also contain passages that reveal Einstein's stereotyping of members of various nations and raise questions about his attitudes on race. This beautiful edition features stunning facsimiles of the diary's pages, accompanied by an English translation, an extensive historical introduction, numerous illustrations, and annotations. Supplementary materials include letters, postcards, speeches, and articles, a map of the voyage, a chronology, a bibliography, and an index. Einstein would go on to keep a journal for all succeeding trips abroad, and this first volume of his travel diaries offers an initial, intimate glimpse into a brilliant mind encountering the great, wide world.

The Description for this book, Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs, will be forthcoming.

A Southeast Asian cookbook with travel and cultural essays written by an award-winning author and food critic.

The Second Edition of Asian Cultural Traditions expands our understanding of the bewildering diversity that has existed and continues to exist in the cultures of South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. In a single volume, the authors pull together some of the major cultural strands by which people in Asian societies have organized their collective life and made their lives meaningful. With new sections on Central Asia, Islam, Korea, and Insular Southeast Asia, this first survey of its kind draws on multiple disciplines to contextualize the interplay of culture, historical events, language, and geography to promote better understanding of a realm often misunderstood by Westerners. The skillful synthesis of a vast amount of information, boxed items featuring popular culture or current events, abundant in-text illustrations, and vivid color plates make Asian Cultural Traditions, 2/E an outstanding introduction to Asian cultures. The Second Edition welcomes the editorial collaboration of Jeremy Murray and is sure to have continued broad classroom appeal.

Contesting the idea that the study of Anglophone literature and literary studies is simply a foreign import in Asia, this collection addresses the genealogies of textual critique and institutionalized forms of teaching of English language and literature in Asia through the 19th and 20th centuries, along with an examination of how its present options and possible future directions relate to these historical contexts. It argues that the establishment of Anglophone literature in Asia did not simply “happen”: there were extra-literary and -academic forces at work, inserting and domesticating in Asian universities both the English language and Anglo-American literature, and their attendant cultural and political values. Offering new perspectives for ongoing conversations surrounding the globalization of Anglophone literature in literary and cultural studies, the book also considers the practicalities of teaching both the language and its canon of classic texts, and that the historical formation and shape of English studies in Asia offers lessons that relate not only to the discipline but also may be applied to the humanities as a whole. ​